The Companions of Tartiël (43 page)

Kaiyr snapped to attention. “So, it is true.”

The elven god looked deep into the forest as though focusing on some deeply concerning matter. “Yes. Someone or something, some power is hiding secrets from the gods. Troubled times are to come, both for those in higher planes as well as for mortals from all realms.”

“Alduros Hol…?” Kaiyr mused thoughtfully.

Arvanos nodded. “He has been struck the hardest, I fear. None have been able to contact the Warden, in His realm or outside of it. Alduros Hol’s vast forests have been burned, and none has claimed responsibility. It very well may be, Blademaster, that I am putting the fate of all the gods and mortal realms into the hands of you and your friends.” He trembled, only slightly, but Kaiyr noticed it. An involuntary shiver ran up the unshakeable elf’s spine at the sight of his god frightened.

Bowing, Kaiyr did not acknowledge Arvanos’s fear. “I accept these tasks, Father Arvanos. You have but to ask of me, and I shall do even more for You.”

Turning His gaze back to Kaiyr, Arvanos nodded. “Very good. I must leave you now, but I must demand of you one thing more.”

Kaiyr gestured with his hand that he was ready.

“You will meet again those whom you consider enemies: three halfling brothers with the name Lillik.” Kaiyr’s expression immediately hardened, and his eyes took on the depth of a blademaster concentrating on battle. “No,” Arvanos interrupted, “you are not to bring them harm, for now. It is distasteful, but they are, by proxy, in my employ. You are to aid them in whatever way they request. You are not to harm them until the next time you return to your home in Ivyan.”

Kaiyr’s eyebrows arched, and his blue eyes roiled with seething anger. “I… I do not understand. But I shall comply because You ask it of me, my god.”

Arvanos nodded and started on His way out of the clearing. As He left, Kaiyr heard the god saying over His shoulder, “This interdict will not last forever. You will meet them again, and then, they may pay for their misdeeds. Should the time come that they answer for their crimes… I should like to watch you deliver to them what they rightly deserve.”

The forest scene faded, and Kaiyr found himself back in the temple once more, in a small chapel occupied only by himself and Kolatev. The blademaster looked at the elf sitting across from him, both with their legs folded beneath them. After a moment, the priest’s eyes fluttered open. “I hope you found the answers you seek, Blademaster.”

Kaiyr bowed his head once in confirmation. “Yes, I believe I have. Or, at least I have found a path which will lead to such answers.” The two of them rose and left the room, the shorter cleric having to take three strides for every two of Kaiyr’s. “Thank you, Brother Kolatev. I—” He stopped when someone in the sanctuary up ahead screamed a gurgling, dying shriek. Kaiyr immediately stepped in front of Kolatev, his eyes focusing on the archway into the sanctuary. “Stay here,” he ordered, and without giving Kolatev time to object, he darted down the hallway.

In the three seconds it took Kaiyr to arrive, two others had fallen victim to the short elf standing calmly in an aisle between pews in the circular chamber near the temple’s entrance. In one hand he wielded a gray-bladed rapier. “You have defied the master long enough,” the elf told one of the dead bodies. “And so, Warteär Nomen comes for you.” Upon hearing Kaiyr’s footsteps, the elf turned toward the hallway and leveled his rapier at the blademaster. “Who are you? Do you defy the master?”

Kaiyr stopped and surveyed the scene. Several other clergy members soon arrived, rushing down the hall with shields and swords in hand. This Warteär Nomen had already killed Altaïr and two others, none of whom Kaiyr had previously judged to be poor fighters. “Yes,” said the blademaster, registering “the master” as an enemy, “I do.” He hopped up onto the back of one pew and darted across the tops of the wooden benches, his soulblade flashing into existence.

Warteär met the blademaster in battle in a similar fashion, balancing atop the pews’ backs with equal grace. Sparks flew as their weapons crashed together, Kaiyr throwing Warteär’s arm out wide. But though Kaiyr continually gained melee advantage over his foe, Warteär moved with preternatural speed, and the rapier sang dangerously close to Kaiyr’s neck on more than one occasion.

Hopping down from the pews, Warteär landed on the flagstones with such force that the stones cracked. He pointed a finger at Kaiyr and muttered a brief incantation. A green ray, crackling with destructive energy, lanced from the pointing digit and toward the blademaster, who leaped into a whirling dive for cover behind the podium at the center of the sanctuary. The beam cut a tiny hole in the blademaster’s robes and lanced into the wall behind, vaporizing several tons of stone.

With his back to the weak protection offered by the lectern, Kaiyr watched as the stones around the hole in the wall began to crumble. “What is this creature?” he asked himself, briefly recalling and analyzing this one’s movements. His rapier, too, Warteär seemed to wield with more force than finesse. Not only was he quick, but this elf was frighteningly strong—and versed in advanced magic, Kaiyr decided as the lectern suddenly blew apart. His future-looking senses, however, had warned him of the attack, and the blademaster was long gone before another green beam could turn him into a pile of dust.

“Master Kaiyr!” he heard a call from the front door, and the blademaster immediately recognized the voice as Caineye’s.

“Stay back!” Kaiyr shouted, his voice echoing in the eerily quiet battlefield. Peering around the pew at his back, Kaiyr saw a green ray lance toward the main doors of the temple, where Caineye was standing. With a strangled yelp, the druid dodged out of the way, and the beam instead vaporized one of the statues just outside the temple.

“Sound advice,” Kaiyr heard his companion quip nervously.

Warteär stalked between the pews, ignoring Caineye as he pursued his more interesting prey. “You will not survive this encounter. All who stand in Warteär Nomen’s way shall fall,” warned the strange elf. “Leave this place, and I will allow you to survive. You are not my target this day.”

From his vantage point, Kaiyr could see a small gathering of clerics at the entrance to the hallway opposite the one from which the blademaster had emerged. They huddled in the shadows, trying to keep out of sight of this monster with an elven face. Kolatev was nowhere to be seen, and Kaiyr feared the priest might have been on the receiving end of a stray disintegration beam.

Kaiyr frowned, thinking hard and analyzing the situation. He needed to give the clerics a chance to escape. Killing this Warteär Nomen creature seemed to be out of the question; Kaiyr had landed several solid blows on his enemy’s body, but none of them seemed to have had any effect. Shaking his head, he went with the only option available.

“You shall have to fight your way through me if you want to kill those I am sworn to protect,” Kaiyr announced, his voice strong as he rose and turned to face his opponent.

“I can comply,” Warteär Nomen said calmly, pointing a finger at the blademaster and loosing yet another deadly, green beam of energy. Kaiyr twitched ever so slightly, and the beam raced by his cheek, severing but three of his hairs. The sudden shift in Kaiyr’s demeanor momentarily confused the strange elf, who cocked his head and studied his opponent.

“You shall not find that an easy task,” Kaiyr intoned gravely, “for you face a blademaster.” If this opponent’s skin was as hard as stone, then so be it. Kaiyr had watched his father, Blademaster Sorosomir, cleave through solid stone with his soulblade; Kaiyr decided he would rise to the same level or die in the attempt.

With his soulblade held high over his head, angled down with its edge aimed toward Warteär Nomen, Kaiyr fixed the soulless eyes of this elf with his own oceanic orbs. “Come.”

Warteär unleashed three more beams, all of which the blademaster, robes whirling, evaded. Most of the central pillar of the temple vaporized behind Kaiyr, and the roof began to crumble in the sudden absence of any support.

Seeing Kaiyr so easily avoid his magic, Warteär Nomen closed the distance between himself and the blademaster, once more whipping his rapier from its sheath. Stones from the vaulted ceiling crashed around them, drowning out Caineye’s worried shouts from the temple’s entrance.

But Kaiyr was in his element. As far as he was concerned, there was no safer place for him anywhere. Behind the whirling wall of his soulblade, Kaiyr’s fortress was impenetrable.

Warteär Nomen continued vainly to assault Kaiyr’s perfect defense, each time his rapier turned away by the blademaster’s flashing blade. Stone rained down around them, but neither of them flinched every time a flagstone cracked under the lithic storm. Both jumped back as a large boulder rocketed into the ground between them, but the event precipitated no pause in the combatants’ fury longer than half a breath; Kaiyr and Warteär Nomen crossed swords again, stepping around the barrier and through the cloud of dust it sprayed into the air.

Despite his stalwart defense, Kaiyr gladly gave ground, steering Warteär Nomen around the rubble that continued to accumulate around them. His arms burned with several tiny scratches every time he swung his soulblade, but he paid the pain no heed as he backed away, drawing his foe into the empty hallway.

Kaiyr’s mind worked as furiously as his body, seeking to discover within himself the ability his father had taught to him but which Kaiyr had never fully grasped: the secret of cleaving through even the hardest materials and armor. The concept was simple: focus on the cut. But with his efforts directed toward defending, Kaiyr could not find the time to gather together his mental and spiritual energies tighter than he already had.

Warteär Nomen came forward with a thrust aimed at Kaiyr’s heart. Over his foe’s shoulder, Kaiyr could see the remaining clergy escaping, clinging to the outer wall, where the ceiling was, for the moment, more stable.

Not giving away his wards, the blademaster stepped inside Warteär Nomen’s attack range, the rapier glancing off Kaiyr’s mithril-armored shoulder, and delivered a kick to his opponent’s midsection. Warteär Nomen stumbled back but did not seem in the least perturbed by the blow.

The pause in the battle was all Kaiyr needed. Concentrating, he took hold of his thoughts and spirit, forcing them to cooperate with his designs. As he did so, he drew back his soulblade, and time seemed to slow for a fraction of a second, just long enough for the blademaster to target an opening in Warteär Nomen’s defenses. With a brief flicker of thought, Kaiyr released his grip on his soulblade and manifested it instead in his left hand. His blue robes whirling, he swung his soulblade in a crescent arc. Warteär Nomen looked up in time only to see the weapon strike his side. The blade bit deep, and Warteär Nomen stopped, staring in shock at the wound.

*

I pumped my fist in the air. “All right. Got him, finally,” I said. Xavier and Matt traded high-fives with me for scoring a hit on Warteär Nomen that actually dealt damage; it had quickly become obvious that this character had a high amount of damage reduction, which negated the vast majority of all the damage I dealt to him. “And better yet,” I went on, “It’s a critical hit.”

Dingo looked up with a smirk on his face. “Technically, yes,” he said, “but only roll your normal damage. Don’t multiply it for the critical.”

We all stared at him, unblinking. “Oh, shit,” Matt said as it dawned on us. “Unaffected by critical hits? This isn’t looking good for you, Kaiyr.”

I nodded and dropped my chin into my palm, thinking. There weren’t too many different kinds of creatures that could resist the extra damage dealt on a critical hit: constructs, elementals, oozes, plants, swarms, and undead are the only creature types immune to critical hits. Of those, we could rule out elementals (this guy wasn’t made of fire or water, etcetera), plants (no leaves sprouting from his eyebrows), oozes (no goop), and swarms (hitting him didn’t make parts of his body fall off and then crawl back into place).

“So,” I said, “Construct or undead, or he has some ridiculous armor. None of these is very healthy for us.”

Dingo nodded but turned to Matt. “We’re going to pause with you there, Kaiyr, and focus on Wild for just a second. Wild, while you’re working in the office today, you hear a sudden outbreak of hustle and bustle in the temple.”

Matt frowned and said, “Well, I’m going to investigate. Can I find Father Coëty?” Dingo nodded. “All right, I’m going to ask him what’s going on.”

“Coëty tells you that one of the nearby temples is under attack by some force. The clergy of both temples are good friends, and the temple of Alduros Hol is going to send help, since they will arrive before the city guard can mobilize, being so close in the same district.”

Matt brightened. “
Can I go along?
” he asked as Wild.

Dingo shrugged and gave a thumbs-up. “Coëty doesn’t have any objections—”

“Good. I get a warpony and name it Flaffy and ride out with the clerics,” Matt announced.

Dingo stared at Matt, momentarily confused. I just looked over my shoulder at Xavier with a half-puzzled, half-amused look.

Sputtering, the DM responded, “What? Uh, no. No ‘Flaffys’ here.”

Matt crossed his arms in mock petulance. “Yuh-huh. Flaffy O’MacFlanagan the warpony.”

Xavier and I laughed at Dingo as he fought back against Matt’s silliness. “Wha? Wait, no, you can’t do O’- and Mac-at the same time. That’s Irish and Scottish. It’d rip itself in two out of ambivalence.” Matt just smiled, arms still crossed. “No,” Dingo said, “I have a better name. How about ‘glue?’ Or maybe ‘Elmer’s’?”

I glanced back at Xavier again, both of us sensing another one of the disputes that so often rocked the foundations of the game. Granted, it was amusing and, for once, not about a conflict of interest regarding the rules. So, the two of us sat back and watched, chortling at times, as Dingo and Matt duked it out verbally over whether or not Matt was allowed to call his warpony, “Flaffy O’MacFlanagan.”

Matt’s persistence won the day in the end, and his character rode out on his ridiculously-named warpony.