Apostles of Doom

“No. I still have no idea how it got there, but I have it, and Tizzy was with Tom and Tom needed my help to get his shamans home,” the pale wizard explained. “And I owed Tizzy a favor for battling the Storm Lords.”

“Yes, you still haven’t fully explained that to my satisfaction,” Jenn noted, staring him in the eyes. She blinked. “Wait, what do you mean his shamans?”

“Yes, well, as I’ve told everyone, those demons, Boggy and Estrebrius, are friends of Tizzy, and all three of them are in the Abyss with Tom.”

“All hiding out in that cave of his? That’s gotta be a blast for a demon-slaying knight of Tiernon!” Jenn said sarcastically.

“They were there for a while, but they moved.”

“Moved?” Jenn asked. She paused and her eyes widened. “You are not saying they moved to Mount Doom with Orcus?”

“Uhm, not so much with Orcus as, well — Tom, or Lord Tommus, as they call him. He’s also the one who recovered the Wand of Orcus and then relit Mount Doom with the mana he stole from Tiernon. He’s the one leading the D’Orcs; it was Tom who opened the portals for them.”

Jenn simply stared at him, blinking every now and then. “You are telling me that the instigator of all the insanity that has propelled us halfway across the continent and set the alvar on the warpath is Lenamare’s greater demon?” she finally asked in disbelief.

“Uhm… technically, I think he is a bit more than a greater demon. He and his people defeated Lilith’s army and a Chaos Maelstrom.”

“Lilith? You mean the demon queen? The ruler of the Abyss?” Jenn asked numbly.

“Yeah. The army wasn’t that big of a deal; he convinced them to surrender, and most swore allegiance to him. The rest he released to go back to Lilith or wherever they wanted. That proves he’s a good guy. A real dark lord would not have let people go,” Gastropé explained. “It was the Chaos Maelstrom that was the problem. Apparently those are really nasty things; everyone is scared of them. Lilith sent it to destroy Tom, but he was able to defeat it with help from this goddess Sekhmekt.”

Jenn slowly lowered herself to sit on a large rock behind her. “A goddess?” she said in a daze.

“Yeah, apparently one of those Nyjyr Ennead — the ones from Natoor.”

Jenn sat there in silence for several minutes. She finally shook her head. “Wait — in Murgatroy Zed mentioned your friend, Vaselle. He was waiting for Edwyrd.”

Gastropé gulped, realizing he was walking a dangerous line between truth and lies.

“Wait!” Jenn cried, standing back up. “Vaselle said Edwyrd and Rupert were using Tom to do plane hopping!”

Gastropé felt the blood drain from his face. “Uhm, yeah. Like Vaselle told you, both he and Edwyrd are working with Tom. Edwyrd was able to locate Tom pretty quickly after they left Freehold.”

“Does Councilor Damien know this?” Jenn asked.

Gastropé frowned. “He knows that Edwyrd is working with Tom. Edwyrd returned to Freehold after we left and hired Vaselle. They had a meeting with Damien; several, in fact.” Gastropé was winging it now. He’d asked Damien how he had ended up in the Abyss. He was not completely sure about all of the details, but he thought he knew enough. He’d have to crosscheck with Damien at some point.

“And you somehow never mentioned this?” Jenn asked Gastropé in what he felt was a slightly threatening manner.

“Well, Vaselle did tell you that he and Edwyrd were doing stuff with Tom…” Gastropé trailed off.

“What about all this other stuff? The D’Orcs, Tom being in charge of Mount Doom? You do realize this is a huge piece of the puzzle we’ve been trying to solve?” Jenn demanded more than asked.

“Well, I was going to, but what with Hilda and all that stuff, I didn’t know how to bring it up quietly. We have been in pretty tight quarters and I didn’t know what or how much I should tell the others. In particular, given how bent out of shape the alvar are over the D’Orcs, I really didn’t want to bring up the fact that I was a friend of their boogieman,” Gastropé admitted.

Jenn stared at him for several more moments, not blinking. He gulped again. Finally, Jenn nodded. “On what to tell the alvar, your decision was probably right. Your decision to get involved with Tom again is clearly insane. Where is Rupert?”

“As I told you before, he is in a school in Ithgar. Very safe,” Gastropé said. He was not going to tell her that Rupert was with a bunch of orcs in a band just like Tal Gor’s and doing the exact same thing because, that was not safe at all — unless you were a demon, which Rupert was, so he was safe and Gastropé was not technically lying.

Nysegard, Agnothnon: Mid Sixth Period