Durlag's Tower, Endgame II
A short staircase. We wouldn't want to waste any more time. Above it, a banded door in oak, blackened as if by fire but not broken. Below it, a high balcony in white stone, the walls of it grey-coloured and the bars of its balustrade more for function than form. It broke to allow yet more steps that led down to a floor covered in black and red tiles with a disordered pattern that hurt the head to look at, in the centre of it a rectangular object covered by off-white cloth. By it stood a figure not so very much larger than a tall man, dark armour with a thick helm that seemed to cover only blackness below.
It spoke only briefly, inhumanly. "Spider to fly. The parlour welcomes. You have come to die, and I know best." Its voice was like a shard of glass scraped along rusted iron, like teeth rattling against copper nails; even while it spoke we tried to destroy it. We'd a battleplan, that Shar-Teel and Ajantis should attack to prevent his casting; protections raised against demonic fire; Faldorn and Imoen to summon and Viconia to cast against him; a bow for me and the icy blade for Ajantis. Shar-Teel ran for the demonknight, Ajantis not far behind, Imoen's voice strong as she began something not unlike Edwin's summoning rituals, Faldorn's wolf snarling and slavering.
Then it flung the cloth away from the mirror, and we saw ourselves. In the shadows of the others the demonknight himself vanished, invisible among the crowd that emerged. A tall and broad copper-haired man drew a two-handed sword. He wore a well-pressed tabard that declared him a Flaming Fist above his strong armour, the only thing about his dress not relentlessly shined and polished a crude clay necklace beaded as an amateur would design. Shar-Teel set eyes upon him, herself a barbarian by garb, armour functional though not polished, a woman who slew males and Flaming Fists—and straight at him she went, curses in her mouth and her sword flashing swiftly through the air. But if anything, he was swifter than her.
There was a pink-haired corpselike thing that shouted spells to cover itself by glowing light, and that moved inhumanly fast. It was unrecognisable, at first.
"I...might have...dreamed of you, once..." Imoen breathed, and sent a fire arrow into its monstrous hide; but the flares dissolved into the spell protections it had laid up for itself.
Ajantis faced the helm of a knight in jet-black armour, who bore a small red-eyed corpse as a familiar upon its shoulders. The black knight's hands glowed red, and he yelled foul words of calling to underworld powers.
"I...swore I would not; I swore I would not embrace my Fall; I am not this—" Ajantis cried, pale; the Blackguard knew each move before he made it, beating him back with a sword that was yet not as dark as Varscona's blade...
A drow priestess who bore the symbol of Lloth's spiders upon her breast, dark power gathered about her, looked to Viconia. "Yibin wael," she said, and in her left hand held a crying drow baby by the nape of its neck, in her right a sharp flashing knife. She brought the knife down, and raw power seemed to gather around her; the crying stopped...
(...an illusion of a child, surely—)
Another Faldorn, clad much the same to the Faldorn we knew, almost entirely alike in feature, stood barefoot on the tiles with her hair loose about her face. Where she stepped, she smiled, and black tar came where she placed her feet; she raised a hand into the air and curled it to a fist, and a sickly brown smoke materialised in it whilst her body gathered a shield of light blue. A wolf-creature stood by her, tall and upon two legs and as black-furred and red-eyed as the old companion; much larger and more fearsome.
"You drain from the earth's power instead of serve it; can you not see that?" our Faldorn's voice cried at her; and:
"Of course I do, for how I use the earth is to serve nature in the end. You will soon learn that I am right." The two-legged wolf flew up to Faldorn; she growled like an animal, her flame blade in hand, held with a druid's conjured strength rather than that of the fifteen-year-old girl she was. The giant wolf bore down upon her.
I'd not been idle, aiming arrows, keeping to whatever was left of the plan. A shaft to the breastplate of the male Fist; one of Durlag's ice arrows that froze a spot upon the armour of the Blackguard; a poison arrow that bounced from the protections of the monster with the vague appearance of Imoen; another poison attempt for the other druid. Automatic movements enough. Behind the five was a sixth, and she seemed to direct them within the fight.
"Aww, don't you people read any histories?" Shining dark hair was smoothed into a bun that seemed flawless. Her hazel eyes sparkled, her body almost as unbearably graceful and slender as Viconia's. Her voice was high and clear and well-carried. "Change dance partners! Blackguard, help the Fist with the barbarian, she's better than the boy. Great Druid, you keep the boy busy with a few summons. Slayer, bring down all their protections. Matron, keep casting against the ones on the balcony." Perhaps she only seemed perfect; she stood and spoke as if she expected to win, her head tilted slightly in an elegant line, poised and balanced and sure of herself. She looked far more well-bathed than I, what I could see of her hands neatly groomed as she lifted a finely made bow. To her I was slow and dirty and clumsy.
She was the evil mirror fiend's creation...
They obeyed her advice. The Blackguard turned, and ran his sword into Shar-Teel's shoulder, past her armour; she broke free with a yell, her blood falling from her. Ajantis found himself within a sea of wolves, trying to use his shield everywhere at once. The chants of the monster and the priestess of Lloth grew loud.
She knew I looked at her; she met my eyes and spoke, her voice silvery and cutting and high enough to be heard above the sounds of battle. "I guess you're thinking I'm the evil you're not, and killing me means killing everything you don't like about yourself. But I'm not evil like some of the others. I'd never know they existed if we hadn't all been summoned like this. I'm not better or worse, I'm just fighting so I can be alive and take your place. The real difference is confidence.
"That's why Eldie still follows me; I'm strong enough to keep him and I know it," she said—and she was me and I her, she knew as she said it that it would hurt. Wanted Eldoth; kept him. "You won't change what you know's bad about yourself by attacking, so why bother at all?" I'd not yet aimed an arrow at her—hands on the bow, paused, her words shouldn't have been enough to make them shake— "You'd still be miserable even if you won. Oh, I'm Skie, I'm helpless and hopeless and about as bright as a bowl of wet pastry. I'm your opposite for being better than you. You know how bad you are."
Remembered Eldoth—did she remember the boy? Did she remember everything that had happened but she'd faced it with grin and dash, courage and verve and poise? She—
Had she read for wisdom?
I loosed an arrow at the mirror itself, flying above her head. But the arrow broke; the mirror too powerful. She released an arrow of fire from her own bow, and I ducked and rolled away. Then the monster's spell finished, and I felt the mage protections stripped away a second afterwards. The stone of the balcony was seared dark by the flames.
The demonknight flung fire. Viconia cast against the other drow, screaming the name of Shar against Lloth; Imoen's spells pierced into the giant wolf-creature, which cut horribly at Faldorn with its claws. I ran, let not-me loose her next shot and the drow cast a black cloud of fog to materialise where I'd been—not that clumsy, not that clumsy, please—
An ice arrow. It whistled through the air and the shot was true enough, though the corner of the mirror rather than the mirror itself. And failed yet again to destroy it.
I heard the other Skie's clear laughter; and then I saw her jump, somehow running forward and flinging herself high in the air, leaping above the battleground, standing easily on the balcony. Not human to do that—
"Stop that," she said. "Now this is one of the things I can do. I can do nice things too, of course, but not to you." White gathered in her hands—she cast some sort of spell, draining the way Edwin or Xzar did; taking blood and life from me in a way that...
I'd cast some sort of healing over Imoen the first times I learned about it; gained red hands to stop people like a ghoul to kill them; dreamed...
I drew the Burning Earth. She jumped easily down from the balcony to meet me; of course she knew similar thrusts and ripostes to me, able to predict the actions. Her own sword was fine, but not of the same magic. "Are you trying to murder me?" she said, her voice amused as a swashbuckling heroine out of a storybook, her poise still elegant perfection. "If you think you're worse than me, you're probably right. I liked killing Davaeorn, but I never killed a boy because I had so little of a self that it was all right to let the idea of wanting to kill everyone take it over." She wielded a small buckler strapped to her left arm, sparkling with magic, her sword in her right hand; she knew everything I knew, and she was just a little bit faster. She used the opposite hand to lead as me. They call the left hand sinister, and proper people are trained out of using it entirely.
Maybe...
Imoen cried out, a skeleton warrior by her that was controlled by the laughter of the Lloth priestess.
I want them to live and I want to live.
I struck fiercely at her left; she dodged as I'd known she would, but the blade sank deeply into the stone of the balcony. Then to her right; again it missed her. She lunged forward with her sword. It pierced through the leathers over my right arm. She kept hold of her hilt; I lunged forward. I struck her with my body—the sword wasn't at the right angle, the reach too close to really hurt her, but it burned her. Her blade still cut through the flesh of my left arm, and it was weak; then behind her the balcony gave way upon either side. We fell.
That move she had not discovered in time.
She landed below me. In the battle raging below it was chaos about us. She looked horribly vulnerable, hitting the tiles with a crack, her hair loosened and fluffy around her face. I dropped the hilt of the sword, lifted her head by the hair, and slammed down her skull to the ground. There was blood on my hands and her eyes were closed. She could jump and to drain energy; she'd dreamed, talked for a reason. In my dreams I became a red arrow loosed from a bow...
I used the blue power to heal my arm to strength; it took little time. I unravelled the bow from my back, drew it—the monster who couldn't possibly be Imoen was coming near to me, I told myself there was no time for hesitation. I concentrated, and the arrow formed at my will just as the red hands; and like them it was a glittering red. I loosed it...
One of the wolves at Ajantis' flanks suddenly leaped in front of the arrow's path; I despaired. But it passed through the wolf's body, deeply red, an arrow more powerful than the physical—I was done, it might not matter now if the monster got me first—and hit the mirror. The mirror cracked from side to side...
(when it did that originally, the lady had seen something she could never have; that was her curse...)
The enemies' forms dissolved and blurred, features obscured and removed from them, their ability to speak and to cast immediately taken. Shar-Teel managed to sink her sword deep into the breast of the Flaming Fist, and that form of a mirror fiend collapsed; but though the spells of the Matron and the monster stopped, they remained, clawed and quick. The creatures summoned, the werewolf upon a bleeding Faldorn and the skeleton warrior against Imoen, the wolves about Ajantis—they'd disappeared, and that was all I'd time to notice. The fiends that had been twisted to Imoen and Viconia were after me.
The Burning Earth, swung widely, kept them partly away. There was a voice behind them: "The mirror was but a toy. You served us well by your passage here. We shall use this tower." The demonknight: its sword hit. I fell across the floor with a wound deep in my back, skidding on blood away from the creature—unliving thing, only darkness below the armour—
"To...guard and protect," I heard Ajantis say, speaking slowly, turning away from a featureless mirror fiend he had sent to the ground. "I cannot allow you..."
Varscona met and parried the demonknight's blade. Shar-Teel, still bleeding, fought another creature. Faldorn chanted, her hands held high, and made something descend on Ajantis; and when the demonknight called down fire, though he screamed he was not burned to death.
I cast for the blue again; it wasn't enough to heal what the demonknight had done. But enough to stand again. Shar-Teel's movements were slow and pained. She tried to hold against the three mirror fiends that remained upright. Viconia seemed to be trying desperately to heal herself by her chanting, Imoen gulping down a dwarven healing potion. Ajantis was worst, most greatly weak in comparison to his terrible foe—and I stabbed the demonknight in the back as it tried to split Ajantis' skull.
It turned on me, and only laughed. It was fire; I ran away— Ajantis in his turn stabbed the demonknight from behind. If he could only forgive that...
On the balcony Imoen was burned and bloodstained and pale. But she flung spells, missiles at the fiends, spinning slowly but steadily out of her hands. I took Shar-Teel's right flank; helped her there, and the Burning Earth could cut through the mirror's fiends at the edge of their blurs, formless but clawed shapes passing through the air. I remembered her teaching me, and tried to fight like it. Bony claws scratched across my collarbone; Shar-Teel struck high into the mirror fiend's head. Then I was at her back, the three of them wildly slashing about us. She was so strong, and I kept them away from us.
Faldorn leaped like a hunting cat down from the balcony; her club was wreathed by green vines, her face bleeding. She hit the demonknight with as much force as Shar-Teel could muster. Ajantis cried out to warn her away, but she fought nonetheless:
"I am one with nature," I heard her say, "the laws of nature must be enforced."
Some of Shar-Teel's blood had soaked into my skin, seeping from her armour on her back. But Imoen's missiles hit the mirror fiend that Shar-Teel fought, and she lunged forward whilst it was off-balance. I heard it fall. Two remaining; the Burning Earth strained my forearm, and bit at the formless thing in front of me.
The demonknight parried Ajantis' strike by its sword. Then its left gauntlet lashed out as a swift whip, and Faldorn fell to the ground. It spoke briefly. Tongues of black leaped about the sword's blade like serpents, and it rose to strike down upon her— Ajantis put himself in its way, and the sound was hissing steam and discordant bells. He stepped back with the armour on his left shoulder buckling and broken, his shield dangling limply from a twisted arm. Varscona still sought what lay under the demonknight's helm.
Viconia's voice was low and confident. She pointed a graceful finger at the demonknight from her pose on the balcony; she spoke a final word sharply—and a sound like rolling thunder burst upon the demonknight, heavy and cold; cracks suddenly appeared in the armour, the same darkness within as below the helm.
"Shar grants me greater power; I have practiced well—" Viconia spoke with a breathy satisfaction beyond that with which she used sometimes for men.
I watched the movements of the mirror fiend I fought, parried one hand of claws with the Burning Earth and the other with the dwarven shortsword. Flame cut into it; I saw an opening and stabbed under and up, like Shar-Teel would have; then quickly to what would have been the neck in a human with the shortsword. Help the others—
Shar-Teel managed to slay the one she fought; she stood there simply panting, and I let the last of the blue heal some of the deep wound in her shoulder. She stared incredulously, but there was no time; the demonknight, huge and dark and inhuman.
The four of us came to it. Shar-Teel's grim, exhausted strength; Faldorn's recovered, fanatical steps; Ajantis' wounded determination; and...me, tired. Its blade had us scattering from the fierce blows; once I dashed below it, stabbed with the shortsword and threw myself away from it. But Ajantis had the blade of ice; for all he suffered, for all the times the demonknight made him bleed with his shield arm ruined, he returned to it. Faldorn managed to cast a spell in a clear and ringing voice. The demonknight was halted in place, and Ajantis ran it through with Varscona...
Parts of the armour were dust; parts were simply empty. A small dagger fell to the ground. Faldorn placed a foot upon the bare helm. I saw that she was smiling in a way not unlike Xzar...
"Silvanus, hear me now," she said, and no interruption was possible. "Let this last unnatural creature become the focus; let the abilities now be granted to me. This tower must be purified; this tower must be reclaimed; by nature, for Durlag, for—Fuernebol." It was the first time that I had heard her speak that name. Her wolf howled between her words; paced by her, guarding her legs. "Oak Father, the fate of Durlag's Tower lies in you!"
"Imoen, get the woman—Clair whatshername. Don't slack," Shar-Teel ordered. "Skie—" I knew what she'd say; to the back of the demonknight's arena was a crack too narrow for the demonknight to slip through, an open place to—
Ajantis was on my heels, but he couldn't quite fit through. There, a small dark alcove beyond—human waste was scattered all around it, the smell vile—the human who had made it shaking there. There was a stained silver charm at his neck, his hair below the grime that covered it fair, his build slender but tall if he stood, his chainmail and clothing ripped open across his left arm and a dark brown mark visible there.
"Therella sent us, Dalton. You're going to be safe."
Ajantis helped Dalton back to Faldorn with only his right arm, where the presence of Clair seemed to calm the boy slightly. Whatever Faldorn was casting, it was lengthy; her eyes rolled up in her head like raw eggs, her voice loud and crude, the druidic words coming from her mouth like hailstones sent purposely to a target.
"She's not listening to us," Imoen said, "I don't know—"
A fierce ululation came from Faldorn's mouth, and we saw the first of the vines: sprouting as if from the earth under the tiles, breaking the floor apart as they rose, seeming to grow thicker in diameter each passing instant. They twined about and broke apart tile and stone, growing child-vines that spread thin and whip-strong to tear apart the tower's construction, growing high and approaching the room's ceiling. Plaster and tiles flew down upon our heads...
Imoen was already looking at her spell components; "Oh Tymora she's going to kill us all. Looked up protection spells, found a really good one, gotta cast it on invocation, gotta use enough power. Me, that'll help; and diamond's the hardest crystal you can find." She showed a large stone from Durlag's treasures; with no qualms about destroying it. "'Jantis, your shield's enchanted, hand it over, I need it." A hank of her hair had fallen across her mouth; she gnawed it while she desperately searched through her materials. "Got all my gum arabic together, can't leave home without it. Gotta evoke this—think of it like invoking. Build it. Hurry up, Imoen," she told herself. Clair De'Lain stood with Dalton, old friends finding each other again. Neither of them spoke; Dalton simply stood blankly in place, while Clair watched the destruction with nervous eyes.
The balustrades came down, crashing and rolling across the floor, torn by the vines. The room in which we had found Clair must be overwhelmed by Faldorn's wild spell by now. The vines were as broad as Shar-Teel's shoulders. They pierced through the walls, tearing up all in their path. Faldorn chanted still.
"Reclaim this for nature." The debris flew toward us, a rolling tide of an earthquake that we stood in the epicentre of. A falling tile struck Viconia in the shoulder, cutting her open. She stared at the moving plants; she hissed in fright, seemingly lost for words.
Faldorn's yellowish grin was full and intense, and she spoke again. "Take my hand!" she said. "Silvanus has promised it shall not take our lives..."
She reached to Imoen and Ajantis on either side of her. Imoen took one of my hands, Dalton the other and Clair holding to him. Viconia and Shar-Teel stood with Ajantis, all joined to each other. Faldorn was the calm at the centre of the storm she raised; hurricane winds whipped around her, carrying and forcing the stone of Durlag's Tower to break and fall about us.
Imoen started to cast, reciting the words of her own spell. "Don't intend any of us not to get out alive!" she shrieked into the raging wind, and then her words of magic. The diamond rose before her, growing and expanding; Ajantis' shield flew by the powers of the wind, and fixed itself before us while sharp fragments of stone blew into it. Faldorn called to the Oak Father, stone yet falling about us. I thought that I saw the body of a chess queen flying, the bone of a dragon falling, tiles coloured black and white last seen below a fiery furnace... The vines multiplied, created new deep cracks; the winds howled; even the earth below us rose and rebelled and sought to swallow everything that lay below it.
The final word of Imoen's spell set a sphere in place, and we were surrounded by crystal, by blue struts that had fashioned themselves out of Ajantis' shield. The tower still collapsed beyond our crystal, and through the translucent walls we could see the chaos continued unabated. Durlag's tower was eaten at the roots by what Faldorn, for the time being, governed...
Silver reflections chased each other in the surface of Imoen's pale sphere. Tortured doppelgangers, fallen dwarves, Grael screaming. The image of a lady dwarf, flickering across and within the crystal ball, whispering in a sound reflected by diamond: The way is open... A male dwarf not far from her side. Durlag's torment, Durlag's spirit. The shadow of a lock of hair of a creature of beauty. The hand of a statue that had once been red-robed and bearing grapes.
Faldorn sweated; Faldorn spoke. The earth and the winds moved, the vines pierced each part of the tower ever touched by something not natural. Imoen's sphere rose higher; stone sought to suffocate it, but the crystal was harsh and steady. Imoen stumbled, like Faldorn in great exhaustion. Slowly it rose: through parts ripped apart by vines that seemed to gather nourishment from the destruction, through every foundation torn down from the vast tower. It had taken many decades to build, and after all of that it returned to simple piles of rock. No more traps; no more monsters; no more ghosts and memories in agony. The dark levels of the tower flew away from us in our ascent, the crashing of the stones like a thousand drums. A blackened picture from the lowest level; bones of a skeleton once strapped to a table; sharpened shards of a porcelain bath; a jade knight's piece... It all fell about our heads.
Rubble was below our feet. The crystal faded away, ruined, and above us there were stars. Below, the ground rumbled four times more and became still, only a pile of jagged black rocks above a natural hole below, a jumble of old materials. Faldorn knelt on it, whispering Silvanus' name in hoarse gratitude. Her wolf licked the sweat from her face.
Imoen held my arm with a deathlike grip, thin fingers digging into me like a skeleton's bone. She could barely stand; I helped her sit, her face white and her eyes wide. We all stared at each other. Clair and Dalton collapsed together, watching the sky. We should never visit the tower of Durlag again.
—