2000-09-05: To Save A Daemon
Wandering through Moonglow after visiting my friend, I came to the bank to deposit some money that I had recently acquired. Once again, the town crier called out to any adventurer that could hear her. “Lord Hawk seeks assistance, come to the Britain counselor guild hall” Wondering why a crier in Moonglow would be calling for help in Britain had me curious… so I promptly went to find a mage to magically transport me to Britain. Lucky for me, my friend was a dabbler in magic and quickly agreed to take me.
When I finally arrived in Britain, I was surprised to see a number of young adventurers as well as hardy stout veterans gathering around the Britain counselor guild hall. Hoping to catch some tidbits of information, I quietly slipped past the crowd to stand within the guild hall. When the crowd had quieted down, a Stout man of middle age stepped forward and introduced himself as Lord Hawk. When asked what it was he needed, he proceeded to tell everyone that he needed their help to destroy a foul daemon that had been terrorizing the countryside. Of course, as you know by now, my curiosity was at an all time high. Anxious to see what would happen next, I edged as close as I could to Lord Hawk. After a few more minutes of talking and many cries of “We shall defeat the foul daemon!”, Lord Hawk opened up a gate. I rushed through the gate to see what was on the other side… and was immediately greeted by the sight of a HUGE black demon.
Upon passing through the magical portal, adventurers and mages alike began to attack the foul beast. However, the beast was not attacking back. “Well this is strange" I thought to myself… "Why would a daemon who was proclaimed as a great monster, who slaughtered the innocent, not attack back? And then it happened… The Daemon spoke, "Please do not attack me!" it said "I am not the evil one here, for I have been cursed with this form." Some of the adventurers must have been as curious as I, for they ceased attacking the daemon. "Tell us more," could be heard from some of these adventurers, and "Let the Daemon speak." Quickly the daemon spoke up, for even though some had stopped attacking, others were still trying to slay him. "Lord Hawk is the traitor here, he is the beast, he has cursed me to this form." Immediately Lord Hawk retaliated with "Ha, he speaks only lies, look at him, KILL HIM!” I for one did not like daemons at all, but for some reason I believed this daemon - there was a sadness in his eyes that spoke of ultimate unhappiness and despair. Trying to help him out, I began to speak up, to leave him be and let us free him from his imprisonment. However my voice could not be heard over the clashing of the many swords and shields. For a while the battle raged on, while the Daemon continued to proclaim his innocence. Slowly, one by one, the swords halted.
In the blink of an eye, The Daemon attacked Lord Hawk. At first Lord Hawk was infuriated that the Daemon would attack him, but when the adventurers began to attack him as well, Lord Hawk’s eyes began to glow an eerie red. Suddenly wings sprouted from his back as his whole image began to fade away, to be replaced with the monstrous form of a dragon. The adventurers stepped back in shock, some even began to pray, while others began to attack the beast once known as Lord Hawk. His form was incredible, and extremely more powerful than the human Lord. The Daemon began to fight Lord Hawk as well. The ground shook with the fury of the fight. Mages were casting spells left and right, warriors were fighting with their swords, slashing and hacking their way through, bards were keeping the other creatures at bay and provoking them to attack each other. The sounds were so deafening I could not even hear myself scream when a fireball whizzed past my head, singing my clothes as it flew by and slammed into the dragon. With a mighty roar, the dragon fell to the ground, and still the warriors attacked it, making sure that Lord Hawk was dead.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I looked at my clothes. “Hmm, looks like I’m lucky I decided to wear my cloak today," I thought to myself. Looking around, I saw bodies everywhere, monster and human alike. Picking myself up from the ground, I walked over to the crowd gathered around the Daemon. He began to tell his tale of how Lord Hawk had cursed him to this form, and that even though Lord Hawk was now dead, the curse was not lifted. He knew that to lift his curse, he had to gather three potions. A green potion, a white potion, and a black potion. But he did not know where to find them. He also explained that something protected these potions, but he did not know what. I walked around to get a better look of my surroundings when I overheard some of the adventurers talking, "Hmm, well… we are at the shrine of compassion now, and that is yellow…" "If he needs a black, white and green potion, lets go and check the shrines that match up to these colors" another adventurer replied. "Good idea. Lets go,” and off they went. I decided to follow these adventurers to see if their notion was correct.
Meanwhile the Daemon had said he would be at the Britain counselor guild hall when they had recovered all three potions. So off I went through the magical portal. Our next stop was the Shrine of Humility. Sure enough, a huge black spider was there by the shrine, her name was Lucretia, I could see her sniffing the air and then all 8 eyes turn towards us as we came through. “Ahh my lunch has decided to come to me have they? How lovely of you." Screaming, I ran behind a boulder and climbed up on top. I do not like spiders, so I was more than happy to let the adventurers take over the fight. From one end to the other these adventurers fought her, finally in the end they were able to slay her, and recovered the black potion. "Wonderful!” I thought. Now we only need two more.
Again, a magical portal opened up and I went through with the adventurers. We arrived at the shrine of Justice just in time to see a HUGE green elemental coming towards us… His name was Gorbash, and by the sight of him, he was not happy to see us. Suddenly, all around us, elementals of all kinds flew to the attack. Fire, air, water, it was horrible… warriors began to drop like flies… and then another gate appeared, and mages began to pour onto the battlefield. A few of the mages began to heal the fallen warriors while the others began to cast their mighty magic at the foul creature. Slowly the mages and warriors were able to fight back Gorbash’s minions and defeat Gorbash himself. But our casualties were high, and the mages were working overtime to raise our fallen companions.
A third and hopefully final gate appeared, and when we stepped through the Shrine of Spirituality greeted our eyes. And so did a…singing gargoyle? Laughing, I made my way towards the gargoyle.., this one was different from the any other I had ever seen, as it was very pale in color, almost white. She introduced herself as Tek’ani and then proceeded to sing. When asked about the potion, she said she knew of the Daemon’s curse and would be glad to give us the potion.
I sighed with relief : finally a potion that would be easy to obtain. At that moment, however, the creature piped up, saying, “But, I would like something in return." Again I looked at the gargoyle, with worry in my eyes. The gargoyle spoke again "I would like to hear you sing.. I love songs and I love to hear voices singing, so if you can sing for me, I will gladly give you the potion”
I almost began to laugh when I heard this, here I was thinking that we would have to give up an arm and a leg, and all Tek’ani wanted was to hear us sing. I gladly joined in to a chorus of Row Row Row your boat, and Tek’ani seemed to be pleased. We soon stopped, but she stated she was not done and would like to hear more. Sadly the adventurers were tired from their long fight, and it seemed that some of the evil that had tainted the hearts of the creatures before had also tainted some of the adventurers’ hearts, for they began to attack Tek’ani. Not ready to be assaulted, Tek’ani quickly fell to the warriors blades. I wiped a tear from my cheek as they rummaged through Tek’ani’s body and grabbed the potion. Even though I had wanted to see the Daemon free, it saddened me to see a creature so nice get killed in the heat of battle.
A fourth and final gate appeared and we returned to Britain. Walking to the Counselor guild hall, I began to think over the last few hours of what had happened. Amazingly, I had lived and am now here telling you the tale. Victorious, the adventurers handed over the potions to the Daemon, which he combined into a single mixture and quickly drank down. Sparkles appeared around his body and then suddenly we were face to face with a live human man – and a scholar at that. The once-Daemon thanked us all for a job well done, telling us if we had not been able to look past his beastly exterior he would never have been able to become human again. With that said, gold began to appear all around us. I did not wish to scramble for any myself, and watched as the others who had worked hard to earn it stuffed great handfuls of the shining metal into their packs. I suppose this is a great lesson to all, and the old saying rings true in my ears once more… “You can never judge a book by its cover.”
