Eventide Bridge, was set unto a roaring blaze not by the eponymous dusk that would grace the end of the day upon the western horizon, but through the discordant pandemonium of battle. But stiffened by confidence and the hurried agency to rescue one of their own. The remnants of the Katheer’s Mujahadeen of Sarenrae and their Arizona Desert Ranger allies contest for power upon the bridge against the marauding Filth Drinkers and their Abyssal pedagogues. Shouts, Magicks and Gunfire traded for blood, blows and tears as the Mujahadeen made their careful approach from their side of the crossing. The objective, cross Sunset Bridge and liberate the Temple of Dawn’s Grace from the Demon Lord Xoveron’s poisonous clutches.
The hour was dark, with the cold gale winds from the sea brushing along the city, twisting step, debris and typhoon-tout paranoia throughout.
The Sarenites scrambled around the decomposing remains of their city for shelter as their assault was met with the barrage of heavy turret fire. Defenses set up upon the choke point that stopped their consecrated march through the city dead on its tracks. Despite the heavy bombardment of spell and arrows from the Mujahadeen, the Filth Drinkers defending the bridge remain staunch in its bastille stand.
“We cannot get past that ballista of theirs! It is shielded.” High Priestess Kamala tucked her head as low as she could from the gun fire.
“We ought’a shave off those blighters off of that Puckle Gun or this attack is gonna be a Wash!” Merizi suggested.
“Browning… Ehm-Two Browning!” David scowled a pinched expression as he dove to a half-demolished brick wall for cover. His annoyance was drowned by the bewailing clamors around him.
“Is there no other way around these fiends?” Kamala asked David.
“Unless you wanna go swimming in shit water below. Be my guess…” David gritted his teeth much to the High Priestess equivocal dismay. “Kid, how far can you throw one of those bombs from here?” the Ranger turned to hi shaken foot Aasimar Alchemist. Remembering his rather dexterous throwing arm from back when he had confronted the Sandstorm’s Marauders.
“Das’sabout sixty or so feet away from me.” Tomos aimed his thumb to deduce the distance.
“Can you throw that far!?” David questioned, not beating around the bush of his companion’s ability.
“I-I g-g-guess so…” the Aasimar restlessly cleared his throat. He picked up a bundle of his Alchemical Bombs from his satchel and readies to throw them.
With all his might, or best the might an erudite scholar who even still cometh from a martial sect of his world. One, Two, Three, vials of acidic chemicals peppered the defenders, all of which splashed they bites upon the Filth Drinkers. However, the distance was to great for such a young Alchemists hands to pitch from so far. Tomos’ bombs merely being an dogged annoyance to the bridges defenders than a faithful attempt to flush them out.
“An old armless whaler can throw better than your soddin’ jelly arms!” Merizi cussed as she grabbed hold of one of the Alchemist Bombs from the Aasimar’s satchel and attempted to throw her lot into the fire.
The bomb merely made half the distance Tomos shortest throw had accomplished much to the Azarketi’s embarrassment.
“And YOU can do better than… that?!” nerves pulsated from Tomos brow as he pulled away his satchel closer to himself.
“Damnit kid, keep trying!” David shook his head.
Frustration amongst the Rangers and Mujahadiin fermented as their assault was bogged down by the bridge’s unwavering defenses.
No worse than to see the prize oh so seeked for by the Sarenites of their desecrated temple than the Bard Navideh herself. She knew that these villains would only pick them apart as time passes from where they stood. They still need to cross the bridge yes, but not when the turret blasts any attempt of a crossing from their front. But luckily, the coy Bard has a trick up her sleeve. Upon her many travels, she would never have gone far to where she is now without such tricks she could strum up from the strings of her Mandolin. Stomping her foot impatiently, she knelt to David behind his should and gently nudged lugged the threads of his shirt.
“Not now Bard. I am kinda busy’ere.” David wrangled himself away as he attempts to fruitlessly fire several returning shots from his firing position back at the Filth Drinkers.
Navideh pouted, attempting to wrangle the rest of her companions to accompany her. But to no avail, their eyes affixed to the putrid choir in front of them. Having no options, yet knowing full well of the entwined fate she has with the Arizona Rangers, the Desnan Bard turned her tail and bolted off.
“Hey blue!” David cried out for the Sulli as she stormed off to their left flank. “Navi--? Damnit get back here!” the Ranger yelled but the Bard had already disappeared off through some rubble out of sight.
“Ranger, that Bard is up to something… I know of it. Take your comrades and follow her, my men shall wait here for an opportunity to attack.” Kamala reassures her.
“Don’t try anything stupid until that Turret is silenced.” David broached. Picking up his Rifle he nudge the rest of his makeshift Team X-Ray of ragtagged misfits.
They followed the Bard through the ruined golden streets of Katheer’s once shining affluence until they met her below a flight of stairs on the Azure Canal’s banks. The lapping waters muddied her slippers as the Bard began to glide her fingers across her mandolin’s strings. She pours her heart, her silenced voice and playful smile onto the notes of her sunset sonata as she spun across her two feet in blissful stupor. Her manic trance of childlike naivete a stark contrast to the crumbling world around her. A relic of a bygone era echoing upon once-Golden Katheer.
“There you are Navideh, don’t come running off like --- hey don’t!” David was about to grab the buoyant bard only for her to step off the ledge of the canal’s banks.
But instead of falling upon the rapid rivers of the polluted canal, she instead began to walk, or more of float atop of the raging waters. Her notes transcended the mere auditory stimuli into a Sonata Span that formed a shimmering and translucent platform for the Bard to walk across the waters safely. Navideh invitingly tapped her gilded foot on the solid ground that arose from the river banks, curtsying her companions to follow her.
The Rangers were reluctant at first of the Bard’s unnerving optimism, but the Blue Butterfly around Navideh egged them onwards to follow the dream-eyed Sulli across the canal. With a wing and prayer, David took the first step forward.
“Well, would’ya look at that?” David blinked, not believing his old eyes as his foot assuredly stepped above the water on Navideh’s magically conjured bridge.
Quietly, the Rangers and their Golarionite companions walked across the bridge until they were directly below one of its supporting arches. Navideh nervously gestured her finger upwards as she covered her ears upon the roar of Turret Fire that is bearing down on the Sarenite Mujahadin. The bridge itself was made of fine mortar and brick. Despite the wet surface, the brick arches were laid out in such a way a good gripped hand could climb up between the crevices in between them and fifteen feet from where they stood to the top. The roar of gunfire blanketed their approach. The Filth Drinkers being too fixated by the Sarenites to pay heed to any other unexpected means of entry.
“I will go after the Turret. Kid get ready with those bombs of yours and keep anyone that isn’t us a good distance away.” David ordered him.
“Once we get rid of the turret. High Priestess Kamala will advance towards the bridge and cross to the Temple with us, right?” Tomos gripped the crevices of the brick bridge with his hands.
“You got it.”
“What of me?” Merizi asked.
“Your backup.” David plastered as he begins to climb the arch.
“Backup?” Merizi furrowed her piscine brow.
“Just keep up.”
Quietly and carefully the Rangers take point, there guns in hand, fingers on their triggers.
“Now.” David leaped over the ledge and hurled the bullets of his rifle onto two Rat-men like Demons closest to him.
Moving tactically, he strafed to his right and aimed his rifle towards the Turret’s gunner. Firing three shots of his weapon towards the Filth Drinker who barrel had time to turn his gaze upon the Ranger.
The Marauder flinched as he absorbed the one-two punches of the heavy rifle rounds onto his torso. Yet to the Elder Ranger’s bafflement, the bandit remained if barely standing on his two feet. The bleeding Filth Drinker’s bleeding nostrils flared bullishly before tackling the Ranger off from the elevated platform.
The two jostled for the advantage, but the rough and tempered Filth Drinker, spending its entire life on the streets to fight for meager scraps arose dominant. His youthful vigor triumphed over David’s old body. His muddied paws gripping David’s Throat…
The critical crack of a matchlock rifle and the swift glint of a silverin blade released David’s stranglehold just as he was about to have his vision black out. The Filth Drinker fell, his head bisected, the final blow.
“Gett’er back up swimling!” Merizi pulled him back up then turning around afterwards to man the pintle of the Turret. “Let’s turn this Puckle Gun o’there’s and see how they like it.” She smirked.
The Turret was affixed into a tripod but its axel could fully turn around the other way.
The Azarketi gripped her fingers around the unfamiliar machineries behind the turret looking for the trigger hurriedly. Her hare-brained determination to man the gun proved indeed reckless as her old hypothesis was proven direly erroneous. The stallion kick of the M2 Browning of which she mistook for a mere Puckle Gun took the Azarketi former pirate for a ride as her lithe stature was sent flying chaotically around her. All her companions barely having enough time to duck for cover.
“Put your feet up ‘swimling’ Soles on the floor!” David scampered towards Merizi until he straffed directly behind her.
He held the Azarketi Steady as they together tamed the wild beast inside the M2 Browning. The .50 Caliber Bullets made short work and mincemeat of the rapid counterattack the Filth Drinkers scrounged up to retake their defensive linchpin. Gunning down Gargoyle, Abrikandilu and Enthralled Man alike in a blaze of Otherworldly Fury. Seizing the moment, the now no-longer pinned down Sarenite Mujahadin rallied together and advanced just as the last few bullets from the Browning’s Drum dried.
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“We got them on the run!” David cheered.
“Whoa… Whoa… just… Gozreh’s breath… What a Puckle Gun.” a dizzied Merizi fumbled away from the Turret.
“Browning… Ehm-Two Browning.” David crossed his arms as he walked towards his fallen Shotgun that fell of his hands during the brief brawl earlier, picking it up.
“Let’s do it again!” Merizi asked of him.
[-]
“Ole’ man fighting across the bridge!” Isaiah pointed to the Bridge.
The three had fought there way through up the Cistern, dodging the rays of lightning bolts from the Living Rune that the Xoveronic Demons had bent to their will upon. Yet still it remained on the loose, without some means to dispel its chaotic energies, it will continue to wreak havoc on its former masters. The trio knew they must reunite with David and the rest of their friends, still in possession of Saint Habir’s Staff.
“What is the plan now Outworlders?” Tutoria asked.
“Purify the food, right? Clean it up how again? The Demons just ‘hate’ that?” Raul Tejada asked for clarification.
“Demons hate to see their work undone. For this ‘Satrap of Spoilation’, he despises his filth food being cleansed from its impurities. If we can find the Food Storage somewhere there, I can purify it.” Tutoria explained.
“Well let’s fookin’ go!” Isaiah recharged his Crossbow and took aim towards an approaching horde of Filth Drinkers.
“Kill the Sarenites!” the wicked pin of a verminous Abrikandilu cried forth, sallying his host of Demons and Enthralled Humans to the fray.
“Fight them back.” Tutoria held her scimitar up high.
Raul with his revolvers skirmished several of the Filth Drinkers from range with dead-eyed aim. Meanwhile, Isaiah managed to land a critical blow against one of the murderous flock of gargoyles above, burying a crossbow bolt onto one of them before it he crashes into the ground. Tutoria meanwhile, met the Demons in Melee Combat. But even so… despite their efforts the numbers were still far too great for them to handle their counter-acted assault.
“Git to tha- bridge!” Isaiah fumbled recharging the strings of his crossbow.
Tutoria finished off one more Filth Drinker with her sword before she turning tail with all of the power of her legs. Her flight was almost weightless…
For she was in fact flying much to the dismay of her companions. Looking above her, the Paladin revulsed as her avian blue eyes locked gaze with the blank coal visage of a Gargoyle as she was carried upwards. She struggles to cut free from the monster’s grip from her back but the stoneskin hide of the beast recoiled upon her blows, causing her weapon to fall to the ground.
“Raul! Save’er!” Isaiah cried to the Ghoul Cowboy.
“Chingada! I can’t get a shoot! The Diavlo moving too fast!” Raul cursed as he tried to aim his revolver at the kidnapping Gargoyle just as the monster flew with its cargo away deep inside the Temple.
The monster descended into the desiccated interior of the Temple as it greeted the Paladin in a fulsome stench of smut. The Temple’s already defiled exterior was merely a canape to the maddening assault of the senses and all things moral the Paladin bore macabre witness to. Sarenrae’s Temple was awash in a sea of excrement and ashes as each mural, chancellery and even the central Altar were twisted into vile parodies in service to its new patron occupant, Xoveron the Lord of Ruins. Even the towering obelisk depicting an outstretching Sarenrae at the center of the Temple was refashioned with cobbled wood, into a blasphemous image of the Demon Lord Xoveron himself.
The Gargoyle flew across the desecrated grounds until it hovered over a dimly lit, opened and yet dreadfully maw-like corner of the temple interior. It threw the defenseless paladin inside before flying away to assist their companions outside. The Paladin closed her eyes to embrace the worst, sensing a her imminent death approaches…
But instead, the weight of her body crashed upon the feather fall of something both soft yet some how still stiff landing. The Aasimar’s eyes blinked and re-sharpenend her eyes to the low-light surroundings. She gasped in horror as she discovered what --- or whom she landing on.
Corpses, a mountain of half-cut up corpses of is where she stood upon. Corpses of those armored Champions and sanctimonious Devotees of her faith lay there as flies, maggots and scum slowly decay their bodies. Fearful and Nauseous, the Neophyte Paladin scampered downwards from the pile, causing some of the loose body parts to fell with her causing the body parts, some still latched on with their armor and jewelry to intonate with a clanging ring. Her eyes seeking like moth to a flame, the feint dim light across her that lead to the exit.
“I…sense… Food…” growled a voice hidden beneath the darkness.
Tutoria quickly hid away, reluctantly burying herself beneath the rubble of her dead fellow faithful to hide from the voice. The figure of a gangly body and bat-winged demon emerged from her perceptible gaze. She knew instantly of this Abyssal Fiend known as a Nabasu. He reeked of blood and fecal incontinence. It turned around and with a few notches of his large and sword-nailed claws he closed and then with a click of a mechanism locked the door leading to the exit.
“I will have… YOU… for Meal Time!” the Nabasu licked his lips hungrily. He took a swig from a water skinned canteen from his belt whilst he brandishes a serrated Scimitar.
“Sun… and Fury…” Tutoria’s heart chilled as the treacherous odds she must now surmount.
Alone, outmatched, probably out-of-her own mind, on what is essentially the face of certain death now that she left the confines of the monastery. Where others would despair or submit to the end upon such a grisly sight, the Paladin felt a sort of warm comfort. To know that one is close to the end was a special kind of freedom no excursion could ever match in the beating of Tutoria’s Crusader Heart. Now was a good time to take… inventory.
She maybe unarmed through her bare fists but she is not unarmed intellectually. She recognizes one of the corpses she sat next to, a brutalized body of a fellow Cleric of her faith wore a specific type of robe on them, the material of the Papyrus Tree to be exact used both in textiles and the creation of scrolls.
The Paladin had one card left that she can play. She may not have her sword but she still has her Scroll Cache that hugged around her waist. She scoured for her quill pen of which she quickly procured. Its tip remained sharp, not something she would use to shiv the neck off the Nabasu but something she can use to create a far more potent weapon against the Demon.
“Remember… Remember… Banishment…” Tutoria’s memories raced. It was winged-prayer that her plan could work. Create a Magical Scroll of Banishment right then and there with imbued runic inscriptions she knows of and then smite it on the Nabasu to return the monster into the dark Abyss from whence it came.
The Scroll of Banishment is intricate however, one deviation from the inscription of the runes could cause the spell to fail. Yet if she doesn’t hurry with its inception, she would be put unto the sword of the Nabasu’s scimitar.
Tutoria grabbed the clothes of the dead cleric and tore a sizable piece of the cloth away that will act as her ‘paper’. Yet just as she tore the paper away, the tearing sound it emited alerted the Nabasu to her whereabouts and skipper merrily along to tighten the noose around his prey. The Paladin quickly crouched away just as the Demon hurried to where he had heard her.
“No hiding from me!” the Nabasu growled as he took a swig of his waterskin and began to spray acid upon the corpse mountain of the dead Temple Sarenites. The flesh and body began to slowly liquify leaving only melted flesh and ash in its wake.
“Blessed Dawnflower…” Tutoria began to pray both to imbue the Scroll with holy magic as she wrote down the inscriptions. She retreated to a nearby wooden table to cover herself from the Nabasu’s dogged pursuit. “Your children are aflamed with fear. Your faithful perish, your temple desecrated, your compassion ignore and the wicked multiply.” She perused her Cache and much to her chargin found her inkwell to be dry of its valuable employ.
The Nabasu broke through the rest of the corpse mountain as it proceeded to deepen his sights towards the rest of the chamber for the surviving Paladin. Using his waterskin once again, he sprayed away the hiding spots he suspected that his prey would cower behind. Yet cower, Tutoria Toledo did not.
“Dawnflower, lend me your strength and your wisdom to right the wrongs, to smite the wicked and bring hope to when all is lost.” Tutoria prayed much more fervently with every word as she continues to inscribed the Scroll of Banishment. Improvising the sharp end of her quill pen, she pierced her left palm drawing red from her veins. Her Aasimar blood, the ink that would be the Demon’s Bane on Golarion. “I pledge myself to the coming trials and if the call of martyrdom arrives, bid me come to thee that I may praise thee with thy Angels and Saints…” she squeezed idiosyncratically with the conclusion of an Anima prayer she knows of from the fellow brothers of same alignment of faith of the Church of Iomedae.
“Go! Go! Go pray to that Whore Goddess, Sarenrae of yours! She will not save you when I done crushing every drop of hope on your soul… every bone in your body!” the Nabasu lewdly mocked as his chiropteran ears began to fixate on where Tutoria is exactly hiding.
The last few places were slowly thinning out the closer she is to completing the Scroll’s Inscriptions. But there was only one last thing left to do.
“Where are you!?” the Nabasu roared in frustration as he crashed down a wooden crate, being the last as he deciphered place any humanoid creature could hide from him. But his hands met nothing but dusted air.
“… As I drive out the Shadow of Evil… with your Holy Light!” Tutoria emerged from the shadows behind the Nabasu, brandishing a piece of cleanly-baked flat bread she had kept when she broke and shared it from a larger serving of it with the captured Filth Drinker boy, she had selflessly fed a day earlier. From her esoteric knowledge on these Xoveron Demons, clean… any object in fact, is anathema and thus an enhancing component to the Magic Scroll’s Arcane Power.
A thematic ‘extra-kick’ as they would say to really hone in the message of their eviction.
“Begone!” Tutoria yelled.
The Nabasu’s eyes broke into shivering fear as an encompassing light and then… vortex of gravity began to pull him away. He was forcibly ejected back into his home plane of the Abyss. The Banishment Spell had worked. Leaving behind only the waterskin and the serrated Scimitar behind on the ground.
The Paladin fell into her knees in relief as she lay there alone amidst the now emptied room. Once filled with the shadow of despair and death, all that was left is emptiness… and Anger.
Anger of this desecration these demons had caused onto Sarenrae’s faithful and her sacred buildings but anger that Bogrus, the Satrap of Spoilation would enthrall children, the abandoned and the desperate into his cruel banner. She may not understand the tongue of these foreign youths who scour amongst the Filth Drinker’s enthralled minions but felt peculiarly, a congenial accordance with them. She knew what it was like to feel alone, hungry and afraid. Those disparate faces she had serviced as charitably as she could at Sun Hill Monastery mimeo the same ones, if just at a much crueler and brutalist reinterpretation of those Filth Drinking Thralls. All of the filth must be purged yes, but the spilling of blood would only prove the Demons’ right on what Black Teachings Xoveron whispered into their impressionable ears.
“They are just Children… Afraid, Parentless, Audacious… just like her. So starved, so young, so angry, so angry at the world. Left to fight for themselves upon the wilderness of the cruel world outside.” Tutoria reflected everything she had come to grips with. “Hunger, fear and desperation name a more seductive temptation into evil?”
She knew violence begets violence… but if she could save even one of these children from the damnation of their souls. She must at least try.
Still it would be foolish to naiively waltz into the heart of darkness unarmed. She will have to defend herself. She grabbed the serrated scimitar; it was light yet she could feel a strange eldritch hum rattle her hand. The next thing she made used off was the key to the locked door that the Nabasu had sealed earlier. And lastly was the gourd shaped Waterskin that the Demon had held earlier.
At first, Tutoria intended to simply toss the inconspicuous item away, seeing nothing more but a vile instrument of vandalism as demonstrated earlier when the Nabasu tore the room apart to search for her. But as her left, and yet still bleeding hand touched the Waterskin… a faint elysian hum began to resonate within the canteen.
She felt a new warmth engulf the waterskin as her Aasimar Blood, consecrated with the blood of virtuous Outsiders began to consecrate the gourd. What once reeked of filth and demonic defilement was instead filled to the brim with a coruscated holy energy from Tutoria’s Plumekith blood. It filled itself with sweet smelling holy water anointed from her Goddess warming self.
“Dawnflower… I bid… T—Thank you…”
Now she could see it through Navdeh’s Dream as foretold by the Song of Spheres, a newly invigorated and twice-golden Katheer. An oasis, a sanctuary a beacon of hope in a broken world.
A many the Dreams of Water.
Golarionite and Otherworlder…
She ignited…
She now Believes.
[-]
“Outlander! Wuh-Where is my sister?” Tomos gasped for breath after he sprinted to meet up with his friend. To his bafflement he did not see his sister by his side.
“A bunch of flyers snatched her and took her inside the Temple! I tried… I really damn tried!” Isaiah answered weepingly as he fell his head in his failure of not being able to protect his friend.
“Sis, no!” the Aasimar Alchemist gasped as he hurried to the front door of the Temple. His hands prying haplessly to open the heavy iron entrances to the Xoveronic Fortress.
“Focused kid! We still got a plan to go through!” David reminded him.
“But we cannot abandon my sister to those fiends.”
“You are both right. It is now or never, we either take the Temple back or we die trying. There is no turning back now. As an old friend once told me, ‘there is no Victory without Risk’.” High Priestess Kamala answered.
“Well get your guns and weapons everyone. We got a Castle to Storm.” David reloaded his Rifle.