IGS #4, Chapter 50

Jova

There were just too many of them.

It wasn’t a question of fury. She had plenty of that. Willpower. That was endless. She tore boulders from the quarried ground, flung them, directed them, allowed her power to do the rest. Her will was made manifest in the heavens as the rocks and shards and fragments spun and sheared and sliced and crushed the Silverines—but there were just too many.

For a moment there, however, she’d thought they had the situation in hand. Even as the sky darkened with Philosophers, their punishing, shrill song more terrible than thunder, Leonis’ power had surged. She’d felt invigorated, her powers heightened, and had laughed breathlessly in wonder as her already formidable Pyre Lady powers had been magnified.

Become more capacious, she had wrested even more rocks from the ground, added them to the vortexes and tornadoes of flying stone, had broadened the sweep of her remit, and for a second, an ageless moment, thought that she could drive back the swooping, dodging, reckless infinitude of Silverines all by herself.

And then Leonis’ blessing had disappeared off like a vital thread snipped in twain. A third of her rocks had collapsed to the ground, the others lost their verve, and she was merely herself once more. The Philosophers grew capable again of dancing with her power, twisting and swerving as they dodged and avoided the largest of her boulders, their inherent Silver-ranked toughness allowing them to weather the storm of the smaller rocks for just enough time to fall upon her companions.

Infuriating. Galling. Horrific.

Their progress had stalled completely. Kuragin had leaped down to transform, Nyrix by his side, Druanna’s eidolon carving up the skies with unending precision. Druanna herself fought off foes who dove down to assail her, who sought to smother her with the press of their own bodies, such that she was constantly retreating, batting away corpses and muscling herself out of reckless clinches.

Leonis had disappeared completely. Fallen off her plinth? Xandera was turning from side to side, palms raised to unleash careful gouts of lava into the sky, the burning blazing trails darkening almost immediately as they engulfed Silverines, but for fear of spattering her own companions her arcs were limited in scope. Kelona, golden, unleashed blasts of her Queen’s Glory or whatever she called it, driving off Silverines who drew too close to the blazeborn queen.

But there was no denying it.

They were losing.

There were simply too many fiends. Their bodies lay crumpled in drifts, tangled with each other upon the sands that were growing muddied with their blood. And still they came. Laughing, trilling, indifferent of death, happily diving down upon Druanna’s blades, being crushed mid-air by Jova’s rocks, seeking to pluck, to grasp, to tear apart their foes.

The air was nearly devoid of mana. Jova strained, thrusting her few vortices farther out, but soon she’d be tapping the last of her reservoir. The Flame Vaults and Dread Blazes wouldn’t last much longer—

Kelona let out a cry of sheer frustration as she guttered and sank down to one knee beside Xandera.

They had to keep moving. Paralysis was death. Urging the plinth on, she turned to cry out a warning to Druanna, and then froze.

Leonis re-appeared at the rear of the plinth, seated, spine straight, hands resting on his knees.

Finally!

The big man didn’t stir. Instead, his odd, geometric clubs appeared once more on the perimeter, each hanging vertically above the sands, spinning slowly and infusing the air with power.

What power!

Jova let out a cry of savage satisfaction as his blessing infused her once more, and where she’d been faltering, fighting to keep her rocks aloft, now she felt buoyed, invigorated, renewed.

Shattered rocks and hefty stones rose from the cratered floor once more to fly with enhanced accuracy at their foes. Her rocks that were already aloft moved quicker and with greater strength.

It was marvelous.

But then the ten or so Nezzars began rising into the air, the muted silver light of the Unfathom gleaming off their sharp ridges and smooth facets, and came to life.

It was as if each one was wielded by an invisible Leonis. Each club began to swing and swoop through the air, remaining roughly in place, but demolishing any Philosopher that came close.

Jova stared, eyes wide, as one Nezzar swung clear through the top of a Silverine’s skull, splattering it apart like a ripe fruit.

It shouldn’t have cleaved open its had so easily. The Silverines has Silver-enhanced toughness, even her rocks only pulped, didn’t splatter.

And then the Nezzars began to rotate in a great circle, rising ever higher into the Philosopher’s flock, and where a club flew, it delivered death.

“Yes!” Jova couldn’t restrain her joy. They were back in the fight! She inhaled deeply and urged her plinth to float forward faster, her rocks crushing and demolishing the Philosophers.

How many of them had already died? The sands were a battlefield, a slaughter house floor. And still the Philosophers gathered above like storm clouds.

But between the dozen Nezzars and her own rocks they could finally thin enough of the assault to get moving again.

The eidolon provided the rear guard, Kuragin lifting the unconscious Nyrix over one shoulder.

Faster.

The mountains loomed massive just out of reach. Sweat ran into her eyes. Even with Leonis’ blessing she couldn’t catch her breath. Her shoulders rose and fell, her jaw was clenched, and she knew, she just knew, they had to break away or die.

“Druanna!” Her cry cut through the enmaddened song, the alien jubilation of the suicidal Silverines. “Run!”

And she lowered her rocks so that they formed a threshing vortex around her plinth, and pushed the great flat stone as fast as it could go.

With Leonis’ blessing, it turned out, it could go fast.

The plinth burst forward, the sands going from creeping by to blurring. The rocks moaned as they cut through the air, and then were joined by Leonis’ Nezzars, three of whom settled into view just above and ahead, the others still forming their perfect ring around their small group.

They cut their way free.

Blood, ichor, body parts rained down on them. Philosophers in all their gaudy variety screeched, laughed, burst apart, died.

Jova wiped blood from her face, out of her eyes, and pushed the plinth to go faster. Leonis’s blessing empowered her, but mana was still in short supply. Her vortices fed her but a trickle now, and any moment they’d have to stop, have to conserve their strength, and in doing so, die—

Then they broke free.

Like emerging from the Rain Wall in the Rascor Plains, the plinth stabbed out of the Silverine maelstrom and into the clear. They sped along for a few moments, but then Jova willed the plinth to slow and turned to regard their foes.

Who didn’t pursue. They hung in the air, their song growing quiet, their expressions neutral, a host several hundred strong. None of them broke the line. It was as if they’d hit an invisible wall of force.

Druanna and her eidolon broke free, the great construct carrying both Kuragin and Nyrix, and they powered forward until they, too, realized the change, and stopped.

“Why aren’t they following?” whispered Kelona, her words strangely loud in the echoing silence.

“I don’t know,” said Jova. The urge to fling her rocks back at the fiends was tremendous, but she didn’t want to break their stasis. Then, on a hunch, she turned to gaze at the closest mountain.

It loomed massive in the near distance, white sands clinging to the lower slopes like snow, but raw black cliffs rose precipitously to a sharp peak from which narrow black rectangular spires emerged. Almost as if the mountain had grown up to swallow an ancient edifice, much as a tree might grow around a post.

The tops of those rectangular towers were lost in the low-hanging clouds. There were perhaps a half-dozen of them, clustered close, with one particularly large tower’s side descending almost halfway down the mountain where a cliff face failed to cover it.

“The Tomb,” said Druanna, still fighting to catch her break, six arms lowered, Silverine gore slicking off her scimitars.

Leonis rose to his feet and studied the mountain. “Must be. And.” He gazed back at the Silverines. “There must be a perimeter here that keeps them at bay.  Maybe the Tomb itself is off-limits.”

Jova nodded reluctantly. “Must be. Doesn’t make sense, though. They’re meant to be its protectors. Why would there even be a perimeter?”

Leonis shrugged.

“How badly hurt are they?” asked Xandera, hopping off the plinth to approach where the eidolon was laying down the unconscious Dread Blazes. Kuragin had reverted to his human form, and though his skin was swelling up and bruised looking, he didn’t seem to be cut or deeply wounded.

“The Silverines got him off the ground,” said Druanna. She kept a wary eye on the floating hundreds as if expecting them to break forward and attack. “Tried to pull him apart. I managed to get him down, but he’d passed out by then.”

“Let’s get them on the plinth,” said Leonis, stepping down onto the sands. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Agreed,” said Jova, urging the plinth to float back to the unconscious Great Souls. “If we can find some kind of shelter at the base of the mountain we can rest. Let them heal up.”

They did so. Druanna and Leonis placed Nyrix and Kuragin carefully on the flat rock, and then they began marching toward the mountain.

“What happened?” asked Jova, who’d hopped down to walk alongside Druanna and Leonis. “What was that?”

Leonis raised both brows briefly then gave a rueful smile. “Guess I figured out a few quirks about my power.”

“Don’t give me that,” snapped Jova. “You disappeared. You’re a Dread Blaze?”

Leonis snorted. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Congrats!” called Xandera, who sat on the back of the plinth, legs dangling. “That’s wonderful, Leonis!”

He gave a bashful wave back.

Jova studied him. “How did you refine your Dread Blaze technique in the midst of battle? I’ve never heard of someone mastering mana flow while fighting for their life.”

“I guess it was a mindset problem.” Leonis considered, then shrugged one broad shoulder. “I never appreciated my Nezzar network before. It always felt… insufficient. The effect was too subtle, too gradual.” He rubbed at his bearded jaw. “I guess I was always too focused on trying to smash people’s faces in.”

Jova nodded. That had been how Leonis had fought during their sparring sessions back on LastRock. He’d been tempestuous, aggressive, punishingly fierce. Often to his detriment. It had felt like fighting a bull that only knew how to charge.

“But… I don’t know.” He glanced back abruptly as if to confirm that the Silverines were still holding back, then relaxed. “Swinging Nezzar from the ground wasn’t going to help us much. So I focused on helping you all.”

“That you did,” grinned Druanna. She was running a thick-toothed comb through her long black hair, working out the gobbets and chunks and worst of the ichor-sludge from her mane. “I’ve never felt so incredible.”

“Yeah?” Leonis grinned, then glanced away as if bashful. “Good.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you mastered your Dread Blaze technique,” said Jova.

He blew out his cheeks. “Well. The network, it functions by my channeling mana to each club from my Heart. And… as I sat there, things became clear. What mattered. What didn’t. And perhaps… I don’t know. I discovered a new understanding of what I could contribute, and why. It allowed me to calm down. To really focus. And in doing so, I was able to intuit how to feed the Nezzars. And one thing led to another.”

“And one thing led to another,” marveled Druanna. “That has to be the humblest explanation for reaching Dread Blaze that I’ve ever heard. How long were you a Flame Vault for?”

“How long?” Leonis pondered. “Perhaps a little under a year? I reached it while en route to the Fiery Shoals.” He chuckled. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

Druanna let out an appreciative whistle. “Just under a year? Careful there, Leonis. You’re straying into prodigy territory.”

“Nah.” Leonis looked amused more than anything. “It’s the opposite. It’s like I finally learned to get out of my own way.”

“Well, it made all the difference,” said Jova. “Your network, or whatever you called it, was indeed… subtle… but this time? I couldn’t have done what I did without it.”

“Agreed.” Druanna cuffed Leonis lightly on the shoulder. “Well done, Dread Blaze. Well done.”

Leonis flushed, and though he wasn’t able to restrain a small smile, he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the white sands.

They crossed the last of the valley, for steep hills encroached on both sides, channeling them toward the base of the mountain. The desert sand grew ever finer till at last each step was causing curlicues of dust to arise with a puff. The air also grew noticeably more chill, and somehow the black towers loomed all the more massive and ominously with each passing moment.

Jova studied them. Their party had fallen silent. She’d died inside those towers centuries ago. Died as a Charnel Duchess. Now that she was here, having fought through that army of Philosophers, that truth felt like a terrible reality. She’d brushed it aside before, intent on achieving impossible results, but…

Damn.

No windows. No entrances. The black sides of the towers were pitted and rough, but unbroken. There had to be a way in. And if there wasn’t? She’d make one.

But damn. Looking back, she studied the distant wall of hovering Silverines. Their silence, their unwillingness to follow, only made the approach more unnerving.

“Let’s climb up the lower slopes to the actual rock,” suggested Druanna. “I’ll feel safer if we can find an overhang or cave.”

“Agreed,” said Jova. “But we won’t make much headway on foot.” Indeed, the first half of the mountain was buried in the thick drifts of fine sand. “If we go slowly, I’ll raise us all on the platform.”

“Good idea.” Druanna studied the slopes above them. “We’ll slip down two steps for each one we take.”

Jova nodded. She appreciated Druanna. The woman was smart, competent, and efficient. Exactly the kind of person she liked working with. No drama, no fuss, no complaining. It helped that she was stunningly lethal, too.

Scorio had been smart to recruit her.

Scorio.

Jova pursed her lips as a wave of complex emotions arose within her. She was used to only feeling conflicted anger and resentment at the thought of him, but now? Regret, mostly. Regret at what could have been. A partnership. The man knew how to get things done. How to tear down walls. He was, in his own way, terrifying.

And yet. He was a good person. Fundamentally so. Naive, frustrating, too trusting, and always driven by emotion, but… a good person.

Jova stared off into the empty waste. There’d been a time when she’d wondered—especially as they’d crossed the Farmlands—if they’d rediscover the connection, the attraction that her previous self had had for him. Incomprehensible as that had been. Perhaps it’d only have been a physical thing. The man was easy on the eyes, and his Gold tempered body…

“Jova?”

She blinked and looked back at Druanna. “Sorry. Lost my train of thought. Let’s move.”

They gathered everybody on her plinth. It was crowded, standing room only but for to the two unconscious men, but no matter. Igniting her Heart, Jova willed it to rise. It did so sluggishly; it wasn’t even the weight, she realized, but something about having to affect the living that rode it. She could direct several tons of rock to fly about in the air, but gently lifting six other people slowed her down.

Still, they climbed obliquely, steadily up the steep mountain slope.

The white sand passed below. The dark slopes drew closer. The air grew ever more chill. Clouds tore themselves into ragged strips upon the highest towers. Then they’d reached the lowest areas of raw rock. Rough and sharp edged, she scanned the environs for somewhere to settle down.

“There,” said Xandera, touching her wrist and pointing over a rough ridge that descended toward the valley like a knobbled spine. “On the far side of that.”

Jova moved her plinth up and over, and saw a pocket gulch hidden below the rise. It’d be completely invisible to anyone not directly above it. Shadowed and deep, it was akin to stumbling across a forest pool in the heart of an ancient forest. The plinth was just small enough to slot down vertically and reach the floor—floor which was worked and polished.

“Looks like we found an entrance,” said Druanna, stepping down from the plinth to approach the huge door embedded in the mountain wall. It was impressive, almost large enough for her eidolon to pass through where it present. Made of hammered black iron panels and rivets, it looked strong enough to withstand an all-out assault.

“This is weird,” said Leonis, turning in a slow circle to gaze about the claustrophobic walls. “No path out of here. Just this tiny courtyard.”

Kelona’s voice was hushed. “Maybe the only folk who come visit can fly.”

“But the Philosophers won’t approach,” rumbled Leonis. “But I guess you’re right. Didn’t see any entrances in the towers proper.”

There was no handle, no sign of how to open the great doors from this side. She watched as Druanna put both hands against the doors and shoved. For a moment the other woman’s body strained, muscles coiling, and then she gave up. “Must be barred on the other side. Or magically locked.” She glanced back at Jova. “My eidolon could probably force it.”

“And announce our arrival,” said Jova.

Leonis scratched at his beard. “We should do some reconnaissance, but I’d wager every entrance will be locked or sealed.”

Jova gazed at where Kuragin and Nyrix lay. “Let’s rest. This place is hidden, and they need to heal up.”

“Good idea,” said Leonis, moving to the sole pack of rations that remained to them. “I can’t warm anything up, but we might as well get a good meal inside of us. We’ll need our strength for what’s awaiting us—”

He cut off as the hinges of both huge doors screeched. The doors swung inward, slowly, under no discernible control, to reveal a huge corridor spearing into the dark.

Jova pursed her lips.

“Damn it,” muttered Druanna, reaching up to gather her long hair back and tie it off swiftly with a leather tie. “Looks like they know we’re here.”

“What do we do?” asked Leonis.

Jova stared into the darkness. The same darkness that had claimed her as a Charnel Duchess. Silence. Stillness. A mineral coldness entered the courtyard, numbing and gelid, as if the heart of the mountain were exhaling.

“We rest,” said Jova, forcing herself to sound confident. “Just because we’ve received an invitation doesn’t mean we’ll leave behind our friends. Druanna, can you place your eidolon before the door?”

“At least we don’t have to go scouting any more,” said Kelona, hugging herself.

“Food.” Leonis moved to the pack but kept a weather eye on the dark hall. “Rest. Then whatever may come.”

Druanna summoned her eidolon. It filled the doorway nearly perfectly, its six scimitars held at the ready, black form gleaming in the diffuse evening light.

Jova forced herself to lower into a crouch and wrapped her arms around her shins. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the hallway even as the others attempted to relax.

Something within knew that they’d arrived.

And without being able to explain why, she felt recognized.

Seen.

And welcomed.