"What the-" he growled, reaching down and yanking Jas's cloak from the straw. "There's nobody here!" he shouted.

The cultist guarding Holly turned his head, and in that moment, Holly lunged forward. With both hands, she grabbed at his wrist, forcing his blade out and downward, then slammed her right foot into the inside of his right knee. With a howl, the cultist crashed to the ground.

The cultist at the door moved into the cell with his sword aimed at Holly, not realizing the threat to him came from above. Jas dropped down from the gargoyle-like perch on the ledge above the door and rammed into his head with both feet, sending him reeling into the opposite wall.

The cultist beside the straw wheeled about just in time for Jas to smack him in the head with the water bucket. Before he could recover, the winged woman had closed in, jammed the bucket on his head and kneed him hard in the groin. He didn't put up a struggle as she wrenched the sword from his hand. Jas thrust the blade into his throat, then yanked the weapon back out.

Holly stomped on the wrist of the cultist lying sprawled out before her and began prying his fingers from his sword's hilt. With an animal snarl, the man rolled toward the paladin, grabbed her wrist, and sunk his teeth into her arm.

Holly screamed, but she couldn't kick at him without losing her balance. Jas whirled about. She slid her blade under his neck and sliced upward. The man released his grip on Holly's arm to grab at his throat and gasped for air. Holly yanked her arm back and clutched it to her chest.

Holly eyed the third cultist, who lay unconscious by the wall. As a paladin, she believed that vanquished foes should be spared. As an escaping prisoner, she realized he was an alarm waiting to go off and an evil foe who would have handed her to back to Xvim's people for sacrifice. She watched uneasily as Jas slit his throat, but said nothing.

Jas wiped her blade off on a cultist's leather tunic.

Holly retrieved a weapon for herself, though she had to use it in her left hand. Her right arm was already bruised and swollen around the mark left by the cultist's teeth. One tooth had broken the skin, which might have alarmed Holly, but she knew her god would preserve her from any disease the cultist carried.

After grabbing up her cloak, Jas snapped, "Let's go!"

Jas took the lead, but since she'd been unconscious when the cultists had brought her to the cell, she had to take directions from Holly. As they moved down the corridor, they were assailed by the sickly sweet stench of decaying flesh. Holly remembered it came from a large room through which her captives had dragged her on the way to the cell. At the first intersection, Holly pointed in the direction of the awful smell.

Jas wrinkled her nose and raised her eyebrows. Then she spun about the corner, her sword at the ready. She motioned to the paladin that the way was clear and the two continued on. The passage opened out into a vast room.

Holly and Jas stood on either side of the corridor, peering into the room for any foes. Piles of bones littered the room, some with flesh still clinging to them. Not all of them were animal bones, and Holly felt her stomach churn yet again.

Someone was holding a whispered conversation in the room. Neither woman could spot the speakers, but they could hear them as they approached. With a quick beating of her wings, Jas leapt up to the stone ledge over the passageway exit. Holly was just about to bad away when she recognized Joel creeping along the wall just around the corner.

The paladin whispered the bard's name and rushed toward him. The bard smiled broadly and threw his arms about the paladin.

"I guess you don't need me to rescue you, do you?" Joel asked, noting the paladin had already managed to arm herself.

Holly pulled away from the bard, suddenly uneasy. She peered at the cloaked figure behind him and glared at her. "Who is this?" she hissed.

"Urn, this is Walinda of Bane," the bard said, grabbing at the paladin's arm before she tried anything rash. "She's helping us escape. We've made a truce-just until we get out of here."

"Joel, how could you?" the paladin growled, raising her sword before the priestess. "This woman is a monster."

"Holly, she helped me find you," the bard explained. "I promised her you would honor the truce."

Holly drew back, never taking her eyes off the priestess.

"We have found your friend. Now we must hurry if we are to escape before dawn," Walinda whispered. "The griffon stables are that way," she said, pointing to a staircase.

Joel started moving toward the stairs, pulling Holly with him. He turned to watch Walinda's progress behind them.

"Joel, listen," the paladin hissed, jerking away from the bard. "There is another-"

Joel never heard the rest of Holly's words. He watched in horror as a harpy with a drawn sword came swooping down on the party.

The bard threw himself at Walinda, knocking her to the ground before she was skewered by their attacker.

Joel scrambled back to his feet and drew his sword. In the large, high-ceilinged room, the harpy had just enough space to swoop around in a circle and make a second attack run on them. Joel raised his weapon, but then he recognized the attacker. It was the winged woman Walinda had offered to the Banites.

Behind him, he could hear Walinda muttering a spell. Confused and uncertain, Joel nonetheless kept his vow and stood guard over the priestess. Blue lines of power streaked from Walinda's palms and arced about the winged woman's sword.

The winged woman cried out in rage and dropped her weapon. The blade made an alarming ringing sound on the stone floor. Joel lowered his own weapon, but the winged woman kept on coming, swooping past the bard and landing on the priestess. In an instant, she had wrapped her hands about Walinda's small throat.

With one hand, Walinda grabbed at her attacker's thumbs while the other hand clawed at her face, drawing blood.

Joel was about to put a sword to the winged woman's throat when Holly slammed into him. "No! Jas is an ally!" the paladin declared. Joel looked down at the two women brawling on the floor. Now he realized that it must have been Holly who had repaired the damage done to the winged woman. They needed to reach a compromise quickly.

"Then help me pull her off Walinda, and I'll keep Walinda away," he said.

Together the paladin and the bard managed to pull Jas from the priestess's throat. Joel shoved himself between the two, holding back Walinda, trusting Holly to keep the winged woman from attacking him.

"I take it you two have met," the bard said. He kept his voice calm, despite his worry that the noise of the battle might have awakened other cultists, or worse, alerted the eye tyrant.

"Murderess!" Jas hissed once Holly had helped her to her feet.

"Ah, Pigeon Girl," Walinda taunted. She stood up and rubbed the bruises about her throat. To Joel, she said, "Is this the measure of your protection, Poppin?"

"Enough," Joel snapped. "I made a pact with Walinda," he explained to the winged woman.

"You're a fool to trust her!" Jas growled. "You should kill her before she betrays us to the cultists."

"She won't do that," Joel argued. "She was a prisoner, too. She helped me find Holly." "How?" Holly asked suspiciously.

"I used a spell to detect goodness," Walinda replied, addressing only Holly, ignoring Jas completely. "In this place, your quaint purity stands out like an ogre at a halfling picnic."

"It's some trick," Holly insisted. "Bane is dead. She can't call on him for spells."

"For my part," Walinda said, now speaking only to Joel, "I am prepared to include this winged deformity in our bargain, if only for expediency's sake, even though I know I cannot trust her with my life."