Chapter Twenty

The happy reunion did not last long, as we all realized that a grim and dangerous task still remained. We now had less than 24 hours to get back down there and finish off those devils. We all settled in for some rest.

The next morning came far too early for our wounded young bodies, but rise we did. We all gathered around the breakfast table, planning what spells would bes suit our needs, and eating a hearty meal. Only Millie and Stenngar felt perfeclty healthy. Their happy disposition made the rest of us wince. T'rojan, Mordagin and myself huddled around a table discussing protection and offensive spells we thought might be of use. Spada continued to beg Millie for healing, to which I beleive she reluctantly agreed. At last the three mages concluded our plans, finsished our meals, then went to our rooms to meditate on our spells. Millie, Spada and Stengar went to the temple to fill the wineskins with holy water. An hour later we departed the inn. We would either return victorious, or never return again.

On the row across the lake, I asked myself, why I was willing to take such great risks to save a town, which worshipped Heironeous, from some devils. Its kind of an odd paradox, seeing as I dispise both devils and Heironeous nearly equally. But the thought of leaving devils alive in my wake frightened me, and there was that debt to Heirnoeous, I had grudgingly promised to repay Bran for saving me from poison so long ago. Still neither of these quite seemed to be enough to cause me to willingly face nearly certain doom. Perhaps I'm just twisted in the mind. I'd lived my whole childhood with one foot in the grave. Death seemed to always loom around every corner, whether it was starvation, illness, bandits, or the law, I never thought I'd live to see adulthood, let alone have anything even remotely resembling a home or wife. I think I enjoyed the danger, I'd lived with it for so long, that I was more comfortable living with fear and defeating it, than in taking the easy road. I can only imagine what drove the others. Some may have felt that the evil must be defeated, no matter the cost, others may have felt that defeating the devils would add to their personal glory, while others may have felt that their lives were of little worth, and doing anything, even that which scared them to death was better than being a nobody. Whatever the case, I was both afraid and excited as we beached our craft and we all headed back down into the ground for the final showdown.

We moved cautiously through the old complex, eventually arriving at the room with the blazing wall of hellfire. It appeared as it did the rpevious day, enigmatic and dangerous. An obstacle to be overcome before we could finish our mission. Spatter had some magical oil that protected against normal fires, it wouldn't do much for us against hellfire, but it was better than nothing. We all rubbed it on us, except Mordagin, who wore a ring that protected him against the elements. Not even hellfire could harm him greatly with that ring on. We retrieved a bunch of ice covered blankets from the freezer space, one level below us. We had put them there yesterday before my brilliant use of illusions. I left the group and cast walking unseen on myself. The others prepared other preparatory spells.

Wrapping ouselves in the frozen icy blankets, we prepared to charge through the flames. One by one we went, first Stengar, then Spada, then the others. They were unaware of my locale, they only knew that I was nearby. I immediately heard the roar of devils and the sounds of combat. I waited a moment, then charged through the flames myself.

The heat was intense, but most of it was absorbed by the frozen blanket, it had served its purpose, but would not do much if I had to pass back through the flames. I dropped the blanket, and looked at the scene before me. A wall of fog stood just feet in front of the party, in the mist, I could see a couple of the slopmen and the spike firing devils engaged with my comrades. I saw a great winged devil flying above the carnage and fog, being attacked by many shadowy demons. We seemed to be holding our own, so I went after the heart.

I weaved my way through the fog, around a couple fleshy creatures, under the wings of a flapping spiky devil, and out into the open on the other side of the room. Another of the big devils we'd fought the day before, was moving forward. I repressed the urge to stab it in the back, and went through one of the three doors I could see in this room. It was a closet with nothing even remotely resembling the heart of a high preist.

The battle raged on as I continued my search. The next door revealed a disheveled lab. If the heart were amongst the beakers and cannisters in here, I'd be searching for an hour to find it. I tried the final door, it lead to another nearly empty room, no sign of any hearts. It was time to see what help I could lend my comrades in battle. Just as I came out the door, I saw Spada come running through the fog and head for the closet, with a look of stark raving terror on his face.

Looks like another fear spell had done its work. I guess I'd try and help him out. I walked over to the closet, and entered, Spada crouched in the corner sucking his thumb and whimpering. What a pathetic sight. He was unaware of my presence, as I was still Unseen. I attempted to dispel the fear, but failed, dejected, I went to get Millie, maybe she could help him.

It was time to take agressive action. Two spike throwing devils guarded the closet door, and I'd have to get rid of them before Millie could get in there. I dropped them with a color spray, sawed through their scrawny necks, then went to get Millie. The last of the devils were falling as I retrieved her. She was able to remove the fear from Spada, and as they came out of the closet, we were splashing holy water on the lemure (fleshy blobby creatures) to keep them from regenerating.

The battle was over, we'd defeated the devils, everyone had some cuts and bruises, but we'd survived in decent shape. Everyone quickly went to searching the rooms for the heart, but we found nothing. Millie finally communed with Rudd for an answer, and was told that there was much danger yet that we would have to face before the heart could be gained. Many groans were heard after this proclamation.

We knew we had to be near, so we searched for secret doors, and eventually found one. It was in the wall furthest from the wall of fire where we had entered. Millie detected evil a ways beyond the secret door. I volunteered to go ahead and see what I could find.

As carefully as I could, I opened the secret door, a passage led straight ahead, I could see that about 15 feet ahead, the floor began to slope upwards. I took a couple steps down the hall, when out of the shadows appeared a massive cat, created from the shadows themselves. I tumbled and dove back for the door, its paws whistling overhead, and slapping off my heel. I bounded out the door, shutting it behind me. The rest of the party had been taken by surprise by my speedy return.

"A giant cat appeared out of the very shadows and tried to treat me like a mouse." I said.

"For Rudd's sake, you asshole, it wasn't a displacer beast. Do you think I would have run from a damn displacer beast?" I shouted.

I just scowled at him while Mordagin and T'Rojan discussed whether or not I'd ever seen a displacer beast before. I invited them to go see for themselves, if they didn't believe me.

We finally agreed to approach the enemy in force this time. We all gathered near the door, fighters at the lead, myself guarding the rear. Stengar opened the door, and we all piled into the hallway, heading up the ramp. BAM! A ball of fire washed over us, sending everyone reeling. I was stunned and badly burned, all I could do was crawl back out through the secret door. I don't know what happened to the others, I think they engaged the enemy. I heard yelling and fighting inside. Frantically, I drank the last of my potions of healing, it didn't do much. I pawed frantically through my scrolls looking for something that would help us. I pulled out Serten's Spell Immunity. Praying and casting it on myself, the spell backfired. I could feel myself become a magnet for spells. Damn! I was a goner for sure.

I peered my head through the doorway and looked up at the carnage. Millie and Mordagin came running right for me, I had to quickly move out of the way, or I would have been run over. After letting them pass, I pulled out my wand of paralyzation and blasted one of the big cat creatures as it fought with Spada. Thank Rudd, it dropped. Stengar stood motionless, apparently having become the victim of yet another hold spell. There was another big shadow cat laying dead, and a real big and nasty devil was still attacking Stengar. Spada tried to pick up Stengar, but just then, was dropped from a nasty claw of a devil. He then turned his attention to us and came down the passage.

Mordagin, Millie and I all retreated as the devil came our way. It entered the room and swiped at Mordagin, who tried to fight it off with one puny dagger. Time and time again I fired my wand of paralyzation at the devil, with no effect, while Millie fired her crossbow and Mordagin swung his dagger. The only damage we had done was a crosbow bolt which had found its mark in the devil. Mordagin had, as of yet, avoided receiving a death blow, but he wouldn't last long. We were at the end of our rope, I was preparing to draw short swords and attack the devil, when Stengar miraculously came running through the door. How he'd escaped the hold spell was beyond me, but he leapt on the devil, as did I, and we finished it off at last.

We quickly gathered ourselves, Spada lay on the ground back beyond the secret door, and none of us knew what had happened to T'Rojan. Mordagin informed me that a half devil enchantress was flying in the room inside, and that she had encased herself in some globe of magical invulnerability. At long last, an opportunity to use my arrow of mage slaying. I drew the arrow and knocked it.

Together, Stengar and I charged into the room, weapons drawn, just as I raised my bow to fire at the devil-witch, she disappeared. She'd seen enough. The battle was finally ours. The room we stood in was a large domed room with a well in the middle of the floor. In the ceiling above the well was a small hatch. This must be where the moonlight would hit the heart of the high preist as described in the book we'd found below.

A voice spoke out of nowhere, "The heart is in the well." It was T'Rojan, he had turned himself invisible, and found a good place to hide during the fight. Millie was helping Spada to his feet, apparently, he'd been playing dead to avoid receiving serious injury. Well, actually it looked like he had already received serious injuries, and playing dead was the only weapon he had left in his arsenal. T'Rojan removed his invisibility spell, and appeared before us. He'd been badly damaged in that fireball as well.

Now that I had the chance to really take stock in the group, I noticed just how sorry a group we were. We were all near death, and should have been lying down somewhere safe and warm, being nursed back to health by scantily clad nursemaids. Sorry, but the mind begins to wander after receiving traumatic injuries.

We all slowly limped and hobbled over to the well and looked inside. There about 15 to 20 feet below us was a pillar surrounded by a circle of flames. On the pillar was the still beating heart of what must be the long dead high preist of Heironeous.

"Wait just a minute!" I said "Someone else can do it, I'm practically dead on my feet."

It appears they were right. We were all in sad shape. "Allright, damnit, but just how do you expect me to get it?" I asked.

"I've got a weak potion of flying, it won't last very long, but it should do the job for this." said Mrdagin.

Checking their wineskins, Millie pulled out hers. "I've got half a skin left." she said.

Clutching the half skin of holy water to me, I drank the potion of flying. I could feel that it was weak, but I was able to fly. I raised up over the well and lowered down into it, the heat was painful but bearable, for now. When I got within a couple feet of it, I stopped and reached out to grab the still beating heart, my hand envountered an invisible barrier, a foot above it. Pulling the stopper off the wineskin, I tried pouring the holy water onto the heart. Thank Rudd, it worked, the holy water passed through the invisible barrier and started eating away at the heart like acid. It stopped beating, and the flames droppped down. As the last drops of holy water landed on the heart, it collapsed into a pool of mush. The flames gave one last flicker, then with the last of their strength, exploded upwards in a burst.

Flames scorched my body and the explosion shot me out of the well. I flew off to one side and settled to the floor, groaning. Millie came running to my side. I had survived the devil's final burst, but not by much. Slowly I got to my feet, leaning on Millie. We all leaned back over the well again. This time there was no fire to be seen, the heart was no more.

Elated we turned and slowly limped from the room, several of us needing assistance to move. When we passed through the secret door, I was overjoyed to see that the wall of fire had disappeared as well. Joyfully we made our way from this dungeon of heironeous. Weakly we rowed back across the lake, finally collapsing on the shore near the village. Victory was ours!

We made our way back to the inn, collapsed into our beds, and called for strong drink.

The next few days passed quickly, as we slept most of the time, and received healing whenever Millie could muster the strength. Almost a week had passed before we were fully recovered and felt strong enough to continue our journey to find the Moon Gate. Cuhltron seemed most interested in the tale of this old town and our deeds. During this time, the lake did not rise back to its normal level, as it had always done in the past, and the townspeople slowly came to realize that we had at last broken the curse.

The heroe's welcome which we all expected never came. The townfolk acted appreciative of our efforts, but I guess since they'd all grown up with the lake, its absence was a bit disconcerting. I don't think they were really ready to feel free from the curse until we were gone as well. Sensing the confused gratitude of the town, we bid it a last good bye, and headed off into the mountains.

One last thing I did, before leaving Valencia, was to write a letter, addressed to Bran, and left it in the hands of Father Maricon to deliver. The note said:

Bran,

I no longer owe any debt to you or your weak god. I have fulfilled any past and future obligation that you could ever dream of, by wiping the taint of devils from one of your deitie's old temples here in Valencia. I have risked both life and limb to achieve this most lofty goal. One which you could only dream of being so worthy to perform. Not only have I cleansed a long standing curse from this temple, but have ended the threat of the return of Baal to the land of Oerth. All this I did without recieving anything in compensation, be it monetary or otherwise. This I did not accomplish alone, for I had help from my fellow comrades, but most especially from a true and powerful god, Rudd. I do not expect thanks from one such as yourself, but if you do feel like expressing some form of gratitude, the only payment I will accept is you casting down your weak god and bending knee to swear allegiance to Rudd.

The Unseen One

Cuhltron's two freinds arrived in town a day before we left. You remember the man and woman who had lead a force of eighty men right to us, before we'd gotten trapped in that mages old home. Anyway they showed up, and decided to travel with us. To say I did not welcome their arrival with open arms would be an understatement.

We left the town of Valencia, heading south along the pass, the scroll tube continued to point eastward into the mountains, and at last we reached a trail that went in that direction. We all turned off the trail that lead through the pass, and slimbed the trail eastward. It soon went up, and as we travelled, the air got colder.

After a couple days of travel, we noticed an interesting looking cave mouth some distance above our trail. T'rojan flew up to investigate, but found nothing of interest. We continued eastward. Later that night, we set camp, it had grown bitterly cold over the day, and once night fell, it had become so cold that we feared for our horses. Mordagin had set a Leomunds tiny hut, as we had been doing every night. We decided to bring as many horses into the shelter as we could, and rotate them throughout the night, to keep them from freezing.

"This is cold beyond the season." he replied, "Normally it doesn't get this cold for another month."

Great, I thought, in a months time, this would be a common occurrence. I could hardly wait.

Later that night, as I lay sleeping, I was awakened by black tentacles thrashing about inside the shelter of our tiny hut. A couple of tentacles had hold of people and horses. Mordagin was shouting that they were the work of a mage. I quickly cast fly and took off straight up out of the hut.

As soon as I left the shelter of the hut, I was hit by the frigid force of the air, unfortunately, the cold was soon followed by two darts of flame fired directly at me. I breifly caught a glimpse of the mage who had cast the spell, and was able to avoid the full strike of the spell, but was severely wounded none the less. I returned fire with a snowball swarm, aiming at the area where I had briefly seen the mage, and continued to fly upward into the dark night sky.

Mordagin came rushing out of the hut's protective circle, charging toward the attacking mage. I looked desparately for the enemy, and he revealed himself briefly when he fired another volley of spells at Mordagin. This time it was magic missiles. I through up a web spell around where I saw the mage, then dropped down behind a tree and listened. Others came rushing out of the hut, and searched around for the enemy. Eventually Spada found some tracks that lead out of the webs and stopped without a trace. The invisible mage had either flown off or teleported away.

We kept a very watchful guard for the rest of that night, but were not attacked again. Millie prayed to Rudd for the origin of our attacker, and she believed him to have come from that cave entrance we had passed. It was nearly a days journey behind us, and we had no desire to tangle with a demented high level mage who lived out here in the middle of nowhere, so we pressed on. Hopefully the Moon Gate was near.

A few nights later, while I was on watch, I noticed smoke passing in front of the moon, to our west. The fire had to be close, and it had to be large for me to have seen it. It was another cold night, but I woke Stengar, Millie was already awake, and cast fly and headed off to investigate.

In only a few short minutes, I came across the source of the fire. There was a large camp of men with several large fires trying to sleep and stay warm in the cold night. They were less than half a mile behind us, and they looked like the group of 4 score men who had been hired by Zach, and that had followed us before. No doubt those two "freinds" of Cuhltron had put them on our trail again.

Looking about the camp, the men were clustered into three groups, huddled together to keep warm, along with a Leomund's tiny hut. The largest group of men, probably around 2 score in number were pressed body to body, trying to stay warm in this frigid cold. I felt bad for them, all cold like that, so I figured the least I could do was warm them up a bit. I gently placed a fireball right in the middle of them, then lit out of there, to the sounds of agonizing screams.

I flew back to our camp and woke everyone up. We had a brief discussion, and the majority decision was to attack, so we started prepping ourselves with spells, and in about ten minutes we were prepared to move. We three mages all had fly spells cast on us. T'Rojan was invisible, I was Unseen, Mordagin, was unfortunately quite visible. We planned to travel to the camp and then spread out, hitting it from three sides. The fighters and preists, Millie, Stengar, Spada, Cultron, male priest freind of Culhtron and female ranger freind of Cuhltron, all came behind. The preists staying about 100 yards behind the fighters, lead the horses, in case we needed to escape.

As we neared the camp, Mordagin spotted a group of a dozen soldiers heading up the trail toward our party. He threw a wall of flame around them, catching them inside. The soldiers inside quickly ran through the wall to escape the heat. Some of them didn't survive the attempted escape. Suddenly I heard Mordagin scream, and I saw him falling from the sky. I quickly spotted a man flying, about 100 yards away from me, and immediately lit out after him. He must have dispelled Mordagin's fly spell, ouch, I hoped he survived that fall, it was a doozy.

I gave chase to the flying mage, who had turned and headed back to his camp. T'Rojan appeared of to my left, when he hit the mage with a lightning bug. I continued my pursuit, and watched as the mage landed in the middle of the camp.

The entire camp had been mobilized. There were steep walls surrounding it, except for openings to the east and south, where the trail passed through. There were many soldiers standing guard at each of these locations, and I could see another mage and a couple of priests moving among the men. I was rather dissapointed to see only about a dozen and a half dead men in the vicinity that I'd placed my fireball.

I payed special attention to the Leomund's tiny hut, hoping to see if anyone went running in. No one did, but I felt for sure that Zach had to be in there. I dropped down into the hut as a spell from Mordagin lanced out and took down the mage I had been chasing. Once inside the hut, I immediately spotted Zach. It had been over a year since he'd hired us to kill a bunch of goblins, but I recognized him. I still had no idea why he was so determined to kill us.

Standing beside him was a swarthy looking archer. He appeared to be pretty tough. Making the most of my situation, I decided that I'd grab Zach from behind, fly up out of the hut, attain a really nice altitude and then drop his sorry ass. I grabbed him, only to find him standing about three feet off to my right. What the hell? Some damn magic displacement shit! Very dissapointing. The Archer nailed me with an arrow, then ran out of the hut yelling for help. Zach pulled a rapier and prepared tro skewer me. I tried grabbing him again, but he held me off, and I saw several soldiers come running to the archer's call. Seeing as I was about to be sorely outnumbered, and my hopes of capturing Zach had been spoiled, I flew up out of the hut.

I paused to drape a web spell across the entire hut area. I couldn't see within it, but nobldy came out, so I assumed I had everyone trapped. My escape would have been perfect, if not for the several archers that had been just itching for a target. A couple arrows bounced off my stoneskins, while another arrow struck me deeply in the thigh. Damn that hurt, I wouldn't be able to walk to well with that in there. I rose over the top of the cliff and dropped down in among some rocks, protected from view for the moment.

I desparately tried to think of how I could still get Zach. I had him trapped, but I couldn't get at him. Then I remembered the scroll of Death Fog, I had on me. Whipping it out, I cast the spell, and settled the death fog over the entire webbed area, and then some. It wouldn't kill anyone very fast, but in about 10 minutes everything inside there would certainly be dead. (I noted a certain nervous look appear on the face of the DM at this time, as his primary antagonist was in real danger of dying).

Meanwhile, I didn't know what had been going on with the rest of the party, but from my vantage point, I could see that another wall of flames had sprouted up, blocking the east mouth of the camp. My comrades were below, battling a few soldiers who found themselves on the wrong side of the fire wall. Mordagin was alive apparently, and stood beind the fighters with a spear in his hand. What the hell was he holding a spear for?

A few minutes later, the fire wall disappeared, as did my web spell. One of the mages had dispelled them both. Damn, Zach was free of the webs, which means he could get out of the death fog as well. An ice storm ripped into Spada, the ranger chick, and her priest freind, seconds after the wall of fire went down. The priest fell and didn't rise. Spada was staggering as was the woman. Stengar had narrowly avoided the spell, by charging forward, he was ready to take on the entire camp. Luckily, another fire wall sprung up in front of him, stopping him from running into the camp.

I could see that one of the mages was down, but there were two more standing as well as both priests. I could see a lot of blood on one of the mages, I don't know what had wounded him so deeply but he looked a little strained. Looking around, there were at least 30 soldiers in addition to the priests and mages. I imagined that the others were almost out of spells as was I. We were seriously outnumbered, it was time to end this sortie.

I pulled out one of my scrolls again, this time, I chose advanced illusion. What to do, what to do, I thought. Finally, I had the perfect idea. What's worse than a red dragon breathing flames? I sure as hell don't know, so that's exactly what I would cast. Lucky for me, I'd seen one real close up, so I should be able to pull it off.

Just as our group was looking haggard, and ready to collapse, a red dragon came crawling through the wall of flames, into the camp of our enemy. It raised it's head up into the air swung its neck around and let loose a blast of flames. Bodies just started falling, as people passed out from the shock of it. The enemy went mad with fear, people started running for the southern pass. In a matter of minutes the entire area was empty, except for those who had died or fallen unconscious. All the while, I hadn't seen Zach come out of the death fog. Where was that bastard? I flew down into the fog, just to make sure he wasn't there. I didn't find any sign of him, but I couldn't stay long, the fog burned my skin, and I dared not breath it.

I rose back out of the fog, and went looking for that dead mage. I found him amongst the dead and unconscious, I quickly grabbed him and carried him off to a safe vantage point. From there, I cast detect magic and went through his belongings, he had quite a few magic items on him. I decided that a message needed to be sent to these people who were following us. I flew down to the pass, and ripped some arms off dead bodies, then used them like paint brushes to write on the rock wall. This is what I wrote, "Follow Zach and Meet Certain Death, Leave Zach, and Live!", "Followers of Zach: 90+ Dead, The Good Guys: 0 Dead" and last but by no means least, "5,000gp for Zach's head". I don't know how many of them could read, but hopefully, the message would get accross. The thirty to fourty dead bodies should help drive the point home for the illiterate.

I grabbed the goods from the dead mage, then went in search of my comrades, who had jumped on their horses and taken off as soon as the dragon had appeared. I caught up with them about an hour later, they'd really gotten a good distance before settling down.