Oath of Vigilance tap-2

by James Wyatt

  “So, I take it you weren’t created to obey the orders of Bahamut’s paladins,” he said. “How about clerics of Erathis? Tiefling warlocks? Either of you two want to try giving a command?”

  “Kill!” shouted a growling voice somewhere behind him. “Smash the intruders!”

  “Not what I had in mind,” Roghar muttered. He landed a solid blow on the statue, hard enough to knock a few large chips of stone loose and drive it a few steps back. He used the opportunity to glance over his shoulder.

  A group of bedraggled looking humans huddled in the hall, taking shelter behind what must have been their champion-a huge, mangy gnoll whose foul hide was marred by several burned, hairless patches. The gnoll held a heavy spear with a brutally serrated head, somewhere between a whaler’s harpoon and a butcher’s cleaver. The humans, though they were dressed like beggars, clutched an array of makeshift weapons and seemed determined to fight-at least for as long as they had the protection of the gnoll.

  The gnoll charged Tempest.

  And Tempest was still staring at the stone knight, probably overwhelmed by the same memories that it had stirred up in Roghar.

  “Tempest, behind you!” he shouted. “Travic-”

  The stone knight’s sword slammed across his chest and pounded him against the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs. Roghar’s armor kept the blade from cutting him in two, but the metal crumpled beneath the force of the blow and bit into his flesh.

  A soft white light washed over him as Travic murmured a prayer. Air flowed back into his lungs and the pain in his chest lost its edge, and he looked up just in time to see the gnoll’s spear turned aside an instant before it cut into Tempest’s spine. Tempest whirled around and uttered a terrifying wail that battered the gnoll and the humans behind it back the way they’d come, giving her room to move.

  “Now for you,” Roghar said to the stone knight. “Bahamut, bless my blade!” Power coursed through him, ran down his arm, and poured into his sword as he struck the statue with all his strength. His blow connected with a crack of thunder that knocked the statue off its feet and sent it crashing to the ground.

  “Marcan?” Travic called behind him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Mind control it is, then,” Roghar muttered to himself. He rushed forward as the animated statue tried to get to its feet, smiting it again with as much power as he could draw from his faith and his fear.

  “You should leave this place, Travic,” an unfamiliar voice said. “We have left that life behind us.”

  “Is Gaele here as well?” Travic asked.

  “Heed me, priest. You should not be here.”

  A growl that could only be the gnoll punctuated Marcan’s words, and Travic cried out in pain.

  Roghar risked another glance over his shoulder. Travic was staggering back from the gnoll, and blood sprayed from the tip of the gnoll’s spear as it pulled free of the priest’s shoulder. That’s not good, he thought. The humans, emboldened by the gnoll’s successful attack, crowded forward to get in on the action. He didn’t have time to worry about Travic. The stone knight was on its feet again, though it seemed a bit unsteady.

  “Had enough?” Roghar asked the statue, making a few tentative jabs with his sword.

  In answer, the knight slammed its sword into Roghar’s shield again. A jolt of pain shot up his arm, then his arm went numb. He could barely hold his shield any more, let alone move it into position to block the knight’s next blow. He tried to step back out of the knight’s reach, but he bumped into Tempest and the tip of the stone sword bit through the armor plates at his shoulder.

  “I need more space!” Tempest shouted, her voice high with fear and frustration.

  Roghar nodded. Using his sword hand to help raise his shield in front of him, he ducked his head and rushed forward, inside the knight’s reach. His shield slammed into the stone knight’s chest, sending a fresh wave of pain through his arm but pushing the statue back a few steps, giving Tempest the room she needed.

  As the animated statue fought to catch its balance, Roghar stretched his jaws wide and exhaled a blast of fire that covered the stone knight. The flames had little effect on the stone itself, but it concentrated and lingered on the places where Roghar’s sword had already made gouges and chips in its surface. Fighting a magical construct like the statue involved more than wearing down its physical substance-it was a creature of magic and will bound to a material form. The divine power that flowed through his sword, the raw elemental energy of his draconic breath, and his own powerful will would cause as much damage to the statue as the steel of his blade, maybe more.

  Indeed, the fire seemed to sap the statue’s strength. It staggered back another couple of steps and sagged to one knee. Roghar pressed the attack, drawing his arm back for a mighty blow.

  With his shield arm still numb, he left himself completely open to a counterattack, and the statue, even weakened and off-balance, was quick enough to take advantage of it. Springing up from its crouch, it rammed its shoulder into Roghar’s chest, knocking the breath out of him again and sending him flying back to land at Tempest’s feet.

  The hall spun around him as he lay on his back. He heard the statue’s footsteps as it advanced-he felt them reverberate through the floor-but he couldn’t lift his head to see it coming.

  Tempest screamed his name, panic filling her voice in a way he’d never heard before.

  A murmured prayer helped bring the spinning world to a halt, and he felt strength surge through his body again. His shield arm tingled fiercely, but at least he could move it. He sat up just in time to knock the stone knight’s blade aside with his shield and struck a solid blow on the statue’s neck with his own sword. Had he been facing a human opponent, his blow would have decapitated his foe, and it was a solid enough hit to drive the statue back again.

  Roghar stole a glance around as he got to his feet. Travic was struggling to hold his own against the gnoll and the ragged humans who occasionally lunged forward to take advantage of an opening. They were wearing him down and driving him back, crowding Tempest from that side too.

  Tempest wasn’t holding up well, he could see. Her eyes were wide, and power crackled in the air around her. Streams of fire circled around her head and tongues of flame leaped from her shoulders, signs that her tight control over her infernal magic was slipping. More than the actual threats they faced, the thought of Tempest losing control filled him with fear.

  Roghar gritted his teeth. He didn’t like having a whole separate battle raging behind him, out of sight, where he was powerless to help and protect his friends. He didn’t like forcing Travic to hold off the gnoll and the others by himself, but he also knew that the priest would have crumpled under the stone knight’s assault. And he didn’t like forcing Tempest to split her attention, unable to catch the stone knight in the same fiery eruptions and thunderous blasts that she used to batter the other group of foes. Fundamentally, he hated everything about this fight, and wished he’d been smart enough to recognize the threat of the statue before it came to life and attacked from the rear.

  “Your eyes should have tipped me off,” he growled at the stone knight.

  The statue’s unblinking eyes gave him an idea, and he began gathering divine power for another strike, one he hoped would finish the statue. He lifted his shield to bat the knight’s sword aside again, then Travic cried out and Tempest screamed his name.

  He risked a glance behind him. Travic was down, and the gnoll stood over him with a leering grin twisting its blood-soaked muzzle. Taking advantage of Roghar’s distraction, the knight’s sword sliced past his upraised shield and bit deeply into his arm.

  “Enough!” Roghar shouted. Ignoring the pain in his shield arm, he swung his sword with all his might. As it whistled through the air, it began to glow, and it struck the knight’s head with a blinding flash of light. After the initial flare faded, the statue’s eyes continued to glow, and an instant later, the statue’s head erupted in a shower of ston
e fragments. Its body froze in the midst of staggering back, as if it had been sculpted in that position.

  Roghar wheeled to face the gnoll and found Tempest raining all the fires of the Nine Hells upon it and its human allies. Her hands were a blur of motion, snatching fire from the air and hurling it at anything that moved. A cloak of smoke and fire surrounded her and flames danced in a ring around her feet-dangerously close to where Travic lay. The fury of her assault was keeping the gnoll back, for the moment, but it also made it impossible for Roghar to get past her and fight the gnoll or tend to Travic’s injuries. Tempest might not have needed his help, but Travic’s lifeblood was spilling out onto the floor as he watched.

  “Tempest, back up!” he shouted over the roar of her eldritch flames.

  She didn’t respond. The firestorm around her grew larger and hotter, forcing her opponents and Roghar back several steps. Smoke started to curl up from Travic’s robes.

  Roghar let out a wordless shout and reached through the flames to grab Tempest’s shoulder, yanking her backward. Flames lashed out at his arm, and Tempest whirled on him, ready to throw a handful of hellfire at what she perceived as a threat behind her.

  “Tempest!” Roghar shouted again, lifting his shield to ward off the blast.

  The blast never came, and the fury of the firestorm diminished a bit. He glanced over the top of his shield to see Tempest, eyes wide with shock, fear, and the dawning realization of what she’d almost done. Still using his shield to ward himself from her flames, he pushed past her to Travic’s side.

  The gnoll stood over Travic’s body, its heavy spear clutched in both hands, its grin daring Roghar to come closer.

  “I’ll take that dare,” Roghar muttered.

  His first swing cut the brutal blade from the head of the spear, and his second cut a wide gash across the gnoll’s throat. Before it could fall, Roghar planted a kick in the center of the gnoll’s chest and sent it sprawling back into the clump of humans behind it.

  As they staggered back from the corpse of their champion, Roghar dropped to one knee and rested his palm on Travic’s chest. Fierce joy surged through him, Bahamut’s delight in a battle well fought, and he felt Travic draw a ragged breath as healing power flowed through his body.

  Roghar bared his teeth as he looked back up at the ragged humans. They stared at him in undisguised terror, then broke and ran back the way they’d come, making no effort to cover their retreat.

  Roghar’s roar of triumph pursued them, echoing down the hall.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The hounds of the fey hunt crashed into Albanon’s thorn barrier as the smaller demons spilled out of the Whitethorn Spire. The first rider to reach the barrier stood in his stirrups, then disappeared, reappearing with a soft popping sound just outside of Albanon’s reach. Albanon’s mouth dropped open as he recognized Immeral, the eladrin they had met in Moonstair.

  Albanon gripped his staff and braced himself for an attack, preparing an arcane shield he could throw up in case the eladrin’s spear or a demon’s claws came too close. In his surprise, readying that spell was all he could manage-all his thoughts of searing foes with fire or lightning had scattered like dry leaves in a storm wind.

  Nodding a salute to Albanon, Immeral lowered his spear and charged the large demon. The other riders appeared behind him with a series of pops and engaged the smaller demons, slashing around them with long, slender swords.

  They weren’t after us? Albanon thought, suddenly feeling very foolish.

  He gestured to dismiss the thorn barriers where the hounds were still thrashing their way through, and the hounds surged forward, leaping at the demons with teeth bared. Albanon stared dumbly as a fierce battle erupted on all sides around him.

  “Are you going to stand there like a statue while the priest dies?” Splendid chirped in his ear. The pseudodragon pushed off his shoulder and took flight, circling his head as she continued to speak. “Not that I would be terribly surprised. Or disappointed, come to think of it.”

  The pseudodragon’s words jolted Albanon out of his stupor. Kri, still sagging with exhaustion, was surrounded by the smaller demons, which stood almost as tall as he was. They were built much like dwarves, and some part of Albanon’s mind wondered idly if these creatures had been dwarves that had been subjected to Vestapalk’s transformation. Kri looked as though he could barely lift his heavy mace, let alone swing it effectively, and the demons surrounding him were making the most of his exhaustion. Like wolves encircling a tired stag, they darted in from behind to slash with their four clawed arms while the demons in front of him concentrated on dodging and blocking the weak blows of his mace.

  It took only an instant’s concentration for Albanon to work the same fey magic that had brought Immeral and the other hunters past his thorn barrier. He took a single step that carried him six long strides to Kri’s side. Demons growled in surprise all around him, but he stilled his mounting panic with a slow breath and extended his senses to feel the magic flowing all around him. As Kri had said, the magic was everywhere, and he found it easy to pinpoint the location of each demon, like an interruption in the flow, a snarl in the weave. With a short string of arcane syllables, he unleashed the merest fraction of the latent power in the weave of magic, causing the air around him to explode with fire. Searing flames engulfed each of the demons within five yards, but left Kri and the eladrin hunters untouched.

  The injured demons raised a terrible keening cry of pain and shuffled back from Albanon. In that moment of respite, he put a hand on Kri’s shoulder.

  “Gather your strength, my friend,” he said. “The fight’s not over yet.”

  “I have no strength left,” Kri said.

  “Call on Ioun’s strength, then. I can’t lose you now.”

  A few of the demons fell still on the ground, flames smoldering on their bodies, and the others pulled together on one side of the fray, pinning Albanon and Kri between them and those that were locked in battle with the eladrin hunters. They crept forward cautiously, as if waiting for the next burst of fire to erupt around them.

  “That’s right,” Albanon said. “You should be scared.”

  He drew in his will as he lifted his staff above his head, then slammed the end of the staff down on the ground as hard as he could. The ground shook with the arcane power surging through it, and thunder pealed in front of him. The clump of demons was blasted back and scattered. When the rumbling ground settled, they all lay dead, leaving Kri and Albanon safely out of reach of any of the remaining demons.

  Albanon turned to check on Kri. The old priest was clutching the stylized eye symbol of Ioun he wore around his neck, his eyes closed in fervent prayer. He looked a little stronger than he did before, but he was obviously not fully recovered. He drew a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes fluttered open.

  “What’s wrong?” Albanon asked.

  “It’s hard,” Kri said, shaking his head.

  “Drawing on your magic?”

  “No, the magic is fine. It’s harder to feel Ioun’s presence, though.”

  “Can you fight?”

  “I think so.”

  The eladrin hunters and their hounds had surrounded the large demon, though a few of the smaller ones remained on their feet, mostly locked in deadly grapples with the hounds. A few hounds lay dying or dead, and as Albanon turned to look, the large demon struck a solid blow on one of the hunters, knocking him to the ground.

  Albanon pointed the end of his staff at the towering demon, and a line of lightning joined him to the demon with a loud crack. Smaller bolts of lightning extended from the demon to strike two of the smaller demons nearby. Beside him, Kri stretched out both hands and bathed the demon and the downed man in brilliant white light. The demon writhed in pain from the twin assaults as the smaller demons collapsed. Immeral shot a smile over his shoulder at Albanon.

  “That’s it!” Immeral cried. “It doesn’t have much fight left in it!”

  The demon’s writhing stopped a
bruptly, and it fixed its small, gleaming eyes on Albanon. Its mouth opened and a voice came out-or two voices, rather. One was a bellowing roar befitting the body it issued from, and the other was powerful but strangely distant and alien … and familiar.

  “So you appear again to disrupt this one’s plans,” the voice said.

  Vestapalk! Albanon took an involuntary couple of steps back.

  “Know this,” the voice continued. “You strive in vain against this one. The Plaguedeep is planted, and its touch spreads to all the worlds. You are far too late to stop what has already begun.”

  Kri stepped forward, surrounded by a faint nimbus of holy light. “We will stop you, dragon,” he declared, and his voice carried the ring of divine authority.

  “Foolish priest. You do not know what you are doing, and you know nothing of this one. No mere dragon is this, though Vestapalk was mighty among dragons. This one is now mightier still.”

  “Keep it talking,” Albanon muttered, hoping Kri could hear. The hunters had backed away from the large demon and were carving through the remaining smaller ones. Albanon closed his eyes and extended his other senses to feel the pattern of magic around him.

  As before, he felt the power coursing through the air and the ground, and experienced the demons as dark tangles in that weave. The eladrin warriors and their hounds were bright threads, part of the same fabric as the Feywild itself, shining with life and their own magical power. Kri was a different sort of brightness, something foreign to the weave but congruent with it, shining with tremendous power of a different kind. The priest was speaking to the dragon-demon again, but Albanon paid no attention to the words. His attention was focused on the dark tangle of magic where the large demon stood.

  A lot of power was packed into its four-armed frame, power that was both alien to the Feywild’s weave of magic and antithetical to it-the magic of chaos and destruction. But there was more, something else occupying the same space. It was a faint presence, like an image in a mirror, similar to the demonic tangle. Albanon also noticed a churning undercurrent of elemental power, pointing to Vestapalk’s draconic nature.