That must be my former pupil, Calmet thought, firing a crossbow from around the corner.
He debated the options of unleashing his dark magic on a portion of the enemy or waiting for Jozan to appear. He waited, knowing full well that the gorgonoid alone would hold off the heroes for a bit longer.
Calmet chuckled cruelly when the gorgonoid gored the half-orc with its left horn and ripped through both chain and flesh. His amusement was stifled when the barbarian chopped viciously at the exposed back of the monster and sliced it open to its spine. Laud's masterpiece couldn't be so easily disposed of, even if such wounds eventually killed it. Calmet kept his spell in readiness.
The paladin turned her back on the few remaining orc guards and charged the gorgonoid. Calmet smiled with approval in spite of himself when she slashed at the wound just inflicted by the half-orc and flayed even more flesh off the monster's back. The evil priest was doubly delighted to see the orc guards try to bury their axes in the paladin's back. When the first axe clanged harmlessly off the woman's armor, a dagger appeared in the guard's back and it fell lifeless at the feet of its companion.
Calmet cursed quietly to himself. He'd thought that Jozan would still be reloading his crossbow, not switching to tossing daggers. The one-eyed cleric didn't realize that the dagger had been thrown by a tavern girl-anymore than she realized what a lucky throw it had been.
The gorgonoid stepped back. Calmet knew what the monster was about to do, but none of its foes understood what was happening. The gorgonoid released a noxious cloud directly at the half-orc. The cloud widened as it passed the barbarian and the paladin, encompassing the remaining orc as well. The cloud coalesced around all three figures. The barbarian merely growled and kept on swinging. The half-orc hacked a bloody channel across the gorgonoid's chest, making the monster howl loud enough to bring more rocks and dirt down around the battle zone.
As the cloud surrounded the paladin and the orc guard, however, it became a shroud. The skin of the orc turned a deeper shade of gray and the paladin assumed a dull hue beneath her armor. Both transformed into statues.
Jozan chose that moment to step around the corner with an iron rod in his hand. Seeing him, Calmet rubbed the coal over a rock he'd picked up from the tunnel floor and shouted, " Tenebrae!"
He tossed the rock toward the combatants and an unnatural darkness descended over the entire battle.
Calmet laughed. Clearly Jozan intended to use the iron rod to cast a common spell that would freeze Calmet in place. Calmet's darkness aborted Jozan's plan-he had to be able to see his target to invoke the spell.
"Interesting idea, young Jozan!" the older man mocked his pupil. "You might yet be able to hold me, if you're strong enough, and if you can get out of the darkness without being impaled by our little creation. Think of it as one, final lesson!"
The gorgonoid sniffed loudly, trying to locate its victims by smell alone. Calmet heard the half-orc grunt and knew that the monster had struck the barbarian. He couldn't know, however, that the horn had dug into the barbarian's arm and scraped through flesh to the bone.
While Calmet listened to the sounds in the darkness, Jozan eased his way across the floor. The priest of Pelor knew that Calmet would be waiting for him when he reached the edge of the darkness and he hoped to withstand whatever assault his former teacher had prepared for him. He heard Yddith and Qorrg trying to find their way in the darkness, but ordered them back.
"Don't come any farther," he warned, hoping to keep them safe from the bull man.
Calmet looked back at the archprelate. He noticed the line of light moving closer to the eye of the statue and remembered the story of the craftsman who made his own god. The apostate almost laughed aloud, then he remembered the night that Laud took his left eye.
The man of power depends on a god of strength who is actually impotent, thought Calmet. I'll believe in the avatar of Gruumsh when I see him!
"I know you can hear me," shouted Jozan. "I know you'll probably kill me before the battle is done. I just want to know why you did it. Why did you steal Pelor's gold and give it to this abomination?"
"You wouldn't understand!" sneered Calmet.
"Try me!" responded Jozan as he heard the gorgonoid slash Krusk another time. "You've taught me before."
"And you've failed to comprehend…"
Calmet's reply was interrupted by a roar and the whistling of Krusk's axe through the air, followed by a wet, crunching sound and the bellow of the gorgonoid. There was a momentary silence, then they clearly heard the massive monstrosity hit the floor, accompanied by a loud crack as one of its horns snapped off against the unyielding stone.
"Pelor refused to protect me," continued the apostate, as if the death of the gorgonoid meant nothing. "Pelor is weak. I sought power."
"Power?" questioned Jozan, continuing to feel his way through the darkness, but also feeling a slick pool of warm blood spreading beneath his hands. "Is it power to pick on the weak? I say this power you long for is its own weakness. It's the kind of power that leads you to smash a child's skull with your mace, but never makes you a warrior."
"Come forward out of your darkness, pupil, and I will teach you about power!" challenged the heretic.
"At least then," responded Jozan, deriding his former teacher, "you would have taught me something!"
Calmet was prepared when Jozan stepped from the shroud of darkness and raised the bar of iron once more. Before the priest of Pelor could invoke the intervention of the sun god, however, Calmet shouted, "Pestis!"
A greasy cloud descended on Jozan, and he instantly took on a sickly pallor. Calmet thought Jozan would retch, but his former pupil maintained control and held up the iron rod, calling aloud to Pelor. Calmet laughed at the puny effort, confident in the power of his mind to resist. His mouth locked open in that laugh, and he realized he couldn't move.
Calmet could watch, but not act. The pupil had bested the master-at least, for a time. Imprisoned in his body, the evil priest saw the half-orc step out of the darkness with blood seeping through his torn chain mail. The barbarian looked as if he couldn't withstand much more, but Jozan pulled a familiar scroll case from his belt, unrolled the scroll, and read it aloud. A golden aura caressed the barbarian's wounds even as the scroll parchment disintegrated into nothingness.
Calmet begrudgingly praised his former pupil to himself. He knew that the real test was about to begin for Jozan. Down in the sanctuary, Laud looked up from his ritual. Calmet saw the archprelate glance up the cleared chimney at the oncoming glow. Even frozen in place, Calmet could feel the tunnel shaking as the line of sunlight moved inexorably toward its alignment with the idol's eye.
Apparently, Laud was satisfied that the ritual was progressing properly. The sanctuary and the tunnel were shaking, candles were flickering in a wind that should have been impossible, and an eerie green glow was growing ever stronger within the sanctuary itself. The archprelate stood and removed a scroll case from his pouch. Calmet could see the necromanctic symbol on the case from where he stood. He knew that Laud was about to inflict pure destruction on the half-orc and Jozan. Gruumsh would triumph, yet Calmet felt strangely disappointed at the certain outcome.
As the evil priest ruminated, he realized that Jozan wasn't surrendering. Jozan pointed a finger at the archprelate and shouted, "Lux etemis!"
No one could miss the golden beam flaring out from the good priest's finger and shooting directly into the chest of the archprelate.
Before Calmet could even consider the scorched flesh on the archprelate's chest, he saw three bodies rushing toward his master. The half-orc was the first to enter the circle and slash his greataxe across the hierarch. Calmet winced inside at the sound of the weapon sundering the mithril mail under the archprelate's robe. He knew the blade penetrated flesh because he heard Laud cry out in agony.