Richard Baker - Final Gate

“Malkizid’s tower,” he murmured. “That’s it.”

“That has the look of elven work,” Nesterin said, frowning. “Was this place made in mockery of the People? Or did elves once live here?”

“The Vyshaan of Aryvandaar,” Araevin answered him. “They built the Waymeet, and they had dealings with Malkizid. They might have built the portal leading to this domain and raised a tower here.”

“Elves lived here?” Maresa asked, incredulous.

“The Vyshaanti were more like daemonfey than elves, Maresa,” Araevin told her. “They would not have been deterred by dealing with the evil denizens of the Barrens. I don’t know if they actually dwelled in this place, but I would not be surprised to learn that they visited it often enough to see the need for a strong refuge here.”

They fell silent, studying the old citadel and its dead forest, until Jorin cleared his throat. “We’d better start down from this ridgeline. We don’t want to be seen.”

The ranger led them down the steeply descending path that dropped from the barren hills into the dead forest. Sliding and scraping their way down the hillside, they finally reached the sparse cover of the desiccated forest. Their path grew easier as the slope lessened. When they reached the black woods, Araevin could see that the valley floor was choked with thick briars. Thorns as sharp and long as daggers gleamed on each side of the path.

Jorin led the company deeper into the forest, staying on the trail. On several occasions winged fiends-devils or yugoloths, Araevin could not easily tell-flew overhead, croaking to each other in harsh voices. Each time he and his friends crouched down under the cover of the burned trees and sullen briars, getting as close to the thorns as they dared, and waited until the monsters flew off.

“Do you think they are looking for us?” Donnor asked softly after the third such encounter.

“I doubt it,” Araevin said. “I think there would be many more devils prowling in this vale if they suspected our presence.”

“That’s reassuring,” Maresa snorted. “They’re going to figure it out sooner or later, you know.”

Araevin did not answer her. When the danger passed, they climbed to their feet and continued on. After another parched mile of walking beneath the bare branches and black trunks of the old forest, they came to a small clearing where an old fountain basin had once stood. It was crowned by a statue of a winged angel transfixed by a sword. Immortal agony and despair gaped silently toward the sky. Rising above the trees a few hundred yards away, the nearest spire of the ruined citadel peered down on them.

“I’ve seen this before,” Araevin murmured.

It was the place from which he had glimpsed the third shard’s hiding place in his vision. He could not make out any gleam of light in the spire to announce the shard’s presence, but that did not surprise him. Visions exaggerated things like that in order to convey information.

A broad balcony caught his eye. It ascended the outside of the spire for quite a distance before it came to a ruined edge. A dark doorway midway along its length seemed to lead to the tower’s interior. A sudden inspiration came to Araevin then. He’d been wondering how they could slip inside the tower proper, since he assumed that Malkizid’s minions would carefully guard what passed for the tower’s gate. But it might be possible to make their entry from the balcony outside.

“There,” he said, pointing out the balcony to the others. “We’ll enter the spire from the balcony. Link hands-I’ll teleport us all to the balcony.”

“Is it safe?” Donnor asked.

“Nothing here is safe,” Araevin admitted. “But I suspect that we may do better to trust in speed than stealth once we get inside. It will be very hard for me to conceal my presence.”

The Lathanderite bowed his head and murmured the words of a prayer. Then he looked back up at Araevin. “I’m ready.”

The mage reached out and seized his friends’ hands, and spoke the words of his teleport spell with his eye firmly fixed on the tower’s balcony. He felt the familiar icy plunge into blackness, an instant of disorientation… and he and his friends were standing high above the barren forest on a narrow balcony of ebon glass. Fortunately, it seemed sturdy enough to hold them all. Araevin had half-feared that it might give way beneath their weight.

Maresa glanced down to check herself, as if she expected that not all of her would have made the trip. Then she grunted in satisfaction and said, “Well, we’re here. What next?”

Araevin quickly took his bearings. The citadel was really three distinct spires in one structure, winding around each other as if they had grown out of the ground in that form. About halfway up the height of the central spire, one of the two smaller ones branched off and soared out as a hanging minaret. The other, the one Araevin and his friends stood on, branched out a little bit higher. The whole edifice spurned the earth below, boldly leaping out over dizzying drops below with the support of long, slender buttresses. Beneath their feet loomed a drop of two hundred feet or more.

“This way,” he said, and he led his friends to the doorway close at hand.

The archway was guarded by a warding symbol, glowing red with malevolent magic. Araevin studied it for a moment and framed a negating spell to suppress it while they passed. Inside the spire, he found a chamber finished in red marble with gold veins. A broad stair circled up to the floor above, and another led below. The room was appointed as a conjury of some kind, with summoning diagrams inscribed on the floor and shelves filled with scrolls of sallow parchment.

The third shard whispered to him from somewhere above. Araevin started for the stairs leading up-but then Nesterin hissed in alarm. “There’s a devil following us!” the star elf said. He stood by the archway leading outside, peering back the way they had come. “It’s alighting on the balcony…”

Maresa drew her rapier and melted into the wall beside the archway. Nesterin and Jorin backed up, readying their bows, while Donnor found the best cover he could on the opposite side of the archway from Maresa and hefted his broadsword. Araevin found a good place in an alcove along the far wall… but then he heard a hissing, scrabbling sound coming from the downward stairs to his left. He looked down just as a trio of chitin-plated canoloths appeared on the stair, spiky tongues lolling from their barbed snouts.

A black-scaled shadow filled the archway. It was a towering devil, easily the height of a good-sized giant, though it was lean and lanky. A bladed tail whipped anxiously behind it, and the fiend gripped a long, barbed chain in its talons. Two great, curled horns crowned its fearsome visage.

“Stupid mortals,” it gloated. “Did you think your sealing spell could hold us for long? You will soon learn-”

“Enough of this,” Jorin said.

The ranger loosed his arrow and buried the slender shaft in the thick scales over the fiend’s chest. The devil roared in pain and started toward the archer just as Maresa slipped in from the left side of the portal and skewered its hip-the highest part of the creature she could easily reach-with her rapier. The devil roared again and leaped away from her, ripping her rapier from her hands.

“Impudent insect!” the creature snarled. “I will eat your liver before your dying eyes!”

It lashed out in a blinding frenzy, whirling the huge barbed chain in its taloned hands. With one quick strike it wrapped the cruel chain around Maresa’s shins and jerked the genasi off her feet, and with the other end it smashed the bow out of Jorin’s hands. The monster wheeled and lashed its bladed tail at Donnor, striking the knight’s shield with a resounding clang that sent him staggering to his knees.