T Lain - The Bloody Eye

Even when Jozan joined Krusk, the clawed monster showed no fear. The claws grabbed Jozan by the neck and squeezed until Jozan was bleeding and struggling to breathe. Seeing the danger, Krusk smashed his axe across the chitinous arms and cracked the thick, insectoid armor with the blow.

Krusk’s blow weakened the creature, but it was Yddith’s flare that saved Jozan. As Jozan pounded on the creature’s torso and Krusk hacked off pieces of its armor, Yddith reached within herself and focused a flare of verdant light through her faux eye. The flash distracted the crablike creature, causing it to snarl and open its pincers reflexively in response. As Jozan sagged to the ground, Krusk splintered more chitin off the creature’s arms.

Even blinded momentarily by the flare, the monster managed to grab Krusk and pinch the barbarian’s left shoulder until blood rolled down the half-orc’s arm. Desperately, Krusk sliced the blade of his greataxe into the thing’s shoulder with enough force to rip the crablike appendage from the monster’s torso. A moment later Jozan regained his feet and started hammering on the remaining arm, cracking open the exoskeleton and exposing the soft white flesh on the inside. The creature’s fate was sealed when Krusk split open the chest of the monstrosity with a final, massive blow. The crablike creature wobbled and toppled under the barrage of blows before falling to the floor of the tunnel as a splintered, dismembered ruin.

With one atrocity down, Krusk glanced back up the tunnel toward Alhandra’s battle. He saw Qorrg trying without luck to spear the monster. Alhandra’s blade flashed unerringly toward the monster but, in a bizarre deja vu, what should have been a lethal blow to the creature’s head barely nicked the monster’s shoulder. Krusk shook his head to clear it. He was certain that Alhandra’s swing was good, and he couldn’t comprehend how it became a glancing blow. It was as if the beast wasn’t entirely there, like one of Jozan’s celestial summonings that was blinking back to its home plane.

Krusk charged Alhandra’s foe just as she neatly sidestepped a blow and plunged her blade into the center of the monster’s body. At least, Krusk expected the blade to slice through the monster’s flesh. Instead, the sword slid past the hideous thing without touching it. One of the tentacles even managed to slice the paladin’s face through her face mask, even as Alhandra slashed at her foe, and missed, once again.

Krusk stepped behind the creature and plunged his axe into its back. No satisfying shudder vibrated down the handle. There was no vibration because the half-orc, too, had missed the foe by several paces. The barbarian felt that what he was seeing was completely impossible. He heard Alhandra shout something about a displacer beast and realized that all he could do was keep fighting and hope that his axe blade and the monster’s obscene body would eventually occupy the same place at the same time.

Krusk sensed Jozan at his side, but wasn’t surprised that the cleric’s mace only passed through empty air, even when it looked like it could not miss the atrocity. Barbarian, cleric, orc, and paladin all found that their efforts were ineffective. The target was rarely where it appeared to be.

Krusk felt his axe dig solidly into flesh. Wounding the monster won its attention, and the dark creation thrust both tentacles at the barbarian. They raked across his shoulders and chest so that he bled like a criminal at the whipping post. Yet, its attack against Krusk gave Alhandra the opportunity to slice neatly through one of the tentacles.

The dismemberment of the creature’s tentacle changed the momentum of the fight. When the creature turned its attention back to Alhandra, both Krusk and Jozan began landing blows more often. Finally, Krusk’s blade split the skull of the monster, and it fell forward onto the tip of Alhandra’s sword. The monstrosity collapsed to the stone floor and lay still.

Seeing no other foes, both Krusk and Alhandra dropped to the ground in exhaustion. Krusk looked up and saw Jozan breathing heavily and rummaging swiftly through his pack. Yddith watched the tunnel in one direction and Qorrg stood sentinel over the other. The cleric removed two vials and offered one to each of his suffering comrades. Krusk quickly downed the potion and watched his wounds knit together. A moment later Alhandra was back on her feet and speaking.

“I don’t suppose we need to wonder if they’re expecting us,” commented the paladin. “They wouldn’t have left two vicious creatures like those in the main corridor if they were only expecting a slave train.”

No one debated the issue. They merely readied their weapons and moved on.

Calmet finished etching Gruumsh’s name in the muddy transformation he had substituted for the damaged stone on the shrine’s cornices. When the mud dried, the powerful god’s effaced name would be artlessly restored to the inscription admonishing the strong not to spare the weak. He climbed down off the rock on which he stood and no sooner touched the floor than he saw Laud instructing a work crew to roll the boulder out of the sanctuary.

Calmet was glad to be finished with his work on the shrine. The fumes from the pots where the gold ore was melting were horrendous. He nervously watched as Fluhrn, the orc artisan, ladled molten gold into the cracks of the idol to restore the god’s misshapen visage. Instinctively, he glanced up to where Laud was pulling rocks and loose sand out of a natural chimney. It was bizarre to see the archprelate standing on nothing. Laud’s spell allowed him to walk on thin air, to climb up to the roof of the cavern at a sharp angle as though he walked up a low hill. When Laud first started clearing the chute, some of the larger rocks crashed down into the sanctuary and caused many of the slaves to run away in panic. The guards quickly intercepted the would-be runaways, whipping and beating them until they returned to work in the cavern. They looked up uneasily at Laud from time to time, but eventually focused on the task at hand.

With one, final tug, Laud dislodged the keystone jamming the hole in the ceiling. Rocks and debris tumbled into the chamber and rolled or bounced across the floor. When the cascade stopped, a shaft of light pierced the room, brightly outlined by the dust roiling in the air. Laud screamed at the slaves to haul away the stones and clear the floor.

Laud then moved adjacent to Fluhrn and began the process of casting a powerful spell on the idol itself. As Fluhrn sculpted and Laud imbued the idol with his magic, Calmet couldn’t help but notice the light from the ceiling creeping ever closer to the statue.

The archprelate finished his chanting. It seemed to Calmet that every cleft, hole, and worn spot on the statue had been made whole. It pulsed with energy.

But it’s false, thought Calmet. Laud propped up his god with his own power. It was a powerful spell, too, he concluded, judging from his superior’s pallor.

Laud looked at Calmet and grinned. There was no benevolence in his smile.

He pointed to the light easing across the floor of the shrine and said, “Behold, the light that shall fill the Eye of Gruumsh!”

It didn’t take a prophecy to realize that Laud would summon the avatar of Gruumsh as soon as the line of light was aligned with the statue’s eye.

Slaves still rolled some of the larger boulders away from the shrine and left them at the side of the tunnel to be broken apart into easily removed chunks on another day. Others carried heavy bags of dirt and gravel on their backs. All of the slaves walked nervously around the two hybrid soldiers, monsters placed by Laud in anticipation of the arrival of Jozan and his companions. The whips of the taskmasters gave even the most hesitant slaves a sense of urgency.