The Quick And The Dead
5 Calistril, 4715-The Quick And The Dead
The following morning, Sandru appeared at the cemetery to escort his mother, Koya, back to the caravan, and to report that Ameiko had uttered another of her cryptic messages the night before.
"She spoke first in Tian," he said, "but then she switched to Common. She said, 'A key you seek lies in the grip of the ten-handed one---his fear is your greatest ally.'"
Sandru also provided some insight into the ornate dragon helm that the group had taken from the wight that had attacked them.
"This is the traditional helm worn by Brinewall's commanding officer," he explained. "The last man to hold that title was Andril Kortun. He was mentioned in the letter you found in the swamp. Ameiko's grandfather left whatever it is we are searching for in his care. I believe you have discovered his unfortunate fate."
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Having scoured the main floor of the keep, the companions decided to move upstairs, following the direction Buttersnips had fled. The stairs led to a wide balcony that wound around the ancient ballroom below. A rickety-looking railing ran along the balcony's edge. A set of double doors on the eastern side of the balcony led out onto the battlements of the keep, where the remnants of a solarium stood. Mazael pulled open the doors revealing a chamber draped in gloom. It may have once had a beautiful roof of glass, but little remained save for a few precariously learning wooden timbers hanging above a swath of crumbled stone and ruined furniture. The roof cover the southern half of the room had been crudely repaired with thick sheets of canvas and furs that had been stretched and fastened over the frames, creating a dark, almost cavelike, nesting area.
As Mazael peered into the darkness, he caught a faint hint of movement from a deeper shadow within the gloom. Before he could open his mouth to warn his friends, and ear-splitting screech pierced the air. Mazael, and Boris behind him, staggered back under the sonic onslaught, their ears bleeding. Within the solarium, a massive bat, easily the size of a horse, unfolded itself from the ceiling. Mazael, his balance still off, stepped quickly inside, his sword swinging wildly, yet still managing to connect. Behind him, Shalelu's bow sang, and the giant bat shrieked as her arrow struck home. It lurched towards Mazael and sank it's dagger-like teeth into the big man's shoulder. When Haroldo shouldered past his friend, the mobat spun like a serpent, and bit him as well. Mazael continued to hack at the beast, while Shalelu kept up a barrage of arrows. Finally, Piotr conjured a dazzling flash of light, completely disorienting the bat, allowing Yannus to run it through with his glaive.
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They reentered the keep and crossed the balcony to another set of double doors on the far side. These opened onto a long hallway. To the right, it opened onto what appeared to be a dining room. To the left, it ended at a door before taking a sharp turn. Not hearing or seeing signs of life in the dining room, the companions moved to the door on the left, and Boris put one of his oversized ears to it to listen. He heard a muffled voice speaking strange words on the far side.
"Somebody home," he whispered to his friends.
Koman reached over the goblin and shoved the door open. The walls of the room beyond were decorated with dozens paintings of a towering humanoid figure with four wings, a bird's head, and a scorpion's tail, seemingly drawn in blood. Old pews sat in a line facing the far wall, where a hideously defaced statue of the goddess Desna stood. Her beautiful butterfly wings had been hacked down the middle to give the impression of four wings, her head had been removed and replaced with a crude carving of a leering bird's head, and a long, barbed tail made of braided, dried nettles hung from her posterior. Standing before this unholy tableau were two dire corbies. The first appeared much as all of the others that the heroes had thus far encountered, but the second wore filthy robes caked with blood, and filth caked her feathers, and smeared her beak and talons as well. She wore a sword belted around her waist, and a silver pendant hung from her neck. Neither of the corbies seemed pleased to see the companions, and Boris wasted no time on introductions. The little goblin darted past Koman and stabbed his short sword into the first corby's meaty thigh. As the bird man shrieked, Piotr moved to the doorway, and seeing the robed corby and fearing she may be a priestess, he quickly cast a dazzling flash into her eyes, which also had the effect of temporarily rendering her mute.
Haroldo stepped into the room to support Boris before he was in over his head, and it was then that he heard a familiar buzzing sound. He whirled just as Buttersnips appeared behind him and jammed her small blade into his foot.
"Hi there!" she said cheerfully. "Did you miss me?"
"Not really," Yannus snapped from the door as he began to chant a prayer.
An ear-numbing blast of sound erupted around the quickling, and she recoiled from Haroldo, holding her ears.
"Not fair!" she whined, stomping her feet. "Nevakali, help me!"
Behind her, the robed corby, who must have been Nevakali, stepped to one side, and as she did so, and exact duplicate of her appeared next to her. At the same time, she slapped her hands together, and a small arc of electricity leapt from them to strike Haroldo, setting the blood rager's hair to stand on end.
Koman entered the fray, moving to try and flank Buttersnips, but as he passed her, she wrenched her knife free from Haroldo's foot, and jabbed it through the slayer's calf. He cursed and stumbled, but then Boris somersaulted behind the quickling.
"Pick on someone your own size," he grinned evilly at her, and then quickly slashed his sword across her belly.
Nevakali seemed oblivious to the chaos around her. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she gripped the pendant around her neck. As she did this, dark energy gathered around her, and then exploded throughout the chamber, sending numbing pain through her allies and enemies alike. It took a moment for the combatants to recover, but Shalelu was the quickest, and she knocked and loosed an iron-tipped shaft in one smooth movement, sending it into Buttersnips' back.
Boris looked around, trying to regain his bearings, and saw the Nevakali's dire corby minion reeling on its feet. Seeing a perfect opportunity, the goblin darted across the room and finished the bird man off with a well-placed strike. Meanwhile, Haroldo, still favoring his injured foot, limped towards Nevakali, his blood beginning to boil. and brought his greatsword across his body in a vicious slash that sent the priestess stumbling into the wall behind her, blood flowing freely.
Across the room, Piotr, still smarting from his last near-death call with Buttersnips, sent a pair of flashing missiles at the quickling. Already badly wounded, she glared at him, pure hatred in her eyes. She blurred into motion, streaking around Koman, who managed to graze her with a wild swing of his blade as she passed. She reached the door, dodged past Shalelu, and stabbed Piotr in the side before disappearing down the hall beyond.
Nevakali pushed herself away from the wall, and finding her voice again, croaked the words ot a vile prayer, instantly plunging the room into total darkness.
"Nice try," Mazael growled as he called upon his celestial blood to flood the area with divine light, banishing the darkness.
When she caught sight of Nevakali once more, Shalelu loosed two arrows in rapid succession. The first on struck the illusory double of the priestess, causing it to instantly vanish, while the second struck Nevakali herself. Haroldo howled in rage and rushed the corby, hammering her to the ground with a bone-shattering blow. She struggled to rise, and then Piotr conjured a cloud of dark motes around her, the cold magic weakening her further. Still, she lived, and managed to once again channel her foul, unholy energy into her attackers before Mazael dealt her a killing blow.
As Piotr pumped his fist in celebration, he suddenly cried out in agony as Buttersnips whizzed past him, her blade raking him from back to belly, before she disappeared down the hall again. Shalelu, Koman and Yannus gathered around the sorcerer, forming a shield in case the quickling came around for another strike. When they heard the tell-tale buzzing of her speedy movement, and saw the blur of her shape appear around the corner, however, it was Piotr's magic missiles that finally brought her down.
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As the companions tended their wounds in the aftermath of the fight, Piotr and Mazael, both devoted followers of Desna, took the time to clean up the shrine, and undo as much of the defacement to her statue as they could.
Afterwards, the group continued their explorations. Beyond the chapel, they found a series of rooms that seemed to be currently serving as sleeping chambers for the dire corbies. One of these chambers was larger than the others, its furnishings laying in disarray with the exception of one writing desk and chair in a far corner. Its surface was heaped with pages of parchment and paper. Piotr shuffled through them, and found most of them covered with dense scribblings and revisions written in messy Tien. The writings all seemed to be devoted to a nonsensical play about a family of crows that turned into bitter, insane humans. A set of stairs spiraled up from this room, leading higher into the tower, where they found what must have once have been a library. The walls were lined with bookshelves, although the majority of the books lay in disorganized piles on the floor. A large, filthy nest of grass, branches and strips of cloth was tucked in one corner of the room. They seemed to have stumbled upon Kikonu's and Zaiobe's hideaway.
Back out in the hallway, Boris stood with his ear pressed against another door.
"Boris hear baby cry," he whispered.
He tried the door handle, but it was stuck firmly. Haroldo fished an iron crowbar from his pack and set it into the jamb. One good push from the big man flung the door open. Although the storeroom beyond may have once been well organized, the fallen crates and broken barrels that filled it presented a tangle of debris. Now all of the companions could hear it...the soft sound of sobbing coming from deeper within the room. Koman led the way, stepping carefully over and around the mounds of detritus. He had gone no more than a few feet in, when he felt something seize his foot. Looking down, he saw a small, bony hand protruding from under a fallen cabinet. The body it was attached to slowly wriggled its way out into the open. It looked like a small, emaciated child, clothed in nothing by cobwebs and rags, but where its head should have been, instead there rested the skull of a wolf or a dog. Its hand was still locked around Koman's ankle, and as he looked down at it, he felt the breath being drawn from his lungs, leaving him fatigued and gasping for air. He raised his sword with some effort, and brought it down on the horrid apparition. It released him, but then darted forward, its animal jaws snapping, and bit into his calf.
"Not to worry!" Boris shouted as he tumbled and rolled past the tiny horror, its continued sobbing seeming to bore into his brain. "Boris here to help!"
He slashed at the creature, but then it turned on him, laying one hand upon in his chest. In that moment, Boris lost his ability to speak.
"Now, Boris going to die horribly!" the monster spoke in the goblin's own voice.
From the door, Shalelu fired into the melee, sending the creature spinning, but it recovered quickly and lunged at Koman again.
"You go to sleep now!" it hissed, still sounding like Boris as it bit and clawed at the slayer.
Koman felt his strength seeping out of him, and then his vision went dark and cloudy as he swooned and collapsed to the ground, snoring like a bear.
Piotr send a missile barrage into the room, and the creature fell back. Haroldo leaped into the gap, standing protectively over Koman as he slashed savagely into the thing. It shivered and shuddered, and then Boris sank both of his swords into its back, and it crumbled into a heap of bones.
Koman awoke with a snort, and climbed groggily to his feet. Boris leaned down to look more closely at the skeletal remains of the monster, clearing his throat to reassure himself that his voice had returned. There, down low, almost at floor level, he saw a series of figures drawn on the wall in a child's hand, seemingly with charcoal. They depicted crude representations of figures dressed in black robes throwing star-shaped projectiles, along with frightening bird-headed men, and lumbering savage-looking giants wielding axes.
Silently, Boris scooped the small bones into a sack. He would take them to Spivey for a proper internment.
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The companions found no more enemies on the upper floor, either living or unliving. However, in an abandoned servants' quarters, they came upon another clue as to what befell Brinewall twenty-five years earlier. Filaments of white, fibrous mold grew along the walls and across the bunk beds of the room, giving it a foul, musty stink. Here and there, mounds of fungus grew in nauseating colors. Beneath these mounds were the skeletal remains of several corpses. The limbs and heads had all been severed from the bodies by some sharp, slashing weapon, though there was no sign of the skulls.
The final room they entered on the upper level was once a guard post. Judging from the blood and gouges marring the walls, a terrific battle once took place there. A spiral staircase led them back down to the ground floor, where they found themselves in a the battle-scarred donjon they had visited earlier. There was another stairwell here leading down, and the group decided to venture to the dungeon level of the keep.
The stairs abruptly ended at an iron portcullis barring passage to a room beyond. The bars themselves were sunken deep into the floor and ceiling with no obvious method of passing thru to the chamber on the other side. However, Boris noted two 5-inch diameter circular depressions in the walls to the left and right of the portcullis, faintly inscribed with an image of the sun to the left, and the moon to the right. Yannus remembered the disc they had taken from Kikonu, inscribed with the image of the sun. He took it out of his belt pouch and placed it in the sun-engraved depression, where it fit perfectly.
"Now we just have to find the moon disc," he said, "and Ameiko said that a key we seek lies in the grasp of the ten-handed one. We'll need to find whoever or whatever that is."
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The retraced their steps to the main level, and then to the nearest set of stairs they had found in their explorations. This happened to be in the ballroom, and it led down to a large kitchen. Stone pillars supported the ceiling, and the fire pits, tables and pantries looked like they hadn't been used in decades. Thick layers of dust covered everything in the room. There were multiple exits from the chamber, but the group chose a pair of double doors to the south. Beyond this, they entered a large, domed room with a pool of dark water in the center surrounded by four stone pillars. It looked to be the keep's cistern.
On the far side of the cistern was another pair of double doors. As had become his habit, Boris leaned close, his ears perked, listening.
"You be quite in there!" he heard a booming voice shout from the other side of the doors, followed by a loud bang. "Slugwort gonna give you a beatin'!"
"Big bully in there," Boris whispered.
Mazael nodded and kicked in the door. Not quite a torture chamber, the dungeon on the far side featured three cells made of iron bars, one to the north and two to the south. A filthy, nest-like bed lay in the middle of the room, heaped around a central stone pillar next to what could only be a half-eaten giant centipede the size of a horse. In one of the cells, a blonde-haired woman, clothed in rags, badly beaten and bruised, stood, yet the look in her eyes was defiant and unbowed. Also standing in the room was an ogre, easily ten-feet tall, with an uprooted sapling gripped in his hand
"Hey!" he bellowed. "You not s'posed to be here....unless you goin' in a cage." He looked momentarily puzzled. "You want Slugwort put'choo inna cage?"
In response, Boris tumbled through the ogre's legs, and promptly slashed across the brute's Achilles'. Slugwort howled, and hopped up and down on his good foot until Piotr hurled a trio of magic missiles into his face. Grabbing his face, the ogre almost lost his balance. Haroldo took that opportunity to charge in, but Slugwort managed to recovered in time to bring his sapling crashing down on the bloodrager. The blow only seemed to enrage Haroldo further. He charged in snarling, and as he struck, Boris slashed behind both of Slugwort's knees, sending the giant sagging to the ground in an unmoving heap.
Yannus and Koman approached the caged woman.
"She's Ulfen," Koman said in an aside. "I speak Skald. Let me do the talking."
"In case you've forgotten," Yannus told his brother, "I speak Skald as well, and we both know talking isn't your strong suit."
The woman continued to glare as they approached.
"I am Yannus Vhiski," the priest began. "Would you like us to release you?"
She nodded once, curtly.
Yannus signaled to Boris, and the goblin hurried over and made short work of the lock. Cautiously, the woman stepped out. "I am Kelda Oxgutter," she said.
Yannus smiled and introduced his companions.
"Did you come on the longboat in the lagoon?" he asked.
Kelda nodded. "Yes, my shield brothers and I. We came here to raid, but we were attacked by a drake. It killed my brothers, but I finally managed to slay it."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Yannus said. "We came here with a trade caravan from Sandpoint. We have encountered and killed many types of creatures here, and have been forced to slay them all. How did you come to be captured?"
"We came to Brinewall following a map I found," Kelda replied. "It showed a hidden entrance into the keep. I was not going to leave empty-handed and have my brothers' deaths be meaningless. Unfortunately, I found the entrance, but it led me to the lair of a creature that I could not best."
"What kind of creature?" Yannus asked, his eyes narrowing.
"It resembled a giant squid," she said, "except it flew, and could speak. It subdued me, and I woke up here."
"Did it have ten arms?" Yannus asked.
"I didn't count them," Kelda snorted, "but ten sounds about right."
"Could you find your way back there?" Yannus asked.
"Yes," Kelda nodded, "but I need to recover my gear, and I'm not currently at my best."
"We can tend your wounds," Yannus replied. "Would you care to join us?"
"My honor demands it," she said stoically.
They found Kelda's gear locked in an adjoining cell, and while rummaging through Slugwort's gear, they came across an odd, rune-marked stone. Piotr peered at it, and muttered a few words over it.
"This is a summoning gem," he said. "It can call a creature from the elemental plane of earth to aid us."
"I think that may come in handy," Yannus said.
