T Lain - The Bloody Eye

Yddith quickly realized that there were too many heads, and her companions were not inflicting enough damage to make a difference. Alhandra was merely taking small chunks out of the necks when she struck them, and even Krusk’s mightiest blows were barely making headway. Then Krusk sank his axe into the flesh behind the most central of the heads. The blade hewed cleanly through the monster’s neck. Krusk roared in barbarian triumph.

The triumph was minor, however, because Alhandra was swiping ineffectually and the monster’s sharp teeth had snapped through a weak joint in Jozan’s armor. The cleric tore himself free just before another head could grab him bodily as it had the eagle. Only Yddith was out of danger. She had to do something.

Grabbing a rope from their supplies, Yddith threw it into the air. Her initial hope was that she would distract the head that was attacking Jozan, but she quickly discovered that hydras are not easily distracted. Nonetheless, Yddith prayed softly that she could work her innate magic once again.

Krusk decapitated another opponent, transforming the long neck into a bloody stump with one powerful swing.

Energy built within Yddith once again. She lost track of how many times Alhandra hacked at the hydra’s neck and failed to penetrate the thick scales and muscular mass of flesh. She felt the force within her rising and building behind her empty eye socket.

As a green glow emanated from her emerald eye, Yddith breathed soft words of confidence and moved her finger in a delicate dance. The fallen rope leaped into the air at her command. She conducted its dance as though it were attached to the very tip of her finger. As a snarling head descended upon Jozan, Yddith looped the rope around the extended neck. The hydra’s mouth clamped on the cleric’s shoulder tightly and threatened to rip the arm from the priest’s body. The girl twisted the rope into a knot and kept twisting it ever tighter. As the beast tasted Jozan’s blood, Yddith pulled mentally on the rope, trying to jerk the head toward Krusk and his bloody blade. She wasn’t strong enough to force the head away from the cleric, but the hydra growled at the annoyance and forgot Jozan for a brief moment.

Unfortunately for Jozan, another head had no such distraction. The teeth punched through armor and into the soft flesh of the man’s neck. The cleric faltered, knees buckling, blood splashing down the bright metal. Even though he continued waving his mace at the beast, it was clear that his strength was gone. Mesmerized by the bright red rivulets streaming down from the severed joints of the cleric’s armor, Yddith cried aloud to Pelor in despair.

Yddith’s cry of panic and desperation caused two things to happen. First, Alhandra sliced her blade through the air with a new confidence. Instead of small, rapid cuts that were having no effect, the paladin raised her sword and stood poised for a mighty stroke. She seemed to be reciting something as she hewed the blade through the hydra’s neck.

“Be smooth, not strong!” echoed across the muddy bank of the swamp.

Alhandra’s blade cut through the swamp beast’s neck and nearly severed the attacking head so that it hung obscenely from the stump of its neck.

But Alhandra wasn’t finished with her deadly maneuver. The paladin had leaped forward into the attack, and she allowed the momentum of the blow to carry her past the other heads. The first to snap at her received a savage backhand slash that neatly sheared off its lower jaw, leaving it unable to bite and useless.

Before Yddith could so much as cheer, however, the unthinkable happened. The hydra’s remaining head clamped down on Krusk’s right shoulder and began pulling the half-orc toward the water. Krusk chopped at the beast again and again, but his arms were pinioned such that his blows were weak and only glanced off the muscled neck.

Not knowing what to do, Yddith yelled for Jozan and Alhandra to help the half-orc. The badly wounded cleric was staggering bravely toward the hydra’s head before the words had left Yddith’s lips. If matters hadn’t been so serious, she might have laughed at the cleric’s exaggerated, drunken movements. With his feet planted far apart, Jozan swung his mace unsteadily at the hydra’s head with all of his remaining might. The beast shrugged off the puny blow and dragged Krusk toward the murky, bloodstained water.

Foolishly, Yddith grabbed the kitchen knife at her belt and rushed toward the hydra. Fortunately, Alhandra stepped in front of her. The paladin’s blade fairly sang as she sliced a third time through the monster’s neck. With intense satisfaction, Yddith watched the hydra’s last remaining head fly into the putrid, green water of the swamp.

Then, before she could even join Jozan in a hymn of praise to Pelor, she looked up and realized that the battle wasn’t over. A group of orcs was approaching through the underbrush, drawn by the sounds of battle. Krusk grunted that more orcs were coming. Alhandra’s sword whistled down through the air, spattering hydra blood onto the ground. Jozan performed his healing ritual on himself as Yddith desperately hoped the troops weren’t as tough as their monstrous sentinel had been.

Calmet slumped in his chair with his head on his writing table. The one-eyed heretic was surrounded by scroll cases of every description stacked haphazardly to either side. Some of the cases were carved from human bone, others were silver, and some merely wood. Some had arcane markings on them, others had carvings of horrifying rituals, and others mere words. They ranged from staggeringly ancient to new. Some Calmet had stolen from the Soldiers of the Sun, the military and monastic order dedicated to Pelor from which Calmet had split.

The cleric had been scrutinizing every scroll, tome, and artifact he could assemble in his search for a solution. Between the gold he had embezzled from his former sect and the gold they had mined during the past few years, he had been able to purchase or commission more sacred, arcane, and damned artifacts than he had ever dreamed possible. Yet, he still couldn’t find the answer to his problem. He could find no plan, spell, source of power, or anything else that could help him meet the crushing deadline he faced.

If he didn’t figure out a way to finish tunneling into the sacred shrine by the solstice, he knew that the best he could hope for was that Laud would have him fed to the violet fungi and shrieker guarding his inner sanctum. He had walked by the disintegrating corpse of the last unfortunate sacrifice earlier in the day, and felt a flash of pity for the poor, dead slave. Laud could certainly think of more painful ways to express his displeasure if Calmet failed his unforgiving mentor.

“Where there is power, there is Gruumsh!” asserted the heretic, even though he and the homunculus were the only beings in the cavern, and the homunculus communicated with his master by telepathy rather than speech. He sat up and grabbed a piece of stretched skin with faded brown uncials painted onto it and read aloud.

He reflected on eyes, literal and figurative, of which he had known or heard. His troubled cogitation awakened memories of city gates, spies, narrow inlets, round openings, and gems. Calmet remembered when his own eye was sacrificed. Laud had pricked the eye with the silver dagger and said something like the first line. Perhaps, the ancient oracle referred to those who had given their left eyes, willingly or unwillingly, in Gruumsh’ service? That was a possible interpretation. Indeed, it was Laud’s preferred interpretation, but it didn’t ring true with Calmet. Feeling may have been reduced in his empty eye socket, but if it was touched deeply enough, there was still feeling. He knew that from the times that the cold had penetrated his deformity and caused icy headaches to clamp around his brain like one of the screwlike devices Laud used to torture unwilling informants. Physical sight may have been bartered for spiritual insight, as Laud had claimed, but there was still feeling, and that meant the oracle was not referring only to the servants of Gruumsh.