In the moments between the appearance of the Seven Deadly Sins and its arrival, I noticed on its main deck a set of four swiveled brass tubes, each apparatus with an imp caged at its base. These tiny devils each wore small leather caps with goggles, and they appeared to have a set of controls in front of each of them within their bulbed cages. I drew out Crownfire and Riftspar, figuring that I would have need of Crownfire’s teleporting power before I got close enough to put Dreaming Fire to work.
As I watched, two of the tubes belched fire, and bolts of energy raced across the distance between to explode upon our deck. Karac and I were caught in the first blast, and I felt a sudden urge of desire for the bright hammer he held – in that moment, he was unworthy of holding such a weapon, it outshone my Dreaming Fire so. In a heartbeat, from across the deck, I found his hammer sinking with a satisfying weight into my hand, and saw he had Crownfire in his. I hefted the weapon, grinning like a child given a springtime candy.
Deep in the recesses of my mind I realized what those tubes were – they were sin cannons, designed to fire a blast of psychic energy capable of manipulating a foe’s mind. The infernals no doubt were conditioned to be immune to the sins fired, or were so inured to the feelings at hand that they could only further the devils’ commitment to their purpose. Their power was drawn from the engine powering the vessel’s flight, so they were expensive to operate, but they certainly were effective.
Contemplating this, I saw the insect-like forms at the bottom of the hull clambered forward rapidly, racing along the frame of the ship before casting themselves off into the aether.
The strange things unfolded long, gossamer wings that gave off a terrible buzzing sound, grating on the ears. Shiny carapaces reflected the ambient light, making it seem as though we were under assault by the very plane itself for a moment. They flew so quickly even in the Astral medium that they were upon us before any of us could react. Three of them raced across our deck, buzzing angrily.
Deimos arced a blast of lightning at one, which took the full force of the bolt head on, and kept coming. Not only that, but the layers of carapace on its back shivered, and what I took at first to be deformed scales revealed themselves to be daughter wasps, that freed themselves and angrily began to swarm down upon us.
The leading one settled its focus on me, swinging in with two sword-like talons and jabbing at my midriff with a stinger the size of my hand. All three found their mark, though I did manage to twist and avoid most of the real pain in the strikes. The two blade arms, intending to impale me, simply gashed my side and leg, and pinchered between them I was carried off the deck. The stinger found my right calf – I idly wondered if I should refer to it as my portside-aft – and set it on fire. I mean that quite literally, in addition to the pain of the strike. I felt a poison in that sting that chewed into my perception with its quick burn, and the skin around the wound immediately burst into flames. The fire, however, did nothing to me – my flesh was not consumed. As I watched, the flames danced upon my skin and on the splurt of poison left behind, but it caused me no harm.
I suppose I could thank Voedle for that – this fire looked like the kind that should burn even a Shadrim, yet here I was barely feeling a prickle of heat. The bronze infusing my skin must have shielded me even further from the effects of flame.
Not so much the poison, though. That hurt like hell.
The wasp carried me in a sweeping curve almost the entire distance to the approaching Dominion Ship before I could react, with it sawing and hacking at me with a free claw while I was pinned within the other. Parrying with Riftspar as rapidly as I was able, I managed to avoid the majority of its most vicious swipes, though one drew a deep line along my leg to an unhealthy depth.
Blood doesn’t have anywhere to fall when you’re away from an axis of gravity in the Astral Sea, did you know that? It leaks out, and pools where it is, or if the cut is violent enough it jets out and coasts away. On a ship, there’s an axis of gravity to which it can flow. Floating free, there’s no simple thing to demand the plane behave appropriately.
Mine, there, floated free.
Finally, I caught a blade-thrust the right way, and was able to pin its jointed limb beneath my arm instead of simply dodging or parrying it, thrusting Riftspar in a counter-strike back at the wasp’s face. It recoiled defensively, swinging its huge faceted eye away from the tip of my seeking blade. I sank my figurative teeth into the thing’s spirit, and wriggled best I could to stay threatening while freeing up my body. This gave me just enough chance to get a glimpse of my surroundings and take a bearing on the Waves of Grass. I immediately sliced open a rift in the Astral and fell through it to land on my feet on the deck of our vessel, and looking up at the Seven Deadly Sins, I spit out a bitter curse and ripped at the hellwasp that had held me with an eyebite, tearing at its mind while rendering myself unseen to it.
I saw Sered and Zatsa over to my right, battling another of the wasp creatures, and strode up with a purpose. Laying the best swing I had into it (which isn’t much – I’ll never claim to be the strongest man alive), I pushed a surge of eldritch power through the haft of the hammer and felt it resonate with the force of the blow. The wasp flew back, pummeled by Karac’s staggering weapon, and was shoved clean off the edge of the ship. I shouted in exultation at the joy of whalloping the thing with my newfound prize – and suddenly realized I didn’t have the foggiest clue of how to use a hammer properly. I saw Karac, who had used Crownfire’s teleport to close distance with Sariel, the devil, who had meanwhile flown across and was busy pummeling Shalvar. He seemed to realize his error at the same time I had, for he threw Crownfire to the ground and shouted for me.
Ducking through another fast rift to reappear beside him, I dropped his hammer there. No time to take up Crownfire, and no benefit to doing so, so I left him to handle Sariel while I did what I could to handle the Seven Deadly Sins. She was closing with us, and the cannons were going off around the cluster of Morin, Zatsa, and Sered. All three suddenly took on the aspect of gluttony – another round of sin, apparently chosen at random – all three developed enormous rolls of fat, and practically choked on their own swelled cheeks as they fell to the deck with agonizing, muffled screams.
Over my shoulder, a hellwasp arrowed in and seized Morin from the deck, carrying him in a single fluid slope across to be deposited on the deck of the Sins, in front of the Deva and his swinging greatsword. Morin seemed to shake off the cannon’s effect en route, for he looked normal when he landed. Sered, meanwhile, continued to flounder, his buttocks growing as large as Karac or Morin either, flapping grotesquely in the air while his enormously fat and soft fingers clambered to get him to his feet. Zatsa was casting something when I raced to the edge of the deck and rifted across to the deck of the Sins.
I had appeared on one of the forward tines of the Dominion Ship’s deck, and leaped down nearby Morin and the Deva. It was hacking at Morin, who was doing his best to avoid the strokes of the sword, but I could see fatigue rapidly taking its toll on his motion. I drew Dreaming Fire and lined up a spell along its length.
“Priest and a bearer of stolen power, Sered always chooses poorly among his friends,” the Deva remarked casually as it pirouetted with its long blade.
I gauged my placement just right, and opened a smooth portal a short distance behind the Deva, just enough to catch it in the blast as I gave the nightmares of Taer Dian Loresh an outlet. Insubstantial nightmares began to ripple out from the portal immediately, pouring over the deck, encompassing three of the cannons in their vicious flow as well as the Deva facing off against Morin. The immortal screamed something as the blast wave caught at his armor, making a strange sigil with his left hand…
And in a flash of motion, I was horrified to see him switch places with Morin. The two simply dissolved into shadows and flew between each other, materializing in each others’ place. Morin’s orientation remained the same, and he caught the blast full in the face.
It did not go well. The scourging shades tore shreds from the flesh of his face and his exposed hands, and I felt the power of the spell thrumming through the length of my blade – I knew it was eating into Morin’s spirit. The fires of Nessus and the icy cold of Stygia were funneling through the blade and into his mind as the nightmares of the Feywild ate away at his sanity. I was powerless to stop them.
The Deva twisted about to see Morin, then laughed. “Nice shot,” he shouted at me. “Tough break, though!”
I screamed my rage and agony at watching my friend get caught up in what I knew – from personal experience – to be a horrible torture. He swung backhandedly, blindly, missing the deva cleanly as he struggled to free himself of the flood of nightmares. I struggled up a desperate surge of hate for the strange immortal, letting it establish a feedback loop that grew to a shrieking ring of tide of corruption, and arrowed it at the Deva.
He saw it coming, and slipped it, my spell went sailing off into the Astral Sea, to eventually dissipate long out of sight.
“No time to dance, Shadrim, I’ve got some catching up to do with an old friend.”
At the same time, the mast beside me burst into leaves, and through a strangely living wood, Sered emerged, the rage on his face clear as he looked across at the foreign deva.
Then the cannon fired.
The blast enveloped us both, and I felt the grip of control slip my hands. I cursed my fate and struggled to free myself, but instead could only struggle helplessly as the effect of the cannon took hold, raising Dreaming Fire.
To lash out an eyebite across Morin. The arcane energy whipped across his back, spinning him around in place. The shock playing across his face was apparent, as was the pain and blood, and wisps of nightmare were falling from his face like mist falling from ice. The deva saw Sered and grinned.
“We meet again, old friend,” he called out. “Still choosing the losing side, are you? You really should join me this time around, don’t force me to enslave you as I did last time.”
“I’ll wipe these decks with your skin, Tarsis-el. This life will be your last, I swear it.” He took a few steps towards the immortal, his sword held out. Seeing the two across from each other made for a strange dichotomy. They were so similar, but spiritually so different.
Well, at least, back then I thought so.
“You’ll have to catch me first, Sered, and you never have, in all of both of our lives, been able to do that.” With that, he spread his arms and glided effortlessly over to the Waves of Grass, where Karac and Zatsa had fought off Sariel from Shalvar’s unconscious form and the helm. Deimos was down there as well, holding his own against the wasp that had spawned so many tiny daughters. I struggled to free myself from the fading control spell of the cannon, and managed it just in time to get a curse sunk into the deva as he passed, which induced a glance as he passed me, smiling patronizingly. I was so preoccupied freeing myself from the cannon round that I was unable to maintain the rift to Taer Lian Doresh, and my fountain of nightmares faded and choked off. I’d hoped to scour the decks of the Sins with that, so began revising my plans.
Sered rushed to Morin’s aid as I threw off the last vestiges of the foreign control, but not quickly enough – another of the wasps darted perpendicular to our course, snatching the injured Dwur from the foredeck in its swordlike hinged claws. It continued its arc off the edge of the deck and into the open space, stinging him repeatedly while mangling him with its huge sharp blades. As we watched, horrified, it deposited his broken form, back bent at an unnatural angle, beside the spinning furnace of the soul engine. His blood and that already upon the deck mixed, indistinguishable.
Sered and I went positively berserk. He ducked back into the leaves on the mast, and I saw him emerge on the deck of the Waves of Grass, from a similar portal in one of her masts there – Zatsa must have done some sort of Fey linking portal there. Sered charged after Tarsis-el, screaming.
I returned my gaze to the crew of the Seven Deadly Sins. I sang rage across the deck, carving Imps and pilot devils before me, trailing a vapor of pure terror from the blade of Dreaming Fire. Two Infernals were picking up Morin’s body as I approached, and I cleaved one where he stood, slashing across his back while twisting his soul into knots with a curse. He staggered away from Morin, drawing a small sword and backing away while clutching awkwardly at the wound I’d dealt him. The other, holding Morin’s arm still, just gaped as it saw me coming. I heard and felt detonations coming from the direction of my ship, but simply couldn’t be bothered, I was so focused on laying waste to these creatures.
The Infernal manhandling Morin’s corpse released him and fled, so I returned my attention to the one I’d injured, and to the cannon crews. It was time to silence their thunder once and for all.
Only one of the imps manning the cannons was watching me, strapped into his little bubble-canopied control chair. He raised his goggles to get a clearer view of me, and frantically began unstrapping himself. As I took my next step, a wasp sailed into view directly off the side, and a flash of spark chased it up from the Waves to explode in a sphere of furious lightning. The wasp’s wings crisped and sizzled, its legs curling up like hair exposed to fire, and its body flew apart. The cannon also fell inside the bounds of the sphere, and the little imp in his bubble jerked erratically, battering himself against his own controls before his gut finally burst, coating the clear canopy with black and purple ichor.
I heard a shout coming from the Waves as the smoke cleared.
“Get off the ship! She’s leaving!”
Looking around quickly, I realized the Seven Deadly Sins had been piloting herself the entire time, angling towards a reddish color line I had not observed previously, hanging vertically behind the clot in which the Sins had been hidden. I glanced back to the mast through which Sered had emerged, and saw a half-dozen imps that had crawled up from belowdecks sawing away at it, attempting to sever it from the base, where it met the deck.
In that moment, a brilliant flash of gold beside me took my vision for a moment. I thought I’d been fired upon by another cannon for a second, until I realized Morin was standing up, his armor clean and new, his face calm and determined.
“Better get back to the ship,” he said. He jogged to the mast and vanished through it, while I stared dumbfoundedly at his retreat. I checked where he had lain, and sure enough, his body wasn’t there. A fluttering to the aft of the Sins made me look up, to see Sariel and Tarsis-el – whose name I have since discovered means “Fallen Star” – settling onto the decking a short distance from me. I stabbed out a curse at Sariel, and an eyebite at him, focusing my will through the boon that Sybarron had granted me – and where I would have normally rent the devil’s soul, instead I planted in him the undeniable need to strike out and lash at Fallen Star. After that I made double-time to the sprouting mast and dove through it.
I found myself tumbling out of the foremast of the Waves of Grass, my companions clustering to her railing as we all watched the Seven Deadly Sins throw a shower of sparks and dip into the color line. In seconds she picked up speed and vanished in the far distance.
I lay on the deck for a moment, until a hand reached down to help me up. I looked up and found Morin’s face grinning down at me.
“Good to be back,” he said as I stood up.
“I bet it is,” I replied slowly. “Sorry to be the guy to point this out, but we haven’t exactly, as a group, had the best success with guys who spontaneously return from the dead. You were dead, weren’t you?”
“As a doornail.” He nodded.
I brushed myself off. The others were gathering around, watching.
“So…there’s not a diplomatic way to ask this, but what happened?”
“I went home, to the Maker’s Forge-house. I was offered a chance to continue my duty to stone and craft, and I accepted it.” He said it so matter-of-factly, as though it was just a trip to the river for water.
And in hindsight, it made sense. Here I was, considering deicide, and that’s a pretty grand scheme. That he should meet his own ruler and be granted a boon, certainly fell within the realm of possibility – probability, even. Looking at the peaceful expression on his face, it calmed me. Not like I was angry or upset, but just his presence was anchoring, as though he had the presence of a mountain behind him.
Here, truly was a Saint of Moradin. That gave me hope. Hope that our mission to find the brother to the Grand King and end the cycle of despair on the Bannerlands would be successful. Hope that we could bring Al’Veydra unto its own destiny. Hope that my people might be avenged.
Maybe even that I could win. For a long while I’d been in deep doubt that I would ever succeed in my self-appointed mission. Here was evidence that perhaps that mission mattered to more than just myself. Perhaps not as a primary goal of those involved, but that it held a measure of value to more than just me.
“You chose to return and continue with us – thank you. I can only assume the temptation to remain and take your place there was great, so my thanks are insufficient, but you have them anyway.”
He went serious for a moment, his thoughts elsewhere. Maybe on the memory of the Halls from which he’d come. Then his vision snapped back to me, to the here and now. “Yes, it will be a great day when I do take my place there. But for now, we have work ahead.”
“Brings tears to my eyes,” Karac grumbled. “You two done?”
“Let’s go.” I said. Zatsa was helping Shalvar up, holding a thick bandage to his head where he’d received a particularly nasty knock from Sariel. “He okay?”
The tree made some motion of agreement. Karac held up a hand with three fingers out. “How many fingers?”
Shalvar looked at him. “Those aren’t fingers, they’re sausages.”
“He’s alright.” Karac trumped up to the front of the vessel.
We re-located the green color line we’d been following, and re-entered it to continue on our way.
The color line we were on passed close enough to Arvandor that it had adopted its color, even though we would be a good travel distance from it when we exited. Some kind of small cluster of reflecting objects were gathered around the line there. When we dropped off it, shedding a great deal of our velocity, the flickers resolved themselves.
We could see Arvandor, far off, which appeared as a lime-green cloud of mist surrounded by a group of orbiting islets, with a single overhanging bright star. There were hundreds of tiny islands, but of them perhaps only twenty or thirty in view were of an appreciable size. When I say appreciable, I do mean large – Arvandor is a world unto itself, and although its bounds are limited, it does have full continents. The largest of these islets, though perhaps not themselves of continental magnitude, ranged from city-sized to hundreds of leagues in breadth.
Closer to us, though, was a sight of some concern. The wreckage of some kind of ship floated all around us, and moving among it were thick plates of black stone or metal, each emblazoned with a single glowing Word of deific power. The enormous plates seemed to maneuver in concert, keeping a strangely ordered coherence in their form.
Flying about among them were a group of what appeared to be magically-powered constructs, angelic forms eight to twelve feet in height or length. Had I not been in the Astral Sea I would have mistaken them for oversized Archons, but these were obviously of a different nature. They flew between us and another creature – an efreet – who was engaged in battle with them.
The elemental saw our vessel appear and in a burst of ash and spark began to fly towards us. He shouted ahead, “Save me and great riches will be yours!”
Sered shouted back “We want no part of this fight!”, and Karac called up to Shalvar, “Get us out of this.”
The efreet was easily the size of each of the angelic constructs, and as he flew he traded blows with two of them that had intercepted him along the way. He dodged expertly, but their strikes rang against his own blade and armor with palpable force even many yards away. He landed on the aft deck next to the helm and again implored with us: “Save me, I am a prince among my kind, you will be rewarded greatly for your help!”
The Waves of Grass had begun to move, angling away from the wreckage and this enormous divine engine of destruction. As she did, one of the plates further away from us rotated over, revealing a huge construct clinging to its face, fully twice the mass of the others we’d seen so far – making their number four and then the leader.
I charged at the efreet, weapons in hand, and shouted, “You will drop your weapons and take no harmful action to this ship or its passengers and crew!” I readied a spell in case it appeared my command would not hold.
The efreet recoiled, going into a defensive stance, and screamed back, “Fool! You will need these weapons against that!”
Deimos called out less-than-quietly, “This is not our fight,” as sparks began to crawl along his fingertips.
The huge red elemental continued, “My people send help even as we speak – help me!” A burst of light enveloped him at that point – one of the constructs had launched it. His skin cracked and blistered under the assault, and both Sered and Zatsa were caught in the blast as well. Sered moved to the aft deck opposite him, and I could see him lining up for an attack. Meanwhile, Karac charged the creature, swinging with his hammer. The efreet dodged the blow, but kept screaming “You fools! You’ll pay for this!”
It then lowered one hand, from which a burst of finely-wrought fire flew to singe the decking beneath his feet. As this took place, two of the constructs drew up beside the ship and began swinging deadly strokes with enormous blades. He countered them as best he could, parrying and dodging, but that he was overmatched was plainly obvious.
I hated that we’d ended up taking such a cowardly position, denying help to a stranger under attack. But also, it was not our fight that we’d been brought to, and my friends had chosen a side in this. I could not stand aside and let this play out without helping. Perhaps I could knock this creature unconscious, and in so doing the constructs would depart…
Deimos vanished below-decks, as I released an eyebite on the efreet. The elemental saw my spell working up and flung a shield up between us, deflecting a great portion of the power of the blow. I had hoped to knock him unconscious with it, but unfortunately all it did was throw him back a bit, his shield having absorbed most of my strike.
At that very moment, two of the angelic constructs rose from below the railing, floating alongside the Waves of Grass, each bearing a weapon – one, a flail, the other, a sword. The efreet must have sensed them, because he wheeled about to face them.
And was impaled on the sword. The enormous blade pierced him through, ejecting a large quantity of blood in a spray that fanned about the aft deck as the huge red humanoid slumped to the decking.
The two constructs held back, as if waiting for something, before silently returning to their runed platforms.
“What in the Nine Gates were those things?” I asked of no one in particular.
“Warwings,” Morin said. “That whole thing is a divine engine of war. Probably been here forever, a leftover from the Dawn War. The efreeti ship probably triggered it to attack because of their origin in the Elemental Chaos, same as the Primordials. The efreeti sided with the Primordials in that war, so the engine probably just has kept going.”
Longer answer than I expected. I was glad to hear it, though, the information was useful. I had hoped we could knock out the afflicted elemental, perhaps the warwings would have assumed it dead. At least then we could affect a rescue.
So much for that idea, though.
“What do we do with him?” Karac motioned at the body. “Search him?”
The efreet’s jewelry and other garments led me to believe he wasn’t lying about being a prince. “No, not a good plan. Either we get caught rifling the body, or we get caught holding or selling his things. That is not the kind of bad blood we want to get called down on us.”
Sered nodded. “Enough others already have issues with us, no sense in calling down more.”
“Let’s just push the body off and get out of here.” Karac volunteered. I had to agree.
While we were muscling the body off, Sered commented, “Efreet are evil anyway.”
I looked sharply at him. “What the hell does that mean? I think we’ve met enough creatures who were supposed to be evil that turned out to benefit us a lot more than just killing them would have. Do I need to remind you of Zur Nav? How about Tarsis-el, hm? You two seem to have had a bit in common there.”
He said very little. Nothing I could hear. I refrained from pursuing the topic of Tarsis-el, the Fallen Star, who supposedly arose from a “good” race. We’d have to discuss that soon, though.
I had a bit of a strange moment of epiphany there, while pointing that out. Though I am fast to recognize the lack of definition between racial tendencies towards good and evil, I myself have difficulty separating out servant versus master races. The halfwise, for instance, I reflexively consider them servile, slaves for others to use.
Perhaps Sered was simply accustomed to assigning comfortable ‘good’ and ‘evil’ labels to creatures, in a similar way that I associated some with being property. Still, as I had learned – and continued to learn – to break from my natural tendencies, he could as well.
Unfortunately, this time it cost someone their life. Hopefully it would not in the future.
The efreet’s body, as it tumbled off the aft of the Waves, crisped over. Deep within, red heat migrated up, cracking the skin and reducing the body to a glowing ember clothed in rich finery. I felt a certain sorrow once more, at the needless loss.
But I consigned myself to how it was. Had we not come along at that moment, he’d be just as dead. He had had no concern for our safety in bringing his fight to our deck.
I loathed myself a little for rationalizing it that way. He was going to die. What one of us wouldn’t have pursued an opportunity to survive in a case like that?
As Shalvar made towads Arvandor, the divine war-engine shrank into the middle distance. As it began fading from view entirely, another vessel materialized out of the mists. From this distance, it was hard to make out, but from the sudden flashes and lines of light, and the distant thunderous echoes, it had to be the backup the efreet had said was coming.
Best we got out of there.
And get we did, sailing on to Arvandor with more than a little urgency.
Arvandor – at least, the part near which we entered the water – was different than I expected. As we parted the veil surrounding it, settling into a salt sea whose surface was rippled with a light swell, its depths a measure of blue like the deepest gems of a Dwur horde. I thought I saw fish, or at least something of might, swimming beneath us, their indistinct shapes rippling in and out of view. What little waves there were possessed slight caps, each a model in perfection, a clinging foam of clean white. Above, a clear sky shaded in deep blue made it difficult to tell where the horizon line truly resided, the cloudless vista either giving way to dawn or settling into dusk, it was still too early to tell.
Before us stretched a shoreline reminiscent of that which we’d seen when we first ventured on our way to the Taer Dian Loresh: enormous old-growth wood grew practically to the shoreline, trees many hundreds of feet tall, birds circling with loud voices, and blooms – countless blooms – sprinkled upon the trees as if an enormous florist had made place-settings of the entire shore. It truly was very similar to the Vastwood, though considerably less cold. I also hoped that perhaps the ocean was not patrolled by whale-hunting dragons, like Vasylim.
Directly ahead, we were greeted by the sight of a large settlement: Faeyan Verdaya. The port city’s docks were home to a large variety of ships – some, like ours, of traditional Eladrin make, others more functional, the mark of human manufacture. Still others took on a wholly alien styling, barely recognizable as seagoing craft at all; one even resembled nothing so much as a floating castle, complete with towers capped with minarets and flapping banners. Another seemed to be carved from an enormous magnolia blossom.
The city was a combination of stone, wood, marble, and cloth – all of a broad range of colors, cheerfully greeting visitors at the docks with a welcoming and festive appearance. Greenery played as much a role in the architecture of Feyan Verdaya as it did in the Faewild, which is to say even occasional buildings appeared to be constructed within trees directly. The land curved up from the water, developing into mountains deep in the distance, their purple shadows barely visible over the skyline of the city. I found myself wondering if the mountains held settlements as rich in vibrant color as this one.
One could be happy, living here – or, I corrected myself, dying and finding oneself here.
So long as one wasn’t pursued by the Legions of Hell, that is.
I put such thoughts away from my mind, as Shalvar navigated the Waves of Grass into a small port cove to the far side of the city. He had explained to me early in the journey that Ereliya, being a dryad and bound to the Waves, was rendered to a state reminiscent of winter dormancy by her distance from her home world. While traveling in the Astral Sea, she was unable to manifest bodily outside of the ship, and her influence over its navigation was limited. This didn’t seem to stop the railings from growing throns at unexpected – and unwelcome – moments, however. I think it must also have put a bit more strain on Shalvar than he cared for. I wondered for a time what manner of offer was given to him that would convince him to embark on such a voyage, given his already-successful career sailing the Sea of Scales.
Regardless, we pulled up to a small dock around the back side of the city, in a sheltered cove a good distance from the main traffic area. Trees overhung the dock, brushing into the water in places, small tufted buds spread up and down the long, supple branches. Now and then a breeze would touch the boughs, and small spatters of light green leaves would drift to the sea. Beneath, streamers of green plants drifted in a relaxed current, tended by schools of sucker-fish the length of my arm.
We drew up to the wooden dock, and both I and Karac went over the rails with thick ropes to moor our vessel solidly.
There were several Eladrin waiting on it, closer to shore, when we arrived. Three approached us, intently. Recognition dawned on me swiftly – one of them was Galeal.
The fey warrior raised his hand in greeting as we tied down the vessel. “Well met,” he called.
I stood straight from where I’d been tying the vessel down, listening to my back snap with the movement. I waved back. “I don’t know whether I should say so, given what you doubtless had to go through to reach these shores,” I said. “It is pleasing to meet you here, though, and I find myself happy in the knowledge that you have done so.”
“Kind words, and yes, I have passed from the realm of mortal ken, I am Ruesti now.”
“Ruesti?” Morin asked.
“The exalted of Corellon, we are all Ruesti.” He made a broad motion with his arm, encompassing all around him. “But come, we have been expecting you, and have made ready for your arrival.”
“Expecting us?” Karac asked.
“Indeed, those of the Jessil Kerith, and the Lady Syntira has been in communication with us.” He held out a small paper.
“This looks like your old home,” I said, looking around.
“Indeed it should, for Aerovan was modeled after Feyan Verdaya, and the Vastwood was tended to give a similar appearance to the woods here. It was the hunts within the Vastwood that gave us an experience like unto which would be found here after we departed our mortality.” He followed my gaze.
He turned back to us quickly. “So have you determined yet, the outcome of the prophecy?”
“Excuse me?” Sered said.
“The prophecy – one to die, one to be enslaved, one to be a prince, have you made that determination yet?”
We muttered amongst ourselves for a few minutes, debating which of the conditions of that particular prophecy would be satisfied by past events unfolding. I remembered the old elvish woman, her fluttering scalpel, and what remained of the dove she had cloven in two.
“No, I don’t believe we have an answer to that, I don’t think we saw any such occurrence.” Sered said.
Galeal dismissed the question. “It is of no consequence. Prophecy being what it is, there are rarely any events that can be folded neatly into its confines. Please. You must be tired from your journey, and with twilight upon us, it is almost mealtime. We have rooms for you.” He and his companions led us away, to a long, low building of living wood grown around a stone framework.
The meal was as always with Fey foodstuffs – intensely enjoyable, but difficult to recall in specific. I believe that fey chefs work with glamour in their kitchens, purely out of instinct, not any sense of malice or intentional disguise. Their intent to produce an admirable table simply results in their inherent magical talents finding expression in the foods they serve. We related our journey’s happenings to Galeal and his associates, while they described something of what our next leg would look like.
They had a box at hand, one which we were to take with us on our search for the Red Stair, the passageway that leads to Carceri. Apparently once in every very long while, moonlight falls on the site of the stair in just such a way that the stair will materialize – and did, one year prior. It was then, a year ago, that Bow – our Carifal Rath – found himself taking the stair and ending up locked in Carceri. There was some talk of what might have become of him, and a few second thoughts were had about pursuing him into the Red Prison if he had already been there a year. His prospects for survival were slim, but I pointed out that this was a man who had survived for over a century of time wandering the Feywild alone, and that would indicate the ability to cope with…adverse circumstances. In the end, we decided to make the effort anyway, for the outcome of our journey was hinged on his presence – and the lack of his seal would weaken our position considerably. If there was any chance at all of his surviving, we had to make the attempt.
The box, an ornate wooden affair, encrusted with runes burnt into its surface, apparently contained moonlight captured at just the moment the Red Stair was made evident – and the runes upon it comprised a ritual that would provide the Stair with an excuse to form. At the correct moment in the ritual, the box would be thrown open, the moonlight escape, and the Stair would form.
At least, that was the theory.
Galeal offered us two means to reach the probable location – one, slower, but safer, followed the shoreline. The second, faster, but more likely subject to encountering the aberrations that leaked into this plane from the Red Prison, passed through the deep forest. After much debate, we decided that time was of the essence in this adventure, and we chose the forest route. Our departure was thus decided for the morning.
Both ways led us to the ruins of Carantharas, a city formerly like this one, though more militarized. It had been overrun thousands of years ago by a string of abominations that had escaped en masse from Carceri and laid waste to the city. None lived there any longer, at least not of the original inhabitants. Even the hunting parties seeking out abominations avoided the place.
And we had to get there. Ah yes, par for the course for us. I really, really looked forward to the day when our lives led us to an easy path.
The night passed relatively uneventfully – until the following morning, when we were brought from our beds before dawnlight to a small banquet hall. Galeal was there, along with two other Eladrin attendants. Outside the hall, Galeal held up a hand and addressed us:
“Here, you are guests, as are those inside this room. Arvandor and Feyan Verdaya participate in commerce, and those who come to trade are granted safe passage so long as they obey the rules of this place.”
“Why are you telling us this?” I asked.
“No violence may be done to you here, nor any to other guests, unless and until they should violate the laws here. Do you understand?” He looked at us all inturn.
“He means we aren’t going to like what we find in there,” Sered said.
Galeal nodded. “Will you enter?”
I shrugged. The others nodded or otherwise indicated their agreement.
The doors were opened.
Inside, standing at the right hand of the head of the table, stood a devil, his back to us. He had a woman chained beside him, and another standing freely at his other side. He was inspecting a tapestry on the wall with great intensity. He was the size of a man, with deep skin the color of wood, grey horns streaked with light ivory stripes that swept back and upwards past his ears. Athletically built, his features were largely covered by a suit of chain and a tabard bearing the symbol of the Ruby Rod. He could have been Shadrim.
Probably had been, come to think of it.
“The work your people put into these is admirable,” the devil said. “My compliment to the weaver. Was he or she Ruesti as well?” He turned to face us.
Galeal ignored the question. “Members of Fellbane, this is…”
“Callax,” I finished for him. “Yes, we met briefly, long ago.”
“You remembered! I’m flattered. Some of you I don’t recall, however. New replacements for the others you’ve managed to get killed, I suppose?” The infernal we’d met in Vor Kragal, accompanying a party of Morvreyans whom we’d fought in the streets of the ruined city on our first visit there.
He yanked on the chain he held, and the woman at the other end of it went down on all fours behind him. He promptly sat on her back, which she accepted soundlessly.
“For almost a year now, my master’s plans have found frustration. At first, it seemed mere chance, ill fortune, or the plans of his rival were to blame. Yet there has been a recurring theme…” he gestured in the air, gazing into the middle distance. His eyes snapped back into focus. “Please, sit, we have much to discuss, and it is yet early. Ruesti, fetch us refreshment per our privilege as guests,” he snapped his fingers in Galeal’s direction. The fey warrior blanched at the insult, but turned to his two attendants and nodded. They departed, I assumed to retrieve breakfast of some sort.
“Where was I? Oh yes, a recurring theme. Fellbane. Such an ambitious name for what appears to be such a bumbling, ragtag mix of misfits.” He stopped for a moment, pulling a cigar from his coat. His deep mahogany skin flickered in the light of a flame sparked from his own thumb as he lit the tobacco, puffing and sucking noisily at it. “No offense intended, of course. It just seems that throughout this long string of accidents and mistakes, the name Fellbane seems to crop up more often than not. In Parlay with my counterparts serving my master’s rival, they have experienced similar occurrences.”
“The drow outpost of Cozule, the escape of the citizens of Tarsis, the raiding of the Library of the Jessil Kerith, even my own expedition to Vor Kragal, each a resounding failure by its stakeholders, and each coming to rest on the shoulders of Fellbane.” He rapped his knuckles on the table.
He let out a long breath of acrid smoke. “And so it is that my master, the Lord of the Ruby Rod, finally took notice, and tasked me with finding out what the difficulty was, and putting a stop to it.”
We all waited silently, arrayed around our end of the room.
“What, nothing to say? Am I that much of a dullard?”
“Not per se, no, but I think the rest of us are waiting for you to get to the point.” I said.
“Well.” He pulled back on the cigar, which had developed a half-inch of ash on its tip. “You encountered the Seven Deadly Sins some time yesterday. I believe in your parlance, that would be considered ‘the stick.’ Obviously, that didn’t work. Ergo, I am here to present you with ‘the carrot.’ That is the correct term, is it not?” He drew back on the cigar again.
“Usually, that’s the phrase,” Deimos grumbled.
The two Eladrin Ruesti arrived, bearing large trays of foods – cheeses, breads, pots of coffee, and the like were laid out before us.
“Ooohh, speaking of carrots! I love coming here,” Callax said. “Arvandor has the most amazing vegetables. I have a love affair with the tomatoes. Nothing like little Jesse and I do,” he tugged at the chain attached to the woman providing his chair. “Oh no, but love nonetheless.”
He waved quickly at the table, and his other attendant set to assembling him a plate. “Coffee this morning, dear, you know how I like it.”
He then looked over at us again. “Have a seat, I can’t hurt you here, and my mission is entirely peaceful.”
I looked at the others, then shrugged and put a plate together for myself. I picked a place not directly across from Callax, but close enough to provide a clear ear. A few of the others remained standing near the door.
“Now, where was I?” Callax wondered. “Oh yes, Fellbane, Fellbane, Fellbane. It seems you turn up everywhere.” He downed a glass of juice in one swallow, his throat distending grossly as he did so. It returned to normal seconds later.
“You can imagine my surprise when I did a little research into your background. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you are even involved with this fight. For millennia, my Lord and the Abyssals have fought over the territories of your world, reaping the harvest it grants us. It’s a world of men, in all their fickle and faithless nature. Humans. Worthless to anyone other than us. Yet here you stand…” he motioned across us all with a half-eaten roast quail.
“Fellbane, fighting pointlessly against both sides. What could you possibly hope to gain from all of this? A Deva who should be wandering these seas freely, two dwur with no interest in human affairs – you’d probably rather be digging in a hole deep underground, eh?” He gestured at Morin, then squinted for a second, as if to clear his vision. “Well, perhaps not you, you’ve business elsewhere, but you at least!” With this he waved an open hand at Karac dismissively.
“And then two Shadrim, who by all I can see have forgotten utterly which side of this fight they should be standing on. Here you are, not a human among you, raising a little town and making gestures as if you wanted to belong among them. Humans, who would probably burn each of you alive if given a semi-conscious priest with a mean streak to lead them. What in the world are you people thinking?”
He shook his head. “I’m here to ask just that – why bother?”
Convincing point. I hadn’t considered it, but he was to some degree correct – there weren’t humans among us, though we knew plenty.
Sered spoke first. “We fight against injustice, whatever form it may take, and your war is the embodiment of that.”
“Oh yes,” Callax didn’t even look up. “And were you serving justice when you killed Kaza’el and pushed his corpse off your vessel? That was his mark of vengeance on the deck I saw, was it not?”
Sered remained silent.
“Oh, yes, convenient when justice comes all neatly wrapped up in a form like mine, isn’t it? Horns, tail, slaves, very easy to see and strike out against, hmm?” He rapped upon his own horns with his knuckles for emphasis. “Whose law provides that justice, hmm? These humans would fall to warring over their own petty squabbles, territory, women,” he slapped the posterior of his standing companion. “Not that you’re not worth fighting over, my dear,” he said patronizingly.
“My Lord brings order to the squabbles. He provides a framework in which justice is guaranteed.”
“By limiting choices so that the only way is doomed to end up in hell?” Deimos asked.
“If that is their fate, indeed so,” Callax replied. “Your kind were the beneficiaries of our generosity. Lost to the elements you may be, but you cannot deny the heritage of your blood. Just as you seek your destiny among the empty, forgotten thrones of the Primordials, so too did others of your race find destinies that led them to many places other than Avernus.”
“But where are my manners? I mention carrots and do not deliver,” he shook his head again. He snapped his fingers, and his attendant looked to him. “The gifts,” he said.
She turned and leaned down behind him, standing with a large oiled wooden case. Callax motioned her to put it on the table, where she then unsnapped the catches and lifted thelid.
“These are gifts for you all from my master. They are given without obligation, in honor of your victory over Sariel and the Seven Deadly Sins, of which I am now master.” Within the case was a coiled whip, barbed with small razor-sharp spikes, and five tiny daggers, each appearing to be the claw of an animal and soaked in some kind of metal. Come to think of it, the whip looked like a tail of something.
We all gazed at these things with a healthy skepticism.
“Oh come now, I gave my word, no harm will befall you here.” He looked melodramatically stricken. “What would you take me for?”
Zatsa, which had remained silent up to now, turned its head – do plants have heads? – to Galeal. “Do curses fall within the boundaries of the protection offered to guests?”
Galeal nodded. “No harm may be perpetrated upon any other while still a guest in the house of Correllon. The gifting of a curse upon an object would be considered harmful, and would invalidate such status.”
Still no one moved. I finally became impatient. If we were up against a coming battle, we were going to need all the resources we could lay our hands on, even if that meant items we would barter. At the very least, we could trade some of these for ritual components if we needed. I stood and leaned over the table, laying hand on the whip.
“Why? I mean, why these?” Karac looked at the contents of the box. “They’re certainly of fine manufacture, but what is the significance? Why a whip? Why daggers?”
“Good point,” I added. “The Lord of the Rod makes no move that hasn’t some thought behind it.”
“These are the claws and tail of Sariel, the former captain of the Seven Deadly Sins. His reward for his failure was not simply displacement from his cabin on board.” Callax waved over the weapons with a hand. “His defeat is to your benefit, and although disappointed my Lord was, he acknowledges your victory in this fashion.”
I stood and walked around to look over the weapons. “I will accept this,” I said. I thought further about it, and seeing Sered still standing by the door. “And since Sered will likely not avail himself of this, I will take his as well.” At the very least, we could trade these for ritual components. Given the nature of the fight we were likely to be engaging in, we might need more than a few revitalizing spells cast upon us, and if Sered let this one pass, we’d all end up paying for it later.
“Arrogance always was a failing of our kind,” Callax said pointedly as I withdrew one of the daggers. “Taking a lion’s share, or seeking to usurp that which is not yours, yes, the old pride hasn’t lost its color.”
I smiled at the jab.
Deimos also took a dagger, as did Karac. Callax pushed the box with its remaining contents down the table, dismissing it.
“I also bring an offer,” Callax then said, hands flat on the table. “It shall be good this day only, as I have the Sins moored in the docks as we speak, and I shall depart at sunset.”
“Oh, here it comes,” Karac said.
“Indeed.” Callax looked at each of us in turn. “It is simple: stand down, step back. Take no further role in this fight, and peace shall continue to grace Al’Veydra.”
My attention focused in on the mention of the town. Callax continued, “My Lord will build his new empire, and will even find roles of significance for some of you. Make no mistake, the profits for all of you would be significant, regardless of your station in the new order.”
“And if we don’t?” Sered asked quietly.
“Then Al’Veydra will be burnt. My Lord will see to it personally that your little hamlet will not be spared from the horrors of the war to come. All which you treasure shall be found, abused, broken, and destroyed. There is also the matter of the family of Kaza’el, the efreet prince – his family are quite beside themselves at his death.” He smirked casually. “I’m sure they would welcome the news that his killers had been found. They probably would like to have words with you. In fact, several of their representatives are combing the dockside, seeking a vessel that was spotted leaving the area.”
I looked over at Galeal, seething inside and wanting few things more at that moment than to freeze this infernal and shatter him upon the floor. “Do threats constitute a violation of status?”
The Ruesti shook his head, negative. Where the dawn had seemed certain to come, the light had adopted a grey shade, and a slight breeze was coming in through the window, softly stirring the drapes.
Callax grinned at me, his oversized canines adding a feral mask to his features. “Touched something, did I? Oh yes, lest you think I had forgotten you, Azrael, my Lord has an offer for you as well. He admits that perhaps the two of you have gotten off on the wrong foot, and he is willing to wipe the slate clean.”
I sat back, not sure what was being said. “What?”
“If you are willing to accompany me this evening, my Lord would like to visit with you, and discuss a mutually agreeable settlement to your differences. His expression to me was that he would be most generous.” He had his hands on the table, and was tapping the fingers of his right in a steady rhythm. “You are, after all, scion of a noble house, albeit one that has been abandoned for such a very long time.”
“He wants me to just walk in, and he’ll let bygones be bygones, is that it?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “How is it that He who condemned my people to destruction, who abandoned them in their time of need, in an attempt to end me, can simply turn around and make such an offer?”
I saw Sered glaring reproachfully at me. Was there no pleasing the creature? Would he have smiled if I’d simply said ‘alright, let’s talk about princedoms!’?
Callax looked at me coolly. “Perhaps not quite that simply, but that is accurate for purposes of summary. What occurred in the past is just that, the past. But know this – as I said, these offers expire upon my departure this evening. And as with the issue of Al’Veydra, spurning this offer would be…unwise. You are being given a chance to return to my Lord’s good graces, and that is far more than many ever get. You should consider yourself gifted simply for the opportunity. If you refuse, there will be no quarter given – and you shall be marked for all eternity, the infinite Legions will be unleashed upon you, and there will be no safe place where you can flee from us.”
Time for a little honesty here – this is my journal, after all – I was extremely tempted at this. And not a little bit worried at the threat. I had lived this long only because my presence was a small matter, and an inconsequential affair in the machinations of the Lord of Tyranny. This posed the case that the Legions would now be actively tasked with my pursuit, at least in the form of a substantial reward for my life or death. Having the mark of the Lord of Hell upon your brow is not a comfortable sensation.
And the thought of a dukedom of my own was a sore, sore temptation. Rulership of my own domain…I did entertain that in silence for some time.
But what safety could I reasonably expect? I just could not believe that the Lord of the Hells would so easily cast aside his discomfort at my continued existence. No, so long as Ilived, I would be a threat to him – whether directly or as a rallying point for those who would oppose him, it did not matter. It would not be long before my head would be gracing the walls of his castle somewhere.
Deimos spoke up. “We must really be getting under someone’s skin, to be noticed like this.”
Sered gave a start, apparently not having considered this. “Yes, I suppose we must if our mission is deemed this important to upset.”
The barest shadow of a frown crossed Callax’ face, but he was a professional at his negotiation, and didn’t let it linger. “Think what you will, Fellbane. I have said my piece, it is yours now to contemplate.” He stood and picked up an orange, hefting it in his hand. Motioning to the box with the remaining daggers, he added, “Do with those as you will.”
With a snap of his fingers, the retainer who had been standing walked to the door and opened it. Callax looked down and tugged the chain of his other, who had borne him as a chair, silently through the entire conversation. She stood, wiping her hands off on her thick skirt, chains jingling slightly. She looked up, her dark brown hair falling away from her face, and I recognized her at last.
Her name was Missy. She’d been a barmaid at the Death’s Head Inn.
Callax smiled at what must have been a plainly legible expression on my face. “I trust you will know which vessel is the Sins.”
With that, he walked out. As if on cue, a soft rain began to fall outside.
“Well, that’s problematic,” Morin said. He motioned at Deimos. “Still, as you said, we must be doing something to get that kind of attention.”
“What do we do? We can’t just let the town be destroyed,” Karac was clenching his fists. “But if we turn back…”
“Then everyone loses.” I said. “This can only end with the Bannerlands free. We would save Al’Veydra only to have it fall to the new Empire, and all its people would be lost in the fullness of time.”
Sered looked over at me. “I really don’t like to admit this, but you’re right. We have to continue, no matter what that implies.”
I tucked the weapons under my belt. “Then I suggest we get ready. If we depart today, then let’s be about it.”
“But…what about Al’Veydra?” Karac was getting angry.
I shook my head. “I’ve lost one home already. We will have to rely on the other members of Fellbane already there to protect it from direct assault. If anything remains on our return, we can cleanse it and restore what we’re able.”
Karac shook his head. “There’s gotta be a way.”
Sered looked at him neutrally. “What do you suggest?”
“I’m going to go see him.”
I watched him stand up. “Don’t let him set you up. He’s going to make you feel like the destruction visited upon the town is your fault. Don’t buy it. They are threatening our home, and it will be them who are responsible for any harm that befalls it. It’s easy to point the finger and say ‘look what you made me do,’ but that’s their sick logic. Our best hope is to defeat them utterly.”
“And once they do, we visit retribution on their king?” Sered asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Convenient how that works out for you.”
I frowned. “There is nothing convenient about this. Do you think I want this? Don’t you think I miss my family? My house? My civilization? Convenient that I have a death-mark upon me by the Lord of Tyranny himself? Where, I beg of you, where is there an ounce of convenience in all of this?”
I walked out without waiting for an answer. I heard Karac and Morin muttering amongst themselves as I retreated to my rooms.
* * *
We set out perhaps two hours later, Galeal accompanying us. Karac had returned, having unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a peaceful outcome for Al’Veydra. His expression was troubled – I’m sure he wasn’t comfortable with the outcome of the discussions with Callax. When I approached him, he handed me a bottle.
It was wine. It was one of mine, from the Death’s Head distillery.
He told me that Callax had brushed him off; he’d been in discussion with two efreet when the Dwur had arrived, but he’d given that bottle to him with farewell.
Karac had also seen the petrified medusa’s head, Nala’s head, on the wall aboard the Seven Deadly Sins.
I had to face it, it was likely that Al’Veydra was gone – or at least, that the Inn and perhaps the distillery itself were no more. I tried not to think too much about it, instead adding them to the tally.
It would be a minor addition atop the loss of an entire Empire, but every stitch in this weave mattered to me.
Galeal led us, mostly in silence, for hours. We paused to eat once or twice, and none of us had a great deal to say.
The Feywild forests are like ours, but amplified. The plants grow lush and thick, heavy with life, and every moving thing seems ready to bite, sting, or eat a traveler. Come to think of it, so do some of the plants. The colors are so vibrant there, that when you return you feel as though someone has washed the hues right out of the Middle World.
Arvandor’s forests were nothing like that.
The trees were stately, enormous, and spaced well apart from each other. The ground between them was generally clear, just settled under a thick blanket of leaves and needles. If it resembled anything, it truly did have the appearance of the Vastwood – strong, old-growth forest with a canopy far above our heads – at least twenty feet before the first branches. Rather than the thick overgrown jungle of the Feywild near Al’Veydra’s borders, there was an elegance, a stateliness, to this forest. It gave me pause to wonder at which was the reflection – was the Vastwood a shade of this forest truly, or perhaps was it the other way around?
Our journey was enjoyable – and went without interruption, much to my surprise. We found our way eaily, Galeal showing us along game trails and riding lanes. Shortly before evening, the shoreline crept in towards where we were walking, revealing a deep secluded cove in front of us – and in it, a large vessel, perhaps half again the size of the Waves of Grass, but of considerably less worthy construction. It was definitely seaworthy, but its bound up sails were a hodge-podge of linen and fur, its wood warped and discolored in places.
On the shore around it were a series of tents and shacks, perhaps ten in all, from which rose small streamers of smoke. Some movement could be seen, though it was hard to determine at distance what race they were – human, elf, eladrin, once past two hundred yards or so it becomes difficult to distinguish without lengthy observation.
Before we could decide whether to approach or avoid the small outpost, one of its inhabitants must have spotted us. The rest vanished into their huts, while one came forward – an elf by the look of him, but clad in strange furs and bearing weapons of a make I would not have associated with his kind. I looked around at the others. Sered finally said, “Oh all right, we might as well. It’s getting on to nighttime anyway.”
As we came down the hill towards the cove, the elf held up a hand and called out in their lilting tongue: “Halt and declare yourselves. We recognize neither your people nor your purpose.”
“What’d he say?” Morin asked. I then realized I might be the only one who was able to speak with the elf, if he did not have the common tongue.
“He is telling us to approach no closer. He wants to know who we are,” Zatsa told him. At least I wouldn’t be stuck translating all night.
Sered waved at me, gesturing me toward the elf. “Go on, then, you’re the Emissary.”
I shrugged. “Hail. We are Fellbane, hunters of aberrations in these woods, on a journey on behalf of the lords of this land. We mean you no harm.”
The elf slit his eyes suspiciously. Something was wrong with his eyes, but I couldn’t begin to say what. “How do I know this? Many of the aberrations can adopt a pleasing form only to lull one’s senses and prepare for an ambush.”
I thought it over for a moment. “You do not know, and I can’t think of any way to prove it to you.” I drew Dreaming Fire and held it hilt out. “But I, Azrael of the House Macreane, give you my word that I mean no harm to you or yours, and will lift no hand in aggression against you.”
The fey thought this over, and nodded. “Put away your weapon, and come down. We have food and drink to share. I am Korvath.” With that he turned and began walking towards the center of the camp.
I looked back at the others, who gazed expectantly at me. Zatsa had been whispering a translation to them. Karac made a harrumphing sound, and walked forward. I followed, and the rest fell in line with me.
“On business of the lords here, you say? We also hunt these woods for aberrations,” the elf said as he reached the center. A large bonfire was blazing there, surrounded by log benches of various sizes – some quite large. “Have you had any luck?”
“Not so far,” I replied. “We are only a day out of our venture, and have several days left to travel before we expect any serious opportunities to arise. Yourselves?”
“Not in over a week. Our vessel has been foundered here for almost five, but we are happy to have the chance to hunt here.” He stirred the fire with a stick. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is the nature of your mission, and what lord is it that sends you into such dangerous grounds?”
“We seek the red stair of Carceri, to effect a rescue of one within.”
“Carceri? Aren’t you a little far from your destination?”
“A gateway of sorts opens here from time to time, which will enable us to depart.” I offered.
“Still, it sounds as though someone doesn’t have your best interests in mind. How do you propose to escape?” His eyebrows rose in surprise at my mention of the place.
“The border between this world and that are permeable here, hence the frequent escapes of abominations from the Red Prison.” I offered. “We hope to exploit the same tricks in the barriers that they do.”
“And if you can find none?” He stirred up smoke and ash with the stick he was prodding the fire with.
“Well, then we’ll have to work out some other alternative.”
“I believe you might have a flaw in your plan, Shadrim,” he grinned slyly over the fire. “Who is it that sends you on such a hazardous quest?”
“Agents of Corellon,” I lied. Best not to invoke the Jessil Kerith or the rest here. “He felt the one we seek to rescue was imprisoned wrongly, and has tasked us with the effort.”
“Truly? Corellon sends you?” Korvath was very interested in this, though given his place here I wasn’t sure why it was such an affair to him. “He must not care for you overmuch.”
“Well, technically not me. Our group is nominally headed by Sered here,” I pointed over to the deva, who was looking around and listening to Zatsa’s translations. “It was he that received the mission.”
Zatsa was looking down at the ground at something, and kept cocking its…I was going to say ‘head’, though I suppose “clump of branches sporting what I took to be its eyes” is more accurate…but I’ll use ‘head’ for brevity’s sake – anyway, it kept cocking its head this way and that. It seemed to be looking at something on the ground, trying to see it different ways. I glanced down to see what it was looking at, but aside from a great many footprints ranging in size from that of a normal human to a far larger humanoid, I couldn’t really figure out what was getting him agitated. It glanced up at me, and said something, but all I could make out was “Feet.”
Feet?
“I see. We too, as I mentioned, hunt these woods at the behest of our god. The abominations that roam here are tough, very tough, and dangerous. They bring much glory to those who defeat them.” He put the stick in the fire and left it there while he walked around it toward us. “But nothing brings glory to the victor more than to defeat the chosen of CORELLON!”
His voice elevated to a basso scream as he said this, while his body…inflated to an enormous size. His face tore at the center, huge tusks protruding hog-like from his lower jaw. He’d drawn his weapon and in a swift move slammed it down upon the ground before him, sending a shock-wave of force that knocked Sered and I back a good six or eight feet and set my ears ringing. When I got my bearings again, I rolled over fast and rocked to my feet, to find myself face to face with an Oni – a relative of the ogres, but far more dangerous. Where an ogre is a cruel brute of magnificent strength and ferocity, he is also intensely stupid.
The Oni have no such limitation. Their minds work as quickly as any race known, and to my recollection the only thing that kept them from dominance was that they bred too slowly to populate an empire. They are vicious relatives of the ogre, both belonging to the Reddalkan family (by Shadrim nomenclature) sharing some characteristics with them – notably, size, teeth, a similarly-shaped pupil, and most notably diet. Ogres and Oni will eat practically anything. I remember one folk-tale of an ogre subsisting on a diet of basaltic lava rocks for over a year, but that was hearsay. I can’t imagine that creature surviving taking more than one or two dumps, and even if it did, I can’t imagine it being in a good enough mood – ever – to let someone escape to talk about it. Regardless of what they can live on, there is no doubt about what they prefer to live on. That is generally the flesh of other thinking creatures, the more culturally gifted the better. Personally, I think it’s a recessive inferiority complex, but it may be a cultural push to possess the power of others through consumption of their flesh.
All this academic clap-trap is certainly interesting in a college of the arcane, but when faced with a slavering example of a Reddalkan food critic, it takes on a new perspective.
Korvath had stepped closer still after the initial blast and swung a huge fist in a vicious uppercut that caught Sered as he rose from being prone, and flipped the deva head-over-heels directly over me. I’m certain I heard his jaw snap shut at the blow, and hoped he’d remembered to keep his tongue in. He fell unceremoniously in a heap behind me, and let out a moan of pain.
The others had mobilized, but looking around, all the tents and shacks were bursting with enemies – there were at least six orcs, perhaps more, two large war-trolls, and one enormous troll that could have been the spitting image of Veyd himself.
Each had had one of its eyes gouged roughly from its socket.
I sank a curse in the spirit of Korvath, and stepped through a rift to put me near the huge Veyd look-alike. Flinging a spray of ice slivers at the monstrous troll, I locked his legs to the ground with a casing of ice and whispered, “Stay put for a while, will you?” I snapped a curse into it for good measure, and teleported away adjacent to one of the huts.
Karac had faced off against Korvath, while Sered climbed to his feet and wobbled after him. Deimos had backed off to a safe distance and was sizzling lightning into one of the war trolls, and Morin planted his hammer directly in the face of an orc, shattering its skull and sending a red-and-white slurry jetting out the back of its skull. Zatsa was streaming across the campsite, and buried its fingers in the soil some distance from the second war troll. Within a second, enormous roots sprung from the earth at the troll’s feet, wrapping its legs in tight tendrils almost to its waist.
Turning back to the fight, Zatsa nearly walked into a crackling lasso of lightning that Deimos was whipping around about himself. It jumped back just as Deimos let loose with an arcing blast that chained four or five of the creatures together, which utterly destroyed the rest of the orcs and raised steam jetting up from the hair and harnesses of both war trolls, vaporized perspiration making miniature cloudscapes above each.
Meanwhile Sered and Karac were engaged in a fierce fight with Korvath, who was rifting his way about the camp and flinging bolts of shadow at them both.
I settled on one of the war trolls and charged him, a long sweep of Dreaming Fire leaving vortices of fading mist behind it. The troll saw the stroke coming and parried with its shield, following with a quick swing of its cudgel around the edge which caught me – stupidly – by surprise and sent me sprawling several yards away. My strike was not without consequence, as I saw the shield smoulder faintly where I hit, but it was nowhere near the definitive measure I’d hoped for.
I couldn’t spend a lot of time considering this, as for the next few seconds I spent my best efforts trying not to be pasted beneath that cudgel. Rolling left and right, I at last got a good moment to focus and rifted twenty or thirty feet off to buy time to get to my feet. I made the rift intentionally leaky, the blast where I’d been was sufficient to surround the troll with a small pack of nightmare spirits, which he brushed away like stinging flies as he gave chase. Still, it had the desired effect, slowing him to prevent him from catching up right away. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Korvath was giving my two companions a drubbing, and whispered off a quick spell of prescience.
Korvath suddenly took on a ghostly halo, the result of my spell, which was in the form of himself – but himself only moments in the future, more solid where his fate would more likely bring him, effectively broadcasting to everyone exactly where to strike in anticipation of where he would be when the blow landed. Sered and Karac immediately shouted and swung, and from a short distance off Deimos also cut loose with a blast that encompassed both Korvath and the Veyd-lookalike, who had broken free from my bindings and had come running up on them.
Karac saw the incoming avalanche of troll, and did some sort of twirling spin – much like a ballerina, though he probably wouldn’t get along well with that assessment – and met the enormous troll head-on. Okay, well, knee-on. I heard the resounding snap of bone as his axe met the metal greave of the creature just below the knee, and the momentum of its charge sent it spinning away, howling with rage and agony.
I grinned with satisfaction at this, right up until I saw that cudgel again. swinging for my head. I ducked in time, but caught what felt like the majority of the blow on my shoulder. I have to say, armor is a great thing, my leather being just mobile enough to give me the flexibility I need. But blunt weapons have a habit of sending their love straight through armor, doesn’t really matter what kind. Much as the old joke about hanging goes – it isn’t the rope or the fall that kills you, it’s the short stop at the end – armor is great at protecting you from edges and points seeking out your innards, but it’s not so hot at preventing harm from impacts.
This one sent me sprawling yet again, almost into the bonfire. I rifted myself towards one of the huts, and crawled inside as fast as I could, hoping against hope that it was empty. As luck would have it, it was. The dilapidated old structure was dark inside, and the holes in the roof were the ony source of light. I got to my knees, trying to catch my breath for a second before running out to rejoin the fray, when the light suddenly lessened. Looking up, I saw the face of the troll peering in through one of the holes, a grin spread wide across his crooked and decaying teeth. The empty socket in its face squinched down, I assume in thought.
The face vanished from the hole before I could poke its remaining eye out with a well-placed spell. I stood, turning to face the door, readying myself.
And that was when it brought the building down on me. I remember seeing the roof and its supporting beams coming down, and no more.
* * *
As it turned out, the others had killed Korvath and driven off the giant Veyd, and eventually my own assailant. I’d been dragged out of the building, Morin and Zatsa tending the injured. I was only out a few minutes, fortunately, but I felt like I could sleep for another two days. A deep gash had been sliced into my chest, and Morin told me I had probably broken a rib or two. All in all, lucky to survive.
We took stock of the area, finding little of interest or value in the camp. As the others looked over the gear left over, it became clear that these were no ordinary trolls and orcs. They’d been the exalted of Gruumsh, on a raiding expedition to Arvandor, no doubt hunting elves as well as abominations.
The bodies of the enemy lay where they’d fallen, and unlike mortal corpses, their blood and flesh was slowly dissolving into a bluish mist, leaving bones behind that seemed to be degrading even as we watched. I suppose the exalted of all the gods here had similar outcomes. There being little reason for decay to function here – the Astral being not a material place – I supposed that the natives were not subject to it.
While the group was examining the campsite, I and Morin went to give the ship a once-over. We realized without much effort that the ship was not only a functioning vessel – no signs of a hull puncture to back up the claim of having foundered – it was an Astral vessel as well. The furled sails, when we got a closer look at them, bore the rough eye symbol of the fallen Raddalkans’ patron, in styling that could have been simply slathered on in blood.
I didn’t spend a lot of time considering whether it genuinely was.
After much discussion about time and effort, we determined the best course of action would be to take the ship and sail it back to Feyan Verdaya. It would serve us both as a backup vessel in case Waves of Grass was too noticeable, and also because the inherent value in an Astral vessel itself was considerable.
That night we slept aboard, having cast off and sailed out from shore a good ways. In the morning, we made for the Eladrin city and its harbor. How we would be received, bearing sails emblazoned with the symbol of their most dire enemy, I had no idea.
