It is clear that Shaddar’s appearance has upset the drow elder’s sleep schedule. All three of the ancient dark elf leaders jump as the double doors fly open and slam into the walls with a bang. None of them look happy to see him.
The sole female elder looks terrible with lines of deep depression clearly etched in her face. It looks like she has not been sleeping or eating very well at all. She appears to be even further aged – something Shaddar did not believe was possible.
“The Harvester returns,” Griselle thinks with frantic dread, “Will he bring us any reason to have optimism? Oh, why do I torment myself with such thoughts? It is hopeless! Our doom is sealed. Doubtless he comes with a missive that promises an eternity of darkness and pain…”
The second drow elder that Shaddar examines as he walks across the room glares at him with unfeigned and unmasked hostility.
“Drips and spots! He’s back – and looking even more fancy than he did on his last visit,” thinks the sorcerer Filazar, “I wonder what insipid demand he will make this time? It’s a good thing I was able to summon my best assassins and hide them in the other room. I can’t wait to call them in on one excuse or another and humble this fraud for good!”
Shaddar’s tentacles jerk in amusement at the baseless enthusiasm that Filazar is overflowing with. But it is as he expected. The drow elders will not be giving in to his demands and so blood will flow in this hall tonight to convince them of the error of their ways...
Yanivlitan looks like he only just awoke. Still groggy, the elder scratches his long nose while thinking, “I thought Drancet told me this fellow and all his followers were dead. Blown up in some magical blast? Evidently not.”
Shaddar stops in front of the three elders suddenly and plants both hands on his hips. Toothsnatcher stops a half pace beside him with Cutt still stately perched on his shoulder. The hobgoblin honor guard stops at once as well.
Yanivlitan does his best to not look impressed. He clears his throat noisily and angrily and then speaks.
“So. You have returned. What is it?” he snaps, “I assume that you have some good and pressing reason for rudely barging into our council chamber uninvited and unannounced?”
Shaddar growls in reply, “The dark winds of change are upon you… now.”
“Oh, for the love of fried frog-legs!” Filazar thinks angrily, “Not this line of dung again!”
Shaddar ignores this and continues after a theatric pause. “It is time for your people to join mine. The only question is this: Will they join me willingly or unwillingly?”
Yanivlitan is clearly taken aback at this unexpected and sudden ultimatum. “But great one! Did we not inform you that such an alliance is impossible without proof that you will bring success and honor to our people and not ruin and disgrace?”
“The only whiff of information about your vaunted ‘power’ that we’ve heard of is that your home is now wreckage!” Filazar adds nastily.
Yanivlitan nods and says, “This is true. We have credible reports that a group of Knights and Heroes stormed the place you were living and killed everyone there.”
“Hardly an impressive display of your omnipotence!” snarls Filazar, ”And you have the nerve to tell us that your bedraggled band of survivors can stand against the Lords when you can’t even handle their officials, do you? Think that’s convincing, do you? Ha!”
“How did you survive that explosion, Destroyer?” Griselle asks with a tone of respect.
“I was not there,” Shaddar answers. “I was on a mission to fulfill my divine destiny. One of my weakest minions took appropriate revenge and killed many of those officials for disturbing a building that I had very little interest in retaining with a retributive strike.” Shaddar waves away such questions with one hand and continues, “These matters are quite meaningless. The time for the enlightenment of your people is now. This is what we must focus on.”
“What are you going on about?” Filazar slowly asks in disbelief at Shaddar’s refusal to respond to his insulting comments, “What makes you think that we will listen to your mad ramblings? Eh? Eh?”
“Let me put it this way,” Shaddar says reasonably, “As elders you are tasked with the goal of bringing well-being and prosperity to your people, correct? I am here to fulfill this aim in full measure. That would be the right choice… Or you can make choices for your race that are foolish and go against destiny. Choices that will lead to the death of many of your people. Choices that are pure folly, such as… Oh, sending your best assassins who are hiding in the next room in here to die at the hands of my invincible juggernaut, perhaps?”
“Gah! How’d he know about that?” Filazar panics.
“What a wild conjecture! As if we’d do something that audacious,” thinks Yanivlitan with raised eyebrows.
“Our destiny is nothing but death! It doesn’t matter what we do,” Griselle despondently grieves aloud. “Please have mercy! If not on us, then on our people, Destroyer! Make all of our ends swift and painless!” She wails and throws herself from her ornate chair to the floor where she sobs in a heap.
Yanivlitan tries to calm the situation by saying, “Let’s not jump to conclusions here. I’m sure we can work something out that will help you in your goals but not cause the Lords to blame us if things don’t–”
“Oh, no we won’t!” screams Filazar wildly. “We’ll see how much of a deity you are, pretender! Assassins! Attack!” He bangs his walking stick onto the floor loudly as a signal and gets an instant reaction.
A hidden door swings open swiftly and a band of masked, black-clad drow rush into the room with weapons at the ready.
“So be it,” Shaddar whispers.
Before the assassins can rush any closer, Cutt throws a handful of tanglefoot bags at their feet with a cry. The bags pop open on impact with the floor and the slimy goo inside splatters everywhere. The goo turns sticky and hardens in a matter of seconds after contact with the air. All of the drow warriors are coated with yelps of surprise and their headlong rush towards Shaddar and his minions is slowed considerably and they struggle to scrape the glue off of their weapons as they move.
“My fine blade! Gross!”
“What curse is this?”
“That midget just sneezed on us!”
Shaddar laughs evilly, his tentacles snapping like pendants in a strong wind. “Witness my power, non-believers!” he screams. The first four of assassins drop their weapons and fall on their faces as Shaddar’s powerful mind blast washes over their minds. The three in the rear are shielded from the blast by their leaders and fearlessly leap over their fallen comrades.
“What is going on here!” screeches Yanivlitan, “Stop you fools!”
Filazar barks, “Ignore him, my assassins! Kill them! Why are you four on the ground? Get up! Get up!” The sorcerer waves his hands in a mystic pattern, but Shaddar sends a blast of power through his staff and blocks his magic from functioning. The drow elder is stunned as his magic spell fizzles into nothing.
“My divine power is too great!” Shaddar gloats, “Only the most heretical can resist the call of my authority! These that have prostrated before me shall be spared. Watch closely to see how I handle heretics, Filazar!”
The three assassins close with Shaddar and lunge at him with their long swords. Their skill is of a surprisingly high quality and all three thrusts dart in past Shaddar’s armor and he is wounded. Not badly, but now he is enraged.
“Ha! See how he bleeds!” Filazar yells with glee. “I knew he was no deity!”
“Your blood shall replace every drop of my own, heretic!” Shaddar hisses as flecks of corrosive slime flick from his tentacles. “Toothsnatcher! My divine champion! Smite them!”
Toothsnatcher leaps into the air and Cutt hoots like he is enjoying riding a wild bull, hanging onto the minotaur’s horns and laughing madly. The encumbrance of the gnome doesn’t hinder the movements or speed of the barbarian at all. His greataxe sizzles downward and slices right through one of the assassin’s armor. The fellow leaps backward and manages to save his life, but the tatters of his armor fall on the floor with copious amounts of blood from the huge and deep gash that opens his right pectoral muscle to the bone.
The smitten elf goes to one knee and tries to slow the bleeding with his free hand, but maintains an iron-like grip on his sword. He stands back up holding his sword out to parry any further blows from the horrible axe that wounded him.
Cutt swings around on one of Toothsnatcher’s horns and lashes out at the injured drow while his attention is wholly on the minotaur. His clawed gauntlet catches the dark elf right under the chin and finishes him off.
“Woo! That doesn’t happen very often!” the wicked gnome cackles.
Griselle sits up and stares at the conflict with wide, terrified eyes, one hand at her own throat.
The hobgoblins by this time, have spread out to cover the exits as Shaddar told them to do should any fighting begin in the underground palace. They are chuckling to themselves and gesturing rudely towards the drow elder that is taunting their master.
Shaddar reaches out and touches the arm of one of the assassins who stabbed him with his rod of withering. The effect is immediate. The elf ages visibly and gasps as if his life looks like it is being sucked away – which it is… He hacks, coughs a spray of blood, and almost drops his sword.
“Witness my power!” Shaddar calls gleefully, “I absorb his life and it becomes a part of me!” A lie, but they will not know that.
The only other assassin who is uninjured slashes at Shaddar with a shout. The blade painfully bounces off of his tentacle shield, but causes no other damage.
The hobgoblins are cheering Shaddar and mocking the drow.
“Dumb palehairs won’t do what master says? Big mistake!”
“Master is gonna’ rip you up!”
“Palehairs is so stupid!”
“Huzzah for the master!”
“Get ‘im Toothsnatcher! Get ‘im!”
Toothsnatcher steps over the ruin of the assassin that he and Cutt tag-teamed to loom over the dark elf that is striking at his master. The unholy blade slices into the drow’s thigh on the downswing and the minotaur jerks it back up, cutting into his triceps as well. The assassin screams in pain and begins to bleed very badly. The blood on the axe blade boils into red mist with a hideous bubbling.
Cutt attempts to repeat his performance and lashes out at the dark elf’s face, but this assassin saw what happened to his friend, and he ducks under the gnome’s attacks. Cutt is bitterly disappointed.
Shaddar lashes out at the now elderly assassin with his poisoned tentacles and catches him right across the throat. The drow goes rigid as the poison paralyzes him into a statue. Shaddar crouches down to present the body of the fellow to Toothsnatcher and the minotaur winds up for a massive swing.
“No! No! No!” Filazar yelps with an edge of nervousness. “What are you doing to my finest assassins? This isn’t right! Stop!” He attempts to cast another spell, but Shaddar again uses his staff to dispel it.
Toothsnatcher swings his horrible weapon at the neck of the frozen assassin and it passes through with a sickening sound. The blow continues into the wounded drow at his side and finishes him in an equally frightful spray of gore. Both of the last standing assassins fall to the ground.
Shaddar rises back to his full height and raises a sliced hand where Filazar can see it. The hobgoblin’s catcalls go silent as they see that their master is about to speak.
“My blood has been spilled,” Shaddar whispers. “This is your doing, Filazar. Yours alone. And thus you are required to pay for it. For each. And every. Drop.” A droplet of blood falls to the floor as if to punctuate his words.
Shaddar has given both of his thralls a quick set of orders during this short speech and Toothsnatcher instantly jumps to the side of the drow elder Filazar, whose mouth is working soundlessly.
The minotaur picks the frail elf up with one hand and walks over to Shaddar with him. Shaddar holds open his robes to show his wounds.
“You think that I lack divinity because of these injuries? Observe as I take his life-force and very soul to replenish my own divine essence!”
As Shaddar wraps his tentacles around the screaming elder’s head, Cutt mumbles a spell and begins to magically heal his master’s wounds.
By the time Shaddar is finished eating the best-tasting brain he has had in his life, his wounds are fully healed. He has Toothsnatcher throw the useless body of Filazar to the floor. And the two remaining drow elders gape at the healing that has so obviously taken place.
Griselle sits frozen with horror, staring at the body of her fellow elder in shock.
Yanivlitan is speechless and his thoughts are filled with denial at what has happened before his very eyes. He has never been so frightened.
“There appear to only be two elders left,” Yanivlitan mumbles, “Perhaps we should vote?”
Griselle falls to the floor face first and gasps as her racing heart gives out and she expires.
“Ah,” Yanivlitan says as he sees that she is no longer breathing, “Well that settles that. What are your commands, great one?”
Shaddar first motions half of his hobgoblins to surround the four stunned assassins. It will not do to have them snap out of his mind blast effect and contest his new-gained mastery of the drow in Big City.
Shaddar folds his robe back into place carefully, then looks absently at the last surviving drow elder.
“I think that you shall be my chancellor,” Shaddar says with pleasure. “We will work together as I form the drow into an army. Any who resist will be cut down and their souls used to regenerate my flesh.”
Yanivlitan is close to panicking, but he manages to say: “Oh… good.” His eyes dart to the still form of Griselle and he thinks, “Maybe she was right! Maybe this really is the Destroyer!”
“Well spoken and a wise choice, chancellor,” Shaddar whispers.
“Choice? He speaks of choice?” Yanivlitan thinks, “What choice do I have but to survive so I can work to keep as many of people as I can alive and away from this monster and his dread minions?”
“Our people will be unified under my banner!” Shaddar goes on as he senses the four assassins wake up. The men stare at the carnage and listen to the conversation with shock.
“Yes! Drow will join with my other noble followers, the hobgoblins, to form an unstoppable force that will gain revenge at last over the indignities heaped upon you both for thousands of years!” The hobgoblins give out a lusty and not-very-intelligent-sounding cheer at the mention of their role in Shaddar’s plans.
“But what of the Lords?” squeaks Yanivlitan.
“Ha! Leave them to me. I will deal with them. They owe me a debt that only their lives can repay! There is only one true Lord in this world and you have just witnessed his power! And now all of the drow are in my service as is right.” Shaddar spins to face the gaping assassins.
“Excellent! You have shaken off the effects of my divine aura and are ready to serve me!” he proclaims. The leader of the assassin’s darts a glance at Yanivlitan who nods vigorously.
Shaddar has Toothsnatcher open the door and speaks in a loud voice so that it echoes down the main hall of the palace, so that those who are eavesdropping will have an easier time of it.
“My children! A great new age is upon us! You will follow me to glory, conquest, and gain! All that is entitled to your noble people shall be once again your inheritance!”
“This is so!” the drow elder says loudly. “Perhaps some of you have heard the rumors that the true ruler of the world has at last come to the Realm? Here he stands! And the elders have voted unanimously to place our fate in his hands!”
After this speech, the drow elder seems to shrink into himself. He speaks quietly, “And now: I must see to my bed – I feel very fatigued by tonight’s activities. Barrityl? See that our great benefactor and new leader has all that he may need in my absence.”
The chief assassin nods curtly and Yanivlitan exits the room as fast as he is able while thinking, “I hope I can retain some authority so as to protect my people, but I fear I have become nothing but a puppet and figurehead to this madman…”
Shaddar reads Barrityl’s mind and sees that the man is considered next in authority to the drow people. He acts as a sort of captain of the guard and a future elder. His thoughts are a bit muddled still, “What exactly transpired here I do not know. I have no memory of it. All I know is that this fellow looked at me and I was unable to do violence to him or even to stand! His power is unlike any other! He must indeed be the Destroyer. Even if he were not, the laws of our people are clear – I must obey the unanimous vote of the council of elders.”
“How may I serve, great one?” Barrityl asks.
“I require a tour of this palace. I would see it all, in order to know how best to utilize it,” Shaddar answers. And as an afterthought he adds: “Oh, and have this hall cleaned. I shall need it to serve as my council chamber soon and dislike to have it in such a state.”
“Yes, great one,” Barrityl murmurs.
“And after you have shown me this facility, I have another task for you, Barrityl,” Shaddar continues, “Gather all of the drow you feel are capable of someday becoming assassins or warriors and bring them to me. Tomorrow night.”
“We have many drow who are strong and active enough for the role, great one. I assume that you do not want the banished ones in your army?”
“Banished? Where to? Who are they?”
“The sorcerers, great one. They must live apart where they can not be seen or threaten the humans.”
“Not all of them have remained separate or in hiding,” Shaddar thinks, “From what Vicacili told me, there is a large group of them who work for the Villains Guildmaster. I will have Hawke find out who they are and then send my new drow assassins to eliminate them.”
“No. Leave the sorcerers alone for now. I will have some orders concerning some of them later, but it can wait for the time being,” Shaddar says.
Barrityl nods and commences to conduct a tour for Shaddar’s benefit. The drow palace is much larger than Shaddar initially thought, with huge storerooms, fresh-water cisterns, and rooms filled with clerical records and staff. There are a number of finely decorated and spacious chambers and two lavishly appointed multi-room suites which have quite suddenly become vacant since the elders who lived in them has both died.
Cutt pipes up upon seeing one room in particular. “Flasks! Beakers! Yes! But what is all this other junk in here?”
“This is the private wine cellar for the elders,” Barrityl explains.
“Get rid of it!” Cutt orders, “This room is my new lab! It’s perfect! Leave all those glass implements and tools, but lose the casks and bottles! Worthless stuff!”
Shaddar nods in agreement with the gnome and Barrityl bows his head in acceptance of the order.
“Fine. As you know, we drow have the finest skills in glassblowing, and every other form of craftsmanship. Should you require anything in particular, you have only to ask and I will see that it is built to your specifications.”
“Ooo!” Cutt squeaks, “You are my new best friend!”
“Good. Between the orders I have given you and what my gnome here will request, you will be quite busy,” Shaddar says. He turns to the hobgoblins.
“Begin clearing away the last ballroom that we saw and building it up into a barracks for yourselves and the rest of my hobgoblin warriors.” They clap in acceptance of his commands and leave at once to get started.
“I shall return shortly, Barrityl. I trust you can see to what needs to be done until I return?”
He spins on his heel as the dark elf bows once again. Toothsnatcher stays right behind him as he walks down the main hall. Shaddar broadcasts a mental suggestion as he touches every mind in range of his powers to feel glad that he has come. To feel like good times are about to come to pass. To feel like a change in leadership is what is needed. This mental exercise is taxing, but rewarding as the affected drow begin to cheer at his passing.
Every time he finds a dark elf that is thinking about how grand it is to finally see someone making some plans to stand up for the drow race before he plants a mental suggestion in their minds, he points and commands them to follow him. Gladly they obey.
He will need many hands to help carry all of his guild’s equipment down to their new lair after all!
It takes a bit more time to guide his much larger procession to the hideout that Hawke established in his absence, but not too long.
Hawke is quite pleased to see the scores of drow porters that Shaddar returns with. The dark elves begin to carry boxes away and work to complete the packing job that Hawke and Loolipo started.
“All of the arrangements have been made, Hawke. We shall move into our new lair at once,” Shaddar says grandly.
“I’ve set wheels in motion too, Boss. The herbalists you need will do business with us in the way we need them to,” he reports smugly. “They have been instructed and warned to keep no records of certain orders and that they will be well compensated for their pains.”
“Perfect.”
Loolipo reports that she tailed several patrols of heroes and constables in the area and that their conversation indicated that they were scared. Very scared, yet very alert.
“I had to use all my skill to remain undetected, master,” she complains, “Not like last time.”
“Their fear has bred a heightened awareness of the need for the alertness that they once lacked,” Shaddar muses. “Interesting. They were capable of performing their jobs to a higher standard before and yet did not due to… sloth?”
“More like they just didn’t need to,” Hawke says with a grunt.
“The regular peoples can tell that the patrols are more frequent and that they travelling in greater numbers,” Loolipo continues in her report. “It was almost all anyone was talking about. Them that was talking, which wasn’t very many. Most of the humans was rushing about, trying to stay outdoors for as little time as possible.”
Shaddar is quite pleased. Apparently the sudden calm of his guild’s activities has done nothing to lower tensions in town. And none of these weak humans can remain on high alert for so long without the strain of it causing mistakes to be made. Rumors will be flying about town and commerce must be down to a trickle. The anger of the Lords of the city is merely icing on a very fine cake.
“I will form small teams of warriors and assassins and send them out into the city to perform hit-and-run attacks that will cause the social fabric of this place to tear asunder like a beggar’s blanket! Once that happens I can move into the slums and use the chaos to mask my take over of that half of the city. Yes. Everything is proceeding in a superb fashion…”
Chapter 1 < Chapter 49 Chapter 51 >
No comments:
Post a Comment