'Did you miss me? Now, so I won't be forgotten...'
"One man's death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." -Josef Stalin responding to Churchill at the Potsdam conference
****
6 Hours before the slide:
Shylara the Manged looked out across the flooded lowlands of Belarian and then back to the face of the Ebon. “I have come my love, just as you requested. Anthraxus has joined his forces at Center and marches now on Khin-Oin. The two armies will clash in perhaps a few hours from now. Soon the Oinoloth will wonder where you are.”
“No. No he won’t. The fool has more things to worry about, and all of the troops I promised him have been provided, and they will fight loyally to him. For now at least.” The archfiend smiled knowingly at his protégé. “That changes in six hours.”
“Explain my lord, for while I’ve been privy to portions of your plans, you’ve never told me the full scope of it; you’ve reserved that for your two compatriots…”The Manged sneered at the mention of those two and Vorkannis chuckled.
“Jealousy becomes you darling. Trust me and look around you. What do you see?” He said.
She looked out over the landscape and frowned, “Misguided righteousness that begets weakness. That is what I see. A barren land that the guardinals have used as a prison for what they could not kill. After all, what troubles them not and troubles the rest of the planes not is not a trouble at all. They lock their problems away and hope they cease to exist if the multiverse forgets about them. That is what I see.”
“Then we are in agreement. Consider this then: what better place to hide the marshalling site of evil than under the very noses of the purest of the pure. A prison and hiding place of their own making, too easily put to our use, and possession is 9/10 of the law…”
The Ebon smiled down at his apprentice as they both looked out over the plane surrounding them where neither of them should have rightfully stood. Neither should there have been the fortress there that rose above the swamp nearly a quarter of a mile across with spires that rose into the sky almost as far. None of it should have been there, but there it was and the guardinals of Rubicon were blissfully unaware of it all; warded by The Ebon’s spells, the entire citadel was shrouded from sight and the very nature of Belarian itself prevented divinations and the like. Evil sat within Elysium, unknowingly aided by the motives of the pure.
Thirty miles to the east stood the empty remnants of the smaller tower, a decoy that would suffice to convince Rubicon that all was over and quiet. It would convince them that all the blood that had been shed was all that would be. The fallen lupinal, Tarnsilver, who was now dead at the hands of Rubicon’s servitors, had been wholly unaware of the full scope of the fiendish involvement on the layer. He hadn’t known of the portal to Carceri that sat within the central courtyard of the other, much larger fortress to the west, framed by its three massive towers. He hadn’t been aware of that portal, ripped into the fabric of Belarian’s original wardings by the Overlord of Carceri himself, that now stood open and glowing a sickly reddish light up into the sky like a bleeding ulcerated wound. He hadn’t known of the sheer volume of traffic through that portal either, and neither would Rubicon till it was too late.
****
6 hours later:
They all awoke with a feeling of dread and nervousness, especially Fyrehowl and Tristol. While none of them could pin it down exactly as they rose from bed and wandered out into the hallway, they could sense that something was terribly amiss. All across Elysium it seemed for those minutes that the multiverse itself was holding its breath, but out of fear and dread rather than anticipation.
Nisha yawned as she got up from the floor where she’d been curled up with her bed’s mattress in the hallway. “… what’s everyone doing out here? If I was snoring I’m sorry, and if it’s about the bed, well, I just felt like it on a lark. But I just had the weirdest damn dream…”
Fyrehowl looked at Tristol, then Clueless, and then to the others as well. From a flicker of eye contact she knew the truth of the matter and said as much, “We all did…”
“We’ve seen him before in Garroth’s sensory stones, and heard his voice in the Mercane’s demiplane. He’s had his hand in all of this, but I don’t know what for.” Clueless said warily.
“Who were the two others with him?” Florian asked.
“We’ve seen the one in the red robes before in Garroth’s material too, he was the Keeper of the tower arcane in Gehenna. Pretty much the head of his sub-race of fiends.” Tristol replied.
“Not that he seemed to be calling the shots there…” Fyrehowl said.
“No, he wasn’t. The third one was the bitch back in Sigil who f*cked me over in the first place… you know the name, I won’t repeat it.” Clueless said bitterly.
“So what the hell do you think that meant? It was just to all of us it looks like. If a Yugoloth had sent dreams to anyone else this place would be jumping with every guardinal in sight.” Florian said.
“I don’t know, but it isn’t good. I think we should tell…” Fyrehowl paused as she felt something strange. For a brief moment it seemed as if the Cadence, the heartbeat of the planes themselves, had trembled and skipped a beat. A second later her head swam with nausea and she felt sick like a piece of herself had just been ripped away and violated. Tristol likewise paused and felt ill before Toras helped him regain his balance.
“Are you ok?” Skalliska said up to the lupinal.
“No. No I’m not. Something horrible just happened, or will happen soon. It feels like something’s missing. We have to go back to Rubicon and warn them that something terrible is about to occur.” Fyrehowl said in a panic as she dashed down the hallway and back to the portal linking to Belarian.
They all ran to the portal and arrived a minute later to find the pair of Avorals stationed by the swirling nimbus of light feeling sick themselves for reasons neither of them could explain either. With looks to one another of worry and concern, the group dove through the portal to Rubicon, or rather, what was left in the aftermath.
They arrived on the southern slope of the hill leading up to Rubicon with the air heavily laden with brimstone and a sharp, coppery scent. As the acrid smoke of burnt flesh drifted over them they realized that they were not within the fortress as the portal had originally led but standing below and looking up into a scene wrought in hell. The island was seemingly sliced in two down the center, with half of the fortress simply missing and the rest of it in devastated ruin littered with the corpses of its defenders.
“Oh powers above…” Fyrehowl said with a cracking voice.
Amid the craters and scorch marks of spells that dotted the fortress and its surroundings, the stones of the walls of Rubicon were glowing in the rising light of dawn. Glowing red with the rising sun, the walls were coated and awash in the still sticky blood of tens of thousands of guardinals who hung crippled, dead and dying, crucified upon the battlements of the fortress. Moans of despair, anguish, and immortal agony echoed across the ruins from where the defenders of Elysium had been left to suffer and die, surrounded by the corpses of those they would eventually join in oblivion there, nailed to the walls of Rubicon by the hands of Yugoloths.
Smoldering pits and outlines of bodies dotted the rubble, the bodies of fiends dissolving into nothingness. One of the towers of the cathedral-fortress still stood and crashed into its parapet was a dead slasrath, its manta-shaped body hanging limply over the ramparts to leave no doubt about who was responsible for the slaughter.
“Oh powers above…” Fyrehowl said as she fell to her knees and wept.
“Where’s the rest of the plane?” Tristol said as he too tried to choke back his emotions.
“What do you mea… sh*t… look at the bay, look for the mainland.” Clueless said as he looked past the blood soaked island and out beyond it to the bay where Oceanus ran red with the aftermath of the massacre. The layer of Belarian was gone, vanished, and only a pale grayish mist swirled above the tarnished and bloodied waters of the holy river where Elysium’s third layer had once been.
That said, one confusion still: "Those four battled furiously as below them, Fyrehowl, Florian and Toras were busy carving up the garrison of Nycaloths." I take it you meant Mezzoloths.
