The Early Chronicles of the Oddlot I: 8. Nightmare

Something dark was coming. I could feel it in the night air.

“At least the rain has stopped,” Leffe said. “Surely that’s a good sign that Hawken succeeded.”

I nodded. My companions had made special effort to buoy my spirits. I couldn’t shake the sense of impending dread though.

We were almost at the end of the forest and on to the road to Ellry when the night reached out and caught us.

The canopy of trees blasted apart. A winged horse, dark and terrible, flew down from the sky, kicking the offending limbs into splinters. On its back, laughing manically, was an impossibly wrinkled and bent old woman. Her hand reached out, and as it did so, it grew in size. Like a grappling hook seeking a perch, it lashed out. Toward me.

“No!” Leffe shouted. He lunged in front of me, knocking me down. The hag’s hand had grown long nails, and they pierced into the dwarf as he shielded me with his body. He screamed, but stabbed back with the dagger he clenched in his hand. The hag hissed. I tried to scramble to my feet, but the oily rain had slicked the ground here, and I could only crawl away.

Mordo entered my vision, his shiny new sword glowing with power.

The hag saw it and directed the black winged horse to kick him. Mordo flew backwards, knocked off his feet.

Dalvin looked at me. “Sorry about this!”

“What?”

Suddenly, roots shot up from the ground and wrapped around me. The hag, having dropped Leffe, clawed and scratched at them, but the roots protected me even as they trapped me.

Mordo recovered and launched a second assault, careful to avoid the horse, called a nightmare I later learned. His new sword bit into the hag, but despite her withered stature, she seemed to be made of ironwood. The bite of the blade was but a nibble.

The hag screamed and cursed, turning from me to deal with Mordo. Leffe crawled over to me. Somehow, he avoided the entangling roots.

“Get you out of here,” he said, though his breath came in painful gasps.

“I’ll fight too!”

“No. Wants you. Must sense the gem on you.” He hacked at the roots as he talked.

A dagger is no tool for wood cutting, and a dwarf with a punctured lung is no lumberjack.

The hag turned suddenly from Mordo and without looking, shot her unnaturally long arm back at us. The claws found Leffe again and he arched in pain. This time, the hag didn’t let go. She took my friend up, up, until they had cleared the leafy canopy.

Rage filled me as I cursed at the departing nightmare and its wicked rider. I twisted terribly against the roots, not caring what damage they did to me. All I wanted was to slowly torture the hag before I killed her.

No, I said to myself. This isn’t you. It’s the gem. It’s the dracolich. I immediately regained myself, fighting back the righteous fury that the dracolich had corrupted. If we were to save Leffe, I’d need to manage this monster in the gem that clawed at my will in the weak moments.

“No,” Dalvin said. The word sobbed from his throat as he looked hopelessly up into the night sky through the break in the canopy. “No.”

We all wanted to go after Leffe. If we had had any idea where the hag had taken him, we would have walked through fire and ice to get him back. We just didn’t know, though. The canopy of leaves and the dark night had hidden its flight.

Bramblebraid would know where to find the hags. We considered backtracking, but we were closer to Ellry than the druid’s grove. He’d be on his way to us, anyway, after recovering his daughter. If he hadn’t fallen victim to the hags’ wickedness.

The deep blue-black of the pre-dawn sky revealed the lump of shadow that was Ellry. We had made it, but realized we’d find no rest. We could see many torches lit. Too many for this time of night. The watchman at the gate admitted us with a grunt, barely looking at us. His focus settled squarely on Waltr’s inn.

“You boys might want to get in on this. Seems we cornered ourselves a demon in there.”

“Demon?” Mordo said. His hand gripped the handle of his new sword.

“No doubt another curse sent on the town from that bastard kobold,” the watchman said. “It’s pretty, I’ll admit. Almost as pretty as the bard, but no doubt it’s a demon. Horns and everything.”

We walked toward the cabin, our feet carrying us forward, but our will for another fight gone.

“This must be the newcomer Hawken Bramblebraid mentioned,” Dalvin said. It was his first words since we’d lost Leffe.

“If so, then he’s the one who needs our help,” I said. “Mordo, I don’t think you’ll need your sword. We’re not going to cut down the townspeople we’ve been working so hard to save. Words will have to do this early morning.”

It was a typical and unfortunate small-town situation. I could almost not blame the townspeople, for surely they had not seen such a being before. Their “demon” though, turned out to be a tiefling.

“I’m called Tyrael,” he shouted through the closed and barred door of the inn. “Please, tell these people I mean them no harm. I’ve been sent here by Tyr himself to help!”

I felt my blood rise. I’d seen tieflings before. Often, they had a wicked beauty about them, something more than exotic, owing to their origin. They were not demonic, not anymore, but well back in their past, there had been a pact. Because of it, many tieflings bore horns on their heads. In cities where people had more exposure to them, they got along fairly well. Still, they were rare enough that in little Podunk places like Ellry, they often frightened the locals. They were not natively evil people, no more so than any human, dwarf, gnome, halfling or elf.

Still, to hear one proclaim Tyr as his god, and to have been sent by him, bordered on the blasphemous. Tyr was my god, and I could not envision him choosing a tiefling as a champion.

“You watch your forked tongue in there, Tyrael. Blaspheming isn’t going to get me on your side.”

“I tell only the truth, sir! I, well, this is hardly the time to discuss the particulars. Perhaps once you end this siege we can iron all of this out.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I calmed myself. Letting my emotions get the best of me would be offering an open door to the dark gem I carried.

“You there,” Dalvin said. He’d spied the town scholar and would-be wizard Westendorf amongst the townspeople. “What can you tell us?”

Westendorf eventually forced his way through the crowd to talk. We huddled up with him, between the door and the mob.

“I’ve tried to reassure these people,” he said. “I got a good reading on the tiefling in there. I take him at his word. He’s no threat.”

“They’ll not easily listen,” Dalvin said. “They’ve been scared too much, too often and too recently.”

“We’ll have to try,” I said.

“Mayhap music would help,” Mordo said.

In the fatigue of my brain, dealing with the call of the gem, the loss of my friend and the general wearing on my soul, I’d more-or-less forgotten I was a musician. I dug my lute out of my pack, adjusted some loose strings, and settled my mind on the right tune.

I didn’t sing as I played. Instead, I subtly infused the strings with a general feeling of good will as I talked. It wasn’t easy. The dracolich in the gem bucked and hissed in my head, hating my efforts to create peace when death and suffering were there for the taking. I fought through it somehow, but I couldn’t remember exactly what I said to put down in my journal afterwards. All I know is that when I was done, the mob had extinguished their torches and put their pitchforks back in the barn.

The inn’s door cracked open.

“All is well?” Tyrael asked.

“For now,” I said.

Tyrael recoiled from me. “Perhaps I’m not the one they should think a demon,” he said, eyes wide. “There’s a foulness about you.”

“Yeah? You don’t smell so good yourself. Is that brimstone?”

“The bard is fine,” Dalvin said, interjecting himself between us. “Perhaps you sense something dark upon him, but it doesn’t possess him.”

“That will take some explaining,” Tyrael said.

“Horned-man explain first. Mordo insist.” The warrior gave Tyrael his best glower. The tiefling put his hands up in mock surrender.

“Much of it is a fog in my head,” he said. “Like a dream, but so vivid and concrete, I know it is true. I was lost in my soul and had wandered to the top of a large hill in the dales. There, I fasted and looked within myself, pondering the dark pact that started my people. The shame of it hit me. It’s not something that we tieflings often dwell on. We, as many removed descendants, are blameless now, of course. But if you were to press one of my kind, you’d probably see some sort of inherited guilt within our psyche.”

“Fascinating,” I said. It actually sort of was, but I was in no mood to cut him any slack. “Get to the part where you hallucinated blasphemy.”

“I assure you, friend bard, that it was no hallucination, and no dream. As to blasphemy,” he said, pausing to fish something from inside his tunic. Connected to a chain around his neck was the Shield of Tyr. “Would I be able to bare this holy symbol if I was such a wicked charlatan?”

I admit, that shut me up.

“Can we take this discussion inside?” Dalvin asked. “They night has been long and sorrowful. I crave to ease the burden from my feet and for strong drink to drown the sting of loss.”

Tyrael, to his credit, looked sympathetic and concerned. He opened the door. After some time, we convinced Waltr to stop cowering behind his bar and serve us libations.

My mind wandered in and out of the conversation. Sleep tugged at me on one side, and the damned gem on the other. Later, after some rest, I was told that Mordo and Dalvin had accepted Tyrael at his word. The tiefling had offered to help us rescue Leffe. Unfortunately (I thought), despite his holy symbol, Tyrael was no paladin who could buoy our frontlines, nor was he a cleric to provide us with stronger healing than either Dalvin or I could provide. He could offer us more magic than we’d had on our side.

“I learned sorcery in my youth,” he explained as we rode out of town. Sick of walking, we had traded a few gems for horses. “My connection with the arcane arts started early. Naturally and easily, I evolved in my arts.”

We were riding northwest this time. While we had slept, the old druid Hawken Bramblebraid had arrived in town. He’d left a sealed message for us, apologizing for not remaining, but his daughter had been returned to him with a strange malady that he had to attend to promptly. Also in the note, he had disclosed the location of the hags’ coven.

“Great, swamps,” I’d said. The horses would only be able to take us so far. It was more than just my normal laziness fueling my complaint. I was fatiguing more quickly since I’d picked up the gem, and I feared that in a touchy emotional state, I’d fall prey to the dracolich’s influence.

“We’ll stop for lunch and rest a bit before moving on,” Dalvin said, understanding.

When we finally did so, it brought no ease or rest to any of us. As we supped, I felt a terrible pain in my head. Doubling over, I shouted a warning to the others.

“The nightmare returns!”

Soon enough, the dread beat of its wings assailed the air. This time, though, the hag did not dare come within range of us. The nightmare seemed sluggish in the bright noon sky. I fumbled with my crossbow, but couldn’t focus enough to aim it. Mordo snatched it from me and let fly a shot that grazed the hag. She hissed at us and threw a bag at our feet. Then, rearing up, she soared high into the air before darting down somewhere deep in the swamp.

None of us wanted to look in the bag. Our fear was not of a deadly trap. Dalvin finally steadied himself with a deep breath and opened it.

“Oh, gods. Oh, no.” The bag tumbled from his numb fingers. Out spilled two bloody feet, still shod in the fine boots of a master rogue.

Despite my need to stay calm, I felt the full fury of hate in that moment. I would rain acid down on the hags. They would crackle and pop, squealing in agony when I was done with them. I would blanket the earth in their blood. It wouldn’t stop there. I’d make Ellry pay for this too. The weak fools, so pitifully helpless, had caused this to happen to my friend. They’d learn what their weakness caused. Then…

Mordo’s big hand hit me hard in the back. I dropped to my knees.

“Enough of this,” he said, having witnessed the darkness pass over my face. “Mordo crush.”

Before I could stop him, Mordo’s had shot his hand into my pack. He whipped the sack containing the gem on to the ground. In one fluid movement, before I could finish screaming at him to stop, he smashed the gem with his maul.

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