#114 - The Traitor

The Journal of Wynn Dennavar 

Zarantyr 24th, 999 YK

The Blue Wraith was still wreathed in fire when I regained consciousness. Frustrated, knowing I couldn’t withstand the backlash of striking him again, I retreated. We’d have to end this at range. Arafin appeared next to me, as suddenly as she had during the fight with Hothyr. Then she had pointed me at the other naga through the murky water, but this time instead of direction she had healing so I could approach and end this fight quickly.

It was an idealistic thought. We crowded around the Wraith, then recognized our error and spread out before he could summon another fireball. The wizard shrugged off arrows, turned blades and ignored magic missiles until, unexpectedly, one of the drow’s eldritch blasts passed through him and scorched the stone walls. While I was still marveling about the wizard’s resilience, Aleae and Magnus nearly simultaneously announced that this Wraith was—or had now become—just an illusion.

I turned my back to it and listened. Among the scuffle of feet and labored breath, I heard matching breathes on the other side of the room. We pursued the fleeing wizard but we had to work our way around the pit. When he reappeared again, a good forty feet away across the gap, it was behind a bead of fire. Many of us were blasted by the heat but none of us went down. Arafin was the first to race towards him, but she stopped short and spat acidic venom at him like a spitting cobra—a customary naga attack.


The venom hit the Blue Wraith in the face. I wasn’t sure what happened next—was it a spell going wrong or the wizard’s devilish benefactor abandoning him? At first I thought the wizard's fire shield had returned, but this time he screamed in agony and collapsed, a new, nonprotective fire eating at his flesh with magical voraciousness.

Cypher and Izzeth reached the Wraith first. Realizing that the fire might consumer any valuables, Izzeth threw a blanket over the burning form. When he drew it away, the fire had been extinguished, but it sprang up again! Without waiting for the wizard to finish burning and squirming both warforged and half-drow fumbled for the wizard's possessions. The fire scorched them both, despite their precautions. This wizard was taking too long to die, and I remained suspicious even as bones, visible through bubbling flesh, began to blacken and crumble.

Magnus came running by us and I told him what I already knew—Simel was dead. Without missing a beat the Seren barbarian began to strip Simel’s body of gear, only saying that he had died well. Huh. And people say we Karrns are disrespectful of the dead.

I can’t point fingers, though. What I had to do was no better. I left the Wraith and sawed Simel’s head off with the Fang to prevent the vampire Trazzen from raising him as an enemy. Burning would have been more effective, but I had neither the time nor inclination to convince one of the casters to do the grisly work. What kind of a Karrn was I to adopt these tactics long-favored by our enemies? Magnus clearly approved, and I was grateful that he didn’t want to add Simel’s head to his growing collection of skulls. I ought to have said a few words before, or after, but it felt wrong. I wish I could say it was the first time I’ve used this partisan on a slain ally.

In the meantime the Blue Wraith burned himself out. Aleae warned us that we had little time until the corpse-elemental reappeared from…wherever she had sent it. Why she couldn’t just keep it there I didn’t understand. We readied ourselves, Cypher with a strange rod he used to control its movement, and Izzeth preparing his beam of radiant moonlight. In short work we took it down, even as it seized Magnus and lifted him into the air.

While we were coming to grips with the end of this long, hard, and costly fight, the drow urged us to continue moving.

We collectively rounded on him.

I still don’t know why we didn’t kill him on the spot. Exhaustion, maybe. Or the infectious, genuine alarm in his voice. He claimed to have turned traitor on Katashka, the rakshasa raja who we had heard about, and who Trazzen served—Trazzen, who had I never heard of until two days ago but whose name had become synonymous with the perils since I reached the vicinity of Glyphstone Keep. Given the disturbing powers he exhibited during the battle, it is easy to believe he may derive his magic from this demon lord.

The drow said he had been bound to kill one of our number, and of the seven of us had picked Simel out of spite: Katashka had wanted him to survive. That bastard seemed to think he had done us a favor. We weren’t buying it, but the drow had greater concerns. He had knowledge of Katashka’s machinations here in Glyphstone. Its servants had concocted some sort of blight from a device he called the Rumdhal Cauldron. One "batch" brewed from this vile cauldron had already been sent out somewhere, and others were in the making. He said that the next one would be bound for Sharn, and other for somewhere in Breland near the Aundairian border. He did not elaborate on the nature of this blight, but from his speech it sounded like a plague of some sort. Given that it was the dream of a demon lord, it was not likely to be a mere disease.

We had mere hours before the next batch from the Cauldron was ready to go out, but between the Cauldron and us lay two upper floors of the Glyphstone dungeons, a small army of gnolls and Arafin’s turned, undead mate who would rival Hothyr in strength and magical prowess. We had no choice but to believe this dark elf's information. We already knew that something malevolent was at work here due to interferences of Katashka’s minions, and now we had a timeline to match. As much as we needed to prevent the Cauldron from releasing even one more wave of blight, we desperately needed to rest.

The drow offered to take us to the Blue Wraith’s chambers, a possible place of temporal safety, and mentioned something about his own. So he was a native here. I wondered how long he had been working for Katashka? Was he a recent recruit or a plant? We barely got a name out of him. He said that until he earned his true name back, we could call him “Bale.” Looking at him in the aftermath of the battle, I wondered if my weariness was affecting my memory. I could have sworn he had two black eyes. But now one of them was a vivid red.

Evidently the teleportation by which I had arrived had brought me into the "natural" caverns far Glyphstone Keep. Bale was now leading us up the bank of the stairs into the goblin-carved dungeons of the keep itself. My new companions—save for Izzeth, who had arrived in a similar to manner as mine—had traversed some of these dungeons before.

As went ventured on, Aleae and I shared the second rank behind Bale, intending to watch for betrayal. Magnus had already affixed Simel’s darkvision goggles to his face and passed me his everburning torch, but the drow insisted that we march in darkness, expressing both surprise and disbelief that we had survived this long openly carrying light.

I took Aleae’s elbow, Clarion took Izzeth’s. The warforged complained about the marching order—it was clear that he and the elven sorceress had a history of some kind, and I don’t think he trusts me yet. At least he finds the drow even more untrustworthy. Ours has been an adventure of common enemies, it seems. Cypher had his iron defender Rungo guide him. That made three who were blind and three who could see, plus one homunculus and Bale.

I was so focused on straining my senses for signs of danger that I couldn’t follow our path up the stairs and into the maze of halls and chambers. We tried to walk in silence, but even I was all too aware of the noise we made, echoing off smooth walls and high ceilings.

Eventually, as we neared a wide, many-columned hall, slow dragging sounds issued from the darkness ahead. Aleae whispered that it was an undead guardian—they had seen its like here before. I couldn’t tell more than the direction—how far away was it? Could it see us, or hear us? Accompanied only by a swish of cloth, Bale moved out of my range of perception. Was this the trap we had expected from him? I was tempted to pull out the torch, but decided to rely on those of my companions who could see in darkness.

Lights began to appear as the battle unfolded—first Clarion’s dancing lights, then Izzeth’s moonbeam, and finally Cypher unveiling Rungo, whose eyes shone like lanterns. We faced three human zombies a giant skeletal minotaur wielding a battleaxe with a head as large as Rungo. Its massive size afforded it no protection: with a single shove Clarion heaved it to the ground and it vanished under blows.

It was over quickly, but the noise announced our passage down the long chamber. Whatever limited confidence we had in being unseen and unheard was gone, and we had no idea how much farther Bale would take until we were safe. If that truly was his plan.