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orisedd was dragged back onto his shins after being doused with cold water. At some point he had passed out and now he was shivering, cold from blood loss. His body shuddered back into the world and he moaned involuntarily in pain as the wounds grew livid. Groggily he listened to a new sound, a raw gasping and weeping that tore at his soul. Raising his face he beheld Uriel lying curled in a miserable heap before him, her body racked with grief and her voice reduced to a disconsolate babble, pleading and begging melded into one terrible stream of misery.
“Is this why you hold your tongue?” Kiku demanded, “Is this how Crystal Palm convinced you to sacrifice yourself for them? I pity you.”
“Let her go,” he breathed, breaking his silence at last. No torment could cut him so deeply as seeing the woman he loved broken before him, “Oh Uriel, I’m sorry, my love.”
“Murdi,” she choked like a wounded child, her voice stolen away by a flood of tears. Her hand trembled toward him as she looked away, unable to gaze upon his mutilated form. Revulsion and longing strained her frail body, but she could not reach him. Tears flowed down his face, her pain more vivid than his own. He could do nothing as she was destroyed from the inside, her heart dying as he watched.
“Dear gods,” he croaked, “Why do this if you already know the answers? What kind of sick perverted fiend are you to destroy a thing of beauty merely because you can?”
Before Kiku could respond, however, the doors behind him crashed open and the chamber became crowded with more shadowy figures. Uriel screamed in horror, scrambling backwards on her hands and knees as a severed head was dropped wetly to the already blood stained floor before her.
“You fool!” Kiku screamed, drawing her daggers and tearing into the gloating assassin who had made the delivery. Morisedd raised his eyes to gaze upon the mangled trophy with its silvery hair matted and red with congealed blood. Dojin Matabe was dead.
Morisedd fell over as he was crushed under the weight of the dead assassin. A tense silence grasped the chamber. Even Uriel held her breath before Kiku’s murderous rage.
“Gather the guild, we must flee!” Kiku roared, “NOW!”
“I’ll finish them,” Mai Ling announced, drawing a heavy gutting knife.
“No. We will need hostages if we are to get out of the city alive. There is only a little time before the imperial decree is made. We repair to our allies in Kurzick lands. Cast off your cloaks, for they will mark you for death.”
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