Umber

In which Klavicus receives a visitor.

The fire mephit and the balor sat in comfortable chairs in the well-appointed library, the smoke from their cigars drifting about their heads. They went through the motions of warming themselves by the fire, though neither particularly felt the heat. “Some friends of yours dropped in to the Abyss for a visit. You’ve been keeping interesting company, Klavicus.”

“Friends of mine?” the demon yawned. “But it seems I have so few these days.”

The little elemental narrowed his eyes. “That’s another matter altogether, and I don’t even want to know. But they damned near seared my eyeballs out with that light of theirs. On that stupid staff the Fharlanghnite carries.”

Klavicus chuckled. “Ah, those friends. Yes, they did drop by here on their way to kill the Witchking. I believe they succeeded, too.”

“Weren’t you supposed to be watching him for,” the mephit looked around nervously, as if the walls might have ears, “watching him for you-know-who?”

The demon rose to his full height and stood menacingly over the mephit, who shrank as far into his chair as the soft unicorn leather would allow. “Do I look like a petty guardsman?”

“No, indeed not, most certainly not. Absolutely nothing petty or guardsman about you. In fact, it’s safe to say that you are the least petty and -” 

”Oh, stop blathering. I probably won’t kill you today.” He sat down again. “They were amusing. It amused me to let them go, and it amused me that they killed the bombastic fool. He was only a mortal. I’ll miss Angren a little. Good blackguards are hard to find. Besides, they gave me some very interesting books. And this.” 

He plucked a skull from a nearby shelf and held it out toward Dimwold. Its empty eye sockets appeared to study the mephit for a moment, then it shrieked, “You will die of suffocation in a dark, airless room! You will be consumed in a pit of fiery lava!”

Dimwold stared wide-eyed for a moment, then burst out laughing. “It had better be airless! Who gave you that?”

“The psion with the levitating blade.”

“Really? She didn’t strike me as having much of a sense of humor. When I was telling them about the balors’ delicious torture of that solar, I thought for a moment she was going to try to slice off my head. If their planetar didn’t beat her to it. Of course, they both thought better of tangling with me.”

”Of course.” Klavicus rolled his eyes, then began tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. “A planetar? I wonder where that came from, and whose attack dog it is? I wasn’t graced with its company.”

Since she hadn’t in fact sliced off his head, Dimwold didn’t care about the planetar, and was impatient to tell his news, although he knew better than to interrupt Klavicus mid-sentence. “They killed Ter-Soth, and all of his guard. Now the solar is gone, and all his guard slaughtered as well, and that seems too much of a coincidence. And they aren’t through there yet. They were asking a lot of questions about – Him – and his Special belongings. The zombies are suddenly on the move, and I heard that the liches had gathered – every last one of them, mind you – for some mysterious ceremony that just about blew the skulls off of any arcane types in Thanatos. Now one of the demilich’s pet death knights has been seen heading for Graz’zt’s mansion. And somebody – although this is really crazy – somebody swore they talked to somebody who saw Mordenkainen slinking around.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. ”And I hear Grandfather was destroyed here, on the Prime Material, by a half dozen adventurers bearing a remarkable resemblance to the crowd that dropped in on me uninvited. They’re a little hard to mistake for anyone else, you know.”

“Grandfather is Kali’s lookout, and I invited them to drop in on you,” the balor replied brusquely. His eyes fixed on a distant point in space. “As for the rest, there are worse things than having my chaos sown for me.” He laughed, softly and then with more vigor, until his entire chair shook with him. “And such agents of Chaos!” He laughed until tears came to his eyes. ”Ah, me! I haven’t heard something so amusing in years.”

The mephit shook his head. ”You’re a dangerous being to know.”

Klavicus’ lips curled into a tight smile. ”Or I could be dangerous not to know. That’s the real reason you visit me, isn’t it?”

Dimwold decided that this particular subject did not need pursuing. He missed the creature comforts of Orcus’ fortress, from which he himself had suffered a long exile, and was willing to cautiously play any angle that might get him out of that dusty, dull cave and back within its teeming walls. Orcus seemed to be afraid of Klavicus, and that was reason enough to treat the old demon with a certain deference. “Are you afraid of them?” he asked hesitantly, not at all sure it was a less perilous topic.

“Me? No.” The balor studied the sleeve of his dark paisley smoking jacket, flicking off a miniscule piece of ash. “There’s no denying that they might have singed this coat, however, and I’ve grown fond of it over the eons.”

“But, um, why didn’t you kill them? They’re only going to get stronger, and harder to deal with later.”

“A flock of dire sparrows will peck you to pieces!” Klavicus snapped the skull of prophecy’s jaw on the flinching Dimwold’s nose, then returned it to the shelf. “I don’t need the likes of you telling me about strength.”

The mephit studied the couatl-feather carpet carefully. “No, of course you don’t.”

Klavicus looked at the cowering little elemental, leaned back in his chair and sighed. There was so little entertainment to be had in petty torment these days. “When you understand why an irritated psion didn’t merely cut you down where you stood, you’ll understand why I didn’t bother killing them. And why, perhaps, I’ll never bother killing them. Or perhaps not. Who can say?”

He hated it when the demon got into these reflective, philosophical moods. But there was worse to come. “A game of chess before you go?” Klavicus asked.

Dimwold looked at him warily. “Is it the same set you had last time?”

A cruel light glinted in the balor’s eyes. “I love that set. Tell you what – we’ll toss a coin for white. You can even call it.”

The mephit squirmed in his seat, but could think of no non-fatal way to avoid what was in the offing. “Okay. Tails, then.”

Klavicus withdrew an ancient Suloise coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air. “So sorry, it’s heads. But to make it up to you, I’ll let you go first.” He concentrated for a moment, and a chess board flickered into existence on the small table between them, followed a moment later by the pieces: sculpted, dancing flames for Klavicus, exquisitely carved blocks of ice in front of Dimwold. ”Your move.”

He chuckled silently to himself as the mephit made a grand pretense of carefully studying the board then finally, reluctantly, picked up a pawn. ”Ouch!”

And so the next few hours passed within the balor’s study, the silence of the Witchking’s now-deserted fortress broken only by the roaring fire and the elemental’s intermittent squeals of pain. Perhaps there were still some simple pleasures to be throttled from life after all.