Chapter 70: Fixing Mistakes
Gouts of fire and crackling tongues of lightning cut through the darkness deep in the Underworld, tearing into rock and flesh alike and casting bizarre shadows over the chaos of the battlefield below.
The great fortress of Northastr’s floodlights were out, all power diverted to the weaponry and armor, and in the black expanse beyond the glow of their fire and thunder there moved an endless pale Formorian ocean.
A towering thursligr charged towards Major Asmund from the roiling chaos of light and dark. Of the largest breed of Formorian warriors, they were foes that could punch through thick walls of rock and metal with ease. Many times the size of his Skidbladnir, its countless huge legs propelled it forward like a runaway crawler, moving at fearsome speed.
Solvaettr was faster, sidestepping the dense, essence-charged horns.
His blade split the beast apart with a whine of lightflame and the giant monster fell with a crash.
Voices cheered to see one of the largest foes slain, but the sounds rang hollow in Asmund’s ear.
The hraekadr made a mere crusher like the thursligr seem no more than a worm crawling underfoot.
Already the titanic formorian had shattered their lines, forcing its way through to attack the fortress itself, and yet they were powerless to stop it, forced to rely upon the massed crawlers and weapon emplacements – for alongside that avatar of terror and destruction had come legion upon legion of lesser foes, threatening to follow in its wake and swarm the defenseless Pharyes within the base.
Northastr was well accustomed to defeating Formorian attacks, yet not for centuries had their foes penetrated so deep into their perimeter, breaching every wall and barrier, evading or destroying the traps and armaments, until now they were at the very walls of the fortress itself.
The scale of the assault was unlike anything Asmund had ever seen. Usually cautious and methodical, Formorians would undermine defenses and cut off supplies, only committing themselves to a costly assault when well prepared – or desperate. Yet they faced that wheel a horde of unprecedented scale, throwing countless bodies into the defenders until they were overwhelmed.
Perhaps it was precisely because of that brutal and relentless assault that Northastr’s very existence now hung in the balance.
The Cataclysm should bear a great share of the blame too however.
Even as he was rallying his forces once more to meet the next wave of foes, Asmund wondered once more if the two horrors were somehow in league. It was absurd, but the being known as ‘Safkhet’ had, alone, done as much damage to their defense as the Hraekadr, like a spear thrust to the very core of their protections, punching through each gate in turn, destroying traps and even washing away the minefield with a waterfall greater than any river… only for the monster to vanish as soon as the formorians joined the assault.
And yet… and yet though the Cataclsym had hung there in the air like a blow about to fall, the monster had vanished into the docks, doing nothing to further aid the Formorian horde.
Nor had it shown a trace of will to kill him or his force. Even the golems had been mostly ignored in its absurd headlong assault, barely even fighting back as his trio of ancestral Skidbladnir had almost cornered it.
“Major!” someone screamed in his ears, “they’re breaking through in 7-F! Lieutenant Calder has fallen!”
Hearing the usually composed, deliberate Varangian Captain Lind so panicked would have been shocking, but Asmund too felt his heart pounding, his hands slick on his controls.
His own position atop a low cliff to one side of the chamber was already being swarmed, but still he gave his orders, diverting Major Kyrja and the reinforcements he’d just called forward to shore up the line at 7-F instead – it lay along the central plain, the most direct, clear route to the fortress walls.
That risked the high point and the crawlers up behind him he knew, but they were stretched too thin everywhere, forced into a steady retreat by the sheer mass of bodies opposing them, a flood that was eroding their forces and could at any moment burst through to pour into the vulnerable dock… and the living quarters beyond, where Alva waited for him….
Triskelions and mechanical footsoldiers were suffering the same attrition as the Varangians themselves, but on a far worse scale. The mass-built machines had been directed to throw themselves into the roil of foes to shield and recover disabled Skidbladnir and their pilots, such as the Lieutenant. Thanks to that direction they had suffered no fatalities thus far; however their numbers were shrinking rapidly before the onslaught.
Rather than indulge in fear and worry he fought on, driving back those of lesser strength and resolve with the burning light of his flashes, parrying chitinous spears and swords of the greater warriors and cutting through each in turn with his blade. In the dense melee lightning and flames were useless – as the Formorians knew well.
He and his force had just won a bloody and desperate victory over the assault on the cliffside when he heard Major Kyrja’s shout.
“It’s at the walls!”
The words were choked out through an audibly tightening throat.
Looking back, and up from the carnage of broken aulogemscics, chitin and rent flesh, he saw the titan rearing up, towering over the battlefield as if all their struggles were no more than a crude joke. Covered in wounds and spears many times his height, its agony must have been immense, but each bolt or fork of lightning could only chip away at the thick layers of armor plate, or gouge the surface of its flesh. Even pierced a hundred times over as it was, the giant wasn’t slowed in the least.
Others turned with him, anyone not beset at that moment leaning their helms back to take in the awful sight in a shared moment of horror as the monstrosity burst through a plane of dazzling lightning and scorching flames, piercing the last barrier horns-first.
Asmund had no need of his instruments to detect the hraekadr’s essence, suffusing those shining black weapons with deathly blue radiance – he could feel the weight, taste the energy, turning the air bitter and metallic with the impossible, malicious power.
The colossus lunged, its speed frightful even with its great size.
Rippling lines of pressure flashed out as the blow fell, essence bursting up in brilliant glittering plumes from detonating turrets as the horns gouged and crushed the metal.
Sound lagged a moment behind, a boom that shook the cavern and threw golems and Skidbladnir off their feet and set alarms blaring in their cockpits.
Recovering his footing, the major looked back up to see boulders and stalactites the size of crawlers falling from the ceiling. Some pounded themselves to dust against the layers of chitin and muscle on the hraekadr’s back, while others fell to the ground, sending vehicles and golems scattering from the spraying shrapnel.
As cascading debris fell away from the impact the titan pulled back, exposing torn and broken layers of armor, pressurized cylinders and piping beneath spraying out the lifeblood of the fortress, rivers of acid green aulogemscic fluid mixing with the deep blue cruor of the hraekadr and pouring down to taint the cavern floor.
Fresh torrents burst out as the dread behemoth tore at the hole, glowing horns boring into the layers of armor, ripping them away, tearing metal apart and gouging through the machinery beneath the outer plates.
They had to do something, find some way to stop the hraekadr before it broke through into the docks, but none among the Varangians gathered could even imagine any attack that would still the fury and power of a foe on that scale.
Engaging with the monster they had been mere flies, flitting about the molten rock in the deep, as like as not to be caught and crushed simply by its movements.
The titan pulled back once more, roaring with hatred and fury as the turrets and crawlers all around it pierced its sides with shot and shock, blackening its hide with wave after wave of flames, but nothing could halt it as it charged mana into its weapons once more, overwhelming, absurd energies condensing for another strike.
Major Asmund could feel his stomach drop as he realized that they weren’t going to win.
The defenders within the dock might eventually slay the titan through sheer attrition, but not before the hraekadr left a mortal wound in the fortress, one through which thousands of Formorians could pour….
They had to evacuate the non-combatants now, before it was too late. Northastr’s defense was the duty bestowed upon him by the King, but the fortification was doomed… he had failed in his purpose. All that remained was to preserve as many lives as he could. By King’s grace he hoped Alva would be one of them. She had to be.
About to thumb his voice gem to call for the evacuation, his hand froze as another boom resounded, this time from somewhere within the walls.
Rent tatters of former armor plating burst apart in an instant, tumbling fragments of debris the size of Skidbladnir shattering as something shot up and out from inside the fortress.
The projectile was too fast and small to make out, yet it hammered into the jaw of the hraekadr with an impact that could be felt, even seen, essence and air flashing out in a wave.
The Varangian guard watched in awe as the formorian titan reeled back, staggering on its innumerable limbs from the sheer force of the blow.
As the monstrosity recovered from the hit a second beacon of energy burned in their gemstone sensors; a power more ominous and overwhelming than even the hraekadr. They knew that thick, heavy, choking mana.
The Cataclysm had returned.
Following the readings Asmund spotted it, there atop the broken edge of the wall, standing on a twisted curl of metal larger than a crawler module.
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‘Safkhet’ looked little more than a speck, but the bestial Pharoid commanded energies that rivaled, perhaps even exceeded the entirety of the fortress behind it.
A cluster of colossal limbs reached out from the recovering giant, but the Cataclysm was faster.
Erupting from nothing a white-hot plume of dazzling flames roared up at the titan, so intense that it could almost have been one of Solvaettr’s lightflame blasts – only the Skidbladnir could never have unleashed a blaze so large.
Forced it to actually defend itself, the hraekadr covered its head with its limbs.
The blaze scorched the hide of its arms and neck, melting chitinous plating and burning away the flesh of dozens of its… pieces….
The towering monstrosity roared with a ghastly, woeful scream that pierced all the way to Asmund’s cockpit, but even those wounds were mere surface injuries to a creature of that scale, overflowing with its own energy.
Safkhet was building essence once more, but the agonized colossus caught the smaller monster with one of its endless flailing hands, smashing the spot where it stood and swatting it away as Asmund might a mere insect.
Debris flew in all directions. One chunk crashed down into the rock not far from the low cliff Asmund was defending.
Except it wasn’t a chunk of metal or rock that punched a hole in the slope below – it was a moving shape. One covered in blood and burns yet still overflowing with crushing, fearful energy that made his bones throb.
Varangians were already encircling it as the monster Safkhet was pulling itself up out of the small crater, but seeing that sight against a sky of hraekadr, already tearing at the walls once again, Asmund staid their hands a moment.
Rushing down to join them, his mind still a jumble of confused thoughts and half-formed ideas that made no sense, he called out the first words he could find.
“Stop! Safkhet! Why do this?!”
His Cycloan was too primitive to ask his question properly – guides had been circulated and the officers ordered to study the language, but the major had never expected to see surfacers as anything but captives.
Struggling to its feet amid the rubble the Cataclysm from above stared at him for a moment, dirt and powdered stone falling from the bedraggled clothes that clung to its body.
In that moment he saw in a Pharoid face all the meaning and emotion of any Pharyes, furrowed brows and taut lips giving away the same anxiety he felt, eyes lit from within with glowing passion. Asmund couldn’t make sense of that – of how so alien and dreadful a being could seem so like them – but nor could they imagine why the Cataclysm had befallen them to begin with.
The creature looked about, and at first he thought it was about to leap away again, or worse yet attack them, but its gaze fixed on the titan far away up the cavern, and the walls being torn into at that very moment.
“You have to help me!”
The words came from nowhere it seemed, spoken by a feminine voice deeper than that of a Pharyes, yet with clarity and precision he couldn’t imagine of any other creature. Unbelievable as it was, the Cataclysm which called itself Safkhet was speaking fluent Pharynx.
Another boom resounded, drowning out even the cacophony of fighting all about as the titan continued its attack on the walls, followed by the rush and cracks of the turrets firing again.
“What are you doing here?!” Asmund demanded, too bewildered to even remember to demand his foe’s surrender now that they were speaking.
Safkhet hesitated before speaking, and he saw several emotions… very Pharyes emotions, passing over the features of the creature.
“I… came back to fix a mistake… before it gets any more people killed!”
Asmund felt the bile rise in his throat at the outrageous claim, righteous indignation at the grave losses inflicted on his people overwhelming his fear.
“Monster!” he choked out the word, feeling sick with fury. “You attacked us! You destroyed our defenses before a Formorian invasion! Was it you who led the hraekadr here too?!”
Even as he shouted the words he was charging power into Solvaettr’s lightflame gems. Cataclysm or not, he would burn it to cinders before he let it beguile him with lies or break back into the fortress.
Alva would understand. This was his duty, the duty of all Varangians, to stand on the front lines and give their lives for the defense of King and Kingdom.
“Please wait!” it replied, raising both hands. “I know I seem like your enemy, but I don’t want to fight you! I just… I’m trying my best to help, to help you and everyone else…. I didn’t know what else to do, we just want to stop the fighting! To stop anymore people dying, but… there was no other way…. I… told myself no-one would be hurt….”
The voice was so quiet he could barely detect those final words over the chaos of battle all around, and the eyes of the creature watered, as though it were a child on the verge of sobbing.
“Liar!” he spat in his disbelief. “How could anyone be fooled by that? You’re our enemy – you care nothing for our lives! We could never trust a monster like you!”
“You have to! We’ve wasted too much time already! Hundreds of people could die if that giant formorian gets inside the dock!”
Northastr control was shouting in his ears to pull back, to destroy the Cataclysm and return all his forces to stop the breach in the walls.
Eyes turned upwards again as the hraekadr struck once more at the walls of their home, tearing out layers of aulogemscics and machinery as if gutting a vast creature, splattering blood and fluids everywhere as it clawed through to the inner layers of armor beneath.
“Please, I know I made a mistake, a-and you can go back to trying to kill me afterwards, but you have to help me stop it! I can’t… I don’t know how to use mana well enough to do anything that will stop it, but together we could win! I beg you, don’t… don’t let any more people die!”
Tears washed pale river-ways through layers of filth and blood as they welled up in profusion from Safkhet’s eyes.
Screams filled the voice channels as another impact shook the very roots of the cavern, the bedrock trembling as the titan slammed its horns against the final layer of powered wall, essence scattering as the thorns drove into the surface.
“Impossible!” he snapped, to control as much as to his enemy.
“Even if we could believe the words of a monster, nothing will stop the hraekadr breaking through! It’s hopeless! Northastr is lost!”
~~~
Another titanic boom resounded through the dark storage bays, and Gastores flinched despite himself as he felt the tremor running through the metal underfoot.
“We really gonna be okay like this?” Ripides asked, his eye following the drips of green fluid and trails of dust and metal filings falling from the seams overhead, the latter twinkling as they passed the light in his hand.
When the gemstone illumination had failed the rescue party had improvised torches, using bits of cloth dipped in lubricant and tied to metal tubes and struts pulled from the store rooms. The scene of them all, gathered together in the flickering light reminded the young ogre of home, but any ogre knew to evacuate a mine or erdroot farm when there was debris falling from the ceiling and the floor had started to shake.
“We just have to hold on,” Gastores reminded him. “Lord Uldmar’s signal should come any time now.”
“He’s late,” Patch said, her ear twitching unhappily. “We sure he’s even still alive? Lights going out weren’t in the plan… maybe those Formorian things got in for real?”
There was a round of shudders at the thought, but Gastores knew better.
“There’s no way they’d get this far even if they broke through the outer defenses – Ivaldi told us about that, remember? They might pound on the doors, but the fortress walls have never been breached!”
Patch gave him a dubious look as more hydraulic liquids sputtered down from a blown line overhead.
“Even if that’s true, how do we know his lordship didn’t get caught by the Varangians?”
“Listen to the noise out there! Even if them monsters can’t get past ‘em, they ain’t got time to chase after some highborn in the cells,” Ripides pointed out.
“If he got that far,” the vulpine replied. “Never did catch that supposed traitor, did we? Coulda been one o’ his lot. Or even Uldmar himself. You know what nobles’re like. Could have a whole army of those war-armors waitin’ up there to nab us.”
“Stupid,” Sulis retorted, with bluntness uncommon even for her. “A traitor could have told them to capture us at the docks.”
“B-but she’s right,” Lap muttered, clasping his hands, his canine ears drooped and tail curling. “Even if there’s no traitor, if anything’s gone wrong with the plan we’re just waiting here for the Stalker to take us!”
Quaking once again, the fortress around them resounded with another crash of unspeakable proportions, as if to underline the old beastfolk’s point.
“Focus,” Sulis said, glaring at the frightened graying canine and the vulpine cynic. “Escape’s ready. We’re too close to get scared now.”
The lips of Patch’s short snout pressed tightly together, and Lap’s ears fell a little lower against the sides of his head, but neither argued.
Many of the team might have been eager to follow Lap’s instinct to flight, be they beastfolk or not, but no-one needed to be reminded of how many lives were in their hands. The captives from Grand Chasm, Southtown and perhaps many more settlements were all just a few yards above their heads, waiting on their rescue. People he knew and cared about, who would never be freed if they missed this chance.
Captain Encheiro was one of them, and Gastores was resolute in his intention not to let her down again. He could see her face in the gloom, bald and scarred, but warm and friendly despite her fearsome looks. Her sneezes too were vivid in his recollections – the cadence and peculiar jerk she made stuck out the most somehow, his clearest image of her, along with her complaints about the dust every time a new mine shaft was opened.
It might have taken him a little while, but he’d finally brought the help she’d sent him for.
Sulis seemed to be lost once more in her own thoughts of her loved one, her brother Calidae. The anxiety was written plainly on her shapely features and Gastores gave her hand a gentle squeeze as he looked down at her.
“It’ll be alright,” he murmured, “we’ll find Calidae, and everyone else. We won’t leave anyone behind.”
Sulis gave him a toothy smile as she looked up at him, her fingers curling around his.
Finally, after what felt like an age of silence, the voice gem on the wall garbled out a sound that could have been speech.
Several people jumped at the noise, but the words that followed were a relief for all – Uldmar had taken the control room to the cell complex, and his people were about to shut down power to the containment systems.
Cheers and barks almost drowned out the rest of the message, but they were soon hushed, so that Uldmar could direct the Triskelions with them.
The rescue party were waiting directly under the cells in one of the top chambers of the storage bays, accessible from below by ramps which allowed crawlers to be walked up and down, however there was no connection on up into the prison complex. Access for transferring large numbers of captives was instead situated in the docks, alleviating the need to move large numbers of prisoners of war into any other areas of the fortress. It was a rational design, but one totally unworkable for a secret jailbreak.
That was where the Triskelions came in. Aided by those among the raiders with the strength, martial skills or magical powers needed, they tore into the ceiling overhead, ripping and cutting apart the final barrier between them and their goal. Above the Skidbladnir and golems with Uldmar would be doing the same… or so Gastores hoped.
Finally after what felt like hours, but must have been just a dozen seconds or so, the last de-powered beams were severed and the sheet between the floors fell with a crash, metal twisting and struts popping. Looking up the ogre saw the familiar forms of Gres-Jarn and Hnitborg, their allies and their golems – and no massed army behind them waiting to make an arrest.
Gastores found himself panting as he breathed again, relieved despite his conscious belief that the Pharyes would not betray them.
“I’m glad to see you well,” Lord Uldmar said, as his team cut away any sharp edges to the hole and worked on cutting loose the dangerous hanging ends of the broken floor section.
Others beneath were pushing crates and other suitably sturdy objects up to the hole to form a ramp, making it safe and easy to traverse, but the process was painfully slow.
Gastores jumped instead, catching the frayed metal edge of the hole and pulling himself up with the power of three arms, the first holding his torch. He felt a sting in his palm, but there was no time to worry about a few cuts or scrapes.
It was only as he got to his feet on the other side of the aperture that he realized he’d lacerated one of his hands badly.
He clenched off the blood flow and got moving, ignoring the concerned Pharynx sounds coming from the nobles in their Skidbladnir. Sulis would heal him later – for now he had to get everyone out of their cells and ready to move.
The structure into which Gastores had emerged was huge, a domed circular cavity in the top of the fortress. It had been hastily partitioned up into sectors around a central control tower that overlooked the space, allowing guards to peer down through barred ceilings at their prisoners, split into small groups by thick doors, creating a series of compounds with their own eating, sleeping and exercise spaces. It was a gaol on a scale he had never imagined.
Even for a city like Grand Chasm there were no cells fit to hold more than a few dozen at a time – those disturbing the Queen’s peace were punished by Lady Feme and sent back to work. It was unthinkable to imprison hundreds, let alone thousands of people indefinitely, tearing them away from their communities and their work, depriving their families of their presence and assistance even as they were themselves cut off from all support.
Yet that was just what the Pharyes had done, a space never designed to accommodate prisoners converted into a simplistic but sturdy creation housing the population of a small city, not criminals, but hostages in an unjust war.
They had broken through into one of the exercise squares, at present empty while the prisoners were confined to sleeping cells. Gastores set off towards the nearest of them, eye searching eagerly for some sign of familiar faces.
Those first faces were strangers to him, but all in the long dark gallery of cells showed the same look of shock and disbelief, from the beastfolk to the ogres to the harpies and more, all of them baffled by the sight of a fellow surfacers running free, the guard golems not only not reacting, but actually starting to open the doors.
“What’s happening?! Is the foretress collapsing?!” one young ogre asked, her face pale, her pretty blue eye swimming with tears.
“No, no! We’ve come for you!” Gastores declared to the stunned crowd. “From the surface! We’re a rescue party from Chasm!”
“Impossible,” one elderly harpy muttered under her breath. “We’re too deep for them to ever reach us here….”
“It’s true!” Ripides replied, running up behind him. “There are some of the Pharyes helping too! We’re gonna get everyone out an’ back home! You lot, open the doors already!”
Even as he spoke, the automatons were moving, footsoldiers following one of the simple instructions Ivaldi had sent them – unlock the cages when surface species appeared to command it.
“Come on, we gotta go!” Ripides insisted. “Anyone able, come help us let the rest loose! The rest of you get down that way, we gotta ride waiting! Any what can’t walk, someone better carry them!”
He didn’t need to tell anyone twice, the captives rushing out eagerly, to the sounds of jubilant cheers and whoops and even a failed attempt to rouse a howlsong as they were helping one another down the passage towards escape.
Watching them Gastores became sure that Encheiro wasn’t among the group, but that was no wonder – one of the ogres who came with Ripides and he was able to confirm that theirs was a section populated mostly by the prisoners from the south.
Ivaldi’s modified golems were on hand to give extra assistance anyone unable to walk under their own power, and so they moved on quickly, continuing to the next section to spread the good news and release everyone.
Many of the captives they found were dressed strangely. Having been taken partially naked or lost their clothes in the fighting and subsequent trip down to Northastr, the Pharyes had given them replacements of mushroom leather sheets tied at the shoulders and thighs with twine. Others wore whatever odd cluster of garments they’d had on or been able to trade with one another – aprons, nightcaps, armor and mismatched boots were all common.
They were also near universally terrified – after the attack had started the guard golems had stuffed them quickly back into their cells, simple and crude chambers with hard shelves supposed to serve as sleeping spaces, dozens of smaller species or a few larger packed into each wall, forced to cohabit in extreme proximity. While huddled together there in the dark they’d heard calamitous crashes and booms, and felt the fortress shake as if the whole Underworld were about to come down upon their heads.
Most were relieved to the point of tears and grateful embraces to see friendly faces there from the world above, with promise of escape and safety, naming their rescuers heroes and saviors to them all.
Gastores brushed the words and gestures away brusquely. He saw the surprise on more than a few faces at that, but there was no time to indulge in celebrations. Rather than triumphant he felt increasingly queasy, a knot tightening in his gut – everything was going too well. Besides which, he was certainly no hero. He was a coward who’d had to travel for days on end into the bowels of the Underworld to make up for his failure… for abandoning his captain in her time of need.
At each bank of cells he, Ripides and the others joining them repeated the same message, telling the people to get to safety before moving on, lingering only to ask for word of Encheiro, or of a naiad named Calidae.
Each stop they made yielded no results for either name.