She was once a hard-faced elf. Now her face is rotting, and the permanent sneer from her torn lip sets her expression in a grimace of perpetual anger. "One more day, and we should reach their trail." She glances reflexively at a longbow near her side and her rotting, impossibly long tongue darts out of her mouth to lick cracked lips. "One more day."

A space beside her, which is completely empty, says nothing.

"You 'tink?" What was once an orc nods, its pitted tusks gleaming with streaks of blood. "Damn gith hurt Huth. Dishonored da Goddess. Huth'll feed 'im is own intestines. Like this." He slurps in more kobold belly, making the corpse jerk. "Heh."

The nothingness in the space where there isn't anything takes a bite of intestine as well.

"We may have already passed over their trail," the shadowy darkness around them says. "Dinner would not talk, but I could tell that it knew the phoenix-thing; he leaves a stink behind him. I'll bet it met them in Akin's Throat. We'll soon find out; the trade city isn't far." The psionic shadow slides across their faces, and the elven archer brushes it away. "Arballine, let me scout and find them."

"No. We tried that, all of us, and it failed. I don't fail twice. We'll use stealth, but we'll do it together." She leans back. "If we passed them, then we backtrack. They'll be trapped between us and Nacreous. No escape." She rips off a chunk of intestine in sharpened teeth and caresses the arrows at her side. "No escape. I almost killed two of them myself. With all of us, they haven't got a chance."

The space where there is nothing doesn't say anything, but the others look at it respectfully.

The orc abruptly jerks his head up, for his eyes have suddenly ignited with a familiar yellowish glow. The elf is the first to notice the change. "Advisor," she offers with a respectful bob of her head.

"I wouldn't get over-confident, my darlings. We don't think they know you're coming, but there are many of them, and they have to be finished off once and for all. There will be no reward if you fail, you know." The orc giggles in a familiar way. "Far from it." Arballine, the rotting elvish archer, dips her head as she bites back her anger.

"They. Took. Away. My. Beloved." She hisses the staccato words out through clenched teeth as she gestures gracefully with her arms, almost hitting the space where there isn't anybody. "Master Soder, they destroyed him, after all the work I did to keep him with me forever. I had promised him!" Her eyes flash. "They took everything you had given me. They made me a liar. They'll pay for that, and for the pain, and for the embarrassment."

"Now, now." The puppeteer reaches over to pat her fondly on the shoulder. "You have new toys. We have the plunder from a half-dozen civilizations to choose from, and you're entitled to the best. Your King wants you to kill them once and for all, not just challenge them. And soon, if they still have your things with them, you can take them back. Think of it as an added incentive." He smiles, and one of the orc's teeth falls from his gaping jaw. Idly, the puppeteer picks it up and jams it back into his body's rotting gums. He speaks slowly. "The fall of the Queen has shaken all of us, but you must keep faith. There will be vengeance against the one who killed Her. Your King has a plan, and is taking care of this even as we speak; retribution shall be delicious. Oh, yes." He chuckles. "But we can't forget our goal, can we? And really, we can't have those sun-lovers complicating things. We offered them the hand of friendship, and they rudely spurned it." The puppeteer looks aggrieved and his voice turns icy cold. "Spurned it! Don't they know that politeness is a virtue?"

The elf looks confused, but it's the empty space beside her that doesn't say anything.

The puppeteer refocuses, and his gurgling voice with the orcish accent warms as he pats the empty air with a worm-riddled hand. "Not to worry, not to worry. You saw them decimate your army; you know their capabilities. I have been trying to find them for you. It's difficult, as the Ivory Breath fogs my divinations. I have tried to join with a company hidden outside Akin's Throat, but they have either died in sympathy for our Goddess or have been destroyed." He shakes his head, and pauses to pick back up the tooth. "That unit is roughly a day and a half from you. It might be wise for you to head there first, and if there is no sign of the offenders then keep heading to Akin's Throat."

The darkness swirls. "Anticipation and anger. A woman struck me with a mace. Hunger and revenge."

"Precisely, Baendril. Precisely. Now, mind if I join you for a bite?" The orc's body leans over, and the Puppeteer's glowing yellow eyes illuminate the corpse as he reaches down with an empty hand. He pulls his full hand back with a wet squelch. "Hmm. Don't have any wine, do you?"