‘You are saying Moon’s Spawn was originally one of these skykeeps that arrived here?’ ‘It was. Three have come in the time that I have been here. None survived the Deragoth.’ ‘The what?’ Osric halted and faced his son once more. ‘The Hounds of Darkness. The seven beasts that Dessimbelackis made pact with—and oh, weren’t the Nameless Ones shaken by that unholy alliance? The seven beasts, L’oric, that gave the name to Seven Cities, although no memory survives of that particular truth. The Seven Holy Cities of our time are not the original ones, of course. Only the number has survived.’
