Under the cover of the waterlogged forest, the companions slowly and carefully began their trek in the direction that the slasrath had been flying, hoping to find where exactly it had come from. As they continued through the swampy woodland the ground rose slightly and grew progressively less and less a swamp, and more a forest proper, as the ground grew slightly more rocky and well drained.
“At least we’re out of the swamp, I was getting tired of that muck getting into my boots.” Florian said as he kicked a bit of slime off of his feet.
“Hey, you don’t have to worry about a wet tail-tip…” Tristol said as he glanced over at Fyrehowl, hoping for some support.
“Honestly I never noticed…” She said as Tristol noticed that the lupinal was still hovering slightly off the ground, her own innate ability having lasted longer than the potions the rest of them had used.
“Anyways… through that break in the trees ahead I think there’s another trail. Can’t quite tell yet though.” Skalliska said, squinting her eyes. “And none of you were hip deep in that junk, so you have no room to complain…”
As they continued, Fyrehowl’s ears perked every so often and she would indicate for them all to pause while she listened. Something was getting to her. Some sense that they were not at all alone in the forest, and several times she swore that she had heard the sounds of a snapping twig or scuffed footfall in the distance that wasn’t a natural sound of the forest’s inhabitants.
But, hearing nothing to confirm her suspicions, they proceeded onwards towards the path that Skalliska had seen ahead of them where the trees thinned out slightly. Neither Fyrehowl, nor any of the others saw the ripples in a large pool of standing water they passed, nor did they feel the subtle rumble through the ground from the footsteps of something large and close, or something distant and titanic.
“Stop…” Fyrehowl whispered harshly as she held up her hand.
The others looked first at her and then in the direction of where her hand was pointed. There, some fifty feet distant and marching along the path they were heading towards was a small patrol of fiends.
Toras nodded to Fyrehowl and motioned for Florian to follow him to one side while he motioned for Skalliska and Tristol to fall in behind the lupinal. As quietly as possible the two groups moved into a flanking position as they approached the column of fiends.
Six Mezzoloths all told marched behind a bloated gray-green Dergholoth in an orderly column while a much larger lobster-like Piscaloth marched behind them. Each of the Mezzoloths carried a gleaming black trident, half of them burning with flickering violet flame, and the Dergholoth sergeant and their Piscaloth commander carried no arms or armor. All of them wore either a sash or a glowing brand in the shape of the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin with a pair of eyes superimposed above it; the symbol of the Oinoloth.
None of the fiends were prepared for the ambush as the five rushed at them from the forest, swinging blades or hurling spells while the fiends were caught flatfooted. One of the Mezzoloths fell in the first few seconds but the others fell back quickly and reorganized into a tight defensive formation, their training in the Blood War serving them perversely well even on a plane of good such as Elysium.
Crying out a praise to his god, Toras swung his sword at one of the chitinous insectile ‘loths as Florian screamed likewise to the glory of the Foehammer and charged at the Piscaloth. At the same time Fyrehowl slashed deeply into the torso of the Dergholoth while Tristol hurled a bolt of lightning at the clustered ground of Mezzoloths and Skalliska sent a cluster of magical bolts to score against another of them.
Toras grinned as four of the Mezzoloths jolted and danced spasmodically from Tristol’s lightning bolt as he stood in the midst of it as well, utterly unaffected himself. Two of the others were either resistant to the electricity, or their innate resistance to magic had spared them of its effects. However that spared none of them from Toras’s blade as he parried several trident jabs and slashed in return.
Wounded as it was, the Dhergholoth still kept its wits about it and made little attempt to defend against Florian before taking an action of its own. Skalliska stumbled and Florian averted his eyes as the fiend yet loose a piercing scream and a burning scatter of lights erupted from its eyes. Having hoped to blind and confuse its attackers, the fiend was disappointed as only two of them seemed heavily affected.
The next moments saw two more Mezzoloths fall before Fyrehowl was forced back by a concerted assault by two others at once, and Toras was attacked by the Piscaloth. His largely justified bravado was wiped cleanly from his face as the attacking ‘loth snapped down on his left arm with both of its massive pinchers and nearly ripped it in half at the elbow.
As Toras fell to the ground screaming and gushing blood from his wound the Dergholoth toppled and fell as Tristol hurled a volley of flaming bolts to strike full into its chest. Skalliska and Florian were both recovering from the now dead ‘loth’s stunning attack while Fyrehowl weaved and danced around the surviving Mezzoloths, taking a few jabs from their flaming tridents but slowly wearing them down in a volley of cuts and slashes.
“Oh son of a bitch…” Toras cursed as he held his arm and gritted his teeth while his companions cut down both the piscaloth and the remainder of the Mezzoloths.
Standing over the bodies of the fiends, watching them slowly bubble away into pools of boiling and foul smelling acids, the air shimmered and a glimmering portal flickered into being. Weapons held aloft, the group looked up, half expecting more fiends to emerge, when Nisha and Clueless came tumbling out and nearly fell into the dissolving fiend corpses.
“…” Clueless was speechless as he and Nisha stood over the pile of fiends and looked at their companions who were largely covered in blood, both the fiends, and in Toras’s case mostly, their own.
“Just what the hell is going on?! Elysium! Fiends. Dead fiends. In Elysium. You standing over them!”
“Subtlety is lost on you guys I think.” Nisha said as she peered at Toras’s arm. “Does that hurt Toras?”
****
Two hours earlier Nisha and Clueless had both stood in Tradegate with Clueless’s former companion and stood in watchful silence as he slumbered peacefully.
A soft cough broke the silence.
“Huh?” Clueless exclaimed as he turned to look.
“Why am I not surprised to see you?” Nisha said as she looked up at the glowing blue grin that hovered in the doorway to the room.
“Just like a clipped copper. Or something like that…” The Cheshire Fiend said as it floated into the chamber.
“So what’s this about?” Clueless asked.
“Your companions in Elysium, well, they’ve gotten involved in a bit more than they had originally bargained on. They could very much use and appreciate both of you about now.” The fiend said as it hovered closer.
Clueless glanced over towards the other side of the room where his elven companion lay asleep, resting from his ordeal. As the fiend drew near, the bladesinger motioned towards the door and away from the elf.
“Away from him, he’s been through a lot and he doesn’t need to hear any more trouble.” Clueless said.
“We’ll have to get someone to take care of him.” Nisha thumbed over towards the slumbering elf and pointed her tail over at the same time.
“I can have the innkeeper have someone watch over him and bring food and anything else he needs. I’ll leave a note for him when he wakes up.” Clueless added.
The fiend coughed. “Our little chit-chat aside now, I can have you sent more or less directly to your fellows in Elysium.”
“Oh? A Planeshift, a gate?” Nisha asked.
“A portal actually, and one back in Sigil. You’ll have to go back through the portal here and then to the second portal there.”
Clueless raised an eyebrow, “Where in Sigil is this portal?”
The Cheshire Fiend glowed brilliant blue and seemed to grin in a more sly manner for a moment before it replied, “Oh, you’ve been there before…”
****
“Lord of Blasphemy!” The arcanaloth cursed as he stared at his lupinal colleage. “You said the idiots at Rubicon wouldn’t send anyone out here. You said they would just watch and listen!”
“Do you have something relevant to say fiend?” Tarnsilver said without turning to face the ‘loth. “Just what is this about?”
Parphinias was livid as he put a hand on the lupinal’s shoulder to turn him around. The celestial brushed the hand away like he’d just been touched by a hot brand.
“One of my patrols hasn’t answered back and the sergeant reported they were being attacked just before we lost contact with them.” The ‘loth said angrily.
“It’s not Rubicon.” The lupinal answered calmly.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, this f*cking layer of this f*cking plane doesn’t exactly have an overwhelming abundance of visitors. Who the hell else would it be?!”
“Then send out your other troops to find out, you have enough of them.”
“And I am, but I won’t leave this tower undefended in the event there’s more out there than one group that took down a patrol of eight. And this stupid plane won’t let me scry on anything out there to find out what the hell is going on. Do something useful for once celestial, besides being consumed by self pity, go out there and find out what the hell took down one of my patrols.”
Tarnsilver and Parphinias exchanged withering glances that could have set wood aflame, but, in the end, the lupinal nodded and walked away from the ‘loth. The ‘loth looked at the lupinal with forced courtesy as he walked away and vanished down the stairs to the tower’s lower levels.
“You had better pray to whatever ideals you still have left that whatever you find out there isn’t from Rubicon. If they’ve found us here you’ll end up in worse condition than the others of your kind down in the bottom of this keep, but…” The arcanaloth mused with a sudden show of fangs, “…but you would know nothing of that…”
****
Nisha and Clueless walked down a familiar looking alleyway in the Lower Ward each of them looking at the other nervously.
“This place again.” Nisha said as she looked at the ruined temple looming at the end of the street.
“Coincidence? The ‘loth sends us to the same place and the same bound space, but just with a different portal key to get to the Waste or to Elysium. I doubt it.” He replied.
“Makes you wonder what this place was originally, and what the ‘loths have to do with it.” Nisha mused as they neared the doorway.
Clueless reached into a small pouch and fished out the portal key that he and Nisha had purchased at the direction of the ‘loth, a bloodstone wrapped in a few links of a thin iron chain. He glanced through the doorway and into the abandoned and dustfilled interior of the temple and then back at Nisha.
“Ready?” The bladesinger asked.
Nisha nodded as she nudged a desiccated rat corpse at the edge of the doorway, it faced outwards and away from the temple as if it had died running from something, just like all of the remains of the small animals and insects that littered the ground around the building.
“About as ready as I can be I guess.” She said as the doorway erupted into a swirling mass of silvery light as Clueless broke the frame’s border with the portalkey.
Looking at each other one last time, they leapt into the open portal and burrowed their way across the planes, through space and age-old barriers, to emerge into Belarian, Elysium’s sealed 3rd layer. Hurtling through space, they emerged into the plane and nearly fell over a pile of yugoloth corpses
****
“Soon, soon now. Listen to it little ones, listen to it. Listen to it starting all over again. It continues now in bits and inches, creeping towards the inevitable; towards what you have borne witness to. I see it, and so do my brothers and sisters. The thirteen. We thirteen. The Demented. Our plans now fall into place as we said they would. And the others fled, vanished or returned to the source leaving us as stewards to control and plot the development of our children and the course of all of these infinite worlds. And so we shall, and so we do. But… you already know this now don’t you…”
Sarkithel fek Perthis lifted his head up towards the sprawling ruins of the great city that sprawled out and surrounded him for miles. One of thirteen, the Baern looked out at the devastation and cried out to the darkness that loomed like an unbound vault overhead. The cry was one of jubilation and triumph, the cry of one who stood witness to the start of something great and terrible and who knew what would happen at the end of that process.
All around the Gloom Father stood the scattered dust and frozen ashes of the city, the remains of its great works and the remains of its dutiful worshippers and inhabitants; the ashes of the faithful who had borne witness to it all. All around the bare feet of the Chronicler, one of the very first of the fiends, the ashes danced and moved, drawn by some unseen pull back to their original places as the city slowly rebuilt itself bit by bit. And all around the fiend the ashes whispered their torment at what had been and what was to come.
The Baernaloth opened a book and placed it upon the broken stones of what had once been a massive flying buttress to the great cathedral at the center of the city. He drew forth a pen and jabbed it into his own flesh to coat it with a drop of his blood, and there he sat and wrote in the ragged volume a litany of what he observed, of what he felt, and all that he saw come to pass.
“Would you wish to stop it if you could?” The Baern spoke into the air to the voices that surrounded him, all of them whispering forth from the frozen lips of the statues that populated the ruins around him.
“Would you wish to end your torment and stop it all from happening once again?” The Chronicler asked to the frozen and incinerated remains of a Solar and the Nycaloth that stood next to it. “You have seen what is to come, but you do not know the meaning of it all. You don’t quite grasp the meaning of the pain, the hollow darkness of that past and this future. No, you fumble at the meaning lurking there in that last moment before death that your spirits cling to, bound as you are to this place.”
“It comes softly now, uncertain of the world it enters and that it left behind. And, like you my children, it too is bound to destiny and fate just as you are bound to this place. And you will see it happen again as will I. But for now, whisper your warning of it all and I shall listen to you as I have since you came to this place.” Sarkithel said as a whisper that rose just above the chorus of those that stirred the ashes and the air around him.
“The first rumblings of that which you have witnessed, that which holds you now, and that which you whisper of impotently in warning…” The Baernaloth whispered as it looked up into the black and starless void of Gehenna. “These are but the beginnings of birth pangs…”
****
Florian stood next to Toras and whispered a prayer to Tempus while the fighter’s arm slowly stopped dripping a spray of crimson blood and began the process of re-stitching itself. Skalliska was averting her snout from the foul-smelling fumes the ‘loth bodies were emitting as they dissolved, and Fyrehowl was glancing nervously down the path.
“Have I taught you all nothing?!” Clueless whispered harshly at his companions as he looked between them and the dead yugoloth patrol. “Sneaking! It’s not that hard!
Clueless sighed, looked at the bodies once more and whispered again with exasperation, “I leave you alone for *five* *minutes*...!”
Toras rolled his eyes at the bladesinger and deliberately ignored Nisha’s constant questioning about his arm. Tristol had to chuckle however at the tiefling’s banter.
“No, really, what’d it feel like to have it hanging off like that? Did it kinda swing at all? Did you think it might fall off at any point? Do you like pickled eggs?” Nisha asked as she tentatively poked his bloody but healing arm.
“…pickled eggs? What does that have to do with anything?” Toras asked, now more confused than in pain as Florian finished his spell.
“Absolutely nothing. Why? Since when do I make sense?” Nisha said with a grin.
Fyrehowl was still looking tense and worried as Clueless was making motions off towards the woods.
“Here, let me show you how it’s done. We leave the fiend bodies and sneak off into the woods before they send out more to track us down and find us right where they probably expect us to be. Quickly.” The bladesinger said.
The ground suddenly shuddered and they all paused and looked, first at the ground and then around them for the source of the tremor. Fyrehowl had redrawn her blade but had otherwise said nothing.
“Umm… what the hell was that?” Skalliska asked.
“The swamp rats need to go on diets?” Nisha mused with a worried look.
“Fyrehowl, do they have dragons or anything big enough to do that here on this layer?” Clueless asked as another tremor hit.
Fyrehowl looked past her group and took a deep breath. “No, but there’s something I should have already told you about this layer before now. I know what it is that we, the guardinals, have kept locked away on Belarian, it…”
“I was wondering when Rubicon would send someone here looking for me. You aren’t what I expected, but regardless, what is being done here is something that must be done. It’s not something for you to stop, not now, not yet.”
Heads snapped around to glance into the trees to the south of the road where a tall, silver furred lupinal stood calm and composed with his hands clasped in front of him. He nodded to Fyrehowl as he softly stepped onto the road with an unearthly level of grace that made him seem to flow rather than step the space between the wood and the road.
Fyrehowl alone saw that his eyes were glazed over, much like the eyes of Factol Rhys were always. There would be only one end here on the road and the rogue lupinal had already decided what it was to be.
“We…” Fyrehowl said as an earthshaking roar from the west drowned her voice out.
All of them there except Tarnsilver looked to the west where the hills rose above the forest, and all of them stood transfixed in awe as they watched the first titanic reptilian head rise above the forest and above the hills as well. A second ear-bruising roar rocked the treetops with its force from miles distant as another head rose above the landscape, soon to be joined by a half-dozen more. Dragons could have perched upon the ridges over the beast’s eyes and giants could have used its scales as tower shields; the beast was more massive than anything any of them had ever seen.
Several of them stumbled with numb shock as they took in the sheer size of the Mother of Serpents. The beast dwarfed any preconception they might possibly have prepared for themselves; even Fyrehowl who had been told of the beast stood in astonishment. Florian whispered a prayer and Clueless’s wings glowed with an orange and yellow sheen of faerie fire. Skalliska’s eyes widened in shock and Toras rose to his feet with uncertainty as Tristol tried in vain to grasp at the existence of such a creature.
Behind them all, as calm and certain as ever, stood the fallen lupinal in a loose and ready combat stance. He spoke but briefly before acting, “Rubicon’s vigil and our shame. That is why I cannot allow you to leave here.”
