He quickly filled his copper bowl from the water bag. He lit two candles on small wooden stands on each side of the bowl. He then sprinkled scrying herbs in the water. He was the priest of the Lord of the Underworld, the mighty demon lord Orcus! He needed to summon his deity to advise him on a matter of great import.
He grabbed his dagger and pulled it from his sheath. He cut the palm of his left hand and, laying the dagger aside as blood lightly filled his palm from the cut, he picked up the talisman and placed it facedown in his palm to feed the god’s mouth his blood.
“Orgnath falgon, zartoth Orcus!” Tal Gor chanted softly. He did not want others hearing his games. He was basically ad libbing, putting together normal chants to the spirits with what he imagined he would need to contact a deity. “Anoboth, trigoshlog, nargh fal doth toman. Graghl foth zartoth!”
He thrust his fist with the talisman into the water... and screeched as the cut in his hand burned with pain. The herbs were apparently painful against the open wound, or so Tal Gor thought until he started getting woozy and the room started to swirl around him. He glanced worriedly down at the bowl. Had he cut too deep? Was his life’s blood overfilling the basin?
Red blood swirled in the water, casting a red tint to the reflected candle light. The bowl was oddly bright and shimmering. What was that in the bowl? Tal Gor wondered woozily. It was not his reflection. The young shaman suddenly passed out.
“Well, that was faster than I would have expected,” a craggy baritone voice crackled. It sounded like that of an elder warrior.
“What are you talking about?” another deep but female voice asked.
An extremely bass and darkly disturbing voice said, “Use your demon sight. We have an insubstantial visitor that has just joined us.” Demon sight? Tal Gor wondered groggily, trying to open his suddenly sleep-heavy eyelids.
“Over by the calling stone with Astlan’s symbol on it,” a third craggy voice stated. “A dream walker has come to us.”
“Ahh, I see. He looks rather young,” the woman’s voice said.
“Interesting in that we had not actually tried calling to him; yet he shows up on his own shortly after the temple’s runes were reactivated,” the disturbing deep voice said.
Tal Gor finally managed to get his eyes open and stared in awe at the room around him. He was sitting on the floor hugging a large silver talisman that looked very much like his stone talisman, yet unworn. He was in a large, carved-stone chamber with a number of large pillars around the edges. He himself was seated between two of the pillars. The voices were coming from the other side of the room, about twenty feet away. There were five very large, very odd-looking orcs and an even larger something else.
The odd-looking orcs were impressively massive, yet had cloven hooves and wings. The orcs were of widely varying colors. The giant creature was truly frightening; it had a lower body like that of a satyr, but instead of being hairy, this being was scaly and had a long tail with a spade on the end. The being’s upper torso was very orc-like, but hugely massive, with far better defined musculature than any orc he had ever seen. The being had huge bat-like wings, not unlike the weird orcs, just a lot bigger. His arms were huge with massive claws. His muzzle was more snout-like than that of an orc, more bestial with huge fangs rather than tusks, and very sharp teeth. The demon, for clearly it could be nothing else, also had huge horns, much like on the talisman.
Tal Gor gulped as he stared at the creatures, who were staring back at him as well. Finally, Tal Gor stammered, “M- My Lord God Orcus?” It was probably hard to hear, but he was feeling rather stunned.
“Well, at least the boy knows where he is,” the woman, who was standing next to the large demon, said.
The large demon, or so Orcus Tal Gor supposed it was, grinned. At least, Tal Gor hoped that that horrifying visage was a grin. “I am Tommus,” it said, “the new Master of Mount Doom. What is your name?”
“Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, son of Sal Gor El and Mar An Crooked Stick. I am apprentice shaman for the Crooked Stick tribe.”
“Vespa will be pleased that one of her tribe was the first to actually contact us,” the woman said.
A man who had not spoken before said, “I must admit, the Crooked Stick bloodline must be strong if an apprentice shaman can seek out and find this temple on his own after all this time. I had expected that locating any shaman still capable of hearing us would have been a task, and here an apprentice comes to us before we call.”
The giant demon stood; it had been seated on a low-backed throne behind an altar. It was huge, twice the height of Tal Gor. It pulled a huge mace with a metal version of the talisman as the ball of the mace. It walked over and stood before Tal Gor. “Rise, shaman,” it commanded.
Tal Gor gulped and stood up. Surprisingly, he felt no pain as he stood. He glanced down at his leg to see it as it always was, yet it did not hurt.
The demon lord noticed his glance. “So you’ve been wounded?”
“Yes, My Lord. I am sorry for my weakness,” Tal Gor said, looking to the ground ashamed.
The demon lord chuckled. “Strength comes in many forms. Do not belittle yourself. You have come here today, uncalled when we were about to look for you. Your strength as a shaman has impressed the commanders of the D’Orcs, and it has impressed me. You have chosen to come to me, and I could use your assistance. Will you swear to be my shaman?”
Still in shock, Tal Gor nodded.
“Grasp the head of my mace and swear by your name and tribe that you shall serve me faithfully as my shaman,” Dark Lord Tommus commanded.
Tal Gor reached out and grasped the head of the mace with his cut hand. “I, Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, son of Sal Gor El Crooked Stick and Mar An Crooked Stick, Apprentice of Horrgus Trifeather, do hereby solemnly swear to be shaman of Lord Tommus, Master of Mount Doom, with all the duties and responsibilities that ensue.” Tal Gor was improvising based on other oath-taking ceremonies he knew of; specifically, the shamanic oaths of service.
“I, Tommus, Master of Mount Doom, do hereby take thee, Tal Gor El Crooked Stick, to be my shaman with all the duties and responsibilities that ensue.”
Suddenly, Tal Gor felt himself overwhelmed by the presence of Tommus. Strange visions and things he did not understand swept through him and he felt weak and dizzy and lost, and then suddenly he felt a warmth and an embracing that was unlike anything he’d felt before.
Tal Gor, return to your sleep now. My commanders and I shall have work for you. We will need to hunt, a great deal, and will need your assistance to come into your realm. I shall contact you when the time is right, Lord Tommus boomed inside Tal Gor’s mind.
Tom waited for his new shaman to disappear before turning to his commanders. “Well, that went strangely well.”
“Indeed. Would that shamans from other planes came so easily,” Darg-Krallnom said.
“I have, obviously, never witnessed a shamanic binding before,” Zelda said.
Tom shrugged. “To be honest, I have never done one before. I based it on what I’ve done before for binding warlocks and similar tasks.”
“It seemed pretty much identical to what your previous self did,” Arg-nargoloth said. “The words were different, but then, the ritual always varied according to the individual.”
Tom hoped so; he did not know for sure he was doing any of it right, warlock or shaman. He had spent considerable time analyzing what he had done with Vaselle, comparing it to his possession experiences, and had tried to refine it, make it less intrusive. He was not sure a warlock binding and a shaman binding would be the same, but he presumed they would be similar. Did not shamans channel spirits, sometimes being possessed? And presumably the shaman would want to call on his aid or power. Tom was not sure how such power sharing might work, although the aid part at least made some sense. He had a link to both Vaselle and Tal Gor and could roughly sense where they were. Presumably, he could send mana down that link the same way whoever had been upstream of the priests sent mana down to them.