“In here,” I called to Shallowlie, propelling myself towards the property and entering a yawning window feet-first.
The room was decayed timber and broken furniture, the reek of damp and nothing much else. I could imagine how someone might’ve lived in here, when the walls were covered with hangings, glass in the windows; this had been a bedroom, once, but the bed had fallen in on itself and been eaten by time, dying alongside its previous owners. The dresser was a pile of eroded wooden boards and smashed trifles. I was lucky I didn’t have to walk, because half the floor was missing, and half the ceiling was strewn across the room.
I floated through the former doorway, penetrating the building, trying to keep myself aware of my target. I felt it as Shallowlie joined me, floating ten feet behind me to back me up, sensing her presence more by the plethora of ghosts she surrounded herself with than by anything else.
It was almost pitch black, but not so dark that we had any issues. Within seconds we found the room in which Fangmoon was being held captive: a bedroom, much like the one I’d first entered but with one crucial difference.
The druidess, suspended and spinning, fake silver hair streaming in a vortex of nethernal wind. Her screams weren’t even penetrating the deadly thing surrounding her, bathing her in its essence.
Killing her – slowly. By the looks of it, killing her in a way that even an arch-druid couldn’t counteract.
“Tinshalemm ban o sol menverka, zathuun!”
I spat the words that declared myself its new master; he released the druidess before I’d even fully focussed my eye, before I could see the purple tint to the wraith’s manifestation. A huge shadow of a man, naked to my sight, always moving, dancing as if to an unending drum only he could hear.
“They do a good job keeping themselves hidden,” Zel observed.
“May we not burn it, Feychilde?” Gilaela used an almost-chiding tone.
Not this time, I replied, a touch apologetically. I’m going to set it on its friends, don’t worry.
“Just so long as you don’t force me to share this space with a creature of its ilk, I shall be satisfied,” the unicorn commented.
I reported in to Glancefall, who called Spiritwhisper back then started reaching out for the other champions, repeating various names, Timesnatcher’s most prominently. Shallowlie soared over to Fangmoon and assisted her as I brought my wraith out of the apartment ahead of us, a coursing of dark wind I was still having trouble even seeing with my mortal eyes.
“Couldn’t breathe…” Fangmoon was muttering, leaning on the sorceress as they slowly coursed together down the corridor. “Couldn’t even think. So… so cold…”
Her breath was producing less fog on the air, I noticed.
“Is the wizardry leaving us?” I asked, then, remembering the link, repeated my concerns telepathically.
By the time the five of us were gathered again in the centre of the street I could feel it on my skin. The interior of my mask, the end of my nose, my ears, my hands, my feet. All of us were reporting the same thing. Fangmoon did what she could to regulate our internal temperatures, but it was never going to replace the spells that were beginning to falter. And the worst of it was the chill of the wind slicing through my ethereal wings – unfortunately it seemed the druid could do nothing for my otherworldly manifestations. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to them for my flying, really.
As we gathered on the ground, I called my white messenger-imp to me. He reported that he’d managed to enter my apartment unnoticed and everything had gone smoothly once he deigned to show himself, crawling out from under the bench in the main room to shock everyone.
I smiled. It was good to think of them back there, waiting for me.
“So how are we going to do this?” Glancefall thought at us. “We can’t walk the whole way, and I don’t fancy being turned into a bird, no offence.”
“It’d take awhile for you to learn how to use wings,” Fangmoon replied, “no offence…”
“I can only carry one,” I said, and looked a little guiltily up at the undead vultures we’d taken into our service. “Could you ride?” I asked Glancefall and Spiritwhisper.
Both of them tilted their faces to look up at the great beasts. I didn’t need to be an enchanter to know before I asked that they weren’t going to mount one of the creatures that’d been responsible for their friend’s death.
But Min came to my rescue.
“Dere is no nee’, Feychile. I can carry dem both.”
She didn’t ask permission, and I watched, fascinated, as a swarm of ghosts instantly separated from those glimmering shapes surrounding her, descending on the enchanters.
Glancefall started to protest but got no further than the first syllable before it was over, and both of them were being hoisted by a group of nethernal figures. They were almost transparent and quite clearly insubstantial but they nonetheless possessed weight, strength enough to lift humans and soar with them.
No weirder than my wings, I supposed.
Fangmoon shuddered into bird-form, a silvery, raven-looking thing that was nonetheless equipped with the wingspan of an albatross – I had little doubt she could’ve swelled up to the size of the vultures if she had a mind to –
Watching her failing to fly in the freezing breeze, I understood. She had to shrink down almost to the size of a normal bird in order to find purchase on the air, which was thankfully not something I was having a problem with. I was just having trouble with the actual feeling of the wind. When it blew through the wings, it cut me to my spiritual core in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
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“You should be glad you’ve got me in here,” Zel pointed out. “You might be uncomfortable, but look at the enchanters. They’re the only ones not at least partially protected by something under their own power… They’re going to be the first to die.”
She was right. Despite having recently received a treatment from Fangmoon, they were shivering all over the place already.
We shouldn’t have been so cavalier. We should’ve been better prepared. I’m sure they sell cloaks of warmth…
It needed a solution, fast.
“Shallowlie,” I said, “can you carry Fangmoon too?” The sorceress nodded but cocked her head at me curiously. I went on: “Sorry, Fang, it’s not that I think you can’t fly, but, let’s face it, it’s not the easiest – and Glancefall and Spiritwhisper are going to need to hold your hands, I think.”
“Aww,” she replied, changing back into the silver-black tiger-shape she’d used earlier. “They can hold my paws. I’m warmer this way.”
“No s-scratchin’,” Spiritwhisper said, then tried a cheeky smile and added the words, “not th-this time, anyw-way.”
Fangmoon snarled a little, but playfully I thought, and accepted the swarm of ghosts Shallowlie sent in her direction.
As I led the way west we built a weave. I kept my shields and squirrel eldritches at the ready, using all my various senses on the route ahead, while behind me the sorceress towed our druidess and our enchanters on a bed of seething phantoms. Giant dead birds and reconfigured bone-men brought up the rear-guard. Glancefall and Spiritwhisper kept us on-track while continuing to call out to our allies, seeking the minds of the friends we hoped were still numbered amongst the living.
What if it’s just us? I couldn’t keep myself from thinking. What if we’re the only ones who escaped?
To keep my mind off the increasing cold I consulted the inner directory that was constantly open to my consciousness, the list of eldritches I could summon.
Aside from those within me – Zel, Avvie, Zab, Gilaela, one of the satyrs – I had the other satyr, Xiatan the dryad, the inflatable scorpion – and not forgetting Flood Boy, whom I hadn’t called upon in some time… One vampire, one ghoul, one wraith… My four bintaborax – the wounded one hadn’t died, then, not yet at least; the razor-fiend kinkalaman and the doll-demon mekkustremin; the surviving ikistadreng, Khikiriaz… a rolling ball of hair and nails… over three dozen imps, more than I thought I ought to have…
My obbolomin dog-men and folkababil birds, gone. All my epheldegrim horses, perished. My atiimogrix…
Alive?
He didn’t just feel alive. He felt…
He’s still on the Material Plane? But I sent him against the deathknights! And I passed out!
I wanted to summon him, but suddenly my fingers didn’t seem to know how to make the red fire rise up –
“Now’s as good a time as any for the lesson, I suppose,” Zel piped up. “You remember what I said about not being able to summon your fey while you’re in the otherworld?”
Sure. You said it was for an advanced class…
“Here we go. You don’t know where he is, so you can’t summon him from the same plane. You’re going to have to reach through Infernum.”
I’m going to have to what?
“Open a seam to Infernum, connect it to a seam to Materium. You can do the same from there – say, you’re in Nethernum, you want to summon your vampire to you –“
Open a gate to Materium, then back to Nethernum. Got it. And this won’t, you know, give me a zombie hand?
“It’s not a full gateway. Just a seam. You’re not going anywhere – don’t think of it as two seams, though –”
Okay, okay.
Getting it was different to getting it, though. My fingers weren’t able to conjure up the magic this time. I had to wrap my head around it.
“… connection to the plane of your origin will let you…”
Zel, not really helping here.
“On the contrary,” Gilaela interrupted, “you ought to listen, young sorcerer.”
I silenced my thoughts, reducing my awareness right down to the point where all that existed of me was a frozen nose and two frozen wings being eroded by the wind – and after a moment Zel started over.
“Don’t think of it as two seams. It’s one seam. The reason you use Materium from Nethernum rather than, say, putting your hand through Infernum instead, is that a connection to the plane of your origin will cement the two. One seam, Feychilde.”
One seam…
They were right. I saw it.
Red flames couldn’t call him. He was still on Materium. Yet I could move my demons using the red flames when I knew where they were. The disconnect was only in my mind. What I could do intuitively when I could locate them I had to replicate without that crucial knowledge.
There was no difference. If I pretended I saw him here –
There was no difference, but the gesture was different. I knew that now, even as I performed it. The knowledge was ingrained, and I could never lose it again.
“He’s quick, this one,” Gilaela noted.
“You’ve no idea,” Zel replied, sounding, if anything, a little perturbed.
Red flames, painfully heat-free, birthed a putrid laughing man who gibbered at me and threw a new imp out of his entrails.
Ah. That’s how I’ve got some extra.
“Khalor,” I huffed at him; and then once he was keeping up I quizzed him in Infernal for some time. ‘Draped ‘em in me pretties’ I took to mean tying the deathknights in his intestines – the rest was worse than the gibberish I’d expected. He seemed to think he was doing his prey a favour by dressing them up in his innards, and came across almost guilty that he hadn’t managed to keep them strung together for long. He strongly implied that he thought his would-be-killers had rejected his intestines, not because they wanted to be free of a constricting net that spawned imps every now-and-again, but because they somehow weren’t ‘pretty’ enough?
Whatever it was, it made me shudder. Now I was engaging him in conversation, I noted the way his laughter was a kind of sobbing, the way his bright eyes were wild with desperate sorrow, not delight.
Feeling a bit guilty myself, I sent him home again. Perhaps I’d just let him live out his existence in ‘peace’…
“I’m not sure he’d prefer being on that side, you know,” Zel said. “Just because they’re native to Infernum doesn’t mean demons enjoy the place. Many of them like being here.”
I shivered, not just from the winter’s chill, thinking what would come to pass if I just let him stay on Materium. After awhile he’d spawn too many imps for me to command, and they’d be brought into the plane unbound, kick-starting an Infernal Incursion…
Would it be so easy? Couldn’t you summon a summoner and just unbind it?
“Definitely – but why would you want to do that?” Zel asked sharply.
Not me! But, well, why don’t the darkmages –
“Well, what would they even have to gain from it?”
I don’t mean regular darkmages – I mean, the mad ones, like the Srol…?
She didn’t interrupt me like I’d been anticipating.
As I dropped back to Fangmoon for a quick bit of restorative relief, I was ignoring the telepathic calls of the enchanters, still going over the problem in my mind.
There must be something stopping them, Zel… If they want the destruction of Mund, the death of the population so badly, why aren’t they just doing it all the time? You could have an Incursion every day, and everyone would just up and leave, wouldn’t they? Oh, perhaps that’s the problem – you don’t want them to leave, you want them all to die… But couldn’t you make, like, a mega-Incursion?
It wasn’t until I’d resumed my position at the front of the group that Zel next spoke, almost at the exact same time as Glancefall, and I was so ready for her to undercut my argument that what she said surprised me – not just because of the content of her words but because I felt that, for once, I’d won an argument.
I flexed my sorcerous muscles, testing the weave.
“Something coming, Feychilde. Heading right for us. Hard to read. Fast. Get ready.”
* * *