Dark Army: Luthien and Malafar, Part One

"You risk too much," said the Hierophant Malafar, regarding the darkwater pool and the images that formed therein. "You should have destroyed them the moment they were weakened."

Kaz Luthien smiled as one of the girallons slammed a fist into the Dwint’lithar girl. "After all they have done and learned? After they took the wheels off our plans again and again? After they made us look the fool, time upon time?"

"Perhaps they made you look the fool," Malafar said. In the pool, the heretic priest swung his scythe and felled one of the four-armed apes. "Do not become a fool in truth."

Luthien shook his head angrily. "I have not and will not," he said. "They are trapped in my game, now. They follow my path. I will not give them a valiant death. They will press forward because they have no choice, facing only servitors, until they are worn down to nothing. They will fall in ignominy and despair, knowing that they have failed even to truly threaten us." In the pool, more girallons were gathering.

"They are still dangerous, even without their magics." The pool showed Martini shoving her dagger into a girallon's eye, and riding its body down as it fell. "They are resourceful."

"I have taken their dragon and their magics," Luthien said quietly, still watching the battle through the darkwater pool. It was a simple enchanted pool, three feet across and shaped from unbroken obsidian, but the waters that filled it had been brought from the darkest depths and never exposed to sunlight. "I have closed off their path. They will--" He watched as his prey threw open a door and swarmed over a pair of Thoughts of Vecna and their two bodyguards. He swallowed. "They will fall before they reach this floor. And if they do arrive, any of them, they will have earned the death I give them... and everything that comes after."

"You weaken our forces needlessly," observed the Hierophant. "Judge carefully the price of victory on your terms."

 Luthien scowled, still watching the pool. "In two days our mistress will reunite the sundered realm and return to Midgard to claim it for her own. What matter a few servitors in the face of such power?"

The Hierophant Malafar considered for a long moment, then reached into his purse and drew out seven platinum coins. He rolled them in his hand, then stacked them beside the pool, halfway between himself and Kaz Luthien. "A wager, then. A coin for each one that falls. And a coin from you for each that doesn't."

Luthien swallowed, then reached into his own purse. To be challenged by the Hierophant himself, and now... there were more than coins at stake here. Still, he would not back down. He would see this finished. He found the seven coins he needed, and placed his stack opposite the Hierophant's. "I accept," he said, and turned his attention back to the pool.