The wheel of the Story Hour turns slowly, but it does still turn.
Though, first: One Certain Step, like most men of Djaw, had a deeply tanned face, with mildly-slanted eyes and a straight nose. I never thought much about the style of his armor, but something with a far-eastern flavor wouldn't be far off, I imagine. He wielded a burning two-handed greatsword from the moment the Company met him, until the moment of his death. Also, Step was only 5' 5".
Now, have some long-overdue Story:
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 317
Glemiyal
A quick glance around this bottommost storeroom reveals only common supplies: pots of paint, a large number of candles, some stone-cutting tools. From somewhere above them comes a rhythmic chanting, many voices unified in guttural song.
A single door leads from the room; Dranko listens and hears nothing but the chanting. Flicker checks for traps before easing open the door, and finds an upward-leading staircase immediately on the other side, ascending some 15’ before ending at another door. The chanting is louder now, and Aravis opines over the mind-link that it’s probably the sound of the goblins moving the opening of the Crimson Maw to Appleseed.
The plan is simple: open the door, lay waste, stop the ritual. It’s a bit unnerving to think that just outside the tower are 20,000 more goblins, but they’ll cut that bridge when they come to it. Buffing spells are hastily applied, and the Company charges up the stairs and bursts into the chamber beyond.
Ernie, Dranko and Aravis are in the lead, and so are the first to see the large round room, 50’ in diameter and with a 30’ high ceiling. On the center of the floor is a nine-pointed star, painted red, with candles about it in patterns. A dozen goblins stand around the perimeter of this circle, facing inward. On the far side of these chanting goblins is an enormous statue of Maglubiyet, God of the Goblins.
A thirteenth goblin stands with his back to the heroes, arms raised, body clad in armor. He’s enormous for a goblin – almost six feet tall – and a glowing red sword hangs by his side.
But all of this is not really what commands attention in the room. Suspended above the nine-pointed circle, in a column of red light, is an enormous dragon’s tooth. It turns slowly, this way and that, occasionally stopping for a second, then twitching to a new position, then resuming its slow rotation. This must be Maglubiyet’s Fang!
The party cannot think of a single thing going on in this room that they ought to let continue. With misgivings only from Dranko about the loot they might destroy, Aravis drops a Mordenkainen’s Disjunction in the room, placed so that everything except themselves is caught in the effect.
It all vanishes – the Fang, the circle, the goblins, even the statue. Everything in the room was an illusion! Some new things are revealed: a door behind the statue, along with three surprised-looking goblins who had been maintaining the illusion. Besides them, the room is empty.
Anxious to move on to the main event while their spells are still active, and also desirous that none of these goblins escape to give warning, the party presses the attack. Grey Wolf moves up the stairs and casts chain missile at the startled goblins, Dranko whips one in the face, and Kibi tosses a coldfire followed by quickened magic missiles that buzz by Dranko’s head.
Only one of the three goblins survive this barrage, and he bolts for the door. Dranko trips him with his whip as he runs by, but the goblin falls into the door, pushes it open, and yells, before Aravis can finish him off with another magic missile.
Onward and upward! Ernie takes the time to cast true seeing before the party opens the door and dashes up a second flight of stairs; they hear more chanting coming from above. Ernie kicks open the door again, and sees a room identical the illusionary one below, only this time what he’s seeing is absolutely real.
“Ding dong!” he shouts. “Yondalla calling!”
* *
Glemiyal, Champion of Maglubiyet and hero-figure to thousands of goblins, turns to the doorway where the interlopers are emerging. He stands tall and confident, his legendary sword Red Harbinger, Bane of Halflings, pulsing red in his mailed hand. Despite the fact that Ernie’s own sword, Tava’s Righteous Fury, should be making him invisible to goblins, Glemiyal is staring directly at him. Flicker dashes up the stairs on Ernie’s heels and stands beside his friend.
Glemiyal’s face quirks in a smile, looking back and forth for a second between Flicker and Ernie. He lets out a deep laugh.
“You? You two? You’re the halfling lovers I was supposed to fear? I must say… your kind is more… adventurous than I expected. Not that it matters.”
And with a flash, Ernie realizes that he never told Yoba about the Crimson Maw. Yoba, who has spent her entire life combating goblins. Yoba would have loved to be here for this fight – and, it would seem, was prophesied to have been.
“Just goes to show you something about prophecies,” says Ernie with a grimace.
Before Glemiyal can respond, Grey Wolf emerges at the top of the stairs and casts an acid storm into the room, blistering the flesh of almost every goblin present. He follows this with a quickened fireball to the densest cluster of goblins, but all the enemies are still standing when the acid and flames recede.
The goblins chatter quickly among themselves, and Glemiyal points impatiently at the doorway. Realizing he’s the only one who can see the invisible heroes, he barks a command.
“Area spells, centered on the door!”
Four cones of cold are loosed upon the only three in the party who have crested the stairs: Ernie, Flicker and Grey Wolf. Flicker leaps and twists, avoiding most of the damage, but Ernie and Grey Wolf are badly frosted. Then two more goblins drop confusion spells upon them. Grey Wolf blinks his eyes and discovers that the goblins have changed places with his allies! No, wait… have they? He’s not sure. His mind is fogged. Flicker shakes his head, suffering a similar loss of focus.
Ernie resists both of the spells, and so he watches with perfect clarity as Glemiyal approaches him, bats away his short sword, and lands a series of telling blows with the Red Harbinger. The Halfling-bane sword leaves a glowing red afterimage as it cuts the air, as well as a terrible heat that burns in Ernie’s wounds. Ernie stumbles and falls, conscious only by the barest of threads, blood pouring from rents in his armor. But a voice sounds in his head, a voice of comfort and resolve. Stand fast. He knows Tava is with him, and he fights off the encroaching darkness.
The rest of the Company moves up to join the attack. Aravis shapechanges into a huge yellow dragon, of the kind that he fought at the Battle of Verdshane. He breaths down a cone of crackling electricity that tears some of the goblins to pieces and further damages several more. Dranko uses a wand to administer cure critical wounds to Ernie before tumbling into position to stand next to his friend.
Glemiyal chuckles. “What do you hope to achieve? There’s nothing here you can do! No matter what happens here, do you intend to fight off my entire when it arrives momentarily?”
“I won’t have to,” Ernie hisses.
“True,” Glemiyal admits. “You’ll be well dead by then.”
Ernie spits at Glemiyal’s feet. “You will not live to see Appleseed.”
Most of the surviving goblins are staring up in horror at the dragon, though the bolstering nature of the Crimson Maw somewhat dulls Aravis’s terrifying presence.
“Forget the dragon!” barks Glemiyal. “Kill the rest – especially Ernest Roundhill! He’s on the ground in the pool of blood.”
Goblin warriors charge the Company. Dranko deftly trips one with his whip. The rest flail at the spot where they believe Ernie is lying, but their blades either miss or are foiled by the halfling’s plate mail.
Kibi casts a potent spell, moves up into the room, and touches Glemiyal on the leg. Otto’s irresistible dance is discharged, but unfortunately, due to a spell turning on the goblin champion, the spell is discharged back upon Kibi. He starts to caper and stomp, and curses up a storm while executing a flawless Dwarven battle-march.
Morningstar squeezes to the top of the stairs and fire off mass heal, undoing all the damage done to Ernie and Grey Wolf by the goblin attacks, and wiping away the confusion from Grey Wolf’s mind. Then she quickens and maximizes a searing darkness that hisses through Glemiyal’s armor.
Ernie, still on the ground, uses one of the unique powers of Tava’s Righteous Fury, calling down a flame strike directly on himself. Brilliant grass-green flames pour down from above, roasting goblins in holy fire and burning Glemiyal, while bringing only a soothing warmth to himself, Kibi and Dranko. Then Ernie gets to his feet, enduring a wicked slash from the Red Harbinger as he does so.
A second later the surviving three goblin sorcerers center chain lightnings on the now-visible Ernie. Crackling red bolts sizzle and hiss, and Ernie again feels his consciousness slipping away... and again Dranko keeps him up, this time with an instantly-cast close wounds.
Flicker sees that Glemiyal is, for some odd reason, dancing. He lines up his sword and takes a might hack.
“Argh!” Kibi shouts in pain and frustration. “Flicker! This is bad enough already!”
“What?” Flicker shouts. “Kibi? Where are you? Is that you dancing? I don’t… I don’t…”
Grey Wolf reaches forward, grabs the barely-conscious Ernie, and bodily lifts him up and back down the stairs, where he slides behind Morningstar. Glemiyal sighs as his main target is moved to the back rank, and Grey Wolf moves forward to confront him.
“Fine,” says the Goblin Champion, shifting his focus to Grey Wolf. “I suppose you’re next.” The Red Harbinger flashes, trailing its ruddy light, and Grey Wolf is nearly killed by a vicious series of cuts. Then Glemiyal gestures pointedly to the stairs; from outside the tower they can all clearly hear the sounds of hundreds of feet charging up the long stairway to the tower.
Aravis, hovering above in dragon form, casts a chain lightning of his own down upon the remaining goblin casters. Two of the three are annihilated in a shower of gore. Aravis finishes off the third one with a personalized cone of cold.
Glemiyal sees that his support has been entirely eradicated, but merely shrugs his shoulders, conspicuously unconcerned as Dranko steps forward to face him.
“I’m displeased,” says Dranko. “You hurt the man I most respect. So now I have something for you.”
Dranko reaches into that part of his brain that shouldn’t be examined, and draws a great power from his unnatural connection to the Far Realms.
Time stops. The light from the Red Harbinger hangs in the air like smeared flame. Bits of goblin flesh both frozen and charred hang still in the air. The gushing rivulets of blood pouring down Grey Wolf’s armor cease their trails, becoming glistening jewels.
Madness laps at the corners of Dranko's mind as he considers. He reaches into his bag of tricks and pulls out a fuzzy ball, which he then places directly opposite Glemiyal. Flanking buddy. Then, against what should be his better judgment, he reaches into his own madness and invokes tentacular nature. A horrid brown tentacle erupts from the side of his head, whipping around like an angry snake. His wisdom is now so low that he couldn’t cast clerical spells if he wanted to. But I don’t need to cast spells. I have a tentacle!
Time resumes, and Dranko is ready. He unleashes a ferocious barrage of whip-strikes, flanking with a suddenly-appearing brown bear, and finishes by lashing Glemiyal across the face with his tentacle. Giggling insanely, he shares a conspiratorial moment with his adversary. “I have dabbled in powers that even I don’t completely understand!”
Now the goblin champion looks concerned. He idly slashes at the dancing dwarf next to him, while wondering if perhaps Ernest Roundhill has made a bargain with powers more malign than he would ever have expected from a halfling.
Morningstar casts another mass heal upon Kibi and Grey Wolf. Ernie does the same for himself, using his quickscroll tube to heal himself.
“Ernest!” calls Dranko. He gestures to the badly-injured Glemiyal and in a voice bubbling with madness shouts, “He’s prepared for you. Finish him!”
Ernie calls upon his sword and tries to conjure up the Astral Deva, Tava’s Echo. Unfortunately for him, the very nature of the Crimson Maw precludes summoning spells.
More unfortunately for Glemiyal, it works anyway.
There is an awful tearing sound as one of the properties of the Crimson Maw is harshly violated, and Tava’s Echo appears, floating off the ground, her heavenly visage glowing with a soft green light. She looks with disapproval at Glemiyal and brings her own blade down upon him. Now it is Glemiyal who is driven to his knees.
Flicker blinks furiously. His head is so clouded, so confused… but he manages to gain one perfect moment of clarity. He looks upon the beautiful face of Tava’s Echo, and then to that of Ernie, his friend for so long.
Flicker grins wickedly at Glemiyal, and shouts “I love you Ernie!”
“I love you too, Flick.”
And Flicker drives his sword through Glemiyal’s gut.
…to be continued…
