The Worldwound Gambit

by Robin D. Laws

  High up above the milling cultists, openings appear in the sarcous wall. Rivulets of blood trickle from them. The demon worshipers hop to life. They jostle furiously for access to the dripping blood. A few slap their hands into the substance and then let droplets of it fall into their mouths. Most simply hug the wall, licking it directly. They moan and shiver. Once sated, they fall into a reverie. Still-thirsty cultists grab them, yanking them violently from the wall to take their places. The dazed, displaced blood-drinkers stagger to the chamber's corners. Demons mock and scourge them as they go.

  Calliard goes numb. He pitches, falling into Gad, who catches him. Tiberio moves inconspicuously to his other side. Together they prop him up. Calliard rediscovers his footing and pushes himself away from them.

  "You're good," Gad tells him, more statement than question.

  The bard feebly nods.

  He can smell it from here. A heady whiff of copper, of decaying fish, of degradation. The pouring blood from which the cultists feed is laced with mesz, the agent that converts the ordinary blood of a demon into narcotic demonblood. The substance Calliard once consumed was almost always spiked with artificial mesz, produced by a forbidden alchemical process. This mesz is purer. Higher demons sometimes ingested it themselves, letting it infuse their blood, using the resulting ichor to enslave and suborn those mortals foolish enough to quaff it. Calliard scolds himself for his failure to anticipate. Of course there'd be fountains of the stuff here. By instilling its blood with mesz and feeding it to its adherents, Yath tightens the bond that keeps them in its thrall.

  The cultists revolt him. He wants to wrench his crossbow from his pack and kill as many of them as he can before the demons and their servitors put him down. It's their servility that enrages him. Their shamelessness. He hates it because he recognizes it as his own.

  With effort, he tears himself away from his murderous daydream. Gad is issuing instructions. Calliard has to pay attention. To show that he is good, like he claims.

  "We need a place to settle in," Gad says.

  A mutter half-escapes the confines of Vitta's helmet.

  "Yes?" says Gad.

  "Nothing," says Vitta.

  "There's only one way to win." Gad drifts to the back of their formation to guide them forward. "By remembering who we are."

  An antlike demon swoops down from a high ledge, seizing a flabby cultist clad only in a shredded loincoth and a metal, multi-horned headband. It lifts its prey up to the top of the vault, then drops him on a centipedal demon scuttling below. The aggrieved target seizes the cultist, digs deep into his flesh with gigantic pincers, and dashes him repeatedly against the floor. Bones twist and crack. Legs broken, the corpulent cultist uses his arms to crawl away. The hundred-legged demon surveys him with alien indifference. Above it, the ant-demon lets loose a peeping trill of triumph, or perhaps amusement.

  "Calliard," says Gad. "Which way?"

  He snaps himself to alertness. His helmet's weevil-nosed visor points in turn to each of the dripping corridor openings. "I'm not sure."

  "Trust yourself."

  "What am I looking for?"

  "The one that scares you most."

  Calliard repeats his survey of the entryways. "This one," he says, pointing to a gaping archway. An oily substance gathers on the surrounding walls.

  Gad heads toward it, drawing the others in his wake.

  The passageway widens and narrows at arbitrary intervals. It draws them up into the tower on a persistent but barely perceptible slope. The oily coating stinks of moldy apples. It soaks into their boot soles and sends the sojourners periodically sliding into one another.

  A chorus of screams reverberates through the tower, then cuts itself off, as if a hundred tortured victims have obeyed a master's cue.

  A convoy of locust-creatures floods the passageway. The bug-demons compose a single shifting mass as they crawl over one another to fill the corridor. The intruders put their backs to the walls. The demons brush them with legs and antennae as they clamber past. One stops, each of its eight jointed limbs clamped tight to Vitta's robe. Then it senses Calliard beside her. As if stung, it slips back into the surging host. The legion of demonic locusts continues on its way toward the great hall. Behind the procession scramble a few laggard cockroach- and silverfish-things.

  The intruders forge wordlessly on. After a time, the circuiting corridor deposits them on the lip of a skeletal catwalk. Below hums a large, wet chamber. Reedlike protrusions emerge from its floor to wave in unpredictable unison. Multicolored liquids drip from its ceiling to be sucked in by root structures bunched at the follicle bases.

  Flat slate stepping-stones bisect the strange chamber below. They are laid in the first straight line the six have seen since entering the tower. The stones connect twinned open archways positioned at the chamber's farthest points.

  Robed figures emerge from the far threshold. Gad feels an impulse to shrink back into the passageway. To be seen to sneak is to get caught, he tells himself. He forces himself to stride on, leading the others, stealing only sidelong glances at the procession below.

  In point position caper a pair of slouching male figures, each pathetically naked save for a grotesque iron mask that vaguely recalls the face of a wasp. Atop each mask is a metal loop to which the last link of a red, flaking chain is fixed. A stooped, uncategorizable being holds both chains in a bifurcated claw. Its swollen, housefly head contradicts a humanoid and mammalian body. Segmented ribs tighten the pink-gray skin of a malnourished torso. Knobbly vertebrae form a ridge along its stooping back. With its other claw it waves a bronze censer shaped like a demonic face. A cloud of chalky smoke wafts from it.

  Behind this hideous entity strides the group's obvious leader. She is human, tall and lithe. An open robe trails behind her, an exquisite thing of black and purple silk. A white silk garment sheathes her alabaster torso. Its cut is tauntingly revealing, forcing the gaze to a pair of small, imperiously conical breasts. A filmy skirt of uneven strips likewise confronts the viewer with flashes of long, unblemished thigh. Leather boots reach nearly to her knees. A dozen diamond studs run up the side of each boot, emphasizing its length. A gleam of reflected light flashes from their soles.

  Sharp cheekbones cut across her haughty face. Tresses of hair float down from the crown of her head, ending at the small of her back. Their blondness borders on translucence.

  With eyes the color of ice, she beholds Gad. Ruby lips rise like curtains to show off a hint of pearly tooth. She holds him in her sights as she passes by, wreath of hair furling slowly in her wake.

  Behind her march a half-dozen cultists. Aside from their relatively robust physiques, they are indistinguishable from their comrades, outfitted in rude puce robes and outlandish helmets.

  The catwalk ends, terminating in a new link of oil-coated corridor. This passage soon forks in two. Each fork in turn leads to another split.

  "Which way?" Gad asks Calliard.

  "Still the worst one?"

  "Mm. How about the second worst?"

  Calliard steps ahead to drink in the corrupting ambiance of the four choices. Just past the first fork, the wall recesses to form an alcove. He checks the others. He slips into the alcove. He can't see them, which means they can't see him.

  The vial is already in his hand. He has worked it out of his pack and palmed it. With jittering fingers he twists out its cork. The synthetic mesz tang rises to greet him. It is muddy and vague compared to the stuff he smelled back in the great hall. Still, it will do. It will more than do.

  Calliard rushes the vial to his lips. A familiar numbing sensation melts across his lips and tongue. The demonblood burns its way down his esophagus. It blasts through his veins and arteries. He feels it everywhere in him. It blots his fear. Dampens his hunger. Allows him to think.

  His hand steadies. Icy calm pervades.
His demon sense, until now a faded reflection of its former acuity, sharpens. In a blazing flash, it sorts and correlates the tower's multitude of competing sensations. It instantly achieves a state of hard, diamond perfection. The full return of his sixth sense hones the others. At the same time they immunize him from the tower's relentless perceptual assault. Only those sights, odors, and feelings that aid his purpose will dare to disturb him. The others retreat.

  Why, he wonders, did I deprive myself for so long?

  You feared becoming those blood-head wretches from the great hall. Pathetic and drooling. But they, the blood reminds him, are weak inside, where you are strong.

  You are yourself again, says the voice in Calliard's head.

  Now he is ready.

  The entire tower flashes in his fervid mind. He feels the greeds and hates and lusts of each of its demons, flaring like pinpricks. There are dim lights and blinding ones. He steers his thoughts clear of the brighter flares: these are the demons who might sense him sensing them.

  Above all, at the tower's mystical center, lies a devouring putrescence. A living oblivion. One he shuts his thoughts to, lest it extinguish them.

  It is Yath.

  But knowing Yath is there doesn't scare him, now that the blood is in him.

  He finds the clarity within the tower's chaos. A clear map forms in his head. He knows which chambers are empty and which ones occupied. Their images careen in his head. He makes an instant choice.

  Calliard removes himself from the alcove, returning to Gad and the others. "I know where we're headed."

  He takes them through the left fork, then the right fork after that. The corridor doubles in size. They close in on the void at the tower's heart. Before their tromping, clawed feet can be heard, Calliard senses a troop of slime demons marching through the enlarged passage. He ducks the others into a small, reeking chamber covered in pustular lumps. They hold their collective breath as the red-skinned demons march skeletally past, glaives hoisted.

  "A ground assault on Mendev?" Gad asks, when the last of them are out of sight.

  Calliard homes in on their ruling impulses. He receives their cruelty, their lust for slaughter. "It matches what we've seen so far," he answers.

  "Time slips away," says Gad.

  "It always does," says Calliard.

  He guides them through a series of forks and loops, down corridors lined in viscera and tunnels honeycombed in sugary toxin.

  Finally he comes to a dead-end passageway, surfaced in the hard, mouthlike material of the great hall. Half-formed teeth emerge throughout. From a distance, their arrangements look like tiles. He blinks. Has the blood misled him? Maybe he should have covertly harvested the purer stuff.

  He removes his helmet for a better look. "I feel that there's a door at the end of this," he says.

  Vitta takes a length of iron pipe and taps it against the terminal wall. It bruises the wall, speckling the air with the tower's blood.

  "Gently," says Gad.

  With hesitant fingertips she touches the wall. Growing bolder, she taps it with the flat of her hand. She finds the joins that reveal a hidden door. The halfling kneels.

  "There has to be a trigger," she says. Examining the partial teeth, she notes that one is larger than the others, worn smooth where the others are grooved. She stands back, taps it with the end of the pipe, and braces herself for trouble.

  A slurping wheeze of discomfort follows. Hairline wounds form an archway pattern in the wall-flesh.

  "How about a shoulder, Tiberio?" Vitta asks.

  Tiberio pushes his weight against the incipient doorway. It pops open, releasing cooler air into the corridor. Beyond is a ribbed chamber, lit like the passageway with an internal phosphorescence. Sword drawn, Tiberio enters.

  "It's safe," says Calliard.

  As he says, the room is unoccupied. They scout it for additional exits and find nothing. Vitta satisfies herself that it conceals no hidden doors. They drop their gear and establish a watch rotation.

  Vitta squinches her face at the door. They've closed it, but a line of green light announces its presence to passersby. "I wish there were a way to hide that again."

  "That woman back there," says Jerisa. "That was the priestess, wasn't it?"

  "A priestess, certainly," says Calliard. He removes his bedroll from his pack, folds it into a square, and sits down on it, facing a wall.

  "No," says Jerisa, "that was her. The one who drove Sodevina to kill herself, and Sodevina's comrades to madness."

  "Could have been," says Calliard.

  "I didn't like the looks of her."

  "Nor of her pets," says Vitta.

  "I should have put a dagger in her eye," says Jerisa.

  "Stick to the plan," says Gad.

  "Aren't we on a demon-stopping mission? Killing their priestess would help with that."

  "The tower is the rip. Any other objective is a distraction."

  "A good rip leaves room for improvisation."

  "Untrue. If we whip a dagger at whatever horrible procession we happen to pass, we'll soon be fighting every cultist and demon in the place. Until we're killed or captured, which won't take long."

  "One quick fireball from the wizard, and it would have been over."

  Hendregan perks up. "Yes, I should have." A fiery miniature image of the demonic entourage appears at his feet. He gestures, and they dissipate into smoke.

  "Fireballs only when called for, Hendregan," says Gad.

  The sorcerer slumps in disappointment.

  "So if we're sticking to the rip," Jerisa asks, "what in the name of Aroden's balls is it?"

  "We catch our breath," says Gad, "then reconnoiter. We find out where the orb is and how it's secured. Based on what we discover, we draw up the final plan, and execute it. Until then we keep our heads down and the priestess-slaying to a minimum. Yes?"

  Jerisa crosses her arms. "I didn't like the looks of her."

  The first watch is not yet over when a thumping comes at the door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Gaffle

  The intruders spring to positions. Preparatory fire crackles around Hendregan's hands.

  "Who's there?" The words slurp and crunch, in the demonic tongue.

  "Servants of Yath!" Calliard bellows, in the same language.

  "Is that a mortal voice?" the demon grunts.

  "What of it?"

  "Open that door!"

  "By whose authority do you demand it?"

  "By whose authority do you refuse?"

  "Try invoking the priestess," Gad whispers.

  "What if they're from the priestess?" Calliard replies.

  The door slams open. Flecks of scab, formed on the sheets of torn skin, take to the air.

  The inquiring demons are four in number, each twelve feet high. Frog-fish faces hang in hunched, triangular masses of muscle. Glistening amphibian skin gives way, on their sloped backs, to horny plates of natural armor. Cords of saliva sweep across toothy mouths. They sniff the air as if scenting dinner.

  "We requisition your hiding hole, mortals!" the first demon proclaims. "By seizing it, you have committed an offense against our rank."

  "You speak in Isilda's name?" Calliard asks.

  "Isilda? Another mortal? She serves at the pleasure of demonkind! Now for the matter of penalty."

  "It is you who will face penalty," Calliard says, "if you persist in this folly."

  "As one of the provisions of your punishment," the demon persists, "your group was to choose which one of you we would devour. By arguing, you forfeit that choice."

  Calliard remains unruffled. "You are newly arrived in Golarion," he says.

  The demon's amphibian nostrils quiver in consternation. "How do you know that?"<
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  "To serve the priestess is to awaken the senses to Abyssal existence. Clearly you are unschooled in the flow of power here in Yath's bosom."

  "Demons are demons! Mortals are meat! This arrangement is eternal!"

  "So your claim is that you outrank Isilda?"

  The frog-demon hisses. "My claim is that you are mortal, and thus may not challenge me!"

  A new voice, buzzing also in the demonic tongue, joins the fray from the door's other side. "Who dares utter the priestess's name?" It is the strange fly-headed herald.

  Though each is on its own twice the herald's size, the frog-demons duck their batrachian heads in its presence. "It was the mortals." It points an overmuscled arm at Gad.

  The fly-demon surveys the intruders. Its tongue darts in and out. It addresses Gad in the common tongue of Mendev. "You lead this cell?"

  "I do," says Gad.

  With a backhanded wave and a buzzing stream of imprecations, the fly-thing dismisses the frog-beasts. They slink away, hissing.

  The fly-beast addresses itself to Gad. "You received the dream-summons of Yath?"

  "We did," says Gad.

  "To which intermediary have you sworn allegiance?"

  "None, so far."

  "Yet you invoked Isilda's name."

  "We have heard of her."

  "From whom?"

  "A crazed wretch we met on the trail. Sodevina was her name."

  "Explain."

  "A vicious half-orc she was. She fought us furiously. Only by stabbing her from behind could we put her down. As she died, she sputtered warnings and anathemas. Told us what Isilda had done to her. From this we decided that Isilda was the mightiest of all the ...intermediaries, you call them?"

  "That is the term."

  "We resolved that, were we given the choice, we would swear allegiance to her, who could break such a tenacious one as Sodevina."

  The fly-demon drones to itself for a while. It flits its tongue around Gad's face. "You are the handsome one, then," it finally says.