**
Khaine didn't stop walking until they were outside. D'Arden followed, trying to scrub the image from his mind with every meditation and mind-clearing method taught to him over two decades of training by the Masters at the Arbiter's Tower.
Nothing worked.
Once they crossed the outer threshold, back outside in the cold, wet night, Khaine finally stopped.
"Now you see?" he asked.
D'Arden nodded mutely.
"This is going to be a problem," Khaine muttered, resting the point of his manna blade in the ground and leaning a bit of weight on it.
"What… is that thing?" D'Arden managed to gasp.
"A lurker," Khaine answered, almost absently. "It probably showed up during the plague to feed on the suffering. When the disease was gone, it had enough power to start actively draining the life from the immediate survivors, and after that it would have had enough to start the siren call that dragged out the people from the surrounding areas."
"That's a lurker?" D'Arden asked. He'd heard about them in the texts, of course, during his studies. There had been no description, though – no way to define them except by their methods. He now understood why.
"We're going to have to kill it," Khaine said. "The problem is; I'm not sure we have enough strength between the two of us. It's been here gathering energy for ten years or more. I'm not in my prime anymore, and you're barely beginning to recognize your own strength."
"Ten years?" D'Arden asked. "The king said it has only been two weeks that his subjects have been arriving."
The elder man looked at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Did you see the state of some of those 'subjects'? Were you actually observing, or were you simply listening to the ravings of a madman?"
D'Arden blinked, stunned. He dipped his head in acknowledgment. The rebuke stung, but Khaine was right. He'd taken the word of the king instead of making his own observation – an apprentice's mistake, and one he'd been warned against before. He resolved not to do it again.
"It's clear that his mind is so far gone that he no longer has any sense of time, D'Arden," Khaine continued, more gently. "He's probably had subjects filing in 'for the last two weeks' every day for the last five years, or maybe longer. The strength of that lurker is far too great."
"So what are you saying, master?" D'Arden asked. "That we might die trying to kill it?"
Khaine shrugged. "It's possible, but we can't leave it here."
"Is there any way to spare Thormund's life?" D'Arden asked, looking hopefully at Khaine. "I don't think it's his fault."
"Weren't you the one who said we should just kill him and end this madness?"
A frown knit D'Arden's brow. "I believe I was wrong."
His master regarded him with sad eyes. There was a long, quiet moment. At last, Khaine asked, "Would you want to wake up out of that dream, D'Arden?"
The young Arbiter looked at the ground, and considered for a long, quiet moment. He thought of living ten years, thinking all the while that he was a boy king growing into his power, with subjects who loved him, and a family of counselors that sat by him every day, supporting him in his noble reign after his father died of disease. To wake up to find that all those he loved and had been speaking to for ten years had been dead long ago, and that a demonic force had lured in his beloved subjects to feed on their life essence, would drive any man over the brink of insanity.
Khaine was right. There was no way to save the unfortunate boy king.
D'Arden felt his young heart, his very soul harden at the thought. A demon had to be slain, and there was no way to save the innocent it had enslaved. A sick certainty of the world's unfairness sank and rooted itself deep within him.
A moment later, he looked up again, a different man than he had been just moments before. The change was minute, but there was a very slight, distant chill in his eyes as he stared at his mentor. "What do we have to do?"