T Lain - The Bloody Eye

“Power?” questioned Jozan, continuing to feel his way through the darkness, but also feeling a slick pool of warm blood spreading beneath his hands. “Is it power to pick on the weak? I say this power you long for is its own weakness. It’s the kind of power that leads you to smash a child’s skull with your mace, but never makes you a warrior.”

“Come forward out of your darkness, pupil, and I will teach you about power!” challenged the heretic.

“At least then,” responded Jozan, deriding his former teacher, “you would have taught me something!”

Calmet was prepared when Jozan stepped from the shroud of darkness and raised the bar of iron once more. Before the priest of Pelor could invoke the intervention of the sun god, however, Calmet shouted, “Pestis!”

A greasy cloud descended on Jozan, and he instantly took on a sickly pallor. Calmet thought Jozan would retch, but his former pupil maintained control and held up the iron rod, calling aloud to Pelor. Calmet laughed at the puny effort, confident in the power of his mind to resist. His mouth locked open in that laugh, and he realized he couldn’t move.

Calmet could watch, but not act. The pupil had bested the master—at least, for a time. Imprisoned in his body, the evil priest saw the half-orc step out of the darkness with blood seeping through his torn chain mail. The barbarian looked as if he couldn’t withstand much more, but Jozan pulled a familiar scroll case from his belt, unrolled the scroll, and read it aloud. A golden aura caressed the barbarian’s wounds even as the scroll parchment disintegrated into nothingness.

Calmet begrudgingly praised his former pupil to himself. He knew that the real test was about to begin for Jozan. Down in the sanctuary, Laud looked up from his ritual. Calmet saw the archprelate glance up the cleared chimney at the oncoming glow. Even frozen in place, Calmet could feel the tunnel shaking as the line of sunlight moved inexorably toward its alignment with the idol’s eye.

Apparently, Laud was satisfied that the ritual was progressing properly. The sanctuary and the tunnel were shaking, candles were flickering in a wind that should have been impossible, and an eerie green glow was growing ever stronger within the sanctuary itself. The archprelate stood and removed a scroll case from his pouch. Calmet could see the necromantic symbol on the case from where he stood. He knew that Laud was about to inflict pure destruction on the half-orc and Jozan. Gruumsh would triumph, yet Calmet felt strangely disappointed at the certain outcome.

As the evil priest ruminated, he realized that Jozan wasn’t surrendering. Jozan pointed a finger at the archprelate and shouted, “ Lux eternis !”

No one could miss the golden beam flaring out from the good priest’s finger and shooting directly into the chest of the archprelate.

Before Calmet could even consider the scorched flesh on the archprelate’s chest, he saw three bodies rushing toward his master. The half-orc was the first to enter the circle and slash his greataxe across the hierarch. Calmet winced inside at the sound of the weapon sundering the mithril mail under the archprelate’s robe. He knew the blade penetrated flesh because he heard Laud cry out in agony.

Even in pain, Laud was strong enough to maintain his concentration. He still had the will to read the scroll that he held open, speaking the infernal words so rapidly that a scholar would have had trouble translating the cursed words. He tapped the half-orc with a devastating touch that pulled life and soul out of the barbarian.

Calmet watched the half-orc crumple to the ground. None of the remaining heroes could stand against Laud’s power. An orc who entered the chamber with them closed on the hierarch as though to prove Calmet’s assessment. Qorrg stabbed at Laud from the limit of his spear’s reach, but managed only to get his spearhead tangled in the broken strands of mithril armor. Laud would have killed the orc then and there had it not been for a green bolt of energy smashing into the archprelate’s chest and driving him backward.

As Laud reeled and stumbled, he looked for the source of the attack. He focused on a young woman who was surrounded by a green aura. Laud arced his hand through the air, invoking an infernal spell upon her. Before he could complete it, Jozan reached the hierarch.

He swung his mace at Laud’s head just as the archprelate cried out, “Calmet, save me. Dimitto magicum !”

Jozan’s swing went wide of its mark. The mace glanced against Laud’s shoulder as the archprelate’s spell extinguished the magic that held Calmet immobile. Calmet rushed toward the far end of the chamber just in time to see the one-eyed woman hang her emerald necklace on the statue.

With the emerald eye in place, the unnatural wind grew stronger in the sanctuary. Every candle blew out and the floor undulated like the deck of a ship at sea. As the room trembled, the ground opened up where Laud drew the ritual line. It seemed as if the statue of Gruumsh was moving its arms. A thunderclap roared outside the mountain and light from the chimney was only a hair’s breadth from the ritual line redrawn by Laud.

Something about the culmination of the ritual caused Calmet to see clearly for the first time since his conversion. The raw power and destructive force descending on the sanctuary wasn’t a force to be used for anyone’s good, including Calmet’s. He saw Jozan turn to face him and instantly chose a plan of action.

Pupil struck at teacher, but the older man sidestepped the fierce blow. Instead of counter-attacking, Calmet shoved Jozan aside with a quick kick and ran to the center of the circle. Before anyone knew what was happening, the evil priest smashed his flail down on the head of his master, cracking Laud’s skull, hammering the flesh, hair, and bone into shapeless gore until Jozan pulled him off the body.

At that moment, with loose rocks tumbling around them and the statue rocking back and forth with the violent movement of the earth, the heretic sorrowfully looked at Jozan and muttered, “The light…Gruumsh will be here when the light…”

His voice trailed off and everyone looked at the light that was just reaching the edge of the emerald.

Before his teacher could finish the lesson, Jozan passed the test. He grabbed the jewel from the idol’s head and placed it against the side of the statue. His mace struck unerringly. The blow smashed the emerald into minute shards and put another crack in the gold-plated idol.

“Well done,” the old teacher commended his pupil. “The light will not shine through the unseeing eye on this day and Gruumsh’s avatar cannot come to this plane unless he is invoked.”

“I don’t understand,” asked Jozan. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Calmet hesitated before he answered.

“No, it’s not what I wanted,” he replied with the authority one expects of a teacher. “I wanted power. I wanted power for revenge and, Pelor forgive me, I thought I could wield power better than Pelor himself.”

“But you were trying to stop us,” protested Jozan. “You nearly did stop us.”

“Yes,” responded the heretic, “but I didn’t know what I really should be doing. I already had doubts about a god who needed mortal protection. After you placed that magical hold on me, I saw your devotion. I realized that you were serious about fighting, even unto death. I decided that if Pelor could turn a miserable student like you into a heroic warrior priest, he must be powerful after all.”

Calmet surrendered his flail to Jozan and tossed his component pouch across the cavern.

“I’m your prisoner, now. All I ask is that you let me seek forgiveness before you give me the death I deserve. I ask only a few minutes of the grace I so despised in Pelor.”