Alas, he thought, reality rarely conforms to convenience.
“So I charge around the corner,” he said, “cautiously. You two watch out for traps, and you help me flush out any cultists that are hidden behind cover.”
“Is that what they are?” Tempest said. “Cultists?”
“That’s my working assumption at this point,” Roghar said, scowling at her.
“I suppose it helps to put a name on them. I mean, besides Marcan.”
“Please stop it,” Travic said. “This is hard enough for me already.”
“Is it?” Tempest asked. “Can killing people ever be hard enough?”
Travic drew himself up, anger boiling in his eyes. “I will not listen to lectures on morality from a warlock who bargains with infernal powers!”
Tempest’s eyes smoldered with fire as she glared at the priest. “Does the mouth that speaks it make the truth any less true?”
“I know the precarious path I walk,” Travic said. “I grapple with these questions every night, when sleep eludes me. And now, because they seem to have entered your mind for the first time, I have to face them again? What I need now is resolve and certainty. Leave the doubts until darkness.” What had started as an angry rant ended as a plea, and Roghar gaped at the priest, his heart aching for his friend.
“I see,” Tempest said at last. “From now on I will keep my questions to myself, and see whether I am able to sleep after we’ve done what must be done.”
Roghar reached a hand for Tempest’s shoulder, but she pulled away.
“Let’s do it, then,” Roghar said. He closed his eyes, reaching for the sense of fierce victory that had filled him just a few moments before, grasping for any reassurance from Bahamut that his cause was just and his way true. A faint tingle brushed at the base of his skull and faded.
That will have to be assurance enough, he thought.
Without another word, he walked to the corner of the hall. Holding his shield up, he peered around the corner into what was indeed a small shrine. A simple wooden table stood as an altar, draped with a deep purple cloth embroidered with a jagged spiral in gold thread. A human skull adorned the altar, surrounded by five small cups. One of the cups held a greasy flame that licked up over the rim. Three long banners, similar to the altar cloth, hung on the walls of the chamber, each one sporting a golden spiral that reminded Roghar of a baleful eye staring out into the room. Behind the altar, a column of light filled a small alcove in the wall.
The cultists-it was a fair appellation, he decided-huddled behind the altar. Roghar almost laughed out loud. The cultists hadn’t enjoyed many more tactical options than had he and his friends, trying to defend themselves in this small, bare chamber. They didn’t have defensible positions to take, cover to hide behind, or, apparently, traps to set. So they had spent the last several minutes clumped behind their priest at the altar, clutching their weapons in trembling hands, waiting for the deadly assault they knew was coming. He almost felt sorry for them.
But not quite.
The priest was a middle-aged human woman with wild hair and wide eyes, draped in a formless black robe. A purple stole with the same golden spiral hung over her shoulders, and the symbol shaped from real gold hung on a slender chain around her neck. She held a gnarled quarterstaff carved and inlaid over and over with the same symbol, like a dizzying storm of eyes or whirlwinds.
“I admit,” he said, “you are not what I expected. I trust you have had time to prepare yourselves to meet justice. Do you wish to surrender?”
One or two of the cultists behind the priest looked like they might be ready to throw down their weapons, but the priest just laughed.
“There need not be any bloodshed,” Roghar said. “If you just put down your weapons …”
“There will be bloodshed,” the priest said. “The Chained God will drink deeply of your lifeblood, paladin.”
“The Chained God?” Roghar glanced over his shoulder at Travic. “I guess we both lose.”
“No, just you,” Travic said. “You bet it was Asmodeus, I said it wasn’t.” Travic rounded the corner, keeping Roghar between himself and the cultists in the shrine. “You owe me five … Gaele?”
Mouth hanging open, Travic stared at the priest of the Chained God.
“Hello, Travic,” the priest said. “Marcan warned you to leave.”
“What happened to you?”
Gaele scoffed. “You gave me comfort in my weakness. That’s all Erathis could offer-the promise of a rebuilt empire where the rich still stand on the aching backs of the poor. The Chained God gives me power, Travic. Power to destroy you and the feeble comfort of your god.”
Roghar shook his head. “Still up to this, Travic?”
Travic pulled himself together with a visible effort of will, then nodded.
“Good,” Roghar growled. “Let’s do this.” Hefting his sword, he started forward.
“Stop!” Tempest shouted, and Roghar froze. “The floor,” she said. “There’s a glyph-a magic trap. You don’t want to step on it.”
Gaele laughed again. “I must congratulate you, tiefling, on your powers of observation. But let’s see how they work through this.”
She lifted her staff, and a cloud of darkness surrounded Roghar, enfolding him until he could no longer see the light on his shield. The cloud was cold, chilling his flesh and whispering madness at the edge of his mind. It pushed against him like water and sent twinges of pain through his entire body with even his smallest movement.
“Tempest?” Roghar said, gritting his teeth.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
The darkness vanished and Roghar blinked in the sudden brightness of his glowing shield. Beside him, Tempest held a ball of inky blackness suspended in the air between her hands, and with a soft grunt of effort she hurled it at the priest. The ball dissipated into slivers when it hit Gaele’s outstretched staff, but a few of the slivers tore small wounds in her face and shoulders.
“Travic,” Roghar said. “Can you do anything about this … griffon? cliff? This trap, whatever Tempest called it.”
“The glyph,” Travic said. “I’ll try.” He dropped to his knees at Roghar’s feet and started exploring the floor with his hands, not touching the stone, but reaching as if he were feeling the contours of the trap and its magic.
“Can I go around it?” Roghar scanned the floor, but still couldn’t see any sign of what had alerted Tempest.
“No, it fills the entire hall.”
“Why can everyone see this but me?”
“We know what to look for, that’s all.”
Tempest called up a storm of eldritch fire around the cultists, breaking up the clump of them as the fire ignited their clothes and hair. Only Gaele stood her ground as the rest of her little cult scattered.
“The Chained God take you, tiefling,” Gaele said. She shook her staff, and rattling chains of red-hot iron appeared around Tempest, coiled around her body and cuffed to her ankles and wrists. Tempest howled in pain as the hot metal seared her flesh, and she thrashed against the restraints.
Travic looked back at Tempest, then up at Roghar.
“I’ll help her,” Roghar said. “You get rid of the glyph. I have to get up there and get your friend Gaele focused on me.”
“I don’t understand,” Travic said, turning his attention back to the glyph. “What could have changed her so?”
“Later, Travic. Focus.” Roghar stretched out a hand to cup Tempest’s cheek in his hand. Her skin was hot, but as Roghar breathed a prayer and channeled Bahamut’s power into her body he felt her cool. Her thrashing stopped, and she drew a deep breath. Roghar’s hand started glowing as bright as his shield, and Tempest let out her breath. The manacles sprang open and the chains clattered to the floor, where they writhed like snakes before vanishing in puffs of steam.
Tempest smiled at him, then conjured a shimmering orb of viscous green liquid in her palm. “Eat acidic slime, you lunatic,” she said as she hurled the orb at Gaele.