The Earth, It Cares Not!
Part 10: After Overnighting With Caddyshanks
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6:12 am, 26th Oct. 204 PR
Matthias and Earnest Thromb sit with Grant Caddyshanks at the old man's breakfast table, eating eggs and bacon, and drinking querma. Old Man Caddy has thick, shaggy gray hair and a scruffy beard. He sets down his cup of querma and says, "Okay, let me see if I've got this straight: gnolls attacked in the night, there was a pitched battle, the two of you were the only survivors, and I slept through the whole ordeal. Does that about cover it?" he asks querulously.
"Well, when you put it like that, it does sound hard to believe, Cad, but yeah, that's about the size of it."
The old man takes another sip of querma, finishes off a strip of bacon, wipes his mouth. "Okay. Well, why didn't you wake me after the battle?"
Merchant Thromb sighs, hangs his head momentarily. "Truthfully, I did try, old friend. I spoke, then louder, then shook you. You didn't wake. Not to be indelicate, but you smelled of your lightning water. You still do, this morning."
Fuck you, Ernie! I didn't drink that much. You are dissembling." He comes to his feet, sloshing coffee. "Fine! I'll drink the swill you've poured out so far. But now, let us go and speak words of remembrance over your fallen."
Earnest Thromb comes to his own feet, palms out placatingly. "Cad, please, just--"
"Fine! Forget the fallen. Show me the corpses of the gnolls!" The old man's voice drops an octave on the last two words, and his chest expands, bursting the seams of his nightshirt. His forehead grows more pronounced and the hair on his forearms thickens.
Matthias remains seated but smiles beatifically at this development. He takes up the knife and carves a few more slices of jerky from a roll on a cutting board. He tosses a bite to the old mutt lying next to the iron stove near the breakfast table. Putting a bite into his own mouth, he chews thoughtfully and releases a spell -- Asmodeus' Disdain.
Caddyshanks feels the harm wash over him and assumes that the deceptive halfling caravan master has worked some evil magic against him. Cad's transformation completes and the werewolf leaps upon his friend of many years, claws raking, wolfish mouth crushing the halfling's throat even as Matthias buries the sharp sausage knife -- now coated in Hellbane -- in the changeling's back.
The knife inflicts another 4 damage, and Matthias drops into a forward roll, narrowly dodging those wickedly sharp claws as Cad spins around, scything the air. The warlock regains his feet and dashes from the kitchen onto the old farmhouse's front porch, ripping his short sword from its scabbard as he leaps sideways to the left of the door leading into the house, back pressed against the clapboard wall.
The werewolf bursts from the house, arms impossibly long, their claws and those of his feet serving to brake his momentum at the expense of the porch's floor boards. As the werewolf rounds on the warlock, the poison of his wound kicks in, dealing 2 CON damage and 4 more HP of injury to the werewolf.
Cad rakes claws at Matthias, and the warlock, using Total Defense, barely manages to avoid being disemboweled, still suffering 5 HP (leaving him at 1 temp HP above his normal maximum).
Matthias puts up a Total Defense, dropping his AC from 4 to -2. Even so, one of the changeling's claws rakes him for 7, dropping Matthias to 24/30 HP. And then, the Hellbane poison attacks Cad's system once more, dropping his Constitution another 5 points and inflicting an additional 10 more HP damage, and the lupine falls back, giving ground while vomiting.
The warlock surges forward, swiping his sword in an arc so that the werewolf pulls back his long arms in defense, and Matthias smacks the changeling right on the snout, delivering an Asmodeus'; Touch cantrip using a 1st level spell slot and inflicting 8 on the wolf. Matthias regains 4, putting him back at 28/30 HP. Unbeknownst to the warlock, the werewolf has a single HP remaining.
Sensing his impending death, the werewolf attempts to close with the warlock, perhaps to take him down into the darkness as well, but he is too weak, and the Hellbane finishes him. He collapses at Matthias' feet. The warlock chops twice at the fallen creature's throat, not willing to take any chances, then carves out the beast's heart with a dagger.
For a moment, he holds aloft the heart, declaring "For the glory of Asmodeus!", and then he bites into it, blood running down his chin, staining his robe. He chews, swallows, and is unaware that a pinprick of red light now lies at the center of each eye's pupil.
◦◦◦
Earnest Thromb gasps weakly for air in his final moments, hands unknowingly playing with his own exposed viscera. In the clarity of approaching death his mind is cleared of Matthias' beguilement from the previous evening, and the halfling cranes his neck to regard the warlock who has re-entered the kitchen. "Why, lad?" he asks of the young man he'd befriended eight years earlier.
Matthias walks over and takes a seat on the rough-hewn kitchen floor boards. "I don't expect you have sufficient time left to hear the full answer to that question, Thromb." The warlock absently twists a new ring that only a minute earlier graced his finger for the first time. "This is Carceri's Ring, created by its namesake over four millennia ago, as revealed by my infernal insight. Ah, but you wanted a reason for the justice I have meted out to you today: you skimped on expenses for the caravan journey. You put profits before safety and loyalty to friends."
"Wh-what? No, I never--"
"And because of your greed," Matthias continues, cutting off the dying halfling in mid-sentence, "my best friend was slain. A few more mercs out of Eastdale would have made all the difference, and the Silver Standard Trading Company actually mandates three or more guards for each and every wagon in one of their convoys. Did you know that? But of course you did!"
"Not ... my fault," the halfling wheezes, blood frothing from his lips. "An ... oversight ... accidental." The halfling struggles for breath. "My business. For ... thirty years I've ..."
"--Busted you hump to turn a profit? Saved up for your children's future? Oh, what will happen to my precious family without me? Blah, blah, blah!"
After a few moments: "Are you still with me, Thromb?" Matthias watches a bloody bubble form and pop on the halfling's lips, and notes that the eyes, though weak, still track him. "I am not without mercy. Pledge your fealty to me and to Father Asmodeus now, and you can yet live. This needn't be the end of your story. You can return home to Isabel. But you'd better choose quickly..."
A second passes ... three ... ten. Thromb gasps, "All right! Father ..." A fit of coughing almost spares the merchant his soul. But fate gives him another breath, and "Asmodeus, I am yours".
"There, now! See, that wasn't so bad, was it? Oh, and look. Your guts are creeping back into your innards. Actually, you don't want to see this -- trust me. At any rate, you aren't going to die ... yet. That's good news, eh? But I cannot fail to leave you some reminders of your guilt, and that you are no longer your own creature." Matthias squeezes Thromb's arm. The halfling shrieks in agony, and tears course down his cheeks. "Oh, come now, my newest servant. Don't cry and take on so." And the warlock brushes tears from the recumbent figure's cheek, eliciting redoubled screaming.
Thromb's eyelids flutter open weakly. He slowly takes in his surroundings. He is in a warm if not entirely comfortable bed. A lantern on a bedside table gently illuminates the room but casts some of it in shadows. He glances down where his arms lie atop the folded down quilt -- taking in his transformed right arm numbly, his recent ordeal permitting no greater reaction.
"Ah, you are awake, Revole. Excellent! We have much to discuss," comes the warlock's voice from the corner of the room.
Thromb turns his head painfully to regard Matthias' silhouette. "What did you call me?"
"Revole. That's your new name. Revole Ting. Earnest Thromb was another life, and a name you will hereafter answer to only in subterfuge, serving my own designs.
"You promised!" the halfling says, voice cracking with emotion. "You said I could go home to my wife!"
The warlock clucks his tongue. "Oh, Revole. You shall learn to trust my word. You shall indeed go home. But first, you shall fulfill your preexisting obligation by conveying me to Caldamis, for I must attend to our Father's business there in a matter of some importance," Matthias chides, observing the halfling's expression. "You were going to be gone from home at least a couple weeks anyway. Nobody expects you back before then."
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