AMETHYST 5.6: LIKE AMBER
“If observing a phenomenon is itself a phenomenon, then the chain of regress extends infinitely into this, its summation. All of existence is concerned with this process: the taking of infinity, and saying, ‘Here in me in this moment of time it finds its end.’ Whether or not we make our choices, we are doomed to feel as though we have made them.”
– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 19:347-351
“Noooooooo –“
“– oooooooooo –“
“– oooooooooooo…”
There was time, between the first and second peals of the bell on the far side of the courtyard.
“Help –“
There was even a little time between the second and third.
“– me –“
After the third –
Timesnatcher. I noticed. He almost moved. Almost rode it.
Not for us. The rest of us. No motion. Not now.
No now.
The wave of old, old magic. It had what we did not.
Time.
Flooding the city. Stilling us.
Chronomancy.
Time… thought.
Slowed. Stopped. No heartbeat. Trapped in a moment. Like slumber.
Amber.
Above, skies changed.
Listened.
To the yells.
“– oooooooooooooooooo…”
“– ooooooooooooooooooooo…”
Contextless sound. Meaningless emotion.
As skies flicked –
Grey.
Black.
No white behind purple. Only black.
There was –
None. No time to take.
No thought to interpret.
Time was being given.
Hours of it.
And we emerged into the other side, still shouting as one, like a chorus of frightened lambs bleating as night falls and the predators draw in.
For that was what had happened.
It was night, and we were in Zadhal. It had even started snowing.
Even as I came back to myself, there was a sudden catching-up of mental sounds, time reasserting itself. Everything that had been spoken while the clock tower’s spell spilled out over us was being replayed, all at once. It was even more meaningless than the slowed sounds, but it was deafening.
As the lethargy that had afflicted us passed by, the same was happening to our enemies. I had no idea how adept all my fellow champions were at using their senses in dark, misty conditions – I could see well-enough, considering that it was nethermist. The wights were recovering. We only had seconds until they’d be on the attack again. Now it was night they would soon be reinforced by things from beyond the courtyard, vampires and any number of other night-dwellers who’d woken hours ago to find this section of the city time-locked…
And the avatar of Vaahn –
The godling was coming out of his chronomantic reverie, seeming almost to vibrate –
Winterprince and Mountainslide hadn’t restarted their attacks yet; within a single lunge the abomination could reach down to take firm hold of the diviner and druids attached to his knee, transform them into unliving matter –
But the babble of Glimmermere overrode the other psychic voices. Hers was the last cry, and –
“Now!” she shrilled –
I didn’t even get to see them get loose; it happened in the very instant we came back to ourselves. Timesnatcher or Killstop was there, and then they were there no longer – the druids, the dwarf diviner.
They vanished. No blur of colours, nothing. Just gone. Snow on the air.
Glancefall vanished.
Acting on sheer instinct, praying to Yune that I was right, I dismissed the remnants of my eldritches.
And I vanished.
As if in retribution against the city that had defied his supremacy, Timesnatcher took us all up one by one, gathering us into his maelstrom of power, soaring with us above the towers.
It cost me a moment to reorient myself; one second I was there in the courtyard awaiting death or worse at the hands of some freshly-awakened vampires – then I was nothing, a space with no location, only destination, a non-being awaiting rebirth –
And I stumbled, cringing, feeling the effects of the Winter Door as it loomed before me.
No weave, but no undead either. Just an expanse of blue-lit snow, silent but for the portal’s constant churning.
To my left, Fang and Glimmermere were lowering a moaning Dimdweller to the ground – they positioned themselves on either side of his shoulder, deliberately not touching the cursed hand itself, and carefully pulled…
I didn’t have to watch; the wet, sickening sounds were enough.
To my right, the priest, the enchanters, Mountainslide, Shallowlie, Starsight –
The next instant, Timesnatcher appeared, one arm around Direcrown’s shoulders, the other resting on the massive spur of ice that was Winterprince’s bicep.
Killstop circled around from out of nowhere, pushing the wheelbarrow.
I cast her a sidelong glance.
“What?” she said, sounding injured. “I promised I’d return it.”
I grinned. “Thanks – I wouldn’t mind a lift, actually…” I flexed my nearly-numb wings, felt the snowflakes drifting through them on their way to the ground.
“Don’t you dare! Moving quickly grants a bit of strength but you have no idea how tiring it gets pushing this thing… If the guy was a bit younger I’d have made him run too.”
“So that’s it?” Glancefall was asking, looking up at the wall of blue flame that was our way home. So much more beautiful, more arcane, in the darkness. “We can go home now?”
Especially here, so close to stepping back into Mund, back into the Box in Treetown, the idea of giving up was incredibly tempting.
No less unconscionable than it had been at any earlier point, though.
I could see the tells on the lips of Timesnatcher and in the posture of Fangmoon. The druidess’s green-glowing hands still clasped the now-unconscious dwarf, but her masked face was turned towards the rest of us.
I wasn’t done here, and I wasn’t alone.
“You never had to stay,” Timesnatcher said.
“What does that mean?” Winterprince rumbled. “We’re all going back, Timesnatcher!”
“But we can’t,” Glimmermere said, also looking up at the Door. “We’re not all here…”
“Shadowcloud…” Starsight’s voice had a musing quality.
“Our work here is done,” Direcrown said. “Tell them what we did, Feychilde.”
I shook my head. “You’ve got it backwards, if I’m not much mistaken.”
“Now is the time, sorcerers.” Timesnatcher had the curiosity back in his voice. “For whatever reason, I still can’t see what you did at the Green Tower.”
“That’s why I have to go back.”
“Back?” Direcrown hissed. “Fool! There is no going back; there is no need for us to go back – a tactical retreat to the Box –“
“You’re wrong. Think about it. We’ve already left it for hours.” I shook my head. “It could take days, and if Timesnatcher can’t see it, that means undead with divination powers are going to interact with its destiny, right? So the Prince or some archlich or super-vampire or something is going to go there, and when they find out what we’ve done –”
“Going there would destroy them!” Direcrown said. “You are clever, boy, but not clever-enough to understand the limits of your cleverness! If you wish instruction, I would deign to teach you…”
If he’d said something like that to me an hour ago I’d have thought it a veiled threat or insult, but I felt I knew enough of him to judge now that he was being sincere.
I shook my head again.
“… then continue in your delusions. Those who will not learn cannot be taught.”
“You said yourself that liches could have been there.”
“Before we knotted the cords, boy! But now the runes are active –”
“All the more reason for them to act this minute, before it grows to such intensity they’re all doomed! It might not be strong-enough to destroy something like an avatar, ever, never mind right now…”
It was Direcrown’s turn to retort, but he just looked away towards the south-west, the wrecked tower district…
Was he reconsidering it?
I followed his gaze, and I realised I could easily make it out now, the smear of verdant light seeping around the intervening buildings. There was no other colour to be found here – the sky was overcast, a gloomy pall of winter clouds.
Timesnatcher had been following the conversation, looking back and forth between us as we argued, a small smile on his face.
“I’m glad we’re all on the same page again,” he said warmly.
“Wait – what?” Spirit blurted. “Just because you suddenly get it, doesn’t mean the rest of us can follow! Unless you want us to start readin’ it in your heads…”
I smiled at Timesnatcher, then quickly explained what we’d found, what we’d done.
When I was finished, the others looked between me and Direcrown in silence, until –
“I wanna go hom,” Shallowlie said in a small mind-voice. “I doan won to leaf you, buh… Dis is de end o’ my tam here. Pliz fogeef me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Timesnatcher replied. Several of the others said words to the same effect; whether because they genuinely meant it or because they meant to go with her and were trying to assuage their own guilt, I was unsure.
I wasn’t sure whether I agreed, but I was hardly going to start a fight, here, now. Not like this.
“I want to go home,” Glimmermere said, “but I… I don’t want to go without him.”
“We’ll do everything we can to find him,” Fangmoon said.
“You’re staying?” the elven-looking druidess asked her.
Fangmoon nodded. “For Leafcloak.”
“She… she would want you to live, you know.”
Fangmoon’s shoulders shook, a brief spasm, and then it was gone.
“I know,” she replied, so quiet it was almost a non-sound. “But what she wanted most of all – she told me once –”
“A death that mattered,” Timesnatcher finished. “Yes. I too will stay.“
“If any of you even thinks about telling Shadow what I said…” Glimmermere muttered.
Winterprince, who’d been unusually reluctant to get involved since the start of the discussion, suddenly straightened.
The icy lips split upon a single word. “No.”
“I’m getting really sick of your drop,” I muttered under my breath.
I stared at him, daring him to make plain the fact he heard me; but he didn’t give any indication.
“Yes,” Timesnatcher replied, still smiling. “You can do what you want, Winterprince, but we’re here and we’re going to see it through. I’ll go with Feychilde.”
“I’m out,” Killstop said.
I raised my eyebrows behind the mask.
“Someone with sense,” the ice elemental grated.
“Ouch!” Killstop winced, rolling her shoulders. “Now, you just take that back!”
“But you need a wizard,” Mountainslide huffed through his beard; he was crouched beside Dimdweller opposite the druidesses.
“I think someone forgot to get a good night’s sleep last night,” Glimmermere said to him.
The dwarven wizard smiled wanly at her, still breathing heavily from all his non-stop energy-expenditure, keeping the effigy at bay.
Winterprince, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease inside his cold casing.
Does he even breathe? I wondered. He had to breathe – he had to draw the air through the ice somehow, surely? But I’d never seen him looking over-exerted – I’d never seen him look anything, really, except detached…
In stark, bleeding contrast to his actual character.
“I get it,” Winterprince said at last. “Fine. I’ll stay, if you’re staying. You need a wizard.” He waved an icicle gauntlet. “The others can keep watch on the other side.”
I raised my eyebrows in disbelief again.
Timesnatcher’s smile merely broadened, and he coasted through the air towards Spiritwhisper. “A wizard… And an enchanter… best young enchanter in a generation…” he wheedled in his smooth, deep voice.
Spirit looked towards me, mute appeal in the slightly-parted lips, the desperate gaze –
“I’m sorry, man, but he’s right.” I sighed. “We need you. Zadhal needs you.” I looked across at the priest of Kultemeren. “A time of ending and unmaking, right?”
The old man nodded, and rubbed his knuckles where he’d right-hooked a god in the nose. “The breaking of the spell. But I cannot come with you, champion, for this is not my path. I promised you I’d help.” The priest looked towards Killstop. “Have faith that I have fulfilled my oath. I must away to Mund with the others.”
There was a smug, almost-mischievous smile on his lined face. Every bit of his previous terror, previous fervour, had been wiped away now he was on the threshold of returning home. He sounded just like any other civilian again.
I’d never before wanted to punch a holy-man – especially one whom I’d just watched punch a god – but this was a day of firsts.
* * *
After the others headed through the Door, those of us who’d elected to remain steered ourselves towards the distant light of the Green Tower.
The wind and the snow were in our faces, but I’d gotten used to the conditions by now, and in any case Winterprince and Fangmoon’s magic was in us. I could hardly feel a thing. If it weren’t for the impending attack of any number of elite undead, I felt I could’ve found a certain joy in just sailing through those dark, snow-filled airs. And even the inevitability of the coming battles didn’t do much to dampen my mood; the weight of the anticipation was a physical thing, setting my senses aflame, making it so that I experienced each moment in its entirety. Even Em, Jaid and Jaroan were distant, untroubling thoughts. Every one of these moments could be my last, with vampire-lords and worse potentially waiting around every corner…
Not that we let corners get in our way. We flew above the buildings, moving under Timesnatcher’s power so as to get back and get stuck in as quickly as possible. Despite this, I got the impression the arch-diviner was being cautious, moving us along in little bursts of warped time, checking ahead before he did so as to ensure he didn’t drop us into a trap.
In the space of a minute we were almost there, soaring above the dead mansions on the edge of the tower district; it was during one of our brief slowing-periods when Timesnatcher scouted ahead that the vampires struck.
There was no moment of warning anyone but me could provide, and the vampires moved so quickly into range of my undead-perceiving faculty that I had no chance to say anything but ‘Argh!’ before they were upon us.
Dozens, whipping through the air, moving like dancers on the invisible night breeze. They reminded me of the way the eolastyr’s obbolomin had moved, when we fought them far beneath Lord’s Knuckle.
They did not move with the weightless grace of the vampire-lord who’d come to Mund, who’d tried to take me and make me like him. These were still earthbound creatures, though doubtless enemies of prodigious strength, given their ability to launch themselves effortlessly from the rooftops towards us. But earthbound all the same.
This didn’t help them when they crashed face-first into my extended shielding; they spent a moment clawing at empty air, their momentum suddenly arrested; then they fell back lightly towards the ground once more.
Or would’ve done, if I hadn’t scooped them up in a big net of force, a dozen interlinked diamonds of pure sorcerous energy.
My ‘Argh!’ of warning had served its purpose, and the others were ready: Winterprince extended an ice-sword, let his lightning ripple through my trapped vampires; it coursed from one to the next, and they howled as they were incinerated from within. Fangmoon hovered watchfully about Spiritwhisper while me and the wizard tore them apart. Then Timesnatcher returned, and with his blades flashing he descended upon those lucky-enough to have avoided my net of diamonds.
“Trouble ahead,” the arch-diviner reported.
“More vampires?” Spirit asked.
“No – liches, their spells readied.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’m ready for them.”
From across my shield, I caught Winterprince’s derisive snort, snapping its way free of his armour’s ‘mouth’.
I reminded myself not to clench my jaw so hard I’d need druidry to fix my teeth again, and flew on.
We passed between the first pair of towers, then the second, the dark shapes barely visible through the snow flurries –
“Soon,” Timesnatcher said, even his telepathic voice hushed. “When they’re about to attack, I’ll take us up. We’ll descend right at the Green Tower, and most of the spells will go wild.”
“I can take lich-fire,” I thought in response, perhaps a touch sullenly, remembering the ease with which I’d bore the sustained attacks of Shadowcrafter’s eldritches.
“Those liches were young,” he replied, as if reading my thoughts. “You might as well say you slew a hundred men, when they were toddlers armed with sticks. Lords of the undead don’t grow in power over time, not if they just sit around; but liches are like your average vampire or wight. They grow closer in kind to us. Time spent connected to Materium matters to them, and these have had centuries anchoredon this plane. I don’t mean to belittle you, Feychilde, but no – we’ll go upwards I think.”
I tried to contain my embarrassment as Winterprince silently turned my way, inclining his head, a gesture of respect warped into mockery.
Tried to contain my fear, focus on the anger instead, the slowly-swelling hate I was developing where the wizard was concerned.
These liches wouldn’t be like the ones I’d met before. The ones who’d literally been created in order to be enslaved.
And I hadn’t faced hundreds… just a handful, really…
I’d been rash, overconfident, several times before and it had always led to catastrophe. I was determined I’d avert such misfortune this time. I’d follow orders, get the job done.
Timesnatcher didn’t even speak. He did something to me, his hands on my shoulders, angling me, arrowing upwards with me.
I went with it – not that I had much say in the matter.
We were all there, rising, my shields a series of blue shapes ringing us as we pierced the snowy night sky –
I looked down in time to catch the array of spells arcing up through the snow at us, a barrage of dark fireworks.
Several dozen of them. Maybe over a hundred.
Zadhal housed more liches than it had deathknights, it seemed. Deathknights, liches, the lot of them – even without an avatar of Vaahn roaming around down there somewhere, they’d all eventually come back again if we killed them.
Unless we were successful. Unless we brought this city’s necromancy low.
The bolts of pure shadow-energy licked out from the ruined black spires beneath us, and, seeing them coming to sear the flesh from our bones and souls from our minds, it really started to sink in. Fighting was futile. We would have to approach this with cunning, not brute force.
A pair of spells simultaneously struck my dodecahedron, my defence evaporating just like the bolts, but as Shield Eleven and Shield Ten fell to one bolt each, I quickly realised that I was lucky and not unlucky to have two of them hit Shield Twelve at the same time.
The ease with which the barriers had been brought down alarmed me. I rebuilt them as quickly as I could, re-reinforced my circle, and hoped my inner protections would fare better.
I tapped my wraith more and more as we climbed higher. My vision was too good. I could track our movement with precision too acute for my frail human mind…
Then, sharply, we descended.
“More attacks!” Timesnatcher snarled, as even my intangible stomach dropped, the sudden plummet more than I could take –
More fire, trailing purple into the clouds – smashing shields…
The Green Tower ahead, bones rising to meet us.
We’d gone over the plan as to how to approach this moment before we left the others behind at the Winter Door and returned. I would go in alone, check the state of the sphere, then exit to make a report before re-entering and finishing the work. The others would only stay close-enough to keep the link at maximum power, and do their best to draw attention away from the place whilst I remained inside. Looking for Shadowcloud while Zadhal still functioned as an undead-recycling facility would be a waste of our resources, we’d decided, unless I found evidence the spell-sphere would be up and running imminently. We had no invisibility that would work against the calibre of creature we now faced, whose senses would penetrate all but the mightiest disguises, so there was little point in subterfuge.
They knew our target.
I ignored everything, fixing shields about the others, acting on pure instinct as I moved feet-first through the bones, the storm that was recoiling from my barriers.
Even as I approached I could see the sphere’s rune-lines, waving through the tower’s armour.
Tattered. Torn.
Then my barriers bent inwards; I still couldn’t push them through ahead of me into the chamber.
Like earlier, I used the force-circle to cover me as my boots went into the wall of bones, then I shut my eyes, slipped through the all-too-tangible matter, and came within the sphere’s chamber once more.
The sight that greeted me made me sick to the stomach. My guts squirmed in spite of the wraith-form.
There were three things in here with me – I could sense them now – and they’d undone ninety percent of the work me and Direcrown had completed. By the looks of things, we’d soon be back at square one. Newly-sliced ribbons of green energy were appearing here and there and everywhere, such wanton destruction of a beautiful spell that my first instinct as a sorcerer was not to fight, but to get right on fixing it again.
It was with some reluctance that I focussed my attention on the three strange shapes I could perceive.
They hadn’t yet sensed me. They were on the ground; I was up at the ceiling of the room. I had this one chance to surprise them.
I reached out, opening portals.
And nothing happened. No excess magic was permitted here. The power that went into my gateways was drained out of the very air before it could manifest, and the sphere briefly shone a little brighter before returning to its normal hue.
“What was that?” came the rasping, nervous voice of an old man, speaking Netheric.
“It was nothing,” responded another, female, no less rasping but far less nervous-sounding. “Who knows why this thing does what it does…?”
“If she had not buried Saphalar a hundred miles deep –“
“Do you wish to be bound? I should have said, who cares why this thing does what it does! Just get on with it before she comes up. They’re back! There, destroy that…”
I hadn’t heard the third speak but I could tell he or she was down there with them. Liches were like crevasses that went deep into the earth, branching complexes that it would take a great deal of time to fill with my willpower. But the three crevasses were distinct, each with its own ‘opening’ onto our plane.
I let a drop of my power fall into the nearest lich, and felt the way the tiny shred of my essence was pulled sideways into the sphere.
Damn planar aberrations.
I had no eldritches here, and any magic the liches would turn on me might fail too. This presented an interesting conundrum. I still had my shields, even if they felt a bit wobbly, like the flight-spell – would my opponents be able to draw their own shields? They would surely know how to use them as weapons as well as defences.
Resisting my impulse to start repairing the runic sentences that were drifting and whirling about the room, and staving off the compulsion to test myself against the trio of liches, I regretfully pushed myself back through the bone plating to make my report.
I kept my eyes shut but went head-first this time. It was strange, how quickly one could get used to being insubstantial, how normal it could feel after so short a time.
I was still half-submerged in the bones when the link came stuttering back. The nexus of the link, Spiritwhisper, was much closer this time than he had been earlier, and it seemed I didn’t have to be as far from the spell-sphere to get through.
“Three liches,” I said. “I’m gonna have a go at them –”
“Bring them out!” Timesnatcher roared.
He sounded angry; I cast about but I couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anyone or anything in the bone-storm.
“I’ll do my best!” I said, and sank back into the tower.
Not that I had any idea how to do something like that.
What do I do, if following orders and getting the job done are at odds with each other?
The arch-diviner didn’t seem to be in the mood to listen to me extemporise about the nature of magic-draining spheres. Was this really the right time to explain to him how this was the best opportunity to destroy the liches, or was it the right time to just do it?
My choice made, I drifted down towards the floor, lowering my levels of wraithness as I went.
“Morning!” I called cheerily, pointing a dangerous finger, wagging it at them. “Or, my, is it evening? I seem to have gotten quite turned around.”
The liches were no different to the ones I’d seen before, really. Walking cadavers in decorated, dark-coloured robes, their flesh drawn and shrunken where it remained at all. There was a pair of women and one man; two were bald, their skulls bereft of scalp, while one of the females had a few strands of long white hair hanging from a tiny patch on the back of her head.
The fleshy eyes were long-gone, of course, replaced with the typical purple fire.
“Stop trying to raise your eyebrows, guys. That’s a battle you’re never going to win. This?” I spread my hands theatrically, continuing to meddle, manipulate forces with every motion. “This you might have a shot at, if things go your way.”
Two of them looked terrified to see me – hardly what I’d expected – but the hairless woman laughed.
“I shall take my shot, Mundian!”
I saw the magenta lines she tried to draw across the air, and decided I’d done enough. No need to be risky.
I snapped shut the diamond-configuration hanging off the circle-shield I’d placed behind them, bringing both ends of the two L-shapes together and binding them in a single pincer movement.
I felt the seal. The barrier was secure.
She formed her pinkish blades of force, tried to break free. The others did the same, with increasingly-panicked motions.
“No, no,” I chided the most-inept one, “you’ll get the attack-vectors all messed up if you tangle them like that. Do it like this.”
I sent a blue sorcerous dagger out from the inner-face of the diamond imprisoning them; when the male lich recoiled from it I transformed it into a spear, sending it unerringly through his own barrier and into his shoulder before dismissing it.
He put a fibrous hand to the wound, gritted his lipless teeth – but I could tell my strike had hardly caused any damage.
I’d have to tear them to pieces to be rid of them. Or…
I turned, letting the light of the sphere fall on my face.
I could put them in there.
I started fixing the ribbons of runes even as I mulled things over; the trio just watched me work, as motionless as, well, corpses.
No. Again, it was risky. Timesnatcher might’ve known something about the sphere I didn’t, for instance, and might’ve wanted them out of here as quickly as possible so as to avoid just that circumstance. After all, while I understood how the sphere operated, how it might be fixed, I had absolutely no notion of what was going on beneath its blindingly-bright surface. I had no idea as to its composition, its construction; the materials and the force-shapes that had bound them together in this way were alien to me.
“Might I not have them?” Gilaela asked archly. “They are such ugly little things. Please, may I not transform them?”
‘Transform’ them?
“Into light! How can there be anything –“
“We cannot bow to you,” the white-haired lich said at last, and her voice wasn’t just defeated – it was broken, completely deflated. “Not in such a way that it binds us.”
I looked at her curiously between tying force-knots:
She cannot mean she’s an archmage, surely?
But she answered that concern by indicating the sphere with a bony hand. “Not here. But we would bow rather than die, sorcerer. We would bow to you.”
I pointed at my masked upper face. “Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrow.”
“Strike such thoughts from your mind!” she cried, stepping towards me only to feel the invisible wall of pressure holding her back. “What reason have we to lie? We are here, and at your mercy. May we… may we not go elsewhere, to better swear to you?”
The bitterness was plain to hear in her tone.
I pointed at the hairless woman. “And you say the same?”
She’d lowered her face, and she looked up at me with eyes gleaming from a dimensionless void of blackness.
“I say the same… master.”
I wanted to test her word, find answers to my questions; Direcrown’s response to my report of intelligent undead told me that an opportunity like this didn’t come around very often. But I couldn’t do that – not properly, at any rate – without doing as she suggested, taking her away from the sphere and binding her. Surely what they really wanted was for me to leave the relative-safety of this chamber behind, and abandon the sphere long-enough that her fellow liches out there would get a chance to fry me alive.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Zel? I called into my inner space.
”She is still at a remove,” Avaelar said.
Zelurra! There was that strange word again. Bondswoman!
I’d been staring-out the three trapped liches for about ten seconds before I felt the fairy’s presence.
“I’m here, Feychilde.”
Forget what happened earlier. I just need an assessment from you.
“What am I assessing? This… thing? You seem to have done alright for yourself since… you know.”
Since you tried to kill yourself.
For all my admonishments about forgetting why she’d exiled herself from my head, I couldn’t stop the thought before it’d run through my mind. I caught the sound of Gilaela tutting, a particularly horsey sound, though which of us was its target I was unsure.
“I shan’t answer that,” the unicorn snickered.
Zel made no protest, and, after a brief awkward silence, I pressed on:
I just want your opinion on the answers I get out of these liches. Can you do that much for me, Zel?
“Of course… It’ll be easier if you get her to speak Mundic though.”
“You.” I indicated the hairless woman, the ringleader. “Tell me, then, in place of service – how many lich-lords are in Zadhal? Respond in kind.”
She grimaced as only a revenant might, then replied in the human tongue, her rasp soft but her accent almost broguish, made foreign by its ancient quality:
“Two.”
“Looks good to me,” Zel supplied.
“Two…” I mulled it over, checking runes and resealing them once more. “And other lords? Vampires, wights, whatever… How many are there?”
“King Keltoros, lord of deathknights… his kin, the Diphraneas family… wights… eight, I believe. The twin vampires of House Isromalle… The liches, of whom you have already enquired… Thirteen, all told.”
An unfortunate tally, I thought, remembering Starsight’s annoyance during the Incursion when Killstop had arrived to join us.
“Some are already dead,” Zel pointed out.
For now…
“Why are you here?” the lich asked, her tone not quite one of demand but edging close to it.
“Why do you think? To free you from undeath.”
She rasped harsh laughter. “Yet you arrive in my home, you bind me and mine within a minute. We are free. What you bring with you is bondage.”
“You worship the Prince of Chains!”
“Into whose arms you drove us! You came here to carry out the sentence, did you not, Mundian?” There was no ice in an elemental plane colder than her tone when she spoke the last word. “What will you do now? Drag me back to your filthy city? Is that not what you intended when you slunk in like a common thief –“
My focus had slipped, and I released the ribbons I was holding; I realised what she meant when she said ‘you arrive in my home’.
The liches had been spread out around the Green Tower when we arrived, sending fire up at us from the ring of buildings surrounding it.
It could’ve been that they’d chosen those positions strategically, or it might’ve just been that they found it convenient –
They lived in the Green Tower.
Of course they did. The sphere wasn’t just easy to fix, it was regenerating. They were living on the lower levels, outside the strongest effects of its pull, beyond my ability to sense last time I was here.
They were coming up to damage it, perhaps nightly, keep its magic at bay…
The ‘she’ down there… They hadn’t been talking about another lich down in the city – they were talking about one beneath my feet…
And ‘she’ had killed the one of their number who best understood the sphere…
If the lich-lord (lich-lady?) had robbed herself of her sole chance to destroy it for good, that could only be a sign of Belestae’s fortune working in our favour.
“I don’t quite follow everything you’re thinking, but this lich is building to something – she’s noticed you’re distracted –“
The hairless one was talking about the war, and I’d heard enough now from several sources to know that Mund’s aggressions were to blame for whatever they’d done that’d made them this way. I remembered the words of the Diphraneas matriarch: ‘We wanted no part in the war; for years we argued against such dreadful actions, seeking only peace with thy people.’
“– if only you Mundians got what you deserved…” the hairless one said in a musing tone, then barked in Netheric: “Kiva!”
‘Now!’
I was quick enough to steal the purple energy she drew across the air, pluck it right out of her hands – while the other two struck simultaneously at the diamond, wedging their blades in deep.
They’d pinned it, but the blow she should’ve landed between the other two never made it, never smashed the barrier.
“Good teamwork,” I congratulated them, extinguishing the stolen energies by clapping my hands together, letting the pieces drift towards the sphere. “I’m not alone either, though.” I went over what she’d been saying to me – the shadows of the words were still there in my memory, coming back to me now as I focussed on them. “Back up thirty seconds, will you? You were saying that this is my fault. Your… condition. That we got what we deserved…”
“In making us!”
Even I could tell this outburst was the truth.
In retrospect it should’ve been obvious – the key that unlocked the whole mystery.
No wonder she thought we had driven them into the arms of Vaahn.
“I mentioned that it was ugly,” Zel said solemnly.
We… we did this? We cursed them? How?
“That I don’t know. But from what I’ve gleaned, yes. The Magisterium did this to Zadhal. Come on, Feychilde… Do you think the Magisterium would care as much about keeping the war secret, if it weren’t for how they chose to end it?”
I felt the anger, the ache to sear flesh until it evaporated, welling up once more, pushing its way into my horn – I saw the liches look up at the golden light that was suddenly brightening the area, vying with the sphere in its incandescence –
They had no idea it wasn’t made for them, and reacted with appropriate horror, backing away to the limits of my diamond.
The horn had no idea it wasn’t made for them either, and reacted with excessive judgement, unleashing a rippling cone of golden power.
I screamed, my head feeling like it was about to rip in two – by the time I could open my eyes, the liches were gone and the sphere was flickering, gobbling up what magical essence it could from their remnants.
What – in – Twelve – Hells – Gilaela?
“What?” The unicorn managed to sound a trifle offended. “I cannot be held responsible for your failure to restrain my…”
Sanctimoniousness?
“Devotion! You were going to kill them anyway, were you not? I simply… expedited the procedure.”
I sighed, taking up a green-glowing cord once more. Answers had been put beyond my reach yet again.
Time to go to sleep, Gilaela, Avaelar.
“Pray tell, what sin did I commit?”
Avvie. Please.
“… As you command, M- Feychilde…”
They were both gone.
Is that how that works? Gilaela’s in charge of her powers while she’s awake in here?
“To a degree,” Zel replied. “It’s not like I surrender my danger-sense to you, is it?”
I’m getting better at it, though, you know.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I wanted to chuckle, but too much of what had happened earlier was on my mind for me to take amusement in her words.
“I know. I – Kas, no, don’t –“
We’re going to have a talk, Zel. I found the partner of the energy-ribbon in my hands, created the sigil and sent them on their way. I’ve got a bit to do here to, you know, fix this whole mess – and there’s very likely an ancient arch–lich on her way – but, drop on it all, I’ve got to take five minutes here. You’re going to tell me everything, Zel…
Zelurra…?
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