by James Wyatt
“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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Welcome to the Whitethorn Spire,” Kri announced. “Your birthright.”
The old priest stood outside the open doorway and bowed, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to invite Albanon inside. Albanon stepped over a demon corpse at the threshold and entered the tower.
The entrance hall was grandly elegant despite at least a century of disuse and the recent intrusion of the demons. Slender columns ringed the circular hall, supporting a staircase that wound around the wall. Living ivy spiraled up the marble columns as if sculpted there. A scattering of rubble and a few brown leaves cluttered the floor, which was tiled in an intricate mosaic depicting the stylized eye of Ioun set within the sunburst of Pelor. Far above, the domed ceiling was carefully painted with an array of figures Albanon couldn’t identify at such a distance. One slender archway, directly opposite the entrance, led to a short hall with doorways on both sides. Si
milar arches led off from the stairway above it, granting access to the tower’s five higher floors.
“Where do we start?” Albanon asked.
“Wherever you like,” Kri said. “The tower is yours to explore now. Start at the bottom and work up. Start at the top and work down. Start in the middle and work randomly, following your instincts. It’s up to you.”
Albanon grinned, staring up at the stairway with its arches. Mine to explore, he thought. It’s my birthright.
Part of him wanted to race through the tower, peering through every door, learning his way around as quickly as possible before deciding what to explore in more depth. But another part wanted to savor the discovery of it all, to choose one room and explore every bit of knowledge it had to offer up to him, whether it took hours or weeks, before moving on to another room. He let the two parts argue in his mind for a moment, savoring the anticipation and uncertainty.
“I want to see the mural,” he announced at last. Without waiting for an answer, he walked to the stairs, stealing a glance down the ground-floor hallway as he went past. Three doors—two on the left, one on the right, all closed. He smiled, filing that knowledge away. Closed doors meant secrets awaiting discovery.
At each archway, he allowed himself no more than a furtive glance through, the merest hint of what lay beyond. More closed doors—three or even five on some floors, two on others. A large library full of dusty shelves, each shelf crowded with books and scrolls, was almost enough to make him stop and explore, but he stuck to his original plan, forcing his eyes back to the mural and his feet back to the stairs.
At last he reached the top of the stairs and found himself on a narrow gallery running almost all the way around the hall, except where the stairs emerged. A thin railing offered little reassurance when he looked down at the drop to the mosaic floor below. Wrenching his gaze upward again, he found that the gallery was perfect for examining the mural in the dome—but he still understood little of what he saw.
The dome was divided into eight segments. Each one featured a depiction of a short pillar topped with a crystal orb that glowed with purple light. Thirteen figures—not all of them humanoid, he realized—were arrayed around the dome, as if spread around a great vaulted chamber. In a focal position, right above the line of arches running up the side of the hall, stood an eladrin wizard, posed in action as if casting a spell.
“Sherinna,” he guessed. He took a moment to study this depiction of his grandmother.
She was lovely, he decided, full of power and grace and wisdom. Or at least that’s what the artist tried to convey, he reminded himself. And she was paying him to pull it off. He smiled, then let his eyes explore the rest of the paintings.
To Sherinna’s left stood a human man in plate armor, locked in battle with a hulking brute of a demon, a monster with six claws and a massive carapace formed of red crystal.
Just like Vestapalk’s minions at the Temple of Yellow Skulls. Albanon’s heart quickened. Kri was right, he thought. Here we’ll learn what’s behind all this.
Next around the dome, an armored woman with the gently pointed ears of a half-elf swung an axe at a creature with the head and forequarters of the demons Albanon and Kri had fought at the tower, but its hind quarters were human legs encased in armor. In the background of that scene, a male dragonborn breathed fire over his own hand, but the fire coiled up and back on him.
In the next segment, an enormous mass of red spiders with crystalline shells swarmed around an elf female’s face screaming in pain. There was no sign or depiction of the rest of the elf, leaving it unclear whether she had already been consumed by the swarm or was perhaps transforming into it.
Directly opposite Sherinna stood an archway formed of scarlet crystal, with a lush green landscape visible through the arch, forming a stark contrast to the dark chamber around it. A human man stood before the arch, but his legs were twin columns of red liquid shot through with flecks of gold and veins of silver.
“That’s the Vast Gate,” Kri said. Albanon started—he hadn’t heard the priest approach, and thought he might have stopped off in the library or somewhere else in the tower.
“What’s that?” he asked. “What is this scene?”
“Well, you’re coming in at the end of the story,” Kri said, stroking his beard. “But I have told you the story before. That’s Sherinna, as you might have guessed.” Kri pointed at the beautiful, powerful eladrin, and Albanon nodded. “Next to her there is Brendis, a paladin of Pelor. And that”—he pointed across the dome, where a male tiefling lurked in the shadows near a human whose hand glittered with red crystal—”is Nowhere.”
“Nowhere? That was his name?”
“Yes. An expression of his alienation, I suppose. The three of them discovered a sinister cult operating in Nera.”
“When was this?”
“Two hundred years before the fall of Nerath.”
“So three centuries ago.”
“Yes. The cult leader was that man there.” Kri pointed at the legless human beside the arch. “Albric the Accursed.”
“Nu Alin,” Albanon said. “He’s in the middle of transforming into the demon.”
“Yes. He escaped the three heroes in Nera, but he left behind some writings that pointed to the ruins of Bael Turath as his next destination. Those writings also indicated that he was looking for something called the Living Gate.”
“Not the Vast Gate?”
“No. As I understand it, the Living Gate was a mysterious portal located somewhere in the depths of the Astral Sea. I believe it actually shattered during the Dawn War, and what the cultists sought was just a fragment of its substance. Which, perhaps coincidentally, took the form of a reddish crystal.”
“Perhaps not,” Albanon said.
“Indeed. Anyway, in Bael Turath, Sherinna and her companions met another pair of adventurers. Miri”—he pointed to the woman with the battleaxe—”and the Sword of the Gods.” This last hero was a fearsome man with pale skin and strange scarlet tattoos, holding a staff in one hand and an enormous sword in the other. A halo of divine light surrounded him, and the man he was facing recoiled in terror.
“The Sword of the Gods?”
“He was a cleric of Ioun, but he also seems to have been a figure of prophecy, something more than an ordinary divine servant. His origin is mysterious, and he did not survive this battle. But I am skipping ahead. Miri and the Sword of the Gods helped Sherinna and the others find the cultists, and they chased them through a portal leading to the abandoned dominion of Pandemonium, adrift in the Astral Sea. Which is here,” Kri said, gesturing to the scene depicted on the dome as a whole.
“And you said before that they were trying to break open a prison? To free some great evil?”
“Yes. They used a shard of the Living Gate to open this portal.” He pointed at the archway shown opposite Sherinna. “The Vast Gate, it was called—a doorway capable of reaching into many worlds and planes. They didn’t free the entity they sought to release, but they did manage to bring the Voidharrow through their gateway. And by the time Sherinna arrived on the scene, several of the cultists were already in the process of changing into demons.”
Albanon nodded, looking around at the variety of monstrous forms—all of which included some element of red crystal. “As the mural shows.”
“Yes. And as you can see, they engaged the demons in battle. What the mural doesn’t show is the outcome.”
Albanon nodded. “The cultists defeated, the Vast Gate closed. And the Sword of the Gods dead.”
“Although Nu Alin obviously survived the battle. At least one other cultist fled through the Vast Gate, and the Sword of the Gods was carried through it when he died. And Nowhere’s fate is not clear to me. Perhaps most relevant to our investigation, though, Sherinna brought back with her a sample of the Voidharrow, sealed in a vial.”
“Which the Order of Vigilance passed down until some of it ended up in Moorin’s tower.”
“Which the
death knight stole,” Kri said. “And then Nu Alin followed him across the Nentir Vale to find it.”
Albanon rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “And Nu Alin, when he’s not possessing someone, looks like a living blob of the Voidharrow. So what is the Voidharrow? Where did it come from? Did it come through the Vast Gate, or was it awaiting the cultists when they arrived in Pandemonium?”
“Those are the questions we’re here to investigate. If answers exist, this is the place to find them.”
“Here or Pandemonium, I suppose.”
“Here at least we have the benefit of records, the fruits of Sherinna’s own research and experience. Of all the founding members of the order, she was the most scholarly.”
“Do you suppose that’s why the demons were here? How much does Vestapalk know about the Order of Vigilance?”
Kri scowled. “Nu Alin was present at its founding, in a way. We must assume that his knowledge far exceeds our own.”
Albanon stared up at the mural, his thoughts spinning. A few moments ago, he’d been so excited, eager to explore what the tower had to offer. Now he was confused and tired, confounded by the puzzle that lay before them and daunted by the prospect of trying to sort it out.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “do you think we might spend some time just getting familiar with the tower? Hold off on plunging into research until we … I don’t know, until we know our way around a little better, maybe?”
Kri glowered. “While your friends fight the demons in our stead? While Vestapalk sends new minions to unearth whatever secrets this tower holds? While the abyssal plague spreads across the worlds? Of course! Take your time! Enjoy yourself.”
Albanon felt his face flush crimson, and he turned away from the old priest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Clearly. Remember our mission, Albanon. We have to understand our adversary if we are to defeat him. Shara and Uldane are depending on us.”
“I … I suppose I’ll visit the library now.”
Kri nodded, and Albanon slunk back down the stairs. He paused outside the doorway leading into the library and peered back up at the dome. Kri was still standing on the gallery, bony hands clenched around the thin railing, staring up at the depiction of the Vast Gate.
