Games of the Powerful

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  After an all-around tearful departure, Leadyl left for her much longer and arduous journey north to seek her tower with Hreidmar and Maiko all the dwarfs with Gilia staying to be with Celedryl. His journey being the shortest Mitch decided to wait for five days to ensure that he arrived at his tower around the same time that Leadyl arrived at hers. During that time, he studied with Bilgrammus and continued to help Danielle teach the duke’s personal guard Shotokan Karate the art of empty hand fighting.

  The fifth day arrived faster than he thought it would when Mitch found himself knee deep in marshland north of the swamp with Cormyr, Garrett, Dorin, Doric and twenty hard-bitten soldiers all volunteers. The waist high grass they were walking through made whispering sounds as it brushed against their tight fitting leather pants making music with the sucking sound their boots made when they pulled them out of the mud, and the splashing sound their boots made in the water keeping perfect tempo. To add to their misery clouds of biting and stinging flying bugs attacked them unrelentingly from being stirred up by their passing through the waist high grass. As the morning wore on, a bank of clouds from the leading edge of a cold front deluged them with cold rain driving the flying bugs back into the grass to cling precariously there so as not be washed into the marsh from the downpour.

  Both quests would be arduous in their way with loss of life for each. In one instance, orcs were hiding in the deep snow and as Leadyl's group moved through a small defile, they found themselves surrounded. The fighting was furious and fast Hreidmar swinging his bloody ax and Maiko felling the orcs with her never-ending supply of arrows. The small victory was costly for they had lost Norelia and Rocksplitter, each of them now fearful this was only the beginning of the death toll come spring when the orcs move south into the valley. Norelia was stabbing an orc in the eye with one of her arrows as it picked her up and crushed the life from her, and Rocksplitter who crushed an orc's knee only to have it fall forward on top of him burying him in the snow. Finally, when the fight was over they searched for him finding him already dead with a broken neck.

  If Mitch thought his travails were unreasonably hard walking through the marsh, he found out soon enough how very differently leading them into the swamp proper turned out to be. Almost immediately, upon entering the fringes of the swamp they felt an unnatural sweltering heat where before they were chilled to the bone from the cold rain. A mammoth wall of dead looking vines, brambles, and thickets of dead looking stunted trees impeded their progress. They each carried sharp wide bladed vegetation cutting long knives that they hacked and cut at the vegetation with but the more they cut at it the more it vigorously impeded them.

  Making slow progress struggling in vain to reach their goal a rather thick thorny vine suddenly attacked them. Lashing out from deep within the thicket, it wrapped around a soldiers throat pulling him face first into the thicket with his bloody hands gripping the vine around his throat trying in vain to escape. By this time, they were fighting off the thorny vines attacking from all sides dragging two more soldiers to their deaths. Realizing only he could end this relentless attack and save their lives in the process Mitch delved deep into his imagination for the power he needed. With his hands outstretched on either side of him, the pure light of goodness and hope of saving those around him struck the vines, brambles and thickets shattering them into thousands of chard black minuscule pieces of deadwood. Switching to the front, he created a trail of blasted vines, brambles, and thickets for half a league.

  Thankfully, they reached their towers without further loss of life for either party of travelers. Leadyl crossed the frozen lake without incident to get to her island tower then through the same type of vines, brambles, and thickets but she simple blasted a trail as Mitch had done leading straight to the tower. When they reached the towers, they made camp and pondered what to do next. Neither the scrolls nor Bilgrammus were much help with this part of the puzzle. Before departing on their quests, they decided to go about this the way they did to find their scrolls. They each knew this would be different in that they would be fighting the darkness surrounding the tower not sitting in a musty room looking for a benevolent item. This would be dangerous far more dangerous. They could feel the evil impenetrably enveloping the towers making them very fearful, overcoming that fear both knew in their hearts that they would know when the time was right to assail the towers and the evil engulfing them and in the end, they would succeed in destroying that evil.

  When the time felt right, each of them walked up placing their hands on their towers instantly falling into an overwhelming darkness threatening to transcend their goodness and destroy them. They were like two tiny pinpoints of light trapped in a world of stygian darkness preventing them from removing their hands from the tower keeping them trapped in the darkness. In fear driven panic, they struggled mightily to remove their hands from the towers failing to break free. Realizing they could not do so sent overwhelming waves of panic racing through them nearly allowing the darkness to pinch out their tiny islands of light. Fighting with all their strength to no avail against the ever-encroaching darkness filled with hate and malice it teased and cajoled them with temptations of immensely powerful dark powers. Insidious power theirs for the asking if they would only give in and become one with the darkness. Resisting the temptations with all their might, the cajoling suddenly stopped changing to a torrent of darkness lashing them with searing blackness causing excruciating pain racking their minds and bodies.

  Still the dark voices droned on with threats of eternal death, pain and suffering if they did not join with the darkness. Under this relentless attack, they felt despair, self-doubt, temptation to succumb to the lure of dark power and doubt in the power of love, kindness, generosity and the power of the light to save them. All of this only strengthened the darkness around them. Desperately they struggled when suddenly they thought of how much they needed each other, and their growing love when suddenly they could see each other’s light in the darkness. They reached for each other sending their strength and love more concerned with protecting the other from the miasma like darkness. In an instant, their power grew exponentially until a thin line of light joined each of their tiny pinpoints of light and at that moment, they were married in the light becoming one light, one heartbeat in the darkness. The line thickened with the light of pure love and goodness forcing the darkness to shrink from it. Suddenly retreating from them, they could sense fear in the blackness, a fear of them permeating the darkness where before nothing but hatred and loathing for them existed.

  After a time, they defeated the last vestiges of the darkness until nothing remained of it and with one last heartfelt surge of love for each other; they removed their hands from their towers. With the darkness finally gone, the towers returned to their normal appearance and the land around them came alive, retuning to its normal state from thousands of years ago. The tower itself was made of white marble lased with solid gold drawing intricate lines of beauty up and down the tower. Placed in an intermittent style were beautiful glass windows from the second floor all the way to the conical roof. Directly in front of them is a solid white hardwood door laced with the gold sparkling with a pure white glow tracing elegant lines in a spiral around the door coming to a point exactly in the center of the door. Placing their hands on the gold spiral, the door vanished in a golden flash of light. When all of them entered the towers first floor, the door returned to normal closing them in.

  The first floor is opulent to the extreme with its white and gold hardwood floors, a cheery fire in a fireplace made of the same material as the tower with comfortable chairs scattered around the room. Bookshelves matching the wood floors lined the walls filled with old tomes and scrolls. On one side of the room, a beautiful staircase made of white wood and a solid gold banister that followed it spiraled to the second floor. When they reached the second floor, they found a warm kitchen with a hearth and larders full of food, a table and chairs in the center of the room and a larg
e window overlooking the land beyond. On the next floor up, they discovered a beautiful master bedroom with a lavish bed in the center and a fireplace with a cozy fire burning. As with the floor below, a beautiful glass window overlooked the land beyond. On a dressing table next to a large freestanding dresser was a large pitcher and bowl filled with fresh water. On the subsequent floors, they found a complete bathing room with two solid gold tubs, and a private privy and another room filled with small beds lining the wall in a circle with an open space between them.

  Realizing they had to go the rest of the way by themselves Mitch and Leadyl left their friends to fend for themselves continuing their seemly forever-upward climb to the top of the tower. Finally, reaching the top, they found a room with nothing but a raised rectangle dais encompassed in a pure white light. On top of the dais, a long sleeve robe with a cowl and a long wooden staff made of white wood with gold traceries along its length beckoned to them. Each of them shed their clothes until only their small clothes remained. When they slipped the robes over their heads, they fit each of them as if made for them. Made of an unknown material the long white and gold robe flowed down the lengths of the bodies hiding their feet. Quickly putting on the white and gold sandals provided, they hurriedly strapped on their sword belts, grabbed their staffs and headed quickly down the stairs.

  Returning to the others they found some were sleeping, others cooking food and at their sudden return, excitement and thanksgiving reigned. It turned out they were gone for far longer than they thought, with many nights past since they went upstairs. When they heard from them that it seemed only a short while they had been upstairs they became fearful that the room upstairs or the entire tower existed in a different time and time passed differently here they decided to leave. Upon exiting the tower, it vanished from the landscape as if it never existed. In its passing from the land, it left a verdant area boasting of plants, animals, and things that had not existed there for thousands of years. Flowers, tress, birds of all colors fluttering around in the tree branches without dead looking vines, brambles, thickets of dead looking trees to be seen anywhere.