“Toss it all,” Atzar mumbled as he stumbled away from the rock. Watery tears ran from his puffy, reddened eyes and he blinked furiously to clear them away as his eyes locked onto William. The world swam around the creature’s blackened form, but Atzar couldn’t tell if it was the shimmering mists moving or if it was simply something to do with the pounding in his own head. He’d been careful to keep his air veil up throughout the skirmish, but even still the valley’s poison might be affecting him. He forced his mind to still its spinning and reinforced the pocket of air around his nose and mouth, hoping that it would do a better job of keeping the pestilence out.

With that out of the way, Atzar finally took a moment to take in the effects of William’s rampage. He studied the layer of gore covering the revenant nearly from head to foot. The fluids that the fungal zombies had secreted looked none too healthy and he was glad that William had taken the brunt of it and not him. There had been a small army threatening to tear them apart only moments ago, and now there was nothing but bloody mud and sticky corruption stretching as far back as he could see into the toxic soup. It seemed surreal to him that so much damage could be done in the short amount of time that they’d been in the valley.

A sharp stinging pain pierced the foggy haze in his mind and Atzar realized that he was injured. A quick glance told him that it was nothing significant, only a few wet ribbons of blood seeping from half a dozen places where William’s spectral blades had nicked him. The demon’s tight embrace had spared him the worst of the assault, but here and there a razor line of force had sliced through his flesh.

“We need to go now, mage,” William barked impatiently. He reached out to shake Atzar from his reverie, but the mage instinctively drew back and snapped a magical whip of water at the demon’s outstretched claws. William scowled at him in annoyance but Atzar simply returned the look defiantly.

“Toss it all,” Atzar said again. He moved around away from William, being careful to avoid the larger chunks of still-twitching meat as he made his way to the clear ground on the other side of the slashed boulder. Once more on solid earth, Atzar took a moment to straighten himself out, calling on a stitch of his power to seal his wounds against the valley’s toxic atmosphere. Eyes drifted back towards the valley’s entrance as he worked. He strained to get a look at the escape, but try as he might there was no way that he was going to visually be able to pierce that much of the fog. Instead he focused on the sounds coming back from the way they’d come. Silence was all that greeted him.

It would be so easy to cut and run as Ioder had. Sure he’d taken William’s money, but that was an easy enough action to remedy. But even as he thought about escaping, Atzar knew that it was something that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do.

William stepped up beside him as he finished binding his wounds, a grim look on his face. “Last chance,” he said, his voice all steel and resolve. “They’ll be back to surrounding us if we don’t move, and I’m telling you now that the only other method I have of clearing that many of them out isn’t going to go as well for you as the last one.”

Atzar grinned at him, sharp white teeth glowing through the air veil. It wasn’t some fanciful notion of honor that kept him at William’s side, or holding to the bargain that he and the demon had come to. It wasn’t even the potency that their little endeavor promised to give him. No, Atzar decided, it was something fiercer and more primal, something about the life-or-death struggle that he built a fire in his blood that nothing else could. Despite the choking air and the frenzy of the last several minutes Atzar couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this alive and excited.

Atzar turned back to William and pulled his magic tightly to him with a gesture. “Alright demon, lead the way.”