Just as Anna and her party arrived in Tantras under Elminster's guidance.
In Water-Drawing City, the rather wretched-looking Milko was preparing to hold an evil ritual in a stone chamber within the old underground district, surrounded by a dark mass of God of Death followers and priests, in order to fulfill a certain agreement he had made in compromise with Bane.
Though Milko's eyes were fixed on the five-tiered sacrificial altar before him, his mind kept replaying Bane's near-mad whispers before his departure. The hatred in his eyes only deepened.
This "Saint" body was simply too frail. Under Bane's pursuit, he had been completely outmatched.
Had he not threatened, at the very end, to destroy the stone slab in his hand—and had Bane not dared gamble on whether that stone slab possessed immortal properties—he might already have died by the other's hand.
Milko had never doubted Bane's underlying hostility toward him and Baal, the two "Gods of Death." In his early years, Milko had even received news that the Zhentarim were secretly tracking down Baal's Children of Murder on the Prime Material Plane.
In truth, that hostility had always been half-public.
The three of them all knew perfectly well that if one day they wished to gain power surpassing Yeg's, perhaps even standing shoulder to shoulder with Ao, then killing the other two and ultimately reuniting the "Dead Three" as one was the only path.
It was only that the circumstances had always forced them to adopt this half-united stance, so they could better fulfill their ambitions!
For instance, how were they to steal those three Stone Slabs from the Hall of the Gods under the watchful guard of Tyr, the God of Justice, who possessed immense divine power?
And how were they to deal with the inevitable pursuit of