Chapter 6: The Halls of the Sleeper

The last chapter begins with a last word from Xardas. He is holding back the Sleeper's reach by the thinnest of margins - the god is half awake already, and every hour the hero spends outside the temple narrows the window. The hero takes Uriziel in hand (or as a rune, if he has transmuted it under Xardas's guidance) and walks back into the Sleeper's Temple one final time. Every step of the old path is clear now. The four shaman blades already in his pack: Lichtbringer, Weltenspalter, Zeitenklinge, Dämonenstreich. The last one still lies with Grash-Varrag-Arushat in the final hall - Bannklinge, the Banishing Blade, the key to the hearts.

Arushat rises when the hero enters the hall, and this time Uriziel cuts through the dragon-demon's protections as though the old shaman is made of paper. The Banishing Blade comes off his body. The hero holds the fifth sword.

At the gates of the Sleeper's hall Xardas teleports into the corridor, just in time to explain what the five blades are for ("Der Schläfer erwacht"). The five hearts of the shamans who bound the Sleeper are embedded in five shrines in the Sleeper's chamber. Only the shamans' own old blades can cut them. Pierce all five hearts and the Sleeper loses his anchor in this world; leave one and he rises. The teleport to the hall cost Xardas more strength than he had; he sinks to his knees before the hero takes the next step, and the final fight is the hero's alone.

Two side rooms off the corridor hold mummies with some of the Colony's last permanent-stat potions - the hero takes them all, because the next room is the Sleeper himself, and the fight will not wait for a second chance. Either descent from the corridor leads into the Sleeper's hall. Cor Kalom and the remaining fanatics of the Brotherhood are already there, chanting, convinced to the last that their god will reward them. They fight the hero as though the reward depends on the killing.

Kalom falls. The fanatics fall. The hero takes the first blade, crosses the hall to the first shrine, drives the old shaman's sword through the heart inside. A Demon Lord erupts out of the shrine. The Sleeper himself answers from the great dais with a rain of fire that would end anyone standing in the open; the hero fights from cover, drops the Demon Lord, moves to the second shrine, third, fourth. Each heart destroyed costs one more demon and one more wall of flame. When the fifth heart is pierced by the Banishing Blade the Sleeper loses the last of his anchor in this world - the thing that called itself the Sleeper is torn out of the temple, out of the Colony, back into the realm of Beliar from which the five shamans once called him.

The temple shudders. The Barrier weakens. The hero stands alone in the suddenly empty hall, the five blades at his feet, Uriziel cooling in his hand. The game ends on that moment. The story of the Colony is closed.