Pages of Pain

"Don't fight me!" The voice was Tessali's. "This is for your own – huh!"

Jayk landed a kick, then hoisted herself entirely onto the wall and, like a rope-dancer, ran along the crest. The long-fingered hand of an elf caught her ankle, and she pitched headlong off the wall, crashing down upon the two dabus guards. The amphora came free of their grasp and thudded to the ground, rolling clear as a tangled heap of tiefling and dabus crashed down behind it.

The Amnesian Hero rushed over to the jar, silently thanking Apollo for not letting it shatter-then he noticed the crack in its neck. A loop of fine golden thread had pushed through the tiny fissure and seemed to be writhing out. The Thrasson kneeled down and clamped his free hand over the crevice. The filament pushed its way between his fingers and continued to work free.

"I fear your gift has been damaged." Still holding his sword, he turned to the Lady of Pain. "Whatever your intentions for me, perhaps you should open it now."

The hem of the Lady's gown billowed outward, as though she were walking forward. She seemed to step downward, then her dress fluttered again, and she vanished from sight.

"Milady?"

Another clatter sounded from the wall, then Tessali's voice called, "I need another net. They're both here!"

The Amnesian Hero turned to see a barmy net spi

By the time he turned back to the amphora, the golden thread had worked completely free of the crack. It rose into the air and began to circle. Pains Of The Flesh

Against that golden strand, there is no slip.

Still as stone, I stand before the Amnesian Hero, both feet smooth upon the ground. The Thrasson and his ilk call me gone, but not so that flaxen thread. Like a worm to a corpse, it comes to me and scribes its circle.

There is time yet, I think. I steal forward, feet as soft as feathers upon the haze-brown sky. The Thrasson's supplication, those divine lines, ca

I do not reach him.

Once more the filament circles me, and something – I ca

Daedalus himself, most cu

I close my eyes, and when the thread circles the third time, no fiber drags across my skin, no filament tightens around my throat, no string binds my wrists. The Lady has gone from that dim alley.

The Thrasson stands unrepentant, the tiefling unpunished beside him. A key has turned, a lock has clicked; a door hangs unlatched and the treasure sits unguarded. I could go into the mazes after them, but there are dark things in the labyrinth, and corridors i

And, in truth, I dare not allow the Thrasson to open the amphora and cast at me more strands from Poseidon's net. Already, the first has found me again. I feel a growing surge in that void where I once had a heart, a rhythmic roar that builds and fades, then rises again more powerful than before. The smell of brine and the salt sea pervades the air, and a stiff breeze whispers across the water. Hard as I try, I ca

Standing above white-crested waves I see the Lady of Pain, gowned in white cloud and belted in golden light, her lips the same turquoise as the Arborean Sea. A string of pearls, black and lustrous like succubi tears, hangs around her neck. About her head flashes a diadem of blue lightning, while in place of her red-stained blade halo waves a flyaway mane of yellow hair: The strands vanish into the air and have no ends; they are a hundred thousand golden threads that lead to a hundred thousand of the multiverse's infinite planes.

In the air beside her – me? – hangs a ghostly visage made of the wind itself and as huge as the sun: the Elemental Queen of Air. Though her features are as translucent and shifting as a breeze, I see something in the shape of her face, in the angle of her oval eyes, and in the set of her high cheeks: a certain motherly semblance to the Lady of Pain.

On my other side stands a trident-wielding giant, waist-deep in waves, reeking of kelp and salt air, sea-foam for hair, sparkling skin like moonlight on water. Upon his lips, a father's miserly smile. He is stretching an upturned palm toward me and looking out to sea.

This ca

A black-sailed dhow approaches, steered by a single black-hooded helmsman. On the deck rest four black coffers, the bride price mighty Poseidon demands for the heart of his golden-haired daughter. The boxes hold agony, anguish, misery, and despair-the four Pains that rule the multiverse – but how I know, I do not know; that is as dark to me as the face beneath the hood.

And now the tide turns; the surf roars more softly each time it rises, the smell of brine grows sour and distant, the face of the Elemental Queen vanishes in a shimmer of still, hot air. Poseidon sinks beneath the waves; the whitecaps subside, the sea calms to a turquoise mirror and the air spills from the dhow's black sail. The helmsman turns his hooded face toward me, and a whirlpool opens beneath his vessel; down he is drawn, down into that void in my chest he whirls, this night-cloaked stranger who paid the bride's price for my heart. City Of Iron

The Amnesian Hero stood in the charcoal dimness, cautiously awaiting the pleasure of the Lady of Pain. Although she had disappeared a moment earlier, a certain disturbing stillness continued to hang in the air. The alley had suddenly grown hot and muggy, and the musty smell of clay seemed stronger, perhaps because Sigil's other fetid odors had vanished. Even the murky light looked somehow deeper – not darker, but heavier and more enduring. From the wall behind him came a frightened gasp and the rasp of boot heels kicking for purchase in the dirt. Thinking the Lady of Pain had finally shown herself, the Thrasson raised his sword and spun.

He found Jayk stooped over Tessali, trying to dodge past the elf's kicking legs and catch hold of a flailing arm. The Thrasson stepped over, grabbing the tiefling's collar and throwing her against a hut wall. Her pupils were diamonds and her fangs were folded completely down.

"Have I not warned you about this, Jayk?"

Before Jayk could answer, Tessali was on his feet and climbing the wall. "Over here! Helpl"

One-handed, the Amnesian Hero jerked the elf down and pushed him to the ground. "You, be silent!"