Eternal

Your main purpose of coming here in the first place was to make sure Talia was safe. You can't leave now without trying to find her or at least her body if she's dead.

You leave the storage room and decide your best bet would be to keep yourself cloaked the entire time while you search the fortress. You also decide to use spider crawl just to make sure you're really out of sight.

As you stick to the ceilings of corridors and rooms you survey the carnage of what the Derro have wrought on the shadows. It's almost like they didn't have a chance. You now have to believe that this was why the Empire wasn't attacking Gloom, they had some sort of deal with the Derro to do it for them and since this used to be a Derro home at one time, they probably knew every ancient secret passage and entire layout of it.

You progressively get more and more discouraged in your search and that's when you hear a voice in your head. Not Dendrin's though, it's distinctly a human one.

"To…the left and down the hall…hurry…not much time…" you hear Master Ebon say. Lacking any other ideas, you follow his instructions and make your make to his location from where you are. As you do so, you notice there aren't any Derro in this direction, though there are a few dead ones. You're guessing that the rest of their fellows haven't searched this area as much.

"The door…at the end…hurry…"

Sensing that there are no Derro in the immediate area, you climb down from the ceiling and prepare to enter the door at the end of the corridor. When you arrive in front of it, you hear a loud click as it opens.

"Quick, inside!" a brother says pulling you in by the arm roughly.

A quick glance and you see a couple more shadows both in wounded condition. You then see Master Ebon in some sort of spell trance. He's also wounded, but his status looks a lot worse. He probably shouldn't even be alive with the deep bleeding gashes he displays across his body. A female shadow stands near him also wounded. When you see her face more clearly and recognize her as Talia, your worries are at least divided by half.

"What are you doing here?" she exclaims.
"I heard the voice of Dendrin and…" in that moment you realize you've just admitted you've heard his voice for the first time. You then realize this isn't the time to keep it a secret and you continue. "…he…uh gave me a warning… are you alright?"
"Just a light wound…wait, you said Dendrin spoke to you? He warned you about the attack?"
"Well, not in so many words. Look we need get out of here, I can explain everything later."

You then hear Master Ebon's voice again. He still isn't speaking verbally though and is using his mind.

"Dendrin spoke to you? Lucky lad. He hasn't spoken to me since I first became a shadow. I always thought he would eventually, but he never did. I assumed he was testing me, to make my own decisions. Perhaps I offended him by claiming those decisions came from him directly, but I didn't know what else to do…"
"Master Ebon, we can discuss this later, right now we really need to leave!"
"Is Master Ebon speaking to you through his mind?" Talia asks.
"Yes, and what's he doing anyway? He's just sitting there with gashes in his chest deep enough for me to see his heart beating and bleeding out. As I said we need to leave before the Derro kill us all."

Master Ebon interrupts you.

"They've already succeeded in killing me I fear, but I still have powerful magic…enough to save the remainder of you…to carry on the fight…"

Master Ebon's eyes begin to turn completely black, this is followed by his entire body. A shimmering portal then opens up nearby.

"This…was to take us to strike at the very heart of the Empire…but now just an escape…to friends. Continue the fight there. The Empire will fall as long as you continue to fight. Dendrin I hope you can forgive my failures as I have served to the best of my abilities…I am ready to enter your realm of shadow if you will allow it…"

"Master Ebon!" Talia shouts when she sees his body undergo his transformation.
"He can't be helped and he's giving us a chance to escape. We need to take it now!"
"But where is it going?" the shadow that grabbed you by the arm asks.
"He said to friends, but quite frankly it could lead into the middle of an Empire battalion and I think we'd still have better chances! Now come on!"

Without another word you all enter the portal. Within seconds your eyes are nearly blinded by the whiteness of snow and you feel a blast of cold air whipping around you.

"DIE! Shadow bastard!" you suddenly hear and turn around just in time to avoid a sword strike to the head. Realizing that this is an Empire soldier and not a Derro, you quickly dispatch your assailant who falls turning the snow red.

When you said being transported into the middle of an Empire battalion would be a better situation, you didn't actually mean it! Fortunately it isn't quite as bad as all that.

Getting your bearings you notice you're on a battlefield. The bodies of several Empire troops lay on the ground and are mixed in with those of orcs and shadows. A great fortress looms in the distance.

"Fort Defiance…" you say to yourself.
"Brother, we're over here!" one of the shadows calls out to you and you run over to the group. (Apparently, all the others teleported to a place out of immediate danger!)

"Are we in Rask?" the shadow who grabbed you asks. You still don't know his name, you can only guess he was one of the newer recruits after you joined.
"Well it doesn't look like Delurg that's for sure. I'm guessing that group ahead of us fighting the Empire troops are our brothers and sisters from Fort Defiance." Talia says.
"Looks like it, well no time like the present, we need to go help them."
"But what about those two? They're badly wounded and can't fight properly." The new shadow asks.
"(Sigh) Very well, you, what's your name anyway?"
"I'm Brother Gannon. I just joined recently…"
"Yes brother, we can get all that getting to know you stuff out of the way later. I want you to take those two and head over to that fort in the distance. I'm sure they can get help there. What about you Talia, I know you're wounded too, do you need any first aid?"

Talia draws her weapon.

"I'll worry about my minor cuts after we take care of this Empire scum." She answers in a harsh tone.
"Okay then let's go down there and drive back the Empire!" you answer back.

You and Talia sprint as fast as you can to where all the action is taking place. Swords are clashed, halberds are swung, skulls are smashed and heads are severed. Mostly all in your favor and the Empire troops were actually losing even before you got here. Still, it's good to be on a winning side of a fight today and you feel energized by the battle.

A short reunion occurs as you finish off the last of the stubborn Empire soldiers.

"What the…? What are you doing here?! I thought you were supposed to be in the Quala province!"Cyrus exclaims running his sword through an enemy.
"Things change brother and how have you been doing?" you answer doing the same.
"We've been getting wave after wave of Empire skirmishers recently, but nothing serious yet. Honestly I would've thought we would've had a full on assault by now. I think they're trying to whittle us down, it won't work though. We're entrenched and have people all over the area slowly turning the population of Rask against them…is that Talia over there? What's SHE doing here? Last I heard she was supposed to be back in Gloom helping with the ritual that Master Ebon and Brother Gray were doing."
"Like I said, things change Cyrus."

At this moment there is a lull in the fighting that allows Cyrus to actually stop fighting. He looks at you his expression is one you've never seen before. One of genuine worry.

"Oh no…what happened?"

You don't even know where to begin.

"Cyrus let's just get through this battle and celebrate THIS victory over the Empire. We can dwell on the troubled times to come later."

The pair of you say nothing more for the rest of the battle which soon ends with your victory. You just wish it was a better one, because it cannot possibly counteract the incredible loss you have suffered this dark day.

You think back on how you told Murk in his dying breaths that the Empire would fall, you also think back to how Master Ebon believed it would fall in his on dying breaths. If you had to guess, you think Talia probably still believes it and you know Cyrus will even when you tell him all that has happened. The righteousness in the shadows' cause and its unwavering faith in Dendrin has always been its strength that it cannot lose no matter how bad the odds.

Of course it would help if you actually believed all that nonsense.

Which brings you to your next dilemma: You already let it slip to Talia that you spoke to Dendrin and Brother Gannon was also there to hear it (and maybe even the other two wounded shadows heard it as well) , so it'll probably be brought up after everyone is caught up to speed on the war front and what happened at Gloom. The fact that Dendrin spoke to you is actually why you're here in the first place.

The question is should you even mention what Dendrin said to you or just lie about what he said? Your own feelings on the situation are that Dendrin, god or not, is not worth following let alone creating a fanatical religion around. He obviously doesn't give a shit about any of you and sees you all as amusing toys at best. However, given the grim situation, the misguided slavish devotion to Dendrin might be the only thing that'll keep their spirits up. Not to mention you wonder if you'd even be believed. Cyrus himself is a very dedicated believer, he may even turn violent and you aren't even sure if Talia would believe you.
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