I honored my commitment to Mike Blackstone's underground army for five years before more urgent concerns drew me away. The desire to know Garanda's fate had become a feverish obsession. I should have been glad to stay as far away from the spirit as I could possibly get, but I could never feel free without being certain that he would never trouble me again. So, when I had heard a tip that Broger had been experimenting with a corpse in a remote cottage somewhere along the northwestern bank of Lake Whitetree, I did not hesitate to drop what I was doing and leave for Tanis to investigate. Unfortunately, my search had been in vain; although I found the cottage I sought, it had been emptied shortly before I arrived.
I paid another heavy price for this failed attempt to find clues regarding my curse. While I was away from the resistance, the outlook of the movement had taken a series of rapid turns. Under Karen Blackstone's control, the Royal Army had managed to close in on my colleagues five times, exacting dozens of casualties each time. In the last of these confrontations, the leader gave his life to hold off the Royal Army to protect our newest ally. It was when the Second Archknight set foot on Comalan for the first time, born to refugees that had fled this world when the Geosians came to power, that the course of the resistance changed for the better. Given where I find myself today, I regret having met young Matthew Ryan only briefly. As Firehawk, I had come from the Gilded Keep to disable a number of problematic magical wards that might have prevented him and the Mages of Destiny from reaching their nemesis. It was then that I shared a brief conversation with the young Archknight, who struggled with learning to control his considerable latent magic.
I fully intended to offer the boy more than a few tips, but shortly after, a dark rumor had reached me from an acquaintance I had made in Tanis. There, a butcher had taken up residence in the depths of Victory Trail and made a living of slaughtering everything he saw. Elves, humans, and magmadons; none were safe from his unstoppable onslaught of death. My source was trusted to ensure that any news I received from him was relevant to my personal search, so I was convinced that this could only be Garanda. Torn between my fellow Restans, and the indiscriminate danger Garanda posed, my choice was not a difficult one. I left the rest of the resistance's work to the Archknight and Kyle Baldus, the man who would later become our King.
While the fate of the world was being decided within the Gilded Keep, I traveled west once more into the elven lands. This time, instead of circling the lake, I flew north as swiftly as I could. Once I reached the northern city of Medear, I carefully swept the woods to the north until I found what I was looking for. I rolled up my sky rug and ventured alone into the world's most treacherous cavern. The usual dangers of Victory Trail fled at the sight of me, a development that filled with a dark certainty. After two hours of navigating the sweltering depths, I found recently dried blood splattered across the walls in countless places.
Shortly after discovering the blood, I found what I was looking for. Another man stood crouching behind a row of stalagmites, clutching a sword roughly as long as I was tall in both hands. His eyes bored into me with the intensity of a predator stalking his prey, which left me time to examine the creature that stood in front of me. His musculature was far more developed in both his upper and lower body and his hair was longer than mine, resembling the state in which it had been when I was last haunted by Garanda's presence. Besides these minor differences, this man looked perfectly identical to me, including even the scar that serves as a reminder of Garanda's first appearance.
My blood boiled as I stared at the monster I would become whenever the Demon Knight's spirit took control of me. I should have been terrified, but I felt nothing in that moment but unfiltered hatred towards the object of my gaze. Neither of us made the first move, but instead reacted to sight of each other simultaneously. He moved with savage speed, but the advantage magic gave me in range allowed me the initiative in this moment-- the beginning of the first of many direct confrontations with the demon knight. I sought to stop him in his tracks with a blast of intense cold, but the ambient heat of the tunnel weakened the attempt. I only managed to slow him down enough to dodge his first swing.
Seeking to take advantage of the heat which had previously hindered me, I followed up my first spell with a stream of fire. While I did manage to inflict a severe burn on the right side of Garanda's waist, I soon regretted my second choice as well. First of all, the use of fire only seemed to intensify the heat in the air, but burning the demon knight didn't seem to stop him in the slightest. He charged through the flames for his counterattack, in which he sent me sprawling to the ground with a slam of the blunt side of his sword. I was bleeding as he approached me in anticipation of his killing blow.
But this was something I could use.
As I had done before, I called upon my blood to form a barrier in Garanda's path. True to his previous reaction, he swung wildly at the obstacle between us. This time, he began to crack the wall on his third strike. With the forth, a hole had formed. Thinking quickly, I drew what I could of the blood spilled throughout the tunnel and poured it into my barrier, causing spikes to shoot of the wall on Garanda's side. Through the hole Garanda made, I could see one of those spikes piercing his left shoulder. He drew back with barely a grunt and growled like a feral beast.
As he withdrew from this encounter, the stone that surrounded me as he boomed out his parting words, "I'll be sure to clean up for you the next time we meet!"
I took this as an admission that his sloppy disregard for the blood of his victims had given me an added advantage that he could not overcome. When next I clashed with him, I would not have such a boon. But I was not willing to allow this change I had to be squandered. For the first time in decades, I took the excess blood into my body along with my own, feeling that I would need the power it contained to finish off my foe. With my barrier withdrawn, I gave chase, but was stopped by the shadow priest I would later come to know as Flinbek of Ravager. I had long considered countermeasures to the soul magic Richard Broger might use to hinder me, but I was unprepared for the mysterious magic of this new accomplice.
The interloper might have crushed me under the weight of my own fatigue, but my body gave in to a familiar feeling. Once again, I turned over control of my body to the Silverfist and tore away the tangible shadows that ensnared me. Seeing the failure of his magic to hold me, Flinbek fled behind his apparent master and used illusions to throw me off their trail. While I was disappointed to have lost him again, I was elated at my first victory of the Demon Knight. But what had to follow was an exhaustive search into where Flinbek had come from and why he had been helping Garanda.
Continue to Part 11
Continue to Part 11
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