“Demon weed?” Tom asked puzzled. What Darg-Krallnom was saying sounded exactly like what had happened to him; except that he had simply smoked marijuana, not demon weed.
Arg-nargoloth shrugged. “It’s an herb, literally a weed, that some demons smoke for stress relief and relaxation.”
Tom frowned. “You mean like tobacco or marijuana?”
Arg-nargoloth shrugged. “I don’t know what the second one is. I suppose it’s similar to tobacco but the effect is different; tobacco doesn’t do much for D’Orcs and demons. Similar to alcohol, we need something that is generally lethal to mortals to become intoxicated.”
Tom shook his head. “So why is Tizzy always smoking his pipe if tobacco doesn’t affect demons?”
Darg-Krallnom coughed. “He is not; he is smoking demon weed.”
“Which is one reason he is often incoherent,” Vargg Agnoth said.
“Hmm. I am pretty sure that it’s the only reason he’s still sane,” Arg-nargoloth said, shaking his head. “Or relatively sane.” He shrugged.
“So Tizzy has a supply of this demon weed?” Tom asked. He wasn’t sure he liked where his thoughts were leading him. He was going to need to table those thoughts for now, however.
“Yes,” everyone said, almost in unison.
“Okay, then,” Tom said. “Targh, check with your shamans, see if any of them know the rituals.”
Targh nodded in agreement, seeming quite pleased with this plan.
“I think that wraps it up,” Helga said, looking at Darg-Krallnom, who nodded.
“It is good to have a plan, a set of orders,” Vargg Agnoth said happily. “It has been so long. Reclaiming Nysegard thrills the blood.” He pounded the table in emphasis. The others nodded as well, several also pounding the table in agreement.
“I know it has me psyched,” Tom told his commanders. “I had the weirdest dreams about battling the Unlife last night.”
“Slaying Unlife makes the blood sing more than any other opponent,” Targh agreed. “If your dream was good, I can assure you that the reality will be far better!”
Tom chuckled. “I am sure. It was just odd that of all the D’Orcs I dreamt I was in battle with, all of whom I felt as if I knew well, the only one I actually knew was Vargg Agnoth. Although for some reason I thought he was only two centuries old.” Tom shook his head.
Darg-Krallnom chuckled. “He has not been that young in nearly ten thousand years!”
“Who did you think your companions were?” Vargg asked curiously.
“My right hand, my general, was named Vosh An-Non. It felt like I had known him forever.” Tom shook his head, not noticing the looks of the others around the table. “And there was Vordek Deathstealer lopping the heads of vampyrs with his lichtshwert, which led me to dreaming about Erdnalla 3 and even Loki.” Tom grinned, looking up at the now very silent and still commanders around the table.
“Can you tell me a bit more about this battle?” Vargg asked, rather cautiously, Tom thought.
He shrugged. “There was this huge army of Unlife. The battle was at night and it was pitch-black; I don’t even recall a moon. The whole battle seemed rather ill-advised in regards to timing. The D’Orcs were going after the necromancers, vampyrs, vampires and higher undead. The orcs, humans and dwarves were taking on the lesser undead. I recall Vosh spotting a couple of Storm Liches on ice dragons and we peeled off to battle them, while I directed you to take on this necromancer vampire I had been about to take.”
Tom looked at Vargg and then around at the very silent table.
“Why are you all looking at him so weird?” Tamarin suddenly asked from Tom’s shoulder, as puzzled at Tom was.
“Because that sounds like the Battle of Night’s Helm. It was about a hundred and sixty years after my ascension, and the three of us — Vosh, Vordek and I — were the closest to you at the battle. The Three Vs, you called us,” Vargg said, eyes rather wide.
“What do you mean, you three were the closest to me? You mean Vosh and Vordek were actual D’Orcs?” Tom asked, even as a feeling of panic was seeping into his stomach.
“Of course. Both perished permanently at your side in Etterdam,” Darg-Krallnom replied in a louder-than-usual voice. “Vosh An-Non was your commander general, the First D’Orc.”
“And Vordek,” Vargg added, “was perhaps the greatest D’Orc animage of all time.”
“Wow!” Tamarin exclaimed. “This is great news! You are getting your memories back! Normally it takes an experienced mind specialist to help people remember past lives. You are recalling things on your own!”
The D’Orcs around the table suddenly laughed and started thumping the table and yelling in excitement. They were all clearly excited that Tom was getting his memories back. Tom, of course, was experiencing a moment of deep and abiding horror. He glanced down at the Rod of Tommus in his hand. Was the Rod — or rather, the Wand of Orcus — somehow infecting him with old memories from Orcus? There was no other possible explanation.
“This is such great news!” Arg-nargoloth said, grinning at Tom.
“Indeed. It is taking me by surprise,” Tom said.
Tamarin leaned in and whispered in his ear, “You do not seem that pleased, master.”
Tom nodded in agreement with her; he would explain later. In theory, djinn knew quite a bit about magic. Perhaps she would have some ideas about what was going on.
Talarius moved down the corridor confidently, yet as nonchalantly as he possibly could. He wanted his exploration to seem as if he was randomly walking in areas he was entitled to visit. There was nowhere in Doom he had been barred from visiting; however, he expected that whatever new endeavor his captor was so engaged in with multiple D’Orc regiments would be something that the demon would not want him to know about.
Admittedly, they had made no great secret of their activities; the long line of D’Orcs had been more than obvious. However, his captor had not directly informed him of what he was up to. As a soldier, Talarius thought it looked like a small invasion force had been assembled and deployed. The question was, to where?
That was the point of Talarius’s wanderings. The D’Orcs had all gone down to a large maze-like region of Doom, with walls lined with large indentations. Following the trail of disturbed dust through the maze, Talarius came to an indentation that was actually a tunnel. A natural rock-walled tunnel, in fact; not the carved stone of the corridor.
The halls were dark in most of Doom, since D’Orcs could see fine in low light; thus Talarius was using his visor to see with. However, there was a glow above the entrance to this hallway that provided better illumination. He glanced up to the light source at the top of the tunnel’s entrance. There were some glowing runes above the archway.
Talarius frowned, not recognizing the runes, but suddenly realizing all the other archways had non-glowing runes above them as well. Was this some sort of runic gateway? he wondered. From the dust patterns it was pretty clear that everyone coming this way must have gone through the archway and this tunnel. Talarius found this quite curious. He shrugged. There was only one way to find out where the tunnel went.
As Tom and Tamarin headed down the hall towards his quarters, Zelda intercepted him. “Lord Tommus!” she called, coming up to them.
“Good morning, Zelda!” Tom said, grateful for the distraction from his new paranoid thoughts.
“Beya Fei Geist is in the Temple of Doom with a request,” Zelda said.
“Okay,” Tom replied. “Let’s head over there.” They changed course and headed to the temple. Tamarin, once more full-sized to avoid getting bounced off Tom’s shoulder while he walked, started small talk with Zelda. As they chatted, Tom found himself mentally tracing through the Rod of Tommus, looking for any sign of Orcus.