by Gary Gygax
The odor was strong. Dwarf, dwarven blood, dwarven sweat, dwarven breath too. The huge black leopard waited not an instant to attack. Little motes of light were dancing within the ebony of the blot now, but whether the darkness was somehow evaporating or some other dweomer was transforming it, only one matter was important: Obmi must be slain. The dwarf was taken completely by surprise when Gord-panther pounced upon him from the side. Somehow the broad-shouldered demi-human managed to bring his martel to bear, and the weapon inflicted a few wounds upon the sleek, black-furred cat's body. But the panther's long fangs sank deep, and its claws tore and raked the dwarf.
Then, after absorbing a particularly vicious blow, Gord-panther managed to seize Obmi's shoulder with his teeth, hold the dwarfs torso fast in his forepaws, and draw the unnatural demi-human into an inescapable embrace — an embrace of death. The rear legs of his leopard body drew up and kicked downward once, twice, thrice as the foreclaws dug deep and Gord-panther's jaws closed tighter and tighter. Obmi screamed in agony and attempted to use his magical strength to dislodge the feline attacker. The dwarf had his arms free, so he seized the great cat by its throat and tried to throttle it. Gord held his teeth fast upon Obmi's shoulder, hardened his muscular cat's throat, and continued to rake with his hind legs. Flesh tore to ribbons. The thick little fingers, fingers that had felt like steel bars sinking into his windpipe and jugular, suddenly went limp. Gord-panther relaxed the grip he had held with forepaws and jaws, but the raking of his rear claws continued on instinct. Obmi's throat rattled, and then his gutted body flew a few feet through the air, propelled by the cat's still-kicking back legs.
In a bound, Gord was atop the seemingly lifeless body. It was a limp thing, a collection of bloody rags and a mutilated, eviscerated shambles of what had been a mighty champion of Evil. That made no difference to Gord, for even in his feline killing fury one thing remained clear in his mind — the dead dwarf had two legs.
Gord-panther picked up the corpse in his jaws and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat. He used claws too, tearing and rending the lifeless body until it was no longer an integral unit but lay in several pieces. Only then did Gord allow his panther self to cease its furious assault and slink a short distance away. The darkness was nearly gone now, nothing more than a haze of black motes that were slowly dissolving. As the last of the motes vanished and the sun again shed its light upon the torn circle where Obmi had fought his last fight, Gord stood again as a man.
"Gord! I thought I saw a great black panther in that- By the Great Horn Spoon!" Barrel's ugly face, marred still further by a long cut across his cheek, lost its grin as he spoke. The burly man's eyes were riveted on the shambles before him.
Following Barrel's gaze, Gord too muttered a shocked oath. The torn bits of the dwarf were pulsing, moving, creeping toward each other. That vile bastard still lives!" Gord shouted. The cry brought Delver and Shade on the run. It was the dwarf who spoke first.
That one is like a troll, Gord. Keep those hunks o' flesh apart from one another, and I'll build a fire quickly. Then when it's going, we toss in all the pieces. Burning is the only way to finish such a thing as that." Delver set about his task while the other three kept busy at the strange and grisly business of prodding and pushing the pieces so that they could not come together.
The other three are in bad shape, cap'n," Barrel said to Gord as they worked. "We've got 'em restin' on the other side of that little hillock."
"We'll tend to them soon," said Gord sincerely, "but much as I hate to say it, what we're doing right now is more important than all three of their lives — or ours either, for that matter."
"Aye, cap'n," said Barrel, who did not really need to be impressed with the seriousness of the situation as he contended with the scuttling bits of flesh and bone.
Minutes later the fire was ready, and they all took up pieces one by one and threw them in the flames. Dark, pungent smoke plumed skyward, and it was over. Obmi the dwarf, servant of EMI, champion of demons, was no more. Gord imagined he heard a wailing, the nearly inaudible sound of an evil life force lamenting as it went off to its end in the lowest of the lower planes.
Barrel had gone back to check on their three injured comrades while Gord witnessed the dwarfs final undoing. The burly seaman trudged back up to his captain with tears glistening in his eyes. "Doho-jar an' Smoker seem like they'll be okay…" he said, putting his hand upon the young thief s shoulder, "but poor Post is a goner."
"When does this end?" Gord said to himself more than anyone else. Then shaking his head to clear away the depression, it occurred to him that the battleground was more empty than it should have been. "Where are the others?" he asked. "What's happened to the white demon? Leda? Eclavdra?"
"Those three were right over there," Shade answered, pointing to the spot where Gord had first laid eyes on Vuron and Eclavdra. "I happened to be looking there, because a pair of Obmi's wild men were headed for the two females — the dark elves."
"Leda and Eclavdra," Gord supplied.
"I went for the men, thinking to take 'em both on, but the pale demon did something, and he… it… and both of the drow just vanished!" Then the half-elf added as an afterthought, "Those lousy marshers were so startled at that that I did for them both without much trouble at all. I guess they were the last left alive."
"Let's see to the wounded," Gord replied after a few seconds of contemplation, "and then we'll worry about what's happened to the rest."
As the four started toward the place where Doho-jar and Smoker lay unconscious, the earth shook and rumbled. Steam spurted up through a fissure that opened at their feet, and the group jumped back as quickly as they could. Then the ground erupted in a gout of smoke and flames, the blaze of the fire and blackness of the fumes obscuring the vision of all four.
Chapter 25
The alabaster Demon Lord stood on a circle of ground that appeared as bright and fresh as a morning meadow. The grass was green and sparkling with dew; little flowers tipped their faces toward the sun overhead. No sign of struggle, blood, or death was visible upon this unspoiled disc. Beside the tall, thin being from the Abyss stood Leda. At least it appeared to Gord to be her, for her garments were those that Eclavdra's clone had worn just today, and her sword was the very one she had taken from the dead Yoli warrior what seemed like an age ago. The demon merely regarded the four warriors with his red-pink eyes, and the dark elf spoke.
"Gord! You live! You have actually slain Obmi?" she cried, smiling and coming toward him as she spoke, her arms opening and then embracing him as she got close.
Gord was tempted to return her embrace. But instead, he remained stiff and unresponsive. "Yes," he said without emotion. "I killed the dwarf." At his cold reaction and toneless words, Leda released her grip on his torso and stepped back from him, her face showing hurt. Gord disregarded that. "What of Eclavdra?" he inquired in the same emotionless voice.
"Eclavdra is gone — finished! Only Leda lives."
"Is there a difference?"
Now the dark elf's beautiful face showed both hurt and anger. "How can you, of all who know me, ask such a question?"
"Much has occurred since last I thought I knew you… Leda. How am I, a poor, simple man, to know the truth of anything?"
Vuron laughed a musical, silvery-cold laugh at that. "Well put, Gord of Greyhawk. Yet even demons must often labor under the same burden which you claim. Allow Me to assure you that this is indeed Leda, not the one from whom she sprang — and there is a difference."
Truth from the mouth of a demon?"
Again Vuron laughed. "Yes. Stranger things occur frequently. And there is yet more…"
Delver, Shade, and Barrel had been close to their friend when the strange appearance of demon and drow occurred. Each was clasping his weapon, prepared to fight a hopeless fight to the last against this supernatural enemy. Now they were confused and uncertain, just as Gord was. Delver growled a warning, which was supported by Barrel's advice to "Beware the words of demons,
cap'n!" Shade merely shook his long-haired head and took a step closer to the young thief, his weapon pointing at the snow-white Vuron.
Without any apparent offense taken at the reactions of the four, the demon lord slowly lowered his head to gaze at the sward at his feet. With a slight gesture and a soft series of sounds, Vuron caused a chest of beaten brass to appear at his feet, out of thin air. "The Final Key, Gord, lies therein," the demon said, indicating the container. "Perhaps you will allow Me to explain what has happened before you decide to do what you must do."
"Explain? Or do you mean, tell me what I am to do?" Gord shot back with contempt.
"Oh, no. I can by no means tell you what to do, Gord of Greyhawk. Your course is very much your own, and even a demon lord of My power is unable to alter that fact. Still, I can alter a few things," and as he spoke this the alabaster being looked away from the four who stood staring at him to the place a few paces away where the body of Post lay.
"I heal you, man," the demon pronounced. Post's chest heaved, he groaned, and then the lean man sat up, rubbing his eyes as if just awakening from a night's sleep. Vuron turned his glance to the injured pair. Smoker and Dohojar. "You two have likewise fought bravely. Be whole." Smoker rolled over on his side and began snoring peacefully, while the brown-skinned Changa sat up and looked at his friends with a white-toothed smile, not knowing what to say.
Gord did have a reply to these acts. "You use demon-powers to bribe me, to bemuse and befuddle my mind. I am unmoved, Vuron."
"That is exactly as I thought," the pale creature said. "The gesture was simply meant to take concern for your comrades from your mind. It must be free of such worries, Gord of Greyhawk, if it is to properly absorb what I now ask your permission to relate."
After a few seconds of consideration, Gord nodded. "I will hear your words, Vuron, with as much disinterest as is possible for one such as I."
"That is considerable, I assure you, but your attention is all I ask. Now I will relate what has transpired," the demon lord said, sinking to a sitting position on the long grass. The four disliked doing so, but they too sat warily when Leda followed Vuron's example, taking a position between the demon and the group of men and demi-humans. "Now, pay full attention," said Vuron in a contented tone. "What I have to say is rather lengthy.
"When the contest for the Theorpart commenced, I brought Leda into being. She is not and never was a true clone of Eclavdra, for never would I replicate such a one as that drow was. If ever a mortal creature could have visited ruin upon My liege lord, that one could have. I altered Leda — as you named her, Gord — and did what I could to aid her. Being as I am, a demon, I could not place any goodness within her, not even any balance or neutrality. She now possesses some modicum of both, and that is because of you, Gord of Greyhawk."
"Do you state blame or proffer some credit toward me, Vuron? Your words make no sense."
"Oh, but they do! As for blame, I just might harbor that against you for many reasons, but I also balance that with much credit for what you did, Gord. The clay of the almost-clone was molded by you — even if just a little. This version of Eclavdra, this Leda, can never act as the original did. There is no longer any threat to My lord."
"Perhaps I rue those words, demon! Why should I be interested in what benefits the denizens of the Abyss?"
"Rest assured that the influence of the departed drow would have been baneful in many ways, Gord of Greyhawk. She would have brought destruction to your world, ruin to Mine own realm, and all the others of demonkind too."
"Yes, Gord," Leda interjected urgently. "It was Vuron's work which gave me the telepathic power to influence Eclavdra without her knowing it. Without such an advantage, she would have taken the Final Key but for a brief time, only to lose it to Obmi and his mistress."
"One demon or another, what does it matter? All humanity loses either way."
"Be not so quick to decide, Gord of Greyhawk," Vuron said in his clear, sexless voice. "What I tell you now centers on that very matter, on the Final Key, and certainly on the fate of all we know as the multiverse."
"I am to decide this?" Gord uttered a mocking laugh in disbelief.
"When I intervened in Eclavdra's actions," Vuron said without commenting on Gord's utterance, "she had violated the compact regarding the Theorpart, and I could take it from her. Once this was done, I could use its power for but a moment to undo what the foolish drow had wrought. Despite those facts, I have no power to claim the Final Key. You, or Leda, must decide what is to be done with it."
"You mean- "
"Yes. You could take it now and in an instant present it to the Demiurge. Basiliv might even accept it. "
Leda spoke then, her voice heavy with emotion. "One thing is sure, Gord. I will not be the arbiter of this. I yield my right to you."
"What she is saying, Gord of Greyhawk," the pale demon explained, "is that she could challenge you for the Final Key. Whichever of you survived would then possess the right to dispose of it. But Leda gives you her right. She will not fight against you, and that is evidence of the effect you have made upon her persona."
This placed Gord in a terrible quandary. Basiliv, and Rexfelis the Catlord as well, had charged him with the very same responsibility. Long, long ago, at the time Gord had first set out on the quest for the last portion of the artifact, both of his mentors had said that the ultimate decision would be his, should he actually succeed in gaining possession of the Final Key. Now Leda, once his beloved, now a distrusted uncertainty, and Vuron, a hated foe, a demon lord of unknown power and certain evil, both placed the same decision squarely upon his head.
"I could give the thing over to Basiliv?" Gord said. Vuron nodded affirmatively. "Mordenkainen? The Cabal? Iuz? The Brotherhood? Anyone?" To each question the alabaster demon indicated a positive answer. Finally the young thief asked, "Myself? I could keep and wield its power for myself?"
"You could hold the Theorpart for as long as fate allowed, Gord of Greyhawk. Whether you could employ it is unknown to Me, but I think that somehow you would manage…"
"What am I to do with the cursed thing?"
"Being nothing more nor less than a demon lord," Vuron said without force, "I cannot say."
Gord looked at Leda. Now she seemed again like the beautiful dark elf he had grown to love as they adventured across the Barren Plains and onto the Ashen Desert — no longer a stranger, a drow, and a priestess of demons. Her return gaze was warm. Her violet eyes were deep pools of emotion that he could only interpret as love for him. "And you, Leda? Have you any words for me on this matter?"
"If you will truly hear them, Gord — with your heart as well as your mind."
He gave a tiny shrug, a little gesture of hopelessness. "I am what I am. I can hear only as I can, but I will try, Leda, to listen with all of my being."
"Then I will speak to you, love, even though what I must say is so painful that I would rather die now than say what I believe… Good can never possess the artifact — no part of it, not even its essence. Should those who stand between Good and Evil and between Law and Chaos obtain the Theorpart, it will at least corrupt and change them to suit its nature. The possessor of such a thing must surely come to be like the one to whom it is linked — or else, the Theorpart will bring ruin."
Gord cocked his head at that. "Ruin? How so?"
"The power of the artifact flows through each of its parts. Each calls to the other, each seeks to place itself into the hands of those attuned to its nullity. It will be united, or it will bring destruction on any being preventing its conjoining."
"Then either whomever I bestow the Final Key upon is doomed, or I bring doom to all the world!"
Vuron responded to that. "Not exactly, but Leda's words and your understanding are almost perfect in this matter. The artifact must always exist, and if it remains in its separate parts, there must always be tension and conflict as the portions exert their influence. Only one force can now be used to keep them from being joined, Gord of Gr
eyhawk, but the selection must be yours. More cannot be said."
"Quite a lure — the temptation to employ evil to overthrow evil," Gord murmured in observation.
Vuron said nothing to that, but Leda came close to him and placed her arm around his hunched shoulders. "Even the greatest and wisest of the minions of Good would fall to such a lure, Gord."
"So if any faction of Good or Evil holds two parts, the third part would be subject to the other two, and the whole artifact would conjoin… But yet is there not the force of Concordance?"
"Is there?" Leda asked softly.
"No… I am not reasoning properly," Gord admitted. "Those who hold to the necessity of all and seek balance are too weak to oppose the others. They would be assailed from all sides, by Good and Evil alike. The key would fall into other hands soon enough, and the inevitable would then result."
"I think you should destroy the blasted thing, cap'n," Barrel ventured weakly.
"Would that such an option existed," Vuron said with such emotion that it amazed all. "Not even the greatest of deities could safely do that. To try is to bring ruin, for the thing would then unite as all other forces became disrupted in sympathy, and He-Who-Must-Sleep-Forever would then awaken!"
"Evil alone can possess these Theorparts," Gord said in amazement, realizing the final truth of the matter. "Each of the keys had been resting with those of malign sort, although none knew it… at that time."
That is correct, Gord of Greyhawk," Vuron said, again without expression in his voice.