Chapter 10 - Part 1

A COLD MEMORY

Around midnight, shortly before or shortly after, either the 15th or the 16th of Zarantyr, 994 YK, buried under a cave system in the southern part of the Demon Wastes, some fifty miles northwest of Blood Crescent.

Orphan stayed crouched behind the rock outcropping, eyeing the gnoll captain as he clanked around the cavern, trying to find a way up to the monk.

The warforged quietly flexed his limbs, testing their mobility. The attempt at wrestling with the gnoll had been a mistake. A harshly spoken word in an unfamiliar language had caused long, thorny bits of metal to seize upwards out of the armor. Had Orphan been a flesh creature, his blood probably would not have stopped pooling. Similarly an attempt to disarm the gnoll captain had nto worked, as the creatures halberd locked into its armor's wristguards.

"K'gah!" Orphan called out. "You have your own mind!" The gnoll snarled something in return. "Think for yourself, that thing got into your head!"

A ripple of something flitted past Iron Orphan’s mind, coming from the other cavern, the one where Delagado’s unmoving form lay. It had the slippery, wrong feeling that the thing from Xoriat had tried to use on Orphan’s mind earlier.

Orphan had not fallen to the stunning blast, but Captain K'gah had gone from being an ally to an enemy within seconds, and the surprised warforged had barely avoided being carved in two.

The gnoll was a dangerous warrior, the most dangerous fighter that could be hired for gold in all of Droaam.

And full plate armor or not, he was beginning to climb the incline.