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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Salmakia" data-source="post: 9247358" data-attributes="member: 7038731">Events in the mortal realm exploded with such unexpected fury that the cleric neither had time to utilize my gift nor redeem my fee. It seemed the despotic warlord whose secrets they had raided was bent on conquering nearby territories, some of which included cities that the four companions deemed important. As it turned out, this warlord had also orchestrated the theft of the elf queen’s sword that I had helped them retrieve from the acid pool. Something about destabilizing the elvish aristocracy.I’ve always found the coincidences surrounding mortal affairs quite fascinating. There are no coincidences in Hell.I could have told them that tyrannical empires come and go with more regularity than the tides, but experience has taught me that mortals, by their very nature of not being immortal, lack something of yours and my perspective.Thus began a campaign that took the better part of a year. The companions, due to their raw power and the political influence they’d garnered, took a chief part in many battles. It’s amazing the effects a single Fire Storm can have on the outcome of a skirmish. Holam relished the destruction he could inflict with the Hell’s Fury spell I had taught him. In my rare moments of reprieve when I wasn’t casting my divinations in service of our legions fighting the Blood War, I immensely enjoyed watching him scream at Saribel or Rakt’re that he needed to kill that giant so as to heal himself.He also repeatedly drained their prisoners’ life force to fuel the Insight invocation I’d given him, until the orc cleric forbid him from ever using the spell again. He continued to do it anyways, of course, just more secretively. Truly he was born for Hell.As for the two non-magical warriors, the hammer I had given Rakt’re helped her abandon whatever inhibitions she’d had on the battlefield, while Saribel’s recent estrangement from her parents translated into a fury that was beautiful to behold.The orc himself seemed bound and determined to reject any advantage stemming directly from me, but I did catch him several times late at night when he thought no one was watching holding the tuning fork and mumbling under his breath. At first I thought he was cursing me, but eventually I realized the truth: He was praying.The mortal war ended as most wars do, in great loss and very little change. Standing over the headless body of the enemy warlord, soaked in the blood of hundreds who had been pressed into military service and perhaps half a dozen who had actually committed atrocities, the cleric turned to Holam and inquire whether the wizard had enough magical energy remaining to punch through the barriers bounding the Material Plane.In my mirror, I watched him pull out the tuning fork, and, a few moments later, the two of them vanished.I do not know what occurred on the slopes of the Impenetrable Mountain. If the gods are good for one thing, it is keeping prying eyes out of their realms. Long ago, back in my mortal days, I surmised that the gods had sealed off the gates to all the heavens. I believed the situation in my world had spiraled so far out of control, with rifts to Limbo and Hell and worse places beyond comprehension, that they had given up any hope of salvation and had instead chosen extreme isolation.But what am I saying? Of course you'd know all about that already.What I do know is that, only a few mortal hours after Holam transited to the Impenetrable Mountain, the gemstone I had given the cleric was broken and I was pulled once more through astral nothingness and into corporeal form.The first sensation that overcame me as I arrived was a profound freedom. There was no protective diagram containing me! I flexed the immense power at my command, thinking of the sweeping transformations I could wreak with a single thought. Then I allowed that swell of ecstasy to subside.The cleric sat on a rock before me, looking glum. The sun had set on this Plane, and I suppose the air was chilly although my hamatula form barely registered such a minor degree of cold. I instantly recognized that the cleric had some item shielding us from magical detection. I wasn’t absolutely certain who he was trying to hide from, but I did have a suspicion.Tapping into my upper reservoir once more, I quickly and silently punched through the item’s wards and established a sensor in the air five paces away. I linked the other end to Holam and sent the wizard a message: Watch.Indeed, Holam could only watch, for I made quite certain that the sensor would transmit only sight and no sound. In the dim light he certainly wouldn’t be able to recognize enough of the surroundings to Teleport to our location, and his measly divinations would be no match for the cleric’s warded item.I couldn’t have set the scene better had I a month to prepare.“You called?” I asked.The cleric didn’t meet my gaze. “I have some questions, to which I would like honest answers. What is your price?”“That depends entirely upon the nature and number of the questions,” I responded.“Five questions,” he mumbled. “I think you already know their nature.”I wondered whether he had been drinking or crying. “If you cannot tell me the nature of the questions in advance then I cannot guarantee my ability or willingness to answer them. But my price is this: I ask you one question for every answer I give. As I am answering your questions honestly, so must you answer mine.”“Fine,” he agreed. “I hardly see how more questions could hurt me now.”I love to see a mortal, who was once resistant to even speaking with me, reduced to unthinking agreement with my terms. Never fear. I’ll make him pay for his carelessness.“You’re not really a hamatula, are you?” he asked.I must admit that one caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting him to burn a question like that. Score: 1 for the cleric I suppose. “No,” I replied. “I am not a hamatula. And I won’t have you waste a question by asking who I really am, because I won’t tell you. What would you like to know next?”“Have Holam, Saribel, or Rakt’re already condemned themselves to an eternity in Hell?”“I could count that as three questions,” I mused, “but since I’m feeling generous and since all three questions have a single answer I’ll give it to you as one. The answer is no, on all counts.” Of course, the cleric’s lack of understanding regarding how eternity really works made my answer somewhat misleading. But it was honest, nonetheless. And a point for the devil brings the score to a tie. “Question three?”“What’s it like fighting in the Bood War?”“Worse torment than you could possibly imagine.” Not the answer he was looking for, but again nothing but the truth. The devil takes the lead.The cleric took almost a full minute before he spoke again, and I knew he was choosing his words carefully. Only two questions remaining, after all. “How does the effort that you personally put into the Blood War tip the balance of the demonic threat?”An excellent question, and one that I couldn’t easily evade with a short, misleading answer. The cleric brings the score back to even. “I’m a diviner, primarily,” I began. “I use my auguries and my scrying in service of my Duke, who has many legions of devils on multiple fronts of the War. Through my explicit contributions I have prevented 157 demonic incursions. Of those, 5 had the potential to seriously tip the balance of the wider demonic threat.”By the strictest interpretation of our agreement he could have pressed me to say more, but I was hoping that I had given him enough to satisfy his curiosity. “Final question?” I asked.“Why did you chose me?” he asked meekly.There it was. The one question that I really didn’t want to answer. And the cleric takes the round with a final score of 3-2. “Your companions think of themselves as neutrally aligned,” I began. “They are disinclined toward truly evil acts, but they prefer to engage in activities that benefit themselves. You, however, think of yourself as Good with a capital G. We get more points for tempting Good mortals.”The cleric shook his head. “That’s not enough. If that were all then you would have tried to tempt the high priest, but you barely gave her a second glance. Why me?”Honesty; what a fickle blade. I admit I didn’t much like the feel once it was turned against my own answers. I decided to take a gamble. I would tell him the absolute truth, and, if I was right about his nature, it wouldn’t matter half a dretch in the end. If I had anything to pray to, I would have prayed with all my might that I had read him correctly.“You are right,” I admitted. “There is more. You are righteous. Not like all the purportedly Good mortals who claim righteousness to disguise their selfishness. I watched you, and saw that you genuinely care about truth and justice and all those lofty ideals, above even your own wellbeing. And I surmised you might not be content with your gods’ idle passivity in the face of the horrors facing this world, and all worlds beyond. But deeper even than all that was a simple gut feeling on my part: You remind me of who I once was.”“Thank you,” he said. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d be willing to answer that one.”“Neither was I,” I conceded.“You’ve put my mind greatly at ease,” he continued, “for now I know what I must do to resist your evil. You may ask me your five questions, and I will be truthful, for I know I have nothing to fear from you.”I gave him my best wicked grin. “Oh no,” I purred. “I don’t think so. You owe me five truths, but at present there’s actually nothing I wish to ask you. I think I’ll save those questions for later on down the line.”The cleric sputtered. “But— but that never—”Laughing, I patted him gently on the shoulder. “Just because I asked you my questions immediately in all our previous deals, what makes you think I am bound to do so now? Be very careful when dealing with devils. Or did they not warn you about that on your visit to the Impenetrable Mountain?”I reveled in his fury. But I wasn’t done yet. “I’ll be going now,” I remarked. “That stone you broke to summon me allows me to stay on this Plane for up to an hour. By my count I still have 46 minutes remaining, and there’s ever so much to do. A shame you didn’t have Holam inscribe a diagram to contain me.Pulsing with righteous radiance, he leapt up from his seat and rushed at me, but before he had taken two paces I made an arcane gesture and was gone.And round two goes to the devil, in a landslide victory.</blockquote>

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