Interlude: Marked for Dragons
Arnold of the Black Ridge was an awe-inspiring titan of a man, with bulging muscles, a lantern jaw, and a smile that made women swoon. Despite being stuck as a cleric, he was the natural leader of the adventuring party, and walked at the front as he chatted to his second-in-command.
"How did you get full plate mail this early, anyway? That stuff's expensive. And I'm pretty sure there are laws against that shade of green."
"It is an ancient family heirloom," Lady Rubia the paladin said proudly. "It was first made for my ancestor Guy de la Puissance two hundred years ago. Guy was born as a humble miller's son, and at the age of—"
"Backstory bonus, gotcha," Arnold waved the explanation away, instead glancing back at the rest of the group. Whateley the warlock was still reading that seal-encrusted tome of his while periodically cackling with glee, while Kali FrozenSoul (but a humble traveller unworthy of special attention, and those skeletons marching obediently behind her were purely decorative) remained an enigma beneath the cowl of her black robe with the bloody snowflake patterns.
"Is it me," he leaned over to Lady Rubia, "or is half of our party blatantly, irredeemably evil? Were they even on the same page as us during chargen?"
"Fear not," Lady Rubia replied with what was probably a radiant smile behind her helmet's visor. "Nobody is irredeemable before the Spirit of Faith. Whateley just needs to ask his Hive Mind patron to stop whispering sanity-eroding arcane secrets to him in his sleep, and Kali needs—"
There was a meaningful cough from behind her.
"—Kali
FrozenSoul needs to learn to make friends who aren't undead abominations enslaved to her will by infernal sorcery."
Even Arnold could feel the death glare being directed at Lady Rubia through the thick fabric of Kali's cowl. As the party leader, it was probably his role to find a way to placate her—
Ahhahahaha! You forgot to scout ahead, suckers! As you enter the valley, a dozen goblins spot you from the other end and charge at you, screaming and waving clubs and axes. What do you do?
Lady Rubia reacted instantly. "I'm going to find a chokepoint and pin the goblins in place. Arnold, start blessing. Whateley, you pick out their leader and hit him with your best spell, and Kali—"
"Don't worry," Whateley interrupted, "I've got this."
The party stared in horror at Whateley as he completely ignored the second-in-command's instructions and walked to the front, staring down the incoming horde with an expression of excitement that made Arnold shiver.
Whateley brandished his tome.
"Darkness."
A huge hemisphere of pure black coalesced from thin air, encasing the charging goblins. There was a cacophony of dismayed screeching and the sounds of goblins tripping over and running into things.
"Devil's Sight."
A third eye, drawn in the pulsating blue light of the Hive Mind's power, appeared on Whateley's brow as if it had always been there.
"Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast!"
Lances of pure magical power sped from Whateley's hand, striking his targets with unerring precision as if the impenetrable darkness wasn't there. By the time the hemisphere faded away, all that was left was a dozen small corpses.
What the…?! Let me see that rulebook!
Huh.
"It's an underpowered class," Kali's voice mercilessly quoted. "Only two spell slots before he has to rest, and the rest of the time he's stuck with cantrips."
"There, there," Lady Rubia patted Arnold on the shoulder with a gauntleted hand, nearly knocking him flat. Unfortunately, his finely sculpted appearance was mostly the product of a stratospheric Charisma stat.
Somebody had to be the party face, and Lady Rubia already had to invest in Strength, Constitution and Wisdom, Whateley's candidacy had been unanimously vetoed, and Kali had been too smart not to take Charisma as her dump stat.
Arnold made a mental note for future battles: "Run out of healing right before you get to Whateley".
-o-
Kali FrozenSoul, elven princess in exile, suffered through the tomfoolery of her imbecilic mortal minions in silence as she studied the goblin bodies with an expert's eye. Doubtless, the others thought her a common necromancer, a mortal graverobber with some meagre gift for the exalted arts. They could not know that she, the pinnacle of elven magical talent, had achieved such heights of mastery of the dead that her own people had cast her out in superstitious fear. Since then, she had spent centuries perfecting her craft, a martyr to her inferiors' fear of the unknown, the truth of her soul understood by none but the silent dead she raised to be her companions.
Soon, however, her torment and alienation at the hands of a cruel world would matter no more. She had a plan, a master plan developed with the aid of the most diabolical of allies, a mistress of manipulation who offered Kali FrozenSoul everything she needed and asked only for entertainment in return. The paladin and his cleric lieutenant were too blind to perceive the true depths of the darkness within her, and the warlock, while useful, was too focused on his art to realise what was to come.
"Kali?"
How could the pitiful mortals ever hope to understand her true self when they could not even remember to address her by her full name? She was no mere slip of a girl to be beckoned with one or two syllables. She was Kali FrozenSoul, last of the great necromancers of old, doomed to wander the land without hope of solace or reprieve, and if her heart was too cold to accept another's love, she would at least demand the respect she was due.
"Kali
FrozenSoul?" the cleric called her, and his eyeroll earned his spirit another century of torment once the master plan was complete.
"What?" she snapped.
"Can you go over and help Whateley figure out the mechanism for that door? We're pretty sure it's magical, and I'm not proficient in Arcana."
Begrudgingly accepting the recognition of her talent, Kali FrozenSoul glided over to the warlock as he hunched over some clockwork engraved with intertwining runes.
"Have you considered my offer, mortal?" she asked in a deathly whisper.
"What?" Whateley muttered distractedly. "Oh, the betrayal? Yeah, sure, just as long as I get the Orb of Unsealing and the key to the Black Library."
Kali FrozenSoul nodded, then recalled that he couldn't see her head move beneath her cowl and also that he was facing the other way. "Of course. And I will finally possess the Sceptre of Unholy Command."
A thought occurred to her. "Leave the paladin intact if you can. With that enchanted armour, she would make an excellent death knight, and it would please me to see the self-righteous smirk on her face be twisted into a murderer's grimace."
"No promises. I don't know yet if I'm allowed to multiclass without downtime, and right now my DPR is going to have trouble with her AC and save proficiencies. My main obstacle will be avoiding MAD…"
As far as Kali FrozenSoul was concerned, that ship had long since sailed.
"Anyway, let's get back to the mechanism." Whateley turned away from her again and reached into what he called his Bag of Circumstantial Modifiers, pulling out a magnifying glass and a primer on dwarven runes.
"Now I'm ready to roll. Let me know when you've started helping."
The things Kali FrozenSoul did for absolute dominion over life and death…
-o-
The dragon's corpse was still smouldering in the middle of the cavern. Arnold, buried beneath it, showed no signs of life, and never would. The survivors were scarcely in better shape.
Rubia drew deep, ragged breaths, clinging onto her claymore mostly by force of will. Whateley was beating the last of the flames out of his robe with his eldritch tome. Kali stared mournfully at the remains of her undead vanguard. The two casters stood side by side, as if by some arrangement, while Rubia was where she'd finished the battle, next to the fallen dragon's head.
"You have done well," Kali said in a cool, mocking voice. "It would not be unfair to say that we wouldn't have made it this far without you. Now, surrender and I promise I will grant you a swift and painless death. You cannot hope to fight two magicians in your current state."
"What?" Rubia demanded. "How can this be? Are you truly turning on me after all the battles we've fought together? All the shared conversations over mugs of bitter ale (and one glass of absinthe)? The bonds we have forged through thick and thin?"
Rubia clenched her sword more firmly. "Even so. If you thought you could slay me so easily, you would have already done so. You're injured and low on spells, while I am the one with the powers of healing. Perhaps it is you who should surrender. I promise you will receive a fair trial."
Kali considered her. A twisted smile found its way onto her face.
"No, paladin, I think you will be the one on trial."
Then she drew a dagger and plunged it into Whateley's back. There was a flash as whatever spell had been placed on it went off, and Whateley, his eyes impossibly wide with shock, collapsed bonelessly to the ground.
"Surrender, and I will allow you to heal him. Refuse, and I will deal him the final blow before I raise him once more to be my champion against you. Will the Spirit of Faith allow you to stand by and watch a friend die, I wonder?"
Rubia said nothing. Of course, Kali was right. 'To stand by and do nothing' was as antithetical to her oaths as it could get. It would betray a lineage centuries old. You couldn't
be a paladin of the Spirit of Faith and let an ally die in order to save yourself, especially given that Whateley hadn't actually had a chance to betray her. He might not even have had the thought were it not for a certain corrupting influence in his life. At least this way, perhaps Kali would let him live now that he was too close to death to be any threat.
"I surrender," she said through gritted teeth.
"Swear that you will not attempt to harm me," Kali said in a voice as sweet as poisoned honey.
Rubia hesitated. She wanted to try to persuade Kali, to look for another way, but every second she wasted, Whateley drew closer to bleeding out.
"I do so swear."
Kali gave a smile as lifeless as anything she had ever created. "Good. Throw away your sword and take off your enchanted armour."
Over a period of several minutes, Rubia silently obeyed.
"Now hold up your end of the bargain," she growled.
"What bargain?" Kali asked. "My oaths are to the dead, not the living."
She stepped over Whateley's body, then raised her hands for what must have been the deadliest spell in her arsenal.
"Eldritch Blast!"
Five lances of scintillating magical energy pierced Kali's torso and limbs from behind, briefly holding her aloft before her mangled body tumbled roughly to the ground.
Whateley smirked. "A servant of the Hive Mind always has another plan."
Before he could rise from the ground, Rubia kicked him in the head, the damage sending him into unconsciousness.
"A servant of the Spirit of Faith," she replied, "only ever needs the one."
-o-
"I kept count of your hit points!" Keiko screeched. "How could you still be alive?!"
"Death Ward," Hazō beamed. "Leaves you on one hit point when an attack would otherwise kill you."
"Death Ward is a cleric and paladin spell! You don't even have a holy symbol!"
"I took some bard levels earlier after Kagome-sensei allowed 'eerie chanting' as a form of music. College of Lore bards can learn a couple of spells from any class, plus illusions to fake high-level warlock abilities whenever you were watching."
Keiko glared. "That still makes no sense. If you had a Death Ward up at any point, it would have gone off when the dragon incapacitated you."
"I took some levels of Sorcerer too. Subtle Spell lets you cast a spell without verbal or somatic components. I used it right before you stabbed me in the back."
"You…" Keiko goggled. "You took three different caster classes? Are you
insane?"
"I saw you talking to Mari-sensei before character generation," Akane explained. "There's no way she'd miss an opportunity to mess with us. And then you went for an evil character, and that sealed it. I decided to give Hazō an optimisation challenge so that by the time he started to suspect you, he had all the aces up his sleeve… just in case."
"And then after she betrayed us, you betrayed me," Hazō commented.
"Of course," Akane said. "Lady Rubia could never turn on a companion unprompted, however evil he might be. But now that Whateley is a murderer, he has to be captured and imprisoned so he can stand trial."
Keiko raised an eyebrow.
"Just obeying the laws of the land," Akane said innocently.
"You know," Noburi observed, "if you knew she was going to betray us, you could have warned me, and then I wouldn't have died when Keiko's magical support suddenly disappeared."
"That would have been metagaming," Akane said seriously. "Lady Rubia is a pure and innocent soul, and she could never have suspected that one of her comrades would turn on the group."
There was a sudden burst of applause.
"In short," Mari-sensei grinned, strolling in from where she'd been listening in the shadow of the doorway, "Whateley betrayed Kali by working with Rubia behind her back. Kali betrayed Arnold by deliberately letting him die, then betrayed Whateley by trying to kill him. Finally, Rubia betrayed Whateley by knocking him out.
"Now
that's entertainment."
"So let me get this straight…" Noburi said. "Akane just subverted Mari-sensei's plan, wiped out the entire rest of the party and got sole claim to the dragon's hoard—all without rolling a single die or violating her paladin oaths."
"Yup."
Kagome got up silently from behind the GM screen. One by one, he fixed the members of the team with a meaningful gaze.
"I think we've all seen today," he said gravely, "what happens when you go around trusting people."
