The God of the Dead reached for the shard of red energy with his bony right hand. The fallen god chuckled softly as he held the fragment next to the foot-tall obsidian statue of a man he clutched in his left hand. There was a flash of brilliant white light as the statue absorbed the energy, and Lord Myrkul looked at the faceless figurine. A red mist swirled inside it violently.
'Yes, Lord Bane,' the God of the Dead rasped through cracked, black lips. 'We will have you whole again soon enough.' Myrkul chuckled once more and stroked the smooth head of the statue as if it were a small child. The mist pulsed with an angry red light.
Myrkul looked around and sighed. Faint images of the real world hung in the air around him. The farmer's home in which he stood was dark, dirty, and bleak. The low-beamed ceiling was black from the greasy smoke of the peasants' cooking fires. Rats occasionally scurried across the floor, racing between the legs of the warped wooden tables and splintering benches. Two people lay asleep under stained furs.
Lord Myrkul, the God of Decay as well as the God of the Dead, rather liked this place. It was like a tiny, unintentional shrine to him. In fact, it upset Myrkul that he couldn't experience it fully. For Myrkul was in the Border Ethereal Plane, an area parallel to the plane where the Realms and its people existed. From the Border Ethereal, the things Myrkul saw around him — the furniture; the vermin; the grimy, sleeping peasants — appeared only as phantasms. And if the snoring farmer and his wife had been awake, they wouldn't have been able to see or hear Myrkul.
'If only they could see me,' the skeletal man complained to the black statue. 'I could frighten them to death. How pleasant that would be.' Myrkul paused for a moment to consider the effects his avatar's visage, complete with rotting, jaundiced skin and burning, empty eye sockets, would have on the humans. 'Their corpses would make this hovel complete.'
Energy crackled and arced from the figurine. 'Yes, Lord Bane. The last shard of your being isn't far from here,' the God of the Dead hissed. Myrkul cast one glance back at the hovel as he walked through the insubstantial walls. When he got outside into the ghostly moonlight that shone down upon the countryside south of Hillsfar, the God of the Dead shuddered. The filthy hut was much more to his liking.
Pulling the hood of his thick black robe over his head, Lord Myrkul stepped into the air as if he were climbing an invisible staircase. Gravity had no effect on him in the Border Ethereal, and it was easier to see his prize if he looked for it from a vantage point high above the ghostly hills and houses. After he had climbed a hundred yards or so straight up, Myrkul could see the final fragment of Lord Bane glowing in the distance.
'There lies the rest of the God of Strife.' Myrkul held the statue up and faced it toward the pulsing shard that rested over a mile away. Tiny bolts of red and black lightning shot from the figurine and bit into the God of the Dead's hands. Slivers of pain raced up the avatar's arm, and Myrkul could smell burning flesh.
'If I drop you, Lord Bane, you will plummet back into the Prime Material Plane, back into the Realms.' The tiny arcs of lightning grew smaller. 'And I will not help you to recover the last piece of your essence. You will be unwhole — trapped inside this statue.'
Myrkul smiled a rictus grin as the lightning ceased and the statue became black once more. 'I am pleased to serve you, Lord Bane, but I will not be goaded into action.' When the figurine remained dark, the God of the Dead started walking toward the shard of Bane's essence. After an hour, the fallen deities reached their destination.
This fragment of the God of Strife resembled a huge, bloody snowflake, almost three feet wide. It was larger and far more complex than any of the other pieces Myrkul had recovered. How odd, the skeletal figure thought. Each shard is different. This one is the most intricate yet. I wonder if it could be his soul…
The God of the Dead shrugged and held the statue next to the snowflake. As before, there was a brilliant flash of light as the shard disappeared into the figurine. This time, however, the statue continued to glow brightly, pulsing red and black in a quickening pattern. Myrkul narrowed his eyes in pain as a loud, high-pitched shriek tore through his brain.
I am alive! the God of Strife screamed in Myrkul's mind. I am whole again! A pair of burning eyes and a leering, fanged mouth suddenly appeared on the smooth face of the statue.
'Please, Lord Bane, not so loud. You are giving me a splitting headache,' the God of the Dead rasped. 'I am pleased my plan succeeded.'
How did you find me? How did you know I wasn't destroyed?
'I was monitoring the battle in Shadowdale as best I could. When that debased form of Lady Mystra appeared in the temple, it became clear to me that we gods cannot be destroyed, but merely dispersed.' Lord Myrkul smiled. 'And so, when your avatar was destroyed, I tracked one of the shards of your being into the Border Ethereal and started searching for the others there as well.' The God of the Dead tilted his head slightly and tried to look into the obsidian statue. 'Are you quite whole now?'
Yes, Myrkul, I'm fine. Do you understand what you've done? The voice inside Myrkul's head was growing loud again, and the God of the Dead winced at the noise. You've crossed into the Planes! You've beaten Lord Ao! We have escaped from the Realms, and now we can go home and claim our true power! The eyes on the statue were wide with excitement.
'No, Lord Bane, I'm afraid we cannot. I was ready to give up when I discovered that you had been blown into the ether. I thought that Lord Ao had blocked all the existing planes from us.' Myrkul rubbed his rotting chin with a bony hand. 'I was wrong.'
Wrong?
'Yes,' Myrkul sighed. 'As my high priest pointed out, none of the gods live in the Border Ethereal, so Ao had no reason to stop us from entering it. Of course, with magic being so unstable, three of my wizards died trying to locate all the fragments of your being and send me here to recover them.' The God of the Dead bowed slightly, and all the vertebrae in his back cracked. 'But I could not let you suffer here.'
Please, Myrkul, spare me your flattery. After all, you need me to force my way into the heavens so you can follow.
Myrkul scowled. For a moment, he considered journeying farther into the Border Ethereal and dropping the statue into the Deep Ethereal, a place of swirling colors and mighty vortices. Bane would never make it back to the Realms — or his home — from there. But the thought lasted only a second.
Bane was right. Myrkul did need him. But not because the God of the Dead lacked courage or initiative. Myrkul wanted the God of Strife to lead the assault on the heavens because it was very dangerous, and it wouldn't do at all for the God of the Dead to be destroyed.
So Myrkul grinned obsequiously and again gave a slight bow to the obsidian statue. 'Of course you are correct, Lord Bane. Let us exit this place so that we may find you a new avatar and proceed with your plans.'
How will we return to the Realms?
'It seems that magic is more stable outside the Prime Material Plane. I should be able to cast a spell to send us home without error.' The God of the Dead held the statue close to his face and smiled once more, so wide this time that the decaying skin at the sides of his mouth tore slightly. 'I only await your command.'
II
The mystical wards that Elminster had placed throughout the Twisted Tower had begun to fail the night the Temple of Lathander was destroyed. The passageways within the tower that were cloaked to appear as part of the walls sometimes revealed themselves as open doorways, and during the first day after the Battle of Shadowdale, people passed through them without incident. By that night, however, an unwitting guardsman walked into one of the openings and was killed as the break in the wall sealed up by itself, trapping him within.
Outside the tower, the torches lit by blue-white eldritch fires either smoldered dimly or blazed with a light that blinded any who dared to look directly at them. Any attempts to remove the torches met with failure, since mortal hands merely passed through the torches as if they weren't there.
The mists that engulfed the upper levels of the tower were meant to stop any prying mystical eyes, but their nature had changed, too. Now the mists swirling around the tower caused a continuous, ear-piercing shriek. The
