Vyth carefully removed the beaten and bloody armor piece from her upper body, and clutched the wound on her left side. The bleeding slowed already, but with every movement the wound ached. Chain and plate clattered onto the stonework floor of the watchtower as she began to make her way to the parapet, blood drops trailing behind her, to where Fellian was propped up. Her left foot dragged a little as she walked, but in the short distance to cover, she suffered through the soreness in her ankle, and sat down beside her comrade in arms.

“If you’re here, I’m guessing it’s over,” Fellian said after a moment of silence, his breathing slow and steady. He tried to straighten himself, but the pain in his leg made him cringe. “Gah! Fuck! Yeah, that’s broken.”

Vyth stifled a laugh, tossing her head back to get some of the wet hair out of the way. Her head was throbbing, and it occurred to her that it was more likely blood than sweat making the hair stick to her face. Ignoring his wound, she said, “Yeah, it’s done.” She pulled her hand away from her side for a moment. “Bastard got a blade between the plates on my left side, but I’ll be fine.” She looked back towards the archway she came from, the torchlight flickering in the hall. The slumped form half-visible from her point of view was enough to reassure it was over. “You should see the other guy.”

Fellian chuckled lightly, only stopping after holding his leg steady. “Which part? Fairly certain I saw something that looked like a head rolling by the archway,” he said, his hands making the motion to match his statement. He paused a moment before continuing, “I was worried for more than a moment.”

Vyth looked over at Fellian a moment, as he stared into the middle distance before his head dropped. She began to laugh, and tried to speak, but couldn’t manage between the hilarity and the pain in her side. After Fellian gave her the familiar stare of misunderstanding, she took a deep breath and said, “That was a head, but not his. I closed the gap and he grabbed the closest thing to throw at me. Just happened to be one of his mummified fetishes.”

“And why is that funny to you?”

“It just reminded me of the Deathless we ran into that Eastern crypt. Remember that?”

Fellian’s gaze broke away from her for a moment as he remembered, and a smile grew slightly on his face. “Those things used everything as a weapon. Throwing rocks, knives, torches–”

“Body parts.” Vyth laid her legs out straight in front of her, rotating her left ankle to massage out the tenderness on it. Her side still ached, but the paid was dulling over time. “I suppose if you can’t feel the pain, using your own dismembered arm as a club works quite well.”

“I suppose…” Fellian said with a resigned sigh. Eyes still forward, he asked, “So what’s next?”

“Well, Goorig makes priest number three, so now we start back at finding another one. Problem is we don’t have a good lead right now.”

“Considering our wounds, it would help to have a moment to recover, too.” Fellian tried to move his leg again, and hissed in pain. “Might have to do that here, even.”

“No,” Vyth said, as she began to stand up. “I’d sooner sleep with a slumlord for penance.” On her feet, she looked over the parapet, into the night. No alarms, no sounds of activity to be heard. “I’m going to take a look through some of his things, and we’ll get out of here.”

“I’m not getting down this tower on this leg, not yet anyway.”

“Fellian,” Vyth smiled, “you say that like we’re taking the stairs.”

The look on his face was enough to make Vyth’s smile stretch into a sinister grin. His head dropped slightly as he shook it in resignation. “Okay, then. You do your looting, and I’ll be right here waiting to get thrown through another Void Door,” he said, waving her off with a hand.

Now able to walk straight, the only ache came from the wound in her side. Still clutching it to keep it from getting worse, she searched the tables and shelves of the laboratory carefully, but with some haste. The closer she inched towards Goorig’s corpse, the faster she went. A couple of tomes of research worth looking into, and a handful of correspondence he had recently with someone only referred to as Caliban. When it came to stepping over his body, Vyth cursed out loud and bent down to search his robes, finding a bloody necklace with bone charms, a silver signet ring that matched the wax seal on some of the letters on the table, and string of prayer beads in repeated patterns of black, red, and blue. Her breath shuddered a moment. She took the beads and pulled on them until the string snapped, the beads clattering onto the stonework. Pocketing the ring, she stood and returned to the shelves on the other side of his body.

Most of it was journals and research notes, but a particular red, leather-bound tome caught her eye. “There you are…” Unwrapping the cord, she opened to the first pages to confirm it’s contents. “Low season…harvest ceremony…there.” The book didn’t snap shut as much as flail weakly, the weight of the leather cover heavy, but not stiff. Wrapping the cord back around it and clutching it under her arm, Vyth looked around for something to keep the valuables together, grabbing a sack from one of the tables. Tossing the tomes, letters and the red book inside, she patted her side, now numb, and walked back out to Fellian.

“Ready?” he asked, looking up at her.

“Are you?” she replied with a smirk.

“Just remember, I have a broken leg. Try to make it a smooth landing.”

“It’s a Void Door. I promise nothing.” A couple feet away from her comrade, she waved her free arm while casting signs with her hand before reaching out with it, fingers outstretched, clinched her fist and pulled. The air before them pulsed a moment, then tore open with a cacophonous howling, before lowering to a dead silence. Vyth went over to Fellian and helped him up on his weaker side, and the two walked slowly through the gaping maw of the Nether, before it snapped shut, leaving no trace.