From altar-of-refuge to altar-of-refuge, the cadre cut through swathes of angels and other godspawn. They stuck to under the auspices of the canopy lest they bring down the leviathans upon themselves like lambs bleating so that the wolves might come to the slaughter.
Amongst the host swooping harpies were great wingless hags. Their arm-wings had been cut and they were carried in palanquins of vermillion and scarlet and bronze. These hags spoke out in the Language, casting down curses upon the cadre.
As they had drilled, when the first of the hostile magi appeared, the group recombined into a turtle formation with Baethen and Escoriot at the centre—the former conjured a thin but rapidly-reforming discus of metal while the latter provided actual defence.
All curses were largely sympathetic in nature and thus required a binding anchor; line of sight was paramount for these sort of fell sorceries. Disrupting a warlock's thrall-of-gaze could render them useless in a fight. The next best thing was silencing the offending caster, either by slaying them or otherwise injuring their wagging tongues.
With Baethen and the Lieutenant protecting the cadre against hexes and a direct assault, Ensign Lacariah and Field-Sergeant Narancan took to slaying any harpies that wandered under the shield-disk. Captain Haviershan provided support where he could, his deck a Jack-of-All-Trades that was a master of none but could otherwise shore up any cracks in the formation.
This left Tratvgar able to freely channel and chain his cards into a devastating spell, a tumorous, monstrous tubercle spasming into being in between the green-magician’s hands as he played card after card after card.
The end result was a living lance of writhing roots fit to slay even the mightiest of archangels. Or at least those that could not stand the smell of greenery. Its thousand-thorned edge was sharp as any steel and twice as vicious.
Tratvgar gave Haviershan a nod and then the Captain gave the signal.
“Drop trow and let ‘er rip!”
A poet, that one.
Baethen let go of his hold over the metallic fonts just as he played [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] one last time, striking the shield-disk. It erupted upon the horde in a glorious, fiery conflagration, spitting molten metal over feather and fur and skin. The hag was higher up and out of reach of the blast but this was only the beginning.
In Baethen’s wake, Tratvgar launched his lance like Stribog did with His lightning-bolts, putting all of his might into the act. Toothed vines trailed the fetor-lance as it arced towards the palanquin unmolested, excoriating the angels in its path of undeniable destruction.
The spear struck true but the battle was not over.
Cut off the head of the snake and its brood still yet lives.
They switched over to a diamond formation with Baethen drawing the harpies ire the most, each Word of the Language taunting them in a manner impossible with mundane speech. Staves and stones may break bones but words struck where either couldn’t: the spirit.
“[Fall. Fall. Fall.]”
The bits of metal stuck onto the angels burst into flame, their metallic mass converted into lashing tongues of fire. While Escoriot and the Ensign stuck to the ground to stop any downed stragglers from overwhelming the ranged combatants of the cadre and forestall any would-be swoops, Tratvgar and Narancan shot out their own salvos, joining together their cards into one coup de grâce.
One by one they fell until the boughs were empty of Yurnmagog’s vulturous angels.
In the deafening silence after violence, the survivors heaved-out their lungs. The sweat of their brows stung eyes that did not dare blink for risk of life, limb, or just an embarrassing story of how you lost an eye to a lamed harpy you thought dead.
“Up and at ‘em, lads. Can’t stay here too long after a battle like that.”
A chorus of grunts.
“Bastards got me in the big toe.” Lac complained.
“Aye.” Narancan wasn’t much for words.
“Thank the Gods, the rack still yet lives.” It need not be said who uttered that particular set of words only that they got a smirk out of Lac, as always.
“Loud and clear, Captain.” The Lieutenant was ever the painting-perfect soldier, saluting like a conscript and everything.
“Methinks I lost the tip of me ear.” Tratvgar cupped the left side of his head, red spilling from the cracks of his fingers.
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“Better what’s between your shoulders than your legs.” Haviershan remarked as he checked his boltcaster’s condition. “Bring your rump over ‘ere lad and let me take a look at you.”
Baethen shuddered at the thought; losing his left arm was bad enough. The concept of emasculation itself sent a shiver down his spine like nothing else.
“Honest to the Twenty-One. I’d rather be eaten alive. Again.”
“Cann, how in Sybil’s alabaster arse-cheeks did’ya slice off a harpy’s nipples accidentally?”
The Field-Sergeant sighed and shook his head.
“Lunatics, the lot of them.”
Lacariah looked around as if looking for someone that wasn’t there.
“Waddaya mean? I thought we left Lazarrah behind?”
That got a chuckle out of Baethen at least. The rest were too busy still licking their war-wounds.
“Ya didnae think that the lasses will notice the missing tip?”
Finally, Narancan’s ever-stoic façade broke as he guffawed at the turn of phrase.
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It took thereabouts ten feasts of angel-ribs for Baethen’s arcanum to jump from magnitude one to two, changing the {Form} clause from droplets to globules and increasing the amount of times he could call upon the dominion-of-blood per Hand. Diminishing returns were setting in rather quick, dashing his dreams of absolute power against the rocks.
Still, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when it came from the God-of-Sacrifice-and-Other-Ominous-Things. Thankfully, it was only blasphemy if others could hear it.
Somewhere far, far away, a certain god whose number was Twenty laughed for the first time in the last millennium though Baethen would only learn of this after he died for the second time.
“We’re getting close to the end o’ the rung.” Haviershan announced. “The needle’s turning faster than afore. Time might be well and truly wormed through-and-through but distance’s been a constant.”
Not soon after, they reached an altar-of-refuge, the monolith of alabaster foreboding and reassuring both. Somehow, down to the marrow of their bones, one and all knew this to be the last safe haven, their last reprieve, before they came upon the Gate-Guardian of the rung.
“Gods, me back and feet hurt.”
Baethen did not deign to comment for even he was tired of the ribaldous jests and double entendres. Or just tired overall, really. He wanted nothing more than to lay down, close his lead-lidded eyes and be swept away into Babylon the Land-of-Dreams.
“Baethey-boy, last time it was me. You’ve got first watch tonight.”
Not even the Lunatics-of-Morophesh could cure the sheer devastation and despair that descended upon Baethen then. He would’ve wept like a dog at the moon had this thrice-damned place even had one.
----------------------------------------
It was when Baethen finally could sleep that slumber ran from him. He tossed and turned, the exhaustion without respite utterly maddening. His blood was still hot, the restless in him seeming not to ebb before the tide but rather wax, growing, festering worse and worse still.
Unable to stay still in his cot, Baethen got up, told the Field-Sergeant he’d be back and then stole away into the sempiternal day of the Land-o’-the-Gallows.
It was difficult to put into words what he felt then. It was not one single thread of emotion but rather many. So Gods-be-damned many. The battle with the angels might’ve ended with their deaths, but inside him, in that space just below his sternum, it raged on like fire smouldering inside a tree struck by lightning long gone.
Secluded, away from the prying eyes of the camp, Baethen stripped the armour off from his left hand and saw the wormscale crawling beneath. In place of fingernails were wicked talons. A rash of chitin jutted out, the hairs of his forearm growing, clumping-together, secreting a wax-like, oily substance that solidified them into malformed plates.
The {Metamorphosis} made a distinct sound against his more subtle senses, like an innumerable mass of chittering insects just behind him but not really there no matter how many times he turned around or how fast he did so.
It was a disease, he knew. Gods, how he knew. And he’d walked right into it—you reap what you sow. He ate of the fruit from the poison tree and could blame no one but himself for it. For the first time in many centuries, the Devil was not at fault. He’d read the fine print and signed his name on the dotted line anyway, fool that he was.
When Baethen closed his eyes and opened that of his mind, he saw it: his own personal wyrd-plague.
It waited there, in the seat of his very soul, those three Words—{Brand-of-Wrath}. A bleeding scab on the underside of his psyche, it ached in just the right way that a mouth ulcer might. He couldn’t help but pick at it with his awareness of himself, staring into that mirror of blackest alabaster, anticipating that the reflection that looked back would be a deformed, twelve-horned, six-winged, monstrous thing.
But no, it was just him. Pitiable, enviable, foolish him.
In that blink between the closing of the eyes and their subsequent opening, a mask appeared upon the face of the reflection, split in two with one side wrought of pyrite, of worthless fool’s gold, and the other of purest aurum. And then, it was gone—just another trick of the mind, just another ripple in the waters, just another cunning illusion of the senses of a violence-addled, diseased madman.
“Get a hold of yourself, Locke.”
He returned to the waking world, to the sempiternal day of the first rung of Rimare-Tul and questioned whether the man that finished climbing its ladder would be unrecognisable to the one that had first put his foot upon it.
Entirely too unsettled to return to sleep, Baethen armoured himself once again to hide away the shame and set about to practicing a sequence of martial forms, chaining card after card to calm his nerves. The stretch of skin in between his shoulder blades never stopped itching something fierce and he could not help but keep an eye-and-a-half on his surroundings.
Only once exhaustion beyond exhaustion smothered the feeling of being watched under its sheer weight did Baethen return to his cot and fade away into Babylon.
He did not even realise the lack of someone on watch.