YVERNU GORGE: HELL ON EARTH
The undead army approaches, and the Cislunar army quickly rallies itself. The clergy band together, both those who worship the Young Gods and those who worship the God-King, to form the front line. Mages hurry through the army as it pours out of its cavern encampment, providing as many protections and other spells as they can. The fighters form up, providing cover for the clergy and a front for the undead's first attack. The clerics rally themselves and turn the first front of undead - and then many are surrounded by a cloying, cold cloud of greasy darkness. An Unholy Blight. The battle begins, as Minimin returns the favor with Acid Cloud.
No battle is ever remembered clearly. With Pip mindlinking the Sun Rose Company and a few select allies, some tactics are planned and executed, but for the soldier on the ground, the attack swiftly becomes a nightmare of undead soldiers and horses that don't stop moving even after they are cut down. The night sky is filled with fireballs and lightning bolts, flaming arrows and cannonfire, gargoyles and flying vatbeasts. Minimin reports the presence of one of the wamphyri in the center of the army, issuing orders, and the Sun Rose Company shoves through the combat toward it.
Malgrin, Duke of Unlife -- a huge, carapaced creature with long horns and clawed hands and feet, wrapped in a dark, ragged leather covering that at first seems to be a cloak, and then wings, and then a cloak again. He rides a great, undescribable beast, giant, horned and thick-skinned. Vampires ride around him, crackling with magical energy, and the skeletons around them are fleeter and fiercer than those in the main body of the army. He wields a great unholy halberd, Bonecruncher, with horrible ferocity. He uses his Unholy Blight two more times, and flies, teleports, and is surrounded by an aura of fear that lesser soldiers cannot overcome.
Minimin and Crimson are called forward to buffet the wamphyri with spells, weakening him as Caprice and Halkem turn the energy-buttressed skeletons around them and the rest of the Company picks off the wamphyri's vampiric retainers. The fight turns ugly when one of the vampires pulls out a wand and bubbles the paladins in Walls of Force. The mages turn to Disintegrate the walls and Malgrin teleports elsewhere on the battlefield, reaping through a wall of screaming, fearstruck soldiers until the Company finds him again.
At last Emperor Adalane arrives, bellowing a challenge and ripping the vatbeasts' heads off with his taloned hands, sending vampires plummeting to the ground below. Balefire teleports to the Sun Rose Company, providing much-needed spell support as the mages and clerics are beginning to scrape the bottom of their powers. She's a fearsome creature in battle, the gold runes inside her ruby crystalline body glowing and lighting her up like a blood-red beacon. At last she and Halkem create a large antimagic field around Malgrin -- Balefire motionless as the magic suspends her animation -- and Elianora, Valere, Eclipse, Nicholas, Pip, Halkem, and Eyvan attack. They are all near death, but so, at last, is Malgrin. Bit by bit he is hacked to pieces, until at last he staggers, stumbles, and falls --
and explodes.
Blood sprays over the six and black tentacles sprout from the wamphyri's flesh, thrashing and grabbing for bare flesh. With horror, the Company remembers Balefire's warning. Caprice races in, shouting for backup, and drags the combatants out, shouting for them to clean off the blood at once. Eclipse, his black armor streaming scarlet, strides toward the corpse instead, ignoring the tentacles that wrap themselves around the spikes and blades built into his platemail. He rams a foot into Malgrin's chest, lifts his unholy reaver, and slams it down.
A terrible psychic scream fills the battlefield. The sensitives, like Pip, feel bile fill their throats and grow dizzy with nausea as they fight off the mental onslaught.
Meanwhile, those clergy who yet stand stagger toward Caprice's shouts, pulling off robes and cloaks to wipe off the blood-soaked combatants. Disgusting wormlike creatures wriggle in the crimson ichor and seek to burrow into flesh like rot grubs. Dismayed, the Sun Rose Company plunges into battlefield fires to burn the creatures off.
Without Malgrin's commands, the attacking army soon falls apart, still fighting but no longer guided by tactics and strategy. It's still many gory hours of hacking apart wriggling corpses until dawn, and the Sun Rose Company cannot join in. Every corpse on the ground that was sprayed by Malgrin's blood must be burned in case it was infected by the wamphyri parasites, and the members of the Company keep nervous eyes on each other, stomachs churning with unease as they realize any one of them might have been invaded. The clerics promise to memorize detections and purifications, but they cannot do so for many more hours. All agree that Cure Disease won't work, because the creatures are parasites, not viruses.
When the antimagic wears off, Balefire adds little hope, but instead stations her gargoyles around those who'd been covered in blood, ordering them to attack and hold should any of them begin to act strangely. Several false alarms are raised as the Sun Rose Company, inevitably, begins to argue bitterly with each other.
The battle was won, but 400 men and women were lost. Their bodies are dragged onto funeral pyres. Vampires had stalked the battlefield that night, and the fear of infection is high. Corpses are identified, staked, stripped, and burned. Among the dead are names the Sun Rose Company knows: friends. Cahira Faolan, Cristofawr, a number of young nobles and clerics known to the group, some of the coryphei Pip had been introduced to, members of Caprice's and Halkem's congregations, seven mages known to Minimin. Another 100 are injured. They, too, are quarantined by the gargoyles, until the clerics can check them for vampiric or wamphyric infection.
Eclipse and Elianora soon begin to feel weak and nauseated. As time passes their joints begin to ache, they get nosebleeds, and feel pain in their soft tissues. As if to make things worse, both report a -- not quite a voice, but something -- in their heads, radiating calm them and reassurance that the pain will pass. Coryphei called in can sense unformed presences in the two warriors' minds. Caprice gives them Viris to hold, but it does nothing. Applethorpe suggests, somberly, that perhaps driving it into their bodies might cure them -- but the healer Rosian forbids such an extreme measure unless there's no other hope. However, those members of the Company capable of coherent discussion agree that perhaps Viris should be used to kill the wamphyri. The idea had been suggested and dismissed before, but now it takes new urgency as Elianora and Eclipse curl on the ground in pain.
By noon the clerics have rememorized, and with Rosian they identify those members of the army -- including Elianora and Eclipse -- who have been infected. The parasites are destroyed with Heal spells and potions, but it's a painful and disgusting process. The former because as they die Elianora and Eclipse go into convulsions of agony, both mental and physical; the latter because the corpses are eliminated several hours later in the infecteds' feces. The parasites had already begun to grow, and Rosian suggests that they probably fight each other for dominance until one wins and takes over the body.
There is no further time to delay. The army, weary and battered, pushes forward, leaving funeral pyres smoking greasily behind them. By sunset the army has encamped on the edge of Yvernu Gorge, erecting as many defenses as they can. This time Crimson and Gules help them by casting walls of iron and stone -- they rememorized to help the army dig in rather than to fight, a dangerous choice, but one both felt was wisest.
The Sun Rose Company and others begin their reconnaissance. There is no question that the Sacrament Sanguis is well-protected. The walls of the gorge curve inward at top, ribbed up the sides and ending in narrow, cruel-looking projections that overhang the gorge opening. There is little space for sunlight to penetrate; clearly the creatures within can be active much longer than normal vampires in the open. Minimin cockily decides to light things up below and casts a fireball, only to discover that the top of the gorge is not as undefended as it seems -- the fire hits something invisible and spreads out, nearly frying the rest of the company standing at the edge. Inspection by summoned light -- for night is swiftly falling -- reveals that the top of the gorge is mazed with permanent walls of force.
The Company retreats back to the encampment, where preparations for battle are well in hand.
For three days and three nights the Cislunar army remains encamped at the top of the Gorge. Most of the attacks occur as soon as night falls, but the SS keeps the army on its toes with a few day attacks, too -- trolls, vatbeasts, enslaved gargoyles, and other minions that are undeterred by daylight. In the meantime, the SRC takes what fighting it can into the gorge, aided especially by Earle Remington's teleportation skills. But the floor of the gorge is no easy battlefield, covered with sharp, jagged rocks, undead ambushes, and horrible creatures born of a madman's fantasies and DNA vats. The aeries rise above the floor, thin, jagged, and hundreds of storeys high. Guerilla attacks inside the aeries wreak confusion and death, but many of the uppermost chambers are magically protected, and though the SRC does penetrate, it must soon retreat, beaten back to heal and discover how the battle above is going. There are memorable flashes: the sight of Elianora and Valere riding together on their paladins' steeds, brandishing the Light and the Fire as they charge; its dark opposite, the antipaladin Eclipse lifting his lance as Acrid surges forward; killing a vampire and watching it fall, baring its teeth in a fierce grimace; sights that linger in the mind long after they have faded from sight.
On the fourth night the wamphyri attack en masse; perhaps, at last, they are growing short on cannon fodder. Slender, bald Antaia the Witch Queen stands on the top of her aerie surrounded by her vampiric coven and vatborn hellcats, casting spells; three-headed Balan, Master of the Infernal Hunt, leads an army of vatmonsters and vampires from the back of his huge, horned dire bear; Jalie Squarefoot, the Lich Fiend, stallion-skulled humanoid, teleports through the army wreaking devastation with his spells; and Drendari, Mistress of Shadow, moves all but unseen, leaving behind her corpses with blood flowing from their backs.
But as bad as all of they are, perhaps the sight that most tears into the souls of the Sun Rose Company is that of a familiar face and crippled body grafted to a spider-legged, razor-pincered vat beast, gibbering madly as it tears soldiers apart. Benedict -- no longer human, no longer sane. Even as the Company debates whether or not to try to capture him, a cannonball tears into him and leaves nothing but pulped and bleeding flesh behind.
Antaia and Jalie are swiftly pinpointed as the worst threats, but Balefire's warnings about Jalie burn in the SRC's memory -- do not touch him, do not listen to him, do not look into his eyes. Antaia is the easier target, and the SRC decides to take her down first. Although Jalie destroys wherever he appears, the Witch Queen and her coven are the worse threat, summoning earthquakes and lightning bolts and other spells that twist and ruin nature. Her minions and hellcats inflict fearsome damage on the Company, but it is, surprisingly, Pip and Caprice who finally corner the Witch Queen, Pip keeping her flanked while Caprice thrusts Viris into her.
The result is all Caprice could hope for after her many abortive attempts at using the sword. The Witch Queen screams, a scream that again escalates into the psychic realms. All the members of the SRC dive for cover as she explodes, blood spraying everywhere.
A few minutes later, as the company grimly wipes the blood from its armor, they see that the parasites are all dead. Viris, apparently, destroyed them even as the wamphyri-parasite bore them, dying. Antaia's blood was purified; the parasite, whatever it was, was considered "profane" under the strictures of the sword.
Elsewhere, the battle is going poorly. The army is cut into pieces by raging walls of fire, and the supplies and waggons are consumed by flame. Balan has been brought down, but Drendari still moves freely, and many vatbeasts are still marauding.
The SRC heals itself up as much as possible and goes after the next greatest threat, Jalie Squarefoot. They find Balefire, too, hot on his trail, accompanied by Crimson. He has all the abilities of a lich, the SRC is swiftly informed, plus paralyzing touch, damaging touch, a fear aura, proof against detection and location, and an incredible number of immunities: cold, electricity, polymorph, stunning, poison, sleep, paralysis, disease, death, necromancy, mental, Fort-save effects, critical hits, negative energy attacks -- and who knows what else. Those are only the ones Balefire and Crimson have deduced from watching the wamphyri move through the army, apparently immune to damage itself. Moreover, the lich seems to have an unlimited ability to polymorph, dominate, dispel magic, cast fireball, fly, go invisible, teleport, and cast walls of fire. "It's playing with us," Crimson says humorlessly. "It can leave anytime it wants. It could fight us completely unseen, if it wanted. But it's having a lot of fun rubbing our noses in how useless we are."
Caprice and Elianora suggest they try to turn it -- Jalie is, after all, not only wamphyri, but undead as well. Within ten minutes the surviving clerics -- too few, and where is Applethorpe? He was last seen fighting Balan -- join. But locating Jalie is difficult, and many more die before the clerics are able to try to turn the lich.
The turning works, and with an irritated hiss Jalie teleports away.
"He'll be back," Crimson predicts grimly.
"Maybe not," Balefire demurs. "Jalie is a survivor. And he has all of eternity to wait and rebuild his power."
The SRC helps finish off the rest of the battle. Drendari is gone -- probably fled, as well. The corpses are piled high, too many unidentifiable, burned to crisps in walls of fire. Again the weary survivors begin to drive stakes into the hearts of their former comrades, or behead them, for fear of infection. Elianora checks on her children and still finds them safe with the king, although Lament's force is in tatters, the king bloodied, the children wide-eyed and dirty.
Over half the army is dead now - more than a thousand corpses have been dragged into fires. The survivors are almost all hardened warriors. The supplies are destroyed. Many warhorses and spare mounts are dead. The support staff is dead. Soldiers curl up where they are and fall asleep as dawn brightens the skies. Even the Sun Rose Company admits that it cannot stay awake any longer, and entrusts the watch to the ever-vigilant gargoyles.
Awakening to a field of bloody and burned bodies is something to which none of the Company will grow accustomed. The death toll grows. Elianora has lost her father-in-law, Nandos, who died bravely defending his grandsons. Rosian is dead. Gules is, again, dead, though the SRC hopes his soul is held safely in its gem. Nobody who came from the School of the Redeemers yet lives. Lavendar is dead. Jack Straw is dead. Nicholas Thongolir is dead. And many, many more. The Company weeps as bodies are consigned to the flames, and debate mentally over which, if any, should be preserved and set aside for later resurrection -- and what effect that might have on the morale of the troops, already exhausted and soulworn.
Pip and Halkem are, at last, the ones who persuade the SRC to gather up a small force and investigate the aeries. After all, three wamphyri are still unaccounted-for, and a number of Punishments, and, perhaps most important, Benedict and Catherine-Marie's two babies, the same age as Pip's own.
For another week the SRC explores the aeries, killing vampires, ghouls, shadows, zombies, skeletons, vatbeasts, and mindless slave-chattel. Jalie Squarefoot's aerie is the worst, covered with Symbols and Repulsions and nasty magical tricks and traps. Over that time, Minimin's store of scrolls and potions dwindles, and charged items run out of charges. In one of the greatest battles inside the aeries, Drendari is encountered and destroyed after nearly killing Valere with a devastating backstab. She was difficult to hunt down, and much magic is used to destroy her and the remaining warriors she'd mustered as bodyguards, but the reward was worth it: her sword was a black mohain blade with a black iron hilt, and Caprice immediately identifies it as Nyctor, which hides what is hunted. The second of the Four Swords of the Troubadour is in the Sun Rose Company's hands.
Other items, too, are found. Too many are evil, or neutral in alignment but evilly inclined, and the usual SRC arguments ensue. Some are more generally useful. The material and notes left behind in Furcas' nightmare vatlabs are potentially invaluable, if the SRC is willing to let them fall into other hands. The creation of such mutated forms of life is not intrinsically evil, but after fighting the results of such tampering, most of the Company is left wondering if it can ever be good. Even Pip, who is usually the most morally ambiguous, feels a certain gut distaste for the vatjobs, as if his link to Caren the Sower has made him more sensitive to the ways nature can be misused. To Minimin's disappointment, though, there is no sign of Jalie Squarefoot's spellbooks in his aerie.
Of the Punishments, Jalie, Lel, Furcas, and the babies, there is no sign. At last the SRC is forced to conclude that they are either in the endless Unders, from which they have little chance of ever being routed, or have teleported elsewhere in the world.
In that week, the rest of the army heals and does its own clean-up of the surrounding mountains. The airship is used to take injured and the preserved dead back to Cislunar, and to bring back food, sappers and miners. Each aerie is pulled down as soon as the SRC declares it clean and the kobkode have scoured it for "artifacts and clues." The Sacrament Sanguis might conceivably rise again, with Jalie still alive, but it will not be able to rebuild its former force for many generations.
YVERNU GORGE: THE TRIP HOME
The trip back to Cislunar takes several weeks, the airship keeping guard over the army and the new waggons and donkeys brought in to help move the ordnance and scavenged items back. On the second week another airship approaches, this one of unusual design.
The Company scrambles to the defense. After a few tense moments, Halkem identifies the ship as "those lizardmen we talked to out in space." The Heshetani.
Sure enough, the ship approaches slowly, under a sign of truce. Soon the ships are beside each other, and the Sun Rose Company again meets the richly dressed bipedal lizardmen of the race that had sold the SRC food and supplies some time ago, in a crystal sphere far, far away. The two groups exchange polite greetings.
"Who are they?" Papa Lucco asks, bright eyes fascinated at the sight of giant almost-kobkode.
"Traders," Halkem says with resignation.
The kobkode merchant straightens his back and pushes through the Company.
"Step aside, step aside," he says, suddenly businesslike. "This is no job for warmbloods."
Although the SRC decides not to let Papa Lucco and the Heshetani talk unmonitored, for fear that the kobkode might sell Samru out from under them, it is the reptiles who do most of the talking, and for those with mercantile interests, it's an educational marvel of a conversation. Papa Lucco seems to draw on a mysterious mantle of power as he speaks, becoming a canny, quick-tongued, iron-eyed negotiator that the SRC had never seen before. Apparently the Heshetani came to Samru not too long after the SRC revealed that the Iron Autocracy had fallen -- leaving the planet undefended by the satamharanthu who had previously ruled the wildspace of Samru's crystal sphere. Upon discovering that the dread Avatarchs had manifested on Samru, however, the Heshetani's interest in, ah, "acquiring" the planet faded considerably. The Metal Gods, born in the madness of space, are enemies to all civilizations. Thus, after reconsideration, the Heshatani decided that it was their patriotic duty as an intelligent race to offer succor to Samru in its attempt to destroy the Avatarchs. At that, Papa Lucco and the Heshetani spokesman, Isthru, settle down to hard negotiation.
The Heshetani are willing to trade airships and even recruit spacefaring mercenaries for the war in exchange for free trading rights with the planet, "unhampered by the Iron Autocracy's restrictive laws and taxes." Papa Lucco points out that he cannot control the satamharanthu, but that the Cognoterre has recently freed itself from the IA and would be very interested in such a trade. SRC sputtering is waved aside as irrelevant as the kobkode sets himself up as the trade ambassador for the entire known lands. "Actually," Papa Lucco corrects when this is brought up, "I am acting as trade ambassador for the Destined King of the known lands." His teeth glisten in a broad grin, so similar to that of the Heshetani speaking to him.
