#123 - Battle for the Cauldron

The Journal of Wynn Dennavar 

Zarantyr 25th, 999 YK

We made our final preparations to assault the Cauldron. Standing before the throne, Scepter in hand, Irakas merely pressed her strong hand to our shoulders and we felt its powers flow into us. One at at time, she bestowed temporary blessings. We could choose "might of the bugbear," "agility of a goblin spy," or "valor of a hobgoblin." Immediately the throne room brightened: it granted me night vision in addition to some resistance against Trazzen’s vampiric mind-control.

Aleae cast Clairvoyance to observe the Cauldron’s chamber directly. We gathered around her and tried to imagine the scene she sketched onto the floor and as she described. From the passages leading to the gnoll camp the chamber sloped downward until the Cauldron, sitting on a stage-like dais in the far corner. She marked four cloaked undead, two long-fingered undead monstrosities, one skeletal naga, and one shadowy dragon on the map, but no Trazzen. I expected he would come running once he became aware of our assault, but we had a little time in which we could eliminate his allies.

Aleae also reported four goblinoid slaves chained up in the room with the Cauldron. While others prepared spells, I gathered a few simple weapons into a bundle to carry with me. Escape wasn’t an option for these slaves; they’d never make past the gnoll camp, but they at least deserved the chance to die with a weapon in hand.

The major complication was that Irakas could only teleport us individually. Aleae, as our eye-on-the-sky, had to go last. The first of us to land would be able to unleash an attack indiscriminately, making it an ideal choice for one of the casters, but would also take the brunt of our enemy’s counterattack while reinforcements trickled in. Magnus was the obvious choice and he was eager to lead the charge, if it could be called such.

Once we had our orders, we didn’t stall. We didn’t know how much time we had until the next batch of the Mire of True Hunger would be completed, or when Trazzen would return. Magnus indicated to Irakas where he wanted to land, and a moment later vanished. A tense silence followed in the throne room, broken only by the background rumble from the camp below. I hoped they would remain unaware of what was now starting in the Cauldron room.

I could only piece together the early moments of the battle from Aleae’s in-the-moment recounting, and by observing the destruction that was left afterward:

Magnus appears near the center of the chamber and summoned an Ice Storm with his mace. Mass confusion as hail rained and coated the ground in a sheet of ice. The falling chunks of ice struck the shadow dragonand one of the tall, long-clawed monsters, and it extinguished the only source of light in the chamber, All heads swiveled his direction, and it was clear we would have to rely upon our temporary darkvision.

The shadow dragon—which Magnus would later identify as having once been a blue dragon—sprang back and spat "shadow" lightning, killing the the four slaves. They were two goblins, one hobgoblin, and one bugbear, and now all four were instantly slain.

So much for that plan. I set down my bundle of weapons.

Bale, cloaked in a sphere of darkness, appeared along the raised dais and rains his eldritch blasts on the shroud-cloaked, sword-wielding skeletons there. Below, murky shadows rose from the bodies of the slain goblinoids and flow across the rubble toward Magnus.

Clarion and his steed Amatrix landed together in a glowing thunder of stone and metal. The naga shied away from him and turned a spell of helplessness on Magnus. The dragon and the shadows converged on him while he was vulnerable. He was locked in paralyzed rage for a few seconds, but Magnus snapped out of it right as Izzeth appeared and cast his own Ice Storm, pushing the skirmishes toward the edges of the chamber instead of the vulnerable middle.

Finally, Irakas turned to me. I indicated a spot on the outdated map I estimate is outside the ice. When I landed, shards of stone and melting ice scattered underfoot. The chamber’s size exceeded the tiny map I had studied; even with darkvision I couldn’t see from one end to the other. With casters both before and behind me who needed space to cast, I stuck near one of the sides by the camp exits and engaged one of the skeletons lingering outside Clarion’s protective aura.

The shadow dragon, wounded now by several blows of Magnus's mace, spat another bolt of dark energy across the chamber. It passed through both Magnus, Clarion, and Amatrix, gravely wounding all three. The damage to Amatrix was greatest, and the summoned steed vanished under its power.

I heard more than saw Cypher appear and immediately tangle with one of the longfingers. On the edge of my vision, the shadow dragon buckled under Magnus’s assault. The thud echoed over the battle noise. With the dragon gone it felt like the tide was turning in our favor, until Izzeth called out and drew our attention to one of the entrances near the gnoll camp.

At first I only saw two translucent, armored hobgoblins, different from the shadows but looked substantial enough to pose a threat, and then the figure they preceded. Trazzen and his honor guard had arrived. After hearing about our foe—my adopted enemy of only the past few days, like an enemy general I had never met—I was finally able to place an image to the name: a muscular form in bronze, baroque plate mail armor, carrying a purple-hued scimitar the same color as Izzeth’s sickle. Byeshk, meant for slaying aberrations, but still deadly for us mortals.

According to what I'd heard, Trazzen was once a leader of his people, a governor of an entire city, and a foe to the monstrous armies of aberrations who had invaded the world in his day. But according to these same stories, in order to gain the power to save the city, he made a pact with dark powers—the demon lord named Katashka, it now seems—and became a greater thread to his people. A vampire, he dined upon his own countrymen and his city fell. In Karrnath or any respectable land, he would have been the worst sort of treasonist. It would be an honor to slay him on behalf of all he'd betrayed.

Trazzen approached the field of battle with casual arrogance and surveyed the room. As his gaze passed over me, I felt cruel pressure on my mind, and even with Irakas’s blessing I could barely manage to resist whatever compulsion that gaze carried. And yet I did.

Then a glint of flame flew between his guards and a fireball erupted around them, and before the light cleared from my eyes—a second explosion followed. Aleae had joined us, completing our reinforcements. The flames burned one of the long-fingered undead greatly, one of the ghostly honor guard wavered, but Trazzen himself was only barely scorched.

Irakas would only now be setting out on her part of the plan: marching the golem down through the gnoll camp to join us in destroying the Cauldron. As the fireball’s wisps faded and the hobgoblin guards broke apart amidst smoke, a horrific, writhing darkness that could only be one of Bale’s magics engulfed the same space.

An instant later, and preceded only by a dark blur, Trazzen reappeared well outside the writhing darkness. Wisps of darkness, clinging to his armor, curled and faded, separated from their creator spell. The assault had left little visible damage.

“You have troubled me enough,,” the vampire lord said aloud, a dark fury overtaking him, “I don’t care what he says. You will all be slain!”

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