Chapter 069: The Reckoning

After Freedom entered the lands of Ambryxis, he stopped caring about collateral damage. Instead, he resorted to tactics of terror and scorched earth. With rather intense brutality. One that I could barely connect with Shimmer. She was an extremist, and she was merciless, but only to those truly evil, always making sure that there was as little collateral damage as possible.

Like a female, polytheistic version of Overtyrant. She was into Greater Good too much for my taste, though. She was ready to kill a thousand innocents to save a thousand and one.

Freedom’s host divided itself right after they crossed the mountain pass. About 80% of cultists and daemons under his lead remained with him. The rest divided itself into several groups under the lead of his dominions. At least a theoretical leadership - daemons weren’t generally experts about mundane strategies and tactics. They were probably listening - very attentively - to the suggestions of cult commanders.

It was hard to figure out the exact size of the enemy forces. Two thousand, tops… I think. But there were cultist warbands that kept joining him. We kept pretending to be one of them.

While the main force continued marching towards Ambryxis, the rest disappeared into the countryside. Probably causing as much ‘mischief’ as they could. Burning manors, hanging slave owners and Ambryxis officials at the trees and using them as target practice, liberating and arming menial slaves, this sort of things. They couldn’t capture any fortresses or even towns, but everything else was a fair game.

It was also causing chaos behind enemy lines. They were obviously much faster than the main forces of Freedom - he sent most of his mounted warriors to do that. Many adventurers returning from the anomalies or missions in the countryside ran into them and ended up dying before reaching the city.

One bigger group of Ambryxis soldiers - at least two thousand, probably returning from some far away mission, with some local reinforcements - tried to ambush Freedom. To be fair, they probably didn’t expect that they would run into a demigod. They expected a rabble of cultists led by an archdaemon.

Freedom killed the adventurer killteam sent after him with a snap of a finger, and then overwhelmed the enemy magicians, killing them all. Finally, he fired few powerful AoE spells, breaking the formation of ambryxian infantry… and sent the cultists and daemons to clean up.

The whole field was filled with slain soldiers of Ambryxis and a dozen minor cities in the area. It wasn’t a battle, it was a one sided massacre. Freedom must have conjured some powerful magic wall type spell, preventing the enemy from escaping. Two thousand men slaughtered. Cultists lost maybe thirty people, judging from the number of funeral pyres.

Weird. Shimmer prefers typical burial methods. Pyres are… a last resort thing. Done to prevent plagues or when one expects that someone might desecrate the bodies. Though if Freedom was serious about losing…

Several castles and forts laid between the mountain passes and Ambryxis. Since Freedom was here in person, their guardian deities were allowed to fight openly as well. Obviously the effects were still absolutely one-sided massacres. They didn’t even have to storm the fortresses, Freedom burned them all to the ground on himself. The only one he spared was one that had a big group of slaves and the commander traded them for Freedom’s mercy.

He followed his side of bargain. The fortress fell, regardless. The garrison fled north. The commander fled east, hoping to enter Vanvyra - and through it, Imperium - before Ambryxis could get his ass. Can’t blame him.

When we entered Ambryxis, it was already over.

***

All people old enough to remember Featherclad agreed that Freedom’s attack was MUCH worse. Most people who knew the city history - like me - agreed that it was the worst supernatural attack on the city since Purifier almost burned it to the ground during last years of Apostasy.

Ambryxis knew what was going to happen. So he prepared well. The city walls and gates were reinforced with magic.The militia wasfully ready to fight. 60% of Ambryxis soldiers were there to reinforce them, the rest wiped out either in Vanvyra or on the battlefield before the city. At best half of adventurers managed to return in time. Archmagicians fully prepared.

At best seven thousand professionals. Behind thick and high walls, with their god supplying them with a lot of magical power. In front of them, at best two and half thousand cultists and freed slaves, plus two or three hundred servile daemons.

It was a massacre, though. And defenders weren’t the one massacring.

Ambryxis expected Freedom to act according to ‘common sense’. Try to storm the city as one more crazy archdaemon commanding a rabble of cultists and daemons. Get his face flattened by repeatedly hitting walls with it. Then get wiped out by a counterattack, with negligible losses for the defenders and a great victory for their god.

Unfortunately for him, Freedom was better than that.

The Hand of Freedom had friends in the city. Or there was an imperial foreign intelligence cell. Or, finally, a crow operative was around. Whoever it was, he opened the city gate the first night after Freedom’s forces arrived.

Cultists stormed the city supported by a lot of daemons. They pushed towards the Woe, the city fortress that also served as a cathedral of Ambryxis.

Freedom marched with them. Wherever he looked, the garrison defenses broke, his daemons grew in strength and his cultists fought with double the ferocity. What’s more, he surprised the garrison completely an instead of facing an organized defenses, his forces annihilated it battalion by battalion.

It wasn’t a nice and pretty urban warfare like in Vanvyra. No time to retreat to recuperate. Not with Freedom ready to annihilate every group of adventurers, soldiers or militiamen that was weakened by the cultists, with spells that were merely a bit beneath the power level of archspells.

They pushed through the streets, causing fires and storming temples of the Black Pantheon. Some groups of city rabble joined the chaos, hoping to pillage and rape, and forcing the garrison to redirect some forces to protect the noble district and wealthy merchants. Not to mention slave markets, where Freedom’s influence broke collars and caused open rebellion.

Finally, in front of the Woe, Ambryxis came to face the threat personally. Not like he had much choice at this point, since he was about to have his precious city burned to the ground. Freedom was interrupting his control over the city, he couldn’t just suppress the flames with his power. If anything, they were growing stronger and wilder, empowered by Freedom.

Cleansing by flames. Heh. Typical for Shimmer.

Few people who were on the plaza before the fortress-cathedral gates survived the battle. Both Ambryxis and Freedom went all out. This wasn’t a battle that could be safely witnessed (not to mention participated) by people that weren’t at least a mithril grade adventurer or an archmagician.

Ambryxis had an advantage due to fighting on his home turf. And he used that. After almost an hour of battle, Freedom fell. Ambryxis eviscerated him in a pretty gruesome way.

He was laughing. Freedom, not Ambryxis. I had no idea what Shimmer expected him to do - besides falling in combat and leading two thousand people to their early deaths - but he acted like he did it well.

That’s when Red Mist struck. She, together with a group of very competent warriors and sorcerers, showed up from nowhere and attacked Ambryxis. The wounds Firewing caused to her were gone and she achieved a significant power up. Plus her sidekicks seemed awfully like the old Baptism of Blood. Elites. All of them. Infected with modified strain of Bloodletter Plague that couldn’t spread, but made them inhumanly resilient.

It was hard to get any decent information about that battle, but from the pieces I got I deciphered the truth. They almost got Ambryxis cornered - that’s how massively weakened he was after his battle with Freedom - but Black Hand and Sapphire, two of the city archmagicians, managed to save his ass.

Red Mist’s strike team retreated successfully. She lost a few elites to the archmagicians, but they could be replaced.

Freedom’s cultists didn’t care that their demigod was slain. They knew what was going to happen. He told them that in detail after they joined his crusade. But they also knew what awaited them after death. Freedom. True freedom of Skyhaven. A place where all people were equal before Shimmer. Where there was no hunger, no abuse, no wrongdoings and crime.

They knew what to do after he fell. They dispersed throughout the city, setting fires, ambushing soldiers and destroying everything they could. It was no longer a battle to take down Ambryxis - it probably never was - but to cripple the city.

The casualties were tremendous. Fighting still continued when we finally reached the city. But… most of the cultists was either killed, or captured and executed. In a way typical for rebellious slaves at least since the Old Empire.

They got crucified on the city streets. Didn’t look like they minded this, really. Sure, they felt pain, but it didn’t break them. Not a single one of them tried to ask for mercy.

The rest either disappeared somewhere - I suspected the sewers, there were some caves ending outside of the city, if they had real support on an inside they could know about it - or kept causing fires throughout the city.

Ambryxis tried to suppress them, but it wasn’t precisely looking good. He lost the battle as well. It wasn’t as visible as the Freedom’s defeat… but it was most likely even worse.

Such fake gods have a single thing they cannot lose no matter what. It is a foundation of their power, a building block of their existence. It is the common belief in their power as guardians of the city. The source of their power, their authority, their own existence.

Now, a big part of city militia, adventurers and soldiers was dead. Gossips about Ambryxis almost dying in combat - guardian deities could die, unlike common daemons, because they existed in Light - were already around. Not only Freedom almost killed him, Red Mist (A MORTAL) almost did it as well. And nobody knew she was a Chosen One of Pentagram.The whole ‘keep it a secret to avoid panic’ idea backfired spectacularly.

Sapphire died as well. Black Hand was beyond furious. Was he trying the same with her as with Firewing? Our archmagician wasn’t in the Hold for a few days, just around the time the battle was waged.. and nobody knew how Sapphire died. Coincidence?

Not to mention that those cultists that didn’t manage to join Freedom’s host were still occupying Vanvyra. War was going to be reignited after snow thaws. Sure, even in its massively weakened state Ambryxis was going to wipe the floor with them. Two months. Five if they avoid open warfare and would wage guerilla warfare. But…

… There was also a problem of the dominions that kept burning the countryside even now. With the best soldiers of the Masked Council mostly dead (army suffered especially high casualties due to botched mission to Vanvyra), the rest had to focus on defending the city. The lands outside? With so many adventurers dead? People shaken? Villages burned?

The coming months were going to be terrible for Ambryxis. Terrible. Things like that once or twice became a spark that led to sudden downfalls of entire civilizations. Especially those decadent and without a driving force that could power up their sudden resurgence and reform.

It could be nationalism. A genuine feeling of belonging to this particular society. A refusal to abandon it despite problems it suffered and a drive to repair. To stay back and fight (which quite often devolved into ethnic cleansings and stuff like that, unfortunately). But there wasn’t even an ounce of it here. The society wasn’t built like that, Masked Council suppressed all popular movements precisely because they could bring demands of reforms. Besides, significant part of population was slaves and people from the slums. How could they feel any sort of brotherhood with the wealthy oligarchs and Masked Council?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

It could also be the religion. But… Freedom dealt it an almost mortal wound. There was a trail going through the city, following Freedom’s footsteps. Flowers bloomed. Temperature was higher. It was tainted with Freedom’s power enough to remain, despite Ambryxis’ attempts. Like a big wound in his pride and authority that was bound to keep undermining them for a while.

Of course, there were serious doubts after Featherclad’s rampage as well. ‘If Ambryxis is so powerful, why did my children got murdered by that insane archdaemon!’ There are always doubts like that. But they fade, in time. And Ambryxis would probably resist this wound, buy enough time for it to safely change into history remembered only by scholars. But now?

It was an ALMOST mortal wound dealt to his religion. To his credence. What could now keep people fighting for Ambryxis? Sooner or later those with money and intellect are gonna start drifting out of the city, especially if insurgents (both from the Hand and any other source) or dominions aren’t slain quickly. Only those that have no other choice would stay. And those that will be paid… at least as long as there is enough money to pay them.

Ambryxis was in for a major crisis. Probably the biggest in the history of the city. If not for the Twilight War coming, I’d give him 33% chance for getting back to full power, 33% for surviving despite general collapse and massive weakening, and 33% for collapsing entirely, and ending up as another ruined city inhabited by few hundred/few thousand people dismantling old buildings for bricks while living in fear of things that lurked in some of ruined buildings and beneath the streets.

Now? 10%-30%-60%. Top.

There was a sad thing, though. Something that hurt my pride and made me understand that we - the Ardent Flame - failed. It wasn’t something I liked. It wasn’t something I used to feel. I wasn’t going to tell that to the others, to avoid ruining their mood, but…

… the whole Freedom affair was obviously the Gods’ contingency plan. We weren’t growing fast enough. We weren’t going to be ready to slay Ambryxis in time… before ‘something’ happens that will render this mission moot. Twilight War, most likely.

Because of that Shimmer was forced to use the Prophetess to summon her Seraphim. Of course, that particular summoning rite was created with ‘random’ occasions in mind. All attempts with people willingly and knowingly martyring themselves was going to weaken the being.

Exactly to the level of Ambryxis. Which also meant certain defeat, because of the guardian deity having certain advantage in his home. But… it also meant said guardian deity suffering a lot of injuries. Having ‘his’ mortals lose faith in him.

The difficulty of the Deicide mission fell from Mithril X to Mithril I. That’s how much weaker he got.

Thousands of people died. In the city and in Vanvyra. Thousands of people, many of whom didn’t deserve it. Collateral damage. Children frozen to death. Women raped by soldiers of one army or another. Men hanged or crucified. And all of that because we failed to get stronger fast enough. So the Gods were forced to take a shortcut.

Judging from what I knew about Shimmer, what she was trying to prevent was ten or twenty times (at the very least) worse than what she did. Didn’t make my mood any better.

***

We departed to Tyrant’s Hold quickly. Participating in pillaging was an option, but I wanted to avoid antagonizing city militia that was busy squashing the riots - with moderate successes, as at least some tough fighters (renegade adventurers? Hardened criminals? Hand of Freedom members?) joined the rioters and was repeatedly ambushing militia squads.

Layla marched towards the witch-hunter headquarters, hoping to find someone who knew what the fuck was actually happening and could accept her mission report. The rest of our group scattered immediately. Meh.

The Hold was more or less the same as I remembered it. Life went on. Civilians cared little about our war. Well, to be precise, they did care (as much as their priests told them to), but they were busy with their day-to-day life. Working hard to earn money and make sure we had enough food and aether to survive the winter.

Typical society. There is always a foundation of people working, earning money, supplying the rest with food and consumer goods. And those that lived off them. Politicians. Ideological demagogues and revolutionaries. Journalists. Also priests, soldiers, scientists and so on.

Our trainees made several missions into the Dungeon. Only the first one was accompanied by Kovacs’ group, that then returned to visiting anomalies (they were out when we came). Firewing returned… with some magical jewelry… that was suspiciously blue in colour and made mostly of sapphires.

Typical day filled with assassination attempts and wars.

We spent two days in the Hold. Catching up with what happened when we were gone. The mood in the group seemed to steadily drop down and I couldn’t figure out why. Sigh.

Then we decided to finally make the long awaited mission to the Black Woods. To finally slay the Forsaken and maybe learn something about the nature of our mission.

***

We found the place quite easily. The markers we left still held. Weakened, but not yet broken. They’d probably last a month longer, at best.

My Unlife - essentially a stronger and meaner Destroy Life - could instakill the Seed of Nyrathzm even when they were still wearing their Thralls. The problem was their body falling down, making sounds that could wake up other Seeds.

There was a shitload of them in the room before the Forsaken. If we woke up all of them at once… well, it would hurt. They could actually swarm us to death even now. But… if I coordinated the casting with Simea moving close to the target and covering it with her sound suppression magic...

I had enough mana to cast the Unlife eight times. So it took us a while to take down all of creatures in the room. But we made sure that they weren’t going to swarm us twenty seconds after we engage Forsaken in combat.

We cleared the Third Anchoring Station. And then attacked the Forsaken.

Of course, it was a massacre. It was merely a Silver V. At this point, we could face Platinum grade threats and survive. Golds were bound to lose. Silver, even Uniques? Cannonfodder, merely.

She still looked creepy as hell. Tall, naked. Unblemished. Quite beautiful, at least until her belly split open and Seeds of Nyrathzms looked at us.

Yuck. Just… yuck.

They even had tentacles. They emerged from her belly together with the eyes. Seriously, yuck. Of course, at this point, after facing Pentagram servants every other second we mostly got used to stuff like that.

I could fight her on an equal grounds. My Unlife was about as strong as her basic offensive hex. She seemed to have an almost endless supply of mana, but she was as vulnerable to Death Magic as other creatures here.

She could also summon Seed of Nyrathzms. We had Leria and Lena clean them up. I, in the same time, slowly and diligently massacred her, together with Syna. Simea played a secondary role.

The whole point was to avoid wiping her out too fast. She could go into an Overdrive. Probably to high Gold grade, which would be… tough, but managable. But why risk? If I knew our luck, something would have made her overdrive right into Platinum grade. And we would be forced to fight for our lives.

She lost her lifeforce slowly. Finally, after maybe ten minutes of fighting (during which she failed to wound anyone), she died. Right after giving birth to stillborn Seeds of Nyrathzms. Through her stomach.

Just… ugh. Another thing I won’t be able to forget. And that is going to haunt me. It was like watching a terrible and ultra squicky parody of delivery by caesarean section. With things making said section from the insides… and being tentacled, grotesque… things. Ugh.

She died. We stole everything from her that could have some value.

Something changed in the air. No idea what, but something. Some of the… smell I associated with the power of Nyrathzm and his creatures disappeared, but also something else. What exactly?

Shit. Being an amalthian helps you figure out things are happening. Figuring out what exactly the things are is another matter altogether.

Unfortunately, the things on her were pretty random loot. Nothing that could let us learn something about the place. In fact, the only thing that could theoretically help us learn everything was a massive pile of dead bodies that the Forsaken resided upon.

The girls of the group were pretty vocal about them being used to sort the ceiling high pile of mutilated corpses. Vaera joined them.

So much for feminism. It ends when you have to carry the fridge onto the ninth floor. Or sort a mountain of corpses. Ghrr.

I certainly agreed with them wholeheartedly though. No way I was doing it. Especially alone. It would take weeks, automatically disqualifying us from the race to be the most powerful Players in the area. And trying to bring a workforce into the middle of the anomaly was going to be a pain. So we decided to make a bet.

Thankfully, this whole talk happened before we left the Hold. After all, due to our last reconnaissance we knew of the pile. The chances of finding some conveniently placed quest items on the Forsaken were also close to nil (I knew DFI ways well enough). So we had to search for clues in another way.

Firewing produced a mana crystal with a one-time active enchantment. Essentially an Entropy Magic spell that forced all organic matter to undergo rapid dissolution. We placed it in the middle of the room, activated, and fled before the effect overtook our defensive magic.

Within few minutes the bodies were gone. Of course, if any clue there was of organic nature…

Thankfully, there was enough of a clue left. Though it was far from being optimistic.

“Well. That explains a lot.” Leria broke her recently found quiet way of life.

A pentagram on the floor.

Massive. Ancient. This thing was… powerful. It could rival the Anchor in the main room, the one that was created as a foundation for a man-made afterlife of the Old Empire. The fact that it was covered in mutilated bodies was probably 30% camouflage, 30% decoration suitable for its theme, and 40% additional power source. Even if all manner of emotional aftermath of their pre-death suffering was sucked out long ago, the sheer act of bodies profaned by denial of proper burial still empowered the thing beneath it.

It was powerful. Like, holy shit powerful. And equally evil. Exactly as deep into the power of Pentagram as possible. It radiated with an active hex that I didn’t even want to try and figure out.

Malice’s Heresy Magic? Agony’s Rifts Magic? Discord’s Abyssal Magic? Definitely not an Extinction Magic of the Void, it would be unmade long ago. Her magic destroyed everything, including itself.

Do I even want to know?

“So, Pentagram is behind it.” Simea commented. “This… is actually something I partially expected.”

Yeah. I guess she was right. I mean, Nyrathzm looked like a fallen archdaemon of Locust. A personification of rot and death wanting to… create life? To have literal children? Madness. Woman actually wanting to willingly bear its children? Madness. So much madness in one place? Pentagram.

Ok, some powerful creatures of Beyond could work as well. Nythrathril. Cthuid. Ygzath. Sh-Ab. Unkh, before he got trashed by Inri’s Crucifixion. But… they sometimes cooperated with Pentagram. Maybe besides Sh-Ab, but…

Puzzles began falling into the right places.

A streak of sudden gusts of inspiration possible only when one was a Chosen One. Tons of seemingly random information suddenly assembling into the whole picture… just as your God wanted you to in that very moment.

Five major anomalies surrounded Ambryxis. Black Woods to the southwest. Descent to the southeast. Starfall Tower to the northeast. Ravine to the northwest. Hell’s Gate to the north. Five major, ancient anomalies that supposedly predated the Dawn War. Ravine, Cacophony and Monochrome Forest were much younger.

Five.

The city was a center of a massive pentagram. With anomalies forever preserving the key points of it. Third Anchoring Station was uncovered only now. The other places… probably weren’t uncovered yet.

We were supposed to find the truth in Descent. Not here. Another shortcut? Time was running short? How much of it was actually left before the Twilight War starts?

Something was imprisoned beneath the city. Ambryxis… he always looked even more powerful and… independent than the average guardian deity of a city of that size. That explained everything. He was a jailer, keeping something from manifesting itself. Forever interrupting a summoning attempt dating back to the Dawn War.

Something from Pentagram. Demigod? Powerful one. Maybe a lesser God in its Avatar form. A remnant of the forgotten era of myths, where demigods and gods walked on the surface of the world all the time and threw mountains at each other above the heads of the mortals.

Pentagram wanted to unleash it. By using Leria’s mother to give us a mission to kill Ambryxis… which would unfreeze the summoning. But… then Overtyrant decided to stop her, and Choose Leria, making sure that she discovers the truth (by Black Woods or the Descent exploration) before we slay Ambryxis.

So Pentagram countered it. Malice had Red Mist become his Chosen One. Mission? Slay Ambryxis… and, preferably, us, just in case we acted according to Overtyrant’s plan.

It wasn’t hard to figure out the reason. Knowing the truth, we could make counterme…

...Yhrezerach. Of course. All we had to do now, was to slay Ambryxis… and immediately replace him with Yhrezerach. Another layer of the plan coined thousands of years ago. Or earlier.

Deviation wanted Ambryxis dead, but didn’t mention the other anomalies at all. ‘That disgusting freak’s position in that is different than you think’? Is the Black Pantheon actually cooperating with Pentagram?! And… WAS SHIMMER IN IT AS WELL?!

No. Impossible. Gods rarely did more than they had to. If Deviation knew that Overtyrant already changed our future decisions and ensured we were to discover the truth, why would she do anything? She could just ignore the matter, as we were already playing right according to her plans.

Leria had the same sudden revelation. I could see it on her face. We exchanged glances of mutual understanding.

“Alright, so this time it’s you two at once.” Simea sighed. “I just hope you will explain it prop…”

The wall behind the pentagram split apart. A portal?! The sudden wave of death-tainted magic almost made my heart stop.

Oh shit. It’s Nyrathzm himself. And he is pissed.