Extinction

Trembling, Halisstra raised her hands above her head, just like the figures painted on the cave walls.

"I accept, Eilistraee," Halisstra said. "I will serve you."

She felt a tear streaking down her cheek, and angrily told herself it was just a drip from the ferns above?then she realized it didn't matter.

Feliane, too, was weeping.

The elf priestess began to chant, and Halisstra felt her body grow lighter. The stone floor dropped away from her feet as she floated upward, drawn by Feliane's spell. The fringe of ferns made the hole in the ceiling look too narrow to fit through, so Halisstra crossed her arms tightly against her chest, making herself smaller. As she rose through the opening, wet ferns brushed against her face, forcing her to close her eyes. Her body squeezed through them, slipping out of the cave, and she felt dozens of hands touching her, guiding her. The priestesses were all around the opening, lifting her from the cave, hugging her, singing.

"Climb out of the darkness, rise into the light…"

Opening her eyes, Halisstra looked up and saw the full moon through a break in the clouds. The goddess's face smiled down at her, weeping raindrops of joy.

"Eilistraee!" Halisstra cried. "I am yours!"

"The goddess welcomes you into her embrace," Feliane whispered in her ear. "Now you must prepare yourself for the trial she has set you."

Ryld frowned, puzzled, as he examined the footprints in the slush. He was still on the animal's trail?he was certain of that?but its footprints had suddenly changed. In one spot where the beast had paused, the track became more like the print a bare drow foot would make, but with deep gouges at the front of each toe that must have been claw marks. They reminded Ryld, at least a little, of the footprints of an orc but the stride, when the animal had continued from that spot, was all wrong. The beast had risen to walk on two feet, not four. The pattern of its footprints, however, was still more like the lope of a quadruped.

Short sword in hand, Ryld continued following the tracks. The animal-thing had tried to conceal its trail by walking along rocks or logs and wading up a stream, but Ryld had no difficulty following it. He was used to tracking opponents across the bare stone of caverns and tunnels. Even with it melting, the slush made tracking anything the work of a child.

Eventually he spotted a small structure deep in the forest. Made from rough-hewn logs, the one-room building had a slumped appearance, as if it was about to collapse at any moment. Its door hung at an angle, attached to the frame by a single rusted hinge, and the roof was thick with moss and larger, leafy surface plants sprouted from it in spots. Firewood that had once been stacked against one wall lay tumbled across the ground, dotted with a sprouting of fungus, and a hole in the building's roof marked where a chimney had once stood. Surrounded by a litter of broken bottles and rusted pots that had obviously been dragged out by scavengers long before, the shelter looked utterly abandoned.

But something was moving inside it.

Ryld drew his piwafwi around himself and crept closer through the trees. He felt something soft under his boot, and the stink of fresh excrement rose to his nostrils. His lip curled. Even in the warrens of Menzoberranzan, people didn't defecate so close to their homes. Whoever was living in the little shelter was no better than an animal, the weapons master thought, angrily scraping his boot.

He looked up just in time to see a small black shape streaking toward him from the cabin. It was the same sort of animal he'd been tracking?but not the same one. As the beast sank its teeth into the wrist of his sword hand, Ryld's warrior's instincts took over.

He grabbed the creature by the scruff of the neck with his free hand and used its own momentum to slam it into a tree. Dazed, it staggered to the side, shaking its head.

Ryld whipped his sword around in a slash at the animal's throat?but it proved quicker than he expected. His blade slammed into the tree behind it as the beast rolled out of the way.

Yanking his sword free, Ryld rounded on the creature?only to see it rearing up on two legs. It held its forepaws out in an unmistakable gesture of surrender. Its mouth worked, forming words that were half yip, half speech.

"Wait!" it gasped in oddly-accented Low Drow. "Friend."

Ryld hesitated, but kept his sword ready.

"You can speak?" the weapons master asked.

The creature nodded urgently, then it closed its eyes as a shudder coursed through it. Bald patches appeared in its fur and spread, exposing pale skin, and its muzzle shrank and flattened. The quadruped legs rearticulated themselves with a soft crackle of cartilage, and paws transformed into hands and feet.