Umber

[I was going to wrap this into whatever happened next session, but we’ve taken a bit longer break and Skip thought a recap might be useful…]

When Urikite officials burst in from every door, Mahlanda remembered what Klavicus had told her. If anything goes wrong, don’t tarry in the city. She suspected she could have escaped in the initial confusion, but couldn’t bring herself to leave.

Skarp’s youths had been all business from the moment Klavicus arrived and even before: Kerac focused on performing the ritual, the others on ensuring the ritual continued uninterrupted. Too many of the Veiled Alliance, however, treated it like some kind of spectacle. She had intended to remain on guard too, but Klavicus gave her a moment’s pointed glance and reluctantly she sat.

She was supposed to be inconspicuous, no more acquainted with him than anyone else, and so she sat and played at seeing a spectacle too. She watched as the mages who knew him even tangentially scurried to obey his orders or to stay out of his way. She watched as the mages who didn’t know him still observed him carefully, curious mutters and even a few laughs stilled as the mismatch between man and shadow sank in. She watched the clerics puff up with pride and self-importance as they realized their role as foci in the ritual, then wilt under Klavicus’ sharp criticisms.

Except for Kerac, who performed his duties gravely and precisely under both praise and censure. He would some day, she suspected, become a Preserver in the truest sense of the word – not merely refraining from wanton destruction, as so many of the Veiled Alliance were wont to do – but actively nurturing the world around him. She looked at Sugar Primrose’s staff, a bit of life and growth that she carried with her wherever she went, and wondered if she understood the miracle of the thing. Purity turns to sand in your hand…Opa Skarp’s words came back to her. Perhaps better – perhaps necessary – that the young druid didn’t understand, that none of them did. Don’t think, only act.

Her own thoughts grew increasingly gloomy as the ritual continued, through two hours, then three, then four, and Klavicus’ condition didn’t help her mood. The shadow on the wall flickered and shifted, to much whispered comment from the assembled crowd, the horns shrinking and then disappearing entirely, the bat wings flexing and folding and finally outspreading into something more feathered and fragile. She gripped the edge of the table until her knuckles whitened, drawing a curious look from a nearby mage, and with an effort she relaxed her hand. In this little play in which she was both actor and spectator the man at the center of the rite was a curiosity, not an individual in whom she was ever more personally and deeply invested.

None of them knew the balor as she did, as she had to pretend she did not, and though that was little enough in truth it was enough to know that not just the shadow was fragile. Whatever he was doing – and she pushed away the wish that he had trusted her enough to tell her – it was plainly consuming nearly all of what she had thought before then were nearly inexhaustible reserves. This Klavicus couldn’t cut a leisurely path through Kalak’s templars in Tyr. Without the elemental currents sustaining him, she doubted if he could hold himself upright. Jaggo’s wards had better hold. I wish I’d checked them myself, no matter what the Preserver said about –

As if to mock her the Urikite officials flooded the room then, the wards serving as neither barrier nor warning, and though Klavicus had told her to flee she rose to his defense, to stand with Skarp’s youths and die with them if need be, to grant the utterly defenseless daimon whatever precious moments she could. But before the Urikites had time to do more than launch an initial salvo, before she had time to cast a single spell, a wave of energy cascaded from Klavicus that stilled every enemy in sight. She nearly laughed aloud at her presumption. Apparently the balor at his weakest was still stronger than anyone – perhaps everyone – in the room. She supposed she should have known.

But not immortal. He had told her that. And as the sword the lieutenant commander held in his hand erupted in violent keening, as it wrested itself from its wielder’s paralyzed hand and launched itself at the balor, her fears for him sharpened anew.  She cried out in warning, and though he clearly saw the blade – from his expression she thought he clearly feared the blade – he was unwilling or unable to move as it embedded itself deep within his flesh. And as the region around the wound seemed to contract to a point, a still center that moments later blossomed outward in a violent explosion, she understood – perhaps too late – why he had ordered her to go.

* * *

Hanen watched in bewilderment at the events unfolding before them. He was so tired that his vision would have been unsteady even if Opa Skarp hadn’t been shaking him. Gathering his last strength he pushed the man away. “Give me a minute.”

“You don’t understand what’s at stake,” Skarp snapped.

Hanen gave him a cool glare. “You’re right. I don’t have a clue in the Nine Hells, about this or much of anything else. You haven’t spent the last few weeks being particularly illuminating.”

The cleric’s agitation faded as rapidly as it had come. Though he said nothing, he returned a hand to the bard’s shoulder, warm and steady and somehow invigorating. Hanen found he could focus again.

It was coming back to him now, the things Klavicus had taught him about gleaning stories from Earth and Air, Water and Fire. These altars were more uncommunicative than the ones he remembered in Greyhawk, but there was some information they were willing to share. The names of the youths, for one, what training they’d received, what role they were to play in the shaping of Oerth’s future. The Earth altar in particular wished to speak of little else. To Hanen’s ears it all had a familiar, peculiarly unpleasant ring.

Skarp was staring in puzzlement at their huddled band, as well he might. Though they themselves looked much as they had before, the weapons they carried had grown strange. The daggers the warrior Reign wielded – Hanen had noticed them in particular because the etched tiger fang and claw jogged memories of a man he once knew – now resembled talons blurred by rapid motion. Kerac’s earth symbol glowed brightly and Hanen could see tendrils of power snaking away from it, acting as anchors to another place; he suspected anyone other than the cleric would have a hard time even lifting it. Zane’s orb had undergone a kind of fission: two spheres, one dark and one bright, danced a tight orbit where one had been. The highest and lowest strings of the bard Saphira’s harp had detached themselves and wound around her forearms, ready for use as garrotes. The druid’s staff bloomed with stars rather than primroses now; the paladin’s sword was a feather, the avenger’s a moonbeam. Hanen had a feeling it all meant something, but he couldn’t puzzle out what.

The young people’s agitation was growing as the speck of light receded from them at a pace more rapid than they could follow. They could, in fact, not follow at all: every effort at forward motion found them advanced not one foot ahead. It was Zane, perhaps because of his unshakeable faith in the power of his mind, who thought to will himself forward rather than walking. Reign laughed nervously as she lagged behind the others, accustomed to instinctual rather than analytical action; with a faint smile Kerac dropped back to pull her along.

“That matches Thanatos,” Hanen muttered. “But how did he get there?”

The youths’ small levity was already faded as the spark of light still outpaced them, soon vanishing completely behind a high tower in the near distance. For lack of a better alternative, they headed in that direction. As they grew nearer its lineaments looked familiar to Hanen; he had a nagging conviction that he should know what it was.

When they entered the stables he did recognize the mounts waiting within. Ebon and glossy as obsidian, taller and more massive than the sturdiest draft horse, red eyes glowing with fire and a fearsome intelligence, the Black were not a sight anyone who had seen them was likely to forget. He leaned forward. “Five. Where is the sixth?”

Opa Skarp was staring at them in wonder, as well he might. “What are they?” he asked the bard.

Hanen struggled to explain. Without knowledge of the Abyss, without an understanding of the the multiverse, with no conception of interplanar travel, where was he to begin? He was dismayed when the problem proved more fundamental than that. “What is a ‘horse?’” Skarp asked.

An incipient horror was suppressed when the Black spoke to the youths. “You must go to him.”

“We’re trying,” they replied. “But he’s out of sight.”

“We will take you, on the fast roads. But understand what you must do. He is dying, but cannot die. You must finish it.”

They glanced at one another uneasily, but nodded in acquiescence and mounted. Even two to a Black, there was ample room to ride. The horses sped away, across the barren plain.

Skarp wanted to follow the youths, but Hanen’s gaze lingered on the tower, and suddenly he remembered: it was Spinecastle, the seat of the paladin Clement’s power at least until Hanen’s dying day and doubtless beyond. “Spinecastle. But no demon would recreate that bastion of righteousness on Thanatos,” he muttered aloud, “not even in bitter amusement. And the Black would never sit meekly in an Abyssal stable, where they’d been captive so long in the past.”

Fragments of memory intruded on his thoughts with an almost physical force. Klavicus and his sadistic chess set, drawn from nowhere and returned there when the game was done. Trapped “treasure” chests that would suck an unwary gold hunter to the Plane of Shadow if he was lucky, to the Elemental Plane of Fire if he weren’t. The Grey Pelican’s reputation as the premier destination inn of all Greyhawk, in no small part because the well-heeled could lease nothing so mundane as a suite, but rather an entire pocket plane. Klavicus had always sculpted the multiverse the way a potter sculpted clay. “He’s pulled them into a demiplane,” the bard murmured.

“Explain,” Skarp said sharply. Hanen jumped; for a moment he’d forgotten the cleric was there.

“It’s a space created from a – projection – of Klavicus’ will.”

The cleric’s brow furrowed. “He has drawn them into his mind?”

Hanen shook his head. If only the man weren’t so ignorant… “No, it has more tangible reality than that. Now that it has been made, if you or I knew where it was we could go there ourselves, without its maker willing our presence.” A certain expression crossed Skarp’s face. “And no, I don’t know where it is and they – ” he gestured toward the elemental altar, “aren’t talking. Whatever needs to be done there,” he shifted focus back to the young people, “it’s theirs to do.”

Both men grew quiet as the Black raced toward a strangely shaped mountain; only as they drew nearer did Hanen recognize it as Klavicus, grown taller than the tallest peak on Oerth. Blood flowed from a wound like lava from a volcanic fissure. The sight confirmed his belief that the balor, in his duress, had created a demiplane – perhaps against his conscious intent, or perhaps not. The youths seemed discomfited, but listened attentively as the Black gave their final instructions. “Go to the heart. Kill him. It is his desire.” And then they were gone.

The young people began to climb. When they reached the rent in his side they paused for a time to inspect the damage. “Maybe we can fix this,” Zane mused.

“They said we were supposed to kill him,” Kerac pointed out.

“Why should we believe them?” the psion asked.

Kerac shrugged. “Good point.” He probed the gaping wound carefully, with a light touch, spoke a few tentative words of power.

Skarp reached out a hand to the air. “They’re trying to heal him,” he breathed, surprise evident on his face.

Hanen looked at him sharply. “Why wouldn’t they?”

The other man’s face grew closed, almost rocklike, again, and he did not reply.

By then Kerac had turned back to his companions with a frown. “It’s hopeless. It would take dozens of clerics casting hundreds of spells to repair this damage. And I’m not sure that would be enough.”

Po tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword. “Then let’s go.” One after another they slipped into the bloody fissure.

They had not traveled far when the first attack came. “Barlgura and evistro,” Hanen announced. Skarp glanced at him, uncomprehending. The bard gestured toward a creature perched near the ceiling of the space they had entered. “The barlgura is the one that looks like a demented orangutan.” He pointed to two other creatures charging the party. “The evistro are the doglike ones.” Panic tinged his disquiet when he realized that the cleric was not only unfamiliar with barlgura and evistro, but with orangutans and dogs as well. Where am I? Why am I?

“If it is a place of his own creation,” Skarp asked, “and he wishes this thing to be done, why is it peopled with enemies?”

Although the others were earthbound now, Po retained the skill of flight and moved to engage the barlgura while the others battled the evistro. Klavicus had probably commanded hundreds, if not thousands, of such beings before retiring from the Abyss and his own demonic nature. Hanen thought he knew why they appeared now. “He was impossibly ancient when we first met,” he said, only half to the cleric, “and his grip on life was tenacious. He would struggle within himself, even if necessity dictated…” he trailed off. It was nearly impossible to imagine a world without the old balor. He wished he hadn’t awakened to it.

“You are right,” Skarp’s glance was oddly shrewd and calculating, “of course.”

Skarp’s “children” fought off the barlgura and evistro, made their way through what looked like an intestinal tract and emerged at the edge of a wide body of foul, greenish fluid that could only be within the demon’s stomach. Zane sent a tiny astral spider to explore some irregularities at the opposite reaches of the lake; no sooner had it arrived than a black dragon reared up from the depths. It was not large, as black dragons went, but deadly enough.

Reign chided him for disturbing it, but even as Zane suggested deferring discussion of blame until later and Po tried to herd everyone away from the vicinity of the acid waters the dragon sent several minions to cut off their path of retreat, following at a more leisurely pace itself.

Sensitive to the peculiarity of their position, Saphira tried to avoid the conflict before it began, and with inimitable bardic charm asked the dragon, “Is there anything we can do to help you?”

He stared at her, considering, then broke into a smile. “Yes, there is.” She looked up at him, calmly encouraging. “Go throw yourselves into the acid. I’m hungry.”

Hanen couldn’t stifle a snort; any lingering doubts he had that the space they occupied was some projection of the balor’s mind dissipated. A dragon’s claws might rend them, a dragon’s breath choke them, but with that retort the animus behind the creature was most certainly Klavicus.

The battle was vicious but relatively brief; if it hadn’t been they might not have survived. They scattered as much as they could to avoid its toxic breath, and Po, still flight worthy, hovered ready in case anyone else besides him was tossed into the acid water. When it was over they continued toward the thorax via a more punishing climb up the ribcage. “They’re near the heart,” Hanen murmured.”If they can reach it, it will be over soon.”

“What will happen to the daimon?” Skarp asked.

Hanen spared only a moment’s bemusement over the cleric’s pronunciation of demon. “I have no idea.” He couldn’t bring himself to speak aloud what seemed to him the most likely scenario. And then Klavicus will be gone.

“And the children?” Skarp’s tone took on somewhat more urgency.

“I can only see two possible outcomes there. If Klavicus – ” he still couldn’t say the word dies, “if his consciousness fails, the demiplane will collapse. Any corporeal occupants will either be ejected – or not.” He didn’t think Skarp would take much comfort in knowing that if they were expelled back into the room from whence they’d come, they’d likely find themselves caught in the balor’s death throes and unlikely to survive the explosive conflagration.

So he didn’t mention it, and mostly managed to stifle his groan as a flame-like creature blocked their forward advance. Hanen recognized the being. Some part of the balor might believe he needed to die. But the rest of him wasn’t going to make it easy.