Dak’ir lurched back to the present, a sickening vertigo threatening to overwhelm him, and he reached out to steady himself. He tasted blood in his mouth and black spots marred his vision. Tearing off his battle-helm, he struggled to breathe.

Somewhere in the temple, someone was speaking…

‘You died,’ Kadai accused, looking up at the warrior on the parapet. He fought the invisible pressure stopping him from striking the renegade down, but his arms were leaden.

‘I survived,’ returned Nihilan, the effort to maintain the psychic dampening that held the battle in stasis against the Salamander’s will creasing his scarred face.

‘You should have faced justice, not death,’ Kadai told him, then smiled vindictively. ‘Overloading the crematoria, stirring up the volatile core of Moribar, you provoked it in order to escape and kill me and my brothers into the bargain. Ushorak’s destruction was your doing, yours and his.’

‘Don’t you speak of him!’ cried Nihilan, red lightning coursing through his eyes and clenched fists, writhing around his force staff and spitting off in jagged arcs. Exhaling fury, the Dragon Warrior recovered his composure. ‘You are the murderer here, Kadai – a petty marshal who’d do anything to catch his quarry. But perhaps you’re right… I did die, and was reborn.’

Kadai raised his inferno pistol a fraction. Nihilan’s grip was loosening. He was readying for it to slip completely, and slay the traitor where he stood, when the Speaker’s body started to convulse.

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ the Dragon Warrior added, stepping back into the shadows of the parapet. ‘Not for you…’

Kadai fired off his inferno pistol, melting away a chunk of parapet as Nihilan released his psychic hold. The Salamander was about to chase after him when a terrible aura enveloped the Speaker, lifting his prone corpse inexplicably so that it dangled just above the ground like meat on an invisible hook.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he raised his chin to reveal a ruined face destroyed by the bolt pistol’s explosive round. Slick red flesh, wrapped partially around a bloody skull, shimmered in the ambient light. What remained of the Speaker’s cranium was split open like an egg. Luminous cobalt skin was revealed beneath. Cracking bone gave way to a leering visage called forth from a dark unreality as something… unnatural… pulled itself forth into the material plane.