The Companions of Tartiël

by Jeff Wilcox

  *

  “Day-umn,” Dingo said, staring at the carnage on the battle grid. He had drawn red Xs in each square containing a downed cleric. “You guys cleaned up,” he said, leaning forward to emphasize just how well we had fought and rolled. I don’t think I rolled below a 13 in that fight, and the same went for Xavier, though Matt, having rolled a 4 on his Will save against Coëty’s baleful polymorph spell, was not as lucky.

  “Hell yeah,” I said, looking at my character sheet. Kaiyr, standing at about 25 hit points out of about 58, was looking pretty battered, though a loss of hit points does not have any impact in-game until they are reduced to or below zero. “And I’m really getting a lot of mileage out of that Deadly Defense feat I took when we hit level six.”

  Dingo nodded, asking, “What’s that do again?”

  “It’s the one that lets me deal extra damage when I fight defensively or use Combat Expertise. By taking a minus two penalty on attacks for plus two dodge to AC through Combat Expertise, I get an extra one-dee-six damage if I hit,” I explained. “The way I see it, it’s better than Power Attack, because instead of a one-for-one damage increase over attack decrease, I’m getting an average of three point five extra damage and plus two to AC. It’s a better than even trade.”

  “Cool deal. Complete Scoundrel, right?”

  I nodded. “Anyway, about what’s going on in the game, I turn to the innocent ones and activate my amulet of detect evil. Do I sense any evil presences among them or elsewhere in the room?”

  The Dungeon Master shook his head. “Nope, the room’s clean. All the clerics involved in the werewolf stuff are dead, and none of the innocent ones are evil.”

  I put on my Kaiyr face and voice. “Are all of you well? I ask. I release my soulblade and move closer to them. Are any of them wounded? I know a couple of them are dead, but…”

  *

  One of the gathered clerics, a human, stood and stepped forward. “I have tended to those who were wounded but not killed,” said the man. “Thank you, Blademaster Kaiyr, Caineye, and Wild.”

  Wild mewed with a mixture of feline gratitude and annoyance at his current state of being.

  Kaiyr frowned. “How do you know our names already?”

  “We met him on board the Flaring Nebula,” Caineye responded for the cleric. “It was during our… misadventures. I distinctly recall interrogating him to make sure he wasn’t one of them.” His eyes snapped to Coëty’s corpse meaningfully. “Eledath, wasn’t it?”

  Eledath bowed. “Yes. I am honored you remembered me, Caineye. And I forgive your lapse of memory, Blademaster. I remember you were having a difficult time on board that airship.”

  We are so not riding on an airship ever again, Kaiyr heard Caineye’s voice in his mind.

  Again, I can offer no arguments. The elf and the human druid exchanged wry glances.

  Wild hopped up onto Kaiyr’s shoulder, using his new claws to climb up the blademaster’s robes. Kaiyr glanced at the halfling-cat and then at Eledath. “Father Eledath, might you or any of your wards be able to dispel this effect?”

  It was done without much further ado; one spell and flare of white light later, and Wild once more stood on two feet before them all, adjusting his fine leather vest and counting his rings to make sure he hadn’t lost any in the transmogrification. The group was rather surprised to find that some of the “supplicants” to the dark ritual were none other than the few remaining elves from Arvanos’s temple, having apparently been magically dominated into joining the “ritual” that would have ended with their transformation into werewolves.

  “I agree with Master Kaiyr,” Wild said as the trio held a brief, whispered conversation after having confirmed that there were no other would-be werewolves nor evil creatures within the remainder of the temple. He flipped a dagger from hand to hand as he spoke. “These people may need more aid. We also can’t pass up the opportunity to form some kind of bastion, you know, one temple which we know has no connection to Sayel and whatever else has been going on.”

  Caineye nodded, thumbing his chin. “Something tells me that this won’t be the last of it, either. There are other temples dedicated to Alduros Hol, some of them barely miles away. Should we head back to the inn, gather our things, and then return here? I see no problem with that plan.”

  “It is settled,” Kaiyr said to them both. “Let us retrieve Lady Solaria and Vinto and return so that we may fortify this temple. If we can hold it against whatever tide is to come, we may yet see an end to this.”

  The trio nodded, and after telling Eledath and the senior cleric of Arvanos’s faith, Id’ril, of their plan and their offer of protection, the trio set out into the nighttime city.

  “Is everything all right?” Solaria asked when the three of them verily burst through the door, startling both the nymph and Vinto from their reverie. Solaria’s skin briefly flared into blinding light, but she quashed the reaction as soon as she realized who was here. “Wild, it’s good to see you again.”

  Accepting the greeting with a sweeping bow, the halfling replied, “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Solaria. Unfortunately, we’ll have to catch up later, as we’re kind of on a tight schedule here. Mr. Socks-to-his-knees wants us out of here in five.”

  “Minutes?” Solaria rose from the couch and moved to close the door after Kaiyr arrived, giving the blademaster a quiet smile.

  “Seconds,” Wild answered for the blademaster.

  Kaiyr, however, focused on something else, and his sudden change in demeanor gave everyone pause. “Outside,” he said, cocking his head toward the balcony in order to better hear. “Something is happening.” Striding to the doors, he pushed them open and looked out onto the street.

  As his other companions joined him on the balcony, Kaiyr peered into the night. This street was peaceful enough, but he could hear shouts—and barks?—coming from around the nearest intersection. Then it dawned on the group what was happening, especially as the first wolves, werewolves, and armored fighters thundered into view.

  Kaiyr entered his state of heightened focus for battle, ready to fight again this night after having used one of his healing wands to eliminate his wounds without a trace. Before anyone else could react, he was already vaulting over the rail of their third-story balcony, pausing just long enough to say, “Get your belongings and meet me at the front door.”

  Landing on all fours like a cat, Kaiyr’s strong and spring-coiled body absorbed most of the damage from the fall, but he felt the bones in his forearms and legs strain under the sudden pressure of the landing. As he pushed off from the ground and into a full-out sprint, he fished around in his extradimensional sleeves, finding one of his healing wands, and applied it briefly to his limbs until he felt them grow solid and strong once again.

  Bursting into the intersection, Kaiyr manifested his soulblade and let these foes feel its deadly edge. Around him, the canine army swarmed through the streets, mostly ignoring the lone blademaster as they battered down doors and tore into the surprised people within. One of the wolves, with such esoteric markings as Kaiyr had never before seen, dragged a woman from her home nearby, and it and three others tore into her flesh, her screams short-lived.

  Kaiyr’s robes swirled around him as he spun and cut amidst the chaos, the blue fabric foiling many attacks by making the blademaster appear to be where he was not. One wolf backed away and howled viciously as Kaiyr cut down one of the humans who had arrived with the wolves and werewolves. The blademaster paused, cautious, and his prudence was rewarded when the wolf’s mouth suddenly filled with flames, which it blew in a great blast at the elf. With his lightning-fast reflexes, however, Kaiyr dodged out of the way before the wolf even began to breathe its fire, and with its eyes closed against the heat of its own breath, it could not properly target the blademaster again.

  And then suddenly it didn’t matter anymore, as Kaiyr’s glassy soulblade pierced the fire-breathing wolf’s skull and protruded below its jaw.

  Caineye an
d the others pushed open the inn’s door at the head of a rush of other patrons trying to escape. They arrived just at the tail end of the dying wolf’s fiery exhalation and pulled up short.

  “Whoa,” Wild said, shielding his face from the heat. “What the hell’s going on?”

  There was no time to explain. The raiders, who had already spread throughout this part of town, spotted the emerging guests at the inn, and some of the invaders broke off to deal with the survivors. “Behind you,” Kaiyr told Wild.

  Wild turned to meet a pair of wolves head-on. Vinto leaped ahead and bowled over one of the strangely-patterned creatures, tearing at its throat with his fangs as Wild feinted a high strike before rolling onto his back and slicing open his foe’s belly with two daggers.

  The others, Caineye included, weren’t as lucky. From the other direction charged another wolf, jaw open and filled with leaping flames. At Kaiyr’s warning shout, Caineye rolled out of the way, though the flames still caught part of one leg and singed the hair underneath his armor. The rest of the patrons, however, were caught fully off-guard, many of them having just risen out of bed. The scent of charred flesh suddenly filled the air, as well as the huddled victims’ dying screams.

  “Lady Solaria!” Kaiyr swore under his breath as his soulblade clashed into a human raider’s sword. “Lady Solaria!”

  “I’m here,” came her reply from just around the corner, where she had taken to the shadows just before the wolf, which Vinto was now throttling, had burned the inn’s patrons to death. She coughed on the smell. “I’m mostly okay.” Her skin reflexively flared with her blinding light, but she quashed it so as not to subject her allies to its power.

  Not having a spare breath for a relieved sigh, Kaiyr grunted, parrying two quick strikes from his human opponent and worrying about the two wolves approaching from down the street. “Go,” he commanded the others as the human foolishly locked swords with the blademaster, who released and manifested his soulblade in the blink of an eye, throwing the man off-balance and putting him in position for the killing blow. Expressionless, Kaiyr delivered the fatal strike. “I move faster than the rest of you. Clear your path to the temple, and I shall ensure none come from behind.”

  Solaria, finding herself being gently but firmly taken by the arm by Caineye, glanced concernedly over her shoulder. “But—”

  “Go!” roared the blademaster, sizing up the situation as even more of the raiders poured forth from all directions. Concentrating briefly, he muttered a meditative phrase and called upon his spirit in a different form, one he had only in recent weeks mastered. Summoning his spirit, he siphoned off a tiny amount of its power and turned it into spell energy, weaving a protective aura around himself that would turn aside the swords, claws, and fiery breath of these enemies.

  Caineye, still tugging Solaria, motioned toward Kaiyr with one hand. “Vinto! Stay with Kaiyr and protect him!” he shouted. At the command, Vinto bounded away, a gray streak in the late night moonlight.

  Turning back, Caineye released Solaria as she found her feet and sprang away ahead of him, keeping pace behind Wild, his short legs pumping double-time compared to those of the taller folk. Together, the group made a mad dash for the temple more than a mile away. Kaiyr and Vinto worked together behind the others, harrying the enemies like not one wolf, but two. When Vinto distracted a foe or bowled one over, Kaiyr was there with the coup de grace, his soulblade a deadly, moonlit arc in the night. And, when Kaiyr found himself beset by too many foes, the wolf came to his aid, tearing out the throats of tattooed wolves, werewolves, and humans alike.

  The group’s pace slowed when they finally outpaced the raiders’ front lines. After cleaning up a few stragglers who still tailed them, Kaiyr and Vinto rejoined the others, vainly calling out to the people of Ik’durel to defend themselves or flee with them. Of those who were even awake to hear the party’s warning cries, few of them paid heed—right up until it was too late.

  Kaiyr cursed at his inability to protect all these people, but he had done all he could this night. His body was tiring, and the spell he had woven around himself had faded minutes ago. His wounds, while not deep, were beginning to catch up with him, and they compounded with the fatigue settling into his muscles. Only his sandals, recently enchanted to make running no more strenuous than walking, kept him sprinting alongside the rest of the group.

  The group finally slowed outside the temple carved out of a giant tree, calling for Id’ril and Eledath to open the doors. Then, after ushering inside the few Ik’durelians who had escaped the assault, they slammed shut the doors, shuttered all the windows, and barred all exits.

  Kaiyr, after heaving the main doors’ locking bar into place with the help of Caineye and two of the remaining priests, leaned against the closed doors and let gravity pull him down to the ground, breathing heavily. The druid followed suit, patting Vinto when the wolf came over to check on his master.

  “So,” Caineye said after several minutes. They had waved away the priests, who offered to bring them food and drink; Wild and Solaria had already been shown to a pair of rooms and had collapsed onto their beds. Opening one eye to look at the blademaster, Caineye drew a lungful of air just to get out a few words. “What do we do now?”

  Stirring, Kaiyr turned his head to stare at the dark grain of the wooden doors as though he could see through it. A grimace spread across his face, and he shook his head. “We wait,” he said, exhausted. “We wait, and we hope.”

  *

  “And that’s where we’ll end for tonight,” Dingo said, closing his Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide and collecting his dice. “Like I said after the battle in the temple, all of you can now level up. That brings you to what, level seven?”

  “Yeah,” we all replied. I brought up the document file on my computer that held the information necessary for working with the blademaster class. “Ah, poop,” I said, looking at the row devoted to the blademaster’s seventh level game statistics. “Dead level for me. I get plus one base attack bonus and can manifest my soulblade once per round as an immediate action.” I twirled my finger in the air in a sarcastic gesture of victory.

  Dingo snorted. “Hey, you made that class yourself. It’s your own grave.”

  I grinned. “I know. Every class has dead levels somewhere. It’s okay, though, because once Kaiyr hits level eight, just about everything goes up. B-A-B, Fort and Ref saves, I get level-two spells, and a new ‘Blademaster’s Path.’ I’m thinking of taking the ‘Allied Defense’ one, so I can protect Wild or Vinto in combat.”

  Xavier nodded, and the motion caught my attention. “What’s up?”

  He grinned at me. “Level-four spells,” was all he said, and I returned the expression, nodding along with him; even Matt joined in after a moment.

  Dingo turned to Matt. “And damn, man. I’ve already said it, but that was some clever use of the limited wish spell in Sayel’s Hope.”

  Matt bowed his head and spread his hands, accepting the praise. “I came up with that idea while you were at the bathroom before the battle started. Honestly, if I hadn’t done that, I don’t think we could have won that battle.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That many werewolves would have torn us to pieces. Or, if we survived, we’d all become werewolves. Hmmm… A werewolf blademaster. That would be plain scary.” We shared a chuckle at the geeky thought.

  “Cool deal,” Dingo said at last, after watching us roll hit points for this level. “I’m going to dash for now, but I’ll see you all on Saturday. Jeff and Xavier, I’ll see you tomorrow at dinner, as usual.”

  XXXVII.

  “How do things look?” Caineye asked Kaiyr as the druid joined the blademaster. Earlier that morning Kaiyr had found a hidden passageway that led up into the boughs of the tree-temple, and he had spent the rest of the morning sitting on one wide branch and watching the city of Ik’durel for signs of movement.

  “Little has changed,” Kaiyr said, peering upwards, to the sky. It had been three day
s since the party, a score of priests, and a handful of other survivors had holed themselves up in the sacred tree. The first day had brought with it the sounds of battle resounding through the streets, and suddenly, in the afternoon, a great dome had appeared in the sky. As far as the party could tell, the dome must have been three or four miles in diameter and contained within its boundaries about a quarter of Ik’durel’s airborne landmass. The globe was mostly transparent, though light filtering through had a faint, golden tint to it, and patterns of magical power blossomed and faded all over the dome’s surface. No one in the temple could determine exactly what the dome was for, and Caineye could deduce only that the symbols were arcane in nature.

  Day two had been the most unsettling, with the city falling completely quiet. Peering through cracks between the shutters and window frames, those inside caught glimpses of a faint, yellowish haze that blanketed the city but stopped just short of the temple’s grounds. Later that evening, patrols consisting of wolves and their humanoid allies began to show up every now and then. They checked many buildings but for some reason declined to investigate the enormous tree with a door in its trunk.

  Today, after Kaiyr had discovered this passage into the tree’s canopy, the blademaster had been monitoring every movement within a half-mile of the temple. Thus far, he had come to a bleak conclusion: if there were any survivors, they were few in number and were not venturing outside.

  Settling down on the bark next to the elf, Caineye glanced back toward the doorway leading up here. “Solaria was looking for you,” he said. “She wants to know how she can help.”

  “I see,” Kaiyr replied, still watching Ik’durel.

  They fell into a companionable silence for a few minutes, until Caineye shook his head and scratched his hair. “I’m impressed with her, really. She’s been working to keep everyone calm, helps out with food preparation, and generally seems in high spirits. Whatever you said to her, I’m glad it worked.”