The Cleric Quintet: The Fallen Fortress

 

Cadderly lay on the stone floor, sucking air into his parched throat as the fires in the room behind him died away, having consumed the magical manifestations of curtains, tapestries, carpet, and wood.



Cadderly understood that this grand hallway was purely the image of stone, magical fields too dense to be sparked apart by mere flames. The young priest felt safe from any advancing flames, and he thought it a curious thing that the properties of such extradimensional pockets followed the same physical laws that governed true materials. What might be the potential, then, if he could create something in an extradimension, through the use of magic, and bring it back to his own plane? he wondered.



Cadderly filed the notion far away in his mind, reminding himself that his present business was more pressing than any hypothetical possibilities flashing around in his always questioning thoughts. He forced himself to his knees and noted the wizard's sooty footsteps on the floor, noted by their long stride and small imprint that Aballister had left the room in full flight



A dozen yards down, with several doors lining either side of the corridor, the wizard had apparently realized his obvious tracks, for they simply disappeared, leaving Cadderly to figure out which way Aballister had gone.



Still kneeling, Cadderly took out his crossbow and loaded an explosive dart. He laid the weapon on the floor beside him and realized, with a quiet nod of his head, that he held one advantage over Aballister, the greatest advantage of a cleric over a wizard. By Cadderly's estimation, Aballister had not been wise to break off the combat, no matter how badly Cadderly's pillar of flame had hurt him, for now the young priest fell back into the song of Deneir, let it take him where it had compelled him previously, into the sphere of healing.



He brushed a hand over his scorched cheek, closing the wound and perfectly mending the skin. He placed his hand firmly against the mark on his chest, where the lightning bolt had thundered home. When he took up his crossbow and stood, just a few minutes later, his wounds did not seem so serious.



But where to go? the young priest wondered. And what traps and wards had the clever Aballister set for him?



He moved to the nearest door, a simple, unremarkable one to his left. He scanned for any obvious traps, then called upon his magic to scrutinize it more fully. Unremarkable, it seemed, and from what Cadderly could tell, unlocked.



He took a deep breath to steady himself, held his crossbow out in front of him, grabbed the knob in one hand, and slowly turned it. He heard a distinctive click, a hissing sound as the door's edge slipped past the jamb.



The door flew from his hand, snapped open in the blink of an eye. A fierce, sucking wind grabbed at Cadderly, pulling him to the open portal. His eyes widened in fear as he came to realize that this was a gate to yet another plane - one of the lower, evil planes judging from the growling shadows and acrid smoke filling the unbordered region in front of him. He grabbed at the doorjamb and held on with all his strength, and held on, too, to his precious crossbow.



He was stretched out fully into the new plane, feet leading the way. Fearful tingles caressed his body, a sensation that evil things were near him, touching him! The pull was too great; Cadderly knew that he could not hold on for long.



Cadderly locked his hands in place and forced himself into a state of calmness. As he had done in the previous room, he used his magic to study the magic of this area, of the door and the threshold.



All of the portal area was magical, of course, but a single spot stood out to Cadderly, its emanations of magic different and more intense than the fields about it. The young priest let go with one hand, straightened his crossbow, and drew a bead.



He couldn't be sure if this was the place of the actual gate, the specific key to the interplanar barrier, but his actions were wrought of desperation. He put the crossbow in line and let fly. His shot did not hit the mark, but struck close enough so that the resulting explosion encompassed the target spot.



The wind stopped. Cadderly's instincts and mounting knowledge of magic screamed at him to roll for the threshold, to tuck his legs in and get his hands clear of the door-jamb. He was wise enough not to question those instincts, and he dove headlong for the threshold, just aheadof the suddenly swinging door.



The door snapped shut, slamming Cadderly and pushing him on his way. He stopped rolling when he hit the corridor's opposite wall, his legs and lower back bruised and sore. He glanced back and was amazed as the door swelled and shifted shape, twisting tightly into place, seeming to meld with the surrounding jamb.



Aballister's extradimensional mansion apparently protected itself from such torn planar rifts. Cadderly managed a smile, glad that Aballister's work had been so complete and so farsighted, glad that he was not hanging in some non-space, some formless region between the known planes.



Ten steps down the stone corridor two more doors loomed. One was unremarkable, like the one Cadderly had just encountered, but the other was ironbound with heavy straps and showed a keyhole below the handle. Cadderly searched for traps, checked around the edges for any areas that might reveal this, too, to be a portal to another plane. Nothing dangerous became apparent, so he reached down and slowly turned the handle.



The door was locked.



It crossed Cadderly's mind more than once in the next few seconds that Aballister might be harboring yet another of his pet monsters behind this door, that blowing it open might put him into a fight with another hydra, or perhaps even something worse.



The flip side to that argument, of course, was that Aballister might be behind this door, recuperating, preparing some devilish magics.



Cadderly leveled the crossbow at the lock and fired, shielding his eyes from the expected flash. He used the moment to put another dart in place, and when he looked back, he found a scorch mark where both the lock and the handle had been, and the door hanging loose on its hinges.



Cadderly ducked to the side and pushed the door in, crossbow ready. His bow slipped down, his smile widened once more when he realized the contents of this room - an alchemy shop.



"What might bring you out of hiding, wizard?" the young priest muttered under his breath. He pushed the door closed behind him and crossed to the beaker-covered tables. Cadderly had read many texts on potions and magical ingredients, and though he was no alchemist, he knew which ingredients he could safely mix.



And, more importantly for what the young priest now had in mind, which ingredients he could not.



Ivan and Pikel led the charge down one corridor, cut through a room to the side, and headed out a back door into another corridor. Vander came roaring right behind them, still cradling Shayleigh, though the elf maiden was conscious and demanding to be put down. No enemies stood against the friends for this first scrambling rush. The enemy soldiers they encountered, even two ogres, fell all over themselves trying to run away. Ivan, more wounded than he cared to admit, let them go. The dwarf wanted only to find Cadderly and Danica, or to find some place where he and his three companions might hide and recover.



Through the back door of another room, the two dwarves surprised a man trying to come through the other way. He had just grabbed the door's handle when Pikel's club hit the thing, launching him across the corridor to slam against the wall. Both dwarves swarmed across the corridor and fell over him, Ivan connecting with a left hook, Pikel with a right, at the same time, on opposite sides of the unfortunate man's face.



Ivan considered finishing the unconscious soldier as his friends ambled past, but he put up his axe and ran after them. "Damned young colt," he muttered, referring to Cadderly, whose constant demands for compassion had apparently worn at the tough-skinned dwarf.



"To the side!" Shayleigh cried as Vander and-i'ikd dashed across the entrance to a side passage.



"Oo!" Pikel squeaked, and he and the firbolg sprinted on, a group of enemy soldiers wheeling around the corner behind them.



Ivan barreled into the midst of the force, his great axe chopping wildly.



Twenty feet ahead, Vander put down Shayleigh, who went right to work stringing an arrow. The firbolg spun about beside Pikel, determined to crash through to Ivan's rescue. The two had only taken a step or two when Shayleigh cried out, The other way!"



Sure enough, enemies poured into the corridor from another side passage farther down, a large force led by a contingent of ogres. Shayleigh put three arrows into immediate flight, felling one of the leading ogres, but another took its place, running right over the monster's back as it fell.



Shayleigh fired again, scored another hit, and put her next arrow to her bowstring. She couldn't hold them back, though. Even if every shot were perfect, if every shot killed an enemy, she would surely be buried where she stood.



She fired again, and then the ogre was upon her, its club up high, a victorious scream erupting from its huge head.



Vander's forearm slammed it in the chin and knocked it flying into its comrades. The firbolg's great sword swiped across, disemboweling the next ogre, driving the enemies farther back.



Ivan chopped and spun, every swipe connecting. He saw an arm go flying free of one orcan torso and smiled grimly, but that smile was smacked away as he continued to turn and a goblin's club slammed him squarely in the face, taking out a tooth.



Dazed, but still swinging, the dwarf backpedaled and sidestepped, trying to keep his balance, knowing that to fell was to be overwhelmed. He heard his brother calling from not far away, heard an enemy grunt and groan as Pikel's club smacked hard against bare skin. Something slashed Ivan's forehead. Blinded by his own blood, he chopped out, connecting solidly. He heard Pikel again, to the side, and took a stumbling step in that direction.



An ogre's club caught the yellow-bearded dwarf in the lower back, launched him tumbling through the air. He crashed through several bodies, the last being Pikel's, and went down atop his brother.



Pikel heaved Ivan over behind him and hopped back to his feet, clubbing wildly at the tangled mass in front He squeaked frantically for his brother to join him, and Ivan tried, but found that his legs would not move to his mind's call



Ivan struggled to stand, to get beside his brother. He realized only then that he had somehow lost his axe, realized that he could not see and could not stand. Darkness engulfed his thoughts as it had his eyes, and the last thing he felt was slender but strong hands grabbing his shoulders and hauling him backward along the floor.



They were greeted at the dining room entrance by the groans and shrieks of the wounded. Danica started forward, her first instincts telling her to run through the carnage and seek out her friends. She stopped immediately, though, and spun about, hands crossing before her.



The sight of their dead comrades had put the soldiers who had accompanied Danica and Dorigen into a rage, and two of them stood right before the monk, their spears leveled, their faces firmly set for battle.



The truce holds," Dorigen said calmly, acting not at all surprised by the piles of dead and mutilated Trinity soldiers.



One of the spearmen backed away, but the other stood unblinking, unmoving, trying to decide if the consequences of disobedience would outweigh the satisfaction of impaling this intruder. v



Danica read his thoughts perfectly, saw the boiling hatred in his eyes. "Do it," she prodded, as eager to strike at him as he was to hit her.



Dorigen put her hand on the man's back. Flickers of electricity arced up the wizard's body, slipped down her arm and through her fingers, blowing the man to the floor several feet away. He rolled to a sitting position, the shoulder of his leather tunic smoking, metal speartip split in half, and hair dancing on end.



The next time, you will die," Dorigen promised grimly, to him and to the other soldiers milling nervously nearby. The truce holds."



The wizard nodded to Danica, who sped off around the room. She quickly discerned that her friends had made their valiant stand behind the small counter at the back of the hall. Finding their trail as they left the place was not difficult, since it was dotted with blood.



"M'lady Dorigen!" cried a man, rushing in behind the wizard and her soldiers. "We have them!"



Danica's almond eyes flickered at the painful news, and she ran back across the hall.



"Where?" Dorigen demanded.



Two passages over," the man was happy to report, though his smile lessened when he noticed Danica running free. He gripped his weapon tightly, but, thoroughly confused, made no immediate moves to threaten the dangerous monk.



"Are they dead?" Danica asked, demanded.



The man looked to Dorigen plaintively, and she nodded that he should answer.



They were alive by last reports," he replied, "but fully surrounded and sorely pressed."



Danica was again surprised by the sincerity in Dorigen's alarmed expression.



"Quickly," the wizard said to her, and Dorigen took Danica's hand and ran off, the shrugging, confused soldiers of Castle Trinity falling into ranks behind them.



Pikel dodged back and forth along the corridor, his club holding back the enemy line while Shayleigh picked her deadly shots around him. Pikel's club rarely came close to hitting anything other than an enemy weapon, but the corridor was fast filling with dead and wounded.



Shayleigh emptied one quiver, began working furiously on another.



"Ogre!" she heard Vander yell, and she had to spin about An ogre had slipped past the furious firbotg and was bearing down on the elf. She put her bow up quickly and fired point-blank, her arrow disappearing into the fleshy bulk. But the ogre was not stopped, and the clubbing it gave Shayleigh sent her flying back against the wall, tumbling over Ivan. On the very edge of consciousness, she tried again to load her bow as the monster advanced.



Pikel glanced back over his shoulder - and a sword slipped over his lowered club to slash his upper arm.



"Ow," he groaned, and he turned back just in time to see another sword slip in the other way, gashing his other arm.



"Ow."



The dwarf darted forward in a feigned charge, and his enemies fell back, then he swung around, transferring the momentum of his spin into his wide-flying chib. The ogre roared as its hip bone cracked loudly, and it lurched to the side.



Shayleigh's next arrow dove into its chest; Vander's heavy sword gashed into its side.



It fell headlong over Pikel as he muttered, "Uh-oh," and dove forward, trying desperately to get away. A man behind Pikel, fully intent on the dwarf, did not react quickly enough and was squashed under six hundred pounds of ogre flesh.



Pikel, laid out straight, scrambled and clawed his way from under the prostrate torso, past the ogre's hips^nd right out between its legs.



Other enemies had run over the creature's back and were waiting for, and stabbing at, the dwarf as he reappeared. He squeaked, "Ow! Ow!" repeatedly, taking stinging hit after stinging hit, trying to get his balance and turn about, that he might fend off the wave of weapons.



An arrow cut the air above him, and he used the distraction and the shield of a falling body to roll all the way out from under the fallen ogre. Three scrambling steps put him beside Shayleigh, the elf now holding her sword low before her, standing unsteadily.



Together," she mumbled to Pikel, but as she spoke, a club twirled through the air and smashed her in the face, and she fell heavily to the stone.



More clubs and daggers came flying the dwarf's way. Pikel's waving club blocked a few; he looked down curiously to regard a dagger's hilt quivering from his shoulder, looked curiously to his arm that had suddenly fallen limp to his side.



Pikel tried to backtrack, stumbled and fell over Shayleigh, and had not the strength to get back up.



The side of her face against the stone, only one eye opened, Shayleigh noted the measured approach of the enemy horde, though her fleeting consciousness could not comprehend the grim consequences. The elf saw only blackness as a heavy boot slammed to the stone right before her face, its heel only an inch away from her bleeding nose.



Trump Card



Cadderly ran from the alchemy shop, pulling the ruined door closed behind him. A moment later the young priest was sprawled out on the floor, and that ironbound door was no more than a pile of burning kindling against the corridor's opposite wall. Cadderly hadn't expected the mixture to react so quickly! He put his feet under him and started running, managing to hold his balance as a second blast rocked the area, this one blowing apart the door opposite the alchemy shop and cracking the walls along the corridor.



Cadderly rounded a corner, glancing back as a fireball engulfed the area. He could only hope that the second door he had ruined was not another portal to the lower planes, could only hope that some evil, horrid denizens would not come leaping through into the corridor behind him.



He ran past another door, then skidded as he crossed by yet another, this one made of iron, not wood, and hanging open.



"What have you done?" came an angry cry from inside.



I have forced you to face me, Cadderly answered silently, a satisfied look stealing the trepidation from his face. He moved slowly to the iron door, pushing it all the way open.



Cages and glass cases of various sizes lined the huge room's walls, and a tumult of growls and squawks greeted the young priest The wizard stood across the way, in front of another door and between the four largest cages. Three of these were empty - for the manticore, the chimera, and the hydra? Cadderly wondered - but the fourth held a creature that would grow into a fearsome beast indeed. A young dragon, its scales glossy black, narrowed its reptilian eyes evilly as it regarded Cadderly.



Cadderly noted the slight trembling of the wizard's shoulders, could tell that the exhausted man's magical energies had been greatly taxed. And the young priest's pillar of flame had hurt Aballister, for the side of the wizard's neck was red and blistered, and his fine blue robe hung in tatters.



Another explosion rocked the extradimensional complex.



Aballister gnashed his teeth and shook his head. He tried to speak, but his words came out as a singular growl.



Cadderly did not know how to respond. Should he demand the man's surrender? He, too, was weary, perhaps as weary as the older wizard. Perhaps this fight was far from over.



"Your war against Shitmista Forest was unjustified," the young priest said, as calmly as he could manage. "As was Barjin's attack on the Edificant Library."



The wizard chuckled. "And what of the attack in Carra-doon?" he brazenly asked. "When I sent the Night Masks to kill you."



Cadderly believed that the man was daring him to act, was baiting him to make the first move. He looked again to that young black dragon, staring at him hungrily.



"There is still the option of surrender," Cadderly remarked, trying to equal the wizard's confidence.



"I might accept your surrender," Abailister replied sarcastically, "or I might not!" The wizard's dark eyes flashed suddenly, and his hands began a circling motion.



Cadderly had his readied crossbow up in an instant and launched the dart at Abailister without the slightest hesitation. His shot was true, but the dart skipped off the wizard's newest magical shield and struck up high on the back wall, blowing a clean hole. Sparks flared at the scorched edges, the force of the explosion threatening to unravel the binding magical energies - magical energies that were already being assaulted from the continuing bursts from the alchemy shop.



As soon as the dart skipped wide, Cadderly knew that he was vulnerable. His choice of a conventional attack prevented him from throwing up a defensive shield. Fortunately, the wizard's attack came in the form of fire, with Abailister hurling a small ball of flame across the room. The fire hit Cadderly squarely, would have burned his face and hair except that enough of his protective globe remained so that the flames were dispersed into a green glow.



The young priest recovered from the shock quickly, reaching into his pouch for some seeds to hurl back. Cadderly dropped them right back into the pouch, though, and nearly swooned, for it was neither his turn to attack, nor the wizard's.



The black dragon spit a line of acid from between the bars of its cage.



Cadderly cried out and spun, falling away to the side. He did not throw his arms up in front of him (and if he had, they surely would have been charred) as his instincts demanded. He used the training Danica had given to him, threw as much of his body as he could out of harm's way.



The acid slashed across his chest, burning and biting at his skin. Rolling on the floor, Cadderly saw that his tunic was burning, that his bandolier was burning. „



His bandolier was burning!