2d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  They followed the cleric inside, except for Ravenus, who asked Julian for permission to catch a bit of sleep on the roof. The walls, columns, and ceiling were coated in some kind of gold-flecked paint. Dave guessed there was some Light magic mixed in with the paint as well. The polished, hardwood floor reflected the light from the walls. It was as bright as noon inside the temple, and only about half a dozen candles burning. The reflection of their flames in the gold flecks of the paint wouldn’t account for even close to how bright it was inside. In contrast to the humble exterior, the inside of this place was truly befitting of Halor, the God of Light. There was probably a symbolic reason for the contrast, but Dave’s face hurt too much to contemplate it.

  Dave was overwhelmed with awe and a compulsion to confess his great sin. On the other hand, his face hurt like a son of a bitch, and he was afraid he might be refused healing if he admitted his offense to the gods. He reasoned that he could do both, so long as he did them in the correct order. Get healed first. Confess second.

  “My name is Tamun,” said the cleric as he led them straight down the center of the great room, toward an altar on which stood a statue twice as tall as a man. Halor. Both altar and statue were covered in the same Light-infuse paint. “Brother Benedict!” Tamun called out. “Brother Stansibold! Brother Murkwort!” After a moment, three figures came from three different directions, each dressed in identical golden gowns. Two were human, the third was a goblin.

  “You’re a goblin?” Julian blurted out.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” asked Tamun severely. His tone suggested that it wasn’t all that uncommon for visitors to have a problem with that. Dave sensed that some of those visitors may have even taken issue with a half-orcish servant of Halor.

  “What? No!” said Julian, fishtailing in the other direction. “That’s totally cool. Some of my best friends are goblins.”

  Tim elbowed Julian in the hip.

  The clerics formed a line, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the altar.

  Tamun raised his great, half-orc arms. “Kneel before Halor, Father of Gods, and know his mercy!” The gong sounded again. It sounded like it was behind them this time, but Dave didn’t remember passing any gongs on his way to the altar.

  Dave knelt before Tamun. Cooper and Tim knelt before the two human clerics. Tamun shot Julian an ice-cold, tight-lipped, Sam Jackson stare. Dave looked over. Julian was still standing up. The goblin cleric was staring sheepishly at the ground.

  “What?” said Julian.

  “Perhaps you would be more comfortable,” said Tamun, “if Brother Murkwort changed places with Brother Benedict or Brother Stansibold?” His voice could have frozen nitrogen.

  “What? No! Come on, man. It’s not like that,” said Julian. “I wasn’t even injured. I didn’t want you to waste a –“

  Tim reached up and punched Julian in the back of the knee. Julian dropped to his knees and stayed there.

  The sides of Tamun’s lips curved upward, ever-so-slightly, in a satisfied grin. He placed his hand on Dave’s head and nodded to his fellow clerics. They, likewise, placed their hands atop his friends’ heads.

  “Halor,” said Tamun. “Father of Gods, Giver of Light!” The mysterious gong sounded again. “Shine your light upon the souls of these, your unworthy children. Mend the flesh. Cleanse the spirit. Make them whole, that they may shine your divine Light upon others. By the Light of the Father.”

  The other clerics repeated, “By the Light of –“

  Dave missed the last part of the repeated blessing, as his face cracked. Blood rushed through his head like the dial had been cranked up from 2 to 10. His vision abandoned him. The only sound he could hear was the rush of blood through his ears. The pain in his face was so intense that he thought maybe the gods weren’t finished with him.

  When the pain subsided, Dave knew his face was whole again. Before his sight returned, he smelled the evidence of Cooper’s successful healing as well.

  “Don’t be such a baby, Brother Stansibold,” said Tamun. “People respond to Halor’s healing Light in different ways. It will wash out. Go and change your gown. Brother Benedict, Brother Murkwort, please fetch a mop and bucket.”

  “Right away, Brother Tamun,” the two lesser clerics said in unison.

  “Rise, dwarf,” said Tamun.

  Dave got slowly to his feet, his vision returning but still very blurry. “Thank you. Do we… um…?”

  “Speak your mind, dwarf.”

  “This is awkward,” said Dave. “What do we owe you?”

  “Halor does not prostitute his Light for coin,” said Tamun. “However, it is the custom for one to leave a donation to the temple to show one’s gratitude.”

  “We’ll give you what we have,” said Dave. “It isn’t much. Tim?”

  Tim tossed a small coin pouch to Tamun. “You can keep the pouch. It’s worth a silver piece.”

  Tamun opened the bag and looked inside. He frowned. “You are indeed fortunate that Halor does not prostitute his Light for coin.”

  Dave felt the rush of blood again in his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We can come back with more later.”

  Tamun placed the coin pouch on the altar. “Unburden your heart, dwarf. Your body is healed, and yet I sense there is still a rent in your spirit.”

  “I made a mistake,” said Dave. “The gods have stripped me of my own powers.”

  “You must understand, child. You have no powers. You are but a vessel through which the gods do their will.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Dave as reverently as he could. “You know what I mean though, right?” Dave had never been this nervous talking to a priest back in the real world, likely because he didn’t believe in their god.

  “I do,” said Tamun. “Speak to me of your sin, and we can see what may be done to set you back on the path of Light.”

  “I borrowed a book from Cardinia’s Great Library. Saint Whistlethorn’s Encyclopedia of the Gods.”

  “I am familiar with the text.”

  “I was just trying to educate myself, you know? What with me being a cleric and all.”

  Tamun pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, but eventually nodded. “Knowledge is a noble pursuit.”

  “I was reading in a quiet, solitary corner of the tavern when I needed to go relieve myself,” Dave explained. “When I returned, I discovered Cooper in my seat, looking through the book.” He hated the idea of throwing Cooper under the bus, but he had to get the truth out.

  “That was an encyclopedia of the gods?” asked Cooper. “I thought it was porn.” Everyone looked at him. “What?” he said defensively. “Some of those goddesses are hot, and they were doing some weird shit in some of the pictures.”

  “Please forgive him,” said Dave. “He can’t read.”

  “Continue with your story,” said Tamun.

  “So when I get back,” said Dave, “Cooper gets up and leaves all hurried like. And when I look at the book, I see he’d sneezed all over the pages. It’s just covered in yellow and green slime.”

  Cooper snorted. “I sneezed? You thought that was sn— Ow!” Julian had knocked him on the head with his quarterstaff. “Dude, that fucking hurts.” After catching Julian’s reprimanding glare, he added. “Oh shit, right. I totally sneezed. I think I’m coming down with a cold.” He sniffed, but for the first time in his existence as a half-orc, his sinuses were clear as could be.

  Dave no longer felt any qualms about throwing Cooper under the bus. He hoped it was one of those big double-decker buses they have in England.

  Tamun stared, frozen and open-mouthed, at Cooper for a moment. He snapped out of it and looked at Dave. “So the pages were covered in mucus.” To Cooper he said “Please allow your friend to finish his story uninterrupted.”

  “I did my best to wipe it clean,” said Dave. “But the ink smeared and the pages stuck together.”

  “The sin was not yours, but your friend’s,” said Tamun.

  “But it was my respons
ibility,” said Dave. “I was the one who checked it out from the library.”

  Tamun grinned. His teeth were pointed like Cooper’s, but much straighter and whiter. “This is an issue between you and the librarian, not you and the gods. Saint Whistlethorn’s Encyclopedia of the Gods is a respected historical work, but it is not considered a sacred text. Tell me, what did you do with the book?”

  “I returned it.”

  “In its sullied condition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you bring the defacement to the librarian’s attention?”

  Dave looked at the floor. “No.”

  “I’m surprised at you, Dave,” said Cooper. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  Julian conked him on the head again. “Shut up,” he whispered.

  “Your friend is correct,” Tamun said to Dave. “Such behavior is unbecoming of a servant of the Light.”

  Dave sighed.

  “But I do not think,” Tamun continued, “that this is why you have been punished. Shameful as it may be, this is still a minor offense. There must be more to this story.”

  Dave looked up at Tamun. “Nope,” he said. “Honestly, that’s about it.” He felt some sense of relief, but knew that he still had a problem.

  “What did you do after you returned the book?” asked Tamun.

  Dave laughed nervously. “I high-tailed it to the door, praying that I could make it out onto the quad before the librarian found the sticky pages.”

  Tamun’s eyes widened. “You did what?”

  “High-tailed?” said Dave. “It just means that I walked briskly.”

  “You defaced images of the gods, and then prayed to those same gods to spare you from the wrath of a librarian? Would you kick a tiger cub and seek protection from its mother?”

  “It sounds pretty bad when you put it like that.”

  “You have heaped insult onto offense,” said Tamun. “Your punishment is just. Praise be to the Light, the gods are more merciful than I might have been.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Dave. “How can I make this right?”

  “You must atone,” said Tamun. He placed his massive palm on Dave’s forehead. His claws dug, straddling the line between uncomfortably and painfully, through Dave’s thick hair and into his scalp.

  Not daring to try to move his head, Dave looked up as far has his eyeballs would allow. It wasn’t enough for him to be able to see Tamun’s face. “Um… should I say a prayer or write a letter of apology or something?”

  “Your careless words cast you into darkness,” said Tamun. “It will take action to put you back on the Path of Light.”

  “I could wash dishes, or –“

  “Do not speak, dwarf,” said Tamun. “I require concentration.”

  A few awkward moments passed while Dave silently bore the discomfort of half-orc claws digging into his head. Finally, Tamun spoke.

  “I see the goblin necromancer. He rides upon a black worg. Beside him flies the banner of OuiJas. The goblins who attacked you, did they seem organized?”

  “Not particularly, I guess,” said Dave.

  “They didn’t fight like goblins are supposed to fight,” said Tim. “They should have been hiding up in the trees to ambush us with arrows. And they should have known that, even if they managed to take down one or two of us, they couldn’t have hoped to have survived that fight. And they all went for me. It didn’t make sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” said Tamun. “You are, at least to the lay observer, the smallest and weakest of your group. It’s a common battle strategy to concentrate on a single kill rather than merely wound many.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why they just charged into battle kamikaze style.”

  “Simple,” said Tamun. “Their purpose was to die. If they could take one of you with them, all the better.”

  “I don’t understand what purpose that would serve them,” said Julian.

  “Theirs was not the purpose being served,” said Tamun. “They were most likely magically coerced or promised rewards in the afterlife. The leader pulls their strings. He seeks to build an army of the undead.”

  “What’s the point?” said Julian. “He already had an army of fanatically obedient followers.”

  “That was no army,” said Tamun. “Imagine if he had gotten lucky and killed you all. You would now be his undead servants. Zombies do not require food. They do not tire. They do not complain or disobey. You yourselves can testify they are stronger dead than they were alive.”

  “My ass can testify,” said Cooper.

  “We’ve heard enough of your ass’s testimony today, thanks,” said Tim.

  “This is good news for you,” said Tamun.

  “What’s good about it?” asked Dave.

  “The path to your redemption has been made clear.” Tamun tightened his hold of Dave’s head. The pain from his claws fell to the back of Dave’s mind when he felt the sudden and searing heat coming from the half-orc’s palm.

  “Yah!” cried Dave as his forehead sizzled.

  Tamun removed his hand, and the pain was gone. Dave turned around.

  “Whoa,” said Julian.

  “Wicked,” said Tim.

  “What the fuck is that on your head?” said Cooper.

  Dave felt his forehead. It was still a little tender, but otherwise felt normal enough.

  Tim spit on the blade of his dagger and polished it with his sleeve. “Try this.”

  Dave accepted the dagger and held the blade in front of him. When he adjusted it to just the right angle, he could see his forehead reflected in it. There was a tattoo right smack in the center of it. The center of the tattoo, accounting for the majority of the whole, was a solid black circle, a little smaller than a golf ball. The circumference of the circle was lined with the same luminescent golden pigment which coated the interior of the temple. Wavy golden lines, a millimeter thick at the base, and thinning out into points a centimeter away, radiated out from the round center. A solar eclipse.

  “You have been marked as one whose spirit is lost in shadow,” said Tamun. “Appease the gods, and you may once again walk in the Light.”

  Dave pointed to his forehead. “Will that get rid of this… I mean it’s cool and all. I just would have preferred it on my chest, or back or something.”

  “When you have fulfilled the task the gods have placed before you, the mark will vanish.”

  “What task?” asked Dave.

  Julian sighed. “We have to go kill all the gomblies, don’t we?”

  “And the necromancer goblin,” added Tim.

  “Shit,” said Cooper.

  “That’s impossible!” said Dave. “We already had our asses handed to us by them, and I don’t have any magic. How are we even supposed to find them again?”

  “You have an unholy mark on your face,” said Tamun. “Evil will find you.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  Tim yawned like a man three times his size. “Do you guys have a place we could crash? Maybe get a drink first? I’m wrecked.”

  “I cannot permit you to stay here,” said Tamun. “Your friend’s face bears an unholy mark.”

  “Come on, dude,” said Tim. “You put that there.”

  “I am but a vessel.”

  Cooper laughed through his nose. His sinuses were nice and clogged again.

  “What?” said Julian.

  “He said ‘I am a butt vessel’.”

  “No he didn’t. And what would that even mean anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” admitted Cooper. “That’s part of what makes it so funny. So much is left to the imagination.”

  “I must ask you to leave this place at once,” said Tamun.

  “Come on, man,” said Tim. “We’ve had a rough day. We’re fucking exhausted. Just let us crash here on the floor for a couple of hours.”

  “If you will not leave peacefully, I shall have you removed by force. Brother Murkwort?”

  The goblin
cleric looked up from his task of mopping Cooper’s shit off of the polished hardwood floor. His eyes had been heavy with exhaustion before, but there was a certain glint in them now. He pulled the wooden handle off the head of the mop and held it horizontally atop his open palms. As he whispered a small prayer, the mop handle began to glow with a faint green light.

  “He’s casting Magic Weapon,” said Dave. “We should go.”

  The others stood, dumbfounded, like it was the first time they’d ever seen someone cast a spell before.

  Brother Murkwort held his enchanted mop handle by one end and looked at them severely.

  “Do you guys see what I see?” asked Tim.

  “I see that we’re about to get our asses ki—“ Dave saw it.

  The four of them spoke in one voice. “Yoda.”

  Brother Murkwort swung the glowing mop handle in wide, complicated arcs behind his back and above his head. He started slowly, and the movements grew faster and faster until he was standing in a glowing, green cocoon. He advanced.

  “Take me!” said Cooper, dropping to his knees. “This is how I want to die.”

  “NOOOOO!” cried Julian, Tim, and Dave as the Jedi knight brought his lightsaber down to split Cooper’s face in half.

  “Ow,” said Cooper as the only slightly magically enhanced mop handle bounced off his head.

  “We should go,” said Dave.

  “All right,” said Cooper, rubbing his head.

  “Do not return until you have atoned for your sin!” Tamun called out after them as they exited the temple.

  Cooper gave him the finger. “Whatever you say, butt vessel.”

  Julian laughed. “Okay. It’s pretty funny.”

  The temple door just barely missed Dave’s ass as it closed behind him.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Julian.

  “I guess we head back to the Whore’s Head,” said Dave.

  “Sounds good,” said Cooper. “I need a drink.”

  “What you need,” said Dave, “is a fucking urologist.”

  “I don’t think I can make it all the way back to the Whore’s Head,” said Tim. “I’d rather just crash here on the street.”

  “Not in this neighborhood,” said Julian. “The Kingsguard would pick us up in no time for vagrancy.”