It takes hours to scour the cavern.
Still flying, the Defenders of Daybreak and a portion of their dwarven troops maneuver back and forth across the watery battleground, seeking out and systematically destroying any cowering or crying ghouls that they can find. Many of the undead appear to have already been killed by the initial assault or instantly destroyed when Imbindarla died, but that still leaves hundreds on the flooded plateau. One by one, the heroes free the whimpering and confused undead from their earthly bonds. As their flesh falls, the shaman Stone Bear can see their souls being swept onwards through the Bright Gate to their final reward in the halls of their ancestors.
Not all go willingly. Perhaps one in ten seem to have embraced the sudden epiphany of their ghoulish nature, and these undead are still hellbent on survival. Craftily, they hide under other corpses or swim beneath the water to try and escape the Defenders’ vigilance.
“I just took out another two!” calls Nolin, hovering over the wind-whipped and corpse-clogged sea. “I heard them chewing. They may have lost their Goddess, but they’re still hungry.”
“Ugh,” says Agar as he swoops in. “Hey, we have maybe another 45 minutes left on this fly spell. It wouldn’t do to forget.”
“Good point,” says Velendo. He calls mentally to one of the paladins. “Hey Mara, I think there might be a ghoul under this pile of smoking zombies. Can you come detect evil and check? I don’t want to poke around in there unless I absolutely have to.”
“I’d love to,” answers Mara, “but it doesn’t seem to be working. Malachite can’t detect undead, either. I don’t know why.”
“Hmm,” murmurs Agar as he strokes his chin. Waving his hands briefly, he frowns. “I can’t detect magic either. It’s possible that the fall of the Goddess has disrupted how normal spells work. We’ll have to see.”
“I can still detect rotting stink,” grumbles Splinder into his beard as he rubs his nose, but no one takes notice. He joins the others and they hang there in the bitter wind for a moment, rotating slowly and surveying the blasted and flooded plateau.
“So where do we go from here?” asks Tao. “Back to Akin’s Throat?”
Burr-Lipp looks up from down by the water, where he is grinding his longspear through the body of a ghoulish gibberling. Nervously, the bullywug’s tongue whips out and cleans some mucous from his saucer-sized eye. He croaks expansively, and his unintelligeable words are translated by the mindlink.
Velendo rounds on him, eyes wide. “What do you mean, ‘why don’t we take their boat’? They don’t have a boat.”
Burr-Lipp croaks again.
“Where? And how do you know about it?” The bullywug gives a wavering sort of ribbit, ending in a low grunt. “Huh. I guess your senses underwater are better than ours. Someone want to go look for it? It must be floating on the other side of those gigantic walls of water.” Several members of the group peel off to go explore for the ship Burr-Lipp claimed he sensed. Meanwhile, Nolin is trying to think like a trapped ghoul.
“Okay, I’m scared and trapped. I eat flesh. I’m over-matched. Where would I want to hide until the damned attackers went away?” He flies in a slow circle, and his eyes finally light on a low series of ridged buildings near the edge of the plateau. Their roofs look like they were once crafted of clouded ruby, and the architecture seems to twist as his eyes settle on it. Three curved and arched ceilings like clam shells rise from the plateau, and the bard concludes that they would be superb places to try and hide. Gesturing to the other Defenders near him, he silently glides down on the wind, circling the curved structure so as to surprise anyone inside.
He’s not disappointed. Behind the entranceway’s ruby pillars, seven or more shapes are visible, crouching low in the water as they speak in gurgling, low tones. “..a run for it,” one of them slobbers, chewing on a piece of its own arm in its distress.
“Too late,” says Nolin simply, as his friends descend in a semi-circle around the opening.
“Noooo!” screams a female drow in anger and frustration, and before the Defenders can react she draws chilling runes on the air with her clawed fingers. A whirling cloud of chewing teeth forms around most of the Defenders, and blood begins to pour from multiple wounds.
“Ow,” complains Velendo, eyeing the ghouls that are suddenly coming alert at the scent of fresh, hot blood. “These aren’t the rank and file. Hit them hard.” He follows his own advice with a flame strike, accompanied by a flame strike of Tao’s and a fireball by Nolin. A male drow elf slumps into the water, and two stumpy duergar are almost blown apart. Another female drow responds with a cone of icy-cold frost, however, and one of the duergar savants tugs his blood-clotted hair out of his eyes long enough to focus a blast of negative energy.
“May Aeos show you the true light,” suggests Mara. “Begone, nasty things!” She focuses her power, and uses her last turning attempt of the day. Focused through the strength of her will, her compulsion is nearly irrestible, and three of the undead are forced backwards into the ruby wall. Malachite and Tao swoop forward to attack, even as Agar unleashes a bolt of mystic lightning.
Nolin, however, stares at Mara. “Nasty things?” he asks skeptically. Mara blushes a bright pink, even as a brace of magic missiles slam into Nolin from one of the remaining ghouls.
“Well, they are!” She slams down the visor on her helmet and turns to charge the ghouls. Nolin grins through the pain and turns to smile at Velendo.
“You’ve got to love…” His voice breaks off as the waist-deep water beneath Velendo ripples oddly. Nolin tries to shout a warning, but he just can’t react in time as the male drow elf they thought dead rises from the dark water with his needle-like sword pointed directly at Velendo’s midriff.
“Goodbye,” whispers the ghoulish assassin, almost lovingly.
But Velendo is suddenly yanked backwards. Where the rumpled cleric was seconds ago, now there is a beautiful angel glowing like the lanterns of heaven, white wings spread and sword flashing. ”No,” admonishes Cruciel, and she both bats aside the assassin’s blade and slashes him across the rotting neck. The undead drow elf gapes in surprise, but quickly realizes that he’s in a horrible tactical position.
“Take him alive,” advises Malachite as he brings Karthos through the neck of the last standing ghoulish wizard. Beside him, Tao and Mara have just finished off the others. “We have questions that need answering.”
“Your choice, foulness,” intones Cruciel in a voice like trumpets at dawn. “Life or death. You may choose.”
The rotting dark elf stand poised in the water for a few precious seconds, torn between escape and surrender. His one remaining eye darts wildly back and forth as he calculates the odds. Then his face entirely shifts, and he drops his needle-like sword into the water. A wide grin spreads across his face, revealing putrefied gums.
“That’s very kind of you,” he simpers. “I am Lios. I hope I can be as kind to someone else in the future. I am, of course, completely at your disposal.” He spreads his arms wide and bows slightly. “I am disarmed and unarmored. I can do you no harm. I repent all of my sins. Won’t you please let me go?” He looks up innocently, his gaze skipping from Malachite’s icy hatred, to Mara’s worried frown, to Tao’s disgust, to Nolin’s bemused disbelief.
“We will send you on,” Malachite intones in a low voice, “when we are ready. We have questions to ask.” He cracks his knuckles within his gauntlets.
“By all means!” slobbers the ghoul eagerly. “I merely await your pleasure. Whatever I know, you will know.” He speads his hands wide once again by means of emphasis.
Velendo’s wispy gray eyebrows narrow. “You don’t mind telling us all your secrets?” he asks suspiciously.
“Oh, no!” says the ghoul unctuously. “It would be a pleasure. I have no alliance to the White Kingdom. Free me, and I will trouble you no more.”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Malachite’s voice is still low and rigidly controlled. His fist grips Karthos’ sheathed hilt tightly enough to cause pain.
“Well, I did,” says the ghoul wonderingly. He pulls on his chin as he thinks, only stopping when he realizes that he’s tugged loose a long strip of flesh. “My will was the will of my King. The ghouls had come to my city of Cuelvier years ago, and I had helped man the defense after the slaves had all fallen. I hated them then, and then I was killed – and suddenly, I understood that they were greater than I was! Greater than Lloth, greater than the drow, they were the key to life everlasting.” His voice has risen, but then he catches himself. “Well, not life exactly, but I’m sure you understand. I made a choice, and then my fate was tied to that of the Ivory King, and I existed only for him. Who I killed, who I ate, I killed and ate for Him and for our Ivory Queen, Imbindarla.” His voice is sad, and he goes silent.
Nolin prompts him. “And?”
“And today I was to be an overseer. I was to whip the fresh ghouls into the heart of the juggernaut, where they could merge with the beetles and bone. We were to do it quickly, for terrible signs had been seen that auspiced a disaster. And then you came, and then…” He sucks in a gasping breath that leaks out a charred hole in his chest. “Then our Queen died. Our Goddess fell.” He begins to look a bit panicked, but forces it away, fixing the wide and phony smile back on his face.
“What was that like?”
The ghoul thinks, still submissive. “My soul returned, I think. I suddenly had free choice again. I could remember everyone I had eaten, everything I had done.” He smiles, a little dreamily. “People taste soooo gooood…” he murmurs.
Mara puts a cautionary hand on Malachite’s shoulder, and raises her voice. “How did you get here?”
“We came in a ship loaded with our people. I don’t know most of the details,” he looks around, “and I think you killed the captain. We came, enlightened the gibberlings, found the sacred spot and the skeleton of the beast, pulled back the water, and began the ritual.”
“What was the ritual to do?”
The ghoul sighs. “It could have gone anywhere. Water, stone, air, fire. It could swim through them all, and deliver ghouls wherever the Ivory King or his Commanders wished. It was a thing of beauty.” He strokes a beetle swimming by, and Agar almost blasts him out of pure reflex.
Mara turns. “Anything else we need to know?” The ghoul tries to look both innocent, naïve, and attentive.
Velendo sighs. “Where is your home city?”
“Eb’Nacreous is far from here. We came by water, through a kuo-toa city named Glubyal. I don’t know the route. It is deep in the bowels of the earth, a place of bone and beauty.”
“Who is Advisor Soder?”
The ghoul looks surprised. “The advisor to the Ivory King. He can speak through the distances. A very wise man.”
“Uh huh. I’ll bet.”
Lios simpers a bit more. “I have been so very helpful. Won’t you please allow me to go on my way, as you promised?” Malachite exchanges a knowing glance with the rest of the Defenders, and Karthos leaps to his hand in the span of a heartbeat. There is the creak of armor, a truncated gurgle, and the sound of several objects splashing into murky water.
Malachite resheathes his sunblade as he turns away. “Gladly,” says the Hunter of the Dead with a tired voice. “Gladly.”
To be continued…
