OBSIDIAN 3.2: HEIGHTS
“We do not speak of death as a state of absolute non-existence. A state of absolute non-existence cannot ever be demonstrated, only inferred on unfounded premises of strict materialism. There is always a demonstrable continuation of background existence, and even if we cannot see the personae that perish – even in cases wherein persistence beyond the barrier proves indemonstrable, there is always the imprint upon existence left behind by the lost. They are not removed from the flow of time. By this we trust all have ghosts, not just those few damned souls that haunt the abodes of those who spurned them when they still drew breath of Materium’s airs. What, are we to posit that only the cursed possess souls? Is it only in the evil eye that we recognise the true being of the Other? What then of this metaphysic! Let us all cease to be!”
– from ‘A Treatise for Existence’, ch. 8
As we approached Hightown the air grew warmer and warmer, more and more fetid; the miasma didn’t stop getting stronger, thicker, until it felt like my nostrils were submerged in alley-water.
Zel, is there anything you can do about this? I muttered inwardly.
“Sweet gods, you know I’m trying, and it’s just getting worse! Hang on!”
She sounded almost as sick as I felt.
“I almost forgot!” Em shouted at me as we soared in tandem, no more than twenty feet apart. “He said zey have a message for you!”
We were already over the border of Oldtown and Hilltown. The roads were steep beneath us – buildings were constructed on the slope with their ground floor on one side lining up with the first floor on the other, and we were having to climb at an angle to keep a good distance above the roofs. It wouldn’t be long till we were in the thick of things again. She was right – if I had important information waiting for me, now would be the time.
I could feel myself still arrowing forwards as I held the hot glyphstone up before my face.
It wasn’t a magister this time. It was Dustbringer.
I could see his surroundings and hear the commotion around him without being able to pick out any details – robed bodies surged about him, magisters’ voices barking phrases in tones of command, but I couldn’t have picked a single face or voice out of the blur… except his. He wore his grotesque corpse-mask, his blackened metal gloves, and the grey robe glittering with tiny black scythes. It seemed that he was standing in the gardens of the Maginox, glyphstone upraised before his face.
It was immediately apparent that this was a recording, not an interaction – this had come out when the Magisterium was still mobilising against the Incursion, probably just after we’d crossed the Greywater. It might be twenty minutes old or more by now.
“Feychilde…” There was a moment of hesitation as he paused; I’d seen this kind of thing before, and I was starting to believe he was waiting while some kind of magic went out and found my glyphstone. “… you haven’t been to a Gathering yet – for now you’re being put with Neverwish and Starsight. We’ve got summoners opening gates unchecked in at least three locations.”
So this was old information – it was four now, and could’ve even risen again since we set off from Oldtown.
“We want you to take a look at Upper Tivertain. Make a report if it’s beyond your limits, but stop them if you can.” He paused, the kind of pause that looked real, though his mask and motionlessness made it impossible to read. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. You’re new at this, and we don’t want to lose you on day one.”
He lowered the glyphstone and in that moment the psychic link dropped – I was soaring over Hilltown once more, the towers of Hightown now visible before me in the distance.
I shouted, “Upper Tivertain!” to Em and she nodded at me, then shouted back, “Roseoak!”
So we had different targets. Great. I couldn’t protect her.
Not that she’d ever needed it before, but I still wanted to be there – if I wasn’t there, and she did need me…
“Think about yourself first. Dustbringer’s concerned over your safety too.”
I think it more likely he’s concerned about having one less arch-sorcerer in the mix if I died, that’s all.
“True. You champions and your m-mortality rates…”
She’d sounded upbeat and jokey, but on the last words her voice suddenly dropped to a choked whisper. Dropped like she’d just seen someone die in front of her.
It’s okay, Zel. I’ll be okay.
She didn’t reply to that.
Not at all disconcerting, telling someone who could see the future that you’ll be okay, and having them do the equivalent of staring back at you in silence. No, not disconcerting at all.
“Sorry, Kastyr. I was – just thinking –”
Think on your own time. We’re here.
One of the sites was coming into view – right on the edge of Hightown.
The sky was filled with mages.
The majority were magisters, their symbols clearly showing on their garments, but there were probably a dozen champions too, all of them weaving between the towers as they fought against the forces of Infernum.
Many were in flight, heading into the conflict, or carrying others out of it. A pair of giant eagles with wounded gripped gingerly in their talons were lifting off from the ruins of a strip of shops – druids, I assumed, or at least monsters being controlled by them. Wizards had conjured creatures of pure air to go between the shells of buildings, gathering the stricken into their soft embraces and transporting them out of the area. The wizards themselves rode the wind above, hurling missiles that screamed and crackled as they sped towards their targets, louder than the cries of the crowds being endlessly evacuated.
There were demons battling demons, and patches of shimmering in the air where I thought I could see sorcerous shielding glinting away. There were diviners and enchanters, moving faster than the eye could see or literally invisibly, using weapons to deal with the lesser foes.
And there were the foes themselves, the demons, in all their multitudes. My magically-acute eyesight painted my destination in lurid, nauseating detail.
Flocks of what looked like huge flying mouths: floating lips of blood-drenched flesh parted to bare jutting teeth – lips that were drawn up at the corners by the wings to which they were attached, forming hideous floating smiles.
Great fat things roiling in hills of tumescent flesh, massive tongues pouring from their bellies, lapping up the stragglers, those too weak to run, reeling them in.
Lashing creations that seemed to be little more than several long, spiny tails, bristling with barbs and with sickle-blades at their tips, all fused together to make whirling killing-machines.
Too many for Zel to start naming. It was mayhem, and I was approaching it at breakneck speed.
“You’re thinking on my time, and no you’re not here.”
That… definitely wasn’t Zel.
“No, it wasn’t. He can’t hear me, and he can’t hear you unless you think it out deliberately – not with this kind of link at least.”
“Ah-h-h, who’s there?” I thought, sounding like an idiot shouting through his door to someone who’d knocked.
“Neverwish. You’re assigned to me. Stop talking to whatever pet you’re talking to and get your backside to Upper Tivertain, now. We really need an arch-sorcerer.”
But wouldn’t they need me here?
I looked over to find Em and saw her, already drawing in a thunderstorm behind her, forks of lightning darting out of it and congealing in her hand.
Gods, I thought, looking at her, the determination on her face.
“Which way’s Upper Tivertain?” I asked Neverwish. “I’m still entering Hightown, just a little north of Hill Road.”
“Farther east – you can’t miss us.” His telepathic conversation had something of a panting quality – I got the impression he was engaged in combat right now, while giving me my marching orders. “No dawdling, Feychilde! Star’s almost out of fuel!”
“I get it. I’m coming.”
I waited for Em to unleash the half-mile-long lightning bolt, letting it leap out ahead of us to incinerate an expanse of demonic flesh – ye gods – then almost crossed her path, shouting: “Refresh it once more! I’ve got to go!”
“It’s done!” she replied against the wind.
We looked upon each other as we flew, perhaps one last time.
One kiss was all I got, one fierce kiss that bit at my soul worse than any hell-fiend, taking a part of me with it.
And then we separated; I pushed myself away from her, and towards an uncertain future.
Neverwish and Starsight – low on firepower. And then me, with next to nothing of that myself.
I would manage. I always had before.
I followed Neverwish’s directions, flitting east between the towers, passing over the chaos and keeping to the northern end of town.
I’d almost traversed the entire length of Mund to get here. Tivertain was a mostly-residential zone, it seemed; too close to Hightown’s centre to be affordable to any but the insanely-wealthy, but too far from it to be purely the purview of nobles, most of whom kept their primary residences in Treetown anyway. Upper Tivertain was on the slope that crept up towards the walls of the city, streets lined with the tall houses of merchant-barons, glass-and-marble constructions of immense proportions.
Hightown was ringing with screams. Demons had burst the boundaries and were going street-to-street, slaughtering any who’d not made it indoors in time. Yellow-leaved eaves were left as ash-choked, scorched wastelands – enough destruction to keep the druids busy for weeks.
Leaving Em behind… there was a lump of guilt in my stomach that physically hurt as I went on my way. But it soon evaporated, replaced by a void, a pressure, a weight of nothingness that swelled up within me as Upper Tivertain came into view.
And there are only two champions on the scene? I asked myself incredulously.
It wasn’t as bad as the Roseoak commotion back there, where Em was fighting – but it was bad.
Flames were consuming everything, melting glass and marble alike into noxious sludge. Blood-red fires were opening everywhere, fires of the variety that produced no heat but were a hundred times worse than those that did, spewing forth ten imps at a time. There were over a dozen big things in the vicinity, and it was probable that a number of the smaller things were still powerful, perhaps more powerful than their larger cousins.
The lesser fiends probably numbered a thousand already, and that figure would be set to increase.
Five or six magister bands were on the scene, but it was nothing like enough. I could see that there was already one lying dead, his ten-spoked wheel ripped through by some titanic claw that emptied his chest of its contents in a single swipe, leaving him face-up in the mess it’d made of his innards
Who knew how many others they might have already lost, whose fates were, well, worse? Leaving no remains?
Enchanters were at their least-useful directly engaging the enemy during an Incursion – even the most-skilled of them didn’t have the slimmest chance of working their mind-magic on a demon, the way I understood it. Though it was hard to see how (the likely-invisible) Neverwish was helping at a distance, I imagined he was working with the minds of those who were doing their best to get away, guiding to the safest routes.
Starsight, on the other hand, was painfully visible in a gleaming white robe. He was helping a little old woman through a demon-infested expanse where four big buildings had been levelled. He was carrying her over his shoulder, running, stopping, sidestepping, rolling her across the ground and skittering after her, diving and rising with knives suddenly in his hands – one shining silver, the other gleaming gold – and each time the blades cut the air the lesser hell-spawn pursuing him shrieked in pain and fell back from him, writhing, as he retrieved her and carried on running. The speed-effect he moved within kept the fiends at bay as much as his weapons. Magisters were attempting to support him, a couple of wizards hurling ice and fire against the gibbering mob, several bound demons charging their brethren and doing their best to slow them down…
Glass screamed, marble thundered. Even as I watched, hurtling closer with every passing second, another building toppled, this one on my edge of the chaos. Its ground-floor was simply eradicated in a single charge from one of the big demons, its thrashing head bedecked with an imposing crown of antlers.
The house fell, storey upon storey like a drunk crashing to his knees, until finally it toppled over in a cloud of dust.
Surely most had passed away in the attack, but I could hear a few survivors in the rubble bellowing in dismay.
And in that I was not alone.
The demon, emerging from the rubble, had heard them too – or smelled them.
It was a strange beast. It looked like a deer, or some kind of elk – but it was eight feet at the shoulder and maybe eleven, twelve feet from nose to tail-tip. Its antlers were black candelabra, doubling its apparent height. Perhaps most disconcerting, its fur was a vivid, bright red that admitted no shadow, giving it a blurred, ever-shifting presence – it must’ve been even more perturbing to those without my sight-boost.
It halted its charge, wheeled around and started rushing at the remnants of the marble walls. It sprang up uncannily into the air, headbutting the corners of floors now sticking up like broken elbows into the sky, smashing them, falling through to trample those trapped within.
Curse these perceptions, Zel.
“Don’t curse them. Fly harder.”
She knew that I was already putting everything I could into the flight. I had to get there.
Now.
What is it, Zel? Can I take it?
“An ikistadreng?” The fairy laughed. “It’s all yours, Feychilde.”
“Engaging ikistadreng on west side!” I yelled mentally at Neverwish, hoping the link was still up.
But another replied, Starsight’s telepathic voice soft and level despite the arduous journey he was undertaking through a horde of enemies: “I need your support here.”
“I’ll bring it!”
I threw out my hands, ripping portals open for all my minions to step through.
Draumgerel. Kinkalaman. Mekkustremin. Epheldegrim. And four bintaborax.
Flood Boy and Zabalam too, looking decidedly out of place.
Zel was right – I felt it, this time, summoning so many at once. It was like breathing in a deep lungful of the smoke on the air, making my chest feel tight, my throat burn.
I barked commands. When I was done they turned away to their tasks, and I swept down at the ruined house, coming to hover over the elk-demon with its majestic, dreadful antlers.
“You!” My voice sounded ragged even to my ears. “Come! Rid this area of demons that do not serve mages! Do not suffer any sentient creatures of this plane to come to harm.”
It was frantically attacking the remaining pieces of structure that still gave clue to the fact this devastation of glass and marble was once a house – it slowed and turned, tossing back its head –
Then reared up and leapt at me, a single motion of fantastical precision and strength, kicking out at me with a cloven forehoof –
It recoiled from my defences, clattering back down in a heap.
As it rose I gave it a lash of a force-spike in the shoulder, thrusting it back down again.
“Swear!” I hissed.
And I glared at it.
Into its eyes, visible only by the whites and pupils – the red irises melted into the red fur in such a way that its face was almost a featureless blur, only suggested by outlines.
I only had to meet those eyes for an instant before it bowed its head.
Despite the rush of reassurance the minor victory gave me, it sent shivers up my spine to hear the voice of the ikistadreng, emanating from the terrifying blackness that split the red blur where its jaws would part.
The voice was female, urbane, and spoke perfect Mundic in a meek little voice.
“I so swear it, sorcerer.”
It – she – crouched, then leapt right through my shielding.
Landing behind me, she charged at the unbound demons. I followed.
What rank is that thing?
“Eighth.”
I could imagine Zel’s devious grin.
You didn’t think to warn me?
“Would it have helped?”
I would’ve grinned along with her if I could’ve heard any more noises coming from survivors in the destroyed building.
Instead I soared over the melee of demons, where my little army had engaged the aggressors, ready to do my part.
Nothing here was as big as Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks (both of whom carried their warhammers, seemingly undamaged despite the outcome of the thinfinaran fight), and even my other bintaborax matched the largest of the unbound fiends in size and strength. The minotaur-demons formed the vanguard, clobbering their way into the ranks of the enemy, reinforced on the flanks by the thudding mekkustremin and the galloping epheldegrim. The kinkalaman loped around with its blade-arms extended, mopping up the stragglers, eviscerating or beheading the demons that had survived their confrontation with the crushing warhammers – meanwhile, the draumgerel bounced along behind, laying down some acidic spit at range in support.
Flood Boy had walled off a section of the battlefield in frozen wine, and Zabalam was following my instructions to the letter, using illusions to spell words in the air and draw arrows, guiding people out of the ruins where they were hiding and into safety.
The ikistadreng swiftly demonstrated why she was my most powerful summon. Whole droves of imps and other lesser fiends were slaughtered each time she charged. She tossed her head violently as she smacked into her targets, sending most of them flying with lethal gashes across their bodies, and impaling others on her antlers – infernal corpses that dangled and swung as she continued on her way, smashing, rending, goring.
I spotted Starsight – he hadn’t managed to get very far despite his eerie speed, still pinned down in the wasteland of demons, burdened as he was with the heavy woman he was attempting to rescue, fiends literally all around him.
I sped ahead, then swooped down over him and settled nearby, throwing the shield over the three of us.
Immediately the demons within my barrier were cast out, flung back by an irresistible, unseen force. Beyond the wards they were snarling and hissing, striking at my defences with claws that came back smoking from their encounters with my glowing blue lines. There weren’t enough pressing in on my shields to worry me – not yet at least.
Starsight stopped, and I got a good look at him. He was short and slight, his mask a single five-pointed golden star covering his whole face, except for the middle of his mouth and his clean-shaven chin. Similar stars were embroidered in miniature into the white of his robe, the shining threads blending in almost invisibly.
He bent forwards, tipping the woman to a patch of rubble-free ground – she was shaking, long matted grey hair quivering in pace with her body. Her veiny hands clutched spasmodically at the reddish servant’s smock she wore. If she knew little of sorcery then, to her, there was nothing protecting her from the demons except empty air.
“Please – please – please don’t leave me –” the woman was gasping.
The arch-diviner was still leaning over, his hands on his knees and his own chest rising and falling heavily as he sucked in smoky air and coughed. He looked exhausted – quite understandably.
So they are still human.
“We aren’t going to leave you,” I said, doing my best to sound reassuring. “We’ll get you out – we just have to regroup for a minute.”
She closed her eyes, still clutching at her smock.
I felt a bit uneasy, looking around me. There were more than fifty demons hitting my barriers now, and that number would soon double, and redouble. Lesser demons, but still… I only had five up – the hexagon was taking some serious damage, and I could feel it. The magisters who’d been assisting the arch-diviner were occupied defending themselves at the moment, retreated back behind walls of shields and summons – while my retinue of demons was still quite a ways off.
“How can I best – h-help?” I asked, choking down a cough myself and screwing my eyes shut momentarily as I really did get some smoke in my face.
The champion’s face turned towards mine as he stood there bent over. The star-mask hid his eyes but not his mouth; nevertheless, he thought at me in his soft mental voice again.
“Speak like this. What did you have in mind? Many things you might suggest will not work. I can’t see a way out.”
“I have some ideas,” I hedged.
He straightened up, still looking at me.
“You aren’t going to be able to fly us out; the spell on you isn’t suitable. Too many will arrive if we wait for your demons and your walls will be overrun. If you move the shields they just follow us, and end up leaving Tivertain. You –“
“I don’t think I’m at my capacity yet, Starsight.”
Then Zel interjected, apparently for my ears only: “And I don’t think it’ll kill you to –”
Of course. I was being stupid.
I waved my hand, and a circle of nine red flames surrounded us, closer than the shields.
I probably should’ve left the ikistadreng behind; this time it really took something out of me. I went to my knees, quivering.
The hexagon fell, all at once.
The old woman screamed Yune’s name as she watched through the flames the ring of imps and bestial fiends suddenly falling towards us, unimpeded and bellowing in triumph.
She wasn’t to know she was still within my pentagon, which still rotated and gleamed bright, undamaged as yet.
It didn’t matter anyway. The red flames resolved themselves into my retinue, outward-facing, blocking off her line of sight to the hostile hell-spawn.
Blocking off my line of sight.
“You know, what to do,” I said, then raised my hand to my mouth while I spluttered a fair bit. The Infernal and the coughing probably sounded horrible to my rescuer-and-rescuee audience, but what could I do?
“Of course, Master,” my ikistadreng said sweetly, speaking in Mundic again.
She reared, kicking violently at the air, before springing up and forwards with her back legs, lowering her head, half-charging, half-plummeting at my enemies.
The rest of my demons barrelled towards the perimeter of my shields and met their lesser cousins in battle, the mekkustremin already there, clobbering three fiends into a pulpy mess with each strike of its huge porcelain hands.
I took a few deep breaths.
This would work. It had to.
“Will this work?” I asked the champion.
“Yes,” Zel replied at once.
And then, after a brief but pensive silence as he stared at me, Starsight replied: “It has been some time since I’ve been surprised, Feychilde. Carry on. I trust you.”
I floated upwards, just ten feet or so, to get a better vantage point, fixing my shields to the ground and being careful to stay well within their boundaries as I ascended.
I cast my eye out on the little ones and waved my hands again – a huge swathe of them met my eyes, suddenly transfixed by me.
“Thanatar rumez el kason khi-rum!”
Over a dozen jackal-faced men and bat-things went snapping at their brethren without a moment’s hesitation.
“Below you!” Zel rustled, and at the same time, despite his exhortation to speak telepathically, I heard Starsight cry my name aloud.
I immediately looked down, and what I saw both terrified and bewildered me.
The rubble beneath me was covered with a sheen of frost, and crisp white snow was billowing softly across a wintry landscape. Snow that wasn’t falling past me on its way down – snow that was appearing spontaneously in the ten feet of open air just below my feet.
A tiny blue-skinned child was standing over the lifeless body of the old woman.
It was beyond strange. She didn’t register as a corpse on my senses. But, then, I had other things on my mind.
This new fiend had darker, night-blue scales in patches all over its body; snow was on its head in place of hair, falling down onto its shoulders and drifting off on the Hells-sent breeze. It was smaller than Jaid, its gender indeterminate.
Red blood was gushing down its chin. Its wide eyes were the same red shade as the blood, no whites or irises or pupils.
And it was within the shields. It hadn’t broken them – it’d seemingly just stepped inside them, without a care in the world.
Well inside them. Feet from Starsight.
I heard Starsight cry out, this time using the psychic link: “Neverwish, we need you!”
What…?
Zel murmured, “I… honestly I don’t know what it is, Kas.”
I faltered, taking a few deadly moments to comport myself before bringing a spike of force lancing down from the inner shell of my shields, flicking it at the demon-child.
It had already moved, darting off nimbly in pursuit of Starsight, who’d drawn his pair of magical daggers, silver and gold glittering in his hands as he backed away –
And he backed right into the line demarcated by my circle-shield, hovering at the centre of my structure of barriers. It was reinforced with three stars: five-, seven- and thirteen-pointed. The one place in the city that should’ve been the safest.
There he took up a fighting stance, radiant knives held in a guard position.
“I consign you again to the nightmare,” the seer said quietly to the demon.
And the blue-skinned child entered, leaping at his face.
I wanted to go to him, to aid him – but how? I was frozen.
This was the end. I would never see my brother and sister again, or Em, or Xantaire or Orstrum or Xastur…
Morsus…
It leapt, but he wasn’t there when it landed; he’d sidestepped out of the circle-shield again with his uncanny speed, driving his golden dagger into the demon-child’s chest –
Seemingly with no effect.
It took the arm he’d thrust with and held onto it, pulling itself onto his chest even as he blurred and twisted, trying to escape – the arch-diviner’s knife tore free of its flesh without leaving even a mark, never mind a killing-wound.
I didn’t have time to do anything to help him even if I’d possessed the volition to make myself move, make myself come to a decision on how to help him…
He plunged both knives into it half a dozen times – nothing, nothing, nothing.
It drew back its head to bite at his throat, and when it parted its lips the jaw opened unnaturally-wide. Hundreds of tiny, sharp white teeth glinted there in a tongueless void.
“Kas! Kas, something’s wrong with you!Snap out of it!”
Jaid and Jaroan, lying dead in the rubble.
I have abandoned Sticktown.
This is the end.
“Disbelieve!” Neverwish’s voice came through as an urgent command. “It’s not real!”
“Ah-h-h,” Zel breathed. “He’s right. Look.”
I still didn’t quite get it even as I watched the demon-child bite ineffectually at Starsight’s face and neck, its body seemingly now passing into his with no effect – but then Zel took my eyes over to a giant fiend fluttering around beyond the periphery of my pentagon. It was a titanic blue-shelled beetle with a man’s face and long flowing snow-hair, and it had its own wintry landscape.
And over there – another, and another: blue-skinned or blue-scaled or blue-spiked creations, all over the battlefield. The odd one in thousands. It took supernatural perception of the highest calibre to spot the correlating creatures out there.
“Then, look again…” She cast the violet-brown of the illusion-breaking vision over my eyes for a moment.
None of them were there.
“It’s a distraction!” our arch-enchanter snapped. “Pure imagism! You need to find the summoner – now!”
Or summoners.
“I’m still blocked,” Starsight said. There was barely a hint of the frustration he must’ve been feeling to be heard in his mind-voice.
Still, as I looked down I saw the arch-diviner walk right through the illusory demon – now that he’d come to the realisation that it wasn’t actually there, it seemed to have no power over him, no strength with which to cling to him. Ignoring it, he went to the old woman’s corpse.
Not a corpse.
He obviously had some experience in how to proceed in this kind of situation. He woke her with a gentle shake of the elbow; she stirred, and my ears picked out the words as he calmly instructed her to ignore the creature – the bluish demon was now rolling around in a desperate attempt to be intimidating, transforming into abhorrent shapes, squids and snakes and something that looked very similar to Em’s description of a troll. A waking nightmare, he called it.
A waking nightmare. It was true – I’d been almost catatonic a minute ago. It had played our fears against us perfectly. It got into my head.
Sorry about that, Zel.
“It’s okay – it had me confused!”
I turned my back on Starsight and the illusion, hoping these others all knew what they were talking about, and surveyed the battle.
Where’s the summoner?
“I’m looking. Be right with you.”
Groups of imps clung to my mekkustremin, but the giant doll rotated its limbs and body too fast to see as it bounded around, flinging its assailants off at high speeds. My four bintaborax had split up into two groups, one big and one slightly-less-big in each pair, and they were double-teaming the other huge enemies dotted around the neighbourhood. They were currently engaging a big ape with eyes all over its body, and a ten-foot-tall woman with her own glowing weaponry – her scimitars glittered with a steady amethyst pulse, the blade of each weapon vaguely the same size as your average household door. My ikistadreng and epheldegrim were ranging far out, and my kinkalaman and draumgerel were supporting Flood Boy, beheading and disintegrating those he froze in place with the endless tunes coming from his pipes – it felt strange to see the three of them working so well together, after the way they’d met last Fullday. Even the group of lesser demons I’d taken were playing their part, though several had already fallen.
The magister-bands around the perimeter of Upper Tivertain were fighting a controlled retreat. One sorcerer would put up a wall, then another would put up a second behind it so that their position wasn’t overrun the minute the first fell. Elementals and demons roamed beyond the shields, doing their best to stem the tide.
It wasn’t enough. I got the impression they were running out of spells – their wizards were nowhere to be seen. Every minute that passed, more and more demons slipped through the defences to outflank the magisters, or, worse, ignored them entirely, slipping off to wreak havoc in as-yet untouched, unevacuated areas.
If just one of the escaping demons was a summoner… we could well be back at square one within minutes.
I settled down near Starsight.
“Can you get her out now?” I asked him psychically. “I’d offer to fly just her out, but I honestly don’t know where’s safe anymore.”
“There’s a refuge, on Danamir Row.”
I looked at him blankly.
“I’ll take her,” he said aloud in an understanding tone, his lips twitching in a smile. He bent down to lift her in his arms again. He didn’t look particularly strong – it must’ve been taking all his effort to hoist her up.
I was glad, because I didn’t want to say it to him: an arch-diviner without a flight-spell wasn’t going to be able to deal with the perimeter outbreaks like I could.
I gave him a grateful nod – he nodded back, and we simultaneously took off. I leapt into the air and he burst into rapid motion, moving even faster than me, heading north on a route that kept him in the cleared-out areas, skirting the battle.
I went back to doing what I’d done in Oldtown – circling the area, picking up those trying to flee.
Only this time, I had nowhere to put them. No wizard to obliterate them without a second glance.
The affected zone was much larger here than it’d been in Oldtown. There were probably a similar number of toppled buildings, but the buildings here were ten times the footprint of the ones in Oldtown, and the roadways were wider. I’d only gotten a quarter the way around the zone before the diamond-tesseract hanging off my pentagon-shield was filled with imps. I could only enlarge it by so much, and I was starting to miss my targets simply because they didn’t fit.
What can I do, Zel?
“I’ve got one idea, but you might not like it.”
Give it a shot.
“Your… inward spikes.”
I eyed the pulsating diamond of force constricting them.
I didn’t have to think – couldn’t have thought – wouldn’t have let myself if I could.
If I did think of it, in the glimmer of a moment that seemed to unwind itself, unfolding as slowly as a full minute of tense anticipation, I would’ve felt sick.
But I was crushing bugs.
Bugs.
I let spikes protrude from the inward faces of the tesseract – let spikes enter the imps.
Shredding them.
Bereft of ill-will, the twisted remains fluttered free on the wind as I whipped around Upper Tivertain, and I soon had another group pinned there, ready to be shredded.
Why didn’t you tell me about this before?
“Well, it’s not like I’m the expert around here, is it?”
I thought of the way I’d ripped that giant heretic-spider thing in half a few nights ago.
Does this mean I could’ve killed Dustbringer the other night?
“Honestly? Of course you could, if your projection was strong enough. Would you have done it, though?”
Accidents happen, Zel! I want you to tell me everything you think of like this, okay?
“I… that’s a hard command to follow, Kas. Do you want to rescind that till later, when you can phrase it properly? Unless you want me to start telling you about the various ideas I had that you could’ve accidentally killed the Cannibal –“
Okay, okay. Rescinded.
I continued flying, continued crushing lesser fiends within my diamond. Despite the coolness of the evening air and the constant wind sweeping through my robes, I was beginning to sweat beneath the hood and mask.
“I’ve got something for you.”
Show me.
My fey passenger pulled my eyes upwards.
Something I hadn’t noticed even on my approach, and certainly not since arriving at the edge of Upper Tivertain. It was too easy to forget to look up when so much was going on on the ground, or in just the first hundred feet or so.
A flock of big, lanky-looking birds was descending upon the battlefield from the darkness of the night sky, the knot of clouds above us barely illuminated by the waxing moon.
And then, there – a flock ascending back into the clouds.
Redder.
It seemed like there were two flocks – overlapping.
“Or many more than two. Folkababil, they’re called.”
Vulture-demons? Gathering the blood of the fallen somehow, taking it up to… something up there?
“Well you can see for yourself; what do you think? It sure looks like it to me.”
I crushed the group of insect-things I currently had trapped; I’d been doing my best not to listen to their chittering as they were caught, their squeals as they were turned to mush, but these things were tougher, didn’t die as quickly as imps –
I turned my head away until I felt the loss of pressure, and knew they’d been obliterated.
Finally, I made for the clouds.
Should I follow the birds?
“No, don’t warn them in advance we’re onto them or they might do something to throw us off. Just head up there, I’ll be able to guide you.”
“Neverwish! I’m going up. I think I know where the summoner is.”
“Up?”
“The clouds.”
“You’ve got to be joking!” Neverwish’s irritation came through clearly. “Now you’re just gonna claim the kill, aren’t you? Dropping new arch-sorcerer, out to make a name for yourself –”
“Is this about the money? I –“
“Yes it’s about the money!” The arch-enchanter was almost snarling.
“I’ll split it with you,” I said at once, “both of you.” If playing to his greed this once would give me an even footing with a fellow champion or two, I would happily absorb the loss. “I just want it dead.”
I was getting really high now. I could see Hightown in all its fire-orange, smoke-clogged, demon-infested splendour.
“Fine,” Neverwish replied at last, a bit of the temper gone out of his voice. “You hear that, Star?”
“I heard it,” Starsight said softly. “On my way back now, Neverwish.”
I gradually entered the cloud-bank hovering over Hightown. Even with Zel’s help I couldn’t see anything, hear anything, smell anything. The moonlight illuminated the chill mists of the clouds surrounding me, but it was a dim, graveyard greyness, no silvery sheen piercing the thick fog I ascended through.
“But it’s close,” Zel said. “Just a little farther.”
“I’m close. How’s things going down there?”
“Your demons are doing well,” Neverwish said grudgingly. Perhaps he was realising how he’d come across a minute ago.
“A fine showing, for a first-time champion,” Starsight observed.
It wasn’t as though I’d never been in a life-or-death situation, but I knew what he was getting at… Incursions were like nothing I’d ever seen before, Infernum being birthed on the Material Plane in a way I’d never imagined. Even cowering under my bed, all those previous times the Bells rang – I’d never imagined this.
And now Incursions were my life, for as long as I managed to keep living it.
“Thank you,” I replied, feeling a bit embarrassed all the same at the compliment.
Neverwish chuckled.
“Stop!” Zel shrilled. “There! You just went past it!”
I let her take control a little so that I could feel her tugging me in a certain direction – which direction it actually was, I wasn’t now quite sure, being immersed in the night-sky clouds and all.
The mists seemed to part slightly just when I approached, moonlight slanting down to illuminate the scene as I stopped, staring at the floating altar.
Dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds of imps were holding it aloft in a horizontal position, their bat-wings beating rapidly as they clustered below it and all around its edges. It was a block of black stone, a single slab perhaps twelve feet on a side and two inches thick. The dark material itself was like that from which the Maginox interior was constructed, threaded with milk-hued ribbons. Upon its face had been etched a summoning circle, so wide that it almost touched the edges of the square, with inner rings comprised of thousands of individual runes.
In the centre of the summoning circle stood a huge iron cauldron, filled with a crimson substance that glinted and tinkled as it slowly sloshed back and forth, in pace with the not-quite-steady motions of the imps supporting the platform. And around the edges of the cauldron there were four men or women, each wearing a heavy black robe and a chain at the neck that linked them to the cauldron’s base – they were gaunt, hairless, and, I saw to my horror, eyeless. They were kneeling up to the rim of the great iron basin, dipping their hands into the bloody mixture it contained.
For that had to be what it was – their hands were covered in the redness – and yet there was the tinkling sound.
“Rhimbelkina. Only four of them. They’re decent-enough diviners but they’re low rank – you’ve got this.”
Low rank like the ikistadreng?
“Low rank like third rank. You could handle eight or twelve – you shouldn’t even notice four. Take them.”
I considered my options.
“You’re about to drop something on civilians,” Starsight said.
Well, that’s reassuring. Sort of.
I didn’t want this altar setting down nice and neatly somewhere another demon might come along and find it – or some enterprising darkmage demonologist for that matter, once the Incursion was all over.
“Can you move them?” I asked the champion. “Like, completely out of the way?”
Even as I floated there a line of diseased-looking, scabrous birds with long legs and necks came up to the altar, their plumage a dim red hue where they had kept it. They entered the cauldron, one by one, and came out looking healthy again, the oozing sores on their bare flesh now gone, covered over with thick tufts of feathers.
They were coming down to Mund and absorbing the blood, the conflict, the death, and bringing it back in themselves to give to these rhimbelkina?
The birds, they’re…
“The folkababil? Technically first rank. They can think. I’ve never seen their abilities used this exact way before, though.”
There were too many new words to remember.
Whatever. Okay.
“Starsight, Neverwish, can you move them!” It wasn’t a question even if I’d phrased it that way – I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. The weird humanoids in chains, the rhimbelkina – they were taking things out of the cauldron now, as the birds departed again: handfuls of what looked like little bits of rubies, glittering beneath a sheen, a gravy of blood.
They were grinding them in their bare hands – I could hear it – probably in order to add their own blood to the mixture. They were grinding them, and then tossing them over the side.
No wonder I hadn’t seen or felt anything down there, and no wonder the summons were being spread over such a large area. It was all going on up here. As the handfuls of ruby dust were thrown overboard I felt same way I felt as the red flames arose. I felt the summoning.
And the handfuls of ruby dust were taken by the wind; the dust could be carried anywhere.
Anywhere.
These rhimbelkina might’ve been responsible for Oldtown, miles away.
“I have to act now – what’s going on down there?”
“Sorry, Feychilde.” Neverwish didn’t exactly sound sorry. “I had to lower the link for a moment. This damn demon! We’ve got news. Roseoak’s got worse. Ten summoners at the minimum. We’re to abandon Upper Tivertain.”
“Are you –“
Are you kidding me!
“– going to be able to clear the area under me or not?” I finished.
There was a pause, then Starsight came through: “All done.”
“I owe you a drink,” I muttered mentally as I psyched myself up.
There were a load of different ways to do this, but I didn’t really want to take these horrible creatures as my minions.
They were chained to it. This would be much more satisfying.
I just had to ensure I had their attention. I needed that sweet, sweet ill-will.
“Hey!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs, speaking in plain old Mundic, zooming towards the altar as I waggled my fingers in the air. “Uglies without eyes! Can you hear me? It’s, like, real important.”
I got the attention of the imps, and the birds currently visiting the platform. A seething mass of demonic faces turned my way, fanged mouths and fanged beaks parted, yapping and cawing in alarm.
And the rhimbelkina too – they could hear, or at least sense the distress of their assistants. They stopped grinding the glittering bloody mixture, hunching over in tension at the cauldron’s lip.
That was enough for me.
I moved swiftly towards the platform, as though to land upon it, close to the centre.
And my shields pushed them all away.
The rhimbelkina were chained to the heavy cauldron, and their collars looked like they might’ve been made from the same quality hellsteel as the cauldron. My shielding was inexorable.
The collars handily decapitated them, and the four summoners and their four eyeless heads went tumbling overboard.
In addition, my presence pushed all the imps and the remaining birds out to the edges of my shields – the platform dropped away beneath me before I was able to land on it.
“Incoming!”
A wave of my hand bound and dismissed the things lurking on my shield’s edge.
I felt swollen, suddenly. I’d taken more in one go than ever before.
For just a few moments, I waited alone, sitting in the clouds, luxuriating in the feeling of victory that had stolen over me –
Then I heard what I’d been awaiting – the dull boom as the platform landed and shattered on the rubble far beneath me.
I loosed a sigh of contentment, then started descending. I’d get beneath the clouds, then have a look around, get my bearings…
“Meet you at Roseoak?” I sent to my fellow champions.
“Uh… can you give me a lift?” Neverwish asked. “I’m not exactly light.”
“I can try, but Starsight warned me against it… Where are you?”
I started arrowing straight downwards, but something went wrong.
A jolt. A chill. A feeling of doom –
“Summon Avaelar now!” Zel screamed.
I felt like I was slipping.
But an hour hasn’t passed yet, nowhere near – oh Yune – Em. Em!
“Now!”
My heart was in my throat as I fell – I was whipped about, hurtling down from a dizzying height.
It was just one instant before I left the clouds, head-first.
Another before I saw Hightown below me – above me.
I got my hands up, went through the motions, and the green rupture answered.
I barely had chance to see the sylph below me (above me!) before I fell into and joined with him.
“Not that way!” Zel howled.
It was too late. I tried my hardest to manifest the wings in time, fighting against whatever lethargy prevented them from springing fully-usable from my back, fighting with all my will, all my might –
But it wasn’t enough. Not even close.
There was a single instant of struggle, the ground rushing down at my head, and I managed to right myself, swinging my legs down, feeling the wind rushing through my wings.
Too late.
I felt nothing as my feet hit the ground, surely shattering every bone in my body.
I felt nothing. No impact.
Just nothing.
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