by James Wyatt
“Easy, Tempest,” he murmured. “You’re safe now.”
Tempest threw her arms around Roghar’s shoulders and pulled him closer. Hesitantly, gently, he enfolded her in his embrace.
As Roghar held Tempest, Travic managed to roll himself up to his knees. Roghar heard the comforting lilt of his prayers to Erathis and the warmth of divine presence around them all.
Erathis holds me, Roghar thought, and I hold you.
Finally, Tempest eased her hold on him and drew away, looking anywhere but into his eyes. Roghar felt strong and whole, and Tempest seemed stronger as well.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Tempest said, still avoiding his gaze. “You know I hate being crowded like that, and Travic’s no good at holding a line.” Finally her eyes met his, and he saw a hint of the anguish she’d been feeling. “I felt trapped.”
“Just like when Nu Alin was controlling your body.”
Tempest looked away and pulled free of his hands. “Are we giving chase?” she asked.
“Are you up to it?” Travic said.
“Of course. Only, let’s make sure we don’t pass any enemies who can attack us from behind this time.”
“Good plan,” Roghar said. “But Travic?”
“Yes?”
“Are you up to this?” Roghar put a hand on Travic’s shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
“Marcan was among them, wasn’t he?”
Travic sighed, and some of the strength his prayers had lent him seemed to drain out of his body. “Yes, he was.”
“Do you think something was controlling his mind?”
Travic turned and paced a few steps down the hall, stopping beside the decapitated statue. “I think something changed his mind. Obviously not for the better. But I don’t think it’s a spell that can be broken.”
“Are you prepared to kill him?”
“If it comes to that, then …” Grief washed over Travic’s face. “If there’s no alternative, then yes.”
“All right. We’re dealing with humans, so if it’s possible, we try to knock them out and bring them to the watch. Agreed?” Roghar watched Tempest carefully as he awaited her response.
“Of course,” Travic said.
Tempest nodded, then frowned. “On what charge?”
“What?” Roghar said.
“We bring them to the watch on what charge? Do we know they’re guilty of anything?”
“They attacked us.”
“The gnoll and the statue did. What the humans were doing would be easy to paint as self-defense. We’re barging into their home. Of course they’re fighting back.”
“We’re barging into the temple where they’re worshiping Asmodeus,” Roghar said.
“Or Tiamat,” Travic added.
“Or some other evil god or demon lord.”
“We assume,” Tempest said.
“Right. But I think it’s highly unlikely we’re going to round that corner and find that these ragged humans and their gnoll friend set up an animated statue to protect their little secret temple of Bahamut. Not to mention the whispers.”
“Fine,” Tempest said. “Assuming we round the corner and find a temple to some sinister power, I’ll try not to kill them unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m just trying to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
Roghar sighed and scratched his jaw. “Look, Tempest,” he said. “I know it’s not always easy to know what’s right and what’s wrong. And I know we’re walking in a great gray area where the lines are even less clear than usual. But it means a lot to me that you’re even trying to sort it out.”
She smiled faintly. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, I don’t expect they’ve gone far, unless they’ve fled out a back entrance. More likely, they’re putting up their defense in their shrine or temple, or whatever is around that corner.”
Tempest nodded. “So we charge around the corner-you first, naturally-and unleash everything we have. Trying not to kill them, of course.”
“A little more caution is probably warranted,” Travic said. “They’ve had several minutes to prepare their defenses. They might have activated traps. At the least, they’ve taken up the most advantageous positions they can find.”
“Right,” Roghar said. “But we don’t have a lot of tactical flexibility. There’s only three of us, and there’s only one way we can approach, as far as we know.”
He ran through other possibilities in his mind. Searching for another entrance could give their quarry a chance to escape, and it would mean navigating the whispering crater again. And he had no real reason to suspect that another entrance even existed, except that it would be tactically convenient.
Alas, he thought, reality rarely conforms to convenience.
“So I charge around the corner,” he said, “cautiously. You two watch out for traps, and you help me flush out any cultists that are hidden behind cover.”
“Is that what they are?” Tempest said. “Cultists?”
“That’s my working assumption at this point,” Roghar said, scowling at her.
“I suppose it helps to put a name on them. I mean, besides Marcan.”
“Please stop it,” Travic said. “This is hard enough for me already.”
“Is it?” Tempest asked. “Can killing people ever be hard enough?”
Travic drew himself up, anger boiling in his eyes. “I will not listen to lectures on morality from a warlock who bargains with infernal powers!”
Tempest’s eyes smoldered with fire as she glared at the priest. “Does the mouth that speaks it make the truth any less true?”
“I know the precarious path I walk,” Travic said. “I grapple with these questions every night, when sleep eludes me. And now, because they seem to have entered your mind for the first time, I have to face them again? What I need now is resolve and certainty. Leave the doubts until darkness.” What had started as an angry rant ended as a plea, and Roghar gaped at the priest, his heart aching for his friend.
“I see,” Tempest said at last. “From now on I will keep my questions to myself, and see whether I am able to sleep after we’ve done what must be done.”
Roghar reached a hand for Tempest’s shoulder, but she pulled away.
“Let’s do it, then,” Roghar said. He closed his eyes, reaching for the sense of fierce victory that had filled him just a few moments before, grasping for any reassurance from Bahamut that his cause was just and his way true. A faint tingle brushed at the base of his skull and faded.
That will have to be assurance enough, he thought.
Without another word, he walked to the corner of the hall. Holding his shield up, he peered around the corner into what was indeed a small shrine. A simple wooden table stood as an altar, draped with a deep purple cloth embroidered with a jagged spiral in gold thread. A human skull adorned the altar, surrounded by five small cups. One of the cups held a greasy flame that licked up over the rim. Three long banners, similar to the altar cloth, hung on the walls of the chamber, each one sporting a golden spiral that reminded Roghar of a baleful eye staring out into the room. Behind the altar, a column of light filled a small alcove in the wall.
The cultists-it was a fair appellation, he decided-huddled behind the altar. Roghar almost laughed out loud. The cultists hadn’t enjoyed many more tactical options than had he and his friends, trying to defend themselves in this small, bare chamber. They didn’t have defensible positions to take, cover to hide behind, or, apparently, traps to set. So they had spent the last several minutes clumped behind their priest at the altar, clutching their weapons in trembling hands, waiting for the deadly assault they knew was coming. He almost felt sorry for them.
But not quite.
The priest was a middle-aged human woman with wild hair and wide eyes, draped in a formless black robe. A purple stole with the same golden spiral hung over her shoulders, and the symbol shaped from real gold hung on a slender chain around her neck.
She held a gnarled quarterstaff carved and inlaid over and over with the same symbol, like a dizzying storm of eyes or whirlwinds.
“I admit,” he said, “you are not what I expected. I trust you have had time to prepare yourselves to meet justice. Do you wish to surrender?”
One or two of the cultists behind the priest looked like they might be ready to throw down their weapons, but the priest just laughed.
“There need not be any bloodshed,” Roghar said. “If you just put down your weapons …”
“There will be bloodshed,” the priest said. “The Chained God will drink deeply of your lifeblood, paladin.”
“The Chained God?” Roghar glanced over his shoulder at Travic. “I guess we both lose.”
“No, just you,” Travic said. “You bet it was Asmodeus, I said it wasn’t.” Travic rounded the corner, keeping Roghar between himself and the cultists in the shrine. “You owe me five … Gaele?”
Mouth hanging open, Travic stared at the priest of the Chained God.
“Hello, Travic,” the priest said. “Marcan warned you to leave.”
“What happened to you?”
Gaele scoffed. “You gave me comfort in my weakness. That’s all Erathis could offer-the promise of a rebuilt empire where the rich still stand on the aching backs of the poor. The Chained God gives me power, Travic. Power to destroy you and the feeble comfort of your god.”
Roghar shook his head. “Still up to this, Travic?”
Travic pulled himself together with a visible effort of will, then nodded.
“Good,” Roghar growled. “Let’s do this.” Hefting his sword, he started forward.
“Stop!” Tempest shouted, and Roghar froze. “The floor,” she said. “There’s a glyph-a magic trap. You don’t want to step on it.”
Gaele laughed again. “I must congratulate you, tiefling, on your powers of observation. But let’s see how they work through this.”
She lifted her staff, and a cloud of darkness surrounded Roghar, enfolding him until he could no longer see the light on his shield. The cloud was cold, chilling his flesh and whispering madness at the edge of his mind. It pushed against him like water and sent twinges of pain through his entire body with even his smallest movement.
“Tempest?” Roghar said, gritting his teeth.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
The darkness vanished and Roghar blinked in the sudden brightness of his glowing shield. Beside him, Tempest held a ball of inky blackness suspended in the air between her hands, and with a soft grunt of effort she hurled it at the priest. The ball dissipated into slivers when it hit Gaele’s outstretched staff, but a few of the slivers tore small wounds in her face and shoulders.
“Travic,” Roghar said. “Can you do anything about this … griffon? cliff? This trap, whatever Tempest called it.”
“The glyph,” Travic said. “I’ll try.” He dropped to his knees at Roghar’s feet and started exploring the floor with his hands, not touching the stone, but reaching as if he were feeling the contours of the trap and its magic.
“Can I go around it?” Roghar scanned the floor, but still couldn’t see any sign of what had alerted Tempest.
“No, it fills the entire hall.”
“Why can everyone see this but me?”
“We know what to look for, that’s all.”
Tempest called up a storm of eldritch fire around the cultists, breaking up the clump of them as the fire ignited their clothes and hair. Only Gaele stood her ground as the rest of her little cult scattered.
“The Chained God take you, tiefling,” Gaele said. She shook her staff, and rattling chains of red-hot iron appeared around Tempest, coiled around her body and cuffed to her ankles and wrists. Tempest howled in pain as the hot metal seared her flesh, and she thrashed against the restraints.
Travic looked back at Tempest, then up at Roghar.
“I’ll help her,” Roghar said. “You get rid of the glyph. I have to get up there and get your friend Gaele focused on me.”
“I don’t understand,” Travic said, turning his attention back to the glyph. “What could have changed her so?”
“Later, Travic. Focus.” Roghar stretched out a hand to cup Tempest’s cheek in his hand. Her skin was hot, but as Roghar breathed a prayer and channeled Bahamut’s power into her body he felt her cool. Her thrashing stopped, and she drew a deep breath. Roghar’s hand started glowing as bright as his shield, and Tempest let out her breath. The manacles sprang open and the chains clattered to the floor, where they writhed like snakes before vanishing in puffs of steam.
Tempest smiled at him, then conjured a shimmering orb of viscous green liquid in her palm. “Eat acidic slime, you lunatic,” she said as she hurled the orb at Gaele.
“Travic?” Roghar said. “Progress?”
“I’m having some trouble concentrating.”
“Fine. Forget it.” Roghar backed up, crouched down, and ran at the glyph. At the last possible moment, he threw himself into the air, a strong jump that carried him almost all the way to the little altar. He braced himself, in case he hadn’t completely cleared the glyph, but nothing erupted around him when he landed.
“Had any second thoughts about surrender?” he said, scanning the nervous faces of the cultists arrayed before him.
“Kill him!” Gaele screeched, clawing at the slime that was blackening her skin, and half a dozen cultists surged forward, closing their semicircle around him.
“I didn’t think so.” Roghar blocked the first half-hearted swing with his shield, then swept his sword low to knock two cultists off their feet. He caught three more in a blast of dragonfire from his mouth, but the sixth one managed to get past his whirlwind of attacks and land a solid blow with a shout of triumph.
The cultist’s hammer hit his armor with a dull thud.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Roghar said, baring his teeth in the cultist’s face. The cultist was a middle-aged man clutching a blacksmith’s hammer in his one hand, the empty left sleeve of his tunic tucked into his belt to keep it out of the way. “Marcan, I presume.”
Marcan paled and swung his hammer again, this time aiming for Roghar’s unprotected face. Roghar knocked it aside with his shield and stepped to the side as another cultist stabbed at him from behind. The blade found a gap in the armor protecting Roghar’s arm and sliced a painful cut.
Roghar kicked at the man who had cut him, knocking the cultist to the floor, and smashed his shield into Marcan’s face. He brought his pommel down hard on the head of a cultist who was struggling to stand up, drove his knee into the groin of a man whose face carried fresh burns from his dragon breath, and cut the head clean off a man rushing in from his right.
It had been pure reflex, an attack without thought, and regret seized him before his sword even finished its swing. The dead man’s face was still twisted in hate and anger as it fell to the floor, a moment before the body followed it down.
“You’re all mad,” Roghar said.
One dead, four on the ground in varying states of agony, that left one-
Something hit him hard on the head from behind, and his vision went double. He spun around and away from his attacker, willing his eyes to focus. The last cultist stood clutching a wooden cudgel in both hands, looking at once surprised that his blow had landed and terrified that Roghar hadn’t fallen.
“That … hurt,” Roghar said. “But it takes more than that to bring me down.”
The cudgel clattered to the ground as the man turned and ran. Travic scrambled to his feet and drew his mace, placing himself between the fleeing man and the hallway.
“Let him go,” Roghar said, turning his attention to Gaele.
Travic stepped aside, but an inferno erupted around the man as he stepped onto the glyph. His tormented scream turned Roghar’s stomach.
“I guess Travic never managed to disable the glyph,” Roghar said as he stalked toward Gaele. “Looks like your trap only managed to kill one of your own.”
“You will never take me alive, paladin!” Gaele cried.
She didn’t have much strength left, save what her defiance lent her. Tempest’s fire and acid had left her scorched, scarred, and barely able to stand, but her eyes remained bright with madness and fury. She threw her head back, laughing maniacally, and just as Roghar reached her side the laugh turned into a howl.
Roghar’s ears rang with the thunderous sound and his head started to spin. Malicious whispers coursed beneath the sound at the edge of hearing and sense, filling his mind with thoughts he couldn’t follow, images of chaos and madness. The world disappeared from his view, and in its place was a starry void where chunks of ancient stone and pulsating globules of living flesh floated in graceful elegance. Wailing cries from no mortal throat echoed around him in the void as lightning and fire tore at his mind. He dropped his sword, which reverted to raw iron ore as it drifted away from his hand, and he clenched his ears, only to find that his body was no longer a body at all. Every atom of his substance floated apart, no coherence marking them as parts of a single being.
An anthem began somewhere in the void, whether near or far he could not tell. He heard it through a thousand tiny ears, and a thousand fractured minds heard the music of the Bright City, a hymn of praise to Pelor, Ioun, and Erathis.
Erathis. Travic. Somehow his shattered consciousness made the connection and recognized Travic’s voice. Slowly his mind started piecing itself back together, woven with the texture of the music, which was more than Travic’s single mortal voice. Just as the howling voices of the mad and the damned echoed Gaele’s maddening scream, angelic voices and instruments undergirded Travic’s hymn, growing in volume until they drowned out the scream and Roghar’s mind was whole again.
Gaele was on her knees before him, the howl sucking the last ounce of breath from her lungs. He slammed his mailed fist into the base of her skull and she fell, gasping for breath as her eyes fluttered and closed. Travic stood at Roghar’s side, shining with divine radiance, his face half hidden behind an angelic visage and his head thrown back in rapture.
“Enjoy your song,” Roghar said, shrugging out of his pack. He pulled out a coil of rope and started cutting pieces to tie up the cultists who had survived.