Chapter Nine

Thus after slaying the Tarrasque and eliminating the menace of the shapeshifters, me and my party journeyed back to our own world and took some time to deal with other matters. Gaspar spent his days mourning Jessalyn, contemplating how he could journey to hell and retrieve her soul. I spent some time researching other matters; my mother, long departed from this world, her soul supposedly dwelling in the elven lands where all such folk went after their deaths. I began my search, spending my days at the Pomarj library and consulting the local elves as to her identity and possible location. Still, the elven leaders would not allow me to journey to their sacred lands a second time, still hung up on their prejudices. I also managed to sell our set of ‘slave rings’ to a thieves’ guild in Langston. Months later, I returned to see that they had become much, much more. They had taken to burning down houses and murdering folks, even striking at locations in my Lockinton. They became a guild no more. Took the master ring from their leader and tossed him in prison. The I lured his minions in until I had all the rings once more. Some of the gang died, others went to jail with their master. Only one man was saved out of the whole bunch; Janko, their doorman. He became Gaspar’s squire, and to this day he is a good and decent fellow, perhaps even more true in his faith than Gaspar at times. Latheric researched a way to journey to this hell that Gaspar so wanted to find. He discovered that we needed to strike a deal with one of the devil lords in order to even enter the plane. To do so, we needed souls; lots of souls. We found them in the former lair of our old buddy, Jake Tabber, he had stored plenty of souls inside of gems, the same type of gems I had used years before to fund my equipment. We eventually collected enough gems, enough for Gaspar to strike a deal with the devil-lord Bel and gain us passage to the afterlife. Before that we decided to get our gear together and make sure everyone was properly outfitted. The mountain of gold, former Tarrasque lair, was a great benefit here. All the molten money had since solidified across the rocks, giving us a nearly endless supply of money. We decided to go off to Langston to get what we needed.

This is where Huey went completely mad. After he had purchased an insane amount of items, spending over two million gold pieces, Huey decided that he was poor. He decided that he really needed a bit of extra money. Thus, he robbed a home, or rather, he tried to rob a home. He rang the doorbell, killed the dog who ran out at him after it started barking, then was surprised to see several guards running at him. He killed them too, decapitating them with his newly purchased sword. Then, the murderous Halfling tried to get away, but was too enraged to think about using his ring of invisibility to escape. Instead, he was caught by some of the town wizards, who paralyzed then imprisoned him. When we discovered this, we had him extradited back to Lockinton, where we prepared to judge him ourselves. We had a long discussion, and finally decided to put a Mark of Justice upon him, which would force the little monster to behave decently, and also to give him one of my ?slave rings?. Me and Gaspar figured that would teach him a lesson. It was then that Huey took out a sword and got ready to stab himself, disgusted with his life and unwilling to face the consequences of his own actions. Gaspar then jumped forward, ready to stop him. At that point, I wasn’t going to give Huey the satisfaction of killing himself. I wasn’t going to let the guy take his own life, not after all the crap that we’d gone through because of him. Quicker than both Huey and Gaspar, I pulled out my vorpal sword and chopped off his head. He died then and there, and as his body fell to the floor, I knew that Huerney White-Eye would never return. For a time after killing Huey I felt terrible. I wandered the lands, battling spirits in ruined Andronia, traveling to the Pomarj and back, contemplating just what I had done. Then I realized that in killing Huey I had done the right thing. Huey had become a monster. I had always stuck up for him, always tried to help him out and make him a better man; yet he was a thief, a murderer and in the end a traitor, both to himself and to his friends. In addition to being all these things, he was an incompetent screw-up, a liability. Huey was better off dead, as you can tell by the many accounts of his previous deaths. His fifth death was the final one, however. We opted not to bring him back, and let his soul go wherever such pitiable dregs go when they die. I regret nothing that happened to Huey, only that it didn’t happen sooner. He was my responsibility, and in the end I dealt with him.