3: THAT’S HOW IT GOT ITS NAME (2150)
Nico stared at the Radiant at the center of the cultist camp.
Two of the most dangerous enemies we could ever encounter, and they’re both here.
This situation was way, way bigger than he’d expected, and he’d already anticipated it could turn deadly.
Maybe we shouldn’t be here.
The Radiant’s eerily alien-sounding series of tones reached a crescendo. Its form of light pulsed, flashed, and suddenly expanded. Bits of darkness, like scraps of shattered stone or metal shackles, went flying.
They’d had it bound, somehow. The cultists had been holding the Radiant prisoner.
“Morediel.” Jenae only breathed the word. It brought everything Nico was struggling to comprehend into sharp focus.
The faction to which Jenae and Nico both belonged, the Order of the Golden Bough, was dedicated to the service of Sol, Provider of Truth Unflinching. All of the nation of Soleon operated under Sol’s patronage, for that matter.
The Radiant Morediel, Maul of Eternity, did not operate directly under Sol’s command. But he had sometimes served as an ally.
Relief welled up in Nico. Radiants were as unpredictable as they were powerful, but at the very least it might not consider them direct enemies worthy of smiting without a second thought.
Morediel lifted his blazing hands. Golden energy blasted nearly straight up the center of the tower’s hollow interior.
Panic returned to Nico’s throat. If the Radiant was shooting at something up there, it could only mean…
The light from the magical blast illuminated nothing. But the energy stopped and spread out as if it met with an object, just the same.
Morediel’s wings, like vast flickering flames on his back, stirred the air and sent cultists shouting and running away from him. He lifted into the air, following the course of the energy bolt he’d just fired.
Dust thickened the air, darkening the magic’s fading light. The black dragon made no sound as it reformed in midair over the cultist camp. As Morediel flew at her, Saqra the Veil lashed out with her sinuous tail. Even as the tail’s dark whip connected with Morediel’s side, knocking him off course, Saqra snapped and clawed at him with teeth and talons.
Morediel’s deafening, discordant notes rang out once more, a sound of pain that was like no voice Nico had ever heard before.
“What are they doing?” At Adan’s murmured question, Nico lowered his gaze from the terrifying sight of the fight unfolding over their heads.
On the ground, not all the cultists had fled from the escaping Radiant. On the camp’s far side, several robed figures had gathered at the bases of twin dragon statues. Between the two serpentine stone figures now floated an orb that to Nico resembled a giant, pure black soap bubble. Its surface shimmered with half-visible colors, ceaselessly moving.
Not a soap bubble. A black hole.
Whether that was what it really was or not, Nico instinctively understood that whatever he was looking at, it was not a good thing.
He wasn’t the only one to think so, apparently. Beside him, Jenae lifted that wicked-looking snake-decorated cudgel of hers. “This is why we’re here, my friends.”
“I’m not sure,” Adan started to say.
Before Adan could finish, a shadow detached itself from the base of a rubble pile and shifted forward. A dog, was Nico’s first thought, but something about it looked wrong—it seemed more a collection of loose rocks that ground together as it moved than like a solid creature. Behind where it might have had eyes, an ominous green-gray glow began.
Like the dragon above them, the creature made no noise as it approached. Nico thought of the petrified sentries they’d left behind and quickly averted his gaze from the creature.
“Don’t look at it,” Nico muttered as a reminder.
Time seemed to slow, and Nico’s ability to move slowed with it, but those were familiar sensations of the game’s turn-based mechanics setting in. Obviously, the stone creature had seen them and was hostile.
We’re in it, now.
Ghost dice rolled. Text floated into Nico’s vision and out again.
[You rolled a 4 for Initiative.]
Nico couldn’t have cursed if he’d wanted to, but he definitely wanted to.
At the bottom edge of his vision, a small tactical map opened, providing an overhead view of the area where he and the rest of his party stood. Grid lines marked off neat squares. The one beside Nico, where Jenae stood, lit up with a blue glow.
At least one of us rolled well.
With her free hand, Jenae made a crisp gesture. A sharp scent like electricity burned Nico’s eyes. His vision brightened.
[You have gained the Heroic condition.]
Nico had worked with Jenae long enough to know that was a good thing. It would protect him from a handful of not-so-good conditions and give him a little hit point boost.
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Jenae aimed a similar gesture at Esperanza. Without ever looking at either Esperanza or Nico, Jenae calmly crossed the rocky ground on an intercept path with the oncoming stone-dog. She kept her head turned slightly away from the creature, though, Nico noticed.
Jenae’s movement turned into that special kind of slow motion which meant her turn had ended. Her blue square on the tactical map blinked out. Another square, much larger and glowing a soft gray, lit over the camp, dotted around the edges instead of solid.
Overhead and neutral.
That matched the small amount of information Nico knew about Morediel. Overhead, Morediel’s wings flared a bright gold that deepened to red. In the air all around him, flames burst forth and showered down. Most of the fire storm centered around Saqra, but bonfire-sized flames pelted the ground, as well. Cultists screamed. Tents exploded.
Nico squinted against the fiery display and thanked Sol and every other god, in game or otherwise, that he and his party hadn’t made it any further into the tower’s large central area.
One hit from that fire storm, and we’d all be dead.
Adan’s turn came up. The towering, black-haired man peered up at the Radiant and Dragon clashing overhead and then across the room toward the expanding black orb with not quite as many cultists now gathered around it. Burning tents partially obscured the orb now, too.
Adan clapped a large hand on Nico’s shoulder. “Keep the faith, my young friend.”
[You have gained the Inspired condition.]
Drawing his black falcata, Adan charged past Nico and in the same direction Jenae had gone. He didn’t go for the stone-dog, though, but off to the side. Only when the falcata raised and fell and the clank of metal against metal rang out did Nico see the cultist half-hidden by a tent. The blade of his sword met and blocked Adan’s falcata.
The figures of other cultists surged forward, emerging like shadows from the licking flames of burning tents. One robed figure gestured, and the air beside Nico stirred with the musty scent of an old grave. Dust rose from the floor, coalescing to form spurs of sharp stone that writhed through the air like a spiked chain.
The chain of stone spikes whipped toward Nico. Frozen by the turn-based gameplay’s paralysis, he instinctively tried to move his body, anyhow.
[Cultist of the Veil uses Stone Whip on you. Hit!]
[You take 4 damage.]
Pain flared along Nico’s forearm, more realistically than he’d have preferred but not life-threatening.
I can live with it.
Other cultists moved in on the party, as well. Three closed around Adan, and his falcata spun to block their blows—most of them, anyhow. One short sword struck past Adan’s guard.
[Adan takes 5 damage.]
Then the stone-hound surged forward, its body shifting like a rockslide. The hound’s eyes glowed, but Adan’s back was to it. Its snout lunged forward. It opened its mouth and emitted a dull green cloud of what looked like smoke or dust.
Beneath the cloud, Adan’s breastplate and exposed flesh turned gray and then cracked. Blood seeped from the fissures of hundreds of small cuts.
[Adan takes 18 damage.]
Nico’s breath caught. He only had 37 hit points total. Adan couldn’t be too far off from that. If they let it, that hound would mow through their entire group in no time.
In the battle between Morediel and Saqra which was unfolding overhead, golden light and stony darkness clashed. Morediel’s chiming cries bounced off a silence so utter that it was nearly a sound.
The sound of nothing.
The black dragon coiled and uncoiled, massive leathery wings beating with surreal slowness. Saqra opened her mouth, but no roar followed. A cloud of dust and stone not terribly different from the one the hound had just spit at Adan flooded from Saqra’s maw and billowed around Morediel. Errant tendrils drifted toward the camp below.
Golden light dulled and struggled against Saqra’s encircling breath. As the cloud fell across the camp, more cultists screamed and bled and fell. Maybe the mortals following Saqra valued her, but it didn’t seem like the feeling was mutual.
Except, even as Nico thought that, he realized that not all the cultists screamed and tried to run. At least two, both robed and standing near the black hole orb, lifted their arms and waited for the deadly mist to touch them. Their entire bodies turned gray and fell still. Fissures crackled along the surface of the statues they’d become.
And then they simply fell apart, broken stone falling to the already rubble-covered floor and dust drifting up to mingle with the cloud which had killed them. A similar fate overtook those trying to run, the tents touched by the cloud, even the lingering radiant flames of Morediel’s fire storm.
That’s how it got its name. The Tower of Dust.
“Maybe…” Nico struggled against turn paralysis to spit out the words. “Maybe don’t go running out under the big fight,” he called out to the rest of the party.
Esperanza’s square on the tactical map lit. She stood just behind and to Nico’s right. He pushed against the turn-based paralysis and ticked his head far enough to glimpse her. Her hood, as always, hid her face, but her head tilted back as if she watched Saqra and Morediel clash.
For a moment, Nico thought she intended to do nothing more than that. Eventually, though, moving in her odd, shuffling way, she moved around Nico and paused. Her spellcasting was a tangle of whispers and dull silver light that seemed to flow in motes from her entire body and not just her hands.
A swirl of magic encircled a cultist standing several feet beyond those engaged with Adan. Esperanza’s target made no sound and showed no visible sign of injury. Nico couldn’t tell if her spell had worked as intended or not. Then she flowed a few more steps and vanished into the darkness beyond a tent.
Esperanza’s square darkened. Nico’s lit.
Finally!
The Heroic condition Jenae had put on Nico flared.
[You have gained 4 hit points.]
The cut across his forearm closed up, immediately healed. The chain of stone spikes which had caused the injury hovered nearby, but Adan’s situation seemed more important. Nico leaned into the AGI-heavy aspect of his class and sprang into action.
Maybe I can make up for some of my previous fail. Just don’t look at the dog.
Nico’s feet barely touched the ground as he spun into place, flanking one of Adan’s attackers. Angling his body to avoid any unintentional eye contact with the stone-dog, he swung his blade-tipped staff.
[You used Melee Attack on Cultist of the Veil. 20 hits!]
[Cultist of the Veil takes 12 damage.]
That was a lot of damage. After a second, Nico realized the Inspired condition had provided some extra points. The cultist grunted in pain and started to turn.
Not done yet!
Nico followed the slash of his staff with a butt-end swing, just like he’d been trained.
[You used Unarmed Attack on Cultist of the Veil. 14 hits!]
[Cultist of the Veil takes 9 damage.]
[Cultist of the Veil has died.]
As the cultist fell, Nico allowed momentum to carry him forward, so that the follow-up kick instead drove toward the cultist to the left of Adan.
[You used Unarmed Attack on Cultist of the Veil. 22 hits!]
[Cultist of the Veil takes 7 damage.]
Punching and kicking other people had the potential to cause as much pain to Nico as to his target, but his class and abilities turned his hands and feet in ways that minimized the impact on himself and maximized it on his enemies.
No physical strength required. So there, Dad.
Overhead, Saqra’s utter silence hung heavily between the single, mournful notes of Morediel’s voice. Odd as the almost-music was, the blood running through Nico’s veins seemed suddenly to thrum in tune with it. A warmth rushed through Nico, not unlike the touch of Sol’s magic which Nico could sometimes wield.