Broccli_Head
Explorer
you are right!
It is getting more and more wicked !
It is getting more and more wicked !
Travels through the Wild West: Books V-VIII (Epilogue)
- Thread starter Lazybones
- Start date
Lazybones
Adventurer
We're back! It's not the Friday cliffhanger that I originally envisioned before the crash, but I think you'll enjoy this installment...
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 33
Benzan looked around at his surroundings. He had no memory of how he had come to be here; when he tried to think on it, he felt a pounding deep within his skull, so he turned his attention outward.
He was standing in a narrow city street. The place had the look of any of a million streets in a thousand unnamed cities, yet it was instantly familiar to the tiefling warrior. The sights, the smells—they instantly hit him with a barrage of memories, despite the fact that when he’d last been here, the place had not been empty as it was now. There was a void of sound, not even the whisper of a breeze off the bay or the scuttle of rats in the shadowy alleys that darted off of the winding thoroughfare. In those days when his dreams had taken him back to Unthalass, they had always been filled with the constant rush of sound that was a part of the city, a medley of voices and noises that grew and redoubled in the tight spaces that were these slums where he’d grown up.
Only now, the city was vacant, without even the buzzing of an insect to shatter the emptiness.
He didn’t immediately recognize this street; a veritable maze twisted and wove through the slums that sat like a fat boil upon the wealthier central districts where the quarters of the merchants, priests, and the palace of the God-King occupied the choice spaces along the bay. As a youth, he’d known that maze intricately, as many of the fatherless and hopeless urchins who crowded the slums did, but it had been many, many years.
He looked up. The sky was bright, and the heat was familiar, that oppressive, wrenching heat that literally sucked the sweat from the body until it ran down your skin in currents. But there was something wrong in that, as well... he realized that he could not see the sun, the golden orb that brightened Toril was just... gone.
He realized belatedly that he had changed as well. Instead of his mithril chainmail he was clad in a flowing cotton tunic, of the sort common in Unthalass. His other gear was missing as well, save for his accustomed bronze longsword, which rested in its usual position upon his hip. It was a reassuring presence, something tangible in this familiar and yet alien place.
“Once again you return to the place of your origin,” a voice said, from behind.
Benzan spun swiftly, for all that he hadn’t heard the stranger approach. As he pivoted his blade hissed out from its scabbard, leaping readily into his hand.
The stranger stood calmly ten paces distant, regarding him with a cold but intent expression. He was humanoid, muscular, his skin a perfect ebon, with a polish that caught the light like smooth obsidian. He looked human at first glance, handsome in a regal sort of way, but on closer examination his pointed ears and slanted brows betrayed his otherworldly heritage. He was clad in a richly cut garment of soft black silk that highlighted the muscular outlines of his frame, and carried a massive bastard sword whose hilt jutted up above his right shoulder.
“This isn’t Unthalass,” Benzan said, gesturing with his blade at the empty streets and alleys that surrounded them.
The black man strode forward. “No, but my statement is true nonetheless,” he said with the faintest hint of a smirk twisting his perfect features.
Benzan lifted the sword so that it stood as a barrier between them. But if the ebon man seemed threatened by the long blade that stood three paces from his heart, he gave no sign of it. “Who are you?”
“Benzan, Benzan. You carry my likeness around with you every day for three years, and you have no knowledge of me? Perhaps I should be insulted...”
“Prince Graz’zt,” he breathed. The Prince fixed him with a hard stare, held him with those black eyes, until there could be no doubt.
“Where are the others? Have you harmed... any of them?” He’d hesitated, almost said, “Dana,” but he’d been able to catch himself. There was no way that he was going to give this... creature any advantage, if he could help it...
But then he looked into those eyes again, and felt despair. Graz’zt already knew. He knew it all. He knew everything.
“It was all one big trap, wasn’t it?”
Graz’zt strode out into the empty street, his boots crunching on the shattered flagstones. Even before the war with Mulhorand that had driven Benzan and his mother, along with thousands of other refugees, from Unther, the back avenues and side alleys of the city had never been kept in good repair, the revenues of the city going instead to enrich the priest caste and those elite warriors close to the retinue of the god-king. Benzan thought he could even smell the familiar odors of the open-air markets, stimulating a rush of memories he’d thought forgotten.
It’s just an illusion, he told himself firmly, forcing himself to draw his full attention upon the foe—for this was a foe, and a deadly one, for all his apparent ease now—as he turned once more to face him.
“I will not try to turn you against your friends, Benzan—I can see the bond that exists between you, and while it might be an entertaining project to snap that bond, or perhaps to warp it, you and your fellow Faerûnites are not my primary concern at the moment. Still, it is rare to encounter one of the Blood who has gone out from us, lived his life on another plane, and has returned to the Homeland as you have. Have you ever considered what you are, Benzan? What am I saying—of course you are. It consumes you, doesn’t it? You’ve been trained by the weaklings of that world, this world,” he indicated the deserted streets with a casual toss of his hands, “This world that hates you and all that you are.”
“I have accepted what I am,” Benzan said.
Graz’zt’s lips twisted into that familiar half-amused, half-mocking smile. “Indeed?” He waved his hand, and a gust of wind swirled in the street, and in that wind they could hear a voice, faint, an echo of words spoken before.
“Anything born of this place is an abomination...” came Benzan’s voice on that breeze.
“Your words, I believe?” Graz’zt said to him.
“You’re not the first to try to torment me with my own identity,” Benzan shot back.
“Torment you? No, Benzan. I want to free you. Have you never considered the possibility that who you are—what you are—sets you above those that surround you? Look at you. You are faster, smarter; though you seek to hide that behind that layer of sarcasm and ‘wit’ that you cultivate. You have chosen not to develop greatly the innate magical talents that flow within your blood, but those skills you have refined make you powerful, nonetheless. Your heritage makes you adaptable, resistant to the hot touch of the flame and the numbing chill of ice alike.”
“I know what I can do,” Benzan said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want and be done with it? I’m getting bored with all this chatter.”
Graz’zt’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction, but then he laughed. “Ah, Benzan. Would that I had the time to turn you; you would make a great addition to the ranks of my minions, I suspect. But since you insist, I will get to the point. I have come to make you an offer, Benzan. For all your self-loathing and petty denials, your ancestry is core to what you are, central to the construct of your identity. I can give you insight, Benzan.”
“Have you never wondered, Benzan? Of course, your mother never told you, but I can.”
“Your father...”
Benzan tried to hide his reaction, but he knew that the demon Prince could see through him as though he were shaped from Cormyrian crystal. “My father?”
“Yes. Have you never wondered, from what source you sprang? Did you think it all happenstance, boy? Your wanderings, drawn to the Western Heartlands, finding the statuette, the device that led you, ultimately, to me...”
“You?” Benzan breathed. His heart seemed to have frozen in his chest. “You... my father...”
Graz’zt laughed again, this time a deep, throaty sound that echoed off of the close press of buildings around them. “Me! Ah, you certainly have a high opinion of yourself after all, it seems! Nay, Benzan, while it’s true that I’ve shared around my seed on more than a few occasions, if you possessed my blood, believe me, you would know it...”
Benzan heard the scraping sound behind him this time, even as he sensed the presence approach. He looked up at Graz’zt, but the Demon Prince only watched him, a faint hint of a smirk on his features.
Reluctantly, Benzan turned around.
The creature—and that was the most he could define of it, at first—was large, half-again his height, its bulbous form clearly several times his mass. It had the look of a fat, ugly, massive toad, except that it stood on two legs, and a demonic intelligence shone in its dull yellow eyes. Fat gobs of slobber dripped from jaws that stretched at least three feet across, smoking where they landed on the uneven paving stones of the street. Its mottled hide was coated with an oily sheen, and as it drew nearer, the stench of it hit Benzan like a hammer blow. It was only with some difficulty that he held his ground, although his stomach continued to roil in protest as the creature closed to within ten paces, sinking into a crouch on its thick legs, ready to spring.
Graz’zt’s voice came over his shoulder. “This is the hezrou, Mul’guk’lak,” he said. “A fairly recent addition to the ranks of my minions. He’s made a few visits to your Faerûn... no doubt you have heard about the rituals conducted by the priests of Unther? Quite... stimulating... wouldn’t you agree, Mul’guk?”
The hezrou’s huge jaws twisted into a ferocious grin, and it emitted a sour, fetid croak.
Benzan could not take his eyes off of the hezrou, though he turned his body back toward Graz’zt. “What... what are you saying...”
“Benzan, allow me to introduce your father.”
“No. No, you’re lying...”
The Demon Prince laughed. “Why would I lie? Ah, I take that back—I’m sure there’s a thousand reasons why I might lie... But in this case, my words are truth... and did you not yourself just say that you have accepted what you are? Surely the family resemblance is obvious?”
“No...” Benzan found himself kneeling in the dusty street, although he hadn’t remembered falling. Looking up, all he saw was the hulking demon, looming over him. Its stench filled his nostrils, seeping into his pores. “No, this is just an illusion, a lie...”
Graz’zt’s laughter came to him once again, echoed by the creature before him. Its jaws opened, and from deep within its throat came a hissing mockery of human speech.
“My son.”
Benzan clutched his head, pressing his arms against his ears. His stomach finally gave over, and he felt hot bile in his throat as he purged upon the dusty stones.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 33
Benzan looked around at his surroundings. He had no memory of how he had come to be here; when he tried to think on it, he felt a pounding deep within his skull, so he turned his attention outward.
He was standing in a narrow city street. The place had the look of any of a million streets in a thousand unnamed cities, yet it was instantly familiar to the tiefling warrior. The sights, the smells—they instantly hit him with a barrage of memories, despite the fact that when he’d last been here, the place had not been empty as it was now. There was a void of sound, not even the whisper of a breeze off the bay or the scuttle of rats in the shadowy alleys that darted off of the winding thoroughfare. In those days when his dreams had taken him back to Unthalass, they had always been filled with the constant rush of sound that was a part of the city, a medley of voices and noises that grew and redoubled in the tight spaces that were these slums where he’d grown up.
Only now, the city was vacant, without even the buzzing of an insect to shatter the emptiness.
He didn’t immediately recognize this street; a veritable maze twisted and wove through the slums that sat like a fat boil upon the wealthier central districts where the quarters of the merchants, priests, and the palace of the God-King occupied the choice spaces along the bay. As a youth, he’d known that maze intricately, as many of the fatherless and hopeless urchins who crowded the slums did, but it had been many, many years.
He looked up. The sky was bright, and the heat was familiar, that oppressive, wrenching heat that literally sucked the sweat from the body until it ran down your skin in currents. But there was something wrong in that, as well... he realized that he could not see the sun, the golden orb that brightened Toril was just... gone.
He realized belatedly that he had changed as well. Instead of his mithril chainmail he was clad in a flowing cotton tunic, of the sort common in Unthalass. His other gear was missing as well, save for his accustomed bronze longsword, which rested in its usual position upon his hip. It was a reassuring presence, something tangible in this familiar and yet alien place.
“Once again you return to the place of your origin,” a voice said, from behind.
Benzan spun swiftly, for all that he hadn’t heard the stranger approach. As he pivoted his blade hissed out from its scabbard, leaping readily into his hand.
The stranger stood calmly ten paces distant, regarding him with a cold but intent expression. He was humanoid, muscular, his skin a perfect ebon, with a polish that caught the light like smooth obsidian. He looked human at first glance, handsome in a regal sort of way, but on closer examination his pointed ears and slanted brows betrayed his otherworldly heritage. He was clad in a richly cut garment of soft black silk that highlighted the muscular outlines of his frame, and carried a massive bastard sword whose hilt jutted up above his right shoulder.
“This isn’t Unthalass,” Benzan said, gesturing with his blade at the empty streets and alleys that surrounded them.
The black man strode forward. “No, but my statement is true nonetheless,” he said with the faintest hint of a smirk twisting his perfect features.
Benzan lifted the sword so that it stood as a barrier between them. But if the ebon man seemed threatened by the long blade that stood three paces from his heart, he gave no sign of it. “Who are you?”
“Benzan, Benzan. You carry my likeness around with you every day for three years, and you have no knowledge of me? Perhaps I should be insulted...”
“Prince Graz’zt,” he breathed. The Prince fixed him with a hard stare, held him with those black eyes, until there could be no doubt.
“Where are the others? Have you harmed... any of them?” He’d hesitated, almost said, “Dana,” but he’d been able to catch himself. There was no way that he was going to give this... creature any advantage, if he could help it...
But then he looked into those eyes again, and felt despair. Graz’zt already knew. He knew it all. He knew everything.
“It was all one big trap, wasn’t it?”
Graz’zt strode out into the empty street, his boots crunching on the shattered flagstones. Even before the war with Mulhorand that had driven Benzan and his mother, along with thousands of other refugees, from Unther, the back avenues and side alleys of the city had never been kept in good repair, the revenues of the city going instead to enrich the priest caste and those elite warriors close to the retinue of the god-king. Benzan thought he could even smell the familiar odors of the open-air markets, stimulating a rush of memories he’d thought forgotten.
It’s just an illusion, he told himself firmly, forcing himself to draw his full attention upon the foe—for this was a foe, and a deadly one, for all his apparent ease now—as he turned once more to face him.
“I will not try to turn you against your friends, Benzan—I can see the bond that exists between you, and while it might be an entertaining project to snap that bond, or perhaps to warp it, you and your fellow Faerûnites are not my primary concern at the moment. Still, it is rare to encounter one of the Blood who has gone out from us, lived his life on another plane, and has returned to the Homeland as you have. Have you ever considered what you are, Benzan? What am I saying—of course you are. It consumes you, doesn’t it? You’ve been trained by the weaklings of that world, this world,” he indicated the deserted streets with a casual toss of his hands, “This world that hates you and all that you are.”
“I have accepted what I am,” Benzan said.
Graz’zt’s lips twisted into that familiar half-amused, half-mocking smile. “Indeed?” He waved his hand, and a gust of wind swirled in the street, and in that wind they could hear a voice, faint, an echo of words spoken before.
“Anything born of this place is an abomination...” came Benzan’s voice on that breeze.
“Your words, I believe?” Graz’zt said to him.
“You’re not the first to try to torment me with my own identity,” Benzan shot back.
“Torment you? No, Benzan. I want to free you. Have you never considered the possibility that who you are—what you are—sets you above those that surround you? Look at you. You are faster, smarter; though you seek to hide that behind that layer of sarcasm and ‘wit’ that you cultivate. You have chosen not to develop greatly the innate magical talents that flow within your blood, but those skills you have refined make you powerful, nonetheless. Your heritage makes you adaptable, resistant to the hot touch of the flame and the numbing chill of ice alike.”
“I know what I can do,” Benzan said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want and be done with it? I’m getting bored with all this chatter.”
Graz’zt’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction, but then he laughed. “Ah, Benzan. Would that I had the time to turn you; you would make a great addition to the ranks of my minions, I suspect. But since you insist, I will get to the point. I have come to make you an offer, Benzan. For all your self-loathing and petty denials, your ancestry is core to what you are, central to the construct of your identity. I can give you insight, Benzan.”
“Have you never wondered, Benzan? Of course, your mother never told you, but I can.”
“Your father...”
Benzan tried to hide his reaction, but he knew that the demon Prince could see through him as though he were shaped from Cormyrian crystal. “My father?”
“Yes. Have you never wondered, from what source you sprang? Did you think it all happenstance, boy? Your wanderings, drawn to the Western Heartlands, finding the statuette, the device that led you, ultimately, to me...”
“You?” Benzan breathed. His heart seemed to have frozen in his chest. “You... my father...”
Graz’zt laughed again, this time a deep, throaty sound that echoed off of the close press of buildings around them. “Me! Ah, you certainly have a high opinion of yourself after all, it seems! Nay, Benzan, while it’s true that I’ve shared around my seed on more than a few occasions, if you possessed my blood, believe me, you would know it...”
Benzan heard the scraping sound behind him this time, even as he sensed the presence approach. He looked up at Graz’zt, but the Demon Prince only watched him, a faint hint of a smirk on his features.
Reluctantly, Benzan turned around.
The creature—and that was the most he could define of it, at first—was large, half-again his height, its bulbous form clearly several times his mass. It had the look of a fat, ugly, massive toad, except that it stood on two legs, and a demonic intelligence shone in its dull yellow eyes. Fat gobs of slobber dripped from jaws that stretched at least three feet across, smoking where they landed on the uneven paving stones of the street. Its mottled hide was coated with an oily sheen, and as it drew nearer, the stench of it hit Benzan like a hammer blow. It was only with some difficulty that he held his ground, although his stomach continued to roil in protest as the creature closed to within ten paces, sinking into a crouch on its thick legs, ready to spring.
Graz’zt’s voice came over his shoulder. “This is the hezrou, Mul’guk’lak,” he said. “A fairly recent addition to the ranks of my minions. He’s made a few visits to your Faerûn... no doubt you have heard about the rituals conducted by the priests of Unther? Quite... stimulating... wouldn’t you agree, Mul’guk?”
The hezrou’s huge jaws twisted into a ferocious grin, and it emitted a sour, fetid croak.
Benzan could not take his eyes off of the hezrou, though he turned his body back toward Graz’zt. “What... what are you saying...”
“Benzan, allow me to introduce your father.”
“No. No, you’re lying...”
The Demon Prince laughed. “Why would I lie? Ah, I take that back—I’m sure there’s a thousand reasons why I might lie... But in this case, my words are truth... and did you not yourself just say that you have accepted what you are? Surely the family resemblance is obvious?”
“No...” Benzan found himself kneeling in the dusty street, although he hadn’t remembered falling. Looking up, all he saw was the hulking demon, looming over him. Its stench filled his nostrils, seeping into his pores. “No, this is just an illusion, a lie...”
Graz’zt’s laughter came to him once again, echoed by the creature before him. Its jaws opened, and from deep within its throat came a hissing mockery of human speech.
“My son.”
Benzan clutched his head, pressing his arms against his ears. His stomach finally gave over, and he felt hot bile in his throat as he purged upon the dusty stones.
Blackness.
Broccli_Head
Explorer
Lazybones said:
I love that line!
Lazybones
Adventurer
Thanks, guys!
I had hoped to wrap up the story this week, but the board shutdown last week threw that timeline off. I'm taking some time off over the holiday weekend, and will be gone 5/22 through 5/27. Rest assured I'll leave you with a cliffhanger before I go...
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 34
Dana’s heart pounded in her chest as she ran. All around her the forest seemed to press in like a malignant, conscious entity, with low branches swiping at her face as she passed, bushes clinging at her leggings, and roots jutting up from the carpet of damp, rotting leaves just waiting to snag a careless boot.
She could not remember how she had come to be in this place, or even what this place was. But she knew that enemies pursued her, and that other evil things lurked in the shadows all around. Those shadows were deep; only a pale, diffuse light filtered down from between the boughs high above, casting everything into a faded gloom that only added to the malevolent feel of this place.
A sound behind; a twig cracked loud. The noise distracted her for just an instant, and a root caught her foot, and she was rolling through the damp leaves. She was up quickly, and running again, but even in that brief interval she thought she could feel the sounds of others approaching, a wedge closing behind her.
She had to run on. She could stand and fight; she had her skills, and the power that came at her command, but even though she had no solid memory of what it was that pursued, something deep within told her that she could not battle these foes. She lacked her weapons, and her gear; she only wore her light traveling clothes, flowing loose about her body as she ran. Something blazed against her chest, a pinprick of echoed power, but when she lifted her hand to touch it, there was nothing there.
She came to an abrupt halt as her foot sank into a soft, yielding surface. She drew back, the ground making a sucking sound as it released her boot.
Ahead stretched a bog, with the muddy flat ahead giving way within a dozen paces to a broad, stagnant pool thick with floating leaves and other detritus. Through the shadows she could make out the slanted forms of ugly, misshapen trees, though she could not make out a clear path that would take her safely across the bog.
She started to turn to the side, to move parallel to this new obstacle, but even as she shifted she could hear them coming, the sounds of her enemies moving through the wood. On three sides, now, clearly.
There was only one way left to go.
Something buzzed at the edges of her mind, a stray thought not quite conscious, strangely similar to that disjoined presence hanging just above her breast. She tried to clear her thoughts enough to bring into clarity those twin warnings, but before she could draw them into focus a loud crashing erupted in the wood along the way she had just come.
Too late. No time.
She crashed ahead awkwardly, stumbling through the bog. The water was cold, the mud deep and clinging. She sank first up to her hips, and then her chest, but thankfully no deeper than that as she pushed on. She reached the first tree, a half-submerged willow, its roots jutting out of the water to form a cage around its base.
Something... not right... came a whisper, but it was nothing against the fear that pounded in her chest, and the sounds that continued behind her. Then splashing—her enemies were following her into the bog.
She hurried onward, pressing blindly through the swamp. Ahead, she could see a low rise, a mound that rose up out of the waters, covered with dense plant growth. From one side of the mound a tree jutted at an awkward angle, its long drooping branches reaching down to touch the water below. Atop the rise, its summit only ten feet or so above the level of the surrounding mirk, she could just make out the outline of a blockish structure. A building? Sanctuary?
She was already pushing in that direction, but the bog seemed almost willful in its efforts to stop her. The mud grew deeper, causing her to nearly founder with each step. She felt a boot sliding off, but before she could stop she’d stumbled and it was gone, lost. The reeds and the muck that covered the surface of the bog like a carpet clung to her clothes and skin, until she felt as though she was wearing a woolen dress that dragged out behind her. Her arms churned at the surface, until the sound of her own passage drowned out the noise made by her pursuers. She refused to look back, filled with the irrational yet powerful premonition that if she did, they would be right behind her, reaching for her...
She stumbled up out of the water, onto the edge of the mound. Her body was coated in a mess of mud and decaying plant matter. Exhausted, she tried to lift herself up the slope, but only slid back into the water.
She looked down at her arm, a pale white outline that contrasted starkly with the black all around. She turned up the limb, revealing a fat, ugly leech that seemed to swell with her blood as she watched it. No doubt there were more of them on her legs and torso, sucking the life out of her greedily.
The sight of it filled her with disgust, and an anger that reenergized her enough to lift herself up decisively from the bog. She crushed the leech, barely able to feel the tiny jolt of pain as it tore free from her arm. She found a few more and killed them likewise even as she slipped and slid her way up the short but treacherous slope, toward the outline she’d spotted earlier.
It wasn’t a building after all, she saw as she drew nearer, but rather a single solid mass of stone, a boulder that someone or something had fashioned into a rectangular bier. It was easily five feet high, and at least twice that in length.
Shadows moved all around, emerging out of the bog. She fell back against the stone, watching with horror as they crawled up out of the mud and started up the sides of the mound. She didn’t need to look around the stone to know that they were coming up from the far side of the mound as well; she was surrounded. There was no escape, now.
A steely determination fired in her and she forced herself to stand free of the reassuring strength of the stone. Very well, then. She would not go down without a fight.
Her enemies slowed as they neared the summit, comfortable now that they had driven their prey to ground. The shadowy figures resolved into humanoid forms, blackened with mud and dripping wet from their chase. And then, as they came close enough for her to distinguish their faces...
“No,” Dana whispered. “No, not you. Why...”
There were over a dozen of them, with more creeping around the stone from behind to join them. She recognized each and every one, though the harsh, almost feral looks that graced their faces were alien to those that shone in her memory. Servants, from her household when she’d been just a child. The kindly monks from the monastery of the Sun Soul where she’d been fostered. Clerics from her Order, some still clad in the remnants of what had once been vestments emblazoned with the sigil of the Moon Lady. Others whom she’d known for a time, friends...
One of them came forward. Dana felt a sob choke her throat as she saw him, his smooth features now twisted into something almost unrecognizable.
“Seral, my teacher, my friend. Why are you doing this?”
The elf’s grim smile was ferocious, cruel. “We have come to take you back, Dana. Too long have you been away from us, your true people.”
“You betrayed us, Dana,” came another voice to the side, a familiar voice that stabbed into her like a dagger. “You deserted us.”
Reluctantly, she turned to face this final speaker. “No, father. No, that’s not how it was.” The buzzing in her head from before had redoubled, now a furious cacophony that filled her head and caused everything around her to grow fuzzy, indistinct. For a moment, there was another presence there, something familiar but not in the warped, terrible way that those around her were. She reached for it, but it was as if her mental probe slid off an invisible wall with no cracks or weaknesses.
“This isn’t right,” she said, decisively. But her father only laughed, a cruel song echoed by the others.
“You are right, my child. But that knowledge will not save you, not here.”
With that, he began to change, his features twisting in an unnatural transformation. The others were shifting as well, but her eyes were filled with whatever it was that was in the shape of her father. A lie, she knew, but he was right about one thing.
There was no escape.
Still, she tried. With a desperate cry she hurled herself backward, trying to leap up atop the slab, to flee the circle that had closed around her. Her limbs felt leaden, refusing to follow her commands, but she’d still nearly managed to pull herself up atop the slick rock when the first blast of pain exploded through her back. And then the claws were tearing at her, drawing her back. She screamed and lashed out desperately at her attackers, but they only laughed. The familiar faces were gone, replaced now with hairy, bestial visages—wolves, rats, boars. Werecreatures. Lyncanthropes. Shapeshifters.
They drew her into their midst, and they piled onto her, slashing with long, bloody claws, grasping, tearing.
It took a long time, and she felt every moment, even her body finally betraying her as it refused to let her fall into the comforting bliss of unconsciousness. Finally, though, there wasn’t anything left but tears and a haze of blood and pain. Oh, the pain.
Finally one of them loomed over her face, and its jaws opened wide, wider, until all she could see was the black pit of its throat.
Blackness.
I had hoped to wrap up the story this week, but the board shutdown last week threw that timeline off. I'm taking some time off over the holiday weekend, and will be gone 5/22 through 5/27. Rest assured I'll leave you with a cliffhanger before I go...
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 34
Dana’s heart pounded in her chest as she ran. All around her the forest seemed to press in like a malignant, conscious entity, with low branches swiping at her face as she passed, bushes clinging at her leggings, and roots jutting up from the carpet of damp, rotting leaves just waiting to snag a careless boot.
She could not remember how she had come to be in this place, or even what this place was. But she knew that enemies pursued her, and that other evil things lurked in the shadows all around. Those shadows were deep; only a pale, diffuse light filtered down from between the boughs high above, casting everything into a faded gloom that only added to the malevolent feel of this place.
A sound behind; a twig cracked loud. The noise distracted her for just an instant, and a root caught her foot, and she was rolling through the damp leaves. She was up quickly, and running again, but even in that brief interval she thought she could feel the sounds of others approaching, a wedge closing behind her.
She had to run on. She could stand and fight; she had her skills, and the power that came at her command, but even though she had no solid memory of what it was that pursued, something deep within told her that she could not battle these foes. She lacked her weapons, and her gear; she only wore her light traveling clothes, flowing loose about her body as she ran. Something blazed against her chest, a pinprick of echoed power, but when she lifted her hand to touch it, there was nothing there.
She came to an abrupt halt as her foot sank into a soft, yielding surface. She drew back, the ground making a sucking sound as it released her boot.
Ahead stretched a bog, with the muddy flat ahead giving way within a dozen paces to a broad, stagnant pool thick with floating leaves and other detritus. Through the shadows she could make out the slanted forms of ugly, misshapen trees, though she could not make out a clear path that would take her safely across the bog.
She started to turn to the side, to move parallel to this new obstacle, but even as she shifted she could hear them coming, the sounds of her enemies moving through the wood. On three sides, now, clearly.
There was only one way left to go.
Something buzzed at the edges of her mind, a stray thought not quite conscious, strangely similar to that disjoined presence hanging just above her breast. She tried to clear her thoughts enough to bring into clarity those twin warnings, but before she could draw them into focus a loud crashing erupted in the wood along the way she had just come.
Too late. No time.
She crashed ahead awkwardly, stumbling through the bog. The water was cold, the mud deep and clinging. She sank first up to her hips, and then her chest, but thankfully no deeper than that as she pushed on. She reached the first tree, a half-submerged willow, its roots jutting out of the water to form a cage around its base.
Something... not right... came a whisper, but it was nothing against the fear that pounded in her chest, and the sounds that continued behind her. Then splashing—her enemies were following her into the bog.
She hurried onward, pressing blindly through the swamp. Ahead, she could see a low rise, a mound that rose up out of the waters, covered with dense plant growth. From one side of the mound a tree jutted at an awkward angle, its long drooping branches reaching down to touch the water below. Atop the rise, its summit only ten feet or so above the level of the surrounding mirk, she could just make out the outline of a blockish structure. A building? Sanctuary?
She was already pushing in that direction, but the bog seemed almost willful in its efforts to stop her. The mud grew deeper, causing her to nearly founder with each step. She felt a boot sliding off, but before she could stop she’d stumbled and it was gone, lost. The reeds and the muck that covered the surface of the bog like a carpet clung to her clothes and skin, until she felt as though she was wearing a woolen dress that dragged out behind her. Her arms churned at the surface, until the sound of her own passage drowned out the noise made by her pursuers. She refused to look back, filled with the irrational yet powerful premonition that if she did, they would be right behind her, reaching for her...
She stumbled up out of the water, onto the edge of the mound. Her body was coated in a mess of mud and decaying plant matter. Exhausted, she tried to lift herself up the slope, but only slid back into the water.
She looked down at her arm, a pale white outline that contrasted starkly with the black all around. She turned up the limb, revealing a fat, ugly leech that seemed to swell with her blood as she watched it. No doubt there were more of them on her legs and torso, sucking the life out of her greedily.
The sight of it filled her with disgust, and an anger that reenergized her enough to lift herself up decisively from the bog. She crushed the leech, barely able to feel the tiny jolt of pain as it tore free from her arm. She found a few more and killed them likewise even as she slipped and slid her way up the short but treacherous slope, toward the outline she’d spotted earlier.
It wasn’t a building after all, she saw as she drew nearer, but rather a single solid mass of stone, a boulder that someone or something had fashioned into a rectangular bier. It was easily five feet high, and at least twice that in length.
Shadows moved all around, emerging out of the bog. She fell back against the stone, watching with horror as they crawled up out of the mud and started up the sides of the mound. She didn’t need to look around the stone to know that they were coming up from the far side of the mound as well; she was surrounded. There was no escape, now.
A steely determination fired in her and she forced herself to stand free of the reassuring strength of the stone. Very well, then. She would not go down without a fight.
Her enemies slowed as they neared the summit, comfortable now that they had driven their prey to ground. The shadowy figures resolved into humanoid forms, blackened with mud and dripping wet from their chase. And then, as they came close enough for her to distinguish their faces...
“No,” Dana whispered. “No, not you. Why...”
There were over a dozen of them, with more creeping around the stone from behind to join them. She recognized each and every one, though the harsh, almost feral looks that graced their faces were alien to those that shone in her memory. Servants, from her household when she’d been just a child. The kindly monks from the monastery of the Sun Soul where she’d been fostered. Clerics from her Order, some still clad in the remnants of what had once been vestments emblazoned with the sigil of the Moon Lady. Others whom she’d known for a time, friends...
One of them came forward. Dana felt a sob choke her throat as she saw him, his smooth features now twisted into something almost unrecognizable.
“Seral, my teacher, my friend. Why are you doing this?”
The elf’s grim smile was ferocious, cruel. “We have come to take you back, Dana. Too long have you been away from us, your true people.”
“You betrayed us, Dana,” came another voice to the side, a familiar voice that stabbed into her like a dagger. “You deserted us.”
Reluctantly, she turned to face this final speaker. “No, father. No, that’s not how it was.” The buzzing in her head from before had redoubled, now a furious cacophony that filled her head and caused everything around her to grow fuzzy, indistinct. For a moment, there was another presence there, something familiar but not in the warped, terrible way that those around her were. She reached for it, but it was as if her mental probe slid off an invisible wall with no cracks or weaknesses.
“This isn’t right,” she said, decisively. But her father only laughed, a cruel song echoed by the others.
“You are right, my child. But that knowledge will not save you, not here.”
With that, he began to change, his features twisting in an unnatural transformation. The others were shifting as well, but her eyes were filled with whatever it was that was in the shape of her father. A lie, she knew, but he was right about one thing.
There was no escape.
Still, she tried. With a desperate cry she hurled herself backward, trying to leap up atop the slab, to flee the circle that had closed around her. Her limbs felt leaden, refusing to follow her commands, but she’d still nearly managed to pull herself up atop the slick rock when the first blast of pain exploded through her back. And then the claws were tearing at her, drawing her back. She screamed and lashed out desperately at her attackers, but they only laughed. The familiar faces were gone, replaced now with hairy, bestial visages—wolves, rats, boars. Werecreatures. Lyncanthropes. Shapeshifters.
They drew her into their midst, and they piled onto her, slashing with long, bloody claws, grasping, tearing.
It took a long time, and she felt every moment, even her body finally betraying her as it refused to let her fall into the comforting bliss of unconsciousness. Finally, though, there wasn’t anything left but tears and a haze of blood and pain. Oh, the pain.
Finally one of them loomed over her face, and its jaws opened wide, wider, until all she could see was the black pit of its throat.
Blackness.
Lazybones
Adventurer
Heh took a while to find where my thread had gone... 
Anyway, just got back from vacation, and here's the cliffhanger I was going to post last week, but couldn't because of the board crashes.
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 35
Lok fought alone in the center of a dark cavern, surrounded by the bodies of slain urdunnir. He slashed weakly but desperately at the closing ring of dark elves, and they were laughing at his efforts, darting into to sting him with the tips of their blades until his shirt was soaked with red. The genasi wore the body of an elder of the urdunnir, this time, no match for even one of his nimble attackers.
“Take him alive, this one,” the drow priestess said as she watched from the side of the room. “He will give us some sport, before the Spider Mother finally takes him. Certainly these others gave us no challenge.”
Lok cried out—it came out only as a croak—and rushed forward, intent upon the ebon-skinned woman. But one of the warriors almost casually tripped him, and he fell hard, his sword clattering uselessly out of his hand.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Cal squirmed within his bonds atop the dais, but the ropes that held him were secure. For the tenth time he scanned the faces that filled the room around him, seeking some small shred of support, of pity. But he found only scorn, hatred, sadness.
“Balander Calloran, you stand accused of the crime of unleashing a horde of fiends upon the peaceful and goodly people of Faerûn.” Cylyria’s words rang out in the crowded confines of the hall, each word hitting him like a hammer’s blow. It wasn’t Twilight Hall—from what his advocate had told him, that lay in scorched ruin—but it was big enough to hold the hundred or so witnesses gathered to see his trial.
“How does the accused plead?”
Cal caught a new hint of motion out of the corner of his eyes. Looking to his right, he saw a small figure enter the hall. As he recognized the newcomer, he redoubled his efforts, trying unsuccessfully to rise off the bench where they’d placed him.
“Alera!” he cried. “Alera, help me!”
The elder gnome nodded to Cylyria, then moved to join the others gathered at the table where the prosecution were seated. Too late, he saw the look in his aunt’s face, a look that burned him with a cold despair deep within the core of him.
A look of absolute contempt.
“No,” he whimpered. “No, it wasn’t our fault. We didn’t mean to hurt anyone...”
“Put the defendant down for a plea of ‘guilty,’” Cylyria said.
Cal slumped down onto the bench, caught in the pattern of lines along the polished wood. He was barely aware of the shouting that filled the room, but he could still feel the hatred, all directed at him.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Benzan stumbled through a dark, noxious place, a room thick with vapors that burned his throat and filled his eyes with stinging tears. It was hot, a clinging heat born of the bodies that writhed on the floor all around him. Demons, rutting with other creatures of their ilk, a hundred different forms, some distinguishable as human or human-like, others so alien that even to look at them twisted something deep inside of him. The humans, perhaps, were worse, and he staggered away from a nubile copper-skinned woman who looked to be perhaps twenty, cavorting with a glabrezu many times her size.
A form rose up to block his way. “Come, join us, brother,” it croaked from a mouth that was not even close to human. “Come, enjoy the pleasures of our kin!”
“No!” he cried, turning and plummeting out of the room, into another much like it. This one, however, was filled with demons enjoying a different sort of pleasure, and the place was thick with the screams of the creatures being tormented to sounds of their infernal laughter. One of the demons, a feathered vrock, turned to greet him as he entered.
“Ah, just in time, brother,” it hissed. “We’ve caught a new one... would you like to be the first to open the fun?”
The demon moved aside, to reveal a figure stretched out upon a rack. Benzan felt his gorge rising again as he recognized her, and the terror in her wide eyes seemed to fill him as he screamed.
“Elly!”
“Ah, even better,” cackled the demon. Benzan hurled himself forward, pounding at the demons with his bare hands, but they only laughed and turned back to the helpless woman. He tried to get to her, but a demonic wing clipped his head, and he fell back, the room spinning around him as he landed hard on the floor.
Then the screaming started, and his world exploded.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Dana splashed through a vile pit of black filth, fleeing desperately from a knot of dretches that chased eagerly after her. The muck rose up to her hips, sucking at her and keeping her from escaping the smaller demons, who simply slid through the mess almost effortlessly. Every now and then she spun to drive back one that had gotten close enough to strike at her, and even though she drove them back, she already bore several bloody gashes that dripped splashes of bright red into the black mire.
On they chased her, tearing her apart one piece at a time. Finally one came up from below, latching onto her ankles before she was aware of its presence. She fell, sinking up to her neck in the muck, and by the time she was able to tear free, a half-dozen of the creatures had reached her.
She screamed, and that part of the pit quickly became a sea of red.
Blackness.
* * * * *
“Your friends, they suffer.”
The voice cut through Delem’s awareness like a knife, mercifully distracting him from the horrors that he was forced to view through the observation portal.
Slowly, he drew his head up to regard the face of his tormentor. Even that limited movement was difficult. Delem’s body was an ugly mess of black bruises and dried blood caked over a dozen assorted wounds. His arms were spread wide and pinned within the grasp of a pair of glabrezu, their pincers crushing the limbs with no heed of the damage done to him. Delem spat, and saw the fresh blood where the spittle landed on the smooth gloss of the stone floor. He wasn’t particularly preoccupied about any damage done to him; he knew that the Prince could have him restored easily if it was necessary to prepare him for new torments.
“I told them not to come for me,” Delem said, his voice slurring slightly as his broken jaw mangled the words.
“It seems that your friends are not good at listening, then.” The Prince strode up the steps to the dais where Delem was held, overlooking the swirling green fire that blazed up from the oval hole in the center of the room. Those flames reflected off of the sheer walls of black stone, adding a sense of immensity to the chamber and bathing the place in their unnatural light. Within the core of the pit wisps of living flame circled the portal through which scenes of his friends’ torment continued to flash.
“Why are you doing this?” Delem asked. “Surely there’s not something else you want from me—I’ve given you everything you sought, betrayed my friends and my people, served your every freakish whim. I am still your slave, your ‘property’ to do with as you desire. What more do you want?”
“Perhaps I wish merely to punish you, for your failure. I invested a great deal of time and energy in you, Delem, and all for naught.”
Delem laughed, though it clearly cost him some effort as his body was wracked by a painful shudder. “There’s no shortage of sadism in you, m’lord, but I don’t believe you. You’re up to something, and my friends are right in the middle of it.”
Graz’zt’s expression tightened for the barest instant, but then he smiled, that familiar dark smile that Delem knew all too well. “I have trained you too well, it seems.” He walked across the face of the dais, and the glabrezu straightened at his coming, drawing Delem up between them. The sorcerer groaned as the movement added a new strain to his already tight muscles.
“What do you want?” Delem repeated, forcing himself to hold his head up before the penetrating gaze of his master.
“From you? What left do you have to give me, Delem? I have driven you to the brink of madness, broken down all that you are and rebuilt you in an image that I desired. And yet, what are you, truly? What secrets do you still hide from me, deep down inside of that soul that belongs to me?”
Delem did not answer. What could he say?
“You and your friends—you have given me no little quantity of amusement, but other projects demand my time, and I cannot waste more of it playing with you Primes. Let us be done with the games, then, and finish this, right here, right now.”
Graz’zt waved his hand, and the green flames flickered and dissolved, leaving only a much fainter light from smaller flames in sconces around the perimeter of the chamber. In their place now stood a shallow, empty pit, stretching out before them in a wide oval. The Prince did something—Delem still had little understanding of Graz’zt’s powers, except to know that they flowed a source other than the conventional magic that he knew—and the air shimmered there, took on a solidity that resolved into a quartet of figures that huddled, broken, on the stone.
Cal, Lok, Benzan and Dana looked clearly the worse for wear. For a heartbeat it did not appear that they even lived; then Lok stirred, pulling himself slowly up to rest on his thick arms.
Delem felt his throat tightened, but he forced himself to chuckle. “Your best illusion yet, I’d have to say.”
Graz’zt froze him with a look. “Oh, it’s no illusion.” And he knew it was true, that these battered forms were his friends, their actual physical selves, and that they had come here to rescue him.
For a moment Delem felt a surge of blind, untargeted anger. Why did they do this? He told them not to come, he knew what the inevitable end would be! They did not know, could not know, how things were here. They were fools, and now they had found their destruction.
One of the glabrezu growled, and he realized that his muscles were tensed, his whole body stiff with resistance. It was futile, of course; even were he at his full strength even one of the demons would be able to handle him like some child’s doll.
The four companions were all stirring, now, slowly recovering from their ordeals. Their bodies were intact, of course—Delem had learned through experience that most of Graz’zt’s “trials” took place entirely within the mind, but they moved as though each had taken a fierce beating. Their armor, weapons, equipment, were all gone, and they were clad only in soft white tunics that hung limply over their bodies. Not that it would have mattered, even if they’d had all of their items of power...
Run, you fools he thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, knew that they would be a futile as anything else he could do.
Graz’zt had crossed to the side of the dais, and started down the curving stair that would take him to the lower half of the room that contained the pit. The companions had recovered enough to gain some awareness of their surroundings, although none had spotted Delem and his guards as of yet. Cal, however, looked up and spotted Graz’zt coming down to them, and shouted something to his companions. Tried to shout—his mouth opened, but only a strangled hiss came out.
Graz’zt waved his hand idly, and a green light flared within the confines of the pit. The light formed tendrils of energy that spiraled up like snakes out of the stone, wrapping around the four companions and dragging roughly back against the sides of the pit. The four of them were pinned within an eyeblink, helpless, facing each other across the open space.
Graz’zt gestured, and the glabrezu dragged him forward to the edge of the dais, giving him an even clearer view of the pit fifteen feet below. Now his companions did see him, but again they were unable to do more than open their mouths and struggle uselessly against their bonds. All but Dana—while she could see her friends, she was attached to the side of the pit facing away and could not look up to see him atop the dais. He could see her, though, and he felt a great sadness fall over him. He was beyond despair now, and the feeling felt strange... almost a sense of peace as the end drew near.
Graz’zt reached the edge of the pit and stared down at the helpless companions, the travelers who had come so far together. It’s all over, Delem thought.
Graz’zt looked down at them, and they looked up at him. The demon did not speak, did not offer any last taunt or challenge, only raised his hand...
But then his gaze shifted to Delem once more, for a brief instant, and his mouth twisted into a smile.
“Perhaps, before I take my leave of you...” He stepped forward into the pit, drifting down easily the three paces to its curving floor. He strode forward, past the struggling forms of Lok and Benzan, toward Dana. He lifted his fingers in a beckoning gesture, and the stone under her rose up, lifting her toward him until she rested on a stone bier that tilted upward at an angle. Her eyes were now wide with a new terror as she looked into the face of the Prince, although the bonds of green fire may as well have been of steel for all the use her struggles did her.
Graz’zt smiled again, a sinister smile, but his eyes were on Delem once more as he spoke. “It has been some while since I have consorted with a mortal from the Primes. Perhaps I will keep this one for a time... I will give her the worthy gift of bearing one of my offspring, a child of the Argent Lord!” Graz’zt lifted his hand into a fist, and laughed. Behind him, Benzan’s face was a mask of fury and pain, but despite his efforts the best he could manage was a sick hacking noise.
Graz’zt turned to face the tiefling briefly. “Better I than you,” he said with a smirk. “At least my blood is pure.”
He turned back to the dais, where Delem looked on in horror. “Yes, a child... the idea grows on me with each passing moment. A scion... perhaps he—or she—shall someday walk upon the soil of your pathetic world, a titan among scurrying rats, the bane of nations!”
The shout of the Demon Prince filled the room, and with Cal, Lok, Benzan, and Delem watching helplessly, he started toward Dana.
Anyway, just got back from vacation, and here's the cliffhanger I was going to post last week, but couldn't because of the board crashes.
* * * * *
Book VIII, Part 35
Lok fought alone in the center of a dark cavern, surrounded by the bodies of slain urdunnir. He slashed weakly but desperately at the closing ring of dark elves, and they were laughing at his efforts, darting into to sting him with the tips of their blades until his shirt was soaked with red. The genasi wore the body of an elder of the urdunnir, this time, no match for even one of his nimble attackers.
“Take him alive, this one,” the drow priestess said as she watched from the side of the room. “He will give us some sport, before the Spider Mother finally takes him. Certainly these others gave us no challenge.”
Lok cried out—it came out only as a croak—and rushed forward, intent upon the ebon-skinned woman. But one of the warriors almost casually tripped him, and he fell hard, his sword clattering uselessly out of his hand.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Cal squirmed within his bonds atop the dais, but the ropes that held him were secure. For the tenth time he scanned the faces that filled the room around him, seeking some small shred of support, of pity. But he found only scorn, hatred, sadness.
“Balander Calloran, you stand accused of the crime of unleashing a horde of fiends upon the peaceful and goodly people of Faerûn.” Cylyria’s words rang out in the crowded confines of the hall, each word hitting him like a hammer’s blow. It wasn’t Twilight Hall—from what his advocate had told him, that lay in scorched ruin—but it was big enough to hold the hundred or so witnesses gathered to see his trial.
“How does the accused plead?”
Cal caught a new hint of motion out of the corner of his eyes. Looking to his right, he saw a small figure enter the hall. As he recognized the newcomer, he redoubled his efforts, trying unsuccessfully to rise off the bench where they’d placed him.
“Alera!” he cried. “Alera, help me!”
The elder gnome nodded to Cylyria, then moved to join the others gathered at the table where the prosecution were seated. Too late, he saw the look in his aunt’s face, a look that burned him with a cold despair deep within the core of him.
A look of absolute contempt.
“No,” he whimpered. “No, it wasn’t our fault. We didn’t mean to hurt anyone...”
“Put the defendant down for a plea of ‘guilty,’” Cylyria said.
Cal slumped down onto the bench, caught in the pattern of lines along the polished wood. He was barely aware of the shouting that filled the room, but he could still feel the hatred, all directed at him.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Benzan stumbled through a dark, noxious place, a room thick with vapors that burned his throat and filled his eyes with stinging tears. It was hot, a clinging heat born of the bodies that writhed on the floor all around him. Demons, rutting with other creatures of their ilk, a hundred different forms, some distinguishable as human or human-like, others so alien that even to look at them twisted something deep inside of him. The humans, perhaps, were worse, and he staggered away from a nubile copper-skinned woman who looked to be perhaps twenty, cavorting with a glabrezu many times her size.
A form rose up to block his way. “Come, join us, brother,” it croaked from a mouth that was not even close to human. “Come, enjoy the pleasures of our kin!”
“No!” he cried, turning and plummeting out of the room, into another much like it. This one, however, was filled with demons enjoying a different sort of pleasure, and the place was thick with the screams of the creatures being tormented to sounds of their infernal laughter. One of the demons, a feathered vrock, turned to greet him as he entered.
“Ah, just in time, brother,” it hissed. “We’ve caught a new one... would you like to be the first to open the fun?”
The demon moved aside, to reveal a figure stretched out upon a rack. Benzan felt his gorge rising again as he recognized her, and the terror in her wide eyes seemed to fill him as he screamed.
“Elly!”
“Ah, even better,” cackled the demon. Benzan hurled himself forward, pounding at the demons with his bare hands, but they only laughed and turned back to the helpless woman. He tried to get to her, but a demonic wing clipped his head, and he fell back, the room spinning around him as he landed hard on the floor.
Then the screaming started, and his world exploded.
Blackness.
* * * * *
Dana splashed through a vile pit of black filth, fleeing desperately from a knot of dretches that chased eagerly after her. The muck rose up to her hips, sucking at her and keeping her from escaping the smaller demons, who simply slid through the mess almost effortlessly. Every now and then she spun to drive back one that had gotten close enough to strike at her, and even though she drove them back, she already bore several bloody gashes that dripped splashes of bright red into the black mire.
On they chased her, tearing her apart one piece at a time. Finally one came up from below, latching onto her ankles before she was aware of its presence. She fell, sinking up to her neck in the muck, and by the time she was able to tear free, a half-dozen of the creatures had reached her.
She screamed, and that part of the pit quickly became a sea of red.
Blackness.
* * * * *
“Your friends, they suffer.”
The voice cut through Delem’s awareness like a knife, mercifully distracting him from the horrors that he was forced to view through the observation portal.
Slowly, he drew his head up to regard the face of his tormentor. Even that limited movement was difficult. Delem’s body was an ugly mess of black bruises and dried blood caked over a dozen assorted wounds. His arms were spread wide and pinned within the grasp of a pair of glabrezu, their pincers crushing the limbs with no heed of the damage done to him. Delem spat, and saw the fresh blood where the spittle landed on the smooth gloss of the stone floor. He wasn’t particularly preoccupied about any damage done to him; he knew that the Prince could have him restored easily if it was necessary to prepare him for new torments.
“I told them not to come for me,” Delem said, his voice slurring slightly as his broken jaw mangled the words.
“It seems that your friends are not good at listening, then.” The Prince strode up the steps to the dais where Delem was held, overlooking the swirling green fire that blazed up from the oval hole in the center of the room. Those flames reflected off of the sheer walls of black stone, adding a sense of immensity to the chamber and bathing the place in their unnatural light. Within the core of the pit wisps of living flame circled the portal through which scenes of his friends’ torment continued to flash.
“Why are you doing this?” Delem asked. “Surely there’s not something else you want from me—I’ve given you everything you sought, betrayed my friends and my people, served your every freakish whim. I am still your slave, your ‘property’ to do with as you desire. What more do you want?”
“Perhaps I wish merely to punish you, for your failure. I invested a great deal of time and energy in you, Delem, and all for naught.”
Delem laughed, though it clearly cost him some effort as his body was wracked by a painful shudder. “There’s no shortage of sadism in you, m’lord, but I don’t believe you. You’re up to something, and my friends are right in the middle of it.”
Graz’zt’s expression tightened for the barest instant, but then he smiled, that familiar dark smile that Delem knew all too well. “I have trained you too well, it seems.” He walked across the face of the dais, and the glabrezu straightened at his coming, drawing Delem up between them. The sorcerer groaned as the movement added a new strain to his already tight muscles.
“What do you want?” Delem repeated, forcing himself to hold his head up before the penetrating gaze of his master.
“From you? What left do you have to give me, Delem? I have driven you to the brink of madness, broken down all that you are and rebuilt you in an image that I desired. And yet, what are you, truly? What secrets do you still hide from me, deep down inside of that soul that belongs to me?”
Delem did not answer. What could he say?
“You and your friends—you have given me no little quantity of amusement, but other projects demand my time, and I cannot waste more of it playing with you Primes. Let us be done with the games, then, and finish this, right here, right now.”
Graz’zt waved his hand, and the green flames flickered and dissolved, leaving only a much fainter light from smaller flames in sconces around the perimeter of the chamber. In their place now stood a shallow, empty pit, stretching out before them in a wide oval. The Prince did something—Delem still had little understanding of Graz’zt’s powers, except to know that they flowed a source other than the conventional magic that he knew—and the air shimmered there, took on a solidity that resolved into a quartet of figures that huddled, broken, on the stone.
Cal, Lok, Benzan and Dana looked clearly the worse for wear. For a heartbeat it did not appear that they even lived; then Lok stirred, pulling himself slowly up to rest on his thick arms.
Delem felt his throat tightened, but he forced himself to chuckle. “Your best illusion yet, I’d have to say.”
Graz’zt froze him with a look. “Oh, it’s no illusion.” And he knew it was true, that these battered forms were his friends, their actual physical selves, and that they had come here to rescue him.
For a moment Delem felt a surge of blind, untargeted anger. Why did they do this? He told them not to come, he knew what the inevitable end would be! They did not know, could not know, how things were here. They were fools, and now they had found their destruction.
One of the glabrezu growled, and he realized that his muscles were tensed, his whole body stiff with resistance. It was futile, of course; even were he at his full strength even one of the demons would be able to handle him like some child’s doll.
The four companions were all stirring, now, slowly recovering from their ordeals. Their bodies were intact, of course—Delem had learned through experience that most of Graz’zt’s “trials” took place entirely within the mind, but they moved as though each had taken a fierce beating. Their armor, weapons, equipment, were all gone, and they were clad only in soft white tunics that hung limply over their bodies. Not that it would have mattered, even if they’d had all of their items of power...
Run, you fools he thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, knew that they would be a futile as anything else he could do.
Graz’zt had crossed to the side of the dais, and started down the curving stair that would take him to the lower half of the room that contained the pit. The companions had recovered enough to gain some awareness of their surroundings, although none had spotted Delem and his guards as of yet. Cal, however, looked up and spotted Graz’zt coming down to them, and shouted something to his companions. Tried to shout—his mouth opened, but only a strangled hiss came out.
Graz’zt waved his hand idly, and a green light flared within the confines of the pit. The light formed tendrils of energy that spiraled up like snakes out of the stone, wrapping around the four companions and dragging roughly back against the sides of the pit. The four of them were pinned within an eyeblink, helpless, facing each other across the open space.
Graz’zt gestured, and the glabrezu dragged him forward to the edge of the dais, giving him an even clearer view of the pit fifteen feet below. Now his companions did see him, but again they were unable to do more than open their mouths and struggle uselessly against their bonds. All but Dana—while she could see her friends, she was attached to the side of the pit facing away and could not look up to see him atop the dais. He could see her, though, and he felt a great sadness fall over him. He was beyond despair now, and the feeling felt strange... almost a sense of peace as the end drew near.
Graz’zt reached the edge of the pit and stared down at the helpless companions, the travelers who had come so far together. It’s all over, Delem thought.
Graz’zt looked down at them, and they looked up at him. The demon did not speak, did not offer any last taunt or challenge, only raised his hand...
But then his gaze shifted to Delem once more, for a brief instant, and his mouth twisted into a smile.
“Perhaps, before I take my leave of you...” He stepped forward into the pit, drifting down easily the three paces to its curving floor. He strode forward, past the struggling forms of Lok and Benzan, toward Dana. He lifted his fingers in a beckoning gesture, and the stone under her rose up, lifting her toward him until she rested on a stone bier that tilted upward at an angle. Her eyes were now wide with a new terror as she looked into the face of the Prince, although the bonds of green fire may as well have been of steel for all the use her struggles did her.
Graz’zt smiled again, a sinister smile, but his eyes were on Delem once more as he spoke. “It has been some while since I have consorted with a mortal from the Primes. Perhaps I will keep this one for a time... I will give her the worthy gift of bearing one of my offspring, a child of the Argent Lord!” Graz’zt lifted his hand into a fist, and laughed. Behind him, Benzan’s face was a mask of fury and pain, but despite his efforts the best he could manage was a sick hacking noise.
Graz’zt turned to face the tiefling briefly. “Better I than you,” he said with a smirk. “At least my blood is pure.”
He turned back to the dais, where Delem looked on in horror. “Yes, a child... the idea grows on me with each passing moment. A scion... perhaps he—or she—shall someday walk upon the soil of your pathetic world, a titan among scurrying rats, the bane of nations!”
The shout of the Demon Prince filled the room, and with Cal, Lok, Benzan, and Delem watching helplessly, he started toward Dana.
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