A second streak of lightning smashed the creature onto its side. It quivered for a moment, legs stiff and trembling, then collapsed.

Still levitating, Q'arlynd reached into his pouch for a piece of leather stiffened with beeswax. Touching it to his chest, he cloaked himself in invisible armor. Only then did he drift to the ground. He stood, braced and ready, half expecting another of the creatures to come hurtling at him out of the mist, but all was quiet. At last he walked to the fallen creature and nudged it with his boot. It was dead.

Q'arlynd tucked the glass rod back in his pouch and ran a hand through his shoulder-length white hair, combing it back from his forehead. When he'd passed this way three months ago with the priestesses of Eilistraee, neither Leliana or Rowaan had mentioned creatures like it. They'd warned that the High Moor was home to orcs and hobgoblins, as well as the occasional troll, but they hadn't said anything about four-legged predators that could talk.

Though perhaps "talk" wasn't the word for it, exactly. The creature had uttered the same phrases over and over, sometimes in fragments, as if repeating something it had heard. Q'arlynd suspected it was imitating the panicked voice of someone shouting for a companion who, it would seem, had left that individual behind to become the creature's next meal.

Q'arlynd decided to see if his guess was correct. He drew his dagger and sliced open the monster's belly. He had to pinch his nose shut as he worked-whatever the creature was, its flesh oozed an oil that stank. A moment later, his guess was confirmed. A severed foot spilled out of the creature's stomach with the rest of its recent meal. Not yet fully digested, the foot had skin as black as Q'arlynd's own.

The creature had eaten a drow, and not too long ago. Someone else had been out on the moor that night.