by Gary Gygax
Gord was correct, of course. Lethargy, weakness, and a growing need to sleep, sleep, sleep forever were imbued into the substance of the quasi-real space that the fourteenth stair had brought them to.
As they went toward the flights of steps that sprang like strange growths from the slightly yielding surface of the ground, each found it harder and harder to place one foot in front of the other.
The environment would possibly have proved fatal, except that Gord correctly gambled that one portion of Chert's dream was true. They had to choose one stairway and head for it, wasting no time, so Gord thought and hoped that the stairway Chert referred to was the actual one. He was right, and they barely made it to the new plateau before succumbing to deathly lethargy.
Draughts from an enchanted flask that the bard supplied gave the four sufficient strength and refreshment of vigor to deal with a place that was like a giant plane of fly paper, populated by flying horrors ready to saw off choice bits of any creature stuck down and unable to defend itself. Chillingly, they had to step up on just such an unfortunate creature in order to be magically moved to the next test.
The residual strength from the elixir that Gellor had shared round, plus his own signing too, gave the four the ability to resist the terrible pain that pervaded the next area — agony borne by the sights, sounds, smells, and very touch of the place. Where the torment was worst, there too the stair for escaping it.
"Upon my life, Gord." Chert spat, "never was a sheer ice cliff before and an angry cave bear behind half so fun as the entertainments you have always managed for us!" He said that as they came floundering down a slime-coated slope toward a precipice.
"If you and Gellor hadn't botched up and lost-" he began to retort, then stopped wasting his breath to do something about their dire situation. Tumbling and somersaulting to the lead of the group, the young adventurer plied his enchanted dagger to dig in and make a firm place to hold to. Greenleaf, immediately behind, slid past, while Chert caught onto Gord's belt and Gellor grabbed Chert's leg. In desperation the druid used one of his least powerful spells and succeeded. The dweomer caused the slime to stiffen and grow, and the stuff caught Curley and held him fast just as he was on the brink of destruction.
Eventually they found the way to free themselves from the slime world, but wound up in a place where gigantic gears with grinding teeth of spiked surfaces threatened to pulp them all. This is a nightmare of some mad technologist," was all Gord could manage. Chert pointed out the way, and then he set the example by grabbing fast to one of the free-rolling spiked wheels and rode it upward to where a small ledge was visible. It was the wrong one, and getting down was trickier than getting up, but after managing it they found the correct ledgestep and were gone from the clockwork plane.
There followed an acid world, a place of animated metal shapes of geometric form and malign purpose, a desert of alkaline sort, a quasi-plane where they had to hop from tooth to tooth of a giant mouth as it clashed open and shut trying to swallow the four. From there to a globe of prehistoric sort that teemed with dinosaurian monsters they went, and thereafter to a brazen city filled with fiery denizens. Of course, Curley Greenleaf handled the City of Brass and the efreet well enough. In fact, the sultan of those elemental beings actually directed the party to a place where there was a portal that bypassed many of the stair-traps that Gravestone had devised. The four adventurers used it to ascend the helix to a point twice as far along as that of their previous progress.
But on that fiftieth plane the druid suddenly found himself face to face with the avatar of Infestix known as Nerull. Chert saw the devil-duke Amon. The troubador confronted the netherlord, Hafdoligor Kaathbaen, master of the undead realm. And Gord stood before none other than Tharizdun himself!
Here at last, it seemed, was the final challenge for each of them. How would they react? How would they fare? They all reacted the same, but not in their usual way. Instead of leaping to the attack or poising themselves for defense, each of the four simply stood, motionless and uncaring. They were filled not with courage and spirit, but with the heaviest, most oppressive despair that any of them had ever known.
Chapter 12
"Leave me." Infestix uttered in his worm ridden voice. The various daemons and netherworld things that served the great lord hastened to obey. "Let none enter until I personally command." he added as the last of his servitors was departing. That ghastly daemon, one of the Diseased Ones, bowed low and firmly closed the ancient door behind itself.
Infestix was now alone in the chamber, a minor audience room he favored because its location allowed him to access so many places easily. The master of the netherplanes sprawled back on the wide chair. His form shifted to that of Nerull, the skeletal god of death, and in his hands appeared the terrible scythe wielded by that deity. Then the terrible figure bounded up from the seat as quickly and nimbly as it he were a young man full of vigor and life rather than a bony monster eons old and laden with plagues. Infestix laughed a booming, iron throated laugh, as in his Nerull avatar he swung the scythe in great arcs around the chamber, the rusted, blood-stained blade singing a death song that was most pleasant to the being as he danced thus and laughed in pleasure.
"The planets come slowly into alignment, and all signs and portents are favorable," Nerull caroled loudly. There were none to hear, of course. He shared the news with nobody, for none save he would soon ascend to be the Chosen of Tharizdun. No master of devils, no chief of any other power in the whole of the netherworlds had come close to accomplishing all that Infestix-Nerull had managed.
Now the culmination of all he had worked for and labored to produce was at hand. With an abrupt cessation of motion. Nerull stopped his cavorting. The terrible being swished his long-edged instrument through the air. There, where it had passed. Oerth and the Flanaess appeared at his feet.
"Let me see the struggle." he ordered. From east to west tiny lines of figures sprang up, fighting and killing in a replay of events of the last few weeks. The soldiery of the Great Kingdom fought on all fronts, slaying and being slain by the knights and footmen of Nyrond, Almor, and the League of the Iron Knot. The forces of Iuz and his allies hammered south, east, west and in turn were hit and driven. Scarlet Brotherhood legions marched, battled, and bled. Baklunish hosts fought nomads and wild kinsmen, as dwarves and elves defended valiantly against the unending hordes of humanolds swarming out from the Pomarj. Everywhere there was destruction, hunger, suffering. Nerull laughed the rust-throated laugh of death again, and as he passed his scythe over the little depiction, all save the dead vanished. Those. In their thousands, arose and marched in ordered formation at their master's will. In fact, many of those dead would come to Hades and those other netherspheres serving Infestix and become new soldiers still fighting for the dark cause of Tharizdun.
"It is perfect," the daemon hissed as he allowed the phantom figures to vanish. "Neither law nor chaos attains ascendancy now. What war ever brought weal?" he added with a sardonic chuckle. "I am readying all for you, Great Master of Evil," Nerull shouted, and a faint pulsing in the dim atmosphere seemed to indicate that the bound lord of all darkness heard and strained to come forth again.
"See, Lord Tharizdun!" the nether-king shouted as he again cut a path through the thick air of the chamber with his scythe. There appeared scenes of the war being fought in the netherspheres. Demons great and small fought with their own ilk and against the minions of the Nine Hells and Hades, too. Three amethyst lights, tiny and bright as stars, showed where the Theorparts were, each a key, a third of the relic that would free Tharizdun.
Infestix-Nerull noted absently the smaller, black gleam where the Eye of Deception gathered chaotic power for its demoniacal wielder, and even smaller motes of rubine hue, orange fire, deep jet. Those were merely indications of the many great weapons being used, artifacts of evil force employed by the warring factions. Together, perhaps, the rest would surpass the power of the Eye wielded by Graz'zt, and it, with the other weapons of the Abyss
, might just surpass a single Theorpart.
"My Lord of All Evil," Infestix-Nerull said more softly, "see how the three parts draw ever closer to each other? Soon, soon!" But there was no further indication that a channel remained to that no-space where the dreaded Tharizdun was imprisoned, so the daemon dissolved the scene with another swish of the groaning blade.
Thinking carefully to himself, Nerull pondered the situation. The keys were so close, yet they remained disjoined, separate, and contentious. "The one-who-stands-between still lives!" The words were loud, iron-toned, rust-dead damnations echoing in the fetid atmosphere as the sound rebounded from the walls of livid purple, skipped off the polished porphyry floor, beat against the dull plum-tinged dome that capped the place as the lid of a sarcophagus. "Where?" Infestix-Nerull demanded, giving the great scythe a twitch that sent it slashing with the sound of a thousand death moans.
There appeared before him his own scrying room. The Diseased Ones were not there, of course. All of them were guarding the door to the chamber he was in. In the vast basin was the situation envisioned as a chess game. The daemon concentrated on the vision of a vision, and the squares ran, shifted, changed. From a vast survey of planar scope it contracted, shifting to a different scale. Yet the field was still multiplaned. Transparent level upon ghostly level it formed. First came the golden brown and pale tan of the material world. Its hue and conformation showed it to be Oerth. There the board shed a fading emerald light, and the violet garments that covered the array of slain pawns and minor pieces there told a tale that brought fury to the daemon's visage. Ghastly lilac light shot from the hollows where violet specks writhed like worms. The beams swept the phantom field, and the depiction of the chess board sank, so that Nerull's gaze was now fixed on a weird and distorted field. "Better," he hissed in his metallic voice. "Much better, little human."
The twisted, distorted helix that was depicted as the playing field of the game was the work of Gravestone. The convoluted layers writhed out and back, and each stratum was filled with the stuff of Nerull — death! For a brief span the daemon lord watched the tableau. The clear emerald of the sole champion, the resister of Evil's coming domination, was pulsing, moving, but struggling from one tier to the next.
"A fly in the webbed tunnel," Infestix-Nerull said gleefully, the sound of his mirth like rusted metal scraping on rough slate. A force of the green-hued pieces moved on the strangely colored spaces of the extradimensional board built by the priest-wizard who so faithfully served the cause, but the way grew ever more perilous, each move more fell; and upward, ever upward, the serpentine helix writhed. Those four men were gone from the main field and entrapped in a mazed board that would isolate them for… how long?
Too long!" The daemon's gaze slid upward to where the misshapen squares terminated in an infundibular form. There another pair of the green pieces stood. "What is this?" Nerull was surprised; concern tinged the iron of his voice as he muttered the exclamation aloud in the empty chamber.
The conformation depicting the enemy men relayed what force they had. Minor pieces, but strong ones. Perhaps one could be likened to the promoted bishoplike piece, a mixture of the conventional moves of bishop and king. The other showed power of a shorter range but good strength in the area immediately around it; a great mage and a high priest.
Infestix-Nerull saw his own chief piece on the field of the material plane. Gravestone. He was larger, stronger, than the two attackers who had attained the funnel's disclike rim. In fact, there in his own place, the nowhere he had constructed as fortress and refuge, power base and armory, Gravestone was nearly godlike in strength. "But why?" Again the words sprang unbidden from the lipless mouth of the daemon. "Are those black wings? Shadows? Or something else…?"
He was pondering that, and also thinking how fortunate for his lieutenant that the little force of green antagonists had been split into two parts, when the images of the many-layered board wavered and began to fade. "No!" Infestix-Nerull boomed the command, and as he so shouted he bent his entire will upon the vision, demanding it to solidify, become sharper, grow. Pale fog of pea green color was obscuring the scene. The phantasmal vapors shot upward from the ground that was Oerth and rose through the unnaturally formed planes above.
"Slow, too slow," the daemon-master said with hard satisfaction. "I will see more before you manage to cloud the scrying, Basiliv!" The smoke roiled and darkened. The intensity of its hue tried to shoot upward, but the convoluted parody of creation disallowed such speed. Laughing foully, knowing that his hated antagonist would hear, the daemon again stared upward to the place where Gravestone was about to combat the two minions of the Balance.
The vivid vert of the mage and priest were barely discernible through a growing gloom. "Black? Black?! What demon scum dares to interfere with Me?" Infestix-Nerull bellowed so loudly as to make the whole room shudder and shake. Nothing was heard outside, of course, but the very stuff of the bronze-bound planks closing off the chamber danced from the force of the daemon's wild outcry, and the Diseased Ones beyond huddled within themselves in fear.
No answer was forthcoming, however, and try as he might Nerull was quite unable to discover some intruding mental force indicating the interference of Orcus, Graz'zt, or any other of the mightiest of demonkind. "Plagues smite you!" he thundered, and scythed the old-blood blur of metal through the vision. Black smoke and verdant fog alike vanished. Filled with rage, the ruler of the netherworld stalked out of his chamber, scattering the lesser daemons before him as wind whips dead, dry leaves in autumn. Now it was time to intervene directly. For the second time Nerull would go forth to find and lay low the puny champion of Balance. He would not be foiled twice.
Of all the powers who adhered to the middle course, among all those who strove for neutrality and balance between the dichotomous forces of the multiverse, Basiliv, Demiurge and dweller on old Oerth, was perhaps the single most powerful. Yet even that might was of limited sort. It extended to the material, reached forth into the elements, and touched those other spheres that in turn touched the material.
Basiliv was an earth giant, as it were. With his feet upon Oerth, he was formidable if not omnipotent when opposing any similar force. When allied to and aligned with the other great ones of like ethos, only the evil strength of the triune relic of Tharizdun could stay Basiliv's hand. Would that hand have been reached forth at this time, the struggling hordes of evil, men and mock men and monsters, too, would have been hurled back into the dark realms whence they had marched. With but another single blow, the Demiurge and his allies would have extinguished all lesser evils, leaving demonkin and devils' own and nether-server alone and trembling in their exposure and vulnerability.
But no such attack had ever come In the past. To cripple and destroy the dark would be to misalign Balance forever. When Tharizdun first arose, the Demiurge had pondered the issue. He concluded that Order, Chaos, and Wealsome deities too would serve to disarm the threat of the totality of malign rule. He and the disparate ones of neutral bent assisted, but they did so sparingly and with a cautious eye toward the time after the Great Evil's binding. Now Basiliv dared not reach forth to strike at the swarms that wrought such havoc in the kingdoms of the world, for all of his attention was needed elsewhere…. "Did I err?"
"Pardon, Lord Basiliv, I didn't hear the question," Mordenkainen said.
The old archwizard was there, serving as a conduit connecting Basiliv to other groups of Balance — Hierophants, the minor lords of planar sort and of specificities, the quasi-godlings. In short, all the might of the alliance save the One of Entropy. Mordenkainen, deep in concentration, had sensed the question Basiliv had asked of himself, but had not heard the words. "I am sorry, old contestant," he murmured to the archwizard. "I was merely mumbling to myself. Excuse me, and return to your work." "You're growing older than I," Mordenkainen cackled, one bushy eyebrow raised in mock alarm. Then he shrugged and returned to his task. "Dealing with that deranged dabbler Gigantos is hard enough withou
t having to put up with you, too," he snapped, recalling the times he had opposed the Demiurge for one reason or another because of what Basiliv had called him. "Mad Archimage, bah! You are as scattered as Gigantos ever was, and I have better claim to the crown of- "
"Enough, please, Arch wizard, enough. We must strive together now, or else…" Basiliv let his sentence trail off. Mordenkainen took the point and said nothing further, expending his full attention on the linkage once again. His attendant mages, led by the portly Bigby, joined again in the circle. All was quiet.
With a final glance at the spell-binder, Basiliv thought, I am as much older as he as the world itself, and yet I wish it otherwise. Then the Demiurge turned away from Mordenkainen and the eight mages with him and focused his power. It was his duty to observe the progress of Gord and his comrades, to communicate what he learned to the others, and to help — if he could.
Information floated into his consciousness and out. Thoughts sent from Shadowking regarding the state of the warfare in the netherspheres, intelligence on the movements of devil-legions, the escalation by inclusion of yet another great malign artifact. Important! The thought stayed and was filed for ready access. The triple keys of our undoing are in close proximity to one another, but still each contests against its counterparts!
The Demiurge saw at the same time the stalemate that locked good and evil in long lines across the whole of the Flanaess, which sent riot, rebellion, and red war spreading in waves over the whole Oerth, but whose waves smashed against each other in a moll of uncertainty. It would culminate in death and destruction without victory to either side.
Another portion of his mind received facts pertaining to the higher spheres. Embroiled in bickering, factious, the beings of Good argued relative worth and precedence, fought for disciples, and were of scant assistance against the looming threat of evil.