Oddly, the three cast no shadows.

He approached them, looked up, gazed deep into their hoods. Something stared back at him: Red eyes shining from within the depths of night.

"Show me what we have wrought," Blackthorn said.

The world slipped around him.

Hours had passed this time. Where he had spent them, he did not know.

Night blanketed the vale when the gates of Windemere's Keep materialized before him. Snow leisurely fell about, sometimes disturbed by a hushed breeze. The flakes settled on the bows of his cheeks, melted, and rivulets of winter streamed down his skin. His heart beat calmly, slowly, relaxed, a few counts between each mist of breath, the air scented with the taste of early spring. Somewhere, somewhere distant, metal rang against metal, and voices pleaded for mercy.

So peaceful.

A mage stepped away from the battered gates of the Keep. The portcullis lay broken to one side, twisted bars of melted steel. The great door it had guarded clung to the stone walls by a single twisted hinge, its handles torn off and thick gashes rent through its oak.

The mage, robed in black, greeted Blackthorn. "My Lord, thou hast arrived at the appointed hour." Flain's resonant, fluid voice dripped from his cowl. "I trust all went well upon the sea."

"Windemere's fleet is no more," Blackthorn said. "Thine acolytes have done well in controlling the dwellers of the deep. How goes the siege?"

Flain stepped to one side and invited him forward with a sweeping gesture. "See for thyself, my Lord. The assault will soon be finished. All that remains are scattered forces, rats among the rubble. 'Tis safe for a leisurely walk to the throne, if thou dost choose."

"By all means," Blackthorn said, and stepped beneath the charred arch of the gate. Flain joined him at his side. Two other figures methodically fell into step behind them. Soldiers, Blackthorn realized, though it took him a moment to realize that their armored plates covered not flesh, but bone.

The vaulted halls within the foyer captured and amplified the echoes of distant combat. From one net of arches emanated the familiar whisper of blades cleaving skin and bone, and the abrupt screams that followed. Torches guttered as an explosion roared. The chandeliers swung in a breeze of unearthly shrieks, the piercing war cries of things that were not men.

Blackthorn surveyed the halls as they walked, often having to step around the corpses of Windemere's men. Most tapestries hung ripped and burnt, many still smoldering, as did the portraits. Those that did not portrayed dark, ominous scenes of anguished men and women. The statues were much the same—only the sculptures of daemonic birds and beasts remained standing. The rest had been shattered.

"'Tis different than I remember," Blackthorn commented.

"Thou wert here once?" asked the mage. A woman's scream did not cause him to look up. Neither did a resounding crash of metal, as if a dozen suits of armor had clattered to the floor.