He punched Vaahn, square in the skull-face.
The resulting detonation sent everyone not covered by a shield spinning through the air.
Warm, yellow energy exploded where his fist made contact, a nimbus of sunlight that pierced the purple mists through, rays that struck other wights and deathknights in the crowd, transforming them into smudges of light on the wind.
I could no longer sense those killed in this manner. They were gone. Hundreds of them.
And an inconceivable shower of skulls and shattered bone soared into the sky, falling like hideous rain, the shards of Vaahn’s face deanimated and inert.
The priest of Kultemeren lowered his hand, floating away and turning back to us as the avatar teetered on suddenly-weak knees, bending over backwards. The holy-man’s smile was grim, his medallion still glowing faintly across his knuckles.
The remaining undead faltered, watching as their god’s spine curved, snapped, his upper half toppling towards the ground –
We floated, silent within and without, as though we were all waiting for the moment he actually crashed down, the moment to burst into cries of triumph –
But Dimdweller still screamed. The druids still tugged at the dwarf, kept their healing hands upon him, the green radiance suffusing him.
The teetering continued, went on, and on… The godling’s arms hung low to the earth, what remained of the head thrown back, crown and cloak hanging precariously, almost set to swing loose…
The priest’s smile slowly became more grim, unsettled. At last he swivelled his head around to look back over his shoulder –
The moment his eyes met the avatar once more, a rasping voice seemed to rise from the very ground all about us – the god’s, menacing in inflection, no less sure and certain than any sound the priest had uttered.
“Thrice thou hast spoken, and nary a lie; while all thy paltry exhortations only show unto the Judge the Truth from which he hath hidden his face. For the Prince he is not. It is not given to him to command my Powers. Spells thou hast broken – ten score and some. No more.
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“For thou speakst True to mine ear: my Time arriveth! My Time, and that of my followers. The Time of Ending. Unmaking. The Last Hour and the great new Beginning! My name shall never again be spoken openly in these walls – it shall be sung! And thou shalt be the first to sing it, in sweetest sacrament, the Lamentunto the Shadow Mountain… a threnody of shrieking unending.”
The gloating of the Prince was a terrible thing to undergo. Like the wet, crawling sounds of worms wriggling in my ears. The beating wings of a million swarming flies, congealed into a single will, a single, unimaginably ancient and evil purpose. I saw the priest’s face turn ashen as he floated there, not far from the avatar’s half-obliterated face.
I felt my own flesh drain of colour just the same. I felt Gilaela and Avaelar recoiling.
Vaahn’s voice wasn’t something you perceived. That would be to imply there was the chance to not perceive it, but it was nothing like that. Vaahn’s vile expulsions were immanent, a fact of the world in which we existed, every bit as vital and real as the air we breathed, the weight of our bones. I very much had the impression even the deaf would’ve heard every word, and not just because his voice struck earth and air like a tremor, a tornado.
It wasn’t just the voice of the god, or the fact he was still here, still with us in this courtyard, despite his toy being broken at a single strike from another god’s chosen-one.
No, it was the fact that the Prince of Chains had interpreted the words all wrong – no implication of ultimate failure, no suggestion we would be successful in our attempt to repair the Green Tower’s secret and set it loose…
We had to try again.
But the staggering malevolence of that crawling, rustling voice had never really halted, and it was only as the elongated, protracted sounds came towards their end that their structure was made plain:
“M-y… b-r-i-d-e…”
Skulls came whipping through the air, clinking back into place, many of them marred, blackened and caved-in.
When they reformed the idol’s face and it jerked back to its full forty-foot stature, it was plain to see there was not a single skull missing.
The implication was obvious.
“Get him back!” I hissed into the stunned psychic silence. “He’s our only weapon against it!”
Shallowlie drew in her ghosts, the trembling priest in tow, but it was too late.
Like a revolting echo of that night, that worst night of my life since donning the robe – like a shadow of the Incursion, a homage to the Mourning Bells: a sound came from the western edge, drowning out Dimdweller’s screams.
The clock tower was ringing.