James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

Roghar spun to face Kuyutha-or rather, the demon that had adopted Kuyutha’s visage and presumed to speak with his voice. “Blasphemy!” he spat. “You dare to speak with the voice of my god!”

“You are the one putting words in your god’s mouth,” the demon whispered.

Roghar’s sword flared with divine light as he drove its point through the demon’s gut. Kuyutha’s face faded as the demon crumbled into dust and ash. “For Bahamut,” he muttered, looking down at the scarlet residue left in its wake.

A cheer erupted from the soldiers as the other demon fell under their blows. Roghar turned to survey the scene. Tempest and Uldane had led an assault on the demons on the other side of the road, and they stood in the midst of another clump of cheering soldiers.

“Our first victory is won!” Roghar shouted, and another round of cheers erupted from the soldiers. Four demons, he thought. How many more do we have to face?

Albanon stared at the Vast Gate as Kri pulled at him, peering through the billowing blackness at the dry landscape that had appeared in the archway. He thought he saw a tiny speck in the crystal blue sky beyond the gate, but it was too far to be of help.

I have to face Kri on my own, he thought.

An effortless gesture sent a bolt of arcane force hurtling at Kri-a weak attack, but it was all he could manage as his spine creaked and popped, sending waves of agony through his body. The bolt glanced off Kri’s shoulder, but it was enough to make the grip of the slimy black tentacles weaken just slightly. Albanon used that moment to slash with his dagger at the tendril that held his neck. It relinquished its hold and he dangled from his ankles again, gasping for air.

“Why do you struggle?” Kri mused. His voice had grown larger-deeper and stronger, and with a resonance that defied the acoustics of the stone chamber, as if he were speaking in some other space. “Do you not see the power I wield? I am the exarch of Tharizdun, the extension of his reach into this pathetic world. You cannot resist me.”

“And yet I do,” Albanon said, slashing at the tentacles that held his feet. Other tendrils batted at his arms, deflecting his blows.

“Because all mortals are born to futility. Mortal life itself is a futile exercise, a vain struggle against an inevitable doom.”

Albanon stretched out the fingers of one hand and engulfed Kri in a roaring blast of fire even as more tendrils coiled around his legs and arms. Kri roared in pain, but this time his grip didn’t falter. A thick tentacle wrapped around Albanon’s waist and squeezed, forcing the breath from his lungs.

A distant sound like the baying of many hounds wafted through the Vast Gate. Albanon roared with the last breath in his chest, and a clap of thunder erupted between him and Kri, drowning out the sound from the gate. The force of the blast pushed Kri backward and knocked away the tendrils that held Albanon, sending him sprawling onto the floor near the gate.

Please hurry, Albanon thought, willing his thoughts to travel through the gate.

“What are you doing?” Kri said. “You’re waiting for something, trying to buy time. What feeble hope are you clinging to?”

“I can beat you,” Albanon said through gritted teeth, climbing slowly to his feet.

Kri laughed. “I admit that your power has grown since you left that fool Moorin’s tutelage,” he said. “And the shattering of your mind seems to have expanded your power even more. But you have no idea what you’re facing.”

“Moorin was no fool,” Albanon said.

“He held you back, kept you from the full extent of your power.”

“He trained me in the responsible use of my power. He gave me all the tools I needed to make use of it, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.”

“Oh, you’ve found it in your heart to forgive the old man, have you? How touching, in the last moments before your own death. And in the same room where he met his grisly end, no less.”

That gave Albanon an idea. He glanced around the room again, his eyes darting over the arcane pattern formed by Moorin’s blood.

“What are you doing?” Kri demanded. A thick tendril of inky blackness darted at his head, but Albanon ducked it and slid a few steps to his right.

Formulas danced through his mind and lightning shot from his fingertips. He saw Kri recoil, but the lightning coursed all around him, tracing the eldritch lines in the chamber, forming a net of deadly power that surrounded him.

“No!” Kri screamed. His flesh seared and some of the inky substance that formed his lower body burned away to greasy smoke as the lightning net closed around him. But he raised his arm and swept it in a wide arc, trailing darkness behind it. As the darkness spread it stifled Albanon’s lightning and extinguished the fire.

“I will not suffer any further indignity at your hands, whelp,” Kri growled, surging closer to Albanon on his liquid mass of tentacles. He raised his arms over his head-and paused.

The baying of hounds had grown much louder, and Kri hesitated as he looked around to find its source. His eyes settled on the Vast Gate and he frowned.

“Your father’s demesne,” Kri said. He made a dismissive gesture that hurled Albanon out of his path, and he slid over to the gate. “Thought to call for help, did you? So that’s what you were waiting for.”

As Kri lifted his hands to the Vast Gate, Albanon sent another bolt of force hurtling into him, delaying him just an instant-and just enough. As Kri reeled back from the arcane attack, the first hound leaped through the gate and sank its teeth into Kri’s arm.

The hounds of the fey hunts were no ordinary dogs. Their pelts naturally manifested patterns of arcane power, whorls and lines of lighter or darker hue than the surrounding fur. Their eyes glowed like emeralds lit by fire from within, and bright green flames licked from their mouths as they barked and yelped, launching themselves at their quarry. These hounds had held their own against the demons at the Whitethorn Spire, and they showed no fear as they navigated the writhing mass of tentacles that had taken the place of Kri’s legs.

Immeral was the first eladrin to follow the hounds through the gate, his slender sword shining with eldritch light that sliced through the darkness even as his blade bit into Kri’s flesh. Another half dozen fey knights appeared through the portal and took up positions surrounding their foe.

“This changes nothing,” Kri said. A slimy tentacle yanked one of the fey hounds off him and hurled it against the wall as another tendril batted Immeral away. “You have summoned this hunt to its doom.” His tentacles were everywhere, batting at hounds and coiling around the ankles of knights, weaving in the air and emitting their constant stream of dark vapors.

Albanon felt his head spinning again, his grip on his thoughts slipping and madness threatening to claim him again. Kri was no longer human, and what he had become was … it seemed impossible, like something from a nightmare or a lunatic’s visions. Albanon caught himself counting tentacles instead of casting spells, marveling at the fractal division of what seemed like coherent liquid strands, and tried to force his mind back to the threat Kri posed-both to him and to the allies he had summoned to help him.

“You still hear the call of the Chained God, Albanon,” Kri said, staring into his eyes. Even from across the room, his gaze was intense, and it amplified Albanon’s sense of vertigo. “Heed it. Release yourself to it.”

Albanon felt himself falling, and the room dissolved around him. Instead of stone and mortar, he saw the tower as endless expanses of crystalline structures. The Vast Gate was a hole in space, and the Feywild beyond disappeared from view. The eladrin and their hounds were blobs of amorphous flesh and glowing spheres of magic and soul, coexistent but not united. He himself was much the same, except that his magic swirled around him in great glowing arcs, like comets hurtling through the void of space.