Baldur's Gate II Throne of Bhaal (27 page)

Melissan breathed deep of the dank, musty air as she slowly walked toward the abandoned temple. It smelled of empty decay and rotting death—a smell she had become all too familiar with over the last thirty years. Beneath the stale, fetid stench she caught a hint of something else: smoke and fire. The scent of burning hatred, the perfume of violent, living, palpable fury. She smiled.

After giving Abdel her horse, she had been forced to journey here on foot. The trip had taken many days, but that was a minor inconvenience when compared to the decades she had been patiently waiting, and now her patience was about to be rewarded. The hot glow of the flames bathed her body as she entered the door and gazed up at the grinning skull that was the symbol of her god. She felt the heat from the flames lick her skin, caressing her tingling flesh as Bhaal himself had done while he had walked the land before the Time of Troubles.

The inferno in the pit flared up as she approached, as if the collected essence of the dead god burning within recognized her: Melissan, High Priestess of the Lord of Murder, Bhaal’s Anointed. Long ago, Melissan had enacted the sacrifices and gruesome rituals that fed her god’s hungers. She had led Bhaal’s followers in bloody devotion, slaying enemies and victims alike and tossing their bodies and souls onto the evil, eternal fire at the center of the temple.

For her faith, Bhaal had rewarded her with the secrets of ascension so that she might bring the Lord of Murder back to life after his inevitable death. The time for the ritual had come, the essence of Bhaal’s offspring had been collected through the Five’s war of bloody sacrifice. All was ripe for the dead god’s return.

But Melissan now had other plans. The tall woman slowly removed the fine chain mesh she wore over her clothes and let it drop to the floor. She removed her silver gloves and boots and peeled off her long black sleeves and her tight leggings. She stripped away the tight black cloth undergarments that clung to the curves of her shapely form, revealing the horribly disfigured skin beneath. Thirty years ago, Bhaal’s anointing baptism of fire had burned his mark onto every inch of her body, except her face? leaving her flesh a mass of ugly, twisted scar tissue that would never heal.

She had undergone the transformation willingly, knowing the rewards would be well worth the suffering when the time for retribution came, and that time was nearly at hand.

Melissan, naked and exposed, stepped into the roaring blaze at the center of Bhaal’s temple. The torment was bearable. Temperatures beyond the scope of mortal fathoming incinerated her spirit, though her mutilated, repulsive body was unharmed. The shrieks of tortured souls, the Bhaalspawn trapped within the conflagration, flooded her ears, splitting her eardrums and piercing her brain.

She welcomed the pain. She embraced it, and the hellish fire embraced her in return. Orange fingers crept up her skin, crawling inside her mouth and nostrils like a living entity seeking to devour her from the inside out. The flames engulfed her, slowly and painfully purging her mortal existence and opening the way for Melissan’s own ascension to immortality.

“This must stop!”

Instinctively, Melissan had closed her eyes as she had entered the sacred fire. At the sound of a seeming multitude of voices speaking in unison, they popped open.

Through the hazy orange veil of dancing flames she saw an enormous figure towering over her, its head nearly scraping against the roof of Bhaal’s temple. It spread its massive black, celestial robe, dwarfing the naked woman. Melissan recognized this being—a solar, servant and messenger of Ao, the strange being that ruled over even the gods themselves.

Despite the all-consuming heat, Melissan trembled.

“This is not permitted!” the being warned. “You cannot do this.” But the creature made no move to intercede. It stood motionless while the ascension ritual progressed, taking no action to disrupt the sacrament.

Melissan’s fear slowly vanished as the truth dawned on her. This was no divine guardian of fate and destiny, no all-powerful entity sent to smite her down. This was a mere projection, a harmless spirit from another plane.

“You have no place here!” she screamed above the roaring conflagration. “And you have no power here!”

“A mortal may not ascend in Bhaal’s place,” the creature stated ominously. “Only one of Bhaal’s lineage must be permitted to fulfill this destiny.”

“What of Cyric?” Melissan challenged. “Was he not a mortal who ascended to the pantheon?”

“Cyric was a mistake,” the entity admitted, “an exception that will not be permitted a second time.”

“Then unleash the wrath of your master upon me,” Melissan dared, made bold by her knowledge of the history of Faerun. Only once in recorded memory had Ao ever intervened in the events of Abeir-Toril, during the Time of Troubles. But that era was over, and Ao had long since retreated once more into the mists of philosophical legend.

When nothing happened Melissan cackled with mad relief. She had called the solar’s bluff and she had won.

“Your master is as disinterested as ever. Soon Balthazar will kill Abdel, or perhaps the other way around. It makes no matter. With either death I will gain access to enough of Bhaal’s immortal essence to begin my transformation.”

Powerless to intervene, unable to even dispute Melissan’s bold words, the solar simply vanished.

The triumphant laugh of Melissan reverberated off the walls of the abandoned temple. The sacred fire intensified, and Melissan felt her flesh begin to melt. Her laughter turned to screams as her body turned to ash.

Melissan found herself standing in Bhaal’s Abyssal realm. Her physical body was gone, devoured by the flames raging in the center of Bhaal’s temple back on the material plane. Here in this nether realm she had form once again. She was beautiful once more, the scars and disfigurements of her initiation as Bhaal’s Anointed had been cleansed from her body. She ran her fingers in wonder over her now-smooth, unblemished skin, marveling at her own perfection.

The heavy rumble of thunder her attention skyward. Above her dark clouds roiled and churned, riding the chill wind. Stretching as far as she could see in every direction was dark, rich earth. The gathering essence of Bhaal had brought malevolent life back to the sterile void. The Abyssal plane was now ripe with potential, simply waiting for a powerful hand to shape its growth.

Closing her eyes and tilting her head back, Melissan raised her arms and began a soft chant. In response the ground began to tremble, and the soil began to bubble and burst as tendrils of diseased vegetation struggled into existence, crawling across the dirt to fawn at the feet of Bhaal’s Anointed. Mountains of stone erupted like jagged teeth on the horizon, encircling the realm with a forbidding, impassable border.

Melissan opened her eyes to witness the rapid terra-forming of what she already considered her domain. This world obeyed her every whim and desire, yet something was lacking. Melissan felt the power of Bhaal’s immortal essence pulsing through the ground at her feet. It hung like a static charge in the air. She was able to bend that essence to her will, but she herself was not yet part of that essence. She was still a mortal in a god’s realm.

It was only then that she noticed the single door, standing without walls or frame in the middle of the world. Cautious and curious, the mortal who would be a god approached the odd portal.

“Melissan has been using you, Abdel,” Balthazar patiently explained to his helpless opponent. “Perhaps • she suspected the Five now saw her as no longer necessary and were plotting against her. Perhaps she learned of my desire to betray her cause. Or perhaps she simply realized the Five were becoming too powerful for her to control.

“Whatever the reason, she played us off against each other. When you came to Saradush she manipulated you into killing Yaga Shura, and she tricked Gromnir into opening the gates of the besieged town. In one fell swoop she slaughtered nearly all the remaining Bhaalspawn and managed to turn you against the Five.”

Balthazar paused to gauge Abdel’s reaction. The crippled warrior shook his head in denial. “No,” he said through gritted teeth, “I don’t believe you.”

“What you believe does not matter. Once we are both dead there will be none of Bhaal’s offspring left for Melissan to manipulate, no one to listen to her promises of glory, and no way for Melissan to bring the Lord of Murder back to life.”

The pain from his demolished joints made cogent thought difficult for Abdel. Balthazar had to be lying, but why? What could the monk possibly gain by spinning such a web of deceit? The big sellsword shook his head, trying to clear away the indecision. Unraveling Melissan’s role in the events of his recent life would have to wait.

Abdel pushed his confusion down, burying it beneath simpler, purer thoughts.

The Five had killed Jaheira. Balthazar was one of the Five. Balthazar must die.

Abdel knew he was overmatched. The monk was too skilled for the warrior to defeat in combat. He had wanted to avenge Jaheira himself, but looking at his horribly mangled sword arm and the bone jutting from his lower leg Abdel now knew that was not to be. Yet vengeance was still possible.

The fires of Bhaal flared up within him, and Abdel abandoned himself to his father’s evil. His body exploded, sending bits of flesh spewing around the room as the Ravager broke free.

The roof of the building wasn’t tall enough for the demon to stand to its full height, but the beast simply hunched forward and braced itself by placing two of its arms on the stone floor. The other pair of clawed limbs extended out before the creature as it scuttled toward the doomed monk.

The sight of Abdel’s transformation into the hideous manifestation of Bhaal’s evil did not surprise Balthazar. He had expected this. He was prepared.

Balthazar ducked beneath the swiping talons of his enemy. He spun away from the gnashing, snapping jaws and delivered a series of hard kicks and punches to one of the abomination’s back legs. His blows bounced harmlessly off the hard exoskeleton of the monster.

The Ravager kicked out its leg, moving so fast Balthazar never even saw the attack coming. A gigantic foot caught the monk in the chest with enough force to turn his bones to dust. But Balthazar’s body was able to absorb the force and roll backward with the blow. Instead of shattering every bone in the monk’s torso, the kick simply sent him tumbling backward in a series of backward somersaults that stopped just short of the stone wall.

The Ravager spun toward the monk again, its immense size effectively cornering Balthazar against the wall. The beast lunged in with all four claws this time, each hand slashing in at a different height and from a different angle.

Balthazar ducked and dodged, his body bending and twisting in ways that would have snapped the spine of an ordinary man. The Ravager was relentless in its attacks. Its claws were nothing but blurs of horrible, grasping, gashing death. Yet somehow the monk continued to evade the lethal talons, deflecting, parrying, and redirecting a half dozen attacks in a single second.

The Ravager was faster and stronger than any creature that Balthazar had encountered, but he knew it was but a beast, an untrained animal. It attacked with simple brute force and fury, it had no concept of tactics or strategy. Decades of study in the arts of combat allowed Balthazar to anticipate and defend against each and every attack.

As Balthazar learned the rhythms and patterns of the monster’s assaults, he slowly began to take the offensive. Mixed in with the dodges and parries were vicious counter-thrusts, punches, and kicks to the bulging, faceted, insect eyes of the demon. The beast seemed oblivious to the damage Balthazar was inflicting. It was as if pain had no meaning for this monster.

But as the monk continued to gouge and brutalize the demon’s ocular organs, the Ravager’s attacks became wilder and more frenzied, and less and less accurate. Soon the creature was thrashing madly, swinging blind in the fervent hope it could somehow find its opponent by touch alone and rip him to shreds.

The mad, chaotic efforts of the sightless Ravager were as ineffective as its previous attempts to destroy the monk. In desperation, the beast slammed its entire body against the wall in a wild effort to crush its elusive foe.

Balthazar sensed the desperate move and easily ducked under the Ravager’s widespread legs as it coiled itself for the leap. The demon threw itself against the magically reinforced stone, sending great cracks through the very foundation of the indestructible tower.

The monster was up an instant after slamming into the stone, turning and flailing around with its arms as it tried to locate the monk. Balthazar stood calmly at the far side of the room, gathering all of his power into a single hand.

The blind beast smelled or heard or simply sensed where the tattooed man stood and charged forward. Balthazar held his ground, letting the monster come to him. • He crouched beneath the Ravager’s talon grasping for his throat. He leaped over a claw that slashed at his legs. Balthazar calmly stepped toward the beast and thrust his open palm into the beast’s massive chest.

The Ravager reeled backward, screaming in frustration and confusion. It stumbled back, waving its four arms in a futile attempt to regain its balance. Halfway across the room it collapsed to the floor, its entire body trembling with vibrations from Balthazar’s quivering touch like a timing fork struck with a hammer.

Still shrieking its impotent rage, the demon struggled to its feet. It stood unsteadily, its body quaking and shuddering as the vibrations intensified. There was a horrendous crack as a million spider web thin fissures appeared all at once in the chitinous shell that was the Ravager’s skin. The trembling continued, wracking the monster’s form with violent convulsions. The hairline cracks spread and widened, and a viscous green liquid oozed out.

The Ravager screeched one final time, then collapsed in silence on its back as great chunks of its body began to shake free, dropping to the earth with sticky thuds. A single crack wound its way up the entire length of the demon’s torso, and the two halves split wide apart.