Amanita (Chapter 34)

Template:Amanita nav We returned to Harrogath. The city was intact, shining white under a new blanket of snow. But there was no time to rejoice. Nihlathak is betraying the world to the Lord of Destruction, giving him the Relic of the Ancients in exchange for an empty promise to spare Harrogath. She cast the portal, and I stepped through to the Temple of the Snake, where the traitor is doubtless hiding. The Relic of the Ancients is our most holy totem. With it in his infernal grip, Baal will not be challenged by the guardians at the peak of sacred Mount Arreat, and the world will be his.

I shook my head, and breathed in deep. Cold air seared my lungs, but the pain helped clear away her residue. That little girl does have a spirit like no other. I clonked my forehead with the butt of my bow a few times and looked around. The Barbarian's biggest clan temples are carved into Arreat's sides, both as a protective circle and to share the mountain's holy vibes. Outside the temple, a bigger-than-average ledge with a double row of standing stones led to the entrance. A few dozen frozen human bodies were scattered around, most old enough to be mummified, and all armed to the teeth. They weren't moving... yet. Zombies. Why does it always have to be Zombies?

I thought about it for a few seconds, then hauled out the katar as the first Zombie stumbled to his feet. Keeping my distance is good, but Zombies don't care about poison and if I break them into pieces they might not give me as much trouble. A quick mind blast stunned the first group, and I laid into them. Frozen rotten meat flew -- bleah. At least having them in nice tight bunches made mental blasts easier.

They fell down, and got up, and fell down again. I slapped and smashed and hacked, slowly thinning them out. Some cracked up, but not enough. Right about the time I started getting tired, they had enough room to charge me. I'm really starting to hate these guys. At least the ones in the swamp didn't charge. A splat like that might be enough to make me quit the business.

When I finally had enough room to move around, I started kicking bodies off the ledge. Hope there's nothing important down there. I swear I heard one saying "Oh no, not again" on the way down. More Zombies were in the entrance hall. They were even tougher than the first bunch -- the nastiest-looking one was rigged to blow up when he fell. Cute trick. Made me wish I'd been using the bow. Trappers sometimes rig bodies, but they do it after they're dead... well, ok, technically a Zombie is dead, but they need them to stop wiggling. Nothing else was in there, so I pried myself out of the wall and went inside.

For a temple, the Temple of the Snake smelled a lot like a mausoleum. Right inside the door was a shallow grave, recently dug up. Even the walls looked like they were made of bones. The local rock is mostly white, so I know it's just my imagination. The banners hanging on every corner were dyed leather too thin to be oxhide. It was probably my imagination that they looked like human skin, too. Then there were the skulls piled up in the corners, the ribs and vertebrae in baskets and crates, long bones stacked like firewood next to them... maybe they don't have much burial space, and have to move old bodies out to make room.

The temple was crawling with Zombies. Every now and then I ran into a couple of Bull-men, but otherwise it was Zombies, Zombies, empty graves, and more Zombies. At least when you knock the Bulls down, they stay that way. None of these guys confuse easily -- Bulls are too stubborn and the Zombies are too stupid. The temple layout didn't help. The whole place was nothing but a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Pretty impressive how a bunch of Barbarians hollowed all this out of the mountain side.

I had to go through the maze at a snail's pace, but it didn't take long to find something more incriminating than piles of bones. In one corner, there was a shrine, candles still burning on the altar. In front of it were two very recently dead locals, a man and a woman. Both were tied to wooden crosses and tortured to death. Fresh, bloody tools were resting on the altar. I don't think Bull-men would bother with scalpels and chafers. In fact... the last time I saw things like those was in some Necromancer's basement "laboratory."

A set of stairs going down was in another back corner. Damn. One maze wasn't enough for these guys. The next level was full of Zombies too, with some Death Maulers and a critter I didn't recognize. The new demon was a flyer, or maybe more like a floater. The upper part was a round bladder full of gas, with a spindly body hanging down under. They hang around at the backs of groups, and implant their young in the bodies of other demons. They don't even buy them flowers first. Even Zombies try to run away. Poison kills the incubator, but not the young floater: when the host dies, they chew their way out. They look a lot like Hell's mother-thing baby worms. Demons are so cute when they're that age... not. Just like the slave drivers, they don't do much in combat, just make everything else worse. And, just like the slavers, they became my new number one priority to kill.

Down on the second level, whoever was in charge was a lot less shy about leaving the tools of his trade lying around. I found several Necromantic totems, wands, staves, and magic orbs, along with a rare demon bone shield and helmet. A couple of times, I found statuettes of a weird squid-like thing on top of columns. One was bronze, the second was jade, and both of them were creepy as Hell. In the back corners were more tortured Barbs, and the remains of experiments. One looked like a dead knight, but it turns out to have been a blood golem someone tried to bind inside a suit of armor. Making golems is bad enough, but trying to combine blood and iron is more than enough reason to put a Necro down.

Grinding up the Zombies was slow, exhausting work. The Death Maulers didn't make it any easier, but at least they'd attack something when they got confused. Zombies just stand there, looking dumber than usual. One weird thing did happen, though. A Zombie had on a suit of armor that was mostly intact. While I was stripping the Zombie, and chopping it up, the armor disappeared and a note fluttered into my hand.

"EEEEEEE!!! SIGON'S SHELTER! You beautiful tall dark and gorgeous mistress of the night! That's the whole set! I could kiss you, but my lips can't reach that far. Remember to put those boots you found in your stash too, we might have a use for them.

-- The Mule"

I don't think I'll ever get used to that.

More stairs led down from the second floor. Double damn. This level was sure to go faster, though: no Zombies. The first thing to charge out was slave humanoids, still naked. Then came Succubi, also lightly encumbered. I'm beginning to feel overdressed. Hmph. Slaves and Succubi. I haven't seen anything that directly implicates Nihlathak yet, but whoever's been down here, they're someone I have to put down.

Unlike the other levels, the basement of the temple was laid out evenly: four long halls off the central staircase. The first hall I looked in was lit by candelabra shaped like subservient demons. Haven't seen anything like that since Horazon's place. And the end of the hall was a pit full of corpses, flayed and bled dry. The skins were hanging on the walls. I didn't stay long. That mass of flesh in that hole looked like it was moving. There was nobody special in the second hall, or the third. Some of the tombs hadn't been opened, but not many. The wall decorations were definitely Rathman, and fresh.

As I worked my way into the last hall, I went over my Necro techniques. There are three ways Necros kill: minions, bone missiles, and exploding corpses. There were plenty of Zombies up above, but none down here, so he could start raising skeletons. Bone missiles hurt, but you can dodge 'em. Explosions would be dangerous. My favorite tactics don't give me much control over where the bodies fall. Let's hope he's a bone specialist.

I looked around the corner. A group of slaves was in the end of the hall, gathered in a tight group around Nihlathak. "Finally!" Nihlathak shouted, obviously happy to see me. "And here I thought your sort was supposed to be quiet." He gestured. A Succubus behind me went up in a cloud of blood, slamming me into the wall.

Damn, again. I retreated, downing a potion. He's made a study of explosions, and I've mined the whole basement for him. If I was a trapper, I could make my own bombs of these bodies and control them that way. A martial artist could slide in there and get him without him ever knowing it. I... shit, slaves coming. I blasted, shot, and watched them die. More bombs. Damn. Killing them just gives him ammunition.

"I see you have run away, and are being uncharacteristically quiet!" He was talking again. I hate targets who want to chat. I can't stand the needling, but talking back means giving away your position. "You're obviously thinking about how to get out of this desperate predicament. You could leave. Did you ever think of that?"

Nope. No point thinking about it, I'll never do it. He kept talking. "While we're on the subject of thinking... has it occurred to you to wonder why Baal's forces captured and held our men when they could, instead of killing them?"

No again. Meat keeps better alive. I started toward the other corner of the hall, slowly, while he went on. "Do you understand that none of this is necessary? All of this suffering, and for what? Baal wants one thing. Why not give it to him and go on with our lives?"

I wonder if he'll start babbling about how much we might learn from honest and open trade with demons. I'll have to ask him what kind of trades the Succubi are here for. Or, I could keep my big mouth shut and concentrate on business. "No one wants to kill anyone here. I profit nothing from your death." Then he sneered, "All I am doing is defending myself. From you, the aggressor here.

How many people are in that pit of burbling flesh in the other hall? A lot for somebody who just defends himself. I got to the far corner and took stock while he jabbered on. "I have treated Baal like an equal, not a mindless aggressor, and he has responded. Harrogath is safe, safer than Qual-Kehk, or Aust, or you could have made it!"

Mindless aggression. A germ of an idea formed. I closed my eyes and reached out to the slaves around Nihlathak. They hated him, and hated and feared Baal more. No mindless aggression there, they put a lot of thought into it. Nihlathak's voice faded to a soft whine as I concentrated on the slaves. It didn't take long to find what I wanted. It was right on the surface of their minds. They hated Nihlathak, but they hated and feared Baal, and he'd told them to obey the man until he had what he wanted. I smiled.

Suddenly, the slaves heard something -- their master laughing in triumph. The sound came from their own memories, but they didn't know that. It was a familiar sound, and they knew just what it meant. Nihlathak's voice stopped. Then he screamed.

I waited a while, making sure everything in there was doing what they most wanted to do, except Nihlathak. When I opened my eyes again, he was floating towards the back of the hall, blasting ice at his own slaves. Another cute trick, never heard of a Necro doing that. They usually don't want to waste the bodies. No sense letting the little bastards have all the fun, so I put a bolt in him. Nihlathak shrugged it off, yelling something I didn't listen to. He was probably wearing poison resistance gear. If I knew I was coming, I would.

Nihlathak knew lots of nifty tricks. He floated, and teleported, and the ice blast made it really hard on the slaves. I put a few more bolts in him, mostly for fun, until he'd killed off the last of them. The hall was full of bodies. I had to go in there, and couldn't let him die slow. If he had any time, he'd blast me all the way back to Harrogath.

I fired one last time, dropped the bow, and charged. The bastard teleported behind a pile of bodies. I ran straight towards him, then jumped to the side as he set off the first one. He never set off the second. The slaves hardly left anything for me, but that was all right. I was alive and everything else was dead, which was fine by me.

"You stopped Nihlathak," Anya said, "but he didn't have the relic?"

"He probably handed it over hours ago. I've gotta get back out there."

"Are you sure it wasn't there? You cannot know what it looks like. Maybe it was..." I looked her in the eye. She blinked, then nodded. "You know."

"I'm sorry, but I do. It doesn't matter now. I have to get to the top of that mountain before Baal does. Wish me luck."