The Temple of Yellow Skulls

by Don Bassingthwaite

  It took effort but Tiktag pushed back the call.

  He’d thought he could save his master, but Vestapalk had never been in danger. The dragon had embraced his transformation. The only one Tiktag had failed to save was himself. He had tried to fight the Voidharrow when he realized Albanon and the drow were doing the same thing, but he’d been too late. The part of him that was Tiktag hung above the maw that was a demon.

  How much longer did he have? For now, he was still here. For now, he was still Tiktag. He could still fight.

  I do not want this, he screamed into the silence of his mind, I do not want to be like Vestapalk! I reject him. I reject the Voidharrow!

  “I will not be rejected. I will not be denied. I am Raid. Challenge me and die!”

  Tiktag’s head snapped up at the words. Raid stood like a giant, confident and strong. Albanon, Shara, and Uldane fought back to back with the drow and the human priest, surrounded by brutes, spiders, and Raid. They were like him, Tiktag realized, holding their own but only until they fell. More like him than he could ever have hoped to be like Vestapalk.

  The first time Tiktag had seen Raid, a part of him had hated the man’s strength. His ability to challenge even Vestapalk. Tiktag remembered wondering if he’d ever be able to challenge a dragon himself.

  But he had done that, hadn’t he? He’d resisted Vestapalk and the Voidharrow. He was stronger than he thought.

  And he wasn’t finished fighting yet.

  Albanon’s gut dropped as the demon that had been Tiktag moved for the first time.

  What had it been waiting for? Thin crystal wings spread and blurred as it leaped into the battle. Something unfurled from behind the demon’s shoulder—long, lashing, grasping tentacles. Albanon’s gut dropped even further.

  Until the tentacles wrapped themselves around Raid’s arms. The bigger demon cursed and turned, but Tiktag pulled back, hauling him off balance.

  And for the moment, out of combat.

  Albanon caught the flicker of a glance from Tiktag’s single eye. As Shara and Kri—Uldane had joined Quarhaun holding off the spiders—blinked at the sight of one demon fighting another, the eladrin clenched his jaw. “Don’t let up!” he shouted. “He’s helping us!” Wishing he had his staff now, he conjured a bolt of silvery force from the air and hurled it at the nearest brute. The thing staggered back, briefly dazed.

  Shara seized her opportunity. She swung hard, putting all of her weight behind a sweeping upward cut. Her greatsword sliced into the demon’s stomach, tore through its chest, and sheared up into its head. The creature’s skull might have been thick and armored above, but from below it was soft and vulnerable. The force of the blow snapped its head back. Shara’s sword grated along the inside of its skull plate. The demon toppled instantly.

  Raid snarled in anger. He yanked hard on the tentacles restraining him and Tiktag, smaller and lighter was dragged through the air. One tentacle let go of Raid’s arm and slapped at his face. The larger demon roared and snapped sharp teeth at it.

  Kri’s expression turned grim. He raised his holy symbol. “Let the light of the gods rise against our enemies!”

  Earthbound lightning burst between the stones of the courtyard in the same glowing web that Kri had turned against Raid once before. The remaining two brutes screamed as it crawled up their legs, drawing smoke from their flesh. Again, Shara took hold of the moment. This time her sword whirled out flat, opening the demon’s belly. The brute bellowed in agony as it sank to its knees. Albanon took the second demon: A thin blue ray darted from his finger and caught the demon right in the throat just as it was raising its head to bellow.

  The cry died inside it. Frost blossomed around its throat. The demon clawed at it, but succeeded only in raking deep gouges in its own frozen flesh. Its jaw opened and closed helplessly. Teeth clenched. Albanon sent another bolt of force right into the snapping mouth.

  The demon toppled backward with half its jaw shattered. The light of Kri’s prayer writhed over it. Behind them, the angry chittering of spiders gave way to frightened hisses, Uldane’s laughter, and the crackling of Quarhaun’s magic as he hurled it again and again. Albanon glanced over his shoulder to see the spiders in retreat from Kri’s light as well.

  The light didn’t catch Raid, though. The demon leaped high, yielding to the drag of Tiktag’s tentacles and using it to give extra power to his leap. With a strange whistling cry of distress, Tiktag tumbled back.

  Raid came down right beside him. One of his axes had fallen from his grasp as he struggled. He still had the other.

  He buried it in the center of Tiktag’s chest. Tiktag fell without another sound, crystal wings ceasing to beat, writhing tentacles falling limp. His body still heaved, though, and his single red eye stared at the weapon embedded in him.

  Raid left it there and turned to face Albanon and the others. “This … is … not … possible!” he said between his teeth. “You cannot defeat me!”

  “No?” asked Kri. “Why not? What did the Elemental Eye tell you? What did Vestapalk tell you?” The cleric’s voice was low and dangerous. “Did they promise you greatness, Hakken Raid? Did they promise you a destiny?”

  Raid’s eyes blazed. “Don’t call me Hakken!” he shouted.

  Kri shouted right back at him. “What is the secret of the Voidharrow? What is this new age that Vestapalk has declared?”

  Raid stiffened, a sneer crossing his misshapen face. “Find out for yourself,” he spat—and spun around quick as a thought. In one blurring continuous motion, he wrenched the axe from Tiktag’s chest and hurled it at Kri.

  Dark hands seized the old cleric’s arm as Quarhaun threw both Kri and himself aside. An instant later, the spinning axe whirred through the space where Kri had been. Shara snarled and turned for Raid, sword already rising.

  Raid’s response, however, struck greater fear into Albanon than the hurled axe had. The demon leaped, reaching for Shara with slashing claws, each ragged nail glittering with the Voidharrow. The two had always fought with weapons before. One scratch from Raid.…

  Albanon heard a voice as if at a great distance and almost belatedly realized that it was his. “Shara! Down!”

  The warrior’s reflexes took over. Shara broke her charge, throwing herself to the ground. Albanon thrust a hand at Raid, palm out, and pushed.

  It was a spell that Moorin had been teaching him in the days before his death. Maybe on the very day of his death. Albanon had never attempted it outside those lessons, but it felt right now, his master’s legacy.

  Unseen force raised a cloud of dust as it blasted it into the demon and hurled him across the courtyard. Raid crashed into one of the ruins’ fat pillars hard enough to bring loose stones pattering down around him. For a moment, his mismatched eyes—human and demon—blinked in a daze. Then they focused on Albanon and fury flared in them again. Raid rolled to his feet, dusty and battered but still willing to fight.

  “I will not,” he growl, “be denied!”

  Albanon stared at him, bare chest heaving, misshapen face bloodied—and clenched his jaw. “You keep saying that. But you know what? It’s not going to stop me from doing it.”

  Raid’s eyes—all of them—opened wide. With an enormous roar, he came leaping back across the courtyard, glittering claws ready to rake and rend.

  Grim anger tightened Albanon’s belly. They’d fought Raid twice before and ended up running from him.

  Not this time.

  The Voidharrow had escaped to infect Vestapalk because of them. He’d experienced the agony and horror of the Abyssal Plague. He couldn’t allow anyone else to suffer that. Not this time. Not ever.

  Albanon focused all of his will on Raid, let his anger build, then spread his arms and shouted words that sizzled on his tongue.

  Flames exploded around Raid. The last Albanon saw of his misshapen face, it was wide with shock—then pain. His roar rose into the air as he burned. “I am Raid! I will not be denied! I will not be—”

  The words
ended in a shriek and a burst of greasy, black smoke. An instant later, Raid’s charred corpse tumbled to the ground in a spray of cinders.

  “Sorry,” said Albanon. “You have been.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Nu Alin. For a moment, he felt ill and maybe a little cold. Colder than he already felt, at least: Vestapalk flew so high that the features of the land below blurred together, so high that the horizon bent with the curve of the world.

  But the shadow wasn’t just his imagination. Vestapalk shuddered under him and Nu Alin knew that he had felt it, too. He leaned forward, pressing the frost-bitten cheek of his host to the dragon’s neck. “Master!” he called as loudly as he could. “What was that?”

  The wind whipped Vestapalk’s answer back to him. “Raid is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Vestapalk chuckled. “Don’t fear, Herald. The ocean can spare a bucket of water. Raid was nothing. He played his role. Now there are others to take his place. Vestapalk feels them. They will hasten the spread of the new age as they search for this one.”

  Nu Alin knew that what the dragon said was true. The Voidharrow was far more now than just the tiny amount Albric had first called into the world. Its power blazed so bright within Vestapalk that Nu Alin felt as if he rode a second sun across the sky. “Where are we going, master?”

  Vestapalk banked suddenly and the panorama swung before Nu Alin. Far ahead, mountains broke the smooth curve of the horizon. In the middle of them reared one in particular, a mountain with the wide flat peak and drifting smoky plume of a slumbering volcano.

  “We go,” said Vestapalk, “to plant a seed!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  They left the Temple of Yellow Skulls quickly. None of them felt like lingering.

  Before they left, however, Albanon knelt down beside Tiktag. To his amazement, the transformed kobold—Albanon had difficulty thinking of him as a demon, no matter what he looked like—moved fitfully and opened his single eye.

  “Fought,” Tiktag said. “Strong.” The deep wound in his chest pumped something like dark blood with every word. “Yes,” said Albanon. “You were strong. Your attack gave us an opening. You saved us. Raid’s dead.”

  The narrow mouth in Tiktag’s wedge-shaped head seemed too small to form a smile, but Albanon had the impression that the kobold was trying. “Vestapalk—”

  Albanon nodded. “We’ll stop him.”

  Tiktag’s hand sought Albanon’s. His grip was weak but surprisingly hot. “Was a proud dragon,” he said. “My … master.” His hand slipped away but his eye remained on Albanon. His small mouth worked as he tried to form final words. He took a shuddering breath and wheezed, “Kill me.”

  Albanon pressed his lips together, stood back, and cast a silvery bolt of force through the kobold’s head. Tiktag jerked at the impact, then lay still. Albanon turned away with regret and rage mingling inside him.

  They made a camp beside a stream in the woods outside the ruins—Uldane scowled at the stream like he was meeting an old nemesis—as the sun passed its height and settled into afternoon. Shara was the first to approach Albanon. “That was Vestapalk’s wyrmpriest,” she said.

  “Tiktag,” said Albanon. “We talked while I was Vestapalk’s prisoner. He was scared of what the Voidharrow had done to Vestapalk, too. He was going to help me escape.”

  “A kobold turning against his dragon?”

  “I don’t think he ever turned against Vestapalk. Just against the Voidharrow.”

  Shara grimaced. “Even after Vestapalk turned him into a demon?” Albanon nodded and sat back against the trunk of a tree. Shara was silent for a moment, then asked quietly. “What was it like?”

  Albanon’s guts knotted all the way up to his throat. He closed his eyes, a sensation he’d never take for granted again, then opened them and looked at the warrior. “Terrible. I know how Tempest felt after Nu Alin possessed her now.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t rescue you sooner. We had to rest before we caught up to you and Kri said—”

  He held up a hand, stopping her. “I can guess what Kri said. The fight against the Voidharrow was more important than I was. I understand.”

  Her face twitched into a smile. “Actually, no. He just kept us from rushing in too fast.”

  Albanon looked up and across their rough campsite to stare at the cleric in surprise. Kri raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Albanon felt a bit shaken. Kri had barely even acknowledged him since he’d burned Raid and the Voidharrow.

  Shara didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe we should have rushed a bit more. When we got there, you were surrounded by demons. We had to wait for an opportunity, and unfortunately that didn’t come until Vestapalk left.”

  “It was amazing!” Uldane chimed in. “You were tied up and changing and Vestapalk was making his speeches, but Kri just put his hand on his holy symbol and prayed. His god told him when it was best for us to make our move.”

  The halfling practically bounced with excitement, his old energy returned, but a question nagged at Albanon. “I thought he said that the gods refused to answer questions where the Voidharrow was concerned.”

  Shara shrugged. “Maybe Ioun relented. They say the gods favor fools.” She nudged Albanon and nodded slightly with her head. “What about him?” she said softly.

  The “him” she referred to was Quarhaun. The drow remained on the other side of the campsite as well, as far from Kri as he was from them. Pausing only long enough to retrieve a cruel looking black greatsword from among the ruins, he’d accompanied them in their departure, an unspoken ally after he had stood with them to fight off the spiders and the demons. Albanon had introduced him to the others and Quarhaun had nodded to them, but then retreated into awkward solitude. Albanon waved for him to join them. “Come sit with us. Talk.”

  Quarhaun’s expression tightened. He replied to Albanon in Elven.

  “What did he say?” Shara asked.

  The drow answered for himself. “My Common is not good,” he said with a thick accent. He rose and came over to join them, however. “I don’t speak it in the Underdark.”

  “I saw you in the temple before,” said Uldane. “Were you looking for the treasure, too?”

  Quarhaun grunted. “Bad timing for us. When we found Vestapalk in the ruins with the skulls, we decided to attack. Bad choice.”

  “Were you the only survivor of your attack?” said Shara. Quarhaun wrinkled his nose.

  “Better if I was. I sacrificed a priest of Lolth to try and escape. I didn’t think any drow saw, but someone did. She escaped. I didn’t. If I go back now—” He mimed ripping out his heart. He looked around at them. “What will you do now?”

  Albanon glanced at Shara and Uldane. Shara’s face darkened. “Vestapalk’s still alive. I want him dead.” She turned to Quarhaun. “He killed my father and the man I loved.”

  The drow nodded in understanding. Uldane, however, just seemed to sag a little.

  “Shara,” he said, “this can’t just be about Borojon and Jarren anymore. They were my friends, too, but that can’t our only reason to go after Vestapalk. He’s dangerous. He’s got demons backing him up. Look at what he did to those people in the ruins. And this new age he was going on about?”

  Shara stared him. “He killed them!” she said harshly.

  The halfling just spread his hands. “This is bigger than our revenge now.”

  “Uldane is right.”

  Albanon turned. Kri stood over them, his wrinkled face unreadable. “We need to let go of our prejudices and expectations. We need to stop thinking of vengeance and of Vestapalk as just a dragon.” He gestured for Albanon. “Follow me.”

  Kri turned away. His stomach fluttering, Albanon went after him. Kri stopped a short distance from the camp at a spot where a turn of the stream made a little pool that sparkled in the sun. The cleric stood looking down into the water for a long moment. The fluttering in Albanon’s stomach increased. “Kri, I’m sorry I sent the exarchs away after Vesta
palk. It was the only thing I could think of. If they’d stayed, they would have killed us, wouldn’t they? I didn’t think. I just needed to stop Raid and the Voidharrow—”

  “Albanon.” Kri turned to face him. “If you hadn’t gotten them away, we’d be dead and we both know it. Yes, they’ll spread the Abyssal Plague, but we still have the chance to stop it. If you hadn’t done what you could, we wouldn’t be here at all. The Order of Vigilance—such as it is—lives because of your quick thinking. And what’s more, you stood up to me when I confronted you. I respect that. You’re growing.”

  “I’m—? You—?” Albanon blinked in surprise. He tried to smile, but found he couldn’t. “Kri, we failed. Vestapalk is out there somewhere just dripping with the Voidharrow. He has exarchs on the loose, and all we’ve managed to do is kill Raid and a few brute demons. It feels like we’ve completely let down the memory of the Order.”

  “Don’t say that.” The cleric shook his head. “You did a lot, Albanon. We know more than we did because of you—and you were willing to sacrifice yourself for the cause. I’d say that shows tremendous respect for the Order.” Kri reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “And you fought the Voidharrow on a personal level that no member of the Order ever has. I’m proud of you. Moorin would be proud of you.”

  A smile and a sense of satisfaction finally came to Albanon. “Thank you, Kri. That means a lot.”

  “Good.” The grip on his shoulder turned to a pat. “Now go back to the others. I need to meditate. You need to rest and try to enjoy yourself.”

  The old cleric’s voice was light, but Albanon caught the tension underneath his words and knew what he really meant. Rest and try to enjoy yourself—until we have to sit down and figure out a way to stop Vestapalk.

  Uldane’s voice rose from the direction of the campsite as he launched into another of his stories. One of his tall tales sounded like exactly the sort of thing Albanon wanted to hear. He put his hand over Kri’s for a moment, then turned away. Suddenly the days of his apprenticeship and his longing to leave Fallcrest seemed far, far behind him. The town might be only a few days’ journey away, but in his mind, he’d already left it for the wider world.