Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 274
The Last Step
Condor steps out smoothly from the solid northernmost Plinth. He is invisible, but in case anyone can see him regardless he is also surrounded by a cluster of mirror images.
He is a Sharshun, or at very least a Mors Tarathi. Muscles unbecoming of a wizard bulge beneath black robes; his bare arms and face are obscured by myriad tattoos and piercings. His face has a timeless quality that belies estimates of age. And confirming the Company’s worst fears, his skin is flesh and stone mingled, just like Cranchus.
“Condor,” breaths Kibi in dismay.
“Hi, great-great-great-grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf. “We’re just leaving.”
Condor ignores this meaningless babble; in fact, he is already casting. An elder earth elemental appears much sooner than it should, towering in front of Aravis and standing nearly as tall as the Plinths themselves. The Sharshun follows this with a tactically placed wall of force before hissing:
“This will return me to the Emperor’s favor.”
Condor is well prepared for this battle, but so is the Company. For starters they’re all still invisible until someone attacks, and secondly many of them are sporting protection from evil that hedges out the direct touch of summoned creatures. As a result of this, one of the sixty-foot-tall elemental’s fists strikes the ground, and the other glances off of Yoba’s ward.
There are three members of the party who can see Condor: Morningstar with her true seeing and Grey Wolf and Kibi with see invisibility spells. Aravis, with greater arcane sight, cannot see Condor’s body, but can figure out his location easily enough by the miasma of arcane auras that surround him.
The wall of force, while not blocking the beams of light from the Eyes and Mirrors, is faintly illuminated by it. With the wall between him and Condor, Dranko decides the best way over it is by climbing the elemental’s body. He’s half way up its back when Condor sinks into the ground.
“Xorn movement” groans Kibi. “Of course.” So saying, he casts the same on himself.
With Condor momentarily out of the picture, Yoba, Morningstar and Snokas concentrate on the elemental – Snokas and Yoba swing their weapons (with little effect) while Morningstar tosses a fire seed (somewhat more effective). Ernie readies a spell while Aravis takes a few seconds to check on the Eyes of Moirel. The Eyes are still spinning in place, seemingly oblivious to, and so far unaffected by, the recent violence.
The elemental notices that some small irritant is using its body as a ladder. It plucks Dranko from its back and holds the half-orc firm in a stony grip. At its feet, Grey Wolf’s summoned wolves appear – a pack of speed-bumps, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The elemental swats at them with Dranko.
Condor appears again, rising up from the ground and casting a spell. Over the Rary’s telepathic bond Grey Wolf serves as spotter, and this triggers Ernie’s flame strike, dropped on Condor’s head. The Sharshun wizard winces but maintains his concentration well enough to catch the entire Company in a horrid wilting. Water is forced painfully from their bodies. He follows this with a quickened slow that only affects Flicker and Yoba.
“Just so you know,” says Grey Wolf, his voice pained, “you just sucked the moisture out of one of your own kin.”
Condor continues to ignore him. Kin? Absurd.
Kibi casts Evard’s Black Tentacles with Condor at its center, and one of the writhing black pseudopodia wraps the enemy up tight. He follows it up with coldfire.
“I know how you feel,” calls out Dranko.
“Use the half-orc as a club!” Condor shouts to the elemental. It’s good advice, as this will circumvent the hedging effects of protection from evil.. Dranko feels the wind pushed from his lungs as the rocky behemoth tightens its grip.
Aravis puts an incipient dimension door on Pewter and sends his familiar scampering up toward Dranko in order to free him. Morningstar casts the first of many mass cure spells, restoring some vital fluids to herself and her friends, before quickening a searing darkness. Worse yet for Condor is a reciprocal gyre from Grey Wolf, which does damage commensurate with the number and strength of active spells on the target.
Condor is heavily enchanted and so his scream of pain is certainly genuine. He gulps, and vanishes, only to reappear on the far side of the circle. He absorbs the pain of a readied ice storm Dranko casts through a magic ring, and blasts the majority of the party with a delayed blast sonic ball. Then he sinks into the ground again.
Kibi surfaces and uses a staff to cast rainbow pattern around the earth elemental’s head. Such beautiful, mesmerizing lights! The elemental is transfixed, enchanted both literally and figuratively. It drops Dranko and follows the lights as Kibi moves them off to the side, stepping idly over the wall of force as it leaves.
Grey Wolf immediately dismisses his wolf pack, not wanting an attack to shake the elemental from its reverie. Pewter sighs as his mission is made meaningless, and casts the dimension door on himself to return to Aravis. Morningstar casts a second mass curative, while the others ready for Condor’s return.
The malign wizard rises up from the ground in a new part of the circle. Ernie drops a holy smite on his head, just before Aravis casts maze. A second later Aravis finds himself in the maze, and grumbling about the vicissitudes of spell turning.
Condor gulps again, a strange and deliberate gesture that suggests something more than simple nerves, and then casts a second horrid wilting that leaves Flicker and Kibi nearly dead, and many others badly injured. Not a few members of the Company start to wonder if Condor might be out of their league, diminished though he might be.
(They might have been comforted to know that Condor was starting to wonder the opposite. He knew that in a one-on-many fight, time favors the many, and not a single adversary had dropped from a pair of his most potent necromantic blasts. But there was nothing for it but to battle on – what would be the point of fleeing? His foes would vanish into the future, leaving him with the unacceptable status quo. He needed time to cast the spells that would dislodge the Eyes from their current activities, and there would be no such opportunity while these strange heroes were alive. It was kill or be killed.)
Kibi gasps desperately for healing before popping most of Condor’s remaining mirror images (and using up the last vestiges of the spell turning) with a magic missile. Then he quickens a glitterdust upon Condor, whose invisible form (as well as his last remaining mirror image) is now coated with tiny glowing flecks.
Dranko heals Kibi with a wand, while Yoba lays on hands, bringing the dwarf back from the brink.
Morningstar blasts Condor with a flame strike, followed by a searing darkness. Shouldn’t a wizard be dead by now? On closer inspection, it’s evident that Condor has been healing himself throughout the battle.
“So,” calls Dranko. “You sacrificed your daughter for this? Was it worth it?”
Condor glares fiercely. “You wish to talk? Then surrender.”
“I would have expected you to have some backup from the Emperor,” continues Dranko. “Oh, but wait! He doesn’t trust you, does he? Ha ha!”
Beside himself with rage and confusion, Condor snarls. “Who are you, and what do you know of these things?”
“We have a relative of yours among us,” says Morningstar, gesturing to Grey Wolf.
“I have no...”
“Through your daughter, you dinglebat!” says Grey Wolf. “Haven’t you been listening?”
Condor, in all of his 61 years on Abernia, has never been called a ‘dinglebat’ or anything like it.
“That’s not possible,” he spits.
“I’m afraid so... grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf with a smirk.
Kibi frowns. Is gloating really worth giving away information that Condor wouldn’t otherwise know? I’m sure for Dranko it is...
Grey Wolf pops the final image with another flurry of magic missiles, and follows it up with a quickened acid orb before speaking again.
“If you had listened to me before, and called off your attack, you might have had a chance.”
“You lie!” Condor hisses. “My daughter had no children!”
“Oh, but she did. And now I’m here. But it doesn’t matter, at least not to you.”
Ernie casts heal on the nearly-dead Flicker while the others are engaged in their witty repartee. “Now stop getting so injured!” he admonishes. “Take care of yourself!”
Aravis reappears from his own maze, having easily found his way out. He’s pleased with himself for about two seconds before coming to regret the timing – Condor blasts the entire party with an empowered cone of cold. Amazingly no one is dead; their patchwork of healing spells, potions and wands is barely keeping everyone conscious. Now, though, over half the Company is one spell away from death. Yoba herself looks like you could kill her with strong language, and Snokas blinks like he’s not sure where he is. Having cast his spell, Condor quickly steps behind the nearest Plinth, out of the line of sight of every member of the Company.
Dranko, healthiest of the party, wants nothing more that to charge over and get in Condor's face. Since the direct path is blocked by Kibi’s black tentacles he downs a fly potion and flies. As he nears the Plinth behind which he expects to see Condor, he encounters Condor's repulsion field. With a tremendous burst of concentration and will, he fights through it. Behind the Plinth he sees Condor's glittering outline.
Kibi summons his own earth elemental, smaller than Condor’s but big enough. It appears next to Condor’s rock and grabs the Earth Wizard, grappling.. Kibi then sinks back underground.
The rest of the Company keeps healing, trying to keep up with Condor’s prodigious damage-dealing. Potions are consumed, wands used, and Morningstar casts her third mass cure.
To Dranko’s great frustration, Condor gulps again before casting a spell – dimension door or teleport, presumably – and vanishing from the elemental’s grip. Dranko flies straight up and looks around frantically. There’s no sign of Condor’s glittering form – he could be hiding behind any of the Plinths. Grey Wolf and Snokas both make a quick search but also come up empty. Morningstar casts heal on herself and murmurs thanks to Ell.
Condor knows that it’s almost over, one way or another. He has run out of healing and cannot endure more than another spell or two, but the same, he thinks, is true of many of his enemies. When he next emerges from the ground he will have to endure whatever his foes have ready and blast with his most potent remaining spell – an empowered chain lightning. He has dispelled the glitterdust, but he knows that some of his foes can see him anyway. He dares wait no longer.
Kill or be killed.
Condor appears and starts to cast. Grey Wolf is too far to cast his enervate, but Aravis casts reverse gravity almost concurrently with a flame strike from Morningstar. For the first time in memory Condor’s contact from the ground is forcibly severed. His discomfiture at rising from the ground makes it impossible to dodge any of the flame strike, and the combined effect causes his chain lightning to fizzle despite his superhuman ability to concentrate. Condor falls upward, coming to a bobbing stop high above the ring of Mirrors.
“He’s at the top,” confirms Grey Wolf.
Dranko leaps into the gravity shaft and hurtles upward, colliding with Condor at the apex. They float there together, and though Dranko cannot see his opponent, he can feel the brush of Condor’s robe. And then Dranko feels something else: the plink of iron filings from Grey Wolf’s ironstorm. He grins wickedly, showing his tusks. He knows what’s coming.
“You know what’s sad?” says Dranko. “You lived a failure, and you’re going to die a failure.”
“There was no failure!” roars Condor. “My experiment succeeded. You are living proof!”
“That’s not what the Emperor would say,” says Dranko.
“He will change his mind when I bring him your corpses, along with my Diamonds!”
Dranko glances downward, wondering when the blast is coming. From his high vantage the light of the Plinths is astonishingly beautiful, a seven-pointed star of rainbow lights in the countryside’s wide and dark expanse.
“You know, if you were a real wizard, you could just fly away right now,” he says.
“Who are you?” demands Condor.
Dranko’s grin grows wider. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to say this: ‘I’m your worst nightmare!’”.
That turns out to be quite true.
Aravis can’t see Condor well enough to target his spell, but he can see Dranko, and with the ironstorm in place that’s all that matters. He targets an empowered chain lightning on his friend, and when the stroke enters the field of iron filings the entire area is filled with raging electricity. Dranko twists, dodges, and avoids all harm.
The same cannot be said of Condor. His body explodes in a shower of rocks and gore, which, along with his magic items, rain down in a gruesome shower upon the Company below. So comes to an end one of the greatest Earth Wizards ever born on Abernia.
The Eyes of Moirel continue to spin.
Flicker and Aravis quickly collect the magic items, and there’s a flurry of healing in case more danger comes.
Fourteen minutes after the Eyes started spinning, a voice sounds in their minds: “Ernest. It’s time.”
The Company crowds around Ernie, putting their hands on his shoulders. Ernie closes his eyes and thinks fondly of Home, his proper place in space and time. The belt of stability becomes warm around his waist.
Condor’s Plinths start to blink in and out of existence. As they did when they traveled backward in time the Company feels as if they are floating, though that is objectively untrue.
Time passes in unknowable ways. The Company is detached from the universe as it rushes past them. Toward the end of their journey there is a brief flash, and a snapshot vision of their own duplicates passing in the other direction. Then there is soft oblivion; there are parts of the journey for which it is best to be unaware.
* *
Above them the sky is a cold and washed-out blue. Beneath them is a thick bed of snow. Before they can come to any realization of their journey’s end, the sky and sun fade out together into a uniform white, and they hear a strange sound in the distance. It is the rhythmic thumping of horse hooves. Together they share a vision of a distant place:
In Djaw, greatest of the Jewels of the Plains, a stable-boy named Four Honest Thoughts stands agog. Before him is the stall of the warhorse Thunder, steed of the errant paladin One Certain Step. It was almost six months ago that she trotted into the city, alone, released temporarily from service while her master journeyed underground. Since that time it has fallen to Honest Thoughts to see to her feeding and comfort, against the day that One Certain Step would return.
“Feathers, come quickly!” he calls to his friend, a teenaged lass his own age who shares duties with him in the stables. Two Orange Feathers runs over to see what’s the matter, and soon she too is standing slack-jawed. The stall is empty. Thunder has vanished, though she was there not moments ago, and it’s impossible that the mare could have walked out without them knowing. But what has the two youngsters in awe is that the empty stall is glowing with a soft yellow radiance, a holy cloister strewn with straw.
On the wide slopes of Mount Celestia a holy knight in unstained armor stands facing a burgeoning sunrise. His heart and mind are at peace, and no earthly care troubles his fair countenance. Far below him a magnificent white horse gallops toward him through boundless fields of the greenest grass. The sound of her thundering hooves comes clear to the ears of the knight, and a tear of joy shines bright in his eye, for soon, soon, he will be riding again.