Abject terror. That was the first and last thing she remembered. She had been taken out of her bedroll by several masked thugs and rendered unconscious with some kind of spell. When she awoke, she was stripped of her armor and weapons, bound on an altar, and a high elf was standing over her with a blade, chanting. She didn’t even have time to scream before the blade came down and she blacked out.

Amelia Degarmo opened her eyes in her own bed, and if not for the fact that she was wearing someone else’s armor, she might have thought the mage and the altar had just been a terrible dream. Well, the armor and the pain in her chest. Just over her heart was a puncture wound the size of a dagger’s tip, not deep enough to kill her, but significant nonetheless. How in the name of the Divines had she survived that, and how had she gotten back here?

“What a week I’m having,” Amelia muttered to herself.

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