Then the grand lord lost his footing again. Golgren banged his shoulder as he collided with the shifting ground. He nearly lost his hold on the ring but kept it between two fingers.
Golgren did the best he could to slide the piece of jewelry onto his fourth finger. For the first time, he got a good look at the signet, with its double-bladed sword turned downward. What that symbol or the others represented meant nothing to him, but Golgren was filled with a renewed determination. Surely, somehow the signet would aid him against Dauroth’s spell.
And even as he thought that, the signet flared a searing orange color. He was suddenly ringed by a brief, intense fire that shot several hundred feet up from the ground.
Then the fire dwindled, and all around him changed. It happened so abruptly that the grand lord could not at first believe it. He lay on the ground for a moment, staring at everything, then staring at the signet once more.
Then Golgren smiled.
Dauroth felt the opposite emotion. He felt the sudden surge of incredible magical forces around the mongrel just before he saw the astounding results. The lead Titan glared in disbelief.
“The power of the ancients!” he roared, eyes burning as bright as the sun. “How is it that he commands the power of the ancients?”
Kallel let out a hacking cough then called, “Great Dauroth! E-end this now! We h-have destroyed Golgren’s army and proven that only the Titans have the might to rule the ogre race! We have proven we are the masters of destiny! If we keep this up, we will only destroy Garantha and possibly our-”
“From the ruins we will be better able to rebuild the city and our kind! Now cease your whining!” Dauroth stared beyond the room, thinking furiously. “A signet! The half-breed must possess a signet of the High Ogres … and he even wields it!”
“How is that possible?” asked Safrag, sweat pouring down his face. Yet of all the others besides Dauroth, he looked the most determined, the most willing to push on with the spell.
“A moot question! Even the signet will not save him! In the end we shall salvage it from his crushed and buried body! Safrag, I must ask for more power from you and the others!”
No one dared protest. Dauroth was pulling all of them, including himself, beyond their known limits. Under his command, the robed spellcasters concentrated their willpower, their essences, into the task. Some no longer looked so handsome, so perfect. Instead, they appeared old and emaciated, in more than one case so withered that they seemed almost like f’hanos themselves. Their expressions, so pained, were horrific to behold. Yet they told themselves that all of that would be remedied when their work was finished … if it could be finished soon.
Only Dauroth did not care. If he had to sacrifice everyone else, he would see it through. Then not only would there be no more grand lord, but this new prize, the signet-however it had been acquired by the mongrel-would be added to his collection.
The two human f’hanos converged on Stefan and the elf, who were having trouble standing, much less preparing to fight.
Stefan eyed the pair regretfully. How he knew which of his comrades had become those fleshless fiends was beyond his ken, but he recognized the duo as easily as if they were alive and standing before him. Once again he condemned himself for failing to save them somehow, preventing their terrible fate.
“Sir Stefan!” Idaria shouted. She had been shouting his name repeatedly, trying to jar him out of his seemingly dazed state. “Sir Stefan! You cannot just stand there! Please!”
Forced to take action on her own, the elf slave picked up a large stone and tossed it at the nearest of the undead. However, the stone bounced off without doing any harm.
Her attempt managed to stir Stefan to action. He gave a start, struggling forward and lunging at the one he knew was once Willum. If the f’hanos retained any of their memories or abilities after death, Willum would be the most dangerous.
Indeed, the larger ghoul dodged Stefan’s awkward attack and continued to close on them. Willum carried no weapon, but one bony hand was folded into a fist and the other reached for the knight, likely with the intention of ripping out his throat.
The Solamnic swatted away the grasping hand then swung. His blade rebounded off the figure’s bones with such force that Stefan nearly dropped his weapon. At the same time, the thing that had once been Hector tried to seize his sword arm, but Idaria grabbed the bony limb, then tried to twist it around.
“Keep back!” Stefan cautioned, but Idaria did not heed his warning. Hector turned on the elf woman, seizing her forearm and holding it tight. She slammed her hand into his rib cage, but the f’hanos, moving swiftly, grabbed hold of her wrist.
“No!” Stefan made a desperate lunge with his sword at the other undead man’s nearest limb. However, Willum seized his arm, keeping the sword from being a threat to either creature. “Let her go!” Stefan pleaded, for Willum was eyeing Idaria hungrily. “She has nothing to do with us! Take me as you will, but let her be, Willum!”
The skeletal figure with Hector’s features, hearing the familiar voice of his old comrade, suddenly stilled. Willum, too, paused but then jerkily brought his fist forward.
Stefan started to react, but halted as the skeletal Willum opened his fist. In Willum’s bony palm lay a triangular pendant. The setting was forged from steel, and the center had a pair of arching horns made from brass.
It was a medallion of the god of just cause, Kiri-Jolith.
As Stefan stared in bewilderment, dead Willum offered it to him again.
Staring at the empty eye sockets, Stefan gingerly plucked the medallion from the f’hanos’s palm. A warmth began to wash over the knight.
Hector suddenly released the elf woman. The two undead warriors stood motionless for a moment, then collapsed together in a pile of bones.
At that point, the ground beneath them suddenly cracked and heaved worse than before.
Secreting the medallion in his armor, Stefan seized Idaria’s hand just as the two of them started to sink into a fresh chasm. Together, they jumped up to a nearby rise.
Idaria abruptly tugged him. “It is him! He is there!”
“Who?” No sooner had he asked the question than the Solamnic caught sight of the Grand Lord Golgren in the distance. The ogre leader looked crazy, his hair flowing wildly around his grinning face as he sought to climb up a high jumble of massive stones.
The elf cried Golgren’s name, but the ogre did not hear her. Golgren finally reached the top of his little mountain and stood straight. He laughed and held up his fist, shaking it at the sky and everything, as though taunting the forces assailing him.
And those forces responded in kind, for the sky, which had turned to fire, suddenly unleashed a dozen bolts of black lightning. They shot toward the grand lord, battering and burning around where he stood, dancing on the roiling land and dodging the bolts. The black lightning bolts churned up so much earth and dust that the pair quickly lost their view of him.
Idaria let out a gasp of fear. Stefan shook his head. “He can’t have survived that.”
But though the lightning continued unabated, through glimpses here and there they saw the half-breed still standing and laughing defiantly. His garments were ruined, his skin was black and bruised, but he retained an air of invincibility.
“We must reach him!” Idaria tried to move forward, but in doing so nearly fell into a ravine opening up on one side of them.
The knight pulled her back. “We can do nothing for him and likely nothing for ourselves but pray!” He touched a hand to the medallion. “If there is a way, great Kiri-Jolith … if there is a way to guide us-even him,” Stefan added, referring to Golgren, “-through this, then I ask humbly for your aid. Or else what is lost here may lead to a dread darkness spreading beyond the ogre realms.”