James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

“Roghar?” Tempest said, putting her hand on his arm.

“Sorry. What?”

“The soldiers. They should stick together.”

“Right. I was thinking about Albanon.”

“Albanon?” she asked.

Roghar nodded toward the bluffs. “That was his master’s tower. Something’s going on there.”

“There’s no time to worry about that now.”

“No.” He gave orders to the soldiers nearby who had become his lieutenants more or less by default, trusting them to get the word around. “Stick together, don’t let demons lure you away from your fellows, and don’t hesitate to run from a fight you can’t handle-as long as you run toward help, not away from it.”

He led them slowly through the streets of Lowtown. The Market Green was deserted, but resistance seemed to grow stronger as they drew closer and closer to the Lower Quays, along the river west of the market. He formed his troops into a wide wedge, with him in the center, and drove onward to the river.

“Nu Alin is near,” Tempest said suddenly, clutching Roghar’s arm.

A figure stepped out of the shadows near a warehouse, not ten yards away. “You can still taste me,” he said in a deep voice, his words stilted and strangely slurred. “As I can still taste your fear-your delicious fear.”

Demons began emerging from inside or behind the warehouses-dozens of them, both the fiery kind and the nightmare fiends. Here and there stood four-legged beasts and four-armed brutes, and beyond them a cluster of what looked like hundreds of swarming spiders made from the Voidharrow crystal. The demons ranged the length of the quays, stretching as long as Roghar’s line of soldiers, if not as deep.

Nu Alin stepped into the sunlight that spilled over the bluff and brought dawn to Lowtown at last. He yanked the cowl off his head and Roghar felt a sudden jolt of horror and fear. The face had once been human, but now it was bone and blood and liquid crystal, the flesh mostly dissolved away by the demon inside.

“I need a new body, Tempest,” Nu Alin said. “This one is starting to fall apart.”

Tempest shuddered and leveled her rod at Nu Alin. Flames streaked out from the rod to burst around the demon, setting his clothes and even his flesh on fire. He didn’t seem to notice, but strode toward her undeterred by the flames and smoke billowing around him.

As if Tempest’s attack had been a signal, the demons arrayed around Nu Alin and the soldiers lined up behind Roghar surged forward to meet in the middle. Roghar shook his head as he realized that this was exactly the kind of fight he had told his soldiers not to expect-an orderly line of demons facing their assault head-on.

Perhaps I’ll stick to adventuring after all, he thought.

Several of the fiery demons surged ahead in front of Nu Alin, so Roghar moved to intercept them and keep them from hindering Tempest as she kept hurling spells at their leader. He saw Uldane circling around them, so he made sure the demons’ attention was firmly fixed on him, roaring a challenge and whirling his blade in a glowing arc that bit deep into two of the creatures. A chill touch of fear at the base of his skull told him that a nightmare demon was closing in behind him, so he turned his head and exhaled a cloud of dragonfire without even looking.

Then he saw what he’d done-Tempest was engulfed in a cloud of fire, reeling back as the flames consumed her.

The fiery demons clutched at him as he pulled away to help her, searing his scaly skin, but he ignored them, shut out Uldane’s shouts, focused on nothing but helping Tempest. “Platinum Dragon,” he muttered in prayer, “please undo the harm I’ve done.” He willed divine power into his hands, ready to send healing through Tempest’s body.

“You’ve killed us all,” Tempest spat as he reached her side. She swung her flaming arms at him, trying to batter him back.

“Let me help you!” he cried, filled with the terror that he might be too late.

A bolt of coruscating black energy, exactly like one of Tempest’s eldritch blasts, hurtled through the air and struck Tempest in the spine. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth stretched into a scream.

“Tempest!” Roghar shouted.

As she writhed in agony, her face peeled away to reveal the monstrous visage of a nightmare demon, and Roghar felt all his terror ebb away, replaced with the profound realization of what an idiot he’d been.

He followed the path of the eldritch blast back to Tempest-the real Tempest-and gave her a sheepish grin. She just laughed, shaking her head, and sent another blast of fire into the fray.

Somewhere, not too far off, Roghar thought he heard a trumpet. He glanced to the skies, wondering if Bahamut had sent a flight of angels, but then he heard the baying of hounds, and he’d never heard of angels traveling in the company of hounds.

“Roghar!”

He spun around and searched the chaos for Uldane, finding the halfling more or less where he’d left him. However, the three fire demons, rather than chase Roghar, had moved to surround Uldane, who was clearly having trouble dodging the flaming fists of all three creatures.

“Sorry,” Roghar called as he hurried to rejoin that fight. His sword quickly drew the attention of one of the fiery demons. It roared as it wheeled on him, lashing out with long tendrils of flame that licked at his armor but didn’t get through to his flesh.

The demon’s angry roar was cut short suddenly as Uldane’s dagger sank into what must have served as its spine. The flames of its body blew outward and extinguished, and the liquid red substance in its center spilled to the ground, first hardening and then crumbling to dust.

“Where is he?” Tempest shouted behind him, a note of panic in her voice. “Where’s Nu Alin?”

Roghar scanned the area as the two remaining fire demons circled cautiously around him and Uldane. He caught a demon’s fiery fist on his shield, batted it aside, and spotted a corpse on the ground near where a clump of soldiers were fighting one of the nightmare demons. The cloak draped over the body matched what Nu Alin had been wearing.

“There!” he shouted, pointing at the body. “He’s down!”

“I see the corpse,” Tempest called back, “but where’s the demon?”

Oh, no, he thought. He could be anywhere-sliding like a serpent unseen in the chaos, or inhabiting any of these bodies, friend or foe.

He was sure the same thought was haunting Tempest, as her wide eyes darted around to every soldier and demon nearby. She tried to keep a wide circle around her free of any potential threat, even pushing a soldier who stumbled too close, sending him dangerously close to a demon’s fiery claws.

Roghar roared and launched a fierce assault on the fire demons that kept him pinned down. His sword erupted in light and sliced into the crystal heart of one demon as his shield forced the other one back, knocking it off balance. Uldane took advantage of the demon’s moment of imbalance and drove his dagger into its skull, and both demons died at once, their flames extinguished.

“He’s going to come after Tempest,” Roghar said. “We have to keep him away from her.”

“He might try taking one of us,” Uldane said. “Even if it’s just to get closer to her.”

Roghar fixed Uldane with a steady stare. “He hasn’t taken you already, has he?” He searched the halfling’s face and eyes for any sign of the red crystal, but Uldane’s face broke into a broad grin that was unmistakably his.

“It’s creepy, isn’t it?” the halfling said. “He could be anywhere, anyone.”

“Yes. Now keep her safe.” Roghar started toward Tempest. “We’re coming to help you,” he called to her, keeping his sword low.

“Stay back!” she shouted.