OBSIDIAN 3.5: ENTER CHAOS
“The road already conquered does not always foretell the twists and turns of the road ahead, and he whose eyes are turned back to read the pattern will misplace not just one footfall, but each and every one. The pattern is imposed by the mind, a structure against which to rest, lean in weariness and wariness. In truth there is no pattern. There is only the imposition of greater and greater minds. There is only the super-structure. It can always betray you – and it will.”
– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 39:99-107
Nothing happened.
I kept circling the clay mound – Shadowcloud was drying it out, sealing away the tower inside, so I watched the cracks spreading throughout the surface, anticipating one of them yawning open suddenly, a torrent of demons showering forth –
But it never came.
Glimmermere had landed, and assumed her human form – or not so human, as seemed to be the case. She was so slender and tall, her features so delicate and eyes so bright, that she had to be at least half-elven. She looked to be in her late teens, but she could’ve been two or three times her apparent age, depending on the quality of her blood. Her robe was lily-green and silver-blue, her mask a shark-like thing covering her eyes and nose. She was an inch or two over six feet tall; the hair poking out from beneath her hood was the hue of seaweed, blending in with the colour of her garment remarkably well. From what I could see of her skin she appeared to have a dark, almost ebony complexion.
Apparently she was communing with a number of subterranean insects, checking the buried structure for signs of activity.
“What are you getting back?” Shadowcloud asked.
“Hold on,” she replied then, after a pause, continued: “Very little. I think they’re being driven mad when they touch it. They’re responding satisfactorily when I’m telling them where to go, but they aren’t coming back afterwards, and those I’ve found which have been to it won’t talk to me. I’m working on curing it but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Wyrda’s maw… It’s as though… as though their souls have gone…”
“When they touch it?” the arch-wizard pressed. “You mean, the black rock.”
“Exactly.”
“Great. Timesnatcher, how far off are you? We need more than one enchanter here when we go in… Timesnatcher?”
He kept mentioning the arch-diviner’s name. I kept circling around. Glimmermere was still there on the ground, head bowed in concentration.
Ten minutes had to have passed when we picked something up, but it wasn’t Timesnatcher.
“Feychilde? Shadow-”
“I’m here, Neverwish!” I tried to keep my cool, but this was pretty exciting actually. “Glad to hear you’re back up on your feet.”
“Courtesy of Nighteye –“
“I think that you can, hm, consider that a favour repaid, my friend, and –“
“You’re not getting money off your next anti-glamourings, Nighteye. Persuading Leafcloak to let you come with me should be plenty enough.”
“I didn’t mean that, old chum! I, hm…”
“O-kayyy,” Neverwish cut him off. “We’re on our way. Three minutes. An arch-wizard magister’s bringing us – she wants to see you.”
“Em?”
She didn’t reply right away, and I wanted to call her name again, but I knew it’d sound stupid.
Neverwish replied instead. “Yeah, her. She’s not linked-up, though. This is for champions only.”
“Ah, I get you.” I tried to hide my disappointment, sound nonchalant, but had no idea whether I managed to pull it off or not.
“You got to tell me your secret one day, man,” the arch-enchanter went on in a musing tone.
I had the sudden urge to blurt, ‘You keep your greedy eyes off her!’
“Ha-ha,” I managed instead.
“Children,” Glimmermere interjected. “Need I remind you that the communication channel is intended for official use only?”
She was such a hypocrite.
“She’s trying to talk to her bugs,” I explained, “but their souls are gone.”
“Oh dear.” Nighteye sounded glum.
“I was trying to get hold of Timesnatcher,” Shadowcloud said, “to ensure he brought multiple enchanters, so I’m doubly glad to hear you’re on the way. I’m worried touching this substance the demons have created will do the same thing to us.”
“Might not be an enchanter you need, in that case,” Neverwish replied.
“If it makes us mindless drones, it’ll be worth having every possible countermeasure in place, just to be on the safe side.”
I liked the arch-wizard. Shadowcloud appeared to be sensible, and a decisive leader.
“Inbound now,” Timesnatcher said out of nowhere. “Sorry about the delay.”
“What happened?”
“Some enterprising demons decided to visit the Winter Door – they wanted to set the dead men of Zadhal loose on Treetown, and if we were thirty seconds later they just might’ve succeeded. Then on the way back we heard about an attack in a tavern, but by the time we got there…”
The conversation continued but I stopped focussing on it, letting it fall into background noise – I saw Em’s hair shining in the night sky, and thrust my wings, rising up to meet her.
Neverwish, Nighteye, Dustbringer and Starsight were with her.
I hadn’t realised before that Neverwish was a dwarf.
He was four-and-a-half feet tall and stout as a barrel. A thick, unkempt blond beard flowed down from behind a full-faced mask of expressionless stone; the only holes were grooves at the mouth, nostrils, eyes. His robe was purple, embroidered with dwarvish runes I couldn’t read – the hood was pulled tight about the mask and he wore heavy grey gloves. If it weren’t for the beard, he’d look like a stone golem toddler playing wizard dress-up.
The others settled themselves down on the ground. Em met me and when I wobbled, feeling slightly too high-up, she took my hands and steadied me.
Her flight-spell wrapped around me, and I instantly felt safe; I felt that I could fly again.
“Ka- Feychilde,” she breathed, pulling herself to me – and this time when we kissed it was just like the first time.
Despite the grief of the last twenty-four hours – despite the trials we’d had to endure tonight… This was worth every moment.
“You died,” I said, somewhat accusingly, once we parted.
“It vozn’t a big deal,” she replied with a smile, shrugging slightly. “You almost died.”
“That… I’d like to say it wasn’t a big deal.” I looked around, looked down. “I feel pretty weird being high up now. I actually crashed, when they were all fighting that gigantic thing.”
“I heard – are you okay now?”
“I guess… not a hundred percent, no. I’m so tired. But I’m better. I’ll get better.” I smiled back. “Just you being here makes me feel at least, oh, fifty percent better –“
“Only fifty percent?” she asked, eyes wide, imploring.
“Maybe sixty – seventy – okay, a hundred percent, oh –“
She suddenly flung her arms around my waist and squeezed me. I settled mine around her shoulders.
“… can someone tell the new sorcerer to stop having a tickling-match up there?” I noticed Glimmermere muttering.
“I told you, man, I need your secret.”
“Neverwish!”
“Sorry, Glimmermere; I didn’t know elves were such prudes.”
“Shadowcloud, tell Neverwish that he…”
I didn’t care. I let their voices fade out again – I’d missed something Em was saying.
“Sorry, Em, I’ve got this – chatter –” I waved a hand at my ear, “and it’s making it hard to hear – say again?”
“I said I vont to come in vith you.”
“In? In there?” I jerked my head back at the hill. “Oh, I don’t know if –“
“Feychilde wants to bring his girlfriend with us,” Neverwish said. “Personally I vote no. He’s gonna get distracted at the worst time, bet you.”
“Twelve is an auspicious number, a figure of power,” Starsight said softly. “I’ll take that bet.”
“They’re discussing it now,” I said to Em in an effort to explain why I cut my sentence off.
“Ahh.”
There was a tension in her frame as she scrutinised my face, like she was waiting to see some clue as to their decision before I gave voice to it.
It was Timesnatcher who decided.
“Link her up,”he said.
I looked across. I could see them coming now. The ice-clad Winterprince was flying them: there was the arch-diviner, in his black robe with its white hourglasses, his metal upper-face mask with a twelve-pointed star on the brow; there was the yellow- or gold-robed Lovebright, clothes and mask covered in red love-hearts; and –
One more champion, flying alone like a scarlet smear of blood across the smog, the iron-scaled wings he was now using glinting in the darkness.
Redgate!
“Link her up? That’s out of the ordinary, even for you, Timesnatcher,” Neverwish said.
“I’ll link her up, then.” A young girl’s voice, Northman accented. Lovebright was Jaid’s favourite champion (favourite non-druid champion, at least), but I suspected it had everything to do with the love-hearts, and the name, and had nothing to do with the nature of enchantment itself. “Evening, Emrelet. I saw you back at Roseoak but I don’t think we’ve been introduced – I’m Lovebright.”
“Lovebright! Pleased to meet you.”
I smiled at Em and squeezed her hand. Together we floated down towards the rest of the champions, everyone seemingly congregating near Glimmermere.
Supplying the wizardry we had Em, Shadowcloud and Winterprince. Healing our wounds were Nighteye and Glimmermere. For telling us when we were about to die we had Timesnatcher and Starsight. Enchantments were going to be handled by Neverwish and Lovebright. Joining me on the sorcerer-team were Dustbringer and Redgate.
A few weeks ago I would’ve been dredging the muck with my dropped jaw at the thought of embarking on an adventure in such esteemed company. Now, after all the misery and death I’d partaken in during the Incursion… I was still left feeling like I had to hold my chin up with both hands.
These were some of the best. The best of the best. The top archmages in the city. Likely in the world.
This was really happening.
Still, some things had changed. A few weeks ago I’d have thought that surely, with a force like this, we would overpower anything. But the battle at Roseoak in particular had opened my eyes. I’d learned to trust the instincts of my faerie queen advisor. And I’d almost died. I no longer felt invulnerable, not in the here and now.
As the others completed their introductions, I wasn’t particularly bothered by the way Neverwish’s head was always turned in Em’s direction. My mind was fixed in purpose, and a cheeky, leering dwarf didn’t figure high on my priorities list. I was already going through the different ways we could penetrate the obsidian building’s defences.
This was really happening, and it had to happen – lest Lord’s Knuckle be left with a dark temple to Chaos buried in its heart.
* * *
By the time the more-experienced champions had gotten into discussing their plans, magisters had arrived to support Ciraya; I saw her with half-a-dozen other sorcerers going around the hill in a wide ring. It looked like they might’ve been setting up wards, barriers facing in at us where we stood on the wasteland of broken buildings and bodies of ash beside the strange, clay-coated mound.
It was still silent, the cracks in the mound still too narrow to accommodate any kind of sortie from the demons.
Everyone was made aware of the particulars. Touching the obsidian apparently made the bugs lose their souls; not their minds – they carried on their usual tasks without any apparent impediments – but their souls. They stopped responding to arch-druidry, as though the contact had made demon-bugs out of them.
The obsidian had somehow stretched as Shadowcloud had dropped the warehouse and its new-made tower into an abyss; by his best estimates he’d sucked it two hundred and fifty feet into the ground, which should’ve left almost a hundred feet of solid earth on top of the highest point of the tower, even if it had gone in at a lopsided-angle. He had not been expecting the walls to stay in place, the demonic reinforcement to the exterior functioning like a shell, holding the structure together. And he certainly hadn’t been expecting anything to still be on the surface when he was done.
Dropping it deeper held the very real risk that we’d simply be improving on the demons’ work. Obsidian was supposed to break like glass. No one had ever seen anything like this before.
No one who spoke, at least. Of those assembled, only Winterprince and Redgate were silent throughout the proceedings, waiting to one side but not near each other. Perhaps they felt their views had already been sufficiently well-expressed by their colleagues, but if that was the case neither of them made it clear through their body language. Redgate’s arms were folded in his sleeves, his arachnid eyes seeming to follow everything. He was surrounded in shields; the metallic wings had disappeared and he was floating again, a few feet off the ground… Floating like he’d done when I’d seen him picking his way through the carnage at Roseoak with thinfinaran at his sides.
Winterprince’s ‘head’ was level with Redgate’s but his huge ice-feet were planted in the ground, his arms at his sides, entirely motionless.
“I’m rather excited, aren’t you?” Nighteye breathed to me, his posh voice reaching high pitches, twanging nervously.
“They don’t let you go on missions like this usually?” I asked, in a possibly only slightly-less twangy voice.
“Oh no, haha, I am – what do they call it in the arena? hm – side-lined, I think is the expression. Volatile, Leafcloak called me last time,” he said it with a certain amount of pride; “got a bit too into it when we were fighting heretics, and just because I didn’t like my orders and almost killed one –“
“Leafcloak said zat you shouldn’t kill zem?” Em interjected, looking over at the owl-masked druid.
“We’re sworn to never take a life,” he replied, “not something, hm, from this plane at least. But they were targeting children.” His voice had hardened; it was the first time I’d ever heard him speak like that. But then he went right back to his usual jolly tone: “Hey, your accent is really interesting. Are you from Onlor? I had a friend from Onlor, she…”
I watched Em scowl, and squeezed her hand in solidarity.
I was wondering where Em came down on the whole ‘killing people’ thing when I noticed Dustbringer talking again:
“Redgate, are you happy with that, then?”
He was asking if the other arch-sorcerer was okay with him taking the lead on breaching the structure.
“As usual.” The crimson champion spoke for the first time, and it was a low, near-whispering sound – a way of hiding the tenor of his actual voice, I supposed. I wondered how many champions were putting on their voices.
“Do you have a ghost in your retinue?” Dustbringer asked, making it sound rhetorical.
“I have many insubstantial creatures.”
“So you don’t. Fine. I take the lead.” Endren straightened up – he wasn’t tall but his pale death-mask and sheer aura of authority made it hard to not see him as looking impressive – and folded his own arms across his chest, metal gloves clinking.
“I realise that Timesnatcher has endorsed your scepticism regarding the possibility of us permitting our demons to touch the sunken edifice,” Redgate whispered on. “I might express my own that an insubstantial creature, whether its nature is nethernal or infernal, should be said to touch anything at all. Be that as it may, I agree that you should take the lead, my friend. I cannot pierce the black material with my gaze.”
Dustbringer looked across at him. “Neither can I, Redgate.”
Redgate inclined his cowled head gravely, saying, “Ah, well. A shame.”
“But I have a keyed vamelbabil blade…”
Do they mean they’re trying to see through the clay and mud? I asked Zel. Through the obsidian?
“I think he was considering trying to summon something inside the tower without having to actually pierce its shell,” she replied. “If he could see in there, he could do it.”
What could they have joined with that would grant them powers like that?
“Oh come on, Kas, there have got to be hundreds! Don’t make me start listing them.”
Fine…
“It would just depend on the manner in which the abilities are granted. You know what I’m talking about – you get access to a reflection of Avaelar’s wings, but you can’t employ his healing or his strength and resilience. Almost every creature that isn’t native to Materium has some interesting ways of perceiving things. I don’t think anything short of a king of hell or lord of the fey would be able to see through whatever that stuff is, though.”
And you don’t qualify as a lord of the fey?
“I’m no amateur, but the things we call lords of the fey are so scary you don’t ever want to meet one, trust me.”
“It’s time,” Dustbringer said. “Shadowcloud – Winterprince – Miss Reyd – if you’d like to do the honours and re-”
It occurred to me then that they were missing something, saying we shouldn’t use demons, but the arch-sorcerer had halted anyway, turning his head – the magisters on the edge of the wards were shouting something.
I caught the name and sighed inwardly.
She was crossing the desolation towards us, wearing a grey, plain robe very similar to my own. She had a scarf across her face, her hood pulled up. And she moved with the eely speed of an arch-diviner, clearly walking by her posture yet covering the distance between us as though she were running full-out.
“Okay! Stand down!” Timesnatcher boomed back at the magisters. His narrow frame belied the deep register of his voice –
I realised then where I recognised him from.
It had been him in Hightown last week. His weird pronouncement about gripping the brand tightly… the Scion and Slave of the Sorcerer…
I remembered what he looked like, the narrow features and bleary blue eyes, wavy dark hair. Had he meant for me to be able to put a face to the name?
Of course he had. He was a diviner.
In a slightly-less-loud voice he went on: “I wondered when you were going to turn up.”
“I’m sorry,” Killstop returned, halting nearby. “It’s been something of a busy day, hasn’t it?” She fake-stifled a fake-yawn, stretched dramatically, then turned her face towards me. “Why don’t you introduce me, Feychilde?”
I felt Em’s gaze most keenly as they turned to look at me.
“For those who didn’t catch it, this is Killstop,” I said. “Yes, I know. Killstop. We met this morning, when she decided to be a champion. And yes, before you ask, I told her.” I had to get out ahead of that straight away, or she’d have to endure an endless barrage of questions on the topic of her knowledge about the Gathering of Champions, like I’d had to.
I didn’t want to go further with Em listening, even if it sounded strange to just say ‘I told her’, in case I broke some ancient law and got Em a death sentence or something.
My voice fell somewhat, as I realised just what I owed to this strange diviner. Right on the heels of Morsus’s death… Perhaps my vain quest to find his killer had been redeemed by fate.
“And she’s responsible for saving my… the people I care about, tonight. Truly, she’s a champion.”
I didn’t know how much to say – just that I had to say something before they went ahead. I knew her presence here was inevitable, that she’d accompany us inside the demon-tower, but I had to be able to say that I’d warned them.
“She’s a little crazy, you know. She came into her powers while under the effect of an addictive drug.”
Timesnatcher’s voice was full of mirth. “We’re all a little crazy, you know.”
“This makes thirteen,” Starsight complained.
“You see? Link her up, one of you.”
I couldn’t see her mouth, but Killstop’s eyes told me Tanra was smiling.
* * *
“Let’s try this again,” Dustbringer said. “Shadowcloud – Winterprince – Miss Reyd – begin moving the earth. Make sure everyone’s got high-acuity flight. Neverwish – Lovebright – the best anti-glamourings and blockers you can conjure. Invisibility to enemies. Nighteye – Glimmermere – performance boosts for everyone. Check we’re all in peak condition.”
I got a double dose this time, and by Enye I felt alive. I could discern nerves in my bone marrow and it seemed those nerves had grown hairs, hairs that individually itched, ached for action, motion. The enchanters approached me next, touching my mask, my robe, my palms; Neverwish stomped along as if he were trying to work off his own excess of energy, while Lovebright was a picture of calmness, whisking about the clearing performing her enchantments without comment, verbal or otherwise.
The wizards were up in the air, sloughing away the clay, the mud, the packed earth. Lucky wizards, having something to do. Em looked thrilled to have been included on this champions’ adventure.
Belestae willing, she’d reconsider not becoming a champion after this.
I caught Killstop virtually dancing on the spot – I doubted inkatra-withdrawal, future-visions and extreme-energising went hand-in-hand. Taking a bit of pity on her, I touched off the ground, flying towards her.
I didn’t want to do it, but I had to express my gratitude properly.
The moment she saw me in flight too, she lifted off herself, moving to meet me.
“Thank you,” I said once we were close. “You looked out for me.”
But I won’t forget you left your own loved one on the pavement, I thought.
“That’s what friends do,” she said, cheeks and eyes going up at the corners in a yet-deeper smile.
That’s what people who want to use you do.
But I’m already used. She had her way in to the circle of champions through me. Hopefully she’ll just discard me now.
“Better cross your fingers and your toes on that one,” Zel said drily.
I nodded to Killstop perfunctorily, then looked across at the hill.
Former hill. The wizards had already moved aside the earth covering a wide section, displaying the sloped surface of glinting obsidian that the demons had wrought with their infernal magic and the ashes of the dead.
Everyone took to the air to some degree, a few showing a little rustiness at flying but nothing worse than the odd wobble.
We all fell back slightly, floating away as Dustbringer floated forwards.
He held out a dark-gauntleted hand, and a wisp of mist coalesced under a purpling light before him.
“Enter the wall,” he said in Mundic; “report back on what you find immediately.”
The hunched woman – for it was a rag-shrouded crone of whom the shade had been called – swept forwards on a breeze that moved nothing but her.
Yet my wings could feel it, a cold wind from another dimension.
She reached the wall before her, and froze in place the very instant her immaterial form intersected the obsidian.
She turned around without moving – one moment she was facing away from us, the next she was smiling a toothless smile at her master.
Or former master.
“Unbound!” Dustbringer grunted, sweeping his arm up.
It didn’t look like she was responding to his commands; she kept coming –
Two fingers on his upraised, metal-coated hand clinked as he pointed them –
I saw as his lance of force drove out and impaled the ghost in the centre of her chest.
She let out a howl, more akin to the shrilling of the winds that came down the mountain in winter than any sound formed by a human throat. Then she seemed to close in around the force still embedded in her chest and dissipated, blown apart to vanish on the nethernal breeze.
“Dustbringer, you have infernal weaponry to try?” Timesnatcher said.
“You wanted to try a demon,” Zel reminded me quietly.
But I was new to this. I didn’t want to interject with my ideas –
“Feychilde, you’re new to this,” Neverwish said. “Why don’t you tell us your ideas?”
“Ha – very funny…” I shook my head. “Let me just check…”
I darted forwards on the air, feeling the eyes on my back, but I had to be sure.
“What’re you doing, Feychilde?” Timesnatcher enquired.
“Experimentation. Redgate’s right.” I brought up an imp in a red flame. “Not using demons in here is going to cost us a lot of our firepower.” I directed the imp to the obsidian shell of the buried tower, and had it touch the surface. “We might as well be sure.”
The imp touched the wall, turned and looked back at me in puzzlement; I dismissed it with a wave.
“I was able to harness a whole bunch of demons that came out of the place earlier,” I explained to my companions. “I didn’t think there was much chance the demons themselves were immune to binding just because they touched the stuff. Whatever it does to souls,” I inclined my head to Glimmermere, “it doesn’t affect demons.”
“Well finally, some good news.” Redgate’s whisper was almost elated.
Within an instant a patch of blackness appeared on his shoulder. He spoke to it quietly, and when I saw the white rune form above two gleaming red eyes I knew what it was.
The mizelikon slipped from him, still nothing more than a vague shadow. Blinking in-and-out of existence, it moved rapidly to the tower. When it was a foot or less from the surface, it blinked once more and was gone.
“Hunh. Feychilde, bring out one of those tower-imps again.”
While we waited for Redgate’s mizelikon to return – if it would return – I turned one of my imps over to Dustbringer and he questioned it.
It didn’t know anything about the spell that’d made the warehouse and tower impenetrable, just cringing and fawning and drooling some faintly-acidic spittle on the ground. Eventually he turned it back over to me, heaving a sigh of disgust, and I almost felt like apologising to it before dismissing it.
“I vont to go in,” Em huffed as she floated to my side. “How much longer vill ve have to vait, do you think?”
“I could break it.” Winterprince spoke for the first time, ice grinding.
“You really want to go in one of these places again that badly, Winterprince?” Glimmermere asked, also speaking aloud. “Not cheap on entry. It cost you an arm and a leg last time, I hear.”
“… Just a leg.”
It was strange hearing Winterprince’s voice without the accompanying thuds, chinks and hisses. If anything, he sounded colder. His tone was calm, but it was the calm before the storm. The calm that promised the swift onset of catastrophe.
He still hadn’t moved an inch, but Glimmermere appeared to get the message. She didn’t respond further, and put her gaze back on the mound.
The mizelikon reappeared, oily darkness squatting on the slope beneath the exposed obsidian. Then it flickered back to its master, settling in Redgate’s outstretched hands before the shadowy folds of his sleeves seemed to swallow it.
There was a moment of pensiveness, before Redgate said with a tremor in his voice: “The blade of a vamelbabil, Dustbringer. Break it down.”
Dustbringer approached the obsidian, and drew a tremendous scimitar from the air.
I recognised the style – a ten-foot-tall demon-woman had been using a similar weapon earlier on today, but hers had been carved from a pulsing amethyst. This was a pulsing sapphire, shedding a brilliant blue radiance on our surroundings, and was even bigger than hers had been, the curved blade easily as thick as my hand. Nonetheless, Dustbringer swung the seven, seven-and-a-half foot long sword just as easily as he might’ve deigned to swing a twig.
When the blow landed a hollow boom rang out across the wasteland of Lord’s Knuckle, and I could feel the reverberation through the air in which I floated.
The demonic obsidian was caved-in at a single stroke, but Dustbringer didn’t stop there, bringing his blade down again and again, forming a hole big enough to accommodate us.
“What was it, Redgate?” Starsight asked. His voice was still soft, professional, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of fear that a diviner might undergo when facing something that couldn’t be ‘seen’.
“It’s not good,” Zel supplied, tension in her own voice.
“There are… a lot of them,” Redgate said. “And they’re not of what one would choose to call the typical variety.”
Nothing was coming out of the opening Dustbringer made. I ascended slightly to get a better view, a higher angle with which to look right down into the buried tower.
But the inside was black.
“I can’t see anything.” Even with Zel’s aid, I couldn’t make anything out. This darkness was more than natural – if it were, my fey-sight would’ve gone right through it, shown me the hordes of hell lingering in wait. But no – nothing. An impenetrable veil.
I could sense them in there, though, now we’d cracked the uncrackable shell.
“Make it bigger, Dustbringer,” Timesnatcher said. His voice still sounded relaxed. “May I remind everyone, we don’t actually want to touch the rock.” The arch-sorcerer continued slicing away at the obsidian, and I looked back at the edges of the destruction, at the magisters staring at us as we prepared to enter.
“Sorcerers, we’re in first. We don’t need light yet. Best we shield the area off.” I turned and watched as Dustbringer lowered his sword; it vanished away, then he soared ahead without once looking back, moving head-first into the darkness, one arm outstretched, fingers already moving.
So maybe Dustbringer was awesomer.
“I can’t see, Kas,” Zel moaned.
We’re in august company, Zel. Now’s not the time to turn chicken!
I did my best to put a smile on my face as I moved past Em, bowing my head to her; moving past Nighteye, feeling his head swivelling slowly to watch me go –
I beat Redgate, and followed Dustbringer, copying his speed and angle of approach as I entered the darkness, the crimson-robed arch-sorcerer just a couple of seconds behind me.
It was neither warm nor cold, the air neither moist nor dry and remarkably scentless given where we were.
This place was a void, a nullity, an annihilation of all that was meant to be.
It was not the Materium I knew, the Materium that was my home. They’d brought part of Infernum here. Somehow, that was what they’d done.
Almost desperately I cast out my hand, trying to shed some light on the surroundings using my gremlin’s power – but the bright whiteness I tried to evoke yielded only a bleak, blank greyness that lasted less than a heartbeat, fading before it even struck the eye.
I already had reinforced shields on the go, up to my pentagon, so I reassured myself by expanding, six-sides, seven-sides –
Oh gods.
And I was already pressing down on demons. Right below us.
The sensation was eerily tactile. Unfortunately, Redgate had been dead right. These weren’t imps anymore. Perhaps the lesser fiends had been cannibalised. Perhaps they’d been… conglomerated. Either way, the things below us weren’t pushing back like first-rank demonoids. These were pushing back like eighth-rank ikistadreng.
And although the tower had given every appearance from the outside of being slanted, almost sloping gently down, this ‘living’ obsidian fell away almost vertically beneath us.
“I thought it when I heard it in the news, about Firenight Square. What’s your range, Feychilde?”
Dustbringer was saying my shields didn’t stretch far? His didn’t look to be…
Ah, no – he was saying just the opposite.
“Seventy-five feet? But I couldn’t get that here. They’re already pressing –“
“Alone? You’ve tested this?” His questions had the character of demands.
“I just… well, I know how far my shields cover. You –” I looked back at him and Redgate “– you don’t?”
“We’re all different, in our ways. I’ve never seen shields cover such distances, not without being built, arc by arc… What do you sense down there? How far down are they?”
“I’ve got forty-nine feet below us covered. I… compacted them down, somewhat, I think. And they’re…” I was already feeling the pressure, as though I were being pulled apart by my arms, my ribcage straining, “… they’re going to break through soon.”
“Let them come closer; don’t overspend your energies yet.” I relaxed Shield Seven, allowing it to ripple away and giving the demons below some breathing room. “Everyone, get in here,” Dustbringer continued. “Don’t pass the deepest-down sorcerer. We need to see.”
Winterprince appeared first above us, changing the shape of his ice to slide through the opening; a natural, ambient white light filled our surroundings as the trio of arch-wizards joined us. It was faint, though it was enough for me at least to see by.
“Best I can do,” Shadowcloud said. “This place doesn’t respond right.”
A lightning-bolt pierced the darkness and froze there – I quickly slammed my eyes shut against its sudden, overpowering radiance.
“Twelve Hells, Stormchilde.” Shadowcloud sounded a little discombobulated. “Where’d you get that from so fast?”
“I’m sorry… zis has been known to happen vhen I’m excited.”
I laughed aloud.
“Give them some warning next time,” Shadowcloud grumbled. “Anyway, the enchanters can handle this.”
Em’s miniature lightning-bolt, pinned in the air silently without even a quiver, had done its job, glowing like a long, jagged white coal – but she didn’t need to bring it down with us. Other luminous shapes appeared, incorporeal threads of light that illuminated the surroundings.
I looked down, and immediately regretted it. And this time it wasn’t due to my apparent height.
Beneath us was a bubbling abyss of creatures, and like a bucket full of lobsters they eagerly teemed over and under one another. They were comprised of intricate masses of curling, razor-sharp horns, all of the fiends seemingly faceless and without dedicated limbs. Some of their growths ended in dangling, lidless eyeballs rather than horns, dark in hue and with red-rimmed, dilated pupils darting freely here and there over their glistening surfaces.
These demons almost looked like bunches of grapes – bunches of grapes, after a highborn was done plucking the fruit from them – except instead of a soft, twiggy frame, these had a frame that consisted of spurs of bone, spike-festooned ribbing, serrated antennae.
“Gaumgalamar. Seventh rank.”
Special powers?
“Look.”
Despite the fact they lacked obvious limbs, they had no trouble moving. They couldn’t quite fly but they seemed able to ‘step’ upon invisible strings with their outermost appendages, climbing up and down and across the tower’s interior without any discernible footing required.
I was immediately reminded of the giant spiders.
They’d climbed up towards Shield Six and were now pressing against that, just thirty-three feet away. Not in such numbers as before – yet – but it would only be a matter of time before I started to feel the strain again.
“Okay,” Dustbringer said. “Light ’em up.”
The wizards began their barrage.
I was unsure if it’d been specifically organised between them – I’d ignored some of the background chatter earlier – but they each tapped into a different element. Em abandoned her favoured lightning to Shadowcloud, who probably had less chance of erroneously striking one of us with a lightning-bolt in this confined space than the relatively-inexperienced magister. She was spraying what looked like liquid fire instead, for all that that was better. Winterprince emitted a white beam of pure cold energy from his ice-encased hands.
The glossy obsidian walls reflected the various sources of radiance in muted shades, so that it seemed we were hanging there within the boundaries of an ever-changing rainbow of colour, only edged in darkness.
At first it seemed the creatures were regenerating from the damage that’d been caused to them, but after a minute it was obvious – they were just being replaced. Roasted, frozen and fried demon-parts were floating on the surface of those pushing ever more-eagerly up at us. Rancid vapours spiralled up past us, slipping around us to ensure none of us were choked.
“Dropping demons,” Winterprince said, again eschewing the telepathy, evidently preferring to grind out his curse with his maw of ice.
“They’re just trying to tire us out,” Timesnatcher said.
“It’s working,” I replied; the psychic link seemed to perfectly copy the voice I’d have used out loud, effortlessly capturing the through-gritted-teeth quality of my words.
“I’m descending,” Redgate said, even as he started to move towards the extremity of my barrier. Frost rays, gouts of flame and fingers of lightning all danced about him, seeking targets beneath him.
“Don’t go too far,” I gasped. “I’m about to be reduced to five shields. They’re going to ascend!”
“I will support your shields down here.” The moment he said this, I felt the burden instantly diminish to half what it had been. “It will be better for all concerned if we can keep them as far from us as possible.”
Looking down, I could now see his shields, barely stretching from wall-to-wall across the tower interior.
“Agreed.” Dustbringer didn’t move to support him, though. I guessed the more sorcerers were down there, the more careful the wizards would have to be – barriers warding off ill-intent weren’t going to defend against accidental attack.
So things continued, another whole minute ticking by, hundreds upon hundreds of the gaumgalamar perishing, withering away under the brunt of the elemental attacks.
We didn’t even need to bring twelve or thirteen champions. A couple of sorcerers and wizards could’ve handled this.
“Let’s hope you’re right.”
After a bit, I realised the ringing in my ears had stopped – I could no longer hear the Bells. I was uncertain as to whether I should feel reassured or not. I decided to keep my mouth shut.
The group of us descended, bit by bit, careful to stay as far from the walls as possible as we worked our way through the foes. The one time I came close to a wall I felt a current of air, gently but forcefully moving me away from the obsidian.
One of the wizards had us covered.
After about two minutes of our slow descent I was sweating, despite the temperate conditions. At first I tried to deny the truth to myself, sought out excuses… Perhaps the wizards were accidentally heating the air; perhaps the atmosphere in here was changing the deeper we went…
But soon it was obvious to me that I was flagging – and after a double-boost of the arch-druid goodness, too…
What must’ve been another couple of minutes passed – how far down did this tower go? It was then that I once more felt as though the hexagonal shield were about to break, and warned my fellow-sorcerers. Dustbringer moved down to take over, careful to stay out of the main line of fire, and I soared back up through the group with my shields relaxed. I seemed to ascend effortlessly – half of my relative speed was, of course, due to the others descending at the same time. I came to a stop a bit above Em then slowly reversed my motion, following her down again.
She was breathing hard as she spewed flame from her hands, directing it into those demons which were closest to the shields.
She wasn’t short of targets.
“You okay?” I murmured.
“Zis is quite something.” She managed a wolfish grin, not breaking eye contact with her targets as she continued her work. “And you?”
“Tired,” I said, wanting to rub at my eyes.
“Come on, arch-sniveller,” Glimmermere chided from over my left shoulder, “we put enough of our energies in you to stop a dead horse needing flogging.”
“You’re almost at your limits for the day, Feychilde,” Nighteye cut in before I could respond. “Aside from the obvious – a bone-shattering fall, a number of serious lacerations – you’ve not slept in over thirty-six hours –” (I saw Glimmermere’s bright eyes widen momentarily, and heard a faint “ahh” escape her lips) “– and you’ve pushed your magic further today than ever before, I can, hm, get a good sense of that just from having touched you, and it usually takes –“
“Okay, Nighteye, I get it.” I smiled and patted him on the arm. “No more rejuvenation. It’s alright – I can manage.”
“No, I think he’s right.” Glimmermere’s voice suddenly had a hard note of seriousness to it, and not of the hostile kind. “We’ll replenish you once more – when we get down there.” She eyed the teeming spider-demons below us. “That’ll have to last you. We need something left if we’re going to heal your wounds.”
“I don’t like the way you’re just assuming I’m going to –“
“Guys, please,” Neverwish intruded loudly, “can you talk like this? There’s a reason we’ve got rules, you know. If they overhear us, they’re smart enough to use our plans against us.”
“Ah-h-h, I’ve never been to a meeting.” Killstop had raised her hand, looking around at the other champions. “What are the rules? I wasn’t aware I ever agreed to rules.”
“I’m going to enjoy going over the rules with you personally,” Timesnatcher said firmly, sounding like he intended for her to feel a little intimidated, even if it was well-intentioned.
“Oooh.” Killstop injected a little purring into the sound she made.
“I – I didn’t really consider how that was going to come out, did I? You’re too young for me, kid. Sorry.”
“Never say never, Cradlesnatcher. We grow up, you know. I’ll be an adult soon.”
“Forget what I said,” Neverwish interjected, sounding sickened. “You two take it off-link. And whisper. And find me some good earplugs in the process.”
“You’ve totally just ruined Timesnatcher’s name for me now, you know, Killstop,” Lovebright joined in. “Thanks for that.”
“Don’t say that!” Timesnatcher blurted.
“And you used to sound cool…” the enchantress trailed off wistfully.
A little tense sniggering trickled through the group – except for Winterprince, and the sorcerers beneath us.
“I’m feeling a little less fraught now,” I said. “Redgate, you need to swap out?”
“I shall inform you when I need to… ‘swap out’.”
One could practically hear the inverted commas. His voice carried a little more animosity than necessary, but I got the impression he was simply unused to mangling language in the lowborn manner, rather than there being anything explicitly disdainful in his attitude.
“Fair enough. Dustbringer?”
He didn’t answer my question directly, but answered one that had been niggling at me, probably all of us, for some time:
“We have now descended three hundred feet. Far beyond the point at which we should’ve reached the storehouse. Am I right, Shadowcloud?”
“I… I can’t explain that,” the wizard replied. “The earth told me how far down it was.”
“The earth doesn’t lie.” Winterprince made a rare telepathic contribution.
“No, but Infernum does,” Redgate whispered.
There was a moment of silence, everyone chilled by his words; then several urgent voices were raised in query and protest.
“Infernum! No one –“
“– actually entered another plane –“
“– was possible to just transplant –“
“– to be joking about –“
“I don’t think we’re actually in Infernum.” Timesnatcher cut through the noise.
“I agree,” Dustbringer said, “but it’s close. The planes have intersected for too long in this spot. It’s changing. We have to move more quickly.”
“We’re doing our best,” Shadowcloud protested. “It’s tiring for us too, you know? Can’t you join in with that big sword of yours?”
“I am conserving my strength – maintaining a shield is a constant drain on my energies. Also, if I got in the way of one of those lightning-bolts, you would slay me outright.”
“Only if I hit you without ill-will, right?” the arch-wizard muttered.
Timesnatcher spoke steadily. “Nighteye, Glimmermere – do your best with the wizards. Shadowcloud, Winterprince… Stormchilde –” his voice twisted in amusement “– back away for a minute. Starsight, Killstop – on me.”
Em didn’t object to the name this time either. Surely this was a good sign.
The wizards withdrew towards the druids, halting their barrage for the moment, while the diviners descended towards my fellow sorcerers.
I had to watch this.
Timesnatcher took the lead, drawing his spellbound blades that glittered with a greenish tincture. He tossed one end-over-end to Killstop who effortlessly plucked it from the air; yet by the time she’d raised her head again Timesnatcher had already plunged into the foes beneath Dustbringer and Redgate’s shielding, literally disappearing into the churning mess of serrated horns.
“He’s gone in!” Em cried aloud, breaking away from Nighteye and starting to descend – but Glimmermere halted her with a hand on her arm.
“Don’t be afraid, magister,” the druidess said. “He likes doing things like that. He’ll be back up in a second.”
“He’s insane,” Em continued; she’d stopped moving but her eyes were still wide, fixed on the place where Timesnatcher had vanished into the demon-spiders.
Killstop had followed Starsight’s example in the meantime, and they were both hanging almost upside down. The winds of wizardry that bore them aloft kept their robes from falling forwards over their faces – and they went slashing at every demonic appendage they could reach without completely abandoning the shields.
They weren’t doing a quarter of the damage the wizards had done, but we were still descending, if at a snail’s pace compared with earlier. How much of that was due to the three ensorcelled daggers at work on the surface, I was unsure, given the one ensorcelled dagger in the hand of the death-defying Timesnatcher somewhere down there beneath the surface of the infernal spiders.
“I’m at – the bottom.” Timesnatcher’s voice came through in bursts; surely ninety-nine percent of his brain had to be occupied with staying alive.
“What do you see?” Dustbringer asked.
“We’re going to – need your – sword again, old friend. It looks like – the roof of the storehouse got – the same treatment as the –“
And silence.
More silence.
“Timesnatcher?” There was an unusual twang of alarm in Dustbringer’s voice.
“W-wait.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and I wasn’t the only one. For a moment there I thought we’d lost him.
It was two minutes before he emerged, on the other side from Killstop and Starsight’s current location, accompanied by an erupting fountain of demon-horn chippings and severed eyeballs. He seemed to spin like a top as he thrust his way out of the gaumgalamar, skipping across footholds that wouldn’t be there a thousandth of a second later, slipping through gaps that would be filled with jagged protrusions before my eyes could even properly focus on his latest movement.
“Got distracted. Almost disembowelled, beheaded and castrated, all at the same time. Then when I escaped, almost touched the wall. Wow.” He soared free of the demons, almost sagging as he hung in the air. “Hope I didn’t worry you too much… Are you guys ready to take back over?”
“With pleasure,” Shadowcloud said grimly.
It was then that it all went wrong.
It was impossible to say what happened, exactly. Starsight and Killstop were separated, and I looked down at them expectantly, waiting for them to disengage.
A spur of bone raked out and snagged Starsight’s sleeve, pulling him out of the shield.
He moved unnaturally, as arch-diviners were wont to do, slipping out of the spider’s reach and into the buffer of wind separating him from the obsidian wall of the tower.
Yet he somehow didn’t move back in time and a second, a third gaumgalamar sprang upon him. Pushing him into the wind-wall.
Timesnatcher whirled – Killstop too. Though she was the closer by far, Timesnatcher beat her to it, sliding out of the shield and slashing his green-trailing dagger through the demons’ serrated spines.
They fell apart, blackened, and I looked across to Starsight –
His head was bowed and he was bringing his knives, silver and gold, up to attack –
Timesnatcher evaded, a minutiae of motions that let his friend’s daggers miss him by finger-widths.
“Star!” Dustbringer grunted aloud.
“I’m on it!” Neverwish snapped, the dwarf suddenly descending towards the mad Starsight.
“What’s happening?” This from Shadowcloud.
“Look!” I pointed.
“Did he touch the wall?” Lovebright cried. “What’s happened to his mind?”
Starsight was still attacking Timesnatcher, about ten times a second, every stroke a killing-blow aimed at the underside of the chin, the temple, the sternum, the spinal cord…
Timesnatcher said nothing, did nothing except dodge. Every. Single. Time.
Waiting. Knowing he could trust others to have his back in this.
Neverwish got ten feet away and raised a grey-gloved hand –
Starsight instantly slumped over, and floated there on the air.
“Brute force attack.” The dwarven enchanter spoke the words in an incongruously solemn tone. “Takes out any sucker. I always told him. But you just went right through them! We’re supposed to be invisible, inaudible! How did they get him?”
“We are.” Wisps of wind, courtesy of one of the wizards, quickly plucked Starsight’s daggers from his sleeping fingers and drew them across to Timesnatcher, who secreted them away in his robes. “They sense us anyway. How do you think I got trapped myself when I went to the bottom?”
“Dropping demons.”
“So he, hm, has a mind, still? because I haven’t got any idea how to fix brains properly yet, not unless they’ve, hm, just been chopped in half or something – and Leafcloak says that Glimmermere shouldn’t fix anyone’s brains anymore because she’ll never be able to do it properly, and –“
It said something of the seriousness of the situation that Glimmermere didn’t give Nighteye a scathing response.
“He’s still got a mind,” Lovebright interrupted the young druid quietly. “But it’s… what would you say, Neverwish? Like he’s lost all his higher functions. It’s the sort of thing you see in the very old, or the very sick, soon to die.”
“He’s not dying,” Neverwish said bitterly. “We’re gonna fix him. Leafcloak’s gonna do it.” He looked around. “Who’s flying him out? We can’t just leave him here.”
“We can,” Winterprince said.
The arch-wizard pointed to the wall slightly above us and created a coating of snowy ice; with his other hand he gently moved the prone arch-diviner up through the group, then settled him down against the whitish substance.
“He’s really gonna be okay in there?” Neverwish said accusatorily.
“I guarantee it.” Winterprince’s tone had a note of finality as he covered Starsight over in more snowy ice, packed deep.
“It makes sense,” Timesnatcher said. “We can’t send someone out now – we need everything we’ve got to do this fast. Has anyone really not considered yet that this whole tower might be growing while we float here chatting?”
Winterprince finished shoring up the block of ice, then the remaining two diviners ascended a bit in retreat; the three wizards moved back down to the front-lines.
We left Starsight behind, slumbering deep in some kind of cold-induced stasis.
I didn’t like it. I’d only known him briefly, but it had helped me – to see a champion who probably hadn’t been a champion for long, taking things in his stride like he had. Now that champion’s mind had been lost, possibly forever.
I clenched my teeth and went on with my work.
Before long I took my turn at the shields again, letting both Dustbringer and Redgate have a break, recuperate. Em, Shadowcloud and Winterprince continued their devastating attacks. And, eventually, we reached the final few gaumgalamar.
A fireball, courtesy of Em, exploded the last of them into bits.
The bits themselves became a problem, next. It took all three wizards another several minutes of concerted fire to reduce a (now twenty-or-so feet deep) pile of demon-parts into dust, then remove it with their wind-control, dumping it back out through the crack hundreds of feet above us.
At last, we were faced with another black wall – well, a floor. The obsidian-covered roof of the warehouse, storehouse, whatever we were calling it.
While Timesnatcher retrieved his second greenish dagger from Killstop and gave Starsight’s weapons into her care, the druids went around with another burst of energy for everyone – my last of the day, if what they’d said before was to be believed – and I felt my focus sharpening, the blurriness of my perceptions receding.
Less effect than before, but much better than nothing.
“Back up a little,” Dustbringer commanded.
Once we were a good twenty feet above him he raised his hands over his head and manifested the sapphire blade on this plane. Holding it in two hands, he brought it crashing down into the ground.
Light.
Soft, yellow light seeped in through the immense crack the vamelbabil-blade had created. Air flooded in – air that smelt fresh enough to breathe, rather than the fetid stink of a demon-pit that I’d expected.
Dustbringer looked up at Timesnatcher, then brought the blade down again, and again.
Once more, no demons came pouring forth – but this time the hole below us led into the light, not darkness.
Yet – here – that light didn’t feel warm, friendly. It felt portentous.
Dangerous.
Dustbringer led the way down into the storehouse, and, one by one, we followed.
It had been a building of moderate proportions for Sticktown, before the events of tonight. The imps bringing chaos to Lord’s Knuckle had definitely chosen for size, and this was the best they’d been able to do – it was a hundred feet or so wide, and maybe half again in length, fifty feet high.
Now – after its architecture had been modified by infernal agents – it was a resplendent throne room, its previous dimensions doubled at minimum. The interior walls and floors were smooth surfaces of gold and brass, lined with thin, silken-looking red carpets and curtains. A dozen huge, flaming hearths cast quite normal-seeming flames over the hall.
And at the far end of the hall, only dimly lit by the nearest hearths, was a raised area, a dais covered in red cushions upon which a number of creatures lounged, surrounding a golden throne that twinkled darkly in the shadows.
“Welcome,” said the thing slouching in the great chair, whip dangling nonchalantly from her paw-like hand. “We’ve been expecting you, as they say. Won’t you come down from there? We have much to discuss.”
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