Hanging between life and death, Ashla is suddenly struck with a vision from the goddess Pharasma.

The Dragon Crown

Ashla finds herself in a large chamber, in the midst of a battle between the Crimson Blades and Queen Ileosa. She watches as Arlynn impales Ileosa with Serithtial. The bloody Crown of Fangs tumbles from the Queen’s brow and rolls across the stone floor, leaving a crimson trail in its wake.

Zandu makes a grab for the crown, but Nox stops him. Arlynn struggles to free her sword from the dying Ileosa as the crown rolls on. Ashla chases after it, but is never able to catch the artifact, as it twists this way and that. She slowly realizes it is tracing out a pattern on the floor in blood.

The half-elf quickly scuffs up a patch of the pattern with her boot, and then scales a nearby pillar. She look down upon the floor in time to glimpse the dragon sketched in red on the stone, just as the crown shatters and its fangs slot into place on the outline’s mouth.

Though splotchy where she marred it, the blood painting peels off of the floor and fills out, becoming three dimensional as Kazavon takes shape once more. Serithtial is trapped and useless within the dying Queen, still clutching at Arlynn in desperation. Lightning crackles around the great blue wyrm as opens its jaws to unleash its fury upon the doomed adventurers.

The Game of Blood

After a bright flash of blue, Ashla finds herself back on the floor of the grand chamber, in another vision.

Once again, the party battles Ileosa in the halls of the Sunken Queen, swords flashing and spells raging. But Ashla’s eye is drawn to the shadows cast on the wall by the spellfire, as it dawns on her that one of her companions’ shadows is missing. It its place is a monstrous horned shade—perhaps a dragon. The room turns to blood, as do the fighters within it and the vision changes perspective.

A red-skinned, long-taloned hand idly drums the table as its owner looks down upon the tableau molded out of blood. He casually reaches out and flicks over one of the shapes in the battle. Then, with a wave of his hand, the entire scene ripples away into the pool of blood and is replaced with the familiar skyline of Korvosa. The clawed hand reached out towards the Acadamae, then hesitates and instead dives its fingers into Castle Korvosa.

The image fades from Ashla’s mind as she returns to consciousness by the grace of the Lady of Graves, but she is left with the troubling certainty that one of the two visions would come to pass.