Mad Toffad's Keep

by Zack Finley

  We approached the broken entrance gates with caution. I juiced up my fire blast to increase its heat substantially. I thought it might make a big difference against the glappners. We equipped ourselves with a force field air bubble around our heads with a substantial fire shield. Argon took charge of maintaining our air supply and backing me up.

  We didn't know whether fire would work, but I intended to use my fire blast like a flamethrower. I could also fill the rooms with lava if needed.

  A glappner was hanging upside down at the top of the gate. I couldn't see it at first, but Argon spotlighted it for me. I hit it dead on, with a stream of sizzling fire that splashed to impact the door and the stone surrounding the opening. The glappner dropped to the ground and began scurrying away. My flame stream followed it, while I continued boosting the flame temperature. I was struggling to imagine hotter and hotter temperatures, finally grabbing plasma from the sun. The glappner exploded. The stone behind him began to melt. I cut off the stream, pulled the temperature, and chilled the area.

  Two down. Hundreds to go?

  We crept toward the door, scanning around us for glappners. I sent up a series of high-intensity lights to reveal any hidden glappners. I blocked the open corridor with a stone barrier to contain any glappners that hadn't left their lair. I did the same for the down ramp and stairwell. I wanted to ensure no glappners got behind us.

  We didn't know if any escaped into the keep.

  All that was left of the glappner I fried was some purplish ashes and sloughed stonework.

  We began searching the office areas. The small offices, jumbled furniture, and broken doors made it difficult to search thoroughly. A small glappner jumped Argon. I lopped its head off with my kukri before it could enfold her with its sticky web. The close quarters made using fire magic problematic. We were prepared to use our blades.

  Argon had her force blade spell at the ready. My kukri was in my right hand.

  I didn't want to leave the body to rot or feed other glappners, so I tried something I hadn't attempted before. I banished the body using flesh magic. It worked, and the magic cost was minimal. Good to know.

  By the time we left the office area, we knew we didn't want to clean it out a second time. I built a temporary stone wall around it to keep it secure.

  I filled the gate from the main keep with conjured stone for the same reason.

  We remained on guard and started toward the ramp. I chose to start the extermination at the top gate for one reason; I just hated fighting uphill.

  I banished a large door in the wall I put on the ramp and tossed out several flares. We didn't go through the door until we'd both verified no glappner was dangling in the ramp area. Argon conjured stone to refill the door behind us. We hugged the outside wall with our heads swiveling up, down, right, and left.

  The stark light of the flare left few shadows. We'd discovered glappners were hard to see even in bright light. Argon was pulling on her animal mental powers hard. She still couldn't sense anything in the port area with us.

  I dialed back my flamethrower slightly not wanting to melt the stone. I widened the flames and sprayed up the right side and onto the ceiling. Argon was watching for any movement at the edge of the flame pattern.

  "There!" Argon sent a mental picture showing the outline of a glappner on the ceiling while sending a fireball at her target. A black distorted crablike creature fell to the floor. We sprayed it with fire until it was ash.

  I finished toasting the rest of the surfaces until we were convinced we'd cleared this level. We walled in the down ramp and the stairwell area between us and the lower levels. I pulled the heat from the stone around us.

  We repeated the operation three more times but spotted no more glappners.

  On the bottom floor, we filled the outside door with stone on our way out.

  We reported to our partners the crisis was contained and everyone could stand down. Tobron joined Argon and me as we examined the area inside the keep along the port building and adjacent wall for signs of glappners.

  "Where are the rest of those things?" I asked Tobron. "We only killed four."

  "They are still dormant," he said cheerfully. "That is better than the alternative. We aren't the first place to have an infestation of these vile creatures."

  "It wouldn't be so bad if we could detect them. We had to hit the last one with a strong fire blast to even spot it," said Argon. "If we can't find a better way to get rid of these we are going to be tied up dealing with them forever."

  "I could flood the place with lava," I said, "but I'm worried about the thermal stresses that would cause on our port area. Do we even know lava will kill them when they are in their undead state, or will it just char them until they wake up later?"

  "All good questions," Tobron said. "I've sent an alert to my buddies and hope to hear back from them soon. I can't remember where I learned about glappners. I suspect one of them talked about them over a brew."

  Tobron thought dormant glappners infested many warehouse levels. It would depend on where the death cult altar was. He was sure they started at the altar and spread out from there.

  Tobron wanted us to stand down on our glappner hunt until he heard from his friends. After our glappner experience, we decided to block all open tunnels under Toffad's Keep immediately.

  The labyrinths under the palace were the only open tunnels Tobron was aware of.

  We walked the boulevard leading from the port complex to Toffad's palace. As we'd seen from our earlier trip, the boulevard turned well after the palace and connected to the southern gate.

  As we approached the palace, Tobron and I marveled at the advanced construction techniques Toffad used. It impressed Tobron more today than it had 50 years ago. As a young mage, he had focused more on the upcoming combat than the innovative construction.

  At 10 stories high, the palace was the largest structure in Toffad's Keep. It stretched four blocks along the boulevard and two blocks deep. The upper levels were not as wide or deep and shot up from the base. The base was two stories high. The main tower wasn't the blocky structure I associated with Jaloan architecture but had rounded corners. The top five floors had balconies jutting out from all four sides. Tobron wanted to examine their design. Archways were the main architectural element adorning the three stories above the base's roof. Glass-like surfaces covered one-third of the building. This was also very unusual in Jaloa. Most Jaloan buildings had some glass but only in a very limited role. Jaloans made up for this with indoor lighting. After seeing this, I vowed to use more glass. Of course, mainstream Jaloans might have a point since much of the glass in the base of the palace was in shards on the ground.

  The entrance area to the palace was a large plaza that once had fountains, gardens, and sculpture. Green soupy water now clogged the fountains and unruly plantings filled the gardens, spilling out onto the enclosing stone surfaces. Someone had used the sculptures for target practice. Several were headless and ancient projectiles had pockmarked the heads of others.

  Some areas of stone bulged upward, which Tobron blamed on clogged expansion joints. He thought if we cleared the joints, they'd settle back into place.

  Toffad must have liked arches because the windows and doors were archways entering the palace proper. The ground floor resembled a hotel lobby. Toffad had not designed this area for defense; he had designed it to welcome people and nature inside. Even the structural elements supporting the upper floors fit into that theme. If I hadn't been searching for them, I might have overlooked them. There was no glass remaining in any of the ground floor windows. The broken glass glittered on the floor in the sunlight with odd fragments of rainbows dancing on the walls.

  The crunch of glass shards underfoot was the main sound as we tromped into the ground floor. We were looking for the entrance to the labyrinths.

  Tobron only had a vague recollection of where the entrances were. We were lucky the mages filled the entrance of each tunnel with stone 50 years ago before mo
ving to the next one. After the final battle, none of the Klee mages had any inclination to remove the blockages to remove the cult bodies.

  It didn’t take long to find the first tunnel entrance; the Klee mages did not match the bright white stone of the original construction. As we neared the blocked entrance, there were few signs of the desperate battle fought here 50 years before. Rusted bits of metal, likely from discarded armor or broken weapons were the main remnants. Tobron said the king's guard brought out all their own casualties and any artifacts or objects they found of value.

  The Klee King's Guard lost two mages and more than 30 soldiers in the battles. At the time, the Klee commander reported the guard killed 200 death cultists. Tobron thought that number was high.

  After the battle moved underground, the mage captain worried the death mages battling in the tunnels might animate cultist corpses. He had the king's men gather all the cultist dead killed above ground in a pile. A fire mage cremated them.

  The commanders considered removing the cultist bodies from the tunnels. No one had the appetite for that after days of battle, so the guard left the cultists where they fell in the tunnels. To prevent any reanimations, the mages blocked each tunnel once the guard cleared it. Some thought this was a better idea than destroying them, hoping the death mages wasted their magic animating corpses confined in an adjacent tunnel.

  Tobron led us to the tunnel entrance where the last battle was fought. He plugged it with stone. We could tell he was reliving his last time at this place and we gave him space. There were no tracks or other signs something was using the tunnel for a lair.

  We spotted a blackened circle in the stone plaza across the boulevard in front of the palace. The bits of melted metal and grimy ashes indicated this was the cultist funeral pyre. Even 50 years later Argon sensed a malevolence there. She was sure nothing would ever grow there. She also doubted anyone should live nearby until it was cleansed.

  She doubted she had the skills to cleanse the site by herself. She vowed to seek counsel on how to rid the site of any taint. Argon insisted we cleanse it before moving many people on site.

  "It will try to corrupt spirits and may take hold in those with few protections, especially children. A malevolence of this type is insidious. It whispers to the susceptible. The longer it preys on the weak, the more likely we will see a new death cult formed. Tobron is right to be concerned about talismans or artifacts. Many of those were destroyed by fire here, but their influence was only dimmed, not erased," said Argon.

  The idea was difficult for me to understand. To me, this was just a blackened circle. I caught no whiff of evil. Had it not been for Argon, I'd have missed it.

  "Where will you find a cleaner?" I asked.

  "I'll consult with Avia's priestess in Klee. She is the strongest local god and should be able to assist. No one wants a death cult to be reborn on their turf," said Argon.

  As we turned back to the palace, for just an instant, I felt a chill and a mild reluctance to turn my back on the blackened circle. Perhaps Argon was right.

  We hurried back to the palace to rejoin Tobron.

  I picked up a chunk of glass and used my earth magic to examine it. Tobron noticed what I was doing and came over to watch. I banished it and then conjured a small square of the same material. When I tried to break the new sheet, it resisted a lot more than "normal" glass. It eventually shattered, but I was impressed with its strength.

  Patterns of the glass on the floor suggested someone removed all the furnishings before the glass was broken. If it weren't for cleaning up and restoring the broken glass, we could move right in. While there were signs of ancient bird droppings, the mage ward must have blocked the birds from returning after the battle. The exterior palace walls also had wards. They were too weak to read what they were.

  The white stone must repel dirt because it gleamed under the glass. Tobron pointed out areas where the builder used sections of darker stone for artistic contrast. Tobron and I both wanted to get a better look at the rest of the palace but set that aside for another day. Today was about making the area safe for us to move in.

  With 19 more buildings to search, we split up to look for other underground access points in the nearby buildings. Argon tied us together in a combat mind space. This allowed us to teleport to anyone's side if they raised the alarm. Tobron didn't expect us to find anything because the king's guard had searched the buildings 50 years ago. He didn't know if mages had followed up to verify there were no magically disguised areas.

  The outlying buildings were more utilitarian than the palace. Arches and open space were still major architectural features. The builders used the same gleaming white stone for all the buildings. The shortest buildings were about five stories high, and the tallest was seven stories. All were a block wide and deep. These were the boxy shapes common in Jaloan architecture, but with a lot more glass.

  The plaza was the width of the palace, about four blocks square. The street grid used wide streets every four blocks and narrow streets every two blocks radiating from the plaza. Only the plaza and the boulevard's turn south toward the keep gate interrupted the layout.

  The tallest buildings were on the boulevard next to the palace, three to the east and two to the west. The remaining buildings surrounded the plaza, with the shortest buildings along the southern edge.

  With plantings and courtyards, the builder planned this 20-building complex to form the heart of the keep with acres of room for expansion.

  The buildings were easy to enter since someone had removed all the doors. Tobron speculated they were made of metal and were sold for scrap. There was no furniture left on the ground floor of these buildings. Much of the glass remained untouched. Something about the glass resisted soil and other tarnish because the windows looked pristine.

  If there were secret underground entrances, we didn't find them. We did find much that encouraged us. While the palace was the Keep jewel, we agreed to leave it for the future. With minor modifications, any one of the outlying buildings could house everyone we now had, including the recruits from Augun, with lots of room to spare.

  We toured the building farthest from the pyre to review the modifications it would need to serve as temporary or potentially even permanent housing for our first arrivals. Tobron especially had much to consider in the coming days.

  Argon and I stood ready to tackle the glappners as soon as Tobron learned more about them. Argon planned to visit Avia’s downtown temple before dinner to make an appointment with Avia's priestess to discuss the cleansing ritual.

  I 'ported directly home. I was still cleaning my kukri and armor when Argon 'ported in.

  She’d had a fruitful meeting at Avia’s temple. The priestess agreed to meet with her tomorrow morning before breakfast. Argon was requesting a very unusual procedure and the priestess needed to consult her archives to learn more about it.

  We had just enough time for a shower and a little fooling around.

  We christened our new shower, helped by a little force magic. Argon gave it a definite thumbs' up. I could already sense her looking forward to the next one.

  Yum.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 14

  Dinner was a lively affair. The six partners were joined by Tobron’s daughter and brother plus their spouses. All who had joined the company. Earlier in the day, Inoa set up a new top-secret com network with just the six original partners for all partner-only communications. She kept the old partner network, where we'd been posting our books and memos, but renamed it as the Toffad management network. Inoa apologized for failing to account for this earlier. She suggested we use the new partner network for top secret info.

  Tobron gave each family member the oath of fealty when they joined. He also told them to consider all of our recruits as additions to the family rather than employees. Inoa helped them strengthen and recast their mind shields, while Argon and I were off fighting glappners.

  Before dinner got underway, Inoa added the
two couples, Marfo and mate Jord; Clive and mate Loma to the Toffad management network.

  "Welcome to Toffad's Keep," I sent via the new link. "We are very happy for you to join our enterprise. Do not hesitate to ask one of us for help. We have so many things in partial progress; helping you get up to speed is our number one priority. You now have access to everything we've posted, but we are still behind in putting up information to share. We are collecting teleport locations, efficient or unusual spells, book summaries, people profiles, to-do lists, supply lists, action plans, and the like. If you don't see something, ask or just post it."

  Tobron took pity on me, choosing to speak out loud. "This is a family. We will keep your secrets from those not in this family, but we have very few secrets amongst ourselves. This means spells and magic levels, too. We will be pooling our magical supplies for the good of the family. If you want gems, I'll have a bucket delivered to your new home. You need money, use it. We trust you with our money and our lives."