22

Fruition

"You've been up all night," Jeshu said.

Oydd scribbled on a stretch of parchment without looking up. "We all have."

"Yes, but I'm not exhausted. You clearly are."

"What would you have me do?" Oydd snapped.

"Sleep," the druid answered. "I can handle things here for a bit."

Oydd leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Cricket, what's your opinion?"

Patches lay curled up on the insect's lap and he pet her with two arms, scratching behind the ear with a third.

He thought a moment. "Clearly this was meant to cripple us."

"Yes," Oydd agreed absently. "But why?" Oydd massaged his own scalp with five spread fingers. "And before I forget, I warned you not to play with that new armor until I had a chance to examine it more closely."

"It's okay. It's not dangerous."

"It is. It's incredibly dangerous. As the group's expert on dark magic, I need you to understand that it's incredibly dangerous."

Cricket avoided his gaze.

"Do you get that it's incredibly dangerous, or do you not believe me?"

"They didn't just attack to hurt us," Patches whispered with her eyes closed. "Also to strengthen the leyline."

"Yes, the leyline..." Oydd agreed sarcastically.

"I think they're interested in the Warrens, since we're on a leyline," she repeated more confidently.

Oydd sat and stared at the mouseling.

"What is a leyline?" Cricket asked, but Oydd waved him silent.

Jeshu whispered, "Places of magical significance. And—"

"No," Oydd said, annoyed. "It has to do with the way those places are connected." He stood and spread a blank parchment on the table, then dipped his quill in ink and began to draw. After a minute he looked up. "Leave me alone with the mouseling."

Cricket sighed and placed Patches on the desk, where she blinked in shock.

"Join me on the practice field?" the druid asked.

"Sure," Cricket replied half-heartedly, and the two made their way across the commons.

The smaller insectoids loaded bodies, foes and allies alike, onto wagons, and a steady train headed up toward the stables. Ghajan and the ogre, what was left of him, still lay where they had fallen, and Oydd gave orders not to disturb the ettin's body.

Cricket wandered to the edge of the training grounds then plopped down and stared at his own feet.

A moment later a sack landed in front of him, making a metal clang and stirring up a cloud of dust.

Cricket turned to see Bird glaring down. "Uh-oh..."

Bird simply stared without comment, turning his head to peer with his one good eye over his purple beard.

"Hey... Bird."

"Ey, Bug..."

"Did... you need something?"

Bird stared silently again, allowing Cricket time to incriminate himself. Finally he said, "You 'ad ma drop erything."

"Oh... did I?"

"Then ya fergot ma."

Cricket gulped.

"Priority one, ya sed."

"That doesn't sound like something I'd say..."

Bird spat in the dirt and walked away.

With a long, awkward sigh, Cricket picked up the bag with the iron Khopeshes and looked around for Jesh.

"What am I supposed to do with these?"

"Did you really tell him to drop everything?"

"Who knows..." Cricket said. "Look, a lot of... things were going on. Everyone was saying stuff..."

The insect buried his head in his hands.

After a minute he heard a metal staff clicking against the ground and looked up to see the rudra with Patches on his shoulder.

"We need to talk."

"What's up?" Cricket scratched an antenna.

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"The Right Hand hasn't been defiling shrines randomly. Each of their targets lines up with a specific ancient site."

"Okay." Cricket groaned.

Oydd noticed the chagrined look on the insect's face. "What's wrong?"

"Um... unrelated."

Oydd stared at the bag of weapons at Cricket's feet and smirked. "I mean that they all line up with a single site. Serinyes' temple—the one that Shisu attacked—was placed in a position to specifically weaken Bale's link to this plane."

"Didn't we already suspect that?" Jeshu asked. "Weakening Serinyes grants them Bale's favor, which is why they're so powerful."

"It's not just about Bale's favor," Oydd said. He sat in the dirt next to the insect and spread his parchment open. Oydd had drawn a large circle with several points labeled on the circumference—the Warrens, a couple desecrated temples, along with other sites that had been targeted by the Right Hand. Even Azande's temple lay on the circle.

"Here," the rudra pointed to the middle, "Is Abris Ahmni. I would consider it an archeological site at this point. Thousands of years old and abandoned by the dhampiri. But before the Betrayal, Clerics of Serinyes used the site to summon Bale."

"To summon him?" Cricket gasped. "I can't picture the dhampiri—"

"Use your imagination," Oydd interjected dryly. "This was back when he, too, served the dark lady."

Jeshu stared at the drawing. "So that's one reason they've wanted to clear the Warrens. To make room for worshippers of Bale and... strengthen his connection to this plane?"

"The Warrens is one of many... points of interest," Oydd replied, snapping up the parchment and rolling it in his hand. "In truth, the mouseling noticed the magical significance of this location before I did. But she is correct."

"So what do we do? Are they strong enough to summon him?" Cricket asked.

"They wouldn't summon him, exactly, but an avatar—a divine form to house him on this plane. And to answer your question, I don't know. But this felt like a big, maybe even desperate move to me. I think it had the added weight of distracting us. Perhaps they plan something while we lick our wounds."

"I don't know what we can do," Jeshu responded to the rudra. "That point is beneath a common plaza. Any slave entering the area without explicit orders would be killed on sight."

"That's why I sent Pip," Patches chimed in.

"Sent Pip?" Oydd asked.

"Yes. My familiar."

Oydd scowled. "Oh, yes... I forgot."

Patches flinched at the tone, and whispered, "I can have him watch and see if anything—"

"Not now, Mouseling," Jeshu said absently. "Rudra, can I see that drawing again?"

Patches looked to Oydd, then Jeshu, then finally to Cricket, but the three all seemed absorbed in what they were doing, so she decided not to say more.

The mouseling retreated to her hole, where she curled up and rested her chin on a four-armed straw doll with antennae and a blue marble wedged in its chest. She closed her eyes and dozed off... until her familiar detected a motion in Abris Ahmni, deep under the dhampiri city. Just a stirring of shadows at first, but then a bright green light flashed and several figures appeared near Pip, passing beneath the ladybug.

Patches stirred, and thought she saw Oydd in a dream. But his skin was too grey, almost undead-looking, and his tentacles stretched all the way to his knees. It took a moment before the mouseling realized she was not dreaming, but saw through her familiar's eyes.

The strange rudra looked taller than Oydd, the back of its head blackened as if burned, and more bulbous. One of the rudra's arms appeared slightly larger than the other, and also possessed a black sheen, like burnt wood.

A small child followed behind the rudra, sitting upon a formless grey spider. She wore a blindfold, stained with old blood. A fresh drop of red dripped from behind the cloth, down her chin, and absorbed into her long sandy hair.

The rudra turned, staring almost straight at the familiar nestled on the ceiling.

Patches squeaked, before calming herself, then closed her eyes and focused on the dim image. She thought she saw a look of intense sorrow on the rudra's face. Something she had never seen in Oydd.

The child spoke. "You miss her?"

The rudra did not answer, but turned to look at the girl.

"Remember, this is what she died for," the child continued.

"Shisu," the mouseling whispered, remembering Cricket had talked about the strange human from the surface.

Behind the child walked a grey, ghoulish monster, whose weblike skin dripped to the floor, and behind it stood two giants, slightly larger than the ettin with glowing green eyes.

She noticed at least two other figures obscured behind the giants, but the mouseling watched the child—transfixed—as her mount led her to the center of the room, where she saw three large, worn circles etched into the floor.

The rudra assisted the child, trembling, from the spider, and she struggled to stand, leaning against his side.

Shisu dropped to feel the stone, kneeling with her feet at her side, her worn gown sweeping streaks in the dust.

"It is time," a deep voice croaked, and a gaunt trollblood pushed to the front of the group. The trollblood had sacrificed an arm to Bale at the elbow, but given his regenerative blood, two misshapen fingers had begun to grow from the stump, and he used them to grip a thin, twisted staff, rather than his good hand.

The rudra helped Shisu back to her feet, and together they walked to the perimeter of the room.

The trollblood walked along the inner circle of the floor on the toes of one foot—his other fat, deformed foot slapped against the stone each time he stepped.

Slowly, a lavender light appeared in the center of the room. The mouseling and the ladybug did not always see colors the same, but Patches hoped this color was real. She gasped and stared into the center of the light in her mind's eye. In the light of the summoning, she saw a black, four-armed monster on the far side of the room that she hadn't noticed before. It looked away from the light, raising a clawed hand before its horned head.

Slowly the mouseling heard the sounds of scraping, like metal against stone, as well as deep breathing, and the light faded, replaced by the form of a deity. Patches knew it had to be a god, because she had never seen anything so beautiful. It's skin appeared as a translucent black with a bright purple aura within and about it. It hovered above the center of the room and it's long, scaled tail dripped to the floor, curling and unfolding. Large bat-like wings spread from its muscled back, and wicked, razor-sharp claws hung from its long arms. Above its regal head, two curved, twisted horns rose nearly to the ceiling, with a faint purple glow. A hammer, forged of pure, brilliant lavender light, hung from his hip, radiating power.

The demon flapped its black-scaled wings, stirring clouds of dust from the ground. The bones in his long, snake-like tongue crackled as he spoke. "I am Bale. You have done well, my servants." He looked over those in attendance and his eyes settled on Shisu. "Come forward, child."

The rudra began to assist the small girl, but Bale raised a hand, and she seemed to gain some strength in her legs, walking the rest of the way on her own.

Shisu knelt before the demon god, then spoke to her followers. "Bind him."

The trollblood nodded and raised his staff. Chains of blackness burst from the shadows, wrapping around the deity. The god roared, rending the chains with his arms, and the room shook from the power of his voice.

Shisu pulled the cloth from her face and stared upon him with empty sockets. She spoke a word that Patches didn't understand and the deity's form quivered, almost flickering like one of Jade's shadows. The demon's eyes glowed white, and a raspy breath escaped his mouth.

More chains erupted from the shadows, wrapping around the demon as the room trembled, and the startled mouseling lost the connection with her familiar.

Patches panted as if waking from a nightmare and looked about her hole, disoriented–feeling at once home and far away. She started for the commons to find the others, but winced, remembering the way they had ignored her. She paced the morgue, stopping now and then to rub her paws together for warmth, then returned to her hole and tried to sleep.