by Gary Gygax
“Thank you,” was all he could get out before the druid dashed off to go to the barbarian’s side. Gord stood and moved carefully to gain a position where he could attack without fear of interfering with his friends. Within a few steps, the last vestiges of stiffness left his limbs, and he felt as fit as he had before.
Gord could see that Curley Greenleaf was touching Chert, just as he had ministered to Gord moments earlier. At that moment the bear gave an awful roar, shuddered, and lay still. The scaly demon stood up, pulling free from the embrace of the mortally wounded Yurgh. The cataboligne was torn by tooth and claw in several places, and yellow-green ichor dripped from its wounds. Throwing its head back in triumph, the cataboligne howled a cry of victory. Filled with bloodlust, it ignored the men and reached down to break and crush the bear. Just then, Chert struck again.
The first swing of his humming axe only grazed the demon’s right arm that was reaching for Yurgh’s motionless body. But the barbarian recovered quickly, and the weapon’s backswing took the demon on its other arm, putting a deep gash in it. The demon bellowed again, but this time its shout was not triumphant.
“Come on, you blue bugger, fight me!” Chert challenged.
The demon accepted, spinning with catlike speed and swiping its uninjured arm in a clawed blow which tore into the barbarian’s chest, unbalancing him and allowing the towering monster to use its wounded arm to strike and hold Chert. The demon’s long claws sank into his flesh, but the barbarian was not finished. He worked his right arm free and struck again.
“Brool!” he managed to cry, as the battle-axe again impacted on the demon’s severely wounded left arm. This time the blade bit true, and the limb was severed from the monster’s body. With a shriek, the cataboligne leapt off and away from Chert, grabbed up its lost arm, and held it up against the place from which it had been severed. As Gord watched with a mixture of fascination and horror, the demon’s sickening ichor flooded over and into the twitching arm, and a blurring seemed to occur around the wound. The demon was reattaching its lost limb!
Gord was moving up to stab the monster while its attention was elsewhere, but before he was close enough to do so, a sheet of roaring flame sprang up between him and the demon. It was said that such creatures revel in fire, but evidently this one didn’t. The thing roared in anger when the flames appeared, but continued to concentrate on repairing its arm.
At first the fire seemed hesitant to approach the demon’s body, almost as if something prevented it from coming near. The crackling fire danced in a ring encompassing the monster, and all the while it kept working on its arm. The flames went out for a second and then reappeared, this time in a blazing mass that enveloped the thing and threatened to consume it-but too late! Now whole again, the creature raised its arms and brought them down, and as they lowered, the flames dimmed and began to die. Scorched and smoking, the demon strode forward away from the last licking tongues of fire. As the last of the flames died, so did the greenish luminescence that had swathed the demon, again making the thing invisible to those without special sight.
Not hampered by the lack of light, Greenleaf advanced toward the monster, stopping less than a spear’s length away and adopting a defiant stance. Chert was off to one side, back on his feet but obviously still trying to recover from the onslaught he had suffered, and now once more left in the dark.
Thanks to his sword, of course, Gord could still see. As demon and druid confronted each other, Gord circled stealthily around on the side opposite Chert until he was behind the creature’s field of vision. He continued to creep as the monster spoke.
“Little druid, your useless spells are nothing to me. I would have used my powers to destroy all of you long before this, but I enjoy breaking such miserable creatures as you with my bare hands!” The demon was speaking softly, with malign persuasiveness, but Greenleaf stood immobile in front of the thing, spear held in both hands before him, refusing to flinch or show fear.
“Humans beg so wonderfully, and shriek and cry when I slowly pull and break them…. What fun, what joy!” the cataboligne continued to purr evilly. One blue, clawed hand reached out slowly in Greenleaf’s direction. “Perhaps I will make you into a replacement for my last servant, the one you thoughtlessly destroyed above, when I finally go free from this prison to-”
“Shitmouth!” Greenleaf shouted as he stabbed his spear into the demon’s slowly reaching hand. “You think I am taken with your foul enchantments of voice? Take that!” And so saying, the druid struck again, this time tearing the other grabbing hand with the keen spearhead.
By this time, Gord had reached his destination behind the monster. Recoiling from the two painful spear attacks, the cataboligne backed full into Gord’s own assault. Its lower back was unprotected and unprepared, and both shortsword and long dagger went home, driven in to their hilts by the young thief’s muscles and the demon’s own motion.
For a second, the monster continued backward, convulsed with the shock of the assault. Then it jerked forward. The dagger was yanked from the grip of Gord’s left hand by the sudden move, but the sword held fast in his other hand, and a geyser of stinking ichor shot out as the enchanted blade tore free of the wound. Howling and yelling the foulest curses, the monster turned to lunge at its new tormentor.
“Now, Chert, at him!” said the druid in wrathful voice, as he cast a second spell to renew the glowing on and around the demon.
The first thing Chert saw was the demon turned away from him with one clawed hand pointing upward-and Gord suspended in mid-air, several feet away from the claws and some thirty feet above the cavern floor. Without stopping to think about what he beheld, the wounded barbarian pounced forward and sunk his great axe into the monster’s thigh once again. Curley Greenleaf followed with a spear-thrust into the demon’s other leg a split-second later. The two blows hurt the creature seriously and broke its spell. Gord plummeted to the stone below. He managed to come down on his feet, tumbled to absorb most of the force of impact, rolled away, and came up shaken but not seriously harmed.
The demon was now terribly hurt, but it was not ready to break off and seek escape. Confined in this underground place for centuries, the monster was no longer sane-if any such thing can ever be said to have sanity. Its desire was to inflict pain and death now. This malign wish had pervaded the demon’s existence, but never with such irrationality as now when it was itself suffering the pain it loved to wreak on its victims. Forgetting about its magical powers, despising flight, ignoring the knowledge that it was able to pass the door which formerly held it imprisoned, the cataboligne sought only to kill the humans challenging it, and to do so most hideously.
Even as its body toppled forward, crippled legs no longer able to support it, the demon grabbed for the barbarian and took Chert down beside it with a swipe of its claws. The other arm lashed out for Curley Greenleaf and scooped his body in close where the demon could maul the druid with its fangs.
The sight of his friends being bloodied drove Gord into a rage. He ran forward without reservation and began raining a furious series of cuts and stabs down upon the scaly back of the prone demon. Some of the blows glanced off the thick plates of horn that covered the cataboligne, and others were not serious wounds-mere scrapes and pricks to the mountain of malign substance receiving the blows. Nonetheless, over a period of time that could not have been nearly as long as it seemed, Gord’s small sword wrought a terrible tattoo on the demon’s hide. Bluish flesh parted in places, and filthy ichor spewed forth under the razor-sharp edge and needlelike point of the young adventurer’s dripping blade.
“Die, you filthy bastard-thing! Die! DIE!” Gord shouted over and over as he struck and hacked the demon.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, Gord heard another voice between his cries of outrage.
“You can stop, friend…. It is finished.”
Gord stopped his thrashing and looked to the side, toward the sound of Chert’s voice. The barbarian was kneeling, hands on
thighs, breathing heavily.
Gord pulled back slowly and faced forward again, staring at the mess before his eyes. The cataboligne’s whole upper torso was a welter of wounds, and the demon was unmoving, save for occasional convulsive twitchings of its dying nervous system. Gore-spattered and stinking, Gord stood alive over the body of the monstrous demon-alive!
He looked back at his companion. “We have won, Chert!” Gord said, almost not believing his own words. “We have slain the bastard! We’re alive!”
“You and I are, Gord,” said Chert. “But Curley is dead, and his great bear slain too. What a price we have paid for this victory….”
Chapter 31
“You count me out too soon,” came a weak croak from the other side of the demon’s form.
Chert rose to his feet and took a couple of steps in the direction of the voice as Gord came around the cataboligne’s body to look. Chert peered into the dimness, having trouble seeing in the faint glow shed by the rapidly fading luminescence from the expiring spell. Gord could see well, however, since the magical sword remained in his ichor-stained hand-and he beamed at the sight before his eyes.
“Greenleaf!” he cried. “Are you indestructible?” The rotund druid was lying several paces away from the demon, propped on one arm, blood dripping from his wounds, part of his face nearly torn off.
“Quickly, Chert! We must help Curley!” Gord said, taking the barbarian by the arm and leading him toward where the druid lay.
“How do you know where to go in this darkness?” asked Chert.
“My sword,” said the thief. “So long as I keep hold of it, I can see.”
“But I am blinded,” said Chert. “You cannot bind Curley’s wounds with one hand, and I cannot do it without eyes!”
“We must do something, man! He’s bleeding to death!” Gord shouted in despair. “I’ll tell you what I see, and guide you to perform the work-but hurry! Already he goes!” The druid had fallen back even as Gord spoke, lapsing into unconsciousness. In a few more minutes, Gord feared, he would certainly expire.
Chert worked his best, directed by Gord’s eyes and voice. It was a clumsy and fumbling process, consuming more time than either of the dying druid’s companions meant to take, but it was all they could do.
Finally, Chert finished. He had managed to close the torn cheek and staunch the flow of blood from that wound and the worst of the others covering his friend’s body. Both young men were themselves wounded and bleeding, Chert worse than Gord, but both ignored their own pain and bleeding to save Greenleaf. Then, suddenly, Gord remembered something.
“He has healing salve!” Not bothering to waste further breath, Gord tore the pouch from the druid’s belt with his free hand. Then, moving sword from right to left, he managed to get the jar out of the bag and held it tightly. “Use your hand to work the top open,” he commanded the barbarian. After a bit of groping, Chert managed to get the thing open.
“Put a bit on your finger and then I’ll guide it to a bleeding wound,” he instructed his companion. “If this doesn’t work, then it is all over for him.”
Carefully, using his free hand, Gord used the barbarian’s outstretched arm, hand, and finger as an instrument for applying the ointment. The stuff had an odd, pearlescent sheen to Gord’s dweomered eyes, but this disappeared as the thick salve was spread on the torn face of the comatose druid. As the salve’s brightness and color faded, the flesh upon which it was spread joined at the edges, closing cuts and gouges. In another moment, blood no longer flowed from the ghastly wound!
“It serves him well, Chert! Now we must have more for his other wounds!”
The process of groping and smearing continued until the small pot of ointment was utterly empty. The druid was still in critical shape, covered with small, untreated wounds and blood-smeared, but blood was no longer coursing from him, and Gord thought he might yet survive. The two young men sat back in the underground place, exhausted. Now they must wait.
Using some of their water, both men cleaned their own wounds as well as they could under the circumstances. They also drank some, to quench the thirst of battle and clear their mouths and throats of the horrid taste left by combat with the demon. Gord sat down close to Greenleaf, still clutching the sword so that he could keep a vigil for the unconscious druid. Chert stretched out beside Gord on the stone floor, intending to keep his friend company while he started to recuperate. But weakness and fatigue got the best of him, and shortly he began to snore. Gord was dozing lightly himself when, some time later, a welcome sound brought him alert.
“Gord! Gord!”
The thief came close to Greenleaf’s head, for the druid could barely manage a whisper. “What is it, Curley, dear friend?” he said.
“Silence that blaster over there,” the fellow managed to say with a bit of spirit. “He’s keeping me awake!”
Gord was flabbergasted at this attempted humor, and for a moment lost track of what else Curley was saying.
“I said, hold me in a sitting position, you idiot!” the druid groused. “Seeing that you two have somehow brought me back from death’s door, I have to do this quickly, or that bony bastard will get his fingers on me and pull me back inside again!”
Gord was afraid to move the druid, who was still not well off, but his demeanor left no choice but to comply. The druid managed to get a sprig of vegetation from inside his robe, and he muttered some chant under his breath as he waved the stuff slowly back and forth over his body. After three such passes, the druid relaxed.
“That’s better, much better,” he said in a stronger voice. “Many thanks to you, Gord. And now I must close my eyes.” Gord started to protest, not understanding his meaning, but the druid reassured him. “I am all right, I tell you! Not well and whole, but I will live if you’ll only allow me to sleep a bit, dammit. Why don’t you imitate that great hulk over there,” he concluded, “and allow me to do the same?”
With that, the fellow lay back and fell asleep almost instantly. Gord had nothing better to do, so he also allowed slumber to take him. How long he rested thus, chilled and aching on the cold stone of the cavern’s floor, he knew not. He was roused by the sound of Greenleaf talking to Chert.
“Now sit there,” the druid instructed the big adventurer, “and I’ll see to sleeping beauty over there.”
“I’m awake,” Gord informed the approaching druid.
Curley, who appeared to have never been wounded, said, “I can see well enough, thank you, to detect your awakened state. How badly are you hurt?”
Gord allowed that he had felt better, but that besides the claw-wounds on his arm, there was nothing but scrapes and bruises troubling him.
“Can you move freely and well?” Greenleaf asked.
“Yes, and without much pain, save for the arm.”
“The arm will have to wait, then, Gord,” the druid told him. “Chert was sorely hurt by the demon, and how he managed to stay conscious and assist you in saving my life is a wonder for a bard’s song. My work has brought him round to fair state, but if I can aid him yet further, we can leave this place to serve as the sepulcher of demon and bear-bless Yurgh’s brave heart-and seek our prize.”
This was most agreeable to Gord, and as soon as the druid had gone through his ritual of healing over the barbarian, the three went from the place. They were tattered, sore, and still stunk of foulness from the cataboligne, but they went with pride and gladness in their hearts. A demon was defeated and dead behind them, and somewhere within the maze before them was a great treasure.
With Gord and Curley taking turns leading Chert through the blackness, they made their way back to the grotto and picked up the torches they had seen there earlier. Then, in several hours of casual wandering, they investigated the whole place.
The central grotto had three exits, as they already knew. Each exit led to a curving passageway, and each of these in turn had three adits. The connecting corridors tied three such circular ways together, but the passages that did s
o were offset and asymmetrical, rather than being like the spokes of a wheel. They covered all the curves and corridors systematically, concluding with a second trip around the outer rim of the third wheel-shaped passageway, which took them back to the tunnel leading to the chamber where the cataboligne’s corpse lay.
After going some distance farther, they came upon another tunnel that led them to a somewhat smaller cavern. The place contained no treasure, but there they found a deep, cold pool of water, and all three had a chance to bathe and clean themselves of the reeking remnants of their terrible encounter. Refreshed and feeling far better than they had in some time, the three adventurers moved on. Going on to their right, they passed the position where a third opening would have been, had such a thing been there. But the wall was unbroken, and they eventually came round to the area of the tomb of demon and bear again. Something was wrong-either they could not find the treasure, or else, as Gord speculated at this point, someone had added the relic to the tale of the cairn to enliven it.
“That is most unlikely,” Curley stated flatly. “The tablet I translated said that there was a most powerful item here, and the whole place seems made to contain it. What madness caused the servants of this place to ward it with a demon, I can’t say, or even hazard a guess at, but the dead bandits carried nothing forth, and their surviving fellows claimed nothing either-why else tell stories for your supper? If bandits fled demon, then demon guarded treasure. Thus,” the druid reasoned, “we have missed its hiding place somehow.”
“How?” Chert demanded in an impatient tone.
“He’s right, Curley,” Gord said. “If the story-teller said they saw wealth here, any treasure would have to be in plain sight, or else taken away… or hidden by the demon!”
Spirits lifted by this sudden inspiration, they returned to the demon’s cavern-the only place they had not searched thoroughly-and looked it over carefully, but besides the dead, there was nothing in sight. They rested a few minutes and pondered.
