James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

Roghar fought with righteous fury, confident in the knowledge that he was doing Bahamut’s work, helping to defend and protect the defenseless citizens of Fallcrest. His confidence gave strength to his arms as Bahamut empowered his weapon, and in just a moment the demon was gone, its fires extinguished and its crystalline substance shriveling to black residue on the floor.

Snarling with satisfaction, Roghar turned to check on Tempest. Smoke still clouded the air, but he didn’t see any sign of her. White light still shone near the floor, marking the location of the woman he’d tripped over. Tempest hadn’t retrieved her.

Another cough, weaker than before, came from the floor near the window, where fire still roared in the curtains. Roghar plunged deeper into the smoke, yanked the curtains to the floor and smothered the flames, then found the suffocating man slumped in a chair. He invoked Bahamut’s healing power as he lifted the man to his shoulder.

“A more moderate lifestyle would serve you well, friend,” he muttered to the heavy man. “The blessings of food and drink were meant to be enjoyed within sensible limits.”

He staggered to the woman’s side and dropped to one knee. Groaning with effort, he lifted her under his arm-grateful for a much lighter load-and carried both unconscious people out the door.

The hallway was in chaos. Smoke billowed along the length of the hall, mostly clinging to the ceiling. Near Roghar, Uldane stood facing one of the nightmare demons they’d encountered on the bluff, standing firm against it though his face was contorted with fear. Behind Uldane, a clump of terrified looking people, mostly clad in bedclothes, huddled together, recoiling from the shadowy tendrils the demon lashed toward them. At the far end of the hall, Tempest stood facing another demon near a broken window.

Tempest seemed paralyzed with fear, and Roghar could imagine why. These demons used fear as their weapon, taking on the appearance of whatever their foe feared most. And they came from the same source as Nu Alin, apparently, so it was likely a trivial matter for them to draw on Tempest’s terror of Nu Alin and her fear of being possessed again.

I have to help her, he thought.

He lowered the two people he was carrying to the floor, as gently as he could, and scanned the clump of terrified bystanders for someone who looked at least vaguely competent. A teenaged girl caught his eye, wearing a look of defiance as she held a younger boy.

“You,” he called, pointing to her. “I need you to get these people into the middle with the rest of you. I’ll keep the demon busy. Can you do that?”

Her eyes went wide and flicked to the demon, but when she looked back at him she nodded. He smiled as he drew his sword again. He roared and charged the demon.

“Fiend of the Plaguedeep!” he shouted. “Your doom is here, in Bahamut’s name!”

The demon whirled to face him, and it changed. The snaky tendrils of shadow and liquid crystal that served the creature in place of legs lifted up off the ground and became five draconic heads in five different colors. The burning inn fell away until he stood alone on a desolate plain before Tiamat, god of greed and vengeance, queen of evil dragons.

“Worship me, dragonborn,” all five heads said in unison. “I am also of the blood of Io.”

Bahamut and Tiamat were two sides of the same coin, in dragonborn thinking. Both gods had arisen from the corpse of the first dragon god, Io, when he was slain by the Lord of Chaos in the Dawn War. But they embodied opposite extremes of Io’s philosophy, and dragonborn believed that they all had a choice to make in life between the path of Io and the path of Tiamat.

Doubt gnawed at Roghar’s heart, a doubt he’d never previously admitted or acknowledged. Did I choose the right path? he wondered, putting the doubt into words for the first time.

The dragon-god roared, five earth-shaking bellows of pain and fury, and Roghar saw Uldane’s dagger stuck into the back of the demon as it turned. Tiamat was gone, and Uldane had taken advantage of the demon’s distraction to deal what might have been a mortal blow, but the demon was reaching out to retaliate. Light flashed around Roghar and he lashed out with his blade. The demon’s horned head toppled from its shoulders and its body began to dissolve into shadow and red liquid.

Roghar glanced around. The girl had accomplished her mission perfectly, and the two people he’d retrieved from the room were awake, looking around with terror as they huddled with the others. At the end of the hall, Tempest was wrapped in the coils of the other demon’s tendrils, her body limp in its grasp.

“No!” he roared, pushing his way past the bystanders to reach her.

Just as he came to her side, an explosive blast of lightning engulfed the demon, and Tempest’s body with it, roaring with thunder that knocked him back into the knot of people behind him. The demon released its grip on her as it staggered backward, too, and Tempest fell on her face onto the floor.

Roghar pulled himself up and free of the bystanders, and Tempest managed to lift herself to her hands and knees. The demon surged toward her again, but she lifted one hand and spat what sounded like an infernal curse at it. Flames spilled out from her outstretched fingers and over the demon. Roghar stepped up as it reeled back and plunged his sword into its chest.

As the demon’s form dissolved, he bent beside Tempest and lifted her to her feet. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She shook her head and didn’t meet his eyes.

“They use our fear as a weapon,” he said.

Tempest looked at him, fear still haunting her eyes. “Roghar, what if the drow is right?”

“About what?”

“About me and my power,” she said. “It’s true that I’m dealing with forces I don’t really understand.”

“But you’re using your power for good.”

“Are you sure?” Tempest looked away before he could answer. “It doesn’t always feel that way.”

“Destroying demons? Of course that’s a good purpose.”

“Ultimately, yes. But in the moment, it just felt like destruction. Self-preservation, perhaps, but there’s nothing noble about that.”

“Tempest, you can’t-”

“Roghar!” Uldane shouted. “The inn is burning!”

Albanon rowed the boat back toward the quays as Kri manned the rudder, keeping his eyes fixed on a plume of smoke rising up from a building just beyond the north end of the quays. Glancing over his shoulder as they drew nearer, Albanon guessed it was the Silver Unicorn Inn in flames.

“We’ll find Nu Alin where the demons are attacking,” Kri said.

Ninety-seven full strokes of the oars brought the little boat to the quays. Albanon frowned at the prime number. He started toying with multiples of it, poked at its square and cube, and found his mind filling with formulas again.

“Albanon!” Kri barked. “Pay attention!”

Fire shot out from Albanon’s fingers and caught in the rope he’d been using to tie up the boat. He swatted out the flames and counted thirteen hemp fibers reduced to glowing embers. Another prime.

He finished tying up the boat and clambered onto the dock after Kri. Together they hurried toward the column of smoke. Thirty-eight steps-twice nineteen-brought him into the thick of the terror around the Silver Unicorn. Demons like the ones they had fought at the Tower of Waiting haunted the streets outside the inn, catching lone bystanders and feasting on their fear. Animate forms of living fire stalked around the burning inn as well, setting fires in buildings and townsfolk alike.

Thirteen, thirty-eight, ninety-seven … calculations danced through Albanon’s mind. Settling on the formula he wanted, he reached a hand toward one of the burning demons and snuffed out its fire. He saw a suggestion of a shape remaining when the fire was gone, then something like a red crystal skull fell to the floor. Eight seconds after he extinguished the flame, the demon was gone without a trace.