For Chai, recovering from the Void Sickness was about as unpleasant as a bad hangover. He had kind of seen it coming; this was the second time he had experienced the Void Sickness, and although he retained very few memories of the original event, he did recall the last few hours of it. Then, like now, there had been a rapid shortening of his ability to see the grand scheme, the pattern between patterns, the path that the Void itself seemed to want to place him on. Then, like now, it had come with something like an admission of defeat, a solemn sense that there was more work to do, but that his time as a tool of the grand cosmos was over.

Every Voidling Chai had talked to had the same sense about their time in the Sickness--that it was deliberate, that some being chose some Void-talented mages to walk the world and resolve problems. Still, nobody seemed to understand who--not the Order, not the few gods he had consulted with, not even the Patron of the order, who was something of a mystery... or at least, according to Master Marion, the Patron had no idea; Chai had never met that person himself. For him personally, Chai felt that like the path itself, the source of the Sickness seemed to be a thin thread winding through the cosmos, one which couldn't be pinned down to one place or another. When he reached towards it, even given all of the abilities the sickness itself granted, it was more like his reaching arm was already part of the source of the power, rather than getting even an inch closer to something distant.

Alas, now was not the time for Chai to sit and contemplate the riddles magic and creation. He simply preferred to ascribe the sickness to Genesis Herself, the universe acting of its own volition.

His head wasn't really clear when he finally had to call an end to the rest stop and get everyone moving. His senses, if anything, were more muddy than they had ever been; he was exhausted, and his brain simply didn't have any strength left to offer. A lesser mage would have preferred to use the Stomach Gift and recharge their body with a set of pills, but Voidlings, alas, were too sensitive. Using the Magic Gifts would heal him, yes, but they would immediately throw off his elemental balance, and it might take days or weeks to regain it. Powerful tools, they were, but very blunt instruments.

Still, the Sickness had provided him with a very detailed look at the world as it was just a few minutes ago. He knew the layout of the house, what Amon's plans were, and Janinda's, what the Nightmare was intending to do, and roughly what was on its mind as it planned its revenge.

His mission now was neither the Nightmare nor Janinda. The other... although Chai's head was hurting, he could now at least admit to himself he knew that the creature that had come and would soon leave was a Djinn, although he feared drawing her attention. Deities didn't like those who were Void Sick, for the very simple reason that Chai had learned her True Name at a glance; he was not, fortunately, stupid enough to use it, and put it immediately out of mind, in case any mind reader should show up. He really ought to have Erron remove the thought from his head, but for now, he had a job to do.

They had only so much time to kill Amon before he killed himself.

So Chai led the way, not to the basement where Amon had been, and not to the small audience chamber he had intended to go to, but to the larger main audience hall, which was the only place he would be able to reach. Wilke and Marin followed, Marin showing about as much confidence as Chai's poor posture and occasional stumbles warranted, while Wilke maintained his facade of being completely unaffected. In truth, Chai had no doubt he was equally troubled, because Chai's advanced senses had been the cornerstone of the mission, and now they were atrocious. At times, to his own dismay, Chai found himself completely baffled by what his eyes saw, let alone his extra senses. Nevertheless, his steps were, for the most part, sure.

All was forgiven when he opened the door to an empty audience hall, only for Amon to show up as if on cue a moment later.

He was a wretched sight, Amon Egrethore. Once, when he was younger, the twisted features of his face had been a mark of ambition and ruthlessness, a sign that he refused to be bound by laws--mortal, godly, or any other kind. His snarl had been famous, and he had argued publicly in the King's court against any moral or legal oversight into manufactories like his own; he made the case repeatedly that there were three paths the nation could take: to give ambitious people like him free reign, to fund them from the King's own coffers, or to fall behind as a nation as others stepped ahead. Those hearings, depending on who was telling the story, were full of heresies, sedition, and naked blackmail. One account had him dragging a woman around on a leash while he spoke of his right as a noble of the country. He spent the next few decades facing duels and assassinations, but he pulled through.

And here, now, his face was not twisted with ambition. Now he was no longer a young man capable of standing up to assassins, and he didn't have any plans waiting in the wings to fix a duel in his favor. He had only one trick left up his sleeve, and this was exactly the time and place to make him reveal it.

"Lord Egrethore!" Wilke sounded positively delighted. "A pleasure. I don't suppose you have any memory of me, do you?"

Amon's eyes were, to that point, fixed to the ground as he lay there in pain, but he raised his head to look at Wilke somewhat mechanically, as though he were forcing his body to act. It was frightening, even to Chai who expected it; he was acting like he was no more than someone else's puppet, although he should have been the one pulling his own strings. There was a long pause as Amon processed the three people in his doorway.

"...d'Matria. You oversaw one of the duels, long ago. As I recall, you declared I had cheated." Like his actions, Amon's voice was terrifyingly out of place, empty when it should have been... something else.

"By which you mean, I caught you cheating," teased Wilke, his voice light and pleasant.

Amon forced out a laugh. "I suppose at my age, I can admit to that." He pressed his one hand onto the bloody stump of his other, then pulled it away to look at his hand, soaked with blood. "So you are here to kill me?"

"We are here," replied Chai as quickly as he could, to break into the conversation, "to bear witness to you committing the crime of Necromancy. I say that so that you may understand both that we know, and that we are not here to stop you." He stepped forward and leveled a glare at the broken man. "Yet."

Amon's face was already emotionless and could not get moreso, but there was a long pause as he considered what Chai had said. Both Wilke and Marin looked to Chai with astonished looks on their faces; this was one of the things that Chai had seen but been unable to express in his previous state. Still, this was probably the easiest way to go forward. Amon wouldn't deny it, and he had no other tools left.

"Are you curious?" Amon's voice was... sick. It contained a morbid something that nobody who heard it liked the sound of. "The secret to immortality... the secret to unlimited power... that secret stolen by the Arch Sorcerors--"

"Is human souls," said Chai suddenly, concerned that Wilke might get the wrong idea. "I know. The Rakshasa started that trend ages ago--"

"Yes... it is that which made gods, the distillation of souls to form a Key." Amon gave a half-twisted smile, and for a moment, Chai could see the younger, still-ambitious Amon. "Any Alchemst worth his salt would want to know how that was done, yes? But Necromancy is so much simpler. No need to reform all of creation to form a key. No, magic already knows how to keep one immortal, but it hides this from us. Immortality is a prize held by tyrants--by the gods, damn them all. Bearing the mark of it on you is forbidden, and the gods know this, can see it. That is why you are here, to tempt me. No sooner do I bear the mark than a god comes to strike me down. I've no doubt you even have a favorite waiting, watching."

Chai didn't bother to deny it, giving Amon a solemn look instead.

"I wonder, dogs of the Order, how much you know about Necromancy. Surely you have never seen red flames turned black, never felt death in the palm of your hand." Amon, rather than rising to his feet, started drawing on the floor with his blood. Despite all his rhetoric, to Chai, Amon looked for all the world like the desperate man that he was--alone, getting weaker by the moment, and surrounded by his enemies. "You want to witness it? Fine. By Creton's blood, by my own soul, I spit in the face of the gods. Death be merciful, for I shall not be."

It was Marin who made the prayer. Chai knew that she would; Wilke was never the sort to follow anyone, let alone take guidance from a god, but Marin had no such pride. She pulled a necklace out of her shirt, a simple circle with a trangle within it, and cast it to the floor before her. "By the three gods of the Terranic Light, I call to thee, bear witness to this abomination, Xethram, god of Eyes."

Despite it all, Amon finished first, as again, Chai knew he would. There were ways he could have forced this, but... there was something about this that felt right. Justice was to be done only when Amon confessed to his crimes by his own tongue. And he had, even invoking the name of Creton--a dead god from ages past, the first of the Lost, killed by the council of gods for creating Necromancy in the time of the Founders. The name was without meaning, now, or it should have been; Creton's name remains in the records of the gods, but there is none to answer when the name is spoken.

Yet somehow, all necromancers know it, and with the word, with the blood, Chai felt something dark moving, something that passed through stone like a ghost, but it was a whirlwind, a towering inferno of something that even Chai's senses could not quite detect.

And then, suddenly, there was a man standing quite perfectly on the symbol that Marin had thrown down. Dressed in what might have been starsilk but for the shifting pattern of eyes on the hems of his clothes, he seemed a gentle man, and as the whirlwind of awful power started to corrode the stone beneath Amon's feet, the man simply reached out with one hand and slapped at the air, as though backhanding an invisible person. Amon, still a good twenty feet away, was thrown ten feet to the side, crashed into the wall, and his head immediately split open. Xethram immediately disregarded the dying man and studied the place where he had been standing.

"Oh, what a mess you've made of this place." Xethram paced forward, and although Chai could not see what happened--a rare thing, for a voidling, but he had never been in the presence of a god doing godly things before--he got the mental image of an invisible blade, small and impossibly thin, cutting away at the world, as though removing only those things tainted by Necromancy and sheperding them away. Then, a ring of eyes--felt but again unseen--expanded out from the god, and he tsked quietly several times.

Finally, after a pause, he turned to Chai, as though greeting an old friend, and shook his head sadly. "This place has seen much death, and no small amount of heresy, but the spatial node is worse. I trust you are here to take care of the Rakshasa problem...?"

"Yes, lord Xethram." He paused. "And... we will want evidence to present to the King, to ensure our continued ability--"

Xethram waved a hand, as though the whole concept was a bother. "The king and his handlers will be aboard soon enough. Even if you were to achieve everything you desire, here, goblins will pour out of every crack in the crust beneath Seyona. Maybe, if we're unlucky, out of all of Contel."

"Nevertheless... the Order made a promise."

"Hm." Xethram smiled, and turned and nodded to Marin, then Wilke. "Hello, hello. I'm sorry, I'm normally better about greeting people."

"Lord Xethram..." Marin looked down, refusing to meet the god's eyes. "If I may ask, is Melthius...?"

"To put it mildly, Melthius, though alive, wishes to be freed from his pain. I have held him in Our grace for only a short while, because the necromancy has done more than merely corrupted him; it has turned him, and I cannot allow him to live. Master Marion will understand... though his sister may not." Xethram paused. "Aside from a few guards, none else remain alive here."

"What about the Nightmare?" Wilke didn't seem to mind meeting the god's eyes; he seemed to find it amusing to stand tall in the face of Xethram, but Xethram was, as always, an enigma among gods. It almost seemed like he was more affronted by Marin's humility than Wilke's daring, but Chai could only shake his head anyway.

"The--oh, that. Your friends will take care of it, or they won't." Xethram shrugged. "If they put their minds to it, I doubt they'll fail. I don't intend to bless them without their knowledge--believe me, that rarely goes well. And... it seems a bad time to interrupt them. I'll keep an Eye on them for you, though."

Chai tried to think through what else he knew to ask, although his headache didn't help matters. "Is that black power... gone?"

"Stars and eyes, no. And it's not just the black power, alas, but other awful things. It will take some time to purify the place, and that is better done by a priest. I assume you have some things to talk to Melthius about, but after that, you ought to keep out of the building until they proclaim it done." Xethram offered a wry smile. "If circumstances permitted, I would tell you to stay clear of the spatial node as well. Let Us know before you go in and we'll shield you, a bit, but there is only so much to be done."

"You are too kind, Lord Xethram," replied Marin. "As you say, we will see to our companion, and then be gone from this place."

Xethram looked at her for a moment, then let his facial features fall into a neutral expression. "Let me know if something else comes up." And with that, he was gone.

Marin stalked forward, moving as though she expected a god to jump once more out of her pendant, and gingerly raised it and placed it in her pocket. She turned once to look at the body of Amon Egrethore, but although he breathed, there was virtually no life left in him.

Wilke looked at her, then him, and back, before striding up to Amon's body with an energy he probably didn't really feel. He knelt where the dying man might catch one last sight of him, and whispered something quietly in the man's ear. With Chai and Marin both being mages, though, the words were lost on nobody.

"This," Wilke said cheerfully, "is what happens when you cheat."