Dodging back from a thrust spearpoint, Ehtelar found her ears assailed by shrill music. Clapping her hands over them, she stumbled back as her adversary uncoiled before her.

Rising, expanding its ribs until it had nearly doubled in size, its multitonal voice joined itself in chorus. A shrieking harmony that resounded through the sand until the tiny grains fell away from the ruins in sheets. As its shifted, the stone beneath her collapsed, spilling her out toward her foe.

Suddenly within striking distance, she thrust her sword through the fiend's blackened maw. As steel met skull, the terrible crescendo of its voice began to falter.

In that moment, her opponent realized a simple truth: It no longer hungered for blood and flesh. It no longer wanted much of anything at all. "How wonderful!" it thought as the ground rushed up to meet it. If its reptilian mouth allowed, it would have smiled.

As the lamia spiraled to the ground, its hooked spear caught Ehtelar in the leg. Feeling the cold bite of steel, she was thrown off balance. For a moment it seemed she would right herself, but the stone she was standing on suddenly gave way.

Down into the dark she fell, suspended within a cloud of sand that swept past the jutting stones and crenelated spires peering out from the shadows below.

As the bright, desert sky abandoned her, she found herself bathed in scintillating light. A field of stars sparkled around her — not stars, for they were far underground. They were the bright crystals of the Ayleidoon.

She fell for what seemed like days, her only company the flickering lights careening up at her from the darkness. "If I could only grasp one of those tiny stars," she thought, her hands reaching toward them, "I might become as ethereal as they are and leave this world behind."

From below, a whisper grew to a rustling, wind like sound. Looking down, it seemed her flight of stars came to an hard edge rushing up at her in the dark.