OBSIDIAN 3.2: HEIGHTS
“We do not speak of death as a state of absolute non-existence. A state of absolute non-existence cannot ever be demonstrated, only inferred on unfounded premises of strict materialism. There is always a demonstrable continuation of background existence, and even if we cannot see the personae that perish – even in cases wherein persistence beyond the barrier proves indemonstrable, there is always the imprint upon existence left behind by the lost. They are not removed from the flow of time. By this we trust all have ghosts, not just those few damned souls that haunt the abodes of those who spurned them when they still drew breath of Materium’s airs. What, are we to posit that only the cursed possess souls? Is it only in the evil eye that we recognise the true being of the Other? What then of this metaphysic! Let us all cease to be!”
– from ‘A Treatise for Existence’, ch. 8
As we approached Hightown the air grew warmer and warmer, more and more fetid; the miasma didn’t stop getting stronger, thicker, until it felt like my nostrils were submerged in alley-water.
Zel, is there anything you can do about this? I muttered inwardly.
“Sweet gods, you know I’m trying, and it’s just getting worse! Hang on!”
She sounded almost as sick as I felt.
“I almost forgot!” Em shouted at me as we soared in tandem, no more than twenty feet apart. “He said zey have a message for you!”
We were already over the border of Oldtown and Hilltown. The roads were steep beneath us – buildings were constructed on the slope with their ground floor on one side lining up with the first floor on the other, and we were having to climb at an angle to keep a good distance above the roofs. It wouldn’t be long till we were in the thick of things again. She was right – if I had important information waiting for me, now would be the time.
I could feel myself still arrowing forwards as I held the hot glyphstone up before my face.
It wasn’t a magister this time. It was Dustbringer.
I could see his surroundings and hear the commotion around him without being able to pick out any details – robed bodies surged about him, magisters’ voices barking phrases in tones of command, but I couldn’t have picked a single face or voice out of the blur… except his. He wore his grotesque corpse-mask, his blackened metal gloves, and the grey robe glittering with tiny black scythes. It seemed that he was standing in the gardens of the Maginox, glyphstone upraised before his face.
It was immediately apparent that this was a recording, not an interaction – this had come out when the Magisterium was still mobilising against the Incursion, probably just after we’d crossed the Greywater. It might be twenty minutes old or more by now.
“Feychilde…” There was a moment of hesitation as he paused; I’d seen this kind of thing before, and I was starting to believe he was waiting while some kind of magic went out and found my glyphstone. “… you haven’t been to a Gathering yet – for now you’re being put with Neverwish and Starsight. We’ve got summoners opening gates unchecked in at least three locations.”
So this was old information – it was four now, and could’ve even risen again since we set off from Oldtown.
“We want you to take a look at Upper Tivertain. Make a report if it’s beyond your limits, but stop them if you can.” He paused, the kind of pause that looked real, though his mask and motionlessness made it impossible to read. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. You’re new at this, and we don’t want to lose you on day one.”
He lowered the glyphstone and in that moment the psychic link dropped – I was soaring over Hilltown once more, the towers of Hightown now visible before me in the distance.
I shouted, “Upper Tivertain!” to Em and she nodded at me, then shouted back, “Roseoak!”
So we had different targets. Great. I couldn’t protect her.
Not that she’d ever needed it before, but I still wanted to be there – if I wasn’t there, and she did need me…
“Think about yourself first. Dustbringer’s concerned over your safety too.”
I think it more likely he’s concerned about having one less arch-sorcerer in the mix if I died, that’s all.
“True. You champions and your m-mortality rates…”
She’d sounded upbeat and jokey, but on the last words her voice suddenly dropped to a choked whisper. Dropped like she’d just seen someone die in front of her.
It’s okay, Zel. I’ll be okay.
She didn’t reply to that.
Not at all disconcerting, telling someone who could see the future that you’ll be okay, and having them do the equivalent of staring back at you in silence. No, not disconcerting at all.
“Sorry, Kastyr. I was – just thinking –”
Think on your own time. We’re here.
One of the sites was coming into view – right on the edge of Hightown.
The sky was filled with mages.
The majority were magisters, their symbols clearly showing on their garments, but there were probably a dozen champions too, all of them weaving between the towers as they fought against the forces of Infernum.
Many were in flight, heading into the conflict, or carrying others out of it. A pair of giant eagles with wounded gripped gingerly in their talons were lifting off from the ruins of a strip of shops – druids, I assumed, or at least monsters being controlled by them. Wizards had conjured creatures of pure air to go between the shells of buildings, gathering the stricken into their soft embraces and transporting them out of the area. The wizards themselves rode the wind above, hurling missiles that screamed and crackled as they sped towards their targets, louder than the cries of the crowds being endlessly evacuated.
There were demons battling demons, and patches of shimmering in the air where I thought I could see sorcerous shielding glinting away. There were diviners and enchanters, moving faster than the eye could see or literally invisibly, using weapons to deal with the lesser foes.
And there were the foes themselves, the demons, in all their multitudes. My magically-acute eyesight painted my destination in lurid, nauseating detail.
Flocks of what looked like huge flying mouths: floating lips of blood-drenched flesh parted to bare jutting teeth – lips that were drawn up at the corners by the wings to which they were attached, forming hideous floating smiles.
Great fat things roiling in hills of tumescent flesh, massive tongues pouring from their bellies, lapping up the stragglers, those too weak to run, reeling them in.
Lashing creations that seemed to be little more than several long, spiny tails, bristling with barbs and with sickle-blades at their tips, all fused together to make whirling killing-machines.
Too many for Zel to start naming. It was mayhem, and I was approaching it at breakneck speed.
“You’re thinking on my time, and no you’re not here.”
That… definitely wasn’t Zel.
“No, it wasn’t. He can’t hear me, and he can’t hear you unless you think it out deliberately – not with this kind of link at least.”
“Ah-h-h, who’s there?” I thought, sounding like an idiot shouting through his door to someone who’d knocked.
“Neverwish. You’re assigned to me. Stop talking to whatever pet you’re talking to and get your backside to Upper Tivertain, now. We really need an arch-sorcerer.”
But wouldn’t they need me here?
I looked over to find Em and saw her, already drawing in a thunderstorm behind her, forks of lightning darting out of it and congealing in her hand.
Gods, I thought, looking at her, the determination on her face.
“Which way’s Upper Tivertain?” I asked Neverwish. “I’m still entering Hightown, just a little north of Hill Road.”
“Farther east – you can’t miss us.” His telepathic conversation had something of a panting quality – I got the impression he was engaged in combat right now, while giving me my marching orders. “No dawdling, Feychilde! Star’s almost out of fuel!”
“I get it. I’m coming.”
I waited for Em to unleash the half-mile-long lightning bolt, letting it leap out ahead of us to incinerate an expanse of demonic flesh – ye gods – then almost crossed her path, shouting: “Refresh it once more! I’ve got to go!”
“It’s done!” she replied against the wind.
We looked upon each other as we flew, perhaps one last time.
One kiss was all I got, one fierce kiss that bit at my soul worse than any hell-fiend, taking a part of me with it.
And then we separated; I pushed myself away from her, and towards an uncertain future.
Neverwish and Starsight – low on firepower. And then me, with next to nothing of that myself.
I would manage. I always had before.
I followed Neverwish’s directions, flitting east between the towers, passing over the chaos and keeping to the northern end of town.
I’d almost traversed the entire length of Mund to get here. Tivertain was a mostly-residential zone, it seemed; too close to Hightown’s centre to be affordable to any but the insanely-wealthy, but too far from it to be purely the purview of nobles, most of whom kept their primary residences in Treetown anyway. Upper Tivertain was on the slope that crept up towards the walls of the city, streets lined with the tall houses of merchant-barons, glass-and-marble constructions of immense proportions.
Hightown was ringing with screams. Demons had burst the boundaries and were going street-to-street, slaughtering any who’d not made it indoors in time. Yellow-leaved eaves were left as ash-choked, scorched wastelands – enough destruction to keep the druids busy for weeks.
Leaving Em behind… there was a lump of guilt in my stomach that physically hurt as I went on my way. But it soon evaporated, replaced by a void, a pressure, a weight of nothingness that swelled up within me as Upper Tivertain came into view.
And there are only two champions on the scene? I asked myself incredulously.
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It wasn’t as bad as the Roseoak commotion back there, where Em was fighting – but it was bad.
Flames were consuming everything, melting glass and marble alike into noxious sludge. Blood-red fires were opening everywhere, fires of the variety that produced no heat but were a hundred times worse than those that did, spewing forth ten imps at a time. There were over a dozen big things in the vicinity, and it was probable that a number of the smaller things were still powerful, perhaps more powerful than their larger cousins.
The lesser fiends probably numbered a thousand already, and that figure would be set to increase.
Five or six magister bands were on the scene, but it was nothing like enough. I could see that there was already one lying dead, his ten-spoked wheel ripped through by some titanic claw that emptied his chest of its contents in a single swipe, leaving him face-up in the mess it’d made of his innards
Who knew how many others they might have already lost, whose fates were, well, worse? Leaving no remains?
Enchanters were at their least-useful directly engaging the enemy during an Incursion – even the most-skilled of them didn’t have the slimmest chance of working their mind-magic on a demon, the way I understood it. Though it was hard to see how (the likely-invisible) Neverwish was helping at a distance, I imagined he was working with the minds of those who were doing their best to get away, guiding to the safest routes.
Starsight, on the other hand, was painfully visible in a gleaming white robe. He was helping a little old woman through a demon-infested expanse where four big buildings had been levelled. He was carrying her over his shoulder, running, stopping, sidestepping, rolling her across the ground and skittering after her, diving and rising with knives suddenly in his hands – one shining silver, the other gleaming gold – and each time the blades cut the air the lesser hell-spawn pursuing him shrieked in pain and fell back from him, writhing, as he retrieved her and carried on running. The speed-effect he moved within kept the fiends at bay as much as his weapons. Magisters were attempting to support him, a couple of wizards hurling ice and fire against the gibbering mob, several bound demons charging their brethren and doing their best to slow them down…
Glass screamed, marble thundered. Even as I watched, hurtling closer with every passing second, another building toppled, this one on my edge of the chaos. Its ground-floor was simply eradicated in a single charge from one of the big demons, its thrashing head bedecked with an imposing crown of antlers.
The house fell, storey upon storey like a drunk crashing to his knees, until finally it toppled over in a cloud of dust.
Surely most had passed away in the attack, but I could hear a few survivors in the rubble bellowing in dismay.
And in that I was not alone.
The demon, emerging from the rubble, had heard them too – or smelled them.
It was a strange beast. It looked like a deer, or some kind of elk – but it was eight feet at the shoulder and maybe eleven, twelve feet from nose to tail-tip. Its antlers were black candelabra, doubling its apparent height. Perhaps most disconcerting, its fur was a vivid, bright red that admitted no shadow, giving it a blurred, ever-shifting presence – it must’ve been even more perturbing to those without my sight-boost.
It halted its charge, wheeled around and started rushing at the remnants of the marble walls. It sprang up uncannily into the air, headbutting the corners of floors now sticking up like broken elbows into the sky, smashing them, falling through to trample those trapped within.
Curse these perceptions, Zel.
“Don’t curse them. Fly harder.”
She knew that I was already putting everything I could into the flight. I had to get there.
Now.
What is it, Zel? Can I take it?
“An ikistadreng?” The fairy laughed. “It’s all yours, Feychilde.”
“Engaging ikistadreng on west side!” I yelled mentally at Neverwish, hoping the link was still up.
But another replied, Starsight’s telepathic voice soft and level despite the arduous journey he was undertaking through a horde of enemies: “I need your support here.”
“I’ll bring it!”
I threw out my hands, ripping portals open for all my minions to step through.
Draumgerel. Kinkalaman. Mekkustremin. Epheldegrim. And four bintaborax.
Flood Boy and Zabalam too, looking decidedly out of place.
Zel was right – I felt it, this time, summoning so many at once. It was like breathing in a deep lungful of the smoke on the air, making my chest feel tight, my throat burn.
I barked commands. When I was done they turned away to their tasks, and I swept down at the ruined house, coming to hover over the elk-demon with its majestic, dreadful antlers.
“You!” My voice sounded ragged even to my ears. “Come! Rid this area of demons that do not serve mages! Do not suffer any sentient creatures of this plane to come to harm.”
It was frantically attacking the remaining pieces of structure that still gave clue to the fact this devastation of glass and marble was once a house – it slowed and turned, tossing back its head –
Then reared up and leapt at me, a single motion of fantastical precision and strength, kicking out at me with a cloven forehoof –
It recoiled from my defences, clattering back down in a heap.
As it rose I gave it a lash of a force-spike in the shoulder, thrusting it back down again.
“Swear!” I hissed.
And I glared at it.
Into its eyes, visible only by the whites and pupils – the red irises melted into the red fur in such a way that its face was almost a featureless blur, only suggested by outlines.
I only had to meet those eyes for an instant before it bowed its head.
Despite the rush of reassurance the minor victory gave me, it sent shivers up my spine to hear the voice of the ikistadreng, emanating from the terrifying blackness that split the red blur where its jaws would part.
The voice was female, urbane, and spoke perfect Mundic in a meek little voice.
“I so swear it, sorcerer.”
It – she – crouched, then leapt right through my shielding.
Landing behind me, she charged at the unbound demons. I followed.
What rank is that thing?
“Eighth.”
I could imagine Zel’s devious grin.
You didn’t think to warn me?
“Would it have helped?”
I would’ve grinned along with her if I could’ve heard any more noises coming from survivors in the destroyed building.
Instead I soared over the melee of demons, where my little army had engaged the aggressors, ready to do my part.
Nothing here was as big as Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks (both of whom carried their warhammers, seemingly undamaged despite the outcome of the thinfinaran fight), and even my other bintaborax matched the largest of the unbound fiends in size and strength. The minotaur-demons formed the vanguard, clobbering their way into the ranks of the enemy, reinforced on the flanks by the thudding mekkustremin and the galloping epheldegrim. The kinkalaman loped around with its blade-arms extended, mopping up the stragglers, eviscerating or beheading the demons that had survived their confrontation with the crushing warhammers – meanwhile, the draumgerel bounced along behind, laying down some acidic spit at range in support.
Flood Boy had walled off a section of the battlefield in frozen wine, and Zabalam was following my instructions to the letter, using illusions to spell words in the air and draw arrows, guiding people out of the ruins where they were hiding and into safety.
The ikistadreng swiftly demonstrated why she was my most powerful summon. Whole droves of imps and other lesser fiends were slaughtered each time she charged. She tossed her head violently as she smacked into her targets, sending most of them flying with lethal gashes across their bodies, and impaling others on her antlers – infernal corpses that dangled and swung as she continued on her way, smashing, rending, goring.
I spotted Starsight – he hadn’t managed to get very far despite his eerie speed, still pinned down in the wasteland of demons, burdened as he was with the heavy woman he was attempting to rescue, fiends literally all around him.
I sped ahead, then swooped down over him and settled nearby, throwing the shield over the three of us.
Immediately the demons within my barrier were cast out, flung back by an irresistible, unseen force. Beyond the wards they were snarling and hissing, striking at my defences with claws that came back smoking from their encounters with my glowing blue lines. There weren’t enough pressing in on my shields to worry me – not yet at least.
Starsight stopped, and I got a good look at him. He was short and slight, his mask a single five-pointed golden star covering his whole face, except for the middle of his mouth and his clean-shaven chin. Similar stars were embroidered in miniature into the white of his robe, the shining threads blending in almost invisibly.
He bent forwards, tipping the woman to a patch of rubble-free ground – she was shaking, long matted grey hair quivering in pace with her body. Her veiny hands clutched spasmodically at the reddish servant’s smock she wore. If she knew little of sorcery then, to her, there was nothing protecting her from the demons except empty air.
“Please – please – please don’t leave me –” the woman was gasping.
The arch-diviner was still leaning over, his hands on his knees and his own chest rising and falling heavily as he sucked in smoky air and coughed. He looked exhausted – quite understandably.
So they are still human.
“We aren’t going to leave you,” I said, doing my best to sound reassuring. “We’ll get you out – we just have to regroup for a minute.”
She closed her eyes, still clutching at her smock.
I felt a bit uneasy, looking around me. There were more than fifty demons hitting my barriers now, and that number would soon double, and redouble. Lesser demons, but still… I only had five up – the hexagon was taking some serious damage, and I could feel it. The magisters who’d been assisting the arch-diviner were occupied defending themselves at the moment, retreated back behind walls of shields and summons – while my retinue of demons was still quite a ways off.
“How can I best – h-help?” I asked, choking down a cough myself and screwing my eyes shut momentarily as I really did get some smoke in my face.
The champion’s face turned towards mine as he stood there bent over. The star-mask hid his eyes but not his mouth; nevertheless, he thought at me in his soft mental voice again.
“Speak like this. What did you have in mind? Many things you might suggest will not work. I can’t see a way out.”
“I have some ideas,” I hedged.
He straightened up, still looking at me.
“You aren’t going to be able to fly us out; the spell on you isn’t suitable. Too many will arrive if we wait for your demons and your walls will be overrun. If you move the shields they just follow us, and end up leaving Tivertain. You –“
“I don’t think I’m at my capacity yet, Starsight.”
Then Zel interjected, apparently for my ears only: “And I don’t think it’ll kill you to –”
Of course. I was being stupid.
I waved my hand, and a circle of nine red flames surrounded us, closer than the shields.
I probably should’ve left the ikistadreng behind; this time it really took something out of me. I went to my knees, quivering.
The hexagon fell, all at once.
The old woman screamed Yune’s name as she watched through the flames the ring of imps and bestial fiends suddenly falling towards us, unimpeded and bellowing in triumph.
She wasn’t to know she was still within my pentagon, which still rotated and gleamed bright, undamaged as yet.
It didn’t matter anyway. The red flames resolved themselves into my retinue, outward-facing, blocking off her line of sight to the hostile hell-spawn.
Blocking off my line of sight.
“You know, what to do,” I said, then raised my hand to my mouth while I spluttered a fair bit. The Infernal and the coughing probably sounded horrible to my rescuer-and-rescuee audience, but what could I do?
“Of course, Master,” my ikistadreng said sweetly, speaking in Mundic again.
She reared, kicking violently at the air, before springing up and forwards with her back legs, lowering her head, half-charging, half-plummeting at my enemies.
The rest of my demons barrelled towards the perimeter of my shields and met their lesser cousins in battle, the mekkustremin already there, clobbering three fiends into a pulpy mess with each strike of its huge porcelain hands.
I took a few deep breaths.
This would work. It had to.
“Will this work?” I asked the champion.
“Yes,” Zel replied at once.
And then, after a brief but pensive silence as he stared at me, Starsight replied: “It has been some time since I’ve been surprised, Feychilde. Carry on. I trust you.”
I floated upwards, just ten feet or so, to get a better vantage point, fixing my shields to the ground and being careful to stay well within their boundaries as I ascended.
I cast my eye out on the little ones and waved my hands again – a huge swathe of them met my eyes, suddenly transfixed by me.
“Thanatar rumez el kason khi-rum!”
Over a dozen jackal-faced men and bat-things went snapping at their brethren without a moment’s hesitation.
“Below you!” Zel rustled, and at the same time, despite his exhortation to speak telepathically, I heard Starsight cry my name aloud.
I immediately looked down, and what I saw both terrified and bewildered me.
The rubble beneath me was covered with a sheen of frost, and crisp white snow was billowing softly across a wintry landscape. Snow that wasn’t falling past me on its way down – snow that was appearing spontaneously in the ten feet of open air just below my feet.
A tiny blue-skinned child was standing over the lifeless body of the old woman.
It was beyond strange. She didn’t register as a corpse on my senses. But, then, I had other things on my mind.
This new fiend had darker, night-blue scales in patches all over its body; snow was on its head in place of hair, falling down onto its shoulders and drifting off on the Hells-sent breeze. It was smaller than Jaid, its gender indeterminate.
Red blood was gushing down its chin. Its wide eyes were the same red shade as the blood, no whites or irises or pupils.
And it was within the shields. It hadn’t broken them – it’d seemingly just stepped inside them, without a care in the world.
Well inside them. Feet from Starsight.
I heard Starsight cry out, this time using the psychic link: “Neverwish, we need you!”
What…?
Zel murmured, “I… honestly I don’t know what it is, Kas.”
I faltered, taking a few deadly moments to comport myself before bringing a spike of force lancing down from the inner shell of my shields, flicking it at the demon-child.
It had already moved, darting off nimbly in pursuit of Starsight, who’d drawn his pair of magical daggers, silver and gold glittering in his hands as he backed away –
And he backed right into the line demarcated by my circle-shield, hovering at the centre of my structure of barriers. It was reinforced with three stars: five-, seven- and thirteen-pointed. The one place in the city that should’ve been the safest.
There he took up a fighting stance, radiant knives held in a guard position.
“I consign you again to the nightmare,” the seer said quietly to the demon.
And the blue-skinned child entered, leaping at his face.
I wanted to go to him, to aid him – but how? I was frozen.
This was the end. I would never see my brother and sister again, or Em, or Xantaire or Orstrum or Xastur…
Morsus…
It leapt, but he wasn’t there when it landed; he’d sidestepped out of the circle-shield again with his uncanny speed, driving his golden dagger into the demon-child’s chest –