Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141e
Ernie lands by Step and sees that the paladin will almost certainly live until the priestesses of Ell reach him. He flies back toward the others, healing himself as he goes with a charge from a healing wand. As he does this, he sees a group of a dozen enemy soldiers come rushing into the chamber, dressed in the varying uniforms of local Silent Quarter house guards. The front two of them go charging directly across the nearest blue energy line, and vanish. The others stop short, and start to go around.
Kibi notices their approach, and lays down a spike stones covering the entire area around the door. The advancing enemy soldiers come to a halt, many of them hopping in pain. Dranko summons Iglat, the small fire elemental from his mace, and it drops into the pit to plague Mokad. There is no indication of what happens to him.
Wanting to inflict some personal pain against his enemies, Grey Wolf casts an ironstorm around the enemy guards, who are already immobilized by the spike stones. Some try to flee, and drop from spike damage. Others stay put, and start to take damage from the whirling iron filings.
The other members of the Company stay just outside the two protective spheres still shielding Mokad, wondering what he’s doing down below the wall of stone. Then Aravis uses a wand to cast levitate on Grey Wolf, lifting him back up so that his body intersects both Spheres. Once again Grey Wolf tries mightily to stay conscious, but the pain is too great and he (and Edgar) both black out. Aravis makes sure he stays floating the in the air; Grey Wolf’s body hangs limply between the two World Spheres, Edghar on his chest.
And Aravis goes into the Maze again, right there in the very shadow of the World Spheres, hoping to see something that will spare the necessity of killing Grey Wolf. He sees something very curious. At this close range, he can see Grey Wolf’s body suspended at the center of the two planes. And around him, binding him to both worlds, is a latticework of crystal webbing. There’s a rainbow of color: white, orange, red, blue, yellow… and a purple and green color both the same shade as the Company’s two Eyes of Moirel. Realizing that the worst he can do is kill a man already destined to die, Aravis tries focusing the energy of the Maze through Ernie, intending to burn away the crystal webs and unbind Grey Wolf from the two planes.
Ernie feels a strange tugging at his soul, as if something is trying to suck the life-force out of him. He realizes that it cannot succeed unless he wills it, and thinking it’s probably some Black Circle magic, he doesn’t cooperate. But when he runs over to where Aravis has fallen to his knees, he sees that Aravis has entered the Maze. Ernie recalls Aravis’s report of how he thinks the Maze works, that its power has to be drawn and focused through living beings, and realizes that the pull on his being is probably Aravis. He shouts out that suspicion to the others, and then gives in to the pull.
He suddenly feels a great chill down to his very core, and in the Maze, Aravis is able to direct the raw elemental energy at the crystal webbing. Some of it flakes away, but it is not enough. Realizing it will take all the power he can get, he reaches out to the others in the room, trying to draw on their energy as well. He only spares Morningstar and Kibi, since they are the ones tasked with killing the suspended Grey Wolf before the cores of the World Spheres meet.
After Ernie’s shouted speculation about what’s happening, the others also voluntarily give up their life force. Morningstar shouts to the priestesses and soldiers that they should do the same. (The four priestesses all do; of Cobb’s men, some do, but about half are too frightened.) Aravis, deep in the Maze, suddenly finds a flood of power at his disposal. He channels it all at the crystal webbing, which starts to break away in large chunks. Those outside contributing to Aravis’s efforts feel life and warmth sucked out of them, stolen away to fuel the Maze. The Spheres get closer and closer, the cores practically touching now. Black energy is spilling across the floor in a solid wave beneath Aravis…
…and in the depths of the Crosser’s Maze, the webs break apart entirely; no longer is the bloodline of Moirel bound into the connection between Volpos and Abernia. Grey Wolf snaps awake, hovering in the air. For the first time in a long, long time, he feels no churning, no discomfort, no sensation of his body or soul connected to the planes. He flies up and away from the World Spheres, leaving Morningstar and Kibi (poised to kill him) confused about what to do now.
The cores of the Spheres meet, and their huge volumes ripple with black energy. The cores glow an impossibly luminous black. Around the room, two dozen forms start to take shape – black-armored warriors all, except for one. A huge soldier in familiar red plate starts to coalesce in the room, a huge sword in his hand.
The Spheres linger at perfect conjunction for a sliver of time, but there is no descendant of Moirel to keep them bound together, and they slide out of phase, each heading to where the other had started.
The black energy surges back away from the Spheres, back down into the pit where the two dozen Black Circle worshippers still stand. There is a moment of massive magical feedback, and with a sickening rending sound, the pit is suddenly filled with a damp red mist. Blood splatters against the underside of the force ceiling. One of the soldiers, whom Morningstar had told to keep an eye on the ritual pit, turns away in sudden disgust and vomits on the floor. The black-armored soldiers and their red-armored leader are suddenly frozen, and just as they fade away, the Company watches as their bodies are also torn silently apart. Much cheering follows.
Aravis stops channeling the life force of his comrades, and instead tries to see if he can draw Mokad into the Maze, as Solomea Pirenne had done to the Company months earlier. But the strain finally overwhelms him, and his mind is ejected from the Maze. He sits upright, and sees most of the Company standing near Mokad’s pit, still outside the anti-life shield. Morningstar has cast a mind fog down in the pit, and Kibi, once the minor globe had vanished, had shot another fireball down into it, but there’s no proof that Mokad is even still down there. Just in case, Grey Wolf walks over to the edge of the anti-life shell and calls down to Mokad: "No army for you today… so sorry!"
So Aravis, foggy from being in the Maze for so long and able to do little else, dismisses the passwall. Ordinarily this would harmlessly eject anyone inside the pit out of the opening… but Mokad has created a wall of stone sealing off most of the pit halfway up!
Wham! Mokad is ejected, but no so harmlessly, as his body slams into the wall of stone and then flips around it, before landing shakily on his feet at ground level. His body is bruised, and one of his legs looks broken. But still alive, and defiant to the last, Mokad immediately flies, up over the center of the room and toward the open ceiling high above.
The Company hits him with everything they have. Dranko fires off the searing light from his whip, but Mokad had cast spell resistance while down in the pit, and the spell fails to affect him. Aravis, still hasted, nails him with a sonic bolt that gets through the spell resistance, but the cone of cold that follows doesn’t seem to have any effect. Morningstar and Ernie cast searing darkness and searing light, but like Dranko’s they fail to penetrate the spell resistance. Grey Wolf casts a final lightning bolt, which singes Mokad but still doesn’t bring him down.
It comes down, then, to Kay, who is flying in pursuit. She just catches up to him before he can fly off into the twilight of Kallor.
Very quietly, she whipsers "This is for you, grandpa."
And then she takes a last desperate swing with her war hammer.
Crunch!
Mokad’s body plummets seventy feet, from the top of the shaft to the force-wall ceiling of the ritual pit below. There is a satisfying thud. Then the force-wall gives way, and Mokad’s body falls the remaining fifteen feet, into the inch of gore covering the floor.
Dranko climbs down the wall, and stands over Mokad’s lifeless body. A grim expression on his face, he takes out a piece of the Blood Gargoyle, carried around since the devastation of Ghant years before. Fulfilling a promise he has made to himself many times since, he opens Mokad’s mouth and stuffs the chunk of red stone inside.
The thrumming of the Spheres has stopped, as has all flow of black energy between the circles on the floor. The Company, exhausted, bleeding, and drained of life energy, looks around in wonder.
The Black Circle has failed, its devotees gruesomely slain, and its grand designs in ruins.
Victory!
…to be continued…