OBSIDIAN 3.4: IMPATIENCE

“The Arch-Diviner represents finding out. The moment of revelation. A new discovery. Reversed, he represents secrecy. The hiding of that which should never be hidden. Not just the lie but the liar himself.”

– from ‘Tarot for Beginners’

I stayed low this time. I’d had problems going too high, so I skirted the roofs of the lower buildings. It would’ve been quicker to go over the towers as the ground dropped away beneath me but I had enough sense left to take the less risky route, drop down with it.

No druid here now to catch me, to put my bones back together.

“I think this is a phenomenally bad idea.” It was Timesnatcher’s deep voice. “Let us finish up here; we’ll come with you.”

“My brother and sister.”

“I understand… We’ll be three or four minutes behind you. Just one more summoner to go, and the smikelliol.”

“Can’t you get someone else to go with me? Just one or two?”

“I’ll try.”

“Leafcloak’s going to be so mad with me, the way I left her…”

“Her bark’s worse than her bite. I’ll talk to her. You’re – you move fast. You’re about to exceed Lovebright’s radius.”

“Not Neverwish’s?”

“He’s down. Recovering. Almost spent himself fighting some snow-illusionist. You keep your wits about you. Reinforcements will -“

The arch-diviner’s voice faded between one word and the next.

I reached the cliffs at the Westrise. Below me a narrow, steep strip of Hilltown separated Hightown and Sticktown. I halted above the rooftops of the buildings standing at the edge and looked down – the swooning nausea returned almost instantly.

Far off in the distance, my home was in flames.

“Take your time, Kas. You can do it. Take a deep breath.”

Even hovering here was filling me with chagrin. I was annoyed at myself, sick of my weakness. I settled down on the corner of a tiled roof, folding my wings.

I crouched there in my torn robe. If anyone saw me from the street they’d doubtless think me a demon – a dark shape but for the soft blue curvature of the wings at my back, perhaps a glint where the mask caught their unnatural radiance…

Every second I wait, people there will die. And it’s my fault! Red rain fell from the sky – it was from the rhimbelkina in Tivertain! If I’d found them sooner, if we’d had better luck – they were throwing hell-fire into the breeze…

“Stop. Close your eyes.”

I took a deep breath, and did as she asked.

“You cannot smell the smoke of the fires, cannot hear the Bells, cannot feel the tiles beneath your feet. You are a feather now. You can feel the wind in your wings. That is the only thing you can feel now. You feel nothing else. You are a leaf. A leaf on an invisible night wind. You are floating on an endless surface with no up or down, no right or wrong.

“Just lean forwards. Spread your wings now and lean forwards.”

I was pretty sure she gave me a push. Whatever happened, I was now falling.

But I opened my wings as I opened my eyes, and already I was halfway down. It wasn’t so bad from here.

I spread my wings farther and then I was swooping across the wooden labyrinths of Sticktown’s neighbourhoods, circumventing all their loops and twists. The streets were empty of all those who had homes to go to, and even most of the road-dwellers were nowhere to be seen – only the most inebriated, depressed or stupid stayed out when the Bells rang. You’d be better off digging yourself a hole in the mud and breathing through a reed than sitting there in the open.

I was doing a good job of quashing down my panic, my doubt, my gut-feeling that everything had gone awry. But as I saw the destruction I was approaching, it came hurtling back, making my spine tingle, my blood surge with excitement and terror.

Helbert’s Bend – Mud Lane – Jaid and Jar –

Just to chase the panic, there was a shot of guilt, as I remembered Morsus, the one who was well-and-truly dead, gone, departed from this plane forever.

I remembered what it was to see his body.

I imagined how much worse it’d have been if it was one of the twins.

Both of the twins.

How much worse it could be if they didn’t even leave bodies behind.

They won’t take my brother and sister. They won’t get to take them away.

I will burn them in flames they cannot withstand.

“Yes,” Zel hissed.

I looked down, and it took me a second to realise what I was seeing – Knuckle Market was gone. It’d been two years since it’d taken a hit in an Incursion, but this went beyond last time – now it was just a muddy square, blackened with ash and charcoal.

I will make them suffer for this.

“Yes!” Zel crowed again.

With the exultant agreement of my trusted advisor ringing in my psychic ears, I coursed across to the bridges spanning Mud Lane and surveyed what they had done to my home.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Most of the people were gone. Gone, dead. But there were still people who needed saving.

I wanted to tear at my hair.

I started fighting before I really saw anything, without even stopping. It was too much to take in. It didn’t look like there were any summoners right here, but that was a mixed blessing – we’d have to find the summoner to stop the flow.

My red-shimmering ikistadreng met three bintaborax with her vast black antlers. They were bowled over, and as they arose, two gripping her antlers to allow the third to smash in her face with its hammer, two of my bintaborax, bigger in every way, took that third up and ripped it in half between them.

The Incursion hellspawn were killing things whilst trampling the block directly opposite my apartment. It was nothing more than black sticks and charred bodies now. My view from the main room window would be forever changed, even after the rebuild. They never built the same building the same way twice, and even if they managed a miracle I’d still have the memories of the corpses on the ground, pulverised under the cloven feet of my demonic minions as my pets drove away the actual killers.

I knew those corpses. I saw Barticia Browne and Sorbit No-Name. One of the arch-enemies of my past, the hated Renkos Fishface, leeching me of old animosities by simple virtue of his broken body.

More to the point, my own apartment building was on fire. The twins wouldn’t even remember anything this bad ever happening before. It’d been – what – four years? five? – since an Incursion last hit Mud Lane.

Were they in there? Were they dying? Xantaire would’ve gotten them out. But how would I know?

Flood Boy was already putting out the flames from an upper-level walkway; he’d been my first eldritch on the scene. A host of my demons was on the ground, and some were now ranging the lower levels of the apartment blocks, engaging with the unbound fiends. I directed a few into the enflamed sections, probably terrifying any number of trapped survivors as my minions sought to drag them out of the dwellings soonest to collapse.

I flew feet-first at my apartment door and smashed right through it, landing almost on my backside in the entryway. A quick scan with Zel’s senses told me no one was here.

My heels hurt where I’d struck the door with them, my only-recently fixed bones groaning in protest. My favourite books would soon be burning – there were fires on the ground level, imps cavorting through the apartments beneath me.

I didn’t care. I needed to see the twins.

Where are they, Zel? Not waiting – I knew she’d have told me the moment she perceived them anyway – I tore out of there, back onto the balcony, and commanded, Find them! Now!

“Yes, I… There’s a large group, more than thirty people, in the building there. Across Springwalk!”

She drew my eyes to our neighbouring building, not as-yet in flames.

Second floor. A broken door hanging loose in its frame. Unbound imps crowding to get in, three or four dozen of them, their spindly, winged bodies swarming over the smashed windows like bugs.

Something was keeping them back, for now.

“Kids in it! And there’s already a huge demon in there! Kas!”

I’d needed no more spurring, and was already in motion.

The plan was simple. Go right through the horde of imps, snaring as many of them as I could – destroy them, then catch the big thing before it could eat anyone else –

It was going to suffer, for each and every person it’d killed – I didn’t care if it was another eighteenth rank demon, it would pay –

And if it’d harmed one hair on the twins’ heads…

I plunged at the apartment feet-first again – but this time there was no door to kick-in. My ethereal wings passed clean through the ruined door-frame, unlike the imps I pulled along in my wake, smashing their limbs on the jagged edges of broken wood. I landed on the soles of my boots this time, and I took my fiend-filled diamonds of force and scissored their occupants to pieces even as I found my stride –

And I stopped dead.

I recognised the yithandreng whose plate-sized eyes were staring back at me. Her horns had a peculiar curve to them which made her different to the others I’d seen.

“Rhu Thrile,” I murmured.

“Rhu Dwazisen,” she growled back amiably.

The thirty people were more kids than adults. There were no bodies. None that were from this plane, anyway.

My eyes scoured them – it took only an instant to find what I sought.

Jaid and Jaroan were there, Xantaire and Xastur and Orstrum. And the Finnerfells and the Sawdans and Salli Meleine and Omrin and Balasain Beerbelly, the greatest ale-drinker the Gold Griffin had ever suffered – all people I’d known most of my life. They were all safe.

Safe.

Fe was a little smaller than the full twenty-feet size at which I’d previously seen her, but only by a bit. Even at a reduced stature, it was clearly her tail that was responsible for taking down most of the internal walls. The victims of the Incursion were huddled behind the demon, crowded into what was essentially a single space with the ruins of bedrooms in the corners.

It was only then, focussing my sorcerer’s-eye, that I could see the line of shielding protecting everyone. It wasn’t strong, wobbling a little – probably due to the fact that the floorboards on which the dust had been sprinkled didn’t quite line up, rather than any lack of skill on the caster’s part. But it was there, and it was real.

She’d saved all my loved ones.

I saw as Jaid began to move towards me – saw as Jar’s hand went to her shoulder, held her back.

I smiled. There were tears in my eyes, tears of frustration and fatigue, tears in the kids’ eyes too. But it was all okay.

They were safe.

Ciraya stepped into view from where she’d been peering over Fe’s flank. The hood of her too-big black magister’s robe was pulled low over her face, obscuring her shaven, tattooed head – but I could see her blue eyes luminous beneath the brim, her full lips pursed in a relieved-looking smile.

“You sure took your sweet time,” she remarked, none of her emotion showing in her drawl.

“Oh, you know,” I looked around the room I’d just strewn in parts of imp, “saving the city… one just isn’t as punctual as one longs to be. I…” I looked directly at her. “Thank you.”

“Well we’re not out yet,” she said, shrugging. “Fe can’t protect us all from the –“

“Most of the big demons are dead – the ones left are mine. But even without them,” I moved my hands, “we’re going to get out of here just fine. Can you see this?”

She shook her head. “I know what you’re doing, though. Fine. How far do we get on your shield?”

I gave her distances.

“Everyone!” She turned back to the crowd, and they all looked to her, even Jaid and Jaroan whose wide eyes had been glued to me since the moment I arrived. “We are going with the nice archmage. He’s called Feychilde.” It gave me mixed feelings to hear the sighs of awe that rippled through the Mud Laners. They had no idea I was Kas, their next-door neighbour. “The closer we stay to him, the safer we are. That means some of us get to be the lucky ones who walk in front of him – that’s us grown-ups. I’ll stay at the limit – go no farther forwards than me, okay?”

There were nods, murmurs of assent. She’d managed to make them trust her, despite the dragon-like entity at her beck and call.

This was more than just the white Magisterium symbol on her robe. She’d made them trust her, and kept that trust, kept them alive through a literal visitation from the Twelve Hells.

I would be recommending Ciraya for honours or a promotion or something the next time I saw Henthae.

She slid onto Fe, then slid off again on my side. She whispered as she passed me, “That’ll give you some breathing room with your kids?”

I barely had time to gasp another “Thank you!” before she’d exited through the ruined door, Fe shrinking down at a moment’s notice to slip out through the wreckage of the doorway, hot on her heels and now no more than ten feet in length.

A press of the adults and teens surged forwards, and I moved aside to give some room to Balasain Beerbelly’s beer-belly. I smiled and nodded at their murmurs of gratitude, feeling altogether like I’d arrived too late to deserve their thanks.

Xantaire and Orstrum came last – Xantaire wasn’t letting go of Xastur and carried him on her hip like he was a two-year-old rather than a four-year-old.

“Kassy?” the little boy murmured sleepily.

“Kassy was out with his girlfriend,” Xantaire muttered, flashing me a look as she crossed in front of me on her way towards the door.

Orstrum headed past and patted me on the arm.

I turned to the mass of kids and tried giving a reassuring smile. “Who wants to go see some awesome demon battles?”

There were still some dubious looks amongst them.

“Do you want to know the best bit?” I let myself grin. “We win every fight.”

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