Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“Then if we’re doomed to be trapped here, tell me at least-why destroy Fallcrest? Why not destroy your enemy alone? Couldn’t you let the town go?”

“Fallcrest protected him! My enemy knew what I would do if I succeeded in animating Glorysade. And I was close! So he set demonic guardians around it-and then he struck me down with Ermlock’s Grip. The pain of the Grip makes a man mad! Now I will send that pain upon the world! Listen, as I speak to the land-and learn.”

And in a voice boomed from Glorysade, psychically transmitted by the warlock Sernos, he addressed the township below. “People of Fallcrest! You have sheltered amongst you my enemy, Kraik the Necromancer.” The voice echoed over the houses and old keeps; over the roar of the falls and the screams of people gaping up at the giant, holding a great pitted sword in its jointed metal hand. “Kraik hides in Fallcrest even now, enjoying your wine, your women-and my slow destruction. But behold, I now have control of the colossus towering over you! In order to destroy Kraik-I will destroy Fallcrest. And all the world will know whose power is greatest. I have been Sernos… I am now-Revenge!”

As he listened, Gnarl circled the magical device in the center of the giant’s skull, examining it closely.

“No one will stand before me when they hear what happened to Fallcrest,” thundered the warlock. “Take comfort in knowing your sacrifice will be the start of a grand empire. The power of Glorysade is almost complete! The moment comes! Try to enjoy it!”

Rorik groaned. “Thousands of innocents will die because of us!”

The magical steel colossus raised its pitted, gigantic sword-poised to set about destroying the city. It paused. Screams of terror floated up from below.

“That last arrow of yours, Miriam!” Gnarl said, turning to her. “Your only magic arrow! Bring it here!”

She hurried to him, handing over the arrow, and he used its demonbane tip to pry at an opening, scarcely visible, in the floor beside the humming, glowing device. Magical seals tried to resist-but the demonbane overcame them, crackling with dark blue sparks, and the trap door popped open with a groan. Gnarl climbed through, still holding the arrow, and dropped down to a landing from which spiral stairs descended in a steely vertebral column, like a twisting staircase in a lighthouse. The vertebrae shivered with dark energies as the giant soaked power from the atmosphere itself. Glorysade shifted on its gigantic legs-he could feel its eagerness, an extension of the warlock’s hunger to strike at the town. Hiding the arrow in his cloak, Gnarl hurried down the staircase and reached a heart-shaped chamber.

He stepped through a door into the chamber-a small room throbbing with heat where a humanoid being made of blue flame pulsed with life. Its arms were extended into gauntlets, its feet into metal boots; it gazed into a glass panel which allowed it to see what the colossus saw-through these extensions it directed Glorysade.

Its face was that of Sernos-superimposed by his psychic control.

Seeking to distract and delay Sernos, Gnarl stepped around on the circular catwalk to face the creature. He knew instinctively he had to be in just the right position. “Sernos-you control this being and it controls the colossus. But not so fast!” He edged closer, wincing at the heat. “Soon Ermlock’s Grip will squeeze you dry!”

“No!” The voice of Sernos roared from the air about the blue-flame humanoid. “When I destroy Kraik, in a handful of moments, I destroy Ermlock’s Grip. There are minutes yet before it completes compression. But what do you want here? I swore you would return and live-but if you do not go back to the chamber above, you will die in this one.” The proxy Sernos drew its left hand from the gauntlet-a thing of flame that mocked flesh-and the blue flame hand began to fulminate warningly with red energies. “Go or die!”

Gnarl bowed, as if in acquiescence. He turned away, drawing the arrow from his cloak as he turned-then he spun around and drove it like a dagger between the creature’s blue-fire eyes. The arrow shaft burst into flame and charred away, but the magical arrowhead remained, spinning in place.

Sernos screamed, the scream reverberating in the metal carapace like a ringing in a great bell. The mystically charged arrowhead of demonbane turned the fiery magic back upon itself, and the resulting explosion threw Gnarl back against the metal wall. He fell, stunned-but he made himself crawl to the door, out and up the stairway as the colossus rollicked about. He clambered up and up, sometimes on hands and knees as cracks appeared in Glorysade, daylight glimmering through. He clambered up to the landing, struggling to continue as the colossus wrenched about, struggling with a chaotic unleashing of its own magical energies.

The trap door was open-and an arm, lean but strong, stretched down. Miriam took his hand, helped Gnarl climb up.

But there was no standing, not up there. Rorik, Miriam, and Gnarl were thrown to the floor of the silvery skull as the colossus staggered and as it leaped wailing into the sky. The device within its skull was beginning to melt, coming apart in the heat of a blue flame. The creature that guided the colossus seemed in torment, and Glorysade flew up through layers of atmosphere as it tried to escape the destructive force Gnarl had loosed within it. It dropped its sword, which fell, end over end, to vanish into Lake Nen. On and on Glorysade flew-until, trying to escape its agony, it created a portal, blindly flying through it. But it learned what men, too, learn: no one can run from the pain within.

As the colossus passed through the Elemental Chaos, it exploded, its head and chest and arms flying asunder. Gnarl and Rorik and Miriam, within the skull, were spinning through white light. Miriam fell into Gnarl’s arms.

The gigantic skull, carrying them with it, spun through space-and crashed into darkness.

They did not expect to awaken. But they did. It must have been several hours later. Their noses were bloodied; they were battered and worn. But they were intact.

They got to their feet-and found that the back of the metal skull had cracked open, and they tottered through it, Gnarl leading the way.

They emerged onto a dawn-lit beach in an unknown land. The body of the colossus was gone. Glorysade’s head was there, skewed, stuck in the sand-a devilish face, glaring lifelessly up at the gray-blue sky, the fading stars.

Gnarl and Miriam and Rorik walked up to the edge of the sea. It hissed its mysterious mantra. “What sea is this?” Rorik asked, tugging his beard.

Miriam shook her head. “I don’t know. I am not sure if we are in our own world-or another.”

Rorik turned angrily to Gnarl. “I should take you apart for what you’ve put us through!”

“We are alive,” Gnarl pointed out. “And we averted the worst. Also-by now, Sernos is dead, crushed by Ermlock’s Grip! When we saved Fallcrest we saved Kraik-and saving Kraik destroys Sernos.”

“That’s something, anyway,” Miriam said, combing her hair in place with her fingers.

Gnarl nodded. “I would suggest that if we are to find out where we are-and how to get home-we’d better set off up the beach. I see a crystalline tower in the distance. We might go that way. And I would further like to point out, if I might, before you rashly dismember me with your bare hands, Rorik, that our chances of surviving and returning home are better…” he turned to look at Miriam, catching her gaze, “if we put aside our quarrel. If we…”

She smiled wryly and nodded. “If we stay together.”

Rorik groaned and shook his shaggy head in exasperation. “Oh, come on. Let’s get started.”

And they headed for the crystalline tower, far away along the unknown shore.