03- The Apostles of Doom Read online

  Vaselle froze for a moment, not knowing what to say. Technically he supposed he had been a lapsed follower of Tiernon before giving his soul to the master. However, that detail would probably not be appreciated.

  He put on a self-effacing grin. “A bit lapsed, but yes. I grew up on Eton and I now live in Freehold, and to be honest, haven’t been that regular at the chapel.” Actually, “never been to chapel in Freehold” would be more accurate, Vaselle thought.

  “Excellent, my son!” The priest patted him on the shoulder. “We get so very few followers of Tiernon here, at least up until the other day, that it’s a true pleasure.”

  Vaselle grinned. “I can imagine. I suspect there are fewer chapels down here than in the Council States.”

  The priest nodded. “I would think so, although I’ve never been that far north.”

  Vaselle asked, “You’ve lived in this region your entire life?”

  “I have; I was raised by an itinerant priest of Tiernon and chose to follow in his footsteps. I’ve spent my life and my mission in Murgandy and the United Federation.”

  “You and your mentor must enjoy a challenge if what I’ve read about the region is true,” Vaselle said.

  The priest chuckled. “Indeed. But it is rewarding.”

  “I can imagine.” Vaselle really could; it had been his lifelong dream to do exactly that. Of course, now he was in an even better position to serve. “I am Vaselle, by the way.” He stuck out his hand.

  The priest took it, smiling. “Teragdor.”

  Oubliette

  “So it appears we have a restless resident,” Phaestus said after several minutes of the Ops Team scanning the system.

  Delg Narmoloth nodded. “Aqua-Chamber K.”

  Völund also nodded and added, “Aqua-Chamber K is one of those closest to Mount Doom. It appears, but will need to be confirmed, that the temperature of the aquatic suspension has shifted significantly, most likely due to the great deep freeze Tommus used to defeat the Maelstrom.”

  Roth Tar Gorefest nodded. “Well, Doom’s ambient temperature did approach absolute zero, so that would probably have been felt down here.”

  “So what does this mean?” Tom asked.

  “It means Sleeping Beauty felt a chill and got restless in its sleep,” Tizzy interpreted.

  “That pretty much sums it up. It’s in a transition state between sleep and waking,” Völund agreed.

  “So what do we do?” Tom asked.

  “Well, the automatic systems are working to restore equilibrium temperature smoothly, the hope being that the prisoner goes fully back to sleep,” Phaestus answered.

  “This Titan is not the most dangerous, so that is good. The real danger is that it might disturb the sleep of others and wake up something more dangerous,” Völund said.

  “So what do we do to stop that from happening?” Morok Deathstealer asked.

  Phaestus shrugged. “For now, we keep a close eye on it. If the restlessness continues”—he paused and looked at a monitoring screen with some image on it that Tom couldn’t quite make out—“then the answer is probably the same as if it were fully awoken. If it woke, given time, it would work to awaken the others.”

  Arg-nargoth sighed. “How many worlds are going to have to pay for that?”

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked, concerned.

  “For this particular Titan, the best answer would be to let it out for some exercise until it tires itself out and wants to sleep again,” Völund said sourly.

  “Hence the death toll,” Darg-Krallnom said.

  “And that works?” Tom asked dubiously. He couldn’t imagine an awakened Titan just going on a vengeful rampage and then docilely returning to sleep.

  “With this one, yes. It’s been done before, both for restlessness and to be of use to the gods,” Phaestus said.

  “Wait!” Tizzy exclaimed. “You said Aqua-Chamber K?”

  “Correct.” Völund nodded.

  Tizzy shook his head and grinned. “In that case I claim dibs on giving the order!”

  “Dibs on the order?” Zelda asked, puzzled.

  “Yes,” Tizzy said. “I get to be the one to say: ‘Release the Kraken!’ ”

  Murgatroy

  Vaselle was starting to feel more than a bit tipsy. He was in fact, quite drunk. This crap beer was hitting him hard, he realized as he swallowed the last of his fifth one. He motioned the barkeep for two more beers, one for him and another for the priest. Vaselle had started paying because naturally, itinerant priests did not have much money.

  Vaselle was by no means wealthy. He had a good middle-class (by Freehold standards) income, which here was probably a pretty decent income. However, he also had quite a bit of change left over from exchanging Mount Doom gems for material components. Plus, he was quite sure he could get more gems and precious metals from Mount Doom if needed. He’d have to be careful about flooding local economies, of course, he thought dizzily.

  He and Teragdor had been having a surprisingly enjoyable discussion. True, they did have a common background in wanting to serve the Five Siblings, but then their career paths had radically diverged. Or at least Vaselle’s had; he’d been forced out and into conjury, only to end up as a warlock to the Lord of Doom.

  Teragdor had faced tremendous prejudice due his bloodline, but had somehow persevered in the face of prejudice, resentment, fear and generalized resistance to his becoming a priest. Which seemed to Vaselle a rather depressing indictment of himself: a half-orc could become a priest of Tiernon, yet he could not?

  But Vaselle could not complain with his new lot, nor with his new acquaintance. Even though Teragdor was one of the FOG (Forces of Good) and he, Vaselle was a member of the FOE (Forces of Evil), at the end of the day, they had a lot in common. Strange how that sort of thing happened.

  “So,” Teragdor continued. He was also quite drunk. Vaselle felt fortunate that half-orcs had only half the drinking stamina of full orcs, or he’d be under the bar at this point. He had learned that lesson at the party.

  “So,” Teragdor started a second time after a hiccup, “you grew up in Eton…”

  Vaselle nodded. “New Etonia, in a smaller town about fifty leagues from Hendel Hearth.”

  “...and then moved to Justicia, when you decided to change your faith to Tiernon from Hendel,” Teragdor finished, recounting what he’d been told.

  “Indeed.”

  “Oh, would I love to see Justicia…” Teragdor sighed as the barkeep put a new mug in front of him.

  “It is a truly glorious city, a fitting honor to the Lord God Tiernon,” Vaselle said, smiling, drunkenly remembering the beautifully clean city. The utter opposite of the shithole of a village they were now in.

  “Amen,” Teragdor said.

  “Amen,” Vaselle agreed.

  “But then you moved to Freehold?”

  Vaselle began to shake his head from side to side, but had to stop as he was getting too dizzy. “I spent several years in a school a hundred leagues or so from Freehold,” he corrected the other priest.

  “And you graduated and moved to Freehold?”

  “Correct.” Vaselle nodded in agreement.

  “And you own your own business making arcane devices,” Teragdor confirmed.

  “Yep. Like this one!” Vaselle tugged on his Amulet of Cooling, still around his neck.

  Teragdor stared at it. “What does it do?”

  “It cools a thin layer of air around your body and keeps you and the air you breathe cool even in extremely hot environments,” Vaselle proclaimed proudly.

  “How hot?”

  Vaselle shrugged. “I have it on some authority that it will keep you cool even in the Abyss!”

  “No!” Teragdor drunkenly punched Vaselle in the shoulder, who swayed dangerously on his stool.

  “Forsooth! I got the idea from a wizard who had travelled through the Abyss,” Vaselle said.

  Teragdor looked at him as if he was insane. “That’s not possible!”

&
nbsp; Vaselle started chuckling. “I assure you it is…” Alarmed by himself, he mentally put the brakes on his tongue before he admitted he had done it.

  “How can that be?” Teragdor asked incredulously.

  “I am not sure,” Vaselle lied. He knew very well that his master had taken Gastropé through. “But the great wizard Gastropé Al-Ghayrani, sid Mierkan Tolan de Turelane has done so, and he would not lie!” he proclaimed.

  “You know Gastropé?” Teragdor asked incredulously and rather loudly. “Really skinny pale wizard with a turban?”

  “How do you know Gastropé?” Vaselle asked, suddenly frightened he had blown his cover.

  “Did I hear someone mention the great wizard Gastropé Al-Ghayrani, sid Miersssomething or ‘nother?” a drunken voice behind them shouted.

  Vaselle and Teragdor tried to rotate on their bar stools to see who was addressing them. It was a satyr! A satyr of roughly their own age, if satyrs aged like humans.

  “And who are you?” Teragdor asked.

  “Why, I am Gastropé’s carpet comrade in arms! He’s a combat pyromancer on my carpet!” The satyr stumbled drunkenly over towards them, leaving his colleagues at their table, ignoring them; as happens with groups of drunken—dwarves? Vaselle blinked. The satyr had been at a table drinking and playing cards with a bunch of dwarves.

  The satyr reached them and extended his hand. “I am Zed, Combat Carpet Pilot on the Nimbus.” He tried to bow as he extended his hand, but started to lose his balance and had to scramble back up on his hooves. The thought flitted briefly through Vaselle’s drunken head that he seemed to know a lot of people with hooves these days.

  “Vaselle,” he said, shaking the satyr’s hand.

  “Teragdor.” The priest also shook the satyr’s hand.

  “So you are on the Nimbus with Gastropé,” Teragdor said, nodding his head. “That makes sense.”

  The satyr peered drunkenly at Teragdor, finally noticing his robe and holy symbol. “Ah-ha!” he said. “You were with the animages from Freehold! And that Stevoh guy.”

  “Stevos. Yes, I am.” Teragdor said.

  “So how do you know Gastropé?” Zed asked.

  Vaselle had to think really hard and try not to make a mess of things. “Uhm, we are both from Freehold, and he’s a really good friend of my, uhm… boss! Yes, my boss!” Vaselle had stumbled there. He really, truly did not want to use the word “master.”

  “Who’s your boss?” Zed asked.

  Another difficult question. Vaselle could not say “The Lord of Doom”; that would likely cause problems. “His name is Edwyrd. Lord Edwyrd.” That would work—that was Tom’s human disguise name.

  “And what does this Edwyrd do?” Teragdor asked, taking another swig of beer.

  “He’s an animage. Mostly pyromancy—sorry, pyromastery, I’m a wizard and not used to animage terms,” Vaselle answered, trying to remember what his master had told him of his Edwyrd identity.

  “Another animage?” Zed exclaimed.

  Teragdor just shook his head drunkenly in amazement.

  “What’s with all the damn animages suddenly popping out of the woodwork… Crap!” The satyr covered his mouth in drunken shock. “I’m starting to sound like Jenn!”

  “What do you mean?” Teragdor asked.

  “Well, you know there really aren’t that many of them since the Anilords. Except in the Grove of course; we got most of the remaining ones, or so we thought... but anyway, as soon as all this crazy shit started happening, they’ve been popping up all over the place.” Zed shook his head and then tried to steady it with his free hand as his balance started to desert him.

  “Really?” Teragdor asked.

  “Yeah. There is Maelen the Seer, your buddy Gamos—he is like some long lost or forgotten sort of animage—and then there is Hilda, and Stevos is also an animage, and now this Edwyrd guy.”

  “Actually, animages are not common, but certainly not unheard of on Eton,” Vaselle interrupted. “There is this whole Society of Learned Fellows organization in Etonia, between New Etonia and Eastern Free Eton. They’ve got schools and everything.”

  “Really?” Zed asked, surprised.

  “I really want to go to New Etonia, so bad!” Teragdor wailed. “I want to see for myself the Cathedral of Justice!”

  “It’s amazing!” Vaselle agreed.

  “So do you think Gastropé has gone to the Abyss and come back?” Teragdor asked Zed.

  Zed blinked. “That would be very impressive.” The satyr shook his head in amazement, but had to stop as he had started swaying.

  “So you don’t think he did it?” Teragdor asked.

  Zed shrugged. “It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s like an epic conjuror! We were zooming around in the stratosphere battling liches on ice dragons and getting our arses kicked...”

  Vaselle’s and Teragdor’s eyes went wide at this impressive thought.

  “...and Gastropé just lit a small fire on the end of his Wand of Fire and somehow summoned three fiends! You know, type II demons! No pentacles nor brazier, no protections at all, and on a wildly moving carpet. We were all strapped down. But he does it, and rather than kill us, the demons do his bidding and take to slaughtering ice dragons and liches.”

  “Holy potatoes!” Teragdor gasped. “Afterwards? Did they try to kill you guys on the carpet?” He took another drink of beer.

  Zed shook his head from side to side drunkenly. “Amazingly, no. I figured we’d be dead, but they just came back, quite a bit worse for the wear and thanked Gastropé for inviting them to the party!”

  Teragdor shook his head in disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense! Demons don’t work that way!”

  Vaselle was swaying as he thought about the story. “Did one of the demons have like four arms and four legs?”

  Zed nodded as Teragdor looked at Vaselle curiously. “Indeed, that was sort of the leader of the three!” Zed affirmed.

  Vaselle nodded. “That’s Tizzy. I know Gastropé is his accursed master.”

  “So you’ve met one of these demons?” Teragdor asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty nuts,” Vaselle said. “But he makes like really good baked goods!” Vaselle could have really used a cookie at this point. Although that might not have been a good idea, considering how wasted he already was.

  “A demon that bakes?” Zed asked curiously.

  “What, do they just leave the dough out on the patio and it bakes?” Teragdor asked before releasing a huge belch.

  “Practically, but no, they have ovens and regular cooking gear,” Vaselle said.

  “How do you know?” Teragdor asked, disbelieving the wizard.

  Vaselle blinked. Crap, now he’d stepped in it! “Uhm, that’s what Tizzy, the demon told me.”

  “So you’ve talked with this demon?” Teragdor asked.

  Vaselle nodded and then shrugged. “Actually, if he’s around, the difficulty is not talking to him. He’s very locationus… locutious… locashus… he’s very talkative,” Vaselle finally managed to say.

  Zed nodded. “He did talk a lot. Gastropé’s friend Jenn says the demon is very annoying.”

  Teragdor blinked. “I think that’s a pretty weird description for a diabolical fiend from the pits of the Abyss!”

  “Yeah. Jenn doesn’t like him that much, but she seems more frustrated with the demon than afraid of him. With Gastropé, it’s hard to tell.”

  Zed nodded.

  Teragdor shook his head. “If everyone else knows him, maybe I should ask Gastropé to introduce me—”

  Zed laughed. “You could exercise him!”

  Vaselle laughed as well.

  Teragdor blinked drunkenly and said, “It’s exorcise, not exercise!”

  “I bet Tizzy could do a lot of exorcising with four arms and four legs!” Vaselle joked loudly, and Zed held up his mug for clinking. Vaselle clinked his mug, as did a giggling Teragdor.

  “Do those sound empty or something?” Vaselle asked.


  Zed peered drunkenly into his mug. “I only got a drop of clinked ale left!”

  “You’re the expert on rituals, Teragdor. Does having only one drop invalidate a clinking?” Vaselle asked.

  Teragdor tried to appear thoughtful and introspective, but failed. “I think for safety’s sake, we should refill and repeat the ceremony. Hate to have a failed clinking!”

  Vaselle nodded, gesturing for the other two to put their mugs on the bar. “Barkeep!”

  Chapter 122

  Mount Doom: DOA + 3, First Period

  Tom entered his sitting room, followed by Tizzy. He was surprised to see Boggy, Reggie, Estrebrius and Talarius playing whist at this late hour. He had to pause and wonder at his own surprise. He had been stuck wide awake around the clock for the last umpteen weeks and after only a few days in Doom, he was back to expecting people to sleep at night? He shook his head.

  Antefalken was also there, scribbling away on his ballad, the crystal ball acting as a paperweight to hold down a large stack of curled parchment. Actually, he thought, given the time of night it was very odd that Reggie was there. He glanced towards the incubus. “You didn’t get summoned tonight?”

  Reggie looked up and shook his head. “Apparently my accursed mistress and her colleague got freaked out when they discovered I knew Phaestus and Sekhmekt personally and had just been drinking with them last night.”

  Tom made a wistful expression with his mouth. “Yeah, that would probably do that.” He had to refile the fact that Phaestus and Sekhmekt were actual gods, as in ancient Egyptian gods, to the back of his mind for a later freak-out. He’d managed to suppress and ignore that troubling thought for the last day or so, but Reggie had brought it forward once more. However, tempting as it might be to have a mental breakdown over trying to even conceive of being friends with ancient deities, it would just have to wait. His basement Kraken was cracking and that was sufficiently mind-boggling for tonight’s nervous breakdown.

  “You look pretty beat,” Antefalken observed.

  “Long day, ending with the discovery that we are running a Black Site in the basement.” Tom shook his head in disbelief as he spoke.

  Everyone other than Reggie looked at him in puzzlement. “What’s a Black Site?” Boggy asked.