One Skull, Two Tenants [D&D / Baldur's Gate 3 SI]
- Thread starter Hmmaster
- Start date
- Location
- Alabama
Yes, Kurga is the Durge. While it would have been my usual in game name of Durga, I couldn't help but swap the D to a K because Kobold.
24
- Location
- Alabama
The gnomish man was surpsingly not grateful to us as we pulled him down from the stalled windmill. His bald, gray head caught the light of the sun overhead in a way that I'd never seen before, and he was haggard. Before we could get much of a word out, he'd vomited all over his own shoes.
"The name's Barcus Wroot," the gnome claimed. "Appreciate it all the same, but whatever you're here to do to me, get on with it. Can't be much worse than that."
Edowin started to speak, but Karlach cut in. "Eh. You'd be a waste to spend energy on. No real offense taken."
I agreed immediately, though her attempt at deception was not quite the skill as some of the others. "What were you doing before they caught you?"
Barcus eyed us carefully. "Searching for a friend." He pulled a bronze medallion from his pocket and dangled it by the chain. "Found this on a thug in the Lower City of Baldur's Gate, speckled in blood. My friend was nowhere to be found. I have reason to believe he's in the Underdark."
Hmmm.
"The Underdark is a big place. Is there an entrance nearby?" Gale asked.
The deep gnome tilted his head toward us and then nodded. "Of course. Surfacers can't spit without finding a crevice or two that leads down below." He nodded again, brushed off his clothes, and started to walk. "Now, if you'll excuse me. Gonna have to leave my damn pack behind; heavy thing's the only reason I got caught. You can have it for all I care."
Barcus muttered a word, snapped his fingers, and then became a blurry, unfocused sight. He scurried away before anyone could say much to stop him, and I wondered truly what the goblins wanted with him. Wrong place, wrong time? Or something more?
"Spoils, then," Astarion suggested and began to search for this pack. Edowin, Brynna, and Andrick stood to one side, watching us with disinterest, and it gave me enough time to really consider how we were going to pull all this off.
I checked the crawlspace beneath the windmill and located the bag in question, Wyll hot on my heels. Leaning over my shoulder, the man watched as I accounted for the belongings within.
Camp rations, three bags of dried apples, a leather pouch tied with a complex mechanism designed to keep the interior dry, and a solidly shaped rust-covered key. What lock it fit, we likely would never know, but it was the contents of the leather pouch that caught Wyll's eyes.
"That would be gnomish smokepowder," the man muttered. "A satchel's worth would be a valuable commodity. Demolition, destruction – the list goes on."
I blinked.
Gunpowder.
The gnomes of this world have gunpowder.
"Fascinating," I spoke nearly under my own breath. Stashing the pilfered goods under my belt, I let the rest of them fight over who'd get the rations. "Chances the cult wants this explosive stuff?"
"A useful tool for any Material army. Won't hold a candle to hellfire, soldier, but not much does."
Hmmm. "And how hot is that?"
"Hot enough to melt nearly any material not made of infernal iron," she explained, pointing to her chest.
I didn't know what to make of it, but the Blood War sounded horrifying. An endless, raging battle between two forces of evil so unstoppable that the heavens did not feel it was worth it to intervene. Far worse than any Cold War-inspired military quagmire from back home, I doubted modern military means would do much to end such a war. Nuking an endless plane of misery was impossible, and it dwarfed every sense I had that we had control at all of our circumstances.
While everyone was distracted, Gale pulled me to the side and said, in a hushed voice, "I cannot believe this deception is working. These people believe us to be True Souls, and that status must come from the tadpoles."
The implications struck me at nearly the same moment. "The Cult of the Absolute have leaders that are tadpole-infected like us."
"Exactly my interpretation, yes," the wizard muttered. "In order to best fool the tribe we are about to encounter, we must be ready to demonstrate these abilities. Edowin's word may be enough, but…"
I glanced toward the pale elf, who had been quick to throw newfound psychic weight toward Brynna. "You want us to do the very thing we said was wrong that Astarion did?"
He reddened slightly. "Not as such. What I am proposing is that, when the moment is right, we should bend the advantage we possess. I am nowhere near the talent I once was – I cannot counter an entire force of goblins single-handedly, and perhaps never could. Better to devise a strategy that avoids bloodshed, saves Halsin, and prepares the Grove best."
"We have to hope their archdruid is alive, then," I answered. "I can agree with that, should we need it."
As we prepared to leave, I turned to anyone who might have an answer. "Was it smart to let Barcus leave? What happens to the smokepowder?"
Edowin shrugged. "There are more gnomes than that one, True Soul. Let 'im have his safety, for the Absolute has not decided his fate yet."
With that found and the uncomfortable realization that the cult may have more of these gnomish inventors on their forced payroll, Edowin and his siblings guided us out of the village ruins and across a bridge a few hundred yards ahead. The rickety wooden thing scared me to cross, if only because of all the movies I remembered seeing, but it held all the same, protecting us from an eighty or so foot drop into the river creek below.
On the other side were makeshift fortifications built out of an old outpost, perhaps a trading house of sorts that had collapsed utterly and been picked clean of its useful pieces. The result was a goblin checkpoint, where more of their number waited to see who approached and, ultimately, let Edowin and his new charges through without issue.
"Good work, True Soul," one of them shouted to me when Brynna relayed the message that it was I who had saved her brother. A gnarly warhorn rested on his belt, while his idle hand scritched the neck of his worg mount.
I merely had to do little but nod, because the alternative was to start noticing these folk as people who deserved mercy. And, well, they did - I knew that – but until they took a swing at me or one of my allies, I would not swing first. They might be religious zealots, but there were plenty of goblins who believed differently. Not all goblins were predisposed to favoring murder, betrayal, torture, and the like. They weren't Tolkein orcs or Theodosian darkspawn.
We rounded the bend as the checkpoint chief, Olak, let us pass. Ahead, a trio of goblins picked clean an upturned traveling caravan cart and played drinking games to pass the time. As we rounded the bend, the entrance to the temple stretched before us, a courtyard that likely was once grand, dedicated to the patron goddess of this temple to the moon. As it was now, it was covered in shit, piss, entrails, and more as the goblins feasted, drank, and celebrated. Two snuck over, dropped the front of their shorts down, and peed all over one of their kind that hax fallen asleep early.
There were a few dozen outside alone. Worgs, bugbears, goblins, and one massive ogre partied hard just outside two massive double doors leading into the interior of the mountain. Armed to the teeth with a hodgepodge of weapons and gear, most of it stolen from "civilized" folk, the raiders were ready for anything to happen.
"Is that…?" asked Wyll, eyes wide.
Standing in the center of a fountain was, inexplicably, Volothamp Geddarn. A man we had left behind at the Emerald Grove. How… why? How?
The man in the froppy hat danced and chanted a song, trying and failing to show off bardic talents to those that could lis…ten…
"Hear my voice!"
A wave of psychic pressure forced me to my knees. The others joined me as I struggled, as I breathed through the weight of a mind incomprehensibly more powerful than my own. Karlach burst into flame – not from her sword, but from her very core – but the heat only added to the torment forcing her to claw at the ground with her hands. Gale muttered an incantation that I could not hear over the sound of my groaning, but whatever it was, it did not help. Wyll's fingers clamored for the focus of his power, the rapier at his side, but his grip faltered. Astarion grit his teeth tight behind his lips, too-wide, too-exposed, too-sharp.
"Obey my command!"
A feminine voice.
The voice of the Absolute?
I… wanted nothing more than to listen. To obey. To follow this authority to the letter, to bend my own will to match Hers.
She was my protection.
She was my ambition.
She was my salvation.
She was all that I am, all that I will be.
Every sensation faded away, no sound, no touch, no sight but a featureless dark landscape of hazy mists and twisting shadows. The others… the others were gone, they did not matter, all that mattered was this single voice of command I must obey.
Light flickered into my vision, not the natural sunlight beaming down onto the goblin campsite but instead a hazy image of three figures. One a tall, armored male elven figure. Another a lithe feminine form. And the last a robed human man who carried himself confidently. Psionically, I knew they were important, knew they were above even those True Souls, knew they were second only to the Goddess Herself. I wanted to serve, wanted to learn, wanted to grow under them.
"These are my Chosen. They speak for me. Aid their search for the Prism, and you will be worthy to stand beside them, in my Presence."
That…
That was wonderful.
That was what I needed – a goal, an ambition in this new world.
To be part of a system, a family, a new regime capable of shifting the status quo of this world.
"My power grows. My forces gather. A reckoning draws near."
I sighed in an intense relief. Too long, I've floundered from place to place, seeking a cure for something wonderful. If I had found it? Then what?
I was a leech.
I was a parasite.
Feasting on a dead man's body.
I was no different than the tadpole, truly, and Tav was my host.
This?
Spreading Her wonderful message of union? Of cooperation? Of conquest?
How could I possibly not reap the benefits? At least if this world changed, then my purpose in this undead life would be fulfilled. This was my divine mandate, this was the reason I am a walking half-corpse.
This was the reason I live.
I pushed myself to my feet first and started to help the others stand. From the transfixed looks upon their eyes, they, too, had embraced the change in perspective.
Gale's mind turned a mile a minute, and I could taste the ideas in his thoughts about wonderous spellcraft involving a Netherese orb stuffed within his chest.
Karlach's heart – or where her heart should be – was an imperfect machine of devilish origin, and she was ecstatic to serve a new master and deliver its flames to Her enemies.
Astarion's heart did not beat once throughout the moments that followed, and it was only then that I truly connected the dots. How powerful such a vampire spawn could be to serve in Her forces.
Wyll's heart did beat in his chest rather smoothly, compared to the rest – he was used to serving a greater patron, a fiendish pact of his own that would now be poised to support the Absolute's gains.
We would be the vanguard, we would be the deliverance, we would unite all of Toril and beyond under the guidance of the Absolute.
We were to be Her Authority.
Author's Note:
This was one of the first chapters I ever outlined - not in exactly the same set up by the time all was written, but that last scene has been cooking in the background of my mind for sooo long.
In Canon, crossing the bridge into the Goblin Camp is the first time the Absolute directly tries to force your group to listen to her. If you've recruited Shadowheart and she's in your party, she pulls out the little Prism and saves you. If she's not in your party, she rushes to the scene and saves you. If she's not recruited, she rushes to the scene and saves you. If she's dead, the Prism itself rushes to the scene and saves you.
Things are cooking differently here, and this has significant ramifications for the immediate and farflung future. If the Prism were to just pop up and save the day, it would be too easy and convenient, in my mind, because Shadowheart and company are busy elsewhere. Video game logic is easy to justify anything, but in a narrative like this, it is far juicier to treat things with more pizazz and see what shakes out.
"The name's Barcus Wroot," the gnome claimed. "Appreciate it all the same, but whatever you're here to do to me, get on with it. Can't be much worse than that."
Edowin started to speak, but Karlach cut in. "Eh. You'd be a waste to spend energy on. No real offense taken."
I agreed immediately, though her attempt at deception was not quite the skill as some of the others. "What were you doing before they caught you?"
Barcus eyed us carefully. "Searching for a friend." He pulled a bronze medallion from his pocket and dangled it by the chain. "Found this on a thug in the Lower City of Baldur's Gate, speckled in blood. My friend was nowhere to be found. I have reason to believe he's in the Underdark."
Hmmm.
"The Underdark is a big place. Is there an entrance nearby?" Gale asked.
The deep gnome tilted his head toward us and then nodded. "Of course. Surfacers can't spit without finding a crevice or two that leads down below." He nodded again, brushed off his clothes, and started to walk. "Now, if you'll excuse me. Gonna have to leave my damn pack behind; heavy thing's the only reason I got caught. You can have it for all I care."
Barcus muttered a word, snapped his fingers, and then became a blurry, unfocused sight. He scurried away before anyone could say much to stop him, and I wondered truly what the goblins wanted with him. Wrong place, wrong time? Or something more?
"Spoils, then," Astarion suggested and began to search for this pack. Edowin, Brynna, and Andrick stood to one side, watching us with disinterest, and it gave me enough time to really consider how we were going to pull all this off.
I checked the crawlspace beneath the windmill and located the bag in question, Wyll hot on my heels. Leaning over my shoulder, the man watched as I accounted for the belongings within.
Camp rations, three bags of dried apples, a leather pouch tied with a complex mechanism designed to keep the interior dry, and a solidly shaped rust-covered key. What lock it fit, we likely would never know, but it was the contents of the leather pouch that caught Wyll's eyes.
"That would be gnomish smokepowder," the man muttered. "A satchel's worth would be a valuable commodity. Demolition, destruction – the list goes on."
I blinked.
Gunpowder.
The gnomes of this world have gunpowder.
"Fascinating," I spoke nearly under my own breath. Stashing the pilfered goods under my belt, I let the rest of them fight over who'd get the rations. "Chances the cult wants this explosive stuff?"
"A useful tool for any Material army. Won't hold a candle to hellfire, soldier, but not much does."
Hmmm. "And how hot is that?"
"Hot enough to melt nearly any material not made of infernal iron," she explained, pointing to her chest.
I didn't know what to make of it, but the Blood War sounded horrifying. An endless, raging battle between two forces of evil so unstoppable that the heavens did not feel it was worth it to intervene. Far worse than any Cold War-inspired military quagmire from back home, I doubted modern military means would do much to end such a war. Nuking an endless plane of misery was impossible, and it dwarfed every sense I had that we had control at all of our circumstances.
While everyone was distracted, Gale pulled me to the side and said, in a hushed voice, "I cannot believe this deception is working. These people believe us to be True Souls, and that status must come from the tadpoles."
The implications struck me at nearly the same moment. "The Cult of the Absolute have leaders that are tadpole-infected like us."
"Exactly my interpretation, yes," the wizard muttered. "In order to best fool the tribe we are about to encounter, we must be ready to demonstrate these abilities. Edowin's word may be enough, but…"
I glanced toward the pale elf, who had been quick to throw newfound psychic weight toward Brynna. "You want us to do the very thing we said was wrong that Astarion did?"
He reddened slightly. "Not as such. What I am proposing is that, when the moment is right, we should bend the advantage we possess. I am nowhere near the talent I once was – I cannot counter an entire force of goblins single-handedly, and perhaps never could. Better to devise a strategy that avoids bloodshed, saves Halsin, and prepares the Grove best."
"We have to hope their archdruid is alive, then," I answered. "I can agree with that, should we need it."
As we prepared to leave, I turned to anyone who might have an answer. "Was it smart to let Barcus leave? What happens to the smokepowder?"
Edowin shrugged. "There are more gnomes than that one, True Soul. Let 'im have his safety, for the Absolute has not decided his fate yet."
With that found and the uncomfortable realization that the cult may have more of these gnomish inventors on their forced payroll, Edowin and his siblings guided us out of the village ruins and across a bridge a few hundred yards ahead. The rickety wooden thing scared me to cross, if only because of all the movies I remembered seeing, but it held all the same, protecting us from an eighty or so foot drop into the river creek below.
On the other side were makeshift fortifications built out of an old outpost, perhaps a trading house of sorts that had collapsed utterly and been picked clean of its useful pieces. The result was a goblin checkpoint, where more of their number waited to see who approached and, ultimately, let Edowin and his new charges through without issue.
"Good work, True Soul," one of them shouted to me when Brynna relayed the message that it was I who had saved her brother. A gnarly warhorn rested on his belt, while his idle hand scritched the neck of his worg mount.
I merely had to do little but nod, because the alternative was to start noticing these folk as people who deserved mercy. And, well, they did - I knew that – but until they took a swing at me or one of my allies, I would not swing first. They might be religious zealots, but there were plenty of goblins who believed differently. Not all goblins were predisposed to favoring murder, betrayal, torture, and the like. They weren't Tolkein orcs or Theodosian darkspawn.
We rounded the bend as the checkpoint chief, Olak, let us pass. Ahead, a trio of goblins picked clean an upturned traveling caravan cart and played drinking games to pass the time. As we rounded the bend, the entrance to the temple stretched before us, a courtyard that likely was once grand, dedicated to the patron goddess of this temple to the moon. As it was now, it was covered in shit, piss, entrails, and more as the goblins feasted, drank, and celebrated. Two snuck over, dropped the front of their shorts down, and peed all over one of their kind that hax fallen asleep early.
There were a few dozen outside alone. Worgs, bugbears, goblins, and one massive ogre partied hard just outside two massive double doors leading into the interior of the mountain. Armed to the teeth with a hodgepodge of weapons and gear, most of it stolen from "civilized" folk, the raiders were ready for anything to happen.
"Is that…?" asked Wyll, eyes wide.
Standing in the center of a fountain was, inexplicably, Volothamp Geddarn. A man we had left behind at the Emerald Grove. How… why? How?
The man in the froppy hat danced and chanted a song, trying and failing to show off bardic talents to those that could lis…ten…
"Hear my voice!"
A wave of psychic pressure forced me to my knees. The others joined me as I struggled, as I breathed through the weight of a mind incomprehensibly more powerful than my own. Karlach burst into flame – not from her sword, but from her very core – but the heat only added to the torment forcing her to claw at the ground with her hands. Gale muttered an incantation that I could not hear over the sound of my groaning, but whatever it was, it did not help. Wyll's fingers clamored for the focus of his power, the rapier at his side, but his grip faltered. Astarion grit his teeth tight behind his lips, too-wide, too-exposed, too-sharp.
"Obey my command!"
A feminine voice.
The voice of the Absolute?
I… wanted nothing more than to listen. To obey. To follow this authority to the letter, to bend my own will to match Hers.
She was my protection.
She was my ambition.
She was my salvation.
She was all that I am, all that I will be.
Every sensation faded away, no sound, no touch, no sight but a featureless dark landscape of hazy mists and twisting shadows. The others… the others were gone, they did not matter, all that mattered was this single voice of command I must obey.
Light flickered into my vision, not the natural sunlight beaming down onto the goblin campsite but instead a hazy image of three figures. One a tall, armored male elven figure. Another a lithe feminine form. And the last a robed human man who carried himself confidently. Psionically, I knew they were important, knew they were above even those True Souls, knew they were second only to the Goddess Herself. I wanted to serve, wanted to learn, wanted to grow under them.
"These are my Chosen. They speak for me. Aid their search for the Prism, and you will be worthy to stand beside them, in my Presence."
That…
That was wonderful.
That was what I needed – a goal, an ambition in this new world.
To be part of a system, a family, a new regime capable of shifting the status quo of this world.
"My power grows. My forces gather. A reckoning draws near."
I sighed in an intense relief. Too long, I've floundered from place to place, seeking a cure for something wonderful. If I had found it? Then what?
I was a leech.
I was a parasite.
Feasting on a dead man's body.
I was no different than the tadpole, truly, and Tav was my host.
This?
Spreading Her wonderful message of union? Of cooperation? Of conquest?
How could I possibly not reap the benefits? At least if this world changed, then my purpose in this undead life would be fulfilled. This was my divine mandate, this was the reason I am a walking half-corpse.
This was the reason I live.
I pushed myself to my feet first and started to help the others stand. From the transfixed looks upon their eyes, they, too, had embraced the change in perspective.
Gale's mind turned a mile a minute, and I could taste the ideas in his thoughts about wonderous spellcraft involving a Netherese orb stuffed within his chest.
Karlach's heart – or where her heart should be – was an imperfect machine of devilish origin, and she was ecstatic to serve a new master and deliver its flames to Her enemies.
Astarion's heart did not beat once throughout the moments that followed, and it was only then that I truly connected the dots. How powerful such a vampire spawn could be to serve in Her forces.
Wyll's heart did beat in his chest rather smoothly, compared to the rest – he was used to serving a greater patron, a fiendish pact of his own that would now be poised to support the Absolute's gains.
We would be the vanguard, we would be the deliverance, we would unite all of Toril and beyond under the guidance of the Absolute.
We were to be Her Authority.
Author's Note:
This was one of the first chapters I ever outlined - not in exactly the same set up by the time all was written, but that last scene has been cooking in the background of my mind for sooo long.
In Canon, crossing the bridge into the Goblin Camp is the first time the Absolute directly tries to force your group to listen to her. If you've recruited Shadowheart and she's in your party, she pulls out the little Prism and saves you. If she's not in your party, she rushes to the scene and saves you. If she's not recruited, she rushes to the scene and saves you. If she's dead, the Prism itself rushes to the scene and saves you.
Things are cooking differently here, and this has significant ramifications for the immediate and farflung future. If the Prism were to just pop up and save the day, it would be too easy and convenient, in my mind, because Shadowheart and company are busy elsewhere. Video game logic is easy to justify anything, but in a narrative like this, it is far juicier to treat things with more pizazz and see what shakes out.
I'm not actually in love with this choice to be honest. Taking agency away from your Mc is almost always going to be divisive and generally unwelcome from a readers perspective. So while I respect walking the road less traveled I think in this case that road isn't traveled for good reason.
Last edited:
- Location
- Alabama
I appreciate your feedback!
This is a development that will be resolved. Not immediately, but also not in dozens of chapters. The ramifications of it will be fun to explore, both externally and internally to Edward and the others.
25
- Location
- Alabama
The interior of the abandoned Selunite ruin had long been in decay before the cult squatters settled in. Broken statues to the Moonmaiden, defaced symbols of her sigil in different phases, and crevices in the walls left the place feeling dead. As a lover of history, this felt like stepping into something like the Parthenon if it had lost all of its attendants for more than a century and slowly lost itself to erosion and other natural processes. Then those attendants were replaced with a group of disgusting cretins who built monuments out of sticks, mud, animal fats, and tanned hides.
Despite the more than adequate wear and tear, this was still easily the most fortified area in the region. One well-defended bridge leading to the courtyard outside, good vantage points from high elevations, and even a spider-infested pit that must be a drow invention would make it difficult to assault. It would serve the needs of Her followers well, and the vibe of the place was one of celebration. They were in chipper spirits, and I wondered idly what the nearest victory of Her grace was.
If the druids were particularly savvy and focused instead on their strengths in magical offense rather than this silly defensive ploy, I wondered how the fight would go. Heavy losses on both sides, but the Absolute promised great gifts for those who put everything on the line for Her. How difficult would it be for them to fight not on their turf?
"Minthara will want a field report – she likely schemes even now with the goblin war chiefs. I must speak with Dror Ragzlin."
Edowin gave us detailed instructions on where to go, and it was interesting how easy it was to navigate the interior of this sanctum. Perhaps it was intuition, perhaps it was the tadpole, perhaps it was the Absolute's guidance. Regardless, the five of us found the woman in question while the siblings left to their own work.
This Minthara was an elf, though one with rather darkened skin and the garb of a stalwart warrior covered in spider-silk-infused armor. A drow, then, whose spindled mace dangled at her side. Bright white hair cut short, she leaned over a hand-drawn map of the region and discussed quietly with a wiry goblin warrior. The yellow-skinned putrid creature wielded twin scimitars in a cross along his back, and despite his smaller stature, I was sure that he would still easily serve as valuable fodder.
"Our chiefs grow restless, and we can only cull so many of our young to feed the ogres," the goblin suggested as we approached. "The longer we wait, the worse thing's will get."
"I'm aware," the drow answered tersely. "We must seize the weapon. If our scouts are useless, then we should-" She paused as she glanced up to see us approach, and her eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
Gale stepped forward. "I am Gale of Waterdeep, and these companions of mine are here to report to you."
"I have never heard of you," the woman barked warily.
"Likewise before today," Astarion countered. "You and your ilk do not seem particularly effective, so I am not surprised I know little of your exploits."
The woman's shorter stature rose to her full height, and while she was a head and a half shorter than Karlach, the shadow she cast along the wall in the dancing torchlight was twice as large.
"True Soul Edowin believed you would like to speak to us," I redirected. "You have known Her vision longer – what need does the Absolute have that we can fulfill?"
The drow nearly directed her ire from Astarion's challenge toward myself and hesitated for only a moment. A… connection solidified between us, a bond forged from thought and experience alone, as Edowin had before. She poked her mind forward like a spiked bludgeon, and a flash of impressions that were not my own connected us both.
"Hmm. I thought you merely Branded," she remarked, locking eyes with each of us in turn. A telepathic grip on each of us confirmed her suspicions – we were like Edowin, not recruits like Brynna or Andrick. "She has provided when in need. Five new True Souls on the eve of our victory – a fantastic sign. The war bands are restless, and we seek to strike soon."
"Why attack?" Karlach asked. "What use does this have for us?"
Minthara glanced toward the hand-drawn map spread across the table and pointed to several locations that were circled nearby. The bubbling marshlands where Auntie Ethel may lie in wait to meet with us. The beach on the bank of the Chionthar River where the nautiloid crashed. The Risen Road that led toward a winding pass through the mountains. To the west, a series of darkened fields outside something called Reincewin Town and Moonrise Towers. The space between was vague on distance and detail, and the amount of uncertainty about what they may find anywhere was clear.
More importantly, one place along the Mountain Pass had a deep red line crossed through it – what might have once been a trading post called Waukeen's Rest had clearly been searched recently.
"We seek a weapon paramount to the Absolute's cause," the drow explained, somewhat uncertainly. "It is only a matter of time before we pry it from the cold, dead hands of the druids and their little devilkin refugees."
"You think the Emerald Grove harbors it?" I asked.
Her eyes shot toward mine. "Do you know of it?"
"We were there," Astarion explained simply. "Spent the night among the filth. It was-"
She clapped her hands together so abruptly that the sound echoed throughout the cavernous ruin. "You are truly a miracle to our woes. Tell me of them – their number, their fortifications, their able-bodied fighters. We must seize upon any information we can to procure the weapon."
The goblin warchief excitedly roared. "Fantastic. We won't have to get that fookin' bear of a man to talk!"
She whipped her head around toward the goblin. "Your men must continue weakening the druid. I have encountered their ilk many times before in my travels – do not underestimate the power of a Wild Shape in stealthy operations."
The goblin nodded in understanding, then glanced toward the rest of us expectantly.
So Halsin was here. I wasn't sure how powerful a druid like himself might truly be, but it was impressive that they were holding him captive for all this time just the same. Goblins were the low-level threats in most of the video games or books I'd read before, the kind of enemy that the true villains exploit to die in droves in the movie's climax.
Karlach gestured toward a spot along one of the distended, winding paths miles from Moonhaven's ruins. "They've got some tricky magic hiding the entrance, making it hard to spot unless you got a feel for what you're looking for. Don't really know how that all works – Gale?"
The wizard perked up and nodded. "The specific druidic ways are unknown to me, nor are illusions a specialty, but they are aptly hiding all the same. Their current leader plots to complete a ritual to make the place virtually impregnable through all but the most determined mages to circumvent it's effects. Perhaps entering from the air may be possible, but they believe it strong enough to make a ground assault impossible."
Minthara cursed in Elvish – or maybe another language. "These wretches dare to defy Her will. One of our warbands brings the spoils of Waukeen's Rest back to Moonrise Towers, but there are others that can be called into the area within a day if pressed. We must work swiftly to secure this Emerald Grove to take what rightfully belongs the Absolute."
"From the sound of it, Kagha will finish her spell sooner than later. What is this weapon the druids hide?" I asked.
I hadn't a clue of what they were looking for. Could the Idol of their nature god be the thing we want? Not sure what kind of weapon a little statue could be, but they were channeling a lot of green magic light through it.
Minthara grabbed a piece of charcoal and etched a quick, lazy sketch of what might be a spiky orb – no, a multisided object with spines. "The Absolute's visions in my dreams were clear – this is what She seeks."
"Your drawing is not as clear as you think it is," Astarion quipped.
"Perhaps if our ta- minds commune, you can share what you saw," I suggested and tried to actively push my own mental connection toward hers.
The effort was clumsy and not at all as easily performed as it sounded in that suggestion. I fumbled to adequately forge a connection, and had Minthara not earlier touched my mind in a not at all elegant way, I might have been unsuccessful. As it was, I finally felt something click into place as my tadpole communicated with her own.
An image of a multisided device covered in runic markings crystallized in my mind. Each rune, etched in a soft orange color compared to the gray metal of its sides, was different from the rest. A soft, orange glow emanated from it that reminded me, strangely, of fire. Where its sides connected ended in spiked protrusions that looked almost like you could use them to twist the sides in and out of place, like an -
"Huh. That's an infernal puzzle box," Karlach suggested as the memory of the object filtered into everyone's mental connection. "Or at least, something close to it. Reminds me of the kind of thing Zariel would keep around to hold a secret, or maybe somethin' powerful. Can't read the runes though, but I've always been a shit reader."
Wyll held a hand forward and snapped his fingers, conjuring a small illusion of the object for all to see. It was not quite the same as the one in Minthara's memories, but it was close enough to provide the needed details. The goblin and the drow studied the image alongside the five of us. "I have heard of these as well, though I have never seen one. They can fetch a high price among fiends who wish to know the secrets of their contents. I've never heard of one as a weapon."
The Absolute's voice was clear – aid her Chosen Three in the search for the "Prism." That certainly looked like one, but what kind of energy this Prism reacted to was unlikely to just be a shining light creating a rainbow.
"Any ideas on what the druids would want with an infernal puzzle box?" I asked, to no answer. "Would Halsin know?"
Minthara huffed. "Be my guest. Perhaps, True Soul, you'll have more luck than these miscreants. Regardless, when you're finished, come back here to discuss plans for this raid on the Emerald Grove. I have ideas."
Despite the more than adequate wear and tear, this was still easily the most fortified area in the region. One well-defended bridge leading to the courtyard outside, good vantage points from high elevations, and even a spider-infested pit that must be a drow invention would make it difficult to assault. It would serve the needs of Her followers well, and the vibe of the place was one of celebration. They were in chipper spirits, and I wondered idly what the nearest victory of Her grace was.
If the druids were particularly savvy and focused instead on their strengths in magical offense rather than this silly defensive ploy, I wondered how the fight would go. Heavy losses on both sides, but the Absolute promised great gifts for those who put everything on the line for Her. How difficult would it be for them to fight not on their turf?
"Minthara will want a field report – she likely schemes even now with the goblin war chiefs. I must speak with Dror Ragzlin."
Edowin gave us detailed instructions on where to go, and it was interesting how easy it was to navigate the interior of this sanctum. Perhaps it was intuition, perhaps it was the tadpole, perhaps it was the Absolute's guidance. Regardless, the five of us found the woman in question while the siblings left to their own work.
This Minthara was an elf, though one with rather darkened skin and the garb of a stalwart warrior covered in spider-silk-infused armor. A drow, then, whose spindled mace dangled at her side. Bright white hair cut short, she leaned over a hand-drawn map of the region and discussed quietly with a wiry goblin warrior. The yellow-skinned putrid creature wielded twin scimitars in a cross along his back, and despite his smaller stature, I was sure that he would still easily serve as valuable fodder.
"Our chiefs grow restless, and we can only cull so many of our young to feed the ogres," the goblin suggested as we approached. "The longer we wait, the worse thing's will get."
"I'm aware," the drow answered tersely. "We must seize the weapon. If our scouts are useless, then we should-" She paused as she glanced up to see us approach, and her eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
Gale stepped forward. "I am Gale of Waterdeep, and these companions of mine are here to report to you."
"I have never heard of you," the woman barked warily.
"Likewise before today," Astarion countered. "You and your ilk do not seem particularly effective, so I am not surprised I know little of your exploits."
The woman's shorter stature rose to her full height, and while she was a head and a half shorter than Karlach, the shadow she cast along the wall in the dancing torchlight was twice as large.
"True Soul Edowin believed you would like to speak to us," I redirected. "You have known Her vision longer – what need does the Absolute have that we can fulfill?"
The drow nearly directed her ire from Astarion's challenge toward myself and hesitated for only a moment. A… connection solidified between us, a bond forged from thought and experience alone, as Edowin had before. She poked her mind forward like a spiked bludgeon, and a flash of impressions that were not my own connected us both.
"Hmm. I thought you merely Branded," she remarked, locking eyes with each of us in turn. A telepathic grip on each of us confirmed her suspicions – we were like Edowin, not recruits like Brynna or Andrick. "She has provided when in need. Five new True Souls on the eve of our victory – a fantastic sign. The war bands are restless, and we seek to strike soon."
"Why attack?" Karlach asked. "What use does this have for us?"
Minthara glanced toward the hand-drawn map spread across the table and pointed to several locations that were circled nearby. The bubbling marshlands where Auntie Ethel may lie in wait to meet with us. The beach on the bank of the Chionthar River where the nautiloid crashed. The Risen Road that led toward a winding pass through the mountains. To the west, a series of darkened fields outside something called Reincewin Town and Moonrise Towers. The space between was vague on distance and detail, and the amount of uncertainty about what they may find anywhere was clear.
More importantly, one place along the Mountain Pass had a deep red line crossed through it – what might have once been a trading post called Waukeen's Rest had clearly been searched recently.
"We seek a weapon paramount to the Absolute's cause," the drow explained, somewhat uncertainly. "It is only a matter of time before we pry it from the cold, dead hands of the druids and their little devilkin refugees."
"You think the Emerald Grove harbors it?" I asked.
Her eyes shot toward mine. "Do you know of it?"
"We were there," Astarion explained simply. "Spent the night among the filth. It was-"
She clapped her hands together so abruptly that the sound echoed throughout the cavernous ruin. "You are truly a miracle to our woes. Tell me of them – their number, their fortifications, their able-bodied fighters. We must seize upon any information we can to procure the weapon."
The goblin warchief excitedly roared. "Fantastic. We won't have to get that fookin' bear of a man to talk!"
She whipped her head around toward the goblin. "Your men must continue weakening the druid. I have encountered their ilk many times before in my travels – do not underestimate the power of a Wild Shape in stealthy operations."
The goblin nodded in understanding, then glanced toward the rest of us expectantly.
So Halsin was here. I wasn't sure how powerful a druid like himself might truly be, but it was impressive that they were holding him captive for all this time just the same. Goblins were the low-level threats in most of the video games or books I'd read before, the kind of enemy that the true villains exploit to die in droves in the movie's climax.
Karlach gestured toward a spot along one of the distended, winding paths miles from Moonhaven's ruins. "They've got some tricky magic hiding the entrance, making it hard to spot unless you got a feel for what you're looking for. Don't really know how that all works – Gale?"
The wizard perked up and nodded. "The specific druidic ways are unknown to me, nor are illusions a specialty, but they are aptly hiding all the same. Their current leader plots to complete a ritual to make the place virtually impregnable through all but the most determined mages to circumvent it's effects. Perhaps entering from the air may be possible, but they believe it strong enough to make a ground assault impossible."
Minthara cursed in Elvish – or maybe another language. "These wretches dare to defy Her will. One of our warbands brings the spoils of Waukeen's Rest back to Moonrise Towers, but there are others that can be called into the area within a day if pressed. We must work swiftly to secure this Emerald Grove to take what rightfully belongs the Absolute."
"From the sound of it, Kagha will finish her spell sooner than later. What is this weapon the druids hide?" I asked.
I hadn't a clue of what they were looking for. Could the Idol of their nature god be the thing we want? Not sure what kind of weapon a little statue could be, but they were channeling a lot of green magic light through it.
Minthara grabbed a piece of charcoal and etched a quick, lazy sketch of what might be a spiky orb – no, a multisided object with spines. "The Absolute's visions in my dreams were clear – this is what She seeks."
"Your drawing is not as clear as you think it is," Astarion quipped.
"Perhaps if our ta- minds commune, you can share what you saw," I suggested and tried to actively push my own mental connection toward hers.
The effort was clumsy and not at all as easily performed as it sounded in that suggestion. I fumbled to adequately forge a connection, and had Minthara not earlier touched my mind in a not at all elegant way, I might have been unsuccessful. As it was, I finally felt something click into place as my tadpole communicated with her own.
An image of a multisided device covered in runic markings crystallized in my mind. Each rune, etched in a soft orange color compared to the gray metal of its sides, was different from the rest. A soft, orange glow emanated from it that reminded me, strangely, of fire. Where its sides connected ended in spiked protrusions that looked almost like you could use them to twist the sides in and out of place, like an -
"Huh. That's an infernal puzzle box," Karlach suggested as the memory of the object filtered into everyone's mental connection. "Or at least, something close to it. Reminds me of the kind of thing Zariel would keep around to hold a secret, or maybe somethin' powerful. Can't read the runes though, but I've always been a shit reader."
Wyll held a hand forward and snapped his fingers, conjuring a small illusion of the object for all to see. It was not quite the same as the one in Minthara's memories, but it was close enough to provide the needed details. The goblin and the drow studied the image alongside the five of us. "I have heard of these as well, though I have never seen one. They can fetch a high price among fiends who wish to know the secrets of their contents. I've never heard of one as a weapon."
The Absolute's voice was clear – aid her Chosen Three in the search for the "Prism." That certainly looked like one, but what kind of energy this Prism reacted to was unlikely to just be a shining light creating a rainbow.
"Any ideas on what the druids would want with an infernal puzzle box?" I asked, to no answer. "Would Halsin know?"
Minthara huffed. "Be my guest. Perhaps, True Soul, you'll have more luck than these miscreants. Regardless, when you're finished, come back here to discuss plans for this raid on the Emerald Grove. I have ideas."
26
- Location
- Alabama
"Fascinating, if a bit of a waste."
The innermost room of this level of the temple had once been a dungeon, perhaps used for the town's local justice when Moonhaven was bustling. Three wrought-iron gates covered interior cells, and Minthara and the rest had turned this place into a hastily crafted prison of sorts alongside a place to keep their worg pets locked away while they were not being used. A pair of the ferocious canine monsters lay agitated behind the bars of one of the cells, while the other cell along the back wall held a barely conscious bear that somehow dwarfed them in size, and they were nearly as tall as horses.
Several goblins took turns tormenting the half-man, half-bear, including a pair of tiny children who would no doubt grow to become as monstrous as their elder kin. They giggled while they tossed rocks at the bleeding bear, biding the time before a goblin with a bloody machete nearly as tall as his torso could approach to butcher the man.
The goblins showed no sign whatsoever that they feared the druid's potential wrath, should he break free of his chains and flee the room. Confidence that the Absolute would hold a reward for them was their only good quality in the face of potential doom. I wondered if She would stoop low enough to bless a trio of tribal kids who brought nothing but misery to the table, or if She might instead reward the butcher whose blades were keeping the druid too weakened to escape.
"Does not seem wasteful to me," Astarion remarked as we approached. "The stories they tell on city streets of how the druids of the wilds can call down thunderstorms, summon plagues, and curse entire bloodlines come to mind. Perhaps they should merely gut him instead, true, but I cannot blame them. He could be a font of information if he would learn to cooperate."
I frowned – easier said than done. Nothing should be feared more than a person who believed their cause was just. While I had no doubt these goblins could remove him should it come to that, why fight at all if you can merely debilitate him into a forced submission?
Or better – merely telepathically steal whatever secrets he was holding.
I had clumsily formed a connection to Minthara earlier and unintentionally every time before that. I tried to force the wriggler to listen, to latch onto whatever psychic power connected it to something else. It was easier to form the right mental state to make it happen, this time, but it did not work. There was no sliver of thought from beneath the surface of the druid Halsin, no inkling of what he may be thinking beyond the expressions of his bleeding bear form.
"I cannot connect to him," I muttered in slight frustration, more akin to knowing my new toy wasn't working than to legitimate grievance that I could not read the elf's mind.
"He holds no gift of the Absolute as we do," Wyll explained carefully, stony eye on the right side of his face dull in the torchlight.
"It seems our psionic talents are limited to those who carry Her grace," Gale explained. "Perhaps such abilities can be further developed – I know of some colleagues in academia who were so attuned to their mental prowess that they gained abilities entirely separate from the elements of wizardry we studied."
Interesting, but not relevant right now. They would be useful, had I the time.
The bear stiffened as new folks strode forward, his muscles straining under the weakness they'd inflicted on him. One of the goblin torturers tossed a small vial of liquid up and down like you might juggle a baseball, and they'd poisoned him too.
"Look – I would relish in watching you hurt," Astarion began, "but we are on a tight schedule. The sooner you tell us what you know, the sooner your misery ends."
I glanced toward the pale elf, remembering what I'd witnessed in his mind link earlier. Was this Astarion's natural state as a vampire coming to the forefront, or was he just gung-ho about mercy-killing? The fact that he'd hid the truth well at all was silly, in retrospect, but I would not have jumped to a bloodsucker just from his ability to walk in the sun.
The bear merely huffed.
"He ain't talkin," a female goblin dressed in thickened leather armor shouted, her blade dripping with half-dried blood. "We've been at it for too long. Last time I had a mark like this, she died before I could even learn a thing."
Karlach smacked her fist into her palm, a bit of fire erupting around the surface of her skin for a moment. Was she intentionally forcing that devilish machine she had for a heart to produce heat, or was it something that she just dealt with?
"You bastards ain't seen nothing," the tiefling shouted and then gripped the metal railing. For several seconds of her breathing growing more erratic, she finally roared. Flames erupted from every exposed bit of flesh on the red-skinned woman's body, and all of that heat began to melt the bars of the cage.
For a second, the goblins cowered in surprise and shock, ready to shout for her to stop, but she gripped the melted hot irons in her palms. Twisting, pulling, yanking, crushing – the superheated metal bars became a horrifically off-kilter ringlet of metal. Still so hot to the touch it glowed red, she winced in her own pain holding it.
"Those little nature loving freaks love thorns so much, you deserve a crown."
Karlach pulled open the rest of the bars. The druid, stuck in bear form, tried to resist with a weak clawed paw to the woman's hip, but it was slow and telegraphed. She crossed the distance a second later and forced the heated, spiked metal crown of thorns atop Halsin's bear head.
He howled in pain as his fur singed, as his flesh cooked. The goblins clapped excitedly, the little children giggling. He tried to pull at the new item burning his head, but he didn't have the limbs to do it as a bear, especially not while he was in this bad a shape.
Karlach could not settle down her heat and stepped back to the back of the room, several yards away, and the fact that we could still feel her skin like a fiery furnace in the corner of the room was impressive even as she slowly cooled it down.
"Talk, druid, or you'll get some matching manacles!" She challenged.
Gale studied the bear form and stepped forward. Watching the man in pain made the wizard uncomfortable, not because he believed the cause was wrong but because he was not heartless. I could… sympathize – I wanted the Prism for Her as much as any of us, but I hadn't intended this to be anything more than perhaps a threatening conversation.
What had the Blood War done to Karlach? How had she lived through it? And, more importantly, what was the Absolute's answer to the Blood War, Zariel, and all the rest? These were questions I wanted to answer, so I could only imagine how the tiefling woman felt.
"It is remarkable that you have yet to yield." Gale rubbed at his chin.
"Tell us what you know the Prism, the weapon," I finally said. "I will heal those wounds on your head if you tell me what we want to know."
The bear made a sound that… may have been laughter.
A blast of sickly green power from the end of Wyll's rapier left a hole in the space where Halsin's left ursine flank had just been. A second happened in such rapid succession afterward that the surprise of it forced Halsin's form to warble.
For a half-second, the bear became a thickly muscular elven man. Karlach's crown remained attached but was around the man's neck and left shoulder rather than his head, renewing the bleeding as it settled into a new place. He tried to shift again, but the exhaustion was too much for him, and he slumped into near unconsciousness, now an elf.
"I wasn't lying," I stressed, gesturing to Wyll. "Do the hologram trick. Show him."
The human stared at me like I had grown a second head at the word hologram, but eventually realized and formed the illusion once more of the Prism.
"Tell us what you know, and I'll get that thing off your head and get you patched up."
A long moment passed and then Halsin weakly said, "Why?"
"Cooperate," I argued, "and once the dust settles, you can live to tell everyone about the glory of the Absolute."
What I was trying to do clicked for Wyll in that moment, it seemed, because he added, "If the Absolute took down the great Halsin of the Emerald Grove, then some will see that as a sign to rally to Her cause as a righteous one."
The elf merely laughed again, this time causing him to wince. "You think this will endear the population to support your false god?"
"This will terrify those who stand against Her," Wyll countered. "If Her followers can stop an archdruid, then many who believed themselves capable to resist will be inspired to yield instead."
The elf studied our group for a long moment and then locked eyes with me, as though seeing past me and Astarion. "You and the elf are undead, and you claim to be a healer. How?"
I raised an eyebrow but decided this was the first moment of genuine conversation. Why squander it?"I am a revenant, though the exact reason why is unknown. For the healing, I utilize ki to heal and to harm."
He blinked with a bit of surprise. "An undead revenant with a mastery of one's life force, where there should be nothing but a corrupted power holding you together." He coughed through weakness. "A curious thing."
"What- How do you know about that?"
"I have lived a long time and have witnessed those who empower their ki as a weapon or a tool," he explained. "Never have I seen such with an undead creature. I don't know what powers your goddess toys with, but everyone who stands against the aberrant, the cursed, and the undead across Toril will not stand for such flagrant atrocities to the natural order."
I glanced toward my hands as I made a fist. Fuck this guy. The Absolute didn't even do this to me – that I knew of – and yet, I was still offended at the insinuation that I was an atrocity.
"The Prism," Astarion repeated, pointing with an angular finger toward the illusion still draped over Wyll's open palm. "Talk. Now."
The druid chuckled weakly. "First the revenant, now the vampire. What's next for the cult? A lich? A mummy lord, perhaps."
For the first time in front of us, the pale elf bared his fangs and hissed.
"Could we just get on with it?" Karlach shouted. "The sooner you tell us what we wanna know, the sooner you get my friend's grubby little fingers over those wounds of yours."
The elven druid stared for a long moment, pointedly avoiding the illusion in his line of sight. Then, he turned slightly toward it and shook his head meekly. "I have never seen anything like that object. From its make, it holds none of the qualities the Treefather would wish to preserve. The Emerald Grove is not harboring an item like that, nor do I know where it may be."
"He's lying," one of the goblins suggested.
I was not sure.
"The Grove does not have this object, and it would be a waste of time, of effort, and of life to devote any of your forces to raid it any further."
Hmm.
"I believe him," I admitted. "He's honest." The others were of mixed reactions, and I continued, "At the very least, he doesn't know where it might be among the Grove."
Gale nodded. "Perhaps the Prism is a secret of Kagha."
At the mention of the name, the druid's eyes widened. "What do you know of her?"
"We spoke with her, mere days ago. She threatened one of the tiefling kids who tried to steal your idol," I explained, fingers palming the locker Arabella's parents gave me. "I stopped her from killing the kid in the end, but at this point, it feels like I wasted my time."
From the look on the druid's face, he hadn't the slightest idea how to react. He knew we were not mistaken about the details, and perhaps he was too weak to think clearly about how he should respond. His fingers fidgeted at his side.
I pointed with a hand toward Karlach. "If I had to guess, one of the tiefling refugees holds this 'infernal puzzle box.' Maybe it was taken from the devilkin's home city of Elturel, and the Absolute wants it for some power it holds."
Gale started to nod, and Astarion pondered aloud the possibilities. Karlach and Wyll studied one another, and it was all I could do to shove the nearest goblin out of the way.
Lightning surged in the space where the butcher had been standing moments ago, a great arcing bolt of crackling green light that nearly cooked the flesh of any who touched it. The sizzle of ozone carried in the air even as the druid prepared to strike again, another blast erupting and this time successfully landing.
Two warriors of the Absolute, former followers of the goblin god, fell at once when electricity cooked their skin from the outside in. Weapons clattered to the ground even as Wyll moved to intercept the elven druid before he could finish a third blast of electricity.
I raced toward him, faster than even the slippery Astarion. Drawing a shortsword in the same moment I prepared a fistful of harming ki, I narrowly missed my strike as the druid changed shape to something far, far smaller.
A zipping housefly moved nearly invisibly in the air, blending in with the disgusting smell of the worg chamber. Gale's hasty pure blast of frigid air missed and collided instead with the floor, leaving a frosted surface but no dead fly.
"Get him!" a goblin shouted, but it was too late. Karlach could not muster up her heat fast enough to slow down the fly, nor swing quickly enough to swat the creature out of the air. Astarion's slicing daggers were swift but not swift enough. Wyll lamented that he could not "command a plague of fell parasites" as he once could.
Halsin, despite his injuries and the poison running through his veins, had enough in his tank to slip into the interior of the sanctum. He could be anywhere, doing anything. Spying on those inside, fleeing for his life back to the Grove, or buying his time to strike once he recovered.
The latter option was perhaps scariest – in a mere eight seconds, he'd killed three goblins and injured two more with electrical power. Could we find him before he attacked, before he ambushed a poor, unfortunate soul who could not possibly withstand the onslaught?
Minthara would not be pleased.
The innermost room of this level of the temple had once been a dungeon, perhaps used for the town's local justice when Moonhaven was bustling. Three wrought-iron gates covered interior cells, and Minthara and the rest had turned this place into a hastily crafted prison of sorts alongside a place to keep their worg pets locked away while they were not being used. A pair of the ferocious canine monsters lay agitated behind the bars of one of the cells, while the other cell along the back wall held a barely conscious bear that somehow dwarfed them in size, and they were nearly as tall as horses.
Several goblins took turns tormenting the half-man, half-bear, including a pair of tiny children who would no doubt grow to become as monstrous as their elder kin. They giggled while they tossed rocks at the bleeding bear, biding the time before a goblin with a bloody machete nearly as tall as his torso could approach to butcher the man.
The goblins showed no sign whatsoever that they feared the druid's potential wrath, should he break free of his chains and flee the room. Confidence that the Absolute would hold a reward for them was their only good quality in the face of potential doom. I wondered if She would stoop low enough to bless a trio of tribal kids who brought nothing but misery to the table, or if She might instead reward the butcher whose blades were keeping the druid too weakened to escape.
"Does not seem wasteful to me," Astarion remarked as we approached. "The stories they tell on city streets of how the druids of the wilds can call down thunderstorms, summon plagues, and curse entire bloodlines come to mind. Perhaps they should merely gut him instead, true, but I cannot blame them. He could be a font of information if he would learn to cooperate."
I frowned – easier said than done. Nothing should be feared more than a person who believed their cause was just. While I had no doubt these goblins could remove him should it come to that, why fight at all if you can merely debilitate him into a forced submission?
Or better – merely telepathically steal whatever secrets he was holding.
I had clumsily formed a connection to Minthara earlier and unintentionally every time before that. I tried to force the wriggler to listen, to latch onto whatever psychic power connected it to something else. It was easier to form the right mental state to make it happen, this time, but it did not work. There was no sliver of thought from beneath the surface of the druid Halsin, no inkling of what he may be thinking beyond the expressions of his bleeding bear form.
"I cannot connect to him," I muttered in slight frustration, more akin to knowing my new toy wasn't working than to legitimate grievance that I could not read the elf's mind.
"He holds no gift of the Absolute as we do," Wyll explained carefully, stony eye on the right side of his face dull in the torchlight.
"It seems our psionic talents are limited to those who carry Her grace," Gale explained. "Perhaps such abilities can be further developed – I know of some colleagues in academia who were so attuned to their mental prowess that they gained abilities entirely separate from the elements of wizardry we studied."
Interesting, but not relevant right now. They would be useful, had I the time.
The bear stiffened as new folks strode forward, his muscles straining under the weakness they'd inflicted on him. One of the goblin torturers tossed a small vial of liquid up and down like you might juggle a baseball, and they'd poisoned him too.
"Look – I would relish in watching you hurt," Astarion began, "but we are on a tight schedule. The sooner you tell us what you know, the sooner your misery ends."
I glanced toward the pale elf, remembering what I'd witnessed in his mind link earlier. Was this Astarion's natural state as a vampire coming to the forefront, or was he just gung-ho about mercy-killing? The fact that he'd hid the truth well at all was silly, in retrospect, but I would not have jumped to a bloodsucker just from his ability to walk in the sun.
The bear merely huffed.
"He ain't talkin," a female goblin dressed in thickened leather armor shouted, her blade dripping with half-dried blood. "We've been at it for too long. Last time I had a mark like this, she died before I could even learn a thing."
Karlach smacked her fist into her palm, a bit of fire erupting around the surface of her skin for a moment. Was she intentionally forcing that devilish machine she had for a heart to produce heat, or was it something that she just dealt with?
"You bastards ain't seen nothing," the tiefling shouted and then gripped the metal railing. For several seconds of her breathing growing more erratic, she finally roared. Flames erupted from every exposed bit of flesh on the red-skinned woman's body, and all of that heat began to melt the bars of the cage.
For a second, the goblins cowered in surprise and shock, ready to shout for her to stop, but she gripped the melted hot irons in her palms. Twisting, pulling, yanking, crushing – the superheated metal bars became a horrifically off-kilter ringlet of metal. Still so hot to the touch it glowed red, she winced in her own pain holding it.
"Those little nature loving freaks love thorns so much, you deserve a crown."
Karlach pulled open the rest of the bars. The druid, stuck in bear form, tried to resist with a weak clawed paw to the woman's hip, but it was slow and telegraphed. She crossed the distance a second later and forced the heated, spiked metal crown of thorns atop Halsin's bear head.
He howled in pain as his fur singed, as his flesh cooked. The goblins clapped excitedly, the little children giggling. He tried to pull at the new item burning his head, but he didn't have the limbs to do it as a bear, especially not while he was in this bad a shape.
Karlach could not settle down her heat and stepped back to the back of the room, several yards away, and the fact that we could still feel her skin like a fiery furnace in the corner of the room was impressive even as she slowly cooled it down.
"Talk, druid, or you'll get some matching manacles!" She challenged.
Gale studied the bear form and stepped forward. Watching the man in pain made the wizard uncomfortable, not because he believed the cause was wrong but because he was not heartless. I could… sympathize – I wanted the Prism for Her as much as any of us, but I hadn't intended this to be anything more than perhaps a threatening conversation.
What had the Blood War done to Karlach? How had she lived through it? And, more importantly, what was the Absolute's answer to the Blood War, Zariel, and all the rest? These were questions I wanted to answer, so I could only imagine how the tiefling woman felt.
"It is remarkable that you have yet to yield." Gale rubbed at his chin.
"Tell us what you know the Prism, the weapon," I finally said. "I will heal those wounds on your head if you tell me what we want to know."
The bear made a sound that… may have been laughter.
A blast of sickly green power from the end of Wyll's rapier left a hole in the space where Halsin's left ursine flank had just been. A second happened in such rapid succession afterward that the surprise of it forced Halsin's form to warble.
For a half-second, the bear became a thickly muscular elven man. Karlach's crown remained attached but was around the man's neck and left shoulder rather than his head, renewing the bleeding as it settled into a new place. He tried to shift again, but the exhaustion was too much for him, and he slumped into near unconsciousness, now an elf.
"I wasn't lying," I stressed, gesturing to Wyll. "Do the hologram trick. Show him."
The human stared at me like I had grown a second head at the word hologram, but eventually realized and formed the illusion once more of the Prism.
"Tell us what you know, and I'll get that thing off your head and get you patched up."
A long moment passed and then Halsin weakly said, "Why?"
"Cooperate," I argued, "and once the dust settles, you can live to tell everyone about the glory of the Absolute."
What I was trying to do clicked for Wyll in that moment, it seemed, because he added, "If the Absolute took down the great Halsin of the Emerald Grove, then some will see that as a sign to rally to Her cause as a righteous one."
The elf merely laughed again, this time causing him to wince. "You think this will endear the population to support your false god?"
"This will terrify those who stand against Her," Wyll countered. "If Her followers can stop an archdruid, then many who believed themselves capable to resist will be inspired to yield instead."
The elf studied our group for a long moment and then locked eyes with me, as though seeing past me and Astarion. "You and the elf are undead, and you claim to be a healer. How?"
I raised an eyebrow but decided this was the first moment of genuine conversation. Why squander it?"I am a revenant, though the exact reason why is unknown. For the healing, I utilize ki to heal and to harm."
He blinked with a bit of surprise. "An undead revenant with a mastery of one's life force, where there should be nothing but a corrupted power holding you together." He coughed through weakness. "A curious thing."
"What- How do you know about that?"
"I have lived a long time and have witnessed those who empower their ki as a weapon or a tool," he explained. "Never have I seen such with an undead creature. I don't know what powers your goddess toys with, but everyone who stands against the aberrant, the cursed, and the undead across Toril will not stand for such flagrant atrocities to the natural order."
I glanced toward my hands as I made a fist. Fuck this guy. The Absolute didn't even do this to me – that I knew of – and yet, I was still offended at the insinuation that I was an atrocity.
"The Prism," Astarion repeated, pointing with an angular finger toward the illusion still draped over Wyll's open palm. "Talk. Now."
The druid chuckled weakly. "First the revenant, now the vampire. What's next for the cult? A lich? A mummy lord, perhaps."
For the first time in front of us, the pale elf bared his fangs and hissed.
"Could we just get on with it?" Karlach shouted. "The sooner you tell us what we wanna know, the sooner you get my friend's grubby little fingers over those wounds of yours."
The elven druid stared for a long moment, pointedly avoiding the illusion in his line of sight. Then, he turned slightly toward it and shook his head meekly. "I have never seen anything like that object. From its make, it holds none of the qualities the Treefather would wish to preserve. The Emerald Grove is not harboring an item like that, nor do I know where it may be."
"He's lying," one of the goblins suggested.
I was not sure.
"The Grove does not have this object, and it would be a waste of time, of effort, and of life to devote any of your forces to raid it any further."
Hmm.
"I believe him," I admitted. "He's honest." The others were of mixed reactions, and I continued, "At the very least, he doesn't know where it might be among the Grove."
Gale nodded. "Perhaps the Prism is a secret of Kagha."
At the mention of the name, the druid's eyes widened. "What do you know of her?"
"We spoke with her, mere days ago. She threatened one of the tiefling kids who tried to steal your idol," I explained, fingers palming the locker Arabella's parents gave me. "I stopped her from killing the kid in the end, but at this point, it feels like I wasted my time."
From the look on the druid's face, he hadn't the slightest idea how to react. He knew we were not mistaken about the details, and perhaps he was too weak to think clearly about how he should respond. His fingers fidgeted at his side.
I pointed with a hand toward Karlach. "If I had to guess, one of the tiefling refugees holds this 'infernal puzzle box.' Maybe it was taken from the devilkin's home city of Elturel, and the Absolute wants it for some power it holds."
Gale started to nod, and Astarion pondered aloud the possibilities. Karlach and Wyll studied one another, and it was all I could do to shove the nearest goblin out of the way.
Lightning surged in the space where the butcher had been standing moments ago, a great arcing bolt of crackling green light that nearly cooked the flesh of any who touched it. The sizzle of ozone carried in the air even as the druid prepared to strike again, another blast erupting and this time successfully landing.
Two warriors of the Absolute, former followers of the goblin god, fell at once when electricity cooked their skin from the outside in. Weapons clattered to the ground even as Wyll moved to intercept the elven druid before he could finish a third blast of electricity.
I raced toward him, faster than even the slippery Astarion. Drawing a shortsword in the same moment I prepared a fistful of harming ki, I narrowly missed my strike as the druid changed shape to something far, far smaller.
A zipping housefly moved nearly invisibly in the air, blending in with the disgusting smell of the worg chamber. Gale's hasty pure blast of frigid air missed and collided instead with the floor, leaving a frosted surface but no dead fly.
"Get him!" a goblin shouted, but it was too late. Karlach could not muster up her heat fast enough to slow down the fly, nor swing quickly enough to swat the creature out of the air. Astarion's slicing daggers were swift but not swift enough. Wyll lamented that he could not "command a plague of fell parasites" as he once could.
Halsin, despite his injuries and the poison running through his veins, had enough in his tank to slip into the interior of the sanctum. He could be anywhere, doing anything. Spying on those inside, fleeing for his life back to the Grove, or buying his time to strike once he recovered.
The latter option was perhaps scariest – in a mere eight seconds, he'd killed three goblins and injured two more with electrical power. Could we find him before he attacked, before he ambushed a poor, unfortunate soul who could not possibly withstand the onslaught?
Minthara would not be pleased.
Interlude: Shadowheart
- Location
- Alabama
Shadowheart was a lot of things – many of them she could not willingly remember – but a lover of kobolds and githyanki was not one of them. The former because far too often, the reptilian hound-like folk found themselves at the slaving service of entities that wished the end of cities everywhere. The latter because, well… they shouldn't be trusted.
Neither of her scaly companions were proving to fit the mold of her expectations, she had to admit to herself. Kurga pointed her frozen magic expertise toward their enemies quite well, such that Shadowheart feared she did not have enough of Lady Shar's favor to endure alone. Lae'zel was a beast with a blade, capable of drawing blood against dangers that would tower over the rest.
It was, ultimately, through their actions that broke the ambush before it could begin, and the bodies of several goblins littered the entrance to the abandoned village. Shadowheart had barely had to break her mace against the defenses of a goblin warrior once before her partners in tadpole affliction had ended the rest.
In her own defense, they had marched through without a rest to follow the likely trail of their target, and every hour brought more exhaustion to the cleric of Shar's muscles. She needed to rest, and so did they.
Kurga currently trailed icy wind from her clawed fingers, while several thick frozen knives pinned her target to the wall of an old barn. Blood too frozen to drip to the ground, the life essence of the goblin wizard instead hung like crimson iicicles inches below the wound. Shadowheart cleared her throat to suggest she take the lead in negotiations at this point, and the kobold relented while the gith fixated her gaze on her.
"We seek a devil in the guise of a tiefling," Shadowheart began simply, cutting to the chase. She would not be blessed with miracles of trickery without an understanding of when to be candid. "Have you seen any such tieflings lately?"
Unless things had changed in the last forty-eight hours drastically, the tiefling refugees in the Emerald Grove would not yet have moved on. If this goblin wizard knew of any, it would undoubtedly be the one Shadowheart had met.
The one who held a mindflayer tadpole as well.
"I seen plenty of 'em devil fucks," the vermin of a woman responded, trying to spit courageously through the agony of ice piercing her left and right arms. "Killed one just the other day who got too close. Got 'im right in the belly, and he doubled over and puked 'is own guts out."
Him.
Not her.
"A tiefling with one horn," Shadowheart corrected. "Feminine. Tall. Flaming sword on her back. Travels with a trio of men and a male elf."
The wizard giggled through the frozen pain, and Kurga decided she'd had enough. With a sweep of her hand, ice congealed even further and crept toward the wizard's heart, stopping just short of turning the creature's chest cavity into an ice box.
The goblin wanted to argue, but Lae'zel kicked lightly toward the body of one of her fallen comrades, which forced the nearly decapitated head to roll to the side. Instead, the goblin choked.
"I saw 'em, yeah!" the goblin pleaded. "Group of True Souls, they were. The Absolute's most favorite. Walked right past us into the camp o'er the bridge."
"How do we get to this camp?" Lae'zel asked, slicing longsword still at her side and in hand.
"All you's gotta do is head on through," the wizard stated slowly, gesturing not with her hands but with her eyes the direction they needes to go. "Heard somethin' big's happenin' tonight. Dunno what, but-"
"Thank you!" Kurga stated cheekily, then her eyes glowed as bright as frost on a winter's morning. With a whispered word of power under her breath, the kobold's spell completed its chilled cycle. As she released her focus on the manipulation of the arcane, the wizard had twin icicles sticking from both eyes, both ears, and the largest of them piercing bloody through the open mouth and jaw.
"Tskva. You did not think to ask what she knew was happening."
The kobold shrugged her shoulders. "Doesn't matter. Our target is in there. Fish her out, lop off her head, get a fancy paladin sword. It's a win-win-win if you ask me."
Shadowheart was unsettled at the entire venture, especially at the unknown term, "True Soul." The Absolute, she'd surmised from the battle cries of those goblins at the Grove, to be some new power in Toril, which was not an unknown or even historically uncommon phenomenon. Shadowheart had studied numerous records in the cloister of deities and quasi-deities that rose and fell with the ebb and flow of the centuries. Shadowheart held devotion to one such power that had withstood the test of time, but many others who were empowered or emboldened by their faith had not been so lucky. If this Absolute was one such new divinity, it had a steep hill to climb to achieve the permanent impact on history of a deity like the Lady of Loss.
But more than the mystery of the Absolute and its True Souls were the idea that Karlach and her party were all followers of this new faith the goblins held. The same goblin tribe that attacked the gates of the Emerald Grove? The ones Karlach were quite happy to disembowel even though they shared her faith? And this new knowledge that Karlach actually served the Archdevil of the first of the Nine Hells, Zariel?
There were too many layers upon layers.
"Something is amiss," she declared even as Kurga tried to loot the bodies of anything useful, including trying and failing to lift a marked barrel of firewine as tall as she was.
At their attention, she continued to summarize her wondering. "What use would Karlach's party gain by lying so profusely in the Grove after slaughtering nearly a dozen of their own comrades in faith? I can admire such deceptions if they hold some ulterior motive, but I cannot perceive what that motive may be." She paused, considering. "If that dwarf, Nettie, had been a skilled healer capable of removing these illithid tadpoles-"
Lae'zel clicked her tongue. "A fool's notion."
"- perhaps lying to gain your way inside by pretending to be the Grove's heroes would be useful, but Nettie was not able to heal such. Afterward, they continue their lies, learn of the former first druid's potential rescue-mission, and decide to investigate on behalf of the Grove. They leave the next morning to discover the truth of Halsin's whereabouts, something they likely already knew from their goblin allies."
"The ramblings of a mad-woman," Lae'zel decided, but Shadowheart shook her head in sudden realization.
"No, I am not mad." Shadowheart spun toward the downward slope that would lead to the bridge the wizard had mentioned. "In fact, I am more certain than ever."
"I guess the devil duped them all," Kurga declared simply. "Bet they don't know they got one of that Archdevil's servants among them."
Shadowheart did not have an answer for that, nor for much else. As many layers as there were, she knew they needed to move without all of the answers. Their mission was to kill the devil of Zariel, but that was decidedly more complex now that she held a camp full of goblin cultists around her to shield her from their approach.
"We should find a place to rest," Kurga decided, breaking their reverie.
"Now? Surrounded by enemy territory, you wish to rest now?" Lae'zel asked in genuine shock. "While an ghaik newborn scrambles our brains?"
Shadowheart winced, but she knew the kobold and the githyanki were both right.
"My confidence wanes, and my muscles ache," Shadowheart finally said, breaking the tie. "We take a couple of hours to recuperate and then we move to investigate. Whatever that goblin meant by tonight, we will resume our movements quickly enough to know what it will have meant."
Lae'zel cursed loudly but relented on account of nothing more than reasonable thinking.
Shadowheart stumbled awake with a foreign yet familiar voice swimming in her ear. A landscape of gossamer stars and multicolored lights appeared as far as she could see, and the texture of the ground beneath her fingers was rather soft but not at all like soil.
"I came just in time."
A chorus of sounds almost like multiple singing voices emanated from the palms of a brilliantly-dressed half-elven man with bright blond hair and gleaming golden plate mail. Prismatic in color like an aurora, he closed his palm, cutting the light and voices at once.
"We are in grave peril."
Shadowheart rose to sit up, trying to study her surroundings and understand this strange dream. This realm was… not material but instead of the Astral Plane, one of the dimensions of existence that suffuse every other realm, mortal and divine. An odd place for a dream, but worse – an odd time for such a vision. There was too much on her mind, and adding this? No.
"Did the Lady of Loss send you?" she asked, immediately thinking better of it. Shar would send not a holy knight but instead someone dressed in the garb of her famed Dark Justiciars. A role Shadowheart longed for. "No – who are you?"
"My name is not important, nor do I have much time." He offered her hand to Shadowheart, but the half-elf ignored it and stood, better focused on their surroundings.
They stood on a floating platform of rock in the midst of an expanse of nothingness. Distantly – or perhaps impossibly closely – floated a massive, bony skull covered in a prismatic barrier of great arcane power. This platform, and any others she could see, were not rock but instead the petrified flesh of a once living thing of godly proportions.
Oh – that was a god, once. Shadowheart promised herself then and there that she would do everything in her power to ensure that this would not be Shar's fate for as long as she drew breath.
"Why am I here? I assume this is no dream."
"I am afraid not," he said simply. "Forgive my intrusion, Shadowheart, but I am in need of your assistance, and you are in continual need of mine."
She frowned. "What could I possibly offer you?"
The idea of a foreign paladin coming into her dream and asking for assistance with something that would undoubtedly fly counter to the wishes of her patron goddess was madness to her. Shar held few allies among the divine, and it was that loss of connection that made the Lady of Loss ever stronger.
"I have protected you and your allies," the paladin explained. A flash of memory flickered across the dream, and she saw the golden-plated man standing before the pod on the nautiloid where she once lay trapped. Another – she watched as it was his prismatic magic that shielded her as her pod crashed into the River Chionthar, that helped usher her to the river's edge before she ever gained consciousness.
"It is my magic that keeps you from transforming," he further explained. "You will not become a mindflayer. Not while I am around."
She peered at him, uncertain. "And? If you speak the truth, then consider me grateful. But, I doubt you do so out of the kindess of your heart. Spit it out – what do you want with me?"
He strode forward and waved a guantleted hand toward the shimmering skull in the distance. Her eyes widened as she followed where his fingers pointed – spectral figures tried to sunder the shimmering barrier, zipping across its surface like meteors and hammering blow after blow against the defenses.
"A fight for the heart of Faerun, a fight we are losing. For now." He turned quickly to meet my eyes. "Shadowheart, until hours ago, I protected several more from the corruptive influence of these illithid tadpoles. Now, I protect three – Lae'zel, Kurga, and you."
She considered the words for a long moment until realization sparked in her mind. "You speak of Karlach and her group."
He nodded. "Just as I intervened for you aboard the nautiloid, I, too, kept the influence of the tadpoles at bay for them. Until this morning."
Shadowheart was not sure what to say to that, nor did she really know how important his words were. As impressive as a barrier around a dead-god-skull might be, she did not know what to think. "What do you want, then?"
"For my efforts to not be in vain," he answered simply. "Find the others before their subverted minds cause undue harm. Or worse – before they transform and become impossible to save."
Neither of her scaly companions were proving to fit the mold of her expectations, she had to admit to herself. Kurga pointed her frozen magic expertise toward their enemies quite well, such that Shadowheart feared she did not have enough of Lady Shar's favor to endure alone. Lae'zel was a beast with a blade, capable of drawing blood against dangers that would tower over the rest.
It was, ultimately, through their actions that broke the ambush before it could begin, and the bodies of several goblins littered the entrance to the abandoned village. Shadowheart had barely had to break her mace against the defenses of a goblin warrior once before her partners in tadpole affliction had ended the rest.
In her own defense, they had marched through without a rest to follow the likely trail of their target, and every hour brought more exhaustion to the cleric of Shar's muscles. She needed to rest, and so did they.
Kurga currently trailed icy wind from her clawed fingers, while several thick frozen knives pinned her target to the wall of an old barn. Blood too frozen to drip to the ground, the life essence of the goblin wizard instead hung like crimson iicicles inches below the wound. Shadowheart cleared her throat to suggest she take the lead in negotiations at this point, and the kobold relented while the gith fixated her gaze on her.
"We seek a devil in the guise of a tiefling," Shadowheart began simply, cutting to the chase. She would not be blessed with miracles of trickery without an understanding of when to be candid. "Have you seen any such tieflings lately?"
Unless things had changed in the last forty-eight hours drastically, the tiefling refugees in the Emerald Grove would not yet have moved on. If this goblin wizard knew of any, it would undoubtedly be the one Shadowheart had met.
The one who held a mindflayer tadpole as well.
"I seen plenty of 'em devil fucks," the vermin of a woman responded, trying to spit courageously through the agony of ice piercing her left and right arms. "Killed one just the other day who got too close. Got 'im right in the belly, and he doubled over and puked 'is own guts out."
Him.
Not her.
"A tiefling with one horn," Shadowheart corrected. "Feminine. Tall. Flaming sword on her back. Travels with a trio of men and a male elf."
The wizard giggled through the frozen pain, and Kurga decided she'd had enough. With a sweep of her hand, ice congealed even further and crept toward the wizard's heart, stopping just short of turning the creature's chest cavity into an ice box.
The goblin wanted to argue, but Lae'zel kicked lightly toward the body of one of her fallen comrades, which forced the nearly decapitated head to roll to the side. Instead, the goblin choked.
"I saw 'em, yeah!" the goblin pleaded. "Group of True Souls, they were. The Absolute's most favorite. Walked right past us into the camp o'er the bridge."
"How do we get to this camp?" Lae'zel asked, slicing longsword still at her side and in hand.
"All you's gotta do is head on through," the wizard stated slowly, gesturing not with her hands but with her eyes the direction they needes to go. "Heard somethin' big's happenin' tonight. Dunno what, but-"
"Thank you!" Kurga stated cheekily, then her eyes glowed as bright as frost on a winter's morning. With a whispered word of power under her breath, the kobold's spell completed its chilled cycle. As she released her focus on the manipulation of the arcane, the wizard had twin icicles sticking from both eyes, both ears, and the largest of them piercing bloody through the open mouth and jaw.
"Tskva. You did not think to ask what she knew was happening."
The kobold shrugged her shoulders. "Doesn't matter. Our target is in there. Fish her out, lop off her head, get a fancy paladin sword. It's a win-win-win if you ask me."
Shadowheart was unsettled at the entire venture, especially at the unknown term, "True Soul." The Absolute, she'd surmised from the battle cries of those goblins at the Grove, to be some new power in Toril, which was not an unknown or even historically uncommon phenomenon. Shadowheart had studied numerous records in the cloister of deities and quasi-deities that rose and fell with the ebb and flow of the centuries. Shadowheart held devotion to one such power that had withstood the test of time, but many others who were empowered or emboldened by their faith had not been so lucky. If this Absolute was one such new divinity, it had a steep hill to climb to achieve the permanent impact on history of a deity like the Lady of Loss.
But more than the mystery of the Absolute and its True Souls were the idea that Karlach and her party were all followers of this new faith the goblins held. The same goblin tribe that attacked the gates of the Emerald Grove? The ones Karlach were quite happy to disembowel even though they shared her faith? And this new knowledge that Karlach actually served the Archdevil of the first of the Nine Hells, Zariel?
There were too many layers upon layers.
"Something is amiss," she declared even as Kurga tried to loot the bodies of anything useful, including trying and failing to lift a marked barrel of firewine as tall as she was.
At their attention, she continued to summarize her wondering. "What use would Karlach's party gain by lying so profusely in the Grove after slaughtering nearly a dozen of their own comrades in faith? I can admire such deceptions if they hold some ulterior motive, but I cannot perceive what that motive may be." She paused, considering. "If that dwarf, Nettie, had been a skilled healer capable of removing these illithid tadpoles-"
Lae'zel clicked her tongue. "A fool's notion."
"- perhaps lying to gain your way inside by pretending to be the Grove's heroes would be useful, but Nettie was not able to heal such. Afterward, they continue their lies, learn of the former first druid's potential rescue-mission, and decide to investigate on behalf of the Grove. They leave the next morning to discover the truth of Halsin's whereabouts, something they likely already knew from their goblin allies."
"The ramblings of a mad-woman," Lae'zel decided, but Shadowheart shook her head in sudden realization.
"No, I am not mad." Shadowheart spun toward the downward slope that would lead to the bridge the wizard had mentioned. "In fact, I am more certain than ever."
"I guess the devil duped them all," Kurga declared simply. "Bet they don't know they got one of that Archdevil's servants among them."
Shadowheart did not have an answer for that, nor for much else. As many layers as there were, she knew they needed to move without all of the answers. Their mission was to kill the devil of Zariel, but that was decidedly more complex now that she held a camp full of goblin cultists around her to shield her from their approach.
"We should find a place to rest," Kurga decided, breaking their reverie.
"Now? Surrounded by enemy territory, you wish to rest now?" Lae'zel asked in genuine shock. "While an ghaik newborn scrambles our brains?"
Shadowheart winced, but she knew the kobold and the githyanki were both right.
"My confidence wanes, and my muscles ache," Shadowheart finally said, breaking the tie. "We take a couple of hours to recuperate and then we move to investigate. Whatever that goblin meant by tonight, we will resume our movements quickly enough to know what it will have meant."
Lae'zel cursed loudly but relented on account of nothing more than reasonable thinking.
Shadowheart stumbled awake with a foreign yet familiar voice swimming in her ear. A landscape of gossamer stars and multicolored lights appeared as far as she could see, and the texture of the ground beneath her fingers was rather soft but not at all like soil.
"I came just in time."
A chorus of sounds almost like multiple singing voices emanated from the palms of a brilliantly-dressed half-elven man with bright blond hair and gleaming golden plate mail. Prismatic in color like an aurora, he closed his palm, cutting the light and voices at once.
"We are in grave peril."
Shadowheart rose to sit up, trying to study her surroundings and understand this strange dream. This realm was… not material but instead of the Astral Plane, one of the dimensions of existence that suffuse every other realm, mortal and divine. An odd place for a dream, but worse – an odd time for such a vision. There was too much on her mind, and adding this? No.
"Did the Lady of Loss send you?" she asked, immediately thinking better of it. Shar would send not a holy knight but instead someone dressed in the garb of her famed Dark Justiciars. A role Shadowheart longed for. "No – who are you?"
"My name is not important, nor do I have much time." He offered her hand to Shadowheart, but the half-elf ignored it and stood, better focused on their surroundings.
They stood on a floating platform of rock in the midst of an expanse of nothingness. Distantly – or perhaps impossibly closely – floated a massive, bony skull covered in a prismatic barrier of great arcane power. This platform, and any others she could see, were not rock but instead the petrified flesh of a once living thing of godly proportions.
Oh – that was a god, once. Shadowheart promised herself then and there that she would do everything in her power to ensure that this would not be Shar's fate for as long as she drew breath.
"Why am I here? I assume this is no dream."
"I am afraid not," he said simply. "Forgive my intrusion, Shadowheart, but I am in need of your assistance, and you are in continual need of mine."
She frowned. "What could I possibly offer you?"
The idea of a foreign paladin coming into her dream and asking for assistance with something that would undoubtedly fly counter to the wishes of her patron goddess was madness to her. Shar held few allies among the divine, and it was that loss of connection that made the Lady of Loss ever stronger.
"I have protected you and your allies," the paladin explained. A flash of memory flickered across the dream, and she saw the golden-plated man standing before the pod on the nautiloid where she once lay trapped. Another – she watched as it was his prismatic magic that shielded her as her pod crashed into the River Chionthar, that helped usher her to the river's edge before she ever gained consciousness.
"It is my magic that keeps you from transforming," he further explained. "You will not become a mindflayer. Not while I am around."
She peered at him, uncertain. "And? If you speak the truth, then consider me grateful. But, I doubt you do so out of the kindess of your heart. Spit it out – what do you want with me?"
He strode forward and waved a guantleted hand toward the shimmering skull in the distance. Her eyes widened as she followed where his fingers pointed – spectral figures tried to sunder the shimmering barrier, zipping across its surface like meteors and hammering blow after blow against the defenses.
"A fight for the heart of Faerun, a fight we are losing. For now." He turned quickly to meet my eyes. "Shadowheart, until hours ago, I protected several more from the corruptive influence of these illithid tadpoles. Now, I protect three – Lae'zel, Kurga, and you."
She considered the words for a long moment until realization sparked in her mind. "You speak of Karlach and her group."
He nodded. "Just as I intervened for you aboard the nautiloid, I, too, kept the influence of the tadpoles at bay for them. Until this morning."
Shadowheart was not sure what to say to that, nor did she really know how important his words were. As impressive as a barrier around a dead-god-skull might be, she did not know what to think. "What do you want, then?"
"For my efforts to not be in vain," he answered simply. "Find the others before their subverted minds cause undue harm. Or worse – before they transform and become impossible to save."
27
- Location
- Alabama
A place like this barely functioned. Rooms had been repurposed into latrines, meal halls, and torture chambers. Grime covered everything, and I wished the Absolute would abandon these lowly creatures and instead focus the growth of the cult on more civilized folk. I was sure goblin tribes could do good work, build great monuments, and generate wonderful art of their own, but these particular united factions under the Absolute's will were too haphazard in their dealings.
It was genuinely surprising to me that we were among the most "polished" of Her followers in the entire ruined temple, and we had only heard the will of Her Voice for so little time in comparison. If we could exert our own corner of influence under Her aim, perhaps we could turn this goblin army into a well-meaning fighting force. A group of proper crusaders whose successes and victories would prove to the conquered that She was the Way.
They'd turned a once-great courtyard outside into a communal fire pit to cook as much big game meat as they could find. They'd shoved forgotten storage crates and other pieces of ruined furniture into a specific for a game of chase the chicken, a boisterous affair that merely distracted them all from battle plans. A torture rack sat atop the implements of a ruined underground garden within the cavern. The hobgoblin leader – True Soul Drod Ragzlin – presided on a great, gaudy throne of spiked clubs, axes, spears, and driftwood that would never match the elegance of something proper, something that could be respected on the world stage.
"They could at least bother to clean up their own shit," I muttered to Astarion.
The elf giggled in response as we sat for a meal of meat porridge, which I didn't touch and Astarion ruefully ate to keep up appearances. Gale picked at the stew with a chipped spoon, while Karlach sipped directly from the bowl and forced them to give her a second helping.
Wyll gestured to the place I was discussing, mere yards away from their great fire pit for communal meal times. Which were barely organized, if only to ensure there was enough food to go around. The raiding force had several dozen members who scattered about the place, but that was still a lot of food for each day that passed.
"Don't mind it, honestly," Wyll remarked.
"You don't?"
"You're dressed way too nicely to enjoy the idea of piles of goblin shit," Karlach suggested to the mage's clean, armored aesthetic. Her own clothing was covered in burn marks, frayed ends, and even sweeping holes.
"I don't enjoy them," he countered. "I am merely admiring a rustic life. When we deliver the world to the Absolute, I hope She grants me the chance to travel. The places between settlements are often where I shine."
"Really? I thought you a city boy, darling." The vampire spawn bared his teeth. "Will wonders never cease."
I glanced toward each of the other True Souls, and the ease with which I could touch their minds was quick as breathing. They could do the same to me, and what a wondrous boon it was to be so interconnected. "I believe we all have been exposed to new information about each other. I know more about you now than I did when I met you, but there are still areas where I am lost."
Astarion was a vampire spawn, able to survive in midday sun thanks to the grace of the Absolute and her tadpole gifts. From Baldur's Gate, he'd called its streets his home. I wasn't from this world, and I looked forward to seeing its sights and bringing them under the vision of the Absolute.
"Why do you pretend to enjoy this porridge?"
The man in question rose an eyebrow. "I do not know what you mean."
"These goblins are beneath us, and they couldn't question us if they wished to. Why hide the vampire fangs?"
He hesitated for a long moment and then nodded. "Actually a solid point, for once. Why should I keep who I am to myself? After all this time, after all my attempts, I finally have gained notice from those on high! The Absolute will provide."
Gale smiled at that. "It would be quite the boon for Her to have a man with potentially centuries of experience living – so to speak – under his belt. Though, perhaps it prudent to keep the fangs hidden when we interact with those who are not in Her eternal grace."
He guffawed. "Oh, of course. Spreading Her message may take a delicate hand from time to time."
Karlach cracked her knuckles and dropped the fractured soup bowl. "I say we burn 'em all. Those that survive, we keep 'em just enough alive that they beg for Her embrace."
I frowned slightly at that idea. "When you say all, you mean-"
"Everyone," Karlach corrected. "I'm not stupid enough to think that'd work, soldier, but if I could make it work? I'd show em why my ticker made the fields of Avernus afraid of me."
I glanced through the memories she'd shared with me inadvertently through the bond, when it had deepened along with us all. A fiery aura of menace around her so strong that where she walked on the bleached black sands of the Hells, she left hellfire in her wake.
"How's that work?"
Karlach gestured with a thumb toward her chest. "Don't really know its ins and outs, to be honest, but when I get riled up, everything gets toasty. The infernal engine in my chest has been running real hot lately, and I can't wait to show anyone who crosses Her why they should fear Karlach Cliffgate, agent of the Absolute."
I shuddered at the thought of facing a warrior so strong she could set fire to you with every blow, flames so hot that they could melt nearly anything they touch.
"On the interests of learning more about one another," Gale asked pointedly to me, "Edward, what is the Internet?"
My brow rose at hearing the wizard ask a question that should be simple to explain, but was utterly alien to them. It had caught their interest well enough, and I nodded slightly.
"Best way I could describe it for you is a gateway to as many books as you could imagine. Like a shared network of, uh, machines that provide a way to create content or review content other users make," I explained. "Like a big public forum happening all the time, basically anywhere, so long as you've got a machine to use it."
The idea of this had clearly broken Gale's brain. Astarion was uninterested, and Karlach had little knowledge but was still impressed. Wyll gestured forward. "So it's infinite?"
"Not actually, but you could spend your entire lifetime looking at it and never see everything."
Gale finally recovered, eyes bugging out in wonder. "What a useful tool that would be. A treasure trove of knowledge that would… would put any wizard's library to shame!"
I laughed. "Maybe, but a lot of people use it for good and a lot of people use it for bad. Where I am from effectively runs on it."
The idea that I was from another world had not phased anyone, which shouldn't really be a surprise. Karlach had spent nearly a decade in the Hells serving an Archdevil called Zariel, and we'd escaped from the Hells using a world-hopping mindflayer ship.
"Gale, do you think the nautiloid could get me back home?"
The man shrugged. "I suppose it could, should you attune the magic of its shifting spells to your world. Crossing through to more local planes is easier, but it is not out of the realm of possibility."
"I'd wanna see this world," Astarion suggested. "Not out of any sense of adventure, mind you, but a… taste of local cuisine may be in order."
I blinked and then laughed, earning a look from one of the goblins nearby who'd just finished a game of chase the chickdn. "You'd taste a lot of antidepressants and caffeine."
They didn't know what to say to that, though Gale admitted coffee was quite a delicacy of his.
"It would be a fine place to spread Her message," Wyll remarked. "Ideas spreading through the public forum is one of the only benefits to a city. It can be… an easy way to share a story or two, and perhaps to be Her Voice."
I considered that for a moment and shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know how much traction we'd get – new age memes on social media would probably make us look like crackpots. Even a video of one of Her miracles would be met with skepticism."
Gale shook his head in disbelief. "Are they truly so close-minded to deny a miracle in front of them?"
"Yes and no," I answered simply. "A lot of folks have faith, but it's a different kind of faith than the one we are blessed to have. The Absolute speaks to us directly, but those of faith where I am from do not hear a specific voice in such clarity. If any at all."
"Hmm. Your world sounds bleak," Gale said. "I was a man of faith in another before I saw the light of the Absolute. I have met many colleagues in my studies who are similarly skeptical, but none can deny the underlying value of the gods. It sounds as though your world has no such underpinning."
I thought of the tomb guardian in Jergal's service we met. The Oakfather's followers in the Emerald Grove. The Absolute's voice we had begun to hear so clearly.
"Before all of this, I didn't think any gods were real," I said simply. "I am glad to be wrong in this world, but I would be surprised if my home plane has any connections to any gods."
Karlach coughed. "That's ridiculous."
"Maybe," I muttered. "If I ever manage to get back, I am excited to bring with me Her message. Maybe that is my mission as a revenant, my purpose for undeath."
The conversation stalled there as the High Priestess Gut, a nasty goblin woman who truly held great reverence to the Absolute and the rank of True Soul, began a quick service of faith for all to hear. All present gathered for her sermon, many still half-drunk from their celebrations.
Bugbears – taller goblin creatures who held furry bodies and long arms – were numbered in the half-dozen, while their shorter, smoother goblin cousins were in the dozens. Several ogres - thick as boulders and fat as hell – rounded out the majority of their forces, and they were so large they could likely siege thickened walls and break the druids' defenses. There were a handful of drow who worked alongside Minthara and Dror Ragzlin who had been called to assist in the upcoming battle, and some had stepped into the shadows of the courtyard to watch the festivities and were careful not to step into the sun. All pushed and pulled their way into an already crowded courtyard to hear her words.
Two of her attendants, a male and female goblin who were quite young, dragged two tied and bound human men into the space behind her, while the flames of the cooking fire danced nearby.
"Hmm. That's Volo," Wyll suggested.
Huh. It was.
How he'd gotten here alone was surprising. When last we spoke, he'd been fascinated with a group of goblins who had abandoned their goblin god for a new one. One that had revealed herself to me in all her righteous glory. So enamored with them that he would risk coming here alone was a quite ridiculous idea.
The other man was in far, far worse shape. Blond and covered in blood from various bruises, cuts, and potentially broken bones, he weakly followed along, arms bound and unable to fight back. That was good – he'd be a fool to resist the true path before him.
"Oi! I know we are all up in mood for a fight soon," Gut declared loudly. "But I come bearin' a gift from Her!"
Volo was haphazardly tossed forward and onto the wet stones, grime and mud ruining his quite pristine traveling outfit. The other weakly fell to his knees, not bothering to try to do any sudden movements.
Goblins cheered upon seeing two such weak humans. Some chittered excitely about the possibility of a human meal.
"The Absolute says anyone can serve," Gut revealed, "and so, I bring them before ya all to see Her reach spread to unexpected places."
Neither Volo nor the other looked quite ready to follow the Absolute's reach. In fact, they both were terrified and doubly so when Volo caught the eyes of us in the crowd. His mouth fell agape, and I didn't need to try to push into his mind to know he was afraid of us, of what we were doing, of why we weren't kicking the ass of everyone here.
Of why we weren't saving him.
"Humies, I give ya this chance," the priestess began. "The Absolute is gold from the sky! Her word is law, her word is love to the souls of all who hear 'em. You stand at the edge of a new world, one with Her as its eternal lord. Revoke your false gods and choose the Absolute. Or Priestess Gut will spill your guts on the pavement. Your entrails'll be a nice snack for the worgs!"
Volo steeled himself and suggested, "I do not think any of that will be necessary. Is your god the type to punish the truly innocent?"
Goblins shouted in anger that he would interrupt the proceedings before it was his time to speak and that he would dare question the High Priestess.
"Innocence? Bah, what a fuckin' useless idea." At Gut's declaration, the crowd cheered. "There's no need for any of that if ya give yourself and ya world up right now. Pledge!"
Neither of them spoke.
Bugbears cracked knuckles. Ogres shifted their weight. Goblin blades and bows maneuvered into view. Volo and the other man had nowhere to run, nowhere to go.
"A shame if he dies," Gale whispered. "A lot of knowledge gone to waste."
"I thought you hated him?"
"Edward, I detest Volothamp Geddarn." Gale sighed. "Yet, I recognize that his guides to the inner workings of creatures far and wide, worldly and otherworldly, have their uses. If nothing else, one of his earliest tomes is a nice paper weight in my tower."
I chuckled.
And then I stood, a decision made.
"Oi, what are ya-"
"Volo," I interrupted, flashing my mind to Gut, which pacified her for a moment. It was getting easier to make connections each time I tried. "What use would you have to the Absolute?"
The man sputtered. "Traitor…"
"What use?" I asked again.
His eyes shifted from goblin to goblin, from each of us, and then back to me. "I… I know things! Write books, study cultures. A student of history and monstrology!"
"Fancy little man thinks She cares?" the priestess challenged.
"It's less what Her eminence knows and more how he can help her followers to interact with others," I answered. "Volo's a famous writer. His name carries weight. If he doesn't submit to Her today, killing him just denies Her an asset for his influence."
He nodded fervently. "Please, spare me! I can write broadsheets about your cause, spread him through towns and cities. Exposure!"
Priestess Gut didn't respond for a long moment. "True Soul, you think this?"
"Yeah. Volo's slimy, but he's not stupid."
She considered it for a long moment, eyes glancing between Volo and the unnamed man who had stared, frozen, throughout the conversation.
"Drag him to Moonrise Towers then," she ordered, and a small team of goblins moved forward to escort the writer into the temple to prep him for transfer. Then she glanced toward me, making eye contact. "Kill the spare."
The goblins who were keen to witness bloodshed cheered racously.
I approached the blond, destitute man. It took little guessing to assume he was one of Aradin's men, captured during the attack that had snagged the druid Halsin. His lips quivered, arms slack and covered with mud, blood, and vomit. Pathetic, really, and perhaps barely of age.
"What have you accomplished?"
His eyes slowly widened but he said nothing.
Karlach stepped to my side and pounded a fist into her palm. "He asked you a question."
The boy's lip quivered. "I-I adventure."
"What have you done?" I asked again.
"A… A couple odd-jobs. Some tomb-diving. T-this was my big break."
A pity.
Other ideas filtered into my head. "You have any useful connections? Are you a noble prince, maybe an apprentice to a wizard?"
"W-we took this job f-for Lorroakan. T-to find the Nightsong."
"But he's not your teacher. Just a quest-giver."
The term confused him but he slowly shook his head, uncertain.
"The Absolute doesn't need you then."
I channeled ki into my palm, green mist visibly oozing from the skin. Shifting not to heal but to harm, the mist turned a blackish hue as I forcefully backhanded his cheek. The necrotic ki raced into his flesh, forced the boy's own ki to begin violently reacting. Resonating with my intent, his muscles atrophied, his bones snapped, and his skin grew gaunt. A final breath, and then the kid fell dead.
A green mist sputtered from his mouth, and I learned his name.
Liam.
It was genuinely surprising to me that we were among the most "polished" of Her followers in the entire ruined temple, and we had only heard the will of Her Voice for so little time in comparison. If we could exert our own corner of influence under Her aim, perhaps we could turn this goblin army into a well-meaning fighting force. A group of proper crusaders whose successes and victories would prove to the conquered that She was the Way.
They'd turned a once-great courtyard outside into a communal fire pit to cook as much big game meat as they could find. They'd shoved forgotten storage crates and other pieces of ruined furniture into a specific for a game of chase the chicken, a boisterous affair that merely distracted them all from battle plans. A torture rack sat atop the implements of a ruined underground garden within the cavern. The hobgoblin leader – True Soul Drod Ragzlin – presided on a great, gaudy throne of spiked clubs, axes, spears, and driftwood that would never match the elegance of something proper, something that could be respected on the world stage.
"They could at least bother to clean up their own shit," I muttered to Astarion.
The elf giggled in response as we sat for a meal of meat porridge, which I didn't touch and Astarion ruefully ate to keep up appearances. Gale picked at the stew with a chipped spoon, while Karlach sipped directly from the bowl and forced them to give her a second helping.
Wyll gestured to the place I was discussing, mere yards away from their great fire pit for communal meal times. Which were barely organized, if only to ensure there was enough food to go around. The raiding force had several dozen members who scattered about the place, but that was still a lot of food for each day that passed.
"Don't mind it, honestly," Wyll remarked.
"You don't?"
"You're dressed way too nicely to enjoy the idea of piles of goblin shit," Karlach suggested to the mage's clean, armored aesthetic. Her own clothing was covered in burn marks, frayed ends, and even sweeping holes.
"I don't enjoy them," he countered. "I am merely admiring a rustic life. When we deliver the world to the Absolute, I hope She grants me the chance to travel. The places between settlements are often where I shine."
"Really? I thought you a city boy, darling." The vampire spawn bared his teeth. "Will wonders never cease."
I glanced toward each of the other True Souls, and the ease with which I could touch their minds was quick as breathing. They could do the same to me, and what a wondrous boon it was to be so interconnected. "I believe we all have been exposed to new information about each other. I know more about you now than I did when I met you, but there are still areas where I am lost."
Astarion was a vampire spawn, able to survive in midday sun thanks to the grace of the Absolute and her tadpole gifts. From Baldur's Gate, he'd called its streets his home. I wasn't from this world, and I looked forward to seeing its sights and bringing them under the vision of the Absolute.
"Why do you pretend to enjoy this porridge?"
The man in question rose an eyebrow. "I do not know what you mean."
"These goblins are beneath us, and they couldn't question us if they wished to. Why hide the vampire fangs?"
He hesitated for a long moment and then nodded. "Actually a solid point, for once. Why should I keep who I am to myself? After all this time, after all my attempts, I finally have gained notice from those on high! The Absolute will provide."
Gale smiled at that. "It would be quite the boon for Her to have a man with potentially centuries of experience living – so to speak – under his belt. Though, perhaps it prudent to keep the fangs hidden when we interact with those who are not in Her eternal grace."
He guffawed. "Oh, of course. Spreading Her message may take a delicate hand from time to time."
Karlach cracked her knuckles and dropped the fractured soup bowl. "I say we burn 'em all. Those that survive, we keep 'em just enough alive that they beg for Her embrace."
I frowned slightly at that idea. "When you say all, you mean-"
"Everyone," Karlach corrected. "I'm not stupid enough to think that'd work, soldier, but if I could make it work? I'd show em why my ticker made the fields of Avernus afraid of me."
I glanced through the memories she'd shared with me inadvertently through the bond, when it had deepened along with us all. A fiery aura of menace around her so strong that where she walked on the bleached black sands of the Hells, she left hellfire in her wake.
"How's that work?"
Karlach gestured with a thumb toward her chest. "Don't really know its ins and outs, to be honest, but when I get riled up, everything gets toasty. The infernal engine in my chest has been running real hot lately, and I can't wait to show anyone who crosses Her why they should fear Karlach Cliffgate, agent of the Absolute."
I shuddered at the thought of facing a warrior so strong she could set fire to you with every blow, flames so hot that they could melt nearly anything they touch.
"On the interests of learning more about one another," Gale asked pointedly to me, "Edward, what is the Internet?"
My brow rose at hearing the wizard ask a question that should be simple to explain, but was utterly alien to them. It had caught their interest well enough, and I nodded slightly.
"Best way I could describe it for you is a gateway to as many books as you could imagine. Like a shared network of, uh, machines that provide a way to create content or review content other users make," I explained. "Like a big public forum happening all the time, basically anywhere, so long as you've got a machine to use it."
The idea of this had clearly broken Gale's brain. Astarion was uninterested, and Karlach had little knowledge but was still impressed. Wyll gestured forward. "So it's infinite?"
"Not actually, but you could spend your entire lifetime looking at it and never see everything."
Gale finally recovered, eyes bugging out in wonder. "What a useful tool that would be. A treasure trove of knowledge that would… would put any wizard's library to shame!"
I laughed. "Maybe, but a lot of people use it for good and a lot of people use it for bad. Where I am from effectively runs on it."
The idea that I was from another world had not phased anyone, which shouldn't really be a surprise. Karlach had spent nearly a decade in the Hells serving an Archdevil called Zariel, and we'd escaped from the Hells using a world-hopping mindflayer ship.
"Gale, do you think the nautiloid could get me back home?"
The man shrugged. "I suppose it could, should you attune the magic of its shifting spells to your world. Crossing through to more local planes is easier, but it is not out of the realm of possibility."
"I'd wanna see this world," Astarion suggested. "Not out of any sense of adventure, mind you, but a… taste of local cuisine may be in order."
I blinked and then laughed, earning a look from one of the goblins nearby who'd just finished a game of chase the chickdn. "You'd taste a lot of antidepressants and caffeine."
They didn't know what to say to that, though Gale admitted coffee was quite a delicacy of his.
"It would be a fine place to spread Her message," Wyll remarked. "Ideas spreading through the public forum is one of the only benefits to a city. It can be… an easy way to share a story or two, and perhaps to be Her Voice."
I considered that for a moment and shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know how much traction we'd get – new age memes on social media would probably make us look like crackpots. Even a video of one of Her miracles would be met with skepticism."
Gale shook his head in disbelief. "Are they truly so close-minded to deny a miracle in front of them?"
"Yes and no," I answered simply. "A lot of folks have faith, but it's a different kind of faith than the one we are blessed to have. The Absolute speaks to us directly, but those of faith where I am from do not hear a specific voice in such clarity. If any at all."
"Hmm. Your world sounds bleak," Gale said. "I was a man of faith in another before I saw the light of the Absolute. I have met many colleagues in my studies who are similarly skeptical, but none can deny the underlying value of the gods. It sounds as though your world has no such underpinning."
I thought of the tomb guardian in Jergal's service we met. The Oakfather's followers in the Emerald Grove. The Absolute's voice we had begun to hear so clearly.
"Before all of this, I didn't think any gods were real," I said simply. "I am glad to be wrong in this world, but I would be surprised if my home plane has any connections to any gods."
Karlach coughed. "That's ridiculous."
"Maybe," I muttered. "If I ever manage to get back, I am excited to bring with me Her message. Maybe that is my mission as a revenant, my purpose for undeath."
The conversation stalled there as the High Priestess Gut, a nasty goblin woman who truly held great reverence to the Absolute and the rank of True Soul, began a quick service of faith for all to hear. All present gathered for her sermon, many still half-drunk from their celebrations.
Bugbears – taller goblin creatures who held furry bodies and long arms – were numbered in the half-dozen, while their shorter, smoother goblin cousins were in the dozens. Several ogres - thick as boulders and fat as hell – rounded out the majority of their forces, and they were so large they could likely siege thickened walls and break the druids' defenses. There were a handful of drow who worked alongside Minthara and Dror Ragzlin who had been called to assist in the upcoming battle, and some had stepped into the shadows of the courtyard to watch the festivities and were careful not to step into the sun. All pushed and pulled their way into an already crowded courtyard to hear her words.
Two of her attendants, a male and female goblin who were quite young, dragged two tied and bound human men into the space behind her, while the flames of the cooking fire danced nearby.
"Hmm. That's Volo," Wyll suggested.
Huh. It was.
How he'd gotten here alone was surprising. When last we spoke, he'd been fascinated with a group of goblins who had abandoned their goblin god for a new one. One that had revealed herself to me in all her righteous glory. So enamored with them that he would risk coming here alone was a quite ridiculous idea.
The other man was in far, far worse shape. Blond and covered in blood from various bruises, cuts, and potentially broken bones, he weakly followed along, arms bound and unable to fight back. That was good – he'd be a fool to resist the true path before him.
"Oi! I know we are all up in mood for a fight soon," Gut declared loudly. "But I come bearin' a gift from Her!"
Volo was haphazardly tossed forward and onto the wet stones, grime and mud ruining his quite pristine traveling outfit. The other weakly fell to his knees, not bothering to try to do any sudden movements.
Goblins cheered upon seeing two such weak humans. Some chittered excitely about the possibility of a human meal.
"The Absolute says anyone can serve," Gut revealed, "and so, I bring them before ya all to see Her reach spread to unexpected places."
Neither Volo nor the other looked quite ready to follow the Absolute's reach. In fact, they both were terrified and doubly so when Volo caught the eyes of us in the crowd. His mouth fell agape, and I didn't need to try to push into his mind to know he was afraid of us, of what we were doing, of why we weren't kicking the ass of everyone here.
Of why we weren't saving him.
"Humies, I give ya this chance," the priestess began. "The Absolute is gold from the sky! Her word is law, her word is love to the souls of all who hear 'em. You stand at the edge of a new world, one with Her as its eternal lord. Revoke your false gods and choose the Absolute. Or Priestess Gut will spill your guts on the pavement. Your entrails'll be a nice snack for the worgs!"
Volo steeled himself and suggested, "I do not think any of that will be necessary. Is your god the type to punish the truly innocent?"
Goblins shouted in anger that he would interrupt the proceedings before it was his time to speak and that he would dare question the High Priestess.
"Innocence? Bah, what a fuckin' useless idea." At Gut's declaration, the crowd cheered. "There's no need for any of that if ya give yourself and ya world up right now. Pledge!"
Neither of them spoke.
Bugbears cracked knuckles. Ogres shifted their weight. Goblin blades and bows maneuvered into view. Volo and the other man had nowhere to run, nowhere to go.
"A shame if he dies," Gale whispered. "A lot of knowledge gone to waste."
"I thought you hated him?"
"Edward, I detest Volothamp Geddarn." Gale sighed. "Yet, I recognize that his guides to the inner workings of creatures far and wide, worldly and otherworldly, have their uses. If nothing else, one of his earliest tomes is a nice paper weight in my tower."
I chuckled.
And then I stood, a decision made.
"Oi, what are ya-"
"Volo," I interrupted, flashing my mind to Gut, which pacified her for a moment. It was getting easier to make connections each time I tried. "What use would you have to the Absolute?"
The man sputtered. "Traitor…"
"What use?" I asked again.
His eyes shifted from goblin to goblin, from each of us, and then back to me. "I… I know things! Write books, study cultures. A student of history and monstrology!"
"Fancy little man thinks She cares?" the priestess challenged.
"It's less what Her eminence knows and more how he can help her followers to interact with others," I answered. "Volo's a famous writer. His name carries weight. If he doesn't submit to Her today, killing him just denies Her an asset for his influence."
He nodded fervently. "Please, spare me! I can write broadsheets about your cause, spread him through towns and cities. Exposure!"
Priestess Gut didn't respond for a long moment. "True Soul, you think this?"
"Yeah. Volo's slimy, but he's not stupid."
She considered it for a long moment, eyes glancing between Volo and the unnamed man who had stared, frozen, throughout the conversation.
"Drag him to Moonrise Towers then," she ordered, and a small team of goblins moved forward to escort the writer into the temple to prep him for transfer. Then she glanced toward me, making eye contact. "Kill the spare."
The goblins who were keen to witness bloodshed cheered racously.
I approached the blond, destitute man. It took little guessing to assume he was one of Aradin's men, captured during the attack that had snagged the druid Halsin. His lips quivered, arms slack and covered with mud, blood, and vomit. Pathetic, really, and perhaps barely of age.
"What have you accomplished?"
His eyes slowly widened but he said nothing.
Karlach stepped to my side and pounded a fist into her palm. "He asked you a question."
The boy's lip quivered. "I-I adventure."
"What have you done?" I asked again.
"A… A couple odd-jobs. Some tomb-diving. T-this was my big break."
A pity.
Other ideas filtered into my head. "You have any useful connections? Are you a noble prince, maybe an apprentice to a wizard?"
"W-we took this job f-for Lorroakan. T-to find the Nightsong."
"But he's not your teacher. Just a quest-giver."
The term confused him but he slowly shook his head, uncertain.
"The Absolute doesn't need you then."
I channeled ki into my palm, green mist visibly oozing from the skin. Shifting not to heal but to harm, the mist turned a blackish hue as I forcefully backhanded his cheek. The necrotic ki raced into his flesh, forced the boy's own ki to begin violently reacting. Resonating with my intent, his muscles atrophied, his bones snapped, and his skin grew gaunt. A final breath, and then the kid fell dead.
A green mist sputtered from his mouth, and I learned his name.
Liam.
- Location
- My happy place
This mind control bullshit is getting really annoying. I think this story has gotten a lot worse, and I'm about to drop it soon if nothing changes.
Tis a getting a wee bit tedious..each update i forget theyve been mindcontrolled until one of em brings up their love for the absolute...