The Cleric Quintet: The Fallen Fortress

 

Far down Nightglow's snow-blanketed side, Druzil scratched his ugly face and watched the undead creature's shivering movements.

Ghost had not taken a step in many seconds, the first time Druzil had seen the tireless thing pause in several days. The gruesome creature made no moves at all, except for the obvious trembling.

"Why are you doing that?" the invisible imp asked under his rasping breath, hoping that the creature had not somehow detected him and was not calling upon some innate magics to locate him, or to destroy him.

The trembling intensified to a violent shaking. Druzil whined and wrapped his leathery wings defensively about him, though since they were invisible, they could not block out the terrifying sight

Crackling noises came from the undead monster, tiny cracks appeared along its blackened skin, wisps of smoke filtered out into the brightly shining air.

"Hey?" the imp asked a moment later, when the undead thing fell into a pile of charred and shattered flakes.

Cadderly continued his scan of the area, of himself, and of his friends. Danica, too, seemed intent on covering up, but Cadderly didn't see the point since she was fully clothed.

Or was she?

A wail from somewhere in the unseen distance brought them all on the alert Shayleigh went into a low crouch, slowly turning and scanning, balled fists defensively in front of her.

If she feared an attack, then why didn't she take her bow off her shoulder? Cadderly wondered. And then he understood. With a knowing nod, the young priest let go of his pointless modesty and stood straight

Another cry, a cry of pain, sounded from somewhere distant, followed by a loud splash.

"Where are we?" Danica demanded. "And why am I the only one who has no clothes?"

Shayleigh looked at her incredulously, then looked down to her own body.

A wave rolled in at them, bringing the uncomfortable brown sludge to their waists. Cadderly grimaced at the feel of the wretched stuff, noticed for the first time the reeking stench.

"What caused so large a wave?" Shayleigh whispered, and her perceptive remark reminded Cadderly that the discomfort might be the least of his troubles.

The apparition, a puny, androgenous form with one arm bent crooked, rose from the sludge twenty feet away from them, its dangerous eyes narrowing as it regarded them.

"The assassin," Danica breathed. "But he is dead, and we..." She looked at Cadderly, her brown eyes wide.

"Caught by the GHearufu" Cadderly replied, unwilling to offer the possibility that they, too, had died.

"Caught!" the puny form roared in a mighty, giantlike voice. "Caught that you might be properly punished!"

"Use your bow!" Danica, more afraid than she had ever been, yelled at Shayleigh. Again, the elf gave Danica an incredulous look, then turned helplessly to her bare, as she saw it, shoulder.

Danica sneered and rushed between Shayleigh and Cadderly, taking a blocking stance between them and the approaching apparition.

Cadderly looked down, looked to the unremarkable muck to clear his head and register all that he had seen and heard. Why was he the only one who was naked? Or at least, why did he see himself that way? As did Danica, he knew, by her own words. And if Shayleigh thought that she had her bow, didn't perceive that she, too, had no clothes and no equipment, then why hadn't she taken the weapon from her back?

Danica's hands began an intricate, balancing weave in front of her. The apparition of Ghost showed no fear at all, continued to steadily glide through the muck. Danica noticed that Ghost seemed larger suddenly, and noticed that the apparition continued to grow.

"Cadderly," she breathed quietly, for now their opponent was fully ten feet tall, nearly as large as Vander. It took another step, doubling its size as it did. -Cadderly!"

They all perceived that they were naked, but each saw the others as they had last seen the others, Cadderly mused, knowing that there must be something pertinent in that %ct He felt along his body, wondering if his equipment only

appeared invisible to him, if his potent hand-crossbow might be on his hip, waiting for him to grab it But he felt only his skin and the slimy splotches of brown, disgusting sludge.

The apparition loomed thirty feet high; its laughter mocked Danica's feeble defensive stance. With a sucking sound, one foot came up from the muck, hovered high in the air menacingly.

"Punishment!" the evil Ghost growled, stamping down.

Danica dove to the side, splashed through the muck and reappeared, her strawberry-blond locks matted to her head by the thick brown sludge.

The splash awakened Cadderly from his contemplations. His gray eyes widened as he glanced about for Danica, fearing that she had been squashed.

Shayleigh was over with the monk by then, pulling her away from the gigantic monster.

Ghost showed no more interest in Danica, though, not with Cadderly, the perpetrator of the disaster, the destroyer of his own form and of the precious Ghearufu, standing before him.

"Are you at peace with your god?" the giant voice teased.

Where are we? The question rifled through Cadderl/s thoughts, now that the monster had threatened him, had apparently just confirmed that they were not dead. Yet this place somewhat resembled the spirit world, Cadderly knew, for he had made several ventures into that noncofporeal state.

Danica and Shayleigh rushed in front of the young priest, Danica leaping onto the leg of the giant, clawing and biting at the back of its knee. It kicked out, trying to shake her free, but if her savage thrashing was doing any real damage, the smiling Ghost did not show it

"Perceived vulnerability," Cadderly muttered, trying to jog his thought process. His self-image, the images of his friends, and the image of their nemesis, had to be a matter of perception, since he and both his companions thought themselves naked and the other two clothed.

Shayleigh slipped free of the monster's other leg as Ghost brought it up high above Cadderly's head.

"Cadderly!" both Danica and the elf maiden cried out to their apparently distracted companion.

The huge foot slammed down; Danica nearly fainted at the thought of her lover being squashed.

Cadderly caught the foot in one hand, and absently held it steady above his head.

He, too, began to grow.

"What is happening?" the frustrated, terrified monk cried out, falling from the giant's knee and splashing away. Shayleigh caught her and held her, needing, as much as giving, the support

Cadderly was half the creature's size, and now it was Ghost who seemed confused. The young priest heaved against the foot, hurling Ghost backward to land crashing into the muck. By the time the creature regained its stance, Cadderly was the larger.

Ghost came on anyway, snarling, wrapping his hated enemy in a tight hug.

Danica and Shayleigh moved away from the titans, not understanding, not able to help.

Cadderly's massive arms flexed and twisted. Ghost's did, too, and for a long whiie, neither titan seemed to gain any advantage.

Ghost bit down hard on Cadderly's neck, whipping his head about in a frenzy. It was he, not Cadderly, who then cried out in pain, though, for he was biting not vulnerable skin, but steel armor!

The wild monster lifted his arm; his fingers grew into spikes, and he smashed down at Cadderty's shoulder.

The young priest yelped in agony. Cadderly's arm became a spear, and he plunged it through Ghost's belly.

Ghost's skin parted around it, opening a hole through which the arm/spear passed without making a cut The evil entity's skin then tightened around Cadderly's appendage, holding him last

Ghost's mouth opened impossibly wide, seeming the maw of a snake, complete with venom-tipped fangs.

"Cadderly," Danica breathed, thinking her love doomed, thinking that she and Shayleigh would also fall victim to this horrid apparition. She had no words to describe what ensued, could hardly remember to breathe.

Cadderly did not flinch. His head thickened, his face flattened, like the face of a hammer, and he butted straight out This time his attack apparently caught Ghost by surprise, for the assassin's snake jaws broke apart, blood washing away the venom.

Ghost's eyes widened in shock and agony as Cadderly's impaled arm shifted shape again, angled spikes tearing out the sides of Ghosf s torso.

Cadderly understood that the game was one of mental quickness, matching defense to attack, keeping perspective <yes, that word was the key!) against fearsome sights and impossible realities. He had Ghost dazed, confused, and so the momentum was his to play out.

His free arm became an axe, his razor-edged hand slicing in at the side of Ghost's neck. The evil titan reacted quickly enough for its shoulder to grow a shield, but Cadderly had simultaneously sprouted a tail like that of the manticore he had battled on the mountain trail. Even as the axe hand resounded against Ghost's shield, the tail whirled about and snapped like a whip, driving several iron spikes into Ghost's chest.

Cadderly whipped his impaled arm about viciously; Ghost somehow melded and molded his skin to match the movements, preventing Cadderly from literally tearing him in half. The tail came about again, but Ghost's chest thickened with conjured armor, somewhat deflecting the heavy blows.

Cadderly had brought Ghost to his mental limit, had taxed Ghost's formidable mind to the extreme of his thought-processing abilities. It was a game of chess, Cadderly knew, a game of simultaneous movements and anticipating defenses.

Ghost's snake maw reformed in the blink of an eye -  Cadderly was actually surprised that the evil man, still holding his defenses strong, was able to enact the shift. At the same time, though, Cadderly*s head became the head of a dragon, became the head of Fyrentennimar.

Ghost's snake eyes widened. He tried to shift his head into something that could deflect the attack, something that could defeat dragon breath.

He didn't think quickly enough. Cadderly breathed forth a line of fire that stole Ghost's features, sizzled his skin away to leave a skull, half human, half snake, atop the titan's skinny neck.

In the throes of agony, Ghost could not maintain his control, his mental defenses. Cadderly*s manticore tail heaved a half-dozen spikes into Ghost's chest Cadderb/s axe hand drove deep into Ghost's collarbone.

With a dragon's roar of victory, Cadderly snapped his impaled arm back and forth, cutting Ghost apart at the waist. The defeated titan's top half plummeted into the muck, showering Danica and Shayleigh. Almost immediately, the slain Ghosf s torso reverted to its normal size, disappearing under the brown lake. Ghost's quivering legs toppled as they shrank, slipping into the muck with hardly a splash.

Cadderly's head became human again as he turned to regard his overwhelmed companions. He caught only a fleeting image of them, though, before a wall of blackness rushed up to smash him into unconsciousness. Soaring Oof!" Ivan and Pikel groaned in unison when the balancing force of the tempest abruptly ended and they dropped, flat-out, to the stone floor. Vander, too, groaned, and fell back against the wall, the huge muscles in both his arms quivering from exhaustion. The wind had simply ceased, and the smoke now dissipated, revealing Danica, Cadderly, and Shayleigh lying one on top of the other in a pile.

"Are you all right, humble priest?" Fyrentennimar asked with sincere concern.

Cadderly looked up to the great beast and nodded, very glad that the ethics reversal he had enacted upon old Fyren had not been dispelled by his spiritual absence. Danica forced herself to her feet, and Cadderly, in turn, climbed off Shayleigh, his joints aching with every step. He knew rationally that his fight with Ghost had been a mental combat, not a physical one, a belief only reinforced by the fact that neither he nor Danica and Shayleigh had any of the disgusting muck on them, and in fact appeared exactly the same as they had before the journey. Still, the young priest felt as though his body had been through a severe beating.

"What was that monster?" Danica asked. "I thought you said the assassin was already dead and gone."

"That was not Ghost," Cadderly replied. "Not really. What we found was the embodiment of the Ghearufu, perhaps a joined spirit, magic item and owner."

"Where?" Shayleigh wanted to know.

Now Cadderly had no definite response. "Some area of limbo between the planes of existence," he answered, shrugging his shoulders to indicate that it was only a guess. The Ghearufu has been in existence for many millennia, was created by powerful denizens of chaos. That is why I had to come here, even before our vital mission to Castle Trinity."

"Ye couldn't've just left the damned thing with the priests?" Ivan grumbled, kicking stones and debris as he searched about for his windblown helmet

Cadderly started to reiterate the importance of the quest, wanting to explain how the destruction of the Ghearuftt was more important to the overall scheme of universal harmony than anything which might directly affect their relatively unimportant fives. He gave up, however, realizing that such profound philosophical points had no chance of getting through the pragmatic dwarf's thick head.

Danica put her hand on his shoulder, though, and nodded to him when he looked back to her. She trusted in him again - her eyes showed that clearly. He was glad for that trust, and afraid of it, all at once.

He motioned for Danica and Shayleigh to go over by the door with the other three.

"Mighty Fyrentennimar," he cried to the dragon, dipping a low, appreciative bow. The words of the gods are proven true." Cadderly took a step to the side and lifted one of the ruined, still smoking gloves. "Nothing in all the Realms but the breath of mighty Fyrentennimar could have destroyed the Ghearufu; no power in all the Realms could match the fury of your fires!" The statement wasn't exactly true, but even though the dragon was apparently still thick in the hold of Cadderly's chaotic enchantment, the young priest thought it wise to be generous with the praise.

Fyrentennimar seemed to like it The dragon puffed out his already enormous chest, honed head held proudly high.

"And now, my friends and I must leave you to your sleep," Cadderly explained. "Fear not, for we'll not again disturb your slumber."

"Must you go, humble priest?" the dragon asked, seeming sad, which prompted a curious and sympathetic "Oo," from Pikel and an assortment of incredulous curses from Ivan.

Cadderly answered with a simple "Yes," bade the dragon lay down and rest, and turned to leave, pausing at the tunnel entrance to consider his friends.

"What of the toads?" he asked, remembering them for the first time since he had gazed upon the awesome dragon.

"Splat," Pikel assured him.

"You should be more concerned for the weather," Vander remarked gravely. "You do not understand the strength of storms in the high mountains, nor the price your private venture may exact from us all."

Cadderly accepted the scolding as the firbolg continued, and Ivan, even Shayleigh, joined in. The young priest wanted to defend himself, to convince them all, as he had convinced Danica, that destroying the Ghearufu was the more important quest, and even if they wound up stranded until the spring, even if the delay cost them their lives against Fyrentennimar, and cost the region dearly in its battle with Castle Trinity, the destruction of the malignant magical item had been worth the price. A younger Cadderly would have lashed out at his accusers.

Now Cadderly said nothing, offered no defense against his friends' justifiable anger. He had made his choice in good conscience, had made the only choice his faith and heart could accept, and now he would accept the consequences, for himself, for his friends, and for all the region. Loyal and trusting Danica, holding tightly to his arm, showed him that he would not suffer those consequences alone.

"We will get through the high passes," Danica said when Vander had played out his anger. *And we will prevail against the wizard Aballister and his minions in our enemies'fortress."

"Perhaps alone I could get through them," the firbolg agreed. "For I am of the cold mountains. My blood runs thick with warmth, and my legs are long and strong, able to push through towering drifts of snow."

"Me own legs ain't so long," Ivan put in sarcastically. "What do ye got for me?" he asked Cadderly sharply. "What spells, and how many? Durned fool priest. If ye meant to come here, couldn't ye have waited until the summer?"

"Yeah." Pikel's unexpected agreement stung Cadderly more than gruff Ivan's ranting ever could. But then Cadderly looked back to Danica for support and saw a mischievous look in her sparkling eyes.

"How friendly is that dragon?" she asked, leading all their gazes back to serene Fyrentennimar.

Cadderly smiled at once, though it took Ivan longer to catch on.

"Oh, no ye don't!" the yellow-bearded dwarf bellowed, but by the eager intrigue splayed on the faces of Cadderly and Danica, and by the sudden smiles of Shayleigh and the firbolg, Ivan knew he was blubbering a losing argument

Shattered! Druzil imparted telepathically, emphatically, for perhaps the tenth time. Shattered! Gone! From the other end of the mental connection there was no immediate response, as though Aballister could not comprehend what the imp was talking about. Twice already Aballister had ordered Druzil to find the undead monster, to discover what had transpired to destroy the evil creature's corporeal form. Both times Druzil had replied that the task was quite impossible, that he had no idea of where to start looking.

Wherever the spirit had flown, Druzil knew that it was nowhere connected to the Material Plane. The imp pointedly reminded the wizard that he had been given only one red and one blue pouch of enchanting powder, that Aballister's lack of foresight had stranded him nearly a hundred miles from Castle Trinity with no way to get through any magical gates.

A wave of anger, imparted by Aballister, washed over Druzil. The imp's mind flared with pain; he feared that the wizard's mounting rage alone might destroy him. A dozen commands filtered through, each accompanied by a vicious threat Druzil was at a loss. He had never witnessed Aballister so enraged, had never seen such a display of sheer power from him, or even from the mighty denizens of the lower planes that he had often dealt with in his centuries there.

Druzil tried to break the connection - he had often done that in the past - but Aballister's telepathic connection remained with him, held him fast

When Aballister finally finished and released the suddenly exhausted imp, Druzil sat back against a tree stump with his dog-faced head resting forlornly in his clawed hands. He stared at the shattered flakes of the malignant monster, let his gaze meander up the imposing side of Nightglow, to the fog and clouds wherein Cadderly and his friends had disappeared. Aballister wanted Druzil to find the young priest and dog his steps, even to try to kill Cadderly if the opportunity presented itself.

No threat Aballister could possibly impose, no display of power, would prod Druzil to make that desperate attempt The imp knew that he was no match for Cadderly, and knew, too, that Aballister might be the only one in the region who was.

But it was obvious to Druzil that Aballister didn't want it to come to that Whatever satisfaction the old wizard might gain in personally crushing Cadderly would not make up for the inconvenience - not at a time when larger issues loomed in the wizard's designs. Aballister had labeled the undead monster as a possible ally. Now it was gone, and Druzil sensed that Cadderly had played some part in its destruction. The imp believed, too, that his own part in this drama had come to an end. The creature had been his guide to Cadderly. Without it, Druzil doubted that he could even locate the young priest And with the weather fast shifting to the full wintry blasts, Druzil realized that it would take him weeks to get back to Castle Trinity - probably long after Cadderly was no more than a crimson stain on a stone floor.

"Bene tellemara," the imp said repeatedly, cursing foolish Aballister for not giving him more of the enchanting, gate-opening powder, cursing the foul, chill weather, cursing the undead monster for its failure, and ultimately cursing Cadderly.

Thoroughly miserable, Druzil made no move toward Nightglow, made no move at all For many hours, the snow settling on his doggish snout and folded wings, the stubborn imp sat perfectly still on the tree stump, muttering, "Bene tellemara."