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.Waving his staff, the priest offered them Cyric's blessing.A raiding party, Vhostym guessed.He knew the Cyricists often raided the merchant caravans that braved the mountain paths between Amn and Tethyr.Sometimes they raided for food and supplies, other times they raided only to murder or take captives for later sacrifice.The double doors closed behind the raiding party and the drawbridge clicked its way back up.The ringing of the raiders' mail and the stomp of their boots sounded loudly in the night as they picked their way through the trees.The priest gazed about alertly as he walked but his eyes passed over Vhostym without hesitation.The party walked along the path near Vhostym and marched on toward the pass.Within moments, the night swallowed them and their red light.Vhostym stared after them, pondering the capriciousness of the multiverse.Had the patrol been scheduled to move out only a quarter hour later, it never would have left at all.Vhostym was reminded again of the utter randomness, the absolute meaninglessness of the multiverse.He might have wished that existence hada greater purpose but he knew better and refused to deceive himself.It simply was.Of course, an existence without external purpose was also an existence without boundaries, at least for one of Vhostym's power.The reminder spurred him to action.He turned back to the tower and spoke aloud a word of power.Time stopped, at least subjectively.The world froze, except for Vhostym.The spell would last only a short while, but he could cast it again if necessary.Taking his pouch of enchanted emeralds in hand, he spoke a stanza of arcane words and teleported into the first floor entry hall of the tower.Torchlight lit the room but the brightness did not trouble Vhostym's incorporeal form.Two soldiers and one of the temple's wizards stood within, frozen between breaths.The drawbridge winches stood in alcoves to either side.Two closed wooden doors awaited in the opposite wall.Without hesitating, Vhostym dropped one of the emeralds on the floor—the gem took corporeal form when he released it-and spoke a command word.At his utterance, the jewel shattered into a rain of shards and left in its wake a green glow that encompassed the entirety of the entry hall and extended through the wooden doors.The abjuration embodied in the glow restricted any form of extradimensional magical travel, including teleportation, into it or out of it.Vhostym's hastening spell augmented the already- rapid flight granted him by his spectral form and he passed rapidly through the wooden doors.A wide stairway led down.Murals depicting the Dark Sun stained the walls.The corridor linked with several rooms as well as the watch stations set in each corner of the tower.Vhostym dropped a gem, and another, until a green glow covered the entire first floor.He noted the location of those within as he moved-the guards armed with long bows atthe watch stations; the servants asleep in their beds.He floated downward through the floor and did the same on the ground floor, where most of the guards were quartered, and in the dungeon, where a few guards kept watch over prisoners.Then he floated up through the floor and did the same on the third floor, which featured a large central room around which lay the chambers of underpriests and lesser mages.In moments, that entire floor too was cloaked in green.He moved up to the next floor and repeated the process, this time painting in green the rooms of the senior priests and wizards.A sudden rush and blur of sound told him that time had resumed.He was in the uninhabited, large central room on the fourth floor.Other than an endless series of wall murals depicting the Dark Sun reading the Cyrinishad, the room featured nothing other than several doors, four pillars, and two stairways, one leading up and one down.He imagined the surprise the inhabitants of the tower must have felt-between blinks, the rooms they occupied had lit up with a green glow.From below, he heard alarmed shouts
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