The Final Sacrafice

Xenophus struggled mightily to release himself from his stony prison. The monster's body began to ooze a jelly-like substance from between the thick soft scales which covered its body in an effort to lubricate itself enough to squeeze its goliath-like frame from the deep channel in which it was trapped.

The slime coated the floor of the cavern flowing along the gentle incline until it reached the edge of precipice covered by the sheet of water cascading down to the sea where it mingled with the falling liquid. The Ürgod undulated its body and managed to exit its tomb significantly further.

Azmeritus stood in front of it unafraid, pointing skyward and yelling to his erstwhile child in a manic voice.
"Above you, O Xenophus! Above you the shield awaits! Nourish yourself!"

The monster paused in its struggling as if understanding the priest's pleas. It raised its head once more through the opening in the courtyard and stretched its glistening body upward to the limit of its reach. Still a hundred feet short of the mystic shield, the creature thrust its tentacles skyward and froze its form, looking like an exotic tower, rigid and alien.

At first it appeared that the monster was well short of the glowing barrier.  The various beasts in the courtyard watched in shock, backing away from the opening and staring slack-jawed at the seemingly petrified colossus rising in their midst.

Then something amazing happened. The extended tentacles began to throb and pulsate, making repulsive slurping sounds. The barrier above the tentacles began to dip down and move until, like water above an open drain, it circled and seemed to flow into the extended pseudopod-like tubes.

As Xenophus began to absorb the shield, he also began to grow in height as well as girth. Down below in the sacrificial cavern, the creature's body began to strain against the constricting stone which trapped it. The sound of shattering and crumbling rock filled the space. Another large tremor rumbled under the castle and the walls of the cave began to flake off onto the ground.

Time seemed almost to stand still as the Ürgod ingested the last of the mystic barrier. Azmeritus was by this time cackling like a madbeast, while Bishop Skaar, Prester Jauba, and the remaining Brotherhood troops in the cave watched on in disbelief.

Suddenly, two things happened almost simultaneously. First an alert was sounded from the opposite side of the curtain of water announcing that the Deev were approaching across the ledge and were about to enter the cave. Azmeritus said nothing, continuing to stare at the Ürgod in adoration. He motioned to Bishop Skaar, who nodded and directed the Brotherhood archers to face the waterfall. At the same time that the Deev passed under the waterfall, the wall behind which Willum and Otto had been trying to watch the ongoing drama, collapsed as result of the violent tremors.

The pirate and the otter stood stock still, almost embarrassed at being discovered. The greater surprise was that no one in the cave seemed to pay them any mind, with the exception of Azmeritus who smiled at them with an insane light shining in his eyes. The High Priest nodded at them in an almost welcoming way.

The remainder of the monks, including Jauba and Skaar, had their backs to Willum and Otto and were fully focused on the corps of Deev, led by Vasheron, who had just entered the cave. Xenophus still stretched upward like a statue, momentarily sated with the magical barrier it had just consumed.

With his Deev in a line behind him, Vasheron strode boldly up to Azmeritus, dismissive of the line of archers, arrows drawn, facing his Minge. He stopped a few feet short of the mongoose, looked up at Xenophus, smiled and addressed the priest.
"I see you have let your pet out for some fresh air. It is a shame you will never see it wandering around the world." Vasheron motioned to his warriors, "We are here to end you, necromancer, but fear not, I will take good care of your Brotherhood when I take over."

Azmeritus smiled.
"It is amazing to me that a beast such as yourself that has been alive so long can be so ignorant and foolish. You will die before me Prince!"

Vasheron became angry.
"Bold words for a dead beast. Are we supposed to be scared of your archers? I have pulled a hundred arrows out of my body today to no ill effect."

Azmeritus turned his head slightly to address Skaar, who stood directly behind him.
"Let the Prince's Minge taste our arrows, Bishop," he paused, "but do not target the Prince, he and I still have some business."

Skaar nodded. He raised and lowered his arm and the archers let their shafts fly. They struck their targets behind Vasheron with deadly force.

The Prince, who was preparing to gloat about his invulnerability, turned toward his Deev and froze in shock. All of his Minge warriors lay collapsed on the ground in a growing pool of blood. Every last Deev save he, lay dead, pierced several times by arrows. Vasheron stared in disbelief, then turned toward Azmeritus.

"How?" he shouted.

It was Azmeritus' turn to gloat.
"Stupid ambitious fool. You were immortal without ever knowing why. The shield, you fool, it was the shield. Do you forget you were trapped on Xenoth as punishment? When you were sentenced here it was feared you would escape your justice by taking your own lives, so immortality was yours within the confines of the shield, so you could contemplate your crimes for eternity."

Azmeritus pointed upward toward the Ürgod.
"Xenophus has taken that curse off your shoulders by consuming it. You  are again of the mortal world and may suffer death as the rest of us do."

Vasheron became furious.
"You insignificant worm! You dare to kill my dreams! Arm yourself, you albino freak, die a warriors death!" he sputtered in rage.

While Vasheron confronted Azmeritus, the dozen monk archers along with Bishop Skaar and Prester Jauba remained focused on the sole remaining Deev and were as yet unaware of Willum and Otto's presence in the small opening behind the freshly collapsed wall.

Willum fought the urge to attack the mongoose out of concern for his otter friend who would surely be cut down with him should he threaten the High Priest. Instead, both beasts moved to the rear of the small space, hidden by shadows, carefully watching the unfolding drama near the front of the cave.

Vasheron continued to rant and demand the satisfaction of fighting Azmeritus, who simply stood in front of the mink smiling. The monks raised their bows at the Prince, but Azmeritus ordered them to lower their weapons.

"So, you will fight me?" the Deev asked in anticipation, the point of his sword resting on the mongoose's chest.

"That won't be necessary," Azmeritus said calmly as he walked forward onto the blade. It pierced his body and he crumbled to the floor.

Vasheron looked down at the dying mongoose in confusion and disappointment. He barely noticed Bishop Skaar's sword whooshing through air toward his unprotected neck.

The Minge Prince's head left his body in a gentle arc and landed in the Ürgod slime which covered the front of the cave. It bounced once, then slid through the wall of water, falling the several hundred feet into the harbor below.

Thus died Vasheron, Minge Prince and Deev, after five-hundred and thirty-seven years of a wasted, evil life.

Willum and Otto watched the entire drama from the shadowy darkness of the recess in which they hid. Otto turned to his pirate friend and whispered in shock.
"Did we just see that? Why did Azmeritus do that, run onto that sword?"

Willum was simply staring in stunned silence at seeing his vengeance against Azmeritus stolen from him. He felt a great emptiness within him and fell back against the wall, slumping to the ground. Otto shook him urgently.
"The mongoose is still alive! He's moving."

Willum looked up in time to see Bishop Skaar approaching the prostrate mongoose and lean over.

Skaar knelt in front of Azmeritus. Collecting himself, he instructed the remaining monks to dump the bodies of the Deev over the edge of the cave into the harbor below and to secure the entrance to the chamber. Only Prester Jauba and two archers remained in the cavern with Skaar. The bishop looked into Azmeritus' dimming eyes.
"Why?" he pleaded.

Azmeritus smiled weakly.
"It is as it must be, my loyal servant...," he coughed, "send the pirate over..."

"What are you talking about? What pirate?" a confused Skaar, who had not seen Willum or Otto, asked.

Azmeritus pointed to the back of the cavern where Willum and Otto stood hidden in the shadows. Willum stepped into the light and approached. The archers drew back their bows to shoot him, but Bishop Skaar stopped them and beckoned the pirate forward. Willum walked up to the mongoose's bleeding form and knelt beside Skaar. Once more Azmeritus smiled.

"Orange Willum Crookfang. I imagine that you're disappointed that you didn't kill me yourself," he rasped, blood flowing from his mouth.

Willum smiled grimly.
" 'Twas a pleasure I was hopin' to have, sure enough...I reckon I'll just have ta take comfort in watchin' the life leave ya, knowin' you ain't gonna see what ya worked so hard for."

Azmeritus laughed and then coughed violently. He grasped Willum's sleeve and spoke.
"I was never going to see the result of my devotion...never!"

"What are ya talkin' about?" Willum asked with annoyance.

"The...final part of the prophecy...it was very clear."

Skaar's eyes widened. He pushed Willum aside and lifted Azmeritus to a sitting position. He looked him deep in the eye.
"What, your eminence...what is clear?" he asked.

"My role, loyal Skaar, my role was always clear. The final lines of the awakening prophecy make my purpose known. I do not fail in my death, I succeed...the prophecy says;

'In stone entrapped,
The god shall be,
Till the priest by death,
Shall set him free.'

"Do you understand now?"

Skaar's eye's widened.
"You always meant to die to awaken Xenophus?"

"It was always my f...f...fate." The mongoose coughed, spraying blood on Willum and the bishop.

Willum became angry and shook the mongoose until Skaar pushed him away.
"Ya can't die happy, ya evil cur...ya don't deserve ta die happy!" Willum sputtered, almost in tears.

"No, I don't," Azmeritus struggled to answer. His breath weaker and more rapid now, "but I do, I do die h..." His eyes closed for the last time.

At the same instant that life left Azmeritus, the Ürgod, which had been stretched skyward in absolute stillness, suddenly came to horrifying life, letting loose with a wrenching ear-shattering roar.

Frega and his army, which had been attacking the monster with arrows, spears and swords to no effect, retreated across the courtyard at the unearthly scream. Xenophus began to quiver. He withdrew his bulk back down into the cavern. His massive head hovered above the body of Azmeritus.

Bishop Skaar jumped back in surprise, stepping onto the slime coated stone at the front of the sacrificial cavern. He lost his footing on the slippery substance and gave a short shout of shock as he began an inexorable slide along the incline toward the precipice under the waterfall. He tried futilely to secure a handhold and flailed his limbs desperately as he slid over the edge and dropped, screaming, into space, tumbling uncontrollably two hundred feet into the harbor.

Willum scrambled on all fours away from Azmeritus' body and the looming monster. Otto ran up and pulled him to the relative safety of the far wall. Jauba and the two remaining archers decided that it was time to escape and fled into the newly opened tunnel from which Willum and Otto had just emerged, ignoring the two friends and concerned entirely with their own safety.

Xenophus stared down at the mongoose's body. Then in a sudden motion, snapped it up and swallowed it in a single gulp. As soon as Azmeritus was taken into the monster's gullet, the cliff as well as the entire plateau began to groan and strain in a erratic yet extremely powerful set of convulsions.

The uppermost portions of the castle wall began to collapse, necessitating all the beasts in the courtyard to move away from the walls. Huge blocks of stone and mortar, some weighing over a ton, tumbled off the battlements and fell to the beach and harbor below.

Inside the sacrificial cave, a massive crack, along the center of the cave and extending into the crevasse in which the Ürgod was trapped, was torn into the chamber floor and ceiling. It continued to widen until the opening became large enough for Xenophus to begin moving outward and into the cavern. Little by little, more of the Ürgod was revealed as the creature struggled to extricate itself.

Otto and Willum were pressed against the wall, barely breathing for fear the monster would notice them. Its head was already past them and its foul body crept outward toward the cave exit passing within four feet of where they lay.

They looked on in dread, trying to visualize what the Ürgod looked like by the colossal body details that were slithering by.
Its body appeared to be segmented, like a centipede, with each segment roughly twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. The color of the creature seemed green at one moment, then black or deep blue the next. It was coated in a glossy oil-like slime that shimmered as light hit it. There were small blood-red ovals, a foot wide, visible under the translucent skin and scattered throughout each segment.

The initial segment, the monster's head, was wider than the rest, and as Willum and Otto watched in horror, it sprouted two pairs of log-thick arms that the beast seemed to push out of its body. These arms were topped with large, lumpy knobs from which three finger-like tendrils extended, each topped with a vicious-looking, curved yard-long claw. The segments following the head contained two more pair of these freakish appendages, identical to the ones on the head, but only half the size.

Xenophus reached the curtain of water at the cave's entrance and continued out into the dawn, its head now visible to those in the Cold Narrows, moving side to side, two hundred and fifty feet above the harbor. More and more of the creature exited the cavern and like the centipede it resembled, the monstrous abomination began walking down the cliff-face using its arms and claws to anchor itself to the stone.

The Ürgod was so immense, that even as its head touched the water below, the entirety of its body had not yet exited the crevasse in which it had been trapped for countless millennia.

Otto shook his head in silent disbelief at the length of the monster. It was taking so long for the Ürgod to complete it's escape that both he and Willum now sat casually against the wall, no longer concerned with being discovered.

It seemed like an eternity till the creature was fully free of its prison. When the last segment, one without arms and trailing two rigid mandible-like protrusions, finally popped out of the tunnel, the two friends had been watching the grotesque parade for nearly an hour. Otto turned to his pirate friend and stated sadly.
"There's no way Chumley's pet can beat that...that thing."

"It don't look good, that's fer sure," Willum agreed, "but that don't mean we're anywhere near givin' up. If'n there's anyone kin stop that devil, I'll bet me life on our pals."

Otto smiled.
"I think that's exactly what we're betting."

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