After I went to sleep, I found myself in the Dreamlands, once more in Samantha’s garden. The hydrangeas were in bloom, but the leaves weren’t the right color. They looked like they had an issue with iron chlorosis. Still, they smelled great.
My twin sister was waiting for me. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You’re on edge, so I thought maybe talking with Samantha would help.”
“It’s just that prophecy. I’m still worried that we’re all going to die, even if we win.”
“I’m sorry,” came the voice of Samantha as she rose from the flowers. “But I can’t really tell you much. Doing so would invite others to interfere. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you anything. The answers you seek can be found in the Morning, little shepherd.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t help much. Also, ‘little shepherd’?”
“You’re trying to protect the docile masses against the wolves. It seems fitting.”
“Fair enough. So there’s nothing you can do to help?”
“Not against the Runelord. But I’ll tell you what. If someone somehow manages to summon a Great Old One, I’ll come help out.” She smiled beatifically at that.
I knew a dismissal when I saw one. “Great,” I said. “Any chance I could use your Playstation for a bit before I go?” A bit of gaming would take my mind off of things for a while.
“Sorry, but it’s doing that update thing.”
“At the most inconvenient time,” I said wryly.
“At least that part’s like normal,” Kira laughed. “Samantha’s got a shelf of board games, though. Want to do a game of Cataan?”
“Sure, why not?”
I woke up early in the morning and got to work. The day was finally here. Once everyone was up, we were taking a secret path revealed to us by Morgiv and heading up to Karzoug’s final stronghold. One way or another, before the day was done, this would likely be over. And, thanks to, or perhaps in spite of, Samantha’s advice, I wasn’t scared.
I was terrified.
Not that something would happen to me. If I died in the process of taking out the Runelord before he could be a problem, then so be it. I’d made my peace with that. Mostly, anyway.
No, what scared me was the possibility of something happening to Aurora and our unborn child. But I would do everything within my power to prevent that from happening. If that meant I had to somehow channel the determination of Commander Shepard, the genius and ruthlessness of Xanatos, and the sheer insanity-fueled awesomeness of Deadpool to do it, then that was simply what I would do. There was no other option. There was no other possible outcome.
I would move heaven and earth to make it happen.
And, right now, what that entailed was making another rocket launcher for Juiz as well as further enchantments on a few people’s gear.
Geo came to check on me first. “I’ve plotted out an optimal pathway up the pinnacle based on what Morgiv could tell us,” he said. “I suspect that they won’t know what hit them.”
“Damn straight,” I replied, doing my best to put on a confident face. He then left to allow me to get back to work.
Lenntu came next. “I’ve been using this place’s training room to test out these grenades you’ve given me. It’s just too bad that we can’t take any of the grenades in here out with us.” We couldn’t take any food either, but that would have been less useful.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ve made plenty of them for you.”
“I have no doubt of that. I’ll leave you to it. I have to go double check all the straps on my armor and clean my gun.”
“We’ve got this,” I told him.
Next came Paulie. “Today shall be GLORIOUS!” he said.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “I bet they’ll even make statues in our honor.”
He twitched. “Do you think my statue could have its hands always ON FIRE?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “I don’t see why not.” He let out a squeal of excitement and left as well.
Lenn stopped by afterwards. “I WANT TO LEARN TO MAKE BEER TO GO WITH THE SAUSAGE.”
“Once this is over, I promise I’ll help you figure it out.”
“GOOD. BUT FIRST WE HAVE GIANTS TO KILL.”
“Yep.”
Once he was gone, Juiz spoke up. “I have completed over fifty thousand simulations. Based on known data, these simulations suggest that we have an eighty seven percent chance of neutralizing target Karzoug today.”
“And what are our chances of survival in the process?”
“Simulations inconclusive.”
“Yeah, I thought as much.”
Aurora was the only one who had left me to my work, so I sought her out when I was done. I found her within the building’s chapel. The room was setup like a Catholic church, but it had shrines not just to my god, but to all the other gods that anyone in the party might conceivably worship.
“Pray with me?” Aurora said, holding out her hand in invitation.
“Sure. Nervous?” I asked as I took her hands.
“A little. You?”
“Not a single bit,” I lied.
“I’ll be nervous for both of us, then,” she said with a smile. We bowed our heads and she began speaking a prayer. “Great Abadar, please guide us that we may fulfill our duty to our people. Holy Iomedae, please lend us your strength so we may smite the wicked. Mysterious Nethys, please grant that the magic we wield will always serve us well. Noble Shelyn, please look after us so that my beloved and I may remain together now and always. Brave Cayden, please grant us the courage needed to face our foes. And Swift Desna, please grant that our travels will always be as rewarding as our destinations.”
She squeezed my hands, so I continued. “Lord, I know that you have a hands-off policy when it comes to us, your children, but perhaps, maybe, just this once, please watch over us and nudge things so they go our way if possible. Amen.” I crossed myself.
And that was it. It was time to go. We bid our farewells to Chadwick, Morgiv and the Rangers, then took the secret path.
There was a monster in the tunnel, but it fled in terror at our arrival. Apparently it had gotten wind of what we’d accomplished. Lenn looked disappointed. “I wanted to hit it,” he growled. I think even his nerves were a bit raw at the moment.
“Don’t worry, we’ll hit something soon,” Geo told him.
“Should we sing a jaunty tune as we climb?” I asked.
“I think I’m good,” Geo said.
As we came out of the tunnel, we found ourselves in a place that felt strange. My magic sight confirmed that the veil between worlds was thin there, so I warned the others. We all stopped and took stock of the path, which revealed the giant spiders before us.
Now, when I say “giant spider”, I don’t mean they were the size of dogs, or even horses. No, they were bigger than elephants. Maybe about the size of a mammoth, even. And weirdest of all, they all had an odd number of legs, as though some even bigger creature had accidentally torn off one while trying to carry them out of its house. Except, you know, no stumps where the legs used to be.
“You there,” the largest spider called out to us. Because of course they could talk. In fact, now that I got a better look at them, I knew what they were. They were the intelligent spiders of Leng.
“What is it?” Aurora called back.
“We are trapped here, so you will complete our mission.”
It couldn’t hurt to hear them out. “What’s your mission?” I asked.
“Our enemies, those from Leng who play at aping your vexingly symmetrical appearance, have returned to this world to hnor an ancient alliance with the recrudescent lord.”
“So, what, you want us to kill them?” I asked.
“If possible. But stopping their machinations will suffice. They maintain some kind of device. We know not its purpose. But destroy it and its purpose matters not. Agree to this and we shall allow you to pass.”
And then Lenn charged. So we ended up killing them anyway. So much for talking. On the plus side, we looted some ioun stones from them that would allow a few more of our party to survive the mountain’s oxygen-deprived death zone without me needing to expend spells.
When we reached the peak, Aurora and I took to the sky to invisibly scout out an entrance to the citadel. There was an easy front door, of course, but Karzoug knew we were coming, so it could be assumed that he’d be waiting for us. No, we needed another entrance if at all possible.
There was one such entrance. It appeared to be a hole in the wall. It wasn’t optimal, but it was better than storming in the front door. So we returned and let the others know.
“We should assume that there will be something guarding this entrance as well,” Geo suggested.
“That does seem likely,” I agreed. “But this entrance was hard to spot, so I still think it’ll be less defended than the main entrance.” No one had anything to argue against that, so it was decided. We headed for the second entrance.
For the record, I wasn’t wrong. There was certainly less defense there than I expected at the front door. But that leaves a lot of room for some kind of dangerous defense. Like a freaking Planetar.
In case you have no idea what that is, a Planetar is a type of angel. They’re nine foot tall beings of sheer fiend-wrecking badassery and usually serve as the generals of angelic armies. So yeah, we didn’t want to fight this thing.
And, based on the look on its face, she didn’t want to fight us either. We did what we could to try to talk her down, but it wasn’t working. She continued to attack us, despite looking really upset at doing so. Something wasn’t right.
“Fall back!” I told the others.
It took a moment to get Lenn under control long enough to retreat, but after that, we managed to flee with little trouble. “I don’t feel right fighting her,” Aurora said, sadness in her eyes.
“So, front door after all, brah?” Paulie asked.
“Not yet,” I answered. “My magic sight told me that she’s under a planar binding. We might be able to find a way to free her. Or worst case scenario, we might be able to banish her back to her home plane.”
“Do you have a spell for that?” Aurora asked.
“Yes, but I’ll need to prepare it. And I don’t know if it’s necessary. If she really is reluctant, maybe we can free her and gain an ally.”
“How?”
“I can prepare a spell to allow me to read her thoughts. If we can get her to think about the terms of her binding, maybe we can find a loophole.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Aurora said. “You, Paulie and I will go. I’ll keep her attention and Paulie can keep me alive while you try to communicate. Geo, we’ll need you and the Lenns to be ready to come pull us out. Juiz, you’ll facilitate communication between us.”
We moved in. And, of course, I was right. “Please! You have to kill me!” the angel thought at me.
“There has to be another way,” I protested.
“As long as my body is still regenerating, I can die and it won’t be permanent. Please! Kill me and I’ll be free!”
Oh! That was a great idea! “I have what we need!” I told the others. “Fall back! We need to plan!” We fell back and I put a wall of force between us and the angel.
“So what do we do?” Geo asked.
“Hit her as hard as we can without using any evil magic. If we can kill her without doing so, she’ll be free when she regenerates.”
“How does that work?” Lenntu asked.
“It’s pretty simple, really. Whoever bound her was an idiot and gave vague conditions for her binding. So we’re going to loophole it.” Thank God for stupid enemies. “It’s not gonna be fun, though.”
I’m going to gloss over what we did. As I said, it wasn’t fun. It was brutal and it was ugly. Suffice it to say, several minutes later, the angel was free. “Thank you,” she said to us as Aurora helped her to her feet. She then took a long look at Aurora. “You have my eyes.”
“What?!” Aurora asked.
“You’re one of my descendents,” the angel responded. “I fell in love with a mortal once, long ago. It’s nice to see that some traits continue to breed true.”
Okay, this was getting weird. “I hate to break up the family reunion, especially when one of the parties involved is my beloved wife, but the longer we tarry, the greater risk we face that someone will come after us.”
The angel assessed me. “That is likely true. I don’t know much about the inside of this keep, but I will aid you. I intend to have words with that wizard, Khalib, who bound me here. I am Ayruzi, and when we have time, I shall have to decide if I approve of your marriage to my descendent.” Great.
The inside of the citadel was constructed of stone sheathed in marble. It was opulent for opulence’s sake. “This looks like some Saudi prince’s third palace,” I commented to myself.
“What’s that?” Aurora asked.
“Don’t worry about it. It would take too much time to explain right now. I’ll explain later.”
Our entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed. Suddenly, an image of Karzoug appeared before us, in an area where my magic sight revealed a ripple in the fabric of reality. “And so the fools have found me. I must applaud your tenacity. You are much more persistent than the worms I thought you to be. You are more like hungry maggots in your endless squirming and writhing to get to the death that awaits you at the core of your fate. I am that fate, maggots. I am that death!”
And then he cast a spell. I’m not sure how he did so, but it was a good indication that he had magic that was beyond my current understanding, which was a good sign for my hopes of getting home. And a bad sign for us, because that spell hit like a truck made of sound and fury.
The spell itself was one I’ve heard of. It mimics the effects of a banshee’s wail. Luckily, only Aurora, Lenn, Juiz and I were in the radius, as the others were taking a peak down the other hallway. Even then, it was devastating.
Juiz was immune to the magic thanks to being a construct, and Lenn managed to resist the effects, but Aurora and I took the full power. I only managed to survive thanks to the fact that I had surrounded myself with necromantic energy at the beginning of the day – it acts similar to an ablative force field and deadens the effect of anything that hits me – and the healing enchantments on my armor and buckler. Also, the contingency spell I had placed upon myself with a scroll. Without those, I would have been done for.
Aurora had the same healing enchantment on her armor, but even then managed to make it through only through sheer force of rage. Ayruzi had to rush over to heal her before she collapsed.
Seeing her hurt like that filled me with rage. I drew my gun and pointed it at the image.
“Fool. You think you can harm me here? I’m merely a projection.”
“Screw you,” I said, squeezing the trigger. Karzoug cried out in surprise as his image was torn to shreds. My magic sight revealed that the ripple in the fabric of reality that had allowed him to project himself was torn and rent from the passing of the bullets.
“How did you do that?” the angel asked as she turned her attentions to my wounds.
“Used the Runelords’ own magic against them,” I replied, holding up my gun. Sure, I had mostly been annoyed and striking out of anger, but it worked, so I was taking credit. They didn’t need to know that the weapon itself had given me the impression that it would work.
I quickly surrounded myself in more necromantic energy. And not a moment too soo, because the shriek had drawn attention. “GIANTS!” Lenn roared, excited to have an enemy he understood.
There were more giants than I would have expected after how many we’d already cleared out below. And not just any giants. These were the real big ones – storm giants and cloud giants being controlled by terrifying Thassilonian Rune giants. Any other group might have been in trouble. But there were seven of us. We had two spellcasters – eight party members and three casters if you count Ayruzi – as well as a veritable arsenal of heavy weapons.
And, of course, we had Lenn. No giant was safe from Lenn.
We managed to defeat them pretty handily, is what I’m saying. We even had time to heal up before a wizard showed up with a number of additional giants in tow. “Why I do declare that you all make some frightful racket,” the mage, who I assumed was the same mage that had bound Ayruzi, said. No I have no idea why he sounded like some kind of southern gentleman – or maybe, more aptly, like a malevolent Colonel Sanders. At this point, I’ve stopped questioning it.
“You will pay for binding me!” Ayruzi swore.
“Well, pardon my use of such a powerful and hee-larious deterrent to any would be interlopers. I promise that I’ll send you a few pieces of you right on back to your home plane shortly, right after me and these here giants tear your new friends limb from limb.”
“YOU SHOULDN’T BE MEAN TO GIRLS!” Lenn roared, charging. Right past the giants. He ignored the giants. LENN IGNORED THE GIANTS. No, you aren’t listening. LENN. WAS. SO. MAD. HE. FORGOT. THAT. THERE. WERE. GIANTS. PRESENT.
LENN.
The wizard tried to react. But there was simply no way he was surviving a Lenn that pissed off. The big guy splattered him into the floor in a single blow. You would need a bucket to gather up enough of Khalib to identify.
The giants died in a hail of gunfire – and arrows – once all of us picked our jaws off the floor and thought to attack them. It wasn’t even funny. They were absolutely terrified of us after Lenn’s sudden display.
After looting him, we decided that the way they had come from was likely back towards the front door and headed off in the other direction. As we passed, another image of Karzoug appeared. “You may have slain my apprentice, but you –“ he was cut off by a cry of pain as I shot that image as well.
We then came to a set of great doors covered in massive carvings. My magic sight was blinded by the number and power of the auras contained on the doors. But I got a few ideas of the power within. Not in time to prevent Paulie from touching the doors and getting us stuck in a magical trap, mind you, but at least I knew what I had to do once we were there.
The trap teleported us to an extraplanar maze. There was something hunting us and trying to kill us. The only thing we had to do was for one of us to escape, then the others would be free as well. Of course, anyone who died would stay dead, so time was an issue.
But I’ve seen harder Sudoku puzzles. I found the exit in less than six seconds.
“You think that was meant to keep us away from Karzoug?” Aurora asked.
“It could also be a vault,” Geo suggested. “But a vault might have something useful to us, so it’s not a bad idea to get into it either way.”
A fair point. “Kyle, do you know a way to get in?” Aurora asked.
“Well, I could waste one of my biggest spells,” I said. “Completely negate all the magic contained within. Or, we could try this other idea. A theory I’ve been working on.” I pulled out a vial of rust colored liquid. “This is called djezet. It’s very rare and can be used to enhance spells, among other things. If I use enough of it, and in the right places, I believe I can short out the spell. If I do it wrong, though…”
“What would happen?”
I did the calculations in my head. “With the amount of energy contained in that spell? We’d be lucky if the explosion was merely big enough to completely obliterate the mountain.”
She smiled. “Well, if you believe you can do it, then I trust you. If you’re unsure, go with the safer option.”
Paulie cackled. “Blowing up the mountain would probably take Karzoug out too, so yeah, let’s do that.”
It took a full ten minutes, but when it was over, I had done it. I had connected compatible but non-interfering pathways in the magic form. The spell shorted out and became inoperative. Which meant I was going to be writing a paper on that when I had some time to go back to Absalom. But for now, there was something beyond the doors that would interest us, in one way or another.
Now, all that was left was to open the door itself. Which wasn’t terribly hard, considering we had Lenn with us. And crowbars. Several crowbars.
Inside the room, we found the Denizens of Leng that the spiders had warned us about. They were working on some kind of eldritch device that was projecting an image of the city we were looking at, but it appeared to be an image of the past thanks to the lack of the ravages of time upon the buildings.
What the hell? Were they trying to change the past somehow? Or maybe, were they trying to bring the past here? Bringing forward wealth? Or perhaps an army?
There wasn’t time to try to figure it out. The Denizens immediately attacked us. And died horribly. There was pale, alien blood everywhere. And the device was damaged in the fight. Because it got in Lenn’s way. So he hit it.
Now it was stuck in an on position, and shaking. “Run!” I shouted, ignoring the fact that the image was now of a strange, alien realm. That was a problem for after we managed to survive what I was sure was a coming explosion.
The explosion itself was underwhelming. We wouldn’t have survived staying in the room, mind you, but otherwise, it really wasn’t that big a deal. No, the weird part was the way the whole mountain shook in reaction to the explosion. It came almost a minute later, and it felt more like an earthquake than anything else.
When we went back to check, the device was no longer projecting any kind of image, but it was still most definitely still active, even in spite of the damage. I got the feeling that we should shut it off, but at the same time, I had no idea how to do so. After a few minutes of trying, I realized it could take me hours to shut it off properly. And strapping C-4 to it wasn’t an option either, since I had no idea what kind of damage that could lead to.
No, we’d have to deal with it after Karzoug was taken care of. Hopefully that wouldn’t be a problem.
And maybe some day I’ll figure out exactly where that dead Hound of Tindalos we found in the rubble of the Denizens’ laboratory had come from. It wasn’t there when we’d started running.
At least, I don’t think it was.
0 Comments