Dismet sat silently, a volcano erupting some miles away was the problem, an impressive group considered their options some yards away. If one thing was a certainty Anstran and Huyga would get her to Kai, so she relaxed bored. A scorpion emerged from beneath the rock on which she sat and began to climb towards her thigh. She watched it a moment, "two killers on one rock" she thought and moved a tiny muscle in her upper arm. Black droplets ran and formed under her fingernails. There was no visible movement as she stabbed the tail with one fingernail and head with another.

The problem was that Grayhawk was disintegrating around them. But in a way this was irrelevant to Dismet, it was more everyone else’s problem. Grayhawk had to disintegrate, if it did not a Dark God would rule a dead world.

Though Dismet was a nightmare this was only partly her fault, after all you cannot choose your ancestors. At the centre of the problem lay her grandparents. Her grandmother Lorimas, was an Archdemon, while her grandfather was the God of Chaos Quizet Daesil. Bad enough, but worse followed their unions. Her mother and father were the son and daughter of the same, the nameless Black King, the so-called Dr. X., and Isula Archpriestess of her grandfather. The result was inevitable there could be no escape from the consequences of such parentage.

But she was also a nightmare by choice, as an assassin her favourite technique had been to seduce and kill when her victim was at their most vulnerable, normally with their trousers around their ankles, or shirt over their heads. Thought she had slept with many men only she woke up, while the men disappeared. She remembered getting herself a job in a brothel frequented by one of her targets; she had forgotten his name but not his face. After a couple of visits the target had selected his bane for pleasure. The greatest climax of his life had been cut short. Her employer never found body and perhaps guessed wrongly that she had eloped with him. Job done.

So it was that Dismet, Alakanthia Queen of Death was the common man’s nightmare infused with two primal powers in a world where primal power was tearing all asunder. Ironically she was also the key to its survival. Presently this made life worthwhile, along with the memory those who died getting her here on a rock with a scorpion skewered paralysed on her fingernails. But the lose of Curavar and her child had severely unbalanced Dismet, but her friends held her together, indeed she suspected if she tried to avoid her fate they would bind her carry her the rest of the way.

The job was to get to the top of the tallest mountain in the north most reaches of Grayhawk and persuade, probably through violence, the essence of man, one the greatest swordsmen and psychopaths that had ever lived to surrender control of their as yet unnamed child. Life is ridiculous she reflected as she flicked the scorpion into the lava flow in front of her. There was a momentary flicker of flame.

"One killer on a rock" she sung childishly before she stood up; it seemed they had decided which way to head.

Dismet, Alakanthia, Queen of Death, Queen of Thieves and Mother of the Universe (how many names can you have?) was staked to the ground naked, a final insult, and the ultimate irony. The fact she was staked anywhere meant she had succeeded. However, the fact she was staked indicated she was not seen as a saviour.

She heard a sound to her right turned her head and saw an elf pillaging a pile of equipment; she could smell grass and perhaps trees. The elf picked up a cloak, Curevar’s cloak, and her cloak and ran off. She struggled against her bindings before feeling pain. She was bleeding from her wrist! There was blood on the rope! She had blood! This was a turn of events. After a period of struggle the group freed themselves. Dismet could feel the change, Primal magic had changed somehow, the void and rootvile no longer infused her being, she felt lost and mortal. This was not her world. Yet another irony.

The journey to the mountain and the fight there in was a blur though her memory contained faint images of violence and death. She remembered her child deciding something that led to self-destruction; there had been love somewhere in the decision. She had talked to her child in the womb, they had known each other intimately before birth. Had he decided to save his mother? She could not remember. She could not remember yet another wave of loss flowed through her. Success denied her purpose.

The battle, as she recalled it, had seen representatives of all the great races of the last and every previous universe. All had come to fight over entry into the Finality – the final universe. But Dismet did not know this she only remembered the deaths and lose of her child and world.

Days had past since they escaped their bindings but time had not cured her pain, rather her malaise had deepened. Though clothed she felt naked without her clock and blood. The party found themselves at the edge of a great forest. Though they entered carefully they found themselves instantly surrounded by twenty elves each with an arrow loaded. This was Dismet’s finality, a chance to escape the life that had never been hers. She charged and died felled by the volley. Death was as sweet as it was final; in this universe there was no resurrection only eternal darkness for those that passed beyond life’s boundary. Or perhaps she would be reunited with her child in death.

A retrospective by Pete – the player

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