Tyrus Paracelsus’s interrogation and apparent death turns an escape into a decisive defeat: captured by a Kishion, Tyrus cannot overcome the force binding his pursuer, and a magically compelled confession reveals the existence and parentage of his daughter. The Arch-Rike learns where to send the Kishion next, while Tyrus is left mortally wounded and his allies are placed in danger.

The failed escape

The confrontation begins after the Tay al-Ard carries Tyrus and the Kishion to a waterfall. The turbulent water disorients them both, and Tyrus loses his grip on the cylinder. He reaches the surface with the aid of spirit magic from a ring and struggles ashore, hoping to reach Drosta’s lair, where stone might shelter him from pursuit. The Fear Liath’s power adds a wave of terror, but the Kishion behind him is the more immediate threat.

Tyrus had gambled that the waterfall’s natural force would unsettle the Kishion. Unlike magic, drowning was a danger that could provoke ordinary human panic; Tyrus also knew where the Tay al-Ard would take them, while the Kishion did not. But the delay is not enough. Tyrus senses the Kishion emerging from the pool and understands that he is still too far from Drosta’s lair.

A contest of powers

Tyrus refuses to return with his pursuer and offers to free him from the ring that binds him. The Kishion responds with silence. Tyrus then draws on the powers held in his rings, bracelets, charms, and jewels, testing fire, ice, poison, wind, love, and spirit magic. The spirit magic surrounds the Kishion in a many-colored display, but none of the attacks affects him: he walks through them as if they were rain.

Tyrus’s last attempt is not an attack but a song. He opens a locket whose spirit melody recalls his dead sister and parents he can no longer remember. The Kishion stops. The moment briefly interrupts the assault, but it does not free Tyrus or turn the encounter in his favor. The Kishion regains control and uses a potion to make him answer questions.

The compelled confession

The Kishion asks about a woman Tyrus had said was in Stonehollow. Under the potion’s influence, Tyrus reveals that she is his daughter. He explains that he left her at an orphanage run by Winemiller, has visited only once, and does not know where she is now or what name she was given. His answers expose a hidden family connection, but they offer no precise location for the Kishion to follow.

Asked about the girl’s mother, Tyrus identifies the Dryad tree in the Paracelsus Towers. The disclosure changes the stakes of the interrogation: the Kishion is no longer pursuing Tyrus alone but has learned of a daughter with a powerful and distinctive maternal connection. The confession is forced from him by magic, and Tyrus is aware of his inability to stop speaking.

The Arch-Rike’s order and Tyrus’s fate

The Kishion’s voice shifts, revealing that the Arch-Rike is speaking through him from Kenatos. The Arch-Rike says that Tyrus had sent Prince Aransetis to fetch the girl and dispatched a Bhikhu after Cruw Reon and the youth Tyrus had passed off as his nephew, in pursuit of Basilides. He threatens those who aided Tyrus, claiming knowledge of the Uddhava, and orders the Kishion to go to Stonehollow and bring Tyrus’s daughter to him. The Kishion uses Tyrus’s scent to prepare to track her.

The Arch-Rike then orders Tyrus killed. The Kishion stabs him, and Tyrus recognizes the wound as mortal. The account ends with the waterfall as the last thing Tyrus remembers; it establishes an apparent death, not a subsequent confirmation of his fate. The event’s reversal is stark: Tyrus’s calculated escape and varied magic yield neither safety nor freedom, but a forced disclosure that gives the Arch-Rike a new target and puts Tyrus’s allies at risk.