The Sorcerer's Scourge (47 page)

As his creature gave one last shudder before lying still, Varnath realized he needed to take a more active approach. He thought the cleric was the immediate threat until the power of that unusual elf once again rocked the chamber. He had dismissed the wizard when they had first arrived. Like any magic user of skill, Varnath had looked upon the invisible aura that surrounded all practitioners of magic.

Wizards typically carried a silvery glow showing their affinity with the Source. That color could change depending on the types of magic the caster associated himself with. But when he had looked at the elf, it was like looking into a kaleidoscope of chaotic colors, all shifting and seemingly at war with one another. It was the aura of a complete mad man.

Varnath floated to the upper reaches of the dark dome and wove a tangle of black magic. He thrust his cadaverous hand towards the elf, sending out a dozen black tendrils and jerked back as if hooking a fish as they wrapped around Tarth’s lean form. The black strands did not retract as Varnath reeled the wizard up into the shadows. They continued to twist around Tarth’s body until they completely covered him in a kind of onyx cocoon.

“I shall enjoy dealing with you later,” the lich hissed at Tarth as he left him bound and stuck to the ceiling.

Varnath floated down just behind Malek, ready to strike the cleric in the back with an ancient dagger sporting a long, thin, curved blade. Malek sensed the closeness of the evil entity and threw himself forward in a roll, just narrowly missing being skewered. He instantly came to his feet, brandished his holy medallion, and poured every ounce of his faith into it.

Varnath hissed and reeled back, as much from pain as disgust at the radiant light that washed over him. Drawing upon his vile necromantic power, he conjured forth and cloaked himself in pure darkness. Light and dark warred with each other, both struggling to consume the other.

The lich took a step forward, forcing Malek to take a step back as the darkness pressed closer. Varnath continued to approach inch by inch, sending out strands of ebony energy questing for a way past, through, or around the opposing light to reach the human hiding within its luminescence.

Malek felt his back touch a solid surface and could retreat no farther. He cast his head left and right, seeking a way to put distance between himself and the evil defiler. In that moment of desperation, Varnath closed the space between them and Malek looked straight into the glowing red orbs that served as the lich’s eyes.

Both opponents could feel the pressure between the two conflicting powers like pushing together the matching poles of two incredibly strong magnets. Malek brought his hammer up in hopes of breaking the stalemate but Varnath was faster. Malek felt the thin knife cut through his armor and pierce his body just below his ribs. The cleric felt himself dying, but not just from the stab wound. The cleric could feel the ancient blade sucking out his very life force, his soul, and feeding it to the lich.

Varnath’s putrefied face turned up in a triumphant grin and relished the feeling of the cleric’s life energy flowing into him. Out of the hundreds, thousands, of sacrifices he had made, this was the most exhilarating he had every beheld. The world began to dim around Malek’s eyes and he tried one last desperate attempt to stave off his own death as the light of his amulet waned.

A body moving so fast it was nearly a blur struck the lich from the side, launching Varnath halfway across the room. Landrin took a brief second to watch the cleric fall to the floor and cast one last look into Malek’s eyes that now stared lifelessly up at the murky dome of the chamber.

Varnath floated back to his feet and glared hatefully at the vampire. “You should have joined me when you had the chance, bard. I would have made you second only to me in the world I am creating. Instead, for your continued defiance, you shall suffer for an eternity!”

Landrin shuddered as the master of undead asserted his will upon the vampire. With shout of denial, Landrin broke free of the overwhelming impulse to obey and struck out with his magic. Varnath flew to the side in an attempt to avoid the fireball. He continued to circle, much of his moldy clothing now smoldering and trailing smoke.

The lich looked around the chamber and saw that only two of his nightmarish creatures still fought. He knew that it would not be long until that number was cut in half. He saw one of the spawn wrap a thick tendril around the ogre and hurl him bodily across the room to strike heavily against a nearby wall.

At nearly the same instant, the second of his creations lifted the dwarf and flung him against the wall hard enough to topple an open stone sarcophagus down upon him.

“You are strong, vampire, but I am the master of this place. I could crush you like an insect, but I think it will be more fun to watch my newest pet cut you to pieces.”

Varnath made a motion with his hand at another sarcophagus standing against the nearby wall. Landrin tried to keep his eyes on it and the lich as the stone lid shifted before falling to the floor with a resounding crash. The former bard nearly dropped the sword clutched in his left hand as he beheld the creature that stepped out.

“Samone, no,” Landrin moaned in despair.

The former paladin’s face was whiter than the purest alabaster. Her once gleaming armor was black as if fouled from the soot of a fire. Landrin could tell she was not a vampire, but what manner of undead the lich had created from her body, he did not know. He looked into those pale blue eyes and saw the gleam of intelligence and recognition within their unholy depths.

“Hello, Landrin. I told you that next time we met I would destroy you. Of course at the time, it was for a different reason.”

“Samone, you must fight him! Reject him! Reject your nature as I have! Solarian will still accept you,” Landrin pleaded.

Samone’s short black hair undulated as she shook her head. “He will not. I failed him, and this is my eternal damnation.” The dark paladin drew a blade as black as her armor. “Now I serve Varnath, and I shall not fail again.”

Samone quickly put Landrin in a fighting retreat. Her speed and strength was nearly equal to his, and her armor and seeming willingness to kill him put her at a distinct advantage.

“Samone, I know you can beat him!” Landrin urged as he desperately parried her tireless flurry of attacks.

“I have no will of my own anymore. It too belongs to Varnath.” A slight glimmer of her former humanity sparked in her eyes and in her whispered tone. “You must destroy me Landrin, or I will destroy you and everything in my master’s path.”

Landrin could see the resolution in her face and hear it in her voice. She knew she could not overcome the lich’s domination and pleaded for Landrin to end her, for her sake and the sake of humanity. The former bard lashed out with sword and magic, knowing that there was only one resolution to what they all faced.

Seeing that his newest, and by far greatest, creation had the vampire well in hand, Varnath turned his attention back to the other troublesome breathers that futilely tried to disrupt his grand scheme. The lich turned and found himself face to face with the huge, angry druid. He stared up into the furious eyes of the half-ogre, and sneered.

 “You are the most ridiculous of all these pathetic mortals. Foolish druid, you are in the heart of death. Ellanee has no place and no power here. Without your goddess, precious plants, and life from which to draw your feeble magic, what are you?”

Bron stared down unflinchingly and responded simply, “Big.”

The half-ogre put all of his considerable strength behind his swing and struck the lich with his fencepost-thick staff. Varnath struck the wall so hard many of his bones shattered and bounced nearly half the distance back to the feet of the druid. Such physical damage was largely inconsequential, but it rattled the lich to his core.

 Varnath seethed with rage as he floated off the floor trailing splinters of bone and ready to unleash his foulest and most punishing necromancy upon the druid. However, Bron was not yet finished with the creature. The lich was wrong. There was life in this chamber and it fought with every ounce of strength it had. As long as the living fought and persevered, Ellanee was always close at hand.

He listened to her gentle whisperings upon a wind only he could sense. Turning his magic towards his staff, thorny vines sprouted from the wood and pierced his tough flesh. They drank in his life-giving blood as they stretched out towards the lich. Varnath swiped at the green tendrils with his sacrificial dagger, but the shoots writhed and twisted around his wrist and crawled up his arm beneath the tattered remnants of his sleeve.

The lich lord wailed a hideous, blood-curdling shriek as the brambles continued to grow, twisting around his form, and burrowing into the remnants of his flesh. The thorns drank deeply of the druid’s blood and pumped its life-giving substance into the cadaverous abomination.

Samone shuddered as her master fell in agony, and failed to parry Landrin’s thrust. The vampire’s slim blade pierced her armor and the unbeating heart beneath. Landrin dropped to his knees as he caught Samone and gently lowered her to the ground.

“Landrin,” Samone gasped as she shared some of Varnath’s pain.

“Forgive me, Samone,” Landrin begged. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“There is nothing to forgive unless you do not finish this. Only then shall I curse you for eternity.”

“What must I do?”

The fallen paladin turned her head towards the enormous black crystal in the center of the room. “The gem is the heart of his power. It is his phylactery. As long as it is whole, he will always be able to reform his body or simply take another. You must destroy it to kill him and to free me. Take my blade and smash it.”

“There must be a way to save you,” Landrin said desperately.

“You will save me by destroying Varnath. It is the only way.”

Landrin nodded, took the black sword from Samone’s hand, and approached the crystal. A short ways away, Varnath renewed his struggles, trying desperately to shed this broken form so that he might take one of the fallen elves’ bodies and destroy them all, but the accursed vines and the blood pouring into him held his spirit as firmly as it did his body.

The bard raised the blade over his head in a two-handed grip and whispered, “Fly free, my nightingale.”

Landrin smashed the sword down upon the gem, still flashing a hundred different images of the carnage being enacted throughout the kingdom, as both crystal and sword shattered into thousands of fragments. The bard felt dozens of sharp slivers stab into his flesh as steel and crystal exploded outward.

Varnath let out a final shriek of anger and anguish before crumpling in a pile of tattered cloth, leathery skin, and broken bones. The last inky abomination slumped to the ground and began spreading out into a pool of sludge. Landrin ran to Samone and cradled her head, praying that she might have returned to her mortal form upon the lich’s destruction. His prayers came to naught.

Maude spotted Malek lying still across the chamber and ran to him as Corana and her remaining rangers checked on their injured and fallen. She checked but found no pulse nor signs of breath. She gently stroked his handsome face as she wept and touched the golden amulet that seemed to glow with a faint light.

For a moment, Maude thought the amulet’s light was increasing until she realized that the source of the glow came from behind her. She, as did the others, turned and watched the blindingly golden glow resolve into a man wearing plate armor that seemed to be forged from the sun.

Solarian stepped towards Maude and the fallen cleric. Maude stood and stepped back as the god knelt next to his Chosen and laid a hand over the holy symbol. The amulet’s glow began intensifying until it nearly matched the nimbus of light surrounding the god’s hand. Malek took a deep, shuddering breath and groaned.

“Solarian!” Landrin shouted. “You have another faithful you must return to life!”

Solarian approached and looked down upon the paladin and the vampire that held her.

“I am sorry, Landrin, but I cannot,” he said sadly.

“Why not? Why will you save him and not her? Has she not given as much or even more? Haven’t I?”