The Temple of Elemental Evil

21

Shanhaevel sat with his back against the wall of the chapel, keeping an eye on the others while they slept. Despite the prince’s eagerness to move quickly, the lack of sleep and the exertion of battle had caught up with the members of the Alliance. While Shanhaevel, Shirral, and Draga rested, Elmo, Ahleage, Govin, and Prince Thrommel kept watch.

Burne had visited Shanhaevel in his dreams again. The wizards floating visage had appeared, and the words Burne had spoken remained with Shanhaevel even upon waking.

When Shanhaevel awakened several hours later, the dream remained in his consciousness, and the import of Burne’s words had horrified him. The key could not be destroyed unless it was whole, and the Alliance did not possess the four gems. We’re not done, yet, he had realized. He had hung his head in dismay, dreading to tell the others, but tell them the elf did, and his words had been met with many groans and disconcerted looks.

“We have no choice but to continue to look for the gems,” Govin had said grimly.

“First, we see to it that the prince reaches the surface,” Elmo had added.

Thrommel had shaken his head. “No. Your task is far more important. I will make my own way to the top, guided by the wisdom of Cuthbert. You continue your quest. Seek the gems.”

Elmo had opened his mouth to protest, but the prince would hear none of it, so the huge axeman had finally given in.

“I shall depart a little before you,” Thrommel had announced. “With luck, your fiendish spidery friend will not be there, but if it is, I will lure it away from you so that you may escape.” When he had seen both Govin and Elmo shaking their heads and opening their mouths about to protest, the prince had silenced them with a gesture. “Do not worry, my friends. Fragarach will protect me from this fiend.”

Now Shanhaevel sat, awake, thinking about all that had transpired. It seemed like many years ago that he had set out with Lanithaine to ride to Hommlet. He had been almost a different person, then. Certainly, if he survived this terrifying escapade and ever managed to return to the Welkwood, he would be a different person, a far different person.

Shaking his head, Shanhaevel turned to his spellbooks and spent the next several hours meticulously studying, memorizing the formulas he would need to cast his spells. When he finished, he sat pondering the coming trials within the temple. Shirral was still in some sort of reverent trance, communing with the forces of nature, bringing the powers of the earth into herself in order to shape and form them as she desired.

Shanhaevel sighed softly. Though we draw upon powers that are vastly different, he mused, in the end, we both become vessels, channeling that power from somewhere to somewhere else. Why is it, then, that neither of us can comprehend the method the other employs to garner that power?

The wizard looked at his own pack, bulging with gear. He noticed a particular bulge and frowned. It was the smallish box, in which was the small golden skull, the key to either free or destroy the demon. Shanhaevel frowned because the thing made him uneasy. Every time he picked the box up, he was overcome with a sense of dread and foreboding. He just didn’t like the thing.

Half grumbling, he leaned over, flipped the pocket of the pack open, and retrieved the box. He shook off the unease that washed over him as best as he could and set the box in his lap. He remembered Burne’s explanation of how to destroy the thing and wished he could carry out the ceremony here and now.

Shanhaevel opened the box and stared down at the small golden skull. The thing was nestled in a padded, velvet-lined depression in the middle of the box, staring up at him. If he let his imagination run, he could almost sense the skull smiling at him.

Very carefully, and with no small amount of trepidation, Shanhaevel reached down and tugged the skull free of its form-fitting depression. Almost immediately, he was overwhelmed with visions—horrible visions of agony, torture, and death. He tensed, suffering through the stinging pain of ice and wind as he fell endlessly through a colorless void, his body buffeted cruelly by a howling storm that carried him away. White light seared him, blinding him. He tumbled into nothingness, and suddenly he was buried beneath a million tons of dirt and stone, his body pinned deep beneath the surface of the world. Trapped, unable to speak, to move, to even open his eyes, he was crushed by the pressure of the earth itself His ribs cracked, his heart constricted, and his breath was squeezed from him.

Then he was elsewhere, free to move again, gasping for the blessed air—only to discover that it was searing hot, scorching his lungs. Flames licked at his body, burning away his hair, his skin, boiling his blood in the span of a heartbeat. He opened his mouth to scream and felt his flesh scorched to nothing. He swallowed a briny mouthful of cold water. Choking, he flailed about once more, drowning in darkness, feeling himself sinking deeper and deeper, the pressure of the brackish sea enveloping him and bearing him down and down and—

Shanhaevel blinked, gasping a deep lungful of air. The elf’s heart raced, and his face and hands were covered with a cold sheen of sweat. He felt his face drawn back in a fierce snarl of pain and tension.

The chapel. He was back in the abandoned chapel. With only one shuttered lamp burning, the small room was very dim.

Shanhaevel sighed and relaxed, feeling the ache in his tense muscles slowly drain away. He shook his head, clearing the visions that still flickered in the corners of his mind, and he wondered how long he had been sitting there. He looked around at his resting companions. The chapel seemed quiet, but—

In half a heartbeat, Shanhaevel was no longer there but in a great and terrible temple, one decorated with horrible images carved into stone the color of death and decay. Standing in the middle of the great room, looking at him, was an older man, dressed in crimson robes and leaning upon a staff. The man’s face was wrinkled and leathery, and he wore a smile as he gazed at the wizard, though the grin was far from benign. Slowly, almost languidly, the man reached a hand out toward Shanhaevel and opened his mouth to speak.

“Give me the orb, whelp,” the man said.

The hatred and malevolence that washed over the elf as he heard these words made him cringe and shudder. He shrieked in horror and tried to back away, but, overwhelmed with loathing and terror for this figure standing before him, he slammed into a great column and crumpled to the floor.

The old man walked toward him, but no matter how hard he tried, Shanhaevel could not move.

The old man reached for the orb, grasping it and taking it from Shanhaevel. Still smiling, the old man backed away, the key grasped in his hands. He moved to the front of the temple, where a great raised dais spread out before a rounded alcove. In the center of this alcove sat a huge black throne, carved of stone. The old man sat down upon the throne and sank, disappearing into the very floor of the temple.

Shanhaevel found himself pulled along, following the man as the throne descended, slipping deeper into the depths below the temple. Finally, the throne stopped, and the man stood and walked to the center of a large room filled with earth and the smell of rot. Fungi thrived everywhere. In the center of the room, next to the elderly man, was an immense blob, a being of putrescence and decay. Looking as much like a bloated mushroom as anything, the creature stood upon four immensely thick legs. A pair of strange armlike extensions protruded from its sides. The fungus-thing stank of rot and mold. Slowly, inexorably, the fungus creature reached for him.

Shanhaevel screamed….

Shanhaevel’s cries clamored through the chapel. When the wizard opened his eyes, Govin was on his feet, standing before him, sword in hand, looking down.

Prince Thrommel stood close by, Fragarach in his hand, apparently ready to do battle with any foe.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” the knight asked. He looked ready to strike at whatever unseen menace threatened his companion.

Shanhaevel raised his hand to point at the foreboding figures standing before him, threatening him, and blinked. The old man and the fungus creature were both gone. He peered around the chapel, looking for the horrific beings, but the figures were nowhere to be found.

“A vision,” Shanhaevel breathed, looking down at his hand, which was still firmly clasped around the golden skull. “They were standing right there.” He understood now how the golden key functioned, could feel the unwanted knowledge flowing into him from the item.

“Who?” Govin demanded, looking around once more. “Who was here?”

Shanhaevel swallowed and shook his head. He knew what he had just seen, for the orb itself was telling him, even though his mind rebelled at the implications of it.

“Iuz,” the wizard croaked, his hands shaking. “Iuz the old. Iuz the terrible.”

“What?” Govin cried.

“Yes,” Thrommel muttered, “the Old One’s hand was always behind the rise of the temple. You did not know this?”

Govin shook his head, his frown intense.

The other companions were stirring now, moving over to see what the commotion was about. They all seemed perfectly fine, oblivious that anything might have been out of the ordinary in the chamber.

“I—I saw them,” Shanhaevel said. It had seemed so real! “They wanted this.” He held up the orb.

Govin drew back from it, repulsed by the evil it embodied.

“He fashioned it,” Shanhaevel continued, “he and his mistress, the demoness Zuggtmoy. I saw them both standing there, in the middle of the room. He smiled at me”—Shanhaevel shuddered, remembering—“and told me to give him the orb.”

The rest of his companions looked around, doubt showing on their faces.

“There is no one here now,” Draga said.

“I never saw or heard anyone,” Ahleage added, wrinkling his brow, obviously convinced that the wizard had been seeing things.

“No,” Shanhaevel replied, shaking his head. “You don’t understand. I don’t think they were really here. I felt their presence through this.” Again, he gestured at the golden skull still clasped in his hand. Subtle waves of nausea seemed to wash over him whenever he was reminded that he still held it. “She definitely wasn’t really here, and I don’t think he was either.”

“How do you know?” Elmo asked as Shirral knelt beside Shanhaevel and took his free hand in hers.

“I know she wasn’t here because I know she’s still trapped, sealed behind the doors. I don’t think he was actually here because she wasn’t here. Besides, in this vision, I was somewhere else—some temple with a great throne made of black stone. I think it was a vision triggered by touching this wretched thing.”

Blanching, Shanhaevel shoved the golden skull back into its form-fitting pocket and slammed the box lid closed. Instantly he felt great relief.

“How do you know all of this, all of a sudden?” Shirral asked. She was huddled close to Shanhaevel and caressed his face soothingly. Worry filled her eyes, and her mouth frowned in a way the wizard had never seen before.

“Because it told me,” Shanhaevel replied, closing his eyes and suddenly feeling very weary. The druid’s caresses were cool and gentle against his skin, washing away the last of the taint of evil still lurking in his being.

“It…it told you?” Govin gasped, obviously disturbed. “It speaks? We must find those gems and destroy this thing soon!”

Shanhaevel opened his mouth to answer, but just then there was a deep rumble that reverberated all around them. The ground shook as shock waves rattled the chapel and sent dust cascading from the walls.

“What on Oerth was that?” Draga growled, his legs braced wide to hold his balance.

Shanhaevel imagined his face must have been a pale personification of his own fright, for when Shirral returned his look, her eyes widened in fear. When he spoke, his words were soft.

“I don’t know.”