In the labyrinthine depths of the ruins, beneath the oppressively low-hanging ceiling that seemed immune to the concept of 'headroom,' one Marrow Ogre stood in solemn guard. His name—if you could call the guttural sound occasionally hurled his way a name—was Muk. Muk was considered something of a philosopher amongst the Marrow Ogres, a title he earned simply by sometimes pausing to think before smashing.
Now, to be a thinker in ogre terms was not to ponder the metaphysical dilemmas or to muse on the lyrical beauty of a blood-splattered sunrise. No, Muk's thoughtful moments were mainly spent wondering why rocks were hard or why rain fell downward instead of sideways. Nonetheless, these rare reflective moments set him leagues apart from his brethren, who were content to live in a world where thoughts were as fleeting as their hygiene.
As Muk stood, his massive frame slightly hunched under the stony archway leading to the ceremonial chamber, he contemplated the hobgoblins' cunning. It was a marvel, really, how these tiny, wiry creatures had managed to persuade him and two of his kin—Brup and Prub—to guard this dreary hole in the ground. The secret to their success would have been embarrassingly simple (if they'd understood the concept of shame): shiny things and promises of 'all the human you can eat.' An offer, Muk mused, that was as tantalizing as it was suspiciously generous.
"Humans are squishy and scream a lot," Muk rumbled, the words reverberating in the damp corridor. "Makes good eatin'."
He nodded, proud of this culinary critique, feeling it was a particularly profound observation for his kind. Humans were indeed a favorite of Muk, but they were not the only types of creature he enjoyed devouring. No, he also liked tasting every one of the creatures that stood on two legs, and most of the ones with four legs, too—oh, and even the no-legs ones. The flappy ones. The swimmy ones. Everything, except, perhaps, other Marrow Ogres, was perfectly palatable as far as he was concerned. Even though there was once when he'd been punched in the mouth by Hup (the Marrow Ogre chief), Muk had accidentally tasted the knuckles of the fist as it crunched through his remaining teeth. He'd considered that it hadn't been too bad of a flavor.
The hobgoblins had been skittering about all day, preparing for something they kept calling a "momentous occasion." They used a lot of words Muk didn't understand, words like "convergence," "portal," and "disgustingly putrid ogres." But he knew they involved something important because the hobgoblins would occasionally point at the pulsating thing in the middle of the chamber and nod significantly.
Muk wasn't sure what the warbling, wriggling little thing was, but it glowed and made a squelchy sound that reminded him of his foot's noise when stepping on particularly juicy bugs. This thought made him slightly hungry, and he wondered if the pulsating thing would taste like the big grubs he saw in sacks of grain or perhaps those spicy sausages the goblin traders sometimes had.
Just as Muk was considering the gastronomic possibilities, he heard a noise—a soft, stealthy kind of sound that was not at all like the clattering, clanging din hobgoblins made when they were up to something. Muk's less-dimwitted-than-the-rest-of-his-kind instincts (a rather low bar, admittedly) tingled with the suspicion of something amiss.
"Gruh…?" he wondered.
He peered down the darkened corridor, his eyes squinting to make out shapes in the gloom. Muk didn't much care for the dark; it was tricky and full of things that even an ogre might bump into painfully.
"Should have more torches," he muttered, which amounted to high strategy by ogre standards.
And then, from the shadows, shapes began to take form—shapes that decidedly did not look like any of his fellow ogres or even the wiry, jittery hobgoblins. Muk's hand instinctively went to the large, crudely fashioned club by his side. The club—named 'Clubby'—was an old friend, a companion through many an argument that Muk had settled in the universally accepted ogre manner—by thumping something until it stopped moving or started agreeing with him.
The shapes moved closer, and Muk prepared to do what Muk did best. He raised Clubby, poised to pound something into senselessness when he saw something move at him from the corner of his eye. Acting instantly, he brought Clubby down at the new thing approaching, only to wind up confused as Clubby suddenly stopped clubbing, freezing in midair. Muk scowled, pushing down and finding resistance.
"Gruh?" he wondered again, applying more of his natural Marrow Ogre strength to his downward blow. He even gripped Clubby with both hands to give it more oomph, but it was useless.
Then, as if the world had decided to throw Muk a curveball (not that Muk knew what a curveball was, but he did know how to dodge a particularly fast-hurled rock, which is somewhat similar), light suddenly erupted nearby—a torch. Wincing from the unexpected brightness, Muk could see a large human standing before him, nearly the size of Muk's younger sister Gurk, with a thick bunch of fur beneath his nose. This human held Clubby in one hand, rooted to the spot like an old oak tree.
The human's grip was like iron, his stance as unyielding as the bedrock, and for a fleeting moment, Muk wondered if he had finally met his match.
Instead of the anger Muk might typically feel upon having his weapon commandeered by a human, a grin split his face. An ogre-strong human! This, he thought, would indeed be a welcome change from the usual squishiness of his adversaries.
The big human smiled, too, as if catching the same wind of excitement that had gripped Muk. He then whispered, though loud enough for Muk's keen ears, "You all go on ahead. I think this 'un and I are about to find out which of us rules this roost."
There were noises from other humans, much smaller and less significant, and the noises were things Muk did not recognize, as ogrekind rarely had the wherewithal to sardonically scoff at a companion. But eventually, Muk found that he and this smaller-than-him, but-not-as-small-as-the-others human were alone in the passageway. The big human took a step back, letting Clubby go, and stretched his muscles, which rippled like the surface of the pond back home when Muk threw stones into it.
Muk wound up, and then, with a roar that echoed down the stony corridors, ogre and human alike charged at one another with all the finesse of a boulder tumbling downhill.
For a philosopher among Marrow Ogres, this was as close to an epiphany as one could get.
---
Garrick's deliberate, almost leisurely tread resonated with thuds through the dank corridors of the ruins, slowly picking at an entire, three-foot wheel of cheese he'd not relinquished from his satchel until now. As he ambled along, his keen eyes missed little, observing the youthful exuberance of his companions with wry amusement. The old mountain hermit's perspective on such matters was seasoned not just by time but by the sheer variety of conflicts he'd witnessed, ranging from the tragic to the farcical. Lately, his life had been filled with the latter.
Why, just moments before, at the very threshold of this shadowy labyrinth, they had encountered the first line of defense: the pair of Marrow Ogres who had taken up rather clumsy guard positions by the entrance. Georgina, ever resourceful with her yarn—which she carried in quantities that suggested she intended to knit a sweater large enough to warm a mountain—had quickly dealt with these two. With a flick of her wrist, she had ensnared both in a net that was as intricate as it was colorful and inescapable.
The ogres, bewildered by this sudden turn of events, had struggled valiantly but futilely. Their efforts to free themselves had only resulted in a comical display of accidental self-sabotage as they managed to knock each other unconscious. It was a spectacle that caused Garrick to raise an eyebrow in amusement and slight admiration at their dungeon delver's ingenuity.
As the group ventured deeper into the gloomy depths, Kerd had apparently decided that mere nets were too subtle for his taste. Instead, he had opted to engage a third ogre in a more direct—and decidedly louder—manner. Garrick considered the situation, leaning against a wall to unstick a pebble from his boot. The younger generation always seemed to thrive on this kind of bravado, expending energy with the boundless optimism of those who have never feared when they'd need some in reserve.
"Kids," he mused under his breath, his voice a whisper lost in the damp air of the labyrinth. "All vigor and vim, but not a drop of discretion."
It was a tale as old as time—youth pitting itself against the world in a test of strength and will.
Yet, Garrick's mind was elsewhere. Beyond the forthcoming sound and fury of Kerd's heroic scuffle, he knew something far more sinister. The ritual that was unfolding in the heart of these ruins posed a real threat, and it was there that his experience and caution urged him to focus.
Only a mistake… he tried to make himself believe. There's no way that it's an actual Fiend embryo. Perhaps it's an echo—like one of those we found below Green Cape Cove back in '92?
He thought about that, though.
Actually…I almost hope it isn't one of those.
The 'echo' varietal of the Fiend embryo were imitation creatures from the Plane of Gray Nothing (which wasn't what the plane was actually called, but Garrick couldn't remember its proper name, and the whole party during that excursion had been calling it that the entire time.) They mimicked Fiends—including the babies, but did not have the same level of Deviant Mantle strength—the energy that Fiends subsisted on—and were not nearly as powerful. Still, they could only be killed with light-based astara, which Garrick was fairly confident none of the Golden Lions possessed.
So…yes, let's hope for it to be a real Fiend embryo, regardless of the implications. At least those can be dispatched a bit more handily.
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Kerd quietly requested that they leave him behind to tussle with the ogre, and though the group found this woefully on-brand for the tribesman, no one seemed interested in depriving him of a good old-fashioned row.
Kufko had darted ahead with a speed that seemed to bend the very shadows to his will, disappearing into the next chamber in a blink.
Dashiell, for his part, was an imposing figure with his Accolade sarissa, a weapon Garrick was sure was as old as the lore of Dova and more storied than Garrick himself. The young leader moved with a purposeful grace, his eyes scanning the dim for any hint of danger, his oversized weapon ready to strike down anything threatening their mission.
Fran lingered for a moment longer by the doorway where Kerd was engaged with the ogre, her expression implacable. Then, with a decisive shake of her head, she turned and stepped into the chamber, her mantle flaring subtly.
As for Georgina, her disappearance was as sudden as it was silent. One moment, she was there, her fingers twitching with the anticipation of action; the next, she was gone, her departure marked by a faint impression of astara.
Last to move, Garrick finally stepped into the threshold of the chamber, his old bones aching slightly from the damp cold of the ruins. The room beyond was vast and dominated by a central dais on which the ritual was presumably taking place. He heard the skirmish and reached out with his own senses to see what was happening—for it was some two hundred feet away from him. He felt the conflict and could understand it in a way that was only borne to someone of this world—or who had, like him, lived here long enough to develop a mastery.
The sounds of fighting surged like the distant roar of a storm at sea. The air was thick with the dust and memories of old astara, the kind that clings to the stones of ancient places like ivy. He paused, grounding himself with the deep, almost instinctual knowledge of his surroundings that comes only with decades of experience in forgotten and forsaken halls.
The skirmish unfolded across the vast space, obscured partially by columns of stone that bore the weight of centuries. The light was dim, the only illumination coming from flickering torches the combatants—Golden Lion and hobgoblin alike—carried. In here, it was heavy with the scent of moss and damp stone, mixed with the sharper tang of astara in use—an acrid, metallic scent that tingled at the back of Garrick's throat.
He closed his eyes briefly, reaching out with his senses even more, extending his awareness beyond the visual and auditory. To an outsider, it might seem like a mere moment of hesitation. Still, to Garrick, it was as if the world expanded, the chamber's secrets whispering to him through the soles of his boots and the palm of his hand holding the wheel of cheese.
Through this extended sense, he could feel the pulsations of energy as Chants were drawn—sharp spikes of power that cut through the ambient astara of the ruins like knives. Fran's precise, controlled bursts of force as she slammed her warclub into a hobgoblin torso; Dashiell's sweeping arcs of energy that spoke of broad strikes with his sarissa; Georgina's quick, nimble threads of astara that darted in and out of the physical fray like a weaver's shuttle.
The clash of metal on stone, the grunt of effort, and the occasional cry of pain or triumph formed a bizarre motley that filled the chamber. These sounds were punctuated by the deeper, more guttural shouts and sinister, sibilant oaths of hobgoblins—each voice adding its own note to the cacophony.
Kufko's presence was like a thunderless flash of lightning—there and not there, a disturbance in the air that one might miss if they blinked. His movements were so swift and silent that they left barely a trace, yet Garrick could feel the displacement, the subtle shifts in air currents that marked his passage.
In this grand chamber, the Golden Lion were introducing an element of combat that the hobgoblins could scarcely contend with—though, were the Golden Lion trying for the kill, it would have been much more one-sided. The air thrummed with the power of their mantles, each a vibrant expression of their Sphere Realms. Garrick moved lightly and continued observing.
Though technically the least potent among them at the High Foundation level, Dashiell commanded his domain with precision, his sarissa moving like a super-sized conductor's baton.
Standing at the precipice of Arch, Fran, her power at the peak of High Pillar, was a study in control and power. Her Chants were deliberate, each cast a clear statement of intent, her astara almost touching the threshold of Arch, promising a depth of power ready to burgeon forth. She'd decided on some form of water-droplet attack—interesting to see. Still, Garrick considered it was likely quite dangerous to experience. Mites of glimmering water appeared in the air and then, as one, moved forward at an incredible speed, smashing against the hobgoblins and peppering them like what the old man might call a 'dark ages shotgun.' It didn't kill them, but it did wear down their resolve.
Georgina and Kufko, both firmly established within the Low Arch realm, showcased their prowess with a flair that was both flamboyant and effective. Georgina's threads of astaran-fused yarn danced through the air, entangling foes with a loom worker's skill. At the same time, Kufko's movements were blurred; his presence felt more in the aftermath of his actions than in observable motions.
An arrow, fired by one of the hobgoblins, went very wide from its mark and sailed across the stretch right at Garrick. Rather than dodge, however, he simply lifted the wheel of cheese, and the arrowhead plunked right in, shielding him.
He looked down at it, then shrugged, and, using two fingers, plucked it out. Then, closing one eye, he aimed. As a hobgoblin made to rattle its skeleton-decorated staff at Fran, likely hoping to inflict some astaran damage, Garrick tossed the arrow—much like one would a paper airplane back home.
SHOOOOOOOOOF!
The arrow fired from Garrick's fingertips and caught the head of the staff, ripping it out of the hobgoblin's stunned grasp and pinning it to a rock another fifty feet off. The hobgoblin paused, looked down at its empty hand, and then at where the staff had gone. Then, probably deciding it was pointless to wonder what had happened, it tore a dagger out of its many belts and advanced. Garrick kept his ambling pace, continuing to watch it unfold.
It wouldn't do to just…do everything, he thought to himself. No one would learn that way.
But it was Tad, the anomaly of their group, who truly mystified Garrick. Full Arch, with whispers of transitioning to High Arch, Tad's mastery of the astara was astonishing. His ability to manipulate the very fabric of the plane, to fold space and conjure portals with casual ease, was a sight to behold.
I see where he earned the nickname, Garrick mused. Riftwalker, indeed.
Tad's interventions were subtle yet dramatic, pulling a hobgoblin through a portal only to appear behind another or redirecting an enemy's attack through a sudden aperture, disorienting and dismantling their formation with almost playful cunning. However, there was a problem.
"Wait!" Garrick suddenly shouted, seeing Tad—in his frenzy of opening and closing—was about to rip open another portal to attack a hobgoblin that had moved directly into the center of where the ritual had been taking place. But Garrick wasn't close enough, still at least a hundred feet away—which he now realized was a stupid choice to make, walking casually. Tad opened the portal. Directly over the Fiend embryo.
There was a sudden rumble, and his team cried out in surprise. Garrick felt the shift in the plane's fabric—a sensation he hadn't experienced in a long, long time.
Shit, he thought.
A colossal tear in the air materialized with the abruptness of an uninvited thought, ripping through the fabric of reality. The vast and imposing gateway gaped ominously—a fifty-foot tall and twenty-foot wide maw that seemed almost affronted by the mere existence of the world around it. As if existence had hiccupped and, in doing so, had accidentally spat out a piece of a nightmare.
The hobgoblins, their glee unabashedly apparent, threw their heads back and let out cries of triumph that resonated with a fervor that could almost be admired for its purity if not for the terrifying implications of their joy. Their shouts mingled with the deep, menacing thrum that emanated from the fissure, filling the cavern with the sound of impending doom.
The rest of the Golden Lion, uniquely valiant but not immune to the primal instinct of fear, cast a collective spike of panic that Garrick could see. Their mantles flickered with the intensity of their emotions, painting the air with ephemeral bursts of color that were beautiful, if somewhat tragic, in their transient splendor.
Dashiell, his expression a mask of resolve shadowed by the unmistakable glint of fear, glanced back at Garrick, seeking reassurance or perhaps guidance in the face of…whatever this happened to be. The others were just as befuddledly horrified. On the other hand, Tad wore a look of embarrassed realization, as if he had just noticed he had contributed most grievously to this event.
And then, huge hands—each the size of Garrick's woodshed—emerged from the rift, gripping its edges with the ease of a child tearing open a gift. The hands heaved, and a figure began to pull itself through the gateway, its presence so massive and intimidating that it seemed to dwarf the very chamber that housed it.
Garrick recognized the misstep in the hobgoblins' ritual with an almost amusing clarity. The good news was that the creature straining through the rift was decidedly not a Fiend. The bad news was that while the hobgoblins had, it seemed, managed to procure enough information to utilize a Fiend embryo, they had spectacularly failed to summon the entity they had intended.
Unless, of course, their goal had been to summon a plane devourer.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" came the deep, resonating roar from within the rift.
The sound was like the very rock itself had been given a voice.
Garrick sighed.
"It's always something."
As the towering plane devourer emerged into the cavern, its visage was an unnerving collage of the grotesque and the weird. Its head, crowned with jagged horns that spiraled skyward, featured a jigsaw of eyes—dozens of them, each blinking out of sync, scattering its gaze in a disconcerting array of directions. Its skin, if one could call it that, appeared as a patchwork of scales and rough, chitinous plates, shifting from a venomous green to a dark, ominous red with every movement. The creature's mouth, a yawning chasm lined with rows of serrated teeth, seemed designed for nothing less than the obliteration of anything unfortunate enough to find its way inside.
The hobgoblins' cheering crescendoed into a triumphant frenzy until the behemoth's head fully crowned, and they caught sight of its ghastly face. Suddenly, their exultant cries hitched in their throats, and silence fell among their number for two whole beats. Then, the noiselessness gave way to a chorus of horrified screams.
The plane devourer—free of the portal up to its chest—let out another roar, this one rippling with malicious delight as it reached down with one gargantuan hand, seizing a hobgoblin who had been too paralyzed by fear to flee. The creature's laugh, a cruel and crooked sound, echoed through the cavern as it hoisted the hobgoblin toward its gaping maw.
"FINALLY!" boomed the beast, reverberating in an unknown yet oddly comprehensible language.
The Planar Tongue, Garrick thought.
"YOU HAVE DONE WELL, TINY BEINGS!" the plane devourer continued, its voice dripping with dark amusement. "NOW, YOUR REWARD IS TO BECOME THE FIRST OF MY ABSORPTION!"
Garrick watched the unfolding horror with a grimace. The faces of his companions were etched with stark terror, their eyes wide, mouths agape. The menacing aura streaming from the plane on the other side of the portal cast a palpable shadow over the room, oppressive and overwhelming. The dread it instilled was a physical weight when combined with the plane devourer's own malicious mantle, pressing down on everyone within its reach.
Garrick knew desperate measures were required. He glanced down forlornly at the wheel of cheese he held, then back up to the creature and again to the cheese. He released a resigned sigh.
As the creature bellowed, it brought the screaming hobgoblin to its lips.
"NOW, I FEED," the plane devourer began, "AND LET ALL HERE KNOW AND HERALD MY COMING, FOR I AM—"
"Nope!"
Garrick moved. He hefted the wheel of cheese and bowled it across the ground. It rocketed along the stone floor, spinning outlandishly fast. It ramped onto the dais, soared through the air with the grace of a decidedly non-aerodynamic object, and crashed directly against the plane devourer's throat.
"—HERE TO—ARGHUHGH!"
It had tried to bellow, but the words became a choked gurgle as it received the launched dairy missile straight to its larynx.
The impact was immediate. The creature shot backward, its grip loosening on the hobgoblin as it soared away, back into the portal. The hobgoblin hit the ground with a squelch, scurrying away and still screaming.
Garrick turned to Tad, shouting over the ensuing chaos.
"Now, Tadanius! Close the rift!"