I was lying on stone, wet, cold – freezing. Each quivering breath was like swallowing a knife that split in two inside my throat and descended down into each of my lungs.
No breeze on my face. No brain-melting light discernible through my eyelids. A musty scent of death cloyed the air, the overpowering aroma of blood.
More than anything else, a sense of bone-weakening Evil. The kind with a capital-E. Something in me was shrivelling up, like I could feel my soul in my chest, curling into a foetal position and waiting for death.
Not the sphere-chamber, then.
And I… seemed to be in possession of all my limbs. All my intestines…
“I’m here, Kas.”
Things even more important than limbs and intestines.
Zel seemed taken aback by my complimentary thought, and stuttered:”Gr-Graima – she poured your healing potion down your throat, and, well, with whatever happened when you activated the sphere… I was able to help with the necrotic wounds. Shadowcloud’s here – oh Kas, be careful, they’re not five feet –”
I know. I feel them. Hush now, Zel. Listening.
Two voices. Distant, beyond mortal hearing. One a familiar rasp; the other similar but less confident, less authoritative –
“Her sister, Graima. Neither of them are very happy.”
Graima was pleading:
“… was the doing of the Harlot! There was naught I could do – my hands, ashes as I laid them upon the hatch! All arts fled me! I sent up mindless to bring him down to us. I have him –”
“Yet what of his mind, dear sister? And the one Keltoros brought, he is still under thy spell?”
“Of course – but whatever yon boy did, he brought about the downfall of the Great One! Removing his amulet, worthless! Some otherworld power guards his thoughts from every incision, and he must be properly subdued before he might be submerged in the Elixir…”
“Mistress!” A new voice, male, hoarse. “Mistresses, we must flee this place!”
There was the crack of lich-fire as one of the sisters lashed the speaker, the agonised gasp that replied.
“Thou shalt do no such thing!” Aidel snapped. “Return to thy post, and warn of any approach!”
This time I could pick out the gentle swishing sound as her servant departed. I tried to keep my breathing shallow as I started to prepare myself.
“Wait, sister,” Graima said in a hollow voice. “He wakens!”
“Nentheleme,” I whispered through cold-cracked lips, gesturing with one hand while I used the other to steady myself.
I opened my eyes, looking past the trio of vampires that had been left to watch over me and the comatose wizard lying beside me.
Not stone – ice, a huge, glistening cavern. But the ice was not the white-blue I was used to seeing. This ice was like a surface of pink crystals: the recesses around the edges, like the spot where I found myself, were gleaming darkly; a hundred yards off was the centre, a flat floor of vivid translucency, illuminated by the fountain in the very middle.
It wasn’t large, the fountain where the two lich-ladies hovered. A narrow column reaching up twenty feet from the small base, which contained a depressed circle, catching the glowing magenta blood that pumped out of the column as though from a stump, a huge severed artery. The material from which the column and base had been crafted might once have been any colour, but the stains of centuries made it a perfect match for the vile substance spurting fitfully from its openings into the dank air.
Is this it? Is this the ‘crux’?
If Zel was still around, that meant I hadn’t truly been out of it. With a little effort I could still sense my wings, my horn. All I needed was a shield before whatever Nentheleme had done to my mind ebbed away completely, and Graima put me to sleep alongside the arch-wizard. That much would surely count as ill-will…
I’d already reinforced my circle twice before I even extended my wings, used them to lift myself off the ground and into a vertical position.
The three vampires reacted to Graima’s words, of course – they could hear their rulers’ dispute as well as I – but they hesitated. A few fatal moments of confusion, while they weighed the pros and cons of ripping into me – me, the person the archliches seemed to think might help resurrect the vampires’ dead master.
The nearest, a big male in a fine felt coat, made his decision, rushing me, but there was scarcely any hunger for the kill in his halting motions.
Far too little, far too late.
A force-blade, invisible to him, tore out his throat.
That wouldn’t be enough, of course, so I increased the speed of the rotation and fully decapitated him.
His friends didn’t turn to run quickly-enough, watching his return to Nethernum with faces filled with horror and amazement. I spread my next three shields more quickly than even they could flee, and they were carried on the crest of my barrier, flung through the air before my blades caught them up, divided them into chunks.
I noticed the gleam of tiny chains as mine and Shadowcloud’s necklaces fell to the ground amidst their belongings.
I turned to face the two remaining super-undead Zadhalites, keeping my eyes on them, staring at them from the shadows as I went to the pendants and retrieved them.
“You sh-should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” I panted in Mundic, settling my chain around my neck and pulling my hood up, trying not to shudder against the horrifying chill. “Well, hopefully, anyway. I never fought two women before. Not ones your age, anyway. How do you d-do it? You have to tell me your secret. You don’t look a day over two hundred, I swear it…”
After I had Shadowcloud’s necklace in place, his metallic mask still exuding its mist-effect, I built more defences, more blades. Graima, her sister’s mirror-image but for her gown being whitish where Aidel’s was red, sneered at me while I mocked them. She raised a hand, creating a ball of purple flame, and floated closer to me, outside the radius of Shield Twelve.
Aidel did not approach, but raised both arms at her sides, palms held horizontally.
An army of skeletal ice warriors, pink-crystal ribcages and skulls and weapons, rose from every section of the cavern outside my shielding, as if they had but slumbered there till now.
“When last we fought, thou didst best me,” she called, floating above her horde. “Thou hast now none of thy former boons; outnumbered, outmatched – what wilt thou do? Cry to thy gods again? I fear they cannot hear thee – not here. In this place, my god reigns!”
“Your god got his ass handed to him,” I snorted. “The only reins he knows are the ones Nentheleme used when she rode him like a poor little pony.”
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Graima shrieked, tore at my shields – I remade them.
“Come on, time to give it up. You have no idea what kind of fire you’re playing with, you know. Last time we fought, I couldn’t summon anything either. Now? How do you like some red fire?”
Within my boundaries, I loosed my own hand-picked creatures. Eight of them.
The liches didn’t seem to like the look of Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks in particular.
Then I heard coughing, spluttering – I looked down beneath me, and saw Shadowcloud staggering to his feet.
My shields were blocking whatever Graima had been doing to him? No, it would be the amulet, finally kicking in.
“And he’s…” Shadowcloud was sick, then replaced his mask, growled, and looked up. “He’s not alone!”
He joined me in the air and set a flood of warmth into my flesh; I almost smiled, but the moment of pleasure and relief was halted in its tracks before it ever really arrived.
I could smell it – on his clothes, his breath – the blood. The weird, purple blood.
“Are… you okay, Shadowcloud?” I asked. I could hear the uncertainty in my own voice.
“Never better,” he said grimly, then looked across at me. “Can we fight now?”
As he surged into the air and called ordinary, orangey-looking fire into existence, I steeled myself.
We can’t fight now, but we might have to fight later.
Shadowcloud – a Sticktowner, a champion without airs and graces, a man I liked, damn it… What would the blood do to him, and in what kind of time-frame? Was there anything I could do to help him? Maybe, with the sphere…?
I couldn’t think about it now. I had to back him up.
Graima ripped into my shields more quickly than I could remake them, ultimately, but she had to avoid my blades, and we started a kind of long-range dance, back and forth. I’d never seen the burning hammers of bintaborax put to such good use as they were now, shattering not just icy skulls but turning whole bodies to slush as the demons waded into the battle. Whenever they seemed to be getting overwhelmed I swished nearer, knocking their assailants back to give them some room to swing their weapons. Meanwhile, on the other flank, Shadowcloud had raised his own army of elementals, pink-ice ones in humanoid shape, but flaming ones also came springing into existence; then Aidel melted the ceiling, quenching his fires in an instant. Just when it seemed Aidel had Shadowcloud on the ropes he responded with the lightning that was his true forte, and then their momentum was reversed again, him chasing her.
I’d been right before. The problem with lich-lords, undead lords of all kinds, really – they weren’t used to fighting. Not against champions, anyway. They sat on their thrones, brooded and plotted, forgetting what it was to truly live. Even with my shields up, Graima could’ve disoriented us by throwing illusions at us; Aidel could’ve brought the whole ceiling down…
Except she couldn’t, could she? Not here. Not where the Evil was concentrated…
“Feychilde?” Spiritwhisper’s voice came through suddenly over the link.
The link! Being deprived of it for so long during my trials in the sphere-chamber had driven all thought of it from my mind –
“Spirit! We’re –“
“You were right, they’re below the droppin’ tower!” Spirit finished my sentence for me. “Shadowcloud?”
The enchanter was busy re-establishing the link with the wizard but my mind went over his words one more time.
Below the tower…
Droppin’ tower…
It was then that it clicked. Not just why Aidel didn’t bring the cavern roof down. Why the ‘Green Tower’ had been chosen to house the sphere in the first place.
How we would save Shadowcloud.
“What – what in the name of all that’s holy do you think you’re thinking about?” Zel screamed in my inner-ear.
Ow! Cut that out! You know the plan’s a good one. I can always go wraith-form…
“’Good’? ‘Good’! I’ve never heard such a preposterous idea in my entire life – and you’ve some idea how long I’ve been around –“
By your own admission, you can’t remember most of it.
I grinned.
“Spirit, when you say below the tower – whereabouts are we, exactly?”
“Fang?” he said.
The druidess replied: “It’s beneath the cellar – Winterprince is about to smash his way down from the street but the vampires –“
“No!” I said. “Don’t. We need him to bring down the floors of the tower, from the bottom to the top. Let the sphere in the top of the tower fall right through the ground.”
It was Timesnatcher who spoke next.
“He’s right. Do it.”
There was a faint, telepathic grunt from Winterprince.
“But they’ll be buried!” Spirit cried. “The kinda mess you’re talking about…”
“Bury the demon-tower? Oh no. But bury the champions? No sweat.” Shadowcloud was muttering as he swerved around the twisting, ever-forking coils of ice Aidel was extending at him. “I can aid him from the underside, anyway, help bring it down –“
“No, don’t,” I cut in. “My shields won’t work against you. Am I right, Winterprince?” I chuckled to myself, readying a new Shield Nine for when the lich-fire shredded it. “You wouldn’t mind dropping a cavern on my head, would you?”
There was silence, then another faint telepathic grunt.
A couple of the others chuckled.
“Ill-will enough for me,” I concluded. “If some rocks do get through, then you’re up, Shadow. Stay within ten yards of me if you can. Winterprince, let me know when you’re going to begin.”
A horrible rending, a heaving, splintering CRACK followed immediately on the heels of my words. It was as though the world were being split in two – well, I supposed it sort of was – but this level of thunderous din I hadn’t expected.
“Warning enough for you?” Winterprince said.
I dismissed my eldritches. It was happening, and it didn’t take the lich-ladies long to realise what was going on. But by then, it was too late. The rock and ice were falling, dust flowing like waterfalls through the purple-lit air. We had two wizards, strong, in the prime of their power, whilst they had one, weakened by time. My shield kept us safe, while, outside its edges, they were buried in hundreds of tons of stone. Aidel’s elementals were crushed, or put out of my sight by mounds of rock.
Ka-koom! Ka-koom! Ka-koom…
The explosions became ever-more distant. Winterprince was working his way up, shattering each of the floors of the tower.
The liches, surrounded by their own shields, fought free of the boulders and struck at us with ever-increasing desperation. We defended ourselves, holding out, keeping them at bay.
“Shadow,” I thought at him, “you need to uncover the fountain-thing down there – I’m sure it’s survived quite unharmed – can you move the rocks aside? We have to drop the sphere in the ‘very crux of the crossed planes’.”
“Distract them. She’s gonna see what I’m doing as soon as I start.”
“On it.”
“It’s time,” I called to the sisters, still speaking Mundic – but even they couldn’t hear me over the din.
I summoned Zab into the air beside me and joined with him.
Six.
What had changed? I didn’t know – I knew only that my instinct was that it’d work.
“You’ve thought a few times of archmages in the ‘fullness of their power’, have you not?” Zel said, in an almost-formal tone. It didn’t sound like she was smiling.
I smiled for both of us.
When next I spoke, I augmented the sound, roared louder than the rocks falling:
“Aidel and Graima, archmages of the Diamond of the North, heed me! Your time is come, and that of your followers. The time of unmaking, the breaking of the spell that still clutches your souls, binds them to the shadowland!”
“No!” Aidel screamed, thrusting herself bodily into my shields, uncaring of the way they sliced into her undead flesh. “Thou mayest not do this thing, Feychilde!”
“Afraid I kind of have to,” I boomed, in a softer but no less-loud voice. “It’s not fair on your souls to try to live forever. You shouldn’t be afraid to move on when the sphere arrives. Take the opportunity to pass through the Gateway. You might not be Infernum-bound.”
“I will not risk even Etherium!” she hissed, almost bisected by the last force-blade to gouge her midriff, continuing regardless. “Thou dost not – canst not understand… We live – to save thy city!”
“Save us from what?” I asked. “Heresy? Incursions? We have it quite in hand, thank you.”
She halted, drew back, looking worse for wear. Her skull had a crack in it, discernible even at a distance.
Aidel and Graima exchanged a glance, then the wizard-lich rasped her response, using the air to bring the shattered voice to my vicinity.
“Save it from ye. From me. From archmagery.”
“What do you mean?”
“My husband, he who was perhaps the most-potent diviner of his time, saw it all – mixing the bloodlines was merely the genesis of the downfall: an unprecedented growth of archmagery in the world, focussed in thy Mund. And the power – the power is –“
She turned her head, jerked it to one side to look –
“Oh Kas,” Zel purred.
I knew what had come over her. I felt it too.
It was too late for answers.
Blinding green light backlit the boulders and the dust-rain – I could see the neat bows of spell-threads penetrating the stone, whirling as they fell –
The impact was silent, a thing of brightness, and coolness that swiftly passed away into warmth as the sphere absorbed the fountain and its putrid ‘Elixir’; warmth such as I could barely remember, like the hot bath protagonists enjoyed sometimes in stories, a luxurious plasma surrounding me, flowing all around me –
As the magic of the otherworld took hold and the light spread, cleansing the cavern, the street, the city, the last-rasped whisper of a dying lich was carried by dying winds to my ear:
“– then perhaps thou, Feychilde, canst seek out my memoirs, and in my place save this world that now spurns me.”
* * *