By Andrew Getting A tale of Larisnar
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Misear. Three weeks ago.
"This had best be good, human," the elf spat. "I've no time for false parley." The moonlight shone through the clearing in the trees, and the elf's raven-dark hair and cloak glistened with countless necromantic trinkets.
"Indeed," the white-haired man replied. "My own agents have said that you've little time at all." The man casually smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in his crushed velvet cloak. "The High Queen ordered a courtier flogged for mentioning your name in her presence. Failure ill suits you, Saunginel."
Saunginel's eyes narrowed. "Careful, Kez. I've lost my conscripts, but I can add one more without much effort."
"Do that," Kez evenly replied, "and you'll have lost the chance to regain your queen's favor. To be certain, you could force my ghost to give up its secrets, but by then, the coming battle will already be over. I somehow doubt that Tepheroth would care for finding out that you cost her so much for something as insignificant as your poorly placed pride."
Saunginel gritted his teeth. "Talk."
"Thank you." Kez pulled the cloak aside, and a parchment from some hidden pocket. "In this, you'll find a map to a temple in the north Narawat desert. One of four, apparently. There's a prophecy involved, but I'm certain you'll muddle through with the information I've presented."
"Indeed. And in exchange, Misear is spared the elven advance. Anything else?"
"That you remember who did you this favor, Saunginel, and that any future such... interactions be more even in tone." Kez wandered over to a nearby stump next to a shrub as Saunginel pored over the map and its notations.
The elf, for his part, lightly traced the papers with his fingers, ignoring the human's continued presence. "This is an interesting gambit you play, Kez," Saunginel said. "If this prophecy is true - and it had better be, for what you ask - why do you not seek to fulfill it yourself? Surely this power would keep our armies out of your lands, and others besides."
Kez nodded. "Indeed. However, were I to pursue every option available to me, I'd die of exhaustion. No, I have my own plans, and if the ancients were all that the legends say they were, they wouldn't be dead."
"Indeed. You are like Calix's pet spiders - important to your masters, but far too deadly and curious to do they or yourself any good." Saunginel peered at Kez over the assorted sheets.
Kez merely leaned back, and relaxed his shoulders. "Indeed? Wherever did you develop such a preposterous notion?"
"Consider your new friend a tiny omen, then, and best beware her bite." Saunginel smiled as Kez looked to his right shoulder just as a spider descended onto him from its web. As Kez reached to grab it, Saunginel spoke up again. "Don't." Saunginel calmly crossed the grass to Kez, then carefully palmed the spider into the elf's own cupped hands.
"Hmm," intoned Kez evenly. "I thought it was only Calix that cared so for such vermin."
Saunginel shot Kez a glare before gently releasing the spider on the ground. "I respect my queen's wishes. Besides, she might belong to someone who would want her back..."
Sarakia, three days ago
The thirsty earth cracked underfoot as the celebrants walked single-file, heads bowed low beneath cloaks that could not conceal inhuman gaits. Scales and chitin glinted in barest light, bitter reminders of desires outstripping discipline. A heartbeat drum pounded into the night as the faithful approached a weathered marble dais, and the procession of supplicants shifted and slithered to the ordained positions. The young knelt in the center, by the rising stone rings. Barely a limb's distance behind and to the left of them stood their teachers and trainers. Behind them, their own aged former masters, a pattern that spiraled out into the night. In the center of it all, dancing between torch light, was a burning host of moths and flies.
As the last of the congregation took its position, the drummers sped their beats on. A fly flew higher on the dais, and the fly remembered a boy wracked by guilt and fear. The fly dwelled upon the memory, and felt the cold of iron bars grasped by bruised hands. It remembered the scent of putrefied eggs wafting up from dark chambers, and it remembered the baleful red light shining from the sky above.
And the fly, like the boy of so long ago, was gone in a flicker of light. In their place was a man that could scarcely be called a man. His skin was loose and hollow, punctuated not by muscle tone, but by the firm reminder of the bone underneath. He raised his hands to the night sky, and the childhood fears he remembered fled away to the shadows, leaving only a sagging scarecrow of flesh and marrow. He had abandoned hope and fear and dread ages hence, and all that remained of the boy was a teacher of laws and humble student of a blasphemous prophecy.
His transfiguration complete, the bent and withered form of Yscar the Elder looked out over his host of hushed children.
"Daughters, sons... I come before you with dire portents. Excessus has returned."
A few of the younger of Yscar's brood murmured nervously at Yscar's words, but quick glances from their mentors silenced the throng.
"Calm yourselves, blood of my blood. We have waited centuries for the coming nights. Since the Dragon released Bascaron into the sky, these doomed days were inevitable. You, all of you, knew that bare minutes ago. Now we know that the time is at hand, that soon, we will not fight and suffer and die for some distant and uncaring fate, but for each other, for a time we may all live to see.
"The pieces are in play, and events in motion. Let us end this, at long last."
The assemblage bowed their heads, but in the distance, a shout rang out.
"Let me through!"
The horrid lumps of cultists stumbled aside as a beautiful woman rushed forward into the light, her red dress torn. Behind her was a muscular man, bare to the waist, running apace and holding a torn swatch of her clothing.
"What is this?" Yscar asked, stepping down the dais to the newcomers.
"Your forgiveness, Father, but Anasasia..."
"I can speak for myself, Varson!" the woman yelled, then knelt before Yscar himself. Looking up, she smiled. "There is another prophecy, Father."
"I trust this is important, child Anasasia. Your siblings care little enough for you as it is," Yscar hissed. "The disruption of our proper mass is not suffered without justification." The sloughing flesh of the elder cultist drew back along his pristine teeth as he leaned in to his errant disciple. "Remember, girl," he whispered, "that discipline and ritual aid the will, and keep desire in check. There are many who see your flawless flesh, and it is natural to want what is denied. You endanger more than my patience." Anasasia's skin felt suddenly flush and hot, as though it was midday instead of darkest night. Behind her, she heard the countless soft breaths of the things that had once truly been human.
"I... I thank you for your warning, Elder, but this could not wait..."
The Narawat desert, three hours ago
"Amazing," Anasasia whispered as she caressed the raw glass pillar jutting from the sands at her feet. It stood twice her height, shaped roughly like a gout of flame. In the distance, over dunes and rock ridges in all directions, dozens, perhaps hundreds of similar sculptures stood silent watch over the sun-baked sands.
Varson snorted, and turned back to their guide, an elf clad head-to-toe in bonemail. "You say that the fire runs throughout the desert? Why haven't they burned us alive?"
The elf shrugged. "Because the Burning's not upon us. The Narawati have an entire order of priests that could tell us more, but I doubt they'd be willing to help the likes of you."
Varson frowned. Even in his bare ceremonial armor, the heat was sweltering. "Then how do you propose that we use the fires if only the Narawati can?"
The elf chuckled. "The Narawati know when the fires come naturally, but they're an isolated people with their own myths about the world. The gods live in the hollows below the earth. The Priests Circle will never fail. They are a chosen people. They've had much time to pray and practice magic without war, but their seclusion has left them ignorant of the collective knowledge of the rest of the world around them. They have never heard of the distant Isles of Light and Shadow, or of Mourn's fall. They do not know of the other planes as we do.
"They do not know that the desert's association with flames has tied it to the Bascaron Plane of Fire."
Varson raised an eyebrow. "My patron would not have us war against one doom to guarantee another. Is there no way we can do this without Bascaron's aid?"
The elf shrugged again, and knelt on the soft sands. "Anything is possible, though I suggest you hurry. Already the elven and nothrog armies converge upon the Temple of the Doomed Sky. The Narawati cannot hold it for long, even with the Free Kingdoms' aid, and we should be so lucky that the Deverenians have no hand in this. Once one of the invaders wins there, that army marches on the Shatteredplains Tomb or the Blackwaters Shrine, and likely to victory. From there, only one temple is left, and I don't doubt that the victor will find and conquer it with ease."
"One last thing - why are you betraying the elves?" Varson asked.
"Ah, that," the elf replied. "A debt to settle between Houses Netheryn and Wyrian. A personal matter, if you will."
"Very well," Varson growled. "Anasasia!" he yelled, and the woman stepped forward quickly. "Are the others in place?"
"Let me ask Torus." Anasasia's eyes rolled back into her head. "Yes. Nehris is in the marsh, Parsis the pyramid, and Otho, the mountain. Torus says that Otho is quite impatient, something about your command conflicting with his orders from the Elder."
"Tell Torus to warn Otho that ours is the more pressing concern, and that Otho should be free in a handful of hours," Varson replied. "Then join Parsis. The Temple of the Doomed Sky is the only site currently besieged, and he may need the help."
"What is the plan, master?" Anasasia asked.
"We're... we're going to do what's necessary to make sure this doesn't pass."
The north Narawat desert, just outside the Temple of the Doomed Sky, three minutes ago
"HOLD THE LINE!" Mekk'iah roared over the battle's din. The VoTaurr and their allies, the Spider monks, were now within sprinting distance of the pyramid's door: a massive, vaulted gate wide enough for a dozen men to walk through side by side. Many Free Kingdoms and Narawati soldiers still stood in the way, however. As Mekk'iah swung his immense battle-ax about, he peered over the falling enemy. Between the sweeping and destructive moves of the havat-lahn, and the more familiar but equally deadly Llyran and Misearean attacks, the humans were slowly pushing the VoTaurr back.
And, in the distance beyond the human ranks but closing, were the elven forces, absent their infamous undead legions. Instead, the nimbics leapt about the brawl, stabbing and tearing and slashing with madcap glee. Backhanding a human, Mekk'iah looked from the nimbics to the temple's entrance, and back again.
"KAB'BALOS!" he bellowed, then backed up four steps. Already, the stunted wizard had replaced him in the lines.
Mekk'iah quickly scanned his ranks, then broke into a run. The VoTaurr ranks parted before him, and soon he strode alongside a charging warbull. He reached up and grabbed at the mighty steed's reins, surprising the rider, himself a fully armored VoTaurr.
"Hur'aal," Mekk'iah grumbled, and firmly pulled the beast to one side. The warbull slowed its pace to a trot.
"What is it, Sovereign?" Hur'aal replied, pulling his spear up.
"This battle," Mekk'iah said. "There are too many troops. No one side can hold the temple long enough to enact any sort of ritual, and the nimbics are fighting too savagely. With time, they're as likely to destroy the site as hold it."
Hur'aal looked out over the teaming armies. "And the elves have withdrawn their undead forces. They'll be making their move shortly. What should we do?"
Mekk'iah grumbled, and spat at the earth. "I need you to distract the other sides. Make as much a nuisance of yourself as possible. I'll take a few of the troops, and look to infiltrating the temple in the confusion. With luck, nobody else has thought of-"
The interior of the Temple of the Doomed Sky, three seconds ago.
Anasasia ducked into a sand block corridor as the howling flames rushed through the main hall of the pyramid. Wrathful fire spirits burned the ancient stone floor with every rampaging footstep. She rolled into a ball, and tucked her hands behind her head. She could feel the heat singe her night-black hair. Somewhere past the gouts of fire, she knew, was a circle of light leading to a place far, far worse. The Halo of Fire yawned wide and unchecked.
"Damn you, Parsis, where have you gone to now?" she whispered.
"I'm right here," a chameleon replied, its green scales suddenly obvious amid the flickering red light. "What happened?"
Anasasia scowled. "I... I don't know. I'd placed the wards just as Varson said I should, but the halo grew and grew..."
One of the chameleon's rotating eyes fixed upon her. "Anasasia, you... you didn't have some other reason to ask me to keep watch, did you?"
"No, no... I'm more familiar with the rites. I was less likely to make a mistake."
"I can see that." Parsis said, his tongue licking at the air.
"Quiet, lizard," she hissed. "I did what I thought was best."
"And if you thought you could impress the Elder in so doing, so much the better? Have you learned nothing, girl? Your petty ambitions called out to Basca-" Parsis' head pulled up suddenly. His tongue flicked out again and again. "Others are here."
"Others? What others?" Anasasia asked, but Parsis had already disappeared into the masonry. Suddenly, the burning fell away. Anasasia stood up, still sweating and shaking from the heat even as she felt a sudden chill replace it.
Echoing through the corridors, she heard voices. Despite knowing that others would soon come and find her, she could not help but follow until at last she could hear.
"...was not of my making, I assure thee."
The Temple of the Doomed Sky. Now.
Kedric's flowing Narawati robes still showered the stairs with dust as he left the shattered conference room and Lembua and ran down the stairs. Even behind the cloth wrapping covering his face, he could smell the smoke. The sounds of warfare - the battering of steel against steel, the howling of battle cries and the wounded - had given way to incoherent screams.
At last, the stairwell gave way to a raised platform overlooking the pyramid's makeshift barracks. Without slowing his step, Kedric set a foot on the railing and leapt to the nearby wall. He allowed his fingers to lightly touch the aged bricks, and gracefully landed on his feet. Whirling about, he saw medics already pulling men from the battlefield. The stench of roasted and smoldering flesh choked the air.
Across the room, a man in fine shining white armor and golden jewelry met Kedric's gaze, and sprinted towards the general. To other eyes, Shomari Jawara would be a young fop pretending to martial skills. Kedric knew better.
"Kepiteni," Jawara said as he approached Kedric. "This was some new attack, not the work of either the elves or the cattlemen. Saboteurs. I thank the gods below that Baqbuo is not here to see some foreign defiler desecrate the temple with Amoudasi's blessed fires."
"Agreed," Kedric said as the two men turned in unison to walk to the door leading out of the temple. "The nothrog have never turned down a chance to gain more power, and Saunginel's own need should force him to keep the nimbics in line."
"The fire's already stopped," Kedric noted as they looked out upon the carnage. Blackened husks stretched as far as either man could see in the failing light. A few brave souls dared to pull the wounded and dying from the field, only to face the escaped fire elementals. Otherwise, the combat had ended for the moment as all sides regrouped.
"How long have we?" Jawara asked.
"Ten minutes or less, depending on how quickly the nothrog adapt and whether the nimbics lose patience." Kedric's brow furrowed as he looked over the wasted terrain. The temple had once held a small city around it, but now secondary fires threatened to destroy what little the invaders had left standing. "Get me as many able-bodied men as we can spare from the barracks. We need to investigate the ruined corridors, so give me three of them."
"What about the rest?" Jawara asked.
"Take them south. There's a mass pyre at the foot of this temple, and not a necromancer in sight."
Jawara's eyes grew wide. "And the undead have left the battlefield, even though the nothrogs only just halted their efforts."
Kedric nodded. "The elves have changed tactics again. We have to prepare for the possibility that they're not just here for the temple, but for Narawat itself."
"Understood. I will return to Narawi, and the remaining priests in the Circle. In the meantime..." Jawara clapped his gauntleted hands together, and two men in robes rushed forward. "I give you the three finest men I've found this dark day. This is Chioke Addo," Jawara said, and the darker of the two men bowed, "and I believe you know the brothers Callenor and Silas Tzin."
"Yes, the Dominar's emissaries," Kedric acknowledged as the two men bowed. "We've little time. Show me the way to the most holy room in this temple."
"What do you mean, we're done here? There's enough dead out there to give Tepheroth her army back and more, and there's the temples themselves!" Raziel ranted as he paced, his blue warpaints like scars in the campfire's light. "For Flesh's sake, we take this temple, and we follow the retreating VoTaurr back to theirs. Your lot can find the fourth, and we win! You don't even have to stay - I lead the nimbics, after all!"
"As I said," whispered Sileth Elestra from beneath his helm, "we've completed our mission here. What forces remain are not worth our efforts. As for the temples..." Elestra's body shook in silent laughter. "The other armies have lost much to the fires, while we lost only expendable forces."
Raziel sneered. "Us."
"The nimbics, true, but the living in general. So long as the Blackwaters Shrine remains ours, none other can complete the prophecy, and we can still track the VoTaurr to their own site." Sileth Elestra spread his arms out wide. "If we stay, we risk losing more for negligible gains. What more can you want?"
Raziel opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again as he looked beyond the cleric. In the distance, he saw two dozen humans ride on camels and horses to the south, even as three others quickly ran back into the temple. Then, the nimbic smiled. "Something interesting."
Mekk'iah marched down the ranks of his army, his nostrils flaring. Every third nothrog and VoTaurr stood only with the aid of a crutch or the man next to him. The medics' hasty field dressings covered the burns of most of the rest.
"How soon can we mount a second attack?" Mekk'iah asked a broad and bearded VoTaurr at the end of one line of troops.
"Five minutes," the Stone Spider said, "but it will be a last-ditch effort at best. My monks are meditating to heal themselves, but even assuming they finish quickly and we use all our men capable of fighting, we're talking less than a hundred heads to put forward. The elves have more healers in their number than we, and Spider alone knows how many units the Free Kingdoms have kept in reserve inside the temple itself."
"Bones and ashes!" Mekk'iah swore, and turned back to the temple. The smoke still rose from the battlefield, but not enough to defeat his keen senses. "Look there," he pointed. "The humans have sent for reinforcements, and the nimbics have already rallied. We move now, or not at all."
"I advise not at all, then," the Stone Spider replied, folding his arms and bowing his head. "I mean no disrespect, but we are outnumbered and face fortified enemies. If we retreat now, we lose our pride but may yet prepare the Shatteredplains Tomb against attack. The ritual requires participants at all four sites at the same time. To stay here is to risk greater losses. To return home is to continue the stalemate until we can again push for victory. Why remain, if we have nothing to lose by returning?"
Suddenly, a clear tone rang out over the battlefield, and those VoTaurr still able covered their ears in pain. The top of the temple crumbled, and a blinding column of light erupted forth into the sky, soon joined by three others: one to the north, one to the south... and one to the east.
"A hundred, you said?" Mekk'iah asked.
"I'll find some volunteers looking for a faster, less painful death than I could otherwise offer them," the Stone Spider answered.
At last, the deafening pain ended, and Kedric and his fellows could stand again. Blood trickled from their noses and ears, but each nodded to the others before breaking out into a dead run. Soon, however, they found their way blocked by rubble.
"Is this the only way to the room?" Kedric asked, hoping the terrible din had not rendered him or the others deaf.
"No," Addo yelled back, "merely the most direct one. Follow, please." Addo turned back the way the men had come, and passed another two hallways before turning right. A thick coat of ashes clung to the walls of this corridor, but the air was so cold that the men's breath fogged as they ran.
"Are my ears still ringing, or...?" Callenor asked aloud as the four rounded a right turn.
"No," Kedric said. "There's a fight ahead of us."
Addo held out a hand in warning as he slowed his pace. A white light beamed from around the bend ahead of them, revealing shadows locked in mortal combat.
Kedric tilted his head cautiously around the corner. The light burned apparently from midair, illuminating a dozen nimbics wielding bone daggers cut at six men and women in robes similar to the Narawati's, but darker tones than those the Narawati favored. Behind them stood a man covered in horrible burn scars, and a woman in tight black leathers. Even at this distance, Kedric knew the garb of both.
"Deverenians," he whispered to the trio behind him, "commanding six - no, five - of unfamiliar styles."
One of the Deverenians' allies, a woman of shapely face and baggy clothes, said something in calm, clear words that Kedric did not recognize.
"She speaks Isadran," Addo offered. "A tongue of our friends to the desert's south. She said, 'Open the way.'"
Inside, the scarred man turned from the battle, and fires grew from his robes and licked at his flesh. The light around him visibly faded as a golden tether opened from the air before him. Beyond the rim was a dusky, narrow city street. He quickly stepped across the threshold. The Deverenian woman soon followed, and Kedric noted that she oddly had a small spider on her back. The Isadrans cautiously backed away from the nimbics before joining the others, and the nimbics raced after as the hole began to pull tight.
"No!" Kedric shouted, and ran forward into the room. Already, the view of the strange city had shrunken to a circle no larger than his head. By the time he stood where the Deverenian wizard had, it was just wide enough for a finger - a slender, manicured finger that poked out the other side, and soon joined by another as it pushed through.
Slowly, the hole widened again, revealing full hands, and then a woman who had veiled her face even as her wispy clothes had left so much of her body scandalously revealed.
"Another Isadran," Addo announced, his lip curling in distaste.
"I beg your pardon for my rudeness," the woman offered in deep, sultry tones, "but we have no time for introductions. The nimbics will not quickly find their quarry, but the others know well the paths they trod. The Plane of Secrets has always been close to our lands."
"Do not trust her, lord," Silas Tzin whispered. "These 'Isadrans' have already betrayed Narawat."
"Some of my countrymen, yes," the woman replied, "but some of us want only to be free. I offer you this chance to stop them. I can only hold this halo open long enough to attack and return. If you cannot defeat this madness, the world will suffer for it."
Kedric frowned. "Lead on."
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