Chapter 17 - Part 4

The morning of the thirteenth of Sypheros dawned without incident, but there was a bitter chill from new-fallen snow. Even Orphan felt the cold, which did not abate until Thomas used seven scrolls up to help them all endure the elements. Delegado meditated for a bit to prepare his own spells, and then after a cold breakfast they mounted up and made their way down the trail. Thomas used another scroll that kept the horse’s hooves from leaving prints in the snow. Orphan would have protested this fast use of magical resources, but Delegado’s words from the night before weighed on him.

Delegado rode first, an arrow with holy enchantments out and against his bow. Feather flew ahead of them, staying low to the ground, as they made their way slowly down the rocky and icy path. Next came Thomas, with his scrolls ready. He had only a few javelins, and his massive greataxe, but the scrolls with their powerful spells would serve as better ranged weapons. Finally Orphan came, clumsily riding his horse, wishing he could walk on his own two feet. He was pretty certain that he could run faster than the horse, and under other circumstances he would have enjoyed competing against it.

Two hours later they were attacked. A great flying thing, with dark skin, and red eyes that seemed to smoke, dove silently at them. Orphan’s mount reared back in terror, and it was all the monk could do to not fall. Feather screeched and flew around the monstrosity. Delegado was already firing, getting one arrow through a wing membrane, while another scratched the side of the thing’s enormously long beak.

“Fiendish dinosaur,” Thomas shouted, ducking as the thing’s long claws gouged his back. He hissed in pain, then took a swipe at its tail as it went by, but he missed.

Delegado dismounted and drew an enchanted arrow out of his quiver. Orphan was still trying to get his panicking horse to calm down, but he recognized the arrow anyway. Magically holding holy spells in a tiny Eberron dragonshard, the arrowhead cracked open on hitting the flying thing, tearing a hole in its chest the width of a hand. The flying thing roared with rage, then turned to fly away. In seconds its great wings had carried it to the other side of the ridge.

Delegado ran up and soothed the horse Orphan was riding. “You okay?” he asked the warforged.

“Feeling useless but unharmed,” Orphan confessed.

“Good,” Delegado said. The half-orc ran back to his mount and got back on.

Some two hours later they were in the foothills, and it became clear that the fifty-five mile length quoted by the druid did not factor in the torn and rippled earth, or the complete lack of roads. The earth was torn into crevasses in many places, while in others great boulders or deposits of dirt were sticking up like bones of some giant, scavenged corpse. There was little snow on the ground in the foothills, and almost nothing in the way of plant life other than a few hardy weeds and some scraggly bushes. The predominant feature seemed to be black sand, rough, cracked earth, or stretches of black volcanic glass where some long-ago heat had seared the ground. Delegado avoided walking the horses over the latter, and they did not ask him why.

They spoke little, not wanting to attract attention, using hand motions whenever possible. About once an hour they stopped and took their bearings, sometimes sending Feather up and sometimes not.

Finally when the sun was a weak spot in a sky that was gathering dark clouds, they stopped for lunch next to a tall boulder. Thomas drove two stakes in the ground and tied a length of cord between them. They wrapped the horse’s reins around the cord, then took empty buckets and placed them in front of each horse. Thomas used three scrolls in quick succession, filling the buckets with pure conjured water. The horses drank eagerly.

Delegado handed meat and cheese and a small wineskin to Thomas, and the two of them ate quickly. Orphan walked around the boulder on either side, listening carefully, hearing nothing. Something bothered him, although he couldn’t name it.

He came back to find Feather eating some grain from a dish and Thomas using another scroll. “We’re going through those fast,” Orphan said.

“He’s got plenty more,” Delegado said. “Besides, we each had a funny feeling.”

“Like you’re being watched?”

“You too, eh?”

“Yes.” Orphan watched as Thomas completed the spell. The half-daelkyr then took out an expensive-looking mirror and stared into it.

His reflection stared back, but only briefly. The mirror’s surface then showed the landscape around them, and the picture then changed, moving in a widening spiral. They saw only more cracked earth, sand, tough weeds and desolation.

“Are we alone?” Orphan asked.

Suddenly the picture in the mirror froze, and then distorted. It fractured, then reformed, and became a snarling, hateful face of a gaunt humanoid covered in black, leathery skin. A large curved horn rose out of the back of its skull behind pointed ears, and its mouth was a mass of jagged teeth. “You came to the wrong place to sneak,” it snarled at them.

“End the spell!” Delegado demanded.

“I can’t!” Thomas said. “It won’t stop!”

“Come to spy out the hidden parts of the land,” the creature snorted. “Take it for yourself. I see you, oh yes I do.”

Delegado grabbed the mirror and threw it on the ground. It shattered into dozens of pieces.

“You just made my other two scrying scrolls useless,” Thomas said.

“It was getting a bead on us,” Delegado said. “Everyone oil up now.”

“Bless weapon oils before magic weapon oils,” Orphan said. “Then drink one of those potions that protects you from evil in case it has mind-magic.”

They quickly applied the oils, Thomas to his greataxe, Delegado to his bow and then his sword, and Orphan to his hands and feet. They also quickly swallowed the protection potion and then spread out a bit.

“I don’t hear or see anything coming,” Thomas said after a bit.

“If it was talking to you it was trying to get a good reading for a teleportation,” Delegado said.

“And it may be invisible,” Orphan added. “So listen carefully.”

Thomas frowned, but did as he was bade.

Suddenly it was among them, reeking of decay, the air shoved aside with its teleportation effect. The horses whinnied in fear, tugging at the rope that held them, trying futilely to flee the demon’s presence. It slashed at Thomas with massive claws, but the half-daelkyr had lived long enough in the wild that he reacted instinctively to the thing’s arrival, pulling back and avoiding the worst of it. Still the claw tips slashed his neck and face, places where Thomas’ armor did not cover.

“Fools to come,” it purred, flexing its muscles under the slimy red jelly coating its skin. The horses were rearing now, their minds overwhelmed with fear. Feather screeched and flew overhead.

Orphan charged at the thing, executing a flying kick that cracked hard against the back of its leg. The thing snarled in pain, but Orphan nearly did so as well. The jelly on the demon was a strong acid, and Orphan barely tumbled away before receiving a serious burn.

“Down!” Delegado yelled. Orphan obliged by doing a handflip away from the thing. Delegado put three arrows into it, the second one bearing another holy spell within an Eberron dragonshard.

The demon howled as the arrows pierced its skin, and then faded away with a crack of air from another teleportation effect. Thomas swiped it in retaliation as it went, nicking a leg before it faded away.

“It will come back,” Delegado said.

“Caltrops!” Orphan said. “All of them, now!” He rushed to the saddlebags and the other two followed. “The demon will stalk us, enjoying the hunt,” Orphan explained, spilling out the first bag. “The smartest thing for it to do is to take out our mounts so it can hunt us at its leisure. Get the horses surrounded by caltrops – use the adamantine-tipped ones – and douse the caltrops with our bless weapon oils, quickly!”

Delegado and Thomas hurried to do as he said, and they quickly used up all their supply of caltrops surrounding the panicked animals. Thomas and Delegado began coating the spiky little jacks with the magical oils, while Orphan drank a potion.

“What’s that?” Thomas asked Orphan, each hand sprinkling oil on a patch of caltrops.

“Acid resistance,” Orphan said. “You’ll see why. Spread out.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Delegado said, tossing the empty flasks aside. He took the time to swallow a potion of his own before taking his bow off of his shoulder again. They all felt a surge of morale and confidence. “That’s all our adamantine-tipped caltrops, and we’ve only got four bags of the regular. Let’s spread out in case this thing comes back with some area spells.”

“I have a few of those myself,” Thomas said, patting his pack. But he spread out.

Orphan turned out to be right. The demon came back with a wrenching sound of displaced air, teleporting next to the horses. It seemed unharmed, having apparently healed itself while back at wherever it had teleported from. It slashed with its claws and bit down with its sharp teeth, tearing the animal badly. But even as the horse screamed and fell, the demon snarled in pain as well, its feet jabbed by the now-holy spiked jacks. Seconds later Delegado shot his arrows quickly. One missed as the demon jerked its head, but the other two hit unholy flesh and bone. Thomas was too far from the demon to effectively use his greataxe, so he cast from a scroll instead. Two darts of force shot from the half-daelkyr’s hand, but faded out as they hit the demon, doing no damage.

Iron Orphan was moving even as Delegado was shooting. He had already made up his mind, even if he hadn’t told the others. The demon could not be allowed to stalk them at will. They would all die if he did.

The warforged jumped up over the caltrops and wrapped his legs around the demon’s torso, gripping its head with his three-fingered hands. Orphan felt the potion humming within him, fighting off the acid in the jelly coating on the foul creature. The warforged began to twist the demon’s neck harshly, avoiding the backswept horn on the back of his head. Its smell was disgusting. The thing’s neck tendons stretched and creaked painfully.

The demon did not teleport away immediately, apparently unable to summon up the concentration to produce the magic through the pain of its wounds. Instead he flipped over on his side, rolling in the caltrops. Orphan did his best to focus, but the caltrops were poking him now, and the demon was slashing at the warforged with its long claws. To make matters worse, the horses were kicking blindly in terror, and one hoof clipped Orphan in the side of his head. Delegado was yelling at Orphan to let go, unwilling to risk the shot, and Thomas cast something else, but again the demon’s innate power fended off Thomas’ spell.

Orphan pushed harder, trying to apply more pressure to the thing’s neck, but it grabbed his wrists, and began to push him back. Then it flipped itself away from the caltrops, and drew a deep breath.

There was a shimmer, a wrenching motion, and it was dark and hot. They were underground, and a dim light was coming from a nearby pool of lava. Orphan let go of the demon as it slashed at his neck with its claws, and somersaulted until he was flush against a wall. He threw a shiruken, but in the dark he missed the demon, his shot going wide.

“Be with you in a moment,” the demon promised, chortling through sharp teeth. “Have another berry to taste, to heal up.”

Orphan cocked his head, listening carefully, but the thing’s footsteps seemed to make no noise. Taking a chance he charged back from when he came, pulling out a sunrod and activating it as he did so. The demon’s back was to him now, and it was pushing a rock away from a hole in the floor to get at something. Orphan landed a kick in the middle of its back.

The demon snarled in fury, and turned around to rake Orphan with its claws and teeth. The warforged monk fell back, startled by the demon’s speed. He tumbled away from the demon and pulled out a flask of magical oil, sprinkling it quickly to repair the worst of the damage to his body. The sunrod lay dropped on the floor of the cave, still giving off its light.

The demon smiled with all of its teeth. “You need that,” it hissed, kicking the rock back over its hidey-hole. “I don’t.” It charged him, and its claws opened up deep furrows in Orphan’s torso. Pain wracked at the warforged, taking his mind and trying to crack it with the most primitive flight or die response.

“No,” the warforged monk said. He pushed his mind past the pain, finding his center, finding that place that knew who he was even when he first became aware inside of a hot forge. “I am law, you are chaos!” He slammed his fists, catching the demon repeatedly in its chest, cracking ribs and pummeling it without mercy. “I am good, you are evil!”

The demon slashed at him once, then thought the better of it and ran back towards the rock-covered hole. Orphan did not let up, kicking the back of its ankle as it fled from him. With a sickening crunch the ankle went, and the demon stumbled and fell. Orphan was on its back, hammering his fists into the back of the thing’s skull just under its horn.

The demon twitched, then stopped moving as the back of its head caved in. Orphan stopped, then got off of its back. Checking the demon for any signs of life and satisfied that there were none, the warforged monk walked over to the hidey-hole.

The rock was heavier than it looked, and Orphan suspected that it contained some lead in it. He finally managed to get it pushed aside and he held the sunrod over the hole. It held mostly coins and gems – a fortune elsewhere in Khorvaire, but here just pretty baubles, and several leaf-wrapped bundles. Orphan pulled the bundles out and opened them.

At the center of each bundle was a berry. The berry seemed soft and fresh, despite sitting in a rock not far from a lava pool. Orphan figured that the leaves had a preservative effect, and he tucked a few in a pocket as a souvenir. He then hesitated, but he ate the berries.

There were five berries all told, and each one rejuvenated him, making him feel more wholesome, better. The cracks and cuts in his body slowly decreased. He then concentrated, focusing his ki, and they closed even more. Finally he pulled out the last two oils of repair that he had on him and used those, and he was restored fully.

Orphan got up and examined the demon’s body. He touched it to make sure that the magic protecting him from acid was still working, then he picked it up and dragged it over to the lava pool. The drop from the edge of the cave floor to the lava was only about two feet, so Orphan lay the demon’s body down and kicked it in rather than simply tossing it. Some lava splashed up anyway, but nowhere near the warforged monk. The demon’s body floated for a moment, even in death its inner power seemed to hold some of the lava’s heat at bay, but it eventually succumbed, turning to ash and sinking.

“Good riddance,” Orphan whispered to himself. He then picked up the sunrod and began searching the cave. He had to find a way out of here.