That Was for Balasar

Fifteen minutes to midnight, under the Durst house. Beowolfe suggests they just leave. Balasar says he's a paladin, and he can't. Remi opens the huge pack he's carried since Daggerford and puts his dead dog Mayla back together on the flagstones. She stands up undead, big and white and still a dog at heart. In the cells they find Petra, chained and half starved, and they free her. She rides on Mayla's back and asks why the dog is so cold.

In the chamber past the portcullis, tentacles lick at an altar. Balasar won't put a life on it. He bleeds on it himself, then feeds it a bloodied ration, and the thing in the water rolls forward: a mound of flesh with a baby held inside its ribs. Genji says the name. Walter. Balasar raises the amber necklace and tells Walter to stand down, and every tentacle drops. Then the party breaks it open, and what climbs out is much bigger.

The creature takes Petra into its chest, and nobody sees what becomes of her. Balasar stands in its path again and again. Its bite crits him for more than twice his hit points, and Genji spends his last inspiration to reroll it. Balasar lives, steps forward, and pushes the monster away from his friend, into its reach. The second bite is another crit, and Balasar Amberflame dies standing between the monster and Genji. Mayla dies too. Remi's last spell tears off its arm, and Genji knocks it apart. That was for Balasar.

They have to leave his body in the water. Gustav Durst's ghost steps aside to let them pass, and they sprint up through the house and out the front door. On a hill outside, Rose points to a pretty spot. They bury her and Thorn there, with Petra's wooden toy.