(A/N: Thank-you to everyone who reviewed! This chapter isn't as long as it could be, though it certainly took long enough to summon the energy to create. For that, I am profusely sorry! PROFUSELY! Most of this was just written today...never again shall I underestimate the power of notebooks!
Disclaimers: The game "Neverwinter Nights" belongs to Bioware, Atari, Floodgate Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast and other people.)
Dependence I: Heartsinger
Chapter Thirteen
The experience of being a stone statue brought back a wave of nostalgia for Deekin. He remembered his younger years in the Nether Mountains, when he had first moved into Tymofarrar's den. Living with the dragon kept the kobold constantly on edge, hyper and jittery. One day, he couldn't stop running around the cave, no matter how hard he tried or how many times a dizzied Tymofarrar threatened his life. At last, the dragon lost his patience and cast a paralyzing spell on poor little Deekin, who was then used as a toothpick. The effect eventually wore off, but Deekin heeded the dragon's advice carefully from then on.
Being turned to actual stone was different from being merely paralyzed, of course. Even if he hadn't been able to move when he was paralyzed, he'd still been able to feel his heart beating, his lungs taking in air, the blood running through his veins, all that would assure him he was still alive. Now, there was none of that--he was cold stone, plain and simple, but somehow still alive and seeing. And, he would most likely remain that way for a while yet; he had read many a tale of the stone-turned victims of medusae, who had stayed in their unlucky state for millenia, so weatherworn by the time they were returned to flesh that their features had been mostly rubbed away. This frightened Deekin, especially because his tail had started itching. After just a few minutes, he thought he would go insane.
Suddenly, a consoling warmth surged over him. Flexing his fingers, Deekin became aware that he could flex his fingers and did it again. His heart beat, his lungs breathed, his blood flowed. No longer stone, he was once more flesh and blood. And there was Umbra, standing silently over him, her gangly black hand glowing faintly with the leftover magics of a Stone-to-Flesh spell.
"Ooh, thank-you thank-you THANK-YOU!" Deekin gushed, flinging himself to the sand in an overdramatic bow.
"You are certainly welcome," Umbra responded as Deekin picked himself up.
"Deekin thought he be statue forever," the kobold moaned. "Deekin gots this little itch under tail that just drive Deekin crazy! Deekin thought his head explode!" So saying, he scratched the itch away. Umbra said nothing, but he thought he saw her shoulders shudder with quiet laughter. It could have been his imagination, though.
Something occurred to him.
"Boss," he inquired, "how you gets all, umm, not-stone?"
"This one was not affected by the medusa's gaze," she replied.
"So...Boss be standing still...but whole time not be stone?" he puzzled slowly.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"This one did not wish to provoke the medusa," she told him, looking at Undrentide. "We have already seen what she is capable of--summoning multitudes of fiends, teleporting at will, changing individuals to stone...Best to play stone, then, lest she do more." Umbra's tone saddened, though her face was unmoving. "This one vowed to protect you, Deekin. This one failed to do that...but shall not fail again." She started walking toward the ancient structure. "This one knows something of Undrentide's design from m'lord...that should prove an advantage."
Deekin stood there, watching his Boss walk away. He knew he should follow, but for a moment he just wanted to stop and think about all that had happened lately. Finally, he raced to catch up.
"Deekin gots question," he said as he scurried along behind Umbra. "Snake lady turns Deekin into statue just by lookings at him, yes? What we do if we meets her again?" He was hopeful that Umbra would know; he really didn't want to be a stone statue again, and next time Umbra might not be so lucky as to escape the effects of the medusa's gaze.
"Close your eyes and this one shall kill her as quickly as possible," Umbra responded.
"Okay, that sounds like good plan," Deekin nodded as they neared Undrentide. "Deekin likes good plans."
Heurodis had shoved open a half-buried stone door and entered Undrentide through it. Now, Umbra and Deekin slipped through the door slat the medusa had left. Hopping to the floor, Deekin looked around.
"Wow," he muttered. "It really be city."
There were fountains decorated by stylized statues of cherubs and merfolk, whose mouths still spouted clear water through some magic; there were marble benches with legs carved like lion paws; ornate marble pillars suspended beautifully frescoed ceilings, and ivy shoots sprawled along the rosy marble walls, creeping around the thin iron bars of old portcullises. Peeking through one of the many portcullises, Deekin could see an entire home, with rotten, overstuffed velvet furniture, decrepit bookcases loaded with disintegrating books, brittle wooden desks, drawers and tables, and discarded children's toys. Only the desert's arid atmosphere had kept it all from entirely rotting away.
Outside the portcullised homes were city squares, immense rooms with colorful brick patterns on the floors. There were even trees sprouting out of circular holes in the ground, cracking apart the brick floor with overgrown roots that sucked nutrients out of the ever-fertile arcane soil, having grown from measly saplings to leafy giants in the millenia since Undrentide had fallen. There was more, of course, and Deekin wrote manically fast in an attempt to get it all down for his epic tale. Undrentide had once been a great metropolis, and its grandeur was stunning even now.
But, all this was coated with thick layers of dust and grime. Spiderwebs fettered the balconies high up in the walls, and draped like gray sheets over the abstract statues that lined the halls. Saddest of all were the broken skeletons on the floors, morbid reminders of Undrentide's expired legacy.
Deekin's wrist throbbed after writing so much so quickly, and he considered learning shorthand. In the end, he could only hope his best descriptions were good enough, letting his hands rest as he turned his attention to the mission at hand.
They had wandered through three large rooms and several high-ceilinged hallways patterned with muted blues, greens, golds and mauves, when Umbra, who had been following Heurodis's footprints--apparent enough on the dusty floor--came to a stop. In front of them was another high wall, characteristic of the city by now, inlaid with five broad portcullises. Heurodis's footprints led off through the third. Deekin started ahead, but Umbra set an elongate hand upon his shoulder to stop him. Holding a long finger to her face to indicate a need for silence, she strode a good way back down the hallway before halting again. Deekin traipsed after, then looked up at her expectantly.
"Heurodis has gone into the Temple of Winds," Umbra stated.
"The Temple of Winds?" Deekin repeated blankly.
"Yes. The Temple of Winds is the control room of Undrentide, if you will," the cowled one explained. "Within it, at its top, Heurodis will find the depressed pedestal to set the mythal upon--according to m'lord, and m'lord never lies about Undrentide. Heurodis will perform the necessary rituals, binding herself with Undrentide to resurrect it, take it to the skies once more, and thereby gain a great power that is dire in the hands of one such as her."
"So we goes and stop her, right Boss?" Deekin persisted.
"It is not so easy as that, my friend," Umbra replied, gladdening Deekin by referring to him as her friend. "The Temple is sealed off from the rest of the city. The wizards of Undrentide were able to teleport into it at will, and the fell medusa will have done the same. We, however, have not that luxury."
"So how does we gets in?" Deekin asked, stomach sinking.
"At the Temple's base is an Ark--" Umbra started.
"Like a ship?" Deekin cut in curiously.
"No, like a sacred trunk," Umbra corrected patiently. "The Ark was constructed to hold the Three Winds, which would open the Temple. Unfortunately, the wizards of this city placed the winds far apart, assuming they could teleport to reach them at any time. It will take some time for us to recover the winds...but then, it will take some time for Heurodis to revive Undrentide. We should have enough time."
"Deekin not understands," Deekin puzzled. "How you collects wind? Wind not be something you touches." He wrinkled his nose, remembering Tymofarrar's fondness for eating fish and the bad gas that followed. "Smells, maybe, but not touches."
"Netherese magic is very powerful, often rendering the impossible possible," Umbra answered.
"Oh." Deekin scratched his head. "But...why there not be four winds? All story books that Old Master has always says there be four winds."
"Are you still speaking of the sort you smell?" Umbra asked ponderously. Deekin shook his head.
"Nope. When you lives with Old Master as long as Deekin did, you know good and well that there only one kind of that wind." He paused thoughtfully. "So we gots to collect three winds to gets into tower?"
"That is correct."
"Okies." His wrists felt better now, so he got out his notebook and quill and wrote, speaking aloud as he did. "'The final path for our heroes had suddenly become clear! They were to collect the wind itself (and not the stinky kind), in order to face their foe! How could such a feat be accomplished? The faithful kobold could only wonder and be confident that Boss would figure out a way!'"
"Indeed." Umbra began walking again, turning down an adjoining corridor. Deekin finished his writing, put his writing supplies away, and smiled at Umbra as he walked along after her. Creeping though her movements were, they were smooth and agile. Combined with the dark, hooded robe that flowed over her and across the dusty floors, this gave Umbra a wraithlike appearance. Perhaps she was an apparition, a ghost in one complex, fantastical dream the kobold was having. Well, if it was a dream, he hoped it never had to end--even if it did get rather nightmarish at times.
They ambled along, taking turns where the halls intersected, for a while. Deekin ran hand along a grimy wall, remembering their journey into the stinger tunnels, among other things. Finally, he ventured, "Boss?"
"Yes, Deekin?"
"Who be your Boss?"
He didn't know if Umbra had started to reply or was simply going to ignore his question--though the latter seemed unlike Umbra, so he suspected the former--but at any rate, they were cut off then and there when a giant spider leapt down before them, a thin thread of silk trailing from its abdomen and up to a webbed ceiling. It raised its pedipalps menacingly and spread apart its jaws, the fangs at their tips dribbling green venom. The creature was green itself, with black-and-yellow designs doodling its wolf-sized body.
Umbra wasn't the least bit intimidated; in one fluid movement, she removed a luminous sword from its scabbard, sliced the swollen arachnid in two with a spray of green innards, and just as quickly sheathed the sword again.
"M'lord did not jest when he said Undrentide's spiders were huge," Umbra remarked dryly, gazing down at the spider's halved, twitching corpse, then advised Deekin, "Tread with caution. Where there is one, there are apt to be many." She continued on and went off down an adjacent passage then. Deekin waited until she was out of sight, then took off his pack, extracted his writing equipment and several napkins, and shoved gobs of green spider guts into it, cramming some in his mouth as well. He was almost out of jerky, and didn't think they'd be running into any restaurants, so decided to stock up on what food there was. Besides, small spiders always proved a tasty treat...he was sure a larger spider would just be more of the same.
Setting the napkins over the slimy stuff, he laid his notebook, quills and inkwells over the napkins and closed the pack. Shouldering it carefully, so as not to slosh the verdant insides around too much, he put on a burst of speed and caught up to Umbra, who didn't seem to notice he'd gone. Deekin opened his mouth to retell his question, when Umbra halted and announced, "We are here."
"What be here, Boss?" he asked, looking ahead. They were standing in front of yet another high wall, which two doors were set side by side into, Netherese words engraved above them.
"This is the Crypt Tower," she told him, walking toward the doors. "We should find one of the Three Winds here--the Dead Wind."
"Dead Wind?" Deekin muttered uneasily to himself as Umbra stepped forward and shoved the left door open. "Why it be called that?"
"You will see," she replied, going in and ushering him after.
And he did see. They had entered an expansive room, filled with rows and rows of coffins of varying qualities, depending on what wealth the corpse within had maintained in life. At some point the caretakers had run out of room and began stacking the caskets on top of each other, so some rows were anywhere from two to twenty caskets tall. The poor were always the first to be stacked, and their caskets were often made of such flimsy material that they cracked apart beneath the weight, revealing the cadaver inside and allowing to be crushed--the occasional arm, leg or even head poking out of a stack was evidence of this.
The stench of death was so heavy in the stale air that it made Deekin's lungs choke and his head swirl, so he made to rest against a sarcophagus until the effect wore off to some extent.
"This one would not advise that," Umbra warned him. "Undrentide's dead do not take kindly to being disturbed." Deekin backed away from the sarcophagus in a hurry, remembering the skeletons that had chased him through the crypt in the Silver Marches. Oh, what Deekin would give to live in a world where the dead stayed dead!
They wove their way around the reposing dead's coffins, Deekin stopping occasionally to place his hands on his knees and take a short rest, to clear his head just a little. It took long enough, Deekin thought, but they finally made it to the other side of the vast room, where a broad but short flight of stairs led upward, through a tall, arched double door, each half decorated with a thin layer of wire mesh.
"What be up here?" Deekin wondered hesitantly.
"The Dead Wind," was Umbra's blatant answer.
"No, no," Deekin protested. "Deekin means--what else?"
Umbra was silent a moment.
"M'lord did not know," she said quietly, trekking up the steps. "We will find out, though." So saying, she pushed the doors inward.
(So ends Chapter Thirteen--I apologize for its brevity, but it is Chapter Thirteen, after all.)