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90. Betrayal

--Bhashera, Sanctum of Frezia—

Amara

Profession: Pyromancer

LVL: 3

EXP: 250/450

HP: 15/15

GLANCE: 40/40

Acquired Item: [Raiment of the desert magister]

Choose an enchantment for this apparel:

Endurance Mantle: +5 RES

Glance Weave: -5 cost on Incantations

She focused on the folds of the crimson robe that materialized in front of her – her reward from the Bhashera church trial.

Crimson, long-sleeved and tight fitting, almost as though it were moulded for her body specifically. For a moment she felt a twinkle in her eye as she donned the robe and savored the feeling of the spider-thin silk against her skin.

It felt warm, clean, and even gave off the aroma of her power – the smell of sweet smoke that wafted from her fingers as she weaved her threads of flame between them.

But the joy was fleeting as she beheld the other two watching her in the long, narrow tunnel that they had stopped in.

“My Lady,” Lokar breathed. “You-y-you look the very picture of royalty.”

He was praising her as usual. No difference there. But the thing that gave her pause was the venerable Mendax’s reaction:

“It is very nice,” he said, and the fear in his voice echoed through the tunnel system. “A mantle more than fitting for the Lightbringer.”

She let her eyes linger on him when he finished his sentence and gulped down his anxiety. When he turned away, she knew it was out of terror, not duty.

Mom…she whispered in her mind again. What did you do to him?

Her mother’s voice was calm and collected, as cool as the strange air that flowed down this final path.

I spoke to him. I reminded him what his duty was.

Amara bristled before she followed Mendax further, Lokar keeping step beside her.

And what did you say that was?

You, Amara, her mother replied without hesitation. You are all that matters here. Your survival, and your strength. You must conquer Bhashera. You must make it to the stronghold of these beasts. And you must kill the Blackbird.

Amara’s brow furrowed into a from.

The Blackbird?

Too much, too little, her mother replied. We shall speak more of this when the time comes. For now, focus your attention on this final step on your first trial. It is time to face the Dominion Lord of Bhashera.

Amara obeyed with some hesitancy. She knew now that there were things her mother kept from her. She had always suspected as much. Yet, she recalled her words back in the empty darkness of the catacombs. Her restraint was fuelled by love. What Amara needed to know, and when, her mother would decide. She had not steered her wrong yet, that was true.

Yet as she looked down at the flowing crimson of her robes, she was struck by the association of this silken red sea with blood, not fire.

The blood of Kimon, coating her body as a shield…

She clamped her hand to her breast, closed her eyes, and focused on the choice the robe had given her:

Choose an enchantment for this apparel:

Endurance Mantle: +6 RES

Glance Weave: -5 cost on Incantations

Defense or greater capacity for offence? It seemed like the more fire she threw the more she’d win, and she’d already increased her health by a margin, though it was a small one.

If she were to face this final challenge alone, she would have had to focus on improving her body’s endurance. That was the mistake she’d made above – thinking that power would get her through all this. But that was the trick, it seemed, that this Everloft liked to pull: you had to be smart, and strong, not just powerful.

But you also couldn’t be alone. The place was not made for that. That was the piece of the puzzle that she’d been missing above.

Yet these servants that her mother called ‘tools’ – would they really stick around forever? Would they really follow her into the great abyss and come out the other side? They didn’t care about Averix. They didn’t even care about her, really. All they cared about was their Shifting Sands, and their Ty’kella. She was Ch’allok to them. She always would be.

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Even her mother had known that, and that was why she’d used fear to control Mendax. Not care, or compassion.

For, after all, what had those emotions ever brought her except death and despair?

So she opened her eyes with a new commitment to truth: this was what she was, now. The fire that burned in the dark.

Passive enchantment activated: Glance Weave

-5 cost on all Incantations

She saw the words appear and disappear before her like her old self had to, now. And, feeling the hard stone of the tunnel give way to a thick, gelatinous ooze that squelched under her feet, she threw her old cloak she had worn all this time away into the sludge.

She was casting off the Amara that she was – alone, brash, ignorant, and afraid. She didn’t need to be that child, anymore.

She was the Lightbringer, now.

----------------------------------------

The tunnel eventually ended after what seemed like hours of walking in agonizing silence, almost like her two companions knew they’d be walking towards their deaths.

The final room of Bhashera now loomed large before Amara, standing beside Mendax on the edge of the tunnel exit, looking down to see the 30 foot drop to the sandy ground below.

She scanned the cavernous room – clearly the older than the rest, filled with the same flesh-like mustard colored mucus that had covered the last few meters of the cave. At the end of the room, a series of pulsing egg-sacs were arranged in a bizarre mosaic pattern- their forms intertwined with boney vines that apparently kept them stuck in place.

“Disgusting…” Amara mouthed.

Mendax grunted beside her.

“This is it,” he said, his voice tinged with reverence. “The final room.”

Amara looked around again, seeing nothing but the shimmering sands, cragged rocks on the ceiling, and the ever-pulsing eggs, each one beating in harmony like a symphony of hearts.

“Where is the Lord?”

Mendax gulped. “Down there.”

She followed his eyes to a spot near the end of the room, just below the eggsacs.

“I don’t see anything.”

“You won’t,” Mendax huffed. “Not even the eyes of the Lightbringer can see the hiding place of this Ty’Kella. It is said the Lord of Bhashera shall be known only to those who plant their feet firmly in the sands of their home.”

She looked to him as he nodded at the drop below.

“So we go in blind, then,” Amara said. “Of course, it couldn’t just be easy.”

“It never is,” Mendax agreed. “Are you ready?”

She hesitated on the cusp of the drop.

Mom? She asked.

The voice’s reply was all but a whisper.

…sorry….dear…interference….on…your own…luck-

Figures. Mom had gone through the same thing with the Boss upstairs. But that was alright. She wasn’t alone now, after all. Was she?

“Ok,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She looked to Mendax, and took his hand in hers. For his part he flinched, and she accepted that. But there would be no intimidation, this time. This time, she’d be the one putting herself on the line. She needed to let him know that.

“Whatever happens,” she told him. “I promise I won’t let you die.”

He said nothing in response. His look told her he didn’t believe her. No matter. She would show him. They were a team, now. She was one of them. They had to be made to see that.

“That goes for both of you,” she continued, turning back to Lokar.

“Oh, oh thank you, my lady!” he howled. “I knew you were good, and pure, and so soso-“

“Alright,” she cut through him. “On three. One!”

“Two,” Mendax grunted.

“Three.”

The last one to speak had been Lokar, and it was in a voice altogether different from his usual pathetic drone. And before either she or Mendax could turn in confusion, they felt his paws push them both from the lip of the tunnel into the sand, plummeting till they both landed on their backs.

For a moment, no one said anything. The eggs stopped pulsing, and a deathly silence dominated the room as Mendax and Amara stared up at their companion, who had not jumped with them.

Then Lokar’s laughter broke through the absence of sound with chilling, biting ferocity.

“Ha…ha….HA! HAHAHAHA!”

Amara stared at his giggling, cackling face, his jaw contorting beyond the realms of mortal possibility, and a slow anger began to rage through her system.

“HAHAHAHAHA!” The cackling hyena-man wailed. “I did it! I did it! I killed the Lightbringer. I killed the Lady of Fire, bringer of ash. I did it!”

He pointed one finger, shaking with primal excitement, at his still-confused brother.

And Mendax could do naught but shake his once proud head.

“L-Lokar?”

“NOW WHO IS THE STUTTERING FOOL!” Lokar cried back. “I am the one on top! I am the one who shall inherit the power of both your sorry souls! He told me! You understand! HE TOLD ME!”

Before Amara could retort, Mendax had impaled his axe into the sands and bellowed up at his brother.

“LOKAR! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Fool!” Lokar spat back, foaming at his mouth. “You really think I would let a filthy Ch’alokk lead us against our enemies?! You are more of an idiot than you look, brother.”

That last word was said with such sarcastic spite that Amara felt she could see the dagger Lokar was twisting in his brother’s gut.

But the great beast did not roar back at their companion, as Amara was expecting. Instead, he dropped his head, huffed, and mewled a low, timid reply:

“Lokar…all this time..?”

He let the question hang as the sands behind he and Amara began to stir.

“You always were a blind dog, Mendax,” Lokar spat down in the face of his brother’s sorrow. “You and Kimon, both. That was why he died. And that’s why you deserve to die, too.”

Amara rose to her feet, trying to find an unsteady balance as the sands continued to…rise?

Lokar grinned an impish, malicious smile.

“Your deaths will enrich me,” he snarled. “It will empower me, and so I will become a worthy vessel for him. He has promised me all the power in this wasteland we call home. You think this piece of human garbage will be our savior? No, Mendax. She would be our ruin. But I?”

He spread his arms wide, watching the thing slowly rising beneath the sands begin to emerge.

“I SHALL BE OUR SALVATION! I SHALL BECOME A GOD!”

Mendax said nothing. He kept his head held low. His countenance was that of a miserable child whose parents had revealed hitherto unknown secrets kept for his whole life. He had no anger. He had no retributive scream to bellow at all.

But Amara stood against the turning tide of the sands, and uttered one thing to Lokar’s laughing, cackling face:

“Traitor!” she spat. “You’ve been fooled, that’s all. I was chosen! Not you!”

The laughter of the fiendish Gnoll rogue abated as he merely turned, departing the cavern with one final statement.

And Amara could swear, by holy flame itself, that it was not his voice that was speaking, now:

“We shall see, Lightbringer. Turn now and face your destiny.”

She made to fly right back up there and chuck a fireball through his flaring nostrils, and she would have done so were it not for Mendax grabbing her arm and jerking her back towards the thing – the behemoth – that had just emerged from the sands beneath them and risen to its full height beneath the pulsing egg sacs.

Its head, torso, and arms easily resembled that of a human female – naked, bald, and scarred beyond belief, as though her swarthy body had suffered the slings and arrows of a thousand different adventurers throughout the ages of her lifetime. Yet, past the abdominal region, the similarities shifted abruptly – her nether regions were sculpted to the body of a gargantuan scorpion, twin tails erect and ready to strike at her behind, while two blazing, silvered falchions gleamed in her hands.

She emitted a bellow from her insectoid mouth – a call to combat that must have echoed through the entire dungeon edifice.

DOMINION LORD: Frezia, Scorpioness of Bhashera

LVL: 6

HP: 195/195

And before Amara could cry out in fear, the first strike came arcing towards her.