Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

11th of Neth 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

As the dragon lunges at the corpse so do you, trying to cut it off at one knee. This isn't the first time you'd faced the living dead, but the knee is still wrapped in armor that rings like an iron bell. Into that ringing you bind a spell to hold and to draw, like a puppet on strings, to send it careening at Gorok. Heavy... so heavy, like trying to roll a bolder uphill. So you're all the more surprised to hear a belly-laugh fall on weary ears, followed by the heavy thud of an ogre falling on his ass as though he can't hold in his laugh at the sight of his chief without his head.

It's still running, passing the circle your friend had cast to keep out conjured fiends without a stumble. Black flames that do not burn but wither burst from the wrist of the corpse as it rises and three arrows strike it almost as one as Gorok finds his mark. It does not draw back its hand, driven on by the hatred of its god, to strike the one who mocked it.

"Sirim!" you hear yourself scream. The blade cuts him clean in two, but as the thing turns back with a mocking salude the smoke gathers again a whirling cloud with ember eyes.


Light dims again in Mina's moment of distraction. Another shadow then descends and in its mouth are words of fiendish blight, to smother Cob and take his flesh. You'd think it would have realized by now that any foes who know them would have raised wards against it. Cob shakes off his head furiously like he's trying to dislodge a physical thing... and it certainly seems to work. He lunges upward and slices an ogre before him from ear to ear.


The priest you had blinded shouts something to the sky. Praise to his god, or a prayer for more aid in the face of the living pyre Pepper had unleashed upon him. The only answer he gets is a furious dragon latching on to the corpse-champion of his god, though she does not seem to slow him, and she barely seems to wound him. What do dead bones care if they are broken?


"Kill you all, kill and eat you all, bring your bones to the Old One!" the great gorger shouts through a mouth that isn't there, but Sirim is nowhere to be found. The clever shade had gone to ground, leaving him with nothing but a wounded but still hale dragon to fight. Or so at least you thought.

The air grows cold but not with frost, not the deepest cave nor the highest mountain have ever been this chill, only hunger, only rage. Syllables like knives carving fall through the air to break and butcher all who dare oppose the will of the ogre god, but it had been a dragon who challenged him and it's a dragon who roars now, breaking the chain of words before it can manifest. As though in answer to its flattering magic, a spear of light strikes the thing in the chest, heating to yellow flame.


You look down at the sword in your hand and realize that sharp as a shadow though it might be it won't be able to cut through that thing. So you do the next best thing, or maybe the stupidest thing you've ever done in your life, though some might call it brave: you run up to the hulking monstrosity that had been trading blows with a dragon and you slam a fist-full of golden light into its back, a power you had only ever used to heal now sizzling dead flesh beneath the armor like boiling oil.

Hidden from view on the other side of the abomination you cannot see Gorok, but you can hear the bow being dropped and the sharp sibilant warcry that had driven fear into the hearts of the iruxi's foes since before the first ogre walked the world. Twice fast as lightning the elven sword slips between the gaps in armor and cuts dead flesh to the bone... almost to the blackened soul.

From a crack in the earth rises a snake spun of shadow that spits into the horror's wounds a bright white spark. It catches and it burns. The corpse aflame collapses to its knees, then falls onto the forest floor.




At the sight of their leader fallen, again, of their god's power broken, a moan of terror goes up among the remaining ogres as they flee in blind terror... with a dragon on their tail. One could almost pity them, at least until the memory of the kobold bones came to mind. Let Sylistrex hunt down her fill.


The body keeps burning, the fire slowly turning from white, to gold, to colorless as melted glass and yet it does not die. It's not warm either, nor cold as the black flames of the champion has been.

"How careless," Sirim whispers, though his words do not match his tone. They are almost... reverent. "To have allowed this power to linger."

"What... what is it?" Mina asks, drawing closer despite herself.

"The High Realm called it pŷr moîra, the fire of fate, the fire of legends," you say.


"We're not..." Mina starts, backing away.

"Aren't you now?" Pepper asks, archly, cleaning his claws as he looks at her. "Did someone else decide to befriend a dragon and slay the the champion of a god? Then put him down again when he rose at his master's call a moment later."

Cob has no doubts about him, no more than he did with Gavhaul's contraption, he rushes over and leans close. The demon is gone again, you realize abruptly. Had it seen the flame?

"I say we take, looks good," with these words your large eared friend sinks his hands into the fire and splashes it all over his face. After that, you certainly aren't going to let him take on strange fate on his own. You drink and drink and find it sweet and bitter, sharp as glass and soft as silk, like a dream you are just now remembering.

The others soon follow, Mina cupping it like its water to drink, Gorok grasping it until it sinks into his hand, and finally Sirim taking up the last embers like a gust of strange wind.


[] Write in Mythic Paths

OOC: Congratulations on killing a CR 10 Ogre Destroyer and then killing it again when it rose as a CR 12 Death Knight while you were all level 6. The only thing that makes it a little weaker than that summary would indicate is the weapon being sized for a human because... well you'll see when you look at it.