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Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Yuck-o! That sounded like fun
It was horrifyingly epic. I can't believe we were nearly defeated by a sphincter. SO EMBARRASSING.
carborundum
Adventurer
Sounds like one of Sagiro's situations where he had NO IDEA how to get out and left it up to you guys.
Forcecage and Rope Trick in the sphincter - genius!
Forcecage and Rope Trick in the sphincter - genius!
Solarious
Explorer
Hey, don't knock yourselves. You were nearly defeated by the sphincter of unguessable and spatially indeterminate tentacle monster that is at least large enough to be it's own geographical feature. It counts for something.
I would only shame you if the Underdark Leviathan came after the Company looking for Dranko lined in aquamarine light.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Something in that range, yes. The run where the Company teleported into the Leviathan was #257, and there were 266 runs altogether. On average, my posts cover a bit less than one full run, but it varies significantly depending on the length and content of that run, so with nine runs left to write up, a dozen posts is a pretty good guess.
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Oh, great. I'm mourning the impending end of the campaign again!
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 383
He Will Send You Back
They fly south-southwest, and it feels like it could be outdoors. The ceiling rises up and out of sight, no walls are visible, and beneath them stretches the calm waters of a vast underground ocean.
The motes begin to dim soon after they head away from the Leviathan’s mouth, and as they’re moving at the fast wind walk speed of a mile per minute, it takes less than five minutes before Kibi thinks they’re directly above Leaping Circle Nine. The trouble, of course, is that directly beneath them is water, and the Leaping Circle is miles beneath the surface. (And almost certainly below the ocean floor.)
They’re fairly well exhausted after completing the Leaping Ritual and then escaping the innards of the Leviathan, and as the motes are fading anyway, they decide to rest for the night. Aravis creates the door to a magnificent mansion high above the water.
They stink like fish and acid, so everyone has a bath. They dine on most of the mansion’s conjured delicacies but leave the fish untouched. When everyone is full and clean and contented, they go to sleep, intending to solve their navigational problems the next day.
Even in the depths of slumber, Dranko’s senses are keen. He senses a tiny whisper out of place, a stirring of the air, a presence nearby that is not Morningstar. Part of his brain, the sleepy part, tells him he’s just on edge, that the magnificent mansion cannot be breached. But the paranoid part takes control; Dranko rolls off the bed in a smooth motion and he grabs his whip even as he surges to his feet.
There is a woman standing in the room, who is not Morningstar. She is short, just above five feet tall, wearing scarlet robes and clutching a tall wooden staff. Small curving horns peek out from her short red hair, and a strange brand or tattoo covers her left cheek. She is staring at Dranko, tears rolling down her face.
“Uh… hi,” says Dranko.
The woman rushes him, clumsily raising her staff. “Just die!” she wails. “Dranko, please, why won’t you die?” She tries to strike him, but he easily sidesteps her inept attacks.
“Who are you, exactly?” he asks, as the woman flails around. Morningstar’s eyes are fluttering open.
The woman swings again, missing badly. “I beg you, please, just die!”
“Look,” says Dranko, still a bit confused. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m really good at not dying. Should I know who you are?”
Morningstar comes fully awake, senses that Dranko is no immediate danger, and casts mind read on the woman. It fails.
“I’m not entirely sure you’re real,” Dranko says to the horned woman. “But if you are real, you’re being really stupid about this. I’ve been hit with a lot worse things than the end of a stick. Who are you, and why do you want me to die?”
The woman is hysterical, and her tears continue to flow.
“Want a hankie?” Dranko offers.
This only renews her fury. She swings wildly again, several times, but Dranko ducks or dodges each one. Her spirit breaks and she slumps to the ground, weeping. Her staff clatters beside her.
Morningstar frowns. “Do you need anyone else to die, or just Dranko?”
The woman answers between sobs. “Just… Dranko… please, I need him to die…”
Morningstar tries to pry out some context. “Are your people in danger?”
“Is the world in danger?” adds Dranko.
“N…no. It’s nothing like that.”
“Are you in danger?” asks Dranko.
The woman nods.
“From what?”
“You can’t imagine…” she says, then pauses before continuing in a hoarse whisper. “He said it would be worse. Worse than thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake.”
“Did you spend thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake?” asks Dranko.
The woman shudders and nods again. Truth dawns.
“You’re from Lord Tapheon!” he exclaims. “Gods, I hate that bastard. He’s such a dink!”
“He let me go,” says the woman. “He sent me to kill you. He said I had to kill you, even though I atoned. I atoned! Centuries ago!” She looks at Dranko accusingly. “And yet you are not dead. He said if I did not kill you, I would return to him and soon I would be begging for my stake.”
She is panting now, her tenuous sanity slipping. “I can’t go back there! I can’t go back, Dranko, I can’t! So you… have… to die!”
“There’s another option,” says Dranko. “Morningstar, can you hit her with a dimensional anchor?”
His wife obliges.
“That’s not going to work,” says the woman. “It’s my soul that will return.”
Dranko considers, then decides he’s going to need more input on this one. At his behest, Morningstar wakes the others. When everyone is gathered around, staring at the woman like an unusual specimen at a zoo, Dranko speaks again.
“You are woefully incapable of killing me, and Tapheon must have known that. I think sending you was just another part of your punishment. What’s your name?”
“I am Galdifain,” she says. “And you do not understand! I… was… an assassin.”
Dranko finds this hard to believe. “Really?”
“I was the greatest assassin of my age. That’s why I ended up where I did. My crimes were countless.”
Dranko guffaws. “With respect, Galdifain, if you’re a really good assassin, what happened? ‘Cause I’m still here.”
“I was a summoner. When Tapheon brought me back, there were… conditions. I could only take with me what I had when I was dead. I only had three scrolls, but any one of them should have been able to kill anyone, easily. A Chichimec! An Anaxim! I, Galdifain, tracked and found and bound the Thousandfold, and you’re not dead!
That draws an collective “Oooooooooh,” from the Company.
“Ah,” says Dranko. “Well, that explains it.”
“Tapheon said your name was a changing thing. You’ve been Melendiel, you’ve been Brightmirror, you’ve been the Oracle, but now you are Dranko Brightshield. Dranko Brightshield. I could not go back and suffer another eternity of that!”
Aravis asks the next obvious question. “How did Tapheon get you down here?”
Galdifain brings her fingers to the tattoo on her cheek. “Tapheon granted me the Mark of Pursuit. I can find you anywhere, Dranko. I always know where you are, and I can appear as close or far from you as I wish.”
“And how is Tapheon going to get you back?” asks Dranko.
“If I die here, or if he senses I have not succeeded, or have given up, my soul will return to his domain, there to suffer endless torments.”
Dranko feels little pity for the assassin. “You know that Anaxim you sent? I pretty much defeated that thing with a magic item I found in my first month of adventuring.”
Ernie is appalled. “Dranko! The poor woman is suffering.”
“I’m aware of that,” says Dranko dryly. “But she did try to kill us horribly, several times.”
Galdifain regards him with a hungry, haunted look. “And if succeed, if I kill you, I won’t go back. He’ll keep your soul instead of mine. He said you were one fish he would never throw back.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a big dork. We got him out of prison, and this is the thanks we get.”
“What choice did I have?”
Dranko turns to Morningstar, whose eyes have gone wide.
“The smoke,” she whispers. “The smoke from your cigar. It said ‘He will send you back.’”
Dranko opens his mouth to speak, says nothing, considers.
“Huh,” he says at last. “Well. Okay.”
“I don’t have very long,” Galdifain presses. “When Tapheon senses I have failed, he will reclaim my soul. It could happen at any moment.”
“They were good monsters,” says Dranko, trying to sound appreciative.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to suffer forever. I have been impaled on a stake for 800 years, but he has promised me worse. I have atoned! I know in my heart I have done wrong. I feel guilt and regret in such measures I wonder my soul has not burst. I know I deserve my punishment. I have apologized to everyone I have ever killed, every child, every man and woman. A thousand times I have begged their forgiveness. And yet, when Tapheon brought me before him, and I told him I could not kill again, that I would not, that I had atoned… he just laughed at me. He didn’t care for my atonement. He didn’t care.”
“I could shift reality for her,” thinks Kibi over the mind-link. “I could make it so that her soul was protected.”
Dranko looks at Morningstar. “We have another choice. I could return to Tapheon.” He takes out a cigar and waves it through the air. “He’s going to send me back.”
“That’s a lot to risk on cigar smoke,” says Ernie.
“I have faith in Delioch, and in Cranchus. Also, I’m worried that if I don’t go, he’ll just send someone else after me. And, I would really like to flip off Tapheon.”
He’s becoming more and more certain of this decision by the second. He lights the cigar on Ernie’s armor and blows out puffs of smoke. The first three show nothing, but the fourth spells out, once again, “He will send you back.”
“See?”
“We don’t know who ‘he’ is,” says Aravis. “It could be anyone. And if Tapheon wants you so badly, why would he send you back?”
Dranko knows at once. “The thing in my head! I I have a sneaking suspicion that Tapheon is going to peel me from the inside out…”
“…and he’s going to get half way down, and decide he doesn’t want it?” Ernie sounds supremely skeptical.
“Exactly,” says Dranko. “He won’t want anything to do with me.”
The others just stare at him, mostly in disbelief that he’s contemplating this at all.
“Look,” he says. “here are our options. Option one: we do nothing, Galdifain gets sucked back to Hell, suffers forever, and Tapheon sends another assassin after me. Option two: I let her kill me, Tapehon takes me, I’m wrong about all of this, and Kibi alters reality to get me back. Option three: like option two, but when I go to Tapheon and he does his song and dance, then glorious things happen, and I get sent back.”
Ernie’s eyebrow practically rises off his face. “Glorious things?”
“Involving the thing in my head,” says Dranko.
“I have a better idea,” says Ernie, his voice rising. “What about, we hide Galdifain from Tapheon long enough for us to finish our quest, and then you take this kind of stupid risk.”
But Dranko will not be swayed. “Did you ever feel like something was just absolutely the right thing to do?”
“Yeeeeah?” answers Ernie, slowly.
“I kind of have that feeling right now.”
“I think it’s a great idea!” says Flicker. “You get to flip Tapheon off!”
Kibi also sides with Dranko. “I have faith in Cranchus, too.”
“We’re betting Dranko’s life on a smoky pronoun!” Ernie shrieks.
“But if it goes wrong, I can change reality to get him back again,” says Kibi.
Dranko smiles and turns to Morningstar. “I may not be the best cleric in the world, but I have been true to my God all of these years, and I love Him more than anything… except you. There’s no power that will be able to keep me there, away from you.”
“No!” Ernie stamps his foot. “Dranko, you’re being selfish! You want to mock Taphon to his face, so you’re willing to take a stupid risk! Just… stop it! Think about the rest of us here, trying to save the world. This is not the time for your personal “I really want to give Taphon the finger one more time” quest.”
“Ernie, I wouldn’t be considering this if I didn’t know I’d be sent back.”
“You don’t know,” says Grey Wolf. “You don’t know who is going you send you back, or from where.”
Dranko turns to Galdifain. “What happens to you if you kill me, and my soul goes to Tapheon?”
“He forgets about me. My soul stays with me, and I live out my life here.”
“Ok. If I let you kill me, are you willing to help us afterward?”
Galdifain raises her hands. “I am useless. I have no more scrolls. I don’t have my equipment or my laboratory, and I don’t have time.”
“We can fix a lot of those things,” says Dranko. “If she’s willing to help against Meledien and Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, that could be quite valuable. Galdifain, this is a raw deal for you. We’re on a quest to stop an evil God from coming, and he’ll destroy the world if we fail. That’s why you’re inconvenient right now.”
Galdifain looks back at him. “Sorry I didn’t time this better for you. But… I might be able to do something, if I had the time and resources, and knowledge of creatures who live in this place.”
“How much time would you need?”
“Depends on the circumstances. I need time. Time to feel the ambient space, for miles around me. I need to be taken to where my subject is, so I can perform the rituals that bind the creature into a scroll. When all of that is done, it is mine, and when I release it, it will kill whomever I name. Or try to.”
“And we can name Seven Dark Words,” says Aravis. “I doubt they can succeed without him.”
In the end, it’s Kibi’s reality-altering failsafe that sways Aravis and Morningstar. Ernie and Grey Wolf think it’s utter madness, but they leave it up to Dranko, and the half-orc’s mind is made up.
“I’m sorry, Ernie,” says Dranko. “I always value your advice. It matters. It has always mattered.”
Ernie glowers. “I’m not resurrecting you.”
Morningstar gives her husband a long kiss. “Whatever happens, I have faith that you are following your path.”
Dranko smiles at her. “I’ll see you soon.”
He hands Galdifain his knife, and lifts his chin. “It’s your lucky day.”
Eagerly, she slits Dranko’s throat.
/*/
The pain is terrible, and afflicts every nerve.
Dranko is standing on the serrated metal grating that serves as the floor to Lord Tapheon’s throne room. The evil reek of the Abyss settles on Dranko like an iron cloak. Memories, terrible ones, come flooding back.
He cannot move. He is aware of his own body, but isn’t sure if he has been transported corporeally to the Abyss, or if only his soul has traveled. He’s not entirely sure how this works.
Lord Tapheon is there, on his metal throne, talking quietly to cadre of demons. He notices Dranko’s arrival and quickly shoos his servants away. The Demon Lord is just as Dranko remembers: bronze skin; a smooth face with four symmetrically-placed eyes and no other features; four curved horns rising from his head.
The Demon’s voice sounds in his mind. “Ah. So she finally did the job. Well done, assassin.” The voice is deep and commanding, rich with wisdom and malice. “Galdifain, wherever you are, you can stay there as long as you wish. You are no longer relevant.”
He locks all four eyes on Dranko, and the fiery pain increases. “Now, I have what I want. My little fish.”
Dranko cannot move his lips to speak, but he can speak telepathically to this creature. “That’s what you want?” he says, keeping his own voice level despite his agony. “I thought for sure it would be some medicine for your hemorrhoids.”
At their last meeting, Tapheon would have been enraged at the insult, but now he only laughs. “Go ahead, Dranko. Make all the jokes at my expense that you want. Because after a few centuries of torment, you will have forgotten that you ever had a sense of humor.”
“I know a lot of jokes,” says Dranko.
“You don’t know enough.”
Lord Tapheon rises from his throne and walks towards his catch. “I have made all the preparations,” he says. “Your stake is prepared. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t bother sharpening it.”
As he walks, the human tongues on his rod Despoiler of Flesh start to flap and wiggle obscenely. Beneath the fiery pain, Dranko feels a worse sensation, as though his body is starting to pull itself apart.
Tapheon stops a few feet short of Dranko. “Your mind will invent new ways of measuring pain,” he says, glee seeping into his voice. “I will enjoy every…”
He stops, and tilts his head. Dranko can feel a wave of sudden discomfiture from Tapheon.
“What…?”
“I’ve brought you a little present,” says Dranko.
Tapheon takes a step back. “No…”
Dranko could swear all four of the demon’s eyes grow wide.
“Get out!” Tapheon’s voice is suddenly not so measured.
“Are you sure? I thought you said you have a stake ready for me.”
Tapheon takes another step back. “Dranko Brightshield, I make you the following offer. Promise that you will never come back here, or attempt to meddle in my affairs in any way, and I will return you to where you were. Promise me!”
Dranko cannot help himself. “I’m not quite sure I want to,” he says. “I think I’d like an apology first. An apology for turning me inside-out would be good. That’s all I want. Or, I can stay.”
Dranko can feel Tapheon’s rage like the heat from an open furnace.
“Maybe,” says Tapheon. “Tell me what it is, specifically, and perhaps I will apologize.”
“Can’t you see for yourself what it is?”
Tapheon takes a tentative step forward, and Dranko feels him prodding at his mind, poking, searching. Dranko is still paralyzed, which only bothers him because it prevents him from presenting Tapheon with a digitus impudicus, but then he realizes he has a solution.
He wills his mind to embrace the madness, and a tentacle pops from his forehead. Slowly, deliberately, he bends the tip of the tentacle upward in an unmistakable gesture of rudeness. Tapheon flinches, then peers just a bit deeper into Dranko’s mind…
“I apologize!” Tapheon’s voice is nearly frantic. “I apologize for every slight I have visited upon you. Now agree to my terms and depart!”
Dranko feels his paralysis lift, allowing him a smug smile. “Your apology is accepted, and I agree to your terms.”
/*/
Dranko is dead. He has been dead for some minutes now.
His chest rises. A raspy, bubbling breath escapes his lips. Morningstar, who has not left his side, immediately heals him.
“See!” says Kibi. “My grandfather was right!”
Grey Wolf shakes his head. “Madness. I still say this is madness.”
Dranko sits up and embraces his wife. Then, to Galdifain, he says “You’re free. Do whatever you want. And I got an apology out of him, which was nice. If you have someone where you want them, never take the first offer.”
Galdifain collapses, sobbing, at Dranko’s feet, while he tells the tale of his visit to Tapheon’s throne room.
“So,” says Morningstar. “He wanted so badly for what is in your head to be out of his proximity, he sent you back here after all the trouble he went through to get you.”
And a thought comes to Dranko, a troubling one. If he dies before he’ s done his job, if he dies with his head still polluted with whatever Far Realms horror has been placed there, Heaven may not accept him either.
…to be continued…
He Will Send You Back
They fly south-southwest, and it feels like it could be outdoors. The ceiling rises up and out of sight, no walls are visible, and beneath them stretches the calm waters of a vast underground ocean.
The motes begin to dim soon after they head away from the Leviathan’s mouth, and as they’re moving at the fast wind walk speed of a mile per minute, it takes less than five minutes before Kibi thinks they’re directly above Leaping Circle Nine. The trouble, of course, is that directly beneath them is water, and the Leaping Circle is miles beneath the surface. (And almost certainly below the ocean floor.)
They’re fairly well exhausted after completing the Leaping Ritual and then escaping the innards of the Leviathan, and as the motes are fading anyway, they decide to rest for the night. Aravis creates the door to a magnificent mansion high above the water.
They stink like fish and acid, so everyone has a bath. They dine on most of the mansion’s conjured delicacies but leave the fish untouched. When everyone is full and clean and contented, they go to sleep, intending to solve their navigational problems the next day.
Even in the depths of slumber, Dranko’s senses are keen. He senses a tiny whisper out of place, a stirring of the air, a presence nearby that is not Morningstar. Part of his brain, the sleepy part, tells him he’s just on edge, that the magnificent mansion cannot be breached. But the paranoid part takes control; Dranko rolls off the bed in a smooth motion and he grabs his whip even as he surges to his feet.
There is a woman standing in the room, who is not Morningstar. She is short, just above five feet tall, wearing scarlet robes and clutching a tall wooden staff. Small curving horns peek out from her short red hair, and a strange brand or tattoo covers her left cheek. She is staring at Dranko, tears rolling down her face.
“Uh… hi,” says Dranko.
The woman rushes him, clumsily raising her staff. “Just die!” she wails. “Dranko, please, why won’t you die?” She tries to strike him, but he easily sidesteps her inept attacks.
“Who are you, exactly?” he asks, as the woman flails around. Morningstar’s eyes are fluttering open.
The woman swings again, missing badly. “I beg you, please, just die!”
“Look,” says Dranko, still a bit confused. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m really good at not dying. Should I know who you are?”
Morningstar comes fully awake, senses that Dranko is no immediate danger, and casts mind read on the woman. It fails.
“I’m not entirely sure you’re real,” Dranko says to the horned woman. “But if you are real, you’re being really stupid about this. I’ve been hit with a lot worse things than the end of a stick. Who are you, and why do you want me to die?”
The woman is hysterical, and her tears continue to flow.
“Want a hankie?” Dranko offers.
This only renews her fury. She swings wildly again, several times, but Dranko ducks or dodges each one. Her spirit breaks and she slumps to the ground, weeping. Her staff clatters beside her.
Morningstar frowns. “Do you need anyone else to die, or just Dranko?”
The woman answers between sobs. “Just… Dranko… please, I need him to die…”
Morningstar tries to pry out some context. “Are your people in danger?”
“Is the world in danger?” adds Dranko.
“N…no. It’s nothing like that.”
“Are you in danger?” asks Dranko.
The woman nods.
“From what?”
“You can’t imagine…” she says, then pauses before continuing in a hoarse whisper. “He said it would be worse. Worse than thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake.”
“Did you spend thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake?” asks Dranko.
The woman shudders and nods again. Truth dawns.
“You’re from Lord Tapheon!” he exclaims. “Gods, I hate that bastard. He’s such a dink!”
“He let me go,” says the woman. “He sent me to kill you. He said I had to kill you, even though I atoned. I atoned! Centuries ago!” She looks at Dranko accusingly. “And yet you are not dead. He said if I did not kill you, I would return to him and soon I would be begging for my stake.”
She is panting now, her tenuous sanity slipping. “I can’t go back there! I can’t go back, Dranko, I can’t! So you… have… to die!”
“There’s another option,” says Dranko. “Morningstar, can you hit her with a dimensional anchor?”
His wife obliges.
“That’s not going to work,” says the woman. “It’s my soul that will return.”
Dranko considers, then decides he’s going to need more input on this one. At his behest, Morningstar wakes the others. When everyone is gathered around, staring at the woman like an unusual specimen at a zoo, Dranko speaks again.
“You are woefully incapable of killing me, and Tapheon must have known that. I think sending you was just another part of your punishment. What’s your name?”
“I am Galdifain,” she says. “And you do not understand! I… was… an assassin.”
Dranko finds this hard to believe. “Really?”
“I was the greatest assassin of my age. That’s why I ended up where I did. My crimes were countless.”
Dranko guffaws. “With respect, Galdifain, if you’re a really good assassin, what happened? ‘Cause I’m still here.”
“I was a summoner. When Tapheon brought me back, there were… conditions. I could only take with me what I had when I was dead. I only had three scrolls, but any one of them should have been able to kill anyone, easily. A Chichimec! An Anaxim! I, Galdifain, tracked and found and bound the Thousandfold, and you’re not dead!
That draws an collective “Oooooooooh,” from the Company.
“Ah,” says Dranko. “Well, that explains it.”
“Tapheon said your name was a changing thing. You’ve been Melendiel, you’ve been Brightmirror, you’ve been the Oracle, but now you are Dranko Brightshield. Dranko Brightshield. I could not go back and suffer another eternity of that!”
Aravis asks the next obvious question. “How did Tapheon get you down here?”
Galdifain brings her fingers to the tattoo on her cheek. “Tapheon granted me the Mark of Pursuit. I can find you anywhere, Dranko. I always know where you are, and I can appear as close or far from you as I wish.”
“And how is Tapheon going to get you back?” asks Dranko.
“If I die here, or if he senses I have not succeeded, or have given up, my soul will return to his domain, there to suffer endless torments.”
Dranko feels little pity for the assassin. “You know that Anaxim you sent? I pretty much defeated that thing with a magic item I found in my first month of adventuring.”
Ernie is appalled. “Dranko! The poor woman is suffering.”
“I’m aware of that,” says Dranko dryly. “But she did try to kill us horribly, several times.”
Galdifain regards him with a hungry, haunted look. “And if succeed, if I kill you, I won’t go back. He’ll keep your soul instead of mine. He said you were one fish he would never throw back.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a big dork. We got him out of prison, and this is the thanks we get.”
“What choice did I have?”
Dranko turns to Morningstar, whose eyes have gone wide.
“The smoke,” she whispers. “The smoke from your cigar. It said ‘He will send you back.’”
Dranko opens his mouth to speak, says nothing, considers.
“Huh,” he says at last. “Well. Okay.”
“I don’t have very long,” Galdifain presses. “When Tapheon senses I have failed, he will reclaim my soul. It could happen at any moment.”
“They were good monsters,” says Dranko, trying to sound appreciative.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to suffer forever. I have been impaled on a stake for 800 years, but he has promised me worse. I have atoned! I know in my heart I have done wrong. I feel guilt and regret in such measures I wonder my soul has not burst. I know I deserve my punishment. I have apologized to everyone I have ever killed, every child, every man and woman. A thousand times I have begged their forgiveness. And yet, when Tapheon brought me before him, and I told him I could not kill again, that I would not, that I had atoned… he just laughed at me. He didn’t care for my atonement. He didn’t care.”
“I could shift reality for her,” thinks Kibi over the mind-link. “I could make it so that her soul was protected.”
Dranko looks at Morningstar. “We have another choice. I could return to Tapheon.” He takes out a cigar and waves it through the air. “He’s going to send me back.”
“That’s a lot to risk on cigar smoke,” says Ernie.
“I have faith in Delioch, and in Cranchus. Also, I’m worried that if I don’t go, he’ll just send someone else after me. And, I would really like to flip off Tapheon.”
He’s becoming more and more certain of this decision by the second. He lights the cigar on Ernie’s armor and blows out puffs of smoke. The first three show nothing, but the fourth spells out, once again, “He will send you back.”
“See?”
“We don’t know who ‘he’ is,” says Aravis. “It could be anyone. And if Tapheon wants you so badly, why would he send you back?”
Dranko knows at once. “The thing in my head! I I have a sneaking suspicion that Tapheon is going to peel me from the inside out…”
“…and he’s going to get half way down, and decide he doesn’t want it?” Ernie sounds supremely skeptical.
“Exactly,” says Dranko. “He won’t want anything to do with me.”
The others just stare at him, mostly in disbelief that he’s contemplating this at all.
“Look,” he says. “here are our options. Option one: we do nothing, Galdifain gets sucked back to Hell, suffers forever, and Tapheon sends another assassin after me. Option two: I let her kill me, Tapehon takes me, I’m wrong about all of this, and Kibi alters reality to get me back. Option three: like option two, but when I go to Tapheon and he does his song and dance, then glorious things happen, and I get sent back.”
Ernie’s eyebrow practically rises off his face. “Glorious things?”
“Involving the thing in my head,” says Dranko.
“I have a better idea,” says Ernie, his voice rising. “What about, we hide Galdifain from Tapheon long enough for us to finish our quest, and then you take this kind of stupid risk.”
But Dranko will not be swayed. “Did you ever feel like something was just absolutely the right thing to do?”
“Yeeeeah?” answers Ernie, slowly.
“I kind of have that feeling right now.”
“I think it’s a great idea!” says Flicker. “You get to flip Tapheon off!”
Kibi also sides with Dranko. “I have faith in Cranchus, too.”
“We’re betting Dranko’s life on a smoky pronoun!” Ernie shrieks.
“But if it goes wrong, I can change reality to get him back again,” says Kibi.
Dranko smiles and turns to Morningstar. “I may not be the best cleric in the world, but I have been true to my God all of these years, and I love Him more than anything… except you. There’s no power that will be able to keep me there, away from you.”
“No!” Ernie stamps his foot. “Dranko, you’re being selfish! You want to mock Taphon to his face, so you’re willing to take a stupid risk! Just… stop it! Think about the rest of us here, trying to save the world. This is not the time for your personal “I really want to give Taphon the finger one more time” quest.”
“Ernie, I wouldn’t be considering this if I didn’t know I’d be sent back.”
“You don’t know,” says Grey Wolf. “You don’t know who is going you send you back, or from where.”
Dranko turns to Galdifain. “What happens to you if you kill me, and my soul goes to Tapheon?”
“He forgets about me. My soul stays with me, and I live out my life here.”
“Ok. If I let you kill me, are you willing to help us afterward?”
Galdifain raises her hands. “I am useless. I have no more scrolls. I don’t have my equipment or my laboratory, and I don’t have time.”
“We can fix a lot of those things,” says Dranko. “If she’s willing to help against Meledien and Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, that could be quite valuable. Galdifain, this is a raw deal for you. We’re on a quest to stop an evil God from coming, and he’ll destroy the world if we fail. That’s why you’re inconvenient right now.”
Galdifain looks back at him. “Sorry I didn’t time this better for you. But… I might be able to do something, if I had the time and resources, and knowledge of creatures who live in this place.”
“How much time would you need?”
“Depends on the circumstances. I need time. Time to feel the ambient space, for miles around me. I need to be taken to where my subject is, so I can perform the rituals that bind the creature into a scroll. When all of that is done, it is mine, and when I release it, it will kill whomever I name. Or try to.”
“And we can name Seven Dark Words,” says Aravis. “I doubt they can succeed without him.”
In the end, it’s Kibi’s reality-altering failsafe that sways Aravis and Morningstar. Ernie and Grey Wolf think it’s utter madness, but they leave it up to Dranko, and the half-orc’s mind is made up.
“I’m sorry, Ernie,” says Dranko. “I always value your advice. It matters. It has always mattered.”
Ernie glowers. “I’m not resurrecting you.”
Morningstar gives her husband a long kiss. “Whatever happens, I have faith that you are following your path.”
Dranko smiles at her. “I’ll see you soon.”
He hands Galdifain his knife, and lifts his chin. “It’s your lucky day.”
Eagerly, she slits Dranko’s throat.
/*/
The pain is terrible, and afflicts every nerve.
Dranko is standing on the serrated metal grating that serves as the floor to Lord Tapheon’s throne room. The evil reek of the Abyss settles on Dranko like an iron cloak. Memories, terrible ones, come flooding back.
He cannot move. He is aware of his own body, but isn’t sure if he has been transported corporeally to the Abyss, or if only his soul has traveled. He’s not entirely sure how this works.
Lord Tapheon is there, on his metal throne, talking quietly to cadre of demons. He notices Dranko’s arrival and quickly shoos his servants away. The Demon Lord is just as Dranko remembers: bronze skin; a smooth face with four symmetrically-placed eyes and no other features; four curved horns rising from his head.
The Demon’s voice sounds in his mind. “Ah. So she finally did the job. Well done, assassin.” The voice is deep and commanding, rich with wisdom and malice. “Galdifain, wherever you are, you can stay there as long as you wish. You are no longer relevant.”
He locks all four eyes on Dranko, and the fiery pain increases. “Now, I have what I want. My little fish.”
Dranko cannot move his lips to speak, but he can speak telepathically to this creature. “That’s what you want?” he says, keeping his own voice level despite his agony. “I thought for sure it would be some medicine for your hemorrhoids.”
At their last meeting, Tapheon would have been enraged at the insult, but now he only laughs. “Go ahead, Dranko. Make all the jokes at my expense that you want. Because after a few centuries of torment, you will have forgotten that you ever had a sense of humor.”
“I know a lot of jokes,” says Dranko.
“You don’t know enough.”
Lord Tapheon rises from his throne and walks towards his catch. “I have made all the preparations,” he says. “Your stake is prepared. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t bother sharpening it.”
As he walks, the human tongues on his rod Despoiler of Flesh start to flap and wiggle obscenely. Beneath the fiery pain, Dranko feels a worse sensation, as though his body is starting to pull itself apart.
Tapheon stops a few feet short of Dranko. “Your mind will invent new ways of measuring pain,” he says, glee seeping into his voice. “I will enjoy every…”
He stops, and tilts his head. Dranko can feel a wave of sudden discomfiture from Tapheon.
“What…?”
“I’ve brought you a little present,” says Dranko.
Tapheon takes a step back. “No…”
Dranko could swear all four of the demon’s eyes grow wide.
“Get out!” Tapheon’s voice is suddenly not so measured.
“Are you sure? I thought you said you have a stake ready for me.”
Tapheon takes another step back. “Dranko Brightshield, I make you the following offer. Promise that you will never come back here, or attempt to meddle in my affairs in any way, and I will return you to where you were. Promise me!”
Dranko cannot help himself. “I’m not quite sure I want to,” he says. “I think I’d like an apology first. An apology for turning me inside-out would be good. That’s all I want. Or, I can stay.”
Dranko can feel Tapheon’s rage like the heat from an open furnace.
“Maybe,” says Tapheon. “Tell me what it is, specifically, and perhaps I will apologize.”
“Can’t you see for yourself what it is?”
Tapheon takes a tentative step forward, and Dranko feels him prodding at his mind, poking, searching. Dranko is still paralyzed, which only bothers him because it prevents him from presenting Tapheon with a digitus impudicus, but then he realizes he has a solution.
He wills his mind to embrace the madness, and a tentacle pops from his forehead. Slowly, deliberately, he bends the tip of the tentacle upward in an unmistakable gesture of rudeness. Tapheon flinches, then peers just a bit deeper into Dranko’s mind…
“I apologize!” Tapheon’s voice is nearly frantic. “I apologize for every slight I have visited upon you. Now agree to my terms and depart!”
Dranko feels his paralysis lift, allowing him a smug smile. “Your apology is accepted, and I agree to your terms.”
/*/
Dranko is dead. He has been dead for some minutes now.
His chest rises. A raspy, bubbling breath escapes his lips. Morningstar, who has not left his side, immediately heals him.
“See!” says Kibi. “My grandfather was right!”
Grey Wolf shakes his head. “Madness. I still say this is madness.”
Dranko sits up and embraces his wife. Then, to Galdifain, he says “You’re free. Do whatever you want. And I got an apology out of him, which was nice. If you have someone where you want them, never take the first offer.”
Galdifain collapses, sobbing, at Dranko’s feet, while he tells the tale of his visit to Tapheon’s throne room.
“So,” says Morningstar. “He wanted so badly for what is in your head to be out of his proximity, he sent you back here after all the trouble he went through to get you.”
And a thought comes to Dranko, a troubling one. If he dies before he’ s done his job, if he dies with his head still polluted with whatever Far Realms horror has been placed there, Heaven may not accept him either.
…to be continued…
carborundum
Adventurer
Mother of pancakes, that was just the the best thing ever!
I would've sided with Ernie and Grey Wolf. I didn't understand how Dranko could know that the cigar-smoke referred to Tapheon -- my first thought was that "he will send you back" referred to someone sending all of them back to the surface -- nor, for that matter, do I really get why Tapheon couldn't bear to have creatures from the Far Realms in his presence. It doesn't bother anyone else; why does it disturb a near-omnipotent demon?
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