BEARDED PROXY

You garner too much enjoyment from so simple a trick," Hephaestus said to his companion in a cave south of Spirit Soaring. "It is a matter of simple efficiency and expedience, dragon, from which I take no measure of enjoyment," Yharaskrik answered in the voice of Ivan Bouldershoulder, whose body the illithid had come to reside in - partially, at least.

Any who knew Ivan would have scratched their heads in surprise at the strange accent in the dwarf's gravelly voice. A closer inspection would only have added to the onlooker's sense of strangeness, for Ivan stood too calmly. He refrained from tugging at the hairs of his great yellow beard, shifting from one foot to the other, or thumping his hands against his hips or chest, as was typical.

"I am still within you," Yharaskrik added. "Hephaestus, Crenshinibon, and Yharaskrik as one. Holding this dwarf under my control allows me to give external voice to our conversations, though that is rarely a good thing."

"While you are reading my every thought," the dragon replied, no small amount of sarcasm in his tone, "you have externalized a portion of your consciousness to shield your own thoughts from me."

The dwarf bowed.

"You do not deny it?" Hephaestus asked.

"I am in your consciousness, dragon. You know what I know. Any question you ask of me is rendered rhetorical."

"But we are no longer fully joined," Hephaestus protested, and the dwarf chuckled. The dragon's confusion was apparent. "Are you not wise enough to segment your thoughts into small compartments, some within and some, in the guise of that ugly little dwarf, without?"

The Yharaskrik in Ivan's body bowed again. "You flatter me, great Hephaestus. Trust that we are inexorably joined. I could no more hurt you than harm myself, for to do to one is truly to do to the other. You know this is true."

"Then why did you reach out to the dwarf, this proxy host?"

"Because for you, particularly, who have never known such mental intimacy," the illithid answered, "it can become confusing as to where one voice stops and the other begins. We might find ourselves battling for control of the body we both inhabit, working each other to exhaustion over the simplest of movements. It is better this way."

"So you say."

"Look within yourself, Hephaestus."

The dracolich did exactly that and for a long while did not reply. Finally, he looked the dwarf straight in the eye and said, "It is a good thing."

Yharaskrik bowed again. He glanced to the side of the chamber, past the four animated corpses of the Baldurian wizards, to the pair of huddled creatures in the deeper shadows.

"As Crenshinibon has externalized parts of itself," the illithid said in the dwarf's voice.

Fetchigrol stepped forward before Hephaestus could respond. "We are Crenshinibon," the specter said. "Now we are apart in body, sundered by the magic of the falling Weave, but we are one in thought."

Hephaestus nodded his gigantic head, but Yharaskrik, who had felt a strange evolution over the last few days, disagreed. "You are not," the illithid argued. "You are tentacles of the squid, but there is independence in your movements."

"We do as we are commanded," Fetchigrol protested, but it rang hollow to the Ghost King. The illithid was correct in his assessment. The seven apparitions were gaining a small measure of independent thought once more, though neither feared that the Ghost King could be threatened by such an occurrence.

"You are fine soldiers for the cause of Crenshinibon," said Yharaskrik. "Yet within the philosophy that guides you there is independence, as you have shown here in these mountains."

The specter let out a low groan.

"We exist in two worlds," Yharaskrik explained. "And a third, because of Crenshinibon, because of the sacrifice of Fetchigrol and his six brethren. How easy it was for you, how easy it is for us all, to reach into the realm of death and bring forth mindless minions, and so Fetchigrol did."

"Carradoon is in chaos," the specter's voice said, though the dark humanoid's face gave no indication that it spoke. "As the fleeing humans are killed, they join our ranks."

Yharaskrik waved his hand to the side, to the four undead wizards he had lifted from their death, one even before the flames of a fireball had stopped crinkling its blackened skin. "And how easy it is!" the illithid said, the even cadence of its voice thrown aside for the first time in the conversation. "With this power alone, we are mighty."

"But we have more than this singular power," Hephaestus said.

Fetchigrol's spectral companion floated forward, willed by the Ghost King.

"The fodder of Shadowfell are ours for the calling," Solme said. "The gate is not thick. The door is not locked. The crawlers hunger for the flesh of Toril."

"And as they kill, our ranks grow," Fetchigrol said.

Yharaskrik nodded and closed his dwarf eyes, pondering the possibilities. This curious twist of circumstance, this fortuitous blending of magic, intellect, and brute power, of Crenshinibon, Yharaskrik, and Hephaestus, had created seemingly unlimited possibilities.

But had it also created a common purpose?

To conquer, or to destroy? To meditate, to contemplate, to explore? What fruit had the tree of fate served? To what end?

Hephaestus's growl brought Yharaskrik from his contemplation, to see the dragon staring at him with suspicion.

"Where we eventually wander is not the immediate concern," the dragon warned, his voice thick with pent up rage. "I will have my revenge."

Yharaskrik heard the dragon's internal dialogue quite clearly, flashing with images of Spirit Soaring, the home of the priest who had aided in the demise of all three of the joined spirits. On that place, the dragon focused its hatred and wrath. They had flown over the building the night before, and even then, Yharaskrik and Crenshinibon had to overrule the reflexive anger of Hephaestus. Had it not been for those two mediating internal voices, the dragon would have swooped down upon the place in an explosive fit of sheer malevolence.

Yharaskrik did not openly disagree, and didn't even allow its mind to show any signal of contrary thought.

"Straightaway!" Hephaestus roared.

"No," the illithid then dared argue. "Magic is unwinding, arcane at least, and in some cases divine, but it has not fully unwound. It is not lost to the world, but merely undependable. This place, Spirit Soaring, is filled with mighty priests and wizards. To underestimate the assemblage of power there is fraught with peril. In the time of our choosing, it will fall, and they will fall. But no sooner."

Hephaestus growled again, long and low, but Yharaskrik feared no outburst from the beast, for he knew that Crenshinibon continually reinforced its reasoning within Hephaestus. The dragon wanted action, devastating and catastrophic, wanted to rain death upon all of those who had helped facilitate his downfall. Impulsive and explosive was Hephaestus's nature, was the way of dragonkind.

But the way of the illithid required patience and careful consideration, and no sentient creature in the world was more patient than Crenshinibon, who had seen the span of millennia.

They overruled Hephaestus and calmed the beast. Their promises of a smoldering ruin where Spirit Soaring stood were not without merit, intent, and honest expectation, and of course, Hephaestus knew that as surely as if the thought was his own.

The dracolich curled up with those fantasies. He, too, could be a creature of patience.

To a point.
* * * * *

"Hold that flank!" Rorick yelled to the men on the left-hand wall of the cave, scattered amidst a tumble of rocks. They stood in ankle-deep water and battled hard against a throng of skeletons and zombies. The center of the defensive line, bolstered by the three Bonaduce children and Pikel, held strong against the attacking undead. The water was nearly knee-deep there, its drag affecting the advancing monsters more than the defenders.

To the right, the contours and bends of the tunnel also favored the defenders. Before them, where the tunnel opened even wider, lay a deep pool. Skeletons and zombies alike that ventured there went completely underwater, and those that managed to claw back up were rained on by heavy clubs. That pool was the primary reason the defenders had chosen to make their stand there when at last the hordes had found them. Initially, it had seemed a prudent choice, but the relentlessness of their enemies was starting to make many, including Temberle and Hanaleisa, think that maybe they should have chosen a more narrow choke point than a thirty-foot expanse.

"They won't hold," Rorick said to his siblings even as Hanaleisa kicked the head off a skeleton and sent it flying far down the tunnel.

Hanaleisa didn't need clarification to know what he meant. Her gaze went immediately to the left, to the many rocks along that broken section of tunnel. They had believed those rocks to be an advantage, forcing the undead press of monsters to carve up their advancing line to get past the many obstacles. But since the monsters had engaged, those many scattered boulders were working against the defenders, who too often found themselves cut off from their allies.

Hanaleisa slapped Temberle on the shoulder and splashed away to the side. She had barely gone two steps, though, before Rorick cried out in pain. She spun back as Rorick fell, lifting his already injured leg, blood streaming anew. Temberle reached for him, but a splash sent Temberle tumbling. A skeletal fish broke the water and smacked him hard in the face.

All across the middle of the line, defenders began shifting and groaning as undead fish knifed through the water and found targets.

"Retreat!" one man cried. "Run away!"

"Nowhere to run!" shouted another.

"Back down the tunnel!" the first screamed back, and began splashing his way deeper into the cave with several others in his wake. The integrity of their center collapsed behind them.

Rorick and Temberle regained their footing at the same time. Rorick waved his brother away. Temberle, blood running freely from his broken nose, turned back fast and hoisted his heavy greatsword.

Hanaleisa glanced to the left flank just in time to see a man pulled down under a dozen rotting hands. Out of options, all of it crumbling before her eyes, she could only cry out, "Uncle Pikel!" as she had done so many times in her life, whenever confronted by a childhood crisis.

If Pikel was listening, it didn't show, for the green-bearded dwarf stood away from the front line, his eyes closed. He held his hand out before him, gripping his magical cudgel, and he waved his stump in slow circles. Hanaleisa started to call out to him again, but saw that he was already chanting.

The young monk glanced toward the left wall and back to the center. Realizing she had to trust her uncle, she bolted for the rocks, toward the group of skeletons pummeling and tearing the fallen defender. She leaped into their midst, fists and feet flailing with power and precision. She kicked one skeleton aside and crushed the chest of a zombie. She immediately went up on the ball of her foot, the other leg extended and pumping furiously as she turned a fast circle.

"Come to me!" she called to the fallen man's companions, many of whom seemed to be turning to flee, as had several of those from the center of the line.

Hanaleisa winced then as a skeletal hand clamped upon her shoulder, bony fingers digging a deep gash. She threw back an elbow that shattered the creature's face and sent it falling away.

Then she redoubled her kicking and punching, determined to fight to the bitter end.

The men and women deeper in the cave abandoned all thoughts of retreat and came on furiously. Hanaleisa had inspired them. Hanaleisa had shamed them.

The warrior monk took some satisfaction in that as the horde was beaten back and the fallen man was pulled from the undead grasp. She doubted it would matter in the end, but still, for some reason, it mattered to her. They would die with honor and courage, and that had to count for something.

She glanced at her brothers just as Pikel, on his fourth try, finally completed his spell. A shining white orb as big as Hanaleisa's fist popped from the dwarf's shillelagh and sailed over the heads of the lead defenders. The orb hit a skeleton and bounced off. Hanaleisa's mouth dropped open in surprise as the skeleton that had been hit locked up and iced over.

"What - ?" she managed to say as the small orb splashed into the water. Then she and everyone else gasped in shock as the radius of the pond around the orb froze solid.

The fighters in front yelled out in surprise and pain as the icy grasp spread to them and knocked them backward or grabbed them and froze them in place. An unintended consequence, no doubt, but no matter, for the monstrous advance, including the insidious undead fish, was immediately halted.

Frigid trails spread from the center of the ice, moving to the sides and away from the defenders, following Pikel's will.

"Now!" Hanaleisa called to her fellows at the left wall, and they moved furiously to turn back the undead tide.

Those not caught in the ice chopped vigorously to free their companions. They moved with desperation when they saw newly arrived undead from behind the frozen area coming on undeterred, climbing up on the ice and using their stuck companions as handholds to help them navigate across the slippery surface.

But Pikel had bought the defenders enough time, and the battered and bruised group retreated down the tunnel, deeper under the mountains, until they crossed through a narrow corridor, a single-file passageway that finally opened - mercifully - into a wider chamber some hundred strides along. At the exit to that tunnel, they made their stand. Two warriors met the undead as they tried to come through.

And when those two grew weary or suffered injuries, two others took their place.

Meanwhile, behind them, Rorick organized a line of defenders who had found large rocks, and when he was certain he had enough, he called out for the defenders to stand aside. One by one, his line advanced and hurled rocks into the tunnel, driving back skeletons and zombies. As soon as each had let fly, they ran off to find another rock.

This went on for some time, until the rocks hit only other rocks, until the monsters were driven back and blocked behind a growing wall of stone. When it ended, the stubborn monsters still clawing on the back side of the barricade, Pikel stepped forward and began to gently rub the stone and dirt of the tunnel walls. He called to the plants, bidding them to come forth, and so they sent their vines and their roots, intertwining behind and among the stones, locking them ever so securely.

For the moment, at least, it seemed that the threat had ended. It had come with many cuts and bruises and even more serious wounds, and the man who had been pulled down amid the undead wouldn't be fighting any time soon, if he managed to survive his injuries. And the defenders were deep into the tunnels, in a place of darkness they did not know. How many other tunnels might they find under the foothills of the Snowflakes, and how many monsters might find those as well, and come against them yet again?

"So what are we to do?" a man asked as the enormity of their situation settled upon them.

"We hide, and we fight," said a determined Temberle, sniffling through his shattered nose.

"And we die," said another, an old, surly, gray-bearded fishing boat captain.

"Aye, then we get back up and fight for th'other side," another added. Temberle, Hanaleisa, and Rorick all looked to each other, but had no rebuttal.

"Ooooh," said Pikel.