by C. M. Carney
“Great masters, we await your return,” the Dweller said. He dropped to one knee in supplication, and behind him, the others knelt.
Then a most unexpected thing happened. A slow, mocking clapping filled the chamber, accompanied by a sardonic, even pained laughter. The twin sounds shocked the robed cult leader as much as they did the shrouded man lurking in the shadows above. The Dweller stumbled to his feet and turned, a sputtering complaint dying behind his mask as he saw another hooded figure approach his cadre of followers. After a moment the Dweller regained some of his confidence.
“Who are you that dares interrupt this holy ceremony?” the Dweller said, but the tremble in his voice betrayed his fear.
“I am the bringer of truth. I am the doom of your masters made flesh,” the newcomer said in a voice that was both alien and familiar.
The shrouded man eased back, all instincts telling him to run. The Dwellers in the Dark were fools playing at things they could not possibly comprehend, but this newcomer was truly dangerous. The shrouded man could feel it in every fiber of his being. Where the cultists were likely mere miscreants, fools with an axe to grind against authority, this newcomer possessed an aura of pure malice.
With a herculean effort, the shrouded man remained still. Whoever this newcomer was he was the real danger. The Dweller, in his arrogance, still clung to his air of superiority. He made a brazen move forward, a despotic fool too tied up in his small ego to understand what he now faced. He ordered his followers to their feet. The six hooded forms did as commanded and flanked their master.
“You are a fraud and a fool,” the newcomer said, and even from his high perch, the shrouded man could feel the otherworldly ice of the newcomer’s voice bite into the depths of his soul.
Something is horribly wrong with this creature, the shrouded man thought.
“By the power of the Old Ones, I command you to stop where you are,” the Dweller said. To everyone’s surprise, the newcomer did just that, stopping a half dozen feet from the Dweller. Arranged around him in a semi-circle were the other cultists.
The shrouded man had to admit the Dweller’s misguided courage impressed him. He must be a true zealot, his twisted faith clouding his judgment. That courage would soon fail the Dweller as his own had begun to fail him.
Emboldened by his superior numbers the Dweller’s voice rang forth with power and authority. “Seize the defiler,” the Dweller raged, pointing a long finger at the newcomer. The cultists moved quickly, rushing forward, a dozen hands clawing and grasping for their prey.
The shrouded man could not see the Dweller’s face due to the nightmarish mask, but he could see the shock in the man’s body language as those dozen hands grasped him instead of the newcomer. The Dweller sputtered in fear, but only one word formed.
“How?”
The newcomer walked up to the Dweller and with a wave of his hand the Dweller’s mask turned to silver gray smoke and flowed away, taken by a nonexistent wind. The shrouded man could now see the Dweller’s face, but he did not know the man. Hardly surprising, there were thousands of people living in Sylvan Aenor.
The newcomer moved closer to the cult leader and raised his head, giving the Dweller a glimpse of the face hidden in the shadows. The Dweller’s body began to spasm as he tried with every bit of his might to pull away, but the six pairs of hands that held him were like chains of iron.
“I will show you the truth of the masters you serve.” The newcomer took the Dweller’s head in his hands, forcing his eyes to remain open. Static filled the air, and the shrouded man could feel the power of primal magic building.
The Dweller’s opened his mouth to scream, his eyes widening in horror and madness, but no sound came out. It was as if what he saw was so terrible that it had robbed him of voice and breath alike.
The shrouded man recoiled as a rush of oily darkness flush with madness pulsed around the room. Every instinct told him to run, but he held fast and watched as the newcomer traced a claw-like fingernail down the side of the Dweller’s face. Tears formed unbidden in the cult leader’s eyes, trailing rivulets down his suddenly ashen skin.
“I must apologize for being rude,” the newcomer said. “You asked me a question, and I did not answer.” He turned from the Dweller, now facing towards the shrouded man. The silver flames back-lit the newcomer, cloaking his features. The shrouded man thanked the gods for small blessings and felt like a coward. After all, he was here to gather information, and what could be more important than identifying this daemon on two legs.
“It was the wine,” the newcomer continued. “Why do you zealots always use wine in your ceremonies? It is so cliche. But I thank you for it. Your predictability was helpful. I had my servant spike your wine with a concoction of my own creation. It dulls your resistance to my abilities.” The newcomer took the chin of one of the other cultists in his hand as if he was telling the Dweller which of his people had betrayed him. “And makes you more pliable.”
Behind the newcomer, the Dweller looked at his betrayer and then began to spasm. His mouth opened and closed in a panic like a man drowning. The newcomer turned back to the choking man and cocked his head to one side, a gesture of surprise and mild irritation.
“Odd?” the newcomer said. “Are you trying to fight it?”
The Dweller jerked violently and coughed. It was the first sound to come from the man’s mouth since his desperate question, and this time it came with a spray of crimson blood. The Dweller spasmed again as silent agony shook his body.
The newcomer spread his hands apart in a casual gesture, and his new minions released the Dweller. His body fell in a heap as blood gushed from his mouth in silent spurts. After a few moments the twitching ceased. The newcomer nudged the corpse idly with his boot.
“Well, that was unexpected,” the newcomer said and motioned to the two largest cultists. They dragged the corpse to the back of the chamber and dumped it in a heap. “It is time.” The cultists scattered like insects, disappearing through passageways and doors the shrouded man had not even seen until the cultists ran through them.
Alone, the newcomer turned back towards the one-eyed visage of the arboleth. He held out a hand, and one of the braziers flew to him. After considering the flickering silver flames for a moment, he tossed the brazier at the tentacled statue. It exploded, turning the darkness into a raging flare of shimmering gray brightness. The newcomer walked up to the icon and traced a finger across the otherworldly beast’s eye. The flames did not seem to harm him.
“I am your reckoning,” the newcomer said to the statue. “I will wipe your kind from all the Realms, and usher in a new era.” As if to certify his vow, the newcomer thrust his hands outward, and a wave of barely visible force erupted from them and slammed into the stone aberration, splitting its visage in two before it crashed to the ground in a heap of broken stone.
Then the newcomer turned, pulled down his hood and stared directly at the shrouded man’s hiding spot. An itch grew at the back of the shrouded man’s head as oily tentacles of fear dredged through his mind. He tried to scream, but terror paralyzed him.
For long moments the horror transfixed the shrouded man as the spiny tendrils of the dread abomination’s mind dug into him. Then he remembered who he was, a warrior of the El’Edryn, whose ancestors had fought the Dark Ascendency and pushed them from this realm. Through pure force of will, he tore his gaze from the dread creature, turned and ran.
He bounced off walls and tripped over loose rocks, each time getting up again and running. His ears thundered with blood, and he feared his heart would burst, but then, ahead, he saw the blue glow of the moon, a harbinger of safety and he ran harder.
He was so close to freedom, but then the chortles of the cultists' laughter flowed over him, and he knew he would not escape, knew the city of slumbering innocents would go unwarned.
As his enemies closed in, a scream tore from his throat, one last, desperate warning for those who slumbered above.
In the
city above, the solitary figure of a woman stopped and listened, imagining she had heard something. After a moment, she shrugged her shoulders and continued her journey home. It was just the wind, she convinced herself.
2
The valley was wondrous. Verdant green grass flowed in every direction, spreading through a dozen varieties of trees that did not exist back on Earth. Some were silver-barked and tall, others were thick-trunked wonders whose umbrella of colorful leaves blanketed the world in chromatic beauty. The chirps of birdsong flowed through the canopy.
Gryph felt at peace and inhaled deeply. His time in the Barrow made him see how precious something as simple as the sounds of birds could be. The valley reminded him of the Swiss Alps, if the same mind who’d created the wondrous land of Oz had painted the Alps. After the horror of the Barrow King and the humbling shock of facing Aluran, it had been a welcome salve to Gryph’s mind and his soul.
Wick and Tifala were inseparable, reminding Gryph of the reunion of a soldier and her husband after the war. As he had then Gryph smiled, his heart filling with both genuine happiness for his new friends and profound sadness at how alone he felt in this world, despite his new friends. Where are you Brynn?
Gryph’s mind flashed back to his arrival in the Realms. He had come to find his sister, to save her from a tech billionaire turned despot. He had known next to nothing about MMORPG, gaming in general or the tropes of fantasy when he’d entered the game that had turned not be a game at all.
Everything had gone to crap from the moment he’d landed face down in this odd universe of magic and possibility. He’d lost Lex, his only guide. He’d faced off against demons, lizards that walked and talked, and long dead men. He’d died not once, but twice. But I learned and leveled and made friends. And we made it here.
Despite all odds, they’d escaped the Barrow and all lived to tell the tale. Even that damn imp Xeg had made it through. It was an outcome that defied logic, and a part of Gryph, who had never been a religious man, felt the hand of providence on him. As if sensing his mood, Ovyrm clapped a firm hand onto Gryph’s shoulder and squeezed. The look the men exchanged was one of relief and surprise.
“I cannot believe that idiotic plan worked,” Gryph said.
“The Realms are a strange place, my friend,” Ovyrm said. “And you made a good plan.”
“We all played our part.”
As if sensing Gryph was uncomfortable with the praise, the tall, gray-skinned xydai looked up to the sky where the sun had just dipped towards the horizon. “This is a good place to make camp.”
Gryph almost protested. He wanted to find a farm or a town, someone who could tell them where they were. How close are we to Brynn? Gryph thought. He looked back at the adjudicator with the piercing yellow eyes he now found oddly comforting and nodded. “You’re right. We need the rest. And this place is beautiful.”
“It is perfect. So different from where I come from.” The xydai’s lips curled up into a sad smile, and he walked to the edge of the small clearing. He sat atop a moss-covered boulder, eased his crimson metal saber from its scabbard and tended to the weapon. Precisely what it was made of and what it did was one of the thousand questions that burned at the back of Gryph’s mind, but he knew the answers could wait.
“Wick, Tifala, we’re going to camp here for the night.”
Wick gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. “The lady and I want our own tent. We have some urgent business that needs tending to.” His grin did not fade, even when Tifala punched him in the gut.
Gryph smiled and said back “We have tents?”
“Shit,” the blue-haired gnome said, and Gryph had to laugh at both his friend’s adoption of Earth swears and the genuine sullenness that crossed his suddenly youthful face.
“We have something better,” Tifala said, and she closed her eyes, and began a low murmuring chant. Her hands and fingers moved in intricate patterns as she began to cast.
Watching Tifala cast made Gryph’s eyes go wide in joy. He still hadn’t got used to the fact that the Realms was a place built on magic. As he eased himself down, back to a tree clad in an unearthly silver blue bark, he pondered this strange universe. He’d been under such constant and horrifying attack since entering the Realms he'd had no time to consider the wondrous insanity of it all.
I am in another world, another universe, Gryph thought to himself. It doesn’t seem real. He looked about him drinking in the beauty of the world. Not only were the trees more magnificent than any he’d seen on Earth, but the small creatures flitting among their branches were equally strange. Despite the trilling birdsong coming from the tiny flying creatures, he discovered they were not birds at all, or at least not like any bird he’d ever seen.
One of the singsong creatures landed on a branch near Gryph and stared down upon him. It looked for all the world like a small blue salamander had taken the bipedal form of a man. It stood on the branch, large eyes staring unblinkingly at Gryph. It shook the four clear wings that sprouted from its back and Gryph got the impression that the tiny creature was both curious and irritated. The light passing through the wing membranes shimmered all the colors of the rainbow, reminding Gryph of a dragonfly.
He used Analyze.
Blue Skinned Lutin: Level 3 H: 23/ S: 17/ M: 33/ SP: 0
Blue Skinned Lutins are distant relatives of Pixies and like their cousins are fond of mischief. While they lack the mental faculties, culture, and intellectual capacity to be considered truly sentient, they are lovers of the wild places of nature and consider the sentient bipedal races to be irritating pests. Most sentient races have the same opinion of Lutins, who have been known to steal the hair from man and beast alike.
Strengths: Unknown. Immunities: Unknown. Weaknesses: Unknown.
Gryph pulled his dagger from the sheath at his waist. The lutin jerked backward, hiding behind a branch. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Gryph said, having no idea if the creature understood him. He moved his dagger slowly up and cut a lock of his long, silver hair. He returned the blade to its home and tied a small knot securing the individual strands. He held the bunch up to the flitting creature.
It stared down upon him with an unmistakable look of greed and jumped from branch to branch coming ever closer to Gryph. It cocked its head from side to side, its wide green eyes hungry and its tiny, three-fingered hands grasping.
“It’s okay,” Gryph said with a nod and a smile. The creature took to the air, hovering a few feet above Gryph. Its eyes went from him to the strands of hair and back to him. Gryph nodded again and then in a blur of motion the lutin sped down, grabbed the bunch and zipped back to its branch. A trill of pure pleasure erupted from the small creature, and it flitted off faster than Gryph could follow.
“You’re in for it now,” Wick said with an undertone of laughter.
Gryph turned towards his friend. “What do you mean?”
With a grin and a nod, Wick sent his eyes skyward. Gryph looked up to see a cloud of lutins looking down upon him. He smiled at the group of multicolored flying little men for a moment, but then they swarmed.
Gryph was suddenly surrounded by a haze of trilling song and lightly humming wings. His hair moved up and around him in a halo of silver as the cloud of lutins pulled his hair to and fro. “Ahh,” Gryph screamed in panic, feeling mildly claustrophobic as dozens of the tiny creatures snipped strands and flew away with their prizes. He swatted at them, but they easily dodged his clumsy attempts to defend himself.
Gryph’s mind flashed back to a time when he was in his teens and Brynn had wanted to play hairdresser. The haphazard chopping his sister had given his hair had taken weeks to grow out. This time, Gryph somehow knew it would be worse.
Wick was laughing at him and he decided that the pesky gnome deserved a thrashing if he ever extricated himself from this rainbow cloud of amateur stylists. Just as Gryph started to panic, a warm pulse of air flowed over him and pushed the lutins away like tumbleweeds in a breeze.
“Aw, Tif, you c
ouldn’t give them a few more minutes?” Wick said through his chortles of laughter.
Gryph stood, rage battling embarrassment as he flitted away a few more imaginary lutins. His heartbeat calmed, and his eyes snapped to Wick. The gnome couldn’t contain himself, and his laughter forced him to bend over, one finger held aloft in a ‘give me a moment’ gesture.
