Malus released the knob and stepped softly back. The door cracked; smoke curled from the bottom. No, nothing, the dragon wasn’t in pursuit.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

He left the dilapidated house and turned left towards Corrigan’s Bar on the corner. The neighborhood was full of tightly packed tenement fronts. He wondered how long it would take them to go up in flames.

Inside Corrigan’s, he went straight to the men’s room in the back and evicted a drunk passed out on the shitter, locking the door behind him. He went to the stained sink and called a scry-chant, bringing Tern to the pitted bathroom mirror.

“Where are you, a men’s room?” the necromancer smirked.

“My fucking clothes are trashed, Corner and Berger are dead, and that magus you put me on was a summoner, you lying sack of shit. You’ll suffer for this!” Malus yelled at the mirror.

“Oh. Really? But I’m so dead, and the dead feel so little. Stop wasting my time. Don’t you have a geas to fulfill?”

“You fuck,” Malus hissed back.