Dungeons & Dragons
James Wyatt
The Gates of Madness
The origin story for The worlds-spanning Dungeons & Dragons® event
Nerath, before the fall
The Chained God spoke, and the Progenitor whispered its reply.
“I will be free,” the Chained God said, “and all will perish.”
“Perish,” the Progenitor whispered, an echo in the desolate infinity of the Chained God’s prison.
The Chained God formed a hand of darkness and bone and stretched a finger toward the glowing liquid. Its light turned the darkness of his substance to blood.
“They will drown in blood,” he said.
“Blood,” whispered the Progenitor.
His finger touched the liquid surface and it sprang to life at his touch, coiling around the bone and joining with his shadow, hungry for his substance.
Once again the Chained God saw what it was and what it had been. He saw the world crumbling as it consumed everything, leaving behind only the void that was his prison.
“So it shall be,” he said, his voice the only sound in the whole of the void.
“All will perish,” the Progenitor whispered.
“The Fire Lord will consume the world!”
Nowhere watched a blast of flames roar from one of the cultist’s outstretched hands and wash over his companions. Brendis raised his shield to block the brunt of the flames, and Nowhere saw a hint of the divine glow that indicated the paladin’s magic at work, protecting himself and the eladrin wizard behind him from the searing heat. He allowed a hint of a smile to touch his lips as the echo of the blast faded in the strange vault beneath the capital. Brendis and Sherinna could take care of themselves—that was why he liked working with them. They didn’t need him, and he didn’t need them, except occasionally to distract their opponents long enough for him to get close. Like now.
“The might of the gods stands against you and your Fire Lord,” Brendis said, raising his sword and striding toward the red-robed cultists.
Nowhere slid the wavy-bladed dagger from his belt in perfect silence and assessed the three cultists. The nearest one, shrinking back from Brendis’s approach, was a portly man whose bald head bore tattoos in patterns of flame. The one who had shouted his defiance and blasted fire at Brendis and Sherinna was a small man with squinting eyes and a thin beard, clutching a staff and muttering invocations to the Fire Lord. The third cultist was a hulking brute with a huge iron sword that trailed fire as he swung it at the paladin.
With all three cultists glaring at Brendis, Nowhere stepped silently behind the portly one. Nowhere and his companions had been working to root out this cult of fire-worshipers for weeks, and he had more than one painful injury to repay, not even to speak of the buildings the cultists had burned to the ground, the wares and treasures consumed in flame. He lined up his attack in an instant and drove his dagger into his target’s spine. A gurgling scream rose in the man’s throat, cut short as Nowhere pulled the blade back and drew it quickly across the cultist’s neck.
The muttering cultist turned in surprise, and his squinting eyes widened as he saw Nowhere’s horns and the bony ridge of his jaw.
“A tiefling?” the cultist said. “Heir of fallen Bael Turath, why not cast your lot with us? What love can you bear this world?”
Nowhere shrugged. “I don’t see any profit in your line of thinking. There’s a great deal to like in this world.”
“Our reward lies not in this world, but in what remains when it is gone.” The cultist punctuated his words by thrusting his hand toward Nowhere, palm first. Another blast of flame sprang toward the spot where Nowhere had been standing, but the tiefling was already in motion, rolling away from the fire and coming to his feet right beside the startled cultist.
“You expect a reward from the primordial monster that burns the world to ash?” Nowhere stabbed with his blade, cutting a gash in the cultist’s arm as the man tried to twist away. “I don’t think the primordials work that way.”
“You think the gods are any better?” The cultist had produced a dagger of his own, but he held it clumsily and seemed more interested in opening the distance between them than landing a solid blow.
“I never said that,” Nowhere said, and his blade found a home in the cultist’s neck.
“Nowhere!”
The tiefling spun at the paladin’s shout, then dropped into a crouch below the third cultist’s sword, which came swirling over him in a tempest of fire. The heat of the flames trailing from the iron sword still seared his skin, and he threw himself backward to find a safe distance.
The cultist’s hood had fallen back from his face to reveal the monstrous visage of a hobgoblin, marked with scars in the fashion of the warlords of the Dragondown Coast, far to the east. Nowhere frowned. Brendis had been sure that this fire cult was a local problem, nothing more than a few malcontents stirring up trouble in the underbelly of the capital. But if it was drawing members or other support from the eastern warlords, it might be far more.
A bolt of crackling lightning shot from Sherinna’s slender fingers to engulf the hobgoblin, searing his skin and sending a wave of convulsions through his body. Brendis took the opportunity of the hobgoblin’s momentary paralysis to step forward and swing his sword cleanly through the hobgoblin’s neck.
Sherinna rubbed her hands together, as though the lightning joining her fingers to the dead hobgoblin could have carried the cultist’s corruption to her. “Are any of them still alive?” she asked, nodding toward the ones Nowhere had dispatched.
“No,” the tiefling said, frowning. “I thought we’d question the big one.”
Brendis scowled. “Sorry,” he said. “I figured the one with the staff was the leader.”
“Well, one of you should search them,” Sherinna said, her lips curled in disgust. “See if there’s anything that might identify other cult members.”
“Nowhere?” Brendis said.
“With pleasure.”
A buzzing fly brought Albric close to consciousness for a moment. He waved a hand uselessly near his head and sank back into dreaming.
He dreamed he was covered in flies, swarming around him, drinking at his eyes and mouth, laying their eggs in his ears and his open wounds. Then he was the flies, his consciousness fractured into thousands of tiny minds, all sharing a single purpose—to feast on flesh. Then he was a man once more, and the world was a fleshy body beneath him, and he joined with the swarm of all living things to consume the world.
As they ate and ate, gorging themselves on the flesh of the world, what was left in its place was fire and chaos, a swirling maelstrom of annihilation. He slipped from the carcass of the world and fell into the maelstrom. He looked down its yawning gullet, and there he saw the Eye.
It was a roiling mass of shadow, with numberless dark tendrils writhing out from it, reaching toward him as he fell. It bore no pupil, no colored ring of iris, nothing that made it resemble the eye of any living thing, but it saw—Albric was seen, and he was empty before it.
Its tentacles coiled around him and slowed his fall, and they whispered their secrets to him. He strained to hear and understand, but most of what they said was beyond understanding.
Another fly buzzed in his ear and Albric sat up, looking wildly around him.
“Bael Turath,” he said, panting. “The Living Gate.”
“What is this symbol?” Brendis said, putting the letter into Sherinna’s outstretched hand.
The eladrin wizard studied the parchment, focusing her attention on the fiery eye traced at the bottom of the page. “The Elder Elemental Eye,” she said. Fear tinged her voice, and Nowhere saw Brendis react to the name.
“Should I know what that means?” the tiefling asked.
“It means our problem isn’t confined to this little cult of fire lovers,” Brendis said.