Episode X: Ooltugula’s Portal
Characters: Bronn Spellforger (shield dwarf male Wiz7); Caramip Murnig (gnome female Brd6); Roman Gemalee (gold elf male Ftr6); Saeita Neví (wild elf female Mnk7); Van Dyksun (human male Rgr4/Rog2/Clr1); Velm Trueforger (shield dwarf male Ftr5/Clr2–Clangeddin).
from the journal of Velm Trueforger
The crunching clack-clack of wagon wheels on a leaf-strewn autumn road is the most comforting sound I’ve heard in these past two months. I am headed along this road in the company of a mule named Lars, my destination Thunderstone, village of my birth. My name is Velm Trueforger, Hatchet of Clangeddin, blood of Nor.
At first glance you’d think me an everyday dwarf, with my simple green hood and battered boots. My blond beard is as braided as the next dwarf’s. Hail and well met to you, fellow. But look a little more closely and you will see the long handle of a waraxe propped beside me. Is that otherworldly shine the evidence of light glancing off mithril?
Look more closely still, and you will see my scars. I’m laced with them; they stitch me together. Aye, my spirit has traveled beyond this world to stand at the side of the Lord of the Twin Axes, and I’ve seen things beneath this world that would turn your hair white and cause you to fall over stone dead.
And when you see the crossed silver axes hanging from my broad neck by a stout chain, you know I speak the truth. I am headed home to bury my dead. My wagon’s canvas tarp shrouds the doomed and the lost. But we saw it through to the end, didn’t we?
*** *** ***
Eleint 28-29
After we had put an end to the Spawning Mother, she who had birthed into the darkness score upon score of wretched and stinking troglodytes, we stayed briefly within the Hall of Clangeddin. But there the water was crusted with an oily foam, and we thought it best to retreat into the corridors of Moradin’s Fane and shelter in the Hall of Gorm Gulthyn, the Fire-Eyes, protector of dwarves.
Our rest was punctuated by mysterious happenings, as well as the bickering that had been welcome among us–a trusted friend–since our humble beginning in Even’star two months earlier. Best I should stick with the mystery and spare you yet another account of my quick temper, Bronn’s ever-expanding hubris, Saeita’s stubborn and enigmatic silence, the good-natured but irritating braggadocio of the gold elf Roman, Van’s well-meaning but–all praise to the Moonmaiden–increasingly preachy leadership, and Caramip’s growing obsession with the drum of Hathos. Even though it had fulfilled its purpose, still she persisted in tuning, fine-tuning, devising new rhythmic patterns, insisting that no one else touch it.
More interesting were the rumblings that passed through the very foundations of Cindarm’s Hall above and into the halls below, where we sheltered. The walls and floor trembled as though shaken by earthquake, or upset by distant concussions in the earth. We did not dare guess what this could mean, but we all had suspicions.
We healed our hurts, we readied magic and blades, we armed ourselves with the contents of Iolar’s armory. Clad in gleaming mithril shirts and armed with mithril blades, we were the dwarves of no Clan, the descendants of Selûne’s grace, who would set Aerunedar free of the Coil. Only a single dragon stood in our way.
Much of our time was spent in planning our confrontation with that fell beast called Nightscale. If Bronn was a little fatalistic or cynical during those hours of planning and re-planning, I chalked it up to nerves. I didn’t dwell too much on his request that I lay his body to rest at the Crystal Caverns, if he did not live through the coming battle. How could I have known that he intended to face Nightscale alone?
We were all wary of this fight; the Curse of Hathos had been lifted, and the power of the Coil was, arguably, broken. By the yardstick of Hathos’ own verse, we were entitled to pack it in and head for home. But to do so would have dishonored me in Clangeddin’s eyes, and would have done the same for Van Dyksun in the eyes of his goddess. According to the map we had taken from the corpse of the sage Mellomir nearly two months before, there was yet one more cavern, downriver, that we had not yet visited.
There we expected to find a ziggurat to the reptile god Meerschaulk, and someone or something called Ooltugula. We knew nothing of this being but its name, and its habit of piecing together patchwork slaves, soldiers and minions from the still-living remains of its enemies. We were destined to learn far more.
Eleint 30
We attempted to leave the throne room of Yss-Fara, and found tons of rock and earth blocking our way. Where the cellar of Cindarm’s proud Hall had been was now completely choked with rubble. The wizard set his toad free to wriggle upward through the rockfall, and we soon learned that the Hall was no more. Some force had utterly annihilated it, and all that remained was a smoking waste of shattered masonry and stone.
Quickly we devised a plan to be free of this place. Caramip would play the drum’s stone-cracking rhythm and, under the direction of Bronn and myself, pulverize the correct slabs of rock to open a way to freedom. One by one the jagged remains of hewn blocks became great boulders and these boulders in turn were reduced to flying gravel and dust by the power of the drum. Soon enough we had opened a way to the surface.
Saeita sprung ahead with preternatural quickness.
But our detonation of the stones had drawn curious observers: a large warband of goblins and fierce worgs. No sooner had Saeita clambered up onto the rubble than she was pelted with whining arrows. She grunted and fell on one shoulder, the other pierced by a shaft that, had it not been off-target by mere inches, would have ended her life instantly.
They swarmed in, faster than we could climb up, and pinned us down. We were ready to fight, but seriously outnumbered by a score of goblins and nearly that many wolves. Snarling worgs, with ropy drool dangling from their fanged mouths, circled and pounced and hungered for our still-warm hearts. Stinging black-fletched arrows fell like death-rain. Soon we had no choice but to flee, by means of Saeita’s moon bracers and Bronn’s spellwork, to the base of Iolar’s Pillar.
We secured ourselves within the stone doors we had passed by twelve days ago, in the wake of our disastrous battle at Arglarllur Bridge. Then we had fled from Nightscale’s dark and serpentine form; now we longed to face her again, even if that longing was born equally of honor and terror.
“Cindarm’s Hall was razed by invocation magic,” Bronn told us wearily, “and only Ruathgrym could summon such spells.” He glanced at Van. “He has the bones of his dead lover, and now he is free.” Corpsecoil…free once again? If only the paladin Temuel Khiv were here with us.
A long staircase led upward into the Pillar, accessing two levels of chambers and a forgotten throne room, where Bronn had heard strangely-accented voices speaking in Undercommon twelve days before, as we approached the Arglarllur Bridge. It seems that so much time has passed since then, until I recalled that in the intervening ride my soul had traveled to Clangeddin’s side and returned by Selûne’s grace.
It was also long enough for whomever had spoken those words to have vacated this hiding place. We found only the remains of a brief inhabitation. From the throne room we could look out round twin windows, which were the pupils in the eyes of Iolar’s huge carved face, and if the ruins of Aerunedar were lit up we could have viewed it in all its fallen splendor.
Another staircase led upward into the arm that supported the cavern roof, and at its peak we found a portal to the Underroad, that avenue mentioned in Hathos’ most cryptic verses. But now we surmised that the straight and high-ceilinged passage through the earth might have its other end beneath the village of Eveningstar, in the former cellars of the tower of Redhand, where that famous dwarf had lived and shared ale with Temuel Khiv so long ago. We decided then that if any of us survived the following day, we would leave Aerunedar by this route.
None of us slept very well that night.
*** *** ***
Not far to go now. Thunderstone is but a few days beyond the next ridge, and the shadowed and mysterious Hullack Forest lies to the north, where stormclouds line up across the horizon like ranked wispy soldiers. I smell the fresh tang of rain on the growing breeze.
I am being watched, that much is certain. But by whom? They say that wild elves have been attacking travelers, which would explain why I have yet to see another living soul along this rutted track.
That night I awaken to the furtive noise of my wagon being searched. I sit up blinking, and in the starlight I see them: six silhouettes crouched and ready, one of them perched upon the wagon, looking steadily at what lies beneath the tarp. I do not know if they see me. They look upon my cargo for a long while, while a chill breeze slides along the grassy meadow. My fingers inch toward samryn, the waraxe beside me. But abruptly they depart in silence, leaving the oilcloth tarp’s unfastened corner to flap sluggishly in the wind.
No longer certain if my visitors were actual or apparition, I stalk toward the wagon with axe in hand. They are gone into the night, and they have left no trace. Beneath the tarp lies the form of Saeita, frozen in stone in the act of springing forward, and beside her a single corpse wrapped in its shroud.
I tie the tarp back into place. Too nervous to sleep, I prod Lars into motion. He brays at me.
“Quiet, mule,” I chide, “this is no place to make a camp. Thunderstone is where we’ll rest.” Clack-clack go the wagon’s wheels on the lonely road. The night goes dark and drops rain. Rain is one of those things that used to bother me, used to drive me indoors and bring an inexplicable sadness to my heart. These days I don’t much notice it; there are so many worse things out there to be worrying about a little shower. Even if it chills the skin, it washes clean the eyes.
*** *** ***
Higharvestide
As it turns out, we reached our final goal on the holiday marking the first day of harvest season. Although not many would find fighting and dying a worthy way to spend a holy day, I see it another way. Somewhere above, on the surface, the faithful of Chauntea wielded scythes and cut down row upon row of wheat. Down here in the dark, we would swing everbright mithril blades and harvest souls for Kelemvor and Clangeddin and Selûne.
We moved east, down the ruined avenues of Aerunedar, past the gatehouse of the Arglarllur Bridge, toward where our map showed the former residence of Glamerdrung. That silver wyrm had allied with Aerunedar’s dwarves long ago, and had been slain by Ruathgrym’s magic when the power of Clan Darkfell was broken two hundred years earlier. We imagined that we were here to put things right.
Indeed we were–but we were also there to survive.
A stone jetty protruded into the dark river, and two longboats were moored at its side. We moved back into the ruins, a good hundred yards from the riverbank, and there we put the reconnaissance phase of our plan into motion. And there we made our first mistakes. Again, none of us could have known what Bronn was planning. I don’t truly believe that even he had any idea of what he was on about. To his credit, he was only hoping to spare our lives–and hopefully his own–by a heroic act of magic.
Bronn used spells to protect himself and Saeita from Nightscale’s acid breath. I loaned Saeita my mooncloak, so that she could walk upon the river’s surface, and Bronn consumed a live spider to finish the incantation that would allow him to clamber along the walls. Together they set out, the dwarf and the wild elf, and left the rest of us to wait in uneasy silence. Before long they returned on foot, claiming that they had heard troglodytes in the tunnel and remembered that they had meant to be invisible.
It wasn’t like Bronn to forget a detail like that, especially one that involved a spell. I studied him closely, but his demeanor showed only annoyance; there was no indication that he’d done it on purpose to warn Nightscale, so that he could face her on his own and spare the rest of our lives. At that point I should have put a stop to this recon; we should have moved in together, or done our best (as Van would later suggest) to lure her out into the open.
But I didn’t, nor did anyone else. Again, this time unseen, they departed.
We waited for what seemed like hours, although it was closer to twenty minutes. Far away in the ruins we could hear the occasional bark or whine of a worg, and the flapping of bats and stirges in the stalactites far above. But from the direction of the river, we could hear no sound, no cries for help, no calls to join the battle.
Abruptly a drenched Saeita appeared beside us, stepping through the dull flash of a dimension door to collapse upon her knees. Her clothing was torn, her midsection bleeding from a score of jagged wounds. “Bronn,” she gasped as water and blood pooled beneath her, “Bronn’s gone. The invisibility didn’t work.”
Only later did we learn what had happened. Bronn and Saeita had made their way slowly and surely downriver, past where they had heard the croaking and splashing. They found a breakwater of flat stones and nothing more than the fading stench of trog. Uncertain but undaunted, they pressed on until a low and flooded side-cavern beckoned. Faint bubbling noises could be heard from within.
“Maybe the ziggurat is underwater,” whispered Saeita.
“Could be,” Bronn agreed, “let’s move in a little bit.” The cavern was utterly empty, and the rock above looked as though it could collapse at any moment. “Not too far…I don’t like the looks of that ceiling.”
“I don’t like any of this,” Saeita said. “Maybe your toad could swim down and see what’s there.”
Bronn crawled down the wall to the rippling surface of the dark river. He held Wolf above the water. The toad looked at the water dubiously, then back up at Bronn. To his credit, Bronn placed his tiny familiar back in his pocket. “Too dangerous. We should–”
The calm surface exploded in a shower of cold water and at its center was the scaly, skull-like maw of Nightscale, covered with black spines. The dagger teeth clamped down on Bronn and recoiled, and they were both gone. Saeita gaped in disbelief.
From where she stood atop the river’s surface, she could see the sudden flare of a spell erupting in the depths, for an instant silhouetting the great serpent. A second later she had made her decision: she ended the claok’s water walk magic and plunged into the cold river.
She swam downriver as fast as she could manage through the murky water, but there was no sign of Bronn or Nightscale. Turning a corner, the water cleared and Saeita found herself swimming atop a pool whose depths were strewn with coins, jewels, gems, riches beyond imagining and certainly beyond belief. The lair, she had time to think, I’ve found it–
From the darkness came Nightscale, who unlike the wild elf was completely at home in the water. Her great jaws clamped down on Saeita, and pain ripped through her. Claws raked in on either side; her breath clamored at the walls of her lungs. She could not see any sign whatsoever of Bronn, but she knew that to stay was death, and she made the only choice she had left. A second later she was with us, soaked and bloody.
She recounted what had happened, and before we could decide what to do next a hissing voice reached our ears from the direction of the river: “This isn’t over…” The very same words Bronn had shouted at her during the battle of Arglarllur Bridge.
“Nightscale,” said Van.
Roman Gemalee drew his bastard sword Swift. “What do we do?”
“We draw her out. In the river she’ll tear us to pieces.” Van nocked an arrow and gazed off toward the river in grim determination.
“She’ll tear us to pieces out here,” Cara replied, clutching Hathos’ drum.
“But out here we at least have a chance of doing the same to her,” said Van. He brought out the sack which still held the head of Yss-Fara, the troglodyte king in whose veins black dragon blood flowed. “A slight chance.”
We moved closer, and tied the head upon the dock in full view of Nightscale. Retreating a good fifty feet from the river’s edge, we readied our weapons.
“Nightscale,” Van shouted, “show yourself! We’ve killed your spawn and we’ll kill you as well!”
The rest of us chimed in, lost for a few moments in the joy of taunting certain death, freed from fretting. Then Nightscale emerged from the river, inspecting the severed head of her offspring with yellow eyes the size of torch flames. We fell silent.
“You have chosen death,” she hissed, and charged forward in a storm of buffeting wings and slashing claws.
In a moment Roman was snatched into her maw, the life crushed from him as he struck out with his sword. Van launched arrows, Saeita and I moved in to land a few blows, and Cara inspired our hearts to battle with the beat of the drum. But Nightscale flapped her batlike wings and soared back, landing in the river with a great splash, taking Roman with her.
There was no time for plans, only for Van to call out, “Be ready!” Nightscale emerged once again, this time coming straight toward me.
Everything vanished except for those two yellow eyes and great scaly darkness rushing at me. I raised samryn, ready to strike, but found myself clamped in those jaws of death. Pain flooded from my every pore.
Arrows soared from Van’s bow and found their mark; a keening cry of pain warbled past me and the dagger teeth embedded in my flesh and grinding against my bones. Through the haze of my own agony, I realize that now it is Nightscale who gives voice to pain. She makes her way back toward the river, carrying me with her. I know that I will die in those dark depths.
I called upon the strength of Clangeddin, and with a shout I pressed upon Nightscale’s jaws, intent on breaking open her deathgrip. The river’s edge grew closer. A bellow of pure suffering erupted from my mouth, and in that second the dragon’s grip slackened. I fell free.
And before she could escape, I swung my axe again and again into her writhing bulk. Saeita landed fist after fist, and many of Van’s arrows protruded from the scaly hide. A huge acrid exhalation roiled from her lungs, and there on the banks of the River of Slaughters Nightscale died.
We healed what wounds we could and piled into one of the longboats. The calm and dark river bore us downstream with cool insistence. No one spoke; we had discovered the acid-scarred bones of Roman and Bronn in the gullet of the beast.
When I regained some sense of my surroundings, we were slipping quietly into a huge chamber just off the river–the former lair of Glamerdrung. Submerged at a depth of nearly thirty feet were strewn the riches of Aerunedar, looted by the Coil two hundred years ago. And perched atop an outcropping of stone was an enormous ziggurat decorated with shiny green mosaics–it was constructed in the shape of a titanic coiled snake, with a fanged maw open and inviting at the apex.
We moored the boat and climbed the steps. Within the snake’s mouth, a staircase corkscrewed down into the ziggurat, and descended beneath. Soon we found ourselves in an octagonal chamber inscribed with many runes, six levers upon the walls, and a pewter post at the center. In the top of the post was a space that seemed designed for the strange disk we had taken with the treasures of Selûne’s temple.
With the bronze disk in place, coruscating energies passed through the walls of the chamber. Before long we surmised, with Van’s prodding, that the picture on the disk itself was the key to pulling the levers in their correct order. When we had done so there was a flash of light, and a feeling of emptiness beneath the feet, and the lurch that hits one’s guts when falling from a great height. But we found ourselves standing in a nearly identical room. But this one had no pewter post; the disk clanged to the floor.
We moved down a tunnel, and found ourselves in a huge limestone cavern. A massive stone bridge had once spanned this cataract, but now the center of the span was collapsed into a small stream below. At the other end stood a forbidding portal carved from white marble.
At that moment we clearly heard Lady Tessaril Winter’s voice. “Well met,” she said pleasantly, “Meerschaulk will soon be free. Even if you win through to the end of the path you have begun…you will have lost. Can’t we talk about this, as we used to?” Van gave us a warning as he shook off the effects of charm magic.
Then she appeared, across the broken span. Her face was very much like that of Tessaril Winter, but where she had once had the fair and smooth skin of a Cormyrian noble, she now had grayish-green scales. Where she once had blonde hair as fine as spun flax, there now writhed and snapped a mass of hissing snakes. Where once she had a pair of shapely legs, her body now stretched into the form of a massive constrictor snake.
“You knew me as Lady Winter,” she hissed, “but my slaves call me Ooltugula. I must congratulate you for sparking the liberation of Eveningstar…be sure to hold close that pride as you perish.” From her snaky shortbow she fired volley after volley of poisoned arrows.
Saeita rushed forward to leap the gap, and with a gravelly crackle turned to solid stone before our eyes. Only Van, Caramip and myself remained. I hurled javelins across the gap, and Van’s arrows flew to the mark with stunning precision. We were no longer novices to be manipulated of disposed of at Lady Winter’s leisure. We were Selûne’s Champions.
Only now did she realize that it had been a fatal miscalculation to face us like this, even though only half of our number remained. A warbling cry of despair escaped her, and as she turned to flee through the portal Van felled her with a final shot from Stonegroan, the strongbow we had taken from Moradin’s Fane.
“Let’s go,” Van said, and I saw before me not the white-haired seventeen year-old who had begged to accompany me two months ago, but a hardened warrior. I knew then that I would follow him into the jaws of ten dragons if he but asked.
We climbed down one side of the fallen bridge, and up the other, and opened the marble portal.
Within was the last chamber, its walls covered with green and scaly mosaics, pillars like trees rising to a ceiling covered with bas relief branches, and carvings of hideous snakes and serpent-like creatures. A foul stench, like spoiled incense, drifted in the air. Treasures and objects of art were strewn all about. Directly across the room stood a huge looking glass.
Cara crept across the silent chamber and peered into the mirror. The surface rippled like water. Instead of her own reflection, she saw a huge chamber. A giant marilith demon, each of her six arms bound by a bronze manacle and heavy chain, glowered at Cara in smoldering rage. It was Meerschaulk herself, waiting for the freedom the Sons of the Coil had promised long ago. Freedom that needed our blood to baptize.
In a burst of smoke and stinking brimstone, a hideous creature appeared in our midst, surrounded by mirror images of itself. It had the squawking head of a twisted and infernal vulture, massive black wings, and puckered skin that gave off a cloud of abyssal spores. Van and I launched into combat, while Cara crept close enough to bestow healing magics on us if we needed them.
Though the spores hooked into our skin and grew, bringing blinding pain, we fought as scions of Selûne should: with skill and valor. For the first time in our short careers, the enemy had no good luck, and blow after blow from its hooked claws and beak went astray, while nearly every one of ours struck true. The demon sank to the floor and dissolved into stinking greenish smoke, and was gone.
Beyond the mirror, Meerschaulk’s face contorted in rage. She stared at each of us, never to forget the faces of those who denied her freedom. Van strode forward and drew out the snake-killing rapier he had dubbed Ssslasher, and swung it in one titanic blow against the face of the magic portal shaped like a looking glass.
KA-CRASHHHH!!! Van was thrown from his feet. The surface of the mirror exploded in jagged cracks and fell smashed, and all that was left of Ssslasher was a burned and melted stub. The cry of Meerschaulk faded away into silence.
Then the room began to tremble. Cracks ran across the floor. Scooping up what items of worth we could, we fled through the marble portal.
Out in the limestone cavern, great chunks of rock were falling from the ceiling to smash into the floor below. Barely keeping our feet, we scaled the other side of the bridge and I hefted the dead weight of Saeita’s petrified form.
“I’ve got her, “ I cried. “Go!”
Somehow we climbed the staircase to the top of the ziggurat, and as we descended toward the longboat a great lurch went through the steps. We all tumbled to the bottom, breaking off one of Saeita’s stony arms. No time to lament. Cara snatched up the arm and we all piled into the longboat, just in time to witness the ziggurat sinking, sinking, and abruptly plunging into the limestone cavern below with a roar of stone and water.
“Plant the poles!” Van shouted. The water filling Glamerdrung’s lair swirled into a momentary vortex as it followed the ziggurat down into the depths, sealing forever the portal to Meerschaulk’s other-dimensional prison. We managed to hold back the longboat as the water level crept steadily down the cavern walls.
Finally the boat came to rest upon the floor of the cavern, propped unsteadily upon tons and tons of treasure and coin. I looked upon the riches of Aerunedar, the statue in the shape of Saeita, Van and Cara looking pale and stricken. I thought of Bronn and Roman’s souls speeding toward their rest and wished them well.
And I thanked Clangeddin for guiding us. And Selûne too.
After two hundred years, Aerunedar was open to the dwarves again.
*** *** ***
Of course, we returned to Eveningstar with what coin and treasure we could manage, and it amounted to quite a fortune. Not that you’re interested in hearing such boasts. It was enough, at least, to allow me to build a small keep where the southeast gatehouse enters Aerunedar. Enough to establish a school of wizardry in Bronn’s honor and memory: the Spellforge. But first, I’ll lay Bronn Spellforger to rest in the Crystal caverns near our home at Thunderstone, as he wished. He is with Mystra now. Once my people have restored Saeita Neví, I’ll see that she returns to you.
And as for me? There is still work for the dwarves who would see Aerunedar rise to its former glory, and no living dwarf has seen more of that place than me. So I will return to Eveningstar, and I will join my Uncle Dorn and his Doomslayers for another trek into the reaches below.
To all you Champions of Selûne, I wish you luck. The rest of the world awaits your swords, and your will, and your wisdom. Do not forsake their need. The Eyes of the Moon and the Blade of the Axefather go with you, gladly.
Velm
Blood of Nor
Clan Trueforger
The Year of Wild Magic
1372 DR
