Patient devil, aren’t you?” Jerico whispered as he knelt by a shallow stream running through the rocky terrain. He scooped handfuls of water and drank, doing his best to forget that the orcs often urinated along the banks. The last tribe he had seen was downstream but the gray scoundrels bred like rabbits in the Vile Wedge. Most likely hundreds of orcs had relieved themselves into that very same water far upstream…

He spat out what little he had not swallowed.

“Well, now I’m thirsty, sick, and still annoyed as the abyss,” he said. He shifted his left shoulder, adjusting the leather straps wrapped around his forearm. A thick rectangular shield hung across his back, emblazoned with the emblem of the golden mountain. That shield, protecting nearly every vital part of his body, kept him calm enough to keep his back turned to his unknown stalker.

He looked past his broken reflection in the water. For two days he had felt a gentle voice of warning in his mind. It was the voice of Ashhur, his beloved deity, the one he served in full devotion despite what had happened. Despite the fall of the Citadel. Despite believing himself the last paladin of Ashhur. He had survived longer than the others had because Ashhur’s voice was strong in his ear and he never doubted it. This time it screamed that death followed him like a shadow.

“You’re no orc,” he said aloud, his patience tiring. He hadn’t slept in nearly two days. “You’re too patient for an orc. So stop hiding. If you want to kill me, come and try. You want to talk, come and talk. If it’s neither, then please go with Ashhur’s blessing and leave me be.”

“I do not think Ashhur would ever grant me his blessing,” came the reply from behind him. “For I have killed too many of his failed, faithless children.”

The paladin stood. The voice was too far away to be within striking distance…yet.