1.

The shovel struck the ground, the soil clammy and clogged from the rains. The predawn damp saturated it and made each scoop heavier than it needed to be. But that really wasn't his problem because the skeletal remnant he had invoked from the body of the flesh it was currently burying was the one doing the digging. There was a certain symmetry to it and that pleased him. Of course, the body itself was neither here nor there; no, what was important was the star sapphire it had once claimed as its possession, a star sapphire that was now very much lost, ground into dust, along with the flamedance ring of another hapless mook who had the misfortune to bear it. The trouble with sacrifice is it required precisely that: a sacrifice, and sacrifices were messy, and in this case, bloody.

He glanced around. The tide was low but would soon rise and mask all the tracks along the cove. The line between sand and soil was marked by vegetation, cliffs and within the cliffs were the catacombs of Candlekeep.

Setting his arm down against the damp rock, he watched the shadows over the surface of the sea, tasted the salt spray. If all went to plan, it might well be the last time he did. If all went to plan, the poison he prepared from the various garden herbs and catacomb fungi would never harm him again but as the last victim, he would exonerate himself.