He only had about twenty deathknights left to back him up, by the looks of things, and he didn’t seem too happy about it. The purple-lit skeletal face beneath the crown-surmounted helm was misshapen, twisted into a frozen scream of defiance, the lower jaw thrust forwards, lipless teeth glinting.
They came plunging down from one of the nearby torn-off tower roofs, descending on the nethermist thick-enough to support the zombie-horses and their riders. I saw Mountainslide surging up to meet them.
“Why do they blow those ridiculous horns?” I muttered to myself.
The dwarven wizard didn’t get chance to intercept them.
I almost felt sorry for them as I reached out a hand, twisting away the amethyst lightning with a few gestures, motions that indicated the confinement of the energies; the reversal of the portals; the completion of the spell.
They fell a good seventy, eighty feet, and the dwarf changed course to float above them. He rapidly warped their surroundings with one hand, creating another depression and sinking them down into it, even as he started pouring lava on them from on-high with the other hand.
But there was one, just one deathknight still in the saddle – just one whose mist would not return to the shadows from whence it came.
The death-lord reared his mount, crying out in a great voice that all could hear but few could understand: “Hai Verkos fan Verki, E sakh neir mashal kat o eltuun! Dhi ban ar E fanast kat o vasal, kat o menevail; temen ban at neir fanast ban o nekiban?“
‘O King of Kings, I might not defend my people! To thee I surrender my crown, my dominion; wilt thou not surrender thy silence?’
And he suddenly went coursing at the statue of Vaahn, with such speed I could hardly follow the motion.
“Stop – him!” Timesnatcher came through from somewhere in a staccato burst of telepathic sound.
Starsight was airborne, on his way –
But the death-lord on his untouchable, special nethermist had obviously been holding back to stay alongside his now deep, deep-fried troops. He was fast, too fast for even Star to intercept.
He did the last thing I expected.
He slammed into the effigy and it accepted him, instantly swallowing him, horse and all, into its horrid make-up.
I looked across the courtyard. For a few dreadful seconds, the silence of which he’d spoken so hatefully descended to reign over all. The tumult ceased and every creature was still, eldritch and champion, staring at the effigy. Even the ever-dutiful Winterprince halted his non-stop barrage. Star alone moved, drifting away from the centre, away from the effigy towards which he’d been streaking.
“Back, Star!” Timesnatcher roared.
Then the idol rose up. Its skulls came alive. A terrible purple light cascaded across its swollen, stringy corpse-body.
Screams of joy came from the crowd, almost masking the awful hissing that came pouring up from the wight-parts strewn across the plaza. Those shredded pieces started stirring under that magenta light. Even those who’d been reduced to ash were affected. Stirring, streaming, skittering…
Recoalescing.
Decimated bodies were coming together again everywhere I looked, knitting seamlessly and pouring nethermist into the air as they did so. The purple light glared through, making everything an impenetrable nethernal smog, even to me.
I had no idea what to do. Several of the champions were perceptible by the greenish glow that suffused their bodies, a result of the anti-shadow healing spells the three druids had been bestowing –
“Move, move!” Zel shrilled.
I went upwards, but she took the reins and moved me backwards at the same time, retreating us away –
The effigy had embarked off its pedestal under the cover of the mist, evidently striding with sickening speed across the courtyard; it barely passed beneath me, its barbed black crown scraping through the space in which I’d flown just an instant before.
Panicked shouts and confused suggestions filled the telepathic link as I tried to re-establish shields. Predictably, they failed when they intersected the huge avatar of the God of Tyranny.
Spinning force-blades and resummoning eldritches to combat the renewed threats all around me, I almost missed it as Leafcloak appeared through the fog, wolf-shaped and titanic, snapping out with her gigantic maw.
The putrid idol to the King of Kings was fast; disgustingly-so. A morass of body parts rose up, a hideous arm to smash a hideous fist into the wolf’s head. But she had her feral instincts working on overdrive and she slipped the blow, diving forwards to sink her teeth into the seething, heaving graveyard of a ribcage that was the avatar’s upper body, sink her teeth in and pin it down –
I’d almost missed it.
Almost missed watching Leafcloak die.
It didn’t quite happen instantaneously. The white fur turned brown, first, like she’d been swimming in a dirty pond; then green, dripping and rotten, as though she’d contracted a few thousand diseases while taking that swim –
Between one moment and the next, the light left her eyes.
A dozen voices were crying out over the link, but I focussed my energies inwards.
Avaelar! I yelled silently. Can she be saved?
I knew what his answer would be before he gave it.
She shuddered to her knees, the great wolf breaking in submission; her jaws stayed fixed to the avatar’s chest.
“This,” the sylph said in a voice thick with shock, “this you must know is beyond me, Feychilde.”
I could feel his fear.
I could feel Zel’s elation as my eyes narrowed on the avatar.
“Do it.”
Her words ringing in my inner ear – old Leafcloak’s canine death-face, fusing with the effigy – my companions trapped in the wake of this reversal of fortunes, this resurgence of wights and wight-lords –
As I speared towards the effigy of Vaahn I summoned Gilaela into the air between me and the awful entity, joining with her and letting her disappear into me as the bubble vanishes when pierced by the dart –
There was no time to discuss it with her, what I wanted from her.
There was no need to discuss it with her. She knew.
I lowered my head and screwed my eyes shut as I sped, flying the fastest I could. I could feel my best circle-shield there, a multitude of stars reinforcing it, and I waited to feel it break as the horn did nothing, nothing at all to the revolting godling and I too collided with its decaying substances – but I had to try, damn it –
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I felt it as I was knocked aside, not by the beast or even wind-wizardry but by a hammer of pure force.
“Wha da hell ah you doin’?” Shallowlie practically screamed at me.
She pursued me, pushing me farther from the fight, battering at me with her blue hammer – behind her I could see the wizards throwing everything they had at the avatar, keeping it at bay.
“Kas, tock to me,” she cried above the mayhem. “Pliz, Kas. I am so scare. I wan Ly…”
I forced us to a halt. “Min, it’s –”
“It’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way.”
“I saw what happened to Leafcloak.”
“I saw what happened to Leafcloak.”
“If it kills us, maybe we don’t have to come back…”
“If it kills –”
I froze.
Wait… What, Zel?
“My dear, you are a morbid one, aren’t you?” Gilaela commented. “Whatever was your name, again? Zelurra?”
“That is correct,” Avaelar said softly.
It was correct, but it almost kind of sounded slightly wrong, a bit. It sounded right, but when he said it was correct, he sounded wrong…
Shallowlie repeated my last words, trying to prompt a response from me, but I was focussed on my most-trusted advisor.
Zel?
The faerie queen’s voice was hard and regal but fragile, brittle, when she replied.
“I apologise. I lost my nerve, I know. We’ll talk about it later. For now, let’s just get through this, yes?”
It was strange. I could’ve sworn Zel had been excited, almost thrilled –
“Forget what you could’ve sworn!” she spat. “Fight, champion! Lay waste the poor folk of Zadhal. I’m gone.”
And she was. I could feel her absence.
Why was she filled with such sorrow, that she saw the shadow of a chance at complete annihilation as cause for hopefulness?
The fairy needed my help. She’d always been there for me, and now it would be my opportunity to return the favour. I considered calling her back, but I supposed I mustn’t have been diametrically-opposed to the idea of her leaving if she, a bound eldritch, had chosen and managed to do so.
“I’m sorry, Min,” I murmured and, noticing the sorceress’s posture, spread my arms. “I don’t quite know what I was doing.”
She moved to me swiftly, clung to me. Briefly we held onto each other, floating away from the chaos, and I could feel the way she was trembling.
No more than I was.
I’d get chance to talk to Zel later. Over Shallowlie’s shoulder I could see that the changes in the avatar had run their course. Strands of tendon had pulled Leafcloak’s tremendous corpse into place, and it now wore her like the garment of her namesake. Her lifeless head served like a grisly hood, speared by the black crown’s protrusions through the underside of the chin so that the spikes emerged through the top of her snout.
We went back to the battle. Our strongest weave was weaker than a highborn’s toilet-paper under Vaahn’s blows so I went back to using Gilaela’s horn on the rank-and-file troops, smashing them into dust, only to watch them reassemble, grey, ashen versions of their former selves. The twenty-or-so deathknights had rejoined the fray and now they were virtually unstoppable, always recovering from whatever we did to put them down, their armour reshaping itself, their broken lances reappearing.
Thousands of wights, climbing out of pools of magma and returning to the fight. Hundreds of eldritches to combat them, our forces slowly but inexorably being depleted as we marshalled them where Timesnatcher called for them. The manifestation of a dark god, wearing Mund’s greatest arch-druid for a fur coat, running amok with elemental attacks streaming off its unholy body, threatening us to make a single mistake. More than once it came within seconds of getting me, getting each and every one of us. Belestae, Goddess of Fortune, must’ve been backing our play.
Then I spotted the small shape, almost impossible to perceive, flying about Vaahn’s idol like a buzzing bee – tiny gleaming stings in its hands.
Dimdweller.
Starsight and Timesnatcher were doing their best to keep everyone away from the avatar, but it was a holding measure at best, and Winterprince and Mountainslide wouldn’t hold out forever; it didn’t even look as though Dimdweller was doing it any harm. Whatever strings of fleshy matter the dwarf sliced through, they knotted again instantly, and every moment that he stayed in proximity with the creature he risked obliteration, even given his powers.
He seemed to be annoying it, though. The sphere of skulls that was its head was trying futilely to follow the arch-diviner.
“How could anyone call this noble?” Glimmermere spat from somewhere, voice lathered in hate. “He from whom all nobility springs? Liar! Murderer!”
“The ministry of the Prince of Chains accepts that the ankle and wrist soon to be bound are oft used in flight or resistance ere the locks are made fast,” Starsight offered grimly. “I have had cause to deal with a number of his cultists in the past. Nobility remains ever their purpose, and thus they can never attain it. Such is granted; never gained.”
“I’m not ending up like that,” Fangmoon breathed. “No chains for me. I’ll die first.”
Where exactly they all were in this abominable purple mist, I was unsure, even when I flew thirty feet over the courtyard. I hadn’t seen the silver-black tiger or huge snake in several minutes. I had to hope the enchanters and diviners had a good lock on everyone.
“What’s with this clock tower, Timesnatcher?” I asked, skewering a dozen wights with my fingers splayed, stabbing out with a multitude of force-blades simultaneously. “Did you mean the horn, or something?”
“No, the clock tower on the western edge. I don’t know what it portends, but we have to be done with this by then.”
“What time will it ring?”
“I may hold things back sometimes, Feychilde, but I think I’d let you know if I could see that. I can just hear them, that’s all. Feedback from the future.”
“Can’t we just –“
“They ring when we try to destroy them.” A touch of exasperation was slipping into his mind-voice now.
“So – what’s our plan?”
“I… I think that’s one of those things you’d really rather wait and see.”
I gritted my teeth. “Not really, Timesnatcher! Is anyone else hearing this? I’d think you’d let us know what you can see when we have a god chasing us, I –“
“Weren’t you listening earlier? I said it’s all in-hand. I didn’t understand until I saw the statue come alive, but I’ve explored it fully now. What she said makes no sense any other way.”
‘She’? Lightblind? I hadn’t been listening, I supposed, while I was trying to get myself soul-destroyed at the behest of my suicidal fairy-minion.
The more I thought about that, the more it called out to me that I had to do something about it – but I couldn’t afford any more distractions.
“The lad has a point,” Glancefall said. “I know I’d prefer to know what you’ve got up your sleeve. After Leafcloak…”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “Timesnatcher, where’s this Green Tower?”
“What are you proposing?”
“I…” I didn’t quite know myself.
“Don’t stop now,” Gilaela prodded me.
“Indeed, you are right, Feychilde,” Avaelar said. “We should away from this place.”
“I think someone should investigate it.” I didn’t sound particularly confident. “It might be a weapon –“
“Someone being you,” Winterprince mind-spoke, voice as cold as everything else about him. “Not trying to run, are you, boy?”
“Grow up,” I snarled. “Someone. The death-lord is gone, and with him our best chance of finding Shadowcloud… And Direcrown.”
Fangmoon gave an emotionless ‘hah’, a placeholder for psychic amusement. But her voice was numb, no actual amusement in it.
Leafcloak was dead. Perhaps it was too early for me to joke about losing the arch-sorcerer. He was a champion, technically, even if he was a darkmage. But I was fairly sure that he would’ve fled at the first opportunity, unlike Shadowcloud.
I shook my head – I had to focus. “For all we know this Green Tower’s significant. Maybe there’s a clue in there, or something –“
“For all we know, it’s insignificant,” Winterprince retorted instantly. “We know the statue’s responsible for Zadhal, now – we just watched it raise these all back from dropping dust and if you deny –“
“We know nothing of the sort!” I interrupted him. “I do deny it! This is a catastrophe, but it’s clearly a special circumstance. You’ve seen the edges – the streets aren’t filled with this purple mist, are they? The wights seemed as surprised as us when the statue woke up, didn’t they?”
I felt I was arguing with a brick wall – an ice wall – and getting precisely nowhere when Glancefall spoke up in defence of me.
Then Fang, and Spirit.
“I don’t work for any of you,” I muttered. “Spirit, just point me in the right direction…”
“Stop.” Timesnatcher finally spoke again. “You’re not wrong, Feychilde. I can’t see what you’re going into. That alone makes it an interesting factor. You’ve got my curiosity piqued, and it’s an unusual sensation.”
“Tell you what – when I get back, I’ll tell you what I found, if you tell me how you plan to defeat a living embodiment of Tyranny…”
The arch-diviner chuckled. “I’ll take that deal. It’s not far – the link will stay up, so we can do a trade, if you can get in. But I can’t let you go alone.”
Without missing a beat, the cold response came:
“I will go.”
* * *