JET 8.3: NO WAY OUT
“They are who they are, while your identity floats in an unfixed state of being. Is it so surprising that they fail to recognise you for what you are not? Believe me, you were not born for this world! The World awaits!”
– from ‘The Book of Kultemeren’, 2:213-217
For every space, there was a corresponding location in each immaterial plane – or perhaps the scholars were wrong, and if there was no cavern already present in Infernum that mirrored the Inceryad’s chamber, one would create itself now for us, in anticipation of our arrival, accommodating our earthly flesh with open arms. Many sorcerers of years gone by had catalogued the features of the various dimensional realms, from the singing orchards and rainbow palaces of Hiriel, the hewn-down mountains and silver seas of Aedervaen, to the plague lakes and bone-glass towers of Abyssinion, the silent deserts and bloody waters of Inner Nethernum. However, we were technically within the bounds of Mund, which was, according to those same scholars, no special place in the other worlds. Any fey lord, demon lord, undead lord – any powerful entity seeking to settle in the area would’ve long-since been moved on by the incessant intrusions of the city’s archmages. It was something of a wasteland, all things considered. Yet Materium had rules it had to follow, locked into a delicate equilibrium by the gods, whose abilities to act were in turn bound by their myriad compromises. The other planes followed other rules, slanted more towards certain gods than their counterparts. Or, in Infernum’s case, very few rules. I didn’t know what to expect here.
The mizelikon’s crimson flame deposited us on the floor of a vast, empty cathedral, carved from what looked like sandstone. Even as we coalesced on the other side of the gateway, I felt the power stutter and die – the oily creature collapsed in on itself and I looked down at it. Draped over my legs there was only a crusty black substance, crispy on top, wet beneath.
The remains of the mizelikon. Slowly, flakes started to drift away, lighter than whatever passed for air in the Twelve Hells. And as the fire died, so did the light. We were plunged into darkness.
I’d drained it dry, and now its corpse was the only thing keeping me alive, keeping me from bleeding out all over the place.
“Kas?” Rathal didn’t sound worried so much as frustrated.
I breathed deeply of the reeking infernal air and shook my head. The three of us were a mess, but we were still numbered amongst the living. That was all that mattered.
Careful to ensure Temcar was still propped up against me, I moved Rath’s hand to my shoulder and then gestured for Avaelar.
Green sparks danced on the air, but they wouldn’t resolve themselves into the curtain of emerald energy I needed.
“You can do it,” Rath said. “You will do it. I know it.”
Eight tries. It took eight tries, and I was almost spent – I almost wept with relief when at last the green fire answered.
“See,” the seer said quietly.
I brought Avaelar through very close-by, and I was touching him on the toned, bronze knee as he entered. The tall sylph immediately bent, putting his fingertips on my shoulder.
“Master – Feychilde!” he sobbed. “I had thought thee forever barred from the outer planes! I consulted with diverse entities, whose counsel brought me to the conclu-”
“Avaelar, please,” I said in Etheric. I was struggling to move my lips; it was a small mercy he wasn’t wasting time complaining about being brought to Infernum, and into a puddle of mizelikon remains for that matter. “Breathe on me. Don’t let me pass out. And… keep touching me. I… I don’t think I can bring you through twice.”
The honeyed breath emanating from the sylph’s lips was a balm unlike anything I could’ve hoped for, sweeter by far than memory painted it. I sensed the lacerations about my hands and midriff sealing closed, the worse ones about my legs knitting themselves together again – but the pain relief was something else entirely. I felt like I was floating on the honey he breathed over me, bathing in a slow-moving river of the sweet stuff, covering me head to toes in a tingling sensation.
The external injuries, those were dealt with almost instantly, but the internal ones – the pulped foot, damaged backbone, snapped elbow, missing teeth – not so much. He couldn’t actually regenerate any body-parts – arch-druidry would be required for that kind of task, or at least very advanced druidry – but it didn’t matter much to me right now. I could breathe again, talk properly again without feeling like I was juggling tomatoes inside my mouth.
Within seconds I felt immeasurably better, but I waited a minute or two before letting him work on the others – it wasn’t selfish, really, so much as it was practical. If I faded now, we all went back, and with no second helping of eldritch-juice we would be doomed to Zyger forever. So Rath, Tem and I sat there back-to-back as Avaelar went between us, healing each of us in turn, moving around and around the little triangle we made of our bodies, his hand fixed to the crown of my head.
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After a little while, I summoned up the strength to call Zabalam, and the little gremlin sat snugly in my lap, getting far too comfortable for my liking. He used his glamour to light our surroundings, and by the clear white radiance he created we could see that the stone upon which we were sitting was, overall, pus-yellow. It seemed to be mottled with other shades: brownish speckles; orangey chunks; a fine film of grey dust over the top of it all. When I raised my fingertips from the floor to my nostrils I got that scent from the dust: acrid, bile or excrement – disgusting. And it was everywhere, great clouds of the filthy stuff entering our lungs with every inhalation – the whole cuboid space was that same off-orange hue, the cursed particles covering everything.
When Tem suddenly woke up, violently attempting to get to his feet out of sheer instinct, Avaelar was on hand to push him back into place before he broke contact with me.
“You’re in Infernum,” I called. The three of us were facing outward, so I couldn’t see him, but I knew he could hear me. “If you stop touching me you’ll be sent back to the Inceryad chamber. You want to go there, be my guest.”
“What the hell!” Tem cried back. “What is this thing? A demon?”
“I,” Avaelar infused the single syllable with such haughtiness that I couldn’t help but smile, “am a sylph.”
“And hell’s the right word for it,” I followed up. “Infernum, or Materium. Your choice. But I think we can get back from here, if I understand right. We can escape. You both have your powers back?”
Rath grunted again, sounding distracted. Small wonder he wasn’t talking much right now – if the future-paths were opening up to him again, it might take him a while to get his head back in the present.
Temcar had wonder in his voice as he responded: “Oh – oh yes. I can see your thoughts, Feychilde! And yours… oh… oh gods, D-Duskdown…”
“Stay out of my head,” Rath grated.
“Y-y-yeah, yes sir,” the enchanter confirmed with a shudder.
“The way I understand it,” Rath said, changing the topic, “we need your seal to stick around, Kas.”
“I don’t really fancy cutting into your flesh with infernal rock, to be fair.”
“Ha. You may have a point.”
“What do we do if you fall asleep?” Tem asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve read up on this stuff. We can’t stay here that long – I can’t sleep here. Something to do with how dreaming works, and the transportation of souls, blah blah blah… Apparently just shutting my eyes and doing nothing will reenergise me when I’m in another dimension, but I’d be ‘tapping the plane’ or whatever, and who knows what I’d end up seeing, or hearing –“
“I’m starting to see routes out,” Rath said tersely. “Give me a few minutes.”
“Fantastic.” I sighed in relief. “Besides, if you guys stayed too long you’d be stuck here. We need to keep moving. A few minutes… and we’ll head off. I just… I can’t believe we made it.”
“We escaped Zyger.” Rath said it in a matter-of-fact tone. “We escaped Magicrux Zyger.”
“It just doesn’t, doesn’t seem feasible.” I closed my eyes, thinking it through. “Is it possible we’re under some kind of enchantment?”
Both of them replied in the negative.
Unless they’re both illusions, I reminded myself. Such a thing was possible, wasn’t it?
Yet, for an enchanter to so closely replicate the sensations of using my sorcerous powers…
It wasn’t like I had much choice, was it? I had to continue. I had to act as though I were free, even if at the back of my mind there’d always be this little sliver of doubt.
“So this really is Infernum?” Tem sounded less scared now, more optimistic. “It doesn’t look so bad, does it?”
The vile, mottled stone upon which we sat was everywhere, a flat expanse stretching off beyond the light. We were in the centre of a space like a great hall of men, almost a hundred feet across – Zab’s light was only just splashing up the right angles of the walls on either side of us. And the light only touched the two opposing walls. It was entirely possible that, rather than being in a box, we were in some kind of trench. A huge, perfectly-smoothed trench.
All in all, Temcar was right – it didn’t look so bad. Certainly it was nothing like I’d imagined it – this was no fire-pit filled with tortured souls and demonic gaolers, even if such places did exist on other parts of the plane. The scent was charcoal and dust, not necessarily that of roasted flesh.
But for whatever reason, once he said those words I felt an ominous presence, something weighing on my mind.
There were things out there, in the darkness, I suspected. Things out of reach of the fey-light – things above us, looking down, watching.
I stretched out with my senses like I’d never done with demons until the last Incursion, trying to touch the fiends up there beyond Zab’s radiance with sorcerous fingertips.
As I’d previous experienced, demons were too chaotic in nature for me to recognise anything but stature, an overall assessment of potency. Perhaps that was how demons so different in apparent strength had been so efficiently ranked by my predecessors.
I knew at a single brush that the thing up there was stronger than anything I’d ever touched before.
Not things. Just thing.
I had demons I could summon – tough ones, like Khikiriaz, Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks, and maybe even some kind of octopus if memory served… But this behemoth was at least ten times bigger than all of them put together. Two or three times the size of the smikelliol I’d watched Leafcloak chomp down on at my first Incursion.
I couldn’t summon – I couldn’t afford to waste my energies. I could feel the power, slowly accumulating within me. I was like a cup, water constantly flowing in, overflowing until I used my abilities, the spells and eldritches that depleted my reserves – the Inceryad had emptied the cup faster than it could be filled, draining it dry, but I was recovering quickly.
Perhaps not quickly-enough…
“Just to mention –“
“Don’t, Kas,” Rath said wearily. “Please, just don’t.”
I closed my mouth.
“What?” Tem asked. “What is it?”
“Better left unsaid,” the diviner replied with a note of finality.
“I – okay, R-Rath… Hey, can anyone else hear that?”
Now that he mentioned it, I could.
“I feel it too,” I said, putting my least-damaged hand on the ground beside me. The floor itself was starting to vibrate, the dust puffing up, tickling my skin like tiny hairs.
There was a sound, far-off: a dull, deep rumble. Coming closer.
“Okay.” Rath sounded resolved. “Take both our shoulders and we’ll help you walk. Gremlin in front, sylph behind, we head to the wall. Stand together. This way.”
* * *