Chapter 67. Into Torment

hat a horrible place,” Brigit whispered under her breath.  Her hand trembled where she grasped the handle of her blackened axe and her freckled visage glowed white against the bloody sky.  Armand had to agree with her.  His senses were raw and he could tell by the deep lines on Mog’s face that he was not the only one.  Sometimes he hated his natural sensitivity and the techniques to soothe himself that he had learned along the way were not always effective.  Mog was clearly focusing upon a mind form, but sweat was beading his brow. 

Aside from Brigit and Mog, he felt out of place, surrounded by strangers he did not fully trust.  The scowling silent ranger prowled ahead of them, returning from time to time to nod and wave them forward.  Ebony had a small silvery globe at the end of a purple silk ribbon that she used to choose their path.  His mistrust of necromancers and their ilk was barely assuaged, but any lingering dislike he had for the woman had been replaced by disdain.  Her foolish folk charms and hedge wizardry seemed inconceivably banal in such a realm.  Better that they should all turn back while they still drew breath.  Not to mention, they had no proof that their friend was still alive.  By all accounts, the man drew trouble like flies to yak dung.  He sighed angrily.

“You’d better be alive after putting us through this,” he thought angrily, “and I swear, if Brigit dies, I’ll finish your bad luck for good.”

When Morisedd returned to the fold this time, he clutched something red in his hand.  Confusion swirled in his eyes as he approached Ebony and held out the shredded remains of one of her satchels.  A stricken look crossed the necromancer’s scarred visage and she ran a trembling hand through her gray-streaked tresses.

“Has everyone got their ward?” she asked anxiously and they all obediently felt at their throats even though Armand could smell his from several paces.  She reached into her belt pouch and pulled out the ninth.  Presumably it was meant for Pendaran when they found him.  She had explained that there were sacred herbs that demons found distasteful and their presence alone would drive off all but the most determined. 

“It is one of yours?” Lemony asked, her eyes round.

“I made exactly ten and nine are accounted for,” the necromancer said, a quaver of panic in her voice, “Oh gods, please no.”

“What is wrong?” asked Uriel.

“I gave the last one to Mabane… something to reassure him while we were gone.  He is so distraught about the loss of Pendaran.”

Morisedd turned away, trotting back to where he had found the item, his sharp gaze pointed at the ground.  Ebony uttered a prayer under her breath while the rest of them looked on in stunned silence.  Mabane, a budding mesmer, not even old enough to have experienced Lyssa’s Aura.  Gods help him if he had truly followed them here, it was too horrible to consider.

A choking cry pierced the gravid silence and he saw the ranger stagger to his knees, his shoulders curled under the weight of terrible grief.  An animal cry curled from his throat and they rushed toward him, shocked and dreading what they would find.  Armand saw tears gleaming upon Brigit’s cheeks as she strode toward Morisedd’s hunched figure.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

Armand was not sure what they were looking upon beyond raw torn flesh and shattered bones.  His gorge rose as he gazed upon evidence of extreme degenerate violence that had flung viscera and limbs and shreds of tawny fur in every direction.  Morisedd was weeping softly beside the creature’s ruined head and now he saw that it had been a big cat with tufted black ears and speckled fur, one of the beautiful Krytan lynxes that Armand had sometimes glimpsed in the forest shadows on his many journeys.  This one was possibly the largest specimen he had ever seen.  Its green eyes gazed into eternity, an expression of terror and sadness frozen there.

“It’s Geetha,” Brigit wept, “Teleri’s companion. Oh gods, she must have followed Mabane and tried to protect him.”

Uriel went to Morisedd’s side as the ranger started to sob.

“I’ll kill him,” he choked, “If anything has happened to Mabane, I’ll kill him.”

Uriel knelt down beside him and held him for a moment.  Then, with terrifying rapidity, the ranger rose, his visage grim with determination.

“I will track him.  Pendaran can rot until Mabane is safe.”

Not bothering to see whether or not they agreed, Morisedd slumped on ahead, moving in ever expanding circles around the remains of Teleri’s pet until he found the scattered mess of a haversack and a twisted wad of tin that might once have been a box. 

“I recognize that,” Uriel said quietly, “Mabane was dragging it around the other day.  I figured he was just playing.”

Armand frowned.  In his experience, mesmer children never simply played.  They plotted.  Easily bored and insatiably curious, their parents had to watch them like hawks.

“He may have fled while Geetha was holding them off,” Armand whispered, squeezing Brigit’s hand.  It was difficult seeing her so distraught and helpless to comfort her.

“I can’t even imagine how terrified he must be,” she croaked, “Alone in this place and poor Geetha destroyed.  He must be mad with fear… and what if we can’t find him.  Oh gods, what if he’s dead?”

Armand welcomed her into his arms, watching as Morisedd skirted the area around the abandoned pack until he seemed to reach some kind of conclusion and headed off at a stiff trot.

“Come,” Armand murmured into her ear, kissing her gently on the cheek, “Morisedd appears to have found a trail.”

Brigit nodded and turned away, unslinging her axe and shrugging her shield onto her arm.  She strode boldly after the lean form of the ranger while the rest of them stayed back a few paces, watching and wary.

“Poor little lad,” Mog sighed, his normally jovial face lined with anxiety as Lemony sidled closer to him.

“He can’t be dead,” the little monk murmured, shaking her head, “It’s just too cruel.”

“T’is no place for a little one,” Mog moaned, squeezing Lemony gently against his side, “He’ll be needin’ all yer prayers, Sister.”

Lemony sighed sadly and rushed off after Morisedd, her staff clutched in a white-knuckled hand.  Brigit ran on ahead of her, leaving Mog, Ebony, and Xiang Yi behind to look on in numb horror.  There was nothing for it.  As long as there was a ghost of a chance the boy might be alive, they had to find him.

They trod slowly over the parched black soil, their clothing constantly snagged by clumps of biting thorn scrub and bitter tufts of lifeless grass.  There was an unwholesome quality to the air that caught in Armand’s throat and made him cough forlornly as the minutes passed into hours and they had to resign themselves to the needs of their bodies and take a break.  Morisedd dropped to his hams, shrugging away Uriel’s attempts to comfort him, his anger palpable to Armand.

‘If she had never met him, none of this would have happened,” Morisedd snarled, “I should have forbid the wedding.  Why did you stop me?  I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Uriel stepped back and frowned.  If she had an answer, she kept it to herself.  The ranger rasped wearily between gulps of water from his flask, then rose to resume his trek.  They were all a little footsore now but eager to proceed.  Morisedd took the lead and Brigit trotted boldly after him.

They passed sulfurous fumaroles and chasms, threaded through a canyon forged of ghastly slabs of what appeared to be flesh pierced with enormous clouded eyes.  Claws of long dead beasts curled up toward the heavens, immense and nightmarish.  Armand could taste the fear of his companions, knew it now as intimately as his own rising sense of doom.  At last Morisedd drew to a stiff halt near the crest of a hill.  He sank to his belly, cursing softly as he surveyed what lay beyond.

“What are they?” he wheezed. Ebony moved toward him, extending her neck to see what lay on the other side of the hill.

“Margonites,” she breathed, “I had heard rumors that they had started to appear in our world, but this is their home and prison.  They are the zealous demonic servants of Abaddon.”

“Demons?” Morisedd demanded, “How powerful are they?”

“One or two might be no worse than a well-trained mage or warrior… but they are so many.  And the fortress beyond them is no doubt teeming with them as well.”

“Mabane is down there somewhere,” Morisedd croaked, “We’d best get started.”

“Started?” asked Brigit, alarm in her voice as the ranger strung his flatbow and nocked an arrow to its string.

“We cannot go down there, but I can lure a few to us, hopefully without alerting them all.  Go, take up positions and prepare for a fight.  Do not leave this place.”

Morisedd crept along the curve of the hill, keeping low to the horizon so that their enemy might not see him from afar.  Then, without a sound, he vanished between a notch where the shoulders of two spiky hillsides met.  Brigit fretted, swinging her axe a few times experimentally before pausing to draw poison across the blade in preparation for her foes.  Then at last they saw the ranger rushing toward them, out of breath and grim.  Four luminous figures rushed after him, lavender and actinic bursts of white flowing beneath their elaborate armors and robes.

“Kill them, quickly,” the ranger rasped, “before they betray us!”

Brigit leaped into the fray, her axe shrieking as she brought it to bear on a thin drifting figure.  Morisedd dropped his flatbow and now wielded a powerful hornbow, feathering their foes with arrows and crippling one before it could turn to run away.  Armand’s eyes narrowed and he felt the cunning minds of his foes, searching now for the one that had just begun to focus.  Armand shouted a swift incantation and the Margonite sorcerer cried out, falling back in pain with several of its fellows.  Mog pressed forward, uttering his own incantation, his features fierce beneath his half-mask as the Margonite priest fumbled its spell.  Fire rained down on the priest, sorcerer and white winged spearman. Sulfurous gouts and splintering rock pounded them senseless, driving them to their knees as they milled about in pain and confusion.  Uriel rose skyward again, her graceful form straining to channel the realm of fire. 

Lemony danced back with a squeak as she dodged away from an immense masked warrior with a terrifying hammer clasped in its fists.  Mog turned to protect her, lashing the warrior with a hex so that it slowed to a crawl, the ether dragging it back so Lemony could run away.  Snarling, the warrior focused upon the big mesmer now.  Armand glimpsed its approach from the corner of his eye, but he had to stop the sorcerer.  The evil elementalist called upon the heavens and ribbons of electrical might danced over its luminous figure as it prepared to hurl it upon them.  In an instant he uttered a single syllable and the spell died, its energies flooding his body and telling him he had succeeded.  Now he focused upon the priest, seeing that it was preventing any of its compatriots from dying.  It had to go down and quickly.  Brigit whirled toward the skulking figure instinctively, her poisonous blade tearing into its burning lavender flesh.  Armand hesitated, watching the sorcerer but also wary of the priest.

Morisedd’s arrows shattered the tough plates of armor over the Margonite warrior’s back, stopping it short as it made a brutal lunge toward Mog’s fleeing form.  Ebony lashed the fiend with a vile curse, the chill of Grenth’s magic causing Armand’s skin to crawl.  Distracted, he narrowly prevented the Margonite priest from shielding itself from spells and now he gathered the powers of a mighty hex onto the fiend, seeing it was weakened and would soon be forced to heal itself or die.  A second curse shot from his lips, swift and cruel, punishing the priest if it failed to act while the first hex lay in wait.

The vile creature staggered to its knees as its attempt to heal itself backfired, its mind burned to ashes and its life fleeing from its misshapen form.  Brigit now whirled toward the sorcerer as Armand laid the wastrel curse upon it while preventing it from casting a single spell.  In an instant it crumpled to a mangled heap and she turned without missing a beat toward the winged spear thrower.

Armand had never encountered its kind, its strange songs and shouts foreign to him.  He made an attempt to stop its potent magic as he might a sorcerer but met with no success.   Behind him he heard the warrior go down with a groan and now felt the minds of his friends focusing upon the strange winged creature.  Ebony and Mog laid their hexes upon it, punishing its thrusts and feints so that it died quickly beneath Brigit’s axe.

And then it was over.  Heart pounding, Armand gazed around their gathering, relieved to see that no one had received more than a scratch from their encounter.  The Margonites might well be demonic, but they died just the same.  Morisedd pushed past him, his eyes slitted above his masked visage.

“Wait,” gasped Lemony.  Xiang Yi panted beside her.  Ebony nodded and encouraged the monks to take a sip of water.

“This realm is taxing, it is far from Dwayna’s gaze,” she explained, “Let them rest a moment and try not to lure too may.”