Chapter 18 - Part 12

“This way, to the right,” Delegado hissed, still invisible.

“Following,” Thomas said, from a few feet behind him. “You move real slow.”

“Show off,” Delegado grumbled. The half-orc had plenty of cousins who embraced their most natural feral state. Like Thomas they could call on raging strength in battle, and like Thomas they could get their legs working faster across the ground than most. As a child they had mocked Delegado’s choice of paths as a tracker, until he started making more money with his dragonmark than they could dream of.

They turned a corner and Delegado felt heat ahead. He slowed down and Thomas bumped into him. So did something small and wriggly that stank of ozone.

“Keep that damn thing off me!” Delegado hissed.

“Then warn me when you stop,” Thomas retorted. “I can’t see you.”

Delegado swallowed a meaningless reply and tapped the wall twice as he moved on. He heard Thomas’ soft footsteps follow.

The tunnel opened up to a large cavern with several exits. A great pool of lava was to his left, along with a foundry and a smithy. Some of the foundry was smashed, but most of the anvils and tools seemed in good condition. The heat from the lava and the smell of the sulfur was intense.

What happened here? Delegado wondered. He stepped across a broken trough and saw the bodies.

“Drop the spell,” he told Thomas in a croaking voice.

“You sure?” said Thomas’ disembodied voice from behind him and to his right.

“Whatever did this is gone,” Delegado said, surveying the cave floor. Before him were upwards of thirty of the hunched demonlings, all withered and drunk, the very essence ripped out of them. Foul though the demonlings might have been, it was an unseemly death. Delegado felt the air ripple, and he could see his hands, the rest of his body again.

“I’m going to stay invisible,” Thomas said. “Whatever did this may come back. Where’s Orphan?”

“Last I checked he was down that way,” Delegado said, pointing to a tunnel that had far newer marks of construction. “And a lot of footprints go down there and back.”

“You’ve got another dragonmark use today, don’t you?” asked Thomas’ voice, now moving around the great cave, apparently examining things.

“I’d like to save my ability to find a person if I don’t need to use it,” Delegado told him. “Come on.”

They headed down the tunnel, immediately noting the scorch marks, and the multitudes of dead bodies. Many of these demonlings had died in combat before the survivors were sucked dry in the cavern. Delegado recognized the busted-up faces that resulted from a warforged monk’s powerful punch. He heard Thomas grunt from somewhere behind him, and he knew the half-daelkyr was noticing the wounds as well.

Then he saw the still form made of stone, metal, and wood lying underneath dead demons, and he ran forward. “Orphan!” he yelled.

No, no, no, no, Delegado’s mind went off like a set of drums with denial. He pulled the filthy, evil, dead things off of his friend. No! Orphan lay there on the ground, his body full of cracks and punctures, a small puddle of some oily substance beneath him. Delegado lifted the warforged’s body up, noting the smears of demon blood and warforged lubricant staining the uniform outfit of the Balanced Palm that Iron Orphan was so proud of. The warforged monk had always kept it neat and presentable.

“I wasn’t quick enough,” Delegado said, his eyes leaking tears he could not hold back. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The wave of grief shocked him with its fierceness. He’d known that he liked the warforged, but he hadn’t ever considered just how much. Solitary as he was, Delegado had grown very used to Orphan in a very short period of time.

An invisible hand touched his shoulder. “Let me look into his eyes,” Thomas said.

Delegado’s first instinct was to tell Thomas to go jump in the lava, but he suppressed it, reminding himself how hard the half-daelkyr had fought to find the warforged. The half-orc lifted his friend’s body up so that Thomas could look deep into Orphan’s face plate.

“He’s not dead,” Thomas told him, ruffling through some scrolls. “Look deep into his eyes. Warforged don’t bleed to death when injured, they aren’t flesh. They just shut down.” Delegado turned and looked into Orphan’s eyes. Astonishingly he saw a thin, small spark.

“He’s not dead,” Delegado said, relief flooding through him.

“There’s a thin line between damaging a warforged enough to shut it down but not enough to kill it,” Thomas said. “Ah-hah!” An upwards rustle said that he found the scroll he was looking for. “Most constructs simply hit a point where the damage they took doesn’t allow the field animating within them to continue functioning, and they die. The warforged have enough living parts that they can sometimes hold on in that gray area before death, like a human in a coma.”

“Some House Cannith Dragon Below cultist tell you all this?” Delegado asked with a sarcasm that was born of relief. He recalled that they’d purchased a repair scroll from the Cannith operative in Greenheart. For that matter he also realized that he still had an oil of repair in his belt pouch.

“Actually, yes.” Soft magical chanting was followed by the light of a released scroll burning itself a few feet above the ground. A dim cloud of ambient specks floated over to Orphan’s body, and the cracks and puncture wounds retreated just the tiniest bit.

Orphan flinched, the light coming back to his eyes, and he jumped up, startled. “Delegado?” he asked, clearly confused.

The half-orc hugged the warforged tightly before putting him down. “Good to have you back, you tin-plated hunk of clockwork!”

“I have neither in my construction,” Orphan said. “However what’s urgent now is – where’s Thomas?”

“Here, Orphan,” Thomas said. “I’m invisible. There’s a rakshasa about, a prince of fiends. It’s a defensive measure.”

“Tiger-headed thing that casts powerful magic,” Orphan said. “Yes, he’s taken the rod, we have to stop him.”

“What rod?” Delegado asked.

“We can’t take that rakshasa, Orphan,” Thomas said. “We just can’t.”

“We have to,” Orphan said. “Would someone give me a sunrod? I can’t see a thing.” Delegado whipped one out and placed it in Orphan’s hand. The monk activated it and ran down the tunnel.

“Did I miss something?” Thomas asked. Seconds later Orphan was back.

“Yes, it’s gone,” the warforged said. “We have to find it! Delegado, if I describe it to you, can you –”

“I used that earlier to find your kama,” Delegado said. “This rod, would it happen to suck the life force out of a bunch of people?”

“Yes,” the warforged said. “I take it that you found some corpses?”

“Up there,” Delegado said, jerking his thumb.

“He covered his tracks,” Orphan said. “Sentry was right, he doesn’t want the other fiends to learn that he has it.”

“Who is Sentry, and what is ‘it’? You’ve got to fill us in,” Thomas said.

“A rod forged millennia ago by a great demon lord,” Orphan said. “It can only be destroyed by adamantine. It must be destroyed, or the greater fiends trapped beneath Khyber could be raised, and this world will die drowning in its own blood. We have to find him, Delegado, you have to track him!”

“I can’t, he has a magical robe that makes him pass without a trace,” the half-orc said.

“There has to be a way!” Orphan insisted, running up the tunnel. They followed him hastily, and found him pacing around the cavern, examining the bodies. “Which way did you come in?” Orphan asked. Delegado pointed to the tunnel. “He didn’t go back that way or else you would have passed him,” Orphan said, pacing. “And he didn’t teleport away, because he would have teleported in if he could have. But if he came down the fastest way, why not go back the fastest way?”

“Is there another thing he wants?” Thomas’ voice asked from somewhere around the cavern. The half-daelkyr seemed to be examining the various tunnels.

“No, he has the rod, that’s all they wanted,” Orphan said. “The forges were to create boltheads that could hit insubstantial things. The rod was guarded by the ghost of a coutal. They – I mean, the rakshasa, has no more need of it.”

“Hm,” Delegado said, spotting three arrows leaning against a stack of longspears. He picked them up, examining the heads, then kept them. It sounded like a handy weapon. “Who was the boss of this place before the rakshasa showed up? Maybe they’re off together.”

“A kyton,” Orphan said. “He’s dead, that’s his body there.” The warforged pointed to a skinned slab of meat that had once been a tall humanoid. “I’m guessing the rakshasa threw the chains into the lava as part of his punishment. Or maybe he planned to kill him all along and he’s still just covering his actions. Where could he have gone?”

“Chains?” Delegado asked.

“The rakshasa is killing things here, ensuring their silence, even though he has the rod,” Thomas mused. “Why is he afraid of being exposed if he has the power?”

“He doesn’t want anyone to know,” Delegado said. “Probably he figures they may develop counter-measures, or they may have their own adamantine. Most likely he wants the element of surprise. Where are the things he’s still killing?”

“That ledge,” Orphan realized, pointing up. “That’s the way I came in. There’s a maze of tunnels there. Somewhere in there is where I came back with the demon that teleported away from us after attacking us. There were some other guardians. Maybe he’s going to kill them.”

Delegado pulled out a grappling hook and began to tie it to a silk rope. “Let’s get up there, then. I’ve seen parts of this guy, and you’ll fill me in on more. Once we’re up I’ll try my dragonmark one more time. That’s the only chance we’ll have.”

“Rakshasa are resistant to many magical effects,” Thomas warned.

“Then I guess I’d best try real hard,” Delegado said, twirling the rope and getting ready to throw.