by Dave Dickie
But Padan was already running, like the rest of the group, toward the mouth of the cave. With the Ibisi supporting him, Beldaer did his best to scramble for the entrance.
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In the cave, hidden behind camouflage webbing, and behind camouflage spells, and even those hidden behind anti-detect spells, something was unhappy. It could see everything it had laid out to lure in its prey despite the darkened glasses it wore, magnifying the gloom in the cave. It didn't care, having excellent eyesight in dark places, and the glasses helped hide the glowing red of its eyes.
So close, so close.
The grid was in place --- also hidden behind anti-detect magic spells --- and it had taken a long time to get all the pieces together, to block every one of the myriad ways a Hasamelis priest could escape, passwalls and other kinds of dimensional doors, teleports, plane and phase shifting. Get the priest in here with his companions, trap the priest, and kill the rest. The plan was almost perfect. And then… wolf howls, unexpected, unwelcome. For the priest and his companions, fear and anger, adrenaline... it could feel them even from inside the cave. Even if nothing came of it, the priest and his friends would be wary, they would be suspicious, they would be more cautious when entering. But it could still work.
If only they would just enter the cave.
It had a moment of hope when the last wolf fell. And then the priest… did something. What? It did not know, but it could sense something, and not the much more visible release of mana for a spell. Some god thing, but a powerful god thing. And then some of the wards started to get hot, then many, most of them anti-detection wards, meaning ….something was getting through the anti detect-shields. Which was impossible. Hasamelis priests did not have those kind of spells, didn't have the godly horsepower to punch through its screens.
Which meant something else was at work besides the normal Hasamelis set of rabbits pulled out of a hat. The priest was wearing a wire. A magical wire. The priest had known this was a trap, was rigged to send information back, using something it had not prepared for.
It cursed, and that was enough to cause some of the camouflage webbing to start smoldering... its curses were powerful. And it did what it had to do in response. Pulled the plug, the magic cords tying all the spells and objects it so carefully placed over days... days... of effort, tugging all that now-useless magical baggage through the veil with it as it slid into shadow. The other side was a cold, cold place, entropically flatlined, only the faint red of dying suns to show that there were still small pools of energy left in the otherwise dead universe. This wasn't its home; just a convenient waypoint. Home was a hotter place, but it the veil was thinner in the dead places, making it easier to do two jumps rather than going direct.
And when it got home, it would have to explain the use of raw chaos needed to move it and its magical snare between worlds, with nothing to show for the expenditure. It was not looking forward to that at all.
Chapter Six
Corel appeared on the teleportal pad in the Hasamelis temple in Bythe with a small pop of displaced air. There was an acolyte in the room, of course, and one outside it. Hasamelis temples, like those of most orders, had their share of ostentatious art and other valuables lying around. But the security was mostly a precaution. It would take a pretty bold thief to try to use a teleportal to rob priests that worshipped a god of travel. Bad juju, for sure.
The acolyte was looking startled. Teleports were rare, and when they did happen it was usually a high-level Hasamelis priest in a hurry, or a Hasamelis messenger with a diplomatic pouch, one of the main sources of income for the order. Corel was dressed in travelling clothes and had the dust and grime of the two-day hike into Tawhiem, which wouldn’t be unusual for a bishop or archbishop --- it was a travelling religion --- but her clothes were not durilia. They were not fine at all, just simple, poorly woven cotton. And, as a middle-aged woman that radiated a carefully developed sense of kindness and goodwill, she didn’t have the attitude that marked someone in a position of power. Nor did she look at all like a messenger, with the wide, powder blue sash across one shoulder and tied at the opposite hip. She looked like a woman who should be maintaining a shop on Rawling street with the other merchants.
She stepped off the teleportal and smiled at the young man in robes standing watch. “Oh, if you could be a dear, I have something from Padan Moire that I must deliver to Jedia Burse immediately.” If Padan’s lie detection spell had been up, it would have been well into the red zone. She’d said she would deliver it to the elvish Embassy or to the Deacon, but she had already decided to deliver it to the elves herself, not Jedia. She was absolutely committed to doing exactly what she had said. Otherwise, Padan’s truth detection spell would have indicated she was lying. And she would. Eventually. But in the meantime there were places to be and people to see. The immediate situation was an obstacle to that. If she just tried to walk out of the temple, there might be questions and delays, and she’d seen the Nitheia communication ring on Padan’s finger. Delays would be a problem, indeed they would. She smiled and said “Could you escort me to Jedia?” He couldn’t, of course, not without leaving his post.
The acolyte’s jaw was hanging a bit open, but he shut it and swallowed nervously. “The Archbishop is in his quarters, recovering from an attack. We’ve been trying to get in touch with Padan to let him know, but he has to trigger the ring before we can speak with him.”
Well, that was a bother. That would mean these two were probably more wary and alert than would normally be the case. She wondered for a minute who would have attacked an Archbishop. Could it have been Delia? That… individual was a bit of a loose cannon. But it didn’t matter. “Not to worry, I can drop the package off with his aide.” And she brushed past him and out the door, and past the other acolyte, who was looking equally confused.
The acolyte followed and called out, “ma’am, if you wait a moment I can get someone to escort you,” to her retreating back.
She turned and waved and and replied, “no need, I know the way.”
The acolyte looked unsure for a moment, but he and the one still in the room were well trained; they wouldn’t abandon their post except in dire emergency, and a harmless older woman wasn’t that. The priest ran back into the room, probably after a Nitheia magicked-up communication device. Most temples had to do with people or pull cords and bells, but Hasamelis temples had money and they and the Nitheia order were reasonably tight.
That was perfectly fine. Corel had studied the temple’s layout well before she’d joined the mission to Tawhiem. She liked to be thorough. There was a side door not far from the teleport chamber in the back of the temple, and she jogged right into a small corridor instead of continuing down the main passageway, with the central prayer area in the middle and the contemplation rooms on her right. At the end was a small but sturdy latch which kept the door from opening from the outside. She pulled it, knowing an alarm would be going off in the temple administration room, but not caring. She would be gone before anyone could arrive to intervene. Outside the sun was rising, and there were a number of people already walking down side streets as small as this one.
And then she did what a small old women in nondescript clothes did quite easily: she blended in. It was much better than using an invisibility spell. If she had to use that, the paperwork would take hours to fill out, and the commander would spend an equall amount time harranging her about it.
Chapter Seven
Stegar urged the group into the voluminous recesses of the cave, deeper and deeper, searching for a place where the slant at the edge was steep enough to form a wall that they could put their backs to. Stegar hoped some of the others in the group had lanterns handy or spells that created light, because all he had at hand was his sword and shield and he was concentrating on preparing those for use.
They had to delve quite deep to find a suitable place where they could adopt a defensive formation. When they finally formed up, the area a
round them was wrapped in such darkness that they could not see their own feet. All that they could see was the wide mouth of the cave, framed in a blazing halo of light that made everything outside stand out in intense detail.
Then suddenly, on the top of a rock on the far side of the ravine, a wisp of black and purple smoke coalesced, and a dark form swirled into existence. The cold, green eyes scanned across the retreating figures and then it stepped again, folding into itself as it did so, until the wisp of smoke was sucked into the moment of its passing. Again and again the creatures phased in and out in sinuous movements. It felt impossible to count them until they finally came to rest, formed into a semi-circle, still for a moment, as their master floated slowly down from the sky outside the cave.
His features were human in cast, but something seemed too severe for him to truly be human. He floated effortlessly, hanging in the air in ornate golden armor, intricately carved and burnished with scale and wing and claw, a deep red cape flowing out behind him. The shadow beasts moved to make a space for him in the center, giving the impression that they were straining at a leash of some sort. They clearly wanted to lunge forward into the darkness after the prey they sensed there, but at the same time restrained themselves waiting for their master’s word.
When the figure landed he ignored the others in their group to talk directly to the elf, and when his mouth opened the sound that emanated from it struck the heart of the group. It sounded at the same time like a chorus of the deepest timbre and like great sheets of metal crashing together. So loudly it assaulted the ears and yet every word was perfectly discernible. “I see you’ve found some friends, elf.”
Beldaer stepped forward, seemingly undaunted, to the gray space where the dark depths of the cave began to transition into the light of day. “They know nothing, I swear it. I am what you want; I will come peacefully. They only tried to help fend off wolves for a stranger they did not know, no fault to them.”
A dark laughter echoed off the walls of the ravine, sending shivers of fear trickling down everyone’s backs. “Even if I believed you, they killed my pets. It took a long time to bend that pack to my will. I’d let the shadow beasts have some fun with them, but ... places to go, people to kill, you know how it goes. I think I’ll just end this.”
The next word that left the creature's mouth were spoken in an elder tongue, and Stegar’s brain refused to comprehend the terrible vastness of it, though it was not a language which required learning. All he could say of it was something he knew intuitively, that it was not a word of creation of but the release of something that had been created before. A return to the form that was true. Already it was pitch dark in the depths of the cave where the party stood, but now the mouth of the cave, which had been a shining blur of light before, became dimmer and dimmer as the man changed, and merged with the gold of his armor. Carvings of scales became scales, epaulettes shaped like wings turned into wings, and the claws on the knuckles and fingers of his gauntlets grew and extended. Slowly hunching forward the shape grew larger, bigger than a horse, longer than a war galley, till finally it was as large as the warden’s keep at Borgia itself, with reptilian eyes the size of a serving plate and wings that could cover a stick-ball field. A dragon. What had he gotten himself into? Stegar could barely see the creature now as it reared up to clean the entire cave out with a blast of pure draconic flame.
Of the group, only the elf and Daesal, the peculiar spellcaster Padan had hired, were immune to the power of that voice, rooting him where he stood. Daesal was an enigma, clearly highborn, a Holder, on this mission for reasons she had not shared. She asked the most jarring questions, had no sense of when she was overstepping conversational boundaries, and either didn’t understand or didn’t care what effect they had on the recipient of her attention. But Stegar had found her to be blunt, not offensive. She clearly asked what she did because she wanted to know, not because she wanted a reaction, not to shock or upset her listener. Those qualities had breathed on embers he didn’t know were still glowing, had made him curious when he thought all interest in anything other than survival had left him.
Stegar tried to break free from the strange paralysis holding him in place. He had no idea how to fight such a beast, but he’d be damned if he stood and waited for death. And it seemed like he was breaking free, because he was suddenly able to move, to raise weapons. But even as he did, he realized it was futile. He had no idea how to attack it.
Fortunately, the elf did, for as the huge beast’s head rose up the elf drew out his bow and in one fluid motion nocked an arrow in it, an arrow that was like no arrow Stegar had seen before. Where the head of an arrow should be, delicate silver filament wove vine like patterns around a dull crystal, merging to come together to a point at its tip. As Beldaer drew the string back words flowed from him in a language as ancient as the dragon’s but gentle and flowing like clean water in a brook, and the crystal, dull before, now glowed with a piercing blue light. Beldaer let the shaft fly and the point embedded easily into the scales below the dragon's jaw. Embedded and then crackled, destroying itself in a blast of lightning that threw the dragon's head up and to the side.
The wound it caused looked insignificant compared to the size of the dragon, but it reared back, the hot flames erupting from its mouth going into the ceiling instead of engulfing them. Where the flames hit, rock melted and broke free, and with a rumble that dwarfed even the dragon’s voice, the entire ceiling near the entrance gave way, collapsing in a cloud of dust and stone.
Stegar saw the elf try to dodge back, but not fast enough, and while he was not buried in the rubble he was hit with a good-sized rock that left him dead or dying on the floor. As the rumbling continued and the collapsing stone closed off the cave entrance, the cave faded to pitch black.
Just before the light completely disappeared, he saw Padan, suddenly free of the terror and awe of the dragon’s spell, backpedaling from the falling rock as fast as he could, tripping on a piece of rock and falling, losing his staff and hat. And then Padan did instinctively what any high-level Hasamelis priest did when they were in danger; he teleported to the temple in Bythe.
Chapter Eight
The cave was collapsing in a thunderous cloud of rock, jagged shards careening off walls and floor. Panic simmered in the maelstrom around Daesal as each voice tried to lead the others. Stegar had directed them decently in the fight but the sudden appearance of the dragon followed by this had clearly pushed him back toward his weaker, sorrowful side and no one was listening to him. Daesal turned to see Padan, their supposed leader, letting his fear teleport him right out of existence. Damn him, damn him, damn him, the useless fool.
This would not do. A dragon was without and Daesal sensed something within the cave, or perhaps the after-image of something that had been in the cave. Something old, ancient, possibly more dangerous than even a dragon, familiar, yet not. She felt a shiver of excitement run through her body at the thought of moving toward it, but everyone had to get away from the front of the cave – she could see more rocks starting to fall – and they were still disorganized and confused. Between certainly being crushed and perhaps being crushed, she chose perhaps.
She strode to the front of the group, whipped her staff from her back and with a simple phrase flared the tip to a blue light, no stronger than a candle flame, as she rang the other end against the ground. She infused her voice with power.
“CALM,” she cried out.
The single word had an immediate effect as the dust from the cave-in settled around them. Yelling and movement alike ceased and all faces turned to look at Daesal, blue flame from her staff now held aloft. She spied the druid. “Hantlin,” she called out. “Your light.” The priest shook himself as if clearing his fear, closed his eyes momentarily, then a soft white light flared from his palm. They now had a circle of perhaps forty feet suffused in glimmering light, enclosing them, which calmed the group further.
“Quickly!” Daesal said while she still had their att
ention. “We must move – the cave is not done collapsing! Hantlin, let your light lead from the back and ensure none fall behind. You, warrior,” and she pointed to the gigantic Stangri, Gyeong, “bring the elf. The rest of you, follow me!”
The group seemed uncertain but Gyeong moved to the elf, then stopped when he saw the broken, still form, yellow blood starkly pooled in his white hair. “Magic woman!” Gyeong cried.
“Daesal. I am Daesal.”
“Daesal,” he said haltingly, seemingly thrown that he could use her name, then his voice gained strength. “The elf. He is gravely injured. If I lift him, it might –“
Daesal broke in, saying, “There is no time to tend to him now and we cannot leave one who offered his life for ours. Take him and all of you, come!” As if it heard her words, the roof at that moment gave a great crack, then groan, and more stones started raining down.
“This way! Run!” The group’s uncertainty turned to action. Daesal saw Gyeong lift the elf effortlessly over his shoulder as she turned and ran deeper into the cave, the others following, the roar of further collapse driving them on.
They ran forward, Daesal leading them away from the cave mouth toward the tip of an underground lake. When she judged them far enough, she slowed and stopped, her breath coming in gasps, like everyone except for the Stangri Gyeong. He seemed barely winded despite carrying the elf.
“There,” Daesal pointed to a sandy spot next to a leaning rock by water’s edge. “Lay him there.” Gyeong gently laid the elf down then stepped aside as the group drew around.
