Untold Adventures: A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

6.

Sitting up on the dusty floor of the subchamber, Gnarl heard the demons stalking through the darkness toward him, but he found that he didn’t much care. A seductive numbness was upon him-the effects of the spores of madness. Lunatic thoughts flashed through his mind, tumbling his senses in hellish ecstasy; it was as if the Elemental Chaos occupied his skull. As laughing faces of fire lit his brain he found he could scarcely move; it was as if his arms and legs each weighed hundreds of pounds. Why not just lie here, and get it over with? It might be interesting to be torn to pieces.

Yes, why not? And he watched the skulking silhouettes of the approaching demons, recognizing them from his uncle’s grimoire; evistro, newly awakened by his intrusion. How long had they waited in dormancy here? He supposed someone had placed them to guard against the activation of the Glorysade device. He found it all very interesting, in an abstract sort of way.

Hunched over, clutching the air with their oversized, pawlike hands spread wide for tearing, the seven evistro approached him. They were hairless, thickly muscular crimson demons, their tooth-lined maws as oversized as their hands and three-toed feet. The grimoire had said the carnage demons usually came in larger numbers, swarming and rending-unless some wizard sent a group of them on a specific mission. It seemed that Sernos wasn’t the only sorcery worker concerned with Glorysade.

The seven demons encircled him, a couple of strides away, their mouths gaping in great slavering grimaces. Gnarl was captivated. Fascinating creatures, he thought. Wonder what it’ll be like to be eaten alive? Missed my chance with the vrock.

He heard Miriam in the chamber above, shouting at Rorik. “The vrock has struck him with spore madness! He’s paralyzed, he’s not in his right mind! We have to, Rorik!”

“But it stinks of demons down there! I hate demons!”

But just as the evistro reached for Gnarl, Rorik leaped down into the subchamber, swinging his hammer handle-braining one of the demons before he’d even touched the floor. The demon flailed, falling back, and the others retreated a few steps, squalling in confusion. An arrow whickered into the subchamber from above, and then another, and two demons fell writhing. But the other five slashed at Rorik with their clawed paws. He swung the handle of his hammer furiously, using it as a club to drive them back. He’s quite a little dynamo, thought Gnarl, sitting on the floor. It can’t go on, though. They’ll overwhelm him soon and we’ll both be eaten. How their jaws drip with saliva… intriguing.

Then he was aware that someone had dropped down behind him, was pressing a small circle of cold to the back of his neck, over his spine. A cleansing fire flashed through him, then a wave of nausea, swept away by a surge of energy. Miriam had used her healing gem to save him.

His head clearing, Gnarl jumped to his feet and plucked the glass ball from his cloak pocket, even as Miriam loosed two of her three remaining arrows. The demons were circling them, leaping, slashing-and her arrows missed their marks, striking one in the shoulder. The wounded demon screamed in fury and snapped at the dwarf, who was nearer. Rorik dashed some of its teeth out with his club.

Gnarl exposed the glass globe-and almost dropped it in his startlement as he saw the grisly face staring out at him: a lich vestige. The lich’s skullish face pressed eagerly against the curve of the little glass sphere, distorted and leering. “Release me!” hissed the diabolic face, bony jaws gnashing, empty eye sockets shining, “so that I may destroy all!”

He swallowed. “Kill only demons, in the name of Vecna!” he ordered.

It sighed in disappointment. “Very well. Only demons… if you insist!”

The demons chose that moment to rush-but Gnarl threw the glass ball at their feet. It burst, and they scattered before the bleak effulgence that blossomed out of it. Porphyros, the gaunt, skull-faced spirit warrior, expanded from the shards and leaped at them with extended claws, ripping into the demons, gibbering happily as it tore them to pieces.

“Come on!” Rorik shouted. “Let’s get out of here before it turns on us!”

Head still swimming from the departing effects of the spores, Gnarl followed Rorik and Miriam through a narrow passage, onto a descending ramp of rusted iron. The warlock’s words drifted in Gnarl’s mind. Once inside, if you win so far-descend!

They descended the ramp between pitted metal walls, traipsing down a gentle slope that clanged softly with their tread. On they went, the passageway lit by the same unnatural light as the surface. Gnarl found himself imagining how he would build his castle in Glorysade-seven spires, perhaps, each a different color, inlaid with semiprecious metals. A fountain-no, seven fountains! Would he have a seraglio? But stealing a glance at Miriam, he thought perhaps he wouldn’t want one.

“I like this less with each step we take,” Rorik grumbled. “And that vrock, the evistro, so closely placed, waiting almost.”

“I had the same thought,” Gnarl admitted. “Someone arrayed them to protect this device-and Sernos gave me no real warning.”

“You were a fool to blunder into this!” Rorik declared.

Gnarl shrugged. “My uncle said my destiny was connected with Glorysade. I always thought he meant a good destiny. So here I am. But now… I’m not so sure.”

“We’re committed,” Miriam said, shrugging. “Looks like a doorway ahead.”

They stepped through a door frame into a low-ceilinged chamber cut into the naked gray stone that underpinned the Plains of Rust. The walls were granite, but the ceiling was rusted iron.

In the middle of the chamber was a glinting dome about seven feet high, sixty in diameter, not quite a perfect circle, made of unblemished silvery metal. In its curving side was an open doorway. Excited by its shiny metallic promise, Rorik scurried eagerly through the low door-he didn’t have to stoop, as Gnarl and Miriam did.

Inside, rising up from a silvery floor, they found a large, glistening artifact shaped outwardly like a polyhedron, some of its panels transparent; it was almost big enough to fill the roughly circular chamber, leaving just a little space to move around its edges. On one facet, partway up, was an opening, within which several curious knobs and studs crackled with miniature bursts of lightning.

“Marvelous!” Rorik exclaimed. “These shapes seem formed to match the many-tool.” He had the magical utensil in his hand, and he tinkered within the device, muttering to himself in a grumbling voice. “Yes, the hexagonal knob asks to be turned this way; the next one requires that I reverse the tool, turning it the opposite way… I seem to hear a whispering suggestion that I press the cool-energy glim”-here he activated one of the magical jewels in the tool, pressing the blue crystal with his thumb, making it shine with a mystical emerald light-“and that would seem to call out for… Yes! And now if I turn this…”

Gnarl felt an odd mix of elation and anxiety at the possibility of Glorysade. Why indeed had the vrock and the evistro been set to guard the interior of the rusty tower? What did he know of Sernos, really?

“Wait, Rorik,” Miriam said worriedly. “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? Who is telling you how to use the tool? Don’t you wonder? Perhaps…”

But it was done: Rorik stepped back as the artifact was fully activated. Clockworks and magical energies intersected, revolving within it, linking and shifting, armatures rotating.

And suddenly the floor beneath their feet shook. They were knocked flat by the shuddering, Rorik clutching the many-tool, all three of them sprawling on the floor of the little dome-shaped chamber, their teeth clattering with the vibrations as the entire structure lifted itself from the floor, rising up and up, the silvery dome smashing through the rusted iron ceiling. Instinctively, Gnarl looked for the door-but it had sealed shut, quite seamlessly. Two windows opened, opposite, shaped like gigantic eyes-eyes looking outward. The floor continued to rollick and vibrate so he had to crawl to look out one of the windows of translucent blue glass-and he saw that the dome was no longer underground.

They had risen up, out of the underground, smashed up through the crust of the Plains of Rust, lifted high, towering above the scarlet desert. The chamber swayed and Gnarl heard gigantic footsteps-thump, thump, boom, thump. Through the windows he glimpsed giant metal hands and arms, swinging. He realized that he was looking out through the eyes of a gargantuan head. He looked down-saw a nose, cheekbones, the lineaments of a diabolic metal face. The enormous creation was stalking toward the rusted old fort. It reached the towers, paused, squatted, and thrust its jointed metal fingers into the desert of oxidation. The fingers fished around, and then the construct straightened up. As the giant stood, it pulled out the tower that they’d entered to arrive at their current place. It was actually a gigantic sword-its hilt had been buried in the red sands, its semi-rusted blade angling toward the sky.

“A colossus!” Rorik shouted over the rumbling, crawling to look out the eye-window beside Gnarl. “We’re in its skull! It was buried under the plains! You’ve activated the biggest colossus ever made!”

“I activated it? You’re the one who-”

He broke off, thrown onto his back by the acceleration as the colossus leaped into the sky. It flew straight up, rocketing with magical force, piercing the gray overcast. Lifting his head to look through its eyes, Gnarl saw that the metal giant, as it flew, was emanating rays of dark purple from its outstretched arms-the rays seemed to pierce space itself, so that a whirlpool formed, a circular gate, big enough for the giant.

“It’s opening a portal!” Rorik exclaimed.

They felt themselves compressed, transmuted, transformed-as, carried inside the giant, they passed through the portal. They traveled through the churning uncertainties of the Elemental Chaos, and through another portal-leaving the Abyss, coming out into the natural world, flying through the sky. Clouds flashed past. A glimpse of a river appeared below.

A great thundering, bone-jarring, double thump-and they were left dazed. After a moment Gnarl forced himself achily to his feet beside Rorik and Miriam, the three of them staring with astonishment out the window-eyes. The colossus stood upon the soil of their own world, awaiting a command.

Five hundred feet below them was Fallcrest.

“Ah, you’ve done it!” It was the voice of the warlock Sernos-whom Gnarl now understood was also known as Revenge. It emanated from the magical device behind them. “You’ve animated Glorysade, the greatest colossus, built by the Demon Chark himself-all have failed till you! You will be rewarded with the orderly world you find… locked forever inside the head of the colossus!” He chuckled dryly. “That is your Glorysade!”

Miriam shook her head. “Sernos must have made up the legend-he must’ve been trying to get at this colossus for years! It’s no surprise he lied to you, Gnarl!”

“I’m a fool!” Gnarl muttered sourly. “But what is Sernos’s intention here?” He turned to the device within the metal skull. “Sernos-can you hear me? Will you grant an answer or two?”

“I hear! Speak quickly-I am about to exact revenge on my enemy and cement my name as one of the greatest warlocks the world has known! Glorysade is nearly drained from its journey-it gathers full power from the dark energies. When that is done, I strike!”

“Then if we’re doomed to be trapped here, tell me at least-why destroy Fallcrest? Why not destroy your enemy alone? Couldn’t you let the town go?”

“Fallcrest protected him! My enemy knew what I would do if I succeeded in animating Glorysade. And I was close! So he set demonic guardians around it-and then he struck me down with Ermlock’s Grip. The pain of the Grip makes a man mad! Now I will send that pain upon the world! Listen, as I speak to the land-and learn.”

And in a voice boomed from Glorysade, psychically transmitted by the warlock Sernos, he addressed the township below. “People of Fallcrest! You have sheltered amongst you my enemy, Kraik the Necromancer.” The voice echoed over the houses and old keeps; over the roar of the falls and the screams of people gaping up at the giant, holding a great pitted sword in its jointed metal hand. “Kraik hides in Fallcrest even now, enjoying your wine, your women-and my slow destruction. But behold, I now have control of the colossus towering over you! In order to destroy Kraik-I will destroy Fallcrest. And all the world will know whose power is greatest. I have been Sernos… I am now-Revenge!”

As he listened, Gnarl circled the magical device in the center of the giant’s skull, examining it closely.

“No one will stand before me when they hear what happened to Fallcrest,” thundered the warlock. “Take comfort in knowing your sacrifice will be the start of a grand empire. The power of Glorysade is almost complete! The moment comes! Try to enjoy it!”

Rorik groaned. “Thousands of innocents will die because of us!”

The magical steel colossus raised its pitted, gigantic sword-poised to set about destroying the city. It paused. Screams of terror floated up from below.

“That last arrow of yours, Miriam!” Gnarl said, turning to her. “Your only magic arrow! Bring it here!”

She hurried to him, handing over the arrow, and he used its demonbane tip to pry at an opening, scarcely visible, in the floor beside the humming, glowing device. Magical seals tried to resist-but the demonbane overcame them, crackling with dark blue sparks, and the trap door popped open with a groan. Gnarl climbed through, still holding the arrow, and dropped down to a landing from which spiral stairs descended in a steely vertebral column, like a twisting staircase in a lighthouse. The vertebrae shivered with dark energies as the giant soaked power from the atmosphere itself. Glorysade shifted on its gigantic legs-he could feel its eagerness, an extension of the warlock’s hunger to strike at the town. Hiding the arrow in his cloak, Gnarl hurried down the staircase and reached a heart-shaped chamber.

He stepped through a door into the chamber-a small room throbbing with heat where a humanoid being made of blue flame pulsed with life. Its arms were extended into gauntlets, its feet into metal boots; it gazed into a glass panel which allowed it to see what the colossus saw-through these extensions it directed Glorysade.

Its face was that of Sernos-superimposed by his psychic control.

Seeking to distract and delay Sernos, Gnarl stepped around on the circular catwalk to face the creature. He knew instinctively he had to be in just the right position. “Sernos-you control this being and it controls the colossus. But not so fast!” He edged closer, wincing at the heat. “Soon Ermlock’s Grip will squeeze you dry!”

“No!” The voice of Sernos roared from the air about the blue-flame humanoid. “When I destroy Kraik, in a handful of moments, I destroy Ermlock’s Grip. There are minutes yet before it completes compression. But what do you want here? I swore you would return and live-but if you do not go back to the chamber above, you will die in this one.” The proxy Sernos drew its left hand from the gauntlet-a thing of flame that mocked flesh-and the blue flame hand began to fulminate warningly with red energies. “Go or die!”

Gnarl bowed, as if in acquiescence. He turned away, drawing the arrow from his cloak as he turned-then he spun around and drove it like a dagger between the creature’s blue-fire eyes. The arrow shaft burst into flame and charred away, but the magical arrowhead remained, spinning in place.

Sernos screamed, the scream reverberating in the metal carapace like a ringing in a great bell. The mystically charged arrowhead of demonbane turned the fiery magic back upon itself, and the resulting explosion threw Gnarl back against the metal wall. He fell, stunned-but he made himself crawl to the door, out and up the stairway as the colossus rollicked about. He clambered up and up, sometimes on hands and knees as cracks appeared in Glorysade, daylight glimmering through. He clambered up to the landing, struggling to continue as the colossus wrenched about, struggling with a chaotic unleashing of its own magical energies.

The trap door was open-and an arm, lean but strong, stretched down. Miriam took his hand, helped Gnarl climb up.

But there was no standing, not up there. Rorik, Miriam, and Gnarl were thrown to the floor of the silvery skull as the colossus staggered and as it leaped wailing into the sky. The device within its skull was beginning to melt, coming apart in the heat of a blue flame. The creature that guided the colossus seemed in torment, and Glorysade flew up through layers of atmosphere as it tried to escape the destructive force Gnarl had loosed within it. It dropped its sword, which fell, end over end, to vanish into Lake Nen. On and on Glorysade flew-until, trying to escape its agony, it created a portal, blindly flying through it. But it learned what men, too, learn: no one can run from the pain within.

As the colossus passed through the Elemental Chaos, it exploded, its head and chest and arms flying asunder. Gnarl and Rorik and Miriam, within the skull, were spinning through white light. Miriam fell into Gnarl’s arms.

The gigantic skull, carrying them with it, spun through space-and crashed into darkness.