Shackled City Epic: "Vengeance" (story concluded)

[Lazybones]

Chapter 525

Night began to descend over Ember Vale once more, accompanied this time by folds of gray clouds that drifted in from the west, promising rain before the coming of the dawn. The sun had already disappeared behind that mass, casting the evening twilight into a deep gloom. As the light of the day faded, the outlines of the village’s buildings started to slip into vagueness, broken occasionally by the bright aura of a lantern or a burning brand set with deliberation to drive back the night. Several such lights haloed the restored gate, which looked durable despite its hasty construction earlier that same day. A few of the silhouettes that loomed within the encircling wall denied the apparent peacefulness of the scene, reminders of the attack that had come upon them a little more than half a day earlier.

Mole Calloran looked out over the valley from her vantage atop the battlements of the Traveler’s Rest. The evening breeze that was bringing the rainclouds closer flapped her cloak at her back, and splashed strands of unruly hair against her cheeks as she looked out over yet another scene of violence with tired eyes.

She was glad to be back here, in the thick of things. When she’d gotten Beorna’s sending a few hours earlier, alerting her that Cal was coming for her and Lok, she’d responded eagerly that she and the genasi would be ready and waiting. Convincing Lok had taken a bit more effort, but ultimately the warrior’s loyalty to his friends won out over his sense of responsibility to his people. Mole recognized Lok’s conflict, and on some level could understand it. A year ago, before she’d come to Cauldron, she might not have had that level of insight.

The trip to the urdunnir stronghold had had its moments, but overall, it had been an exercise in boredom. After their battle with the elemental earth monster, literally nothing of interest had occurred for days. Her suggestion to Lok that she could go exploring in the Underdark—just on the immediate outskirts of the urdunnir areas, of course—hadn’t really been serious, although for once she’d been able to get a strong reaction from him. She’d gone looking for the odd elder dwarf with his stones and his lessons, but hadn’t really been surprised when she failed to encounter him again. She had her suspicions about “Lord Liggett”, but she hadn’t shared them with anyone, for once keeping a secret close to her heart. It just seemed… appropriate. She’d continued to practice her new skills and hone her techniques, but without the threat of real, immediate danger, she quickly lost interest in such exercises.

She drew her rapier, and tossed it up in front of her, so that it fell-point down toward one of the merlons on the battlement. She sprang up and flipped forward, coming down on the weapon as its tip struck the stone, her hand closing on the hilt, her body rising straight up like an arrow as she balanced there, the breeze whipping around her as she teetered on the edge of the stone with a forty foot drop just a few inches away. She closed her eyes, letting the fullness of the sensation wash over her.

Exhilirating…

“You’re going to break that weapon if you keep doing that,” a voice said.

Mole twisted and flipped back onto her feet smoothly, the rapier flying end over end after her until she snared it out of the air and slid it back into its scabbard with a smooth motion. “It’s a good blade, it won’t break,” she replied. “Or are you suggesting that I’ve gained weight?”

Dannel came forward from the recessed portal that provided access back into the tower. “I would never make such a crass comment, and it would be false regardless,” he said. “I doubt that I’ve ever met a more athletic gnome in my life.”

Mole raised an eyebrow as the elf came over to join her at the battlement. The merlons were a foot higher than she was tall, so she hopped up onto one, letting her legs dangle down into the crenel. “Cal and I just got back,” he said. “How have you been, Mole?”

She shrugged. “Same old. It hasn’t been that long.”

“And yet, it would seem that some things have changed.”

“You saw Lok, I assume.”

“Yes, that too.” Looking down over the village, he caught sight of the dwarves coming down the main road, from the direction of the gate. They appeared to be engaged in earnest conversation, but they were too far away for even the sharp ears of the elf and gnome to pick up any of their words.

“There’s a new dwarf, a cleric,” Mole explained. “He reminds me of Morgan, somewhat. From… you know, before.”

Dannel nodded. “Clerics have not done well with our group, in the past.”

Mole turned and slapped his hand. “You shouldn’t say that, it’s a jinx. And don’t let Cal hear you talking like that. He’s worried about Dana. She went to Sigil, and was supposed to keep in regular contact with us; from what Cal said, her latest message is a day overdue.”

“I didn’t know that. I’m surprised he let her go alone.”

“Yeah, well, if you knew her better, you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“They mean a lot to you, don’t they?”

Mole looked out over the valley again, staring at the eastern horizon that was now just a black line in the distance. Somewhere beyond that line, she knew, lay the city-states of the Western Heartlands, and the Sea of Fallen Stars, and nations and peoples that she would perhaps never get a chance to visit. Strange sights and adventures, just over that horizon. For a moment, she felt a tug deep inside her, a temptation to leave all of this behind, and just go.

She sighed.

“I didn’t get to know them until I was in my tweens,” she said. “After the Rest had been established, and the village was starting to grow. I spent a few summers there, and then more time as I got older. Dana and Benzan were like those ‘famous relatives’ that you only see on holidays and special occasions, the kind that some families have, you know? But I got to know them… first from Uncle Cal’s stories, and then, when they would come to the Rest, every now and again. They were nice, and fun to be around. And they always treated me like a grown-up, even when I didn’t act like one.”

“I knew of them long before I first met them,” Dannel said. “To me, they were in the same category as Elminster, or Cadderly, or Storm Silverhand. People whose actions shape the Realms.”

“We all shape the Realms, each in our small way,” Mole said. “That was something my uncle used to say. He used to tell me that I was destined for great things. I always thought that he was pulling my leg, you know, the sort of thing adults always say to little kids to motivate them to study harder.”

“A lot has happened in the last year,” Dannel said.

“Yeah. Seems like just yesterday we were in the Morkoth, worrying about the Stormblades and missing wands and regular villains... you know, ‘stick your sword into the bad guy, take his stuff.’”

Dannel smiled. “I don’t know if it was ever that simple, but things did seem a lot less complicated back then.”

They were quiet for quite some time.

“What’s going to happen to us, Dannel?” Mole asked.

“I don’t know. But whatever comes, we’ll face it together.”

“I miss her.”

“I miss her too.”

He came up next to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. She leaned into him. Finally, she said, “Now, what are those blasted dwarves up to?”

Dannel leaned out over the battlement, and saw what the gnome had; the dwarves—at least three of them, Hodge had gone inside the tower it seemed—were gathered in the open space in front of the tower’s single door, right at the edge of the street. Arun and Beorna were watching Umbar, who had inscribed a crude circle in the dirt with the shaft of his hammer and had now knelt just outside it, his arms extended as he chanted in what sounded like a dialect of dwarvish.

“Looks like he’s conducting a summoning ritual,” Dannel said. “Cal didn’t say anything to you about it?”

Mole shook her head.

They watched as a pale glowing fog began to take shape within the circle. The sight was familiar enough to them; they’d seen Cal and Dana conduct summonings on several occasions. The dwarf’s ritual took several minutes, but finally the glowing figure took solid form, revealing a tall humanoid, apparently female, with greenish skin and large white wings. She bore a silver trumpet in her hand.

“Ah, trumpet archon,” Mole said. “Good choice.”

“Glad you approve,” Dannel chuckled, watching as the dwarf spoke to the celestial, then handed her something. The archon beat her wings and lifted into the air. As she passed the two standing atop the battlements, they felt a sense of calm creep over them. Mole waved.

“Looks like they expect another attack tonight,” Dannel said.

“I think at this point, we need to expect an attack at any moment,” Mole said. “Come on, Cal said we’d all meet in the main hall at eighth bell. Maybe we can find out more about what’s going on.”


Chapter 526

At almost the same instant that Dannel and Mole turned to reenter the security of the Traveler’s Rest, the Shaman of the M’butu lifted his head, blinking as he returned from the far realms of his meditations to the cold harshness of the present Reality. His body resisted his efforts as stood; the frail vessel of flesh that held his consciousness was finally beginning to protest the abuse he’d heaped upon it since he’d come to this alien place at the bidding of the Six-Fingered Man. For a moment he just stood there, until he had mastered himself. Then he walked over to where he had left his few possessions. A drink cleared the crust that lined his throat. He hungered as well. His people, accustomed to the rigors of life upon of the Plains of Cet’abba, were durable, and could go for several cycles without nourishment, but the rituals he’d already conducted had drained his body.

He glanced at the soldiers, who remained in watchful positions around him, ever vigilant against the dangers of this strange Reality. Their loyalty was a tribute to their clans, and the Shaman felt a momentary pang at their loss. But the feeling passed quickly. Their fate had been decided the moment they had come, and passed through the gateway to this Reality. Whether his people would be able to realize the freedom that had been promised was for others to determine. He paused, and took a moment to utter a charm for one of those who would take up the Staff and the Mantle and continue the struggle. He did not know if the potency of his invocation would pass the barrier that separated Realities, or if it would have any effect even if it did. But the action helped to settle him, and enabled him to enter the state of focus that he would need.

The night came upon them with startling rapidity; he was still getting used to the rapid progress of the cycles upon this world. But he did not need the light as he used his staff to begin tracing a series of marks upon the surroundings of the dell. Wherever the staff touched, black lines remained that seemed to ooze power. They seemed haphazard at first, placed upon stones at all angles, upon the earth, and even upon the bole of a weathered tree that had died some years before. As he worked a nexus formed, not visible to normal sight, fashioned of lines of power that emerged from someplace… else and extended through the glyphs to form an interlaced web that resembled the weave of a drunken spider.

When he had finished, he used the staff to excavate a small pit in the ground in the midst of the lines of power that he had created. Then he rose, leaning slightly upon the staff as the exertion—physical and spiritual—from his efforts took hold upon his body. His hunger had returned, redoubled, but the Shaman of the M’butu paid it no heed. He was used to ignoring the demands of his body.

The four soldiers had gathered, and watched him impassively, waiting.

Finally the Shaman lifted his head, and regarded his guardians. He had no doubt of their loyalty, although what he would ask of them lay far beyond the traditional compact that the shamans extracted from the Khalasaar. He met the eyes of each individually, a final gesture of respect, and saw there the same dedication he himself felt. And yes, even hope… if not for themselves, at least for the M’butu.

He selected the first, the fortunate one, with a nod. The soldier came forward, removing his bulky garments and discarding them casually to the side. He knelt on the ground, leaning forward over the small pit that the Shaman had excavated. The Shaman waited until he had placed his fists upon the ground and locked his arms, lifting his head until his eyes stared directly ahead. Then the Shaman reached forward, and using the ritual ka’a blade, sliced open the black warrior’s neck with a single stroke. His lifeblood smoked as it issued into the pit. The soldier did not flinch, did not stir as his body cooled with the torrent, tapering finally into a oozing remnant that fell in dark runnels down his torso.

When the flow had stopped completely, the Shaman gestured, and two of the soldier’s bretheren lifted him gently and placed him to the side. All three of them came forward, removed their garments, and started to kneel in front of the pit. The Shaman interrupted them to reposition them in specific locations, back slightly from the pit but within the invisible weave of power he’d created.

Once they were in position, the Shaman returned to the pit and bent beside it. To his cold-numbed fingers the soldier’s blood felt like it was boiling. Taking up his hand, glistening with the soldier’s life, he splashed each of the others across the cheeks, returning for more blood before adding a final bloody slap on their torsos, right where their hearts beat in their chest. The three soldiers remained utterly impassive as the hot blood steamed in the cold night air. The Shaman returned to the brink of the pit, and used his staff to draw symbols around it with the blood. As he worked, he chanted, and the tendrils of power surrouding the dell thickened.

For almost a mile in every direction, animals fled in terror.


Chapter 527

Night settled upon the village of Ember Vale, dark clouds warding even the faint glow of the stars above. No one stirred in the streets. The torches set along the walls flickered slightly, although the evening breeze had quieted, and a preternatural stillness spread over the place. In the sky above, Umbar’s called trumpet archon flew in wide circles overhead, her celestial senses scanning both for mundane threats and for the presence of evil. There was something sinister in the night, an undercurrent of shadow that the celestial noted, her perfect face darkening with an expression of concern. But she could not sense its source, and she could not abandon her duty to protect this place to explore the feeling further.

Still, she was wary, and interrupted her scan long enough to cast several long-lasting defensive spells upon herself.

Within the looming mass of the Traveler’s Rest, in an interior chamber warded against both magical scrying and transportation magic, the Heroes of Cauldron and the Travelers gathered against the late hour. The chamber, which took up the majority of the tower’s second floor, had no windows but was warmly lit by an eager flame in the hearth and by a half-dozen lanterns that gave the place a cheerful glow. The comfortable armchairs sat unoccupied near the hearth, drawn back along the walls to provide more ample space around the low, heavy wooden table in the center. Despite being the largest room in the tower, the place was somewhat crowded, now that the others had joined them.

Cal stood at the head of the table, standing upon a squat four-legged stool that allowed him to more easily look over the table and his friends around it. The archmage had burned through a good portion of his available higher-level valences to scry and contact Dannel, recovering him from the depths of the Wealdath. A sending from Beorna had alerted Mole that Cal was coming for them as well; the archmage’s niece now stood atop a chair on the far side of the table, next to Lok. Something had happened to the genasi in the Underdark, a transformation obvious in the altered appearance of his eyes, which sparkled in the lantern light. But it was more than that, something evident in a subtle shift in his demeanor that Cal had immediately discerned. There was a story there, but it would have to wait for another time in the telling. Mole had let him in on the general details of their encounter with the elemental monster outside of the urdunnir settlement, but Cal had sensed that she too was holding something back. At another time he would have pressed her to share what was troubling her, but at the moment there were too many matters of more pressing import.

Layers within layers, he thought, turning his attention back to the now, and the more immediate circumstances that confronted them. The dwarves were arguing, and Cal let out an exasperated sigh at the lack of resolution. There was ample subtext here as well. The new dwarf, Umbar Ironshield, had already demonstrated his power, and in all honesty Cal was glad to have him present, especially given Dana’s absence. He’d only spoken briefly with Arun after their clash with the giant bugs, and the paladin had not ventured more about the priest’s presence except to note that he’d come from the Great Rift, and that he was a consecrated High Priest of Moradin. Arun had likewise been reluctant to speak about the sigil he now wore upon his brow, or the new golden hammer he carried. From what he’d gotten out of Beorna and Hodge, they four of them had just dealt with a small tribe of grimlock barbarians that had come into Cauldron via the Underdark.

It seems like all of them had had an adventure or two in the short time since they’d parted. More tales for his book, if ever he got the chance to write them down.

In any case, Umbar Ironhammer obviously regarded Arun with something akin to adulation, but that dedication clearly did not extend to Beorna or Hodge, both of who appeared to reciprocate the priest’s dislike.

“We must deal with the immediate threat first,” Beorna was saying. “Whoever sent those bugs will not give up easily, and may already be planning another attack.”

“We know who our foe is,” Umbar said. The dwarf cleric had communed with his god while Cal had been out regathering their distant companions, but while Moradin’s agent had confirmed the role of their six-fingered adversary in the attack, the yes-no questions allowed by the spell had not been able to yield a clear identification. The spell had not been in vain; they had learned the Prince’s agents had come from another plane, were still active, and that at least one major demon was still present upon the Prime. It was not enough to give them a target for detection magic, even if their foes were not warded against such spells. And several questions that Umbar had directed more specifically to Graz’zt’s current activities had been met only with silence. That failure apparently had done little to improve the cleric’s mood.

“Would you have us translate to Azzagrat and press an assault upon him?” the templar asked.

“That would not be wise,” Cal said. Even now, almost twenty years later, he still had nightmares about Azzagrat.

Umbar did not respond, but Cal noted that the cleric glanced at Arun, the look on his face perhaps suggesting that he wanted approval to do just that! Arun himself stood silent, as he had through most of the discussion. The sigil burned into his forehead seemed to pulse slightly with the faintest hint of golden light, as if sounding in echo to his heartbeat.

Two transcendences, in such short order, the gnome thought, trying to wrap his mind around the implications. So much had changed, and at times he felt like he was sliding down a greased chute, unable to slow his progress toward the unknown.

“I am concerned about Dana,” Lok said, interjecting his first words into the conversation. The priestess was only a day overdue on her usual sending, but given the attack upon them, Cal’s worry about her had justly intensified. At his request, Beorna had prepared and delivered another sending for her, but she had not received a reply. He wished that Umbar had waited for his return to attempt his divination; he had a number of questions he would have suggested, not the least of which was an inquiry into her fate. The dwarf had already proven that he was not one to seek approval before taking action; if the divination hadn’t been enough evidence, his surprising summoning of a celestial a few hours earlier had been. Perhaps he should have anticipated the dwarf’s precipitous actions, and said something earlier. If only the commune spell had been within Beorna’s reach; Cal felt more comfortable with the templar than with the still-unknown variable that was the cleric of Moradin.

If only the sending had worked!

“There is a chance that the spell will simply not function, across the planar boundary,” Beorna gently reminded him. Cal looked up, not aware that he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. Or perhaps the templar had divined his feelings in his manner. “With a message and reply, there are two chances for the spell to fail.”

“I know the limits of the spell,” Cal said, a little more harshly than he’d intended. He forced a smile, nodding in apology to the templar. “Unfortunately evocation magic is outside of my sphere; blowing things up has never been my strong point. But direct action is still open to us. I have a plane shift” scribed upon a scroll,” he said. “We have a copy of the focus for Sigil that Cylyria provided. We can find out for ourselves.”

“That spell will not transport you with any degree of accuracy,” Umbar said.

“That is only a minor difficulty,” Cal said. “Once there, I can scry her, and teleport directly to her location.”

“If she is… not warded.”

Cal knew all too well what the cleric had been about to say. But it was Lok who replied for him. “We do not leave behind one of our own.”

Cal nodded in agreement, but inwardly he felt the doubts raised by the cleric’s words keenly. Now, with hindsight, he wondered if he should have added the discern location dweomer to his book, rather than the binding. What had he been thinking, to even imagine that he had a chance of using the spell against one such as Graz’zt? Events had raced past them, and he felt as though every minor decision they made was leading them into dark, tangled thickets, where probability played out into greater danger no matter what choice they made. Their enemies knew more than they, of that he had no doubt. But what else could they do, except respond to events as they were thrust forward?

“We should get the people out of here,” Arun said. “Once we depart, they will be defenseless, and their association with us should not doom them.”

“We have some friends who might be able to help,” Cal said. “In addition to my remaining greater scrying for Dana, I have a regular scrying memorized; I’ll use that to contact them and ask for their aid in evacuating the town.”

“Even so, I’d feel better if we just didn’t leave them to their fate,” Arun said. “Umbar, Hodge, perhaps you two should remain here and assist in the relocation.”

“With all due respect, Chosen, you will need my power in the coming confrontation. I can see clearly, now, that there was a greater power at work in bringing me to you, that made me the unwitting agent of your apotheosis.”

“I am no god,” Arun said softly.

Hodge snorted.

“No, but you were Chosen,” the cleric continued. “And for what… if not to confront the shadow of darkest Evil? The Prince is a blight upon the multiverse, and the Soul Forger’s patience at his meddling has come to an end.”

“So now you are discerning the will of the god?” Beorna said.

Umbar shook his head violently. “You twist my words, templar. Can you not perceive that we stand upon the cusp of great events? I shared openly the result of my commune with the All Father. The Dark One has directly intervened in events here upon the Prime. He has stolen one of your companions, and may have already acted against another. I know that I have come lately to this war you are fighting against him… but I offer—freely and without reservation—my hammer, and the power that I command, in this struggle. And my life, if it comes to that.”

“Oh, it will,” Hodge muttered under his breath. But he did not turn to meet Arun’s gaze.

Cal too felt uncomfortable at the cleric’s words, which to his ears bordered upon fanaticism. But they could not refuse the aid of one of the dwarf’s power. “I suspect that we will need all the help we can muster,” Cal said, standing on his chair and placing both of his hands upon the table. “So that we may reach agreement, let me summarize our plans. As Umbar has noted, we know our foe, but we lack enough specific information to discern the location of his agents here upon the Prime. Dana, however, has access to the highest valences of clerical magic; she can help greatly in flushing out our enemies.” Cal looked across the table, at Mole and Lok. He saw in their eyes that they recognized his tactic, that he was shading his argument to convince the others. They knew what Dana could do, but they also, realistically, knew that Dana’s abilities, however considerable, were unlikely to merely produce Graz’zt’s agents upon a silver platter. They just did not know enough. And their foe, all of them knew, was a master of deception and misdirection. But they said nothing.

“How many of us can you transport?” Arun asked.

“I can take eight others with my plane shift, Cal said. “I specifically allocated my spell selection for maximum divination and transportation today, but I have only one more greater teleport remaining.” He did not share that he’d had to reserve one of his eighth-level slots for that magic; when he’d taken out his spellbook that afternoon he’d anticipated that he might have to make more than the two round trips he’d already taken today. Between the multiple teleports and scryings he’d already burned, he only had a handful of spells left in his upper valences. And very little room left for blasting and buffs, if it came to that.

So be it. He’d cautioned Dana about the dangers of precipitous action, but he would not lose her to Graz’zt, in addition to Benzan.

And Delem. Even after ten years, that wound was still not fully healed.

“Getting to Sigil is only half of the journey,” Beorna said. “Assuming you can locate her, how many can you teleport with you to her location?”

“Four,” Cal said.

“Hey, you can stuff me into a bag of holding or something,” Mole said. “I can hold my breath for a minute or two. There’s ways around the limits of spells… heck, you guys used to do tricks like that all the time, from your stories.”

“It seems like there are a number of uncertainties in this course of action,” Arun said. “Would I be correct in assuming that you have only one of these planar transportation scrolls?”

“I have the spell in my book,” he said. “Upon resting again, I can memorize it… or the high priest can pray for it to facilitate our return.” Dana also kept the spell in memory, he knew, but he avoided that thought, knowing that the fact was evidence that she was in trouble, and was not in a position to escape.

Let it just be a problem with the sending, he thought. He knew what Arun was getting at, that it might be better for them to rest and recover their full potency before setting out on this journey. And it wasn’t unreasonable, especially since it would allow them to keep the scroll as a reserve, and cast the plane shift from memory… and even memorize two, allowing an immediate return journey in case the scrying of Dana failed.

Cal was exhausted, despite having slept for most of the day. In the six hours or so since he’d awoken he’d burned numerous potent spells and covered thousands of miles back and forth across Faerûn. But even though the practice of high-level magic was itself draining, of more weight was the constant worry, the neverending surge of plans and contingencies that kept popping into his mind. Over the years he’d gotten used to the strain of his hyper-enhanced intelligence; he’d read accounts of mages who’d been driven mad by the pressure of an enhanced consciousness. Of late, however, he’d been experiencing nasty headaches that were only worsened by the work of transcribing new spells into his book. He’d only recently gained mastery of the eighth valence, and already the final sphere, the most potent spells available to the arcane caster, were nearly within his grasp.

Beyond that there was more, a wilder terrain of magic that few mortals had tread, but that was not a journey he could even afford to think about at the moment.

“Maybe we should wait until the morning,” Mole suggested. “To see if…”

But the gnome never got a chance to finish her thought, for at that moment a great clarion note echoed through the very stones of the tower, only slightly muted by the surrounding walls. For a moment the companions shared a confused look, but they quickly realized the source of the sound.

“The archon!”

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 528

The archon’s name was Abael, and as she passed over the sleeping village below, she cast out into the darkness, scanning for evil as well as for mundane dangers that might lurk in the darkness. Her senses were far superior to those of most mortals, but even so, the corruption was nearly upon the place before she detected its presence.

A dark form materialized out of the night before the village’s main gates. It was massive, easily twenty feet tall, looming over the thick pylons of the repaired barrier. And yet it was silent, its approach unremaked by telltale noises one would expect from a thing of its size, until it reached down and tore the gates apart with great claws that left ugly black scars upon the fresh wood. The gates resisted for only a moment, before the heavy board, fully eight inches thick, that held the portals shut splintered explosively, and they swung open loudly on bent hinges traumatized by the rough treatment.

Abael was already diving to greet the intruder. She lifted her trumpet to her lips, summoning a clarion call that shattered the night, offering an answer to the destructive noise of the creature’s arrival. She followed that with a holy smite that swallowed up the upper half of the creature in flare of pure white light.

But when the smite faded, the intruder stepped forward, unharmed. Lifting its head, it fixed Abael with a cold gaze. The archon felt a grim chill as she barely overcame the paralyzing grip of a hold monster spell; and then, before she could react, the monster hit her with an unholy blight. The spell penetrated her resistance easily, and she staggered as she fought off the cloying sickness that tried to creep into her bones through the dark miasma of the blight.

Recognizing at last the true nature of her foe, the archon cast a banishment spell. But the nightwalker was again unaffected, its potent spell resistance enabling it to shed the effects of the celestial magic. Abael tightened her grop on her silver trumpet, which at her mental command shifted into the form of a greatsword.

Before she could dive to engage the terrible undead monster, a faint whisper of wind alerted her of a new danger. Looking up, she saw a dark fold of shadow descending rapidly from above, a wave of perfect black that overwhelmed even the dark sky beyond. Abael lifted her sword in challenge, her aura flaring bright around her celestial form, but the nightwing altered its course to the side, blasting her with a finger of death as it slid past. This time the archon’s spell resistance held, and the icy chill of the spell was felt merely as a momentary shadow brushing against her life essence.

But as the nightwing turned away, three discrete shadows that were only slightly smaller than the huge undead creature detached and swarmed through the night at her. Their foulness swept over her perceptions in a wave, and a look of anger clouded her face.

Dread wraiths!

The wraiths dove eagerly toward her, their insubstantial bodies spread wide like a cloak catching the wind. Abael waited until they were within thirty feet before casting a mass cure serious wounds spell that both tore into their unholy essence and restored some of the injury she’d taken from the nightwalker’s blight. But there was no time for further action as the powerful undead spirits swarmed around her, trying to suck away her life essence with their cold touch. Her aura fortified her, allowing her to resist that drain, but even so their incorporeal fingers drew blue lines across her flesh where they touched, spreading tendrils of numbness through her body.

Abael knew that the wraiths were too potent for a holy word or her undeath to death spell, and would likewise not be fazed by the call of her trumpet. So she swept out with her enchanted blade, tearing into the nearest wraith. The undead creature did not even attempt to dodge the assault, trusting its semi-substantial form to protect it. But the celestial’s sword cut into it, once, twice, and with a soft sigh the wraith dissolved.

But the nightshades were still pressing their assault as well. First one, and then a second unholy blight erupted around Abael. She resisted the first, but the second, originating from the more powerful walker, cut again through her defenses and ravaged her pristine soul. Weakened, she further succumbed to the touch of one of the remaining wraiths, and she felt her essence diminish as the creature greedily fed upon her life force.

The nightwing had turned, cutting a broad swath through the night sky, and started gliding back toward the embattled celestial.

Light erupted from atop the tower as the heavy door blasted open and the companions, with Arun and his glowing hammer first among them, made their appearance. They rushed to the edge of the battlement, looking for the source of the attack. The celestial glowed in the sky, its radiance muted somewhat by the two wraiths enfolding it. The nightshades were more difficult to spot, blending with the night shadows, sucking up the faint radiance that made its way from the ring of torches on the wall around the village.

Dannel was the only one who caught sight of the nightwing gliding silently down toward the celestial. Drawing an arrow, infusing it with the power of his song, he launched it at the creature. The shaft intersected perfectly with its broad form, but the undead monster did not react, continuing its dive toward the archon.

“What are they?” Mole asked, trying unsuccessfully to make out what the elf had shot.

“Empower me with flight!” Arun urged Cal, drawing upon the power of Moradin to infuse him with divine favor. The gnome complied, using his wand upon the paladin. As Arun lifted into the air, Mole turned from loading her little crossbow. “Me next!” she cried.

“Sneak attacks won’t work in this situation,” Cal said.

“I am next,” Beorna said, already filling herself with the divine power of Helm.

“Fine, then Lok,” Cal said, drawing more power from the wand.

“Back to the pit from whence you came!” Umbar shouted, blasting one of the wraiths harrying the archon with a beam of searing light. The creature let out a foul wail as the beam carved a swath through its dark substance, but it did not pause in its assault upon the celestial. Abael drew upon another mass cure, fortifying itself and weakening the undead, but the celestial was clearly suffering from the draining touch of the wraiths. She turned as the nightwing descended toward her, and lifted her sword again in challenge.

But the wing did not close to melee, instead blasting the celestial with a cone of cold as it passed. It obviously bore no concern for the wraiths; one of them avoided the attack, the blast passing harmlessly through its body, but the second was caught in the white nimbus, an outline of frost forming briefly over its substance before the wraith perished. The blast should have finished off the archon, but she’d taken the precaution of warding herself against both cold and fire earlier, and the cone failed to penetrate that defense. Despite that, however, it was clear that she was still nastily exposed to the attacks from the nightshades, as well as the remaining wraith that still hovered eagerly behind her.

“Abael! Fall back upon the tower!” Umbar yelled. The archon lifted her head, acknowledging the dwarf cleric’s command. But before she could act, the nightwalker hit her with a targeted greater dispel that ripped away her defenses like the layers of an onion. Even her innate aura was disrupted by the spell. Given a moment, Abael could have restored that protection with a thought, but she never got that moment as the walker followed its attack with a final quickened blight that tore mercilessly into the weakened celestial.

Abael cried out, and stiffened. The dread wraith greedily latched onto her as she fell, and followed her down, the life bleeding out of her until she slammed into the hard earth with a flat thump.



Chapter 529

The companions could only watch as their ally was dispatched by the invading undead. As of yet, their counterattacks had been of little avail. As the nightwing had flown past the archon, vanishing back into the night, Dannel had switched targets to the nightwalker. The moderate range—the thing stood in the midst of the village, a good two hundred feet distant—was of little impediment as he peppered its body with a barrage of electrically-charged missiles. The darkness hindered his vision, but despite that difficulty he could tell that the shots appeared to have little effect, even with the full potency of his song infused in each arrow.

“I don’t think I’m having any effect!” he warned, as he continued to fire.

“Join the club!” Hodge said, winding his heavy crossbow for a second shot. Mole had experienced a similar result with one of her shock bolts, and was leaning precariously out through one of the crenels in the battlement, as if considering leaping down to the ground to get more directly involved in events.

Cal had finished enchanting Beorna, who hefted her adamantine sword—transforming it into a holy sword—and leapt up into the air after Arun. Lok waited patiently for his turn, not even bothering to recover his longbow from his bag of holding.

“They are nightshades,” Cal said. “They are extraplanar beings, not of this world…”

“Save the lecture, ye daft gnome!” Hodge urged. “How do we kill ‘em?”

Cal’s mind darted back over the memory of dozens of books and scrolls, tales and legends, even tiny scraps of knowledge gleaned from old songs and bits of nearly forgotten lore. A scrap of doggerel clung to that sweep, a verse he’d heard chanted once in a tavern in Waterdeep…

Shades of darkness, walker in the night,
Shy from silver, or the mornin’s light…

“Silver weapons!” Cal exclaimed.

“Where in the hells are we s’ppsed to get silver weapons?” Hodge shouted, jamming his finger painfully as he tried to snap a bolt into place. “Damn and blast!” But Dannel immediately slid off his pack, and dug into it for something.

Umbar had turned away from them, and had fallen to one knee, his forehead pressed against the hilt of his hammer, obviously seeking some form of divine intervention.

Arun felt the divine potency of his patron course through his veins as he ascended into the air over Ember Vale, the night air blowing cold through the slit in his helmet as he flew. His target was the nightwalker, its outline a dark shadow against the night to his darkvision as he drew closer. The creature looked up and fixed him with its horrible gaze, and Arun shuddered as a wave of malevolence swept over him. Whatever grim power was in that stare, he was able to fight it off, and he brandished his holy hammer like a talisman as he dove toward it.

“Arun, look out!”

Beorna’s cry alerted him just an instant before the wraith fell upon him. He jerked to the side, but as the two passed its cold claw passed through his hip, sending a stabbing knife of cold through his lower body. He tried to swipe it with his hammer, but the holy weapon merely passed harmlessly through its incorporeal body.

The wraith spun in mid air and turned to meet him again, but before the two opponents could close for another exchange Arun felt another magical attack hit him. His own powers held against the nightwalker’s power, but the spell from Cal’s wand was much less potent, and even as he realized what had happened the fly spell dissolved before the walker’s greater dispel, and he went plummeting toward the ground fifty feet below.

“Arun!” Mole yelled from atop the tower, unable to intervene to help the dwarf.

“He’s tough!” Hodge said, cursing as he fired another bolt uselessly toward the nightwalker. “A little tumble like that ain’ gonna hurt ‘im!” Still, it looked painful as Arun glanced off of a roof, rolled, and toppled down a final fifteen feet to slam hard into a lean-to shed, which crumpled under the impact.

What was worse, however, was that the nightwalker was already heading in that direction.

Lok lifted off of the tower roof, the latest beneficiary of Cal’s wand of fly. Before he could join battle, however, a great rumbling shook the tower, the heavy stones vibrating under their feet. “What now?” Hodge exclaimed.

“Umm… guys…” Mole said. From her uncertain perch deep within the crenel, leaning out over the stone edge of the battlement, she could see the ground below, where the packed earthen surface of the road in front of the tower had begun to rise into a low mound.

Hodge looked down in time to see the ground erupt in a fountain of earth as the mound exploded outward, and a massive worm rose up into the air, its body easily seven feet across, formed of segments of utter blackness. It rose higher, fifteen feet, twenty, twenty five, and as the horrified companions stared down at the bulbous head its massive maw opened wide, and it disgorged a spew of black vileness that resolved into a dozen discrete forms… undead shadows, which immediately flew up eagerly toward the living beings atop the tower.

Author’s note: just for the hell of it, I house-ruled that a greater dispel from a 21st level caster could completely wipe out a fly spell with a 5th level caster (i.e. from Cal’s wand), rather than lead to the soft-fall described in the 3.5e SRD.


Chapter 530

“Uh oh,” Mole said, as she looked down into the gaping blackness that was the nightcrawler’s huge maw. A stench like a thousand open graves swam over her, and she fell back, gagging.

The movement caused her to look up, briefly, so she saw it coming.

“Lok, look out!”

The genasi had lifted himself a few paces into the air and shot out over the battlement, his axe ready to strike, his attention upon the nightcrawler. But Mole’s warning brought his focus up in time to see the nightwing sweeping down out of the sky, directly toward him. The genasi struck at the same instant that the wing hit. From the nearly silent way they moved, and the fact that they were accompanied by wraiths and shadows, Lok had expected the thing to be nearly insubstantial, an echo of a living creature without much mass. But as the wing slammed into him, driving him back with the force of a battering ram, he realized his mistake.

Gods, it has to weigh a few thousand pounds, he had time to think, as he was catapulted backward through the air. His axe glanced off its hide, which was like leather and steel and rubber combined into a nearly indestructible combination. For a full second the two were linked, then he tore free and fell back, the wing continuing forward as it spread its wings and began gliding around for another attack.

Aware that its damage resistance would make hurting it extremely difficult, Lok deliberately shucked his shield, letting it drop to the ground below, and he took up his axe in both hands.

Umbar finished his prayer and stood as a skein of light motes gathered before him atop the tower, forming and solidifying until a celestial griffon, its hide a brilliant gold, stood awaiting his command. The cleric instantly leapt atop its back, urging it to flight. The agile summons responded, easily clearing the battlement despite the dwarf’s considerable weight, spreading its wings to gather the air as its rider shouted a battle cry to Moradin.

But before Umbar could direct his mount to assail the nightcrawler, he was faced with the small horde of shadows, which eagerly rose to meet him. Several latched onto the griffon, draining its strength, and threatening to bring it down. A pair of the undead monsters came at the cleric himself, their insubstantial claws piercing his armor and drawing strength from his body.

“Be GONE!” he cried. Yellow light erupted from his hammer, from the etched sigils of his faith graved on either side of the heavy iron head. The shadows shrieked, and the nearest half-dozen evaporated as the purifying rays tore through their vaprous forms. The cleric urged his mount toward the rearing form of the nightcrawler, but the griffon’s diminished strength was no longer up to the task, and he had to direct his efforts to just staying upon its back as it tried to make a controlled landing a short distance away.

Beorna had seen the nightcrawler’s dramatic appearance, but her attention was focused more on Arun’s fate. As soon as he’d fallen, she’d dove after him, but was drawn up short as the last dread wraith rose up from the corpse of its celestial victim to meet her. Up close, it seemed even bigger than it has first appeared, and it looked as though it would simply enfold her, to suck her life from her body in a cold embrace. The templar lifted her sword, but at the last moment called upon a blast of searing light that tore through the center of the wraith, opening a blazing hole in its body that quickly spread, until the undead monstrosity dissolved into harmless wisps of night.

But the wraith had managed to delay her, for a critical moment.

Arun pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, shattered pieces of wood from the ruined shed continuing to fall around him. His head spun and he tasted blood, but that didn’t stop him from tearing himself free, staggering forward, his heavy hammer still firmly held in his right hand.

He looked up, right into the face of the nightwalker.

“Are ye goin’ to do somethin’, elf?” Hodge all but shrieked, as the nightcrawler seemed to continue to grow larger and larger as more of it tunneled out from under the ground. Already almost sixty feet of its body had formed a coil in the middle of the street, and its head twisted upward, until its head—and that huge opening that served as its mouth—was only a short distance below the level of the tower’s battlement.

“I’m working on it,” Dannel said, as he poured the contents of a small vial over a thick bundle of arrows. The liquid glistened as it coated the arrowheads, shining slightly even in the darkness.

“Well, ye better do it quick!” the dwarf said, ducking out from cover long enough to fire another bolt into the nightcrawler. His attack, like those before, appeared to have no effect.

As soon as he’d poured out the last drop of the silversheen, Dannel tossed the vial aside and rose, one arrow almost leaping to his string as he spread the others out on the merlon in front of him. His first shot penetrated the undead worm’s body just below the maw, and this time he got a response. He drew again and fired as the worm surged up, extending until its head was a good thirty five feet above the level of the ground below. He knew something bad was coming, but he drew a third arrow, and even as a white storm of death exploded from deep within it, he released the shot toward its long body.

The cone of cold swept up over the battlement, piercing the crenels between the thick stone merlons. The fortifications provided some cover, although Dannel, already exposed, took the blast hard and staggered back, shivering. Most of his arrows went careening away from the blast, although he managed to grasp onto a handful as he fell. Hodge and Cal likewise huddled in cover, and of course Mole avoided the cone entirely.

Dannel struggled to rise, but the crawler gave them no chance to counterattack. Even as its head drew back, it unleashed another potent power, and laid a mass hold monster atop the tower. Against its potent magic only the strongest of wills could offer resistance. Cal’s mental discipline withstood it, but Mole, Dannel, and Hodge were all caught, paralyzed.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 531

Arun grunted as the nightwalker’s powerful claws slammed into him, driving him back almost into the ruin of the shed behind him. He started forward to counter, but his leg snagged on a broken farm tool, and he had to catch himself before falling flat on his face in front of the massive undead creature.

Gah, blast it! the Chosen of Moradin thought.

Beorna yelled a challenge as she descended toward the nightwalker looming over Arun, her sword shining in her hand, holy power radiating from it.

The undead creature looked up, and fixed her with its dark gaze.

Beorna’s will was considerable, and she should have been able to easily shrug off the corruptive power in that stare. But as she looked down, and saw Arun, tiny in contrast to it, she felt a momentary twinge of doubt, and fear. That opening was all that the creature needed. Unleashing the power of its gaze attack, the nightwalker drove a spike of terror through the templar, who, overcome, turned and fled like a streak through the night.

“Burn you!” Arun roared, hurling forward with his hammer coming up in a powerful arc. The holy weapon smacked meatily into the nightwalker’s thigh just above the knee, driving white energy into it as he smote it. The nightwalker let out a high-pitched keen, and turned its attention back to its foe.

Umbar, having dismounted after an awkward landing, commanded the griffon to attack as best it could. As the celestial creature rose into the air, it met a pair of shadows that had followed him down. The undead creatures assaulted the summoned griffon eagerly, avoiding its frenzied counters.

But Umbar’s focus was on the massive worm that undulated menacingly only a short distance away. Taking up his hammer, he ran toward it, calling upon the power of his god as he ran. A white glow began to form around him, shining from the gaps in his armor.

The crawler, sensing his approach, blasted him with a quickened cone of cold, followed immediately by a finger of death.

The cleric staggered through the storm of ice, simply absorbing the damage, and likewise shook off the full effects of the deadly ray. Pure determination drove him on, although it was obvious that the crawler’s magical assault had hurt him. He lowered his head and charged, but as he drew within its reach, the worm’s fat head came crashing down toward him. Seeing that it would hit long before he could reach its body to attack, the priest readied himself, crouching and hurling himself aside at the last instant. It was a maneuver of a veteran combatant, and against a normal foe, it would have worked.

But the nightcrawler was a thing of dark energies and ancient potency. It adjusted slightly, and as its head struck the ground with colossal force, its neck twisted and it snared the dwarf with the very edge of its jaws. Bone-white teeth as long as shortswords pierced his shoulder, tearing through his armor. Umbar cried out as the chill of the grave entered him through the creature’s bite. He tried to pull free, but the thing was insanely strong; he may as well have been trapped in a vice. He was wrenched roughly back, lifted off his feet as the crawler brought its head around in a wide sweep. His hammer went flying into the night, but he still was infused with the power of his dispel evil spell, and as he was lifted up into the air he wrenched himself around enough to splay his hand upon the black hide of the creature.

White light flared from around his fingers into the creature, but it was just too powerful. As the flare dissipated, the spell having failed to send the nightshade back to whence it had come, the massive worm abruptly spread its jaws wide, engulfing the cleric, who vanished into the blacker than black interior of its body.

As Umbar was swallowed up by the nightcrawler, Arun fought for his life against the nightwalker a scant hundred feet away. He slammed it again with his hammer, smashing the magical bludgeon against one unnaturally long arm as it reached for him. The thing was almost indestructible, but even with its damage resistance, the paladin’s smites were causing it serious injury. It came at him again, but as Arun steeled himself for another full attack, the walker suddenly lunged ahead and closed its fist around the haft of the paladin’s hammer, just below the head. Surprised, Arun tried to pull his weapon free, but the nightshade, far stronger than he, tore it from his grasp. Wisps of greasy gray smoke rose from the edges of the walker’s hand, evidence that the holy weapon did not appreciate the maneuver, but the undead creature’s unholy eyes blazed with something akin triumph as it lifted the weapon high above Arun’s reach, and closed both hands around it.

And squeezed.



Chapter 532

Cal resisted the crawler’s mass hold monster spell, but as the fog of ice crystals cleared he quickly saw that his companions had not been so fortunate. Unfortunately his stature limited the benefit granted by his high perch; he could not clearly see out over the battlefield. And even if he could, he mused, as he shook the rime of frost from his cloak, it was too dark to clearly resolve anything much in the way of details in any case.

We need help, he thought. Calling upon one of the few higher-order illusions he’d memorized that day, he drew forth strands of shadow and infused them with potency.

Unfortunately, those weren’t the only shadows to come upon the battlements; as he cast his spell, dark forms drifted up through the crenels, eagerly seeking out the adventurers. The paralyzed companions were unable to resist as several of the shadows settled upon them; Cal drew a pair who lunged at him, their dark touches pressing against the protective barriers created by his bracers of armor and ring of protection. The gnome ignored them, focusing on his spell as his conjured shadowstuff took on the form of a quartet of lantern archons.

The archons did not wait for commands, immediately blasting the shadows with their energy beams. One of the two shadows menacing Cal evaporated, hit by several beams in quick succession. The second quivered as a beam struck it, and retreated through the stone floor beneath them. Cal ran past it to Mole, who shook helplessly as another shadow greedily drank her life-essence. The gnome drew a wand and stabbed it; as he released a cure moderate wounds into it the shadow let out a hollow shriek and vanished.

The last shadow, which had started to drain Hodge, was set upon by all four archons and was quickly dispatched.

“There is a giant undead worm at the foot of this tower,” Cal said to the archons. “Spread out, assail it.”

As the archons hurried to comply, Cal lifted Mole up and quickly examined her. The gnome woman shook, still caught in the paralysis, but her eyes rolled up to meet Cal’s and she was even able to nod slightly.

But then her gaze drifted up behind him, and her eyes widened.

Lok had not had much luck against the nightwing since their initial clash. He lost sight of it as it vanished into the night, he’d known that the undead flyer wasn’t done with him yet. His suspicion was proven correct as he caught sight of it drawing closer from another direction, having completed another broad turn out over the fields of Ember Vale. Almost as soon as he spotted it, he was hit by an unholy blight that washed over him and left him feeling violently ill. Still, as the wing drew nearer he screwed up his face and flew at it, lifting his axe with both hands firmly tightened around the long haft.

The wing, however, apparently did not care for another collision. Instead, it banked away, its speed enough to let it easily outpace the genasi. Lok felt a cold chill hit him like a mule’s kick, and focused his will against whatever spell the undead creature was throwing at him. His will was considerable for a warrior, and the feeling passed in just a few moments.

Frustrated, he had started to head back toward the battle that continued to rage on the far side of the tower, when he was hit by a greater dispel and started falling.

Arun watched as the nightwalker lifted his precious hammer in both hands and started to squeeze. The weapon was incredibly tough, he knew, but a high-pitched whine of protest issued from between the black claws as it brought its strength to bear. Even the holy avenger, almost an artifact itself, could not long withstand the dark power of the nightshade.

Arun did not intent to let it have the chance. With a snap of his arm his shield flew away, and with a quick tug of his other hand his adamantine battleaxe pulled free from the loops holding it across his back. Invoking Moradin, the Chosen rushed forward. The nightwalker ignored him… until the axe came around in an arc, slamming into the creature’s left knee. Arun held nothing back. He knew it was a gamble, sacrificing finesse and accuracy for all out power. But the axe hit its target, and as Arun released his third smite into the joint his holy power penetrated its defenses, cutting through black flesh and the putrid essence within. The nightwalker keened as its leg was severed, and it tumbled backward, caroming off the façade of the nearby building before slamming hard into the packed earth of the road. There was no blood from its wound, but black wisps of vapor issued from the stump of its leg, oozing out like a thick fog. It still held onto Arun’s hammer with one clawed hand, and it brought the other up clutching for the adversary that had wrought this hurt upon it.

Arun leapt atop its chest. In desperation, the nightwalker tried a last gambit, summoning the power of a plane shift to cast its foe into the deepest pits of the Abyss. But against the paladin’s gathered will, the nightshade’s power faltered for a final time. It tried to grab him in its clawed hand, but the paladin avoided the clumsy grab, lifted the axe, and with a final invocation of divine justice he brought the weapon down with full force into the center of the nightwalker’s face.

Warned by the subtle shift in focus of Mole’s eyes, Cal turned around to see the nightwing bearing down upon them, gliding toward their position from above. It was… huge. He reached for the rod that hung from a long throng at his hip, but before he could act yet another unholy blight erupted in a cloying storm over them. It only lasted a few seconds, and when it cleared, the nightwing was still there, closer now, looming over them like a massive stormcloud

A silver streak knifed up through the night to meet the descending creature, intersecting its path at the point where its body opened up to reveal a maw of utter blackness. The wing shrieked and began to turn away again, but Dannel continued his barrage, sending silver arrow after arrow up into it. The elf, having finally fought off the hold from the other nightshade, got payback as his missiles tore violent rents in its substance. The nightwing pumped its wings and began to turn as it ascended, perhaps preparing to hurl another nasty attack at the foes atop the tower before it disengaged.

That tiny delay cost it, as Cal disintegrated it.

Dannel sagged against the battlement, still in pretty bad shape from the multiple attacks they’d suffered. “Need more… arrows,” he said. He had plenty of regular missiles in his quivers, but he was referring to the ones he’d coated with silversheen, most of which had been blown away by the cone of cold. A few, however, lay scattered across the stone roof of the tower, almost invisible in the darkness.

“I’ll get them,” came a weak voice. Cal turned to see Mole, still moving stiffly as she pulled herself up and began looking for the enchanted missiles.

Cal rushed over the nearest crenel and looked down to see what had become of the nightcrawler.

It was still there, and much closer than he’d expected.

The archmage barely had time to draw back and grab a firmer hold upon the stones before the worm slammed into the side of the tower a mere eight feet below his perch. The Traveler’s Rest shuddered with the impact, and for a moment Cal thought that the entire building would come down under the massive strength of the creature. But the Rest was of solid construction, fortified with magic, and it held.

“What’s it doing?” Dannel asked, falling against a merlon as the tower shook again.

“It can’t quite reach us… I think it wants to bring us down to its level for a chat.”

“Even this tower won’t hold up long against that,” the elf said.

Cal nodded, and turned back toward the edge… only to clutch at the stone again as yet another unholy blight erupted just above the lip of the battlement. As he voided his stomach upon the already slick stones he thought grimly, How many of those can we take?

Glancing back at Dannel, who was barely on his feet now, his face an ashen gray, he knew that this had to be decided quickly, one way or the other. In his brief glimpse of the creature he’d seen no sign of his archons, or of Umbar. He had a strong suspicion of where the dwarf cleric would be found; which made defeateing the creature now all the more imperative.

“We have to finish it,” he said, more to himself that to any of the others, for his voice snagged in his throat, which felt hoarse and raw with bile. Crawling forward, he waited for the next slam, and the sound of crumbling stone that he knew would mean disaster.

But the next slam did not come. Reaching the edge of the roof, he leaned forward and looked down.

The worm had shifted, falling back into a coil at the base of the tower that had to be a hundred feet long. Its head had turned away from them, and he could see that its tail, a sinuous extension tipped with a vicious-looking sting, stabbed down at something on the ground, striking with a loud metallic clang. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

Lok!

The genasi took the hit and countered with a two-handed strike with his axe that tore into the rubbery body of the crawler. From his perch Cal could not see if it inflicted any serious injury, but from what he’d seen thus far of the undead creature’s damage resistance, he doubted it. Still, the genasi’s assault had drawn its attention, and the huge maw opened as the head slammed down to meet the daughty warrior.

Against that, Cal knew, even Lok had no chance.

Dannel staggered forward to the edge of the battlement, clutching a handful of silver-tipped arrows—all that Mole had been able to find. The elf looked unsteady, and for a moment Cal feared he would stumble and fall into the crenel, knocking the both of them over the edge of the tower. But the elf braced himself between the two adjoining merlons, and as his face took on that look of concentration that accompanied his archery, Cal heard a faint hint of a melody on the night breeze.

Dannel’s arrows stabbed down and vanished into the body of the worm. The thing reared violently, the attack clearly inflicting a lot more harm than Lok’s assault had. Its head snapped up, and Cal knew that another magical blast—another blight, or a cone of cold—would be coming in seconds. Dannel, he knew, would not survive another magical attack, and while his stamina was considerable, he had his doubts about how many more such blasts he could withstand.

Let it work, he thought, calling upon something… a prayer? He wasn’t especially religious, but in that instant, he thought he felt a presence, something external to himself as he sucked in magical power, amplified through his rod, and unleashed it through the triggering words and gestures, culminating in a finger pointed down at the creature.

The green ray struck the worm in the midsection. For a moment the beam flared out in a pale halo of soft light, and Cal thought that the spell had failed, defeated by the worm’s considerable resistance ot magic. But then a segement of its body, about ten feet of its length, vanished, crumbling into dust.

The worm collapsed, both halves thrashing with an incredible violence. The tower shuddered against repeated impacts, and Lok was hit and knocked roughly back, falling in the shadow of the recessed doorway to the tower. But the worm’s struggles were clearly its death throes, and they grew steadily weaker, until it finally—almost a minute later—stopped moving altogether.

As the worm finally expired, a gory figure slaked in black ooze staggered out from one of the ends. Umbar made it all of about five paces before he collapsed.



Chapter 533

The rain promised by the gathering clouds the night before had come and gone so swiftly that the ground was barely damp. A bright winter sun in a sky of startling blue could not banish the chill in the air, but it made the morning much more pleasant than the dreary overcast ones of the last tenday. As the sun rose, with it came the stir of life in the hills that surrounded Ember Vale, for even in this unfriendly season animals dwelled here, although they gave the settlement in the valley’s center a wide berth.

There were no sounds of animals in the brush, or birds scattering at their approach, as the companions descended on their flying carpet into a rocky dell overgrown with dense brush and other vegetation. Cal, kneeling at the front of the carpet, pointed to a compact clearing below, and the carpet descended in that direction. Weapons were readied, and spell components checked for easy access.

But only silence greeted them. They were still a good thirty feet above the ground below when Dannel saw the first body. They were not surprised; Cal’s prying eyes that had found this place had given them warning of what they would find. Still, they were alert for any sign of an ambush, as the carpet settled a few feet above a wide stone outcropping, and they dismounted, spreading out to watch in all directions. Dannel remained on the carpet, an arrow nocked and ready to fire.

“What manner of man is that?” Beorna asked, as Cal knelt besid the first body. Umbar’s voice carried from the far end of the dell, indicating that he’d found another.

The “man”, if he was that—he was of no race any of them had ever seen—looked to have been abused. His body was covered with dozens of what looked like tiny cuts, which on closer examination were found to be tears in his flesh, as though his body had simply started to come apart under some incredible stress. His eyes were clouded, staring sightlessly ahead nothing, and his jaw was locked so tightly that blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. They found a broken staff nearby, and a depression in the ground that was caked with dried blood.

“There were more of them here, at some point,” Mole said, checking the ground.

“That one over there, his throat was slit,” Umbar said. “He did it to himself… His hand was clutched on the blade so tight that I’d have to hack off the hand to get it, I think.”

“I sense no Taint,” Arun said. “There is a lingering darkness in this place… but he, at least, feels clean.”

Looking down at the bloody hole in the ground, Beorna said, “It is… wrong. What was done here was evil.”

“Perhaps,” Cal said, still looking at the ruined figure at his feet. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know who these beings were, or why they came here.”

“Seems pretty obvious ta me,” Hodge said. “Assumin’ yer ain’t forgotten last night.”

“Do you think that’s the end of it?” Mole asked.

Cal lifted his head and looked at his companions. He saw the answer in their eyes. “No,” he said.

“So where do we go from here?” Dannel asked.

“We go forward with our plans,” Arun said. He lifted his hammer. “We know who the ultimate enemy is. And while…” He abruptly stopped in mid-sentence, and his eyes grew momentarily unfocused.

“What’s the matter?” Beorna asked. The others turned to him, concern on their faces, but Arun forestalled them with a gesture. When he finally spoke, his voice was grim.

“We are out of time,” he said.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 534

INTERLUDE

Ediir drew a considerable draught from his pipe, held it a moment, and then let it out in a soft plume of sweet white smoke. He didn’t need to look to his side to see the disapproving look from his second. Avellos, like most celestials, took a pretty strict line on what could be considered a vice.

The leonal guffawed slightly, and took another puff of smoke before tapping out his pipe and tucking it back into a pocket of his war-cloak. It was almost time to move out again. He only had to nod to Avellos—think what he would, the fellow was a good leader—and the hound archon started gathering up the patrol for a resumed march.

Preparation was almost reflex now, for Ediir. He checked his weapons, although they were never far from his hands, riding easily at his hips. The two maces were very different, one small and gleaming silver, the other large and crudely hewn of cold iron. They had seen a fair amount of use during this extended patrol, but inwardly the leonal was thinking that their role had begun to transition to mopping up the remnants of the fiendish creatures that still resided here. Of course, he wouldn’t say as much to his men—no sense in having them let their guard down! Ediir could see the changes wrought even in just the short time since he’d come here, transitioning across planes to join the fight against Evil on yet another front. From what he’d heard from some of the archons, the ones that had been here before the failed attempt from the former master of this place to reassert his authority, those had been some hairy times, back then.

Not that his tally on this extended patrol was anything to scoff at. The fiendish bison weren’t that much of a threat, but they’d also flushed out a knot of dretch that had taken shelter in one of the mounds of rubble dotting the landscape, and a fiendish dire lion that had torn one of his archons to pieces before they’d finished it. It had been a pity to slay that last one, Ediir thought, recognizing a distant kinship with the beast, but in the end, it had been Evil, and his maces had splayed its brains quiet convincingly out over the turf.

He looked up as one of his scouts came buzzing into their camp. Even before the lantern archon spoke, its words sounding like they were spoken from within a long hollow tube, Ediir knew that its news was trouble. His maces sprung into his hands, and his patrol gathered around, alert for any threat.

The lantern archon’s report confirmed his feeling, although as usual the celestial’s words were thin on the details that he would have liked. The little ones weren’t known for their intellect, but they were fearless and dedicated.

“Lead us there,” he ordered.

They followed the pulsing lantern archon deeper into the forest of withered strands that they’d been skirting before their break. A faint hint of rot hung over the place, which grew stronger the deeper they progressed. It was all just a part of change, Ediir noted; as Occipitus evolved, the old faded away, to be replaced with the new. He wasn’t sure what exactly would replace this fibrous forest, but it had to be better than the grisly strands that made him feel like a flea walking upon the back of some massive hound.

The archon flashed, and they could see something up ahead, a reddish glow that had a decidedly unfriendly look to it.

“Buff up,” he told his forces. The hound and lantern archons paused briefly and prepared aid spells. It wasn’t much of a boost, but Ediir had been in enough campaigns to know that every little bit helped. One of the lantern archons touched him, infusing him with the same protection, and he nodded to the celestial in gratitude.

“All right, let’s go,” he said. He didn’t need to issue further orders; if nothing else, the archons were organized and knew their roles.

As they drew closer to the source of the glow, Ediir could see that it originated at some sort of distortion-field that floated in the midst of a clearing in the forest of dying fibers. The sagging strands grew particularly dense here around the perimeter of the clearing, as if the ones inside the open space had been pushed back to the rim. But they gave way easily before Ediir’s mace, and the leonal stepped forward into the clearing.

The distortion appeared to be a completely flat plane, an oblong roughly six feet high and four feet wide at its broadest point. It floated about a foot off the ground, and although the surface wavered, like a pond that had been disturbed by a thrown stone, Ediir could just make out something else beyond, a landscape of brilliant colors that was somehow jarringly wrong.

His suspicions about the nature of this oddity was confirmed a moment later, as it shimmered and something stepped through.

It resembled a tall human at first glance, but that resemblance was quickly dispelled. Its body was lean, almost emaciated, and its hide was a mottled gray, as though all of the life and vitality had been sucked out of it. Its face… its face was a monstrosity, a warped feral thing with jaws too large for its face, and eyes that gleamed with a hungry yellow glow. It moved with an awkward, shuffling gait, carrying a massive double-ended axe almost as large as it was.

Ediir could sense the sudden surge of anger from his celestials, as they recognized the fiend. A rutterkin demon, one of the lesser tanari, but no less infused with taint for that.

The archons did not hesitate, immediately assailing the demon. Beams of pure white light lanced down from above as the lantern archons hovered overhead, the rays searing the demon’s hide, ripping away swaths of corrupted flesh. The thing snarled and lifted its weapon as a quartet of hound archons rushed at it, spreading out to flank it and block retreat back through the portal.

They needn’t have worried; the demon had no thought of escape. It managed to inflict a minor wound upon one of its adversaries before their greatswords brought it down, thrashing as black ichor splashed out upon the spongy turf.

Ediir was typically one to lead from the front, even against such a minor threat, but he had hesitated. The portal was clearly some sort of planar gate, but he knew that such an effort was far beyond the capabilities of a mere rutterkin. He heard a bark from one of his archons and saw that another rutterkin, this one armed with a jagged-edged longsword, had pushed through into the clearing, and was already coming under heavy attack.

Why would someone bother to open a gate to send rutterkin here?

The answer came to him in a flash, filling his gut with a sensation of dread.

“They’re already here!” he said aloud, even as the air flashed around him, and the clearing filled with demons.

They appeared all around, teleporting in, surging immediately at the archons with slavering hunger for carnage. Most were babaus, their emaciated black hides glistening with the acidic red gel that coated their bodies, but Ediir saw a pair of vrocks materialize overhead, and as he head a loud croak behind him he turned to see a squat, massive hezrou crouched behind him.

The leonal did not wait for the inevitable charge. Recognizing the toad-demon as the greatest threat—a single blasphemy would have cut through his entire force—he opened his jaws wide and unleashed a powerful roar. The sound washed over the demon and knocked it back, reeling, stunned. A babau that had been too close shrieked and collapsed, likewise rendered insensate, but that did not in any way dissuade three others from leaping at the leonal from his flanks, their claws eagerly seeking his flesh.

Ignoring them for the moment, the leonal turned back toward the portal. Another demon had pushed through, a squat jovoc. One of the hound archons, too inexperienced to recognize the threat, chopped it with its greatsword, only to roar in pain as its aura of retribution returned the pain of the wound to its inflictor, and its allies.

Ediir created a wall of force across the gateway. It wouldn’t keep out the fiends that could teleport, but it would hold back the weaker ones…

But more demons were continuing to appear. Babaus were everywhere, at least two dozen now swarming in and around the clearing, and Ediir could feel the cries of his lantern archons as the vrocks eagerly tore into them, extinguishing their shining radiance.

The babaus snarled as they slashed at him with their claws. His damage resistance protected him for the most part, but the babaus were masters of sneak attacks, and he felt pain as their piercing talons sought out weak spots in his defenses. Turning, he aligned himself so that the maximum number of demons were in front of him, and then let out a second mighty roar. Nearly a dozen babaus crumpled, their bodies ravaged by the mighty blast. His own forces were not affected, but the lantern archons were all gone, destroyed, and only four of the hounds were left standing, having formed a defensive ring in the center of the clearing. Their swords hacked and cleaved into demonic flesh, the canine celestials caught up in the glory of slaying their traditional enemies. Ediir saw Avellos lift his flaming sword high as a vrock screeched and dove at him. The archon did not falter, holding his strike until the vulture demon’s claws had reached his fur, then driving the blade deep into its body. The vrock let out a piercing cry of agony and lashed out with all four of its taloned limbs at its enemy, and for a moment the two combatants were lost in a wreckage of violence. The other three hound archons hewed at babaus that leapt over their stunned comrades to tear at the archons with their long claws. One shining sword broke, weakened by the caustic ooze secreted by the babaus, and its owner rapidly fell, its jaws still locked around a babau’s throat.

Ediir felt a surge of glorious pride at the courage of his soldiers, but it was clear that the battle was not going in their favor. The leonal tore free of the babaus that were trying unsuccessfully to drag him down, and charged forward toward the embattled archons. He unleashed his third and final roar, and again demons fell, overcome by the holy power of that blast of sound. Avellos was quick to take advantage, driving his sword through the vrock one final time as the demon fluttered dazed at his feet. He turned immediately to aid his comrades, taking the head off a babau as it rushed past, but before he could strike again Ediir forestalled him.

“Return to headquarters… report what is happening!” Another vrock dove down at him, but he lifted his cold iron mace, and drove it up into the demon’s body. The blow released a sudden cacophonous blast of sound, the full power of the thundering weapon knocking the beastly creature roughly aside.

“I will not abandon you!” the hound archon yelled, stabbing another babau. Already, his sword smoked as the toxic acid ate at the weapon. A foot away, another hound went down under a pair of babaus, leaving only one other celestial standing besides the two leaders, blood oozing from a half-dozen gashes in his fur. Both of the celestials knew that there was no easy escape for the leonal, who lacked the archon’s ability to teleport.

“That is an order!” Ediir roared, crushing a babau’s skull with his backswing. The vrock, recovering, let out a terrible shriek; the hound archon soldier staggered and fell into the eager arms of a babau, and Avellos only barely resisted being similarly affected. Ediir’s fortitude was such that he easily shook off the stunning effects of the shriek, and he brought both of his weapons down onto the vrock’s shoulders, drawing a reassuring crack as fiendish bone gave way before the assault.

Avellos nodded, drew up his sword, and vanished.

The demons, furious at the escape of one of their adversaries, only intensified their attack. The vrock, still struggling, seized one of Ediir’s arms. The leonal broke free, losing one of his maces. He laughed and tossed the other away; he needed no weapons to hurt demons. His claws found the vrock’s throat and tore, and the demon collapsed, gurgling out the last of its life in a bloody mess.

For a moment, as babaus swarmed around him, the leonal considered flight. It was possible that Avellos would be able to return with reinforcements; distances were of no concern to a celestial with the ability to teleport at will. He could lead these fiends on a merry chase, and rally his forces…

But as he looked up, and saw more demons descending toward the melee—chasmes, he recognized, and a palrethee—he knew that his initial suspicion about the demonic assault was correct. This wasn’t a raid; this was an invasion, a campaign of conquest. Avellos would not be returning soon; if the great spire was not already under attack, it would be soon. The hound archon was loyal, and would seek to return, but Saureya was practical, above all, and he would not allow a veteran leader to throw its life away.

He could run. But while he was faster than these demons, they too could teleport.

The leonal let out a growl from deep in his throat, shaking his head to clear it of the buzz that was already beginning to lull his senses. He was bleeding now from a half-dozen deep gashes that had gotten through his defenses; everywhere he turned a babau was tearing at him.

Ediir paused a moment to heal himself, then he reached out and grabbed a babau by the skull, slamming it into his knee with enough force to crack its skull like a ripe melon. The action hurt his knee somewhat, and would likely cost him some mobility. In effect, a decision made.

The leonal laid about him with abandon, cutting and tearing and crushing. Demons died, and more came forward to take the places of the slain.

It went on.

No celestial reinforcements came.



Chapter 535

Dana steeled herself as the thick door recessed into the wall slowly opened. The receeding portal did not make a sound, but its ponderous swing nevertheless clearly conveyed the feeling of great thickness and weight even before it had withdrawn enough for her to see the space beyond.

The space beyond looked dark, at first, but as her eyes adjusted she could make out the features on the walls inside, highlighted by a deep violet glow that seemed to seep from small globes that were set into the crown molding where the ceiling met the wall at regular intervals.

The dark portal finally came to a stop, leaving a gap only just large enough to allow her passage. Taking another deep breath, she stepped forward. She felt a tingle as she entered the threshold, and for a moment felt a brief thrill of panic that she ruthlessly squashed. For just an instant she thought she heard a voice, calling her name. LL? she thought, but there was only silence. Oddly, she almost thought that the voice had been a woman’s, slightly familiar but too fleeting to identify.

She steadied herself and stepped forward, commiting herself. She had forseen this, and in fact would have been surprised if there had been no defense here. A ward against scrying, or extradimensional travel, or both. In any case, she was not going to turn back.

Once fully through the doorway, she immediately caught sight of the door warder, shielded behind the portal. She had to look up to meet its eyes; it was nearly eight feet tall, and its long angular wings brushed the ceiling. She would have called it a succubus but for that size, and the fact that its skin consisted of dense scales colored in a blend of gray and olive that was muted in the odd lighting. Its eyes, set deep within their sockets, were black orbs that regarded her without any emotion that she could discern.

“No weapons,” it said, its voice deep and androgynous.

“I carry none,” she said, spreading her cloak. She forced herself to meet that black stare as she spoke, and the meanings behind the words carried clearly. I do not need them. Her demeanor also carried the clear intimation that she would not subject herself to a search.

But the reptilian thing did not press her. It closed the door, leaning into it until it sank cleanly into its socket. She could now see that it was a full foot thick, and if it was solid metal as it appeared, it had to be insanely heavy. As it settled into place, an audible series of clicks sounded that were disproportionately loud in the confines of the corridor.

The door warden glanced down at her. Its mouth twisted into what might have been a grin, as if confirming that she was now without options. She did respond. She had already worked out the implications of this visit, which she had gone through such trouble to arrange, and was beyond second-guessing herself.

The creature gestured for her to proceed it down the hallway. She walked down the corridor, her boots silent on the thickly carpeted floor. The hall wasn’t very long, perhaps twenty paces before it ended in a wide arch that curved dramatically in a fashion reminiscent of Calimshite architecture. The shadows deepened within, and it took her a moment to recognize that there was a pair of enameled wooden doors opposite her.

The doors opened easily at her touch. The space beyond was significantly brighter than the oddly lit corridor, and it took a few seconds of blinking to adjust enough to make out details of the chamber.

The floor was somewhat lower than the corridor, with a short but wide staircase leading down to the broad space below. Several additional arches around the perimeter—lushly warded by silk drapings or curtains of colored beads—led into shallow alcoves or to other rooms within the complex. A faint sound of water trickling into a basin was audible, but she could not identify its source. There was an air of luxury here, but also an undercurrent of horror that became clearer as she looked around. Faded tapestries that appeared to show scenes of frolic were actually depictions of torture, while small objects that looked like innocent knickknacks at first glance turned out to be quite otherwise when they suddenly moved, resolving into bulbous vermin or small fiends that skittered away into hidden corners. A pair of quasits sitting on a high ledge watched her movements, whispering comments in Abyssal that didn’t quite reach her ears. One held something in its hand that it occasionally tweaked with a sharp fingernail, drawing a tremulous squeak of discomfort from whatever it was.

She looked back at the door warder, who merely indicated another arch on the far side of the room. This one had a more substantial opaque hanging obscuring it, but as she approached it—careful to avoid a slithering something that slid past her boot as she crossed the room—it drew back seemingly of its own volition, revealing a complex circular iron door that resembled an iris.

She stepped up to the door, which twisted open before her, revealing another chamber.

The room was shaped like a hemisphere, although there were enough bulges, ledges, and alcoves to ruin the pure outline of the form. The dome was crafted from blocks of red stone that bulged slightly, their edges rounded, giving the place the appearance of being part of the shell of some monstrous giant insect. A pair of hooded lanterns dangling from the apex of the dome provided at least a semblance of illumination. Dark shadows along the walls might have concealed exits, or they might have just been part of the unnatural curve of the dome.

A pair of massive forms flanked her as she entered. She recognized them from elsewhere in Sigil; mogs or something similar, LL had called them. Each carried an axe larger than she was. How they got in here she didn’t know; they seemed too large to navigate the entry.

Dismissing them as mercenary guards, she directed her attention to the others in the room. She felt a momentary quiver as she recognized a medusa, its skin a deep shade of blue, its eyes obscured by a pair of black eye cusps that reflected the light in the room. It stood adjacent to a black divan that pointed toward the door. Opposite it stood another creature that Dana thought she recognized. It took her a moment to place it; the naked, sexless humanoid was of the same race—if not the same individual—as the creature that had betrayed her and her friends to Graz’zt when they were in Zelatar, almost twenty years ago. Its body was hairless, its bone-white flesh pulled tight over its frame, its features pinched and alien with narrow slits for a nose and mouth, and no visible ears at all. For the life of her, she could not recall the name of the creature they’d encountered that last time; in any case this one evidenced no hint of recognition, or any other emotion in its alien eyes.

But the one she had come to see what lying upon the divan, facing her.

That Barrat Ghur was a fiend was discernable at an instant’s glance. Even if the black horns jutting from his temples and the sinister red tinge to his flesh did not give it away, the depth of spiritual corruption that radiated from him could never be fully masked. But from that base, all other assumptions collapsed. For one, he looked… old, his hair and beard thinning and gray, his skin wrinkled and sagging, gathered in clumps around his neck. His limbs jutted from his body like sticks, and were marked by spiny ridges that protruded up to several inches out from his elbows and knees. He was clad in a tunic and breeches that glimmered with the sheen of metal, cut specifically to the unique contours of his form.

There was a long moment of silence as the human woman regarded the fiend, who met her look with a cold stare.

“Barrat Ghur,” she finally said.

“Dana Ilgarten,” Ghur said. For his aged appearance, his voice was deep and full, booming from his chest. “You have gone through a great deal of effort to ferret me out. You have bullied your way across the torus of Sigil, slain my associates, and inconvenienced me by sundering operations carefully assembled. Now you come into my sanctum, alone, with all the arrogance of an infernal magnate.”

“Tell me, my dear… why is it that I should not simply slay you where you stand?”

The door twisted shut behind her, and the creak of the maugs as they lifted their weapons sounded unpleasantly loud in the sealed confines of the chamber.




Chapter 536

“Tell me, my dear… why is it that I should not simply slay you where you stand?”

Dana did not react, did not turn as the obvious noise of the door closing and the maugs shifting into a ready position echoed behind her. Instead, she kept her attention focused on Ghur. “I am not someone you would wish to make an enemy.”

“Ah, yes,” the fiend replied. “Perhaps you refer to your fabled thaumaturgic powers. In case you have not noticed, human, this citadel is fortified with a dimensional lock. You will be not be gating in any angels to your cause this day, nor can you shunt yourself off to a place of safety.”

Dana did not respond.

“Or perhaps you refer to your friend. I was not altogether surprised to hear that you’d attracted Laertes Leonidas to serve as your planar cohort. The werelion has something of a reputation here in Sigil, and has always had something of a soft spot for lost causes. Either way, he cannot assist you here.”

“LL is not involved in this,” Dana said. “He offered to join me in meeting you, but I asked him not to intervene.”

“A selfless gesture,” Ghur said, his tone such that Dana could not distinguish whether it was mocking or sincere. “So given these limitations, why should I be leery of inflicting my… desires… upon you?”

Dana came a step deeper into the room, still a good three paces from the end of the divan. She sighed. “If you feel it necessary to wade through these preliminaries… Very well, then, here’s a reason for you: I have powerful friends who would not take it well if I were to be inconvenienced.”

“And yet you seem quite cavalier about placing these friends of yours into a circumstance of potential danger, through your actions.”

“I am driven by a motivation beyond my control.”

“Ah. Love… or hatred, perhaps? Connected like a mobius, they are.”

“I would not expect a being of your kind to be able to comprehend the former. But let us speak of hate. That, I suspect, is something that you understand quite intimately.”

“You presume much.”

“A necessity, born of the circumstances I alluded to before.”

“Let us speak of that, then. For you would not have come here, would not have undergone the obviously significant effort that you have, without a profound need.”

“Would it be too jarring if we simply skipped over the little dance? You know who I am, and why I am here. If not, then I have miscalculated, and you will not likely be of aid to me in any event.”

The fiend inclined his head slightly in a nod of acknowledgement. “So be it. Let us assume for a moment that all of your grand presumptions are essentially accurate. Tell me, then, why I should help you.”

“You sat high in the councils of the demon prince Graz’zt; were one of his advisors for quite some time. Perhaps even one of his inner circle, for a time. You represented his interests on numerous planes, ultimately settling here on Sigil. Forgive my delving into conjecture at this point my narrative… but perhaps you grew to prefer this place to the stark harshness of the Abyss. When the Prince’s fortunes underwent a period of decline, you used the opportunity to sever yourself from him, and establish yourself as an independent agent.”

“You have accumulated a lot of data in a short period of time. But your narrative rests upon a tortuous web of assumptions and suppositions, the most tenuous—and risky—of which is the presumption that my ‘severing’ from the prince was not amiable, and that I bear some resentment of him that is sufficient to motivate me to be of assistance to you. For example… consider for a moment the dynamic if it turned out that the estrangement was initiated by he, and not I… and the potential for restoration of amiable relations, if I were to present him with one of his enemies?”

“That is of course a possibility,” Dana replied. “I make no claim to knowing the truth of circumstances, only educated guesses based upon the information that I have been able to access. The problem with an investigation of this sort, is that only some of the facts are in evidence, and the motivations of the protagonists is clouded. For example, one might learn that you have thus far been approached by representatives of several Powers of the lower realms, including but not limited to the Abyss. And that you have carefully avoided any entanglements, playing off one against the other in an exercise that demonstrates a fair quantity of diplomatic skill, and guile.”

“Raw flattery, while appreciated, will not sway me to your cause.”

“Noted. It is also evident,” she continued, indicating their surroundings with a wave of her hand, “That you have undergone considerable effort and expense to cloak your operation here in a veil of… privacy.”

“If you had spent a longer time in Sigil, you would come to understand that such precautions are not uncommon. The fundamental rules upon the planes are quite different from those on your corporeal globe, not the least of which is that most of the rules themselves are mutable to some degree. But let us continue; your narrative grows interesting, even as the web strains against the weight of your assumptions.”

“Then let me offer my most tenuous statement before the web snaps altogether. You know where he is.”

Barrat Ghur chuckled. “Ah, here at last, your clever story runs into a wall formed of logic. Presume that your statement is correct. This presents several fallacies. First, if that were the case, and if your earlier statement about the mutual antipathy between myself and my former employer is likewise true, would not He be motivated to ensure my silence? Second, if I did possess this knowledge, would it not be insanely valuable? Surely one of my fundamental nature would sell or trade such information, in exchange for fabulous wealth and power. He has many enemies, as you no doubt know quite well.”

“Now you make assumptions,” Dana said. “You presumed, perhaps logically, that the ‘he’ I referred to was the Prince. I know that his location and movements are masked, by a potency greater even than a mind blank. In fact, finding out anything at all about the Lord of Shadows is all but impossible, even through direct divine agency.”

“Many things are made nebulous by the Heart,” Ghur said, mysteriously. Dana raised an eyebrow, but the fiend offered no clarification.

“Fortunately, his associates—current and former—are not so diligently shrouded.”

“And so you have set upon me,” Ghur said.

“Part of it is a question of access—you are here, after all, and not the Abyss, where a casual visit would be… inconvenient. But it is also true that you, perhaps more than any other individual of the Prince’s acquaintance, are familiar with his interests that are located outside of the Abyss. One such as he would have many bolt-holes that were not casually known, I am sure.”

“And you would be correct. It would take a lifetime to search them all, in fact.”

“I do not have a lifetime, and I think that you are being deliberately obfuscatory, in this case.”

The fiend’s eyes narrowed just slightly. “You still have not addressed my original critique about your construct of postulations. If, as you are obviously suggesting, I have some insight as to where to look, why would I not sell this information to one of His rivals?”

“That puzzled me as well,” Dana said. “But then I had to reorient my assumptions, as you might say. I grant that it would be impossible to even begin to put myself into the shoes of one who had been spawned and raised in the Abyss. But since coming to Sigil I have spent time with individuals who have been… instructive, in many ways. So my best guess is that you recognize that to share—sell, trade, whatever—this information with an Abyssal magnate would be to commit yourself to a faction, and thus forfeit the independence that you have obviously fought hard to preserve here.”

There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Ghur spoke. “Your insight is considerable, for a mortal so new to the Outer Realms. But your fault lies in your limited perspective. You do not truly understand that nature of your enemy.”

“Then enlighten me.”

Ghur shifted his gaze slightly to the humanoid to his left. The pale figure seemed to come closer, although it had not moved its feet. It shifted subtly, its hands coming up into a complicated pattern, its fingers—it only had four on each hand—twisting in a way that she could not have matched without breaking them.

The Silent, it was called the Silent, she thought. And indeed, the creature made no sound.

“What are you doi—“ she began, but then everything around her began to grow insubstantial, and she lost consciousness.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 537

Dana felt like she was floating, the surroundings of Ghur’s lair replaced by an empty gray expanse that seemed limitless in every direction. She felt a thrill of terror at Ghur’s—attack, betrayal? But the emotion slipped from her grasp, neutered by the void that was this place. Her thoughts flickered back upon the past, to Zelatar, and older treacheries, and Graz’zt.

Her attention was drawn back to the moment as the gray began to form shapes around her. The empty void was replaced by a landscape of black towers and squat buildings laid out like bricks below her; a cityscape. She was flying above it, incorporeal, a hollow observer. She recognized the place instantly; even two decades could not mute the memory.

Zelatar. The corrupt city of the Lord of Shadows, sprawling across three layers of the Abyss, Azzagrat, demesne of Graz’zt.

She could see demons, vrocks flying lazily through the air, swarms of quasits, there a succubus on some private errand. None paid her any heed. Below, the streets filled with creatures of all shapes and sizes… demons, yes, but others as well; planar travelers, yugoloths, daemons, slaad, tieflings, humanoids, giants, and a thousand other species all represented. Zelatar was far from friendly, but it was cosmopolitan, a collection of lost souls and the jetsam of a hundred realities, bound together in fear and respect for the Argent Lord, the Prince who ruled it all.

There. The Argent Palace, a massive complex that was visible from anywhere in the city, on any of the three planes on which it existed. There, the place that their enemy lurked in security, planning his wars, twisting plots through the fabric of dozens of worlds.

Dana felt something strange… a tendril of power intruding upon the edges of her consciousness. Something… familiar. She could not identify it, but it drew her attention to the depths of the Palace, to a collection of spires that rose hundreds of feet into the air, above a building large enough to hold a considerable town inside.

Something… popped.

A flash, erupting suddenly, blinding her. She covered her eyes with an insubstantial arm, blinking against the spots in her vision. She knew that she wasn’t really here, but even so the flare had been painfully bright.

She still couldn’t see when the blast wave hit her. She was driven back, although she could only feel the pulse of solid wind like an echo. As her vision began to return, she saw a vrock that flew past her as if shot from a catapult, there and gone in an instant.

She looked down. The city was…

Ruin. The Palace was a smoking pit. A massive orange cloud shaped like a billowing mushroom rose up from where the spired cathedral had been. A wall of flame continued to spread outward in a rapidly-broadening ring; within the ring everything was red fire and black smoke.

A giddy feeling rose up in her; madness came with it, she knew. In the nebulous shadow-state in which she floated, the feelings shore off of her like water upon an oilcloth cloak. She drifted, destruction everywhere she looked.

After a time, the scene shifted. Zelatar was still visible in the distance; a plume of black smoke hung over the city like a shroud. Columns of refugees stretched from the city in long strings. As Dana watched, a crevice in the ground disgorged a ravening pack of abyssal ghouls, who descended upon the nearest cluster of hapless souls fleeing the ravaged city. Demons and others fought the undead in knots, leaving mounds of shredded carcasses…

Another shift. A gray-green portal as big as a house disgorged a legion of heavily armored fiendish troops. A bat-winged woman in full plate atop a nightmare watched as row after row of soldiers poured into the bleak scene. She held a longspear aloft like a pennant; atop its summit hung a pair of severed heads, female…

Another shift. Carnage in a strange cityscape. Bodies rotting in the streets.

Another. A frozen landscape, frost giants with glowing red eyes, ambushed by huge wraiths that rose out of the ground, enfolding them until even their screams were engulfed.

Another. Another. Another.

Dana pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to blot out the images. A part of her knew she had to watch, had to absorb whatever clues were being revealed to her in this litany, but it was too much, too much…

Daughter

The soft voice calmed her. She cautiously opened her eyes, only to see that the neutral gray expanse had returned. She reached out with her mind. Moonmother?

Daughter, came the voice again, bringing peace, filling her with the benevolent touch of her patroness.

Were those things I saw real? Did Ghur betray me? Oh, mother… where is Benzan?

Hush, child. I have little time here, and you must save your strength for the trials that will come.

Ghur can only be what he is; ultimately he can only betray himself. He can give you the information you need… but the price will be high.

I will pay it, Dana thought, but she felt a tiny thread of caution through the link.

Do not be hasty, daughter. Some prices are too great to pay, if they cost us the thing for which we paid.

What would you have me do, mother? Speak it, and I will obey.

I cannot—no, I will not—take away that agency that is granted you. I cannot make this course any easier, daughter. But nor will I abandon you. Long have you carried my standard, and what grace I can bestow… I freely grant.

A soft glow penetrated the gray murk, a shaft of silver moonlight that bathed Dana in its radiance. At the touch of that light the fog that had hung over her senses melted away, and she felt a bright rapture as a divine glow spread through her.

Dana let that glow fill her until she thought she would burst. At that moment, she let go.

Her eyes opened. She was looking into the face of the medusa, who started in surprise. Dana saw that she was not what she appeared to be. How could she have missed it, before?

“She is awake!”

She stepped back and to the side. Dana saw that her cloak lay on the ground in front of Barrat Ghur, with several of her items laid out upon it. The fiend looked at her with an expression of interest upon his face. She started to step forward, only to realize that her arms were pinned, each held in the iron grip of one of the maug guards. Since she could not move, she fixed Barrat Ghur with a cold stare.

“I have gained insight from what you have shown me, but I still lack the information I seek,” she said coldly.

“You have surprised me, and I am impressed by your ability. But that does not change the fundamental reality of the situation that I alluded to earlier.”

“It does not have to go this way. I suggest you consider this; your interests and mine can coincide in this matter.”

“Had you come to me even a short interval earlier, I might have been inclined to agree. As it is…”

His gaze shifted for just a moment, but it was enough to confirm what Dana had already begun to suspect.

“Who are you?” she said to the medusa. “Surely it does not threaten you to reveal the truth, not at this point.”

The medusa let out a short, unpleasant laugh. “If you wish.” Her form shifted, and her already lean body elongated, her features altering. The transformation only took a moment, and when it was done a tall, impressive figure stood before her. A cloak of shiny black chitin covered most of its body, obscuring most of its form, but it was still identifiably humanoid. Its head, however, resembled that of a jackal, with milky yellow eyes that shone malevolently within deep sockets in its canine skull.

Inwardly, Dana felt a flutter of worry in her gut. But her voice was calm as she said to Ghur, “So. You have elected to throw your lot in with the yugoloths.”

Ghur tilted a hand apologetically. “Your comments upon my motivations were insightful, for the most part. But as you noted, it is very difficult to avoid taking sides. I do not make the rules…”

“We all make our own rules,” she said, quietly. “And we must live by the consequences of our choices.”

“I would have enjoyed seeing the ultimate outcome of your clash with my former employer,” Ghur said. “But as it is, I am afraid that your quest must now come to a premature end.”

He turned to the yugoloth lord. “She is yours.”



Chapter 538

Dana spoke a holy word.

Everything happened at once. Dana, her senses hyperattenuated by the expectation she’d had for this moment, all of the contingencies she and LL and Eleva had worked out, sensed the attempt of the pale asexual humanoid to counter her effort, but it failed. The power of the word filled the chamber with a resounding echo of pure Good. The merceanary maugs released her and fell back, stunned. The arcanaloth seemed momentarily discomfited, but she was not especially surprised when Barrat Ghur was not affected; his only response to the spell was a brief lapse of his calm features into a hint of a scowl. Likewise, the Silent showed no ill effect.

Ghur responded immediately with a powerful word of blasphemy. His invocation was even stronger than Dana’s, and without any sort of spell resistance she should have been dazed and seriously weakened, at least.

Fortunately, the fell magic was one against which she’d prepared a spell immunity before entering Ghur’s stronghold, and the sinister echoes of the magic slid off of her without harm.

The aranaloth tried to hit her with some sort of hold spell but with her will augmented by the divine gift of Selûne, that too did not affect her. Fortunately, she had returned to awareness before the creature had found and taken her pearl of wisdom, which nestled between her breasts under her tunic. They want to take me alive, she thought. That gave her an advantage, perhaps, albeit a small one; if they did manage to ensnare her, then she was as good as dead in any case.

The battle had only lasted a second, and while Dana had withstood the initial display of power from Ghur and his allies, she knew that the odds were still against her.

Well. She would have to do what she could to shift them back.

“Selûne’s might!” she screamed, kneeling and smacking her fist into the floor. As she struck, she unleashed a massive wave of energy, an earthquake that seized the room and shook it madly, tearing through the foundations of the structure and rippling outward. The yugoloth and white humanoid were thrown briefly off balance, while Barrat Ghur was tossed roughly off of his divan, as the floor shifted at an awkward angle beneath him. The construction of the place was durable, so the room did not collapse, but cracks appeared in the ceiling and floor, and the metal of the iris-door behind her creaked loudly in protest as it warped in its threshold, sealing them in.

When Ghur stood, his face had finally betrayed an expression of anger. “You will pay for that,” he said, his voice cold.

For a few seconds the four combatants just seemed to stand there; to an outsider it might have seemed like a casual gathering rather than a battle between earnest adversaries. But to one sensitive to the flows of magic that were hurled back and forth, the room would have been louder than a castle siege.

Ghur shifted his tactics, focusing a greater dispel at Dana in an effort to shear away her magical defenses. But that spell too dissipated before it touched her; she’d anticipated the tactic and had included that spell in the four protected by her spell immunity.

Thank you, Mocker Darr, she thought wryly, before she felt another sharp surge against her Will. It was from the Silent, she thought; it was impossible to be certain, because the creature did not stir, it just stood there with its arms at its side, only the slight shifting of the flaps of its mouth indicating that it was alive at all. The alien creature might be the most dangerous of the three, she thought; she was certainly familiar with its ability to shift reality and sever her grip on consciousness. But her mental defenses were fully alert, her will gathered like a suit of armor, and she resisted whatever assault the creature was launching at her.

The arcanaloth blasted her with a ray of enervation. But Dana’s death ward, cast immediately before she’d entered the Ghur’s lair, neutralized the spell. Thus far her layered wards were holding… but she knew that her enemies almost certainly had their own protections up.

So be it.

She summoned another powerful spell, lifting her hands high above her head, filling the room with the emerald glow of a dimensional lock.

Ghur, recognizing what she was doing, hit her with a power word. She hadn’t protected herself against that one, but was able to resist the effects—barely, swaying slightly as the spell’s power reverberated against her will.

“You play well, but you cannot withstand us forever,” Ghur said. “I have twenty fiends in my service, who will be here in moments!”

As if in response to his taunt, a loud crashing noise sounded through the damaged iron door.

The arcanaloth shifted its form, shapechanging back into the blue-skinned medusa she’d first seen when she’d entered this place. It immediately fixed her with its petrifying gaze, but Dana’s resisted its potency, tearing her eyes away from that deadly stare.

The priestess knelt again, touching her palm to the cold stone at her feet. Divine power flowed through her, spreading outward from her touch. The effect wasn’t immediately obvious, and as she stood, she was hit by a devastating spell from Ghur.

A scream was torn from deep in her throat as the flesh on her arms and legs began to tear itself from her body, dangling in long strips. Blood trickled down her limbs as she looked down to see bare muscle pulsing garishly in the room’s unsteady light. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she began to hear voices whispering at the edges of her awareness, building in intensity. She glanced over at the Silent, who stood motionless at his place, as unreadable as before.

“Ah, didn’t expect a flensing, did you?” Ghur said. “Savor the pain, Dana… it is only the beginning of the agonies that you will experience. If Amok Vorr is willing to amend our bargain, perhaps I will keep you for a time, and teach you the true depths of your ignorance about the Planes.”



Chapter 539

“Go f*ck yourself,” she hissed, and imploded the Silent.

As the pale humanoid collapsed in a bloodless heap, Ghur’s neutral façade cracked for the second time, now betraying a look of surprise. The arcanaloth, perhaps realizing that the situation had grown a bit more serious, abandoned subtlety and tried to disintegrate Dana. The green ray tore a painful swath across her torso, but when the beam faded she was still there, her expression cold as she turned toward the yugoloth.

The arcanaloth shapechanged into a pit fiend, but even as it lunged at her she focused her will and imploded it as well.

She paid a price for that, as Ghur kept up his attack, sending waves of agony through her as more of her flesh ripped free of her body. But she was not unaccustomed to pain, and her focus had reached the level where dedication and insanity were too close to distinguish.

She set her gaze upon Ghur. In an act of desperation, he laid a destruction upon her. The black fire scorched her exposed limbs, but even as it did a blue glow surrounded her, and the wounds were healed as the contingency she’d laid upon herself earlier—courtesy of a miracle spell—took effect.

The fiend turned and darted into one of the recessed alcoves nearby. But the secret door there refused to open; Dana’s earlier stone shape had sealed all of the room’s exits. Given time he could have forced it, but as he turned he saw that he had no time left.

Another heavy crash sounded, this time filling the room as the iron door buckled under a massive impact. The sound seemed to restore Ghur’s courage. “You can destroy me… but if you do, you will never find your lost love! It is time to make a decision, priestess!”

Dana snarled and lunged at him. Ghur screamed as the unholy red glow of a harm spell surged through him. Ravaged by the spell, he lashed out at her one last time, striking at her with a surge of fire that scorched both of them with eager red tongues. But that too faltered against one of the five protection from elements wards she wore.

Judging how injured the fiend was from her harm, she hit him with an inflict moderate wounds spell. The spell easily overcame his spell resistance, and while Ghur resisted the full effect of the destructive magic, what got through was still enough to knock him unconscious.

The door crashed again, the metal squealing as it was torn free of its moorings. Staying close enough to Ghur so that she could keep track of him, Dana stood and turned to face the newcomer.

With a final loud scream of protest, the door crashed free of the threshold and fell into the room. The figure that stepped through the doorway was not what Dana had expected, and her heart sank as she recognized the massive reptilian form of Dhur’s fiendish door warden. The demon’s features twisted into a violent snarl as it caught sight of her, and as it spread its claws they thickened and elongated, pulsing with an infusion of black shadow-energy.

Dana hit it with a holy word.

The demon, unaffected, stepped forward.

Oh, crap.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 540

Dana brought down a flame strike that almost missed the demon. It moved so quickly that it was on her even before her mind registered that it was attacking. Even as the stench of scorched reptilian flesh filled her nostrils she felt pain explode across her body as the thing smote her with one of those massive claws, drawing deep gashes in her torso, slicing flesh and muscle down to the ribs below. Staggering back, she opened her mind to the goddess, and poured divine energy into a stream of silver fire that splayed over the body of the demon, scoring its corrupt, scaly hide.

The demon roared in pain. It lifted its claws, snarling as it prepared to tear her face from her body.

A dark form hurtled through the doorway like a rolling boulder, slamming hard into the demon’s back. Dana twisted out of the way as the newcomer and the fiend crashed hard to the ground in a tangle of limbs, the demon already twisting its body around in an effort to get at its attacker. The newcomer was just as strong and fast as the demon, however, and after a violent series of attacks, the fierce reptilian monstrosity sagged and collapsed, blood oozing from the wreckage of its back.

“You okay?” Laertes Leonidas growled as he stood. The werelion looked a sight, his fur matted with blood and scorched black across his shoulders and the left side of his head.

“Took you long enough getting here,” Dana said with forced levity, as she healed his injuries.

“Yeah, well, their welcoming committee wasn’t exactly… welcoming.” Dana’s cohort looked around at the wreckage of the chamber, the two still-insensate maugs, the remains of the Silent and the arcanaloth. “That him?” he asked, nodding at the motionless form of Barrat Ghur.

“Yes,” Dana said. She turned as another figure appeared in the doorway. He looked like an elf at first glance, although his planar heritage was clear in the odd shine of his eyes, the slightly unreal cast of his features. “Everything all right in here?” he asked, his voice musical in its lilting syllables.

“Yes, Eleva,” she said. Now that the battle was over, she felt suddenly tired. But she could not rest, not now. “Bring him,” she said to her cohort, who nodded as he went to recover Ghur’s limp form.

“Thank you again for your service,” she said to Eleva. The ghaele eladrin bowed. “You took most of the risk upon yourself, Moonmaiden. I am pleased that you were successful.”

“I would not have been without your plan. It was… brilliant.”

The ghaele smiled. “The intelligence provided by your captive provided us with the keys we needed to unlock the complexities of the tactical situation.” The statement was true in more ways than one; Mocker Darr’s headband of intellect had been one of items Dana had offered Eleva for a term of service as her planar ally, and while it had been one of the least powerful versions of said item, it had still helped to augment the eladrin’s already considerable intellect.

“Are you all right?” she asked, noting that the ghaele’s garments were discolored with scorch marks and trails of blood. His greatsword, dangling at his side, was red from the hilt to the tip of the blade. But his wounds had already been healed, and the eladrin shook his head at her offered aid.

“The fiends put up a bit of a fight,” he explained. “Your contingent summoning worked perfectly as soon as we felt the tremors of you earthquake, and the elemental made short work of the entry. But as soon as we got inside, we ran into some heavy resistance. That little monstrosity,” he said, indicating the reptile-demon, “was the worst of them; she made short work of the elemental but fortunately disengaged to return here before she became too much of a problem. I was able to distract the remaining defenders while Laertes here followed it. Your friend ran across a few blast wards, but he was quite intent on reaching you.”

“Eleva is too modest,” Laertes said, as he returned with Ghur slung over his shoulder. The fiend groaned, but did not stir back to consciousness. Dana gave him a quick examination; she did not want any more surprises. “Ghur had a good two dozen fiends and merc guards working for him, mostly light stuff: quasits, reavers, half-fiends, maugs; with a couple of nasties like the dragon-bitch there. He went through most of them single-handedly. I marked a prismatic spray, a banishment, and a holy word, and I think I saw a summoned avoral flapping around in there at some point.”

“It was a glorious fight,” the eladrin said, modestly.

“Let’s get back,” Dana said. “Eleva, please give a quick check over the rest of this place for any remaining fiends lurking in the corners, or items of power that we might use. Swiftly.” The eladrin nodded and departed.

“What about them?” Laertes said, indicating the still-helpless maug guards. “They are likely mercenaries, Dana… evil, perhaps, but not implicated in Ghur’s schemes.”

“You know the answer to that.”

The were-lion did not reply, but followed Dana as they made their way out of the complex. It was harder going out than in; the earthquake had done some damage outside of the central room, forcing them to detour around a few fallen beams, and at the doorways they had to pass over the wreckage of the portals forced by Dana’s summoned elemental.

Once they had made their way back to the covered portico outside of the main door, they paused. Dana looked back at the black doorway; the violet lighting inside the main hall had faltered during the battle.

“Dana…”

“Later,” she said. After a few moments, Eleva emerged, and nodded.

Dana cast a summoning, and after a few seconds, a trio of large fire elementals appeared. She did not speak Ignan, but Eleva had told her the words she needed, and she had memorized them. She pointed toward the dark entry.

“Go inside there. Burn everything to ashes.”

Without even stopping to see if they obeyed, Dana turned and walked away. Her friends shared a brief look, and then followed after her, bringing with them the prize they had fought so hard to win.



Chapter 541


The scene within the Hall of the Flame had the look of chaotic bedlam, with celestials rushing about, to and from the staircase that led into the room, or flying in through the cleft in the ceiling above. But most of those present were archons, and so the appearance of tumult was in fact underlaid by a precise order. Lantern and hound archons delivered reports crisply to superiors, who in turn passed the information on to others of higher rank. A hulking ursinal clad in silvery plate stood guard, its armor aglow in the golden light that shone from the burning column that gave the place its name.

The center of the buzz of activity stood adjacent to that plume, close enough that he had to be awash in the heat radiating out from it. A sword archon approached and delivered a report in precise language. After his summary was concluded, he paused.

“What else is it?” the figure standing in the glow of the golden pillar asked.

“Avellos again requests permission to return to his patrol leader,” the winged celestial said.

“No,” Saureya replied. The archon waited for elaboration, but upon receiving only silence he made a clipped, formal bow and retreated to receive more reports.

Saureya stared into the column of flame. He already knew most of what the archon had reported, had already deduced the trend in the snippets of information that had flowed in from all over Occipitus since that first hound archon had returned with his news of a planar gate opening in the fibrous forest. At that point the deva had dared to hope that this was just a raid, but it had taken very little time to dispel that dream.

At this point, the only thing he didn’t know for sure was which Abyssal magnate was behind this. He had his ideas, of course. Ultimately, what did it matter?

He hadn’t wanted this authority. When Morgan had… gone, leadership had somehow just fallen upon his shoulders. He had managed to convince himself that it was all for the greater good in the aftermath of Adimarchus’s destruction, when no major threats lingered. But now…

He turned, and looked at the others gathered here. There was no fear, no doubt. They looked to him, and would sell their lives at as high a price as possible, if he gave the word. For the archons, there was Right, and there was Wrong. Everything between was clear.

How he envied them.

He knew that he should make another attempt to secure aid, but he knew it was pointless. Whoever was behind this, they had planned well. The link between Occipitus and the Higher Realms was blocked, and while he might have restored it eventually, using the power of the plane itself as a conduit, there was no time. Thus far the wards had held, but demons had already begun popping in and out in the airspace above the skull, and they were likely only waiting to build up a sufficient advantage of numbers before they swarmed in for a final assault.

The sword archon returned, but Saureya did not acknowledge him. Instead, the fallen deva reached out and plunged his hands into the column of golden fire. That hurt, and more than a little, but Saureya was a creature who had long familiarity with the nature of pain. The flow of liquid fire shuddered as he manipulated it, drawing upon the power of Occipitus to send a message across the boundaries between worlds. He did not even try to penetrate the barrier that lay between him and the rest of the outer planes, but instead drove in a different direction, toward the inner planes and the Prime Material.

It took almost no time. As soon as he felt the tiny pang that meant contact, he issued his sending.

Graz’zt unleashed all-out attack on Occipitus. Under heavy attack, several legions mimimum. Celestial aid blocked. Holding skull for moment. Assist immediately or Occipitus will fall.

The effort of completing the sending cost him more than he’d expected, and he sagged, the pain from the connection with the plume intensifying in response to his weakness. But he forced himself to hold the connection for a few moments longer, until the response came back, weak but still discernable.

We will do what we can.

He all but fell back from the pillar of fire. The sword archon looked at him with concern; the action in the room had paused as all of the gathered celestials watched. Instead of turning to his adjutant, the deva addressed them all directly.

“Send out the following order to all forces in the field.”

“Retreat.”




Chapter 542

With a hissing crash and a twisting of reality, Cal, Dannel, Mole, Lok, Umbar, Beorna, and Arun materialized on an open plain under the golden sky of Occipitus.

The third arrival of the companions from the Prime was not a pleasant one. Cal and Mole collapsed, voiding the contents of their stomachs; Dannel staggered and likewise would have fallen if not for Lok’s quick steadying arm. The dwarves looked unsteady as well, although they were better able to weather the surge of nausea that swept over them.

“What in the… Hells… was that?” Arun said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Some kind of distortion effect,” Cal managed, shaking his head as Umbar started to help him. Summoning an effort, he pushed himself back to his feet.

“Are you all right, Mole?” Beorna asked.

“Oh, hunky dory,” the gnome shot back, grimacing as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and gingerly stood. “You know, there are times when I envy you dwarves your cast-iron bellies.”

“Something is wrong here,” Arun said, looking up at the sky. They all followed his gaze, and they could see angry red striations in the gold-tinged firmament; had it been a normal skyscape, they might have called it a storm.

“We’re way out on the periphery,” Cal said. And indeed, the massive wall of cliffs that ringed the bowl-shaped plane seemed to almost loom with gray menace over them, extending out as far as they could see to either side. In the opposiste direction, toward the center of the plane, they could make out the massive spire of the great skull mountain that marked the core of Occipitus. The distortion effects appeared to be stronger there, but they could not discern any details at this distance.

“I cannot gauge the distance,” Umbar said. “This place… it is strange.”

“The layer is completely flat, and lacks a horizon,” Cal explained. “It takes some getting used to.”

“You should have seen it when it was evil,” Mole said.

“I do not think I will ever get used to this place,” Dannel muttered.

“We need to find Saureya, and find out what’s happening.” Arun said. “His sending said that several legions of demons were attacking, but that they were holding on to the skull—for now.”

“Assuming that the message was legitimate,” Cal said. “Remember, we know almost nothing about this situation. Time flows… differently here than on our plane, and the situation may be more fluid than we know.“

“You said you could bring four with your teleport,” the paladin said. “Take Lok, Mole, Dannel, and Beorna with you directly to the skull. Umbar and I will follow on the magic carpet.”

“I do not think that is a good idea,” Cal said. “Not only would the two of you be vulnerable, but we might arrive right in the midst of a hundred demons. At least let me try to scry Saureya, first.”

“That could be very time consuming, and we are very exposed here,” Umbar said, siding with Arun.

“I have the more potent variety of the spell memorized,” Cal explained. “I can establish the sensor in just a few moments, once I set up my focus.” He unslung his handy haversack which produced the oblong silver mirror on demand. As he prepared his spell, the others established a perimeter around him, scanning the open plain and the sky above for any threats.

None of them spotted the invisible quasit that hovered briefly a few hundred yards away, watching for a moment before it flew off with all dispatch in the direction of the skull.

Cal cast his greater scrying spell, and focused intently upon the mirror. The silver surface grew murky, as if he were looking through the window of a room filling with smoke. He oriented his thoughts on Saureya, the fallen deva, as he was the last time they saw him, after the defeat of Adimarchus.

The surface of the mirror faded to a dull gray.

“It’s no use,” he said. “He’s warded, or just alert to being detected; the spell has to overcome the subject’s will in order to get a lock…”

He trailed off as the gray void disappeared, replaced by a scene of intense clarity. Cal found himself staring into a familiar chamber; it was the greater chamber in the interior of the skull, with the pillar of fire just visible as a flickering glow in the back of his field of view. “Hey, I got some—“

A darkness appeared, filling the sensor. It fixed the gnome archmage, pouring into him like a torrent through the link. Darkness, nothing but darkness, carrying him away.

“Cal!”

“Cal, what’s wrong?”

“The mirror! Something’s using the sensor to attack him!”

Arun and Umbar pulled the gnome and the mirror apart, the paladin having to rip Cal’s clenched hands from the sides of the device. Cal screamed as the contact was broken, his body arching as his muscles clenched in a violent spasm. Umbar lifted the mirror to break it, but Dannel stopped him. “No, wait! The link has been broken!” And indeed, when the priest cautiously looked at the mirror, he saw only his own face.

For lack of a better solution, Beorna cast a protection from evil on Cal. The seizure seemed to be passing, and the gnome groaned in the cleric’s arms, pressing his palms against his eyes.

“What happened?” Mole said, once he’d removed his hands, and blinked up at them.

“He… he’s here,” Cal said, his voice laden with dread.

That grim announcement was followed by a pregnant silence, broken only when a harsh sizzle sounded out of thin air almost upon them, followed by a series of pops as demons materialized all around them and attacked.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 543

The first to appear were a cohort of babaus and a half-dozen apish bar-lgura, which teleported in anywhere from a few paces to fifty feet distant to the ring of companions. Wherever they were, the demons immediately let out bloodthirsty howls and leapt to the attack, covering the ground separated them from the nearest mortal in a mad rush. A few of babaus cannily hurled untargeted dispel magics into the knot of adventurers, hoping to strip away some of their defenses. The effort was mostly unsuccessful, as their magical potency was greatly inferior to the long-lasting wards cast by Cal and Umbar, but Beorna lost a protection from fire.

“Defensive ring!” Umbar yelled, invoking the power of Moradin to fill himself with righteous might. The action drew attention to himself, and three bar-lgura fell upon him, leaping up to cling to his torso, clawing and biting.

The warriors fell back into a tight circle, shielding Dannel, Mole, and Cal within, protecting each others’ flanks. The demons, confronted with a firm defense, evoked no subtlety, hurling themselves at their enemies to claw and bite.

For a moment the demonic rush seemed inexorable, as the emaciated babau and the shaggy bar-lgura swarmed over their foes, striking their armor and shields with powerful blows. The companions, caught off guard, did not immediately counter, which only seemed to embolden the demons further. More fiends materialized around the perimeter, another half-dozen babau accompanied by a fat toad-like hezrou. These moved to join their fellows, the hezrou pausing to hurl a chaos hammer into the fray before leaping forward on its powerful hind legs.

But the companions were not falling back or delaying their counterattack out of confusion or despair. No, every movement was planned, buying time and space to prepare as they consolidated their position, summoned powerful magic, and prepared.

When they did unleash their assault, just ten seconds after the first demon had materialized, it was devastating.

Arun held his spot in the circle as two babaus clawed at his armor, looking for any vulnerability. They didn’t find any. His very presence bolstered his allies; not only did he radiate a calm assurance against fear, but the hezrou’s hammer did not touch him or those next to him, and the magic circle against evil that he’d created helped all of them to defend against the demons’ ferocious assault.

Now, his shield came down, and his hammer, the blessed holy avenger, came out. Trusting in the sacred weapon’s ability to resist the caustic effects of the babaus’ slime, he drove in the chest of the first with a pair of truly colossal blows that laid it sprawling upon the turf a few feet back. The second one thought to use its comrade’s death to gain advantage, but even as it reached for Arun’s weapon-arm it realized its mistake. The paladin turned the hammer and sent it flying again with a smooth snap of its wrist, crushing one side of the demon’s torso in with a devastating straight-on blow. The demon staggered, and before it could recover a fourth attack smote it on the bridge of its nose, driving a shard of bone into its corrupted brain.

Beorna, just a step away, had faced a babau and a bar-lgura. The ape-demon had elected to simply try and bear her down, leaping upon her in the hopes of overwhelming her quickly. It found this more difficult that it appeared, as Beorna caught its weight, and taking one hand off of the hilt of her sword, grabbed its chest and hurled it back into the onrushing babau. The demons quickly recovered and came at her again, encouraged by the fact that she hesitated rather than striking at them. As with the two that had threatened Arun, they learned that hesitation did not mean weakness, as they found when the templar attacked fortified with divine power and a holy sword.

A few seconds later, the only difference between her foes and Arun’s were that hers were hacked apart rather than crushed.

Lok was rushed by three babuas. He had no buffing spells to cast, and no need to pause. Once he had fallen back to his assigned place in the line, he set his feet in a defensive stance, and waited. As soon as the demons entered his reach, he was ready.

Three more demons down.

Umbar’s concentration held as the three bar-lgura tore at his torso, and he too called upon the divine power of his patron. The demons clinging to him dug in with their claws and tried to rip open gaps in his armor, but the magical mail was dwarven-forged, and it withstood their best efforts. Empowered with an incredible strength, he tore one of the demons easily from its grip, thrusting it down upon the ground. The bar-lgura sprang back up, but before it could attack again the cleric drove his warhammer down into it, smashing bones with the force of the blow.

Within the protective circle offered by the warriors, Dannel plyed his bow. He did not have any more holy arrows in his quiver, but his song of power infused even the mundane missiles with magical potency, enough to punch through the damage resistance of the demons. His shock bow was of little avail against demons, with their immunity to electricity, but he now wielded Benzan’s bane longbow, which was a different matter entirely. The bow, specifically designed to harm evil outsiders, tore into the bodies of demons mercilessly. His first arrow had struck one of the bar-lgura threatening Umbar, but on seeing the hezrou appear, he immediately shifted targets to that foul demon. His first shot coincided with the blast of its chaos hammer, which the elf weathered with no ill effect. If anything, the blast of energy drove him to a renewed intensity, his hands almost blurring as he transferred arrows from his quiver to the string, drawing and firing almost instantly. He felt an added surge of speed—a haste spell from Cal, no doubt. Never had he felt the song so keenly in his veins, the bow singing in his hands in harmony with its melody. The hezrou’s thick hide may as well have been the parchment of a tournament target, for all the hindrance it offered to his shafts. The demon’s gaze fixed upon the archer, and in those alien eyes, Dannel thought he saw fear.

Unleashing its most fell power, the demon croaked a word of blasphemy. But the heroes were warriors of legend, and the dark word washed over them, its menace fading like a fireside tale of horror remembered in the reassuring light of the full day.

The demon’s foul word had barely faded when Dannel’s next arrow slammed through its open jaws, and through the roof of its mouth into its brain.

Thus far, the demonic attack had accomplished little but to litter the ground with riven fiendish corpses. But the hollow flares of more teleportations went on around them, as more attackers continued to appear. Another dozen babaus appeared, along with another hezrou, and in the air above them, five vrocks materialized. The vulture demons dove down toward the companions, but instead of attacking, they formed into a ring, locking claws as they spun in a mad, gyrating dance.

And if that wasn’t enough, a massive form appeared another fifty yards behond the vrocks, its bloated body held aloft by stubby wings jutting from its hairy back. Nevuuz took in the battlefield and the ring of slain demons, and smiled. Mortals, caught here by the surprise invasion engineered by its evil master. The nalfeshnee already had a quartet of archon scalps bound to the throng it wore across its body, enough for a fair bounty. Cutting this knot of defenders would bring a fine reward; perhaps even a succubus as a personal attendant?

Surrounding himself with an unholy aura, the mighty demon descended toward the battle.

Meanwhile, in the center of Occipitus, an ebon-hued figure appeared in the air over the skull. Spreading his arms, he rose slowly up into the air toward the golden ceiling above. Peals of thunder wracked the plane, as if Occipitus itself were announcing his arrival, and dark webs of energy began to form across the sky, as chaos surged.




Chapter 544

The companions turned from the task of slaying demons long enough to note the loud din that resounded across the plane.

“Now what?” Beorna shouted, twisting to avoid a claw that swiped hard at her helmet, and following it with a thrust from her sword that ran a babau through the chest. When she withdrew the weapon, she saw that the blade was smoking from the acidic gunk smeared along its length. Swearing, she dropped the damaged weapon, which encouraged the next two babaus that leapt eagerly forward.

“I don’t know… but…aagh!” Lok said, as an unholy blight settled onto them, courtesy of the latest hezrou to join the fray. When it cleared, it revealed another pair of babaus trying to trip the genasi, who snarled as he grabbed one by the neck and slammed it to the ground at his feet.

Cal’s voice sounded from directly behind Lok. The gnome had made himself invisible almost as a reflex, and naturally Mole was nowhere to be seen as well. “We have to take out those vrocks… if they finish their dance, we won’t like the effect one bit!”

“On it,” Dannel said, already lifting his aim and choosing his target. Cal put his words into action by casting a shadow evocation, hurling a delayed blast fireball made of shadowstuff into the midst of the vrocks. The creatures let out a terrible screech, but did not interrupt their dance, even when Dannel dropped his target with a direct hit.

“We need more firepower,” Cal said, even as a blast of lightning stabbed down from above them, splaying across Umbar’s broad shoulders. The cleric merely grunted and kept up his task of mashing the demons still fighting to bring him down. One of the bar-lgura had crawled up onto his back, out of easy reach, and was moving for the gap between his helmet and neck when it suddenly lost its grip and fell. Mole briefly became visible, dangling from a strap of the giant priest’s armor, then she kicked off and fell blade-first onto the demon’s chest.

“Fly me, and I’ll go,” Lok said. But Cal saw that without the genasi, they’d never be able to hold the line; already several of the babau were threatening sneak attacks as they continued to swarm around the defenders.

Grimacing, the gnome began casting again, hoping that he would be fast enough to outpace the beatdown he knew was coming.

A wave of pure stench swept over them, as a hezrou barreled into the melee. The frog-demon took a hit from Arun as it reached for Beorna. The templar tried to stab it, but the hezrou seized her bodily with both claws and stuffed her head-first into its gaping maw. For a moment the demon’s head engulfed the dwarf’s head and shoulders, but then it shuddered, its body spasming suddenly. A second later the demon disgorged its captive along with a flood of bloodly gore, and staggered back; Beorna, calling upon a feat of strength granted her by Helm, had smote it from within. It managed to croak at her in a violent fury, recovering for another attack, but unfortunately its movement took it within Arun’s reach, and that was that.

“Dannel… take the one with the scorched left wing!” Cal’s voice urged. The elf nodded and let fly, his arrow stabbing up into the vrock, joined a heartbeat later by a second. The vrock faltered and broke free of the circle, its wings flapping wildly as it tried to arrest its descent. The demons smoothly closed ranks, the three remaining ones intensifying their dance as flickers of blue energy began to erupt in their midst. But just as the dance of ruin was coming to its peak, Cal hit one of the demons with an empowered disintegrate, vaporizing it. The two remaining vrocks let out a frustrated shriek, and promptly surrounded themselves with a halo of mirror images as they withdrew to a safer distance to regroup.

“Nice one!” said Mole, as she rolled back to her feet beside them. “Say, could you hit me with a quick improved invis? A fly would be nice as well…”

But before Cal could respond, there was another series of all-too-familiar distortions that announced more demons arriving. All around them, in an uneven ring, babaus, bar-lgura, and hezrous materialized, almost fifty in all. And the sky above blackened as more vrocks, at least twenty, teleported in, accompanied by a few sleek succubi.

“Oh, damn it all,” Lok said, summarizing the feelings of everyone present.




Chapter 545

Prince Graz’zt felt power surge through him as he rose into the air above Occipitus. He’d invested a fair amount of his power into the opening of the gates that had allowed his legions to transfer here, but that had been offset by the use of the Heart of Axion to siphon off energy from some of his minions to fuel the process. The complete annihilation of two hundred demons would be an incentive for the remainder to perform with vigor in the coming campaign.

Now, as the sky around him surged in useless resistance to his presence, it was time to ensure that victory would be the conclusion of that effort.

Extending his gaze, Graz’zt looked down at the base of the skull below. Three massive portals shone like oozing sores around that perimeter, each disgorging a column of fiends upon the plain. They were of all sorts and sizes. The demons were by far the largest contingent, and included hulking goristo, rutterkin, squat jovocs, endless slavering dretches, quasits, and even a few scattered glabrezu and jariliths. There was a knot of mercenary hordelings, no two of which were alike, and a full company of massively armored cambions, including a cohort of cavalry mounted upon fiendish dire lizards that were the size of cottages. The half-demons were the spawn of one of Graz’zt’s lesser harems, and all had been blooded in the eternal struggle against the devils. The harem was another pleasure that was lost to him, now, destroyed in the ruin of Zelatar…

The Prince allowed his anger to fill him, to fuel the growning flood of potency that gathered in him. For a few moments he hovered there, hundreds of feet above his armies, savoring the moment. Even for one such as he, what would be wrought here would be… remarkable.

Finally the columns began to thin. The noise of a sonic evocation reached his ears; the signal from his general that the deployment was complete.

Graz’zt did not rush the process. He was an entity of passion and fury, but he was also possessed of an incredible cunning, and a patience that had allowed him to bring down rival after rival over untold centuries of struggle. He was diminished, now; that could not be denied. His seat of power had been reduced to rubble, and others squabbled over the scraps he had been forced to leave behind. But this place, Occipitus… here, in this place which lay upon the cusp of possibility, a morphic reality teetering on the brink of redemption, here, he would begin anew.

It could take millennia to recover what he had lost. But Graz’zt was patient.

He gathered his Will. As the gates below faltered, he siphoned off their power as well; every little bit would help for what would come.

He reached out through the Heart of Axion, and drank of Occipitus.

It was time. Reveling in his might, the Prince unleashed two epic spells.

A massive crack shook the plane, followed by a rumbling that sounded like the end of the world. At Graz’zt’s bidding the massive white mountain that marked the heart of Occipitus began to shake and tremble, caught in the eddy of the Prince’s Will. The bleached white exterior of the fiendish pillar began to distort, hardening into grim plates of dull gray metal, marked by bands of jagged spikes and angles sharp enough to cut flesh. Spires and battlements jutted from the perimeter of the place in no particular pattern. Every hollow and overhang that could offer even a modicum of shelter from their view grew long, narrow spikes. The drained pool and tunnel that provided access to the place grew a massive iron door, surrounded by narrow slits that were similarly ringed by sharp edges.

The transformation took all of five seconds. When it was done, the mound of the skull was completely gone, replaced by an abyssal citadel from the depths of a nightmare.

But even as the reverberations of that dramatic alteration echoed across the plain, Graz’zt uttered the words of his second dramatic casting. The eddies of energy that the Prince had drawn to himself exploded outward in a cascade of sick emerald light that tinted everything upon the surface of Occipitus with its glow. Graz’zt spread his arms wide, drawing more and more power, screaming with the intensity of it. Again the spell developed rapidly, with the glow spreading to engulf the entirety of the plane in its radiance within a few seconds. When it had reached its furthest extent, the Prince drew upon a final reservoir of energy, and rooted the effect to the very fabric of the layer.

Graz’zt had set a dimensional lock over the entirety of Occipitus, sealing the plane.

Exhausted, the Prince half-drifted, half-fell downward toward the fortress of his creation. The armored iron roof bristled with spikes that looked ready to arrest his descent by impaling him, but at the last moment an opening appeared, the metal groaning as it gaped open and accepted the falling demon into its embrace.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 546

Faced with what seemed like a neverending horde of demons, the companions looked to be in an untenable position. Thus far they’d held out against the sheer force of the demonic rush, but even though none of them had suffered serious injuries yet, all bore wounds from tearing claws and evil spells.

Now, as the latest horde of reinforcements surged at them, they knew that their situation was becoming increasingly dire.

“We’d better think about getting out of here!” Cal shouted, as the warriors hurled back another snarling horde of demons. Up above, he saw that the vrocks had immediately started several new circles, at least four separate groups, all within range to strike them with the terrible power of the dance of ruin. The nalfeshnee he’s spotted earlier seemed content to hang back for now, calling down stinging lightning bolts onto them from a distance, but Cal had no doubt that the demon was just waiting for the other demons to soften them up some before unleashing some nasty surprise of its own.

“We can handle them!” Umbar yelled, smiting a stray vrock that had dove within the extended reach of his enlarged hammer. The demon shrieked, and darted back long enough to surround itself with a bevy of mirror images. Four babaus were tearing at his legs, and another dove between them, nearly broking through to grab Dannel from behind before Mole suddenly appeared, tripping it and sending it sprawling to the ground.

“There’s too many! In a few seconds those vrocks will hit us with a deluge that will kill us all! On my signal… fall back on me, and I’ll plane shift us out of here!”

An unholy blight crashed over them, followed a split-second later by a chaos hammer.

“Do it!” Arun said, crushing a bar-lgura’s skull with his hammer before the demon could grab onto him with its claws.

But the gnome never got a chance to execute his plan. For it was at that moment, halfway across Occipitus, that Graz’zt unleashed his power upon the plane. With the distance and the distraction of the demon horde, none of them witnessed the event, but all of them felt the reverberations across the plane as the Prince’s magic shook Occipitus. The vibration through the ground reached them as a tremor nearly strong enough to knock them down; only the strong stances of the dwarves allowed them to keep the defensive line intact. The quaking was accompanied by the violent sounds that reached them even forty miles away from the transformation of the skull.

“What’s happening?” Dannel shouted over the din.

But the others were too overwhelmed by the sudden rush of sensory information, and the battle to keep their own equilibrium, to answer. Even as that first pulse faded, they felt the surge of Graz’zt’s lock spreading outward, tinting the soft golden glow of the sky above with a shading of sinister green. Of the entire group of mortal heroes Cal was the only one who recognized the significance of what had just happened, and even as his mind tried to grasp the reality of it, the demon prince’s epic magic took hold, sealing off their retreat, their way home.

As the wave of sorcery faded, the chaos of the melee returned, the noise and the screeches of demons all around them.

But if the effects of Graz’zt’s magic had disrupted the senses of the companions, it had made a much more significant impact upon the demons. All of the eighty or so demons engaged in the battle were reeling, stunned by the backlash of their master’s efforts. Graz’zt had drawn deeply from all of his sources of power to fuel his twin incantations, and that included his minions. Babaus and bar-lgura staggered about, blinded, while the vrock circles came apart as the vulture demons fluttered to the ground in a daze. Even the nalfeshnee, Nevuuz, reeled, spinning in the air as explosions of dark energy filled his vision.

“They’re caught in some sort of feedback surge!” Cal shouted.

“Hit them hard!” Lok yelled, putting his words into action as he chopped a stunned babau in two with his axe. The dwarves were just a moment behind him, laying into the hapless demons with full attacks that cut a deadly swath through their ranks. Arun paused long enough to tug his backup axe from the loops across his back, tossing it to Beorna. The templar immediately put the weapon to good use, carving a pair of babau into wreckage. The ground shook as Umbar pounded several demons into the ground with his warhammer. Dannel continued his barrage, targeting the two hezrous that had been hitting them with unholy blights and chaos hammers, dropping the first with six arrows embedded deep in its chest. Mole leapt upon onto the piled corpses of a pair of dead bar-lgura, using the perch as platform from which to rapid-fire a series of crossbow bolts at nearby demons. In one hand she held three bolts spread between her fingers, slapping the string of her weapon back with her palm and dropping a bolt into place one after another so quickly that it seemed that the weapon must be magical. The bolts themselves were not ensorcelled, and appeared too puny to affect the demons through their considerable damage resistance, but each struck a vulnerable spot, driving pain through the haze that clouded the minds of the attacking fiends.

Cal cast a greater shadow conjuration, intending to bring in a few lantern archons to start blasting demons, but although the spell was completed without interruption, the influx of shadow-substance normally drawn by the spell did not materialize. Cal quickly realized the significance of that failure, and he grimaced as his assessment of their situation grew yet more bleak.

But there was no time for him to ruminate more upon the big picture, for the demons were starting to recover from the backblast from Graz’zt’s release of energy across Occipitus. The companions had slain a good fifteen demons during that brief interlude, but that left dozens more, including the vrocks which shook their heads as they rose, getting their bearings before lifting back into the air on powerful beats of their wings. Several paused to summon mirror images, while others only bothered to gain ten or fifteen feet of altitude before they dove over their ground-based fellows at the ring of defenders, claws extended. Four of them ascended to renew their arial circle, beginning the creation of another dance of ruin.

Nevuuz threw a slow spell into the defenders’ circle, counter Cal’s haste. The nalfeshnee began to drift closer to the melee, still surrounded by the protective halo of its unholy aura.

The warriors withstood a renewed surge as the demons pressed their attack once more. Umbar staggered and nearly fell, as a babau savaged his left knee with its claws; opposite him, Beorna was nearly taken down by a bar-lgura that leapt onto her back, seizing her armored neck with its powerful claws. Lok and Arun continued to hew with their weapons against row after row of attackers, but both of the veteran warriors was now cautious of the damage wrought upon their powerful weapons by the slimy coating that covered the hides of the babaus. Lok dropped his axe and shield and drew Coldburn, sweeping it in a broad arc that decapitated two babaus, but he barely ducked in time to avoid the charge of a screaming vrock, its claw catching on his shoulder plate long enough to painfully wrench the joint.

As the vrocks dove at the companions, they unleashed terrible screeches laden with fiendish power. The warriors withstood those potent cries, but Mole, Cal, and Dannel were all knocked reeling, stunned.

One of the vrocks took advantage, flying over the center of the circle. Hovering briefly, it used its telekinesis power to seize hold of Mole, drawing the helpless gnome up into its waiting claws.

Meanwhile, Nevuuz dropped to a hover sixty feet above the battle. A weave of rainbow-colred lights began to take form around its misshapen form, as the nalfeshnee gathered its power to smite these mortals, and take their lives as its prize.




Chapter 547

Mole, stunned by a vrock’s screech, only hung limply as one of the flying demons lifted her through the air into its grasp.

With Cal and Dannel momentarily unaware of their surroundings, only Lok, already turning to face the vrock hovering over him, noticed the maneuver. “Mole!” Lok yelled, staggering as his distraction cost him a painful bite to his left ankle from a babau near the bottom of the heap of bodies before him that wasn’t quite dead yet.

Arun glanced over his shoulder, saw Dannel lying on his rear, shaking his head. He didn’t see Cal; the archmage was still shrouded by his greater invisibility. But he did see Mole, through the shrieking chaos of a half-dozen vrocks weaving overhead. Unfortunately, without a fly spell, there wasn’t a lot that he could do to intervene.

A pair of babau came at him from behind, their claws tearing at the creases in his armor. Ignoring them, he swept his hammer around in a wide swipe that achieved maximum velocity right as it intersected the face of the demon splayed across Beorna’s back. The demon went flying, taking one of the templar’s shoulder greaves with it. As the dwarf woman straightened, Arun caught her gaze and pointed upward. The vrock had gotten both of its claws around Mole’s body, and while the gnome had started to struggle, she could not immediately break free as the demon started to fly off with its prize.

Beorna at once called down a flame strike that engulfed both the fleeing demon and an additional pair of nearby vrocks, but when the blazing column evaporated the demon, still clutching its prize, continued its retreat.

A second vrock evidently wanted its own trophy, as it too hovered over the melee, trying to snare Dannel with its telekinesis. But the arcane archer, taking up his bow again as he recovered his wits, resisted the tug of the spell. He started to aim at the demon, before spotting the one making off with Mole. He shifted smoothly, but before he could release, Cal shouted a warning.

“Dannel, nalfeshnee!”

The elf spun again, releasing as soon as he planted his foot, the huge demon looming large even sixty feet away. Arrows erupted in a rapid sequence from his bow, the third already in the air by the time that the first penetrated through the demon’s unholy aura and its ugly hide into its torso.

Cal hesitated for a fraction of a second. The demon carrying away Mole would be out of range within seconds, but he was all too familiar with the smite power of the nalfeshnee, and his brain immediately calculated that statistically, at least three of them would fall victim to the effects of the demon’s chaotic burst, with the warriors particularly vulnerable. That conclusion did not ease his worry as he drew his magic again through his rod, firing a green beam of energy that lanced into the nalfeshnee, piercing both its spell resistance and the unholy aura. The demon had an instant to look surprised before the green glow enveloped it, and it was reduced to ashes.

Cal let out the breath he’d been holding. He’d been damned lucky with that shot.

But the destruction of the greater demon did not ease the gravity of their situation. Vrocks surrounded by a confusing welter of mirror images dove down at them from above, tearing with their claws, releasing puffs of corrupt spores that drifted down through the gaps in armor in clothes to burrow into the flesh of the adventurers. Dannel was clipped by on the side of the head, tearing a bloody gash across his forehead. Two vrocks descended upon Umbar’s head, darting their claws under the lip of the cleric’s helmet, and drawing them back wet with blood. Another unholy blight hit them, the work of the last remaining hezrou, which hovered just beyond the ring of lesser demons surging at the warriors. Beorna went down to one knee as another three babaus dogpiled onto her, their claws knifing through her armor like little daggers. Arun shifted his position enough to help her, but that let another babau through the gap in their line, the demon stumbling over the invisible Cal on its way to Dannel. The demon, cackling, paused to empower itself to see invisibility, before reaching down to grab at the spellcaster with eager claws.

A hundred feet above, three succubi flew over the battlefield, content to watch, for now.

Mole regained her senses in time to realize that she was being carried off by a very big flying demon. Her first instinct was to use her magical cape to transport her back down to the ground, but as she drew the garment around her, nothing happened! Somewhat irate at that, she then looked down to realize that the ground was rapidly falling away; already she and her captor were nearly sixty feet up and still gaining altitude.

Oh well, she thought, and with a twist of her body, slipped out of the demon’s grasp.

It was a long way down, and nothing to grab onto to slow her fall. Still, she did what she could, spreading her limbs to catch the air, and then collapsing into a forward roll as she hit, her legs absorbing some of the shock and redirecting her interia as she spun across the ground. The spongy turf soaked up some of her momentum, but she still felt like a child’s ball that had been kicked hard when she finally snapped back up onto her feet. Still, falling from that kind of height and still being able to walk after it was no small feat, and the first thing she did was turn around to see if any of her friends had seen it.

But not only could she not even see any of them over the ring of slain fiends and the ones still attacking, but her momentum had carried her within spitting distance of a hulking hezrou, which turned around to regard her with a nasty look in its bulbous eyes. Its long tongue shot out, as if to taste the scent of her on the air.

Above her she heard the shriek of the vrock, which was already diving to reclaim its lost prize.

Uh oh, she thought.

Meanwhile, another surge of energy formed above the battlefield, as the vrocks finally completed a successful dance of ruin. A crackling blast of energy stabbed outward from the nexus of their ritual, passing through the demons harmlessly, but tearing into mortal flesh with terrible fierceness. Arun’s magic circle helped the companions withstand the full force of the blast, but Beorna, already heavily damaged, collapsed, and Umbar, already shrinking back to his normal size as his righteous might spell faded, fell to his knees as eager tendrils of energy lanced through his armor. For a moment it looked as though he would shrug off even that powerful assault, and he started to stagger to his feet. But then his divine power expired, and he too fell, as eager demons surged forward to tear him to pieces.



Chapter 548

The battle raged on, until only sheer will kept the warriors swinging weapons that felt like leaden weights at the nearest charging demon. There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them.

The vrocks fell dance had finally broken the defenders’ line, and it looked as though a total collapse was imminent. Arun, who’d simply absorbed the blast of fiendish energy, ignoring it through sheer stubbornness, took in the situation quickly. “Lok… cover Umbar!” he yelled, as he himself rushed to stand over Beorna.

Ignoring the painful gouging he felt in his back, as several demons tried unsuccessfully to bring him down, the paladin bent over the fallen templar, driving back a babau that was trying to rip off her gorget and sink its claws into her throat. Her helmet had fallen half off her head, and she was pale, with blood trickling down the side of her mouth. Arun placed his hammer down and laid his hand upon her neck, unleashing a surge of positive energy into the broken woman as he laid on hands.

The effect was immediate; Beorna’s eyes popped open, and she started to get up.

“Heal yourself the rest of the way,” Arun told her, but any further discussion was immediately curtailed as a bar-lgura leapt onto her chest, clawing at her. Arun reached for his hammer, but even as his fingers touched the haft a babau yanked it out of his reach. Another two were still hanging on him, and one got a good grip on his shield, pulling it—along with the paladin—down on top of it.

Cal’s attention was distracted by the babau that had seized him in its claws. It did little damage through his stoneskin, but the demon lifted him up and tucked him under an arm, clearly intent on darting off somewhere quiet to dismember its catch at its leisure. Realizing that neither his maze spell nor his remaining shadow evocation would likely work, given Graz’zt’s sealing of Occipitus from extraplanar channels, the gnome contented himself with polymorphing the babau attacking him into a slug.

Dannel, threatened by a storm of vrocks, barely resisted another stunning screech as he fired his bow up at the dizzying array of attackers. Every shot hit, but most of his targets simply vanished as the arrow struck, merely a mirror image of a demon. Already his skin felt like it was on fire, as the vrocks’ toxic spores burrowed deeper into the flesh of his face, neck, and arms. As Umbar went down, the elf staggered over to him, narrowly avoiding another vrock that almost managed to tear his bow out of his grasp. Lok was already standing over the unconscious cleric, knocking off demons as they tried to finish off the stricken dwarf.

Dannel no longer used his bardic magic much; in most cases the song was much more useful in channeling the power that he used to transform his bow into a devastating weapon. But now he used it to heal, bending over Umbar, infusing him with a cure moderate wounds spell. The magic didn’t do much against the dwarf’s terrible wounds, but it did bring him back to consciousness.

Unfortunately, it also left him open, as a vrock dove down and seized him in its claws. Pumping its wings, it lifted him several feet up into the air, kicking and struggling, while several of its fellows dove in, tearing at his body with their claws.

Mole darted forward as the hezrou tried to snare her with its claws, tumbling between its legs and coming up behind it. It turned quickly, so it did not notice the small furry ball she’d left lying on the ground behind her. The ball expanded into a boar, which immediately set about stabbing its tusks into the demon’s leg. The attack was utterly ineffectual, of course, but it did distract the demon slightly, enough for Mole to whip her rapier up into a vulnerable spot in its lower body.

The vrock flew overhead, screeching in anger at the loss of its prey. It turned around in mid-air and flew back around. It tried to grab the gnome again with telekinesis, but this time the gnome was able to resist the insubstantial grasp, darting forward a moment before the hezrou’s claws tore deep gouges in the earth where it had been standing. The demon uttered a word of blasphemy, intending to stun this elusive foe, but while the spell reduced Mole’s boar to a black smear, it had no effect on her as she darted away, careful to avoid its lengthy reach.

“Hoo, boy,” she said as she ran, the hezrou and vrock both following her as she ran. The demons were much faster than she was, and both converged on her at the same moment, shrieking at each other as much as at her as they fought to be the first to snag the prize.

At the last moment, as both demons lunged, she disappeared.

Dannel was in bad shape. Not only had he taken damage from the series of blights that had washed over him, but the burrowing vrock spores from several of the vulture demons continued to dig deeper into his flesh, until a dense beard of furry growths jutted from his face and neck. He’d avoided the worst of the energy blast from the dance of ruin, but as more of the vrocks tore at him with their claws, more attacks were getting through his magical armor and the protection offered by his magical ring. It was obvious that within a few seconds, he would be torn to pieces.

Cal had his final disintegrate ready, but in the swirling medley of vrocks, most surrounded by mirror images, he could not get a clear fix on the demon holding Dannel.

“Damn it,” he said, knowing that there weren’t a lot of options left.

Arun’s foes leapt at the paladin with a renewed vigor, encouraged by the absence of the terrible weapon that had destroyed so many of their fellows. Arun slipped his arm out of the loops of his shield, relinquishing it to the babau that had dragged him down as he pushed himself back up to his feet. Another babau was crawling away with his hammer, but he ignored it, instead charging at the bar-lgura atop Beorna, slamming into it with enough force to knock it off the templar. He helped her to her feet, shielding her with his body as she cast a cure serious wounds to restore some of the vigor taken in the beating she’d received.

That need attended to, she quickly smashed the bar-lgura with the axe she’d borrowed from Arun, cleaving it with a pair of massive blows that laid it out upon the turf.

Umbar drew upon the power of Moradin to heal his own grievous wounds, taking up his own weapon again as Lok fended off a surge of babaus, bar-lgura, and diving vrocks. The genasi had abandoned his defensive stance to come to Umbar’s aid, but even though he had to be exhausted, he still fought like a machine, his blows tearing demonic flesh asunder with every strike. He focused on the demons on the ground, not wanting to waste a swing on a vrock’s mirror image. Coldburn was beginning to hiss now from the acidic babau ooze covering it, so when he ran through a leaping bar-lgura he let the weapon lodged in its body as it fell, drawing out his third weapon, one of the adamantine battleaxes taken from Shatterhorn. Two babus came at him from opposite sides, and the genasi swung around in a complete circle, chopping both demons down with terrible gashes to their torsos.

Surprised, Lok looked around for the next foe, only to see that he was alone. It was a momentary sensation, as a vrock’s screech drew his attention around in time to face a pair of tearing claws.

“Hold on, Dannel!” Cal said, flying into the air after the struggling elf. He reached Dannel moments before a trio of vrocks did, spraying the contents of a pouch across his body as he touched him and infused him with a stoneskin spell. The spell did not render him immune to the demons’ attacks, especially their powerful claws, but it gave him a moment’s breather as Cal seized hold of the elf’s cloak with one hand, and jabbed his rod up into the body of the vrock holding him with the other. Several of the vrocks, recognizing that there was another spellcaster here, lashed out at Cal, seeking him through his invisibility, but even though a slashing claw and a sharp beak nipped him, he was still in fairly good shape and he ignored what little damage got through his own stoneskin.

“Get… out… of here…” Dannel coughed, his lips red with his own blood, his face a garish mask from the wounds he’d taken and the growths covering his exposed flesh.

“Hold on!” he said, as he felt his rod touch solid flesh, and he fired off his last disintegrate.

Gnome and elf fell like stones as the vrock holding Dannel evaporated, dropping out of the flapping ring of demons. Dannel landed hard on his left leg and went down, that last blow finally pushing him over the border into unconsciousness. Cal recovered quickly, and stood in time to see the vrocks diving down at them.

“Need some help here!” he yelled, hurling a greater dispel into the knot of vrocks, shearing away some of their mirror images and heroism buffs, but doing little to ease the violence of their attack.

Umbar pushed forward, covering the elf with an upraised arm as a vrock tried to seize him again with its claws. The cleric tore free before the fiend could get a hold on him, and he quickly channeled a cure critical wounds into the battered elf. Dannel stirred, and Umbar shoved his bow, which had fallen nearby, into his hands.

“Shoot demons,” he instructed calmly, lifting his hammer as he stood to face the vrocks once more.

Without more reinforcements coming in, the tide of the battle began to turn. Arun and Beorna appeared again as they slew the last of the demons threatening them. The vrocks began to fall as they pressed their attack, and Lok joined Umbar in shielding Dannel and Cal. Cal used one of his wands to enlarge both warriors, given them the same reach as the demons, making their swooping attacks less effective and opening them to full counterattacks that left them shredded. Arun and Beorna dealt with the hezrou that had been threatening Mole, and moved to join them. The babau holding Arun’s hammer had tried to slip away, but before it could build up enough of a lead it suddenly tripped, screaming as Mole’s rapier appeared jutting from its left eye socket. The demon snarled and tried to grab the gnome, but a pair of arrows from Dannel put an end to it.

And then, it was over.

The companions stood in an exhausted circle above the wreckage of dozens upon dozens of demons. The only demons to escape were the three succubi, which had started to flee as soon as the battle had started to turn, and were now just tiny specks in the distance. All of them—except perhaps for Mole—were covered in blood and gore, at least some of it their own. A foul stench already permeated the ground like a living entity, and each of them knew from past experience that it would not soon fade from their own bodies as well.

“We should consider retreating back to the Prime, to recover our strength,” Beorna said. “Those three bitch-demons will soon bring reinforcements. Our weapons are damaged, and need repair.”

Cal shook his head, his voice grim as he related what he’d learned during the battle. “There is no retreat. That backblast we felt… the green glow spreading over the plane… Somehow, Graz’zt has sealed all of Occipitus with a dimensional lock. The demons cannot teleport either, it would seem, which is some help, but neither will any of our summoning spells function.”

“Then we will take the fight to him. We will be triumphant,” Umbar said.

“Well, for now, we should find some place less exposed,” Cal suggested. “Perhaps the cathedral… if the demons haven’t overrun it, we may find aid there.”

They started reaching for healing potions and wands, knowing that this was just the beginning.

“I’m starting to think coming here was a bad idea,” Dannel said.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 549

INTERLUDE

Graz’zt, Prince of Demons, sagged and nearly fell as his feet touched upon the hard ground of his new sanctum. Above, the iron roof of his citadel slid ponderously shut, closing out the troubled sky of Occipitus above.

The chamber had changed dramatically in a short time. The pillar of flame was still there, its roiling surge a confused mixture of red and gold, reflecting the tangled war that was still being raged over the very identity of the plane. But the rest of the chamber had been altered, with tall pillars of black metal ringing the perimeter of the place, buttressing the massive iron plates that now reinforced the domed ceiling above. Spikes jutted from the walls at regular intervals, flanking crude iron carvings of varied and creative foulness. It was a reflection of the Great Hall in the Argent Palace in Zelatar; imperfect, but still imposing.

Graz’zt saw only the imperfections, and it sent new tendrils of anger through his veins. His eyesight was diminished; the Heart of Axion was dull in his socket. A high price had been demanded, and paid. He was committed; he had submitted his final gambit, and now all would rise or fall upon its fate.

A faint scuff of a boot upon the stone drew his attention. Warily, he turned to see Athux standing before him.

“Congratulations, father.”

Graz’zt snarled, and summoned his power. He was depleted, more so than even in the aftermath of the Disaster, but he was still what he was. But Athux was prepared. Black energy shimmered briefly around him, his Rod absorbing most of the potency of the attack. The scion of the Abyss gestured, and black chains shot out from the perimeter of the room, lashing into the arms, legs, and body of the Prince. A violent surge of energy exploded from Graz’zt, but the chains held, the spines interwoven with the links digging painfully into his flesh as they held him.

“You are a fool, if you think that even the Chains of Ur’don will hold me,” the Prince hissed. “You will spend an eternity in suffering for this treachery.”

Athux did not respond to the goad. His lips moved as he finished an incantation that he’d spent centuries acquiring and perfecting, in anticipation of this moment. His Rod, a potent artifact in its own right, was consumed and turned to ash, as was his amulet, cloak, and boots. Their power was sucked into the spell, as was a considerable portion of the young lord’s own energies. It was his masterstroke, and as Graz’zt recognized the flows of energy that were beginning to coalesce around him, fear shone briefly in his one remaining eye.

But as the enhanced binding began to take effect, Graz’zt did not beg for forebearance, or offer bribes or threats. Instead, he laughed. This was the way of his kind, and he knew all too well the rules that governed the lives of demons. He had failed to anticipate this betrayal, and now he might pay the price.

That did not mean he would give up easily. Surges of energy erupted around the Prince, as he fought off the thickening web of power that surrounded him. The black metal chains holding him began to melt, their substance falling to the ground in thick gobs, mixed with his blood. But they weren’t really needed, not now. Athux began to sweat, his face tightening as the strain of exerting the full power of his Will began to show. He held nothing back, nor did his sire.

Finally, however, the Prince screamed, and crumpled. Athux let out a strangled hiss that was somehow more exultant than a cry of triumph, as he directed the flows into the final stage of the ritual. All that he had waited for… it was now his.

But in that moment of victory, pain exploded in his back. The one who would succeed Graz’zt fell forward. He spun to see Malad standing behind him, the white-hot fury of a thunderlance glowing in his hand.

“What treachery is this, brother!” the cambion snarled, hurling an explosive sonic evocation at Athux.

The blast rippled around Athux, who was warded against magic much greater than this. The spell would have left strong demons writhing in pain, but the son of Graz’zt merely laughed. The half-fiend sorcerer started forward, lifting his weapon to strike, but Athux marshaled his Will upon the other, and Malad staggered, his spell fading into nothing. He resisted, but it took all of a second before he succumbed, collapsing to his knees.

That threat defused, Athux turned around, only to feel an explosion tear through his mind.

Nice… try…

He screamed, trying unsuccessfully to hold onto the sundering fragments of his consciousness. The last thing he heard was the blistering laughter of his sire, and the last thing he saw was a tiny sparkle of light through the haze of red agony that filled his senses. Realization entered him, and followed him into oblivion.

(break)


Chapter 550

The adventurers did not linger long over the gory battlefield. Once they had healed themselves, and wiped as much gore as they could from their armor, weapons, and skin, they unpacked their flying carpet from Lok’s bag of holding and laid it flat upon the ground, clambering aboard. Umbar, who had never before seen an item of this sort, had to be reassured by Arun that it was more durable than it appeared, and thus settled they set out across the plain. Cal took the carpet up to an altitude of about a hundred feet briefly, just long enough to verify their location vis-à-vis a few landmarks remembered from their last visit. Much of the plane’s features bore a depressing similarity, but Cal was confident enough to chart a course toward the celestial cathedral. They agreed that it was probably wiser to travel around the perimeter of Occipitus, rather than risk a more direct route that took them closer to the skull. They still did not understand fully what had been wrought in that moment of surging power, but even from here they could see that the monument had been… changed.

Cal quickly brought the carpet back down to just a few paces above the ground, and they started out at a fast walking pace across the landscape. More than a few heads turned to regard the battlefield they left behind, each wondering if the next one would include their ravaged bodies as well.

Mole had done an “informal” count—“Hard to keep an accurate track when you keep blasting them into dust, Uncle Cal!”—and had recorded fifty-eight babaus, fourteen bar-lguras, four hezrous, twenty-five vrocks, and the nalfeshnee Cal had disintegrated.

One hundred and seven demons. It had been an impressive tally, especially given the potent abilities commanded by the various demons in the horde. They had come close—damned close—to disaster, with only quick reactions saving Dannel, Beorna, and Umbar from being torn apart. For his measure Cal offered a quick prayer of thanks to Tymora, knowing that his string of successful disintegrations was running up against the odds, and would not likely continue as more powerful demons threatened them.

But they had not escaped unscathed. Not only had they heavily depleted their spells, but their gear had taken a beating, particularly from the caustic secretions issued by the babaus. Umbar’s hammer and Beorna’s bastard sword were heavily damaged, unusable until repaired, and Lok’s various weapons likewise had taken some harm. Arun had used the powers granted by the Soul Forger to restore his own hammer to full utility, and promised to repair the other damaged weapons as soon as he could, but he could only draw upon that power once per day. Their armor all needed a few tendays in a well-equiped smithy, but the likelihood of that happening any time soon seemed quite remote.

So they pressed on. The carpet, heavily laden with the seven of them, traveled slowly, but it set a steady pace that they could not have kept up on foot. Mole distributed food and water from her bag of holding, and they refreshed themselves as they traveled, keeping a wary lookout in every direction.

They continued for several hours, taking shifts watching while others rested as best they could. The carpet’s ride was steady and stable, but worry about their situation made sleep almost impossible. At least for most of them; once it became clear that the landscape only offered a constant vista as they progressed further, Mole curled up on a corner of the rug and instantly fell asleep.

None of them expected that the respite would last long. Thus when Dannel lifted a hand to shade his eyes, peering into the distance, none of them were surprised when he said, “Oh, crap.”

As the dwarves reached for their weapons, Cal looked up from the small book bound in blue leather he’d been perusing in his lap. “Could you be more specific?”

“See for yourself,” Dannel said, stringing his bow and pointing with one end of it toward the sky in the distance, in the direction of the skull. There they could just make out a cluster of specks flying just under the Occipitus ceiling.

Heading straight for them.

“Demons?” Beorna asked, settling her helmet upon her head, holding the axe she’d borrowed from Arun in the other.

There was a pause as they watched Dannel watching the approaching specks. “Yeah,” he finally said.

“There’s another group,” Mole said, pointing ahead and slightly left of their current course. They turned to see a second approaching flight, partially hidden against the backdrop of the jagged horizon of Occipitus’s ring of cliffs, but definitely coming closer as well.

“Here we go again,” Dannel said.

(break)


Chapter 551

“Let’s start buffing up,” Beorna said.

“Hold on a bit,” Cal suggested. “Distances are difficult to gauge here, but they’ll be a few minutes, at least. If they could teleport, they’d already be here, they wouldn’t give us time to prepare.”

The gnome gestured and spoke a command word, and the carpet slowed and started descending toward the ground. They were only a few paces up to begin with, so it would not take them long to reach solid footing.

“Wait,” Arun said. “Perhaps we should meet them aloft.”

“They are more adept than we in the air,” Cal said. “And as you have seen, the flight power granted by my wand is easy to dispel.”

“But the terrain here gives little advantage,” Umbar said. “And a stationary defense opens us to those explosive blasts, from the vrock dances.”

“Dannel, can you identify the types yet?” Arun asked.

The elf had been keeping a close eye on both approaching groups. “The ones coming from the spire look like vrocks,” he said. “The others… I’m not certain yet. They almost look like giant bugs, if I had to guess.”

“Chasme demons, probably,” Cal explained.

“Can either type dispel magic?” Umbar asked him.

“The vrocks, no. Chasmes… I do not know for certain, but I don’t believe so. We’ve only faced their ilk once before, in Skullrot. But their buzzing is a potent soporific. It can be resisted, but with so many of them, it is likely that at least a few of us will be affected.”

Mole shuddered, thinking back to an experience in the Carcerian prison.

“Maybe we can find some cover back in the cliffs,” Beorna said, pointing to the wall they’d been following for the last few hours. “A cleft, or a cave or something.”

“I don’t think we have time,” Dannel said. “They’re coming on fast… a few minutes, at most.”

“We need to make a decision,” Cal said.

Umbar looked at Arun, who nodded. “Then we use the carpet as a mobile platform,” the cleric said. “The archmage and elf, with the templar as close-defense. The genasi, Chosen, and myself, empowered with flight, fly a close formation against the enemies, staying within close range of the carpet… or vice versa. If the vulture-demons begin a dance, we draw off. If anyone is overcome by a stunning effect, then the others rally to his or her aid.”

“Hey, what about me?” Mole asked. “Sheesh, they always forget the gnomes,” she added, as an aside to her uncle. “You know, I’ve taken out my share of bad guys,” she went on, to Umbar.

“Invisible, you can linger next to one of the warriors, and deliver sneak attacks when least expected,” the cleric said.

“All right,” Cal said. “It’s a workable plan. We’ll stay close to the ground in any case, but if someone goes down, then everyone has to converge on that location, vrock dances notwithstanding. And watch out for flanking attacks; you’ll be vulnerable from all sides. Remember flying opens up the third dimension.”

“Sheesh, you sure do worry a lot,” Mole said. “Hey, how about a greater invisibility?”

“Looks like they’re pretty eager to get to us,” Dannel said. As they watched, the formation of vrocks shifted course to block the avenue of approach of the second flotilla of insect-demons. Faint screeches reached their ears, followed by the bugs spreading out into two wedges that spread out to bypass the vrocks. The vrocks had the advantage of position, but the chasmes were slightly faster. Now that they were closer they could see that there were about two dozen demons in the first group, and about that or maybe slightly fewer in the second.

“What in the hells are they doing?” Beorna said.

“They’re demons,” Cal said. “Don’t assume they’re working together. They’re probably taking a first-come, first-served approach.”

“With us as the entrée,” Arun said, lifting his hammer.

The spellcasters began making their preparations, as the demons approached swiftly, and began their dive.

 

[Lazybones]

Chapter 552

Cal, holding two wands in his left hand, started rapid-firing buff spells onto his companions. With the entire plane locked to summonings and his shadow-spells, the gnome knew that his best contribution to the battle would be in the form of magical enhancements. As the others watched the demons spread out into an attack formation—or rather two, as the vrocks and chasmes were definitely not working in concert—the gnome cast fly on each of them with his wand, followed by magic circles against evil from the second wand upon Arun, Umbar, Lok, and Beorna. He followed that up with a cat’s grace upon Beorna.

Beorna used an align weapon spell upon the arrows in Dannel’s quiver; her own borrowed axe got a bless weapon. She then infused herself with divine favor. Umbar did the same, and put a few ability enhancements upon himself and the other companions, including an owl’s wisdom on Lok.

“Shoot straight, elf,” he said.

As the demons closed to a few hundred feet Dannel started opening fire. The carpet was not the most stable firing platform, and it was moving to boot, but the elf easily adjusted, targeting the left wedge of chasme demons. His first shot hit, striking a chasme solidly in the torso.

“Cal?” Arun said, tightening his grip on his hammer.

“Go!” he said, casting a haste that empowered all of them. He didn’t stop there, and as the paladin, Umbar, and Lok all lifted up off the carpet, forming a defensive wedge, he was already continuing with his second round of buffs, casting displacement on Dannel, and then shrouding him with greater invisibility. Normally such layered wards would be superfluous, but Cal suspected that the chasmes, at least, could see invisibility. And keeping Dannel active would be key to surviving this battle, he thought.

“C’mon uncle, I need that greater invis you promised…” Mole said, as Cal surrounded himself with mirror images. He’d elected to stay visible, for this battle, because with his spells either cast or unusable, he’d be more effective as a target and distractor. He slid his buffing wands into the case at his hip, drawing another out with a smooth motion. He had almost a dozen of the magical devices in his inventory, but the magical case provided the one he wanted each time with a simple command; in this case his wand of enervation.

“I’ll get to you in a moment, Mole,” he said, launching into another spell. What he didn’t tell her was that he feared that she would not be able to resist the buzz of the chasmes, and would be easily carried off by the foul demons.

The two wings of chasmes had slid around the vrocks, ignoring their angry shrieks as they buzzed down toward the companions. Arun, Umbar, and Lok rose to meet them, hoping to keep them far enough away so that their buzzing would not impact those on the carpet below. At least the rivalry between the two groups of demons had aided them in one respect; none of the vrocks had hesitated to call mirror images. That would probably change once the battle was joined, however.

The first chasme faltered and plummeted downward, several of Dannel’s arrows jutting from its body. Beorna had unlimbered her own heavy bow, keeping her axe close beside her, but her own shots were largely ineffective against the demons’ damage resistance. But six chasmes from the second wing detached and shot around the defensive wedge of warriors, clearly coming for those on the carpet. The first was hit by an arrow that nearly exploded through its body, a critical hit that dropped the foul demon like a rock to splatter on the ground below. The elf’s barrage continued and a second likewise fell out of formation, its wings still fluttering as its claws tore at the two shafts jutting from its face.

Cal directed the carpet into a wide turn that would keep them fairly close to the defending warriors above, firing off an enervation that lanced into one of the chasmes, draining some of its life-energy.

“Uncle Cal!” Mole urged, all but hopping as she casually fired off a bolt from her little crossbow that had no effect.

The three flying companions felt a soft wave of tiredness wash over them as the chasmes dove at them. But their wills, bolstered by their own dedication and Cal’s magic circles, let them fight off the deadly lull of the chasmes’ buzzing. The three formed a tight formation, protecting their flanks and letting the demons come to them. The demons tried to break that defensive knot with sheer force, several of them bashing their fat bodies into the smaller dwarves, but each time they were rebuffed by shields or raised weapons. Their drones became screeches of frustration and pain as the companions’ weapons lashed out in a violent counter, and the fly-demons fell in clumps to the ground below.

Seven went down in that initial flurry.

“Fine, I’ll use my own ring then!” Mole said, impatient at the delay that was keeping her from joining the battle. But before she could use her ring of invisibility, the chasmes came close enough for the power of their drone to impact those upon the carpet. “I’ll show those… bas…” Mole managed, before she slumped unconscious to the fabric.

Cal finally made her invisible then, sliding her into the center of the carpet, right next to where he was standing. He himself resisted the droning, along with Beorna and Dannel with his augmented willpower.

The four demons dove eagerly at the companions, their vicious claws outstretched. They must have empowered themselves to see invisibile objects, or maybe they’d pinpointed where the arrows killing them had come from; either way, they made a beeline for Dannel. Beorna intercepted the first with a powerful blow from her axe that clove deeply into its body, knocking it aside from its target. A second tore through empty space, fooled by Cal’s displacement. The third did manage to get through the elf’s defenses, digging an ugly gash across his temple with its claw, but as its momentum carried it past it took a blast from Cal’s wand of enervation, draining it. The fourth demon never got close enough to attack, as Dannel unleashed a full barrage of arrows into it at point-blank range.

Lok, Arun, and Umbar continued shredding the chasmes that dared to press their attack. More were unleashing spell-effects now, hitting the defenders with circles of nausea and waves of grief. Arun’s hammer shone with golden light, however, and again most of the fell magic of the demons dissipated against that radiance. The dark energies that did get through failed to overcome the grim determination of the three warriors. The surviving demons fell back, overcome by the ferocity of the defense. But the vrocks were right behind them, and now they descended upon the distracted warriors with terrible effect. Far stronger than the chasmes, they slammed into the defenders with powerful force. Several unleashed powerful screeches, and while Arun and Lok were able to resist their potency, Umbar was momentarily overcome. A moment later a vrock caromed into him like a falling boulder, knocking him out of his place in their formation, demon and cleric intertwined as they descended rapidly toward the ground below. But Lok and Arun had their own problems, as eight vrocks swarmed over them from forward, above, and below, tearing and slashing with their long talons.

Above, two small groups of vrocks had already begun the intertwined pattern of their dance of ruin.

Caught up in the intensity of the battle, neither side noticed the shadowy forms that appeared in the air high overhead in the distance, approaching swiftly from the direction from which the chasmes had appeared earlier.




Chapter 553

Caught up in his song, firing aligned arrows from a bow empowered to slay fiends, Dannel created a storm of death around the magic carpet.

The two chasmes that had assailed him quickly recovered and dove at him again, hoping to take advantage of the momentary distraction offered by their fallen comrade, and by the one that Beorna was still fighting at the front of the carpet. But Dannel spun suddenly, an arrow seeming to jump into his string as he drew and fired. The first chasme, already weakened by Cal’s enervation, took an arrow right through its left eye socket and fell. The second attacked, but by the time it realized it had again been mislead by the elf’s displacement, long shafts were already piercing its body, one even passing through it to continue its flight off across the plain.

“Above!” Cal warned, bending to slap Mole’s cheeks, hoping to rouse his niece in time to deal with the next threat. The companions looked up to see Arun and Lok surrounded by a veritable explosion of wings and claws, the two warriors almost invisible within the nest of swarming vrocks. Umbar was falling, a vrock grappling with the cleric. Above they could see at least two formations of dancing vrocks, and that still left another half-dozen, several of which were already coming around toward their position. At least two, he saw, had now taken the time to call upon their mirror images, which suggested they’d taken at least a clue from the decimation of their rivals at the hands of the companions. “Incoming!” the gnome added, in case the others hadn’t all seen the threat. As Mole groaned, coming around, he shot off an enervation, but his streak ended as the beam disintegrated against a vrock’s spell resistance.

Lok and Arun came together, back to back, and fought off the vrock horde. They were truly surrounded, but if they cared, they did not show it. They fought together like warriors who had campaigned at each others’ sides for years on end, covering their flanks, and turning in unison to unleash truly awesome blows into the attacking demons. Arun’s hammer slammed into the face and torso of a vrock, each blow crushing demonic bones, until the fierce thing had become a mangled ruin. Even as it fell back, Lok disembowled a second vrock, tearing its body open with a pair of violent swings of his axe. The few surviving chasmes chittered angrily around the perimeter of the melee, denied their victims by the vrocks, but there might have been the smallest hint of relief in those cries, given how quickly their kin had been savaged by this pair.

Umbar recovered from being stunned to find a flapping vrock in his face, driving him rapidly downward. The cleric concentrated momentarily upon his fly spell, slowing his descent greatly. He brought his hammer up, but the vrock seized it, holding it in its claws, while its sharp beak snapped at his helm, splatting his face with foul-smelling spittle. The thing was phenomenally strong.

But Umbar Ironhammer was a consecrated priest of Moradin, and as such he could call upon the power of the forge to crush his enemies. “Burn in the righteous fire of the All Father!” he shouted, slamming his gauntlet into the demon’s chest, unleashing an inflict critical wounds into it. The demon shrieked and released the dwarf’s hammer—a mistake, as it turned out, as the cleric drove the axiomatic weapon into the back of its neck, snapping its spine.

Thus far the battle had been heavily one-sided; only Dannel had been seriously injured, and the gash on his forehead from the chasme’s claw, although it continued to ooze blood, wasn’t immediately life-threatening. But as the demons brought their numbers to bear, the situation quickly evolved.

Lok and Arun came under heavy attack, both from the claws of the vrocks, and from a cloud of spores that found the gaps in their armor and begun digging into their bodies. One of them grappled with Arun, immobilizing his weapon arm with a solid grip, while the one opposite grabbed onto his body, driving its claws through the layered plating covering his gut into the muscled flesh beneath. Lok likewise took several telling hits, although he avoided being grabbed.

The defenders upon the carpet likewise found themselves suddenly beset. Having dispatched the last chasme, Dannel lifted his bow to target the diving vrocks. But before he could release his arrow, a stunning screech from one of the vrocks staggered him, and he fell, dropping his bow. Cal, likewise, reeled. Beorna hacked at one of the vrocks, but managed only a glancing blow as all six of the demons landed on the carpet, their weight driving it quickly down to the ground below.

Meanwhile, less than a hundred feet above, the demons continued their dances of ruin. Sparks of energy began to flare around the twisting circles, rising now to a building crescendo.

Arun had briefly caught a glimpse of the vrocks driving the flying carpet down to the ground. “We’ve got to take out those dancers!” he said, grunting as a vrock claw caught him squarely in the middle of his face. Were it not for his helm, the blow would have taken both of his eyes.

The paladin tore free from the demon holding his arm, and launched upward, the energy of Cal’s spell carrying him upward. As he passed out of the ring of vrocks he took several attacks of opportunity, but shrugged off the painful claws that snagged momentarily on his limbs. Lok was already ahead of him, and behind them came the vrocks, eager to finish off their foes. Again the two cooperated in concert, splitting in unspoken agreement as Lok shot toward the rightmost cluster of dancing demons, while Arun rose toward the ones on the left.

But breaking free of the grapple had taken a few precious seconds, and as Arun ascended slowly toward the gyrating circle of demons, he sensed that he would not be in time.



Chapter 554

Dannel felt a blaze of pain in his gut as a vrock stumbled over him, the demon nearly falling before a flap of its wings recovered its equilibrium. Quickly sensing that it had an invisible foe nearby, it lunged at him with its claws. Dannel tried to roll away, out of its grasp, but a claw snagged on his cloak, and the demon eagerly seized upon it.

A few feet away, Beorna and Cal were coming under heavy attack. The templar swept a powerful blow toward one, but managed to hit only mirror images. Cal fired a blast from his wand at another, but once again the attack was foiled by spell resistance. The demons, on the other hand, proved quite effective in their assault, with Cal’s foe getting lucky, scoring a hit through the gnome’s own shifting nimbus of images. Only his quick leap back saved him from being grappled and borne down. Beorna drew more attention, with several vrocks leaping at her, trying to flank her. Vrock spores filled the air, and the companions soon had to struggle with the agonizing pain of the burrowing tendrils.

Dannel tried to shake out of his cloak, as the demon quickly dug his claws up its length, trying to find its owner’s head. The demon let out a triumphant cackle as a claw brushed his cap, but then it let out a screech of pain and staggered, allowing him to pull free. Dannel rolled off the carpet, grabbing his bow as he went. Another vrock heard his movements and leapt at him, but it misjudged his position, and its attack caught only empty air. The arcane archer called upon his song, and as it filled him and his bow he made the demon pay for its error.

The one that had grabbed Dannel did not follow; it had its hands full with Mole. Shrouded by her uncle’s greater invisibility, she could spring in and out to unleash sneak attacks upon it with impunity, easily avoiding its attempts to grab her. Frustrated, the demon lifted itself six paces into the air, and summoned mirror images to defend itself. That was fine with Mole, who shot the one threatening Dannel with a bolt that found a nasty spot in its backside. The vrock barely had time to screech in protest before the elf finished it with a final arrow to the chest.

As Umbar took down his foe, hovering a mere two paces above the ground, he started almost at once flying back up to rejoin Lok and Arun in the melee. But he saw the vrocks force his allies down upon the carpet, only about forty feet from his current position. His first instinct was to preserve the Chosen, but almost at once he felt the hard grip of Duty settle upon him. He started toward that melee, but had barely covered half the distance when a pair of chasmes, survivors from the earlier melee, descended upon him, forcing him to defend himself. Both hit him with spell-powers, and one did manage to finally shear him of his temporary ability of flight with a targeted dispel, dropping him to the ground ten feet below. The other weakened him with a ray of enfeeblement, but the cleric stood his ground, blasting the nearer of the pair with a ray of searing light that penetrated its spell resistance and scorched its ugly hide.

High above the battlefield, Lok slammed into one of the vrock dances. Knowing that he could not likely kill one in a single blow, his tactic instead was to bull rush one of the demons, slamming it with his shield and taking it bodily out of the circle. His effort was successful, in that it broke up the demonic ritual. Unfortunately, however, the three demons immediately leapt upon him, joining the three coming up from below to surround him in a surge of violence.

As Arun looked up at his own target, he caught sight now of the shadowy figures in the air above, pale white streaks like clouds coming forward at great speed. As he wondered what new threat this might portend, the insubstantial aura around the figures parted, and they resolved into a quartet of newcomers. The one in the center drew the paladin’s gaze; a glorious figure of a man, clad in a white breastplate, with white wings spreading from his shoulders in lieu of arms. The others, he saw, included a pair of winged elves carrying longbows, and a mechanical half-man, half-horse creation that he recognized as a zelekhut, an inevitable.

The newcomers appeared to recognize the greatest danger at once, directing an immediate assault upon the vrocks engaged in their dance of ruin. The sword archon hit them with the reverberating energies of an order’s wrath. The vrocks shrieked, blasted by the lawful potency of the spell, but they resisted the dazing side-effects of the wrath, and did not halt their ritual. But the arrows of the two winged elves succeeded where their comrade’s word of power had failed, as white-fletched holy missiles transformed one of the dancing vrocks into a pincushion, scoring five hits, including a critical hit that pierced its throat, putting an end to its chant and its life.

Arun’s pursuers and the surviving two demons from the dance let out a terrible cacophony, and shot up toward the celestials, ignoring the paladin in the face of their hatred of their traditional foes. Arun smashed one with his hammer as it passed, but it ignored him, flying like an arrow toward the archon. The majority of Lok’s foes likewise disengaged and turned toward these new enemies, leaving only a pair that continued to press their attack against the genasi.

The zelekhut released spiked chains from its wrists as it descended to block the vrocks’ charge at the sword archon. The inevitable tried to hold a vrock, unsuccessfully. The demons looked like they would just try to slip past it, but when it lashed one of its chains around the neck of a vrock, the demon fell upon the construct, its claws tearing deep goughes in its metallic hide.

Upon the ground below the arial battle, the companions continued to find themselves pressed hard by the surviving demons. Beorna wielded Arun’s adamantine axe, blessed with Helm’s power, as if she’d borne the weapon her entire life. Each blow tore deep into demonic flesh, and as one went down hard in a thrashing heap, her backswing caught another solidly in the side, sundering a rib. That seemed to drive the demon into an even greater fury, and as it lunged at her, a third flew down almost atop her back, trying to tear her helmet off her head.

Cal, meanwhile, was assailed by his enemy, which chased after him, tearing at his mirror images. Each hit upon a false gnome caused the image to disappear. Cal shot it with a ray of exhaustion from another wand, but again the device failed against the vrock’s resistance. The demon slashed through a pair of images before it pounced upon one of only two remaining instances of the archmage. Cackling as its claws dug into solid matter, it tried to snap up the gnome in its arched beak.

Cal, finding himself in a sticky situation, didn’t stop to think. Instinct took over, and magic flowed through him. Intellectually, he knew that his maze spell could not function within the dimensional lock, as it relied upon an extradimensional portal. But as the power flowed through him he… tweaked it, channeling the flow into a different outlet.

Silver fire erupted from his hands, pouring over the vrock. The demon, more than a little surprised, dropped Cal as the arcane fire savaged it. Its resistances were of no avail as the flow of liquid energy tore into its body. It wasn’t enough to kill it, but it gave the gnome a moment to react, which he used to dart out of its reach.

The demon recovered quickly, and beat its wings furiously as it leapt after the gnome. Cal didn’t retreat this time. Again he called upon the power of his magic, this time deliberately directing his greater shadow evocation into another blast of arcane fire. This time the demon’s head was engulfed in the flame, and although it was able to lash out at Cal, striking him a glancing blow to the head with a claw, the demon’s time had come to an end. Cal recognized it, too.

“Time’s up, pal,” he said, a moment before the first arrow slammed hard into its back.

The sword archon held its ground against the vrock charge, calling down a flame strike that swept through a dense knot of the vulture demons. Two that were already injured plummeted to the ground below, charred and blackened by the holy evocation. But the others eagerly swarmed upon the celestial, tearing at his arms and wings with their claws. Another went down, pierced by arrows from the elven bowmen. The archon maintained a look of calm even as the demons tore deep gashes in his limbs. He looked helpless before them, but then something flared in his eyes, and a white glow formed in front of him; a plane of wispy energy that took on the shape of a sword. The archon swept this insubstantial weapon before him, and where it intersected with a demon, corrupt flesh was torn asunder.

Demons died, but this only drove the remaining ones into a fury, intent upon taking at least this celestial with them.

But then Arun reached the melee, and put an end to those hopes.

Even as the battle began to wind down, the demons did not attempt flight or retreat. The two winged elves joined with Dannel in putting down the stragglers with precise shots, knocking down the last vrocks fighting Lok and Beorna, and the chasmes that menaced Umbar. The only casualty was the zelekhut, which they found entangled with the vrock that had killed it, bloody gears strewn around the spot where the two combatants had hit the ground.

The surviving celestials lowered themselves to the ground slowly, along with Arun and Lok, joining the others near the grounded flying carpet. The sword archon brushed Arun with his wings, healing him of his injuries. Cal and Beorna were already tending likewise to the others.

“We’re glad to see you guys,” Mole offered, as the archon, his limbs still trailing blood, landed and walked up to them.

“Yeah, we were starting to think that demons were all that were left here,” Dannel said.

“Saureya sends his respects,” the archon said. “I am the Herald’s Voice. These are Abrigen and Callendes, of the avariel,” he added, indicating his two companions. The two winged elves inclined their heads slightly in greeting, but they did not shift their wary gazes from the surrounding landscape. They resembled sun elves from Faerûn, but one look at them was enough to indicate the celestial influences in their heritage.

“What is the situation?” Arun asked.

“Graz’zt has launched an all-out invasion of Occipitus,” the Voice reported. “The initial wave came via five temporary gates through which approximately four hundred demons, most capable of teleport, came through. We were able to neutralize two of the gates almost immediately, but the demons were surprisingly coordinated, and were able to quickly annihiliate the majority of our patrols. Realizing that the attack was a prelude to a full invasion, Saureya ordered all forces to fall back to the Bastion, where we have established a final line of defense.”

“The Bastion?” Dannel asked. “I don’t remember that from our last visit.”

“A few things have… changed. The Bastion of Helm was created through the will of the Herald.”

“The Herald… do you mean Morgan?”

“That is the name by which you knew him,” the celestial acknowledged.

“I think that there is a lot going on here that we do not fully understand,” Cal said. “I think we need to…”

“Incoming demons,” one of the avariel said, interrupting the gnome. All eyes turned to mirror the winged elf’s gaze. Their eyesight did not match the acuity of the avariel, but they could see the long black line, writhing slightly, upon the horizon roughly in the direction of the central spire.

“We do not have time,” Arun said. “Can you get us back to the Bastion?”

“There is a demonic army between us and it, in the canyon,” the Voice said calmly. “But their arial superiority has been heavily diminished, and while additional forces are mashalling at the Skull, we may be able to slip through. Abrigen, wind walk back to the Bastion, and inform Saureya that we will be coming through.” The avariel nodded, and began shifting back to the insubstantial form they had worn when first arriving upon the scene.

“I regret that I do not have another spell prepared to transport you, but Callendes and I will escort you upon your conveyance.”

“How many demons are we talking about altogether?” Umbar asked, as the companions gathered back upon the carpet. Beorna and Arun did their best to get as much of the demon corpses off it as they could, but it was clear that the device was going to need a thorough cleaning once they were through here.

“Our reconnaissance is hindered by the lock that has been laid upon the plane,” the Voice said. “Neither we celestials nor the demons can teleport at will. In essence, we have been reduced to a conventional army, to a campaign the likes of which you mortals may be familiar.”

“Best guess,” Umbar persisted.

“It would appear that the Shadow Lord has committed the majority of his remaining forces to this action. Approximately fifty thousand demons.”

For a long moment, there was only silence.