1st Day of the 1st Quarter of the Reaper’s
Moon, Season of Mists, Year 766.
Days in Barovia: 11. The moon wanes
gibbous.
The
Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling
Dickie
crushed the topaz bead and released its magic. Over the next minute, as the
magic took effect, they underwent a very strange transformation. Slowly, their
bodies- hair, teeth, flesh- their clothing, their weapons- the raven perched on
Elliana’s shoulder- everything; began to turn into mist. It started slowly,
gradually spreading through their form, until at the end of the minute they
were barely corporeal accumulations of fog, roughly cohesive to the shape they
had held before.
The
Bullingdon Boys could not speak, with no functioning vocal chords, although they
could still just see each other. And they were no longer bound by the weight of
their bodies. With the ease of thought their gaseous forms rose into the air,
and soon they were all executing exhilerating aerobatics- Dickie for the second
time in his life, the rest of them for the first.
Maintaining
rough cohesion as a group they rose into the sky above mount ghakis. All of
Barovia lay before them, the beacon of Argynvost a brilliant star revealing the
land below. The luna river swept from the bridge spanning the gorge up the
valley, through the ruins of Berez and past the dragon’s mansion. To the north
the Abbey of Saint Markovia perched above Krezk; Lake Zarovich was a dark
stain, Vallaki a barely visible blot.
And to the
east, looming over the land like a great black bat atop a pillar of stone seven
hundred feet high, the Castle. Ravenloft. And in the deepest pit, the devil’s
tomb, their final battle with Strahd.
Unable to
talk, they managed to coordinate and began to move east- and they flew, swift
as a storm, around and above the mountain, towards the castle in the far
distance. The land was a blur below, and the Bully Boys soared towards their
target not having to navigate their way down the mountain, through valleys, up
hills, around lakes; not having to ford rivers and not bound to winding trails.
How it was to fly above the world unbound, and how close the castle seemed!
The beacon
of Argynvostholt moved from their north to north west to west; they soared over
Tser Falls where the water of the Ivlis river crashes down into the pool where
they had their fortunes read what seemed so long ago, to pass the village of
Barovia; and in less than an hour; maybe less than half an hour, they were
closing on Castle Ravenloft.
Thunder
rumbled and the clouds grew thick around their misty forms. Huge hailstones
began to fall around them, lightning crashed so close that they were blinded
for a moment. The wind around them reeled and howled. Through the sleet and
hail and cloud, illuminated by garish lightning, they could see the castle.
Huge and batlike, black and foreboding, perched upon a gigantic pillar of
stone, the castle loomed over the surrounding landscape. A bridge spanned the
chasm to the west of the pillar, connecting the castle to the land; to the
east, the pillar fell away for hundreds and hundreds of feet to the village of
Barovia, a tiny spec below.
Cornelius’
mist-form pantomimed to the others, and they descended upon the castle to land
before the chasm, before the bridge, before twin turrets of stone, broken from
years of exposure. Beyond the guard towers the precipice of the wide,
fog-filled chasm disappeared into unknown depths. The awesome presence of
Castle Ravenloft towered above them.
A lowered
drawbridge of old, shored-up wooden beams stretched across the chasm, between the
Bullingdon Boys and the archway to the courtyard. The chains of the drawbridge
creaked in the wind, their rust-eaten iron straining under the weight. From
atop the high walls, stone gargoyles stared down from hollow eye sockets, grinning
hideously. A rotting wooden portcullings, green with growth, hung above the
entry tunnel. Beyond this location, the main doors of Ravenloft stood open. A
rich, warm light spilled from within, flooding the courtyard. Torches fluttered
sadly in sconces either side of the open doors.
Their forms
regathered, and the across the bridge from the castle the Bullingdon Boys
slowly became corporeal again.
“Is everybody here?” Cornelius asked.
“I seem to be,” said Paris, as Elliana
nodded.
Dickie was
looking up at the castle; up, and up, and up. “Blimey. Sure is a lot of that.”
“Are you all prepared for what is to come?”
“Quite,” said Elliana with confidence.
Paris
whispered so that his daughter could not hear. “For quite a long time I really did hope that we were just pretending
we were going to do this.”
“No Paris. There is no other way. If you
wish to return to Saxonia, we must do this. Now, can you do that thing where
you make people’s voices louder on me?”
“Most definitely!” Paris waved his hands
theatrically, shouted a few nonsense words and Cornelius’ eyes glowed with
magical power as his voice was amplified.
The last of
the Bullingdons turned to the castle. “Hear
me now, Strahd! This time, we are the ones who have come for you! It is I, your
hated foe- KING Cornelius Pfeffil the First of Barovia, and YOU are a squatter
in MY domain!” His voice boomed across the chasm, echoing off the walls of
the silent castle. “Now I come to cast
you down! But I do not come alone. For I bring with me: Paris Digby, the mighty
wizard, who will flatten these walls with a flick of his wrists!”
“Hurrah!” Paris shouted.
“I bring also, my loyal and noble manservant
Richard, who with his wicked dagger will cut your throat and flay your hide! I
come also with the last of the Spency Squad, who you tried to kill, but who
escaped your grasp- Elliana… Something.”
“In Anslem’s name you will not live to see
another day!” Elliana cried.
“But these, Strahd, are not my only
companions today, oh no. For I have brought an army; an army that will bring
you to heel once and for all.”
Cornelius
drew forth the silver horn of Argynvost and held it above his head. “Look upon my horn, ye mighty, and despair!”
He put the
instrument to his lips and blew three times.
Uuuuhooooo.
Uuuuhooooo.
Uuuuuuuhoooooooooo.
The bright
notes rang clear. As the final note lingered, there was a pregnant pause…
And then,
coalescing in the air behind them was a splendid phalanx of knights, ghost-blue
spirits in prisitine armour on barded destriers, shields and caparisons bearing
the crest of the silver dragon. At their head was Vladimir Horngaard, the lord
commander of the Order of the Silver Dragon. A knight by his side carried an
enormous standard, the silver dragon emblazoned upon it given life by the
rippling wind.
As Cornelius
turned to regard the host, Horngaard spoke. “So.
It is time?”
“Yes, you kitschy knights of the dragon. It
is time to have your revenge!”
“Very well.” He turned his horse,
raising his enormous sword above his head single handed. “Arise! Arise, Knights of Argynvost! Fell deeds await! Long centuries
we have waited! Now, we act! Spears shall be shaken! Shields shall be
splitnered! And Argynvost will be avenged! Ride forth! Ride forth, and fear not
the darkness! ARGYNVOST!”
And as a
single voice the spectral host cried “ARGNYVOST!”
and charged towards the bridge, towards Castle Ravenloft, a stream of ghostly
horses and men flowing around the Bullingdon Boys.
The Silver
Order was a distraction. The Bullingdon Boys had no intention of joining a
frontal assault; they would instead revert back to their misty forms while the
magic lingered, and fly to the tallest tower wherein lay the heart of
Exethanter.
As they
underwent the weird shift of form once again, Elliana asked, “Who are these dragon fetishes?”
“Good chaps, they’ll be a lot of help I
think,” Dickie replied, his hands becoming fog.
“Useful idiots,” Cornelius told her, “Just, don’t get in their way.”
As they
transformed, the Bullingdon Boys bore witness to the Silver Order’s assault on
Ravenloft. The tide of silver-blue spirits crashed over the bridge in a perfect
formation, and there was a phantom cry, the twin of the horn Cornelius had
blown. The knights’ charge carried them into the courtyard, where they spread
in a wider formation, and the half-mist Bully Boys saw the tip of the spear
reach the open doors of Ravenloft and without stopping fly up the stairs and
into the castle…
And from the
darkness within, the knights were rebuked, the line buckling then surging
forward once again as some force beyond greeted them. As the charge lost
momentum and the fight pressed into the castle knights began leaving their
horses, and as the Bully Boys rose into the air they saw the host pushing,
pushing, into the maw of the great castle, swallowed and out of sight.
They flew
upwards, hundreds of feet above the walls of the castle, up and around and
above the trio of tall towers that stood as a cluster over the huge structure.
Cornelius, Paris and Dickie recognised the structures from the model of the
castle in the Amber Temple: southeast, a tall tower with a conical roof, no
windows or doors apparent; to the north, the tallest tower wherein lay the
heart, and some way down the face of this tower, a bridge connecting to the
flat roof of the third, southern, shortest spire.
As they
approached, Dickie communicated his intention by flying around the top of the
tallest tower, not descending to the obvious doorway. The others eventually
caught on and gathered around him.
The tower
roof was rimmed with battlements intermittently spaced with hideous stone
gargoyles. As they approached, lightning flashed, and grotesque stone faces
lurched into life; the gargoyles stiffly lifting themselves, their stone wings
spreading as they rose into the party’s midst, hands outstretched with razor
sharp claws. They lunged towards the Bully Boys…
And dove,
down towards the courtyard, ignorant to their presence as near-invisible mist,
swooping down in answer to some summons from the battle below.
The Bully
Boys alighted on the roof and once again took solid form. They resumed their
natural forms on the slick flagstones, pelted by hail and rain. What Dickie has
seen was a trapdoor on the roof; this he investigated cautiously, and finding
it unlocked and apparently not trapped, threw open. Rivulets of rainwater
trickled from the roof into the pitch black room below.
Elliana
moved to descend first, but Cornelius stopped her. “Woah there, Elliana,” Cornelius said, “traditionally it’s Dickie who goes first through the doors. We
wouldn’t want to take that privilege away from him now!”
Dickie eyed
up Elliana, in her full set of steel plate. “Now
now, if the young lady in her very strong looking armour wants to go first I’m
quite happy-“
“Dickie, be a gentleman,” Paris said, “this is my daughter! The least you could do
is go fir- hey, you come back here young lady!” Elliana had pushed forward
and slid down the ladder, hands and feet to either side of the rungs.
Dickie went
into the trapdoor head-first and slithered off sideways, along the ceiling. Not
batting an eye, Cornelius climbed down the ladder, followed by a muttering
Paris.
Elliana
unsheathed her sword, which glowed dimly, shedding some illumination around
her. “You call that light? This is light,
my girl!” and Cornelius’ holy symbol blazed radiantly to reveal a dreary
room with manacles attached to the walls. In the middle of the room was a bed
fitted with leather restraints, and at the foot of the bed was an embossed iron
chest. A stairwell curled around the tower wall, leading downward.
“That’s a pretty ugly sigil,” Paris
said, pointing to the iron chest which bore a hideous bat-like crest.
“Well, it’s better than having dragons
everywhere,” Cornelius replied. “Dickie, open that chest.”
Dickie
casually strode to the floor, down the wall from the ceiling. The chest was
locked but popped open after a moment under his fingers. Within was a
bejewelled golden crown resting on a silk pillow. He raised it up to show his
companions.
Cornelius’
eyes lit up. “Stick it on my head,
Dickie! About time I had some proper regalia.”
“Paris, could you give it a look over to see
if there’s nasty magic?” Paris did, and found the item to be completely
mundane.
“Come on, crown me!” Cornelius demanded.
Paris was
uncertain. “I don’t know, seems like the
kind of thing you’d get Dickie to do?”
“No, Paris. You are a mighty wizard, and it
is by your wizardly authority you will crown me king of Barovia.”
“Does that make me… Like, the bishop?”
“It makes you something.”
“Well, in that case… I, mighty wizard, Paris
Digby, do proclaim thee king Cornelius Pfeffil Bullingdon the First, of
Barovia!”
“Bully! Bully! Bully!” demanded King
Cornelius.
“Oi! Oi! Oi!” his loyal subjects
replied.
“Every minute we’re here, Saxonia feels
closer to coming back under my grip,” Cornelius said softly with a smile.
“Every minute we linger, the closer Strahd
gets to defeating your horde of dragon-fetishists,” Elliana said, making
her way to the stairs.
Bleeding
Hearts
From below,
they could hear the familiar lub-dub, lub-dub of an enormous heart. Behind
Elliana, Dickie drew his sword and dagger, the sunlight blade springing to
life. Paris, not wanting to be last, tried to follow but Cornelius elbowed him
aside.
A reddish
light flared, settling into a dull pulsing glow illuminating the full immensity
of the tower: the spiral staircase descending some two hundred feet, the tower
wider at the base and narrowing as it climbed. Before them, suspended by
grotesque veins clinging to the ceiling, hanging above the two hundred feet of
empty space in the core of the tower, was an enormous heart pulsating with red
light. The heart of Exethanter.
Dickie
caught sight of concealed recesses in the walls along the stairwell around the
heart; tall alcoves, with a faint glimmer of blades. Some sort of trap. “Careful, something on the walls,” he
said, as he crawled onto the ceiling and started to slice through a huge vein
with the Sunsword. Enchanted flesh sizzled as the light-blade began to cut
through it.
As Dickie
moved away, Cornelius used the space in front of him to make a running jump,
out over the abyss and onto the gigantic organ. Clinging to it with his legs,
he began to batter the flesh, his fists coming away bloody.
And then the
tower responded.
The whole
structure began to pitch and throw wildly, lurching one way then another.
Cornelius held on to the heart, Dickie maintained his balance upside down on
the ceiling, and Paris clung to the stairs; but Elliana, in her full plate, was
thrown from the balcony into empty space.
From the
hidden recesses Dickie had spied, poles extended with wicked blades at their
ends; these animated halberd began flailing at the space on the stairwell
around the heart.
As Elliana
fell, her raven fluttered away from her shoulder, squawking with indignation. A
flash of light surrounded her and she decelerated, defying gravity and gently
floating downward. She reached out one hand and a lash of lightning wrapped
around the pole of the lowest halberd. She swung towards it, one hand grasping
the edge of the stairs as the magical whip sheared through the blade of the
animated weapon; her weight jerked her down but she managed to raise her other
hand, and heave herself up on to the stairwell,
a full turn of the tower away from where her father clung to the top of
the stairs.
Paris
crouched down on the stairs as the tower heaved this way and that, frost
licking from his wand to strike the heart- “How
about a… heart attack!” he cried- as with his other hand he summoned the
Golden Bully Sword. The sword floated over to the nearest halberd and battered
into it, bending prongs out of shape.
Dickie’s
blades- one of sunlight, one of wicked metal- flashed, and he sliced clean
through two of the huge flesh-tubes holding the heart to the ceiling. Blood
sprayed all over the rollicking tower as the heart swung ponderously, and then
the other veins suspending the heart tore free from the ceiling, and with
Cornelius still astride it the heart began to fall.
The tower
stopped its shaking, freezing at a weird pitch, the halberds stopped writhing,
and Cornelius and the dead heart fell.
“Dickiiiie!” Cornelius cried as he fell;
Elliana threw out a hand, and the rate of his descent slowed to a gentle
floating fall as green light ensconced him. “Dickie?”
Cornelius called again after a moment, as the initial excitement of the
fall wore off. Dickie began to run down the wall of the tower, racing after his
falling master. The manservant threw a rope, which came tumbling past
Cornelius; he grabbed it, but the other end slipped through Dickie’s hands, and
the whole rope fell past Cornelius.
The floor
still rose towards Cornelius, quite quickly but not terrifyingly so. He
impacted the ground, the heart beneath him, and was coated in blood and gore as
the soft organ ruptured. “I feel… Icky,” he
said, as Dickie walked down the wall towards him.
A few feet
away from Cornelius was a descending stairwell, and two creatures emerged,
frantic and panicking, shouting “The
tower! The tower! The heart! The master!”
“No! No!” Elliana heard, as a third
creature emerged on the landing near her, far above Cornelius and Dickie, where
the bridge outside joined to the shorter tower’s rooftop.
The three
were humanoid, pale, pathetic-looking with clawed hands and sharp canine teeth
prominent. The Bullingdon Boys had fought their like before; vampiric spawn of
Strahd.
Those on the
ground floor stopped, hissing, as the radiance of Dickie’s sword fell upon
them. Needing no more prompting, he leapt from the wall above, coiled and spun
in the air and landed behind one of the undead, the Sunsword flashing down like
a falling star.
The
vampire’s arm came off at the shoulder and it screamed as the limb fell to the
ground, the stump smoking.
Cornelius,
stood, rope in hand, coated in blood, shouted “Stop right there!” and divine compulsion washed over the
creatures; one stuck fast, paralyzed, while the one Dickie had disarmed
continued to writhe away from the manservant. It turned and ran back down the
stairs, wailing as the sunlight caused its flesh to melt and run.
Above them,
Elliana threw up a hand at her foe and a spectral claw appeared; the vampire
spawn evaded its grasp, and while the spell faded ducked under the sword blow
striking at its neck. “Ha! Beaten up by a
teenage girl!” Paris shouted at the creature in combat with his daughter.
The Golden Bully Sword struck and the magic lacing the mockery caused the
creature to wince and stumble. Its claws went skittering off of Elliana’s
armour and shield.
Dickie
chased after the retreating vampire down the stairs, swiftly closing on it; he
ducked low, sliced through hamstrings and then the dagger plunged into its eye
socket; the creature writhed, sizzling in the sunlight, then lay still.
Cornelius stepped to the paralyzed vampire and began levelling punches into it,
laughing at the defenceless creature as bones snapping under his pummelling
fists.
Elliana’s
blade leapt with green flame and flashed once, twice, biting deep into the
vampire’s flesh; the Bully Sword smashed down on it and was joined by a ray of
frost from Paris’ wand.
Dickie
rejoined Cornelius, who asked “Could you
pass me a handkerchief there?”
“Do you want this over with quickly, milord,
or are you having fun?” Dickie asked, nodding at Cornelius’ paralyzed
punching bag.
“I’m having a great time Dickie,” Cornelius
said, “except for the fact that I’m
covered in disgusting, disgusting heart blood.”
He continued
throwing punches as Dickie rootled through his pack for a towel. Cornelius’
fists smashed into the paralyzed vampire spawn again and again until it was an
unrecognizable sack of meat, flesh running in the sunlight, and finally the
paralysis ended and the remains collapsed wetly on the ground.
High above,
the remaining vampire scrabbled at Elliana, desperately trying to find purchase
on her steel plate but unable to harm the newest Bully Boy. She smashed her
shield into its face, her sword flashed again with green flame and as she
stepped back to deliver a final blow, the Golden Bully Sword swung low to
decapitate the vampire, crushing its skull sideways.
“That’s how it’s done, my girl!” Paris
called down the stairs to his daughter.
Elliana,
having heard Paris mocking the creature from afar, called back angrily “Is there anything wrong with being beaten
up by a teenage girl?” Vampire gore dripped from her glowing sword and her
eyes literally blazed.
“Of course not! I was just trying to put him
off his game- and it worked.”
“I don’t appreciate it!”
Paris
shrugged. “Helped you make short work of
him.”
“Come up with some better taunts.”
“Don’t talk back to me,” Paris tried
warily, testing his new found fatherhood.
A voice rose
from below them- it was Dickie, calling “Everything
all right up there?”
“Just teenager problems,” Paris shouted
down the tower, “You’ll know what it’s
like when you’re a parent, Dickie.”
The newly
united father-daughter duo began to make their way down the tower, moving past
doorways that led into the upper and middle floors of the castle to join Dickie
and Cornelius below. They knew that they would face Strahd in his tomb, and the
path to the catacombs would be down, deeper, into the bowels Ravenloft.
Dickie had
withdrawn a vial of oil from his pack, and was applying it liberally to his
dagger; oil of sharpness, that would make the weapon more keen. If ever there
was a time to use it, it was now. Seeing this, Elliana followed suit with her
sword. Paris helped clean Cornelius, blood and gore flying from the burly
Bullingdon with flicks of his wand.
The distant
sounds of battle rang through the castle as Vladimir Horngaard’s spectral
knights clashed with Strahd’s forces.
“Down, then?” asked Dickie, nodding to
the descending stairs where the vampire spawn had tried to escape him.
“Only way to go,” replied Paris as
Elliana clattered to her feet.
“You know Elliana,” Cornelius said, “I’ve always said only cowards need to wear
armour.”
She frowned
at him. “I find it quite useful. Prevents
bad things- like nasty blows to the head- from happening.”
“And death,” suggested Dickie, “let’s not forget about death.”
“My doctors tell me I have an incredibly
thick skull,” Cornelius bragged.
“Armour to a fighter is like a spellbook to
a wizard,” Paris explained, “you grow
out of these things.”
Quietly,
Cornelius said “It’s a shame Clarence
never grew out of his book.”
The stairwell
descended to a landing where lay the corpse of a one-armed vampire, turned,
descended again. It led to a dark passage. To the north and south alcoves held
rotting wooden cots and dirty rags. The ceilings were yellow with lichen.
Beyond the alcoves, the light from Dickie’s sword revealed a shambolic room;
shattered furniture in heaps, broken bones scattered amid crumpled armour, axes
and swords jutting out from the walls as if driven into them with force. Doors
led north and south.
Elliana
cautiously stepped forward, eyeing the bones with suspicion.
“Elliana, what have we told you about Dickie
going into rooms first?” Cornelius asked angrily.
“Dickie is not wearing thirty pounds of
metal.”
“Yes, because Dickie is brave.”
“I don’t see him going first.”
“You keep jumping ahead and stealing his
thunder! You need to learn some humility, if you want to fit in with the
Bullingdon Boys.”
Elliana gave
Cornelius a scathing smile, as Dickie let out a resigned sigh and stepped into
the room. Nothing happened; the bones remained inanimate, the weapons remained
embedded in the walls, no grumpkins or snarks jumped out.
They went
through the southern door. Dark stains covered the floor of the room beyond.
Large oak tables, scarred and beaten, lay scattered like toys, their wood
crushed and splintered. Replacing them were furnishings made entirely of human
bones.
The walls
and high, vaulted ceiling were a sickly yellow colour, not from faded plaster
but because they were adorned with bones and skulls arranged in a morbid
decoration, giving the room a cathedral-like quality. In each corner of the
ossuary stood enormous mounds of bones, and garlands of skulls extended room
these to grim chandeliers of bones than hung from the ceiling above a long
table- also constructed of bones- in the centre of the room. The chairs
surrounding this were too made of bone, decorated with skulls, as were the
doors to the south and the doors they had come through. The double-doors in the
eastern wall were banded with steel and free of decoration.
“Well, that settles it,” Cornelius said.
“No one in Barovia has any taste of
interior décor.”
“What has to be wrong with a person to do
this?” Dickie asked.
“It’s very crass,” Paris observed
disdainfully.
“I think all of us can agree that we don’t want
to linger here,” Elliana said, while Paris prodded a bone clad chair with
his wand. Absentmindedly, the foppish mage asked “Do you think any of these could be your guys?”
“Yes, Elliana, which femurs do you
recognize?” Cornelius asked viciously. “Maybe
your friend has been made into a chair?” Elliana tensed for a moment, her
jaw clenching, then took a deep breath and relaxed. Her raven, Amity, fluttered from her shoulder
to perch on a bone chandelier.
“I think it unlikely that Anslem has found
such rest.”
“Maybe we can now rest on Anslem,” Cornelius
quipped, grinning to Paris and Dickie at his pun.
Dickie
rolled his eyes. “Let’s just leave this
room. It’s not very nice.”
Elliana
strode to the steel-banded eastern door, following the logic that the strongest
door would be the one they would be least welcome behind and therefore the one
they should go through, and opened it to reveal a dark corridor.
“I’m sorry old chap,” Cornelius muttered
to Dickie as Elliana went first once again, “I
keep trying to tell her.”
Generously
and certainly not motivated by self-preservation, Dickie said “It’s alright milord, let the young blood go
first.”
“Very well. You’re still my favourite,
Dickie.”
Dickie
smiled wanly. “Thank you, milord.”
Tourist
Traps
Fog clung to
the floor at Elliana’s feet as she entered the dark passage, backlit by the
sunlight of Dickie’s sword, her own dimly glowing blade held out before her. A
giant shadow lurched across the ceiling of the corridor as a figure shuffled purposefully
down the hall towards her.
As it
stepped into the light, Elliana recognised the figure; shuffling forward with
an unlit lantern in one hand, less than five feet tall, hunched, muttering. The
left side of its face- almost that of a man- was covered with lizard scales,
and he had the ears of a panther. His left foot looked like a duck’s, large and
webbed, and patches of black fur sprouted from his arms.
This was the
creature that had served as her jailer for long weeks in the castle’s dungeon.
As they saw each other, and both were struck with recognition, it took a step
back, stumbled, crying feebly “Ah, no, no,
you’re meant to, you gotta get back in the, ah, the master’s gonna-“ as
Elliana rushed towards him.
“It’s one of those damn Belviews!” Dickie
shouted, and indeed it appeared to be one of the strange mongrelfolk the Abbot
had created in the Abbey of Saint Markovia. Elliana tackled it to the ground,
and for a moment they were lost in the fog, then she stood, heaving the
miserable creature from its feet.
“I see you remember me.”
“Y-y-you hurt my face!” she had,
slamming it into the bars of her cell.
“Quite. I think we’ve found a guide,” she
called to her companions.
Dickie
wandered over. “What’re you doing out of
the abbey?”
“I don’t live there,” the creature
whimpered. “I serve the master!”
“How about you serve us, and take us down a
floor?”
“Yes! Where is Strahd? Take us to him!” Cornelius
slapped the jailer across the face.
“Cornelius!” Paris hissed, “don’t hit the disabled!”
“He’s a servant of the enemy. He deserves to
be hit for his treachery to Barovia.”
“But he hasn’t got the, you know, the,” Paris
pointed at his temple and circled his finger, “to know what’s the right choice and what isn’t.”
“I, I, I got some stew,” the creature
offered, reinforcing Paris’ point.
“We don’t want your stew. We want to find
the master of this castle, so we may destroy him!”
“You… You want me, to, to take you down?”
“Another thought that just occurred to me,” Cornelius
continued, “if there is any great
treasure in the castle, perhaps you can lead us to it.”
“I can’t get in the treasury, I don’t have
the key,” the mongrel creature muttered.
“Just the master then.”
“Don’t think about doing anything clever,” Dickie
warned the creature. “Firstly, you’re not
clever- secondly, we’ll skewer you.”
“I’m, I’m not clever,” the creature
admitted, “I’ve got stew.”
At sword point,
the creature led them to a door that led to a corridor at the end of which was a
stairwell. Elliana was struck by recognition; as they stepped through, she
turned around to regard the doorway from the direction of the stairs beyond.
She had seen this corridor before; she had climbed those stairs; the times that
Strahd had invited her to dine with him, she had been led to the floor above
from the dungeons below up that very stairwell. From here she could find her
way to the magical brazier which had let her escape the castle, and which she
thought could be used to find Strahd.
“Your services are no longer required.”
The pommel of her sword cracked into the skull of the jailer and he collapsed
like a sack of potatoes.
“That wasn’t very ladylike,” Cornelius
chided.
“Why does everyone keep hitting the
disabled?” Paris lamented.
Elliana
turned towards them unrepentant. “Do you
know how long that creature kept me down there, feeding me on stagnant water
and…”
“Stew?” Paris guessed.
“Disgusting gruel.” Elliana’s eyes
flickered with magical fire.
“I’m sure he didn’t know any better.”
“I always say you should face a man before
you punch him into unconsciousness,” Cornelius said.
“He had plenty of time to face me through
the bars of my cell.”
“I wouldn’t wish prison on anyone,” said
Dickie, recalling how he met Cornelius, “and
prison here I’d imagine is worse than most.”
Elliana strode
toward the stairs, Paris on her heels, Dickie and Cornelius behind. All of a
sudden there was a clang of metal as the heavy tread of the armoured youth set
off some pressure plate; two metal grates crashed down from the ceiling,
trapping the father and daughter in a cube. “What
the hell!” Elliana exclaimed as, with a grinding of gears and a rattling of
chains, the two new walls and the section of floor beneath and the ceiling
above them began to rise; the whole cube lifted by some means into a shaft
above.
As the
box-trap rose into the ceiling above them, Dickie flew forwards, kicking off a
wall to land on the bottom of the retreating cube. Unhindered by gravity, he
pulled something from the pocket of one of the pouches on his haversack- a pot
of paint and a brush, and began to paint on the bottom of the slab separating Paris
and Elliana from him.
Below,
Cornelius tried to jump up and grab on to Dickie but the manservant was lifted
out of his reach. Within the cube, Paris let out a girlish scream as green-grey
gas began to fill the cube; he took a deep breath and promptly collapsed to the
floor unconscious. Elliana stabbed her sword at the floor in frustration but
simply chipped at the thick layer of stone.
The elevator
came to a shuddering halt almost a hundred feet above the corridor below where Cornelius
looked up at Dickie worriedly, the manservant painting furiously. Dickie
stopped, regarded his work: he had painted something like a crude trapdoor on
the bottom of the cage, and as the magic of the marvellous pigments took effect
the trapdoor became real, stone transmuting into wood and metal. He heaved it
open, and Elliana jumped back as a hole suddenly appeared below her, Dickie’s
head peeping through.
In the
corridor below, something fell through the ceiling in front of Cornelius. A
ghost-blue knight was thrust down from the floor above and landed at Cornelius’
feet in a crumpled heap. The head of the phantom appeared to have been twisted
all the way around; as it landed before him, the ghostly corpse dissolved into
thin mist.
“The old knights of Argynvost don’t look
like they’re doing so well,” he called up the shaft nervously, as a second figure
descended through the solid stone of the ceiling.
This one
came feet first. Its cape billowed slightly as it came to rest before
Cornelius. Not ghost-blue, but pale and striking, in royal regalia and with
noble bearing, Strahd von Zarovich descended on the last of the Bullingdons.
The vampire
laughed. “I see you have been separated
from your frie-.”
“Can it, Strahd!” Cornelius shouted over
Strahd’s monologue, hoping his voice would reach Dickie above. “It’s just you and me now, mano-a-mano, no
dirty tricks.”
Cornelius
glanced up the shaft, caught Dickie’s eyes and desperately waved him down, then
leapt at the lord of Barovia. Strahd avoided the first blow but the second
glanced him on the shoulder. Strahd winced in annoyance- “The heart,” he growled.
“That’s right, Strahd! I rode your heart
into oblivion, and now I ride you to your doom!”
Dickie was
streaking down the wall towards his master, assuming Elliana could make her own
way down the shaft with the unconscious Paris, the Sunsword blazing in his
hand. He rounded the bottom of the shaft onto the ceiling of the corridor above
Cornelius and Strahd’s brawl, and the vampire hissed at the sunlight fell upon
him. Strahd was blow for blow with Cornelius, his bare hands crashing in to the
Bullingdon’s leader.
Elliana
looked at her father. Paris was unconscious, but alive- asleep, in fact, open
mouthed, drooling, snoring loudly. She gathered his smaller frame in her eyes,
and clad in armour jumped through the new trapdoor. Magical energy crackled
around her, and once again her fall was slowed to a gentle downwards float.
Strahd stepped
around Cornelius and turned his gaze on Dickie. His will crashed in to the
manservant. “That sword is my brother’s.
Give it to me and I will put it in its rightful place. In his tomb, where it
belongs.” But the sword flared and with a will of its own encouraged Dickie,
who shook through the charm.
“I’ll put it where it belongs all right- in
your foul heart!”
The vampire gave
a growl of disgust and as his flesh smoked from the light of the sword, sank
through the solid stone floor.
“Coward!” Cornelius shouted, as Elliana
landed softly at the bottom of the shaft, placed Paris on the floor and drew
her sword.
“I heard Strahd’s voice- where is he?”
“He went through… the floor,” Dickie
said. “It was weird.”
She looked
down at Paris. “Get up.” Paris rolled
over, sticking a thumb in his mouth. Elliana reached down and slapped him. “Snap out of it, damnit!”
“Ow!” Paris moaned as Elliana began to
shake him by the shoulders. “There’s no
need to hit me, I was just resting my- wait, where are we?”
“If you’d bothered to be awake, Paris,” Cornelius
said, “you’d’ve seen me and Dickie giving
Strahd the old one-two.”
“You breathed in some gas,” Elliana
explained, “it put you to sleep.”
“Well, I happen to be very sensitive to that
particular gas. You see, I’ve got an allergy,” Paris blustered. “So that would be why my reaction was so
much stronger than any of yours, you see.”
Elliana had real
relief in her voice as she said “Well,
you’re up now. I was worried there, for a moment.”
“I’m sure everyone was worried. I bet that
fight was a lot harder without mighty Paris Digby.”
“I didn’t know you were asleep,” Dickie
said. “I’ll be honest with you Paris, he
just, kind of… left.”
“Probably because he saw I was coming to.”
“We should carry on,” Elliana said. She
gestured for Dickie to go ahead of her, saying “Bren?”
“What is that, some sort of code?” Paris
asked in confusion.
“That’s how he introduced himself to me,” Elliana
explained. “I know you all call him
Dickie, but-“
“That’s because it’s his name!” Cornelius
said firmly.
“It’s his Bully Boys name,” Paris added.
Cornelius
continued, “My valet has always been
called Richard and Dickie here is no exception.”
There was a
brief moment of pause as this revelation settled over Paris and Dickie. The
manservant let out a long, “Oh! I’d
wondered…”
Elliana suggested
he walk beside her to look out for traps or anything else untoward. Paris
narrowed his eyes at Dickie, who smiled back at him. “Don’t worry, Paris, I’ll take good care of her.”
“Not ‘too’ good care of her,” Paris said
suspiciously.
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything. Stop flirting
with my daughter.”
Elliana’s
eyed flared.
“Paris, I don’t like you in parental mode,” said
Cornelius, as the side of Dickie’s face that had movement looked askance. “You’re cramping the Bully Boys’ style.”
“Paris, have you ever known me to flirt with
anyone? That is not what this is.”
“I thought you were just doing it badly.”
Elliana
rounded on Paris. “I don’t appreciate you
sticking your nose in my personal business, dad.”
“I’m just trying to do the job!” Paris
said, exasperated.
Cornelius
raised his hands to the sky. “Well, just
in case anyone forgot, we’re all trying to do the job of defeating a mighty
vampire lord, freeing the land of Barovia from his evil, raising a large army
and marching upon Saxonia to reclaim my inheritance and wreak vengeance upon
those who stole it from me!”
“I know!” Paris said, “But now I have to balance that
responsibility with being a full-time dad!”
“Well you should’ve thought about that,
Paris, before you took it out of your pants and stuck it in her mother!”
Dickie and
Elliana left he bickering pair and headed to the stairs. There was a loud
graunching noise and a rattling of chains and Paris and Cornelius dove out from
below the shaft as the elevator came crashing back down to the place where they
had just stood.
They
descended into black, still water; a corridor with doorways to the north and
south, that Elliana recognized as leading to the dungeon cells.
“There is a… teleporter- this way.” Elliana
pointed down the corridor. “It is how I
escaped the castle and came to the Amber Temple. It also allowed for transport
to other places- including ‘yellow, to master’s tomb’. I think that is where we
need to go.”
“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing,” Cornelius
said, “so maybe you should lead the way
this time. But! Only this time.”
In the
chamber beyond, dark shapes rose out of the water. Hooked chains hung from the ceiling.
Revealed by the light of the two glowing swords, the shapes were revealed as
racks, iron maidens, stocks and other instruments of torture. Skeletal remains
of their last victims were still trapped in the malevolent devices.
A balcony set
on the north wall overlooked the room. A red velvet curtain was closed behind
two large thrones. On one of these a man was splayed, his legs over one arm of
the seat; a woman stood behind him, her hands on his armoured shoulders.
The man
spoke. “Ah, Elliana. We thought you may
come this way.” Sprawled in the chair was her old friend, the only other
survivor of the Spency Squad: Anslem Thruppington-Spence.