JollyDoc
Explorer
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
“It’s in the Undercity,” Grubber said, opening his eyes.
“Are you sure?” Faust asked. “I thought we had searched those slums pretty thoroughly.”
“Grumbar is sure,” the goliath replied. He had just completed a Communion with his patron, and the taciturn god had indeed informed him that the location of the second vault key was somewhere within the Undercity of Kongen-Thulnir. Where exactly it was, or who was in possession of it remained in question. Gods tended to be somewhat fickle and vague in the answers they gave.
“Well isn’t that reassuring?” Mak muttered. Though genuinely happy to be reunited with his long-lost brother, the younger goliath could not understand his sibling’s outdated devotion to such a stick-in-the-mud deity. Grubber simply stared patiently at him, inwardly certain that Mak’s youthful ideals would settle down in time, and he would come to see the pragmatism behind Grumbar’s teachings.
“Alright then,” Faust nodded. “Everyone gather round me. We’re not going to chance walking it. That dragon is still out there somewhere.” The group had taken refuge in the citadel after fleeing Xyzanth’s assault. Now, as they all laid one hand upon the psion, he opened a rift in the fabric of reality, and shunted them instantly between dimensions. They reappeared before the barricaded redoubt of the Gorgecrawlers.
Everyone looked expectantly at Grubber, and the priest closed his eyes and began to pray quietly. He held the first vault key in his hand, and formed a perfect mental picture of it in his mind’s eye. Slowly, a dull throb formed in the center of his forehead. It rapidly became a pulse, irritating but not painful. As Grubber turned first one direction, then another, the pulse would fade or increase.
“That way,” he said finally, pointing towards the southeast wall of the shallow cavern which housed the giants’ ghetto. Moving quickly between the shadows and alleys of the huddled buildings, the team made their way across the cave floor until they reached a winding stair, tucked far back in the recesses of the Undercity. It sported three-foot risers, obviously made for the feet of giants, but a narrow section alongside the main stair had been chiseled into smaller steps to accommodate normal feet. The steps were stained with dark substances of unknown origin, and the general stench of the Undercity seemed intensified. Atop the stairs stood a single fifteen-foot tall iron door, its face completely coated in a patina of crumbling, reddish rust. Cautiously, they climbed the stairs until they stood just before the doors.
“Should we knock?” Hawk asked sarcastically.
“Let’s just surprise them, shall we?” Havok answered. This time his five teammates laid their hands upon him, and repeating Faust’s transdimensional trick, the warlock shunted them all to a point five feet on the opposite side of the door.
Beyond the red door, a hallway disappeared into darkness. Arches opened straight ahead and to the right, though the one to the right was sealed by a heavy stone door. The acrid stench of an open cesspool wafted from the passage and stung their eyes. No sooner had the group gotten their bearings, however, than three adamantine portcullises slammed down around them, caging them inside. At the same time, dozens of tiny vents opened in the ceiling above them. Havok and Storm didn’t hesitate. Each of them seized two of their companions by the hands and shunted them through dimensions again, reappearing in the right hand alcove just as steaming, bilious fluid began pouring from the vents into the cage where they had stood moments before. Just then, the door to their right was thrown open, revealing a large chamber literally filled with troglodytes, each one bearing a long spear. The reptilian creatures were just as surprised to see the League members as the latter were to see them, but the trogs were much more dismayed. They had expected to find helpless prey, paralyzed by the distilled brain juices of carrion crawlers that was still pouring into their failed trap. They had intended to kill their victims at their leisure, but fate had dealt them a bitter hand. Though, all things considered, the troglodytes put up a valiant defense, the outcome of the confrontation was never in doubt. Less than two minutes later, with Havok’s sickly green flaming worm walls illuminating the room, only one cowering trog remained, its hands held protectively over its head.
Faust walked slowly around the pitiful creature, clucking his tongue. “What a waste,” he said, speaking in the trog’s own draconic tongue. “Did you honestly think you stood a chance? How long have you been waiting here to spring this pitiful trap of yours?”
“We not soldiers,” the trog hissed, “We workers. Told to kill anybody trapped in cage.”
“Told by whom?” Faust asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Boss,” the trog replied.
“Does your boss have a name?” the psion pressed patiently.
“Charlgar,” said the trog. Faust looked meaningfully at his comrades. They had been led to believe that Charlgar, the leader of the Gorgecrawlers, had met his death at the claws of a red dragon early on in the siege. Apparently those reports had been…exaggerated.
“And where is Charlgar now,” Faust asked, turning back to the troglodyte.
“In him room at end of hall,” the trog gestured towards the hallway beyond the cage.
“Thank you for your assistance,” the psion smiled. “Now I suggest you scamper along before you get yourself in more trouble.” Not waiting to see whether or not the trog obeyed, he turned and stalked out the door, his colleagues right behind him.
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Charlgar heard his trap being sprung, and the subsequent shouting and sounds of steel on steel. The battle had been surprisingly brief, however. Had the Tiamikal Nul-Shada, for he was certain it was they who had finally come for him after discovering his treachery and that of Vercinabex Tor, been such easy targets for his underlings? The hill giant didn’t think so. Just the opposite in fact. He was certain his guards were all dead, and he would be next. He banged loudly on the crawler cage, alerting Wilmot Coldtooth that trouble was on the way, and then he hefted a crawler load bag and positioned himself so that he could see the door across the room.
Suddenly, a group of six individuals simply appeared in front of the door from out of thin air. One of them, a bespectacled young human, saw him immediately, and pointed one finger at him. A searing pain stabbed through Charlgar as a blast of emerald energy leapt from the man’s outstretched appendage. A moment later, the hill giant found himself engulfed in burning flames of the same green color, only they seemed to be made entirely of writhing worms! Screaming, he dropped his weapons as he frantically struggled to extinguish himself, but abruptly he stopped. He felt a presence inside his head, speaking soft words to him, sifting through his thoughts like a deck of cards. It quickly found what it was looking for and drew the memory to the forefront of Charlgar’s mind…the memory of his own death!
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“He doesn’t have it,” Grubber said in irritation as Mak and Havok rummaged through the dead giant’s belongings. “It’s down there.” He nodded towards an archway on the far side of the room. The vista there was as startling as the gagging stench. Extending outward into a large cavern was a great cage composed of an iron grillwork that arched to a height of thirty feet. Through the gaps in the floor, only darkness was visible. The cage seemed to be suspended against the side of the cavern, secured to the wall by iron support struts below and heavy anchoring chains above. A burning bundle of small tree trunks strapped together served as a massive torch wedged into the southeast corner of the cage. The exact dimensions of the huge cavern were not discernable in the torchlight, but it descended some ways down into the darkness below. The most startling aspect of the strange tableau was the seething hordes of large, writhing green worms. The fat, tentacled monsters swarmed all over the cavern walls as well as the cage exterior, filling the cave with a nauseating slithering.
“Down there?” Havok asked, a look of disgust on his face.
“Well, at least in that direction,” Grubber said. “More specifically, the southeast corner, and yet, it still seems distant somehow.”
Havok sighed, and then drew a scroll from his belt. “The rest of you wait here. It will be safest for me to investigate on my own. I’ll be back as soon as I find anything.”
“Just a moment,” Faust said, and then he stared hard at the warlock, concentrating. Havok felt the psion’s thoughts touch his. “There,” Faust nodded. “Now, through the Mindlink, you can let me know what you see…or I can know if you’re dead.”
“Thanks,” Havok smirked. He then read the scroll, the incantation rendering his body ghostly and incorporeal. Then, calling upon the dark powers of his bloodline, he willed himself invisible. Thus cloaked, he drifted between the bars of the cage and down into the darkness below.
The cavern was vast, with the floor lying some hundred feet below the suspended cage, and every surface literally crawled with carrion crawlers. None, however, marked the warlock’s passing, consumed as they were with devouring the mounds of refuse and filth which covered the floor of the cave. At the lowest point of the cyst, Havok spotted a large tunnel leading away to the southeast. He slipped quietly inside and followed it down its spiraling course. Over a half-mile he reckoned his travel, until finally he emerged on a cliff overlooking another, even more massive cavern, this one comprised of sloping floors and several colossal stalagmites. It was lit by swaths of phosphorescent fungus, which clung to the walls and ceiling. Mats of rancid, decaying fungus bubbled and seethed in a thick carpet on the floor, filling the air with a hazy, green taint of spores and stink. In places, huge mounds of fungus rose like hills, and scattered throughout them were the bones and skulls of long-dead giants.
‘Can you hear me Faust?’ Havok thought to himself.
‘As if you stood by my side,’ the psion replied.
‘I’ve found another cave. There are no crawlers here. If I give you a mental picture, do you think you could bring the others here?’
‘Child’s play,’ Faust said, and Havok could almost hear the disdain in his voice through the Mindlink. Concentrating on every detail that he could see in his immediate area, the warlock shared the image in his mind with his comrade. Suddenly, a flash of light flickered behind him, fading to reveal the other members of the League.
“It’s down there all right,” Grubber rumbled, peering out into the gloom. “Not far now. I’d guess somewhere on the far side.”
“Well, we didn’t come here to sightsee,” Hawk said, and then he spoke a brief word, causing small wings to sprout from the sides of his boots. Havok and Storm likewise took to the air via their own magics, while Mak quaffed an elixir to give him the power of flight, smirking at his land-locked brother as he did so. Grubber shrugged, wrapping his spider silk cloak around him, and then began scaling the walls like a giant arachnid himself. Faust closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his body had taken on the dark hue and blurred outlines of a shadow. Stepping to a nearby wall, he seemed to melt into the darkness there, traveling along its surface as easily as he might the floor.
The troupe made their way across the cavern, seeing and sensing no signs of life, until finally they reached the far side and began descending towards the floor. Grubber was the first to reach the spongy surface, and no sooner had his feet touched it than the entire floor seemed to erupt in a geyser of fungi and spores. Rising up out of the muck to a colossal height of forty feet was a carrion crawler of immense proportions…the Mother of all Worms. An instant before she appeared, Havok sensed the impending danger and quickly warned the others through their shared mental link. The warlock quickly unleashed a scathing blast of eldritch power, and the monstrous aberration shivered and shrieked in pain. Her writhing tentacles reached up towards Havok, and he realized that he was too close to dart away, and his ghostly enchantment had expired long ago. However, at that moment, from somewhere above him, a crackling, hissing ball of acid and electricity shot past. It struck the Mother Worm full in the face, exploding in a deafening cacophony of sound and fury. The scream from the crawler was ear piercing, and when the smoke and haze faded, over half of the beast’s head had simply melted away into a mass of gore and bone. Havok looked up and saw Storm hovering above him, looking like an angel of death. He made a mental note never to anger the sorceress. Abruptly, a second ball of energy struck the great worm, this time originating from Faust, never one to be shown up by a woman. Though the resulting explosion of fire was nowhere near as powerful as Storm’s, it was enough to put an end to the already mortally wounded crawler.
One by one the group came to ground, surrounding the massive behemoth. They knew they had been fortunate. Had it not been for Storm’s expertly timed strike, the beast would have had them all. Grubber circled around the crawler, his head turning left and right.
“I think the key’s inside it,” he said finally.
“Stand back,” Hawk ordered, drawing Quaero and stepping to the worm’s exposed belly. Like a hot knife through butter, the enchanted blade sliced through the crawler, spilling entrails and bile into a knee deep pool around the civilar. And there, gleaming in the midst of the mess, was a single, large key.
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Once again the League stood before the doors to the vault of the Citadel of Weeping Dragons. Faust had Teleported them to the exact location, and now Havok and Hawk each held one of the keys. Nodding silently to each other, they stepped to the portals, and inserted the keys into the locks. Instantly, a flood of memories came upon each of them, a millennia and more of history compressed into an eye blink. They saw the rise of the stone giant guardians who first warded Kongen-Thulnir, and their subsequent defeat by a tribe of cloud giants. Through the centuries, band after band of giant- kind laid claim to the city, each drawn by the sacred pact laid by the Order of the Storm. Over time, what they guarded and how to access it was forgotten, only the compulsion of guardianship remaining. Now, however, Hawk and Havok both knew precisely the ritual that would open the long-sealed vault and reveal the treasure within. In unison, they spoke the words, and as they did so, the great doors swung silently open.
The ceiling of the vaulted chamber beyond was lost in shadows above. Flanking stairs rose ten feet to a platform across the room, and atop it stood the statue of a rampant dragon, wings spread, fore claws extended, and mouth agape. Its chest was open, revealing its rib cage, wherein floated a ruby-red box, its faces carved with leering dragons. Dark striations of rock traveled vertically through the walls, creating the illusion of pulsing blood veins in the light given off by the glowing red box. A susurrus echoed through the chamber like dark secrets long hidden. As the doors swung wide, the flickering light pulsed once, and then faded. It was only a matter of moments after that Havok sensed danger…imminent, lethal danger. A split second later the entire north east section of the vault wall melted into a pool of mud and ooze, revealing startling sunlight and the open air of the rift beyond. Hovering in the breach were two gargantuan dragons. The first was the fanged horror from which the League had narrowly escaped just hours before, and perched on his back was none other than the Ominous Fabler, now in his true form, with empty eye sockets fat with green worms writhing within, his flesh sallow and rotten. The second wyrm was even larger than the first, with scales the color of blood…Brazzemal the Burning. Dragotha’s chief general had been circling above the citadel the moment the vault doors were opened, having guessed that it concealed his master’s phylactery from the news brought to him by Xyzanth. As the enchantment concealing the Heart was broken by the breaching of the vault, the great wyrm instantly sensed the proximity of his goal. And now it was before him, barely a claw’s reach away, and all that stood between him and it were a few, pitiful mortals.
Once again, Havok’s foresight saved the group from instant death. Whipping a scroll into his hands, the warlock read the spell and slowed time to a crawl. This tactic had served him well in previous battles, and if a plan worked, a good tactician didn’t alter it. Working quickly, he placed a wall of perilous green flame before Brazzemal, blocking the dragon’s line of sight. Then he put another wall straight through the plane occupied by Xyzanth and the Ominous Fabler, followed by a third perpendicular to that one. Next he used his old trick of placing a nest of tentacles within a wall of solid fog directly in the center of the vault, hoping to keep the dragons from charging his comrades and tearing them to ribbons. Just before the flow of time resumed, the warlock rendered himself invisible and resumed his ghostly form.
Gazzilfek, the Ominous Fabler, former vassal to Kolvant Granitebones, former spy within the court of Prince Tarnheel Embuirhan of Starmantle, and in the end, unfortunate victim of Dragotha, never knew what hit him. One moment he was sitting triumphantly upon Xyzanth’s back, Dragotha’s phylactery within his grasp, and the next he was literally consumed by twin walls of flame. The last things he ever saw were the green worms of Kyuss reaching out to embrace him.
Faust recognized what Havok had done when he saw the results that had not been there a moment before. Unfortunately, realization came too late to recall the power he was preparing to unleash. A cyclonic vortex or wind blasted from the center of his forehead, reaching out to completely engulf the phylactery. As it struck, the tornado exploded into a devastating hurricane, tearing Havok’s solid fog apart as if it were paper, and blowing the corpse of the Ominous Fabler from its saddle. Xyzanth rolled to one side, performing a perfect wing-over that took him out of the blast radius. When the storm cleared, the phylactery was gone. With a moment’s thought, Faust proceeded to alter the flow of time itself, but this time only long enough to place his own body in a timeless state, incapable of being affected by any outside force, either hostile or friendly. When the brief temporal blip ended, the psion walked boldly across the vault to stand before Brazzemal.
“The phylactery has been destroyed,” he said coldly. “Surely you can sense it. We offer you this one chance to leave now and tell your master of your failure.”
Brazzemal could indeed sense the truth behind the élan’s words, and he knew that Dragotha’s wrath would be terrible, but his own fury overwhelmed any thoughts of the future or self-preservation. He knew that the creature before him must be warded in some way to present himself so brazenly. The red wyrm was an accomplished practitioner of magic in his own right, and he quickly wove a dispelling field around the psion. Nothing happened. Faust just smiled.
The battle was joined in truth at that moment, and things began to happen very rapidly. Grubber chanted to Grumbar, hurling a hammer of righteous energy at the fang dragon. To his amazement and dismay, his spell was turned back upon him, dissipating in a harmless blast of holy power. From behind the goliath, Storm conjured an arcing bolt of lightning. It streaked towards Xyzanth, but again the dragon’s amazing reflexes saved him, and the bolt ricocheted off a wall, bouncing towards Brazzemal. The red dragon winced slightly as the electricity singed his fore leg, but he had not come to this battle unprepared. His own wards were potent as well. Xyzanth launched himself into the vault, clearing the clutching tentacles in the center easily. He landed like a crouching cat directly before Grubber and his neck whipped forward like a cobra. His sword-like teeth sank deep into the goliath’s thigh, and Grubber screamed. Then his eyes flew open even wider as he saw Brazzemal leap over the tentacle nest as well and land just behind the fang dragon.
Faust cursed as the dragons called his bluff. The protection he had created was fleeting, fading away even as he turned towards the attacking wyrms. Desperately, he flung a psychic tendril out towards Xyzanth, attempting to sap the dragon’s will, but as with Grubber before, the power was turned back upon him, dissipating against his own psychic barriers. Grubber was equally desperate. He could not stand toe-to-toe against Xyzanth, and the entry chamber behind him was a dead-end, especially since he had walled off the only exit with iron prior to the vault opening as protection against any last defenders of the Citadel. He may very well have sealed his own fate, he realized. Uttering another prayer, he brought into being a wall of whirling, flashing blades, which materialized right through the space currently occupied by the fang dragon. To the goliath’s disbelief, the dragon did not dodge aside as he had so easily done before. Instead, the blade barrier cut deep rents into his scaly hide. From behind his brother, Mak tried his own desperation move. It seemed likely to him that the dragons were spell users as well, otherwise how could they so easily weather the magics being thrown at them? He wove his own version of a dispelling effect, this time a chain that arced between both dragons. Brazzemal and Xyzanth snarled in anger as they felt several of their protective spells dissolve.
Xyzanth turned expectantly towards Brazzemal. He knew the red dragon was a more powerful arcanist than he, and he waited to see if his superior would endeavor to free him from the cutting blades he was trapped within. Predictably, the red was not so magnanimous. He vanished from sight, only to reappear a moment later in the antechamber behind the two goliaths and the drow woman. As the mortals registered their shock and fear, Brazzemal opened his great maw and breathed forth an inferno, engulfing Storm. When the flames cleared, only a charred skeleton remained where the sorceress had stood. The other members of the League each felt their mental link with Storm evaporate. While impressed with Brazzemal’s tactics, Xyzanth was still disgusted that he would be forced to help himself out of his predicament. Leaping to one side, he jumped free of the blade barrier, then sank his teeth into the wretched goliath that had cast it again. This time, as the dragon’s teeth ripped Grubber’s flesh, the priest felt noticeably weaker, as if he had lost something of himself more vital than blood.
As Grubber staggered under the fang dragon’s assault, Havok stepped from a wall behind the wyrm, unleashing another eldritch blast. Xyzanth yelped and whipped his head around, but at the same time a fiery beam of energy struck him from Faust’s outstretched hand.
“Move aside!” Hawk commanded, shouldering his way past Grubber and rushing towards the distracted dragon. Xyzanth turned towards him as he approached, but Quaero’s descent caught him in the center of his serpentine neck, neatly decapitating him.
Grubber’s vision blurred and he felt darkness groping at him. Holding on to consciousness a moment longer, it was his turn to stop the flow of time. Quickly, he used his most powerful healing magic, closing all his wounds, but failing to restore his lost vitality. Still, his head began to clear, and he used the time remaining to prepare himself for battle, fortifying his body with divine power and righteous might. His size grew to that of a giant. Lastly, he placed a second blade barrier across the entire antechamber and through Brazzemal. Time resumed.
It was Brazzemal’s turn to smile as his own innate resistance to magic rendered the blade wall ineffective…except now he could use it as a shield between himself and his foes. Xyzanth’s death did not concern him. He knew the mortals were weakening, and it would be only a matter of time until the five remaining joined the drow. He would hurry that process along by removing more of their own protections. Since the goliath was somehow miraculously larger, the red dragon assumed he had woven even more charms. All the better. A dispelling wave washed over the priest. Grubber knew this battle had to end soon…one way or another.
Faust stepped through the doorway between the vault and the antechamber. He had one last chance to finish things. Accelerating the flow of time for himself again, he manifested three intersecting walls of freezing cold energy to encase Brazzemal. When time slowed back to normal for him, he saw with dawning horror that the dragon was only mildly injured. That was it then. The psion was spent. All of his mental powers were drained. He moved back into the relative safety of the vault, praying to gods he did not believe in to watch over his fellows.
Magic wasn’t working, Grubber saw. This was to be a battle of strength and steel. Lowering his head, he hefted his maul and charged. He brought himself up just short of the blade barrier, but swung his hammer through it, connecting solidly with the red dragon’s chest. This was the chance Brazzemal had been waiting for. Like a lion, he pounced, ripping and tearing at the goliath with both front claws, a vicious bite, beating wings, and the whip-crack of his tail. Grubber staggered under the blow. Even with his body toughened by his magic, the wounds were grievous. He needed help desperately. That help came when a word was suddenly spoken from behind Brazzemal. “Mobilify!” Instantly, Hawk disappeared from where he had stood by the doorway, and then reappeared behind the dragon. Grubber knew that Havok had managed to maneuver himself unseen near Brazzemal, and then transpose himself with Hawk using that clever wand of his. Would wonders never cease?
Brazzemal hissed as he saw the warrior that had slain Xyzanth now on his flank. He quickly cast his own spell, transporting himself to the far side of the blade barrier with Mak and Grubber, leaving Hawk on the opposite side.
“Not so fast,” a disembodied voice spoke from beside the wyrm. “Mobilify!” Once again, the paladin stood before him, a grim smile on his battle scarred face.
“Check mate,” the civilar said, and then he brought Quaero slashing down, brutally ripping into Brazzemal’s flesh. Havok, still invisible and incorporeal knew that the dragon would keep hopping from place to place at will if he didn’t do something to stop him. From his belt, the warlock drew his last scroll bearing the Time Stop spell. He barely noticed the now-familiar feeling of time slowing for everyone and speeding up for him simultaneously. He had other things to tend to. He first read from a second scroll to encase Brazzemal in a zone of silence, thus negating the dragon’s ability to speak the words to his spells. Next he read a third scroll, weaving another bank of solid fog around the wyrm, and last he brought forth a tentacle forest in the midst of the fog. When time returned to normal, Brazzemal found himself trapped, mute, and all but blind.
‘Way to go Havok!’ Grubber crowed through the Mind Link when he saw the results of the warlock’s latest salvo. Quickly moving to a point outside of the silenced fog bank, the goliath did something Brazzemal could no longer do: he cast a spell. Instantly, a storm of glass-steel shards tore through the mist, ripping into the dragon. Hawk, still within the fog and close enough to Brazzemal to still see him, witnessed the effects of the spell. The red dragon was bleeding profusely now, and he began heaving his massive bulk south, towards the blade barrier and the relative safety beyond it. Hawk wasn’t about to let that happen. He followed the dragon’s tortuously slow progress easily, leaping in to strike, and then disappearing back into the mist. At that moment, Mak and Grubber entered the fog bank as well, Mak’s hand glowing black with power from a spell he had cast prior to stepping into the supernatural silence. Grubber’s maul struck at the same time Mak reached out and gently touched the dragon. The spell, once delivered, sucked a great deal of Brazzemal’s life force out of him in an instant. For the first time, the great wyrm felt the first twinges of fear. He opened his jaws again, silently breathing forth another crematorium of flame on Hawk, Mak and Grubber. He then lurched south again, desperate to escape the clinging fog and debilitating silence.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Havok whispered as he saw the dragon’s silhouette approach the edge of his fog bank. Pulling a final scroll, the warlock used its magic to transform himself completely into a ghaele eladrin…an angel. Drawing upon the innate power of the celestial, he created a wall of pure force directly behind Brazzemal. Now there was truly no escape. Brazzemal howled in fury, but no one heard. He struck at Hawk with tooth and claw, but it was a final act of futility. Grubber stepped free of the silent mist once more, and called upon Grumbar’s power to smite his foe a final blow. The hammer of Grumbar’s righteousness fell, and with it fell Brazzemal the Burning.
“It’s in the Undercity,” Grubber said, opening his eyes.
“Are you sure?” Faust asked. “I thought we had searched those slums pretty thoroughly.”
“Grumbar is sure,” the goliath replied. He had just completed a Communion with his patron, and the taciturn god had indeed informed him that the location of the second vault key was somewhere within the Undercity of Kongen-Thulnir. Where exactly it was, or who was in possession of it remained in question. Gods tended to be somewhat fickle and vague in the answers they gave.
“Well isn’t that reassuring?” Mak muttered. Though genuinely happy to be reunited with his long-lost brother, the younger goliath could not understand his sibling’s outdated devotion to such a stick-in-the-mud deity. Grubber simply stared patiently at him, inwardly certain that Mak’s youthful ideals would settle down in time, and he would come to see the pragmatism behind Grumbar’s teachings.
“Alright then,” Faust nodded. “Everyone gather round me. We’re not going to chance walking it. That dragon is still out there somewhere.” The group had taken refuge in the citadel after fleeing Xyzanth’s assault. Now, as they all laid one hand upon the psion, he opened a rift in the fabric of reality, and shunted them instantly between dimensions. They reappeared before the barricaded redoubt of the Gorgecrawlers.
Everyone looked expectantly at Grubber, and the priest closed his eyes and began to pray quietly. He held the first vault key in his hand, and formed a perfect mental picture of it in his mind’s eye. Slowly, a dull throb formed in the center of his forehead. It rapidly became a pulse, irritating but not painful. As Grubber turned first one direction, then another, the pulse would fade or increase.
“That way,” he said finally, pointing towards the southeast wall of the shallow cavern which housed the giants’ ghetto. Moving quickly between the shadows and alleys of the huddled buildings, the team made their way across the cave floor until they reached a winding stair, tucked far back in the recesses of the Undercity. It sported three-foot risers, obviously made for the feet of giants, but a narrow section alongside the main stair had been chiseled into smaller steps to accommodate normal feet. The steps were stained with dark substances of unknown origin, and the general stench of the Undercity seemed intensified. Atop the stairs stood a single fifteen-foot tall iron door, its face completely coated in a patina of crumbling, reddish rust. Cautiously, they climbed the stairs until they stood just before the doors.
“Should we knock?” Hawk asked sarcastically.
“Let’s just surprise them, shall we?” Havok answered. This time his five teammates laid their hands upon him, and repeating Faust’s transdimensional trick, the warlock shunted them all to a point five feet on the opposite side of the door.
Beyond the red door, a hallway disappeared into darkness. Arches opened straight ahead and to the right, though the one to the right was sealed by a heavy stone door. The acrid stench of an open cesspool wafted from the passage and stung their eyes. No sooner had the group gotten their bearings, however, than three adamantine portcullises slammed down around them, caging them inside. At the same time, dozens of tiny vents opened in the ceiling above them. Havok and Storm didn’t hesitate. Each of them seized two of their companions by the hands and shunted them through dimensions again, reappearing in the right hand alcove just as steaming, bilious fluid began pouring from the vents into the cage where they had stood moments before. Just then, the door to their right was thrown open, revealing a large chamber literally filled with troglodytes, each one bearing a long spear. The reptilian creatures were just as surprised to see the League members as the latter were to see them, but the trogs were much more dismayed. They had expected to find helpless prey, paralyzed by the distilled brain juices of carrion crawlers that was still pouring into their failed trap. They had intended to kill their victims at their leisure, but fate had dealt them a bitter hand. Though, all things considered, the troglodytes put up a valiant defense, the outcome of the confrontation was never in doubt. Less than two minutes later, with Havok’s sickly green flaming worm walls illuminating the room, only one cowering trog remained, its hands held protectively over its head.
Faust walked slowly around the pitiful creature, clucking his tongue. “What a waste,” he said, speaking in the trog’s own draconic tongue. “Did you honestly think you stood a chance? How long have you been waiting here to spring this pitiful trap of yours?”
“We not soldiers,” the trog hissed, “We workers. Told to kill anybody trapped in cage.”
“Told by whom?” Faust asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Boss,” the trog replied.
“Does your boss have a name?” the psion pressed patiently.
“Charlgar,” said the trog. Faust looked meaningfully at his comrades. They had been led to believe that Charlgar, the leader of the Gorgecrawlers, had met his death at the claws of a red dragon early on in the siege. Apparently those reports had been…exaggerated.
“And where is Charlgar now,” Faust asked, turning back to the troglodyte.
“In him room at end of hall,” the trog gestured towards the hallway beyond the cage.
“Thank you for your assistance,” the psion smiled. “Now I suggest you scamper along before you get yourself in more trouble.” Not waiting to see whether or not the trog obeyed, he turned and stalked out the door, his colleagues right behind him.
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Charlgar heard his trap being sprung, and the subsequent shouting and sounds of steel on steel. The battle had been surprisingly brief, however. Had the Tiamikal Nul-Shada, for he was certain it was they who had finally come for him after discovering his treachery and that of Vercinabex Tor, been such easy targets for his underlings? The hill giant didn’t think so. Just the opposite in fact. He was certain his guards were all dead, and he would be next. He banged loudly on the crawler cage, alerting Wilmot Coldtooth that trouble was on the way, and then he hefted a crawler load bag and positioned himself so that he could see the door across the room.
Suddenly, a group of six individuals simply appeared in front of the door from out of thin air. One of them, a bespectacled young human, saw him immediately, and pointed one finger at him. A searing pain stabbed through Charlgar as a blast of emerald energy leapt from the man’s outstretched appendage. A moment later, the hill giant found himself engulfed in burning flames of the same green color, only they seemed to be made entirely of writhing worms! Screaming, he dropped his weapons as he frantically struggled to extinguish himself, but abruptly he stopped. He felt a presence inside his head, speaking soft words to him, sifting through his thoughts like a deck of cards. It quickly found what it was looking for and drew the memory to the forefront of Charlgar’s mind…the memory of his own death!
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“He doesn’t have it,” Grubber said in irritation as Mak and Havok rummaged through the dead giant’s belongings. “It’s down there.” He nodded towards an archway on the far side of the room. The vista there was as startling as the gagging stench. Extending outward into a large cavern was a great cage composed of an iron grillwork that arched to a height of thirty feet. Through the gaps in the floor, only darkness was visible. The cage seemed to be suspended against the side of the cavern, secured to the wall by iron support struts below and heavy anchoring chains above. A burning bundle of small tree trunks strapped together served as a massive torch wedged into the southeast corner of the cage. The exact dimensions of the huge cavern were not discernable in the torchlight, but it descended some ways down into the darkness below. The most startling aspect of the strange tableau was the seething hordes of large, writhing green worms. The fat, tentacled monsters swarmed all over the cavern walls as well as the cage exterior, filling the cave with a nauseating slithering.
“Down there?” Havok asked, a look of disgust on his face.
“Well, at least in that direction,” Grubber said. “More specifically, the southeast corner, and yet, it still seems distant somehow.”
Havok sighed, and then drew a scroll from his belt. “The rest of you wait here. It will be safest for me to investigate on my own. I’ll be back as soon as I find anything.”
“Just a moment,” Faust said, and then he stared hard at the warlock, concentrating. Havok felt the psion’s thoughts touch his. “There,” Faust nodded. “Now, through the Mindlink, you can let me know what you see…or I can know if you’re dead.”
“Thanks,” Havok smirked. He then read the scroll, the incantation rendering his body ghostly and incorporeal. Then, calling upon the dark powers of his bloodline, he willed himself invisible. Thus cloaked, he drifted between the bars of the cage and down into the darkness below.
The cavern was vast, with the floor lying some hundred feet below the suspended cage, and every surface literally crawled with carrion crawlers. None, however, marked the warlock’s passing, consumed as they were with devouring the mounds of refuse and filth which covered the floor of the cave. At the lowest point of the cyst, Havok spotted a large tunnel leading away to the southeast. He slipped quietly inside and followed it down its spiraling course. Over a half-mile he reckoned his travel, until finally he emerged on a cliff overlooking another, even more massive cavern, this one comprised of sloping floors and several colossal stalagmites. It was lit by swaths of phosphorescent fungus, which clung to the walls and ceiling. Mats of rancid, decaying fungus bubbled and seethed in a thick carpet on the floor, filling the air with a hazy, green taint of spores and stink. In places, huge mounds of fungus rose like hills, and scattered throughout them were the bones and skulls of long-dead giants.
‘Can you hear me Faust?’ Havok thought to himself.
‘As if you stood by my side,’ the psion replied.
‘I’ve found another cave. There are no crawlers here. If I give you a mental picture, do you think you could bring the others here?’
‘Child’s play,’ Faust said, and Havok could almost hear the disdain in his voice through the Mindlink. Concentrating on every detail that he could see in his immediate area, the warlock shared the image in his mind with his comrade. Suddenly, a flash of light flickered behind him, fading to reveal the other members of the League.
“It’s down there all right,” Grubber rumbled, peering out into the gloom. “Not far now. I’d guess somewhere on the far side.”
“Well, we didn’t come here to sightsee,” Hawk said, and then he spoke a brief word, causing small wings to sprout from the sides of his boots. Havok and Storm likewise took to the air via their own magics, while Mak quaffed an elixir to give him the power of flight, smirking at his land-locked brother as he did so. Grubber shrugged, wrapping his spider silk cloak around him, and then began scaling the walls like a giant arachnid himself. Faust closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, his body had taken on the dark hue and blurred outlines of a shadow. Stepping to a nearby wall, he seemed to melt into the darkness there, traveling along its surface as easily as he might the floor.
The troupe made their way across the cavern, seeing and sensing no signs of life, until finally they reached the far side and began descending towards the floor. Grubber was the first to reach the spongy surface, and no sooner had his feet touched it than the entire floor seemed to erupt in a geyser of fungi and spores. Rising up out of the muck to a colossal height of forty feet was a carrion crawler of immense proportions…the Mother of all Worms. An instant before she appeared, Havok sensed the impending danger and quickly warned the others through their shared mental link. The warlock quickly unleashed a scathing blast of eldritch power, and the monstrous aberration shivered and shrieked in pain. Her writhing tentacles reached up towards Havok, and he realized that he was too close to dart away, and his ghostly enchantment had expired long ago. However, at that moment, from somewhere above him, a crackling, hissing ball of acid and electricity shot past. It struck the Mother Worm full in the face, exploding in a deafening cacophony of sound and fury. The scream from the crawler was ear piercing, and when the smoke and haze faded, over half of the beast’s head had simply melted away into a mass of gore and bone. Havok looked up and saw Storm hovering above him, looking like an angel of death. He made a mental note never to anger the sorceress. Abruptly, a second ball of energy struck the great worm, this time originating from Faust, never one to be shown up by a woman. Though the resulting explosion of fire was nowhere near as powerful as Storm’s, it was enough to put an end to the already mortally wounded crawler.
One by one the group came to ground, surrounding the massive behemoth. They knew they had been fortunate. Had it not been for Storm’s expertly timed strike, the beast would have had them all. Grubber circled around the crawler, his head turning left and right.
“I think the key’s inside it,” he said finally.
“Stand back,” Hawk ordered, drawing Quaero and stepping to the worm’s exposed belly. Like a hot knife through butter, the enchanted blade sliced through the crawler, spilling entrails and bile into a knee deep pool around the civilar. And there, gleaming in the midst of the mess, was a single, large key.
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Once again the League stood before the doors to the vault of the Citadel of Weeping Dragons. Faust had Teleported them to the exact location, and now Havok and Hawk each held one of the keys. Nodding silently to each other, they stepped to the portals, and inserted the keys into the locks. Instantly, a flood of memories came upon each of them, a millennia and more of history compressed into an eye blink. They saw the rise of the stone giant guardians who first warded Kongen-Thulnir, and their subsequent defeat by a tribe of cloud giants. Through the centuries, band after band of giant- kind laid claim to the city, each drawn by the sacred pact laid by the Order of the Storm. Over time, what they guarded and how to access it was forgotten, only the compulsion of guardianship remaining. Now, however, Hawk and Havok both knew precisely the ritual that would open the long-sealed vault and reveal the treasure within. In unison, they spoke the words, and as they did so, the great doors swung silently open.
The ceiling of the vaulted chamber beyond was lost in shadows above. Flanking stairs rose ten feet to a platform across the room, and atop it stood the statue of a rampant dragon, wings spread, fore claws extended, and mouth agape. Its chest was open, revealing its rib cage, wherein floated a ruby-red box, its faces carved with leering dragons. Dark striations of rock traveled vertically through the walls, creating the illusion of pulsing blood veins in the light given off by the glowing red box. A susurrus echoed through the chamber like dark secrets long hidden. As the doors swung wide, the flickering light pulsed once, and then faded. It was only a matter of moments after that Havok sensed danger…imminent, lethal danger. A split second later the entire north east section of the vault wall melted into a pool of mud and ooze, revealing startling sunlight and the open air of the rift beyond. Hovering in the breach were two gargantuan dragons. The first was the fanged horror from which the League had narrowly escaped just hours before, and perched on his back was none other than the Ominous Fabler, now in his true form, with empty eye sockets fat with green worms writhing within, his flesh sallow and rotten. The second wyrm was even larger than the first, with scales the color of blood…Brazzemal the Burning. Dragotha’s chief general had been circling above the citadel the moment the vault doors were opened, having guessed that it concealed his master’s phylactery from the news brought to him by Xyzanth. As the enchantment concealing the Heart was broken by the breaching of the vault, the great wyrm instantly sensed the proximity of his goal. And now it was before him, barely a claw’s reach away, and all that stood between him and it were a few, pitiful mortals.
Once again, Havok’s foresight saved the group from instant death. Whipping a scroll into his hands, the warlock read the spell and slowed time to a crawl. This tactic had served him well in previous battles, and if a plan worked, a good tactician didn’t alter it. Working quickly, he placed a wall of perilous green flame before Brazzemal, blocking the dragon’s line of sight. Then he put another wall straight through the plane occupied by Xyzanth and the Ominous Fabler, followed by a third perpendicular to that one. Next he used his old trick of placing a nest of tentacles within a wall of solid fog directly in the center of the vault, hoping to keep the dragons from charging his comrades and tearing them to ribbons. Just before the flow of time resumed, the warlock rendered himself invisible and resumed his ghostly form.
Gazzilfek, the Ominous Fabler, former vassal to Kolvant Granitebones, former spy within the court of Prince Tarnheel Embuirhan of Starmantle, and in the end, unfortunate victim of Dragotha, never knew what hit him. One moment he was sitting triumphantly upon Xyzanth’s back, Dragotha’s phylactery within his grasp, and the next he was literally consumed by twin walls of flame. The last things he ever saw were the green worms of Kyuss reaching out to embrace him.
Faust recognized what Havok had done when he saw the results that had not been there a moment before. Unfortunately, realization came too late to recall the power he was preparing to unleash. A cyclonic vortex or wind blasted from the center of his forehead, reaching out to completely engulf the phylactery. As it struck, the tornado exploded into a devastating hurricane, tearing Havok’s solid fog apart as if it were paper, and blowing the corpse of the Ominous Fabler from its saddle. Xyzanth rolled to one side, performing a perfect wing-over that took him out of the blast radius. When the storm cleared, the phylactery was gone. With a moment’s thought, Faust proceeded to alter the flow of time itself, but this time only long enough to place his own body in a timeless state, incapable of being affected by any outside force, either hostile or friendly. When the brief temporal blip ended, the psion walked boldly across the vault to stand before Brazzemal.
“The phylactery has been destroyed,” he said coldly. “Surely you can sense it. We offer you this one chance to leave now and tell your master of your failure.”
Brazzemal could indeed sense the truth behind the élan’s words, and he knew that Dragotha’s wrath would be terrible, but his own fury overwhelmed any thoughts of the future or self-preservation. He knew that the creature before him must be warded in some way to present himself so brazenly. The red wyrm was an accomplished practitioner of magic in his own right, and he quickly wove a dispelling field around the psion. Nothing happened. Faust just smiled.
The battle was joined in truth at that moment, and things began to happen very rapidly. Grubber chanted to Grumbar, hurling a hammer of righteous energy at the fang dragon. To his amazement and dismay, his spell was turned back upon him, dissipating in a harmless blast of holy power. From behind the goliath, Storm conjured an arcing bolt of lightning. It streaked towards Xyzanth, but again the dragon’s amazing reflexes saved him, and the bolt ricocheted off a wall, bouncing towards Brazzemal. The red dragon winced slightly as the electricity singed his fore leg, but he had not come to this battle unprepared. His own wards were potent as well. Xyzanth launched himself into the vault, clearing the clutching tentacles in the center easily. He landed like a crouching cat directly before Grubber and his neck whipped forward like a cobra. His sword-like teeth sank deep into the goliath’s thigh, and Grubber screamed. Then his eyes flew open even wider as he saw Brazzemal leap over the tentacle nest as well and land just behind the fang dragon.
Faust cursed as the dragons called his bluff. The protection he had created was fleeting, fading away even as he turned towards the attacking wyrms. Desperately, he flung a psychic tendril out towards Xyzanth, attempting to sap the dragon’s will, but as with Grubber before, the power was turned back upon him, dissipating against his own psychic barriers. Grubber was equally desperate. He could not stand toe-to-toe against Xyzanth, and the entry chamber behind him was a dead-end, especially since he had walled off the only exit with iron prior to the vault opening as protection against any last defenders of the Citadel. He may very well have sealed his own fate, he realized. Uttering another prayer, he brought into being a wall of whirling, flashing blades, which materialized right through the space currently occupied by the fang dragon. To the goliath’s disbelief, the dragon did not dodge aside as he had so easily done before. Instead, the blade barrier cut deep rents into his scaly hide. From behind his brother, Mak tried his own desperation move. It seemed likely to him that the dragons were spell users as well, otherwise how could they so easily weather the magics being thrown at them? He wove his own version of a dispelling effect, this time a chain that arced between both dragons. Brazzemal and Xyzanth snarled in anger as they felt several of their protective spells dissolve.
Xyzanth turned expectantly towards Brazzemal. He knew the red dragon was a more powerful arcanist than he, and he waited to see if his superior would endeavor to free him from the cutting blades he was trapped within. Predictably, the red was not so magnanimous. He vanished from sight, only to reappear a moment later in the antechamber behind the two goliaths and the drow woman. As the mortals registered their shock and fear, Brazzemal opened his great maw and breathed forth an inferno, engulfing Storm. When the flames cleared, only a charred skeleton remained where the sorceress had stood. The other members of the League each felt their mental link with Storm evaporate. While impressed with Brazzemal’s tactics, Xyzanth was still disgusted that he would be forced to help himself out of his predicament. Leaping to one side, he jumped free of the blade barrier, then sank his teeth into the wretched goliath that had cast it again. This time, as the dragon’s teeth ripped Grubber’s flesh, the priest felt noticeably weaker, as if he had lost something of himself more vital than blood.
As Grubber staggered under the fang dragon’s assault, Havok stepped from a wall behind the wyrm, unleashing another eldritch blast. Xyzanth yelped and whipped his head around, but at the same time a fiery beam of energy struck him from Faust’s outstretched hand.
“Move aside!” Hawk commanded, shouldering his way past Grubber and rushing towards the distracted dragon. Xyzanth turned towards him as he approached, but Quaero’s descent caught him in the center of his serpentine neck, neatly decapitating him.
Grubber’s vision blurred and he felt darkness groping at him. Holding on to consciousness a moment longer, it was his turn to stop the flow of time. Quickly, he used his most powerful healing magic, closing all his wounds, but failing to restore his lost vitality. Still, his head began to clear, and he used the time remaining to prepare himself for battle, fortifying his body with divine power and righteous might. His size grew to that of a giant. Lastly, he placed a second blade barrier across the entire antechamber and through Brazzemal. Time resumed.
It was Brazzemal’s turn to smile as his own innate resistance to magic rendered the blade wall ineffective…except now he could use it as a shield between himself and his foes. Xyzanth’s death did not concern him. He knew the mortals were weakening, and it would be only a matter of time until the five remaining joined the drow. He would hurry that process along by removing more of their own protections. Since the goliath was somehow miraculously larger, the red dragon assumed he had woven even more charms. All the better. A dispelling wave washed over the priest. Grubber knew this battle had to end soon…one way or another.
Faust stepped through the doorway between the vault and the antechamber. He had one last chance to finish things. Accelerating the flow of time for himself again, he manifested three intersecting walls of freezing cold energy to encase Brazzemal. When time slowed back to normal for him, he saw with dawning horror that the dragon was only mildly injured. That was it then. The psion was spent. All of his mental powers were drained. He moved back into the relative safety of the vault, praying to gods he did not believe in to watch over his fellows.
Magic wasn’t working, Grubber saw. This was to be a battle of strength and steel. Lowering his head, he hefted his maul and charged. He brought himself up just short of the blade barrier, but swung his hammer through it, connecting solidly with the red dragon’s chest. This was the chance Brazzemal had been waiting for. Like a lion, he pounced, ripping and tearing at the goliath with both front claws, a vicious bite, beating wings, and the whip-crack of his tail. Grubber staggered under the blow. Even with his body toughened by his magic, the wounds were grievous. He needed help desperately. That help came when a word was suddenly spoken from behind Brazzemal. “Mobilify!” Instantly, Hawk disappeared from where he had stood by the doorway, and then reappeared behind the dragon. Grubber knew that Havok had managed to maneuver himself unseen near Brazzemal, and then transpose himself with Hawk using that clever wand of his. Would wonders never cease?
Brazzemal hissed as he saw the warrior that had slain Xyzanth now on his flank. He quickly cast his own spell, transporting himself to the far side of the blade barrier with Mak and Grubber, leaving Hawk on the opposite side.
“Not so fast,” a disembodied voice spoke from beside the wyrm. “Mobilify!” Once again, the paladin stood before him, a grim smile on his battle scarred face.
“Check mate,” the civilar said, and then he brought Quaero slashing down, brutally ripping into Brazzemal’s flesh. Havok, still invisible and incorporeal knew that the dragon would keep hopping from place to place at will if he didn’t do something to stop him. From his belt, the warlock drew his last scroll bearing the Time Stop spell. He barely noticed the now-familiar feeling of time slowing for everyone and speeding up for him simultaneously. He had other things to tend to. He first read from a second scroll to encase Brazzemal in a zone of silence, thus negating the dragon’s ability to speak the words to his spells. Next he read a third scroll, weaving another bank of solid fog around the wyrm, and last he brought forth a tentacle forest in the midst of the fog. When time returned to normal, Brazzemal found himself trapped, mute, and all but blind.
‘Way to go Havok!’ Grubber crowed through the Mind Link when he saw the results of the warlock’s latest salvo. Quickly moving to a point outside of the silenced fog bank, the goliath did something Brazzemal could no longer do: he cast a spell. Instantly, a storm of glass-steel shards tore through the mist, ripping into the dragon. Hawk, still within the fog and close enough to Brazzemal to still see him, witnessed the effects of the spell. The red dragon was bleeding profusely now, and he began heaving his massive bulk south, towards the blade barrier and the relative safety beyond it. Hawk wasn’t about to let that happen. He followed the dragon’s tortuously slow progress easily, leaping in to strike, and then disappearing back into the mist. At that moment, Mak and Grubber entered the fog bank as well, Mak’s hand glowing black with power from a spell he had cast prior to stepping into the supernatural silence. Grubber’s maul struck at the same time Mak reached out and gently touched the dragon. The spell, once delivered, sucked a great deal of Brazzemal’s life force out of him in an instant. For the first time, the great wyrm felt the first twinges of fear. He opened his jaws again, silently breathing forth another crematorium of flame on Hawk, Mak and Grubber. He then lurched south again, desperate to escape the clinging fog and debilitating silence.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Havok whispered as he saw the dragon’s silhouette approach the edge of his fog bank. Pulling a final scroll, the warlock used its magic to transform himself completely into a ghaele eladrin…an angel. Drawing upon the innate power of the celestial, he created a wall of pure force directly behind Brazzemal. Now there was truly no escape. Brazzemal howled in fury, but no one heard. He struck at Hawk with tooth and claw, but it was a final act of futility. Grubber stepped free of the silent mist once more, and called upon Grumbar’s power to smite his foe a final blow. The hammer of Grumbar’s righteousness fell, and with it fell Brazzemal the Burning.
