Episode #12: The Back Door

Diary of Gregorius Half-Orc the Cenobite

Third Day on the Isle

We awoke to find the lamia dormant in her block of stone. I noticed that Edrathior now wore a gauntlet of fine silvery mail on his left hand. Where he found such a thing I do not know. While snacking on the fruit we’d found, we discussed our next move: whether to head to Thanaclan and the Deluvian Hourglass straightaway or to seek the Silken Grove and thereby win the lamia’s promised aid. She’d told us the will-o’-the-wisp ("Quival") knew the way. When Edrathior asked, it said that the Silken Grove lay “beyond the wall.” If “the wall” be the wall north of Tanaroa separating the peninsula from the rest of the Isle, than it lies in the same direction as Thanaclan. So, we decided to head northward, and hopefully find the lamia’s name on our way.

Before we left, Elody woke the lamia. She offered some of our fruit, but the lamia was not interested. She told us in some final warning: “Do not aggravate the water, and Razamere will not aggravate you.” We knew then that Razamere was some guard for the back door to this place, but not what kind.

We descended the chasm, Penitence first, then I, Edrathior, Bartholomew, Elody, Ecaris, and finally Gruff. The trellis was slick, having been hidden beneath the falling water so long, but climbable. Descending, I felt a familiar wave wash over me, and tightened my grip. A new memory that was not my own.

I found my self before a roaring fire. I surmised this was either Hell itself or Penitence’s living room from long ago, for a man with horns and a tail tended the fire, turning a shank of venison upon a spit. Three tiefling boys waited for the meat—my brothers. Rather, her brothers. One whom I knew as Hamza elbowed his way to the front. He kicked me—the young Penitence—out of the way. Penitence seized him and bit his ear off. Brothers Arshem and Goshenk, not to be denied, jumped her. She snatched up a stone and struck Arshem in the face with it. Goshenk made to grab her, and she clawed at his face with her nails. Penitence stood before her father to claim her prize.

I came back to myself, and continued climbing. I suspected Edrathior would relive part of my life. I thought of the first time I met Fat Willy’s gang, and hoped he’d enjoy the ride. I was unaware at the time that Penitence, who began the descent first, seemed more deeply immersed in her received memory than the rest of us...

At the bottom lay a pond, covered by a layer of scum, spanned by a string of broad stones, each several strides apart from the last. Across the pond to the east was a pebbly beach. To the north was ten feet or so of beach and beyond that, jungle. To the northeast was the mouth of a small cave, its end beyond our sight. Just as I reached the bottom, Penitence collapsed and fell toward the water. Must have been a bad memory indeed. Bartholomew, having somehow outpaced the both of us, was already down there, and managed to break her fall with his own body.

Just then we heard riders approached from the east at the opposite side of the pond. Two of the cultists we had encountered earlier, mounted on scarlet drakes, bearing axes and javelins. At that moment I noticed something curious: inside the phanaton-net-bundle I carried, silken fibers had formed about our captive a moth’s cocoon. But I hadn’t time to worry about him sprouting wings and flying back to  Lucan. Plus, the quasit still seemed entangled.

I scooped up Penitence and leapt across the water to the north. Edrathior had already teleported there and I set her down on the sand beside him. One of Gruff’s arrows sank into a tree-trunk, trailing a length of rope. I didn’t know what he planned and didn’t much care. Bartholomew skipped across the stones toward the two cultists. One cultist picked up a great stone and tossed it into the water—aggravating the water. The other threw his javelin straight at Bartholomew, stopping him in his tracks. I sprinted across the water and fell upon the javelineer with a jab, cross, and hook. He seemed surprised. The other cultist drew his axe and whistled for the drakes.

The drakes shouldered their masters out of the way. One charged for me, but caught a horn on the cliff-face, spun about like an eager puppy on polished stone, and landed on its scaly backside. The cultist tipped his head back to scream with some primal and scathing force, as his fellows had before. I clapped my palms over my ears before he could. That was when things got strange again. It was as if something flew in front of me, showing itself not to the sense of sight, but only to the sense of thought, like the ornament the novice keeps in his shield. This was somehow Edrathior's work.

(Translator’s note — here the diarist’s idiosyncratic predilection for the obscure and rustic again rears its head, as does his frankly disastrous use of abbreviation and ligature. I have read the diarist’s scrawl as z-l-m, abbreviating the Old Thyatic for a cover, a shield. Doubtless in next month’s letters my colleague Professor Zartosht will explain how I have got it all wrong; for now I disregard his “skin” translation, if only for the nonsensical result it creates. I digress.)

The cultists and the drakes clearly saw it; panic filled their eyes as it wended its way among them. Then the drake before me vanished in a flash of light. I heard a scraping and snarling in the middle of the pond, the crash of a mace against scaly hide, and a resounding splash. Only later would I attribute this strange occurrence with Elody and her "feystrike" mace. But the more time I spend with these castaway companions, the less I am surprised by what I see. Both the cleric and Ecaris now battled the vanished drake at the center of the pond, amidst the stepping stones and splashing water.

I slid closer to Bartholomew to cover our flanks. I assumed a spiral stance, drawing the air around me deep into my center, focusing my mind upon one point, and then releasing it to burst outward and lash our enemies. One of the cultists lay still upon the beach, neck broken, and the other was still fighting, as was his drake. From the corner of my eye, I could see the other drake fighting to tread water. I drew out the "new" dagger the lamia had given us. Its scaled finish glinted, as if in anticipation. Reaching over Bartholomew, I buried the dagger in the drake’s side, and blood gushed forth.

That was when we met Razamere. A tremendous crocodile but not an earthly one, he burst from the pond and fell upon the cultist and his drake. His jaws alone were almost the length of the drake’s body, and he clamped down on the human. Remarkably, the cultist survived the first bite, but the second tore him apart. 

As the crocodile advanced upon the shore, the ground about him softened and turned to mud. Bartholomew did not look any more intent on fighting Razamere than I. Penitence still lay on the north beach where I’d left her, alone. I made haste and leapt across the water to the north, hoping I could reach my companions before Razamere did.