by James Wyatt
The Doomdreamer’s eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed, dropping to his knees behind the makeshift altar. Albanon dropped to his knees at well, unsure what he was supposed to be doing.
The wailing chorus ceased and the Doomdreamer collapsed on the floor. “One billion, three hundred and thirteen million, forty-six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five,” Albanon said, and then he, too, fell silent.
Panting with exertion, the Doomdreamer lifted himself off the floor. “Did you see, Albanon?” he asked. “Now do you understand?”
“I understand,” Albanon said. You are Kri, he realized suddenly. I understand perfectly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shara yanked her sword from its sheath as the fiery demon surged forward. “Quarhaun!” she shouted.
Dozens of tiny flames caught in curtains and on posts and floorboards as the demon entered the inn and lunged at her. Its entire substance was fire, except the crystalline head in its core, and Shara couldn’t see any difference between the flames left in its wake and the demon itself. It extended a tendril toward her and she slashed at it with her sword, but as the blade passed through the fire she didn’t feel any resistance and it didn’t seem to slow or hinder the attack at all. She followed her blade’s arc, twisting her body out of the tendril’s direct path, but it still seared across her back, igniting her cloak.
With a muttered curse, Shara loosened the cloak’s clasp and let it fall smoking to the floor. Sweat trickled down her face as the demon’s heat washed over her, and she smiled. “Into the fire,” she muttered, and inched closer to the inferno.
A bolt of blue-white light whistled over her shoulder and struck near the demon’s leering face, blossoming into a sheet of ice that spread across the surface of the fire, stilling the dancing tongues of flame for a moment. Shara took advantage of that moment and followed the bolt’s path with her sword, striking hard where the demon’s substance had grown solid and-she hoped-brittle. Her blade struck something hard, making a loud crack, and the demon recoiled with a monstrous roar. Its fury seemed to intensify its heat, melting away the coating of frost that Quarhaun’s spell had created, and it curled in around Shara, extending more tendrils of flame to enfold her.
She ignored the coiling tendrils and drove her sword into the demon’s face. She expected to hit solid crystal, hard as rock, but instead found liquid that flowed around her blade. The demon’s light and heat faltered with the blow, and the tendrils that struck her stung but didn’t burn her. Pressing her momentary advantage, she sliced her sword clean through the demonic face, drawing a trail of crystalline liquid out with her blade. The face dissolved into floating globules of red liquid as the demon’s fiery form contracted. A moment later, the liquid globs fell to the floor, burning like lantern oil, and the demon was no more.
She bent to pick up her cloak, then used it to swat out the little fires left behind from the demon’s passing. Quarhaun added his own cloak to her effort, then put his hand on her shoulder.
“You fight like you have nothing to live for,” he said.
Shouts from the street outside suggested that the threat had not passed, but she clasped Quarhaun’s hand anyway. “If I had killed Vestapalk when I thought I did,” she said, “would these demons be here now?”
“We are the same, you and I.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, and he responded with a wink and nodded at the door. “There’s more killing to do,” he said.
Smiling, she stepped to the wreckage of the door left behind from the demon’s entrance and peered into the street.
Roghar looked up and down the hall, trying to find the source of the scream that had stopped him in his tracks as he came upstairs. Wisps of smoke snaked out around a door midway down the hall, and another cry for help came from the same direction. He glanced at Tempest, who nodded, and then sprinted to the door. Drawing a deep breath, he kicked the door open, releasing billowing clouds of smoke into the hallway.
Flames roared in the room beyond, lighting the room in lurid reds. The thick smoke made it hard to see what was happening, but Roghar plunged in without a moment of hesitation, following the sound of a man coughing. He stumbled over something on the floor, looked down, and found a woman’s body.
“Tempest!” he shouted. “Get her out of here!” He crouched beside the woman at his feet, and a word of prayer sent Bahamut’s power into her, simultaneously strengthening her against the fire and smoke and lighting her like a beacon so Tempest could find her in the smoke.
As he stood again, a column of fire roared up right in front of him. A demonic face, mouth open in a shriek of fury, floated in the midst of the flames, evidently formed of a glittering liquid similar to Nu Alin’s true substance. Roghar drew his sword.
“Vile spawn of chaos and destruction,” he said, “you are not welcome in this world. Get back where you came from.”
He didn’t expect any kind of response, but the demon answered him, in a voice like the crackling of flame. “The Plaguedeep grows, mortal. Soon this world shall be consumed.”
As long as the demon was willing to talk, Roghar used the opportunity to get his shield off his back and into position on his arm. “I don’t know what the Plaguedeep is, but I’m here to make sure that this world stays as the gods intended it to be.”
“The Plaguedeep is the place whence I came, and it is in this world. Until it grows to consume the world. As I shall consume you!”
I guess it’s done talking, Roghar thought, interposing his shield between himself and the demon’s fiery tendrils. His sword erupted with brilliant light as he swung at the demon’s liquid crystal face. It recoiled from the divine light, and his blows seemed to burn the liquid crystal in a way that the roaring flames could not.
Roghar fought with righteous fury, confident in the knowledge that he was doing Bahamut’s work, helping to defend and protect the defenseless citizens of Fallcrest. His confidence gave strength to his arms as Bahamut empowered his weapon, and in just a moment the demon was gone, its fires extinguished and its crystalline substance shriveling to black residue on the floor.
Snarling with satisfaction, Roghar turned to check on Tempest. Smoke still clouded the air, but he didn’t see any sign of her. White light still shone near the floor, marking the location of the woman he’d tripped over. Tempest hadn’t retrieved her.
Another cough, weaker than before, came from the floor near the window, where fire still roared in the curtains. Roghar plunged deeper into the smoke, yanked the curtains to the floor and smothered the flames, then found the suffocating man slumped in a chair. He invoked Bahamut’s healing power as he lifted the man to his shoulder.
“A more moderate lifestyle would serve you well, friend,” he muttered to the heavy man. “The blessings of food and drink were meant to be enjoyed within sensible limits.”
He staggered to the woman’s side and dropped to one knee. Groaning with effort, he lifted her under his arm-grateful for a much lighter load-and carried both unconscious people out the door.
The hallway was in chaos. Smoke billowed along the length of the hall, mostly clinging to the ceiling. Near Roghar, Uldane stood facing one of the nightmare demons they’d encountered on the bluff, standing firm against it though his face was contorted with fear. Behind Uldane, a clump of terrified looking people, mostly clad in bedclothes, huddled together, recoiling from the shadowy tendrils the demon lashed toward them. At the far end of the hall, Tempest stood facing another demon near a broken window.
Tempest seemed paralyzed with fear, and Roghar could imagine why. These demons used fear as their weapon, taking on the appearance of whatever their foe feared most. And they came from the same source as Nu Alin, apparently, so it was likely a trivial matter for them to draw on Tempest’s terror of Nu Alin and her fear of being possessed again.
I have to help her, he thought.
He lowered the two people he was carrying to the floor, as gently as he could, and scanned the clump of terrified
bystanders for someone who looked at least vaguely competent. A teenaged girl caught his eye, wearing a look of defiance as she held a younger boy.
“You,” he called, pointing to her. “I need you to get these people into the middle with the rest of you. I’ll keep the demon busy. Can you do that?”
Her eyes went wide and flicked to the demon, but when she looked back at him she nodded. He smiled as he drew his sword again. He roared and charged the demon.
“Fiend of the Plaguedeep!” he shouted. “Your doom is here, in Bahamut’s name!”
The demon whirled to face him, and it changed. The snaky tendrils of shadow and liquid crystal that served the creature in place of legs lifted up off the ground and became five draconic heads in five different colors. The burning inn fell away until he stood alone on a desolate plain before Tiamat, god of greed and vengeance, queen of evil dragons.
“Worship me, dragonborn,” all five heads said in unison. “I am also of the blood of Io.”
Bahamut and Tiamat were two sides of the same coin, in dragonborn thinking. Both gods had arisen from the corpse of the first dragon god, Io, when he was slain by the Lord of Chaos in the Dawn War. But they embodied opposite extremes of Io’s philosophy, and dragonborn believed that they all had a choice to make in life between the path of Io and the path of Tiamat.
Doubt gnawed at Roghar’s heart, a doubt he’d never previously admitted or acknowledged. Did I choose the right path? he wondered, putting the doubt into words for the first time.
The dragon-god roared, five earth-shaking bellows of pain and fury, and Roghar saw Uldane’s dagger stuck into the back of the demon as it turned. Tiamat was gone, and Uldane had taken advantage of the demon’s distraction to deal what might have been a mortal blow, but the demon was reaching out to retaliate. Light flashed around Roghar and he lashed out with his blade. The demon’s horned head toppled from its shoulders and its body began to dissolve into shadow and red liquid.
Roghar glanced around. The girl had accomplished her mission perfectly, and the two people he’d retrieved from the room were awake, looking around with terror as they huddled with the others. At the end of the hall, Tempest was wrapped in the coils of the other demon’s tendrils, her body limp in its grasp.
“No!” he roared, pushing his way past the bystanders to reach her.
Just as he came to her side, an explosive blast of lightning engulfed the demon, and Tempest’s body with it, roaring with thunder that knocked him back into the knot of people behind him. The demon released its grip on her as it staggered backward, too, and Tempest fell on her face onto the floor.
Roghar pulled himself up and free of the bystanders, and Tempest managed to lift herself to her hands and knees. The demon surged toward her again, but she lifted one hand and spat what sounded like an infernal curse at it. Flames spilled out from her outstretched fingers and over the demon. Roghar stepped up as it reeled back and plunged his sword into its chest.
As the demon’s form dissolved, he bent beside Tempest and lifted her to her feet. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She shook her head and didn’t meet his eyes.
“They use our fear as a weapon,” he said.
Tempest looked at him, fear still haunting her eyes. “Roghar, what if the drow is right?”
“About what?”
“About me and my power,” she said. “It’s true that I’m dealing with forces I don’t really understand.”
“But you’re using your power for good.”
“Are you sure?” Tempest looked away before he could answer. “It doesn’t always feel that way.”
“Destroying demons? Of course that’s a good purpose.”
“Ultimately, yes. But in the moment, it just felt like destruction. Self-preservation, perhaps, but there’s nothing noble about that.”
“Tempest, you can’t-”
“Roghar!” Uldane shouted. “The inn is burning!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Albanon rowed the boat back toward the quays as Kri manned the rudder, keeping his eyes fixed on a plume of smoke rising up from a building just beyond the north end of the quays. Glancing over his shoulder as they drew nearer, Albanon guessed it was the Silver Unicorn Inn in flames.
“We’ll find Nu Alin where the demons are attacking,” Kri said.
Ninety-seven full strokes of the oars brought the little boat to the quays. Albanon frowned at the prime number. He started toying with multiples of it, poked at its square and cube, and found his mind filling with formulas again.
“Albanon!” Kri barked. “Pay attention!”
Fire shot out from Albanon’s fingers and caught in the rope he’d been using to tie up the boat. He swatted out the flames and counted thirteen hemp fibers reduced to glowing embers. Another prime.
He finished tying up the boat and clambered onto the dock after Kri. Together they hurried toward the column of smoke. Thirty-eight steps-twice nineteen-brought him into the thick of the terror around the Silver Unicorn. Demons like the ones they had fought at the Tower of Waiting haunted the streets outside the inn, catching lone bystanders and feasting on their fear. Animate forms of living fire stalked around the burning inn as well, setting fires in buildings and townsfolk alike.
Thirteen, thirty-eight, ninety-seven … calculations danced through Albanon’s mind. Settling on the formula he wanted, he reached a hand toward one of the burning demons and snuffed out its fire. He saw a suggestion of a shape remaining when the fire was gone, then something like a red crystal skull fell to the floor. Eight seconds after he extinguished the flame, the demon was gone without a trace.
“Impressive,” Kri said. “But we are looking for Nu Alin.”
Eight words, Albanon thought. Eight seconds for the demon to die. An unlikely coincidence.
“There he is!” Kri said, pointing to a broad, strong-looking man who walked without fear among the demons.
“Don’t kill him! Not yet.”
Eight words again, Albanon thought.
Kri hurried toward the man, whose face was hidden beneath the hood of his cloak. “Albric!” he called.
Nu Alin stopped and lowered his hood.
Albanon stared. The body was completely different, but the eyes were the same-the eyes of the halfling creature that had clung to Tempest’s back, digging its fingers into her throat while demanding that Albanon activate the teleportation circle in Kalton Manor. The same creature that had killed Moorin.
“Albric has been dead for a long time,” Nu Alin said slowly.
Eight words.
“Not completely,” Kri said. “His will yet survives in you.”
“He is gone and long forgotten, old fool.”
“The Chained God commands you! Finish your task!”
“I have come with a different purpose now.”
Eight eights, Albanon thought.
As Kri was about to speak again, someone barreled out of the inn, a red-haired woman with a greatsword. Her name bubbled slowly to the surface of Albanon’s thoughts, and he mouthed it to himself. Shara.
She launched herself at the nearest demon, one of the shadowy nightmare creatures, and hacked into it with her massive sword. The drow who had come with them from the Temple of Yellow Skulls came out of the inn after her, his eldritch blade burning in his hand. He leaped at the same demon, and together they made quick work of it, apparently undaunted by the nightmares it induced.
“Albanon?” Shara cried.
“Albanon,” Nu Alin said, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time. “I remember you. You sent me and your tiefling friend into the Labyrinth after I killed the old wizard.”
Anger welled in Albanon’s chest, but he tried to keep his face a mask. As long as Kri believed that his mind and will were shattered, he would not have to fight the priest. He wasn’t ready.
“His mind has been broken by the Chained God’s touch,” Kri said. “He will not remember.”
But I do remember, he thought. I rememb
er everything, Kri.
“Too bad,” Nu Alin said. “Do you suppose he remembers finding the wizard in his tower? It was a work of art, what I did to him. A masterpiece.”
He’s trying to provoke me, Albanon thought.
“Albanon, what are you doing?” Shara called. “We could use your help here! Roghar, Tempest, and Uldane are still inside!”
Tempest is here?
“He remembers more than you think,” Nu Alin said.
Kri looked at him sharply, but Albanon made his face blank again. As Kri peered into his vacant eyes, Shara leaped over the corpse of another demon and ran toward them. As she drew close, Nu Alin spun around and slammed his fist into her gut, hurling her back the way she’d come. She crashed to the ground and lay still.
“Servant of the Chained God,” Nu Alin said to Kri, “I serve another master now.”
“Betrayer!” Kri spat. “You fought the Voidharrow’s will even as it transformed you. It is not too late. You can still help me free the Chained God.”
“Impossible.”
“No. I have the shard of the Living Gate. I have a fragment of the Voidharrow. We can finish what you began. I need only your knowledge.”
“Then look upon my masterpiece,” Nu Alin said, grinning at Albanon.
Quarhaun was helping Shara to her feet, and they both gaped at Nu Alin with fear and confusion on their faces. One of the flaming demons swept toward them from behind. Albanon extended his hand and snuffed its flame as he had done to the other one a moment before.
Nu Alin turned and started walking toward the quay. Shara shouted, and Quarhaun leveled his sword, sending a bolt of frost hurtling after the demon. The bolt crashed into Nu Alin’s back and stopped him in his tracks as Shara ran after him.
“Come, Albanon,” Kri said. “We have all we need.”
Without a word or a backward glance, Albanon turned away from Shara and Nu Alin and followed Kri into a shadow-cloaked alley.
