The Cleric Quintet: The Chaos Curse

 

Danica looked to the fire, no more than glowing embers by this time, with all the wood fully consumed. Trolls hated fire, and feared it, if they feared anything at all.

Danica called quietly to Dorigen, but the wizard did not stir. A look to Shayleigh sent the elf maiden sliding gently around the side of the fire, near enough to prod Dorigen with her bow.

Dorigen grumbled and started to come awake, then popped her eyes wide when Danica yelled out. An explosion went off to one side, one of Dorigen's wards taking down a monster in flaring blue flames. But three more trolls rushed past their burning companion without regard for its terrible fate and crashed into the clearing, eyes glowing a fierce red, their stench nearly overwhelming the companions. The monsters' long, thin frames towered over the group - one had to be nearly eleven feet tall - and, as they came into the light, their rubbery skin showed as putrid grayish green.

Shayleigh's bow was up and firing in the blink of an eye, three arrows blasting into the closest troll. The monster jerked with each hit, but came stubbornly on, its skinny arms waving its hands awkwardly in wide, arcing swipes.

Shayleigh did not gain confidence from the awkward movements; the three fingers on those hands ended in long, sharp claws that could easily tear the hide from a bear.

A fourth arrow hit the monster squarely in the chest, and Shayleigh hopped away, thinking it better to pummel this creature from a distance.

Two flashes, one silver, one gold, went past the elf as Danica led with her daggers. The monk leaped up and spun head over heels over the fire, following the shots (both solid hits on the next troll) at full speed. She barreled in, jumped, and spun, her trailing foot flying about to slam hard into the troll's midsection.

Danica winced at the sickly, squishy sound of that impact, but she didn't dare hesitate. She spun again for a second kick, then came up straight and landed a one-two punch on the lurching troll's jaw.

"Dorigen!" she screamed, seeing the third troll bearing down on the sitting wizard. To Danica's knowledge, Dorigen had no weapons, and few, if any, components for spellcasting - not even a proper spellbook that she might have studied. The monk, too engaged with this monster, and with Shayleigh still battling the first troll, thought her new companion doomed as the troll reached down at the blanketed woman.

There came a bright flash, and the troll fell back, holding the blanket and nothing more. That blanket flared suddenly with fire, scorching the monster's arms, causing it to scream out in pain.

Danica had no idea where Dorigen had come up with that spell, but she had no time to ponder the issue now. The troll swiped at her repeatedly, and she did a fair, twisting dance to keep clear of its deadly arms. She came in close, inside the monster's reach, thinking lo wriggle out the backside and score a few hits before the lumbering thing turned, but the troll proved faster and more resourceful than she believed, and she nearly swooned as the monster opened its wide, horrible mouth. The long, pointy teeth came within an inch of Danica's face - she could smell the thing's disgusting breath! - and the troll would have had her, except that the incredibly agile monk snapped her foot straight up before her, lifting it right in front of her face, though she had only a few inches to spare between herself and the troll.

Her kick caught the troll on its long nose and drove the proboscis up and back with a loud crackling noise. Danica was down in a crouch in an instant, dodging the flailing arms, and out she slipped, under the troll's armpit, around the back, where she exploded with fury, launching a barrage of heavy punches.

Shayleigh continued to backpedal, firing arrow after-arrow into the pursuing troll. She knew that this would not do, though, for the troll's initial wounds were already on the mend. Trolls could regenerate, their rubbery skin binding of its own accord, and could take an incredible amount of punishment before falling dead.

No, not dead, Shayleigh realized to her horror, for even a dead troll, even a troll that had been cut into little bits, would come back to life, whole again, unless its wounds had been completely burned. That notion led the elf's gaze to the fire, but the embers promised little help. It would take some time to coax that glow back into any sort of flame, and Shayleigh and her companions had no time at all. The elf looked to the side of the encampment, but found that the troll that had been consumed by the explosion (which Shayleigh did not fully understand) had fallen into the snow, and already the fires that had destroyed the thing were nearly extinguished. Shayleigh muttered an elven curse.

Another arrow thudded into the troll, hitting the creature in the face. Still the stubborn thing advanced? and Shayleigh looked down to her half-empty quiver doubtfully. She thought of running into the woods then, of leading this monster away, but one look at Danica told her that she could not, that her friend would not be able to follow.

The troll that had gone unsuccessfully after Dorigen was after the monk now, it and its gruesome companion circling fast to find an exposed flank. Danica worked hard to keep up her guard against attacks from all angles, for with their long arms the trolls could simply reach around any straightforward defense.

"Where did she go?" Danica cried to Shayleigh, obviously referring to the missing wizard.

Shayleigh sighed helplessly and fired another arrow into the pursuing troll. Where indeed had Dorigen gone? she wondered, and she suspected that the wizard had determined this was a good time to escape.

Danica's powerful punch landed heavily against the side of a bending troll's head with a sickly splatting sound. When she retracted the hand, she found a bit of the monster's skin on her knuckles, along with some strands of the thing's hair. Danica groaned in revulsion when she noticed the mess, for the troll hair was writhing of its own accord.

She turned that revulsion into anger, and as the troll came about to swipe at her again, she stepped in close and pounded it repeatedly. Then she wisely fell to her knees and rolled fast to the side as the second troll came rushing at her back. Both monsters were on her as she sprang up to her feet, and up snapped her foot, knocking a lunging hand aside.

"They heal as fast as I hurt them!" the tiring monk cried in frustration.

Danica's statement wasn't quite true, as Shayleigh found out when her next arrow, her sixteenth shot, dropped the troll to the ground. She looked to her quiver, to the four arrows remaining, and sighed again.

Danica went left, was forced back to the right, and backpedaled frantically as both trolls suddenly rushed ahead. An angled log at her back, a dead tree that had toppled to lean against another tree, ended her running room.

"Damn!" she spat, and she leaped high, kicking out with both feet, scoring two hits on one of the trolls and knocking it back several steps. She realized that the other would hit her, though, and she twisted as she came down to protect her vital spots.

As the troll started its attack, an arrow slammed into1 the side of its head. The monster's momentum flew away in its surprise, and though the swinging arm did indeed hit Danica, there was little strength behind the blow.

Danica spun completely to regain her balance, then she quickly lashed out, her flying foot slamming the monster several times in succession.

"And when I'm finished with you," she called defiantly, though of course the beast could not understand what she said, Til hunt down a certain cowardly wizard and teach her about loyalty!"

At that moment, as if on cue, Danica noticed a small sphere of fire appear in the air over the closest troll's head. Before she could ask, the hovering sphere erupted, sending a shroud of hungry flames down over the troll's body.

The monster shrieked in agony and flailed wildly, but the flames would not let go and would not relent. Danica did well to slip away from the waving inferno. She kept her wits enough to concentrate on the second mogster as it came around its burning companion (giving the flaming troll a wide berth), and she met the monstrous thing with another flying double-kick.

Danica had the devious notion of herding the troll into its flaming companion, but the cunning monster wanted no part of that. It staggered back from the kick, then came around again, pointedly putting Danica between it and the burning troll.

An arrow thudded into its side; it turned its ugly head to regard Shayleigh.

Danica flew into it again before it turned back, and the monster stumbled and toppled. Danica was up quickly, thinking to leap atop the monster, but she skidded to a stop, seeing another flaming sphere come to life in the air above the prone troll.

An instant later, that troll, too, was shrieking in agony, engulfed by the biting magical flames.

Shayleigh held her next shot, sensed movement to the side, and spun and fired - into the troll she had already dropped. The thing went down in a heap again, but stubbornly writhed and squirmed, trying to rise.

Danica was on it at once, pounding wildly. Shayleigh joined her, sword in hand, and with mighty hacks, cut off the troll's legs.

Those severed limbs began to wriggle immediately, trying to reattach to the torso, but Danica wisely kicked them away toward the glowing remnant of the campfire.

As soon as one of the legs touched the embers, it burst into flames, and Danica scooped it up by the other end, using it as a grotesque torch. She ran across the clearing and shoved the flaming limb into the face of the unburned troll, the amazing monster still thrashing against Shayleigh's repeated strikes. Soon, that troll, too, was ablaze, and the battle was ended.

Dorigen walked back into camp then, inspecting her work on the two flame-shrouded trolls. They were little more than crumpled black balls by that time, and their regenerative process was surely defeated by the wizard's flames.

Danica could hardly bear to look at Dorigen, ashamed of her earlier doubts. "I thought you had run off," she admitted.

Dorigen smiled at her.

"I vowed to..." Danica began.

"To hunt me down and teach me about loyalty," Dorigen finished for her, lightly and with no accusation in her tone. "But, dear Danica, do you not know that you and your friends have already taught me about loyalty?"

Danica stared hard at the wizard, thinking that Dori-gen's bravery here, and the fact that she had bothered to stay around and aid in the fight, would weigh in her favor once they returned to the library. As she thought about it, Danica realized she was not surprised by Dori-gen's heroics. The wizard had been won over, heart and soul, and, though Danica agreed that Dorigen should pay a strict penance for her actions in favor of Castle Trinity, for the war she helped direct against Shayleigh's people, the monk hoped that the penance would be positive, in which Dorigen might use her considerable magical powers for the good of the region.

"You likely saved our lives," Shayleigh remarked, drawing Danica's attention. "I am grateful."

That remark seemed to please Dorigen greatly. "It is but a pittance of the debt I owe you and your people," the wizard replied.

Shayleigh nodded her agreement. "A debt that I trust you will pay in full," she said sternly, but with apparent confidence.

Danica was glad to hear it. Shayleigh had not been cold to Dorigen in any way, but neither had the elf been friendly. Danica could appreciate the elf maiden's turmoil. Shayleigh was an intelligent and perceptive elf, one who based her judgments on an individual's actions. She, more than any of her clan, had accepted Ivan and Pikel as true friends and allies, had not allowed typically elven preconceptions concerning dwarves to cloud her judgment of them. And now she, alone among the elves of Shilmista, had seen this new side of Dorigen, had come to where she was ready to forgive, perhaps, if not to forget

That support, as well as King Elbereth's (and Danica was confident the elf king would accept Shayleigh's judgment), might prove critical in Cadderly's forthcoming showdown with Dean Thobicus.

"It is almost dawn," Dorigen remarked. "I have no stomach for breakfast with troll stench in the air."

Danica and Shayleigh wholeheartedly agreed, so they packed up their camp and started out early. They would reach the Edificant Ubrary in just three short days.

An Invited Guest

Dean Thobicus was surprised to find a blanket draped over the lone window in his office the next morning. It ruffled as he approached, and he felt the chill morning breeze, which led his gaze to the floor, to the base of the blanket, where the window's glass lay shattered.

"What foolishness is this?" the surly dean asked as he brushed some of the glass aside with his foot. He pulled out the edge of the blanket and was surprised again, for not only was the glass broken, but the grate was gone, apparently ripped from the stonework.

Thobicus fought hard to steady his breathing, fearing that Cadderly might somehow be behind this, that the young priest had returned and used his newfound and indisputably powerful magic on the grate. The iron bars had been new, bolted in place soon after Cadderly had disappeared into the mountains. The dean had explained to the others that it was necessary to ensure that no thieves - agents of Castle Trinity, probably - broke into his office in this time of turmoil and stole off with battle plans. Actually, Thobicus had put the grate on the window not to keep anyone out, but to keep anyone from falling out. When Cadderly had mentally dominated the dean, the young priest had shown his superiority by threatening to make Thobicus leap from the window, and Thobicus knew without doubt that he would have done exactly that if Cadderly had so instructed, that he would have been powerless to ignore the command.

Seeing that window now, broken open and with no blocking grate, sent shudders along the thin dean's spine. He eased the impromptu curtain back into place and turned about slowly, as if expecting to find his neme-sis standing in the middle of the office.

He found Kierkan Rufo instead.

"What are you ..." the dean began, then his words were lost in his throat as he recalled that Rufo had just died. Yet here the man was, standing at that curious and customary angle!

"Do not!" Rufo commanded as the dean's hand went up to grasp the blanket for support. Rufo held his own bony hand out toward Thobicus, and the dean felt Rufo's will, as tangible as a wall of stone, blocking him from grasping the blanket.

"I favor the darkness," the vampire explained cryptically.

Dean Thobicus narrowed his dark eyes to study the man more closely, not understanding. "You cannot come in here," he protested. "You wear the brand."

Rufo laughed at him. "The brand?" he echoed skeptically. He reached up and ran his nails across his forehead, tearing his own skin and scraping away the distinctive Deneirian markings.

"You cannot come in here!" Thobicus said more frantically, finally catching on that something was terribly amiss, that Kierkan Rufo had become something much more dangerous than a simple outcast. Such a brand as Rufo wore was magical, and if covered or marred, it would burn inward, tormenting then killing the outcast. Rufo showed no pain now, though, just confidence.

"You cannot come in here," Thobicus reiterated, his voice no more than a whisper.

"Indeed I can," Rufo countered, and he smiled wide, showing bloodied fangs. "You invited me in."

Thobicus's mind whirled in confusion. He remembered those same words, spoken by Rufo at the moment of the man's death.

At the moment of the man's death!

"Get out of here!" Thobicus demanded desperately. "Be gone from this holy place!" Out came the symbol of Deneir, hanging on a chain about the dean's neck, and he began a chant as he presented it before him.

Rufo felt a sting in his unbeating heart, and the glare of the pendant, seeming to flare with a life of its own, hurt his eyes. But after the initial shock, the vampire sensed something here, a weakness. This was Deneir's house, and Thobicus was supposedly the leading member of the order. Thobicus above all should have been able to drive Rufo away. Yet he could not; Rufo knew with certainty that he could not.

The dean finished his spell and hurled a wave of magical energy at the vampire, but Rufo didn't even flinch. He was staring directly at the presented holy symbol,

which, to his eyes, no longer flared in the least.

"There is a blackness in your heart, Dean Thobicus," Rufo reasoned.

"Be gone from here!" Thobicus countered.

"TTiere is no conviction in your words."

"Foul beast!" Thobicus growled, and he boldly approached, hand and holy symbol extended. "Foul dead thing, you have no purpose here!"

The vampire began to laugh.

"Deneir will smite you!" Thobicus promised. "I will..."

He stopped and grunted in pain as Rufo snapped a strong hand up and caught him by the forearm. "You will do what?" the vampire asked. A flick of Rufo's wrist sent the holy symbol spinning from Thobicus's weak hand. There is no conviction in your words," Rufo said again. "And there is no strength in your heart." Rufo let go of the arm and grasped the front of the dean's robes, easily lifting the thin man into the air.

"What have you done, fallen priest?" the confident vampire asked.

Those last two words echoed in the dean's thoughts like a damning curse. He wanted to scream out for the headmasters; he wanted to break free and rush to the window and tear the blanket aside, for certainly the light of day would do ill to this horrid, undead thing. But Rufo's claims, all of them, were true - Thobicus knew they were true!

Rufo carelessly tossed the man to the floor and paced to put himself between the dean and the window. Thobicus lay very still, his thoughts whirling with confusion and desperation, wallowing in self-pity. Indeed, what had he done? How had he fallen so far and so fast?

"Please," the vampire said, "do go and sit at your desk, that we might properly discuss what has come to pass."

All through the early morning, Rufo had sat in this office, thinking that he would lie in wait for Thobicus, then simply tear the man apart. It was no longer hunger that drove the vampire - he had feasted well the previous night. No, Rufo had come after Dean Thobicus purely for revenge, had decided to strike out against all the library for the torments the Deneirians had given him in his life.

Now, unwittingly guided by the designs of the chaos curse, the vampire was thinking differently. In that moment of confrontation, Rufo had seen into the heart of Dean Thobicus, and there he had found a malignant blackness.

"Have you eaten this day?" Rufo asked pleasantly, sliding to a sitting position on the edge of the oaken desk.

Thobicus, still a bit ruffled, straightened defiantly in his chair and answered simply, "No."

"I have," Rufo explained, and laughed wickedly at the irony. "In fact, I have feasted on the one who would prepare your meal."

Thobicus looked away, his expression filled with disgust.

"You should be glad of that!" Rufo snarled at him, and slammed the desk, forcing Thobicus to jump in surprise and turn back to face the monster. "If I had not already eaten, then my hunger would have overcome me by now, and you would be dead!" Rufo said fiercely, and he bared his fangs to accentuate his point

Dean Thobicus tried to sit still, to hide the fact that his hands were working under the desktop, fingering a loaded crossbow that he had recently come to keep there. The weapon was supported by sliding brackets so that it could be swiftly and easily pulled out in times of need. The dean's shoulders sagged a bit when he titiought

of the weapon, when he realized that he had put the crossbow there not for any emergency against a foe such as this, but in case Cadderly had come to him again, and had tried to dominate him.

Rufo was concerned with his own thoughts and seemed to notice neither the dean's delicate movements nor the turmoil boiling within the withered man. The vampire slid off the desk and walked to the middle of the room, one skinny finger tapping thoughtfully on his lips, still red from the blood of his meal.

Thobicus realized that he should pull out the crossbow and shoot the monster. Well versed in theology, the dean recognized Rufo for what he was, knew that he had somehow become a vampire. The crossbow bolt probably wouldn't kill Rufo, but it had been blessed and dipped in holy water, so it would at least wound him, and possibly allow the dean to flee the room. The library was waking up by now, allies would not be far away.

TTiobicus held his shot, and held back his words, letting the vampire make the next move.

Rufo turned back to the desk suddenly, and Thobicus inadvertently gasped. "We should not be enemies," the vampire remarked.

Thobicus eyed him incredulously.

"What would be the gain of a fight?" Rufo asked. "For either of us?"

"Ever were you a fool, Kierkan Rufo," Thobicus dared to say.

"A fool?" Rufo mocked. "You could not begin to understand, fallen priest." Rufo threw back his head and let his laughter flow out, He spun about so that his black burial robe trailed his form like a shadow. "I have found power!"