Just as the last parts of the giant f’hanos came crashing down around them, more of the ghoulish warriors swarmed at them from all directions. Tyranos battered away two in the lead as Golgren seized a weapon from one of his fallen warriors.
The pair that the wizard had swatted away had already resurrected themselves. Tyranos let out an oath. “Would you mind telling me what you did with my own staff to make them stay dead?”
“The skull! It was the skull I struck, wizard! Atop!”
Tyranos tried again, trying to hit the two skeletal warriors on top of their skulls, and that time the one he managed to hit on top of its head fell down in pieces and stayed down without moving. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
From Golgren’s left there came a war cry and the sounds of several weapons clanging. Khleeg, somehow still mounted, was trying to lead a band of warriors to the rescue of the grand lord. The sight would have heartened Golgren if there were not so many f’hanos between the loyal officer and his master.
Indeed, the rescuers were blocked; then they began to be forced back. Golgren tried to steer toward Khleeg, but once again they were swarmed by undead who converged on them from everywhere.
“We must be away from here!” Tyranos shouted. He raised the crystal head of his staff to the sky, groaning with pain. Blood still dripped from the wound Sir Stefan had caused.
Reminded of the Solamnic, Golgren searched around for Stefan, wondering what had become of the knight. He saw no sign that he was alive. He regretted the human’s passing, if only for the hope that, should they both have survived, there might still be a chance of some sort of alliance between ogres and knights.
Golthuu-and Silvanost-seemed to be dreams that far exceeded his one-handed grasp.
“Be ready, oh Grand Lord!” Tyranos called.
“For what?”
Something huge swooped just above them. With a wingspan far wider than the ogre’s height, it circled around for another pass.
Golgren recognized the scaly behemoth: the gargoyle from the palace corridor. Arms outstretched, the winged beast’s intention was clear: to grab both figures and take them into the air.
The idea did not sit well with the grand lord, but he accepted it as the only escape. With Tyranos, the ogre fought to clear the area to give the gargoyle proper room to land.
With an evil grin across its wide mouth, the winged fury closed on them. The wizard, closer to the creature than Golgren, raised his arms to reach up to his rescuer.
Golgren did the same.
Then the entire world trembled. The ogre was tossed off his feet just as the gargoyle took hold of Tyranos.
A sound like raging thunder but a thousand times more ear splitting shook Golgren to his very core. He heard cracking and tearing, and realized that the ground just ahead of him was opening up, great chunks of rock collapsing into the huge gap. A f’hanos just closing to reach him stumbled and fell back into the swiftly widening crevasse, vanishing from sight.
All around Golgren, the land shook harder and harder. In every direction, huge pieces of earth and stone tore apart or shot up into the air. Ogres and undead alike were tossed about like playthings.
Tyranos and his pet gargoyle had vanished in the sky. Golgren fought to maintain his balance.
He fell to his knees, rose, then almost immediately fell down again. The one thing that the grand lord had accomplished was to achieve a low vantage from which he could see better what was happening all around him, but that view only left him cold.
The entire landscape from the edge of Garantha to far to the west was caught up in a quake of tremendous magnitude. The legions of f’hanos were perishing by the scores, most of them falling into horrific gaps, which opened and suddenly closed again. His own followers fared no better. Golgren witnessed a horse and rider simply sink beneath the land without even the chance for a scream, while other ogres fled in outright panic as relentless rock flows poured over them.
As for the city itself, its walls stood unperturbed, untouched. The towers did not tremble in the least nor were there any plumes of dust and smoke as filled the air about him. Garantha was safe and sound and, strangely, entirely untouched. The citizens surely knew what was going on outside the city, but for them it was merely a monstrous spectacle to watch in awe.
It was a spectacle courtesy of Dauroth.
“The land will be ravaged for mile upon mile!” Kallel declared. “Is this not dangerous?”
Dauroth stared down the other Titan. “It is justice.”
“But how long dare we keep this going? It will deplete our energies, risk pushing some of us to collapse. We need more elixir, and there is barely enough for one last round as it is!”
There was less than that, even, if truth be told, but Dauroth was not concerned. After the fight it would be simple enough to gather the elves that Golgren had put in the stone stockade and squeeze from them every drop of necessary blood. That would give the Titans an ample supply of that precious resource until the new sources of rejuvenation could be properly tested.
“We will keep this up until the f’hanos and the grand lord share a common grave from which neither shall ever rise again! From this vast destruction will emerge at last the golden age for which we have toiled so long! There will be no further question in the mind of the people that it is the Titans who are their hope, who are their saviors, their teachers.”
“But so many will be lost!” pointed out another Titan. “The blame for all of that-”
“The blame for all of that shall fall upon the half-breed, naturally.”
The other Titans could not argue. Among ogres, a failed ruler, a dead ruler, was an easy scapegoat for mistakes and catastrophes; such had been the course of things too often in ogre history.
Dauroth focused on the spell again. An exhilaration that he had not experienced in decades filled him. He was thrilled to be destroying Golgren, he finally realized. Until that very moment, the lead spellcaster had not understood just how much he had despised the grand lord.
What a joyous event it shall be! Dauroth thought merrily. I shall make the grand lord’s demise a day of celebration!
First he had to finish the task. Like most true vermin, the mongrel was proving adept at hanging on to life. The Black Talon would have to increase its magical efforts. If one or more of the inner circle should suffer fatal consequences from his action, so be it. Dauroth had always preached that to reach the golden age would require sacrifices from many.
With but a single sung word, Dauroth drew more magic from his cohorts. The others let out gasps as they felt the power draining away from them, but there was not even a feeble protest, not that any protest would have changed his decision.
You will be squashed, Grand Lord, the Titan promised. You will be squashed even if I have to rip apart all of Kern and Blode to do it.
It should have been Idaria’s chance to flee the ogre realm, but still she stayed loyal to Golgren, trying to find and help him, searching through the chaos. Although her thick iron chains yet bound her, she still moved with the grace and perfection for which her race was famous. Where ogres and fleshless undead toppled into chasms and were lost, the elf nimbly shifted from one momentarily stable place to the next.
It was because of the Titans that she was so determined to save Golgren. Only Golgren stood against them. Only Golgren would see that her enslaved people were not herded like cattle to the slaughter, providing more and more blood for the foul elixir of the vampiric spellcasters. She had believed him when he had said that he would release the slaves shortly after his coronation. If Golgren made such a promise, he would fulfill it. Her sacrifice of honor and freedom-of her own body-her spying for the Nerakans would finally be vindicated.