“Grab the fucking sword!”
As the dwarf shouted these words, old man Carmost grabbed the sword and continued running down the path to the specified location. The elf followed as well from the trees with his well-crafted bow. His work was probably the most important; clearing the path in front of the other three members. So this was them… An elf (male), a dwarf (male), a human (male) and a halfling (female) all together in the same mission. The artifact they were after was a signet of an ancient god called “Xord’arez”. This evil god has left all his remaining power in this signet, after being beaten by “Dagon”, the well known primordial. So now it was their duty to get the signet after killing the arch-priest, who was keeping it “safe”.
The relatively weak goblins in their way made them think that the whole work would be a piece of cake. But soon they would realize the complexity of the matter.
As they kept on going there was seemingly a dead end. They searched for a way out, but no path or shortcut was to be seen by them. The orders were clear. The directions were detailed enough to guide them easily and “safely” (at least in the safest way) through the jungle. To the elf it was clear that there was no way out apart from behind. He had this elven perception of the surroundings, so he could give an almost accurate prediction that they followed the wrong way! But Carmost insisted. As a wizard he could cast a spell to reveal any hidden paths.
“Aha!”, he said with an ensuring tone. “Nope. There’s no hidden path or door”. This caused a felling of disappointment in the team. “But…, he continued, there’s a golden key right behind this tree”. He showed a long tree at their right. Then the elf laid his head down, feeling disappointment about not recognizing the existence of this key and headed for the tree.
Well, having almost deactivated all his senses, he didn’t notice a halfling archer some trees behind, since he was well hidden from the beginning. When he realized it, an arrow has already hit him on the arm. It didn’t actually touch his body, as his armor was also well-crafted but he was surprised by this action that he couldn’t reach out for the bow. Until he could, Infentia, the halfling of the team spoke to the other halfling on the tree to a strange sounding language, probably a halfling one. After that, the other halfling replied in common language, saying: “Me and my team will crash you if you don’t give us a hundred golden pieces”.
No team could be seen so the choice seemed easy for a moment. But the halfling, as a rogue, could understand by his logic alone that it was a difficult choice. Although giving a hundred gold pieces to them was like buying a small piece of meat for a rich person, they couldn’t just give money to anyone, because they demanded it. But on the other hand, if he had a team, they could be powerful, and lose their lives and money as well. So the halfling suggested:
“Carmost, you will ask him to show us his team. If he does, we’re ok. If not, Ozaїd will have his bow ready and attack him. Please be precise, young elf. In the meantime, I will have hidden in the shadows of the trees, as I’m used to it now, and I’ll sneak-attack any possible teammates of the opponent. If anything goes bad…please don’t die.”
He was clear; everyone agreed to that, so Carmost shouted:
“We will give you the money if you show us your team”. The halfling laughed taking care not to be attacked meanwhile.
“Do you really think I’m going to show you my mates that easily? Give me the money and I assure you that you’ll meet them soon…”
It was obvious for Infentia that he was lying, but an agreement is an agreement. She let Ozaїd take all the pride by killing this worthless halfling with a straight headshot. He smiled with satisfaction and got the key without facing any difficulties, of course after being reassured that there were no actual teammates around.
So now, where were they supposed to use that key? The directions didn’t mention any doors or…. “Wait!!!” Ozaїd shouted. “We are pretty close!”. He just remembered the part where they should find a way to open the chest containing information about the enemies and probably some more gold… But could it be there? No dead ends were mentioned, or passing through trees. “Now I understand”, said Axehead (apparently the dwarf!). “It was before, that we should have followed the shortcut we saw, although we thought we could go faster this way. And now we can go back and continue as programmed, knowing that we already have the way to open the weird chest…! Or it may be a useless key, but anyway it can be useful somehow”. That was very encouraging for the team. They rested for two hours to gather an important part of their powers back and they set out for the shortcut.
Just to mention it, “Axehead” was a kind of weird name. Maybe not too much for a dwarf, but still it was strange. He was practically born with an axe into his hand. That is he could hold and use pretty well a small axe from when he was just four years old. But his parents didn’t name him Axehand, because this was his father’s name owing to the fact he was also able to use an axe from a young age. So they thought Axehead would be fine.
Back to their travel, they faced no problems on their way back; neither did they face problems at the first kilometer of the shortcut. Then it was that strange elf-looking middle-aged man they saw on their way. It was obvious –for Ozaïd at least- that there were plenty of other archers in the trees, but they were moving backwards. What could that mean? The only thing they could do was ask the man. But he looked strange to some extent.
He was white-haired with a dark gray skin. He had normal green eyes, but they didn’t seem too stable to the eye of the experienced archer.
All this strange analysis of the characteristics didn’t give the team enough time to talk first, so he took the lead. He said:
“Don’t go further. There is nothing to see.”
“And how do we know you don’t lie?”, answered Infentia with her –sensible- suspiciousness
“We just went there with my team and now we are returning to our starting point. My team is composed only of elves and now they are on the trees around you.”
Axehead takes his axe out and prepares for battle
“But don’t worry!”, said the weird elf, “We aren’t fighting you. I just warned you not to go further. It won’t be good for you”
“You know something you aren’t telling us. No tricks like this to me… Speak now!” , obviously what Infentia answered.
“Well, it’s just that you won’t find a way into the temple”
“Who mentioned a temple?”
“Eeeh, well I just supposed you were going that way, after all!”
Infentia knew he was lying, but she preferred not to go on with it since a whole army of elf archers was around them.
“We appreciate your interest about whether it will be good or bad for us to go further. But we will continue despite your warning.”
“You will remember me… Hope not to meet me again.” , and he disappeared after casting some kind of spell.
That was weird. They had never seen someone with those characteristics. But for one moment Ozaïd stood there and thought of something he had only heard of. A war between elves and dark elves. But nobody had ever given him a full description of what dark elves looked like so he wasn’t sure. But this feeling he got was peculiar; he had never felt something so intense.
Then after talking a bit about the man’s words, they decided to continue, hoping he wasn’t right whatsoever. Every one of them made negative thoughts about what else they would see, but their mission was practically to prevent a dark priest from collecting or even releasing the destructive power of a signet.
It was time to run! They saw the sun setting slowly and knew they should be there by the end of the next day. They knew they could be there in less that ten hours, but resting would be a priority halfway there. They left immediately, taking care to avoid any trouble with the slowly moving elves around them.
Some three to four hours later, they already were at the spot they were supposed to fully rest and regain all of their powers. They had eight hours and needed six hours of sleep each, so for every two hours they would change patrols, except for Ozaïd who only needed four hours. He would be patrolling for some more time maybe…
Everything went as programmed while they were sleeping, apart from a slight sense of dark energy flowing increasingly from the direction of the temple. But that was normal. They were told about it. This means that they were working for someone else, if I didn’t already mention it. They wanted the money, and their employer wanted to secure the powers of the signet. He was a good person. Very lawful and all and he always was kind, but wise too. He could understand if you would survive through your mission. That’s why he selected this team. He straight understood the teamwork between the four members, which is something very important for this mission, as they knew.
Now Carmost, who was the last one sleeping, woke up and they set out for the mysterious temple. This road less traveled was full of suspicious information about what they were about to see. Ruins of ancient buildings, having strange symbols and runes on them that even Carmost couldn’t fully understand, marble-made cubic ruins depicting scenes of horror, like hunting of humans, dark rituals, and this kind of battle between two giant creatures, probably Xord’arez and Dagon.
Hopefully they weren’t afraid. All of them were pretty experienced in scary staff and all and generally they all though those were fake-scary prints sculpted there to scare them away. They went on after ensuring some general knowledge of the written staff. That is the runes and symbols. Carmost could remember such signs when they were on their way towards another similar temple. Infentia could also find some similarities between the types of the ruins there with the types of the ruins in their last quest in this other fake-scary temple. That time they had to prevent a priest and his team from reaching that temple’s center. But it was much easier. The priest’s team was composed of inexperienced kobolds and the priest himself was just another junior in magic. Their reward was huge, though. Almost eight thousand gold pieces (two thousand each) and any other sort of treasure they found in the temple. There they found other three thousand gold pieces in total and of course lots of valuable staff like the archer’s invincible armor and bow and the rogue’s armor designed for hiding in the shadows and lots of other items.
But now they thought it would be slightly more difficult, since they were informed that the priest was not a novice. He would do much more tricks and nasty spells and of course he would have much more guards. From the sculpted marble ruins they saw, it was perhaps a strange society. For sure a dark one. That could be easily worked out from the way the rituals were represented. There were plenty of souls floating over and around the magical circle –probably a summoning one- and the priest was maybe casting a spell that had the ability to sacrifice these souls for power or for summoning some sort of beast, or something worse…
Now they didn’t have enough time to analyse it. They kept running through the forest as they were told to. They only thing they weren’t told about was the inside of the temple. No person from the civilized world had ever got into this temple, mainly because of the evil guards described as violent tormentors. But these were just descriptions. Nobody seemed to have tried to fight them, so they might have also been fake descriptions.
That was it. Five hours later they saw this strange giant-stone full of ancient runes of a dragon. The runes were actually unimportant to them, but this was a sign they were near the chest. While Ozaїd had the best perception in the team, Infentia was specialized in revealing hidden doors, chests and magical marks and prints. So she did the work successfully. The chest was under the ground near the giant-stone. All they had to do was to dig it out. Fortunately it was relatively near the surface, so it didn’t take a lot of time using the axe of Axehead –and, yes, they didn’t have any other means of digging like shovels! They used the key and… It wouldn’t fit. They probably had a wrong key (Axehead was right before). That made Infentia mad about that halfling. She started cursing the time they took the main road instead of the shortcut. And it was logical since they’ve wasted plenty of time on that. She grabbed her thieves’ tools and started trying to unlock it. It wasn’t easy at all. But her experience led her to a trick she learned a couple of years ago. She just needed a specific amount of acid that they didn’t have at that time. She ordered Ozaїd to look for a small portion of any kind of acid, except for hydrogen cyanide in his bag. Ozaїd didn’t understand the last one, but thought he wouldn’t have something like it. Luckily he found another acid that was hydrogen carbonate as Infentia told him; he probably didn’t understand this, but he just felt reassured. He had done a good job. The trick went right and the chest was now open. They looked in to see just an old piece of paper
“Oh my god! Was it all for a damn piece of paper?” said Axehead full of disappointment. Well, he wasn’t intelligent at all! He was thinking of money and all, except for a piece of information.
“Shut up! It is a map of the inside of the temple. Clearly we’ll have to do a lot of things inside, and we practically have ten hours and thirty two minutes, as I make out from the position of the moon and stars. There are seven floors. One is up and five are down. We’ll first go up to seek for that rest shrine written on the map. There we can regain all the powers we lost on our way here. Then we can head for the last floor underground. It will be pretty steamy down there, so take some huge breaths out here. Then lets…”
“Wait up! You said seven floors. One up and five down make six! What the hell?” interrupted Axehead
“What the fuck do you have in your mind? What goes on with the ground floor, Shithead?!” that was clearly Infentia on insane mode
“Okay, it’s not time to argue ‘tough guy’! Let’s move on!”
“And I’m not a guy…Whatever happens, only me and Carmost can effectively read the map, so we’ll guide you through. You two will be fighting, Ozaїd from behind and Axehead straight in the battle. Carmost will be helping you, Axehead. And I will be trying to sneak-attack the enemies from their back. I hope there is not much light or they may see me. All this, after we get into the temple. Before that…”
“I have an objection…”
“What is it Carmost?”
“Infentia, you will be going first towards the enemies to see if there is a way, a path or secret door, to avoid battle. You are always doing a good job on planning everything and we are very good at team-fighting. But I’m starting to think that this time it’s more serious and we shouldn’t repeat mistakes we used to do once.”
“I think Carmost is right” said Ozaїd, after understanding what the old wizard just added
“I think you really are right. So this is what we do inside the temple. I’ll now tell you about the six guards outside it…”
Now they had a full plan and they were ready to go further. The remaining road was easy to walk. They went slowly through the last trees and found themselves in front of the temple. They saw all the guards in positions right according to their plan. They all smiled. They got their positions and gave the signal to Infentia. Then the battle started.
Ozaїd threw a flaming arrow from the trees. The light of the fire momentarily blinded the guards, as they were ambushed. In the meantime Infentia hid almost behind them and sneak-attacked the one that was behind. Carmost spontaneously cast Niac’s cold ray to the one that was hit by Ozaїd, in order to cause severe damage because of the temperature difference. One down! Axehead runs straight for the second one and hits him on the side. Mad that he didn’t kill him he made a three hundred and sixty degrees turn and tried to hit him with supernatural power, but he failed, since he gave him plenty of time to react. Axehead noticed in this low light condition that the guard had the form of a snake. That was the last thing he saw before being hit on the shoulder. He fell a couple of feet behind, stood up, shook his head, and ran shouting “DIE BEAST!” with haste. At the same time, the second hit by Ozaїd was perfect; he got the head of the second guard with this cold-iron arrow he found on their last mission, making him unable to go on and fight. Infentia successfully sneak-attacked the one behind and caused permanent damage by stabbing him on the scruff. That was three down!
But now it was time for the other guards to get really mad. The one of them was a mage. He immediately healed his half-damaged teammate and began casting a spell Carmost couldn’t understand. He shouted “KILL THE MAGE!!”. Ozaїd threw an arrow, but he didn’t get any weak point, causing only light damage. Infentia tried to sneak-attack him, but to no avail; he moved to the side while saying these strange words in a snake language she could merely understand. The only one who could do sufficient damage to prevent the mage from casting the spell was Axehead. He tried to, but another of the two remaining guards got in the middle, forcing Axehead to attack him. He did great damage, though. The mage finally cast this spell. It was a fire spell. The fire went towards Ozaїd and hit him on the side as he was trying to dexterously avoid it. He put out the fire with his hand but that hurt a lot.
Now Infentia, although she had noticed the hit, she attacked the almost dead snake-guard before the mage could heal him. Success! Two remaining. Axehead hit the mage hastily while Carmost threw another Niac’s cold ray, making him unable to go on with the fight, and the last one was an easy opponent for the three of them.
But there was no time to waste. Ozaїd got severely damaged by this fire spell. They all ran towards him and tried to help him. Carmost carefully covered the wound, as he had learned how to do this, and the bleeding stopped. They didn’t have a cleric in their team and that was a weak point. But they always managed without a cleric. This would be another time.
Ozaїd felt much better now and they all went into the temple. No one was at the entrance, so they slowly went on to the obvious staircase in the middle of the room – after making sure there were no enemies around it. They quickly found their way to the room with the shrine, just to come across four little kobolds. Piece of cake! They got rid of them and went right to the rest shrine. They felt the healing power flowing inside them. It was very refreshing after a lot of time to feel rested. But now they should leave. Ozaїd’s wound had fully closed, so he removed the bandage.
Now downstairs. On the ground floor there was nothing to see according to the map. But Infentia chose to search for anything suspicious. She looked carefully the walls and the floor and found a secret door on the floor.
“What the hell?!! There’s a door on the floor. It’s too small to get in, but could there be something hidden in it?”
She carefully opened it to find a scroll. After carefully opening the scroll, she saw some symbols she could recognise.
“Carmost, can you read that?
He got it and after some seconds he looked worried.
“It says: ‘If you are here for gaining the power of the signet you are welcome. But to gain it you’ll have to go through lots of pain. After finding this scroll, you’ll have to find nine other scrolls to activate the central door.’ Then it says the writer’s name. It’s…it’s…SPELLMORIN! This is the priest we’ll have to kill. Should we follow the instructions or is it a trap?”
“Crap!” added Axehead
“We can be sure for one thing. He wants the power for himself. So this is probably a trap. But we can’t be sure. The central gate is according to the map…on the fourth floor underground. Let’s go there and check out if there’s really need to find the scrolls.”
She feared nothing. She was confident and thought it would be easy for her to find any traps on their way. She went first, as planned, to see if there are enemies. She was amazed to find that there were no enemies on the first, second and third floor. After all of them moved to the third, she slowly checked the fourth. No obvious enemies, but she noticed a strange move behind a wall… That was suspicious. She moved closer to see better. It was obvious that there were at least two guards similar to the ones outside the temple. She hoped that they were only two.
After saying it to the others, she just told them to attack in any way they could, according to the main plan. Everyone agreed and so Carmost and Axehead ran forward, leaving Ozaїd behind. Infentia effectively hid in the shadows of Axehead and Carmost while they were running and then jumped to the shadow the light made to the wall.
Ozaїd went first again. The creatures unhid themselves when they found out they were revealed and so Ozaїd could hit them precisely. He spent his two good arrows on the outside of the temple so now he threw a normal one. But he didn’t miss. He was good whatever the quality of the arrow. He didn’t kill the first, though. As Carmost and Axehead were running towards them, they saw several shadows behind the wall. They weren’t scared, though, so they went on and hit both creatures –one each- and managed to kill one and damage the other one. Infentia was sort of ambushed by the existence of other enemies behind the wall, so she stopped and tried to think of an alternative. But clearly there was no alternative. They had to fight them too.
Now Ozaїd took down the last one with a half-precise shot –not the best he could do- and the others started getting out. They were all half humans half reptiles apart from two minotaur-like creatures. There were about ten of the first. Ozaїd wasn’t ambushed at all, so he shot straight the minotaur. Headshot! That was pretty important at that time since minotaurs are very powerful. He was about o go on with an archer, but the archer was ready from before so he tried to hit him. Fortunately he missed. But if Ozaїd hadn’t seen him before, he would be hit again.
Well, just to avoid getting into deep detail, they killed them with no loss and no sever wounds. Only some unimportant –and pretty cool!- marks of blood. Infentia looked carefully behind the wall.
“Trap!” she shouted and hid behind the wall again.
Then she turned around to search for a control panel
“Duh! What an obvious way to disable it!”
She went carefully with her tools, disabled it facing no problems and checked for any other traps around. After making sure there were no other traps, she went further and saw a big door –apparently the central gate.
“Weird…” she whispered.
“What is it, Infentia?” asked Ozaїd.
“It’s just that the central gate is open…”
They all sighed. Axehead hit his face as well to show he understood it.
“Don’t make any noises they may be expecting us…”
She carefully got in and made sure, there were no traps and the like. She told them to follow. And that’s what they did. If only she had noticed the priest beneath the staircase to the fifth floor underground…
“So… I see you finally came here, ha?”
“Why, weren’t you expecting to meet us?” answered Infentia with a tone of fear
“Mw-hahaha, do you really take me for an inexperienced mage?”
“No, but what makes you think we will show mercy to you?”
“Well, come if you dare…”
That’s what they did. Painful mistake. They attacked. The following moments were a blur for them. They couldn’t keep in their mind any of the details. Their last moments. They felt like some sort of spell entering their body and hurting all inner organs. That was pretty painful. That’s probably the last thing they could sense…
Infentia, wasn’t attacked, though. She was sitting behind trying not to show her pain about her lost teammates.
“Now, have you changed your mind?”
She didn’t speak. She tried to attack. Poor move. But it was the last thing she could do. Retreating was not an option. This way she preferred to lose her life. Fighting for her lost friends…
***
Hey, dud, can I continue? After all I was there, I saw the slaughter. Well, in the beginning I was dazed from the aftereffects of the teleport spell – another one that went wrong. But, I’m used t it after all this time spending talking to them – they push me back to work in their way, as always. So I entered this dump room with that violent creatures trying to kill… eh, what’s that? Ah, Spellmorin! By Caiphon, it was nice to check he was alive! Abacab started screaming, but I promised him plenty of food, so he stopped before revealing our position. Poor priest – arrogant as always, he enjoyed dealing with humanoids with…a spell of his own design! All time classic! Similar to the one I prepared; “damnation”.
“Spellmorin!”, I yelled, “what a nice surprise!”
And I cast damnation right on his face (he was flabbergasted). And then silence. I imagined him cursing me while fighting my friends in the Far Real. It took him some years to escape last time. So my work was over. I prepared to leave but Abacab started murmuring. Of course! The dead! Poor humanoids! I reached the shortest one – the one closer to me. I still remember her face as I fixed my gaze on her… She was calm with a peaceful , relieved expression and even could it be? (all my eyes blinked) – a hint of a smile. That was the best death as it seems. Dying for her friends. What an emotion. Sacrifice. If I only had a heart it would break for sure. But Nodaro was anxious
“Cm’on we have to go!”
“Just give me a moment”
I put the four of them together, next t each other
Together in life
Together in death
Abacab screamed
“Yes, I know females are usually tastier”, I agreed.
“But we should eat all of them.”
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