Hey, my 15 minutes of fame have started, as Rizzen, the creator of the Neverwinter Connections website, has published an interview with me as this week's cover story. The link is
www.neverwinterconnections.com. Drop by and take a look, and while you're there, sign up and get involved in a great D&D online community playing Neverwinter Nights.
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Book V, Part 29
Cal slowly picked himself up off the floor and limped over to where Benzan’s battered form lay. The gnome crouched over the body of his friend, and after a moment’s examination uttered a sigh of relief, followed by the soft lilting melody of his healing song. As the tiefling began to stir, Cal moved over to where Dana had fallen, and tended to her in the same fashion.
Lok just stood there over the body of the dragon, his body heaving as he silently regarded his fallen foe. He seemed barely able to keep to his feet, with runnels of blood caught in the wrinkles of his face and caked in the matted length of his beard. The blade of his axe had fallen until it touched the floor, the haft clutched almost desperately in his tired fingers.
Benzan rose, still groggy and half-stunned despite the restorative power of Cal’s magic. He bent down and recovered his sword from where he had dropped it, and crossed to where Cal was helping Dana.
“How is she?” Benzan asked, his feelings clear in his stricken expression.
“She’ll be all right,” Cal reassured him, and in fact the young woman began to stir as he finished his spell, groaning in pain as she shifted slightly.
“Take it easy,” Cal said to her. “You’re hurt bad—we all are.”
“What… what happened?” Dana asked, as she looked up. She still looked horrible, with her exposed skin ravaged by the dragon’s breath, but there was a hint of her natural fire in her eyes as she gained her bearings and gazed around. The stick with the
everburning flame was still stuck in her belt, and its radiance brightened as Cal helped her rise to a seated position.
Cal didn’t answer her, just looked at the body of the dragon and its severed head a short distance away. Lok’s silent form, standing there over the body of the beast like a sentinel, was answer enough.
“Help me up,” she said, trying to rise and failing before Benzan caught her. “What about the quaggoths?”
“Dead,” Benzan reported. “And we quite nearly joined them. How we’re going to get out of this place with our skins intact, though, is a puzzle that’s beyond me right now.”
“One problem at a time, Benzan,” Cal said.
“Well, at least no one came running at the sound of that fight,” the tiefling noted. “That’s something.”
Lok, meanwhile, had turned and started walking slowly, almost grudgingly, toward the rear part of the chamber from which the dragon had emerged. The shadows there seemed almost tangible, as if they were actively resisting the probing rays of Dana’s light, but they could just make out the thick lines of a massive stone door recessed within the far wall of the place.
“Lok, wait,” Cal said. “There’s no way we can go on—even you can barely stand!”
But Lok, caught up within the grasp of some other call, did not seem to hear him. His companions had no choice but to hurriedly gather up their weapons and follow as best they could. By the time that the first of them reached him, however, the genasi had already reached the stone door.
The portal was large enough to accommodate a giant, yet it opened smoothly at Lok’s touch. As it opened light spilled out from the space beyond, as did a droning, continuous sound that they all quickly realized was someone chanting.
Lok stepped through, the others only a moment behind him.
Into the innermost depths of the Sanctum: the ritual chamber.
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The interior of the cavern dwarfed even the considerable spaces that they’d traveled through thus far in the duergar complex, although it seemed crowded with the mesh of activities going on as they entered. Their attentions were drawn to the massive pillar of silvery metal in the center of the place, resplendent with glowing gemstones that seemed to sparkle like stars in the night sky. But even that mysterious and wondrous sight did not make them overlook the more immediate concerns directly before them.
The floor of the cavern was crowded with slumped, half-conscious forms, most of them apparently dwarves with a smattering of other races thrown in, that looked emaciated and ill-used through the ragged outlines of the tunics they wore as dress. The poor creatures were mostly insensate to what was going on around them, although some of them mumbled incomprehensible gibberish or clawed vaguely at the air with cracked, dirty hands. In their eyes burned an admixture of madness and despair that was utterly disconcerting.
Other than the gathered slaves, only two other figures were in the cavern. One was a duergar female, clad in layered robes of fine cloth. She was the source of the eerie chanting, and seemed as unaware of what was going on around her as the drugged slaves.
The other figure, however, was far different. His back was to them as they entered, so all they could discern of him was that he seemed human, muscular, his bare torso as perfect as if it had been shaped by a master sculptor’s chisel in fine marble. His head was bald, and he wore a long skirt that shone with a metallic sheen in the light from the dozen or so brands that ringed the circumference of the chamber.
That was what they companions saw as they entered the chamber. But on another, more basic level, they could also sense the undercurrents of what was happening here, the source of the disquiet that Benzan and Dana had felt earlier. A palpable feeling of power was present here, felt as a tingling on the skin that was almost uncomfortable in its intensity. On the edges of perception they could just detect the flows of power that connected everything in the room, drawing from the gathered slaves but also from the world beyond, through the half-naked man, and from him focused into a tight line that vanished into the substance of the pillar.
“They’re dying,” Lok said, staring in horror at the gathered slaves.
“By the gods,” Cal whispered.
At the same moment, Dana cried out, her mystic sensitivity allowing her to more fully perceive the abominous nature of what was being worked here.
Benzan reacted differently, drawing an arrow and in a smooth motion nocking, sighting, and releasing a shot that slammed squarely into the center of the bald man’s back. It stuck there, although no blood issued from the puncture.
As one, the captives shuddered once and then fell still. The chanting ceased, and the duergar woman slumped to the ground. The flows of energy stopped flowing, but the stored power was still there, waiting, almost eager to resume its flow.
The youth turned. As he faced them, they could see that his face matched the rest of his features, youthful lines that while perfect in form, lacked the depth of expression. His eyebrows were stylized designs that formed runic whirls above his eyes, which in turn were deep pools of pure blackness that shone with an otherworldly and ancient intelligence.
If he was at all hindered by the arrow stuck squarely in his back, he did not show it. And when he spoke, his voice seemed to come from someplace cavernous deep within, filling the air with its sonorous rumble.
“Foolish mortals, treading as you always do in matters beyond your ken.”
Cal stepped forward. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing, but we’ve come for the urdunnir, and you’d do well to hand them over before things get ugly. We took care of your duergar friends, and your little dragon, and we’ll do the same to you if we have to.”
“Big words from such a little creature. You are all nothing to me, small beings who seek to interfere in things they do not understand. Balander Calloran, who sings his little songs and fears to let his comrades down… Dana Ilgarten, so very bored with her perfect little life, angry that daddy didn’t pay any attention to her… Benzan, a creature after my own heart, unwilling to confront the true meaning of what he is… And finally Lok, mighty defender of the downtrodden, who does not even know that he is just a pawn in yet another game of the divine powers…”
“You know a great deal, but now it is you who hurls empty words,” Cal replied. “We are committed, and no idle comments will sway us from our purpose.”
“Bravely spoken, indeed. But if you think that you have the power to hinder me, you are sadly mistaken. Since the Time of Troubles my power has been sundered, divided into three separate channels following my confrontations with the god-king Gilgeam. Since then, my many followers have been scattered by the fall of once-glorious Unther. On my own plane I have been humbled, forced into alliances and concessions that ill befitted one of my standing. But here, in this desolate wasteland, that which is rightfully mine will be joined once again to the essence of what I am. Can you not feel it, already? This marvelous stele is but a tool, amplifying the life-energy of these pitiful wretches into a wedge that will allow me to take back what was stolen from me.”
“Nice speech, villain,” Benzan said. “I’d give it a six, maybe a seven, personally.”
Cal’s expression, however, had darkened as the inkling of recognition flared in his eyes at the youth’s words. “Who are you?” he managed to ask.
“Have you not already guessed? In my once-mortal life I was Tchazzar, the Red Wyrm of Unther. Now I am the Avatar of Tiamat, and with that revelation your souls are forfeit!”
“Whatever you are, die!” Benzan cried, drawing his bow and firing another shot. The missile flew true, but the youth almost carelessly deflected it with a swat of his hand.
Even as the companions started to act, the Avatar raised his other hand and held it like a claw, outstretched toward them. A glowing bolt of sinuous green energy lanced out and struck the ground before them, exploding into a web of twisting, living tendrils that lashed into them, penetrating their clothing and armor as if it wasn’t there and vanishing into their bodies. As each glowing strand passed into their flesh each of them felt a sudden numbness that held their muscles fast, leaving them unable to move.
“Now, witness your doom!” the Avatar said, raising both of his arms high above his head, his hands outstretched in an expansive gesture.
The smoothly sculpted lines of the youth’s body began to change, twisting and shifting in a gut-wrenching transformation that the four of them could only watch in helpless horror. As his form changed he grew and grew, until the empty space around him was filled with the still amorphous outline of his new form. Then the form began to take solidity once again, resolving into an image normally reserved for the darkest, most disturbing nightmares.
It was a dragon, huge beyond huge, its body rising high up into the vastness of the cavern above them. Atop its thick torso protruded not one but five distinct necks, each topped by a massive dragon’s head in one of the five chromatic colors: white, black, green, blue, and, in the center, red. As the Avatar assumed its true form each of the heads opened and bellowed in a draconic roar that shook the cavern to its very foundations.
The companions shivered in fear as the dark reality of what confronted them finally sank in. They had fought many deadly foes, both mundane and bizarre, had confronted demons and wizards and evil clerics and somehow always managed to win out even against the worst odds. But nothing they had faced could compare to this.
“It has truly been my pleasure to call each of you my friend,” Cal said, unable to shift his head even to look at them.
Benzan, however, was able to manage that feat with great effort, twisting his head just enough so that he could look at Dana. “I love you, Dana.”
Tears streaked the young woman’s face as her gaze met his. “I know.”
Lok, however, through an incredible effort of willpower and fortitude, managed to take a single difficult step forward. His face still streaked with his own blood, he lumbered awkwardly forward a few more paces, fighting the Avatar’s fell magic with each step, until he halted, bringing his axe up before him.
“Come on, then!” he cried out, in defiance of the inevitable death before him.
