The Temple of Yellow Skulls

by Don Bassingthwaite

  The anger that Tiktag had felt melted into confusion and he sat back from Albanon. “Demons? No, that’s not … Vestapalk can’t be a demon. The visions and omens sent by the Eye promised he would be transformed—”

  “The Eye,” said Albanon. “The Elder Elemental Eye?” Tiktag blinked and nodded. Albanon grimaced. “The Voidharrow came into the world under the guidance of the Eye. Tiktag, this is the transformation that the Eye promised Vestapalk. This is what was supposed to happen to him.”

  Tiktag stared at him. His guts felt as though they had been ripped out. His heart felt as though it had fallen though the hole where his guts had been. If all of this had been the Eye’s plan for Vestapalk all along, then his mighty master had just been a pawn.

  “Why?” he asked. “It can’t be. I read the omens from the Eye, too. Vestapalk would take a new form and a new age would come to the world.”

  Albanon’s eyes opened wide and he sat up. “A new age? What kind of a new age?”

  “An age of chaos—an age that Vestapalk would rule in his new form.” Tiktag curled his tail around his body and scratched at the scales. “This is wrong. The omens said nothing about demons!”

  The color had drained out of Albanon’s face. “Did the omens say anything else about this new age, Tiktag?”

  Tiktag clenched his jaw and found himself trying to shake his head and nod at the same time. “No. Yes. Not the omens I read, but when Vestapalk woke after his transformation had begun, he said that the Voidharrow”—Tiktag tried to recall his master’s words—“that the Voidharrow would transform him and he would transform the world.”

  “Transform the world,” Albanon repeated. “Moon of the Feywild, that’s why he’s spreading the disease of the Voidharrow.” He looked at Tiktag sharply. “Do you know what he’s planning to do next?”

  Tiktag left off scratching his tail. “I don’t know what he plans anymore. Raid wants him to use the power of the golden skulls to restore the temple of the Elemental Eye. I don’t think he will. Vestapalk doesn’t talk about the Eye as much. He says it served its purpose and its only role now is to watch. He only talks about the Voidharrow now.”

  Albanon wrinkled his nose, then asked, a little more softly, “Do you know when he’s going to try turning the Voidharrow against his prisoners?”

  The wyrmpriest shook his head again. “I think he wants Raid to gather more first.”

  “Well, that’s something.” Albanon let out his breath in a sigh, then looked at him. “Tiktag, my friends are trying to stop the Voidharrow from spreading. They need to know what Vestapalk has planned. I don’t know if they’re coming to rescue me, but if they do, Raid’s going to be waiting for them. He’ll kill them. Or capture them and infect them with the Voidharrow, too.” He dropped his voice to the barest whisper. “Will you help me escape?”

  Tiktag froze at the suggestion. “I serve Vestapalk,” he said—but as soon as the words left his tongue, he knew that his heart was no longer behind them. He had stood by Vestapalk as the Voidharrow ravaged him, only to have his master turn to other servants. He had stayed with Vestapalk when it seemed his transformation was a curse, only to be ignored. It was blasphemy to admit it, but deep inside he knew that what Albanon had told him about his master was true. The Voidharrow had turned Vestapalk into something other than a dragon.

  Hadn’t Raid taunted him with the same words?

  Vestapalk might rule over the age that was to come, but it would be an age without room for wyrmpriests and kobolds.

  Unless Tiktag accepted the blessing Vestapalk had once offered him and became like his master. He had followed Vestapalk into the gaze of the Elemental Eye. Why not continue to follow him? Because he had seen what Raid had gone through. Because he didn’t want to become like Raid or the brutes. Or Vestapalk.

  But to defy his master and help Albanon escape.… Tiktag looked up at the eladrin.

  The sudden angry roar of a brute in the distance broke into his dilemma.

  Albanon’s head snapped up. Tiktag’s twitched around to search for the guards patrolling the pit—and found them all looking in the direction of that first angry roar. More roars were spreading through the night, rousing the other prisoners as well. The brutes ignored them.

  “Tiktag!” Albanon whispered urgently. He twisted around to present his bound hands. “Help me! Those are my friends coming for me!”

  Suspicion gnawed at Tiktag’s guts. “No,” he said. As Albanon gasped and gaped at him, he grabbed the gag and shoved it into the eladrin’s mouth, then jerked the hood back over his head. Albanon let out a muffled protest. Tiktag put his mouth close to his hood-covered ear. “Unless your friends are attacking from the heart of the ruins, those aren’t them.”

  Another roar broke over the ruins, louder than any other. Tiktag didn’t recognize the words, but he knew the voice. Vestapalk had been roused to anger. The prisoners in the pit went still and silent. The brutes, however, answered with roars of their own and, without a backward glance, went racing for the steep ramp.

  Tiktag hesitated for only an instant—then leaped to the rough wall behind Albanon and dug fingers and toes into its rough surface, scaling it faster than a hatchling. Who would dare attack Vestapalk? The distraction might have been a good time to try freeing Albanon, but not if it meant facing an unknown enemy in the process. At the top of the wall, Tiktag dove for the nearest shadow and pressed himself into it. He scanned the darkness, and when nothing moved nearby, darted away from the pit. He stuck with the low cracks and narrow crevices of the ruins, using his small size to his advantage, as he headed for Vestapalk’s courtyard.

  It was a good decision because there were other creatures in the shadows. Tiktag spotted the first of them just moments after leaving the pit behind. Black skin, white hair, dark swords—the drow that Vestapalk had so casually dismissed had come to call.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The ruins rose up before Nu Alin, dark stone against a moon-silvered sky—at least through the eyes of Apech the minotaur. To Nu Alin’s own senses, they blazed with the glory of the Voidharrow. A shiver of excitement passed through him. To be back in the presence of the Voidharrow after spending so long in pursuit of its power was intoxicating.

  And not even during the first few moments of his rebirth from the husk of Albric had its presence been so powerful. It nearly blinded him, like squinting into the sun. Wherever the Voidharrow had taken root, it was thriving.

  For a moment, Nu Alin even felt something that he hadn’t known in a very long time: shame. It had been his responsibility to recover the Voidharrow and deliver it to the appointed place at the appointed time. He’d failed in that. Somehow the Voidharrow had still reached its chosen host, not because of his efforts but in spite of them.

  He clenched Apech’s teeth and thrust the thought back, locking it away as he had locked away the minotaur. He refused to wallow in self-doubt. This was not a time for regret. It was a time for triumphant celebration. Nu Alin lifted Apech’s head. He was the Herald. He had brought the Voidharrow into the world. He was its greatest servant and he would stand before it in the age to come!

  Confident once more, he strode into the ruins. With the Voidharrow so near, he no longer had the same clear sense of it that had guided him across the Nentir Vale. No matter—it was in the ruins and he would find it. There would be signs to mark the way.

  He saw the first just steps into the ruins. Still as a statue among the tumbled heaps of ancient stone stood another of his kind.

  Not exactly another of his kind, of course—from the moment the Voidharrow had claimed him, Nu Alin had known that he would be unique among its servants—but certainly another who had been transformed by the Voidharrow. As tall as Apech, but broader and more muscular, with four strong arms and armor across its shoulders, the other could have put up a challenging fight if it chose to. It didn’t. Nu Alin had a sense that the creature was more muscle than mind, a mere warrior in the service of the Voidharrow. Recognition flicke
red in it tiny eyes as it sensed him within the minotaur’s body. It lowered its head in submission to the greater power.

  He moved on. His extended senses picked out more of the hulking brutes scattered amid the nearby ruins, positioned in such a way that suggested a more agile mind at work. The Voidharrow had created something greater than just minions, then. He recalled the wondrous moments after Albric and his followers had first joined with the Voidharrow, the incredible explosion of forms and powers that had manifested—

  He was so caught up in his memories that the first enraged roar caught him by surprise. It came from deep among the ruins. All of the brutes around Nu Alin turned as one and looked toward the sound. Another roar followed, then another and another—the sounds of the attack on the Voidharrow’s, Nu Alin guessed, but not dying as quickly as they were intended to. Rage rose inside him. Who would dare attack them here at the heart of the Voidharrow’s power?

  Then another roar broke over the ruins, far louder than the first and far more compelling. There were no words in its strange double tone—half bestial, half strangely crystalline—but there was a command. Attack! Kill! Destroy!

  The brutes around Nu Alin bellowed in response and broke into a lumbering run, charging for the heart of the ruins. The commanding roar swept Nu Alin up as well. It flooded his being with ecstasy and sent him racing alongside the brutes—then ahead of them, his desire for speed shredding Apech’s flesh.

  Strange bursts of purple light flashed among the darkness, outlining four-armed soldiers and flashing briefly on the smaller figures that whirled around them. Nu Alin recognized the graceful, deadly movements of drow. The dark elves wove a lethal dance around the larger soldiers, evading heavy blows with ease and thrusting deep with sharp blades. Here and there, monstrous spiders joined in the attack.

  The spiders seemed to have more success against the brutes than the drow. Stabbing blades and flashing lights only appeared to anger the hulking figures. The spiders, some as large as the Voidharrow’s warriors, closed and grappled with their opponents, matching six limbs with eight. Nu Alin reached the edge of the fighting and watched a spider force a bellowing brute to the ground so that a pair of drow could finally finish it.

  A growl rumbled out of his throat. He lowered Apech’s massive head and poured his own speed and strength into a charge. The drow turned at the sound and leaped out of the way, but the big spider wasn’t so lucky. Nu Alin crashed into it. Apech’s horns crunched into the creature’s abdomen and warm goo cascaded over him. The spider squealed and struggled, the legs that not been broken by Nu Alin’s charge lashing at him with tips as hard and sharp as swords. Nu Alin twisted and lifted. The spider was heavier than he’d expected, but he got it into the air and flung it away, Apech’s horns ripping its abdomen further.

  The spider went tumbling across the ground until it hit a ruined wall. With only three of eight legs still working, it scrambled to escape, dragging its collapsed and oozing abdomen behind it. Nu Alin whirled on the two drow. Both looked shaken, but one held a slim crossbow in her hand. She steadied it and took aim.

  Nu Alin saw the flicker of the bolt as it leaped from the weapon—then Apech’s vision vanished in sudden, searing pain. An excellent shot, through the eye and into the brain. The minotaur’s body staggered and grew heavy. Nu Alin kept him upright, a puppet of dying meat, and turned him toward the drow. He clenched his teeth and sent his liquid crystal form bubbling out around the shaft of the crossbow bolt.

  One of the drow turned and fled instantly. The other, the one who had killed Apech, dropped another bolt into her crossbow and took aim again.

  Nu Alin crossed the space between before she could squeeze the trigger. A blow from his host’s left fist shattered her right arm. Apech’s right hand seized her by the throat and squeezed. White eyes opened wide in an instant of agony before Nu Alin crushed the life out of her and tossed her corpse aside. With Apech’s body so much dead meat around him, he might have taken her as a new host, but in the middle of battle there would be many other opportunities. He extended his senses, searching for the nearest suitable host—and discovered something unexpected.

  For the amount of chaos they were causing, there were far fewer drow than there should have been. There were plenty of spiders, to be sure, but less than a dozen drow, and from what he could tell, they were only trying to torment the soldiers, not kill them in earnest. The dim-witted brute warriors hadn’t realized they were being toyed with.

  Nor, it seemed, had another presence he felt not too far away, raging like a barbarian and invested with a far greater portion of the Voidharrow’s strength than the brutes. Another exarch. Nu Alin felt the presence’s power pulse and flow, turning the spiders around him against their drow masters. Perhaps the other exarch possessed the agile mind that had positioned the soldiers, though clearly it was not agile enough to recognize a distraction. Nu Alin turned, pushing his senses against the pervasive brightness of the Voidharrow’s power.

  And he found what he was looking for: Other groups of drow moving through the ruins, away from the chaos. The drow were looking for something. The Voidharrow?

  Apech was of no further use to him. Nu Alin forced himself out of the minotaur’s corpse, shedding it like the shell that it was. The pressure of the world on his naked form was painful. Flowing like silvery-red water through the moonlight, he went after the nearest group of drow.

  They argued, as drow usually did, in voices that they probably thought too low for other ears to hear but that Nu Alin’s strange senses caught with ease.

  “For the last time, Ivriashalal, trying to kill the dragon is just suicide,” said a male in long robes embroidered with shimmering webs and arcane patterns. “If we steal the sack of skulls, we can flee. The dragon can’t follow us below ground.”

  The drow who answered was female, with spiders decorating her armor and a whip on her belt. A priest of the drow’s spider god, Lolth, Nu Alin suspected. “But the creatures that serve it can follow, and now that we’ve attacked, it knows we’re here. It must die,” she said. Even whispering, there was nothing soft about her voice. “Looking for your skulls was only part of this expedition, Larcees. The dragon has taken a lair in the entrance of a potential route between the surface and the Underdark. Our duty is clear. The plan will not be altered. Be thankful I give you the chance to take your precious skulls as well.”

  Larcees looked indignant. “They’re not just ‘my precious skulls.’ They’re legendary. The power in them could be …” His face twisted in frustration and he looked to another male, this one wielding a jagged greatsword shrouded—to Nu Alin’s senses—with the dark energy of a warlock’s fell power. “You tell her.”

  The warlock looked at him like he was insane. “I think you’re both wrong. We need to go back to the City of Palls for proper reinforcements—not just a commandeered border patrol and a pack of spiders.”

  Both Larcees and Ivriashalal bristled at the suggestion. “We do it now,” said the priest. “The glory—”

  “And the skulls!” added Larcees.

  “—will be ours, Quarhaun.”

  The warlock just rolled his white eyes.

  The Eye looked kindly on him, Nu Alin thought. He’d stumbled on to the leaders of the attack. The drow spoke strangely accented Elven, which he understood, though their words were a mystery to him. Skulls? A dragon? He grasped what the drow intended readily enough, however—and saw the flaw in their intentions. As intelligent as they considered themselves, they clearly had no real idea of what they faced. It had been a dragon’s roar that had sent the four-armed soldiers and Nu Alin racing into combat. If the Voidharrow had truly taken possession of a dragon, what a world the next age would see!

  But first he needed to return to a host, and a drow would serve very well. Not one of the bickering leaders, though. He picked out a female in the rear of the skulking party who carried two swords and looked like she knew how to use them.

  Nu Alin took her much as he had tak
en Apech, though far more quickly. He slithered ahead of the party to the end of a ruined wall, then as the drow passed, he reached out and seized his chosen host. One pseudopod covered her face to prevent her from crying out. Two more seized her arms and bound them to her side. A fourth, anchored to the wall, dragged both her and Nu Alin out of sight. It only took a moment for Nu Alin to take possession of her body. He was not gentle. When he locked the drow into the back of her mind, she was screaming with pain and terror.

  He stepped out from the shadow of the wall only a few paces behind the rest of the party—just far enough behind for one of the others to look back, scowl, and murmur, “Keep up, Eklabet!” before turning away again.

  Nu Alin smiled to himself and hurried to catch up.

  The sounds of the battle deep in the ruins followed them, the screams of drow beginning to match the roar of soldiers. Nu Alin caught a hardening of Ivriashalal’s expression and the look of concern that passed between Larcees and Quarhaun. “We should hurry,” Larcees said to the priest.

  “We can do nothing until the others are in position. And if the dragon thinks his creatures have the upper hand, so much the better,” Ivriashalal answered. But she did glance over her shoulder. “Are we close, Diue?”

  “Just ahead,” said the drow who had looked back for Eklabet. She moved forward to point the way to cover. Nu Alin found himself looking out, along with the others, on a wide courtyard amid the ruins.

  A dragon paced the courtyard—and once again, what Nu Alin saw through his host’s eyes and what he saw with his own senses were very different things. Eklabet saw a green dragon, strangely lean and disfigured by some disease that left its scales reddened and oozing.

  Nu Alin saw his new master, full of strength, power, and the Voidharrow. It was all he could not to break down with joy, to draw his swords and slaughter the pathetic lesser beings around him in a bloody offering to the one who would begin the new age.