Chapter XXIV
Welcome Home
A cascade of silver lightning greeted the first minion of Tiamat to approach the newly empowered avatar that Liam had become. He marched defiantly through the streets of his beloved Neverwinter, holding tightly the Tear of Nahdril, and striking down any who approached him with a blast of magic force or a swing of Dieubanai. He has indiscriminate, killing both the spawn of Tiamat, and the hobgoblins that tried to surround him with warriors and casters. He never stopped, never slowed, never released the Tear of Nahdril, and never moved his eyes from his goal: the Halls of Justice. The closer he came, the more impatient he became with those who barred his path, and the more power he tapped into to utterly annihilate them he strode, almost calmly, up the steps of the Tyr's Temple. One of the doors was scattered two dozen yards from its original home, and the other hung limply upon the one remaining hinge. This did not deter the avatar in the least. As he entered the building, he realized that a great many things had changed. Where yellow flames once burned, they were now black, though somehow still shedding light. The entire room seemed to be steeped in darkness; the altars, statues, tapestries, even the stones of the very foundation. The final thing that had become one with the darkness was the lady of Neverwinter. Aribeth stood at the center of it all, clad in jet-black full plate armor, but still wielding the hand-and-a-half sword with its pommel fashioned in the likeness of a single, lidless, serpentine eye.
"Ah, our champion, the harbinger, has come. Together, united with the serpent queen, we will sweep through Faerûn, a scourge to all who will not bow to our dark queen. All we need is you at the head of the armies to complete this wondrous picture," Aribeth told the unblinking avatar that inhabited the shell of Liam.
Just then, an explosion rocked the building, and a fiery hole was blasted through the eastern wall, revealing a blood-red sunrise. Standing in the gap, hands glowing with red energy, was Gorion.
"Liam?" Gorion asked in disbelief. "So ye finally joined us, and I see ye found the Lady Aribeth, now the servant of the serpent queen. Looks like we can finish 'er off together, like the old times."
As Gorion strode towards his old friend, he was greeted with a gloved hand stuck fast to his throat and lifting him into the air. A solid kick to the chin sent Liam momentarily stumbling back, but that was more than enough time for Gorion to freeze him in place with an arcane gesture and word.
"What's gotten into ye?" he roared to the motionless warrior. "Before ye got knocked of the docks, ye never would've tolerated the presence of a traitor such as her, allowed the servants of Tiamat to live, nor would ye ever strike me!"
"Enough of this!" Aribeth yelled from the dais. "Speak to him no more! He has become the avatar of Dieubanai, the blade you now see strapped to his back. There is nothing you can do to bring him back!"
Her hands began to glow with a black light, and she shot a small orb at the frozen Liam, an orb meant to dispel all magic upon him. It succeeded in dispelling the movement impediment, but it did much more. It was for that brief moment that Dieubanai lost all of its influence over Liam. It was in that brief moment that Liam realized that Dieubanai had been feeding him false emotions, causing him to do what he had done. It was in that moment, that Liam was done following the orders of a Hell-forged blade. Dieubanai fell to its sheath on Liam's back as twin scimitars leapt to his hands, a single target in his blindingly silver eyes. He leapt onto the dais and began relentlessly hammering the defenses of Aribeth. His scimitars came in at constantly altering angles, the true strikes melding in and out of the feints in a fluid motion that was too quick to follow.
"Hah!" Gorion shouted. "That be Liam as I know 'im!"
Only an immense amount of luck allowed Aribeth to last as long as she did. But Liam was holding back, his true intentions known to none but himself. Sure enough, just before Aribeth "lost" the battle, the roof was torn from the Halls of Justice. Stone walls rose from the ground, in which resided full statues of the five chromatic dragons. Five statues of chromatic dragon heads tore through the ground, each firing energy into the now open sky. A rift began to tear in the sky, and the Twisted Nether began to appear before the three stunned individuals. This must have been the nexus of powerful ley-energies that the spawn of Tiamat required to create the portal to summon their dark queen.
"Anar'alah belore," Liam muttered slowly beneath his breath.
A monstrous roar echoed through the sundered halls of the once grand temple to Tyr, "Tremble mortals, and despair. Doom has come to this world!"
"Anar'alah belore," Liam cursed more heatedly.
The dark goddess of chromatic dragons, the foul queen Tiamat, had come.