She experienced an odd sense of calm. The uncertainty was gone, the waiting over. At least she could derive some small sense of satisfaction from knowing her opponent’s identity. What better way to test her than with creatures like this? She breathed slowly, deeply, trying to steady herself. The mewling was rising steadily, building in intensity. She had only moments.

What shall I do?

Hers was the stronger weapon, her magic against their teeth and claws. Hers was the superior skill and cunning, her craft honed in a thousand battles. But the Furies were driven by instincts that did not value safety or self-preservation. A pack mentality ruled them when they found prey, and they would attack and keep attacking until either the enemy or they were destroyed. No quarter would be given and none asked. Furies knew only one way, and that way eschewed any identifiably rational behavior. She had been put into a den of madness, and the source of that madness was a legion of relentless, inexorable killers.

She tested the magic of the wishsong to see if the Straken Lord had told the truth about using it, thinking that if the demon had lied, she would be rendered unconscious fast enough that she wouldn’t feel it when the Furies tore her to bits. But the magic blossomed at the end of her fingertips on command, gathering force, taking shape, waiting to be used, and the conjure collar gave no warning. Hope welled up within her at the realization that it would be an even battle. She would have her chance to survive.

A small chance.

She would have to kill all of them, if she was to walk away. Nothing short of that would save her. They would come at her in a rush, and they would keep coming until the life was bled out of them. Once, the task would have been a challenge she would have embraced, a struggle of dark magic against dark intent, the wellspring of the Ilse Witch’s indomitable self-confidence. But she was no longer the Ilse Witch, and her desire for combat had fallen away with the identity she had shed.

Her strength must come from her life as the Ard Rhys.

What shall I do?

They began to appear, small shadows in the failing light, feline faces and slanted eyes, sinuous forms sliding from holes in the earth and from behind bits of scrub. Like ghosts, they materialized in the gloom, their mewling rising and falling in waves of expectation. They were all around her, perhaps a hundred of them. Too many for her to overcome, no matter how much magic she used, no matter how strong her determination. Like the ogre she had seen on her way to her confrontation with the shade of the Warlock Lord, she would fight with passion and fury, but in the end she would be pulled down.