Slowly, amidst the dripping blood and the faint, feeble, faltering cries of the fallen and falling, Sebastion's laughter faded to giggles, to a stifled chuckle, and finally to a painfully embarrassed silence.
Slowly, regaining his breath - and giving up hope of retrieving his dignity - the warrior stood, checked his untarnished armour and weapons, walked to the nearest of the fallen Hashrukkite clerics and kicked the corpse solidly for several minutes, swearing sulphurously beneath his breath.
* * *
Melisande lowered her hands slowly as the din of battle died away. Her breathing was ragged with horror. The scene under the dome finally reached her in its full gory, nightmarish, appalling violence: fleshtwisted monstrosities, diseased priests and many of her own allies lay twitching in spreading pools of blood and body fluids. Red flecks on her own gown were the only damage she herself had sustained, but she felt suddenly weak and ill as if also bleeding.
She gaped at Sebastion where he stood savagely kicking the hideous ragdoll of a Hashrukkite corpse, not really wanting to do the same thing (the sound of his foot was making her stomach heave), but relating to the sentiment.
Her ruse with the Carthagians temporarily forgotten, she turned to Wyshira, who was standing nearby struggling with some kind of black, barbed projectiles that had pierced her in several places. She took the priestess' arm and guided her gently. "Here, find somewhere... clean to sit and I'll help you with those. I have a potion if you want it. You've been busy healing everyone else."
Glancing up over her shoulder, she stared a moment at Gaethras. Something about him still reminded her of home and comfort in spite of everything--in spite of who and what he was, what he represented, and what she had become.
"Is that what you meant by 'rogue Manipulators'? Gaethras,
where is Professor Akarsis?" Her voice rang harshly in the sudden silence.
Gaethras was looking around the carnage with an expression somewhere between disgust and disbelief, but his head snapped back round to the azure sorceress as Melisande made her demand with piercing tone. The mage had fallen out of the ritualistic stance of a spellcaster, looking if anything more bedraggled and tired than before. With one hand he wiped away at the flecks of blood that had spattered across his features, while the armoured Toranite strode over to stand defensively by the Manipulator, face still hidden by the impassive visor of his heavy plate. The mage-captain, doubtless a simple military man who had benefited from natural arcane talent, walked over to stand by his superior as well, his breath ragged and a haunted look about him as he took in the extent to which his soldiers had been mangled by the massive girallons.
"What?" Gaethras said distractedly. "Oh, the rogue fleshtwisters. I don't know, it might be."
"Professor Akarsis? He isn't here... did you think he was? He sanctioned this expedition but he remains in the Guild fortress in Carthagia... you thought he was here? But I thought you had said you had been sent here to help us." His eyes narrowed with renewed suspicion.
Mel stood up and wiped her hands on her dress, trying to look casual. The only thing she could think of was to pretend she knew something Gaethras didn't (even though she had just admitted to knowing nothing of the rogue Manipulators). She sent him a long, suspicious, appraising look, eyes as narrow as his. Then she shrugged. "You really
don't know where he is, do you? Hm. Well."
It was good, at any rate, that Akarsis was not one of those who had defected. Not that she expected it of him anyway--these Hashrukkites were precisely the sort of thing he disdained (not to say 'frowned upon', since he rarely showed that much emotion in Mel's experience). But then again, she could hardly believe
any Toran-fearing Carthagian Manipulator would turn to--to
this. She stepped carefully away from the gaping, pock-ridden face of a dead priest of Hashrukk. Manipulators were valued citizens in Carthagia. They had prestige, comfort, and a wider range of freedom than most other people, with the exception of priests of Toran and warrior orders. Why would they choose this risky, hellish path of disease and corruption? What had been offered to them?
Though still rigid with tension, Mel shuddered to think of it. Hashrukk was supposed to be dead. What kind of evil, twisted power and luxury could he tempt Manipulators with, if he was near to non-existant? The question came to her again, as it had when she and her friends had defeated Cancer and burned the chapel of Gilamesh: was she simply ignorant in the past of the surreptitious doings of old gods, or were they really popping up more often and in more alarming ways all of a sudden?
She stopped in front of Ebri Zol. It was as if she were seeing the priestess for the first time. "I think we should talk... to the Master of this Tower as soon as we can. Shadow-man."
Meg'anna winced as the pain from the gash the girallion gave her. She leaned heavily on her spear, realizing that the battle was over for the moment. She had no idea what to do next. Her magics were nearly exhausted. None of the spells that she had left would work for wounds that had been recieved already. While the others were talking, Meg tore a strip of fabric from one of the fallen, and bound herself, hoping to staunch the flow of blood for a few moments while she figured out what was going to happen next.
Sebastion calmed himself and looked down at the carcass he had been mishandling, feeling more than a little ashamed.
To lose my mind to the magic was bad enough, he told himself in what he called his scolding voice - it sounded like his father's most of the time -
To lose it to anger and embaressment is just foolish. Straightening himself up, he turned to look over his companions, feeling the flush on his cheeks as he saw them treating wounds and the like. With little else to do at the time, he bent over the fallen figures and began to search for anything useful - as much to fill Mel's description of a mercenary and Gaethras' expectations as anything else. The prospect of scavanging from the dead still left him more than a little uneasy...
There was little for Sebastion to scavenge. Most of the Carthagian warriors had little more than basic equipment and a few coppers and silvers on them; the Hashrukkites had nothing of real worth, and obviously neither did the girallons. The remnants of the sages might have yielded up something of more use, but as he headed towards that area where the old men lay crumpled as if discarded dolls, he saw the critically injured Johan, propped up against a wall with the gash of a claw wound across his midriff; his breathing came weakly and raggedly as he tried to staunch the flow of blood with shredded parts of his robes.
* * *
Wyshira shook her head in response to Mel's offer of a healing potion. She allowed the sorceress to help her pull out the barbs, but used her own spell to heal herself. She briefly inspected the nasty wound she'd received from the teeth of the little shrieking demon, sickened by the thought of its filthy mouth touching her; but cleaning that one up would have to wait: there were many, many wounded for her to tend.
She made her way around the room, looking for survivors. Thank the Lady that all of her own crew were on their feet! She found Johanne leaning weakly against the wall, and set to work on cleaning and bandaging the gaping wound in his belly.
He barely heard her, tsking softly at the tone Melisande took with Gaethras.
I wish we need not play these games! she thought unhappily as she applied an herbal ointment to the sage's torn flesh. But she would play her role - mercenary healer - and stay out of the way.
On one knee beside Johanne's crumpled form, offering the little comfort he could as Wyshira actually did something useful, Sebastion tensed at Gaethras' tone before his mind ever had the chance to absorb the words. Once he had, he prepared.
The nice thing about a two-bladed sword, he realised, as his outstretched right hand clasped tightly on the handle, was that there was no real way to carry except in hand. He didn't appear ready, on his knee, off to one side, but the
Shortbowman's Stance was as familiar to him as any of the others his father had taught him, and from here Gaethras was in just about exactly the right place for the
Rising Shadow strike, should it be required.
If it was, things were about to get ugly. Keeping his senses alert, he could do little but hope that Mel's always quick tongue would prove to be quick enough.
* * *
Cazamir dropped down by the fallen form of Johan. He did not want to interfere with Wyshira’s work, but he needed to speak with him.
“Johan, I…” Cazamir struggled to find the right words. He respected this man. Johna had constantly elevated himself above the bickering of his fellows. And he lay here dying, partially because of Cazamir. “I have failed you. I am sorry.”
The accusations spoken by Gaethras reached Cazamir’s ears. He levelled his gaze at the manipulator for a moment, then turned back, muttering a comment only he, Wyshira, and possibly Johan would hear. “Someone had best shut him up before I decide to.”
* * *
"You don't either, do you..." Gaethras replied coldly to Melisande's words. "No idea. You genuinely don't have a clue as to what's going on, do you? I can't say I'm fully informed, but you're a glowing beacon of ignorance compared to me." The creak of leather and metal as the heavily armoured Toranite turned his visor to look at the sorceress seemed sinister, the gaze of the man hidden behind it impossible to discern as it was. The mage-captain looked tense, highly-strung, on edge. Gaethras just looked depressedly scornful.
"And yet you've got what looks like a shadowman with you," he continued, as nearby, Wyshira muttered spells of healing that salved much of the injuries she had suffered from the storm of barbs, and stopped the free flow of blood from the gash across Johanne's torso.
"You haven't failed me, lad," Johanne said groggily in reply to Cazamir, as Jarvis knelt down too to help the wizard sit up. "Just was expecting a ruin, not a battleground. We didn't make the right preparations for this," and he coughed in pain. "Not your fault, ours."
Before anything more could be said, the arcanofex moved, from being as still as a statue to a source of light and sound.
The whitelights beneath its head flared brightly, a fresh cough of energy from the construct's engine flaring within and sending crackles of electricity dancing along the crystal rods that protruded along the spine of its frame. It clomped over to the still-open iris, head turning to wash the survivors of the carnage in light.
"The Master will see you now. He has determined that the Carthagians may also enter the sanctum - he judges you no longer of threat to him. He wishes me to tell you all, that now you have seen the Hashrukkites, you must understand they are the real threat here. He wishes me to tell you all, that the Hashrukkites have plans for the tower. The Master understands the tower structure well, and what it might be used for."
"The Master wishes me to ask you to enter the sanctum with all haste to see him, because I have sensed within the structure the presence of a being of power, an outsider with a foreign source signature, other than the carnoloth daemons that the Hashrukkites brought with them. He believes this outsider is also a fiend..."
"A devil."
Next Time: Further Elucidation...
It's pretty nasty...
