The temple quaked, the maze beyond shaking, walls tumbling and electrical bursts exploding where they toppled. Cracks ran along the walls, ripping through frescoes eons old. Stone grated on stone, dust spraying into the air like geysers.
In the center of it all, Jeldorain loomed, cackling and raising his clawed hands up in victory. I felt powerless, trapped behind his eyes and looking out, seeing Kevinar desperately shift his gaze this way and that, trying to find an avenue of escape. I shoved again against his consciousness, attempting to take control, only to be rebuffed hard and through to the spiritual limits of our shared body. Everything felt cold there, a desolate spiritual tundra, and I wound myself up, marching back against Jeldorain’s power to the wall that guarded his seat of power.
I couldn’t retake control, but I would lay siege until I could.
Waiting for an opening? That’s your plan?! What a waste of champion you are, Ryan. You will go insane as the millennia go by, your inability to control anything as I retake this world for the infernals will make you desperate. You will plead and beg. But I will bring us the glory your foolishness would have denied us.
I sighed. Though I was shut out from the conscious part of the body, I was close enough to feel uncertainty sluicing through our body. He was at least partially bluffing, and that made me confident that there would be many opportunities sooner than later.
Jeldorain roared, a victorious bellow that quaked with power, and in our shared intellectual space I felt him activate one of our new power, Size of a Tempest. Our body began to morph, grinding and stretching, contorting and surging. Our equipment grew with him, I saw, the armor and weapon matching him as they too ballooned to incredible size. His head and shoulders smashed into the ceiling of the temple, tearing through rock and adding to the volatility of the earthquake that was tearing it asunder.
Beneath us, Kevinar leapt at our ankle, grabbing hold just before Jeldorain kicked in the next power, Cyclonic Journey. Powerful winds formed around us, surging us upwards and ripping through rock, thundering the temple into assured death after its eons of existence. I tried to feel for Kevinar, for the sensation of him clinging to our body as we tore through the rock and out of the top of the hill into the sky, but we’d lost him along the way.
One traitor gone, Jeldorain exulted, bursting through the earth's crust, a shockwave of snow and ice blanketed the surrounding area. The once familiar landscape at the temple's entrance was now an alien terrain, covered in a white shroud. The sky was light-blue with morning, a friendly and fresh scent on the air in direct contrast to the situation unfolding underneath it.
Peering down at the ground, both of us viewed battle on pause, an adventuring party of goblins and my own companions staring up at us from a ground now blanketed by snow.
Hovering like some eldritch god, a behemoth of ice and storm, Jeldorain moved closer to them. “Behold the dawn of a new era!” he bellowed, dropping the cyclone and landing near them. Unexpectedly his feet sank deep in the muddy mulch of the land, causing him to curse quite colorfully.
The two parties glanced at each other and parted, regrouping a distance away from each other. As I watched, the professionally geared goblins took defensive positions on another hill as my own companions pulled back into the lip of deeper treeline.
A single figure strode forward rather than retreating. Jeldorain stared at him, amazement coursing through his body, as Ike walked to where he was standing, and showed empty hands.
“So am I talking to Ryan, or am I talking to Jeldorain?” he asked. I watched him, admiring the fact that I saw no fear gleaming in his eyes and no run in his step. “Because if I’m talking to Jeldorain, well, I’d like to hope that he understands we’re all in this together.”
“Get out of here, Ike,” Jeldorain said, surprising me. “We aren’t enemies.” I felt his resolve falter, looking down at the tiny kobold with something that felt like hopeful friendship. A part of me thought to attack my consciousness now, but I hated to think what would happen if I did and I failed. I watched, wondering what would happen next.
“Jeldorain. I see. Well, I don’t blame you. I’d try to take my body back too if goblins stuffed some human into it. Is Ryan dead?”
“He’s in here,” Jeldorain answered, almost shyly, his mind a chaos of confused feelings and urges.
Ike peered left and right. “And Kevinar?”
“An agent sent by the goblins to tame us. I left him to his doom,” Jeldorain growled. Movement caught the corner of our eye, noticed by me but not by my host, and I noticed Schustak staring angrily in our direction, muttering the words to some magical ritual.
No, I accidentally muttered. Jeldorain frowned.
As the scene had unfolded, Schustak, the goblin swamp druid, materialized next to the towering Jeldorain. With a swift, fluid motion, he conjured his Bolt of Submission. A vivid, pulsating green energy crackled in his hand, intensifying into a brilliant bolt. With a sharp flick of his wrist, he released it, the bolt streaking through the air with a sizzling sound.
“Kneel before the might of the swamp!” Schustak declared, his voice a mix of confidence and command.
The energy bolt struck Jeldorain squarely in the face. For a moment, it seemed as if the spell would take hold, the green energy spreading rapidly to envelop his entire body in a shroud of electric light. But then, with a roar of defiance, Jeldorain resisted the enforced submission. The energy dissipated harmlessly against his immense form, leaving him unbowed.
“You think such tricks can subdue me?” Jeldorain had bellowed, his voice thundering across the battlefield.
Enraged by the audacity of the attack, Jeldorain lashed out at Schustak. His icearigama, motes of electrical ice storms swirling around it, descended towards the druid with frightening speed. Schustak stared at the attack, grimacing, and with a wave of one arm a dome of thorns grew over his location, blocking him from sight. The impact resonated with a thunderous clash.
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The attack acted as a catalyst. The other goblin adventurers – a mage, a warrior, a rogue, and a cleric, judging by their gear, – charged down from the hill with a battle cry. They moved with a unified purpose, their weapons and spells ready.
“We are here for you, druid!” called the warrior, leading the charge with his ax raised high.
From the periphery of my vision, I witnessed the formidable charge of Jon the Centaur, the dark wood and gleaming silver of it flashing in the light as he tore through snow and mud, the runes of it glowing brightly. Behind him ran Brandosyeus, much slower and well distant, but the determination etched on his face told me he wasn’t out of the fight.
A blast of flame exploded near Jon, setting his flank afire, and I traced the spell back to its origin, seeing the goblin mage weaving a circle of flame over his head. Jon dropped and rolled in the snow, getting back to his feet and altering the path of his charge in no time. It was a shocking thing to watch, seemingly almost impossible, and the goblin seemed to feel the same way as he dropped his spell in shock and ran back towards the rest of his group, screaming. But the centaur was too quick, and he pierced the mage through, leaving it to struggle on its end as he turned to fight the goblin party once again.
What is happening? I asked Jeldorain, surprised. They were supposed to be fighting us, not each other.
They are vermin. This is what vermin do. There is a reason the infernals ruled here. And a reason they should rule here again.
I watched as hooves and feet pounded the snow-covered ground, stirring up flurries of white. The goblin warrior leaped an unnatural height, wrestling the lance from Jon’s grasp, and the rogue tried to slide under him, angling to attack soft horse’s belly. But the centaur ignored the loss of his lance, his fist growing ten times its normal size and smashing the rogue into the slushed mud before him.
A new flash of movement caught my eyes. Ike was before us, a potion in each hand. “Didn’t want to have to do this, Jeldorain. Kinda respect free will. But you two, you’ve got to learn to work together.” Both flasks smashed against our skin, sizzling, and for a moment I could feel weakness in Jeldorain. I seized the chance and pushed against him to reassert control.
Around us the battlefield had become a maelstrom of action. The goblin mage was off of the lance, and he wove spells, hurling bursts of arcane energy at Jon. The warrior stood in front of the centaur, swinging his ax back and forth with lethal precision, while the rogue had fallen back, stumbling, and was now equipped with a short bow. The cleric, chanting incantations, conjured shields of light to protect her allies.
Brandosyeus sang, and a legion of snowmen rose from the ground, further complicating the battle.
Within Jeldoratin, my soul wrestled with him, rolling through the chambers of his body, past the beating behemoth of his frozen heart, falling to the chilled stink of his bowels.
Give me back my body! I screamed, tearing at him. We were both mercurial beings, wrapping and jabbing at each other with force of spirit alone. He swarmed over me, attempting to consume me, but I slid out and countered, swarming over the icy-sheen of his id.
Mine! he bellowed. It’s mine! Give it to me!
A crackle of green energy tore over our body, the energies of Schustak again compelling us to drop to our knees before him. Ike stood, his weapon ready, staring at us with eyes both wide and sympathetic.
And Jeldorain bolted upwards, my own soul stuck to his as we both occupied the seat of consciousness together. Before I could understand what was happening, he activated Soul Sync and an electrical blizzard ripped through the land in every direction.
“I bow to no mortals!” Jeldorain cried, his former anger now desperate and filled with pain. I could feel the icy tingle of tears on his face, freezing a second after they formed, and I recoiled in horror at the reality of what the infernal must be going through.
I’m sorry. I have no choice.
On the battlefield, everything was an opaque swirling mess of damage. I couldn’t see further out than Ike, who lay huddled on the ground under a large tower shield that the man must have kept in his inventory. It was already covered in ice, and sparks crackled over its surface.
I looked on the broken soul of Jeldorain, weaker than I’d ever seen him, curled and weeping at the edge of our shared mind. In that moment I knew I could push him out, shove him hard and fast back into the depths of his own body to watch powerlessly as I piloted him about the world, a marionette dancing to the strings of a human.
It was tempting. Visions of my wife danced before my eyes, my son and daughter beside her.
Reaching out, I laced a tendril of my soul around him and pulled him into the center next to me.
We do all of this together. As a team. No more prisons, no more submission. There will be rules for both of us, set by us. And together, we’ll both find a way to fix this mess. Deal?
Jeldorain stood, rising up above me. He stared at me, at the nudity of my human form, a million thoughts flashing through his crystal blue eye. Deals with infernals are bound spiritually in a way that will destroy the one who breaks them. His head cocked, he turned and looked out at the dying magic of our soul-synched spiritual blast. I accept, oh great champion. We will make a Devil’s Bargain out of it, and work together to fix what has been broken.
Around us the crackling energy and risen winds disappated, revealing cracked earth, tremendous snow mounds, and three unmoving bodies. One, I saw with horror, was equine in nature, lying next to the other two. Standing under a dome of fiery-red light, the cleric and the mage stared, their faces a mix of horror and disbelief. And stumbling in their direction was Schustak, his stumbling form frailer than I’d ever even imagined it could be.
[Achievement Unlocked: Fragging]
+50 XP
Objective: Kill a party member.
Brandosyeus had reached Jon and was bent over the body frantically singing songs and slinging light into the centaur’s flanks. While Ike was simply a frozen shield on the ground, a being both alive and dead as far as I could tell. We’d have to pull that shield up and see what was underneath it. I felt a sad dread wash over me, and was surprised to realize it was a feeling shared by both of us.
We must see, Jeldorain prompted. His arm reached forward under his will, and I watched silently as he tore the shield out from its icy casing, revealing the shivering and ill-looking form of the very much alive kobold.
“He-he-healing. Heat,” Ike pleaded through chattering teeth, his voice quiet and weak. As I knelt down, pouring one then another healing potion down his throat, notifications flashed in my sight.
VICTORY! 6000 XP rewarded!
LEVEL UP!
I’d have to deal with it later, I realized, as I saw that whatever debuff had taken hold of Ike wasn’t allowing my potions to do their thing.
“Schustak!” I yelled as Jeldorain cast about, looking for some means by which to start a fire. “Schustak!” I yelled again.
The druid turned, his eyes hostile despite their fatigue. “You win, infernal. We were wrong to think we could control you. I am leaving now, and when we meet again, it will be to put you down.”
Having reached the other goblins, the mage opened a swirling portal of blue and white, and they stepped through, the portal snapping shut behind them.
You were right, Jeldorain.
I felt him affirm it without words as he marched over to where Brandosyeus worked his magic, carrying the dying form of our friend. Only one thing gave me any hope from the whole mess — the fragging achievement hadn’t appeared when Kevinar disappeared, and that made me think he might still be alive.