Goodmonth 18, CY 593
60: More pinions for the spear.
As the Liberators finish their work on magical items, and Heydricus assures himself that the reclamation of Nevond Nevend has found a self-sustaining momentum, Prisantha calls the group together and announces that she has two things to share.
First, she takes a scraping of skin from the forearm of each Liberator (including the familiars). “This will be for our clones,” she says. “I took flesh from Thrommel before he left as well, and this process will ensure our continuation in the face of the unthinkable. I mean to store the clones in Martak’s secret chamber, in the head of the Easternmost statue. I have linked the chamber to our secret passage via a phase door, and seen to it that only those of us present here will be able to use it.”
Next, she presents Heydricus with a pair of items. The first (secretly crafted by Gwendolyn), is a somewhat plain-looking cloak of charisma for the Duchess Maia, given against her promise of financial aid.
“For the people of Tenh,” Prisantha loftily clarifies.
The second item is a gift for Heydricus, a much more finely made vest of magnetism, bearing the tri-part seal of Tenh, along with the holy symbol of Tritherion, and the Liberators’ own device—a tall spear festooned with seven blue and seven red pinions. Heydricus is nearly overcome with emotion, and clasps Prisantha’s hand in a meaningful (if chaste) embrace.
Heydricus’ own spear features only one red and two blue streamers, although he means to add to the decoration very soon. The Lesser Boneheart members Panshazek and Cranzer of Riftcrag are at the top of the List.
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Prisantha stands in front of the completed clones, each one a naked and perfect duplicate of its original. If she regards Heydricus’ nude form for longer than would be considered proper, no one is around to notice.
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Panshazek is scryed again, but this time, there is no spell misleading the divination. He is seen to be relaxing in the same alchemical laboratory as before, although there is no active work readily apparent. He is attended by a pair of cherubic youths, both just slightly pre-adolescent and possessed of an innocent beauty; one boy and one girl.
But Prisantha’s true seeing foils the illusion, and Panshazek is seen to be a massive bird-like demon, made entirely of fire, and giving off a thick, noxious smoke. A sort of anti-pheonix, Panshazek furls and unfurls his flaming wings with a vile majesty.
His attendants are no children, to be sure, but beastly vulture-headed winged creatures with avian lower-torsos and humanlike arms protruding from their grotesquely malformed upper bodies.
The Liberators prepare spells, and with Lucius, Gwendolyn and Regda ensconced in the portable hole, Prisantha teleports the improved invisible group to Panshazek’s secret laboratory in Dorraka.
The foul demon notices them immediately, apparently able to see invisible. “You?” he croaks, grinning slyly. “This is unexpected.”
“Your plans for us were foiled, beast!” Heydricus crows.
“Are you sure of that, Liberator?” the demon says. “Are you aware? Perhaps we should talk.”
But by that point, Gwendolyn has emerged from the portable hole, and without another word being spoken, she arcs a horrid wiliting through the room, pulling flame from Panshazek’s wings and withering his two vulture-headed lackeys. Of course, to her eyes, she just unleashed her most powerful spell at an unarmed old man and his bright-eyed grandchildren. Here’s to hoping that The Plan turns out to be a good idea.
To her relief, Heydricus leaps forward and begins cutting into the grandfatherly man, slicing strips from his form with forehand and backhand blows. His efforts are rewarded by a nearly sub-sonic screeching emerging from the thing.
Jespo follows Gwendolyn out of the bag, and stumbles about in a very undignified fashion, growing tangled in his long robes, until he finally rights himself and summons a horde of black tentacles that fill the back of the room and seize the leg of the young girl, as she rises into the air. She wrestles with the tentacle, slashing and biting it before finally tearing free and flying upwards beyond the reach of the tentacles with a raucous subhuman cry. A thin tentacle tip clings to her ankle, severed from its source by her frantic biting, but still struggling feebly to kill . . . kill . . .kill.
The young boy reaches behind himself, and emerges with a formely unseen bow, then fires three shots at Heydricus. Two of the arrows are mis-targeted due to the Liberator’s displace self, but the third strikes home. Lucius returns fire on the boy, striking him through the neck in what must certainly be a mortal blow, assuming of course, that he is mortal after all. The boy-thing glares at Lucius as it shakes its head.
At that moment, Panshazek the anti-pheonix spreads his frail arms (or gigantic firey wings, depending on whether you have true seeing), and intones, “Paskaviik Ta’hasish Mulu, I invoke our bond! Fly to my aid in the name of He Who Sees All!” As he finishes his invocation, Panshazek flickers once, and is gone.
His disappearance is followed by a sudden shuddering in the room, and then a six-armed woman with the lower half of a huge serpent appears directly in the midst of the Liberators. She wields a different weapon in each arm, many of them obviously enchanted, and six flashing blades whirr hypnotically as the edges grate across one another, producing a terrible cacophony. “I hear and obey, Eternal Terror,” the demoness says. And as if to prove her obedience, she begins carving heroes, cutting Regda, Dabus and Prisantha simultaneously.
Dabus reacts to the sudden onslaught by uttering a holy word. As the booming tone echoes through the fight, all three of his enemies (and Lucius) stagger away from the sound, sickened and deafened. Heydricus reacts to the sudden break by leaping at the demoness, and he works his holy spear through her field of blades, and runs her through the sternum, heart and head. In that order.
Both the girl and boy child target Dabus for their next volley, and the stalwart cleric grunts as several barbed arrows punch through his plate armor and bury themselves into his skin. But he is made of stern stuff, and he shrugs off the pain, then motions to Heydricus. The two Tritherionites position themselves on opposite sides of the creature, a strategy that does not seem to dismay her in the slightest. She continues weaving her blades in a complex pattern, forcing both men to grant her weaponry their full attention.
Prisantha backs away from the struggling marilith, and says, “I wish Panshazek was directly in front of me.” Her spell twists space, and suddenly a desiccated and worm-ridden corpse appears in the air directly in front of her, and then falls to the ground with a wet sticking sound, breaking into several filthy pieces.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Prisantha observes.
Dabus and Heydricus exchange blows with the marilith, receiving aid from both Lucius and Regda in the form of bow-fire, and after suffering a series of withering strikes, the serpent demon is destroyed, evaporating into a fine astral mist.
Jespo Crim points his finger at the girl-child and speaks a power word stun. The creature twists in mid-air for a moment, then falls into the midst of the black tentacles, its unseen wings seizing up. True to their nature, the tentacles tear it to demonic shreds.
“Great job, Crim!” Heydricus shouts, and to the remaining demon, he says, “In the head or the gut? Your call.”
The vulture- thing cannot hear Heydricus’ taunt, but being a creature of personified Abyssal Evil he understands a death threat when he sees one. He concentrates, and summons several duplicates of himself that phase in and out of one another, confusing and temporarily foiling his foes.
As the Liberators begin to separate the phantasm from the demon, there is a ghostly laughter that echoes through the room, and in a burst of flame, the phoenix-demon reappears directly within the mass of black tentacles, its illusion cast aside. The tentacles do not seem to even exist for the demon, and it spreads its sickening fiery wings to their full reach and opens its beak wide, revealing three writhing cyst-encrusted tongues. The wings’ passage leaves behind bright pinions of flame that coalesce in the air and form a horrid abyssal symbol that fills everyone looking at it with a sudden terror.
Fortunately, only Jespo and Lucius are fully stricken with the fear effect, and they turn to flee, ‘never split the party’ be damned. Gwendolyn responds by freezing Lucius in place with a hastily-cast enchantment. Regda is also quick to act, and she proves that the arms of a lover are good for more than just soft nights under the moon as she seizes Jespo in a crushing arm-lock.
She whispers, “it’s okay baby, Redga’s here,” in her throaty voice, attempting to stroke his head with one mailed hand as the frantic conjurer struggles feebly against her iron hold.
Prisantha has had quite enough, thank you very much, and she finishes the fight as her cohort began it, with a powerful withering spell that destroys both demons outright. Like their fellows, they dissipate into a fine mist as they are banished from the mortal plane.
As Regda solidifies her hold on Jespo, (and asks Dabus to heal the inadvertent bruises and sprains she’s given him), the rest of the Liberators make a quick search of Panshazek’s manor. They find that his home is on a hill, and several adjoining chambers have tall, lordly windows that look out over the misery and violent squalor that has the misfortune to call itself Dorraka, the capital of Iuz’s empire on Oerth.
The city’s buildings seem to perch against their own weight and hang precariously over their streets, each one looking as if it might collapse at a moment’s notice. Several vermin-infested rubble piles prove that some times, they do. Garbage and filth litter every thinly-trod intersection, corner or alleyway of the city, and small trash-fires are everywhere.
Iuz’ sprawling Imperial Palace towers over the rest of the city like a patient vulture, promising that in the end, all will be consumed.
As the Liberators take in the view, they see pestilent beggars run-over by charging abyssal horses pulling smoking carriages, small-scale riots led by demon-possessed madmen, and gangs of orcs alternately defending the ubiquitous Iuzian clergy against looters, or simply taking what they like from the common folk as they pass. The streets are lit by thousands of shuffling zombies set aflame, and the sounds of faint moaning and even fainter screaming can be heard.
They also see that as is rumored, the streets of Dorraka are in fact paved with bones.
“I have no desire to remain here,” Dabus says, somewhat unnecessarily.
“But the corpse,” Prisantha calls from her place next to Panshazek. “It is months old, at least.”
“Whatever we fought was not Panshazek,” Heydricus says. “Did you hear the name that it called out before it disappeared?” He receives no reply. “The first time it disappeared,” he clarifies.
“Paskaviik Ta’hasish Mulu?” Prisantha says. “Yes, it is abyssal for “Thing That Spawns Ten Thousand Pains.” That was undoubtedly the personal name of the marilith.”
“No,” Heydricus says, “He Who Sees. That‘s a name for Prazrael, the winged demon-prince. This was no Iuzian we killed, it was a spy!”
