Cadryn Ironthew's mighty seven-foot tall frame tottered. He clutched at the axe protruding from his chest, and scarlet threads of blood rolled from his mouth as he crashed amid the splintered bones, and gnawed skulls that littered the cold stone floor of the shunned temple at Devil's Head Peak.

His killer dodged away, coal black cloak and hair flowing behind him as quick footsteps carried him between the altar and the ominous visage of Vlad the Dark, which was carved out of black living stone, and rose to the height of the cavernous temple chamber that existed within the very peaks of the Skeltor Mountains.

Sedrah drew back her thin stiletto blade, and slipped away from the edge of the altar behind which their foe had ducked. For a moment she was tempted to reach out and grab the Broach of Baal from among the rotting red velvet scraps of the tray that protruded from the altar, but she knew that to linger would mean death.

It was obvious, now, that Lothar was a man to be reckoned with. The Assassins Guild had maligned his abilities and told the four of them that he would be easy to kill. They called him a penny-ante thief and wastrel, but any assassin worth her salt knew that she should never underestimate her target. Sedrah had carefully set the trap, but some intuition had warned Lothar of the danger, and her strike to kill had been avoided.

Now Cadryn Ironthew was dead, and their numbers were whittled from four to three. Hawk-nosed and eyes gleaming ferally in the dim guttering of the red torchlight, Hastur Slingblade stood to her right, sword in hand, an imposing warrior that stood a head taller than she.

Standing ten feet to Sedrah's left was Adryl. He was a knife man, and a phalanx of throwing daggers were arrayed across his bandoliered chest. He was a foot shorter than Sedrah, and as he raised a knife to his ear, the bone and sinew jutted from his pole-skinny arm. Despite his unforbidding stature, his reputation steered all but the most foolhardy of men away from him. At one time a drunk sailor attempted to pick a fight, and Adryl had put a knife in the man's eye from twenty feet away.

Lothar shouted something from behind the altar, and Hastur made a snickering response, but Sedrah didn't hear what they were saying. Her keen ears began to pick up other, more sinister, sounds within the dark recesses of the vast hall; a strange hum that was at the edge of her hearing, accompanied by a clicking that was reminiscent of a dog's nails on the cobbles of a city street.

Suddenly Hastur's ears caught the sound, and he was jarred from his sneering conversation. "Did you hear that?" he asked, concern and fear growing on his face.

Sedrah surveyed the massive piles of bone that reared up about them on all sides. They extended as far as her eye could see into the dim tenebre that licked out its inky tendrils, held in abeyance only by the flickering of the smoky torches. She cried out as a mottled gray palm, clawed with five sharp talons reached up over the summit of the nearest bone pile. In a moment the creature hove into sight, its four furry arms spread out to balance on the precarious pile of skull and ribs while it leaned back on its haunches and examined the three intruders below with baleful eyes. The visage of the creature resembled that of a monkey, but long, yellowed incisors hinted at a beast that was far from docile, and a meat eater--not an herbivore.