Ridge's Mission I
Fresh off the success of our first mission, we were once again called to assemble in the courtyard. Rurik met us and led us into the main hall of the keep. In the entrance hall, we passed the statues of the founding member of the Warriors of the Eclipse. As we passed the statue of Arcadius, I reached out and touched its stone foot. I would be his apprentice one day.
In the main hall, many of the people we had just seen in stone form met us in the flesh. Rurik introduced us to Seamus, Rigel, Zyress, and yes, even Arcadius. I stared at them in awe. They looked no different than the people I had seen in High Castle when I first arrived on this island, but I knew there was a difference. These people had faced considerable danger and overwhelming odds and defeated their enemies while others could not. There was something special about them, and I now wanted to be a part of it.
The founders explained to us about the phenomenon of the negative energy rift. A weakening between the realms of the living and the dead was allowing the negative energy of the plane of death to leak out into the realm of the living. These rifts, as they are now called, open and infect areas in our world. These rifts have been accumulating ever since the power of magic was restored. While most of them in the populated regions have been sealed, they are still common in this wilder region. One of the goals of the Warriors of the Eclipse has been to deal with any rifts that they have found. That being the case, when a new rift was discovered to have just opened in the east, it became our next mission was to close that rift.
In order to close a negative energy rift, it must be inundated with positive energy. A number of positive energy spells can produce this effect. However, the collapse of the rift releases a huge amount of energy that will hurt anyone nearby. Even in the case of this small rift, the backlash would reach out to some twenty yards. Therefore, a delivery system with a long range is preferred. And so I received my first scroll of Cure Missiles from Arcadius. This spell combines the two sources of magic, arcane and divine, into a single spell to produce a long range delivery system for positive energy. I examined the formula and it made perfect sense to me. I knew then that I had made the correct decision to come here. Arcadius, seemed impressed with my understanding and told me to report to his alchemy lab after this mission.
We re-acquisitioned our donkey, cart, and supplies and started into the forest. A few days into the journey, our company was attacked by the fairly ingenious web traps of a group of monstrous tunnel spiders. I managed to avoid the vermin for the most part, but did get tangled in their webs. The more I struggled, the more entangled I became. I was finally able to work myself free and we were about to push on. Suddenly I realized that these spiders could not have been so large if they were unsuccessful hunters. I quickly attuned my senses to the presence of magic and examined their tunnels. Sure enough, I could detect the aura of magic in some of the tunnels. I started to fight my way through the webs into the newly vacant lairs. Adoras tried to stop me so that we could quickly get to the source of negative energy, but enough of the group was interested in the prospect of recovering these artifacts that we stayed and managed to recover a brooch, a flask, and a large, sparkling dart. I quickly claimed the oversized dart for my studies and was delighted to see magical energy crackling along its surface.
Late the next day, we encountered a pack of ravenous wolves. They attacked us unprovoked, or at least unprovoked in a humanoid sense. I must admit that I do not know what exactly would provoke a pack of wolves. Perhaps they were friends of the spiders we had just exterminated. Regardless, we managed to deal with them in a goodly fashion. Upon searching the area to ensure the last of the wolves were gone, we found the remains of some gnolls. They had been completely dismembered. None of us was sure if these wolves could have done that work, so we quickly left the area, just in case, and felt lucky to have gotten away as well as we did. That evening, as we prepared our supper, our camp was attacked by wolves yet again. Still wondering if a pack of wolves could so gruesomely dismember a humanoid body, we fought them as well as we could. It wasn’t long before we realized that there was something different about this pack. There were wounds on these wolves that seemed so severe as to be fatal to a normal beast. In addition, most of our weapons were not having their normal affects on these beasts. Suddenly it dawned on us that these were, in fact, the same wolves we had fought earlier in the day. Adoras and I immediately attempted to turn away these abominations with our gifts of holy might. It was working and the wolves that remained were fleeing.
I looked to Adoras in satisfaction of a job well done. Suddenly my blood ran cold. The holy symbol he held aloft was not a simple symbol of good, but was a symbol of Pelor. Adoras was a Peloran! All the stories I had heard as a child of the Peloran clerics flooded my mind. Their attempts to demonize and eradicate the non-humans were still terrifying. Fortunately, the cult of Pelor was all but absent from the Western Isles, but if that was the case, what was one of their number doing here. I decided to keep an eye on him for the rest of the trip and try to discover what I could in a passive fashion.
We continued our trek through the forest, searching for clues that would lead us to our goal. Soon we found the trail. The trees and animals in the area seemed to have a sickly appearance. That even such a young rift could have so much impact on the surrounding land was disturbing. We followed the hints found in the terrain to a opening in the forest, the source of the corruption. There was no mistaking the rift once we saw it. There, floating above the center of a small pond was a pulsing stone, glowing with a sickly, purple light. It was amazing. Such raw power concentrated in one place. If it could be understood and harnessed, it could provide a mage with enough power to complete a decade’s worth of research or more. I immediately approached the pond, ignoring the flying insects which were slowly starting to mass around the pack animals.
I reached into my backpack, searching for my notebook so that I could write down a description of the scene in front of me and take notes on the properties of the rift. The stone appeared even brighter now, though I had only closed one third of the distance. The water rippled with every pulse of the stone. Small fishes were swimming in the shallows. Small, skeletal fishes. Skeletal. That is when I remembered that the energy from the stone was not just escaping into space, but was actually degrading the entire region. The trees around the pond were dying. The animals that could leave had fled. Those that could not were being corrupted and devoured by the energy pouring from the stone.
I continued to rummage around in my pack for my notebook when my eyes met the empty orbits of much larger skeleton in the water. Suddenly the water in front of me erupted and an enormous snake emerged from the pond. The remains of the snake, anyway. It had almost no flesh left, but its skull, balanced on a column of vertebrae reared ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air. Startled, I quickly pulled my hand from my pack and realized I had grabbed the scroll of Cure Missiles. I debated casting the spell immediately, but realized that I had to get to a safe distance first. If I stayed close and the snake bit me, I might lose the spell and we did not have another. I quickly cast a spell to increase my speed and made a break for the relative safety that distance represented. As I turned, the great snake snapped and two fangs, nearly as long as I was tall, pierced my back. I stumbled, but kept my feet and made it well away from the pond.
I turned, favoring my left shoulder. I was badly hurt, but I knew that this might be my only chance to use the scroll. The snake had not followed me. Instead, it turned on the rest of the party, whether to attack the larger concentration of life force, or simply the nearest, I do not know. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I used the scroll. The missiles struck true and the explosion was the largest I had ever seen. We were all well outside the blast zone, except for the snake. Its bones became more brittle and shed some powder as the energy burned off the outer layers of mineral, but it continued fighting.
After the blast image had cleared from my eyes, I looked back at the center of the pond. The rift was gone. I had done my job. I used some magic to heal my wounds, and then went to make sure the horses did not panic and become lost. After collecting the two horses and making sure they would not flee, I returned to the party. The snake had been defeated. Unfortunately, during the fight, our donkey succumbed to the stinging bites from swarms of reanimated insects.
I cautiously approached the now lifeless skeleton and took some notes on the skeletal morphology of the snake. The energy used to power its animation had been cut off when the rift closed so, once it was defeated, it became just a mundane skeleton of a phenomenally large snake. Remembering the size of its fangs, I examined the skull and managed to pry one loose. It was the perfect height and weight to create a staff. This would be well worth the effort. Unfortunately, Adoras had it in his head that the snake had been an irredeemable evil, and all parts of it had to be destroyed. I tried to convince him that the evil was in the energy that had animated it, and that it was now gone, but he would not listen. He forcibly took the fang from me and threw it into the pond. This did nothing to improve my image of him or his Peloran kind, but I decided to keep quiet on the subject. After all, most of the group was human. Maybe there was more than one Peloran among them.
The trip back to the fort was somewhat tense, but uneventful. We reported our success to the founders and went our separate ways to rest and prepare for the next mission. I managed to pull Rurik aside and warn him of Adoras’s true identity. I then reported to Arcadius. We discussed our philosophies of magic and the application of multiple sources into a combined effect. He then took me to the alchemy lab where I was able to have my own small work area to conduct my own research when I was not working on making reagents for use at the fort.