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reached up and put a taloned appendage on the hexagon that already held an
ioun stone in four of its six corners. "When these two last holes are filled,
I will be able to control elves, dwarves, even humans. But in the meantime,
you must learn what motivates those three. Promise them anything, but get them
working for me or bring me their miserable flesh and blood, and let it fill my
pool. If you succeed, your reward will be "
Quarrel's black eyes gleamed with a fresh intensity. "I already know the
generosity of your rewards, master. And you also know the reward for which I
work most anxiously."
"Yes ... Yes, Quarrel, I know."
The moment she successfully completed the bidding of the Lord of the Ruins,
Quarrel would receive the one thing murder and looting could never get her a
human nose, a small triangular-shaped nose that would not snuf-fle when she
intended to be silent, that would not be an object of harassment and derision,
that would not iden-tify her as a half-breed ... an object of contempt.
The great bronze dragon enjoyed the surging warmth of the energy-giving pool
for a few more glorious min-utes after Quarrel departed. The giant amphibious
body of the dragon was an impressive one strong, vital, and impervious to most
attacks, an excellent choice for possession by Tyranthraxus, the Great
Possessor.
For more than a millennium, the dark-minded entity of Tyranthraxus had dwelled
on the material plane.
For more than a thousand years, Tyranthraxus had been hampered by the nuisance
of mortality, forced to control the weakest or the most corrupt mind he could
find and then to function within the confines of that creature's physical
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resources, however limited. He had at times been forced to possess even
creatures as mean as lizards and squirrels just to survive. Inevitably he
drove their pathetic, inhibiting bodies to the breaking point as he searched
frantically for a new vessel to contain his essence. He had possessed humans
by the score, men and women overrun by such overwhelming greed that their
minds had lost the capacity to reject his usurping pres-ence. He preferred
humans because they made his record-keeping so much easier. Since humans were
themselves gifted with a capacity for language, maintain-ing accounts of his
subversion and conquests was easier for Tyranthraxus when he inhabited a human
body.
But the dragon had been a good choice. Its mind had been subverted by a
powerful wizard's Mind
Control spell at the time when Tyranthraxus had last been forced to leap to
another host. The Great
Possessor now found himself mental companion to a mind that, unlike most on
this plain, had withstood centuries of life, a mind that had, over the years,
acquired a tremendous capacity for magic. Tyranthraxus was, of course,
obligated to keep pushing back the beast's lawful good tendencies, and he was
forced to cope with physical features that made writing difficult. But the
ability to intimidate with a dragon's body was a tremendous advantage. Then,
too, the dragon had led him to the pool....
What Tyranthraxus could never hope to achieve in his own plane, where he was
merely a minor entity among giants, was finally within his grasp here on this
plane of weak mortal minds. He already controlled the actions of a legion of
creatures within his telepathic reach. By cor-rupting the Pool of Radiance, a
magical body of water that had been created by the goddess Selune to purify
her followers before arcane rites, and expanding its powers with the enhancing
forces of a perfect hexagon of ioun stones, Tyranthraxus had found the means
of be-coming the supreme ruling being of an entire plane.
Each drop of blood added to the pool gave Tyran-thraxus new life energy. Each
ioun stone added a mea-sure of power to his own. For years he had researched
the magical gemstones' power, and he knew that the hexagon was the ultimate
figure of control. With six stones, lined up perfectly, and his tremendous
mental capacity, he would control the actions of every creature on this plane,
and with the power of the pool, he would do it for-ever. ...
* * * * *
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