Ashen - Chapter 13: The Temple of Moradin

Chapter Thirteen: The Temple of Moradin

The Temple itself was spartan, after the manner of the dwarves of old. Smooth stone walls, without decoration. Four pillars held up the flat ceiling, each carved in dwarvish with the names and deeds of the builders. The floor was polished stone, carved into a tile-like pattern around the pillars, leading the eyes up toward the altar and the raised dais upon which it stood. The altar was also carved stone, but decorated with gold and adamantium, and marked with the Hammer and Anvil symbol of the Dwarf Father.

    It was impossible to enter the Temple quietly. The massive stone doors were worn with age; the weight of them strained against their hinges. They groaned as they scraped along the carved tile floor.

    Hulk spoke the dwarven word for firelight and her eye shone golden with magical light. Four figures lay at the base of the altar. They seemed to have been sitting or crouching there and simply fallen over, but as the magical light fell across the closest, it twitched.

    The sound of popping bone and twisting flesh filled the chapel, as the figure stretched its arms unnaturally, and managed, somehow, to stand to its feet. In life it had been a dwarf, perhaps Raegar, but Ceru didn’t have it in her to ask. Now it was pale - almost white. It’s stringy, unwashed hair lay in clumps across its face, mercifully hiding its eyes, which she imagined to be hollow or - impossibly - filled with evil light. Its armor hung on a deceptively frail form, and it withdrew a pair of swords from sheathes strapped to its back.

    As it did, it seemed to be chuckling, or maybe muttering something in dwarvish. The other three figures - all equally as dead, and equally as menacing - stood slowly to their feet behind the first.

    Hulk did not wait for them to attack. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, seizing the initiative and charging forward, her voice rose to a crescendo as she began shouting some ancient prayer, or perhaps it was a battle cry. As Ceru and the marines began their own charge forward, weapons drawn, the warforged cleric began to shine with holy fire. The wights could only cower and flee before her.

    Adovar loosed a trio of arcane missiles at the nearest wight, which were quickly followed by a geyser of water which seemed to spring from between Oquee’s hands, throwing the undead horror against the altar. The two genasi were on it in a flash, leaping into the air as one, they brought their swords down hard and fast, skewering the creature. One of them stood and stomped his foot down on the thing’s head, snapping its neck against the dais edge.

    The other three were fleeing into a dark passage which stood behind the altar, obscured by the stonework, but visible now that Ceru was standing off to one side. She was following behind them, cutlass drawn; but the warforged called out to stop her.

    “Wait,” she said in magical elvish. “The wights aren’t the danger here. Hang back. It’s the priest we must contend with; Kalgruun. It knows we’re here. The wights help it. They bound it in a twisted mockery of the vow we all took to guard this place. We must move as a unit. One-by-one, we’d each fall before the mummy’s curse.”

    Adovar, Oquee, and the warforged Hulk each began casting spells in preparation for the battle, while Ceru and the marines watched the passageway - weapons ready. It wasn’t ideal. They could hear the foul priest weaving its own magic, its hollow voice echoing against the stone walls. With no other recourse, they moved as a group through the dark passage and into the chamber beyond when their last spell was cast.

    The tomb of Orgoren Brightstone was decorated with ornately carved walls showing the life and accomplishments of the ancient dwarf hero, but they scarcely had time to admire it. On either side of the tomb’s entrance the wights were ready, weapons held high Ceru managed to dodge an axe blow to the head, but one of the marines caught a sword in the shoulder. The other ran his own sword deep into the face of the wight, but lost his grip and was forced to step back and draw his hammer. Tormund had rushed into his place and buried his own axe in the stomach of the same creature.

    Before Hulk could get off her own spell, she was engulfed in a column of unholy green fire. She cried out in her native tongue, and though none of them spoke the words, they all knew it had been a disastrously effective attack. From behind and beside her, Oquee and Adovar each loosed a tiny spark of flame from their fingertips. These motes of light shot across the room, each striking the sarcophagus on either side of the mummy priest and erupting in a conflagration that nearly filled the tiny chamber. Ceru shielded her eyes against the heat and the flames, but sliced at the wight in front of her, relieving it of one of its hands.

    After that first exchange, the rest became lost in the chaos of battle - a protracted back and forth of metal and magic. At some point in the fight, Hulk had cast a healing spell that enveloped the whole party. Adovar managed to reduce one of the wights to fine dust, and Ceru had held her own against a pair of the undead dwarves until Oquee slammed them both into the wall with a thunderous wave of raw magic, stepping in front of Ceru to do so just as another axe swung for her head. Torumund fell again, and was revived with another magic potion; this one from within one of the many hidden pouches tucked away in Oquee’s shell. In the end, it was Delevar, one of the marines, who decapitated the mummy priest even though he still had a sword still lodged in his shoulder.

    As one, the party dropped to the ground. Ceru didn’t take her eyes off the pair of wights slumped against the far wall, but she put her back to the stone and took a deep breath to calm her heart. The air was foul, but at least she was alive to taste it. “I hate that part,” she said, prompting a chuckle from the wounded marine.

    “Ow,” he said. “Don’t make me laugh when I have a sword through me, please.”

    This caught everyone off guard, and they all laughed along with him, though Delevar was now wincing. He cried out in pain and Hulk crawled over to kneel beside him. “Lie back,” she said. His brother joined her and together they removed the blade and closed the wound.

    When she was done tending to Delevar, Hulk stood to her full height and began gathering the bodies of the fallen undead, carrying them out into the chapel.

    “What are you doing,” Adovar asked.

    “Consecrating the corpses, so that they might never have to rise again.”

    Nursing a poultice wrapped around a minor wound on his thigh, Oquee looked up. “Why have you never done this before?”

    Hulk stood still and quiet for a long moment. Her living mechanical form seemed almost frozen. If not for the light in her eyes they might have thought her dead. Finally, she said, “I have never been able to stand against Kalgruun alone - only the wights; but he did not know that, and so we have lived in a kind of passive stalemate. Occasionally, he would send the wights after me, occasionally I would take the fight to them. Most of our time has been spent in silence - ignoring one another.” She carried the corpse of the mummy out into the chapel.

    When she returned, she added, “and then there is the matter of my vow.” She was looking at the crypt. “I believed the undead might serve where I could not, if I were to fall in defense of the temple.”

    The warforged walked with heavy steps to the sarcophagus, then turned to Tormund. “Today, my vow is fulfilled.”

    Tormund furrowed his brow. “What?”

    “Your markings show you to be of Clan Brightstone,” she said. “You wear them with pride.”

    “My…” Tormund ran one meaty hand over his bald scalp. Already, his thick, dwarven peach fuzz was showing through the blood and the dirt. “These are Clan Stonesinger,” he said. “I’ve never even heard of Brightstone.”

    The warforged moved closer, studying the patterns of his tattoos. “No,” she said. “I see the tracings of lineage in the patterns - Kalgruun taught them to me.” Looking around at the others, she added, “before he died. Whatever you call yourself now, you are a descendant of Orgoren Brightstone.”

    She turned back to the sarcophagus and with some effort pushed back the heavy stone slab that served as its lid. Then she stepped back and indicated the coffin with an outstretched hand. “The Axe is yours.”

    No one moved. For just a moment, Ceru wondered what everyone was waiting for. Then, as one, they all rose and approached the stone resting place of Orgoren Brightstone. Tormund leaned over first and looked in on the remains of his ancient - unknown ancestor, and then his voice caught in his throat - a cry of horror, or wonder. Awe and terror.

    He fell to his knees, “Praises to Moradin,” he cried. One hand stretched up, as if he might take the axe held in his ancestor’s dusty, bony hands; but he made no move to do so. He only wept. “I- Oh mighty Dwarf Father, give me the strength.” His eyes were shut tight, and he was weeping.

    Peering into the sarcophagus, the others saw there what must have once been a lavishly adorned dwarf in the ancient heavy plate armor of what must have been a mighty warlord, and whose shine could only have been dulled by time. Whether by some quirk of dwarven anatomy, or by the magic of some ancient burial right, he still possessed his beard - braids upon braids, lovingly tied together into a mighty warbeard of graying copper. The rest of him seemed all but skeletal. His hands were likewise armored, and in them he held a battleaxe that appeared to be made of mithril, gold, and perhaps adamantine, encrusted with gems, and completely untouched by time.

    “I- I can’t,” Tormund was saying, almost whispering to himself, or perhaps his god.

    “What are we looking at here,” Adovar said, placing a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. Tormund shuddered at his touch, but stood.

    He seemed to steel himself, then reached for the axe, but brought his hand back as if burned by the thought of it. Turning to Hulk, he said, “I cannot take this. It cannot be for me.” He turned and sat with his back against the coffin. “I’ll carry it for you. Help you find the warrior fit to wield it; but ancestor or no - I am not fit to wield Uxja Avoreth Djergjovr.”

    Again Adovar asked the question. “What is Uxja Avoreth Djergjovr?”

    “The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords.”