Richard Baker - Final Gate

The war-constructs were old elven work, he could see that easily enough. But they fought for the daemonfey-scores of them. Arrows splintered on their rusted breastplates, swords broke, spears shivered, and even spells seemed to be of no avail against the relentless new enemy.

Fflar looked down at Keryvian in his hands. “Come on, old friend,” he said. “I think we have a long day ahead of us.”

With a bold battle cry, Fflar charged at the first of the daemonfey battle golems.

17 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

Araevin and his companions made the trek from the refuge-cave at the top of the terrible stairs to the portal leading back to the Waymeet in one long hike. They encountered no other travelers along the way, reinforcing his original impression that this was a very remote part of the Underdark indeed. They did not even rest for food or drink until they made the turn into the wall of bedrock and left the vast, silent dark of Lorosfyr a good half-mile behind them.

“Good riddance to that place,” Maresa said. No one argued with her.

Some time later-it was impossible to tell in the changeless dark of the underworld-they reached the blank-faced portal, set deep in its squared alcove of stone. The place looked much as they had left it. He peered down the tunnel snaking away into the darkness, and looked back the way they had come.

“We’ve marched for quite some time, and I feel like we should rest before entering the Waymeet again,” he said to the others. “But this is a bad place to make camp. Anyone or anything using this tunnel couldn’t help but walk right into us.”

“Then let’s not take the chance,” Jorin said. “I’d rather deal with what might be waiting for us on the other side of the portal than pass another day in this sunless place.”

“I’m with Jorin.” Donnor squared his shoulders, shifting the weight of his armor. “I think we should press on.”

“Very well,” Araevin agreed. He considered the blank portal for a moment, thinking. How long had they been in the Underdark? Six or seven days? Or even more? And what had the servants of Malkizid accomplished in that time? “I think we should take some precautions, though. I will conceal us with a spell of invisibility. Some demons and devils can see through spells of that sort, but perhaps it will help us to avoid unnecessary trouble.”

“I will speak a prayer for Lathander’s protection, too,” Donnor said.

Araevin moved his hands in the arcane passes of the spell and murmured the familiar words, while Donnor chanted his own prayers. In the space of a few moments his companions grew translucent and faint. The cleric’s protective spell left no visible sign, but Araevin felt a reassuring warmth on his shoulders, almost as if he stood in the bright sunshine of the World Above. Satisfied that they were as ready as they were likely to get, he turned back to the portal and woke it with another spell.

“Follow me,” he said to his companions, and he strode into the gray mists.

As usual, there was an instant of darkness and a flutter in his stomach as if he were suddenly falling, and he emerged in the Waymeet. He stopped dead a step inside the doorway, appalled.

Half the Waymeet had been consumed by the hot black iron of infernal magic.

Like some torturer’s machine, the rune-scribed iron bands affixed to the pillars and columns of the crystalline cathedral had chewed their way deeper into the fragile glass. It almost seemed that a second, parasitic Waymeet was being built over the first, riveted to its skeleton. The pearly luminescence of the whole structure had died away to a lifeless dull gray, and the air was hot and acrid.

“By the Seldarine,” he murmured.

The portal whispered at his back, and Donnor staggered into him. Araevin flailed for balance, and his outstretched hand brushed against one of the metal bands. Searing heat scorched his flesh, and he yanked back his hand with a stifled cry. In the space of a moment, Jorin, Nesterin, and Maresa filed out of the doorway after the cleric.

“Bane’s brazen throne, but someone has been hard at work here,” Jorin said. The Yuir ranger scowled fiercely. “Is this as bad as it looks?”

“Araevin, what happened to his place?” Donnor asked.

“Malkizid’s servants have increased their efforts. We have less time than I thought.” Araevin did not give his friends much time to get over their shock. “Come on. I want to see if the Gatekeeper can help us, and our spells will not hide us for long.”

Stilling their questions, his companions hurried after him while he quickly retraced the path leading back to the plaza of the speaking stone where he had questioned the mythal before. At one intersection they found a pair of barbed devils crouched atop ramparts of iron-scarred glass. The spine-covered monsters kept watch over the path below, but Araevin managed to double back and go around the creatures. He simply wasn’t certain that he could rely on the invisibility spell to fool the devils.

With no more close calls, they came to the open space where the speaking stone stood. Iron plates had been riveted to each side of the triangular pillar, encasing the crystal in a cruel coffin. Not a glimpse of the original crystal showed through the plating.

“Damnation,” Araevin murmured. “I should have expected that.”

“Have the devils finished their work here, then?” Nesterin asked.

Araevin studied the scene, searching for the subtle strands of magic that pervaded the structure. Angry reddish-gold threads of infernal power coiled around the original weavings of the ancient mythal, strangling vines that slowly tightened their grip on the living artifice that hosted them. At first he feared that Malkizid’s cruel siege was complete, and that nothing remained of the original spells the hellish sorcery replaced. But then he sensed a dim blue pulse, soft and shallow.

“Not quite yet,” he answered the star elf. “It took the high mages of Aryvandaar a hundred years to raise this mythal. It’s not entirely corrupted yet.”

“Another tenday or two, and they’ll have the whole thing riveted shut in those rune-covered bands,” Maresa said. “What happens then?”

Araevin did not answer. Instead he moved closer to the speaking stone, examining the iron driven into its face. He hesitated to interfere with the spells burned into the metal for fear of announcing their presence to the power or powers behind the device, but he could see at a glance that the Gatekeeper was barred beneath the metal. After a moment, he decided that it was more dangerous to delay within the Waymeet than it was to risk a disturbance.

“Watch for Malkizid’s servants,” he warned his friends. “I am going to try to reach the Gatekeeper.”

He felt quick glances at his back, but his comrades didn’t question his judgment. Blades whispered out of their sheaths as Donnor and Nesterin drew their swords and set themselves at Araevin’s shoulders, while Maresa and Jorin found good places to crouch in the shelter of soaring spars of iron-banded glass. Trusting that his friends would warn him if anything threatening appeared, Araevin quickly considered the spells ready in his mind and settled on a powerful spell of unjoining. It was the most potent counterspell he knew, which worked by rending spells into their component parts. He thought it might separate the diabolic curse from the Waymeet, at least in that one corner of the edifice.

He hummed a strange atonal tune and wove his hands in the sinuous passes of the disjunction. “Estierren nha morden! ” he called out, and plunged his mind into the tangled skein of magic in front of him.

He brushed his hand to one side, as if to clear away the foul clinging webs of the devilish magic, while holding the original magic in place with his other hand and fierce concentration.