Like the wizards, the priests had to prepare an object to receive their souls during the transformation, but unlike the wizards it didn’t have to be a specially made object costing a small fortune and requiring vast amounts of magic to create. A simple holy symbol representing the priest’s faith, in their case a golden griffin, was all that was required, providing that it was of sufficiently high workmanship to carry the required quantity of holy power, and since all priests of Samnos carry such a symbol with them wherever they go it wasn’t necessary for them to go looking for any other.

     All the priests had to do was spend the night praying over them, beseeching Samnos’s aid in the awesome undertaking they were about to attempt, so that when dawn came they were all red eyed and exhausted, even Resalintas himself who’d been through a lot during the past few weeks.

     The old priest then passed the scrolls around, so that all the others could have a good look at them, and Vasta laughed aloud as he read the faded, crabby writing. “We needn’t have worried about offending Samnos,” he said. “It's Samnos Himself who'll turn us into raks, if it's His will to do so, and if it's not He just lets us die.”

     The preparations took a further two days, during which the priests fasted and prayed, and the wizards could only wait anxiously until it was complete. Because of the danger that they might start turning to evil immediately after the transformation, they had decided that they would all, wizards and priests alike, make the transformation simultaneously and then embark upon the mission immediately after that, while there was still enough goodness in their souls. Their arks would remain in Crystalwade, in the care of younger priests, and when their mission was ended, either in success or failure, they would be destroyed in a solemn, respectful ritual, sending the souls of the raks to the judgement of Samnos.

     Three days after the ancient warrior priests arrived at the fortress monastery, the time finally came when all their preparations were complete and they were at last ready to attempt the transformation itself. The inner sanctum itself had been painstakingly prepared. Every surface had been thoroughly scrubbed with holy water and acolytes had spent two days chanting verses from the Samnia in an attempt to sanctify the very air itself. A long table covered by a simple sheet of white linen had been placed along the centre of the chamber, where it was overlooked by the large statue of Samnos standing in the pose of an officer inspecting his troops. A constant reminder that their God was keeping a close eye on them and was only permitting the ceremony with the gravest of reservations.

     The arks stood in a double row along the table; the wizards’ crystal globes along one side and the priests’s griffin pendants along the other. Beside each globe stood a phial of clear liquid, looking deceptively harmless despite the fact that it was, in reality, a powerful poison. Beside each griffin pendant lay a small, silver dagger.

     The exact method by which the prospective raks ended their lives didn’t really matter, though. It was the spells of the wizards and the faith of the priests that would actually cause the transformation, but the priests had chosen daggers for a characteristically practical reason. As the blood left their bodies, it would be collected in golden bowls and dried to make a coppery brown powder which would then be distributed to younger priests all over the world. The blood of a dying priest was a very powerful substance and played an important part in many holy rituals and ceremonies.

     The wizards and priests all took their places beside their arks, some of them pale and apprehensive as if having last minute doubts. “Well, I suppose this is it,” said Adantus, picking up his phial of poison. “No excuse for delaying any longer.”

     “Are you absolutely sure you want to go ahead with this?” asked Elmias from his position just inside the door. Along with a couple of other of the older wizards, the ex-director of extra-planar studies would not be taking part in the transformation. Each of the wizards had only about a fifty percent chance of surviving the transformation, which was good enough for the others in such a desperate situation, but Elmias’s expertise would be vital in dismantling the Puncturium so they couldn’t take such a chance with his life. He would wait in Crystalwade, therefore, and would only teleport into Arnor when, or rather if, the others succeeded in dispelling the Shadow. The wizard couldn’t honestly say he was sorry, but he hated to be the odd one out.

     “We’ve got no choice,” replied Adantus. “We either do this or we flee Tharia. Are we all agreed?” The others nodded, some of them reluctantly, and Adantus broke the tip from his glass phial.

     Acrid fumes from the powerful poison filled the room as the wizards cast their last spells and the priests all dropped to one knee to pray. Then the priests picked up their silver daggers. Resalintas felt its edge with his thumb and nodded with satisfaction. Elmias didn't doubt that it was razor sharp and would cut deep.

     All the priests held their daggers aloft in a final salute to the God of Righteous Warfare. “Mighty Lord Samnos!” they cried in unison. “We go to death or undeath, according to Thy will. Praise Thy name above all others until the end of the world.” Then they raised their other hands and slashed their wrists with a single, precise motion.

     Postulants came forward with golden bowls to catch the blood as it spurted out, and at the same moment the wizards threw back their heads and swallowed the poison with a single gulp. Elmias had expected them to gasp or gag as they felt it doing its deadly work, and had psyched himself up to the possibility that they might even scream in pain, but what he wasn’t prepared for was the awful sizzling as the hellish liquid burned away their throats and the jet of blue flame that leapt from their gaping mouths. They made no other sound. They were unable to make any other sound as their vocal chords were amongst the first tissues to be reduced to charred flakes of soot, but their bodies shook and jiggled in an obscene dance of death, giving the horrified onlookers some idea of the terrible agonies the wizards were undergoing.

     The priests, on the other hand, were having a much easier time of it. They chanted prayers of praise and devotion to Samnos as the blood left their bodies, their faces growing a deathly pale and their bodies beginning to sway as it became more and more of a struggle to remain standing. The postulants took away bowl after bowl of warm, steaming blood, moving with the utmost care to make sure they didn't spill a drop of the precious liquid, and they emptied them into large vessels of gold over which more senior priests prayed and waved bowls of burning incense. The blood of different priests was not mixed, though. Each vessel held the blood of only one priest, so that the name of that priest could be included in the prayers when it finally came to be used, begging the soul of the dead priest to come to the aid of the living who were still fighting the forces of evil in the mortal world.

     One of the wizards, Phileus Garno, collapsed onto the polished brick floor, his body convulsing and erupting with flame in a dozen different places, and the younger priests and acolytes gathered around the room murmured a prayer for his soul. Then a priest fell, and his body was borne away with great dignity and ceremony for later burial with full religious honours.

     More wizards and priests fell, each one a powerful defender of civilization that they couldn’t afford to lose. Elmias felt his age as he watched the wizards fall one after another, most of them great friends whom he’d known for many years. Gradually, though, it became obvious which of them would survive the transformation, their flesh shrinking onto their bones as all the water and life was driven out of their bodies. Eight wizards and nine priests were still standing, about half of all who’d attempted the transformation. The ratio they’d expected.

     Now the process was approaching its final stages. The seventeen creatures standing along the table were no longer people. They were corpses, dead and lifeless. Everything that made them what they were, their thoughts, their personalities, their likes and dislikes, were now contained in the arks that had been prepared for them. Now it was time for them to attempt to re-inhabit their bodies.

     The souls reached out, tentatively touched the cold, lifeless flesh, and seeped back in. Elmias watched in horrified fascination as a horrid kind of pseudo-life came back to the shriveled corpses, transforming them from objects that, although dead, were perfectly natural into things that were completely unnatural. Things that had never been meant to be. The temperature in the room plummeted, making all its living occupants shiver and wrap their arms around themselves in an attempt to hold onto their warmth, and as the transformation reached its final stage the sunken, empty eye sockets of the proto-raks lit up with tiny pinpoints of hellish, burning light.

     All except two, a wizard and a priest. As their souls attempted to re-inhabit their bodies, something went wrong and the fragile thread binding them to the mortal world was broken. Their souls were immediately sucked away, carried to the realm of the Gods where they would be judged and committed to whatever afterlife the Gods thought they deserved. Their material bodies were left behind, though. Full of supernatural power and radiating the cold of the spaces between the stars, but empty of spirit. Empty vessels waiting to be filled.

     They did not remain empty for long, though. The world is full of spirits. Weak, immaterial, almost powerless creatures that have been wandering around for millions of years. Nobody knows where they come from, or what they do to occupy the interminable eons of their existence. Only two things are known for certain about them, and the first is that they are almost completely mindless. Unable to make a proper choice between good and evil and therefore unable to enter the realm of the Gods.

     The second is that they crave material bodies to inhabit. Any body will do, so long as, for one reason or another, it's not inhabited by a soul of its own, for these spirits lack the strength to take a body by force. Even the dried and shrunken body of a rak will do, since even the tough and leathery flesh of the undead is preferable to the nothingness which they have to endure for most of their existence.

      The moment the wizard and the priest were lost, therefore, their rak bodies were entered by thousands of these spirits, each one fighting to drive out the others and become the sole occupant of the prized flesh. The two soulless raks jerked back to life, therefore, full of the joy of corporeal existence, but almost immediately they saw that they were surrounded by many similar creatures and, in a sudden panic, they tried to escape.

     Elmias watched in fascinated relief as the raks gradually came back to life, flexibility and movement slowly coming back to the stiff, shrunken corpses. He saw without surprise that one of the surviving raks was Tragius, and that Resalintas had also made the transformation successfully. He’d somehow known that these two, even if no others, would survive. Adantus had also survived, he saw, as had Aerethil and Vasta, but before he could identify the other survivors two of the raks went berserk.

     They stared around in horror, seemingly terrified by everything they saw, as if unable to comprehend that there was nothing in the world more worthy of causing terror than they themselves. They screamed through their tightly shrunken jaws, beat at the air with withered hands that now looked more like the talons of some terrible bird, and ran in all directions, ignoring the wide open doorway and crashing their way through chairs and into walls while the room’s living occupants ran desperately to keep out of their way. One acolyte didn’t run fast enough and was bowled over by one of the insanely terrified raks. His body was instantly frozen by the brief contact, and he hit the ground with the same dull thud that a side of frozen beef would have made, his body covered by beads of condensation.

     “What in the name of...” began Captain Mace, staggering back towards the sanctum’s main altar.

     “The shock of their new condition’s driven them insane!” cried Elmias, backing fearfully out through the doorway.

     All the acolytes and postulants were desperately trying to cast protection spells, but they all knew it was futile. Not one of the room’s living occupants had a chance of defending themselves against the kind of power that even a juvenile rak could wield. Their only hope of survival was to get out of the room and bar the door behind them, in the hope that the other raks would be able to deal with them, but so far the other raks were still dazed and uncertain, not quite sure what was going on. Even Resalintas himself was just standing there, staring blankly at the far wall, as if having difficulty coming to terms with his new condition.

     “Raks don’t go insane,” replied Mase. “It must be...” A look of horror then spread across his face as the truth dawned on him. “Oh Gods, no!” he murmured. “Cretirak!”

     “What?” asked Elmias as priests and acolytes dashed in terror out of the room, most of them shivering from cold and one of them stumbling along the wall, half his body frostbitten by the briefest of glancing contacts with one of the cretiraks. Suddenly, though, the cretiraks became aware of the door for the first time and headed towards it at a full run, ignoring the fact that it was blocked by fleeing priests. Some of the priests managed to jump out of the way in time and some were already safely through, but at least half a dozen were still stuck in the doorway, unable to move because of the bodies all around them, and when the cretiraks forced their way through Elmias could only turn his face away in horror in an attempt to block out the terrible wailing and screaming.

     By the time the other raks began to come back to their senses, the cretiraks had escaped and the dead and dying were being carried away by shocked, grim faced attendants. “What happened?” demanded Resalintas.

     Mase quailed under his furious gaze, as well he might, Elmias thought. If the old priest had been awesome and intimidating as a living man, the rak he had become was terrible! Few living man could lift their eyes to the tiny, hellish pinpoints of light that burned in the empty eye sockets of a rak without literally quaking at the knees and feeling his bowels loosening. Mase was a priest of Samnos, though, and by means of a terrific effort of will he was able to force himself to meet the terrible gaze.

     “Two of you became cretiraks,” he said as steadily as he could. “They ran berserk, killing and injuring many acolytes before finding their way out and escaping.”

     Resalintas swore, the burning points of light that served him as eyes flaring up in anger.

     “What’s a cretirak?” asked Aerethil, coming to stand alongside him.

     “It’s Barchil and Dorth,” said Vasta, also coming up after having conducted a quick head count of the surviving raks and the failed corpses. “They must have failed to re-inhabit their bodies.”

     “So they’ve gone to judgement and their rak bodies have become inhabited by vulgar spirits,” said Resalintas, answering Aerethil’s question. “We haven’t got time to bother with them, though. They’re not intelligent enough to be much of a problem, except to those poor wretches they happen to stumble across. They’ll find some dark hole to hide in, and anyone with any sense will leave them well alone.”

     “Surely we can just destroy their arks,” suggested Elmias, coming back into the room. He’d wrapped a heavy cloak around his shoulders to keep himself warm in the presence of the fifteen raks.

     “Wouldn’t do any good,” replied Vasta. “Vulgar spirits aren't drawn to the realms of the Gods in the same way our souls are. They don't need an anchorage in the mortal world. Resalintas is right, forget about them. We’ve got a mission to think of.”

     The living wizards looked at Resalintas, but the undead priest seemed to have withdrawn into himself and was staring at the wall again. "Is he alright?" muttered Elmias to himself.

     He hadn't meant the question to be heard by anyone, but one of the surviving acolytes had re-entered the room and was standing close beside him. "He is searching his soul," the acolyte replied. "Looking for any sign, no matter how small, that he’s begun turning to evil."

     "It wouldn't happen so fast, would it?" asked Elmias, his eyes widening with fear.

     "Who can say? This has only been done once before, and the scrolls of Skava say nothing about how fast the evil grew inside him." The acolyte stared at Resalintas, his eyes narrowing. "He'll find evil within himself, of course. There is evil in all of us, even him, but is there more, now that he's a rak? That's the question he'll be asking himself, but the better question would be; would he be aware of it even if there was?"

     "Best thing, then, is to complete the mission as quickly as possible," said Elmias. "While his soul was still mostly good." The acolyte nodded soberly.

     Resalintas snapped out of his introspection a moment later and began barking orders, sending raks and living priests scurrying in all directions as they made preparations for their departure. “Have you given any thought as to how we’re to get to Arnor?” asked Tragius as he assembled and packed away the items he’d chosen to take with him. “If we just walk in or fly, we’ll be spotted before we get halfway and they’ll throw everything they’ve got at us. We’d never get within a hundred miles of Arnor! I hope you haven’t forgotten that you can’t teleport within the Shadow.”

     Resalintas gave him a look of pure disgust, or would have if his face had still been flexible enough to allow facial expressions. “I have given some thought to the problem,” he said. “I believe the answer lies in the old Agglemonian teleportation network, the heart of which lies directly beneath Arnor itself. Once there, we can disintegrate a tunnel up to the surface and emerge in the very heart of the Necropolis. We’ll be in the palace before the enemy even knows we’re there.”

     Tragius nodded. “It might work,” he agreed. “Where’s the nearest teleportation chamber leading into this network?”

     “The nearest one that still works is in the ruins of the old Agglemonian city of Redulopolis, in the Tannaric Plains. It was here that a pair of trogs dug their way out following their escape from the Underworld. We can teleport straight there as soon as our preparations are complete. Use the chamber to enter the network and be in Arnor less than an hour from now.”

     “Less than an hour from now!” gasped Tragius. “It’s almost too good to be true! If everything goes according to plan, this terrible war might be over before sunset tomorrow.”

     “Attend to your preparations or it will indeed be too good to be true,” warned the undead priest. “With all civilization resting on our shoulders, this is not the time for daydreaming.”

     The undead wizard nodded, and turned his attention back to his packing.