The Final Battlefield: Armageddon
Elianora and Valere stand on either side of Caprice. Nobody could mistake the two paladins as human anymore: they are something else now, both terrible and beautiful in their strangeness. Their two swords are out, the Light and the Fire, providing a circle of illumination in the stormy darkness of the vast battlefield.
Caprice, too, has changed. No longer the gawky adolescent who arrived fresh from Candor, she has grown into her role as high priestess of Cislunar's Church of Bel. Dark-skinned, dark-eyed, clad in Bel's armor and hard black leather, she is herself a stark setting for the white sword, Palladios, that she holds bared in one hand. Behind her, quiet, her lover Hari stands and waits.
Halkem has lost the softness of youth and alcoholism. His face has new lines carved into it, but although so much of him seems harder and sharper, his eyes have, in contrast, softened with marriage and fatherhood. He stands with a look of resignation on his face, holding the glass blade Viris. The sword is as fragile as his own expectation of survival in this last battle.
Pip has also matured into adulthood, his once nearly foppish good looks torn down in pain and heartbreak and rebuilt along more cynical, hopeless lines. He glitters with jewels and precious metals -- the psicrystals and other magical items he has collected seem to glow with their own light, as does the multihued sword Pavonine he holds, the irridescent colors that run along its blade and complicated as his own thoughts and motives.
Minimin is no longer a mage's apprentice, but has become an archmage in his own right, his own collection of magic items gleaned over the last year nearly rivaling Pip's. His bearing is cocky, arrogant, and the black sword Nyctor adds a dark, dangerous note to his ensemble. Spellfire limns his garments, mute testament to the many protections that he's wreathed around himself in anticipation of this last confrontation.
A few feet away, three boys stand just as solemnly. The Destined King, Malachi Raventree, wears the imperial crown and carries in front of him the great sword Coron, its flames a momentarily tamed but hungry inferno. Beside him are his brothers: Olivar, unarmored, eyes moving restlessly from side to side as he looks for danger to his older brother, and Gaetano, holding the pole of the king's standard, eyes dark and moody and turned in on his own private thoughts.
Earle, Gules, Carel, Crimson, Darkangel, Chrystostom, and all the high priests and priestesses of the Young Gods, the Sacred Order, and several lesser known pantheons stand further back. Only the clerics of the Old Gods are not represented; they are in the armies behind, but refused to join this privileged assembly.
One hundred hand-picked mages, clerics, psions, paladins, monks, and more: all waiting for the signal that the gods have promised. They wait at the forefront of the army, poised for a series of painstakingly planned mass teleportations as soon as the signal is given: teleportations that will bring them to the base of Iron Scream's fortress, where none doubt that the real, most terrible battle will be fought. The dragons and airships filled with more specially chosen combatants are already en route, flying swiftly against a sky filled with lightning and thunder.
Lightning strikes the ground next to the king, and the earth shakes as electricity crackles through the entire assembly. When the glare fades, the Sun Rose Company sees that another force has assembled.
The Herald stands at its head, face covered in a half-mask, motley replaced by armor that seems to be composed of pure white, luminous energy. A golden boy about Malachi's age stands at his right hand, holding a fiery sword far too large for him. Malachi bows to him, and the boy smiles, as if merely a child silently greeting his best friend at any formal occasion.
Valere, Pip, Elianora, and Caprice all recognize the boy at once: it is Bel.
And behind those two -- eyes search out and find other recognizable shapes. A young man with wings, garbed in animal skins: Caren, ready for battle in his manifestation as The Reaper. A huge warrior in crimson armor, shifting restlessly: Sangre. Beside him, another warrior, this one a stern-faced younger man in white: Vair. To one side, a broken shape hanging from crutches: Carrick. A rainbow-scaled dragon: The Onieromancer.
Among them, their reverates -- the Sun Rose Company recognizes the golden winged figure of Persifal, who nods grimly to them, the gold streak in her hair matching the streaks in Valere's, Elianora's, Pip's, and Halkem's.
And beyond ... what manner of gods? Those who have studied other religions can identify a few -- Those Who Remain, the dangerous half-monstrous deities of the desert ... a bade'in in armor, Adoyne? ... countless animals and creatures worshipped by Somadion and kobkode shamans ... and other beings that no cleric recognizes, deities from the unexplored lands of the Southern Continent or beyond the Shadowed Seas, and quite possibly Archetypes hitherto unknown or unacknowledged.
A silent, grim army of deities, faintly translucent, standing on a battlefield that both is and isn't the same one as that beneath the feet of the mortal warriors.
"From Samru's birth to this moment, I have been here," he says quietly, though his words carry clearly even to the least scullery-boy in the army camps many miles to the rear of the plains. "I created Samru as a refuge, but I discovered that it had taken on a life of its own, a life I have come to cherish. Today that life hangs in the balance.
"The Avatarchs of Attrahent are as old as the darkflux from which I and all things were born. They could destroy this sphere with little more than a word, but they do not, because they are not living, they are not motivated, as we understand those things. The avatarchs pit themselves and us against each other for their amusement, but when they grow tired of the game, they will move on. They have the entire multiverse in which to seek new diversions.
"You may be thinking that this is a grim and pointless fate, to die in some great game played by ruthless beings of unimaginable power. But let me assure you: today's battle will not be pointless. Those who die today will not die in vain. Because if we do not fight the avatarchs to a halt, Samru will not survive -- at least, not in any form you or I would recognize. The avatarchs care nothing about this world, but we do. And that is why we must fight."
Several of the war-deities behind the Herald growl with impatient approval, swords clashing on shields.
Malachi steps forward, his young boy's voice clear and steady.
"We're ready," he says simply. "Let's go."
Bel smiles again at the young king, looking to Elianora like nothing so much as one of her son's old playmates getting ready to go.
Throughout the army, churchgoers and worshippers everywhere feel a surge of power and hope, as the deities behind The Herald bless and rally their forces. Heads lift, backs straighten, and fear diminishes.
The Herald opens his hand and a great curled horn of light, like a ram's-horn trumpet, appears in it. He sets it to his lips and the battle clarion rings across the battlefield far more loudly than the thunder rumbles overhead.
He turns and sounds it in each cardinal direction, and then the sky is filled with lightning and rain and the battle begins.
Among the One Hundred, hands reach out to bind the whole in a great chain, and mages teleport the entire group to the base of Iron Scream's fortress. Razor-and-spike-covered walls of red iron lunge into the sky and crackle blue as lightning strikes them and plays down their great length. Everything is noise and rain and violence as the fortress's defenders roar and attack the intruders with blade, cannon, and spell. Airships loom overhead, dropping more attackers down into the fray before becoming victims of lightning and spellfire. Dragons furl their wings and plummet, breathing fire, lightning, acid, and gas over the enemy, and are themselves battered by lightning and cannonball, sticky fire and flying monstrosities from the enemy forces.
From horizon to horizon, from the Indigo Mountains north to the Ebbikuk Mountains south, from the Gitukki Forest east to the Eavon Ocean west, battle rages.
Rotting, diseased servants of Mock stride through the forces, spreading plagues that rot the flesh in mere minutes, parasites that drill through flesh and bone seeking hearts and brains, diseases that turn bone into mush or blood into dust. Twisted, uncanny servants of Sardonicus call on arcane powers to ravage the armies with all manners of elemental and demielemental forces, to destroy the earth under their feet and poison the air around their bodies. And metal-clad warriors and beasts of Iron Scream rip through the army, golems made entirely of swords, steel-jawed beasts that tear through bodies with talons of sharpness, and soldiers of all sorts firing pistols and cannons, arrows and spears, and wielding swords and axes.
Above, between, within, a second battle rages -- a battle perhaps only a tenth of the defending army can see, those with the truest beliefs and sharpest eyes -- the battle of the gods. Everywhere at once, in a place where time and space are not congruent, the gods fight -- what?
If Decad, Mock, Sardonicus and Iron Scream each have only one Champion, that is not to say that they don't have their own versions of reverates and mendicants, beings almost as powerful themselves as the gods of one mere mortal world. Demons, devils -- what mortals would consider all the most powerful rulers of the hell dimensions -- have come to the avatarchs' summons.
And the One Hundred fight on both battlefields.
The Sun Rose Company has been here before -- in the grey, mutable plane that was the home of the Carnival, that entered Suspiro Keep with the Onieromancer. It is a plane on which they see much farther than should be humanly possible: with a moment's concentration they can see other cities around the world, and even some that do not exist on Samru at all. They can see those places that span two planes, and clearly recognize those people with a foot in both planes, as well. And above them, they can see the Night Sun burning overhead, black and cold and full. The members of the Company slip from one state of being to the other as they fight, moving easily between Rharihu and the shadowland of the gods. But so do many of their foes.
Flash: Olivar takes a blow from Havoc meant for his brother, and falls to the ground, covered in blood; a group of rotund alien mercenaries drop from one of the airships and gleefully begin firing right and left, ignoring the human who is trying to point out the enemy to them; and Balefire leads an army of gargoyles through a line of Iron Scream's gunmen, the bullets deflected harmlessly from her body as blood from her enemies runs over the fiery red crystal of her face and hands; twin warriors, Banter and the Onieromancer, fighting side-by-side against carrion-headed devils with mouths covering their bodies; canine warriors from beyond the Shadowed Seas howl with glee as they wrest a cannon bunker away from its defenders; a teenage girl in her brother's borrowed armor stumbles but her enemy is driven back when Reverate Bryan Millerson manifests beside her while she regains her footing; a group of Tarin Tor standing over the bodies of slain enemies, picking up pistols to use with their poison-metal cinnaph swords; Caren the Reaper screams as one of his wings is torn off by Iron Scream's claws; the reborn antipaladin Dakrion Avis swings his battleaxe at Caprice, who lifts Palladios to deflect the blow.
Flash: A humanoid golem clad in the tatters of human skin fighting through a group of surprised and betrayed clerics; a group of white-clad Michaelites falls to an ambush of gunfire; black-winged, bone-armored god Azel falls beneath the parasites that swarm from Mock's decaying flesh; kobkode warriors swarming over a group of Sardonicuses' mages, biting and clawing with teeth, horns, and claws enameled in bright, barbaric colors; the oceans roiling with blood and ichor as the Empire of the Ebon Throne fights aquatic dragons and the last remnants of the once-great mer kingdoms; Minimin and six other archmages circle around Sardonicus's Champion Bane, peppering it with spells and striving to batter through its magical defenses; an aseku archer kneels and takes careful aim, then releases a crimson arrow that arches up into the stormy sky and down onto the Iron Keep -- white fire flashes and burns out the eyesight of everyone in a quarter-mile who had their eyes open at that split-second, but the iron walls turn into molten slag and run into the ground like iron lava; the White One shrieks and perishes as it is engulfed in an exploding ball of acid from Sardonicus; a hooded man lowers a hand for Gaetano, who drops the Destined King's standard in order to pull himself up into the saddle; grey-uniformed members of the Order of Reverate Alain howl with cheerful bloodthirst as they wade through enemy mages' defenses and begin to cut the wizards down; Pip is battered back by black-armored Havoc as he tries to distract the Champion's attention from Malachi; satamharanthu leaping through the forces on all fours, then standing to raise energy spears and alien guns, blasting at the enemy with weapons never manufactured on this world; Valere lunges forward and grabs the horseman's saddle, trying to keep him from running off with Gaetano, and sees Finster's face beneath the hood.
Flash: Minimin gasps as Bane turns Chrystostom to dust, and, shocked, picks up all that remains of Candor's royal wizard -- her staff of the magi; red-haired and -handed Sangre buries his axe into folds of Mock's larded flesh; Thax turns, half-man and half-wolf, jaws covered with blood; Darkangel and his hierodule armies are attacked by slavering hellbeasts; a woman screams as she sees her husband impaled on a rat-man's barbed bone spear; an army of crusaders from the Sacred Order cheer as they spot the Herald flashing through the battle, lauding the presence of the God-King; Halkem's gaze rises from the victim he's giving last rites to and meet those of his father Dubo and brother Jaime; a dragon falls like a comet of yellow flame and crushes a platoon of canonneers beneath it -- a half-minute later, the hillside explodes as kegs of gunpowder stored by the cannon are ignited by the fire; Elianora kneels beside her dying son and lays on hands, feeling Olivar's heartbeat strengthen again; Pip stumbles and Havoc's steel opens him from gut to groin; an army of children shudders beneath an attack of monsters while Fellis raises the fallen as undead to buttress his forces; the earth swallows a battalion of golems as the kevalinu Tocair speaks firmly in kh'indaranya; Finster starts to say something to Valere, but then the Fire stills his smooth tongue forever, and Gaetano shrieks with frustrated anger, pulling out his dagger and hacking at Valere's hands; Caprice and Hari slowly force Dakrion Avis back, and then the antipaladin's axe Reaver cleaves into Hari's chest and devours his soul; Dubo pulls out a pistol and aims it at Halkem, saying, "So, here we are at the end of the world, after all."
Flash: Twenty of the original One Hundred cross the gap of liquid iron and enter Iron Scream's fortress; a steam-driven dragon skeleton made of metal, with pistols and cannon mounted on every horizontal surface, stalks over the battlefield, manned by hooded clerics of the Clockwork Goddess; Caprice screams and plunges Palladios through Dakrion's field plate and into his heart as he tries to pull his axe from the trap of Hari's ribcage; crippled Carrick gasps with pain as he heals Caren's wound by taking it on himself; Valere turns and leaves Gaetano on his own as he sees Pip's blood-covered corpse; the last surviving member of the Elspethian Order wearily lifts her glassteel sword as a black-clad hashishin lunges at her with envenomed claws; Caren the Reaper shakes his head and Pip's raw lungs suddenly fill with air again as agonized life sears through the coryphei warrior; Valere and Malachi stand between Pip and Havoc, flaming swords leaving light-trails behind as they weave through the air; Halkem ducks the bullets and, torn between fighting his father and helping Pip, chooses to run to his fighting companion's side with spells of healing and regeneration.
Flash: Minimin grins in triumph as his detections reveal that Bane's defenses are beginning to fall under the onslaught of his highly powered spells, and the archmages tear into their spellbooks, pages flashing into fire and ash as the spells are read aloud; Reverate Valedeth Gargoyle-Friend falls defending a small gargoyle named Rosemary; Dubo, trying to track his son, shoots impatiently at Valere and Malachi to get them out of his line of fire; Pip musters enough strength under Halkem's healing hands to use his last remaining psionic powers to batter at Havoc's brain, and the Champion of Iron Scream staggers; Elianora turns at Aubrey's shout and sees that Bane is starting to falter, and heads in that direction to help the mages; one of Dubo's bullets slams into Malachi and the Destined King is spun back, falling into the bloody dirt; Valere turns and drops to his knees to heal the young king and son of his beloved; Havoc unsteadily raises his sword over Valere's unprotected back.
Flash: With a feeling of resignation, Halkem realizes nobody else can see the threat to Valere, so he stands and steps forward over Pip and past the prone Malachi; Havoc's sword and Halkem's sword flash past each other; both find their homes in each others' hearts. At the same time, on the parallel battlefield, the crippled god Carrick steps between Iron Scream and Bel, and the god of martyrs falls beneath Iron Scream's ruthless, shredding claws.
Flash: Caprice reaches for Hari's corpse but a hand falls on her wrist and she is turned around by Persifal, who shakes her head and points to the ur-battleground where Bel and Vair stand, bleeding and unsteady, before the wrathful and relentless bulk of Iron Scream itself.
Flash: Havoc's antimagic sphere sputters out and Minimin rips out the last page of his spellbook, reading Disjunction aloud; the Champion of Sardonicus shudders, and Elianora steps past the archmages to take off Bane's head with a swing of the Light at the same time as the Champion tears itself to pieces.
Flash: Valere feels the splash of Halkem's blood on his back but ignores it as he turns from Malachi, only winged by Dubo's bullet, to use the last of his healing on exhausted Pip.
Flash: The battlefield darkens as the Metal Gods' feel their Champions' loss, and those who are the most devout worshippers of their gods find themselves in the shadowland of the clash between avatarch and deity, summoned by the desperation of their gods themselves.
The shadowfield is littered with the corpses of reverates and mendicants, demons and devils, and gods and goddesses themselves. Blood streams restlessly over the ground, containing its own life and luminescence, moving as swiftly over the unnatural earth as oil over water.
Valere and Elianora and Caprice forget everything else they were doing and run forward to stand beside Bel, who is covered in his own gore. Minimin, too, finds himself in Bel's cohort, feeling helpless as he holds the ragged remnants of his spellbook and pats himself for a scrollcase that still contains a scroll. Pip, still only half-alive and bereft of all psionic strength, stands in the autumnal shadow of Caren, who still, fittingly, wears the countenance of death. And around them they see other clerics and paladins and devout worshippers beside their own deities, human and inhuman.
An army of deities against only four, but what four! Decad, a giant of both sexes, covered with breasts and vaginas and penises and holding a great iron chalice filled with blood and a great iron chain upon which are leashed a hundred cowering addicts of all types. Iron Scream, an inhuman monster that seems to be made of nothing but horns and teeth and talons and spikes, blood spilling from its howling maw. Mock, a behemoth, suppurating mass of decaying flesh and lard, covered with swarming, gnawing parasites. And Sardonicus, a towering creature that is ever-changing, its shape in a constant state of flux, covered with mouths that speak to each other, mocking, challenging, confiding, whispering, shouting, praising, blaspheming -- the very essence of change and inconsistency.
For a moment all is in abeyance, as if they are considering the loss of their last Champions.
And then they lunge forward, as if to leave their final mark on the world.
Sangre and Bel and all their paladins, cavaliers, clerics and worshippers converge on Iron Scream, the fiercest and deadliest of the four Metal Gods. The Herald stands with them, wielding a weapon of pure power. The heshetani and Those Who Remain and all the kobkode and desert dwellers who chose to fight for the Destined King attack Mock, carving away chunks of rotting flesh and yellow, quivering fat, from which disgusting worms and parasites squirm and burrow. The Onieromancer, Vair and Caren and all their forces pit themselves against Sardonicus, fighting through devastating wizardry that seems all too likely to destroy them. The bade'in god Adoyne, the Somadion totem spirits, and beings from beyond the Shadowed Seas harry Decad, tearing ruthlessly into the abomination of pleasure despite being counterattacked by its mad, enchained slaves. And darting in and out are other beings, archetypes, mendicants, reverates, all fighting and dying.
The rivers of glowing, restless blood grow larger.
Persifal screams as Iron Scream leaps on Bel and tears his head off with teeth the size of swords. Mock heaves forward and deities die beneath his shifting, glutinous, diseased bulk. Vair, already fighting on broken bones, is crushed by an invisible force. Adoyne falls as Decad's iron chain crashes into him and breaks his back. Sangre buries his huge axe into Iron Scream's head, but is at the same time impaled on the spikes that jut around the Metal God's neck.
Valere and Elianora wipe blood from their eyes and press forward, hacking at Iron Scream with the Light and the Fire, unable to believe that Bel is dead, not daring to hope that the Metal God is dead. Caprice fights back a demon prince to give Persifal room to try to retrieve Bel's corpse, but though she runs the demon through and banishes it with Palladios, Persifal is caught in a black ray emanating from one of Sardonicus's ever-shifting eyes and falls with her flesh seared from her bones. Caprice turns, feeling dead inside, and uses Palladios to begin hacking at Decad's sordid appendages.
Pip stabs Sardonicus with Pavonine, blinding the eye that had just taken down Persifal, when a terrible explosion throws him backward, and all he sees for a moment in the brilliant glare of light is Caren torn limb from limb by the blast.
Minimin rolls to his knees, nearly blinded by the same blast, and sees Mock's rotten hulk descending close to him. Desperate, spell-less, Minimin picks up the staff of the magi that he'd taken from Chrystostom's body and snaps it.
Another explosion, and gobbets of unsavory, stinking flesh are blown over the combatants.
The very plane itself seems to shudder and groan, and the sky crumbles like ash, and for a moment everyone who is still alive on the battlefield of the gods sees past the sky, past wildspace, past phlogiston, and into the raw, swirling madness of the darkflux itself:
And then the wound in spacetime heals itself and the battlefield erupts in a geyser of golden blood.
... the taste of the gods on your lips ... the blood of the gods in your eyes ...
... an endless moment in which to choose to accept that lonely but powerful fate, or to remain on Samru with family and friends and rebuild a damaged world from the ground up ...
.. a choice made.
And the world is changed.
The Metal Gods are gone.
The Young Gods are slain.
Long live the new gods.
Long live Samru Reunited.
