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moving on hands and knees. Gustav could not see clearly, for the thick darkness.
    â€œWho’s there?” he called out in a sleep-fuddled voice while, at the same time, the thumbnail of his right hand scraped against the tip of the sulfur stick.
    Flame flared. Gustav thrust the fire into the face of the intruder: a woman’s face, a face of astonishing, breathtaking beauty. Blue eyes, large and lustrous, full red lips, hair the color of maple leaves in autumn. She wore a dress of rich green velvet, the bodice cut low. She was on her hands and knees. Her white breasts fell forward, heavy, ripe and tempting.
    â€œI am lonely,” she said softly. “I need somewhere to spend the night.”
    The smothering feeling, the stench of rotting flesh.
    Gustav stared fixedly at the woman and the illusion shattered, burst apart, as if it had been made of ice and he’d struck it with a hammer.
    Beauty disappeared to be replaced by horror.
    The beautiful face deteriorated into the face of a long-dead corpse, a skull with a few clumps of decayed flesh still clinging to it. There were no eyeballs in the bony sockets, but there was malevolent and cunning intelligence. No pity, no mercy. No compassion. No hatred, no greed, no lust. He saw, in the eyes, the Void.
    The Void. As it had been before the gods came and the world was created. As it would be when the gods departed and the world came to an end. He saw, in the eyes, the emptiness in his own heart when Adela died.
    Gustav saw his own death in the empty eyes. He could not fight this thing. He could not move to defend himself. The power of the Void emptied him, drained him, drained his will to live.
    The sulfur match went out, burning Gustav’s thumb. The pain reminded him that he lived and that, while he lived, he could fight. Before the flame vanished, he had seen a small knife made of bone in the corpse’s skeletal hand.
    The corpse lunged at Gustav, stabbing at him with the knife. So swift and skilled was the attack—aiming straight for the heart—that Gustav had barely time to grab his sword. He would have died, but for the magical armor of the Dominion Lord that flowed over his body.
    The knife in the corpse’s skeletal hand struck steel. The armor turned the blade from the heart, but did not stop its entry. Few weapons can penetrate the blessed armor and this was one—a weapon of Void magic. The blade missed the heart, stabbed Gustav in his left shoulder.
    The pain was terrible, a stinging, burning pain that slanted through his flesh and struck to his very soul. The pain shriveled his stomach, caused him to gag.
    The corpse made an unearthly sound, muffled scream, as if it were crying out in fury from the grave. Fighting against the debilitating pain that was making him sick and dizzy, Gustav raised his sword. The corpse was close to him. He could feel the rasping of its nails against his armor. He plunged his blade into the corpse’s chest.
    He had expected bone, but the blade struck steel armor. The blow jarred his sword arm so that he very nearly dropped the weapon. Yet, he could tell by a grunt of pain that he’d managed to inflict damage on his murderous assailant.
    Gustav took advantage of the corpse’s momentary distraction to escape the confines of the tent. Kicking aside the pots he had placed in front of the tent opening, he staggered out into the night and turned immediately to face his opponent, who would not be far behind him. His armor glowed silver in the darkness.
    His attacker emerged from the tent and rose to her full height. By the silver light of his own blessed armor, Gustav looked upon his antithesis.
    The figure wore armor that was blacker than the darkness. Thedesign of the armor was hideous, like the carapace of some monstrous insect, with razor-sharp spikes at the elbows and the shoulders, and a helm that was formed in the shape of the head of a mantis with bulbous eyes of empty nothingness. The