Chapter 18 - Part 3

Orphan saw a light flickering at the end of the tunnel, and he felt something about the air. There was an open space down here, an older cavern that probably had been buried for a long time.

A voice called out to him in a language he did not recognize, a tongue full of hisses and low growls. It seemed to be a warning or a challenge of some sort.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” Orphan said carefully, trying to keep his voice steady. “I do not seek to harm you. I am fleeing from the fiends.”

The voice switched to another language, and this time Orphan recognized it, although he still could not speak it. The thing with the flickering light was speaking in Celestial.

“I am not a threat,” Orphan said, keeping his hands up in the air. He focused his mind on the ring, and repeated his statement in Terran, the language that the earth elemental had used. There was no response. He tried it again in Aquan, the language of the water creatures, and then in Auran, the language of air.

“I recognize the elemental speech,” the voice said, now in Ignan. “I hope you also speak the language of the fire creatures.”

“I do, thanks to a ring I wear,” Orphan said. “I am not your enemy. I seek refuge from the fiends.”

“You have no smell of evil,” the voice behind the light said. “But you may be a proxy or a dupe. Approach slowly and do not draw a weapon.”

Orphan continued to walk forward, grateful that he could communicate with the tunnel’s inhabitant. “I am doing as you say,” he said.

The tunnel ended abruptly where it opened up into a cyst in the rock, a raw bubble of space that had formed millennia ago, perhaps during the war between dragon and fiend. Orphan stepped carefully onto the uneven floor and stepped closer, carefully keeping his hands in plain view.

The light floated closer, and Orphan could now see it. In fact, he could see through it. It was a ghostly, translucent form, about nine feet in height, of a great snake floating on wonderful, full wings of white feathers. Beyond it lay a tangle of great bones, stretched out for over fifteen feet in length.

“Are you a coutal?” the warforged asked. He thought he had seen a picture of a similar creature when he was studying about the Silver Flame religion at one time.

“The spirit of one,” the coutal said, cocking its ghostly head. “What creature are you?”

“I am called a warforged,” Iron Orphan said. “My race is new. My name is Iron Orphan, although I frequently go by simply Orphan.”

“My name is my mission,” the coutal said. “In this language it is difficult to convey, the closest I can come is Sentry.”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Sentry,” Orphan said, bowing. “You should know that the demonlings are amassing an army, and they have been forging weapons that can hit you even though you are an insubstantial ghost.”

“They certainly have lost enough of their number to have learned that the hard way,” Sentry told him. Orphan looked about, but only saw the long tangle of great bones, which was far from the opening and covered with dust besides. “Look at the scorch marks on the floor by the tunnel,” Sentry said, noticing Orphan’s confusion. “I do not only speak the language of fire, I manipulate it as well. They resist it somewhat, being fiends they are tough, but I was an accomplished manipulator of magic when I died, and I retain that still.”

“How long ago did you die?” Orphan asked. “Is that heap your body?”

“My bones mixed with the bones of my enemy,” the coutal told him. “And I have been a ghost for so long that the time has no meaning. Only recently did the little fiends find me.” The ghost swiveled and looked up the tunnel. “They are preparing for a charge, so I have little time for detail. That other pile of bones mixed with mine is the remains of a great demonic overlord that I destroyed. The fiends you have encountered now, they are nothing compared to what once was, not in numbers or power. This demonic overlord was not caught in the sealing, and he had a rod of tremendously evil power with him. He had used this rod to slay several demonic competitors, draining their essence. That rod lies there where we both died, and it can still be used. My spirit did not pass on because I have been protecting it. Do you understand?”

“The fiends want that rod, they have been looking for it for centuries, and now they are close to getting it, am I correct?” Orphan asked.

“You are,” Sentry told him.

“And if they get it?”

“The sealing may be unsealed. The fiends could walk the world again.”

Orphan turned his head as he heard demonic feet moving down the tunnel. “Would one of the spell you know happen to be something that blesses a weapon?”

“Yes,” Sentry told him, nodding. “Which of your weapons do you want me to enchant with goodness so that you can bypass their resistance to wounds?”

Orphan held up his hands. “These. And I’ll need some light, too.”

The coutal nodded, then cast his spell. Orphan bolted towards the tunnel even as Sentry’s second spell bathed the tunnel’s last length in the equivalent of full daylight.

The demonlings hesitated as the tunnel’s end lit up, and nearly panicked when Orphan came charging at them. The tunnel allowed for them to go in waves of four abreast, and the front mass of the demonlings all had longspears. The warforged monk didn’t even hesitate, ducking under the spear points, and kicking and punching in all directions. Demonic skin split, fiendish bones broke, and demonlings died. The demonic advance halted, then milled about. The hunched demonlings panicked, using their innate magic to produce, stinking, greasy clouds of sickening gas. It had no effect on the warforged, of course, and the demonlings ended up only harming themselves.

The back waves of the demonlings began firing their crossbows, lacerating the ones before them. The chain-fiend was yelling orders that were being ignored in the din. Orphan continued to kill demonlings, slipping his hands around their throats and snapping their necks while he kicked their weapons away.

Down at the end of the tunnel, Sentry cast another spell. A bolt of fire tore through the ranks past the warforged, ripping into more of the demonlings. Their natural resistance to fire kept them from dying right away, but the pain and burn made them mill about in confusion even more.

A crossbow bolt nicked Orphan in the side of the head, but other than that none of the demonlings touched him. It was barely a minute until they broke, fleeing back up the tunnel, preferring to take the curses and beatings of the chains to Orphan’s deadly hands and the coutal’s dangerous spells.

“That will buy us some time, at least,” Orphan said, coming back into the coutal’s cave. “I don’t know how long we can stave off the entire fiendish population of the Wastes.”

Sentry laughed, an oddly full sound given that it was made without air. “Most of the fiends do not know of this,” the coutal explained. “The rod will give great power to the one who wields it, and the rajah who commands this group has no intention of sharing it.”

“Can the rod be destroyed?” Orphan asked.

“Yes, but I do not know how,” Sentry told him. “Or at least not with certainty. I cannot affect it with my magic. As my spirit is bound here to guard the rod, I believe that the demon whose body lies there left some of his spirit in the rod.”

Orphan considered this. “Did he have any weaknesses, this demon overlord?”

“You think that they have passed to his rod,” the coutal said approvingly. “I had the same thought. In fact, I have been pondering it ever since I passed into this state. The demon’s flesh was strong. It seemed no physical weapon could hurt him, save for a super-hard metal that was forged from meteors.”

“Adamantine,” Orphan said.

“I do not know this word,” the coutal said. “But in any event, the demon was badly wounded by a great silver dragon whose claws had been coated with this metal. After he slew the dragon, he teleported himself here to recuperate. I was already here, having discerned the location, trying to find some valuable piece of intelligence on his methods. I used my magic, he used his. We both died. Had he not been so badly wounded by the special metal, I would not have prevailed.”

“I have a friend somewhere nearby with a sword that I think is made of the same metal,” Orphan said. “He might be able destroy the rod with it.”

The light that the coutal had cast within the tunnel suddenly went out, countered by some fiendish magic, and they heard the demonlings prepare another charge.

“Only if he arrives here quickly,” the coutal said.