The shade of the being who had once borne the name Grimm Afelnor drifted in a strange, formless void beyond the cares and pains of the mortal world. A living human might have found the grey oblivion tedious, enervating or even frightening, but the young mage's wandering spirit found only peace and contentment. His short life had been arduous and at times painful, but his troubled past now seemed little more than a half-forgotten dream.

His solemn oath of fealty to the Guild of Magic-users, Sorcerers and Thaumaturges now seemed so irrelevant, as he drifted in this ethereal state. Even his vow to redeem his tainted family name no longer seemed to have meaning.

Images of faces flickered through his sensorium: Magemaster Crohn, who had driven him to the brink of insanity, but who had made him a Questor in the process; the bullies, Shumal and Ruvin, who had played a willing part throughout those long months of torture; Questor Xylox, who had sworn to break him as soon as he returned to Arnor House.

The wandering spirit had no mouth or lungs with which to laugh, but he felt a warm glow of amusement, nonetheless. The body of Xylox, he knew, lay next to his own cooling corpse in the mountains of Shest.

At least I died a full Questor, he thought, and I took Xylox with me; he will never be able to carry out his threat.

His grandfather, Loras, known throughout the Guild as the reviled Oathbreaker, and his grandmother, Drima, would be distraught at his death, but they would surely find comfort in the fact that Grimm had died in the service of the Guild, as a Mage Questor of the Fifth Rank…

But they'll be sad, all the same.

Despite all the hardships he had known in his brief, seventeen-year span, Grimm's had not been an unending life of pain and deprivation, and he recognised that several-even many-people might regret his passing.