Oathbreaker
Kaylor tore the vestments from his armor while he ran.
The cloth caught beneath one shoulder plate. He seized it with both hands and ripped until the embroidered symbol of the Sanctum split down the center.
The pieces fell behind him.
He did not look back.
“I revoke my oath.”
The words were almost lost beneath the pounding of boots and the shouts of guards spreading through Hunter’s Landing.
Almost.
His companions heard them.
Kaylor had spoken vows before altars.
He had pledged himself to mercy, honor, courage and the defense of the innocent. He had carried those promises into battle and allowed them to shape every decision he made.
He had believed the power answering him came from something righteous.
Craven had led the institution through which Kaylor understood that righteousness.
A demon had murdered Viran and worn his face.
Clerics had silenced Kaylor’s truth with the power of his own faith.
Paladins had struck him with divine light while defending the servants of a murderer.
The witness at Joraya had died because Kaylor trusted one more authority that had not earned it.
“The god I served allowed its name to become a lie,” he said. “I will not carry that lie any farther.”
Something answered.
Not from above.
Not from the Sanctum.
Not from any altar.
It came from inside him.
The warmth of his former oath disappeared.
In its place came something colder and entirely his own.
Kaylor did not lose his strength.
It changed.
The companions running nearest him felt it first. Anger sharpened around the dragonborn like an invisible edge. Their weapons seemed heavier in their hands, as though every strike delivered beside him would carry part of his fury.
The streets behind them seemed less certain.
The guards pursuing them slowed whenever they drew too close, their courage thinning beneath a pressure they could not name.
Isamu glanced toward Kaylor.
“Did you just become evil?”
“No.”
“That is good.”
“I became finished.”
“With the Sanctum?”
“With obedience.”
Kaylor tightened his grip on the axe.
“I believe in what I choose to defend. I believe in the people beside me.”
He looked back toward the warehouse district.
“And I want Craven’s head.”
That answer satisfied Isamu.
It did not satisfy Grazim.
The cleric ran in silence.
Kaylor had not rejected every god.
He had rejected the faith through which his own god had been presented to him. There was a difference, though none of them yet understood how large it might become.
Behind the heroes, radiant magic flashed above the rooftops.
Hexen still moved through the air in his elemental form, drawing the attention of the remaining patrols. Magic Missiles struck the living wind and disappeared into it. A Guiding Bolt followed, radiant light passing through Hexen’s shape and tearing part of it away.
He endured.
The others reached the end of the street.
Hexen descended behind them, returned to his natural form and ran.
“More are coming.”
“How many?” Fendor asked.
“Enough that counting would be discouraging.”
Kaylor knew the city better than the others.
Memories returned as they moved.
The greatest concentration of guards protected the inner districts, the Sanctum, the palace and the main gates. Hunter’s Landing stood near the poorer edges of Krinrith, where patrols were fewer and the alleys had grown without planning.
He led the party north and east.
They avoided the major roads.
Nethnarel used the narrow passages between buildings, old drainage routes and hidden cuts known to those who moved through cities without wishing to be seen.
More than once, they heard armored patrols pass only a street away.
None found them.
They reached the district Kaylor remembered as Night’s Edge shortly before midnight.
The buildings leaned over the streets there. Signs creaked above doors. Lamps were few and carefully placed. People who noticed the six bloodied strangers made a deliberate effort not to notice them again.
The first inn they found appeared nearly closed.
One lamp burned in the common room.
The proprietor was a broad, shelled man native to this plane. He looked from Kaylor’s bloodied armor to Nethnarel’s horns, then to the humans and elf behind them.
He considered closing the door.
Kaylor placed a silver piece upon the counter.
“One room.”
The innkeeper looked at the coin.
Then at the heroes.
“One silver each.”
He had clearly chosen a price far beyond what he normally charged.
Kaylor added the remaining coins without argument.
The innkeeper swept them from the counter.
“The common room is available. There are private rooms upstairs.”
“We need somewhere quiet,” Grazim said.
The innkeeper swallowed.
“All of it is quiet.”
The common room was nearly empty.
Nearly.
A lone man sat in the darkest corner.
He had selected a place from which he could see the entrance, the stairs and the kitchen door. His cloak concealed most of his body. One hand remained near the hilt of a weapon beneath it.
Hexen noticed him first.
Fendor noticed the moment Hexen did.
The elf approached.
The stranger watched him come without changing expression.
“Good evening,” Fendor said.
The stranger nodded.
“We are looking for someone familiar with the less respectable parts of Krinrith.”
The man extended one hand.
Fendor placed a platinum piece into it.
The hand disappeared beneath the cloak.
“Now we may speak,” the stranger said.
His name, if he gave a true one, was difficult to hear and impossible to trust. He was a broker of introductions rather than a thief himself—or at least preferred to be considered one.
Fendor described the woman who had sent them to Joraya.
Celestial blood.
Command of the ratfolk at Hunter’s Landing.
A talent for appearing and disappearing.
A willingness to sacrifice anyone between herself and her objective.
The broker shook his head.
“I have not met her.”
“Have you heard of her?”
“No.”
“Gavasani?”
A slight pause.
“The escaped thief?”
“Yes.”
“I heard he died years ago.”
The heroes exchanged glances.
They had watched Gavasani die only hours before seeing him alive.
The broker noticed their reaction.
He chose not to ask.
Fendor placed a second platinum piece upon the table.
“We need people with particular skills.”
“What skills?”
“Information gathering. Infiltration. Finding people who do not wish to be found.”
The broker took the coin.
“In the northern Powdertown district stands a building known simply as the Meeting House. At midweek, after sunset, those looking to hire—or be hired for—unpleasant work gather there.”
He gave Fendor a location and a password.
“What happens if the password changes?” Fendor asked.
“Then they kill you.”
“That is useful to know.”
The broker’s attention moved across the party.
His eyes lingered on Grazim and Isamu.
“I have never seen your kind.”
“That is becoming a common response,” Isamu said.
“Where are you from?”
“Far away,” Fendor replied.
“How far?”
“Farther than you can profitably follow.”
The broker studied him.
Fendor leaned closer.
“People who sell information about us should remember that we may return to discuss the price.”
The warning failed to frighten the man as much as Fendor intended.
He hid that fact well.
Not perfectly.
“Pleasant meeting you,” the broker said.
He rose.
Kaylor watched him cross the common room and leave.
“We should not sleep in the rooms.”
The innkeeper looked offended and relieved at the same time.
Isamu pointed upward.
“The roof.”
They climbed without using the interior stairs.
A rope and the irregular stonework gave them access to the low, sloping rooftop. From there they could see the roads approaching the inn without being visible from below.
The night was mild.
They settled against the roofline.
Fendor entered the shallow trance his people used instead of sleep. Hexen rested beside him. Grazim treated the worst of the party’s wounds before allowing his own eyes to close.
Kaylor sat apart.
The torn vestments were gone.
He still wore the armor beneath them.
The symbol had been removed, but its outline remained where the cloth and metal had protected the surface from years of wear.
He placed one hand against it.
Nothing answered from the Sanctum.
Nothing needed to.
His new strength remained.
It did not feel holy.
It did not feel profane.
It felt honest.
Four hours passed.
Isamu kept watch.
Hexen woke before the others and joined him near the roof’s edge.
A patrol appeared at the end of the road.
Four figures moved carefully through the darkness.
Two armored paladins.
A robed spellcaster.
A cleric wearing the vestments of Kaylor’s former order.
They approached the inn slowly, checking doors and alleys as they came.
“They found the district,” Isamu whispered.
“Not us,” Hexen said.
“Yet.”
Everyone flattened against the roof.
The patrol reached the inn.
The door below opened after repeated knocking.
Through Gygax, Nethnarel listened.
The mouse had slipped inside earlier and hidden near the common room.
The guards questioned the innkeeper.
“We were told a group matching their description came this way.”
“I rent rooms,” the innkeeper said. “I do not ask where travelers come from.”
“Did you rent rooms to them?”
Silence.
The guards pressed him.
Eventually, fear defeated whatever loyalty a handful of silver had purchased.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“Upstairs.”
Three guards moved toward the sleeping rooms.
The spellcaster remained behind.
He vanished.
Gygax felt the displacement of magic as the man teleported away.
“To get reinforcements,” Nethnarel whispered.
Hexen closed his eyes and cast Detect Magic.
His awareness spread through the roof and into the building beneath them.
Magic moved below.
Not a spell already placed upon an object.
A spell being cast.
Someone inside the inn was searching for magical auras.
The heroes carried enough enchanted weapons and equipment to shine like a beacon.
Hexen acted.
Dispel Magic passed through the roof.
The searching spell vanished.
Below them, someone cursed.
A guard spoke sharply.
“Someone countered me.”
The patrol stopped searching rooms.
“Spread out. Block the doors.”
Boots moved through the building.
The front entrance was secured.
Then the kitchen.
Then the side passage.
The heroes had not been discovered.
But the guards knew someone was present.
Another figure teleported from below.
More reinforcements would come.
Kaylor looked across the rooftops.
“We leave.”
Nethnarel looked toward the sky.
“Not before this.”
She raised one hand.
Magic gathered among the clouds above Krinrith.
Letters formed in pale white vapor.
The warning was brief enough to be read from the streets below.
CRAVEN’S SERVANTS ARE NOT WHO THEY SEEM.
The clouds held the words above the district.
Kaylor stared at them.
“That will attract attention.”
“Yes.”
“That is why we are attempting to leave unnoticed.”
“Craven controls what the city hears.”
Nethnarel lowered her hand.
“Now the city has heard something else.”
A tree grew close enough to the rear of the inn that its upper branches nearly touched the roof.
Nethnarel used Telekinesis.
The trunk bent.
Branches extended toward them, creaking beneath invisible force until they formed a bridge between the building and a lower garden wall.
The heroes crossed one at a time.
Grazim moved with surprising silence despite the weight of his armor.
Isamu went last, waiting until the others had reached the ground.
The patrol still searched the rooms.
No one looked upward.
They reached the wall.
Nethnarel released the tree.
It sprang back into place.
The heroes disappeared into the alleys.
Behind them, the warning remained written across the sky.
Two more patrols approached the inn from the south.
The group had escaped only moments before the district closed around it.
They moved beyond the densest part of Krinrith.
Fields and isolated homes began replacing shops and warehouses. The city walls curved away to the west. Small farms occupied the land between the poorer outskirts and the surrounding countryside.
“We cannot keep moving through inns,” Fendor said.
“Every place we enter becomes a target,” Grazim agreed.
Hexen pointed toward a dark structure beyond a low field.
“A barn.”
It stood apart from the farmhouse.
No lights burned inside.
No animals sounded an alarm as they approached.
The doors were locked, but the mechanism did not resist Isamu for long.
They entered.
The barn smelled of hay, dust and old wood.
A broad loft occupied the upper level. Tools hung from beams. A hatch led down toward the stalls below.
No one waited for them.
No one asked questions.
They climbed into the loft and concealed themselves among the hay.
For the first time since Hunter’s Landing, Kaylor allowed his eyes to close.
Four hours passed before the watchers saw movement outside.
The heroes had recovered much of their strength.
Kaylor’s new power had settled more deeply into him.
He understood parts of it now.
Those fighting beside him would strike harder.
Enemies near him would find resistance more difficult.
The radiant force once shaped by his oath had become something harsher.
A Vicious Smite.
Not granted.
Chosen.
Isamu watched Kaylor flex one armored hand.
“You are certain you are not evil?”
Kaylor looked at him.
“I am certain Craven is.”
“That was not my question.”
“It is the answer that matters.”
Hexen crawled toward the edge of the loft.
Shapes moved across the field.
Many shapes.
Armored figures approached from several directions, using the farmhouse, fences and low walls as cover.
The barn had been found.
Kaylor joined him.
“How?”
“Tracks. Informants. Magic.”
Hexen looked toward him.
“Or terrible luck.”
The force surrounding the farm was much larger than the patrols they had avoided in the city.
Paladins advanced with shields raised.
Clerics and spellcasters moved behind them.
More waited near the road.
Nethnarel peered through a gap in the boards.
“They are not approaching to negotiate.”
A broad pair of doors opened from the hayloft toward the field. Farmers used them to lift hay from wagons into storage.
Isamu looked at the stacked bales.
Then at Nethnarel.
“How much can you lift?”
“A great deal.”
“Enough to make them look in the wrong direction?”
Nethnarel smiled.
Telekinesis wrapped around nearly a thousand pounds of hay.
The mass rose.
Loose straw fell from it as it drifted through the open loft doors and out over the field.
The guards saw it.
Several stopped.
One of the spellcasters reacted before anyone else could determine what the floating shape meant.
A Fireball crossed the field.
The spell struck the hay.
Flame erupted.
The floating mass became a burning sphere large enough to crush a wagon.
Nethnarel’s smile widened.
The guards understood their mistake.
Too late.
She drove both hands downward.
The flaming hay fell upon the largest group.
The night vanished beneath fire.