Chapter Eleven
Transfiguration
There in the fog his song kept calling me
Leading me on with its haunting melody
Deep in my heart a voice kept echoing
I knew I'd soon be wandering
Styx: "Castle Walls"
Castle was lead away, past rank-upon-rank of Kobolds, more than Castle had ever heard of, gathered into one place. It would take a powerful dragon indeed to overcome the clannish natures of the dragon-kin that normally tended to keep their numbers small, rarely bigger than raiding parties. Scores of them assembled in common purpose was almost unheard of. Without a strong leader, such and army would crumble shortly after the first engagement.
"Where is this Black Death?" Castle asked, barely registering that he had asked the question out loud. "Do you serve him?"
Bracken's undisguised mirth once again wracked him with bouts of nigh uncontrollable laughter.
"Serve him, Richard?" he asked rhetorically, "I am him, or I was and with the magic you misappropriated, I will be again. I will have back my true form, my wings, my claws, my teeth, the ability to speak my own true name! When I have back everything that bitch-queen Lolth stole from me, I will avenge myself on Drow and mankind alike for every decade, every year, every single minute I have been trapped in this pitiful accursed form!"
Rick stopped dead in his tracks, stunned at the revelation. He still had no idea what he'd walked into all those years ago, what all of those sacrifices had been for, but now he was beginning to draw a very terrifying picture of what was to come, but the dreams offered him the one hope of stopping the nightmare scenario that Bracken painted, as repugnant as they idea might be to him to give Bracken what he wants.
"For the dark son born of light to prevail, The Black Death must rise again..."
He only hoped he could buy Alexis and his companions back at the ruins time to escape, because he knew, once he had outlived his usefulness to the Dragon their lives would become forfeit.
His introspection was interrupted when bracken turned back to the direction he'd been walking before, and muttered to Lockwood, "Bring him."
With a rough shove on his shoulder, they were off again, deeper into the forest.
The deeper into Hollander's Woods they went, the more distinctly he could feel the void where magic should have existed. Such eddies and currents around a great nothing could mean only one thing: The presence of a null magic zone off in the distance - any decent mage with enough power could detect it. There were places dotted here and there all across the face of Faerun where the scars from the Time of Troubles had never healed. Tears in the veil between magic and nature that magic users of any skill level did their best to avoid. Magic either ceased to function at all in such places, or even the most simple, basic spells could go terrifyingly wrong without warning.
He'd heard tales from his masters, warnings to steer well clear of such places. Among the worst being fireballs going berserk and destroying caster and target alike. Another, a simple cantrip to light a campfire roasting the caster, the woman he was trying to impress, and burning an entire forest to the ground in the ensuing fireball.
"Are you proposing to send me in there?" Castle asked.
Without turning or even skipping a beat, Bracken chuckled.
"Why no, Richard," he muttered, his voice taking on an almost conversational air, as if they were discussing the weather or the merits of participants in the Grand Melee, "I have personally charted this node and great pains will be taken to keep you quite safely outside of its area of effect. I have also carefully plotted how long its null-magic properties take to wear off. I will be in the very center of it for one hour and you will be given a spell to recite as soon as I have emerged. I trust you can read Drow?"
Castle nodded. He had been taught to read and write the Drow language using a text written by the Drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden himself. Though his conversational fluency in their dialect of the Elven language was suspect, (how often does one get the chance to chat with a live Drow on the surface?) he could read and write their language with great precision. Well enough to recite a spell, at any rate.
Bracken turned back toward their destination. "You will be provided a proper meal and a place to rest while you study the spell, you will need every once of your strength for tonight. I expect you to be well rested by sundown. Contrary to popular belief, you will find my hospitality to be quite generous."
"Oh, and one more thing, Richard," he rounded upon Castle to look him square in the eye, the pleasant conversational tone never leaving his voice, "in case you have a mind to try something clever, I am intimately familiar with every single word of that spell. If you utter so much as a single syllable or glottal stop of it incorrectly I will not only have every one of your friends put to a violent death, I will have your daughter brought before me in chains and disemboweled while you watch. Do we understand each other?"
Castle nodded. While his friends and his daughter were under threat there was very little else he could do, but hope that Ryan rode hard and fast.
"You let him do what?" Kate shrieked when she was finally roused from the healing spell Lanie had put her under. Esposito had been prepared for her to be upset, but she was more accurately apoplectic with rage. "What the hell, Javi! I know you didn't like him very much, but I trusted you!"
"He did what he did to buy us time to get you up and about so we can get his daughter out of here," Esposito objected,. "You're right, I may not see in him what you do, but I can respect that much."
"If you think for one minute that we're leaving Castle in the hands of the maniac who kidnapped his daughter," Kate hissed as she sat up and began putting on her armor careful of her still tender shoulder, "you have another thing fucking coming!"
"Woah, woah, woah, girlfriend," Lanie insisted, catching her as she stumbled, "you're in no condition to mount any sort of rescue just yet. You need time to work that arm and you need to eat something."
"She's right, Beckett," Esposito agreed, "from what little I heard, he wants Castle to do something for him, we have time to plan something, and we will need the cover of darkness to get out of here undetected anyway. "
As the last rays of sunshine began to wane, and the small group slipped from the tower under cover of darkness. Kate Beckett leading them, holding the dagger Castle had given her. Hoping it will lead them to him in time. They'd pulled his daughter out of that hellhole and he'd surrendered himself to keep them safe. She was determined to get him out safe.
The door to Castle's locked room opened to reveal Lockwood standing in the doorway.
"Tine for you to do what you were brought here for, Lord Castle," he muttered, "Come with me."
Castle rose from the single cot in the room, he passed the small desk and chair, slowing only to collect the sheet of age yellowed parchment with long-dried blood on it that had been left with him. Drow language or no, he knew a transmutation spell when he saw one. Lockwood pressed a bag of the necessary components to set the spell in motion, pointed at the indistinct figure of his master emerging from the shifting mist before stepping away from him.
Castle crushed the components and recited the spell, feeling the overcharged power rise within him, setting forth the same vortex of magical energy as he repeated the spell again and again. The energy from the spell pouring from him and swirling around Bracken, lifting the man clear off the ground.
Tendrils of magical energy surrounded and penetrated him as the glow completely enveloped him, while his body began to morph and transform. His body grew larger, neck longer, head stretched and elongated, jaws and teeth grew, limbs and claws extended.
When the spell finally dissipated, William Bracken was gone. In his place, BahorAgyrtCiym, The Black Death reared up on his hind legs and let loose a deafening, bellowing roar for the first time in one hundred years before launching himself into the sky, disappearing into the night, his roar an expression of pure joy.
The Black Death was once again loose upon the world.
Castle fell to his knees, power spent. Before he could pitch forward, one of Lockwood's men stepped forward with a dagger to slit his throat, only to be met with the business end of a mithril shield directly into his face, breaking his nose and sending him reeling backward to the ground.
Before another could approach, Esposito whirled on him.
"TEMPUS!" he shouted before throwing his sword at the man, the weapon whirling end over end until the blade speared into the man, impaling him just beneath the collarbone and pinning his dying body to the nearest tree. Before Lockwood could turn and engage him, a wall of fire leaped between Bracken's henchman and Esposito.
Alexis Castle appeared seemingly from nowhere, red hair flying wildly behind her with wand in one hand and spell components in the other as she faced off with Lockwood.
"Taste my magic, old man!" she growled as she sent lightning from the wand into Lockwood, followed swiftly by crushing prison, grinding every bone in his body to dust before reversing the spell and tearing him limb from limb.
Esposito yanked his sword loose from the corpse allowing to drop free from the tree. He wiped it clean on the corpse and sheathed it before hauling Castle to his feet, then throwing him over one shoulder to carry him out of the clearing to meet up with Beckett and Lanie.
By the fierce look in Kate's eyes, the blood on Lanie's mace and the three bodies at their feet, it was clear that they had decided not to remain out of the fray.
Lanie gave Castle a once over and was sufficiently convinced that he was uninjured to not bother making Esposito put him down. At her affirmative nod to Alexis' unasked question, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
"Let's get out of here," Beckett stated calmly, "before somebody takes it into their head to come after us. As soon as we can get Castle on his feet, we need to get as far from this place as possible before that damn dragon can come back."
With that they moved out, taking advantage of the momentary confusion among the Kobold ranks to make their way back to the relative safety of the broken tower. It was going to be a long night.
BahorAgyrtCiym's wings flared as he neared the ground and he soft-landed near the entrance to his lair. This had been a night he had long awaited since the day he had been trapped in human form. He wanted to savor this moment for a brief time, the feel of his claws, the shroud of his wings.
But he also knew he was yet vulnerable. His scales were as sof newborn, his body had yet to begin the long process to build up enough acid for his breath weapon. He needed to consume sulfur and platinum from the ready supply in his lair. He spied the small shack he had lived in as a human and smashed it flat with his tail before entering the mouth of the cave.
He felt content that Lockwood had done his work and that Castle was dead. He had plenty of time to have his friends and daughter dealt with. For now he would rest surrounded by his treasure hoard. The disturbing "dreams" banished forever, just like that small shack had been.
The Black Death would begin his reign of terror... tomorrow.
Happy Castle Fanfic Monday everybody.
And let us not forget the men who stormed the beaches on 6 June 1944. Their bravery and sacrifice ensured a victory over tyranny and quite literally saved the world.
Honor the fallen.
