She was at the far end of a much larger corridor that she recognized all too well. Carved depictions of various bits of gnoll mythology and gnoll lore flickered and danced in the guttering light of the torch sconces that sat at intervals down its length to her right. The ma.s.sive armored guards she'd seen the last time she'd traversed this hall were conspicuously absent. The sounds of battle came clearly from the far end, which she knew connected to the central hub of the gnoll village. So it was under attack then. But by whom?

Her heart pounded even faster. What if the things she'd been seeing of an approaching army led by Jack and Rose weren't delusions, but were actually truths? What if, in the midst of all the lies she'd been fed, she had actually been seeing their progress of trying to rescue her this whole time, probably from the Shaman's perspective.

Then....

She felt light-headed from the anxious excitement and fear pounding through her veins. If what she surmised was correct, then it was quite possible that there, less than five hundred feet from her Jack and Rose were locked in combat, fighting for her life as well as theirs. She felt an overwhelming desire to sprint towards them. Towards the possibility of finally being free. She took the first step. But something stopped her.

She looked to her left for the first time. There, perhaps fifty feet in front of her, were the doors to the throne room, standing dark and ominous within their carved recess. She didn't know for sure if he'd be in there. She didn't know what to expect from the encounter if he was. She didn't even know if she did fight him again if she'd have any chance of winning after the time she'd spent imprisoned and tortured. It was quite possible she wouldn't walk away from another encounter with him. He may simply be able to throw her into another delusion the instant he saw her.

But she knew what she felt she had to do, for her own dignity, for the lives of Jaang'faz and Marg'faz, for her desire for revenge. She had to face him again. And this time, she had to win, no matter the cost.

She turned her attention towards the throne room doors, and walked with determination towards them. She made it about four steps before she was frozen in her tracks by an unearthly, head-splitting shriek from somewhere inside the throne room, like some eldricht abomination had just been stabbed. Even at this distance, the sound was enough to make her eyes water and her legs beneath her. She stumbled up against the wall to regain her stability, and listened in growing horror as ma.s.sive footfalls drew closer from the other side of the throne room door, accompanied by lower, disturbingly harmonic cries. Reacting instinctively, she pulled herself back into the side corridor, and dug frantically through the components at her waist. She found a usable piece for invisibility just in time for the throne room doors to explode outwards into the carved corridor in a shower of splinters and beams that tore large chunks out of all of the nearby story carvings.

Even in spite of her invisibility, Eleanor found herself pressed as flat as possible against the stone wall of the corridor as the creature responsible for the shriek and the shattered doors shambled past the corridor entrance.

It was an unholy terror to behold, shambling nearly ten feet tall on clawed legs thick as tree trunks. It stood hunched, its pale white fleshy skin covered with mottled patches of long hardened fur that reminded her of a porcupine's spines. It had four ma.s.sive clawed arms, and out of its back, neck and face dozens of grotesque fleshy tentacles hung and twitched, flicking and wriggling as if they had a mind of their own. And there, in the center of the head was a vast, pink-irised eye, below which hung a horrible, slackened maw filled with serrated teeth too numerous to count.

Once it had cleared the doorway, the abomination roared and flew into a flurry of limbs as it flew towards the gnoll village, leaving a trail of shatterd stone in its wake. Once it disappeared out of sight, Eleanor dropped the invisibility, and stepped out into the shattered hallway towards the throne room.

There, standing in the middle of it with a very pleased look on his face, was Rawgh'faz.