The next days, in our ride back to Vor Kragal, were the worst of my life. It has been almost a year of my life since leaving home, and I suppose in a strange way I always thought I would see it again. Finding that I was centuries past the demise of my life and the people I knew – and loved – was only emphasized by the ashen ruin that Vor Kragal demonstrated to me. My vengeance, shown to be only the flailings of an injured beast, and my plan, only the barest of ideas, have failed me.
I face the future with the near-certainty of my demise. Asmodeus, betrayer of my people, will surely destroy me. Not because we were turned away from the Bonegate like errant children, oh no, but because of something that came after. I will get to that.
I suppose I slept along the way, in the saddle.
We all traveled back, heading for Serim’s camp. I barely spoke to my companions – perhaps I should say allies of convenience, as it seemed. We made the journey back with little event, which is probably for the better – in all likelihood I would be little more than a mobile corpse in a fight during that time.
We returned without fanfare, and without greeting. Serim no doubt accumulating his rainwater. We did notice a new arrival, however – though not to Serim’s camp, no. Over the city hovered the brass-and-black zeppelin we’d seen over the Hastwith, or one just like it. Beneath it, the city glowered in its mists and shadow, the Charspire watching our return without a hint of passion.
I did not speak to my co-travelers as I dismounted, gathered my gear, and made for a tent, dropping ten silver into the brass spittoon that Serim used for a payments and vanishing myself into a tent. The sun set to a reddened horizon without my eyes to see it.
The morning dawned outside my tent, though I did not make my egress to see it. I was up long before it ever shone its face, but I could do nothing more than sit on my bunk and think things through. Still and all, my considerations came to nothing.
Well after dawn, I returned to the fire, to claim a bit of the breakfast I’d bought and take further stock of my surroundings.
To my surprise, the rest of the gang – for that is all I could call them now – were still there. Much to my surprise, Sered spoke first.
“I suppose the next order of business would be to retrieve what information we can. Serim, who are they?” He motioned to the floating airship as he said so.
“Wizards of Morvrey, they are. Never stay with me, seldom speak to me. We have little use of each other. More tea?”
Sered held out a mug. “What do they seek there?”
“They come for knowledge, like all who come here, knowledge and power.” He bent to pouring the tea for the Deva.
“Where do we go from here, Shadrim?” Sered looked askance to me.
“I know not what we’d gain from the ruins, though the pool still holds my curiosity. In the time we’ve traveled I’ve considered the issue, and perhaps I have a plan.”
Karac flipped his tent-flap open and moved to the kettle on the fire. “Which is?”
What was there but to be straightforward? “The taint of the Hells and its temptation of power ruined my people, as did the withdrawal of aid when we needed it most by our so-called benefactor. The devils who were condemned to destruction in the pool of bronze may have been so condemned because they stood fast against my people’s iniquity, and lawlessness.”
I continued; “If I were to sift them somehow, retrieve the soul or souls bent on justice, I could bring the so-tainted bronze to the Crucible to be forged. Thus gaining an ally and one bent on a purpose similar to my own.”
Sered shook his head. “You know, if you kept more of this under your shirt, you’d seem a lot more sane to us all.”
Deimos was seated some distance away, smoking a pipe of some weed unknown to me. “We could seek information from them.” He pointed off to the floating vessel over the city.
I truly failed to see why they took interest, but lest they lose it entirely and choose to retreat to Al’Veyrda as Bingo did, I spoke up. “True, they may know something, and in our dearth of information anything must be better.”
Sered nodded. “This is so. But how may we accomplish this? Surely we cannot simply walk up and ask them?”
As he said this, the city below echoed with thunder. A battle had ensued among the buildings below.
“Ah, they’ve met with some resistance!” Serim took a cup and ran up to the edge overlooking the crater.
Flashes and sound came to us, oddly separated by the distance between us. I knew the look of a battle when I saw one, this was but a skirmish, though one of powerfully laden opponents. It settled after another sixty seconds, with flashes of lightning, fire, and the powerful deep thump of resounding thunder.
“They always get into trouble down there, despite what I told them so long ago,” Serim said, almost wistfully.
Karac tossed a small stone over the side, where it tumbled down the steep escarpment and into the brush below us. “Better get down there now if we’regoing to talk to them. Night travel, not such a good idea.”
Serim shook a finger at him. “Yes, quite right. If you’re going down, now’s the time. Nighttime, much much worse.”
Once we had geared up, and Serim had seen to our horses, the old Shadrim led us around the campsite and back to the ledges, this time to a different part of the cliff face. Perhaps not quite so sheer as the last, but still plenty dangerous, this escarpment was distinguished by the presence of several ropes, chains, and climbing apparatus of various kinds.
“Groups sometimes descend, and never return. Leave these behind. Never know, someone might still need them down there, and it doesn’t do anyone harm by others using them.” Serim gestured at the different things, and went into a long litany (probably on reflex) about who brought which ones and when.
I set a fine example again by almost falling, but in the end we chose from among the different suspended lines and lowered ourselves into the crater, beneath the cover of the mists.
The mists themselves were mostly just that – mist. Just enough ash and smoke permeated them, though, that on occasion a drawn breath could result in a fit of wheezing, coughing, or sneezing. I put a cloth around my face and tied it tight beneath my horns to secure it. Others did similarly, and we proceeded in the general direction we believed the battle had been seen.
Our travel among the shrouded streets went relatively quickly. Mounds of ash still collected on the sides of buildings, but the roads were fairly clear. The sun never shone directly, it simply appeared as a whiter area of the sky behind the mists and smoke. Occasional deep thuds rose from the ground, and strange scuttling noises always seemed just at the edge of hearing, but no threat from the city itself ever materialized.
Instead, that threat arose from the followers of Dal Morvrey.
At first, I didn’t realize we’d come into contact with them, I thought we’d found a denizen of the city. On the other side of one of the buildings, a giant with the head of a viper rose up, looking around, and fixed its gaze on us. Though not surprised, it was a bit of a shock to observe such a strange hybrid. While looking at it, the clinical, detached part of me noticed rough stitching around the neck, where the head had been attached. Who knew what had happened to the actual giant’s head, but the viper was worse. I had to assume the venom glands would still work.
I locked onto it almost immediately, getting hold of its spirit with an arcane hands – “taking the reins,” Sybarron had called it when he first taught me how. Spiritually, it locks a grip around the enemy’s soul, which can channel power into that soul to harm it, or – more importantly – can retain that grip on the demise of the thing. That is the true danger of a warlock, that you might die while in his or her grasp. Victims so slain have their souls taken and delivered to the warlock’s patron, which in my case was my choice of either Shan Doresh, the lord of Nightmares, or the engines of Hell, feeding the fires of its power. Neither one is a popular choice. Some warlocks bind themselves to strange malevolences among the stars, while others seek the hidden powers of the darkness, and some choose arch-fey for their patrons. Still others seek out remnant beings – the sleeping spirits of dead gods, elemental forces on the verge of sentience, what-have-you. In each case, the warlock tunes an exchange with the patron, giving the defeated enemy’s soul to the thing in exchange for a temporary surge of some form of power.
In any case, one can get hold of any number of spirits this way, the process being similar to tying a horse to a hitching-post. It causes no harm of itself, but the enemy knows you have a hold on it and the feeling is very uncomfortable. The grip doesn’t last – a few minutes at most – but it is sufficient for its purpose.
In some instances, we can learn to tear off a piece of an enemy’s spirit even before death, and make the exchange for that purpose. It can only be done through the creature’s blood (if it has any), but it rips free the piece you have a grip upon. This is most often of no lasting harm to the creature – souls grow back, believe it or not – but enough can be obtained in this fashion to satiate one’s patron. The fragment generally forms a smaller version of its original self, which is sufficient. A new grip must be established once that is done, but that’s a small matter. In my case, my links to the Hells can grant me a surge of vitality that passes at the end of only a few minutes, while my link to the lord of Tier Dian Loresh enabled me to pass through his realm as one would walk through a door to cross ground here instantly – to teleport, if only for a short distance.
Our other spells we learn along the way. The power for them is arcane in nature, and independent of the nature of our patrons. Some spells are influenced by the patronage, because many of us learn to modify the effects of the spells with ‘flavors’ of the patron’s power, often times enhancing the output of the spells significantly. Depending on how active one’s patron is, you can even be taught or given spells by your patron. For instance, my Otherwind Dream spell was given to me by Shan Doresh as part of my agreement to become his Emissary. Using it, I can temporarily banish enemies close to me to Taer Dian Loresh and make an escape before returning them to their original places. Though sometimes, as I was to discover, it doesn’t return them at all.
The thing let out something between a roar and a hiss, and charged around the building to come after us. As it did, and somewhat unsurprisingly, two more of the monstrosities became visible – one with the head of a crocodile, the other of a vulture – around us.
Sered squared off with Karac against the viper-headed giant, while Deimos and I arrayed out around Morin to take on the other two approaching. Behind the viper-giant, several human-sized beings were spilling around a building into the street – two infernals, a mottled Shadrim with more infernal influence, a mage of sickly pale skin and great height, and another who seemed half-metal. The devils charged behind the viper. The two mages each wore a curious collar of steel with spiked studs upon it…after a moment I recognized them as the symbols of graduates of the college of Morvrey.
Sered recognized them as Dal Morvrey first, and shouted out “Parlay!” while lowering his weapon. “Bonekey! Parlay – we wish no fight here!”
The tall mage barked out a sharp order, and the forces pouring towards us drew up short. “Who are you and what do you seek here?”
“We are Fellbane, perhaps you have heard of us?”
“No.”
“We are travelers from Al’Veydra, and we seek an exchange of information with you.”
“We have no desire for your company or your exchange. Depart or we shall kill you.”
I stepped up. “We seek information regarding Kaenig’s visitation to the Pool of Bronze, and his presence leading his army. We know him to be a betrayer, and wish to see him removed.”
“We serve the Lord of the Rod as does Kaenig, you are lying.” Even amidst this rebuke, I could sense a hint of curiosity swelling.
“He is a betrayer and has been since he served me on campaign in the Cairn Jale.” I stated flatly.
“How can we demonstrate our truthfulness to you?” Sered asked. “This stalemate cannot go on.”
The tall one, Bonekey apparently, thought this over and nodded. “Callax, watch them. Shadoweye, inspect him.” He pointed at me as he said this.
The other mage waved me over, his metal side showing no facial changes as his fingers clicked together coldly. The giants all observed this interchange with some noticeable anxiety, flexing their fingers and breathing heavily – it was obvious they were straining at whatever served as their leashes. The two Infernals moved up as well, and the Shadrim took station directly behind the one called Shadoweye.
Shadoweye slipped some sort of device onto each index finger, both the flesh and the metal one, each a metallic cap with a pointed end. As I watched the points extended like melting tin, or strangely cohesive mercury, several inches from the caps.
“You submit to this investigation freely?” He asked me. The way he said ‘investigation’ felt greasy, like the foot of a butcher’s table after a week’s work and no cleaning…all hair, suet, and half-coagulated blood. His face, the half that was flesh, was missing its eye, which I assumed was the origin of his name. I nodded, bolstering my defenses and focusing on my knowledge of Kaenig as betrayer.
He held his fingers to my temples, and my vision went dark. I felt the strange metal separate out into a skein of webbing that extended out and around my skull, crawling around the base of my horns like a multitude of spiders spinning their way around. There was little pain, just a strange feeling of distance. After a short while I could feel someone walking around, as if my mind were a great room of many doors, and a stranger was stepping on every creaking board. I could only walk beside him, somehow I could not actually interpose between him and the doors he investigated.
He saw the time in the Cairn Jale, Kaenig betraying us to the Yuan-Ti ages past, and my own finishing service. We walked through my ascent on the timeline to bring me to the current age by Fellbane, our travels through the Feywild and back through the Underdark. He saw me taking a win in the casinos of the New Black Widow and our voyage to Taer Dian Loresh. He viewed Sybarron returning to his knighthood, and my forging a pact with Shan Doresh.
And he saw my moment of epiphany, when I realized Asmodeus’ betrayal of my people and vowed revenge for the deaths of so many. I had done everything I could to hide that moment, but he’d found it. I felt the alarm set in on his mind when he realized what he was seeing, the panic.
And I felt the pain as he pulled himself away from me with unexpected rapidity. The skein ripped and slid off of my head, a moan escaping my lips as the blood flowed from my nose.
“He means to betray us, to betray the Lord of the Rod!” Shadoweye croaked as he fell away from me. Callax had an arm under one of his shoulders to hold him up as he staggered back.
The world went into slow motion around me as I settled into a combat stance, locking a solid grip on Shadoweye’s spirit and ripping a fey curse across him. The flesh of his face attached to the metal crisped and crystallized as the chill of my curse froze the solid to the meat, and he cried out in pain as his legs involuntarily jerked straight. The draping tendrils of wire hanging from his fingers retracted instantly, and I saw on them traces of my blood and some tiny pieces of skin.
More than I wanted to think about for now.
The giants kicked into action right away, the viper one clubbing Sered severely, sending him sprawling back several steps. The crocodile one moved in from the right, and the vulture-headed thing came from ahead and left.
The devils fanned out, one joining the vulture-giant, the other coming at me and Sered, and the Shadrim infernal named Callax shifted quickly from behind Shadoweye to move on me. I blinked for a moment, and realizing I had only a second to act before he engaged me, sprinted back past Morin and Deimos to charge up to the vulture and the devil flanking it. I grinned, watching them open their stance to meet me, and ripped reality directly up from under their feet.
I shredded the space all around me, bursts of shadowy horrors whirling about like a maelstrom of insanity. The giant and the devil both disappeared for a moment, just enough time for me to dodge back the way I’d come, interposing some street and my companions between the storm and myself. A moment later, the rift closed, the vulture thing returning from Taer Dian Loresh to stand with shaking knees on the street and expelling a misty breath.
Of the devil, there was no sign – it was gone, trapped in the realm of Nightmares.
Returning my attention to the front I’d left, I saw Sered standing again next to Karac, the two going toe-to-toe with the viper headed beast and Callax, while a faint golden echo of light permeated him. Tracing the fine lace of light back, I realized Morin was bolstering him up from behind with some divine power directed through his hammer. A crack of thunder behind me revealed Deimos’ unleashing a shivering bolt of electricity at the vulture beast, sending it reeling back a few steps.
A crashing, rending crunch sounded from just next to me, causing me to jump – just in time to avoid being struck by a meaty fist the size of my chest, where the crocodile giant had thought to catch me unaware. Fortunately, it had had to crush its way through a ruined building to reach me, and the noise of it had alerted me.
Another crack of thunder, this time sizzling up the road past me, sent shivers of lightning through Shadoweye, then Callax, and finally up the street to Bonekey. This last was deflected, Bonekey raising his hand to fend off the offending energy, but both Callax and Shadoweye were left with smouldering clothes. Shadoweye, who had been in the midst of preparing a casting, bolted from his stance and raced up the street away from us. As he passed his thin compatriot, Bonekey shouted at him, “Stand your ground, you pathetic weasel!”
Either Shadoweye did not hear, or did not care – he raced up the street and vanished around the corner of a building. Bonekey spared him a contemptuous final glance, then called out to Callax in a language I hadn’t heard in an age of the world, the dialect of Supernal found in the Hells.
“Fall back, block their passage!”
Callax retreated a step, barely avoiding a cleave from Karac’s axe, and his devil companion stepped into the gap to flicker its wickedly-curved blade at the dwarf. Karac parried the stroke easily, but it was obvious he wished to give no opening to the new assailant and was forced to hold his ground rather than pursue.
Bonekey vanished around the same corner as had Shadoweye, and Callax withdrew up the street a ways before halting to observe.
The vulture-headed beast had recovered its bearings and charged up to Morin and Deimos, to be met by a solid blow to its kneecap by Morin’s hammer. Gold light flashed from the impact point, and I’m quite certain I heard bone crunch beneath its pointed face. The vulture let out a shriek, and as it did I heard other bird-like calls echo the sound. Looking up, I could see shadows circling in the mists, their shaodws falling through the smoky clouds like rain viewed falling from a distance. I could make out no sense of scale, but surely the wings were those of carrion birds, no doubt attracted to the sounds of battle.
The vulture grabbed at Deimos and simultaneously bit at Morin, the bite missing. The thing’s huge hand, oddly missing its third finger at the knuckle, slapped Deimos clean off the ground to smack him up against one of the buildings nearby, six or seven feet off the ground. He rebounded to fall on his face in the street. He looked up with a grimace of rage and released a bolt of flame – I recognized it as the legacy of our mutual infernal heritage – which raced across the intervening space and singed the skin across the thing’s hand black. It howled again, turning its face back to him, and stepped forward to deal with him more finally.
Which, in the end, proved its undoing.
As it turned from its abortive bite at Morin, its head never changed elevation – and Morin completed a full-circle windup and delivery of his hammer directly to the beast’s head. The hammer sunk a good foot into the side of its skull, and its right eye simply leaped from the socket, as if itself eager to impose its anger on Deimos. The eye fell to bounce on its beak, hanging loosely in a stream of blood from the socket, and moments later the thing’s body collapsed in a heap before them both. Morin extracted his hammer with a short victory shout, and turned to engage the others.
Meanwhile, I had been busy with our crocodilian friend. Obviously irritated that it had missed me, it had feinted with a subtlety that still takes me aback while writing this. It had swung at me with its fist again, causing me to dodge directly into the path of its bite. Those jaws clamped down on my chest and right arm, crushing the breath from me and lifting me up from the ground, where it proceeded to shake me like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. I was disoriented and injured, and could feel my ribs creaking, so without a thought I sliced an opening in space with Riftspar, and slipped cleanly from the beast’s maw and into the street a good twenty feet away. It saw me where I fell, landing on my ass in a rather undignified fashion. Rather than standing, since I saw it building up to charge me again, I unleashed my best fey curse upon the thing. I saw the hit frost it over, and immediately it glanced around – the fey build curses wisely; though they might be slightly less directly harmful, they often have wonderful side effects.
Such as rendering me invisible to the creature I strike out upon.
I rolled away from my seat to escape the last position it had seen me in, and came to a panting halt leaning against a building on the far side of the street. Morin had moved up to support Sered and Karac, while Deimos had swiftly moved around behind the crocodile. Callax had vanished while I was looking elsewhere, and the devil which had fought alongside the viper giant lay in a heap beside Karac.
My attention was called back to the closer foe as Deimos struck out with a strange blue-violet flame from his staff, lacing its back with smoking ruin. The head turned so swiftly that I would not have been surprised to hear its vertebrae snap, but there was no such luck to be had this day. Taking advantage of the distraction, I produced a handful of razor-sharp blades of ice and sent them showering at the crocodilian abomination. I had grown to love that spell, the fields of Levistus becoming a favored source of power for me. The blades ripped up the beast’s leg and belly, spraying a froth of half-frozen blood into the air as they went. Finding itself frozen in place, its jaws snapped with furious speed while it struck out at the air. I ripped at the monster’s spirit with my curse, taking advantage of the thing’s pain to emphasize the harm I caused its spirit.
Deimos finished it a moment later, taking the leisure to line up his lightning blast in the time I had afforded him. As it expired, I funneled its fleeting spirit back along the channel to the Hells, siphoning off a shred of its vitality to help me recover a bit of my exhaustion.
I gave Deimos a little salute as we both rose from our crouches, and turned just in time to see Sered skewer the viper-headed giant with a deft sliding-step and a thrust of his shining greatsword. The point entered the creature’s belly just above the waist, and I barely caught sight of its tip protruding fro the back of its neck. It froze up, hand feebly clutching at its throat and shaking its head wildly. Karac swept past it with a stroke to the left knee that severed its leg, and the thing tumbled to the ground in a bloody heap. Sered extracted his sword with another step as the giant fell, the blood sizzling off the surface of his blade.
We regrouped quickly, looking around for other assailants, but silence greeted us. Karac was first to notice, looking forward up the street.
“Ahh, shit,” he muttered loudly.
Ahead, probably five or six blocks, the great black-and-brass airship had dipped down close to the buildings, and was now rising and moving off.
I stopped, my arms dropping loosely to my sides. “There go my answers,” I muttered.
No one said much for a minute or two, as we took stock of our wounds and recovered our breath. When we were all breathing normally again and Morin had tended our injuries, Sered walked over to me.
“It is worse,” he said, still looking in the direction of the departed airship. “There goes whatever information that bastard was able to dig out of you…your prophecy, your vow against Asmodeus, and quite possibly what knowledge you have of even Bow, who could pose a threat as the rightful heir to the Bannerlands.”
I stood there, stunned. That hadn’t even occurred to me.
“For fucksake, could things get any worse?” I looked off in the same direction.
The ground beneath us began to buckle and shake.
Karac called over from the other side of the street. “Would you please shut yer trap?!?”
