The Companions of Tartiël

by Jeff Wilcox

  He wanted to surrender, to tell Saraël that she had won this fight so that she could kill everyone and have done with this whole situation. He wanted the peace of death and to be reunited with Astra and Solaria beyond the veil, as neither, it seemed, would return to him in this life.

  But Kaiyr was a blademaster, and blademasters did not surrender their lives so easily. Kaiyr had long ago begun the process of tempering his body, mind, and spirit against failure, and over the course of his adventures, he had continued hardening himself against his own weaknesses. It was only a matter of realizing that he was clever enough to win here, and that was what galvanized him now. More, he suddenly remembered that he had a tool at his disposal, a tool that could mean success or disaster, but it was the only surprise he had left this day.

  *

  “So,” Dingo said, looking at me. “You’re thirty feet away from Saraël, who is moving to attack Caineye. What are you going to do?”

  I looked at Matt and Xavier, both of whom grinned and returned the gesture. Then, looking at my character sheet, I said, “First, I shout to Caineye as I pull something from my sleeve. Master Caineye! Get out of the way!”

  Even though Xavier knew what was going on, his character didn’t, so he played it out as though he was ignorant of the danger. “I’m going to use the amulet to speak back. What is it?”

  “I’ll use the amulet, too. I am going to throw this canister at Saraël!”

  Shaking his head and gesturing sharply with one hand, Xavier snapped, “Throw the damn thing and get it over with! I say, not using the amulet. I’m immune to poison, remember?”

  “Wait, wait,” Dingo said, cutting in, his expression perturbed. “What canister are you talking about?”

  We all directed blossoming grins at him, and he shrank back. Since it was my turn and my action, I explained, “Remember the canister Warteär Nomen tried to use on Solaria with that trap?”

  Dingo paused, thinking. Then his palm came up and slapped into his face. “Oh, no,” he groaned. His reaction was all I needed to gauge just how effective my ploy would be.

  I nodded emphatically, a grin splitting my face. “Oh, hell, yes!”

  He sighed and cupped his chin in his hand. “I can’t believe I forgot about that poison.”

  “Frankly, we did, too, until we realized Saraël is about to kick our collective ass. I just found it on my character sheet from when Kaiyr stuck it in his sleeve.”

  Dingo sighed again and flipped through his notebook, looking for the poison he had designed for use with that trap. “Oh, jeez,” he muttered, finding the stats for it. “I can’t believe this. There’s no way she’s going to make this save.”

  I wound up my arm as though I were a pitcher on a mound. “Well, Dungeon Master, I pull out my canister-o’-hopefully-angel-doom and give it a whirl.” I dropped my d20 on my desk. “I’m pretty sure I hit Saraël’s square dead-on with a thirty-three, since I’m only thirty feet away. What happens?”

  *

  Caineye batted away Kaiyr’s warning with a wave of his arm, which was covered in his own blood from having taken Saraël’s enormous sword in his shoulder. “Throw the damn thing and get it over with!” he snarled as Saraël advanced on him menacingly.

  Kaiyr hesitated only a fraction of a second longer. He knew this was his last chance to catch the angel off-guard. If Caineye was willing to sacrifice himself to stop this creature, then so be it; the blademaster could only hope the druid’s spirit would be more willing to return to life than Solaria’s had been.

  Winding back, Kaiyr grasped the delicate, glass cylinder carefully, took aim, and let fly. The crystalline canister soared end-over-end in its path to the angel.

  Saraël turned almost lazily to regard the incoming threat. Despite it having belonged to one of her servants, she did not recognize the object, and so she smashed it to pieces with her sword, her expression indifferent when she realized it was not an arrow fired from a bow. It was the worst possible thing she could have done.

  The shattered cylinder released its gaseous contents right into the fallen angel’s face, a green cloud spreading out in the air to cover the fallen divine being. With a shriek of agony that crumbled several nearby buildings and made Kaiyr’s and Caineye’s ears bleed, Saraël thrashed about as the gas seeped into her body.

  It was over in moments. Caineye, deafened, scuttled back on all fours as Saraël laid waste to the ground around her in her death throes. Her veins stood out black against her pale flesh, and within seconds, her body turned to black crystal and began disintegrating into dust that settled over the ground.

  A supernatural wind, borne of released divine energy, rushed from the fallen angel’s dying form. Wild found himself picked up and hurled a hundred feet away, while Kaiyr and Caineye managed to withstand the storm’s force. Vinto flattened his ears and bowed against the gale, though he was pushed back several paces.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and the pile of grayish dust that was Saraël dispersed on her own divine wind before that, too, halted.

  Wild darted back to rejoin his friends. “What happened? Did I miss anything?” he asked excitedly as Vinto padded over to him and licked the dust from the halfling’s face. “Haha! Stop that, Vinto.”

  Caineye sat up and glanced around, his hair disheveled from Saraël’s death. “Oof. I really don’t feel so good. Where’s Master Kaiyr? Is he all right?”

  Wild looked over at where he had last seen the blademaster, but the elf’s body was splayed on his stomach, his robes torn and tattered and his armor nearly rent in two halves. A feeling of dread built in the halfling as he saw his most stalwart companion’s body lying so broken on the ground. “Caineye,” Wild said around a rising lump in his throat, “I… I think he might be—” He stopped, hearing a most disconcerting sound coming from the blademaster’s direction.

  Wiping his eyes even though tears had not yet budded there, the halfling rushed to Kaiyr’s side as Caineye pushed himself to his feet and followed. “Maybe he’s still alive—I think I hear him wheezing!” Wild called over his shoulder.

  But when the halfling arrived next to Kaiyr, the blademaster rolled over onto his back—and laughed. It was a low, slow chuckle that Wild had mistaken for a wheeze, but it gradually rose in a crescendo to pealing laughter straight from the serious elf’s belly.

  Now tears spread to Wild’s eyes. “You’re… you’re laughing,” he said almost accusingly as Caineye joined him. “That’s… that’s rather… heh… heh, heh, hahaha!”

  Kaiyr’s desperate mirth proved to be infectious, and after Wild fell on his rump and rolled, giggling, on the ground, Caineye caught the condition as well, his baritone chortles joining Kaiyr’s as he offered the blademaster a hand.

  Kaiyr took it and rose as Caineye took the blademaster’s arm across his shoulder, supporting the wounded elf. Vinto nosed Wild’s hand to get the halfling’s attention, but the chilly wetness only made him laugh harder for another minute. “What’s so funny, anyway?” he asked, rolling to his feet.

  Kaiyr glanced up at the sky and shook his bloodied head. “We won. We defeated an angel attempting to ascend to godhood, and we survived.”

  The midmorning sunlight suddenly brightened and lost its queer, amber hue, giving the three friends cause to look up. The transparent dome that had for weeks on end covered this section of Ik’durel vanished, taking with it the symbols of sealing that had loomed over them in the sky.

  Caineye hiked up his grip on the stumbling blademaster, whose eye had stopped bleeding thanks to a few last moments in Saraël’s vicinity, though the fallen angel had died before the eye could grow back. “Come on,” the druid said, taking up the lead since Kaiyr was in no condition to do so. “The others must be wondering what in the Nine Hells happened to us out here.”

  “Yeah,” Wild agreed. “I need a nap or three. Or six. Or a hundred.”

  Kaiyr looked at Caineye with a quiet smile on his features. He opened his mouth to say something, b
ut the druid grinned and chuckled. “Don’t worry, Kaiyr. If you fall asleep on the way home, I’ll just carry you the rest of the way.”

  A last, tired laugh escaped Kaiyr’s lips. “Thank you, my friend. And thank you all, my friends.”

  Together, the four of them took the first step away from the battlefield.

  XLIV.

  Dingo, Xavier, and I sat down in my room on Tuesday of finals week. We had not had time to wrap up the campaign after the last battle, having played until four in the morning. So, the four of us had departed with the tentative promise to meet later and finish what we had started four months ago.

  “I wish Matt could be here to do this with us,” Dingo said as he dropped his notebook onto his lap. He hadn’t brought his table or rulebooks along; today there would be no die-rolling, no sword-swinging, and no monster-thrashing. Today was a day for us to bring things to a quiet close.

  “I have to say,” I put in before Dingo could launch into the session, “and I know I’ve said this before, but this is the most phenomenal campaign I’ve ever played in, guys. Xavier, you’re a terrific roleplayer. Even though you only started D&D a couple years ago, and you’ve only been in a handful of campaigns, it’s been a blast.”

  He accepted the praise graciously and nodded. “Thanks, man. I’ve been working hard on roleplaying with you guys. And you’re the best I know.”

  “Ha,” I said, “thanks, dude.”

  Dingo glanced between the two of us. “I have to agree. You two, and Matt, are some of the best roleplayers I know, right up there with Andy and Carlos.”

  “So,” I said after a few more minutes of chatter, “what happens after the end of the battle?”

  Dingo shuffled his papers while he collected his thoughts then began: “Well, the first thing you notice is that the dome overhead disappears entirely, which we covered last session. You make it back to the temple, where everyone is relieved and curious about everything that went on.”

  “If they ask,” I said, “first, I’m going to bed. Then, later, if they ask again, I’ll give them a brief description of what went on, but just the important stuff.”

  “All right,” said the DM. “The city wastes no time in finding out exactly what went on under the dome, and they find all of you in and around the temple later that evening. City officials greet you and congratulate you. They describe the dome as the city’s self-containment magic, designed to seal off any threats to the state at large, and that once so sealed, there is nothing anyone on the outside can do until the threat inside has been neutralized or when enough time passes.

  “The night passes uneventfully, but the next day, a formal ceremony of thanks and congratulation is held in front of the temple. However, when you—Wild’s with you, too—step outside, two things happen independently of each other. Kaiyr, you enter a brief slip in time and meet with Arvanos again, who tells you that time is short. However, the news he has is not so good; although you have fulfilled your end of the bargain, he cannot uphold his, for Astra’s soul seems to be beyond his calling. Whether she has already returned to life in some other manner, moved on, or been utterly destroyed, he doesn’t know.” He hesitated, awaiting a response.

  I put my index fingers to my lips, the others laced. “I merely nod and accept the news. If there is something beyond his power at work here, then it’s not his fault. I thank him for the effort and then ask to be on my way.”

  Dingo nodded, then turned to Xavier. “Caineye, you don’t notice Kaiyr’s little mental trip, since it happens in an instant, but while you’re about to leave the temple, an eagle swoops down and lands on your arm, and in a subtle gesture, three words appear in your head, and they stick with you forevermore: I am back.”

  Xavier beamed. “Alduros Hol. So, I couldn’t meet him because Saraël must have been keeping him away somehow.”

  Dingo nodded. “Moving on, as you exit the temple, you first see the three Lillik brothers standing just outside the door. They look at you all expectantly.”

  Xavier looked to me, since the artifacts were of elven origin. “I fix them with a stern glare and say nothing as I pull all of the parts of Ministriel’s Regalia from my pack, except for the Helm, which I will be returning to Ivyan myself,” I said gravely. “Begone, I warn them, and I brush past them.”

  “I-I don’t even look at them,” Xavier added.

  “Don’t worry, says the eldest brother, we’re not particularly interested in seeing any of you, either. They leave without further ado, leaving you to face the ruling council of Ik’durel.

  “The leaders of the city thank you profusely for your aid in saving this part of the city,” Dingo said.

  “Even though only ninety-nine-point-six percent of everyone here died,” I added sardonically.

  The DM snorted in amusement and went on, “You are all awarded titles within Ik’durel, as well as seats on the council, if you want them.”

  I looked at Xavier, who shook his head. I mirrored his reaction at Dingo. “No. Kaiyr, at least, isn’t going to take them up on that. He’s got stuff to do back home, and I don’t think he’ll be wanting to stray far for a good, long while.”

  “I’m going to go to Ivyan with Kaiyr,” Xavier announced. “We’ve been through so much, and our characters have become good friends. Caineye could use some time in a small forest village.” He looked at me, and I held out my hand. He slapped it in a low-five.

  Dingo shrugged. “All right. Well, they do give you a mansion, and they staff it with people who will keep it tidy in case you ever need to use it, and within Ik’durel, you are nobility. You are told that you may keep all the gold and other treasure you have found within the church, as they are spoils of war.”

  Xavier and I had already discussed this with Matt, and I shook my head, giving Dingo reason to pause. “Wait a sec. We’re going to keep a tidy sum of it, but a lot of it we’re going to donate back to the church of Alduros Hol. There’s still work to be done here: they need to repair the damage to the temple and see if they can save the tree, there are positions to be filled, and there are probably other cells of false worshipers out there in the world. They’ll need this money to do any of that, even though Kaiyr is going to devote some time before heading back to Ivyan to destroying any remaining followers of Saraël. We’ll keep the gold and the stuff in the boxes, but the platinum is all going back to the church; I believe it amounts to something like sixty-five thousand gold worth of plat.”

  Dingo’s eyes popped. “You’re not keeping that?”

  Both Xavier and I snorted. “Dude,” I replied, “do you have any idea just how much gold you’ve given us? We’re actually going to end up well above the gold for level-twelve characters… which we are now, since we beat Saraël!” I put my hand out, and Xavier clapped my palm with his again, to chuckles from all around.

  “All right,” Dingo said after a moment. “So, you donate a shit-ton of platinum to the temple.”

  I flattened my lips in an expression of finality. “Yeah, and then I’m outta there. Kaiyr has no desire to stick around for back-slapping and feasts. The laughter yesterday was more a reaction to Saraël’s sudden defeat, but now reality is catching up to him… particularly after that little meeting with Arvanos.”

  “Well,” said our DM, “I suppose all that’s left is the epilogue, then.”

  Epilogue.

  Blademaster Kaiyr dodged out of the way of a clumsy overhead chop. Then, manifesting his soulblade in the blink of an eye, he batted the weapon out of his opponent’s hands.

  “Good,” he said, releasing his grasp on his soulblade and striding over to where his student’s wooden sword had clattered to the floor. Tossing it back to the scrawny elven lad, the blue-haired elf took up a position before the youngster. “Again!”

  As he and his student sparred, all around them, several other pairs of apprentice swordsmen and –women practiced different strikes and maneuvers on the floor of Kaiyr’s treetop dojo nestled within the elven village of Ivyan. It ha
d only been a few months since the one-eyed blademaster had opened the doors of his new dojo, but already his students were showing signs of growth and skill.

  Kaiyr had been much aggrieved to learn upon his return home that his father, Blademaster Sorosomir Stellarovim, had fallen ill with a mysterious disease and had died only weeks before Kaiyr’s homecoming. The young blademaster, his spirit already bowed enough under the stress of losing both Astra and Solaria, spent several nights meditating by his father’s grave before deciding that Sorosomir would not have wanted his son to grieve for him overlong but to continue the elder blademaster’s work.

  Caineye had come with the returning blademaster and was quickly adopted into Kaiyr’s tiny family, now consisting only of Kaiyr and his mother, Iresili. The druid spent much of his time out in the woods with Vinto, adventuring, watching for storms, and hunting both game and threats to the peaceful Ivyan.

  “Master Kaiyr, when will you teach me to be a blademaster?” asked one of his students from behind as Kaiyr was putting away the wooden practice swords for the day. He turned around and found himself face-to-face with a fierce tomboy with short, red hair and demanding, green eyes. She was almost old enough to own holdings and live on her own.

  A slow smile spread across the weary elf’s face. “Can you manifest your spirit, Lady Lurai?”

  Lurai’s gaze dropped to her feet. “No, Blademaster. I still can’t.”

  Kaiyr nodded and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Ask me again the first time you manifest your spirit, whether it be your full blade, the hilt, or even a wisp of golden light. Then, and only then, can I teach you more. I have given you all the direction I can for now. The rest is up to you. You will have to learn more discipline and patience before your spirit will come to your call.”

  Giving him a sullen but respectful bow, Lurai sighed, “Yes, Blademaster Kaiyr.” She gathered her sparring robes in her arms and made her way to the door.