The Fortieth Session (Part 2)

After departing from the rest of their group, Aoth and Halrek blinked into Procampur. Seeing a large tower resembling Shadowborn armor, they inferred that would be where Xolax Baal potentially was. Blinking through the city, they made their way there, ultimately ending up at a window on a high ledge of the tower. Aoth froze the window, allowing Halrek to quietly remove a piece of it at the moment thunder clapped from the ensuing storm. Looking in, they saw two of the Shadowhunters who they had escaped from guarding a stairway to a door.

Blinking in, Halrek assassinated one with Elovrus, while Aoth landed an aggressive flurry of blows on the the second. Before they could continue fighting, they were approached by the Shadowhunter captain, who emerged from the doorway. He mused that they would have been trophies for General Blackthorn, and acknowledged Aoth for killing Grimgarde. He then drew a spear that seemed to be made of pure shadow energy, and Shadow Walked to Halrek, striking with a flurry of blows that Halrek was barely able to deflect. Halrek had some trouble striking back, but did land a solid blow before blinking back to the window. The captain Shadow Walked to the window to follow him, and they clashed on the ledge. The captain ultimately grabbed Halrek by the throat, using a Life Drain on him. Halrek responded by blinking the captain outside the building to fall to his death. He blinked down to the ground and made his way to the area of landing, just in time to insult the captain one last time as he took his dying breath.

Inside, Aoth continued fighting the remaining Shadowhunter, ultimately catching his arm and landing a devastating flurry of blows to his torso, head, and knee, and forcing him to the ground. He then dislocated the Shadowhunter's shoulder, causing him to drop his sword, and upon Halrek's return, convinced the Shadowhunter to surrender. Questioning him, he learned that the Ebony Legion was 500,000 strong in the kingdoms alone, with a million more still on the Obsidian Isles ready to join the invasion. He learned the Dread King wished to unite all the lands under his rule to purge the world of the weak, and leave a society that could never falter. When the Shadowhunter mocked the fall of Draconia and Aoth specifically for "having no dragons left to shield," Aoth used the Nulbuster to tear his arm completely off, and then healed the wound. He expressed that he hated being so violent, but the war had begun taking its toll on him, and his disgust with the Shadowborn was outweighing his conscience. He took the soldier's other arm, asking who was leading the invasion on Suran's mainland, to which the Shadowhunter responded that High General Dorek Blackthorn was, and was a far more powerful entity than any general they had fought before, and would crush them and the resistance, and bend them to his will. He laughed as he said that the general would be seeing them sooner than they thought, and Aoth ripped his other arm off, once again healing the wound before he could bleed out. He then put his body in a bag of holding up to his neck, saying "if you make any noise, you go in the bag, where there's no air." to which the Shadowhunter responded "Blackthorn would like you."

They looted, blinked back to the ground, and looted the captain's corpse. Before they could revel in their spoils, they heard an ear-splitting roar before seeing the silhouette of a massive winged creature descending from the sky toward the beach. Blinking toward the Bloodstone as the beast landed, they saw the colossal demonic dragon standing over their fellow Sentinels that was taking the remaining Bloodstone shard, with the soldier from Delthuntle on its back. It lifted off, knocking both Aoth and Halrek off their feet from the force of the wind, and they watched it fly toward the Free Lands.