OBSIDIAN 3.6: TIGRESS LIES

“Quoth the dragon: ‘What is this spiritual currency of which you speak? The sole currency of the Twelve Hells is blood, and that transfer is the true doorway. Not the blood itself. The act of violence that releases it.’

Quoth the Kestrel: ‘Oh, my friend. Where they come from the currency is kindness. It’s the only kind of wealth worth having.’”

– from ‘The Testimony of Prince Deathwyrm’

Zel hissed.

What is it?

“Eolastyr. Tw-twentieth rank. Kas… this won’t be pleasant.”

The eolastyr was a tall woman, naked; her limbs and torso right up to the neck were covered in black-striped fur like that of a tigress, except that her fur was purple. Her face was not just narrow and pale, but inhumanly triangular, inhumanly white. A circlet of dark, glossy material kept her raven hair from hiding her all-black eyes, sunken nose, dusky, smiling lips. The curved claws of her furred left hand were curled about the short handle of a gold-coloured whip, the tips of its many thongs knotted with chunks of flesh.

Other than the circlet and whip she had no accoutrement on her person whatsoever, no rings upon the small, claw-tipped fingers, no pendants or chains. Nothing else unusual – no wings, no horns…

The same could not be said for her pets, however. They weren’t anything like her, really, with their savage but recognisably-animal visages. There were a dozen or so of them, each differing in appearance – though they all seemed to have masculine builds, and none would be much taller than Neverwish if they were standing. They were clearly of lesser breeds; they were humanoid but they were bestial in their own ways – tails, talons, fangs; thick animal hair or overlapping scales covering their bodies… There was even one with a beetle-like carapace of brownish chitin, shining wings folded against his back.

Unlike their mistress, they were decked out in jewels, their appendages dripping with rings and anklets, bracelets and necklaces, hundreds of gems glittering away in an exuberant mosaic of colour.

They barely reacted to our presence, a few raising their heads from where they languished on the soft cushions – but those who did merely looked around blankly. The invisibility spell was clearly working, on them at least. Yet most didn’t even move their eyes, content to just lie there, relaxing.

Even if they knew what was happening, they were confident – supremely confident – that their eolastyr had this intrusion well in hand.

Other than the eolastyr and her pets, there were no demons lying in wait. Nothing else to fill the empty, golden expanse.

I moved my eyes back to the threat. She held the whip by the very end of the handle, using the curve of a single ‘thumb’ claw to trap it delicately in her palm, and the savage-looking thongs swung in a soft arc behind her.

The sound of it hit my sorcerer’s ear in a perplexing way, even through the shield – though given her rank I was hardly surprised it could pierce the wards. I knew it was no louder than the rustle of a champion’s robe, but at the same time each back-and-forth motion was deafening, like a tidal wave of sand cascading down, dashing itself into a trillion pieces on a coast of iron rocks.

She spoke again. Her Mundic was as flawless as that of any properly-schooled highborn. The voice was musical and airy, but the authoritative tenor made it clear she was used to having her orders obeyed:

“Come, I say. We’d welcome our guests properly, with open arms.”

She did indeed spread her arms wide, claws splayed in a gesture of openness, like a benevolent queen greeting esteemed foreign dignitaries.

The twelve of us – poor Starsight had got his wish in almost the worst possible way – were still floating there near the golden ceiling. Dustbringer and Redgate were at the fore, and our shields flickered around the group.

“Let’s see where this goes,” Timesnatcher said. “Don’t touch anything. For all we know this whole room is made from the same stone, just covered by illusion.”

“Could be,” Neverwish said.

“Demon illusions are difficult to pick apart,” Lovebright expounded. “I’m working on it, but there’s no way to be sure yet.”

Timesnatcher slowly descended at an angle, drifting towards the throne, and we followed.

“I don’t trust zose fires,” Em said.

“Me neither,” I replied, frowning as I looked down at the twelve fireplaces, six on either face of the long sides of the room. They were clustered in the middle, leaving either end of the hall in relative shadow. There were no piles of wood, coals, any other fuel-like substances beneath the golden mantelpieces. Just perfectly pretty, ordinary fires: orange flames licking about, a hot bluish core near the base.

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Far too ordinary to be just decoration.

“The sound’s grating on me too,” I added.

“The sound?” Lovebright asked.

“Its whip,” Redgate whispered.

“I’ll work on it.”

“Thank you,” said Dustbringer.

“If it hurts, we can surely do something about that, hm…”

“It’s not painful, Nighteye,” I said, “just sickening. I don’t think you’ll be able to affect this.”

“Time’s flowing strangely too,” Killstop muttered. “Too many avenues are dark for me to move properly.”

“I know. I feel it as well,” Timesnatcher answered her.

We halted a good fifty feet away, hovering twenty feet off the red carpets. We gradually fanned out in a semi-circle.

Voice booming, the arch-diviner called, “And we would welcome our guests, newcomers to our city, with gifts and blessings rather than blades’ edges and death, if they did not come bearing pain and destruction in their own hands.”

“But it is you who’ve come to me,” the eolastyr said gently, like a parent patiently teaching their child grammar, “to the Daughter of the Sinphalamax as she prophesied, as the scribes of Limbo gave it form. The Daughters of the Sinphalamax are never wrong.”

She rose to her feet, and her pets looked around listlessly. I got the impression the eolastyr’s sight went through our enchantments so easily that she didn’t even have to expend any effort to see us; perhaps she wouldn’t even realise her minions couldn’t see us.

Not that the pets looked anywhere close to being ready for combat.

As she and Timesnatcher exchanged cryptic phrases, Shadowcloud said, “No crossed lines of fire,” and I felt a soft surge of wind pushing me into a placement that obviously suited the wizard’s battle-plans, saw the same happening to the others – he was neatening our semi-circle, varying our heights.

“You won’t hit us,” Killstop said; “we’re not that slow.”

“If I summon my demons –” I began.

“Can you summon?” Dustbringer asked.

I hadn’t even thought about it –

I waved a hand, and felt nothing.

There were no connections here. No other planes interacting with our surroundings.

No way to pull them through.

Red or green, no gates were available to me. Though I had no undead remaining after giving up the Body Brigade, I could assume they were being blocked-off in the same way.

Seriously.

“I told you this wouldn’t be pleasant.”

But you’ve not been thrown out of me.

“We’re not actually in Infernum, no matter what she says. It’s just magic. Powerful, eldritch magic. An absolute anchor.”

Fine…

“No, I can’t,” I answered my fellow arch-sorcerer’s question glumly.

“If you saw so much as you pretend you would know that this meeting ends in your death,” Timesnatcher was saying.

The smile never left the eolastyr’s violet-hued lips.

“Nay, my child. In this meeting is my birth, my death, my future and my past. Would you say to the long-shadowed man that his feet are the source of the shadow he casts? You live still in the moment, and cannot see the sun. Else why would you come here? You did not know this would mean the end of one of you?”

She looked across the semi-circle of champions. Her black-in-black eyes, emptinesses deeper than the darkness within the helm of a thinfinaran, flicked without contempt from one of us to the next.

“There are too few of you.” She seemed to sigh. “But which shall it be? This I already know, but I will not spoil it. I’ll let you find out for yourselves.”

“She couldn’t read Starsight’s fate?” Killstop asked.

“That’s her weakness – us,” Timesnatcher replied. “I –”

She raised her whip, and snapped the thongs out in a crack that made it feel like the world was splitting in half.

I teetered back and forth, left and right, swaying as I hung there. Weakness filled the marrows of my bones, paralysis gripping me, forcing every hair on my body to stand on end. And I wasn’t alone – we were all sent reeling through the air, fluttering uselessly for seconds.

Then the light changed.

It was suddenly as though the room was carved from crimson-tinted gold as the dozen fires shifted hue behind us. Now the tigress-demon was standing before a throne that seemed to have dark, gleaming blood swirling about its surfaces.

Her pets looked a thousand times as ferocious as they had done before, under this new illumination that made everything red. They still did not stir, but their smiles and eyes gleamed with hidden danger.

The fires behind us… red?

“Sorcerers, retreat! Block them the moment they come through!” Dustbringer hissed, and, the moment the paralysis ended, he hurtled back towards the scarlet flames in the hearths lining the hall.

Redgate followed him and I moved to –

“No!” Zel cried, and I halted. “It’s –“

“It’s a trick!” Timesnatcher yelled.

“Watch the animal-guys!” Killstop added.

But by then it was too late.

I should’ve known when the eolastyr had made reference to there being too few of us. There were thirteen demons here, to fight thirteen archmages.

To fight them. Not to sit and watch their mistress doing battle with a number of magic-users they couldn’t even see.

The hearths were an obvious danger. So obvious that the sorcerers would immediately fall back into a rearguard the very second they lit up in red light.

But summoning was blocked here, and she wasn’t going to let her anchors dissipate when it would give us the chance to summon our own creatures. No. She was just going to ensure all the shield-makers would be nowhere near her actual targets when she made her prowess plain to see.

She coiled her legs, as if to sit cross-legged on the floor, then sprang up into the air like a bolt from a war-machine.

Yet she hadn’t seen Zel. She hadn’t known the visions she’d seen had been foiled by a faerie queen telling me ‘No’ and me trusting her enough to obey.

I’d been careful to keep Shield Seven from touching her or her lackeys while we’d floated around, while Shadowcloud had shifted my position. I’d only covered a short distance before Zel stopped me in my tracks, and the range on my farthest-flung shields easily covered the arch-diviners –

Towards whom she hurtled.

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