AMETHYST 5.2: NO COMMUNICATION

“Just in this last week – three reports of zombies malfunctioning in Hightown. Customers are becoming too frightened to shop. One poor little girl had her ear bitten off, and if the security detail hadn’t stopped it she surely would’ve had her brain slurped right out of the side of her head! How has this happened? How are we to maintain a reputation of reliability and trustworthiness under such circumstances? These are the problems with which I have been wrestling. I suspect well-hidden interference, on behalf of the Circle Watchers or the Society of Summoners; these lesser colleges have ever envied our position. I wish for three volunteers to open an official investigation in my name. Any evidence you discover in support or defiance of my hypothesis, bring it to me and know it will be fairly considered, whatever the outcome. I intend to take this to the Magisterium myself.”

– from Mistress Arithos’s Seminar with the Purple Adepts

Fire and frost flowed over my skin, a caress almost luxurious in its delicacy, its tenderness of application – but that sensation was buried, clamped down beneath the agony reverberating inside my brain. It was akin to getting my head busted open with a stonemason’s drill the size of a hammer. I almost would’ve preferred that, quite honestly, because at least getting your head busted open with a drill the size of a hammer would leave you dead in a split-second, mercifully free from pain. This was like getting your head busted open, without the possibility of relief, the escape offered by unconsciousness, death. It left me crawling, skittering on my elbows and knees on the cold, cracked stone, Shadowcloud’s buoyancy spell keeping me from actually smashing my skull on the floor.

But I knew I had gone through. I knew from the way that, even despite the wizardry setting my veins aflame, I was shivering, panting from the iciness of the very air about me.

I struggled to open my eyes, and saw the shadow I cast on the charred grey rock – the blue light was behind me. I was through. I drew out a circle straight away, reinforced it with instinctive motions.

I looked up, using a faltering burst of flight to float myself upright; as the spell settled down, coming back under my control, I felt warmer again. My breath still misted on the air, and I didn’t like being this close to the Door – I hovered forwards hesitantly, cradling my throbbing head in one hand as I beheld Zadhal.

Lyanne had shown me the illusory replication in her glyphstone the last time we’d met for training, but it hadn’t even come close.

My first time leaving Mund… and it’s to see this…

The Winter Door stood in the centre of a wide plaza, like a fraction of Firenight Square. Far off, ruins of buildings ringed the area. A single roadway before us led off towards the shattered towers at the centre of the city, a cluster of broken teeth jutting into the pale white sky. The sun was too low to illuminate anything except the air itself – for all the sky’s apparent brightness everything was dim; everything was bathed in shadow.

Where are the undead? I wondered.

“You might be better at finding them than me, now,” Zel replied with a sniff.

Before I had chance to test my sensory abilities I heard Min softly call to me. I looked over to find that Shallowlie had already spun a thread of power; as she threw it I caught it, added to it, and looked to Direcrown…

Either Valorin had been through an intensive training-course like me or he learned damn fast – by the time the enchanters followed us we’d split up, heading in rough approximations of the cardinal directions, maintaining the weave between the four of us. Direcrown was more than keeping up his end, and having a whole quartet of arch-sorcerers maintaining the shield with our power just trivialised the ordeal. It didn’t even feel like I was spending of my power to keep it in place. Hopefully my shields were stronger now, stronger than they had been when I was warding the doorway to the assassin’s guild. Would they fare better against elite undead creatures?

If not – well, I had my new allies to try out.

Waiting for the rest of the expedition to arrive, I flew around the edge of our defences and almost passed out from pure bliss as the humming finally faded to a low background buzz. We continued carefully building the weave, but as I worked I took the opportunity to study the buildings in close-up, the vacant windows and blasted walls of what must have once been shops, offices. This probably would’ve been the city’s bustling trade centre, what with it being the way to Mund and all. (Certainly what I’d heard of Habburat, the city through the still-operational Spring Door, indicated as much.)

I could almost imagine the people who’d lived their lives here, who’d died here when something beyond their knowledge or control went catastrophically wrong and they paid the unending price.

But I could sense nothing in the ruins, nothing I could touch with my magic. Not even corpses.

“No time like the present,” Zel piped up.

For what?

“To test your present…”

My… oh.

I halted, caught and tied the next section of shield, then summoned my unicorn.

“My, this is a pleasant change of scenery,” she commented dryly, looking about, her glittering horn seeming to leave a trail of sparks in the air as she tossed her head.

“Stay still a second, will you?”

Joining with Gilaela was the weirdest transition yet – I floated through her like she was made of thin air, to me at least, and it was only once she was half ‘in’ me that the rest of her got sort of sucked in.

Thanks awfully for your help, I thought at her, and looked down to check I hadn’t grown two extra legs.

Stolen story; please report.

“For Nentheleme,” Gilaela replied, in a tone of acceptance.

I saw sparks out of the corner of my eye as I swished my head and it took me a minute to realise that they were coming from my head.

“Uh…” My mouth went to the trouble of commenting on my situation. There was no one else to hear.

I passed my hand over my forehead – I felt nothing.

I got Zab to pop out and take a look, then the green-eyed gremlin confirmed:

“You’ve got a great honking horn sticking out your head, Feychilde.”

He drew a reflection of me in the air before I rejoined with him, lasting only a few seconds – long enough for me to memorise the ridiculous sight.

The glittery horn thrusting through my mask was almost a foot long, and despite its incorporeal nature it was brighter and far more glittery than when it was atop Gilaela’s head. It angled upwards as much as it did forwards, and –

“What’ve you done to yourself, Feychilde?” someone said – Glancefall, I thought.

A bit rich for someone in a jester-mask and a gold wig.

“Ha! Someone looks happy,” Spiritwhisper commented.

I endured a minute or two of the world’s most obvious jokes, and did my best to laugh along with them.

I didn’t care. It was funny, after all, and power was power. Once I learned how to use it…

I busied myself with summoning my satyrs, Sarcamor and Sarminuid. It transpired I could only join with one of them before I once again felt ‘full’, and Sarminuid suddenly wasn’t insubstantial under my hand like his fellow had been.

I dismissed him back to Etherium. I had better eldritches to use in a place like Zadhal, and I had a grand total of five eldritches inside me, bound to the flesh. Five would do, for now.

Zel made no comment…

“I’m busy. What?”

Oh?

“Looking at the future for –” She halted, as Timesnatcher asked:

“Can I get confirmation, the undead have withdrawn from the area?”

I agreed, and Min too – Valorin might not have mastered that aspect of his powers yet and didn’t reply, while Direcrown reported a single ghost. He brought it up to the edge of the shield where it crossed the road, and I couldn’t quite make out what it was saying under his questioning – something about being lost and alone, the typical stuff you’d expect to hear I supposed…

He sent it out again, and it flickered and vanished into the city beyond the plaza, leaving only a faint purple trail in the air to my sorcerer’s-eye.

I started summoning demons into my vicinity, one by one so as to not overexert myself. I got the feeling they weren’t overly comfortable, this close to a bunch of champions and arch-magisters, even those with enough intellect to know they weren’t in any danger of being collectively annihilated. The lesser things all looked positively subdued – the few diseased folkababil birds and the dog-faced obbolomin guys, the various imps, even the seven-legged epheldegrim herd.

In contrast, my bintaborax clan and Aunty Antlers all stood straight with pride. Khikiriaz, my other ikistadreng, looked far more afraid of me than of anyone else in the vicinity as he kept his head bowed, his strange pupil only focussing briefly on me after I summoned him.

I called my atiimogrix into Materium, the thin, near-naked laughing-man with the endless entrails already starting to dribble out of the hole in his gut. I would put him at the front, let him get destroyed first.

“Agar salithak,” I snapped at him. “Neleb gharar onn sa kasagren.”

‘Stop laughing. And don’t make a mess.’

He immediately pressed his lips together, pressed his hands against his belly – his glowing eyes, his cheeks, his torso, they all puffed up, swelled almost immediately beyond his ability to contain.

Sighing, I rescinded the commands and just waved him away again. I’d have to settle for bringing him out when the battle began. I’d caught onto the fact that more than a few of my fellow archmages had turned their heads, hearing him barking laughter, exuding a truly unique stench.

“Sorry,” I said. “I, er, didn’t realise just how bad that would be…” I seized on the opportunity to change the topic. “Can we be sure the invisibility covers our eldritches?”

I received several assurances. It looked like sorcerers weren’t the only ones who found it easy to cover large numbers with their spells when gathered in force.

“So, does this mean they were expecting us?” Shadowcloud was asking. I could make him out, floating higher than the others, looking out across the city towards those broken-tooth towers in the centre. “There are normally some critters around here, aren’t there?”

“Them expecting us was never beyond the realms of possibility, Shadowcloud,” Lightblind’s measured voice responded.

“Indeed.” Zakimel’s urbane drawl. “Everything going according to plan.”

“If you say so.” The arch-wizard still sounded dubious.

“It’s possible that the last expedition earlier this year cleared the locals out for good,” Lightblind explained in a patient voice. “It takes time for them to wander back in, or get sent here.”

“And we were just dying for a welcome party,” Glimmermere muttered from somewhere.

“I don’t think our palates have much in common,” I said. “I tend not to eat places where the waiter wants to serve you your own leg as the main course.”

“Whatever. We all know what sorcerers get up to, don’t any of you deny it.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it, my dear,” Direcrown practically purred. “What would remain of our reputations, should the common folk think our tastes ordinary?”

I was surprised at the amount of sniggers that were elicited into the shared telepathic space by the back-and-forth, the lack of reprimands from the leaders. Or perhaps I shouldn’t have been – the laughter was comprised of tight, terse sounds. Maybe they wouldn’t have found it amusing if we were elsewhere, under the bright light of the sun, where it didn’t feel like your death was waiting for you just around the corner…

I realised then that it couldn’t just be the previous expeditions clearing the place that’d left the area free of undead.

If that was the case, why had a vampire-lord been waiting on this side of the portal for the moment in which the defences were dropped, when the demons struck the Box?

But before I voiced my doubts I realised the further truth: there was no way Lightblind had missed this. She was just hoping to hide it from the others. What could be the point of such a deliberate deception? Unless she and Timesnatcher knew that things would go worse if they mentioned it…

Zel, have I ever mentioned how much I detest foresight?

“I think it’s come up once or twice,” she said with just a touch of spite.

“I still feel cold,” one of the arch-magisters was saying, and I thought I could hear Winterprince grinding out a chuckle as he soared past.

“Is the weave in place, Shallowlie?” Timesnatcher asked. His voice just seemed to be getting tenser and tenser every time he spoke.

“We ah ready, Tamsnatcher,” she said. I could see piles of ghosts surrounding her, a swirling ring of greyish figures, moving through the air but frozen in place, like transparent portrait-people rotating in the pattern of a shield. I started opening my own nethernal portals, producing the handful of ex-assassin vampires and rag-draped ghouls I’d taken after the Gathering.

“Okay, pin it in place. We’ll leave it as a warning system – the moment you feel pressure against it, you let me know… Zakimel?” Timesnatcher prompted.

The gaunt old magister in blue and gold was near Shadowcloud before the Door, surveying the scene.

“Yes,” he answered the champion. “Let us begin.”

* * *