“It’s designed to be brought into the ‘very crux of the crossed planes’,” he pointed out, passing me another ribbon of energy. “This surely implies that we’d have to bring it to the avatar in any case.”
I necked another vial of water from my demiskin as I fixed the lines together to form a glyph in the air. “That thing is a decoy, I swear it. The wights were as surprised as we were – look, just trust me, okay? The appearance of the Prince is just a… a chance occurrence. Sure, maybe we should’ve thought of this ahead of time – or Timesnatcher and Zakimel should’ve, anyway. I bet Zadhal is the god’s biggest centre of worship in the world – there was no way he was just going to take us invading this place lying down!” I gestured out at the towers around us – the bone-armour and bone-storm had fallen still a few minutes ago, settling back down to the ground. “But that doesn’t mean he’s behind it all.”
Direcrown grunted agreeably, then nodded at the fiercely-glowing green weave in my hands. “Focus. You’re tangling them again.” He went for the next one, drifting across near the trapdoor beneath which we’d had no chance to properly explore.
I’d taken a quick insubstantial head-poke down there to scan about, check there were no immediate threats. It was silent and dark on the floor below us, which was an empty space but for the black pillars, a five-storey room of identical proportions. Unlike the sphere-chamber, the walls were windowless, and it was colder down there. A single narrow set of stone ledges were fixed to the wall beneath the sphere-chamber’s trapdoor, like steps, and there was another identical trapdoor nearby, presumably leading down to the next floor. There couldn’t be more than four floors in total, given the height of each chamber.
I focussed. He was right – I had tangled them.
“Sorry.” I fixed the mess, applied my power to the next shape, then let it go again and sent it whirling off around the sphere. “How much work do you think there is to be done here?”
“We make progress.” He indicated the glyph I’d just allowed to slip from my grip, and I could see it, replicating itself across the trails it touched, the shape slowly multiplying across dimensions. “Those who think chaos stronger than order because of the ease with which order is dismantled, transformed into chaos, miss this simple fact: that chaos longs for order, cannot be without it, cannot fill its belly on its own tail. Order is its own end but without it, chaos is nothing. Chaos is alone in the night of its own making, while order flourishes in its brief, beautiful lifetime. Let us hope that this time it might achieve its goals ere it is snuffed out once more.”
We’d only been at it for fifteen minutes – I had popped out briefly to give Winterprince the all-clear and repair his shield; he was now bearing the news of Direcrown’s discovery back to the others. Fifteen minutes, and I couldn’t help but think the darkmage was right, watching the transformations our simple work was bringing to bear.
It was the weirdest thing. These drifting ribbons of runes were simply broken sentences; it wasn’t hard to see how to reconnect them, and apply to them the proper patterns. My sorcerous instincts knew what they were doing, even if I couldn’t consciously draw from my memory the exact shapes of the sigils of Nentheleme, Glaif, Mortiforn… My hands moved, and the shapes appeared in living lines of green fire, more vibrant and true than the sensations any memory could supply.
“What happened to them?” I wondered aloud.
“To whom?”
“No – I mean, the spell-lines…”
“Ah.” He drew a breath, then said, “They were cut. Deliberately. See here?” He held another ribbon, just like all the others, and indicated the very tip, where we were fastening them together once more. “This is a neat divide, no? An act of tremendous violence would leave fraying, here, and here, where the runes drift. No, these were snipped with scissors, so to speak.”
“What sorcerer would do that?”
“A lich, no doubt, whose continued existence rests upon unbroken connection with Nethernum. We might call this stuff antinether.”
I frowned, but not because I disagreed. No, if anything it was that I was disconcerted by the candour with which the darkmage had treated me so far. The lore he shared with impunity. I’d come to expect this of Netherhame and Shallowlie, but from Direcrown?
A little voice in the back of my head murmured, What if Timesnatcher is wrong about him?
The more-sceptical side of my mind retorted, Let’s test the sharing-lore-with-impunity bit, then.
I looked across at my colleague. “Do you know much of the war?”
He just chuckled snootily. “So thou art a believer too! Ha! Do you know how similar to Dustbringer you are? And yet, how dissimilar…”
“I… I have it from the lips of an eldritch,” I said.
“Do you? Do you now?” The dark eyes in the fiendish face sparkled terribly all of a sudden. “That is very interesting to me. Do you speak of a bound eldritch?”
“I – well…” I didn’t want to mention Zel, really – especially when I couldn’t pull her back without having a psychic argument right here in front of Direcrown. “I had it from a wight-lord in the courtyard, actually –“
“These lords retain well-formed thoughts, speak willingly?” The arch-sorcerer sounded incredulous. “My boy, we must away! This sphere will wait, fix itself as we soar with greater purpose! Come!”
I couldn’t deny that it looked more and more like he was right. The more we toiled, the swifter the changes would come about, complete the sphere’s magic and allow us to activate it – but beyond a certain point, it was a waste of our time. It would deal with itself. My fellow champions – some of whom I’d come to think of as friends – were back there.
I nodded, following him to the open window.
“Reinforce your shields,” he murmured. “I suspect the defences shall awaken again the moment we breach the boundary of this wall.”
“Agreed.”
I drew on my wraith again and, as expected, the very instant we set off from the precipice the bones reacted once more, coating the tower, lashing out at us. Direcrown’s flight was slower than my sylph-wings or wizard-flight, so I allowed him to take the lead until we were clear of the sickening storm of gleaming body parts.
“Which way?” he asked.
Once we were in the clear and I moved just ten yards in the right direction it came through, the burst of telepathic resonance:
Timesnatcher roaring;“-ancefall! Back, fifty feet! If –“
Glimmermere panting; “– he won’t come back to me, Fang! Can you reach –“
Spiritwhisper muttering; “– Twelve Hells are Feychilde and Direcrown –“
“We’re coming!” I cried. “Direcrown’s with me – link him, then I can come faster –“
“I’m on my way,” Winterprince grunted, “I’ll bring him ba-”
“No, you’re needed here!” Timesnatcher berated him. “More fire on his left side, or he’s going to break away again!”
Damn it.
“Straight a hundred yards, then turn left, look for the purple mist!” I yelled to Direcrown, before putting everything I had into my speed.
Each beat of Avaelar’s wings was a moment I wasn’t there and I picked up just how bad things were over the link. Glimmermere and Fangmoon were trying to save Dimdweller, and it sounded like they were in a very difficult situation. I could imagine getting there too late to do anything, anything but feel the guilt – I’d left them behind, and hearing Spirit complaining about my absence had cut me, sliced through nerves I didn’t know I had. All I knew was that it hurt to disappoint him, to have abandoned them like this – what if the spell-sphere in the Green Tower came to nothing? What if it was all a waste? What if Dimdweller died while I dallied with playing arch-sorcerer?
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I wasn’t too late.
I plunged into the purple mist, into the same unending battle as before. My shields went before me, and I pushed a huge area clear, sent my blades spinning. Timesnatcher directed me to a point near the centre, a little towards the south-eastern edge.
It wasn’t long before I sensed the shapes within my farthest-flung shields, the wight-lords reborn like pillars of angry, animated ash – Khikiriaz launched himself into one of them even as I passed by. And it wasn’t long before my shields started winking out, connecting with the black-armoured deathknights, standing strong against my force-barriers, some even extending their purple-burning blades to more-easily pierce my defences.
I ignored them, soaring on, even as they gave chase across the smoking, lava-riddled courtyard; I saw as Starsight descended at the nearest deathknight, robe gleaming as he blurred through the purple mist, like a smear of luminous paint across my eye.
Then I was there. Vaahn loomed in the fog.
Dimdweller was caught, moving through the air with the effigy as it stumbled about, blasted this way and that by searing rays of flame.
The dwarf was screaming, covered in a green radiance; part of the palm of his hand was attached to one of the bony struts extending from the avatar’s knee. Fangmoon and Glimmermere were both flying beside him in their humanoid forms, holding him, trying to pull him away, each of the druids larger in frame than they ought to be.
Someone had suggested tearing the arm off, and they’d found it impossible without dropping the anti-nethernal healing-effect they were using – they were trapped between the flood and the cliff, unable to stop the regeneration-spell without giving him to Vaahn, but incapable of tearing him free while the spell was ongoing.
Above the three of them floated the other dwarf, the wizard’s bearded jaw clenched as a sunbeam emanated from his clasped hands, pouring up into the godling’s right arm. Winterprince was on the opposite side, and between the two of them they were preventing the creature from reaching down, using his huge carcass-hands to grab the diviner and druid, sending them all to join Leafcloak in her terrible fate with his touch of death.
I could see Mountainslide was tiring. I wondered how close to his reinvigoration-limit the young dwarf was.
Timesnatcher, Starsight and Shallowlie were embattled on every front. The diviners were everywhere and nowhere, less than phantoms on the air as only a streak of colour left clue as to the fact they’d passed me by yet again; what they slew was dead for less time than it took for them to return and slay it a second, third, fourth time. The sorceress’s ghosts were the only eldritches she had left in the field, and they couldn’t deal with the deathknights for her.
One of my bintaborax was dead, the one that’d been wounded earlier – the one I’d obtained from the Cannibal Six, if I was right.
It all looked rather desperate, truth be told.
I went to three wight-lords and reintroduced them to my pointy forehead, then grabbed a hundred or so wights trying to penetrate the edges of a shield, sending them back at their fellows behind them, tearing with teeth and cold grave-fingers into the bodies of their brethren.
“Now’s the time for sharing, Timesnatcher!” I mind-shouted. “I’ll tell you what I found – but first, what about this god-on-earth situation?”
“She will be here in a moment! Honestly, asking questions won’t speed things up – trust me, I’m an expert. Tell me – what did you find, Feychilde? Other than a Direcrown.”
I gritted my teeth, and did my best to compose a response in my mind before speaking it psychically – a response that wouldn’t be quite as biting as the first ten or so retorts that came to mind.
Then Direcrown beat me to it – someone had linked him while I was focussing on the wight-lords.
“My dear Timesnatcher, that is a matter for arch-sorcerers. It would be hard to put into layman’s terms.”
He was one hundred percent talking out of his backside, but I didn’t want to contradict him, not when Timesnatcher was being at least as much of an ass.
“Try me,” the arch-diviner said.
I spoke up. “Stop treating us like children! If –”
“Look – here she comes now. East.”
He had been, at least up to a point, correct. It wouldn’t have been quite as perplexing and exhilarating, if he’d explained what was about to happen beforehand. But the argument had taken all the thrill out of it.
I still got to stare, dumbfounded, as a wheelbarrow shot out of the purple mist at a ridiculous speed, an old robed man half-seated, half-lying inside it. His lined, unshaven face was petrified in a look of soul-sick terror, eyes and mouth thrown wide open like he was apple-bobbing.
Killstop was holding onto the handles behind him, weaving with death-defying lurches across the lava-cracked plaza. Even when moving with such ferocious haste she was able to evade the deathknights in her path, and her speed only assisted her when ash-wights got in her way – she simply headed right for them and ploughed them under.
Not that the old man she was ferrying to us looked happy about that particular part of the arrangement.
She skidded to a stop thirty feet from me, near Glancefall inside my hexagon, not fifty yards from the godling’s stumbling feet.
My enhanced hearing caught the murmured words as she bent her masked head to his ear: “You remember what you promised me.”
As the old man focussed on the effigy wreathed in spell-fire, reeling and recoiling across the smashed ground, the druids and diviner seemingly glued to his knee in a daisy-chain of champions, something in him changed. The expression of terror didn’t vanish completely, but it receded, hardened, the thin colourless lips pressing together in a grimace of determination.
“I remember,” he said in a flat monotone.
As I moved closer, studying Killstop’s plus-one, I produced a wave of glitter from my horn, then flew over them to loose it at the deathknight trying to creep up on them from behind. Hard to creep when you clank with every step; even with the mist and general clamour of the battle – Dimdweller’s incessant screaming – my senses had no trouble identifying the threat.
The old man wasn’t one of the Knights of Kultemeren – he didn’t wear their armour, and clearly he’d sworn no oath of silence – but he was a priest of Kultemeren all the same. The sigil of the gavel in the centre of the silver medallion about his neck, coming loose of his white-and-grey robe as he straightened up, proclaimed his position as one of the senior clergymen.
In a flash Killstop had circled the wheelbarrow and set him down on his feet.
“Link her up, Spirit, be-“
“I’m already linked, Cradle,” she cut off her fellow arch-diviner a little derisively. “Both of us are. It’s go-time.”
“It is,” I heard the priest respond aloud. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the avatar, the statue-like amalgam of a million discrete body parts that was now the Lord of Undeath made manifest, an unholy intrusion into our dimension.
When he continued to speak, removing his medallion and wrapping the coldly-gleaming chain about his hand, those eyes never blinked, his gaze never wavered.
“You trespass, Son of the Chain-Maker. In so doing you grant me only greater strength. Flee. Take these spirits and begone. Three times will I deny you, and then you will be reft away, your name never again to be spoken openly in this city.”
It surely had to fill a man with faith, to be a priest of Kultemeren and to make a vow, a promise to render assistance – to know that such a thing would be thereby made not just a possibility, but a certainty…
“I – ah – hello? Can someone let me fly?” the priest enquired telepathically.
Flight or no, he was nonetheless making his approach, striding towards Vaahn with his fist encased in the silver chain, the gavel-icon across his knuckles.
I was powerless to do anything else but keep up with him, maintain the shield about him that was even now protecting him from a number of wights – I was too busy fending off wight-lords and deathknights to physically carry the priest. At the same time I was captivated by his demeanour, his confidence, and wished I had the opportunity to take a closer look into those implacable eyes of his.
I could see what he was getting at, though – bubbling streams of lava separated him from getting closer to the avatar. The wizards had set spells to carry off the fumes through the purple fog – the divinely-powered fog that the wizard-winds couldn’t budge – but such secondary spells were good for nothing more than keeping the air clean. The currents weren’t anywhere near powerful-enough to lift a man, and our two arch-wizards seemed to be diminishing in reserves by the minute; there was no telling when those spells might fail, the air turning noxious. They couldn’t spare a flight-spell, and there was nothing that would help the old man get closer to his target.
Not that getting closer seemed to necessarily be the best of ideas, but at this point we just had to trust that he knew what he was doing, didn’t we? We were dead any other way. Sooner or later, Mountainslide would give out, and there’d be no more juice left in him for Fangmoon and Glimmermere to keep him going – then Winterprince would follow and we’d all get swallowed into the dark god’s substance…
At least Zel would be happy…
“Push the abomination east!” Timesnatcher was ordering. “To his right, and forwards! Glimmer, Fang, be ready to back up!”
The very moment I resolved to send Avaelar out, to hoist the priest over the obstacles – it was then that Shallowlie appeared, streaking down from the north. At her gesture a group of ghosts surged beneath him, buoying him up.
Kultemeren’s envoy strode the air as implacably as he’d strode the courtyard. Vaahn was still being buffeted by attacks, funnelled in the priest’s direction.
“Higher!” the old man thought. “Take me to this mockery’s face.”
Shallowlie complied, bringing him up to thirty-odd feet while, aloud, the priest cried:
“Your time is come, and that of your followers. The time of ending and unmaking. The breaking of the spell that holds these poor, lost souls in thrall.”
My own soul swelled up in response to these words. Did that mean we were going to be successful in restoring the natural order in Zadhal?
I smashed another handful of wights, staying behind and below the priest, but close-enough to him to keep a careful watch over him.
“Shallowlie, can you help me with the shield on him?” I asked.
Together we spun my lines into a weave. It couldn’t hurt, could it?
My outer shields broke like breadsticks against the effigy’s titanic body as it surged towards us, blinding fire pouring all around its upper sections. The huge skin of Mund’s chief arch-druid, his cloak and hood, was impervious to damage like the rest of his disgusting composition – but the force of the spells was still driving him, bringing him to meet his doom.
The sphere of melted skulls beneath the iron crown appeared, swinging.
With the sorceress’s help, the priest put on a final burst of ghost-flight –
“In Kultemeren’s name, begone!” he roared, and raised his medallion-wrapped fist to deliver the blow.
* * *