AMETHYST 5.7: EVASIONS
“The Nightmare is the Shadow. The Shadow is the Wave. I see it by the light of strange stars – Rivertown is swallowed, and it climbs, over the hills, still rising as it courses up the slopes, to splash against the very shins of Obrosil and the Five Peaks. Is it a dream? Is this my own idiosyncrasy? It does not feel idiosyncratic. It feels like Truth!”
– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall
Why does your name sound so strange to me? ‘Zelurra’? It sounds like I’m pronouncing it wrong now – it’s only getting worse. What’s up with me?
“I can honestly say that I have no idea why my name would sound strange to you all of a sudden, Kas. You’re just being a – what was it? – a clod. Kastyr, Kastyr, Kastyr… Sometimes words sound funny if you say them too often, you know? It’s probably just that.” She sighed. “Or maybe it’s just that I’m not being myself.”
How do you mean?
She hadn’t replied by the time I fixed the next rune-thread, so I prodded: Come on, Zel. You tried to dive us both into the avatar. What was that about?
“You think I’m avoiding talking about it? Why did you want to attack it, Kas? After seeing what it did to Leafcloak…”
I had to! It killed her! But you – you were excited!
“You were excited! I felt it in you. The fact Vaahn killed her should’ve turned you off the idea, not spurred you on –“
That was your doing!
“No, Kas. Not really. You know it the same as I. We – how did you put it yesterday? We’re all broken. It applies to us too, you know. Think of the atiimogrix… We live, surrounded by death, but we’re unable to stop.”
I don’t want to die.
“See, Kas, you think you don’t –“
No, Zel, you’re wrong, I thought at her sharply. It was my head, after all, and I could shout over her if I had to. It’s not that I want to die. That’s not why I attacked the avatar. If there was even a ten percent chance Gilaela’s horn could’ve slain it, or even given it a serious wound, my life would’ve been worth it – it would’ve been a right reason to – you know…
“Would it? Leaving your brother and sister, to put a single dent in it?”
Leafcloak gave her life!
“So you agree with me! You wanted to give your life.”
No! You – are you mad, Zel? Do you think that’s why Leafcloak did what she did? You think she died deliberately? She’s – she was a druid, damn it –
“I didn’t say that – you’re the one who used Leafcloak ‘giving her life’ to justify your own actions! Don’t you see the contradiction there? You knew what you were doing!”
I shook my head. She was blind.
“I’m not blind, Kas, in fact I can see everything that –“
I wish I knew how to help you, dear… I thought it softly, and it silenced her all the same. I felt her… her shame. I’m not trying to say we’re not – I’m not broken – I know I am – I get that, I do. I charge headlong into near-certain death, the thought of the battle, it thrills me, sure – whatever. The point is that I didn’t do it to die. I did it to kill that hideous thing, even if it was going to be almost impossible to pull off. I had to try. Leafcloak had to try. We didn’t want to die. She wouldn’t have retired half a dozen times if she wanted to die –
“She wouldn’t have resumed the mantle of champion if she wanted to live, you mean.”
I had no answer. I fastened the spell-threads in silence, my mind in turmoil, every thought like a bubble on the surface of a cauldron, bursting into nothingness as soon as it was born.
“And you wouldn’t have stopped once Shallowlie brought you around if it was the sensible option.”
Well, I’m hardly trying to argue it was the sensible option…
“What are you trying to argue, then?”
That it was… understandable?
“Fine, Kas. It was ‘understandable’.”
No, not sarcastic-understandable – just the normal kind.
I felt her scepticism.
Anyway, how did you turn this around on me like that?
“I just started pointing out the inconsistencies in your –“
Rhetorical question, Zel!
“Well, what can I say; I must have a way with words.”
Yeah – but I’m not the one who said I wanted to never come back. Where was your way with words when you were explaining yourself through my lips to my sorceress-buddy?
She sighed again, and now it was her turn to be silent.
After thirty seconds, she came back to me, and this time there was no aggression in her tone. No apology either. Just acceptance, a touch of sorrow lined with amusement.
“I guess we’re made for each other, Kas. I didn’t see Shallowlie charging a god. We both… We hide from ourselves. But this is who I am. Who you are. We might be broken, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be fixed. I…” She chuckled, and I could tell she was going to be okay. “I once did something similar myself, you know. Flew up to a dragon, poked it right in the eye, blinded it for seven seconds – just long enough…Twelve Hells, you should’ve seen me back then, Kas. I was really something, once…”
You still are, Zel. I don’t care how old you are, where you’ve been, what you did. I… I trust you. I want you to have my back. You’re – well, you’re part of the family, you know? You need to know you’ve always got something to live for.
“I…” Her voice cracked. “I’m – Kas! Danger!”
The work had gone more quickly this time. A sigil of Glaif, a closed book. A sigil of Nentheleme, a simple key. I’d almost managed to catch up to the point we’d reached when both me and Direcrown had been repairing it, when the residents of the tower in which I was currently an extremely-unwelcome guest finally decided to pay me a visit.
They used the trapdoor rather than coming up through the floor right under my feet, affording me a tenth-second reaction time, which was very considerate of them, all things taken into account.
The heavy lid banged open, and a blur moved towards me – then the vampire-lord was at the edge of my circle, fingers poised to rip it apart, nails digging into its surface. My other shields were already gone.
Twins indeed. The same haughty features and beautiful hair, the same rich, unspoilt white clothing.
Can he get through twelve stars? I wondered grimly, looking at those razor-sharp, steel-hard nails, remembering the severity of the wounds they could inflict.
“Hold, Ilthelor. We would have words with this one.”
The female skeleton’s voice was a high-pitched rasp this time, but nonetheless dripping with authority, the ease of familiarity. She came flying through the rectangular opening, surrounded by magenta shielding, moving under her own power.
“Unless she’s using magery, flying like that makes her a sorcerer or a wizard,” Zel mentioned.
Figured that much out… I let my senses lap over her. Wizard, I think. Very fine control.
“Watch out. Liches aren’t necessarily more powerful than they were in life, but she’s had centuries to hone her skills. She might be able to get around the sphere.“
She certainly looked the part. Her gown was a flowing thing ten feet long, hanging almost to the floor beneath her as she floated towards me. It was an intricate braiding of red and black fabrics, sleeves far too deep to expose her bony hands. To proclaim her true nature there was only the gleaming white head without a single trace of hair or skin, muscle or ligament.
A high black collar framed the face, stretching up from the neck of the garment to surround the back of her skull, extending almost a foot into the air over her head. The whole get-up was there to intimidate, to make this shrunken, dead thing look like some big scary critter.
I’d faced genuine demons. The lich-lady wasn’t scary.
That’s what I kept telling myself.
Still, someone this important-looking ‘wanted words’ with me…
At last! I forced myself to think.
“Well…” I cleared my throat. “Well finally, someone who actually wants to talk – you have no idea what it’s like trying to make inroads with the locals as a foreigner in this place,” I lamented.
“How awful thy trials,” the archlich said quietly, her voice hard. She came to a stop about twenty feet from me, glowering down at me.
I hadn’t exposed my own wizard-flight to them yet. They’d know I was capable of flight from the wings, so they wouldn’t be expecting me to take off without so much as a single flap of otherworldly feathers. A secret only to be revealed for whatever slight tactical advantage it could win me.
I moved my eyes to the vampire-lord, smiled blandly. “Your brother – he wasn’t all that chatty. He tried to adopt me, would you believe it – you’d have been an uncle! But then he met this murderous twig, see, and –”
Rage warped the porcelain features, and with a shriek Ilthelor drew back a claw to strike, strike hard, tear through my shield if he could –
His motion was too slow to be real – he was just trying to intimidate me, and I wasn’t going to let it work.
I moved to meet him at the edge of my circle, caught the hand by the wrist – saw his purple eyes widen in surprise at my strength – and headbutted him as hard as I could across the nose.
Gods, it felt good watch the vampire-lord recoil, stumble back with his palm cupped across his face.
“Revenge. Your brother took a few pieces of me with him to the shadowland, don’t you know.” I rolled my shoulders, stepped back into the centre of my circle. “I’ve learned a few things since then. Why don’t you let your betters have a bit of a natter before we have round two?”
But it was more serious than that. Glitter was pouring out from between his fingers; I’d completely forgotten about the horn.
“Ilthelor?” the lich-lady pronounced, looking down at him curiously.
The vampire had gone to his knees, one hand on the stone, the other still clasped across his nose – then he almost toppled, and thrust out his other hand to keep himself upright, revealing his face –
Most of it was gone; above his chin there was just an orb of softly-falling petals of light.
We both watched in surprise as the second Isromalle brother disintegrated, and drifted away in pieces towards the sphere.
“Well,” I said dryly, “I wasn’t planning on a hard-ball negotiation, but…”
“What hast thou done?” she said in quiet horror. It wasn’t quite a question.
“Erm – rid the world of a second great evil? Slightly increased the rate at which this magic ball gets up and running, to wipe you and all your filthy breed out for good? Erm…”
“Thou speakst so callously of the death of the man who was my love. Mine eternal love!”
They – they’re capable of love?
“If it can talk, it’s got a soul. Her soul might be lost, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t got one.”
“He’ll be back, won’t he?” I said casually, watching the movements of her own shield.
“Upon a time, upon a spell, dies the death; return the dead, upon a wish, upon a god’s breath…” she crooned, looking distracted, staring down at his empty clothing. “Thou slewest his twin, in truth?”
She might’ve been anguished; she might’ve wanted to close her eyes, frown; but she had no features upon which to display her emotions. She had no eyelids. She was forced to look, without sleep, without cease, to stare out upon the world the Magisterium had created for her.
Pity welled up within me then. If she hadn’t been a highborn herself, I might’ve even been able to put myself in her shoes. As it was, I felt it was ironic. Toppled into undeath by the very same institutions and organisations that had raised her up above the masses since her birth.
“The one who killed him isn’t in your city,” I answered, thinking of Em. “But I had a hand in it – well, he had a hand in me for most of it, actually…” I gestured at my side, the remembered pain flaring. “But what goes around comes around, and it’s now up to us to discuss a truce. You have to let me finish this.” I inclined my head towards the sphere.
“A truce?” Zel muttered.
I’ve got to report this stuff back. Got to keep her talking, not fighting. A chance might present itself.
“There will be no truce,” the lich-lady said quietly. “Thy Magisterium hath gone too far this night. I had thought to take it from the other one, but thou hast now come away blood-handed from both their deaths – yet can I use thee twice?”
“I… really don’t follow the question…”
– thought to take it from the other one –
“… but who is this other one?” I finished.
“The wizard of thy fellowship, deposited at our feet by the King’s men,” she replied, just carelessly dispensing information, looking off as if deep in contemplation.
That told me she really didn’t see me as any kind of threat.
And that told me she had Shadowcloud. She had him, she wanted something from him. Something she now wanted from me.
Something she now wanted from me twice.
“My sister shall simply kill me,” she said to herself in an almost-singsong voice, then sighed.
“Your sister… let me guess… also a lich-lord?”
The skull nodded solemnly.
“And she was in love with…”
“Rhinath, yes. The first thou felled. We made them, raised them up, when ye brought the desecration upon us.”
Two sisters, twin brothers, all archmages, lovers… The story was something that would’ve been in all Jaid’s books – Twelve Hells, it sounded like one of the fables of Brenwe Bathor – if only those who owned magic in the Realm hadn’t had free rein to expunge any mention of this lore from the record. Curse them.
“Just, for what it’s worth, I completely, one hundred percent disapprove of turning cities into undead wastelands. I don’t even like the Magisterium – I don’t work for them –”
“Yet thou camest here under their wings, didst thou not? What is thy name, sorcerer?”
I straightened, swallowed. “Feychilde.”
She nodded to me. “Very good, Feychilde. I am called Aidel, of the Sunseed, Eighth of my name. It is fitting that we know one another’s name, is it not, now that one of us must fall, never to rise again, unless it be in the dusts of the passage of centuries?”
“We’re going to fight, then?”
“We must. Even should I grant that thou art an enemy of mine enemy, I cannot befriend my love’s killer. And how else might I procure thy soul, and use it to return my love to mine arms, and my sister’s to hers? Wilt thou offer it freely?”
If this was a scare-tactic, it was working.
Gilaela. Wake up.
Wake up and help me take this thing apart.
Aidel saw my answer in my eyes through the mask’s slits, and lowered her head, the purple-glittering flames in her eye-sockets still centred on me.
As she brought down her chin she raised her arms; the sleeves drew back, exposing the thin, bony forearms, the fingers clutching the very coldness of the air – and all was plunged into tumult.
* * *
Being a lich gave her certain advantages. This wasn’t just confronting your average arch-wizard. Your average arch-wizard wasn’t ancient beyond the lives of elves, capable of wielding sorcerous forces on par with the best arch-sorcerers, or possessed of a bodily durability that would impress an arch-druid. Your average arch-wizard wouldn’t regenerate from as little as dust given half the chance to hang around on the plane.
Defeating Aidel would require a careful weighing of my advantages, and a watchful eye for her spirit when I parted it from its physical manifestation. It had to go back in the nethernal wind. It had to be lost, never to return.
She floated there, spraying a vast quantity of frozen air at me as if it were nothing; other than the infrequent movements of her fingers, refocussing the streams of white wind, she was motionless, expressionless, simply waiting for me to break. She looked bored, if anything, while I held myself taut in the centre of the rushing, booming cascade.
Winterprince had mentioned it once, and he was right. I would break, eventually. My circle wasn’t large – barely enough to cover my head and feet at the same time – and it didn’t prevent the frost from building up around me. Within seconds I was being buried inside a rising hill of ice, but she wouldn’t bury me completely – she would want to keep working on my shield, not just encase me…
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? I’d seen Winterprince and Mountainslide trading-off when fighting the avatar of Vaahn, and I knew it sapped a wizard’s strength to keep their power turned on for extended periods. We were champions, fighting monthly, weekly, daily, continually testing our abilities, pushing our boundaries. For all her ancient and undying nature, Aidel had gone unchallenged for centuries, until tonight. Now she was being forced to call upon her wizardry right next to a sphere that sucked on any excess energies. Sure, personal powers like flight, internally-ordered powers like shields – they were going at ninety percent output, perhaps. But anything directed externally? Shredding planar matter to open a gateway? Gathering the elements together to form an attack? Not so easy.
Perhaps she’d find this a test of her own skills. Boredom could bite you in the ass, if you let it.
There was the natural wobble granted to my shield due to my being in the sphere’s vicinity, but I waited for the first serious wavering before delivering a riposte.
I feinted first, bringing out arms of force as if to bounce around, strike behind her –
Just as I saw Aidel move her head slightly, following one of the lines, I delivered my blow.
I sent out a series of well-structured spikes, flowing like waves upon the backs of the ones that had gone before, striking straight between the two jets of icy vapour. Just like Dustbringer had done to me the first time we met.
My pointed battering-ram thudded into the centre of her purple barrier, and I saw the instantaneous fragmentation. I kept up the force, watched her squirm, doing her best to bring in other lines, trying to splinter my spike before it broke her protections.
I was right. There was no spare energy in the force-systems worked by my sorcery, little residue for the sphere to steal away. I’d done more damage to her shield with one carefully-placed hammer-blow than she’d done to mine with a whole minute of output, and I capitalised on my good fortune, pouring more and more power into my offense.
After five, ten, fifteen seconds she could bear it no longer and darted to her right, trying to evade my lance of force – I swivelled, trying to follow her, but she circled the sphere and came around at me from behind, this time striking out with lich-fire.
She was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
It was time. I very obviously and deliberately spread my wings, lifting myself into the air, weaving away from her purple flames.
The responsiveness of the sylph-flight was surprising. Eldritches of fey origin had their powers exaggerated here – something to take advantage of. If she wasn’t going to exhaust herself with her wizardry, I’d see how much nethernal energy she could draw on while she was stuck here with me, and hold my sorcery in reserve, let my strength replenish itself.
The red-black braided gown she wore was so long that its hem extended out of her shielding. I tucked my wings and rolled towards her, almost low enough to slide across the icy ground, and as I anticipated Aidel rose up in the air, to afford a better angle for bathing me in her magenta energies.
As she did so I reversed my motion and took hold of the dangling fabric, leveraged it to swing her through the air and into one of the pillars.
Her shield absorbed the force of it – the first time.
I added every ounce of the wizard-flight to the steady beating of my wings, holding myself still, bringing her about again –
My shield took a full burst of the lich-fire, and I felt my stars fading –
Every shred of satyr muscle I could draw upon, augmented by the green glow bathing the room – the force with which I struck her into the second pillar was enough to shake it in its moorings.
I laughed mockingly as the purple lines about her broke, suddenly sundered at a thousand points between one moment and the next, their pieces dropping away into the air to be pulled apart by the sphere.
The sound of her body striking the stone was a satisfying crunch, but she pulled herself away from both me and the pillar using her archmagery, and after a quick stretch she continued to move with every bit of the uncanny grace she’d displayed all along.
Now, however, the tables were turned – every time I saw her trying to draw out the purple lines to recreate her barriers I could interrupt them with my own forces. I couldn’t steal her nethernal power like I could with the standard liches, but this much I could manage without any issue: keeping her on the back-foot, taking advantage of her vulnerability.
Over and over I sent my spears of blue light into her unnatural substance, piercing her weird robe again and again. Still she fled me, circling the room, reversing direction when I did, giving me no opportunity to catch her.
Did she suspect what I wanted to do? She had to know that getting close would allow me to direct this sickening glittery anger-stick right into her face – do to her what I’d done to her twisted lover. And while she evaded me she was surely healing, the old bones knitting with every second she retained her link to Nethernum. I doubted my minor attacks were doing much to bring this to an end.
But Zel had gained potency too.
“Turn! Now!” my advisor shrilled.
The sudden shift in momentum took Aidel off-balance, and for the first time since the approach to the Green Tower I used Winterprince’s flight-spell to put on a burst of speed, enhancing the already-potent sylph-flight – I closed my eyes –
The instant I should have connected, burying Gilaela’s horn into Aidel’s breast, I realised she had moved, escaped me – I opened my eyes, cast about with all my senses –
“The trapdoor!”
I looked at it just as the last twelve inches of her gown were disappearing across its rim, black and red fabrics snaking down to the next floor, trailing after the lich-lady. A gust of wind was tipping the trapdoor lid, and it was about to fall, close itself after her…
I aimed myself at the rectangular opening –
“No! No, Kas – Feychilde, I mean… Don’t follow her. That’s what she wants. Closing the lid is just there to entice you. Stay. Stay up here. You won.”
Slowly, extremely slowly, I unclenched my fists. Ungritting my teeth was an altogether different matter.
You… you can calm down now, Gilaela.
“She might come back!” the unicorn snapped.
When she didn’t immediately retract her anger I had to send her consciousness back to Etherium, then sank down to sit on the floor, breathing deep.
She really doesn’t like undead, does she?
“If you’d caught up to Aidel, you’d have appreciated that hatred,” Zel pointed out.
I know, I know… I sighed aloud. I still have work to do – and she’s going to be coming back with reinforcements if I don’t follow, isn’t she? I don’t think I can handle Aidel, even here next to this gods-loved little beauty, I gestured affectionately at the sphere, if she’s got a few dozen lesser liches at her back.
“Or her sister.”
Or her sister…
Only half-conscious of what I was doing, I started matching runic sentences again, fastening them.
I need to speak to the others, don’t I?
I really didn’t like the thought of leaving it almost-complete a second time, especially after the way they’d undone it all after the first.
The bones were still sheathing the tower, covering the chamber’s windows. That meant my friends were nearby, didn’t it? Or at least one of them, I supposed…
I tapped the wraith again, and stuck my head through – then, after a moment’s consideration, pulled the rest of my body through. No point leaving a torso dangling from the wall for Aidel to take aim at if she returned.
A maelstrom of bone, snow and lich-fire greeted my eyes when I opened them. I propelled myself away from the tower, calling out over the link. Thanks to the storm (and possibly, in part, my current nethernal essence) none of the attacks were heading my direction.
It swiftly transpired that the avatar had reappeared. Timesnatcher was leading him away from the area, and he’d left instruction that I should finish up with the sphere as quickly as possible, get it working so we could use it against the Prince.
It was Spirit who reported this to me. Unsurprisingly, Winterprince said nothing; he’d been opposed to the notion of coming to the Green Tower in the first place, and would hardly be singing my praises now I’d been proven right all along.
A weapon, I’d called it, and a weapon it would become.
I’d been gone for less than a minute, and when I returned to the sphere-chamber I couldn’t help but stop and stare at the ribbons extending from the blinding ball. They’d fixed themselves faster than earlier, and with just two more minutes’ work…
Four minutes later, I was done. All the dangling spell-threads that I could find had been joined with their partners, and it was ready to be activated.
“And how exactly do you propose to do that?”
I was kind of thinking I’d ask this really helpful, super-knowledgeable fairy I carry around in my head.
“Oh really? You have to introduce us. I, for one, know next to nothing of necromancy.”
It’s pretty simple, really. Somewhere inside that thing there’s a shape. Lines of introduction, drawing in the surrounding magical energies like water down a drain.
“A hole in the plane?”
A hole in Materium and Nethernum, I mused. There’s an Etherial connection in there.
“I still don’t see what you’d have to do to wake it up.”
Wake it up… I mulled-over her turn of phrase. Like the Doors… How do they turn them on?
“They’re always on?”
The Autumn Door…
“True… But nothing’s been through that door for centuries. It’s dormant – I don’t think it’s off. What you’re looking for here is more like giving birth…”
Oh.
I saw it. The way I would have to do it.
The way I would surely die.
I could reach through, grip Etherium inside the sphere, and pull. Like reversing an inside-out tunic. Bring through as a flood what had until now been seeping out in drips and drabs.
The amount of power I estimated it would take scared me. I wouldn’t just be opening a gate – I’d be using my power, my body as a conduit – a highway. If Shallowlie or Direcrown were here – if we were permitted to go into Etherium, have someone push from the otherworld-side, while I pulled from this side…
The other option was to give it all.
“You think this will kill you?” Zel sounded amused. “You really have no idea what an archmage is, do you?”
You’re not trying to get us wiped from existence again, are you? I flexed my fingers nervously.
“Do you have to keep bringing that up?”
Errrr – Zel, it only happened an hour ago – well, to me at least… I’m gonna be bringing it up for aaaaages… If you think it’s bad now…
I sensed her irritation. Yeah, she was herself again.
Fine. I took a deep breath. Are you ready?
“Are you?”
I suppose I’d better be.
“I… I think you can do it, Kas. In fact I think you have to.”
I didn’t want to actually send my wraith home in case the sphere stole away the magic before it could be completed; for all I knew unjoined entities might become unbound under the sphere’s light, and I’d have no way to get through the tower’s casing if I lost control of him and was forced to destroy him. Instead I reduced the share of his essence I’d taken to virtually nil. It would have to do.
I drew back my sleeve, turned my face aside, and approached the sphere. It tore away my shield once I got close enough for the lines to meet it, which was lovely.
The thing was massive, a green sun. I wouldn’t be able to reach the structural glyphs in the centre from here at the edge, but that was okay. Any part of the internal architecture would let my senses follow the pattern, unlock the whole.
I stretched out my hand and touched my middle fingertip to the swirling stuff.
Had I expected heat? It was like ice-water. Who knew what it’d be like without Winterprince and Fangmoon’s protections suffusing my flesh.
Wincing against some anticipated pain that never came, I plunged my arm into the sphere up to the elbow.
Oh. Oh my.
“You can feel it?”
It… it…
It was a system of delicate gossamer, damaged even by my intruding hand; I instinctively put right what I’d broken as I studied the filaments of energy that whirled within the sphere.
A whole latticework, millions or billions of connections. It felt to my sorcerer’s-touch like the night sky from Hightown, an endless expanse of stars and subtle colour, here an unimaginable complex of runes and hidden meanings.
How…?
There was no time to ponder it now. I could spend weeks researching it in the Maginox library – so long as I got home. And I knew now there was only one way I was going home – with Zadhal back in one piece.
I put my finger on the arterial channel, followed it back to the beating heart.
Slowly, I closed my fist.
Inexorably, I pulled.
The weight of a plane in my hand, I pulled.
At first nothing happened. I held the living nexus in my fist, applying such pressure as my willpower itself could bring to bear.
I will go home.
I strained. Using my other hand I stretched out a line of force in the opposite direction towards the bone-wall, opening the channel, begging Etherium to flow through me.
Lost souls – it’s time you went home too.
Then I felt it. The slightest submission to my will. It moved, one tiny shred, an inch of the miles I had to travel.
And the moment the otherworld bent to my power, allowing me to pull a fingernail of its spirit-matter into my world, the bones surrounding the sphere-chamber came alive.
“W–h–e–e–e–r–r–r–e–e–e?“
The voice of the God of Tyranny rattled my brains, emanating from the fleshless lips of hundreds of skulls all around me, deafening.
Oh, drop.
Lich-fire blasted the bones on at least two sides of the four-sided room, and I could see them through the tiny gaps their spells created, before the unliving armour filled-in the spaces again. Dark shapes, teeming out there, enough to be visible through the storm. Many of the liches were under the effects of flight-spells, and had soared up to try to penetrate the bones, get through and stop me.
It was only a matter of time.
Pull… pull… come on, come through, damn it!
It was moving, but slowly, too slowly.
“Yune!” I cried aloud. “Kultmeren! Aid me now!”
I was no clergyman, had no special talent for prayer in moments of distress. I didn’t have enough hope for Yune to hear me. Kultemeren’s aid was probably already spent.
“Nentheleme?” I called lamely.
I was acting against Vaahn, her arch-enemy. Surely she could hear me. Surely she, of all the deities of the world, would feel free to break whatever rules kept the gods from interfering in our affairs.
Nothing special happened. No magnificent avatar leapt to my defence.
I was yet to devise a way to shield myself without allowing the lines to intersect the sphere’s surface – I’d need to use three circles, set close to me… But, praise be to Belestae, even the tower’s defence-system was working in my favour for the moment. The liches still hadn’t got through. Travelling down and back up through the tower would be faster –
It was therefore not without a huge dollop of horror that I watched as, not thirty seconds later, the grisly curtains undulated, then changed, forming whole bodies, bone-golems like those Shallowlie had crafted, slipping away to drop into the chamber. They faced me with their multiple skulls, their stances hostile.
I pulled, pulled with all my might, physical and psychic. I could see from the illumination it shed on my surroundings that the sphere’s light was intensifying, on the twenty – thirty – forty many-limbed, many-headed monstrosities. They were getting their bearings while their bodies finished formulating themselves. Fifty – sixty of them –
Worse, the liches were closing in, brewing powerful bolts of energy, preparing to unleash them once they got near-enough to inflict maximal damage.
And worst of all – Vaahn was coming. I just knew it. It was him, his power that was doing this to the bone-armour, transforming it into an army.
I couldn’t see any trace of my fellow champions in the sky out there, didn’t have anyone rushing to my rescue. They had to be close, but there was no one close enough to hear me if I screamed with all my dying mind’s strength.
I’d formed a semi-circle of shields, six stacked circles, each separate, each with five stars reinforcing it. The sphere at my back would absorb anything that came at me that way. I was protected.
I held the thought:
I am protected.
Then it seized my tongue:
“I am protected!” I said to the crowd of undead. “By Glaif, and Illodin! By the bondage you suffer! This curse that keeps you in your nightmare! By the memories you have of… of a place that can never exist again, because of us! I understand! I have to put… it… right!”
Over half of the liches who floated there in the great glassless windows stayed their hands, holding their spells aloft but not hurling them.
It made no difference. Not enough held back, not enough were stymied, mystified, intrigued by my words to give me a moment’s respite.
Almost half of them let loose their lich-fire, and my shields withered like dry grass.
The blue lines stuttered, cut out, stars falling apart in dissected triangles.
The barrier held long enough to take the brunt of the blasts, but half a dozen lashes of purple flame still ripped into my flesh.
I screamed, and the vast extent of my injuries seemed to actually help in holding off the agony.
Left arm and right leg, almost torn off. Lower torso, an awful vacancy. I didn’t look down. I wouldn’t have been able to see how much was left of me through the tattered, smoking robe anyway.
The wounds continued to sear, fragments of nethernal magic burning into me, working their way towards bone –
I staggered, of course. I would’ve fallen, if not for the death-grip I held on the heart of the sphere.
And as I gazed up through pain-wet eyes, seeing them prepare another volley of spells, seeing the bone-golems approach, I spotted the true threat.
Great long fingers, femurs strapped together with entrails and nails, clawing up over the edge of the chamber. Another arm, immense, gripping the pillar in the corner – the titanic wolf-skin, pierced through the snout by the wicked crown, rising above the lip, surmounting the face of skulls…
Vaahn himself had deigned to attend my destruction, climbing the tower to claim me, as I had known would be my fate since the moment I saw him break Leafcloak.
Looks like you got what you wished for, Zel.
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