Travels through the Wild West: Books V-VIII (Epilogue)

[Broccli_Head]

Great to see you back into the action, LB....

It seems that only Lok is in good shape.

Pity for the rest, but there's nothing more resilient and scary than a flying dwarfkin with a wicked battle axe!!!!

 

[Maldur]

LB, great cliffhangers , your back in form!!


(It seems your work situation is similar to mine, stinks doesn't it)


Broccli_Head, that not really how I see Lok, but still a nice pic

 

[Black Bard]

Great update... As usual...

Broccli_Head, that not really how I see Lok, but still a nice pic

I agree with Maldur... I think Lok is a bit more stony ...

 

[Lazybones]

Thanks guys! I think we'll have 3 updates this week, including a short but dramatic Friday cliffhanger! Stay tuned!

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Book VIII, Part 19


Dana saw the death rushing up to meet her as she fell, but strangely she felt no fear, only a deep calm that fell over her like a warm cloak.

Suddenly an iron band locked around her ankle, and she felt a rough jerk as it drew her up. Pain blossomed down the length of her leg, but she gladly welcomed that, preferable to the alternative of being dashed against the jagged rocks that continued to draw nearer for a moment as she slowed. Then, barely five feet above the ground, above those eager fingers of stone that would have claimed her life, she stopped.

Ignoring the pain, she twisted her body up so that she could see Lok, his iron-plated fist locked around her ankle, his axe clutched awkwardly in his shield-hand. Beyond him, she caught a glimpse of one of the yrthaks, flying in a wide arc overhead.

“Thanks,” she managed, forcing a smile despite the pain. Her side ached where the yrthak’s claw had clouted her, but Lok looked far worse off, with streaks of blood running down his head from his nostrils and ears, from blood vessels shattered by the creatures’ sonic lances.

“Better put me down,” she said. “Those things...”

Lok nodded, and lowered her gently down to the ground. Even as he released her he shifted his axe to his weapon-hand, and looked ready to lift back up into the fray, but Dana forestalled him.

“Wait a moment,” she said. Ignoring her own hurts, she channeled the power of the goddess into a powerful healing spell, the most potent she had ever cast. When she touched Lok, his eyes widened in surprise, and she could almost see the injuries fading as the healing energies blasted through his battered frame.

“Good hunting,” she said, stumbling back as he nodded and shot back up into the air. One of the yrthaks was already diving to meet him, and the second was flying around the edge of the valley near the cliffs, Dana’s spear still jutting from its chest. Of the third creature, the one that Lok had driven off, there was no sign, nor did she see the giant eagle. From the way her side throbbed from just a glancing impact from the creature’s claw, and the pain from that sonic pulse she’d felt through it, she suspected that her ally had been driven back to its otherplanar home.

She was about to call upon another healing spell, to ease her own pains, when another rumbling noise distracted her and pulled her attention back to the cliffs. From her current vantage, atop a low rise of jumbled stones, she could clearly see the rockslide blocking the tunnel entrance. The noise grew louder, and she saw that the second yrthak had sensed it as well, and it was already winging down to investigate, its deadly horn sweeping for possible targets.

Her own hurts forgotten, Dana was already running toward the cliff, her magical boots carrying her with incredible speed across the uneven terrain. She was vaguely aware of Lok meeting the first yrthak a hundred paces directly above; the clash was a silent one save for the buzzing noise that bled off of the beast’s sonic attack, and the meaty thud of Lok’s axe cutting deep into reptilian flesh.

Dana’s attention shifted to the yrthak diving toward the rockslide, only for an instant, and when her gaze returned she saw the massive pile shifting, with rocks pouring down its slope. At first she thought that the shift was the result of the yrthak’s sonics, but then the top of the pile of stones split open, and a creature emerged from within the mountainside.

Its appearance was so startling that Dana drew up short, almost stumbling on an uneven patch of loose stones. The creature was an insectoid monstrosity, its bulbous head flanked by a pair of massive, snapping mandibles, its clawed hands crushing stone as it cleared and widened the opening it had just created.

It was a familiar sight to the mystic wanderer: an umber hulk.

For an instant Dana felt a sick feeling of fear in her gut, for the fate of Benzan and the others. But then, the creature looked up and saw her, and instead of lumbering forward to attack, it waved.

Silently, she berated herself for a fool. But then she was running forward again, pointing up to where the massive shadow of the diving yrthak had already fallen over the valley floor, the creature swooping so close to the cliff that its right wing almost brushed the uneven stone.

The umber hulk turned and saw the danger, but even as it started to move, Dana felt the familiar buzzing in her skull. The attack was not directed at her, but even so she felt the momentary stab of pain within her skull as the piled debris around the hulk exploded, blasting the hapless creature with hundreds of shards of jagged stone.

Dana continued to run, while awkwardly clawing at the side of her pack for the crossbow that had hung forgotten there for a good part of their recent journeys. She knew that she would never get it ready in time, as the yrthak spread its wings and started back up toward the open sky above, either to retreat or to get into position for another attack run.

The umber hulk had slid forward, out of the way of the opening it had made, and two figures leapt into view from the darkness beyond. Dana’s heart leapt as she recognized Benzan, and the slender form of one of the elven Harpers. Both carried their bows with arrows nocked. The elf drew and fired in a single motion, but the shaft narrowly shot past the departing creature, already a good fifty paces distant and rising quickly. Benzan drew his own arrow to his cheek, the arrowhead bursting into magical flames as the power of his bow poured into the missile. Yet he hesitated for a moment, his lips moving soundlessly as he held his aim toward the departing shape of the creature.

Then, suddenly, he lifted his aim higher, and released.

The arrow knifed through the air, rising higher, higher... until the yrthak’s rising form finally intersected its course. The missile caught it solidly in the back of its head, driving through flesh and bone and bursting with eager flames as the head penetrated into its brain. The yrthak lurched in the air, its wings still beating furiously, and then it began to fall. Dana felt a moment of hard memory as she watched in plummet, finally to fall with an earth-shattering crash on the valley floor.

Not ten seconds later, another crash sounded from behind. Dana spun, thinking it at first to be an echo, but then she caught sight of the second creature, which had fallen to earth near the remnants of the hobgoblin stockade. Its fate was immediately clear, even before she saw Lok descending rapidly to join them.

They gathered at the base of the rockfall, the umber hulk sliding awkwardly down, followed by Benzan, and the elf Harper. Cal came behind, emerging from the dark opening in the cliff to join them, and Lok, the last to arrive, floated down to land safely a few feet away.

Dana crushed Benzan in a tight hug, and the tiefling eagerly responded. “When I saw the rockfall, and those... things... I thought...” she said.

“It’s all right,” he reassured her. “They forced us inside, and then used those pulse attacks to collapse the entrance. I would have been crushed, if Cal hadn’t dragged me back with the power of his ring. As it is, they banged us around a bit, but we...”

He trailed off, and she released him, sensing that something was wrong. She saw it on the faces of the others, on the elf, Cal, even the umber hulk that had to be one of the others, polymorphed by Cal’s magic.

“What happened?” she heard herself asking.

“Eloren, he was killed,” Cal said. Dana saw the pain that the words had upon his brother, who had be Valdis, then. That would make the hulk Fariq, who regarded them somberly through the alien eyes of his assumed form.

“Perhaps I can do something for him, on the morrow,” Dana said. “But I’ll need to rest, and regain my spells.”

“I think we will all need to rest,” Cal said. He turned to dispel his spell and restore Fariq to his normal form.

“I will recover your spear, Dana,” Lok said. He lifted a few feet off the ground and shot out toward where one of the yrthaks had fallen.

“The entrance was pretty beaten up by those things, as you can see,” Benzan said. “But the interior tunnels are intact. We’d probably be safer inside.” He looked up and surveyed the sky, but there was no sign of the third yrthak, or any other dangers.

Dana shivered, though she wasn’t cold. While she did not relish spending a day in that accursed shrine, it was preferable to remaining out here. And they needed her to be strong; Benzan hadn’t exaggerated, when he said they’d taken a beating in this encounter.

For her, it only reinforced the importance of them staying together. Apart...

“All right, let’s go,” she said, trudging toward the mound of rubble that led up to the dark opening. Her leg was hurting again, but there would be time to deal with all their wounds shortly. They would rest, restore themselves, prepare their spells...

And then, their next journey would begin.

 

[Maldur]

The image of a waving umberhulk! Hilarious

Great stuff, LB! Thx!

 

[wolff96]

Sweet, sweet combat. The nectar of the gods.

Great update, LB! Can't wait to see the final push to liberate Delem.

 

[Black Bard]

I'm sure Fariq was the only one excited with the possibility of being turned into a umber hulk!!!

Great update, Lazy!!!

 

[Lazybones]

Book VIII, Part 20


It was two full days later when the companions gathered once more in the dark chamber where the Portal, that strange gateway to the Outer Planes, waited patiently for their coming. Each of the four friends felt the press of time intently, particularly in this place, where dark dreams came and the face of their lost friend intruded constantly in their thoughts. Nor did any of them seek to delay what now seemed inevitable, the final passage through the Portal into the dark realm that lay beyond.

But even with those proddings, there was nothing to be done for it but to use that time, to make the necessary preparations that they had discussed. The first day Dana had used her divine powers to restore life to Eloren. The Harper Scout rose gingerly, weakened and drawn from his soul’s brief excursion to the Other Realms, but he responded quickly to healing magic, hot food, and fresh air. Valdis’s eyes shone with gratitude whenever he saw them, especially Dana, and he swore the service of both him and his brother should the companions ever need their aid in the future.

Except in their current venture, there would be no more aid, save that which the companions had already mustered.

They could have begun after that, but Dana and Cal agreed that they would be fools to proceed without Dana recovering the power she’d expended in restoring Eloren. That night she walked alone out into the valley, the brilliant light of the full moon shining down onto the barren rocks, turning the landscape into an alien sea of rolling gray. She called to Selûne to grant her the magical power that they would need to see them through, and long hours passed before she returned, a look of calm on her face that did not quite reach her eyes. Without words she went to Benzan, who had not slept, working the fletching on a bundle of arrows as he awaited her return. The two faced each other for a long moment, and then silently departed together to a side chamber, to share what little time remained to them before they were cast into the darkness once more.

Cal spent the night in careful review of his spellbooks. They had already discussed this in length, how they would choose their spells to best complement their shared abilities and talents. The gnome had spoken extensively with a number of the Harpers in Twilight Hall, including Cylyria, and had gotten at least a partial understanding of the limitations that his magic would encounter once they had passed through the Portal into the Abyss. Thus both he and Dana would steer away from summonings, which on the Outer Planes tended to draw the local residents regardless of the caster’s intent, and divinations, which could directly alert the predominant Power of the plane to which they traveled. In all honesty, the gnome was more troubled than he showed outwardly by the prospects of his magic failing him, but finally he closed his spellbook and slid it into one of the pockets of his magical backpack, and took up his lute, playing a soft melody that seemed to haunt the empty corridors of the underground complex well into morning.

Lok spent his time preparing his weapons and armor, painstakingly cleaning them of gore from the battle with the yrthaks, testing buckles and edges that did not really require maintenance. His face was impassive even to his closest friends, like the hard stone of the chambers that surrounded them, and before retiring to sleep he spent some time sitting alone, fingering a small, rounded stone and staring deeply into the darkness.

Fariq and the elven brothers, sensing the somber mood of their new companions, and understanding what they were about to face, gave them their distance, and when they spoke it was in hushed, respectful tones.

Finally they awoke on the morning of the second day after their arrival in the valley. The companions went outside once more, to drink in the fresh, bracing morning air and the bright rays of morning sun that shone down through a gap in the line of peaks to the east. No words were spoken, but the four travelers took in the day together, drawing strength from each other, trying to banish the dark thoughts that haunted them. They were ready.

With the three Harpers in tow, they returned to the dark places under the mountain, and soon stood before the looming Portal.

“That... that is unnatural,” Valdis said, staring at the Portal, at the inverted U of stacked stones that could not, should not, have been able to stand without toppling. Within that arch the parchment-thin sheet of black rock waited like an unbroken pool. The unholy black radiance that somehow allowed them to see despite the blackness seemed to pulse at their arrival, as if greeting them. In that strange glow the summoning circle graven upon the floor seemed to glow with a silvery radiance, but everything else was just an outline formed of a deeper black.

To combat the glow, Dana held aloft her torch, the one bearing the continual flame, but the light it cast was pale, sickly. Fariq added a light spell, but it did little more to drive back the enfolding black a scant increment further.

Slowly, but with determination, they approached the portal. Once closer they could see the familiar squat pedestal that stood before it, a simple finger of black stone with a squared top.

The companions stood there for a long minute, staring at the portal, girding their courage close about them. Finally, as if some unspoken signal had been given, they turned to face each other.

“So then,” Lok said.

“One moment,” Cal said. “Benzan, I meant to give this to you earlier.” The gnome drew out a slender wand, the one that he’d recently created in Silverymoon. As the tiefling took the device, Cal said, “It’s fully charged, and casts the invisibility spell. It does not rely on a command word; you just grasp it and will the effect into being. Should be useful, given your talent with the sneak attack.”

“At least against the lesser demons,” Benzan said, tucking the wand into his belt. While he hadn’t paid as much heed as Cal to the information provided by the Harpers, they all knew that the stronger demons possessed the power to neutralize various forms of magic.

“I have something for you, Cal,” Dana said. As the gnome turned to her, she drew out a small gemstone from an inner pocket. The gem was an exquisitely shaped sapphire, which glimmered with a strange radiance in the admixture of blacklight and magical illumination that warred in the chamber. As she passed it to him, he could feel the power stored within, a tingle that seemed to radiate out from the solidity of the stone.

“An attuned gem,” he said in query.

“Yes. It took... a great effort, to prepare it, but it is very important. It bears within it the power to plane shift you and whomever you are touching back here, to Faerûn. Though I cannot say for sure where exactly you would end up.”

Cal nodded, and carefully placed the gem within an inner pocket. “A wise precaution,” he said.

Benzan, on the other hand, clearly felt it was anything but, as emotions clearly warred across his face. But Dana turned to him and smiled weakly, meeting his gaze with a slight nod that seemed to confirm an agreement already made. Benzan opened his mouth to speak, but then snapped it shut and turned decisively toward the portal.

“Let’s get this over with already,” he spat. He bore his bow in one hand, with one sword at his hip and another across his back, with his small shield hanging over one shoulder. The four carried only light packs, with most of their supplies secured within Cal’s magical haversack and Lok’s bag of holding. Those items, at least, should work normally, according to what Cylyria had told them.

If not, then this trip might be a lot shorter than they expected.

Cal moved to stand beside Benzan. “The statue,” he said, softly.

Benzan nodded and crossed to the small pedestal. Drawing the bundle out of his pouch, he unwrapped the small statuette of the demon-figure and lowered it cautiously into place. It fit into the depression atop the pedestal perfectly, settling in with a softly anticlimactic click. The flat surface within the portal remained quiescent, not reacting in any apparent way to their actions.

“Dana,” Cal prodded.

The woman stepped forward as Benzan gave way, handing her torch and spear to Lok before confronting the doorway with a look of fierce determination on her features. Her eyes grew vacant as she reached out both within herself and across the universe to the bond that connected her to the power of the goddess Selûne. Her lips moved as nearly soundless syllables poured from them, each vanishing from the mind before those present could be certain that they’d heard anything at all. She stood solemn and silent, a statue of a woman, her hands limp at her sides, the only animate parts of her the moving lips and the twitching shifting of her eyes as they sought out things unseen. The others gathered shuddered, some part of them deep in their subconscious sensing the invisible channels of divine and natural energies that gathered at the woman’s call, intersecting the existing threads that permeated this ancient place of power.

And then...

...the portal opened...

It was not like a door opening, or even a dramatic sundering. Instead the wall within the arch just melted away into nothing, and then there was something there, a faintly shimmering plane confined within the stacked stones. It awaited them.

Dana sagged a bit from the expenditure of energy involved in opening the portal, but she straightened by the time Lok had come forward, and she took her weapon back, tucking the torch into her belt. The illusory flames flickered against her clothes, but did not burn.

The companions met each others’ gaze once more. They did not speak, but nor did they shy away from the cold question that resided in each set of eyes. As one, they moved toward the portal.

“Good luck,” Fariq said, his words tight.

Benzan glanced over his shoulder at the man, flanked by the elven brothers, their own expressions solemn.

“Don’t forget us,” he said.

And then the four moved into the gateway, and vanished from the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Maldur]

wow, and with this I am going on vacation!


thx, LB! Great cliffhanger

 

[Lazybones]

Friday cliffhanger, short and sweet. And our heroes' ultimate adversary is finally unmasked, as if all of you didn't already know...

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Book VIII, Part 21


The succubus G’hael walked silently down an empty corridor within the vast confines of the Argent Place. The walls, floor, and ceiling around her were apparently of white marble, clean and pristine, but on closer examination there were textures... within the rock that seemed almost to move when viewed from the corner of one’s eye. The hall was nearly dark, but occasionally shafts of varicolored light penetrated through narrow and deep slits high along the walls, creating a strange network of shadows that gave the hall an eerie mood. Even if one wasn’t already familiar with the master of this place.

G’hael paid little heed to her surroundings, even when two of the shadows shifted and took on solid form before her. Bodaks, she recognized, as the dark forms loomed over her, then, seeing that she did not have what they wanted, shambled almost absently away. Other things squirmed deeper in the shadows, but they did not approach as the demoness continued swiftly on her errand.

The Great Hall was empty, cavernous and silent. G’hael looked around, somewhat surprised; typically this place was a bedlam of gathered demons, notables from across the Planes, petitioners, and others drawn to the Power that held court from atop the massive white throne that dominated the chamber a good bowshot across from where she entered.

The throne was empty, at first, but as G’hael quickly crossed the chamber—not quite running, though casual flaps of her wings helped drive her legs faster—something coalesced in the air around the seat, a black envelope that split to reveal... Him, seated languidly but with an intent expression upon his perfectly formed features.

The succubus drew up suddenly, spreading her wings to catch the air as she halted and fell quickly to her knees, her fingertips pressing the floor before her as she lowered her head in supplication.

“Rise,” the ebon figure atop the throne spoke. Even that single word was enough to send tremors through the demon, but she quickly obeyed nonetheless.

“Great Prince, they have arrived,” she said, not meeting the stare of his black eyes.

The Demon Prince Graz’zt leaned back in his chair, his fingers splayed across the carved ends of the rests, and his lips twisted into a faint smile.

“Yes, I know.”