Pleased with themselves and wanting for spells, the group wiped their blades and camped in the dead beholder’s lair. It was as good a place to camp as any… beholders don’t smell quite as bad as most creatures you’ll find in dungeons.
Moonday, 3rd of Needfest
The Knights spent two days in the lair while Vek identified their recent treasures. When he got to the weighty
Laws and Evil book, he quickly threw it across the chamber where it slid to a stop against a wall. “Don’t touch that book,” he warned. “Don’t pick it up, don’t read it, don’t even look at it. It sucks knowledge. Takes it straight out of your head.”
They left the room behind and walked through the corridor. It branched into two directions. “Kella said to go right if we want to go straight to the lower level, correct?” Dartan asked. The others nodded, and he walked to the right. Everyone followed.
Around the corner, they could plainly hear the sounds of heavy labor, and the occasional whip crack. The Knights walked into the area, ready for anything. A large group of hobgoblin slaves were loading rubble into carts. One ogre with a whip was lashing them and yelling. “Work faster! FASTER!” He saw the heroes standing there and pointed to them. “There! The interlopers! Kill them!!” The hollow-eyed hobgoblins looked at the Knights and didn’t move. They were trapped between slavery and death… but the heroes were probably here to destroy the Temple. From the looks of them, they could do it, too. If the Temple were destroyed, they would be free.
The ogre screamed with fury. “I TOLD YOU TO KILL THEM!!” He cracked the whip across one hobgoblin’s back, and a fresh line of blood ran down it. “KILL THEM, YOU WORTHLESS BEASTS!!” The Hobgoblins turned and looked at the ogre. The Knights knew what they were looking at: revolt. They stood back and grinned as the hobgoblins slaves rushed the terrified ogre and killed him with their rusty shovels. When the horrible business was done, the hobgoblins looked at the Knights and dropped their bloody weapons. They nodded in respect and walked out.
Dartan, Vek, Katya, Kyla, Rafflorn, Jettok and Surge walked down a dim set of stairs to the lower level of the Temple of Elemental Evil. At the bottom, a long hallway extended before them.
Jettok leaned over to examine a cave-in that had apparently happened some time ago. He cried out as lashing, vinelike ropes whipped towards him. Two snarling creatures that looked like feral, living stalagmites emerged from the rubble. Dartan deflected their whipping cords and attacked. In no time at all they’d killed the creatures.
Dartan led the group as they walked down the hallway. They walked over the rise of stairs and past two doors to their left and right… they walked straight on. They strode down the hallway. Their bootheels clopped loudly down the length of the corridor. They were ready for anything.
At the end of the hallway, a man stood silhouetted against the torchfires behind him. He wore immense pieces of spiked armor. Two eye-shaped red gems in his helm caught the corridor’s dim light and cast it about eerily. He was facing them, legs apart, head held high.
Dartan growled and smiled, preparing to pull his sword and once again wade into a battle he would rule over and through. He put his hand on his swordhilt.
The armored man spoke. “Son.”
Dartan froze.
“Come before me, son, and receive your just punishment for the crime of heresy.”
Kyla looked confused. “’Son’? Dartan, is this man truly your father?” By then, Dartan was already walking forward. It was indeed his father’s voice, but how could it be him? Dartan saw the armor: black, hideous, profane plate mail that no paladin of Heironeous would ever wear. Bat wings extended from the helm’s demonic face. A motif of spikes and spiderwebs was embossed into the coal black steel.
Dartan stopped walking and stood five feet away, ready for the likely outcome. “I see I’m not the only one guilty of heresy.”
The black knight balked. “How do you mean? I do not travel with arcane spellweavers and witches of dark lore. I know better.”
“You wear that black armor. It’s clearly in tribute to Tharizdun… or evil in general.”
His father’s eyes didn’t blink. “You refer to this- the armor of the chosen Champion of Heironeous? How it shines, like the bright silvery beacon of justice. Surely your dabbling in the black arts has taken whatever was left of your mind.” He drew his sword. “This is why I’ve come here, deep into your lair of filth and evil. To deliver you your rightful execution by a father’s loving hand. Do you submit?”
“No.” Dartan drew his own sword. The two stood as a glimmering contrast; one was clad in shining silver armor with a bright steel sword, the other in black armor that seemed to absorb the light, holding a curved barbed sword of red-black.
“I’ll miss you. I love you, son.” Korgan swept his black longsword up and over in an arc. Dartan caught the blade on his own. Red-orange sparks lit off the swords’ edges. The two began trading blows. Both were expert swordsmen, and the swords swung and met in a violent choreography.
Out of the corner of Dartan’s eye, he caught the sight of his friends coming to his aid. Katya cast a spell on Korgan- but the black knight’s spirit was too strong to submit. Jettok ran forward swinging his axe. Korgan parried the blow and kicked Jettok over, never missing a beat with Dartan’s own sword swings. Through clenched teeth, Dartan said “Leave us… this is my fight!”… but the exertion of the combat had taken the breath from him. He didn’t say it loud enough to change what happened next, and he would wonder for the rest of his days what would have been.
Vek stepped from the darkness behind Korgan and placed his hand on his back. The sword fell from Dartan’s father’s hand. With a pained grunt he fell to his knees. The battle was over. Korgan’s strength was gone from him. His heart fluttered, a hair’s breadth from stopping.
“Wee Jas grants you the gift of death,” Vek hissed with his predatory smile. His hand moved forward to touch Korgan again. Dartan’s arm shot out and grabbed Vek’s wrist, stopping the hand of doom one inch from his father.
Vek looked up to challenge Dartan’s presumptuous command, but his resolve died in his chest when he saw the look on the fallen paladin’s face. Stone-faced, terrifying anger. “This is- was- my fight. I ordered you all to stay your hands.”
Vek feigned a look of apology. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry, Dartan. I never would have attacked if I’d heard.” He stepped back to watch the doting son tie up his father. Back in the darkness where no one looked at him, that slight smile curled his lips again. It had been Dartan’s right to fight his father… just as it had been Vek’s right to defeat Clegar Mormont, his own ancestor. Dartan had taken that from him.
What more fitting justice than to defeat Dartan’s father, when the fight belonged to the son? The smile spread wider across his face.
They brought Korgan to the beholder’s lair and left him there to curse them and yell oaths.
They walked back to the area they’d found him in and began investigating. There was another of the altars… no one touched it. Behind the altar was a red crushed velvet curtain. Katya swept it aside using magic, and revealed behind the curtain were two large creatures. One was made of water, and its skin rippled with clear refractions. The other was merely encased in water- it was an aboleth: a large scaled fish with six red eyes and tentacles. It was also known as The Second. They both hovered around three oval-shaped altars that were aligned towards the center of the room.
The Knights wasted no time in attacking. Dartan and Katya arrived first, cutting and casting. Dartan found the aboleth difficult to strike through its caul of floating water.
Jettok ran forward and only happened to move through the area close to the drawn red curtain. He was most surprised when it sprouted writhing, shapeless arms and attacked him. There were many of the arms, and he was only one dwarf- but he hacked and hacked with his bound arms until the curtain’s tentacles were all severed. “I hate being attacked by furnishings!” he yelled in a most dwarven manner.
Dartan, in the meantime, was wrestling with his own problems. The aboleth was doing… something…Dartan felt like it was grappling with his mind. He solved the problem by thrusting his sword through the fish’s eye, killing it. The others were done with the water elemental, so Dartan sheathed his sword. He noticed Rafflorn looking all around them at the surrounding room in fright. “What’s bothering you?” Dartan snarled.
“I just realized something,” the young wizard said. He took out a piece of paper and quickly sketched something. “The shape of this room and the last, and the placement of the altars…” he held the paper up.
Next: Fifty feet of Hell
