by James Wyatt
“Where do you think you’re going?” Shara growled, cutting a gash across the demon’s shoulder.
In answer, the demon sprang toward Uldane. Shara and Quarhaun both swung their blades as its attention turned away from them, and the two weapons clattered together instead of striking true. The demon sailed over Uldane’s head, but the fearless halfling thrust his dagger up to cut another gash in its belly as it went over. It landed with a grunt of pain but didn’t slow down, charging at full speed toward the ruined wall.
Shara cursed as she shook her sword free from Quarhaun’s blade. “After it!” she yelled, already starting her run.
She heard Uldane fall in behind her, but Quarhaun wasn’t moving. She shot a glance over her shoulder without breaking stride.
“It’s a trap,” the drow called after her. “There’s bound to be more.”
“So we kill them all,” Shara snarled back. She heard the drow sigh, then his footsteps joined hers, quickly closing her lead.
Quarhaun laughed as he passed her, less burdened by his light mail armor than she was in her heavy scale. Shara grinned in acceptance of his challenge and pushed herself harder, her breath coming faster as her legs carried her up the low rise behind the drow. The exertion was exhilarating, particularly after the thrill and terror of the brief battle. For all her effort, though, Shara fell behind as Quarhaun was the first to reach the wall.
The wounded demon pounced at Quarhaun and knocked him down, as it had Shara, but instead of sprawling to the ground, the drow and demon both disappeared from Shara’s sight. Shara reached the spot a moment later and saw a stone stairway descending below the rise. The daylight reached only a short way down the narrow stairs, and in the darkness beneath she heard the thud of metal on stone and Quarhaun’s grunt of pain as he hit another stair.
“Damn it, Shara,” she breathed. She fumbled in a pouch at her belt for a sunrod. “That was really stupid.”
A blast of blue eldritch fire lit the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, farther down than she had expected. In the brief flash, she saw Quarhaun back on his feet, fire wreathed around the demon’s body as it screeched in pain. She breathed a little easier as the sunrod sputtered to life. Uldane caught up with her and followed her down the steps without a word.
Uldane speechless—that was a bad sign. It probably meant that the halfling was as disappointed in her idiotic foot race with Quarhaun as she was with herself.
But she’d berate herself later. In the darkness below, a faint purplish glow lit Quarhaun’s inky-black blade as it swung in a wide arc. Shara thought she saw the blade bite into several demons, and she quickened her pace down the steps.
The sunrod’s light reached the bottom, revealing Quarhaun standing in a circle of six crouching beasts. One lay still on the ground at his feet, its shattered ribs identifying it as the one that had attacked them on the surface—the one that had led them into the trap as Quarhaun had predicted.
Shara dropped the sunrod, gripped her sword with both hands, and charged down the remaining stairs. Swinging the sword fiercely, she knocked the nearest demon aside and stepped into the ring of them beside Quarhaun. She slashed at a demon as it lunged toward the drow, cutting its face and driving it back. She put her back to Quarhaun’s and they both held their long, deadly blades at the ready.
“I win,” Quarhaun said over his shoulder.
“You take the prize, all right,” Shara shot back. “I should have just left you here.”
“But you didn’t. That was foolish.”
“We’ll see about that.” The demons were holding back, assessing them, looking for an opening in their defenses.
The demon nearest the stairs screeched as Uldane’s dagger slid between its ribs, and it wheeled on the halfling in surprised rage. Shara lashed out at it and it turned back to her, batting uselessly with an enormous claw, weakened by Uldane’s strike.
“They’re still coming,” Quarhaun said.
Shara glanced behind her and saw two more of the creatures fill in the circle around them, and she noticed dark shadows moving just beyond the sunrod’s light. “That’s a lot of demons,” she muttered.
“So we kill them all.”
“Right.” Shara scanned the circle and found the one Uldane had stabbed. Blood from its side ran down its front leg, leaving sticky footprints glistening in the light as it stalked around the circle. She lunged at it, bringing her sword down in a mighty swing toward its neck.
Her target hopped back away as the two demons beside it leaped at her. The one on her left clamped its jaws around her arm, pulling her sword off target, though her armor kept its teeth from biting into her flesh. On her right, sharp claws cut through the leather and mail that protected her knee, but the wound was shallow. She slammed the pommel of her sword into the face of the demon that held her arm, but it held her fast.
Uldane appeared out of the shadows again and drew his dagger across the beast’s throat. It yowled and released Shara’s arm. Its voice died in its throat as Shara brought her sword down to split its skull.
“We need to get into a passage or something,” Quarhaun said, “a narrower hall where they can’t surround us.”
Shara glanced at the stairs where the sunrod still sputtered, and she saw Uldane nod. “Right,” she said. “Follow me.”
With a roar, she slipped between two of the creatures and made for the stairs, swinging her sword in a wide arc to slash at the demons as she passed. Uldane shadowed her movement toward the stairs. Shara turned and paused to let Quarhaun get behind her, but the drow was nowhere in sight.
“Quarhaun!” she called.
“I’m here.” His voice came from somewhere beyond the pool of light the sunrod shed, and he sounded annoyed. “In the hall I was pointing to.”
Shara slashed at a demon that came too close and called back, “I can’t see you!” Even as she spoke, though, she saw a flash of fire illuminate the drow, two demons snarling as the flame licked around them, and the mouth of a narrow tunnel a half dozen paces ahead and to the right.
The beasts were tough, and there were a lot of them crowded into the room. The smart thing to do would have been to get to the stairs and retreat. On the narrow stairs, the demons couldn’t surround them, and they could fight just two or three demons at a time. Quarhaun’s idea had been sound, but he’d apparently had a different narrow passage in mind—one that he could see but that her human eyes couldn’t.
At this point, retreating up the stairs would leave Quarhaun stranded in his hallway with no way out. Shara doubted he could hold the passage by himself—the demons would get around him, attack from both sides, and bring him down in a minute or less. She changed her plan.
“Uldane, light another sunrod,” she said.
Her heart pounded as she rushed at the demons again, hacking furiously on every side, her sword cracking through bone and drawing spurts of blood. She advanced in the general direction of where she’d seen Quarhaun’s fire, keeping an eye out for any other sign of his presence. Another sunrod sputtered to life behind her, and Shara gasped as she realized just how many demons were crowded around them. But then Uldane rejoined the battle, slicing and cutting with his dagger, making up in precision what he lacked in strength. Together they carved a path through the demons until the mouth of Quarhaun’s passage came into view in their circle of light. The drow wasn’t there.
“Quarhaun!” Shara called. The only answer was the roar of another demon as it lunged at her, clawing the wounded spot on her knee. This time the claws went deeper and pain shot up her leg. Her knee buckled under her and she stumbled, giving another demon the chance to lunge in, slashing at her side, slamming against her ribs without piercing her armor. Then another pounced onto her back, and she fell under its weight.
“Get off her!” Uldane shouted, and the demon’s weight lifted from her back. Uldane might have been small, but he wielded his dagger with such speed and skill that he could outmaneuver even much larger and stronger foes, pos
itioning them just where he wanted and driving his dagger home.
“There’s too many of them,” the halfling said as Shara found her feet.
Shara roared and whirled in a complete turn, unleashing a hail of steel on the demons that had closed in for the kill, driving them back again. “We can’t just leave him,” she said.
“Of course not.” Uldane didn’t sound convinced, but Shara knew the halfling would never abandon a friend. Or even a casual adventuring companion, or whatever the drow was.
Shara scowled. She and Uldane were risking their lives for Quarhaun. Just a few moments earlier, Quarhaun had chided her as foolish because she hadn’t abandoned him to the demon. He was a drow, after all—born and raised in a society that exalted scheming and treachery as the highest virtues. She had no reason to believe that Quarhaun would even inconvenience himself for her benefit, let alone put his life at risk. Why should she do any more for him than he would for her?
“Come on, Uldane,” she said. “We’re almost there.” Back to back, they fought their way to the hall, a raging storm of steel and fury cutting their path through the demons. Uldane held the sunrod up to light the passage where they’d last seen Quarhaun, a hall running straight, as far as the sunrod’s light could reach.
Quarhaun was gone.
“Now what?” Uldane asked.
“We have to find him.”
Uldane nodded, and Shara smiled grimly. He didn’t ask why. He knew, just as she did. They would risk their lives for Quarhaun, even if he wouldn’t do the same for them. They’d do it because it was the right thing to do.
CHAPTER THREE
Tempest was silent as they walked, and Roghar recognized her expression—her brow creased, her eyes on the cobblestone beneath her feet, her lower lip caught between two sharp teeth, pinched almost tight enough to draw blood. He rested a big, gentle hand on her shoulder but left her to her silence. The past months had taught him that nothing he could say would be any greater help than that simple reminder of his presence and his concern.
He’d thought at first that time would heal the wounds that her brush with possession had left on her soul. In those first weeks, though, she’d been haunted by constant reminders of Nu Alin, terrified that any stranger they met might be harboring him, ready to assault her again. At times she even looked at Roghar as though she thought he might be possessed and waiting for the right time to attack her. Finally he’d decided that she needed to leave the Nentir Vale, and they’d traveled together to Nera, where they first met. Somehow he’d thought that removing her from the scenes of their last adventures and immersing her in places that evoked happier memories might help her forget the ordeal.
It stung his pride, fleeing the Vale like that. It felt like running from a battle, which Bahamut taught him was a sin to be shunned. But once Nu Alin had left Tempest’s flesh, it had ceased to be a battle he knew how to fight.
So instead, he and Tempest had thrown themselves into fights they did understand, confronting extortionists, bandits, and a crazed necromancer in the streets of the fallen capital. In the hundred years since the emperor’s palace sank into the earth and the empire crumbled, Nera had gone from a bustling city with tens of thousands of residents to little more than a frontier town, leaving the manors and estates of the city’s vanished nobility to crumble into ruin around the crater that marked where the palace once stood. For its size, though, it had more than its share of crime and evil, from madmen working dark magic in ancient laboratories to bands of gnolls picking through the ruins and occasionally attacking families that lived too close to the decaying manors.
Their work of the day seemed like something in the latter category. They had arranged to meet Travic, a cleric of Erathis, in a tavern near the ruins, and agreed to help him investigate some disappearances. Roghar had every expectation that they’d be fighting gnolls before the day’s end, and that suited him fine. Fighting gnolls was a bit like fighting demons by proxy, since the foul, hyena-headed humanoids revered demons and worshiped a demon lord as their god.
He squeezed Tempest’s shoulder as they approached the tavern, and she seemed to shake herself out of a reverie. She glanced at Roghar’s hand on her shoulder as if noticing it for the first time, and she smiled up at him.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
“I know.” She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What do you suppose Travic has for us today?”
“Gnolls, I expect.”
“Filthy beasts.”
“Indeed.”
Roghar spotted the tavern by its sign, a crudely painted basilisk’s head with glowing green eyes. At that hour of the morning, no boisterous crowd marked it as a tavern at all, let alone one of the busier gathering places in the city. “The Stony Gaze,” he announced. “Are you ready?”
“Of course.”
Roghar pulled the tavern door open and scanned the room inside, his senses alert for danger. Travic was there, a warm smile spreading across his weathered face as he recognized the dragonborn. A young woman with a mop glanced up at the doorway, looked back at Travic, and returned to her work. Otherwise, the place seemed deserted.
“Roghar, thank you so much for coming.” Travic stood up and bobbed his head in greeting. A lock of salt-and-pepper hair fell into his eyes, and he brushed it aside.
“Good morning, Travic.” Roghar stepped to the side and let Tempest enter before him, then followed her to Travic’s table.
“Tempest, lovely to see you,” the priest said. “Thank you, as well.”
Tempest took his outstretched hand and started to sit.
“I have to apologize,” Travic said. “I planned to meet you here, buy you breakfast, and discuss the situation while we ate. I did not plan on this establishment’s excellent cook being abed at this hour.”
Roghar laughed. “Fortunately, we have eaten already.”
“I’m glad. And I believe it’s to our advantage to get an early start. I’ve heard a report of another couple gone missing, so perhaps we can look into that while it’s still fresh.”
“Very well,” Roghar said. “Shall we leave right away?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on as we walk. Or at least as much of it as I understand.” He patted the mopping woman on the shoulder as he walked to the door. “Thank you, Jesi.” She returned his smile.
Outside, Travic started walking in the direction of the ruins. “The cases I’ve looked into so far have had much in common, things that set them apart from the troubles we normally see near the ruined part of the city.”
“Gnoll attacks and such?” Roghar asked.
“Exactly. When gnolls raid the city, they leave an unholy mess behind them. Blood everywhere, bodies half eaten and mutilated, stores of food plundered, that sort of thing. It’s obvious there’s been an attack, and quite clear that gnolls were responsible—few other creatures are both so savage and so cunning.”
“How common are gnoll raids like that?”
“Actually rare. The watch patrols those neighborhoods pretty heavily, and when gnolls do attack, the watch strikes back fast and hard. Otherwise, no one would live in those areas.”
“But you said these cases are different?”
“Yes. No blood, no bodies, nothing missing or plundered. It’s like these people just disappeared—just got up and left, taking nothing with them.”
“Maybe the gnolls have new leadership,” Roghar said. “Maybe they’ve started carrying victims back to their lair, making offerings or sacrifices or something.”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose. But I’ve never heard of gnolls behaving like that.”
“What does your god tell you?”
Travic stopped walking and sighed. “Nothing clear. But the whole thing feels wrong to me. Dangerous and important.”
Roghar closed his eyes for a moment, letting his thoughts settle and fall still. His spine prickled at once, and a sense of urgency rose in his chest. At the same time, a gnawing dread took root in his
gut. He opened his eyes and nodded. “Lead on,” he said to Travic. “Dangerous and important is about right.”
Travic led them around a corner, and the ruins emerged into full view. The street, a broad thoroughfare that once must have carried carts and wagons to the city’s finest homes and markets, sloped gently upward and then suddenly dropped off into the crater that marked the site of the fallen palace. Majestic stone buildings lined the sides of the street, but the ones nearest the crater were only crumbling façades over ruined husks, the gutted interiors visible through gaping windows and empty doorways.
“I dream about this street sometimes,” Travic said. “I see it as it once was, flowers and banners in a riot of color, the wealthy and powerful of the empire walking along its smooth cobblestones, the palace rising in majesty at the crest of the hill. Except instead of the emperor in his palace, I see Erathis, bathed in glory, the sword of her justice in hand and flames of inspiration around her head. Her eyes pierce me, and she commands me to rebuild.”
“That’s not a calling you could easily ignore,” Roghar said.
Travic sighed. “It makes me so tired. I’m just one man.”
“Today we are three. And we’ll shine the light of the Bright City into this desolate street.” Erathis, the god of civilization and law, was said to live in a celestial realm called the Bright City of Hestavar.
“Thank you, my friend. Bahamut’s work will be done as well.”
Roghar noticed the cleric’s gaze wander, a little uneasily, to Tempest. Travic understood why Roghar was helping him—as a paladin of Bahamut, Roghar had a divine calling, just as Travic did, and the goals of their gods were aligned in many cases. But Travic didn’t know what to make of Tempest and had no idea why a warlock whose power ultimately came from the powers of the Nine Hells would participate in this work.
Tempest wasn’t like them, it was true. Her power didn’t come with a divine mandate—it wasn’t granted on condition of service. In fact, as far as Roghar understood it, Tempest had stolen the power she wielded and used it without permission from the powers of Hell. And he had made it his mission to make sure she used it in ways that would infuriate the devils it came from, which brought him a perverse sort of pleasure.