PILLARS OF THE WORLD
Round 3, Match 1: Rodrigo Istalindir vs. Piratecat
It takes some skill to settle into a sand dune while picking fish bones from your beard, but I'd had plenty of practice.
I did this every day. It was both a joy and a tradition, like the way I'd greet the boy who brought me food. "Hey ho, Timothy! Have you shaken the pillars of the world today?" Or how I'd sing to the sea while I cooked my fish. Cooking is a moment of communion when you honor the fish's life. For instance, hold a fish in your hand and you can tell how well it has eaten. Was it mostly predator or prey? Sniff the scent of the thing and you'll know that elusive smell of deep water and flashing silver. Press your thumb against the roughness of its scales, and you feel the faint scars where it barely escaped a predator long in the past. For a long time now I'd felt that I owed the ocean a debt. I ate fish anyway. They tended to be delicious. Then I'd lie in the sun and groom my beard, appreciating the fish and my memories with every tiny bone I'd pick out by touch.
I couldn't do it by sight. My eyes faded not long after I came here to the shore. I didn't much miss them. Very few people were still alive who remembered when I could see.
I no longer knew exactly what I looked like. I knew the sun had baked my skin mahogany-dark. I knew I was wrinkled from a lifetime of tropical days. My beard was tangled, my eyes faded, and I still had scars. Plenty of scars. This body has gone through wars. Timothy asked me sometimes, "Master, where did you get the scars?" I'd laugh and tell him a fabricated story that he always believed to be completely true. Timothy thought I could kill dragons and chain gods. He thought I sang away the ocean storms, flipped the mountains to spike down the land, and chanted away the seabirds that hang in the wind. Then he'd leave to walk back down to the village, and I'd flop in a dune with old dry seaweed for a pillow and take a well-deserved nap. I missed my old pillow, but this was the kind of life I'd secretly dreamed of.
Now I heard his hesitant footsteps on the path through the dunes. Odd timing. I called out, as I do. "Hey ho, Timothy, have you shaken the pillars of the world today?"
His answer was the same. "Not yet, master. After lunch." It always made me laugh. He drew closer. "Master, I am sorry to bother you, but it is a day of odd omens. I am followed by a stray cat. The seabirds scream. Fishing is poor, and the tide is lower once again, as it has been now for a week. My father says that you are crazy but clever and that you may know why. He bids me to bring you fresh water and ask you for wisdom."
I laughed. "You overpay. But I'll gladly tell you anyways. This is nothing to concern yourself about. The moons that dance above us always sing to the Queen of the Seas. Chained to the bottom of the ocean, she certainly doesn't have much else to listen to. When she likes their song, the seas swell and the tides flood forth. When she dislikes it, the waters recede and draw back for a time. She must truly dislike the harmony she hears today." I smiled, pleased with the explanation, when a voice - not Timothy's, oh so different than Timothy's - hissed an interruption.
"Innnncorrrect. Lazy and ignorant. I have hunted a full week to find you, and that is long indeed for the likes of me. All to hear you talking blather to an unschooled boy? Appalling. You have gotten old."
It's embarrassing to say that I was caught off guard, but it was true. My hearing was very good, and I never heard anyone but Timothy approach. I knew the voice, though.
Timothy spoke. "Master," he said, choosing each word deliberately like it was the one remaining truth in a world suddenly composed of lies, "why did my new cat just speak?"
The voice again. "I am not yours, boy, and I wish I was not his. Nor am I a cat. I am all things. You have served your purpose by leading me - oh so slowly! May your hut be filled by stinging wasps for a year to come! - to the one I sought. Mallister, you have hidden here long enough. Your bonds fail and the world dies. Time to go back to work." It paused. "And let me say, you have really let yourself go."
I could imagine Timothy gaping. I heard him turn to the cat, his voice rising as he spoke, a trill of panic and disbelief. "Wait, what? No. Mallister the Pilgrim is a myth. He's the Archmagi of the Shifting Wind from three ages past. He's the Adventurer, the Kingmaker, the Weaver of Spells. It's just a story. He's not actually real!" When Timothy spoke, darned you couldn't hear him capitalizing all those titles. I'd have to ask him some day how he did that. It was a nice herald's trick.
"Timothy," I said gently, "you do know that you're explaining that to a talking cat, right?"
The boy fell silent.
"And it's not really a cat. It's my familiar, and it's a predator. It just prefers that shape because it likes to stalk its prey. Hello, Slink."
Every word dripped with disdain. "Mallister, pleasantries bore me. You are called. By Ogilvey's hymn, by Challa's knife, by Tatiana's sword, you are called. The elements wake, the oceans roar out, the world needs you. So get off your bony ass and let's get moving." It paused, its tone changing. "Hey, is that fish in your beard?"
I grabbed my driftwood stick and turned to Timothy. I put my hand on his shoulder. I didn't usually touch people. It changes them. "My boy, I am apparently needed to go out and shake the pillars of the world myself. Look up at my shack. What do you see?"
His voice was confused. "Your shack, master. Old wood, white from the sun. Windows with no glass. Sand and weed and stone."
I flexed, and opened the doorways. I hadn't done it since before Timothy's grandparents had been born. "What do you see now?"
His voice broke. "Light! Oh, and.. and beauty. Endless spaces. Distance. Singing." His voice trailed away, and I kneeled down in front of him.
"Look at me," I commanded. "I love this village, but there is more to the world than this. Every single one of those stories I told you was true. Every single one. I'm going to leave now, and once I do only you will ever remember that I was here." And as I said it, it was so, for this was my will. I disbanded Slink's earlier curse as I did. "You may want to marry a girl, to settle down, to fish and love and tell epic stories and sleep in the sun. Goodness knows that's what I'd do. But you also may want something more. So I give you a terrible gift. When you think you are ready, return here and open the door. More than one door will open. If you choose, Timothy, you can go out and shake the world."
I kissed the top of his head, a benediction, and stood up. "I hope that day comes. If it does, and I still live, I will train you." Then I stood and marched arthritically towards my shack. Slink followed beside me.
"Pathetic," Slink said. "Maudlin. If he comes through the door, and I am there and you are not, then I shall eat him."
"Just like old times," I said, and we were gone.
-- o --
My tower came alive as I walked through it, and I rebuilt my body from magic and flesh. The driftwood cane grew and became one with the dawn staff. My homespun robe spun and shifted and became the garb of an archmagi. My beard shrank and my skin tightened. A hundred new eyes flew towards me and I selected two to rebuild my sight. The rest I spun into my robes with a gesture. They hid within the pattern of the fabric, blinking and twisting before they closed their eyes. Sight would be useful for the task to come.
"You're looking more like an Archmagi of the Shifting Wind," mocked Slink from the floor beside me. He mimicked Timothy perfectly. My idle kick sunk deeply into his backside and stayed there, stuck in the malleable flesh, and we both laughed.
"Why did I bind myself to you again?" I asked.
"I was incredibly cute," Slink answered. "I was whatever you needed me to be. I still am. Why did you leave me for so long?"
I paused, then knelt down. The dent I'd put in the cat's side was gone. "Slink, the four of us - Ogilvey, Challa, Tatiana and myself - we really did shake the world. We started with goblins and became the four most powerful mortals alive. We did things no one thought possible. Cities rose and fell at our bidding. I can rip apart mountains. Gods would run from Tatiana's anger. And you know what? That gets really tiring. Sometimes you need to sit back and get perspective. You need to appreciate what you've won. For me, that meant disappearing for a time, even from the things I loved." I scratched his head, and he ripped a second head out of his body to get even more attention. "Sorry, buddy."
Slink sniffed from both heads as I stood up. "Not forgiven." But his body twisted and he came with me anyway.
I stood in the heart of my tower and I looked upon the world. I saw through the eye of magic; wherever a tendril of enchantment squirmed across flesh or stone, my consciousness went with it. And yes, the sea was going away. Perhaps some magic was going with it, leaving me plenty of blind spots. There was a hole in the ocean and the water was being swallowed by the stone. That was bad. And our likely suspects?
I looked. Imix was still bound in a boiling pool, his endless fires extinguished deep beneath the volcano where we'd staked him. Yan-C-Bin's prison was an airless chamber in solid rock, and I couldn't sense the evil prince of air; he was dead or gone. Yes, the stone lord Ogrémoch was still suspended in water, pinned beneath the mountain we used to trap him, and Olhydra... I couldn't sense her within the underwater volcanic pyre. Dead or escaped, and I thought I knew which. I'd never felt quite right about her fate, really; I liked her style but no one could trust her. Olhydra was as changeable as a stormy sea, and no mortal can detect an elemental prince's lies. She'd been imprisoned for hundreds of years in raw fire. Now she was free, and certainly vengeful. I knew from hard experience that I could not stop her myself, not even in my prime with all my power behind me, and I knew if she succeeded in stealing back her water then all the world's oceans would be left a desert.
Time to find the others. I opened a door and stepped through.
-- o --
The Leaning was what we called it. When I first walked into the decaying shanty all those years ago it was named "The Inn of the Ugly Dog." It was a most appropriate name; the owner's dog was even uglier than you'd expect, and we still have the beast stuffed in a back room somewhere. After the bartender was killed by doppelgangers the tavern changed hands, got burned down by our foes, changed hands again, got dragged into the Astral for a week or two, got hauled back by Ogilvey and some of his underpriests, and finally Challa bought it with the money she stole from an efreeti Caliph in the City of Brass. She named it The Leaning because it didn't have a straight board in the place, and it officially became ours. We strengthened the building with spells and prayers over the years. Nowadays it lived in shadow and appeared wherever we wanted it.
I stood on a wooded path before the inn, cloaked in glamour with Slink at my side, and the cawing hurt my ears. Thousands of huge black raptors covered the building, beating at the walls, clawing at the roof, scratching at the door. Feathered assassins. They weren't likely to break the seals unless someone was stupid enough to open a door or window, but it must have been loud inside.
I could help. I rolled back my eyes and saw the weave of magic. Thousands of lines of force, singing to me as they crossed and tangled in no discernable pattern. I exerted my will. Magical lines straightened, twisted, combined, and I quickly wove a repulsion spell that covered the building like a rising mist. I anchored the spell in a glowing rune of power upon my robe, raised the dawn staff, and plucked the final strand of power that would make my spell complete.
My glamour vanished, and I stood uncloaked before Yan-C-Bin's spies.
"Begone!" I said, and my voice resounded, and the murmuration of their wings was a thunder as they fled that place with all their speed. Black wings faded into white and shimmering cloud above me. They would tell the archomental that I had returned, but I didn't mind. He'd find out soon enough anyway.
The door to The Leaning cracked open, yellow light streaming out into the shadow. I felt a kiss on my cheek. "Hello, Mallister," said Challa from the darkness beside me. Her elven eyes sparkled. "It's been far too long." I wrapped her in my arms, then held her out to look at her. Her smile was still dazzling. "You haven't aged a day," I said. "Now give me back my purse." She reluctantly complied. "And my focus." Challa sighed. "And my staff, and my wand, and my familiar." The elf grinned and did so. This, too, was a tradition.
"Impudence!" hissed Slink as he reemerged from whatever shadow Challa had hidden him in. "You will pay for that!" His cat form split in two and his hideous mouth sprouted fangs. He and Challa never particularly got along, and Slink had more dignity than he probably needed.
"Shush," I told him, and then turned back to Challa. "How are things?"
"Bad," she said. My, I loved the lilt of her voice. "You're the last to arrive. We sent Slink to find you after none of the rest of us could track you down. Thanks for dispersing the feathered assassins. We were at a disadvantage from within." I waved it away.
"Come inside," she said, and stepped through shadow. Slink and I stood alone. So we strolled up the path and through the open door.
-- o --
"It wasn't actually me you've been hearing about," I explained through a full mouth of stew. "I set up any number of simulacrums across the continent. They all think they're me. It's been really handy except when they duel each other. What about you, Ogilvey?"
Ogilvey was leaning back in his chair, drink balanced on his ample stomach. "Technically it's Saint Ogilvey now." He looked a little embarrassed. "I found out when I became disincarnate and suddenly coexisted anywhere there was a shrine to me. I can see everything near any of my worshippers. I even have my own cult of warrior priests." He looked proud, and grinned over at Tatiana. "Do
you have a cult of warrior priests?"
Tatiana rolled her eyes. "Yes," she said.
"Oh." Ogilvey looked momentarily flustered, then recovered. "Still, I've got to say it's pretty handy. Our lord lives in me and through me. Took a while to get used to. The best part is hearing really selfish prayers, then getting to manifest and tell them to stop being jackasses. Saint Ogilvey is getting a reputation as a protector of those who help themselves. You should have seen the look on the Lord Bishop's face when I manifested at High Mass to lecture him on greed." We all laughed.
"I never liked that guy. Too pompous." Challa gestured with her beer. "Being one with the living shadow is mostly boring, so I've been setting up dungeons. I find 'em or build 'em, I stock 'em with treasures and monsters, I start rumors, and then in disguise I help train a new generation of heroes to go out and conquer them. It's ridiculous amounts of fun. I've made a lot of friends. You should see some of my latest traps."
"Don't many of the so-called heroes die?" Ogilvey raised his eyebrows.
"Not the talented ones." Challa shrugged. "No guts, no glory."
Tatiana stretched with the sound of a hundred little clanks. She didn't seem to have particularly aged either, but her voice had gotten hoarser. Her heavy armor and barbed weaponry glinted in the lamplight, and I could smell the weapon oil. "Challa lives inside the shadows and reshapes the world. Ogilvey is well on his way to becoming a demigod. Mallister has apparently retired to a beach. And me? Nowadays I'm known as the Queen of Razors. I went off to carve out civilization on a new continent. I must have fought a thousand battles since the last time I saw you, and when I'm not fighting I'm lending my skill to my generals and my armies. It's..." She shrugged. "It's enough."
I looked at her. "You miss us."
Tatiana brushed stringy black hair from her face and once again rolled her eyes. "Of course I do. I love who we are when we're together. Or who we were. Things were simpler back when we were fighting ogres in the Southdown mines, don't you think? And remember our first otyugh?"
We all smiled. Tatiana continued. "There we were in the sewers of Lost Nathal, waiting for this hideous monster to make its big evil monologue, and in a thundering voice it announces..."
Challa cut in, doing a credible imitation of the otyugh. "'I like poo! Do YOU have any poo?'"
"Such an anticlimax," I said, "Although I seem to remember getting ripped in half by the damn thing when it was looking for some. Ogilvey saved my life."
"Of course I did," said the cleric.
"See?" said Challa. "I told you at the time. You should have offered it poo."
"Wasn't going to happen. I had a reputation to maintain."
We laughed again, then fell silent.
"The ocean," said Tatiana.
"Right," I said, and we got down to business.
I told them what I'd learned. Imix - crazy, murderous fire lord Imix - was still captured. So was the evil but methodical earth lord Ogrémoch. Yan-C-Bin, lord of Air, couldn't be found but he had his feathered assassins active, and Olhydra was nowhere to be seen. She'd be behind this. She was stealing back her ocean, so she'd escaped our prison.
The problem was that she was stronger than we were, at least in her own element. We'd beaten each of the archomentals through trickery more than raw strength. We were going to need an ally. The debate lasted for hours as we went back and forth about our options. The fire burned low and The Leaning settled around us with familiar creaks. Finally we voted. Three to one, with Tatiana opposed but willing to give it a try, and we bunked down for a few hours sleep before tomorrow's adventure. It was going to be interesting.
"Mallister," murmured Slink as we climbed into bed. He was in his traditional cat form. "How could not one, but two of the elemental lords break your bindings without you knowing it?"
"I don't know," I said. "It should have been impossible. They may have had help. We'll find out."
"I do not like this," said Slink. "It feels like a trap."
"It does indeed," I said. "That's why we're bringing a trump card of our own." Slink formed himself into my favorite pillow. I slept well.
-- o --
Ogilvey's voice shook the raw stone. I had ripped apart the mountain that marked this spot, Challa had disarmed the myriad traps we had left in ephemeral darkness, and Tatiana's spirit guards stood aside at her order. Now Ogilvey spoke the final words. "Arise! We call and bind you. By ancient pact and the right of conquest and the power of earth and stone, you are ours to command. ARISE!"
The earth shook as the evil lord of Earth
pulled himself from his grave. Mist rose from him, water dripped off him, boulders fell from his shoulders. I had forgotten how tall he was, how
solid. Stand next to Ogrémoch and you feel like you are a wisp of steam, a fragile leaf to be ripped in two. His presence draws the gaze. He is more real than the ground you stand on, and he was just the tiniest bit perturbed.
"MORTALS!"
"No," Tatiana said plainly. "Not in a long time."
"Long story short," said Challa and she pulled back her long red hair. She looked up at the stone archomental, being sure to keep eye contact. That's tough when the other person's eyes are made of stone. "We bound you and put you here, but only because Olhydra betrayed you. She's stealing the oceans. We can defeat her, but it'll be much easier if you assist. Do so and you will be freed from your eternal prison of water and darkness. We'll banish you, sure, but you'll live. Turn on us and you die. Deal?"
The stone giant stood motionless for minutes, the water from its prison dripping down its legs. A breeze blew in our faces and carried the musty smell of endless caves. It was impossibly large.
"AGREED."
"Challa?" asked Tatiana. "Transportation?"
"Not through shadow," she said. "Our destination is in the dawn. I can't take us until tonight."
"Then it's Mallister," said Ogilvey, and he was right. Opening doors was much more difficult with our new ally, but no one is better than I am at what I do. The dawn staff hit the ground three times. The Way opened, and we were gone.
Seconds later we stood on balconies of conjured force and
looked down at the end of the world. The ocean fled before us. Ogilvey chanted, and chanted again, and the five of us plunged down past the rift and into the watery dark. We followed the ancient trails of power that we ourselves had used back when we first bound Olhydra. It took hours. The sea changed around us from green to a pure black, and hideous predators nosed past to see if we were edible. We were not. After a time even the predators disappeared. Throughout the entire trip Ogrémoch said nothing. He crouched in his bubble of solid air and watched the water pass. Rocky fingers grazed the edge of the bubble, just barely trailing through the water as we dove deeper and deeper. If he was angry he didn't show it. He said nothing. We soon pretended he wasn't there.
As we sank, the rest of us spoke. Even Slink. It was nothing epic, just funny stories from the last hundred years. We laughed some, and once we cried when Challa told us about a human man who had loved her until he discovered who she truly was. Slink told us how he had started hiding in Challa's dungeons disguised as a treasure chest, and then how he'd chase around young adventurers who tried to open him. Some of them he'd try to kill, particularly Challa's favorites. The thief gave him a dirty look for that. Ogilvey spoke about what it had cost him to close a portal to Hell. Tatiana told jokes. I spoke about sand dunes and fish.
And then we were there.
-- o --
More prayers, more spells. We floated before the smoking volcanic vent that trapped Olhydra in an eternity of fiery pain. I said a silent prayer of forgiveness for that. Olhydra had come to me once at the start of our conflict, cloaked in the shape of a mermaid and offering a bargain. I knew it was false, but the lies of an archomental are undetectable. We dallied for a bit, and she tried to betray me, but my counterspells protected my true soul and she gained no power over me. Or did she? I still thought on her fondly, didn't I? There was no way to tell if that was enchantment or misplaced affection. But now Ogilvey and I were quelling the volvanic vents, drawing apart the walls of fire to confirm that Olhydra had truly fled. Challa and Tatiana had their weapons out, Ogremoch stood ready to smite the watery Queen if she was there...
And by the Five Gods, she was.
I'd never seen her true form. She always cloaked herself as a mermaid or a living wave.
Now I knew why. Her actual form was horrible, somewhere between a lacedon and a kapoacinth, jutting teeth and calcified skin and staring eyes. I started to regret my dalliance all those years ago. Olhydra was a creature of pride, and she would never have shown it to me if she were alive. That didn't turn out to be a problem. She was very, very dead. She lay on seaweed and stared sightlessly at the darkness.
We turned to one another. "Dead? How? Then who?"
Ogrémoch's laughter was like an avalanche of tombstones, slow and heavy and final. All four of us turned to stare at him. Ogilvey had the presence of mind to dispel the protective sphere from around the archomental. The inrushing water and crushing pressure did not affect him in the least. The cleric tried to exert his summoner's control. It failed.
"YOU KILLED HER, HEROES. THE CONSTANT FIRE BURNED HER AWAY. WHEN SHE WAS DEAD, ANY ELEMENTAL TOUCHING THE ENDLESS SEA COULD TRY TO SEIZE HER POWER." He paused to form his near-immobile face into the dry rictus of a smile. "AND WHERE WAS I? IMPRISONED BY YOU IN A BUBBLE OF ELEMENTAL WATER, SURROUNDED BY EARTH AND SUSPENDED IN SEA. I SIMPLY STOLE HER MIGHT. WITH MY NEW STRENGTH I SOUGHT OUT YAN-C-BIN, BETRAYER, TRAPPED IN SOLID STONE. I SNUFFED HIM OUT AND TOOK HIS POWER IN TURN. IMIX WILL BE NEXT. BUT EVEN WITH STONE AND AIR AND WATER I COULD NOT FREE MYSELF."
Decades of adventuring experience teaches you to ignore the monologues, so we had not been idle. Ogilvey and I were casting as if our lives depended on it, which they did, and Tatiana was magically warded and ready for war. As expected, Challa was nowhere to be seen. Slink mrowled beside me, changed into some sort of fish, and disappeared from my sight.
Ogrémoch bowed with great difficulty from the waist. "SO I THANK YOU. I WILL REWARD EACH OF YOU WITH THE DEATH OF YOUR WORLD." We believed him.
The battle was joined.
Ogrémoch gestured and our protective bubbles of air and force were ripped from us, but Ogilvey had anticipated that and we were still protected. The cleric called down a powerful curse that should have boiled away the archomental's health, but no one was surprised when it didn't work. Tatiana swam close, only to be smashed by a huge fist. Ogrémoch grabbed her then, squeezing tightly, but Tatiana's spiked armor and jutting blades made this more painful than expected. She said a command word and her shield and armor sprouted a hundred razor-sharp spikes that pierced the archomental's hand. Then Challa slid out of the shadows behind him. Her slim dagger was forged from a fallen angel's hatred, and the tiny blade still carved huge chunks from the back of Ogrémoch's neck. "Sneak attack!" she screamed. She so loved doing that.
He spun, catching her with a backhand that knocked her towards a suddenly materializing whirlpool. Slink was there first, though, changing shape to barely catch Challa's leg with his claws and help anchor her in place. By now I was casting, beams of destructive force springing from my hand and being absorbed harmlessly by the archomental's chest. I'd have to try something different. Absorbing two other elements seemed to have bolstered all of his defenses.
The King of sea and sky and stone gestured again. He'd clearly learned something from Tatiana because razor-sharp spikes of volcanic rock jabbed upwards from the sea floor. My blood mixed with water. I then felt the air in my lungs turn to solid stone, but Ogilvey turned and counterspelled away the deadly curse before I could entirely fall unconscious. Tatiana had fought her way out of the monster's grip by now and was hacking at his chest, but Challa had been stomped before she'd been able to slip back into shadow. Her unconscious body twitched, shards of bones showing through broken skin in at least a dozen places. Ogilvey swam towards her. Slink was back in dual cat form now, grinding on one of the archomental's feet with his central mouth. It didn't do much, but it surely was brave. He was in position if I needed to channel spells.
I was in pain and I needed an edge. If one solid hit could drop Challa, Ogrémoch was far too powerful for us. Then I realized that I was thinking like the man I'd become, not the wizard I was. I was thinking like a old blind man. I'd regained my eyes. I wasn't blind any more.
I opened my eyes. All of them. My garments came alive with vision, and I saw everything.
I saw how the shadows swirled around Challa to keep her safe, and how if she fell here she would be reborn in another shadow at another time. I saw the enchantments - so many enchantments! - that pervaded Tatiana's weapons. One in particular, a small dagger that she'd probably forgotten she had, shone brightly in the darkness. I saw the spirits that surrounded Ogilvey, that kept him safe and anchored, and I saw his endless faith. I envied him a bit. I saw the bond between Slink and myself.
Mostly, though, I saw Ogrémoch. Though my many eyes I could see that he held onto all of this power by only the barest of margins. It would rip him apart if we knew where and how to push. He was a being of stone, not air or water, and his command was more limited than I'd feared. Elementals hated each other for a reason.
I shouted to my friend. "Tatiana, the knife of Ixen! It's in your right boot. Use it!"
She'd just taken a terrible blow from the archomental's fist. Her left arm was hanging useless, but her right hand still held an ancient sword that she'd buried in Ogrémoch's chest. She stared at me from across the black thick water. "Seriously?" she asked. But she trusted me, so instead of taking another attack with the Onyx Blade she drew the tiny little knife. I imagine she rolled her eyes. She pulled back her hand to strike...
...and Ogrémoch slammed her into the sea floor, planted one foot on her, and ground down. I heard bones snap. I couldn't see her in the sudden watery explosion of blood.
The knife flew loose. Ogilvey muttered something about always needing to be on healing duty, and Ogrémoch turned his head to stare at me.
"YOU'RE NEXT," he said, and started to move.
That's when Challa reappeared, still hurt but healed enough to fight. She snatched up the knife of Ixen and yelled, "Hey Ogrémoch? SNEAK ATTACK!" The knife blade buried itself in the back on Ogrémoch's stony knee. That's when I cast. Using Slink as the focus, I called forth the fire of the volcano we were standing upon. I'd banked its fires and fumes when we approached, but now the full might was channelled through my familiar, right next to an old knife that stripped away elemental protections. All elemental protections. It was like being made of paper and being dunked in lava.
Carrying the weight of my focused spell, Slink's cat form
opened its toothed maw and bit down. Four elements vied for supremacy inside Ogrémoch, all while his control was magically suppressed.
The results were spectacular.
The influx of fire disrupted Ogrémoch's careful control and he literally ripped apart. We were spun outwards and away, flung by lava and currents and bubbles and shattering stone. An earthquake shook the seas. It was another half an hour, just before the spells ran out, before we all found ourselves again. Ogilvey's miracles fixed shattered bone and scoured lungs and I watched with my many eyes as the elemental forces dispersed to their new hosts, wherever they may be.
The seas slowly settled around us. And by the Five Gods, we had shaken the pillars of the world. Timothy would probably be proud.
-- o --
Challa stepped us directly from the blackness of the ocean floor into The Leaning. We dripped on the crooked floorboards, dropped our gear, and fell into our favorite chairs. No one said anything for a time.
"That," slowly announced Tatiana, "was fun."
I blinked. "Not the almost dying part?"
"Nope. But the saving the world part. The going on an adventure part. The being with friends part. What with all my armies and exploration, I've missed this."
"Me too," said Ogilvey. "Saint or not, it's been too long."
Challa pulled an inkpot out of shadow and spun a quill pen in her fingers. "I think I'm going to write up the epic saga. At least the good parts." She caught my eye and winked. I winked back.
Slink curled up on my foot, and the four of us sat there by the fire and looked at one another. And smiled.
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