"I don't ...have much left," Sythemis gasped as Amal half carried her up the pillar. Her skin had lost some of it's lusture giving her a wan and sallow look. A gasp left her lips as Amal's hand closed around the diamond, lifting it down from its pedestal. The bells hammering was so intense it could be felt deep in the stomach, physically painful against the eardrums. With shocking suddeness, the sound ceased and was replaced by a rumble. The pillar shook beneath them as though an earthquake rocked the tower. THen the soild stone disintergrated into gravel and slumped downwards in a shower of stone that swallowed at them like mud. Sythemis held on to Amal, spreading her body wide to keep from sinking to her death in what was now a mountain of small perfectly circular pebbles. The thief, by the grace of all the gods, kept hold of the stone as the careened down towards the forested floor. There was no dust and the grinding of stone on stone was like the hiss of a thousand blizzards. It took an oddly long time for the pile to come to rest.

"She is no man's queen thief," a cold voice declared from the portal by which they had entered. Antiachus stood framed by the arch. His body was nude and oddly mis-shapen, as though growths of some kind were stretching the skin beneath. Thin traceries, like old scars covered him from the neck down, forking and spreading like thin ivy. Only his face was whole and human, handsome and terrible with black eyes that gleamed with malice.

"Not that it need long concern you," the wizard declared, lifting both his hands palm upward. The jungle began to pulse and throb. Great humps began to appear in the forest floor. Clawed, skeletal paws, burst out in showers of dirt as creatures, like the one Sythemis had dispatched but long dead, dug themselves free, empty skulls glowing with red eldritch lights.