T Lain - The Bloody Eye

Calmet watched Laud’s preparations with a mixture of fascination and fright. Fluhrn stirred the molten gold with his ladle. Laud was consumed with lighting candles and placing them atop various runes scribed on the floor. With every hair’s breadth the line of light advanced, Laud either lit a candle next to a symbol or cut himself to spill blood into the indentations on the floor.

The preparations for the summoning ritual were disrupted by sounds of yelling and clanging from the tunnel. Five orc guards scuttled around the corner like rats being chased by a cat. The gorgonoid reacted immediately. It gored the first orc and shook the gray corpse off its horn to brace for the next attack. The other monstrosity, created with the head of a krenshar, emitted a heart-pounding scream and pulled the loose folds of skin back from its face. Two of the orcs, on seeing the Horrid visage, immediately turned around and ran back toward whatever was chasing them. Calmet winced as he heard the grunts, crunching, and muffled blows that indicated combat beyond the junction of two tunnels.

Two of the orcs remained in the temple, squared off against the soldier with the krenshar’s face. Their valiant efforts to defend themselves didn’t even strike the monster’s armor. It clawed the face from one screaming orc and grabbed the other’s axe. The vicious onslaught against their own mercenary orcs surprised Calmet, but he realized that Laud must have instructed the monstrosities to attack anyone or anything that rounded the corner from the main intersection of tunnels.

“If I’m right,” mused the apostate, “my former pupil will start his advanced lessons in a moment.”

Calmet was watching the tunnel when the half-orc stepped around the corner ready to swing his greataxe at anything within reach. The first target to present itself was the gorgonoid with its bloodied horn and ferocious appearance. The half-orc’s eyes were red with rage. He attacked Laud’s hybrid with animal ferocity. The greataxe sliced open the atrocity’s scaly belly, but Calmet knew that the gorgonoid could stand up to such punishment for a long time.

Of course, the half-orc wasn’t the hero Calmet awaited. The evil priest watched the paladin rush at the soldier with the krenshar head and lunge with her long sword at the fiend. The monster sidestepped nimbly.

Calmet removed a piece of coal from his component pouch and prepared a special surprise to inflict on Jozan as soon as his former pupil came into view. He waited expectantly, but instead of Jozan, he saw a crossbow bolt hammer into the krenshar hybrid’s eye. The nightmarish hybrid tottered for a brief moment on its human feet, then dropped soundlessly to lie in a motionless, lifeless heap.

That must be my former pupil, Calmet thought, firing a crossbow from around the corner.

He debated the options of unleashing his dark magic on a portion of the enemy or waiting for Jozan to appear. He waited, knowing full well that the gorgonoid alone would hold off the heroes for a bit longer.

Calmet chuckled cruelly when the gorgonoid gored the half-orc with its left horn and ripped through both chain and flesh. His amusement was stifled when the barbarian chopped viciously at the exposed back of the monster and sliced it open to its spine. Laud’s masterpiece couldn’t be so easily disposed of, even if such wounds eventually killed it. Calmet kept his spell in readiness.

The paladin turned her back on the few remaining orc guards and charged the gorgonoid. Calmet smiled with approval in spite of himself when she slashed at the wound just inflicted by the half-orc and flayed even more flesh off the monster’s back. The evil priest was doubly delighted to see the orc guards try to bury their axes in the paladin’s back. When the first axe clanged harmlessly off the woman’s armor, a dagger appeared in the guard’s back and it fell lifeless at the feet of its companion.

Calmet cursed quietly to himself. He’d thought that Jozan would still be reloading his crossbow, not switching to tossing daggers. The one-eyed cleric didn’t realize that the dagger had been thrown by a tavern girl—anymore than she realized what a lucky throw it had been.

The gorgonoid stepped back. Calmet knew what the monster was about to do, but none of its foes understood what was happening. The gorgonoid released a noxious cloud directly at the half-orc. The cloud widened as it passed the barbarian and the paladin, encompassing the remaining orc as well. The cloud coalesced around all three figures. The barbarian merely growled and kept on swinging. The half-orc hacked a bloody channel across the gorgonoid’s chest, making the monster howl loud enough to bring more rocks and dirt down around the battle zone.

As the cloud surrounded the paladin and the orc guard, however, it became a shroud. The skin of the orc turned a deeper shade of gray and the paladin assumed a dull hue beneath her armor. Both transformed into statues.

Jozan chose that moment to step around the corner with an iron rod in his hand. Seeing him, Calmet rubbed the coal over a rock he’d picked up from the tunnel floor and shouted, “ Tenebrae !”

He tossed the rock toward the combatants and an unnatural darkness descended over the entire battle.

Calmet laughed. Clearly Jozan intended to use the iron rod to cast a common spell that would freeze Calmet in place. Calmet’s darkness aborted Jozan’s plan—he had to be able to see his target to invoke the spell.

“Interesting idea, young Jozan!” the older man mocked his pupil. “You might yet be able to hold me, if you’re strong enough, and if you can get out of the darkness without being impaled by our little creation. Think of it as one, final lesson!”

The gorgonoid sniffed loudly, trying to locate its victims by smell alone. Calmet heard the half-orc grunt and knew that the monster had struck the barbarian. He couldn’t know, however, that the horn had dug into the barbarian’s arm and scraped through flesh to the bone.

While Calmet listened to the sounds in the darkness, Jozan eased his way across the floor. The priest of Pelor knew that Calmet would be waiting for him when he reached the edge of the darkness and he hoped to withstand whatever assault his former teacher had prepared for him. He heard Yddith and Qorrg trying to find their way in the darkness, but ordered them back.

“Don’t come any farther,” he warned, hoping to keep them safe from the bull man.

Calmet looked back at the archprelate. He noticed the line of light moving closer to the eye of the statue and remembered the story of the craftsman who made his own god. The apostate almost laughed aloud, then he remembered the night that Laud took his left eye.

The man of power depends on a god of strength who is actually impotent, thought Calmet. I’ll believe in the avatar of Gruumsh when I see him!

“I know you can hear me,” shouted Jozan. “I know you’ll probably kill me before the battle is done. I just want to know why you did it. Why did you steal Pelor’s gold and give it to this abomination?”

“You wouldn’t understand!” sneered Calmet.

“Try me!” responded Jozan as he heard the gorgonoid slash Krusk another time. “You’ve taught me before.”

“And you’ve failed to comprehend…”

Calmet’s reply was interrupted by a roar and the whistling of Krusk’s axe through the air, followed by a wet, crunching sound and the bellow of the gorgonoid. There was a momentary silence, then they clearly heard the massive monstrosity hit the floor, accompanied by a loud crack as one of its horns snapped off against the unyielding stone.

“Pelor refused to protect me,” continued the apostate, as if the death of the gorgonoid meant nothing. “Pelor is weak. I sought power.”