James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

But not quite.

The priest was a middle-aged human woman with wild hair and wide eyes, draped in a formless black robe. A purple stole with the same golden spiral hung over her shoulders, and the symbol shaped from real gold hung on a slender chain around her neck. She held a gnarled quarterstaff carved and inlaid over and over with the same symbol, like a dizzying storm of eyes or whirlwinds.

“I admit,” he said, “you are not what I expected. I trust you have had time to prepare yourselves to meet justice. Do you wish to surrender?”

One or two of the cultists behind the priest looked like they might be ready to throw down their weapons, but the priest just laughed.

“There need not be any bloodshed,” Roghar said. “If you just put down your weapons …”

“There will be bloodshed,” the priest said. “The Chained God will drink deeply of your lifeblood, paladin.”

“The Chained God?” Roghar glanced over his shoulder at Travic. “I guess we both lose.”

“No, just you,” Travic said. “You bet it was Asmodeus, I said it wasn’t.” Travic rounded the corner, keeping Roghar between himself and the cultists in the shrine. “You owe me five … Gaele?”

Mouth hanging open, Travic stared at the priest of the Chained God.

“Hello, Travic,” the priest said. “Marcan warned you to leave.”

“What happened to you?”

Gaele scoffed. “You gave me comfort in my weakness. That’s all Erathis could offer-the promise of a rebuilt empire where the rich still stand on the aching backs of the poor. The Chained God gives me power , Travic. Power to destroy you and the feeble comfort of your god.”

Roghar shook his head. “Still up to this, Travic?”

Travic pulled himself together with a visible effort of will, then nodded.

“Good,” Roghar growled. “Let’s do this.” Hefting his sword, he started forward.

“Stop!” Tempest shouted, and Roghar froze. “The floor,” she said. “There’s a glyph-a magic trap. You don’t want to step on it.”

Gaele laughed again. “I must congratulate you, tiefling, on your powers of observation. But let’s see how they work through this.”

She lifted her staff, and a cloud of darkness surrounded Roghar, enfolding him until he could no longer see the light on his shield. The cloud was cold, chilling his flesh and whispering madness at the edge of his mind. It pushed against him like water and sent twinges of pain through his entire body with even his smallest movement.

“Tempest?” Roghar said, gritting his teeth.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

The darkness vanished and Roghar blinked in the sudden brightness of his glowing shield. Beside him, Tempest held a ball of inky blackness suspended in the air between her hands, and with a soft grunt of effort she hurled it at the priest. The ball dissipated into slivers when it hit Gaele’s outstretched staff, but a few of the slivers tore small wounds in her face and shoulders.

“Travic,” Roghar said. “Can you do anything about this … griffon? cliff? This trap, whatever Tempest called it.”

“The glyph,” Travic said. “I’ll try.” He dropped to his knees at Roghar’s feet and started exploring the floor with his hands, not touching the stone, but reaching as if he were feeling the contours of the trap and its magic.

“Can I go around it?” Roghar scanned the floor, but still couldn’t see any sign of what had alerted Tempest.

“No, it fills the entire hall.”

“Why can everyone see this but me?”

“We know what to look for, that’s all.”

Tempest called up a storm of eldritch fire around the cultists, breaking up the clump of them as the fire ignited their clothes and hair. Only Gaele stood her ground as the rest of her little cult scattered.

“The Chained God take you, tiefling,” Gaele said. She shook her staff, and rattling chains of red-hot iron appeared around Tempest, coiled around her body and cuffed to her ankles and wrists. Tempest howled in pain as the hot metal seared her flesh, and she thrashed against the restraints.

Travic looked back at Tempest, then up at Roghar.

“I’ll help her,” Roghar said. “You get rid of the glyph. I have to get up there and get your friend Gaele focused on me.”

“I don’t understand,” Travic said, turning his attention back to the glyph. “What could have changed her so?”

“Later, Travic. Focus.” Roghar stretched out a hand to cup Tempest’s cheek in his hand. Her skin was hot, but as Roghar breathed a prayer and channeled Bahamut’s power into her body he felt her cool. Her thrashing stopped, and she drew a deep breath. Roghar’s hand started glowing as bright as his shield, and Tempest let out her breath. The manacles sprang open and the chains clattered to the floor, where they writhed like snakes before vanishing in puffs of steam.

Tempest smiled at him, then conjured a shimmering orb of viscous green liquid in her palm. “Eat acidic slime, you lunatic,” she said as she hurled the orb at Gaele.

“Travic?” Roghar said. “Progress?”

“I’m having some trouble concentrating.”

“Fine. Forget it.” Roghar backed up, crouched down, and ran at the glyph. At the last possible moment, he threw himself into the air, a strong jump that carried him almost all the way to the little altar. He braced himself, in case he hadn’t completely cleared the glyph, but nothing erupted around him when he landed.

“Had any second thoughts about surrender?” he said, scanning the nervous faces of the cultists arrayed before him.

“Kill him!” Gaele screeched, clawing at the slime that was blackening her skin, and half a dozen cultists surged forward, closing their semicircle around him.

“I didn’t think so.” Roghar blocked the first half-hearted swing with his shield, then swept his sword low to knock two cultists off their feet. He caught three more in a blast of dragonfire from his mouth, but the sixth one managed to get past his whirlwind of attacks and land a solid blow with a shout of triumph.

The cultist’s hammer hit his armor with a dull thud.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Roghar said, baring his teeth in the cultist’s face. The cultist was a middle-aged man clutching a blacksmith’s hammer in his one hand, the empty left sleeve of his tunic tucked into his belt to keep it out of the way. “Marcan, I presume.”

Marcan paled and swung his hammer again, this time aiming for Roghar’s unprotected face. Roghar knocked it aside with his shield and stepped to the side as another cultist stabbed at him from behind. The blade found a gap in the armor protecting Roghar’s arm and sliced a painful cut.

Roghar kicked at the man who had cut him, knocking the cultist to the floor, and smashed his shield into Marcan’s face. He brought his pommel down hard on the head of a cultist who was struggling to stand up, drove his knee into the groin of a man whose face carried fresh burns from his dragon breath, and cut the head clean off a man rushing in from his right.

It had been pure reflex, an attack without thought, and regret seized him before his sword even finished its swing. The dead man’s face was still twisted in hate and anger as it fell to the floor, a moment before the body followed it down.

“You’re all mad,” Roghar said.

One dead, four on the ground in varying states of agony, that left one-

Something hit him hard on the head from behind, and his vision went double. He spun around and away from his attacker, willing his eyes to focus. The last cultist stood clutching a wooden cudgel in both hands, looking at once surprised that his blow had landed and terrified that Roghar hadn’t fallen.

“That … hurt,” Roghar said. “But it takes more than that to bring me down.”