A Moment Between Life and Death

A powerful hand seized his hair and yanked hard. His sword lay nearby on the forest floor. Whatever the weak human was muttering, the Ogre paid it no mind. All Gulk cared about was how much food he could get from his master in exchange for this human.

The change in Aaron went unnoticed. The Ogre merely muttered a couple of words and kept dragging him by the hair.

Ogres were immensely strong and none too bright. Generally classified as giants, about half were Chaotic Evil. They cared only about filling their bellies, and when hunger struck, they would destroy anything and do anything without a second thought.

Many of the rest were considered neutral evil. They became mercenaries or servants and were happy to work for anyone who kept them fed. But an Ogre's contract was never reliable. Hunger might make one change its terms on the spot, and a better offer could make it betray its employer just as quickly.

Aaron recalled what he knew about them. One look at the Ogre's height and build told him he could never match its strength. A single twist of that wrist, thicker than his thigh, could snap his neck. One swing of its club could crush his organs through his chain mail.

He would only get one chance!

He had to gamble everything on it!

"Hey, big guy!" Aaron panted, straining to lift his head. "How much meat is he giving you?"

Sure enough, to a dim-witted Ogre, "meat" was a magic word. Gulk lifted his chin at once, delighted. "Master Mepham will give Gulk lots and lots of meat! Enough to last Gulk until summer!"

Mepham. So that was the Warlock's name. Aaron's mind raced, gathering every scrap of information.

The Black Sun Lord. A Bhaalspawn. A Warlock, a Hobgoblin, a Bugbear, and the Ogre before him.

The Black Sun Lord... Cyric?

A Bhaalspawn... the Lord of Murder?

Shattered, jumbled pieces of information came together at startling speed in the young Viscount's mind: memories from his previous life and memories from this one.

He suddenly understood. This was a carefully planned ambush. The bandits had only been a test, and his performance had plainly given his enemies the wrong idea. They thought he was a Bhaalspawn.

I'm no Bhaalspawn! If anything, I'm a Child of Chaos! Aaron gritted his teeth. This disaster had come out of nowhere, yet in hindsight it made perfect sense.

"Hey, big guy. You're satisfied with enough meat to last until summer?" the weak human asked with a contemptuous edge. "Let me go, and I'll give you enough to last until autumn."

Meat? More meat? The Ogre hesitated. "But Master Mepham will punish Gulk!"

Good. This Ogre clearly leaned toward neutral evil. Aaron drew on every bit of wit he had and coaxed him along. "I'm a Viscount. My life is worth money. Let me go, and when I get home, I'll give you a whole farm's worth of meat!"

"I'm not your enemy. I'm your friend!"

"Weak human is friend, not enemy?"

"Yes. Friend means more meat. Enemy means less meat." The Ogre's hostility quickly faded. He was plainly torn.

Charm successful!

The Ogre's huge hand finally released Aaron's hair. The Viscount hit the ground hard enough to make his insides feel as though they had shifted and his wrists and knees crack sharply.

It hurts! It really hurts!

A cruel, triumphant smile spread across Aaron's contorted face.

One of the powers granted by the four Deities had just been unsealed.

He understood why he had remembered crossing into this world and why a Deity's power had awakened within him.

It was the overwhelming shock: the shock of killing for the first time, of seeing Volk's head, of standing at death's door. Such fresh, extreme stimulation was exactly what that Deity loved most.

After that relentless series of shocks, a spell sprang into Aaron's mind: the first-circle spell Charm Person.

He needed no study and no understanding. The spell was as natural as breathing, an instinct he had been born with.

The charm had worked. While the Ogre wrestled with his choice, Aaron had a moment to breathe. He quickly looked toward the muddy path through the trees nearby.

There, four identical Hickses were fighting the Warlock. Bolts fired by the Bugbear and Hobgoblin passed straight through him. The Worgs' sharp teeth tore through Hicks's phantom images and caught only air.

Aaron recognized the spell at once. It was the second-circle spell Mirror Image, a favorite of many Mages. It created several illusions of the caster, helping them avoid close combat, where they were at a disadvantage.

Hicks loudly mocked his enemies' aim. He chanted, and three Magic Missiles shot from his fingertips. His three images copied his every move, making it impossible to tell which was real.

The black-robed man sneered. "Childish."

A spell struck Hicks, and the Mage apprentice stiffened.

The three images vanished. The Magic Missiles disappeared. A flying javelin pierced the apprentice's chest, and a broad patch of dark red spread across Hicks's robe. He screamed as Worgs knocked him down. Their sharp fangs ripped his body apart, flinging clumps of red, white, yellow, and black tissue from beneath their heads.

It was like having a bucket of ice water poured over him from head to toe on a sweltering day. Aaron's flicker of triumph vanished, leaving him cold to the bone.

This was an enemy he could not hope to defeat right now.

He was no spellcaster, but he knew what that spell had been.

The third-circle spell Dispel Magic could instantly end spells of the third circle or lower.

The third circle was a major threshold for spellcasters. His enemy was plainly a second-tier elite spellcaster. Aaron was a first-tier apprentice, a novice whose powers had only just awakened. His body was covered in bruises, and he was bleeding internally. And that was without the dozen or so Orcs at the man's side.

You can't fight this enemy! Aaron roared at his own pride once more. Wake up, you idiot!

He knew himself. The old Aaron Salian had been stubborn enough to shout "For Cormyr!" and choose a glorious death.

He had already been prepared to die.

But while the old Aaron might have done that, the new one would not be so foolish.

Only one option remained. Aaron searched through his newly awakened memories for a useful spell.

There it was.

Aaron drew the dagger at his waist and slashed a deep cut across his palm. With utmost kindness, he told his Ogre friend, "Friend, I need to mark you. Otherwise, my family might not recognize you, and they won't give you any meat."

"Okay. Hurry! Gulk is hungry!" The Ogre nodded.

The charm was still working.

A few minutes later.

"Gulk? What are you doing? Bring that Bhaalspawn to me! Don't you want your meat?" The black-robed man had turned his attention to the Ogre, who still had not moved.

The Ogre stood where he was.

"Gulk?" The black-robed man saw Gulk slowly turn around and was about to berate him when he spotted a symbol freshly drawn in blood on the Ogre's belly.

He had never seen the symbol before. It looked like a male sign merged with a female sign, and he could sense magic coming from it.

The black-robed man immediately swept out a hand, signaling the Orcs to fall back.

"Master Mepham, Gulk is hot," the Ogre said dully. "Gulk's belly is hot. Gulk is going to get bigger. Bigger..."

"Get back!" A dreadful feeling seized the black-robed man.

"Bigger!!!" With that final roar, the Ogre swelled like a balloon. Tumors bulged from every part of his body, burying his face beneath layer upon layer of flesh. His features spread into irregular shapes as the growths multiplied. His hands disappeared, replaced by two enormous tentacles that whipped powerfully through the air.

"Eat meat! Eat meat!" The two-meter-tall Ogre had become a mass of flesh more than three meters high. He charged with a roar, shaking the ground with every step. Hunger and rage had become his weapons. As he bounced forward, his tentacles snatched a Bugbear off the ground. He bit off half its face and chewed the flesh, organs, and bone, sending juices spurting between his teeth.

What is that? What in the world is that?

With another bite, the fleshball tore off the Bugbear's head. It roared, hurled the headless corpse ahead of it, and bounced closer, an overwhelming presence.

The black-robed man pulled an octopus tentacle preserved in acid from inside his robe.

The plan had changed.

Whatever had happened, that boy had gotten lucky. First, he had to deal with this chaotic monstrosity.

"Ugh!"

The scenery swayed before Aaron's eyes as he sprinted through King's Forest. His face was pale. He had wrapped the large wound in his palm with a strip torn from his outer robe, but blood still seeped through.

Weakness from blood loss gradually dulled his senses, but Aaron dared not stop. He ran like a madman. Using the sun to judge roughly where he was in King's Forest, he picked a direction and bolted.

He had drawn a magic array with his own blood and poured all his mana into it, warping the Ogre's body. His Ogre friend had become a mindless Chaos Spawn that would attack any creature it considered edible.

The Chaos Spawn should keep the Warlock and the Orcs occupied for a while.

It was the only way Aaron had been able to break out of the trap.

The transformation was a unique bloodline spell that required a great deal of blood. The less intelligent the target, the better: it had to let him draw all over its body, then give in to the urges stirred by the sigil and descend into madness.

Aaron was weak right now, truly weak. If the Ogre had not been exceptionally dim and so easily ruled by his appetite, the spell would almost certainly have failed.

"Ugh!" Aaron did not know how long the Ogre could hold off the Warlock, but it probably would not be long. As a Chaos Spawn, Gulk would attack everyone indiscriminately until he exhausted all his strength and died.

Running in heavy chain mail was slow going. After only a few minutes, the weakened Aaron was drenched in sweat. But he knew he could not stop now. He had to keep moving with everything he had.

Dead branches and fallen leaves brushed the Viscount's handsome face. His heavy steps sank into the decaying matter on the forest floor. The sunlight that had once felt warm and pleasant had become irritating. His palm still hurt.

You really should have trained harder! Aaron, you always thought Father demanded too much, so you liked to slack off whenever you could. Do you understand why he pushed you now?

The young Viscount berated himself, his awakened self scolding the person he had been before.

After another ten-odd minutes, Aaron truly began to run out of strength. The scenery blurred. Every injury ached with weakness. His feet felt as though they were landing on cotton, unable to find any purchase. Even the fresh spring breeze against his face left him feeling only numb.

As he tried to step over a large tree root, his foot caught. Unable to control his body, Aaron pitched forward and struck the ground headfirst.

Then he knew nothing more.

Just before he lost consciousness, a helpless, sorrowful thought surfaced in his mind.

With everything that's happened to me, I might have been better off never awakening.

What am I supposed to do? What will become of me?

Everything went black.

Meanwhile, in the forest roughly two kilometers from where Aaron had collapsed...

The mangled bodies of two Worgs, a Bugbear, and a Goblin lay scattered on the ground. The once-unstoppable Chaos Spawn now resembled a deflated balloon. Its layered flesh and bulging, vein-covered tumors had all collapsed. The Ogre Gulk was just recognizable beneath them, though he was now less than a quarter of his former size. Wounds covered his body. He was dead beyond any doubt.

The black-robed man lowered his hand and let out a weary breath.

Defeating that tough-skinned, mutated ball of flesh had cost him four underlings and a spell.

The third-circle spell Hunger of Hadar.

The spell came from his Patron, one of the Great Old Ones. It opened a connection to a realm in the darkness among the stars, a place filled with unknown horrors. Centered on a point within casting range, it created an area without light that directly harmed creatures inside it.

The Chaos Spawn had been dragged into that area. Maddened, Gulk had plainly been unable to find his way out by instinct. Continuous cold and acid damage had finally worn him down.

Together with the third-circle Dispel Magic he had cast earlier, that left the black-robed man with little mana.

"Sir, what should we do? Should we pursue that Bhaal Godspawn?" The Hobgoblin was plainly unhappy with how the skirmish had ended.

Goblin and Hobgoblin differed by only a word, but the gap between them was vast. Goblins were extremely weak Chaotic Evil creatures, while Hobgoblins were lawful evil creatures, stronger than humans and possessed of strict discipline and a soldier's bearing.

"No. We should leave at once and find somewhere to rest." The black-robed man sighed. His voice held regret and a trace of disappointment. "Did you see? That young Bhaalspawn is a Purple Dragon recruit. We failed to capture him. There's a good chance we'll be wanted now."

Obarskyr, the Purple Dragons, and the War Wizards: three pillars supporting Cormyr.

"We can still track him! He's badly hurt. He can't have gone far!"

"Yes, he can't have gone far, but the temples of Lathander and the Lady of Silver aren't far from here either!" the black-robed man snapped. "There are followers of Lady Luck and those damned Druids, too! We can't take the risk. All of this is for the supreme Dark Sun Lord!"

The Hobgoblin said no more.

"Strange." The black-robed man paused, puzzlement creeping into his voice. "The Godspawn hidden among the Purple Dragons is a Bhaal Godspawn?"

"But the earlier intelligence suggested he was more likely a son of the God of Tyranny..."

"Forget it. We're leaving."

An update! Please vote!

Aaron's current attributes (5e):

Strength 14, Constitution 14, Dexterity 14, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, Charisma 14

(Thoroughly mediocre.)

(End of chapter)