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been able to invoke from his destroyed amulet. The Sign embodied the purity of the natural world. It was anathema to aberrations. The ghoul’s eyes widened as its horrible, abdominal tongue retracted. The cavity spat Raidon’s leg out with such force that he fell to the ground. His foot remained attached. “Thank Xiang,” muttered Raidon. The thing’s second mouth was bigger on the inside than the outside. But strips of skin were absent from his extremity, dissolved away as if by acid, revealing red and oozing muscle. It was the most serious wound Raidon had ever received. But his mind passed over that particular realization to consider what he’d just invoked, unaided. He had become his amulet. The energy pouring “into” him issued from him. Raidon grasped his focus, visualizing his mind and body again as lines of flashing energy. The glimmer of blue he had earlier observed blazed cerulean at its heart. At its edges, it burned the wilder, darker blue hue of the Spellplague. Had the firestorm he’d survived… had it infused him with his amulet’s power? If so, why was its cerulean color contaminated� The ghoul-thing smashed into him, bearing him to the ground. Raidon blinked away his untimely retrospection too late. The creature’s claws and both mouths tore at his flesh. It panted, “I don’t like your taste. Maybe you’ll taste better dead.” A thumb to the creature’s eye and a knee to its side did little to dislodge the ghoul. A crushing elbow directly to the creature’s throat cut short its constant, maddening titter. That blow would have killed a mortal man outright. The ghoul-thing was undead, and its nerves did not communicate messages of pain. Raidon struggled in its grasp, his breath coming quicker. The monk’s deep knowledge of how to attack vital areas, like pressure points, joints, and organs, was almost useless against the walking dead. He squirmed right, trying get out from under the crushing weight, then shucked left, hoping to fake out the creature. The ghoul’s tongue-tentacle held the scrabbling monk fast. Raidon was pinned on his back. The creature’s disgusting, abdominal jaws gave it an unholy advantage, and the pain in his leg was slipping more and more into his consciousness, threatening to cripple his ability to seize the initiative. Even as he inched one hand toward the sign on his chest, the ghoul managed to grab his wrist. It quickly snatched his other wrist too. Its claws bit painfully into his palms. It tittered, “No, you mustn’t touch! Hold still, now, while I nibble the skin from your face.” Raidon’s focus faltered. Concentrate! Hold onto your calm, or you are lost, he commanded his wavering discipline. But what chance did he have if he could not reach the symbol? If I have the power of my amulet, what need have I to touch it to trigger it? Wasn’t he always in contact with it, since it was part of him? He concentrated on the cool point above his heart. The symbol of a dead order. The Cerulean Sign. He imagined himself touching it with a tendril of thought. The Sign was a metaphor, an emblem that served as a door, a door Raidon visualized himself swinging wide, revealing wonders beyond… The Sign on his chest pulsed. Shafts of cerulean light speared heavenward. Where the light touched the aberration, it howled. Pain was no longer beyond its ability to sense. The ghoul’s abdominal tongue retracted, and it writhed and fell away from Raidon. The light from the Sign faded. The monk staggered to his feet, shaking and bleeding. Zai zi, he was sorely hurt! If he didn’t tend to his raw foot and lower calf soon, he’d lose his leg, then soon enough his life. The ghoul remained prone, writhing and drooling without regard to its environment. Its senses were overloaded, maybe burned out. He’d seen a similar response many times during his decade of abomination hunting. The Sign’s mere manifestation affected weaker aberrations just so. The most powerful aberrations