The companions abandoned the uneasy safety of the merchant quarter and pressed into the shattered heart of Raam. The streets were eerily empty, the air heavy with smoke and the distant echo of screams. They pushed toward the wall, hoping to glimpse Dregoth’s movements, but before they could reach their vantage, a patrol of dray on snarling kalin mounts erupted from the ruins and cut off their path.

Safi sprang into action, unleashing a cone of cold—but the spell was shattered midair by a templar’s counterstroke. Undaunted, he transformed into a kirre, the six-legged predator of Athas, only to be charged and cut down by a rider’s flashing blade. Shank, igniting the fury of the arena, hurled himself into battle, dropping one rider with brutal axe blows and cloaking the battlefield in volcanic smoke. From the haze, Shiv vaulted over Zahraan’s shoulders, his mace crunching into a dray’s ribs, while Zahraan slipped into position, his daggers and fists striking with lethal precision.

The riders pressed hard. Eldritch blasts screamed across the street, hammering into Safi and Anvar, nearly felling them. Safi shifted away with psionics, resuming his kirre form before unleashing a psychic storm that staggered four foes. Yet the kalin tore into him, its jaws locking around his feline body, dragging him down. Karnos, with cold clarity, surged psionic acceleration through his allies, turning their movements into blurs of deadly speed.

The clash reached a fever pitch. Shiv’s maul rang with the power of minds breaking, smashing bones and will alike. Shank struck from his smoke, killing one dray and vanishing into another cloud. Zahraan’s flurry of blades and fists carved a rider from his saddle. Fazanna’s toll of the dead silenced another, her blade driving home as she pressed forward. Anvar conjured flame and mended his wounds with raw vitality, standing defiantly against the storm. Then Karnos reached into the minds of riders and mounts alike, pinning them under the crushing weight of his telepathy.

Fear broke them. The dray faltered. Shiv, reckless and relentless, surged forward, Bonecrusher in hand, killing two more and leaving another gasping out his final breath. Zahraan dispatched another with his deadly rhythm, until only the survivors remained—and those survivors fled into the ruins, their mounts screeching in terror.