by Tiger Gray
Ashrinn laughed, but he sobered immediately following. "Men," he said, trying to hide how touched he was by their shows of affection and respect, "now is where we get to the unpleasant part of this business. I can't tell you how much your respect means to me, but here's the real test of those feelings.
He lifted his head and stood straight. "The only reason Lord del Sar let me come on this mission in the first place is the slim chance that I might be able to destroy the altar and banish the demon."
Daniel watched him especially closely. Ashrinn could read his expression without effort these days; it had been largely Daniel's word that it was possible that had swayed Randolph. Now he knew Daniel was wondering if he'd done the right thing.
"If we get there and it looks like it won't work, you're all under orders to shoot me."
Everyone exchanged looks, shifted their weight from foot to foot. Gerolt damn near protested, but he bit down on the words before they made it out. Some realization dawned on a couple of faces as they figured out why he'd sent Malkai away.
"Yes, sir," Jericho said, firm, "Whatever you say."
"I know it's not what you want to hear," Ashrinn said, quiet, "because we've always been about never leaving one another behind. That's how we should be. But when demons get thrown into the mix the game changes. It wants me and only I will do, so if it comes down to it I'd rather one of you did it then let me be meat for the beast. Besides, I've had a good run." He did his best to put a brave face on it, even though the part of him that was human, the part of him that wasn't a leader or a paladin, protested hotly that he'd only just started to figure out his life and that he didn't want to lose it now, of all times.
No one said anything. Jericho shot significant looks at her team members, her jaw tightening. They all murmured assents, proof they'd received Jericho's message: if the Commander says it, you damned well do it.
"Now, we've got a backup plan if that doesn't work, which is to blow the place all to hell. I don't have to tell you the survival rate on that one isn't great. We've got a bomb that ought to take it out, altar and all," Ashrinn said. No one knew if that would work, using a mundane solution to a supernatural problem, but they had to try.
"Let me carry it," Jericho said, rising to her feet as if she hadn't consciously chosen to stand up. She had that stubborn look on her face, the one where she dropped her head but peered out at whoever she was talking to anyway, and Ashrinn swore he could see the shine of her wolf eyes even if she was in human form at the moment.
"No. I ought to do it," Ashrinn said. He was already marked for death. Why not have him lead the suicide mission, too?
"Sir," Jericho said, and he caught the desperate note in her voice, the same as when he'd freed her from her cage so long ago. "Please."
It was so unlike her that he gazed at her as if compelled to. For a long moment they stayed like that without speaking. He'd known her for years and now he had to admit there was hardly anyone he trusted more than her. She was his second in command, but more importantly than that, he could call her friend.
Because of that he could see more in her gaze than she ever could have spoken aloud, all the shame and fear of having been manipulated and turned against her squad mates the last time she'd encountered the Cult in force. How she felt fear lancing through her like a series of cold spears about whether she could control herself in the face of so much demon magic. How she'd rather, if it came to it, go down fighting the enemy instead of tearing into her friends.
"All right, Kassie. You win," he said, though he felt hollowed out by the decision. He tried to say don't throw your life away with his expression, hoping that she wouldn't just sacrifice herself to prove a point.
Roger Brewer stuck his head in. "Sir, Lord del Sar says the Waygates are live."
"Everyone up," Ashrinn barked, "we don't have long before they detect those Waygates. Move, move, move!"
He and Jericho moved out side by side.
* * *
The vibrations from the tunnels collapsing crawled up Jericho's spine and made her scalo itch. She and the rest of the Storm crouched low, hidden by brush. The dryads jacking up the Cult's major entryways were followed by the sounds of a charge, the infantry hooting and hollering like a bunch of barbarians.
She and her teammates waited, hidden by the power of Sonth's mind, as Cultists boiled out of the remaining tunnel. She wished she'd been able to convince the free Wolfen to join them, but none of them would believe paladins would let a bunch of diseased wolf monsters into their private party. They might have made the difference against some big ass demon, or whatever was waiting for them inside. Bitterness made her itch worse than the vibrations had.
She refocused on her objective, annoyed at herself for wasting time worrying about what her mangy hive-family thought of her and her team. The truth was, the Commander had given her a chance and she was ready to prove herself this time too. The vest she wore suicide-bomber style was heavy as hell, but she barely noticed; adrenaline and tight control made her float somewhere just above her body.
"Go."
A series of taps on her shoulder underscored the Commander's order. She performed the usual checks --- making sure her communicator worked, pulling on her gloves --- in less than five seconds. She felt Sonth's shadow shroud like a too-tight uniform.
She took the wolf form as she moved. Smell of corruption. A whiff of wrong became the scent of a floating corpse as she leapt into the darkness of the tunnel, the murky secret smell of water polluted by demon shit.
Part of her wanted to throw herself into that water, into the canal she could just now see. The smell scorched her nostrils, and her other sight showed her streamers of that same sickly green, the stuff she could remember from the alleyway where she'd first met that crazy Wolfen. She dry heaved as the corruption in her roiled in response.
She crept forward once she got her stomach under control, sticking to the shadows. It was dark here, but her altered eyes took advantage of every bit of light available. The hive mind barked and moaned, but she shut out the connection as much as possible. If they wouldn't help her she didn't need to hear their worthless opinions.
The stink of the canals grew until she had to change into her human form once more, muzzle flattening into human nose and jaw, paws elongating into fingers. She felt blind in comparison, doubly blind; bad eyes and bad scent. She was afraid of getting lost in the warren --- the Commander had told her that it was pretty common in tunnel warfare --- but thanks to Sonth she could at least sense her teammates mentally.
Chanting. The Cultists who hadn't rushed to the surface must be praying. She could feel their god the way she could feel blood rushing back into a numb limb.
"Looking all right so far," she subvocalized into her communicator, "I don't --- "
Alarm. Sudden corruption surging through the magical world like sewage. Sonth's voice.
"Shadowmancers! At least two!"
"We're coming in." The Commander said, collected but tense, "Hold down the fort, Kassie."
Then they were on her, a group of at least six. Two wearing the masks common to Faceless shadowmancers, but many enemy forces would dress non-shadowmancers that way to throw people off the scent. She couldn't assume.
Revelators. Guns and whips, looking extra brutal against those starched white outfits. She took her wolfman form, uncoiling in an explosion of power and muscle. The rest of the Storm, coming in behind her, Sonth calling forth so much shadow magic even Jericho, with no gift, thought she could feel it.
She experienced the bullets as simple pressure. There was no pain, not yet. Only rage and the leftover instinct from the wolf template her kind had been built on, the instinct to protect her pack. She leapt towards the Cultists, hot poisonous madness in her veins.
Jericho sensed it before she saw it, a great creeping presence that slithered into consciousness even as it slithered into the bend in the tunnel. A tangle of sharp bone and flat interlocking plates as a head, a s
cattering of narrowed, greenish eyes erupting from what passed for its face like boils. Too many limbs, legs that moved in a way that made Jericho's gorge rise just by looking at it. A snake body, one long muscle that whipped towards her and her team mates.
She faltered, pouring blood.
Demon.
Fear. The blackened, oily claws of the shadowmancers, pulling her mind open. She froze. Gerolt gunned down one of the shadowmancers in a neatly placed burst before turning to the demon. The Commander, behind her, took out one of the Revelators with a single shot to the head. His holy magic, which would have protected any other creature, only made her agony worse.
The demon rushed Liz. Jericho knew it would kill her teammate in a single strike if she didn't make a move, and now.
The remaining shadowmancer, still trying to drive her crazy, his blistering psychic fingers buried in her brains. The sickness threatened to take her over for good, so it could turn her against her teammates and friends the same way it had back at Harbor Island. Tentacles of corrupted energy, normally under her control, sprang into being and lashed around her like chains.
Not this time.
She rose to her full height and howled a challenge. She shoved Liz out of the way with only seconds to spare. The demon's handlers turned their guns on her, but nothing mattered anymore, not pain, not death. She slammed her palm against the detonator resting over her heart as the demon struck.
* * *
There is no preparing for demons.
Randolph's words were writ large in Ashrinn's mind, burned into his third eye in lurid script. This whole time they had hoped the Cult had spent all of its energies on summoning its God, and none on bothering to call forth the lesser manifestations, only to be sorely disappointed when it counted most.
Jericho leapt. He lunged forward, gun in hand, sword in the other. Daniel, across the room from him. The mage had resorted to fire magic, perhaps one of the only things destructive enough to banish the demon. He gathered what of the divine he could, though the force field generated by the Suffering God made all righteous energies difficult to summon.
He saw what Jericho was going to do and even though his brain tried its best to protect him with a thick sheet of denial, his combat mind took over and he reacted without thinking.
"Fall back!"
The demon schreeched, skin sloughing off. Daniel was in real danger of overloading himself. Sonth lifted a shadow-shrouded hand and the remaining shadowmancer succumbed to her onslaught, crumpling to the floor. Ashrinn skidded to a halt, spun around, and grabbed her. He ran, dragging Sonth with him. He couldn't worry about Daniel; there was no way to help the mage from here. Sonth, he could save.
The explosion deafened him, knocked him to the ground and held him in place. They hadn't been fast enough, he knew, and now he and the Cultists were crammed into the tunnel together. At least one teammate dead --- Divine spirit, no --- maybe more. They would all die if they couldn't get past this choke point.
He struggled to stand, using his sword point as a lever. Sonth lay in a motionless, crumpled heap, but before he could compound the grief he already felt she stirred. He hauled her to her feet and they ran towards the tunnel exit, hoping to get to the main chamber, or at least a wider tunnel. They had to make it. He had to make it, with the ordnance gone.
He pushed aside thoughts of Jericho and Daniel. He and Sonth turned the corner and a squad of Revelators stood ready to meet them. The sounds of fighting and dying roared behind him. Sensing the mental matrix Sonth had crafted between them all felt almost impossible, like he was in free fall and reaching for a drop line, in that peculiar slow motion way that he associated with panic.
There was no way he and Sonth alone could take on a pack of Cultists, armed to the teeth and magical besides. He felt trapped in a surreal nightmare, as though he were back in that blazing forest with nothing to offer him succor. Then as in the dream, the flash of rainbow magic. A flash, as though some creature had gone bounding away out of his sight.
He remembered.
Surrender.
He grabbed for Sonth before she could aim her rifle, dug his fingers into her arm and shook her.
"Go. Find Daniel and Lizbet. Find a way to the main chamber."
Please let them be alive, Divine spirit, Ahura Mazda. Anyone.
She hesitated and he knew she was remembering how they had stood together against the Suffering God's lesser manifestation, that first time, and she couldn't conceive of leaving him now.
"Go."
She turned and ran. If he couldn't get to the altar through force, then...
He willed his spirit blade away. The Revelators were so taken with him that they barely noticed Sonth. Thank the divine for that. He sunk to his knees and didn't make a sound when they all grabbed him.
* * *
Time could seem so inherent to how the world worked that the concept appeared unassailable. After all, one could easily perceive it! One didn't brush one's teeth and simultaneously exist down the street performing one's job.
But time, Ashrinn found, never held up to torture. How long, for example, had he been locked in this room, bound and bleeding? How many times had a Cultist --- or he thought, shuddering --- a group of them slipped past the door, approaching him with reverence in their eyes and implements in their hands?
No matter the violation or torment, they thanked him, each and every one of them, told him how special he was, how he would be the one to open the way to rapture. They spoke in babbling, fevered voices that he could no longer fully understand, their zealot's words twined together with the otherworldly mutterings of their imprisoned god.
There was little fight in him now, not since they'd taken him back to the Memory, not since they'd strapped him down, jammed a rag in his mouth, and poured water over his face. In that place between life and death, he too had heard the demon's voice. Or had it been Kir's, telling him he'd only hit his head, that he would be fine?
The demon could smell his blood. Ashrinn knew it in the way only a paladin could. Every cell in his body protested, and not just because of what was being done to him. No, the spiritual conduits within him swelled and throbbed as if they were infected, goading him to banish the thing even though he had absolutely no resources with which to do so.
The sick part was, even when they broke his fingers, one after the other whilst murmuring words of praise, part of him didn't mind so much. They had taken the whips to him first, and had been quite surprised when they hadn't gotten quite the reaction they were expecting.
It was one of his worst fears, that maybe, even if someone were killing him slowly, a tiny part of him might enjoy it even so.
Focus, you old sod. Can't let the team down.
What was left of the team. The image of Jericho flinging herself at the demons that had threatened to destroy them all played over and over in his mind's eye. He held out faint hope that she had lived, but his heart knew it was only a wistful dream. Not even a werewolf could live through that blast.
He willed images of Kir away. That was the diabolical thing about the hallucinogenic venom; it removed the filter between his associations and imagination, shredded the shields that normally would have cushioned him against the demon's presence.
No wonder they're all barking, he thought, clinging to humor as his last refuge. The flex cuffs on his wrists weren't mundane; they were the same anti-magic handcuffs the Order of the White Eagle used. In fact, he suspected they'd stolen these off of some hapless corpse.
He might have whined a bit when the Cultists entered and unbound him. No shame in that, was there? That he should be a bit put out that they were dragging him around?
As they dressed him in white clothes, he wondered if he would bleed on the garment and ruin their ritual thereby. He clung to some notion of fighting, of stopping the fact that once they laid him on the altar he was going to have his throat cut, but he couldn't seem to quite grasp the pieces of a plan, let alone fuse them together into so
mething coherent.
The cavernous nature of the main ritual chamber lent itself to cool air, stirred by a breeze that had no obvious source. He smelled the pool surrounding the altar before he saw it, a slimy green smell that spoke of hidden, forbidden things. The corrupted water flowing through the Protectorate had its origins here, the black heart of an unspeakable abyssal ocean.
People, too. There were people, but he couldn't make his eyes work. So much effort to open them, and really, what did it matter? Even the thought that his son, his poor, misguided son, might be nearby couldn't rouse him. The bare stone of the altar soothed his much abused skin, and he sighed, surrendering once more. So much easier to slip into blackness, away from the demon, away from battle.
* * *
Liusidris, standing next to Gilly behind the altar, felt moved nigh to tears at the sight of the sacrifice being born into the chamber. He had suffered through his enlightenment so well. The euphoria of having chosen the appropriate person for her God filled her with warmth and peace. Soon she would be complete, and she would never have to worry about where she fit again.
Coren jerked forward. "Dad...!"
She moved to her love's side and laid a hand on his forearm. So tense! It was a great burden and honor Coren had been tasked with. She could see why he might be nervous, might worry that he would be unworthy in His eyes.
"Don't think of it that way," she said. "He gave himself for this. They said he laid down his weapons. He must know how important this is!"
Coren looked resplendent in his ceremonial garb, white jacket and pants, a half cloak embroidered in gold and green. A sword belt rested low on his hip, though he wore only a plain steel sword there instead of his spirit blade. He had explained to her that he didn't think himself worthy to carry it before the God until he was changed. Such devotion!
Liusidris dared to touch the sacrifice as she spoke, fingertips skating over his battered forehead. His face, purple with bruises, made him appear so lovely as to be saintly. Gilly came up beside her. Gilly didn't have to speak, because the solemnity of it all resonated between them so strongly already.
