Checkmate

"Aaaaah!"

Oh, so that's what happens when you destroy an artifact. Agar has heard about such things before; when growing up he once met a former high wizard who was reduced to a hollow shell, forever unable to spellcast, all because he destroyed the bodypart of some long-dead lich. Agar never expected to have to fight this battle for himself. The pull of the disintegrated crown is insidious, and Agar instinctively knows that it will gladly take him with it if he gives it any opening whatsoever. He's shocked by how hungry it seems. The alienist cudgels his willpower into resisting, and with a sound like a falling bird he drops to his knees, barely successful. The crown of bones crumbles into fine black dust, and the Ivory King gurgles in soul-wrenching loss.

Agar looks up as the ground begins to shake. He sees the Ivory King, enraged beyond comprehension, overbearing Priggle as he charges like a juggernaut for Agar. "Oh dear."

"Ow. Ouch. This is very painful. And disgusting. But mostly painful. Line right up, step on the deep gnome. We're used to it. Ouch." Priggle's trampled voice sounds somewhat philosophical about it all.

Turned by the Ivory King, Tao runs. She curses as she scrambles up and over rubble. "Goddess damned son of a bitch friggin'. . ." Shuddering with the cold, she screams at the top of her hoarse voice for the solar to return. Something peels off from the fight above the huge black worm out in the balefire-lit darkness, but with a shudder she realizes that it's Soder turning back and not Evergreen. She can barely see the solar, swooping above the worm and attracting numerous bolts of fire and lightning from the ghoulish forces on the plain below. Chains of sunlight dangle from his hand.

Meanwhile, Velendo flies over to the limp and bleeding Galthia to cast freedom of movement. Next to him, Cruciel starts to heal him and suddenly pulls back. "You don't worship Calphas, do you?" she asks with disappointment.

"No," gasps Galthia. Feeling is beginning to return to his limbs.

"Then my healing won't work on you, but I'll do what I can." She casts protection from evil instead. As he begins to recover, Velendo turns and casts a maximized searing light at the Ivory King's corpulent back. The holy magic hisses and spits when it touches him, winking out without harm as it's deflected by spell resistance. The ghoul doesn't even turn around.

Galthia staggers to his feet and groans as he points into the darkness. The rest of the Defenders turn to look. At first all they can see is the faint glow of light rising from the solar and the chains of light. He swoops down, rises slightly. . . and as the group watches, the darkness rises up to eat the archangel. Literally.

Tao screams from somewhere outside the ring of light. "Nooooo!"

"Oh crap," says Velendo with his mouth hanging open. "That thing just ate a solar. We are so screwed."

"Language," chides Cruciel out of habit. "But yes. Yes, we are."

Stone Bear is the only person who feels pure and utter pleasure. It isn't his own, of course; it's bleeding through from his empathic link with Elder. The worm is fundamentally pleased about the angel's taste. Thinking about this, Stone Bear also realizes that his raven is somewhere out in the darkness picking at the Goddess's corpse. Get an eyeball, he thinks, and a plan occurs to him. "Listen," he says to his friends over the mindlink. "I have an idea. There are two power nexuses here, and that should be impossible. I'm going to try and tap into both of them at once."

"Hang on a second," says Mara. Standing resplendent above him in the sunlight, she looks like a goddess herself. She takes her holy shield of Aeos and angles it, channelling sunlight through it into the Ivory King. The torrent of light slams into his side, almost knocking him off of his feet as he thunders towards Agar. The beam coming from Mara's shield connects with the beam coming from Malachite's sword, and the light solidifies into a blazing triangle. The paladins are acting like magnifying glasses as they focus the sunlight, and suddenly the Ivory King no longer cares quite as much about Agar. With his skin afire and his plans crashing down around him, his plan suddenly becomes to escape and regroup.

Agar isn't taking any chances, though. With the hideous ghoul almost to him, he casts fly on himself even as Proty teleports them to the other side of the combat. In the heat of the moment Proty misjudges their arrival location, but they end up close enough for Agar to fly back into the radius of sunlight.

"Now," says Mara. "You were saying?"

Stone Bear rubs his empty eye sockets with one hand. "It's normally impossible to be tapped into more than one power nexus at a time – but the dead body of Imbindarla is one, and the sunlight of Aeos is another. I'm going to try and cross the energy sources and see what happens. If I'm right, I can use this sunlight to burn out Imbindarla's essense before anyone can eat it."

Mara rolls her eyes. "Is this going to hurt?"

Stone Bear smiles. "Could be." Before she can object he clutches her hand and slaps them both down against Malachite's. Then he reaches out with his spirit and grabs the power nexus of the dead Goddess. Like a tiny copper wire between two lightning bolts, the shaman tries to merge the two destructive forces. There's no effort to control the flow; Stone Bear just acts as a pipeline between Aeos's afterimage and Imbindarla's corpse. The result feels a little bit like being swept over a waterfall. All their muscles begin to convulse, and the sunlight around the three dims noticeably. There's a faint glow somewhere out in the distance.

In his brain, Stone Bear hears Elder say Stop that!

He grits his teeth, energy playing across his eye sockets. "That's the first useful thing you've ever said to me."

Stop that. NOW!

Malachite grimaces from the pain. "If the worm doesn't like it, hang in there as long as you can stand it."

The spirit guide Bear grunts assent. He and Grandfather are floating over Stone Bear's head, forced out by the channelling of energy. They watch him with concerned eyes.

Out in the cavern Elder rears up, way up, thick body twisting high enough to smash into the cavern ceiling above Nacreous. Screaming ghouls fall from his form. Huge chunks of ossified stone fall from the ceiling, crushing giant mushrooms and mausoleums alike.

Stone Bear winces. "This is bad! This is bad! Everybody duck!"

The worm comes down towards the Defenders, slamming to the ground with unimaginable force not far from the bone hill. The earth shakes. WHUMP! Elder's mouth opens and emits a horrible, horrible scream that probably hasn't been heard in the world for eons. People find themselves on their knees, involuntarily clutching their ears. They raise their eyes to see the solar, horribly battered, fluttering upwards from the worm's mouth.

Stone Bear hangs on to Malachite and Mara's hands, and sunlight begins to stream outwards from the heart of Imbindarla. In contrast, the radius of the sunlight on the bone hill has shrunk to only fifteen feet, leaving most of the Defenders exposed in the chill darkness. Imbindarla's essence is polluting and dimming the sunlight here, but the radiance of Aeos is doing even more damage back in the corpse. More importantly, the energy is definitely hurting the worm as it's channelled through Stone Bear. "I'm the conduit," he mutters. "It's linked to me, so what passes through me passes through it." He does his best to increase the flow of power, but it's like splashing a puddle into a cataract.

Malachite focuses the sunlight through Karthos and keeps the beam focused on the Ivory King. Smoke and flames continue to rise from popping, sizzling layers of fat. He looks right at the ghoul. "Check."

Burr-Lipp moves into the sunlight, shivering, then realizes that Tao is somewhere out into the darkness near the worm. His frog-like face grimaces as he realizes what he should do. "This will probably hurt," he thinks to the others, and hops out into the darkness.

Priggle picks himself back up, brushing carrion bugs from his armor. He looks over at the Ivory King. "He's hurting, and I'm never one not to kick a man when he's down. Learned that from my enemies." He pauses for a few seconds to untangle the twisted phrasing, shrugs, and moves into the dim sunlight before shooting his crossbow. He misses pathetically, the bolt just hitting but dangling from flab.

The Ivory King looks longingly at the hated Agar, but the halfling is flying too far out of his reach. Instead he tries to put an end to Malachite's insolence. He braves the sunlight and slaps the paladin with his tongue, following up with some kind of power that almost freezes Malachite solid. Icicles form over him, melt in the sunlight, then reform as the cold rebounds through his frame. Entering the sunlight is too painful for the ghoul, though, so instead he lurches away over the crest of the hill and out of sight in the darkness.

"Soder! To me, now!"

"Hello, everybody! Miss me?" The dragoncorpse with yellow eyes swoops overhead, and Agar barely fights off an urge to become a bibbling idiot when one of Soder's spells strikes him. "Your majesty, where is the true threat? Where is Nolin?"

If the Ivory King answers his advisor, the Defenders don't hear it, but Mara answers for him. "Dead!"

The dragon pauses in its wingbeats. "Dead?"

Suddenly the ragged solar swoops in, depositing Tao and Burr-Lipp closer to the light. He uses his own holiness to burn away the remnants of the negative energy that turned Tao. The divine agent is furious. "I have sunbeams with his name on them! I spent hours carefully engraving 'big fatass Ivory King' on them! Where did he go?"

Malachite points at the rubble blocking their view of the Ivory King, even as Karthos lays on hilt to bring him back from the brink of death.

Elder is inside Stone Bear's brain, his customary hissing becoming a thunder of pain. Make! It! Stop!

"I think no."

The voice of the spirit guide begins to cajole and wheedle. I have helped you for so long now during your whole trip through the underdark. . .

"La de da la la, I can't hear you!" Stone Bear grits his teeth and maintains the connection. He's quickly becoming exhausted, and he yells to the others. "We can't let the Ivory King escape. He'll heal in the darkness!"

"On it," says Velendo, and he recites the prayer to the most powerful spell he knows. A sovereign wall springs into existence as a dome over the bone hill, trapping the Ivory King in with the Defenders but keeping Elder and Soder outside. Velendo wraps it around as a floor as much as possible in order to stymie the worm if it tries to burrow in. A few arrows clatter down from afar and skitter off the wall, but its existence isn't obvious to anyone who can't see magic. Then Velendo touches Malachite with a heal spell. "That was my last really big thing to do!" he warns.

Agar says, "I know how you feel."

The solar lands, emaciated and shaking. "Can Cruciel heal the solar?" asks Galthia.

Velendo shakes his head. "Not unless the solar is a worshipper of Calphas."

Galthia nods. "Right, I don't think he's allowed to moonlight. 'Oh, in my spare time I worship Calphas. . .'"

Priggle frowns. "Was that a joke?"

Galthia looks at him with a frown. "I'm very funny. You just don't understand githzerai humor."

"Just like Glibstone."

"What's that?"

Malachite interrupts. "We have trapped the Ivory King in here for a reason. We want to kill him. I can't hit him any more because there's rubble between me and him, so now everyone else has to do the job."

Velendo frowns. "If we do, then he isn't permanently dead. No good."

Agar looks resolute. "I'm going to try to get the elemental to clear you a path."

Malachite winces as energy ripples through his body. "Have Cruciel go hit him!"

Velendo shakes his head. "Cruciel is enervated. But we have an archangel here, and they're freakin' powerful." He pauses to think. "Of course, it's enervated too. . ."

"I'll buy us some time." Galthia is the only one who can see the Ivory King, who is now standing in the darkness away from the light and visibly healing from the cascade of negative energy that fills the polluted air. The sunlight's flame is extinguished, and the only part of his skin that's still smoking is the part burned by Nolin's fiery death.

Galthia launches himself off a broken pillar and spins in mid-air, trying to tumble close before the Ivory King notices him. He isn't even close to successful. Velendo's freedom of movement means that he can't be paralyzed again, but the ghoul's barbed tongue drains strength as it pulls him close enough to be bitten. "He's not going to bite my head off at this angle," thinks Galthia to the others. "How much damage can he do?" That question is answered as the Ghoul King's teeth grate along Galthia's left leg, shredding flesh and muscle in the same way a hungry halfling might strip the meat from a chicken bone. The monk wrenches free and balances on one leg, cursing himself for asking rhetorical questions.

"My turn," he growls. His muscles are shaking from negative energy and it feels like he has run a marathon, but the Ivory King's head is still spouting ichor from where the crown of bones was destroyed. Galthia hits the Ivory King four times, doing enough damage to drop a slaad. The ghoul reels backwards under the withering blows.

Elder screams, and people scream with him. Make it STOP! He rears up to the ceiling and slams his bulk straight down onto the top of Velendo's dome-shaped sovereign wall. The ground crumbles as the unstable bones shift, and many of the Defenders fall to hands and knees. There's no question that the blow would have killed them if it weren't for the wall of solid faith. Galthia looks up to see Elder's black and gaping maw right up next to him, just five feet and an infinitely thin force wall away. As he gazes down into the void of annihiliation, he sees – oh so far away! - a little tiny spark of sunlight forcing its way upwards from inside the worm.

MAKE IT STOP!

Mara dumps all of her faith and energy straight into the heart of the worm. It screams again. The tentacular, pseudonatural earth elemental summoned by Agar begins to push its way through the ossified stone to clear a path between the Ivory King and the source of the sunlight. Seeing this beginning to work, Agar floats backwards and tries to summon a second elemental to help.

Elder's breath is frosting a section of the sovereign wall next to Galthia, breathing on it, freezing it solid, and scraping the frost away with its face as it tries to break through and destroy Stone Bear. The sound of the undead flesh rubbing up against the wall is a sound that will haunt nightmares.

Velendo steadies himself, eyes wide. He prays under his breath, but it isn't clear if he's talking to the wall or his best friends. "Hold it together! Hold it together!"

Stone Bear smiles as he watches the worm thrash. "Elder, tell you what. I don't recall ever using the death touch ability you granted me."

That's not my fault! When Galthia was weakened in Akin's Throat, I –

"Here's what I want to know." He hesitates. "If I stop what I'm doing to you, and I use the death touch ability on the Ivory King, is it going to work?"

Pause.

YES.

He laughs out loud. "I don't believe you." The worm hisses with frustration and pain, and Stone Bear turns to his friends.

"I'm making a conduit between the two channels, but Elder is anchored to me. Any energy I channel is being filtered through him as well. Through all my spirit guides, really, but he's the only one made of undead flesh."

Velendo blinks. "That means it isn't the fact that you are channeling energy to the heart. It is the fact that you are channelling energy at all! Every bit of sunlight you channel goes through it? That means that you should pour everything you have into the Ivory King, because it's going to hurt the worm at the same time."

"We have three main targets here." Stone Bear scans sky for Soder, still hovering silently above. "Four. One is killing the Ivory King, one is driving away the worm, one is killing Soder, and one is burning away the godlflesh."

Velendo nods. "Yes, but the godflesh is not trying to kill us."

"And the sunlight will go back to a larger radius if you stop channelling both." says Mara.

"Fair enough." Stone Bear casts deathwatch to monitor the people around him, then ceases channelling negative energy from Imbindarla's corpse. The sunlight around him grows brighter, and there is a hissing in his mind.

Malachte shouts to the others, "Didn't Nolin have a magical mirror?"

"Yub." Burr-Lipp turns his bulging eyes to the pile of discarded items around where Nolin fell. He hops forward, sees the mirror lying on its back, and nabs it with his sticky tongue. "Got it!" He jumps over onto a bounder between Malachite and the Ivory King.

"That's some tongue," comments Priggle.

"Very popular with the ladies," confirms Galthia.

Priggle scowls. "You ARE funny!"

Galthia starts to answer, but catches a glimpse of the mirror of vanity that Burr-Lipp is holding. In its reflection he thinks he can see Nolin's face amidst an endless wreath of flames. Then the image disappears as Mara and Malachite simultaneously channel the sunlight through their holy items and into the mirror. Burr-Lipp angles the mirror perfectly, and the beams of solid sunlight slice into the Ivory King's bubbling flesh. Even as they do, the worm begins screaming and slamming itself multiple times into the wall.

Stone Bear winces. "I'm going to need a new spirit guide."

"You think?" Mara glares at him.

"Wait a minute!" Galthia looks over. "You only just now realized that you're going to need a new one?"

"Well, he was a really good spirit until he got all angry. And huge. And undead."

Galthia squints. "A giant, world-devouring worm and you didn't figure out he was..."

"My spirit guide? Come on! How would I know?"

Priggle nods. "We should have suspected something. His directions were impeccable."

WHOOM! Dislodged by multiple impacts, the bones beneath Elder are cracking and shifting and dissolving. The whole hill begins to slide. The sunlight is jostled away from the Ivory King, but Burr-Lipp corrects his aim and looks satisfied as the light reignites the ghoul's skin.

"Where's that ring Nolin had? The one that made people do. . you know? We may want to purge him of Imbindarla's flesh." Priggle looks over at Nolin's remains and shakes his head. "Oh, my, I have to sort through the vomit. This isn't the sort of things they write epic poetry about after the fact." He scrabbles in the bone, hunting for the ring.

Desperate and with nowhere to flee, the Ivory King attacks Galthia. Again he fails at snipping off his head, but Galthia is almost too weak from strength drain to stand up. "Call off the sunlight, and I'll let this one live!"

Malachite shakes his head. "Check!"

Galthia looks up at the sarcous face with its sharpened rows of teeth, meeting the piggy little eyes. "Seems like a good time to die."

The Ivory King smiles through his pain. "That's convenient." He looks up. "Soder! What are you DOING up there?"

He killed Nolin. Soder hovers, dumbstruck and griefstricken, ignoring the battle that rages below him. He killed Nolin! But I had such plans for us! He would have loved my family, and I had his room prepared. . . Would he come back if I asked nicely? A quick divination indicates otherwise, and grief is beginning to transform to cold fury. How DARE he? He knew that Nolin and I were best friends! How could he betray me like that? The others were his, but not the bard! Then his attention is dragged away by the Ivory King screaming for him down below. The traitorous Ivory King. The murdering, traitorous Ivory King.

"Oh? Do you need me?" Soder flicks a cursory greater dispelling at the sovereign wall, and is not surprised in the least when it isn't remotely affected. Fury battles with loyalty in his head, and he barely manages to contain his tongue. He's lost his taste for this fight. Everything worth fighting for is gone. Now it's just Soder and his greatest treasure, held safe within the palace, and all the joy has left the world. He considers dimension dooring behind the wall – he does still have a large complement of spells prepared – but rejects it. It might now work, and if it does, he'd only be saving the ghoul who killed Nolin, and there's still that worm to contend with. Let him save himself.

"Sorry, your majesty. I Can't get in. You can't get out. Bye-bye." And he teleports away.

Velendo stares in surprise up at the ceiling, and begins to laugh. "Thanks, Soder!"

As the weakened archangel heals Galthia of his injuries, Tao flings a sunbeam at the Ivory King. It splashes harmlessly off of him, so she leaps towards him with her sword. Halfway there she's met by the ghoul's tongue, which wraps around her neck and drags her forward. Tao is holding nature's wrath and so can't be paralyzed, but the Ivory King drops Galthia and tears into Tao instead. She feels her strength bleed away.

"I was looking forward to eating this one more than you. She has a holiness about her." He kicks away Galthia's weakened body.

Malachite agrees, "She does."

Galthia rolls over at the Ivory King's feet. "I feel so rejected. He spat me out twice."

Tao, however, spits in the ghoul's face. "My holiness is inside of me and it comes from Galanna, and it's not for you!"

"Inside of you? Not for long."

"Wow," says Agar, "Soder fled!" He flies over to see if Tao needs help.

Mara smiles. "He was his closest cadre!"

Agar nods. "Maybe he's mad at him?"

Malachite smiles. "I hope so, Agar, but one objective at a time."

"Good point." Velendo casts prayer, followed by a maximized flame strike. The pillar of fire smashes down with a roar. The undead tries to get ut of the way, but with the wall behind him he doesn't have much room to duck. The smell of burning meat fills the foul air. "You big fat abomination!" The Ivory King groans as his flesh reignites.

There's a knocking noise on the sovereign wall.

Knock knock.

"Not now!" yells Malachite. Agar turns and looks. It's Teliez. The teenaged son of the God of Murder grins and waves. Using overly elaborate hand gestures, he points to himself, points to Imbindarla's body, mimes eating, and gives a questioning shrug with a cautious smile.

Tao screams at him. "Go eat the heart! Go!"

"Wait!" says Stone Bear. "Isn't he a bad guy?"

"Yes," says Velendo, "but he's the best of the bad guys we have. Go!" He waves Teliez away. The acne-scarred demigod gives a grin and a thumbs up at their approval, and disappears into the darkness.

Galthia yells "Don't break off!" He is incredibly weak from the negative energy coursing through his muscles, but he attacks the Ivory King multiple times. Guided by Velendo's prayer his hands plunge into his burning belly, pulling out huge gobbets of fat.

Tao growls, "Die already! Die die die!"

Right over their heads the worm Elder strikes the sovereign wall one final time. Then it twists its huge bulk, smoke trailing from it, and chews its way down into the ossified stone out of sight. Soder is nowhere in sight. More ghoulish firepower from troops outside is aimed at the worm's tail, but it never seems to notice it. The tail seems endlessly long as it slides into the ground. Stone Bear can still hear it screaming inside of his head.

The earth elementals smash away rubble, and Cruciel pulls Velendo back to clear the line of sight between the sunlight and the Ivory King. Both paladins withdraw from the focus, and Stone Bear's channelled energy drops by a factor of ten. He slumps back, exhausted.

"I'm charging him," yells Mara. "I really want to smack him!" She charges on foot as Cruciel pulls Velendo out of her path. Mara's iron feet ring on the crumbling bone, and Lightbinder blazes like a star in her hand. The mace sweeps against the Ivory King's bloated head and he's knocked backwards off of his feet. Dank and noisome fluids begin to pour from his nose and mouth, and he begins to twitch. Rotting intestines wriggle inside of his horribly injured belly. A sickly green light seeps from his chest.

"Is he dead?" asks Mara, panting slightly. She's still glowing slightly.

"Not yet," says Malachite. He stands over the fallen form and raises his sword. The Ivory King manages to open one dull yellow eye to look at him standing there. "Mercy?" he mumbles, worms spilling from his mouth.

"Checkmate," says Malachite, and slams Karthos home.

It's almost an hour later when the corpse of Imbindarla disappears. One minute it's there, and the next minute it has collapsed in on itself, solid bone crumbling into huge slabs as if suddenly hollowed out. The several hundred ghoulish troops clawing at the sovereign wall stiffen, throw their heads back, and putrefy within seconds. For the first time Nacreous is silent, and the pulsing negative energy that had filled the air is gone as well.

"He's done it," says Velendo as he leans up against a broken chunk of statuary. "Teliez has ascended to become the new God of Undead. Calphas help us."

"Better the incompetent demigod that we know, than the evil worm and bloated undead we don't," say Tao. "Or something like that."

"Well, it looks like he did us a favor when he went," says Malachite as he stands on a wall to scout across the city. "I think he killed every single ghoul when he left. Maybe he drew on their unlife force for energy to push himself into immortality, I don't know. But there's no one out there now."

"I think some of the ghouls had already looted and fled the city," says Galthia. "That's what it looked like from here after their King died."

"And they're welcome to it." Stone Bear's head aches. "I wonder where Soder is?"

No one knows.

That night they sleep safely behind the sovereign wall, miles below the surface but bathed in the holy sunlight of Aeos, and there are no unpleasant dreams. If you were to watch Sir Malachite as he slept, you would see him smiling.