Slowly he opens his eyes.
Nothing is as Shaddar expects. The ground on which he pushes himself up from is slanted steeply at roughly 12 degrees. He turns his head to the bottom of the slope to see that many of the liquids from the console have spilled and are pooled at the far edge of the room. Shaddar studies the pool of liquid and realizes that not all of it is alchemical potions; there is a great deal of blood mixed in as well. In fact, the air is thick with the smells of blood, smoke, and death.
His eyes follow the trails of dark fluids to the broken bodies of two of the thralls. Eesha has been electrocuted, a copper strip wrapped around her left leg. Tuthoad is missing a large portion of his head. It appears that a beaker of acid exploded into his face. The kuo-toa and gnome are alive and breathing shallowly, on the other side of the room. Shaddar gets to his feet unsteadily and looks to the doorway.
“Ah,” he thinks, “The minotaur’s axe seems to have slipped into the gargoyle’s neck. Well, then.” Despite the tragedy of the loss of the elder brain, Shaddar feels a bit of satisfaction from the sight. Ped’fraxith will never give him a beating at the command of his master again! Looking past this happy accident, Shaddar’s tentacles go rigid with shock.
A large block of stone has become dislodged from the ceiling and now rests on the pulped skull of Felinxtrath.
His mentor is dead.
For a moment, Shaddar is so discombobulated that he does not know what to think or do. And then he does what comes naturally.
He begins to laugh.
“How obliging you are, master,” Shaddar thinks with joyful malice, “To grant me this happy boon, and so much earlier than I had planned!”
He turns to examine the rest of the room while still chuckling evilly and is amazed to see that the four slaves are nothing but blackened ashes that have left nothing behind but sooty silhouettes on the torture racks. The console is a smoldering ruin of broken glass and melted metal. The iron throne looks completely untouched other than the burnt and liquidated fragments of the crystal still attached to its once fine setting.
Shaddar puts his hands on his hips and examines his situation. This has been a series of amazing events that he will not soon forget. His emotions are a mix of delight at the demise of Felinxtrath and disgust at the ruin and disorderly mess all about him.
The worst thing however, is not what he sees and feels. It is what he does not feel. A hollow in the center of his being worries him like a scab – itching and painful. The elder brain is dead. He feels no comforting presence. He is alone.
But wait… What is that?
Shaddar turns once more to the still form of his erstwhile master. There is something there. A mental contact that seems familiar, but weak…
“Of course! The brainmate!” Shaddar thinks with an edge of relief he can not deny.
His mind quests outwards still farther, to see how the rest of his brethren are faring as he moves to collect the precious fragment of the elder brain. His movement stops abruptly after a single faltering step. There is nothing to hear. Not a single illithid mind-voice.
Granted, his range as a youngster is limited, but much like the hum of the elder brain’s thoughts, he has never been subjected to this type of telepathic quiet. There is always some other member of the race he can hear and speak to somewhere in the city.
But not now. Not anymore. And Shaddar again is confused as to how he should feel about this new experience and wonders at its cause. Have the foul butchers of the elder brain killed all of his people? Has he been rendered a mental deaf-mute because of the experiment’s failure? Or is there another possibility? Shaddar does not have enough information and so he sets about gathering what assets he can. Best to be ready for any contingency.
His first step is to collect the thralls under his authority. With much mental prodding, he manages to awaken the three thralls that have survived the explosion. They are not thinking clearly yet – their minds are reeling and unfocused.
“Collect what you can from the bodies and the wreckage,” Shaddar tells them. They begin to obey, slowly moving faster now that they do not have to think of what to do on their own. Shaddar feels the bonds between thrall and master begin to tighten to him. This indicates that his lack of communication with his fellow illithids is not an illusion – there must be no other of his race nearby for communal thralls to begin to bond to him like this.
Shaddar moves to the side of his master’s corpse and quickly loots it. The brainmate is safe and he cradles it for a moment. Next, his master’s fine robe is quickly removed and donned. The splatter of blood and brains does nothing to lessen it’s fineness – indeed, Shaddar resolves to never remove his master’s essence from this robe. A fond memory! Why should he wash it away? In a pouch he finds several gems. A locked scroll case is attached to the belt, although Shaddar can find no key. Altogether he is quite satisfied and stands, kicking aside his old threadbare robe.
The thralls have completed their task and show him the meager belongings of the dead thralls as well as a few items from the experiment that were not ruined. He takes what he wishes and the thralls pocket the rest.
His tentacles point to the doorway, partially filled with fallen stones as he mentally addresses Jor, “Clear the rubble and make a path. I would see what has become of my city.”
The minotaur moves the heavy stones with ease and the group moves down the tilted hallway. They only travel a few dozen feet before the hallway ends in a brick wall. Shaddar touches the stone and realizes that it is not natural, but some kind of baked clay.
He backs away and gestures at the wall curtly. “Smash it down.”
With a bovine grunt, Jor charges the wall with his head lowered. The wall detonates as the steel-hard horns blow through it. And a foul miasma assaults Shaddar’s nostrils.
A sewer?
He steps through the shattered wall and finds that he is indeed inside a large sewer tunnel. Underneath the ripe smell of his immediate surroundings, Shaddar can smell other things: animals, exotic foods, and wood-smoke. The stench of mankind is everywhere. And so are the thoughts that he can now begin to hear. Thousands of them, just within his current range of sense.
Under a city? A human city?
Shaddar is confused. Again. This new feeling is become quite wearying and he decides that he does not like it. Clearly the result of the experiment is that the room and everyone in it have been teleported or shifted somewhere else. He feels the need for more information as a hunger.
Suddenly, there is a horrible metallic sound as a grate is lifted above them. Light streams down, making Shaddar wince and Loolipo gurgle as the light blinds her. The grate is next to the wall of the tunnel, fifteen feet ahead of them. A pair of boots step onto the top-most rung of the ladder that is set into the wall beneath the grate.
“Stop yer moanin’,” a voice comes from the opening, “I said I’m gonna’ go see what made all those awful noises.” A pause. “Nah! It’ll be a lark!”
Shaddar waits until the man is halfway down the ladder before blasting him with his mind. The man drops to the ground like a stone.
“Take him to the experiment chamber and chain him to one of the racks,” Shaddar commands. The minotaur quickly scoops up the immobile form and re-enters the hallway.
Just as he disappears a voice calls down from the open grate, “Timothy? What was it? A king-rat? Snakes?” Another figure begins to descend the ladder.
This time Shaddar waits for the human to reach the bottom before gently touching his mind and fooling him into thinking that he is his recently captured companion.
“This way, friend,” Shaddar says, while beckoning with one hand. The weak-minded fool follows him with a stupid grin on his face.
“Close the grate and be sure that you remain unseen,” Shaddar commands Cutt mentally. He then silently speaks to Loolipo, “Follow the human and bind him once we get to the experiment chamber.”
A few moments of muffled yelps and scuffles yields both of the humans chained to the racks that were still in working order. Since only one of the captives is awake and alert, Shaddar begins his questioning and mental probe with him.
“Where is this place?” he says with malice, his tentacles twitching slowly.
The man stares at his horrible visage with an open mouth for a moment then clucks his tongue.
“Gor! What a mask! A right proper villain you are, sir! Fantastic!”
“Where is this place?” Shaddar repeats, flecks of corrosive slime hitting the man’s arm and making him wince.
“D’ya mean the town’s name? Oh. It’s Big City, of course.”
“Big City? This is the name of your settlement?” Shaddar is overcome with disgust at the low intelligence of this cretin and all of his kind. How stupid! He quickly reads the man’s surface thoughts to see if he is being truthful.
He is. And moreover, Shaddar can detect no fearful tinge to the thoughts at all. Can it be that this man is too dense to know the nature of his predicament?
“I hope this kidnapping won’t be taking long, sir,” the man says, “I’ve got a schedule of drinkin’ to do this night and it’d be a shame to fall behind!” Then he laughs. Laughs!
The first man wakes from his stupor and makes an awkward sound. Shaddar turns to him, and gets a very surprising reaction once they focus on him and his thralls.
His eyes light up with excitement as he shouts happily, “Huzzah! I’ve been captured by a group of villains!”
Shaddar is amazed. He has never seen such a reaction in any lessor race. Terror, yes. Fear, disgust, and panic. Denial even. But this?
“When the heroes rescue me in front of the town I’m going to be famous! Famous! The women will love me! Oh, the stories I’ll be able to tell – free drinks at every pub, I’ll get! Why, it’s my lucky day!” The man puffs out his cheeks and begins humming a jaunty tune.
Shaddar checks this fellow’s mind quickly, but his words match with his thoughts and there is no taint of madness there. Just a certainty that his life is not in any danger and that rescue and fame are inevitable. And as a further insult, Shaddar reads some further thoughts that indicate that this human believes that he and his thralls are, “some of the best illusionist magic ever!”
Enough. Either these men are fools, complete innocents, or mentally retarded. In any case, Shaddar is both hungry and insulted. He snarls menacingly as his tentacles wrap around the man’s head.
Within moments, the first man’s brain has been eaten. A tasty morsel, full of interesting tangs. Shaddar stands upright from his meal to face the other man whose face has lost most of its pallor.
“T-that’s a scary illusion, you villain, and too realistic by half,” he blubbered, “Are you sure that kinda’ thing has been okayed by the entertainment guild?”
Shaddar chuckles nastily. “I am fine with this entertainment… That is all that matters.” He moves forward slowly and casually as the man begins to cry out.
Minutes later, after the second man’s limbs have stopped twitching, Shaddar absently wipes the remnants of his meal from his face. Superb! He has never felt this satiated! What a glorious feeling!
“I am resolved,” he broadcasts to his thralls, “We will explore this ‘Big City’. It seems to be filled with amusements and fools. It would be a pity to not enjoy them – and their brains!”
Chapter 1 < Chapter 3 Chapter 5 >
No comments:
Post a Comment