by James Wyatt
“They’re pulling back,” he said to Tempest and Uldane. “Or circling around to attack where we’re weaker.”
“They’ll pick off stragglers,” Tempest said. “You should tell them to stay close together.”
A rumble of thunder drew Roghar’s attention to the sky, but the dawn was driving the clouds back. The noise, he realized, came from Hightown. A flash of fire or lightning caught his eye, and he found himself staring at a familiar tower perched near the edge of the bluff. Moorin’s tower.
“Roghar?” Tempest said, putting her hand on his arm.
“Sorry. What?”
“The soldiers. They should stick together.”
“Right. I was thinking about Albanon.”
“Albanon?” she asked.
Roghar nodded toward the bluffs. “That was his master’s tower. Something’s going on there.”
“There’s no time to worry about that now.”
“No.” He gave orders to the soldiers nearby who had become his lieutenants more or less by default, trusting them to get the word around. “Stick together, don’t let demons lure you away from your fellows, and don’t hesitate to run from a fight you can’t handle-as long as you run toward help, not away from it.”
He led them slowly through the streets of Lowtown. The Market Green was deserted, but resistance seemed to grow stronger as they drew closer and closer to the Lower Quays, along the river west of the market. He formed his troops into a wide wedge, with him in the center, and drove onward to the river.
“Nu Alin is near,” Tempest said suddenly, clutching Roghar’s arm.
A figure stepped out of the shadows near a warehouse, not ten yards away. “You can still taste me,” he said in a deep voice, his words stilted and strangely slurred. “As I can still taste your fear-your delicious fear.”
Demons began emerging from inside or behind the warehouses-dozens of them, both the fiery kind and the nightmare fiends. Here and there stood four-legged beasts and four-armed brutes, and beyond them a cluster of what looked like hundreds of swarming spiders made from the Voidharrow crystal. The demons ranged the length of the quays, stretching as long as Roghar’s line of soldiers, if not as deep.
Nu Alin stepped into the sunlight that spilled over the bluff and brought dawn to Lowtown at last. He yanked the cowl off his head and Roghar felt a sudden jolt of horror and fear. The face had once been human, but now it was bone and blood and liquid crystal, the flesh mostly dissolved away by the demon inside.
“I need a new body, Tempest,” Nu Alin said. “This one is starting to fall apart.”
Tempest shuddered and leveled her rod at Nu Alin. Flames streaked out from the rod to burst around the demon, setting his clothes and even his flesh on fire. He didn’t seem to notice, but strode toward her undeterred by the flames and smoke billowing around him.
As if Tempest’s attack had been a signal, the demons arrayed around Nu Alin and the soldiers lined up behind Roghar surged forward to meet in the middle. Roghar shook his head as he realized that this was exactly the kind of fight he had told his soldiers not to expect-an orderly line of demons facing their assault head-on.
Perhaps I’ll stick to adventuring after all, he thought.
Several of the fiery demons surged ahead in front of Nu Alin, so Roghar moved to intercept them and keep them from hindering Tempest as she kept hurling spells at their leader. He saw Uldane circling around them, so he made sure the demons’ attention was firmly fixed on him, roaring a challenge and whirling his blade in a glowing arc that bit deep into two of the creatures. A chill touch of fear at the base of his skull told him that a nightmare demon was closing in behind him, so he turned his head and exhaled a cloud of dragonfire without even looking.
Then he saw what he’d done-Tempest was engulfed in a cloud of fire, reeling back as the flames consumed her.
The fiery demons clutched at him as he pulled away to help her, searing his scaly skin, but he ignored them, shut out Uldane’s shouts, focused on nothing but helping Tempest. “Platinum Dragon,” he muttered in prayer, “please undo the harm I’ve done.” He willed divine power into his hands, ready to send healing through Tempest’s body.
“You’ve killed us all,” Tempest spat as he reached her side. She swung her flaming arms at him, trying to batter him back.
“Let me help you!” he cried, filled with the terror that he might be too late.
A bolt of coruscating black energy, exactly like one of Tempest’s eldritch blasts, hurtled through the air and struck Tempest in the spine. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth stretched into a scream.
“Tempest!” Roghar shouted.
As she writhed in agony, her face peeled away to reveal the monstrous visage of a nightmare demon, and Roghar felt all his terror ebb away, replaced with the profound realization of what an idiot he’d been.
He followed the path of the eldritch blast back to Tempest-the real Tempest-and gave her a sheepish grin. She just laughed, shaking her head, and sent another blast of fire into the fray.
Somewhere, not too far off, Roghar thought he heard a trumpet. He glanced to the skies, wondering if Bahamut had sent a flight of angels, but then he heard the baying of hounds, and he’d never heard of angels traveling in the company of hounds.
“Roghar!”
He spun around and searched the chaos for Uldane, finding the halfling more or less where he’d left him. However, the three fire demons, rather than chase Roghar, had moved to surround Uldane, who was clearly having trouble dodging the flaming fists of all three creatures.
“Sorry,” Roghar called as he hurried to rejoin that fight. His sword quickly drew the attention of one of the fiery demons. It roared as it wheeled on him, lashing out with long tendrils of flame that licked at his armor but didn’t get through to his flesh.
The demon’s angry roar was cut short suddenly as Uldane’s dagger sank into what must have served as its spine. The flames of its body blew outward and extinguished, and the liquid red substance in its center spilled to the ground, first hardening and then crumbling to dust.
“Where is he?” Tempest shouted behind him, a note of panic in her voice. “Where’s Nu Alin?”
Roghar scanned the area as the two remaining fire demons circled cautiously around him and Uldane. He caught a demon’s fiery fist on his shield, batted it aside, and spotted a corpse on the ground near where a clump of soldiers were fighting one of the nightmare demons. The cloak draped over the body matched what Nu Alin had been wearing.
“There!” he shouted, pointing at the body. “He’s down!”
“I see the corpse,” Tempest called back, “but where’s the demon?”
Oh, no, he thought. He could be anywhere-sliding like a serpent unseen in the chaos, or inhabiting any of these bodies, friend or foe.
He was sure the same thought was haunting Tempest, as her wide eyes darted around to every soldier and demon nearby. She tried to keep a wide circle around her free of any potential threat, even pushing a soldier who stumbled too close, sending him dangerously close to a demon’s fiery claws.
Roghar roared and launched a fierce assault on the fire demons that kept him pinned down. His sword erupted in light and sliced into the crystal heart of one demon as his shield forced the other one back, knocking it off balance. Uldane took advantage of the demon’s moment of imbalance and drove his dagger into its skull, and both demons died at once, their flames extinguished.
“He’s going to come after Tempest,” Roghar said. “We have to keep him away from her.”
“He might try taking one of us,” Uldane said. “Even if it’s just to get closer to her.”
Roghar fixed Uldane with a steady stare. “He hasn’t taken you already, has he?” He searched the halfling’s face and eyes for any sign of the red crystal, but Uldane’s face broke into a broad grin that was unmistakably his.
“It’s creepy, isn’t it?” the halfling said. “He could be anywhere, anyone.”
“Yes. Now keep her s
afe.” Roghar started toward Tempest. “We’re coming to help you,” he called to her, keeping his sword low.
“Stay back!” she shouted.
“Tempest, it’s us. We’re safe.”
“I don’t know that. You can’t prove it.”
A soldier, a woman who had fallen into the role of one of Roghar’s lieutenants, approached Tempest from behind, her eyes fixed warily on Roghar. Roghar tried to remember her name-Beven? Beren?
Belen, he decided.
“The demon has him,” Belen said to Tempest. “Strike him down, quickly!”
Tempest spun to face her, backing away without getting too close to Roghar. “Stay back, all of you!”
Belen’s eyes widened and she pointed at Roghar. “Behind you!” she screamed.
Tempest wasn’t fooled. She glanced at Roghar without turning away from Belen, but even that momentary distraction was all the opening Nu Alin needed. In Belen’s body, he leaped into the air and came down on top of Tempest, smashing her to the ground. Belen’s fingers scrabbled at Tempest’s neck.
Together, Roghar and Uldane rushed to Tempest’s side. Roghar planted a kick in Belen’s gut that sent her sprawling, though her fingers left a long gash in Tempest’s neck. Blood spurted from the wound as Tempest cried out in pain and fear.
Nu Alin was unfazed by the blow, making a rasping sound that might have been laughter as he lifted Belen’s body to its feet. “It’s fascinating,” he said in an approximation of Belen’s voice. “She’s so furious with you, Roghar. She followed you, trusted you, believed that you would keep her safe. You failed, and now you’re ready to kill her in order to get to me. She feels so betrayed.”
Uldane stood near Nu Alin, a dagger in each hand, looking for an opening. Keeping his eyes on the demon, Roghar fell to one knee beside Tempest and muttered a prayer, closing the wound in her neck.
“Does it matter to you what body I wear?” Nu Alin said. “It appears that it does. None of you knew the farmer whose body I just abandoned, and you thought nothing of lighting it aflame to drive me out. But when I took Tempest”-he looked at her with something that might have been hunger in his eyes-”you couldn’t bring yourself to attack. Are you torn, now? Was this Belen someone you cared enough about that you’ll hesitate again? She certainly hopes so.”
“She would rather die than live as a prisoner in her own body,” Tempest said, getting to her feet.
“True,” Nu Alin said, “but she’s desperately clinging to the hope that you can free her without killing her. She has such faith in you, Roghar. But she’s so afraid that her faith has been misplaced.”
Roghar and Tempest spread out so that they and Uldane more or less surrounded Nu Alin. Roghar knew they were fooling themselves-if the demon wanted to, it could escape with ease through one of the gaps between them, or even jump right over the halfling’s head to get out of their grasp. It certainly didn’t seem to feel threatened as they closed in around it.
But he had to admit that the demon’s words were giving him pause. What right did he have to hurt or kill Belen, just because she’d fallen prey to the demon? He had a responsibility to her, to free her if he could.
“Look at you,” Nu Alin said, turning in a slow circle. “You didn’t hesitate for a moment when I wore the flesh of that farmer. You set me aflame, burned the flesh from my bones. Did he offend you? Or was it something I said? Will you kill poor Belen if I start describing how eager I am to taste Tempest again? It’s strange, actually-I’ve never felt this way about a host before. Usually I wear them out and discard them. But I feel as though I’ve been deprived of a particular pleasure because I didn’t have the opportunity to really use you up.” Belen’s face leered at Tempest with an almost lascivious grin.
That was more provocation than Tempest could stand. “You never will,” she snarled. “And you’ll never do that to another host. Rekhtha murkuhl Hadar rash!”
Wind sprang up around Nu Alin, engulfing him in a whirlwind that lifted Belen’s body from the ground. Dust and debris rose up in a cone, and eerie lights shone all around him, weaving into a prison of light and wind that held him fast.
“What is that?” Roghar said.
Tempest shot him a wolfish grin. “I believe Quarhaun would refer to it as the seventh invocation of Hadar,” she said. “It’s worse than it looks.”
Belen’s body writhed helplessly in the whirlwind for a moment, then her back arched in what seemed like horrible agony.
“But Belen-” Roghar said.
“Don’t worry about her,” Tempest spat.
“I have to worry about her. I led her into this.”
“Tempest!” a voice called from somewhere nearby. It was familiar, but Roghar couldn’t quite place it.
Tempest didn’t turn toward the voice. Her eyes were fixed on Belen’s body, one hand outstretched to keep the whirlwind in motion.
A man broke from the mass of warring demons and soldiers and ran toward them. Roghar shifted so he stood between Tempest and the onrushing man, then he recognized Albanon and the pseudodragon perched on his shoulder.
“Stay back, elf,” he growled.
Albanon stopped in his tracks, and the smile fell from his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Shara said you were talking to the demon, that you let it escape.”
Albanon’s brow furrowed and he looked down. “I … I don’t remember,” he said, meeting Roghar’s gaze again. “Listen, Roghar, a lot has happened. But I’m the one who brought a fey hunt to kill all these demons.”
Roghar looked behind Albanon and noticed for the first time that the battle was clearly going against the demons. Hounds were barking and yowling, and he saw several green-eyed, flame-tongued beasts in canine form biting and tearing at demons. Eladrin warriors cloaked in starlight fought alongside the Fallcrest militia who had followed him, and Roghar could clearly see the hope written on the faces of his soldiers. Against all odds, this battle was looking like a victory.
Perhaps I haven’t failed them after all, he thought.
Albanon was staring slack-jawed at something to his left, and Roghar followed his gaze to where Belen’s body still hung suspended in the whirlwind. Her mouth was stretched open in a silent scream, and a long, snaky tendril of shimmering red liquid was emerging slowly from her throat. The eldritch lights of the windstorm shone brightest around that tendril-around Nu Alin as Tempest’s magic extracted him from Belen’s body. Roghar could see the lights searing Nu Alin’s substance. A black crust of ash constantly formed and reformed across the liquid surface, each layer blowing away in the wind before being replaced by the next.
“Is that the demon?” Albanon asked. “Nu Alin?”
Roghar nodded.
Albanon stepped closer and looked up at the writhing serpent whose substance was slowly eroding under the alien lights of Tempest’s spell. “Worm,” he said. “You killed my master, possessed my friend, and sacked the town I called home. Now you and your plans are dust.”
He stepped to stand beside Tempest and put one hand gently on her shoulder. With his other hand, he lifted his staff and pointed it at Nu Alin. The wind intensified and the lights grew brighter, dancing with lightning and fire in the heart of the windstorm. Nu Alin burned faster, and in a moment the serpent was reduced to a cinder, the cinder to ash, and then there was nothing.
Albanon and Tempest lowered their hands and the whirlwind died, lowering Belen slowly to the ground. Roghar fell to the ground beside her, relieved to find her breathing in ragged gasps, though she was unconscious.
“She’ll be fine,” Tempest said, coming to stand behind him.
“Is he really gone?” Roghar asked.
“He is.”
Roghar stood and put a hand on her arm. “How do you feel?”
Tempest blinked, and a tear streaked down her cheek. “Pretty good,” she said. She pulled him into an embrace, one of her curling horns clattering against his breastplate. “Pretty good indeed.”
EPILOGUE
Fallcrest would have a long journey to recovery, from rebuilding burned buildings to treating the citizens and soldiers who showed signs of the demonic contagion. That harsh reality was in the forefront of Roghar’s mind as he approached the flame-scorched inn.
But then the cheering started. People spilled out of the inn and gathered from the square to welcome back the victorious soldiers, throwing hats in the air and flowers at their feet. Roghar scanned the crowd, looking for Shara’s red hair or the drow’s black-skinned face, but he saw neither of them.
As he drew near the doorway, a portly man he recognized as the Lord Warden, Faren Markelhay, stepped out. The Lord Warden’s arms were crossed over his chest, and he cut an intimidating figure.
Roghar leaned close to Tempest and whispered, “He can’t complain, right?”
“Right. You’re a hero.”
The Lord Warden stepped out of the doorway and spread his arms wide, smiling just as broadly, as if the crowd were cheering for him.
“Heroes of Fallcrest!” he shouted over the crowd, prompting them to cheer even louder.
Roghar braced himself for a long speech and perhaps some attempt to claim credit for the victory. Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to see the Lord Warden step out of the doorway and gesture for Roghar to enter.
“There will be time for speeches and acclamation later,” the Lord Warden said as Roghar ducked through the doorway. “But the last thing Fallcrest needs right now is for me to stand between it and a good party.”
