The twilight warbles of frogs and the thrumming of bayou insects endlessly regaled the grounds of la Maison Soulombre. A sweltering dusk, more so even than usual for this backwater island-of-exile. Despite the light’s fading, Viktor fancied he could make out heat-shimmers in the torrid air, out on the fringes of his vision. To think, he mused ruefully, I would miss the chill of last summer’s nautical foray! Not that I wouldn’t have gladly traded it in for a Souragnien heat wave, at the time…
Enough of this: enough heat, enough grousing. If all goes as planned, old boy, you’ll not have to endure such wretched weather much longer, nor such primitive conditions as the Maison’s. It’ll be good to get back into the classroom again, to get my life back again…
The professor’s wistful ponderings were brought back to earth by the sound of footsteps behind him. Lighter than a man’s, and quicker. “Ambrose?” Hazan queried, without turning round. “Any new developments with Anthony?”
The gnome halted beside his Dementlieuse colleague, joined him in gazing over the dimming estate from the veranda. Skully’s clothing was disheveled, his collar loosened to catch the thin breath of breeze that taunted both Brothers with its fleeting relief.
“Just more of the same,” Skully grumbled. “Checklists, safety precautions, rehearsals. I never would have thought anyone could be more cautious about diabolism than Dr. Reuland, but this Hazlani makes him look a right daredevil!” The diminutive bard’s lip twisted smugly, pleased with the pun.
“Let’s hope such measures aren’t necessary,” Hazan observed, tactfully ignoring Skully’s flimsy quip. Ambrose had been in Souragne too long, if his urbane wits had sunk so far. They all had.
“And yourself?” Skully pressed. “All set for your part in tonight’s endeavor? And is there any more word from Father von Lovenhorst?”
The gnome’s expression became serious, momentarily more sober-minded than Viktor’d seen his wee associate in months. Skully’s role in tonight’s plan was necessarily minimal – this wasn’t the sort of rite which artistry could assist – although his storehouse of sinister folklore had been helpful in its planning stages.
Shrewd little fellow, Viktor considered, almost fondly. Leaving the heavy lifting to we bigger folk, and the risks also! Ah well, he’s done his part: let this ‘Zoltan’ chap shoulder the burden for now.
The professor considered the Fraternity’s latest aspirant, and what Anthony had said about the man. An odd choice for their Brotherhood – “aspirant”, indeed! – but Hazan could hardly dispute how valuable the Mulan’s skills could be, this night. If anything went wrong (Watchers forbid it!) with von Lovenhorst’s plan, they would not lack for expertise at this end of the conduit.
The plan. Would it really succeed? So many failures, these past two years; so much ground lost. But the prospect of reclaiming the Fraternity’s pride – of reasserting its primacy over matter and spirit, and seeing its paradigms made manifest in reality’s very fabric – was too promising to forfeit. If they should succeed tonight, the Brotherhood’s strength would be proven, and the twin black marks of Van Rijn’s betrayal and the debacle of the Nocturnal Sea expedition, wiped from his own record.
Moreover, Viktor will have both his University position and all the good Souragnien coffee he can drink. What more could a philosopher wish for?
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Miserable swill, Skully grumbled, then downed the rest of the drink regardless. Despite his well-earned reputation for copious imbibing, he’d never really taken to the local rum. A sorry circumstance, when a chap couldn’t even dig out a proper wine cellar, let alone sample a worthy vintage for less than a king’s ransom! But he was far from the Core’s master vintners, his last novel's proceeds were three years gone, and Souragne’s soggy soil ensured he couldn’t have properly stored a decent case of vino even if he could afford it.
Not for much longer, though ... if his human Brethren could avoid bungling things in these crucial few minutes.
The gnome smacked his lips, submerging the taste of rum in the memory of a red wine he’d so recently enjoyed in Dementlieu. For all his colleagues’ efforts to deprive him of his pleasures here, they couldn’t balk his self-indulgence whilst on assignment in the field. Not the pleasure of alcohol, or of other things. A leer crept over Skully’s face, reminiscing: intriguing as Souragne’s dusky beauties had seemed at first, they simply weren’t as shockable as the delicate, sheltered young flowers of Chateaufaux. Where was the amusement in pursuit, if he couldn’t appall the quarry to his satisfaction? This Mist-bound isle bored him now. High time that the exiled St. Ronges cell should re-stake its claim upon the Core!
Digging into a pocket, Skully withdrew the sketch he’d carried during his errand to Chateaufaux. A bit rumpled, both from being stuffed into a waistcoat and from several days’ constant handling, of showing it to one half-addled village simpleton after another. The charcoal drawing was smudged now, but the links of the chain could still be counted, even if the unappetizing insignia on the pendant was obscured.
Recalling the genuine article – the one he’d handed over to von Lovenhorst’s own team of ritualists in St. Ronges, once he’d finally tracked the wretched thing down – the gnome winced. He was no finicky human, to be charmed or repelled by superficial appearances; he didn’t care a whittle that the medallion was “ugly” (whatever that meant).
Nonetheless, he hadn’t much cared for the feel of those heavy links’ metal. It had been unnervingly warm, and greasy to the touch.
The chantings from the ballroom were growing more intense, their rhythms, more frenetic. The gnome sniffed, irritated at the ritual’s thinly-veiled primitivism. Trust a Hazlani to insist on some outlandish mass incantation to accomplish what simple spoken words and gestures ought to achieve! He and his colleagues should count themselves lucky the newcomer hadn’t fumigated the entire mansion with the rite’s bitter incense: it made Skully’s acutely-sensitive nose sting.
Let’s just hope this works, he groused mentally, pouring himself yet another shot of rum. The sooner this foreign devil – devil-lover, devil-conjurer, whatever – is out of our hair, the better!
The chanting went on, the voices – the everyday, familiar voices of Viktor and Anthony and Gabrek; the seldom-heard, more youthful tones of Kristoff, called back from his rovings for this occasion; and the gravelly speech and exotic accent of Zoltan – growing hoarser with recitation. No stamina, the human voice, no doubt due to those oversized vocal cords. He’d known that for years, might even have written a paper on it, if he’d thought the human Brethren would welcome such criticism. Not likely, but no matter: there were far more amusing things to write about. Aye, and better ways to shock people…
And then Skully, himself, got a shock, as the raw note to one chanter’s speech came clear: a voice – he’d never be certain which one – about to crack in mid-syllable. Trust a bard’s ear to hear it coming, before even the speaker suspected. Dropping the glass (Rum, only rum, let it go!) and slipping off the human-sized parlor chair, Ambrose hit the floor running, skated on his heels across the parquet floor, then dove for the hidden touch-rune beside the grand entryway. At his back, the voices were breaking off in mid-chant, and an unearthly sound of rushing wind was building, pitched almost high enough to be a scream.
Not one to deem discretion the better part of valor – not when it could be the only part – the gnome hastily slapped the doorframe’s sigil in passing to activate the Maison’s defenses. He felt an answering tingle from his viper-ring, granting him safe passage through the wards, as he rushed through the door to retreat into the night…
…too late.
The wind-scream was rising, rising at his back. And before him, so were the Mists.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Rising from mire and surf, flowing like water upon the wind or crawling like a living thing through the bayou, the Mists spread across the island. Thick, cloying, clutching.
Amidst their pale vapors, wisps of yellow and black. Beneath the scents of swamp water and vegetation, traces of brimstone and ash.
Deep in the swamps, the wild loa whisper amongst themselves in perplexity, and the dark, dead eyes of their realm’s Master glance upward, momentarily uneasy.
Streaked in smoke and sulphur, the Mists coil, converging upon the summons…
Midnight, Richemulot…
All is quiet, all is still. No grand balls tonight, no gala celebrations. An ordinary night, by all appearances.
Still, the rats are restless, and their Queen – drowsing, doubly sated, beside her most recent lover’s well-muscled and primly-gnawed carcass – stirs in her sleep, beset by dreams that disturb beast and woman, alike.
A nagging itch, a splinter beneath the skin. A crack, a tear, a void is opening…
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Mists eddy silently along the streets, entwine serpent-like round the pillared facades of mansions, drift in wisps over the lapping waves of the harbor. Late walkers catch wind of the aroma, noses wrinkling at the sulphurous taint. Fishing crews, setting out to troll by night for squid and shellfish, curse the mottled, obscuring trails of fog and smoke. Sleepers, windows gaping in hope of catching some errant night-breeze, turn and twist and shudder in their beds: their rest, disturbed by the dreamt insight that there are worse fates than to walk as a zombi, after all.
The Mists twist and shudder too, their vaporous trails writhing and contorting like things alive, yet eventually veering back toward a single destination. All of them, all to the same destination.
Down the road, not far from town.
Midnight, St. Ronges…
A still, crystal-clear night, undisturbed by human activity, unseen by human eyes. The streets quiet, the houses of the common people sealed against the encroaching darkness, the grand halls of the town’s elite deserted by their celebrants. Empty of humans, yet hardly vacant.
Still, yes, but not quiet. The rats are moving now, driven by keen survival instincts from the source of their unease. Their noses twitch and their whiskers flick warily, alert for dangers undefined. Tiny teeth grate compulsively against one another, anxious without comprehending why. Tiny voices chitter. Tiny paws patter.
Patter in synchrony, lock-stepping without realization or intention, even as a nebulous fear has the nervous animals wetting their own feet and hiding beneath one another's bellies, as oppressive terror herds their hordes outward from the nexus.
Away, in hunted haste, from a property none save their own ubiquitous kind have dared to inhabit for more than two years.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
The scream-wind’s wail is stronger now, carrying far out over the dilapidated estate. As the brimstone smoke-Mists lick and coil round the Maison’s walls, wayward streams of Hell-born distortion make their eldritch influences felt across the grounds, wherever the cyclonic shrieking is heard.
In the bayou, the shrilling of insects falls silent all at once, as the singers perish en masse in a fleeting hail of ruptured chitin. The muting of the frogs take longer, as one by one they fall upon their neighbors on the mudbanks, till cannibal mouths are stuffed too full to give voice.
In the cemetery, a badly-weathered statue of Ezra laughs hysterically, and beats her head endlessly against a long-dead plantation master’s crypt, sending shards of angelic marble features flying.
Behind the mansion, the stones of the garden well are bleeding.
Along the east end of the building, overgrown tendrils of honeysuckle-vines scratch inquisitively at the Maison’s windows, dip into an under-eave nest of purple martins to strangle the sleeping hatchlings.
Outside the grand entrance, a gnome crouches motionless on the veranda, fighting the horrible fear of fighting fearful horrors, and stays low and still: all the better to pass unseen, and undetected by the forces now unleashed, while he musters the courage to aid his Brethren within.
Inside, from the ballroom, the wind-scream continues to rise.
Midnight, grounds of Chateau d’Is…
The rats are gone now, leaving naught but the memory of their panicked chittering. The windows of the house are boarded over, the outbuildings and entryways chained shut. By rights, no living creature should be near this place, no lights should be lit up within. The estate is as unwelcoming as a crypt, the house, as bleak as a sarcophagus, even in its unlamented past owner’s absence.
But something, living or not, moves within the walls. And each and every tiny crack between wall-slats or window-boards or beneath the Chateau’s doors, is alive with preternatural, bilious light.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Indoors, the distortions are worse. In the front parlor, two ornate high-backed chairs with embroidered upholstery gallop and do battle around the room, rearing and kicking their carven legs like enraged stallions. The flames in the kitchen’s bread oven now burn a rich emerald green. Every portrait and still life that hangs within la Maison is slashed across, again and again and again, by an unseen and intangible blade. In the library, the most prestigious of the rare books are marching, crumpling their lesser fellows’ pages beneath their bulk.
From behind the sealed doors of the ballroom, barely perceptible beneath the unceasing wind-scream, a sharp-edged voice with a marked Hazlani accent bellows orders:
“No! Not one step away, man, not even one inch! We’ve not lost control of the creature yet, only the containment-frame’s peripheral energies. The conduit can still be aligned! Stand your ground, all of you: the Cage will hold!”
The kitchen bread oven’s flames shift from green to an infernal red, and a new sound begins, in purgatorial counterpart to the wailing wind.
A chittering, as of innumerable frightened rats…
Midnight, Chateau d’Is…
In the forsaken and ransacked laboratory of Erik van Rijn, sickly yellow-green light gleams through dusty racks of glassware and shelves of bottled alchemical reagents. Spilling forth from the propped-open door to the adjoining cellar, the abnormal illumination does not flicker like natural flame, but shifts erratically from one angle to another. Occasionally, its fluctuations cast grim shadows – heavy, curved shadows, in the image of convex wooden beams – across the walls of the stonework staircase.
Also ushering up from below, an aristocratic male voice meticulously intones arcane syllables, his recitation unhurried and seemingly calm. Not so, the murmurs of his companions, that echo weirdly up the stairwell:
“Dash it all, what are they doing on the other end? Has Reuland’s fiend-binder betrayed us, or merely failed?”
“Shhh! Fool, it’ll be we who fail, and worse, if you distract him now.”
“But if there’s no counterpart awaiting this facet of the conduit, then—”
The highborn speaker strengthens his voice, though his precise enunciation and calm manner remain unaltered, and the murmurs subside, chastised.
In the laboratory above, the waxen seal on a flask of omni-reactive indicator has cracked from years of exposure to dry, dusty air. Unobserved by anyone, it begins slowly changing in color, first from gray to ochre, then to a brilliant, even hue of yellow.
Trace amounts of sulphur in the air…
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
In an elegant chamber intended for courtly seigneurs’ dances, everything now dances – chairs, end tables, an ill-tuned harpsichord, all of them pushed aside earlier to clear space for the Cage – save the five human or near-human figures within the eldritch trap. The spillover of its raw binding energies, predicated upon Chaos in selective opposition to the Fraternity’s chosen quarry, has infested the fabric of outlying objects, wreaking havoc all around the ritual’s boundaries.
At the heart of the chaos, the arched wood-and-iron pillars of the Mystick Cage send shadows skittering across the ceiling, the blazing tapers at their eight bases guttering madly in the scream-wind. At the heart of the heart, the symbol-etched ruby at the ritual’s focal point gleams with its own unnatural, bloody light. Crackling bolts of violet lightning arc from the gemstone to the suspended iron box above, as the melded energies of three mighty conjurations strain against one another, each striving to seize and to bind their mutual prey.
“Thirty seconds!,” cries Viktor Hazan, pocketwatch clutched in an unsteady hand. Spaced equidistant round the Cage’s interior, his Brethren stand braced against the frenzied winds: Kristoff, for once not sweating in the heat his Winterboone blood has never quite accustomed itself to; Gabrek, stalwart frame defiant of the gusts that toy with his beard; Anthony, gray lips grimacing into the gale. Dr. Reuland in particular looks shaken, his personal resources drained by the effort of invoking a spell in which he has but recently attained proficiency. By now, all four Souragnien wizards share his discomfort, having yielded considerable life force to sustain the arcane energies of the fiend-trap.
“Twenty seconds!,” the professor cries out again, leaning harder into the wind that threatens to send him sprawling. At the Cage’s center, unbowed by the life-drain and seemingly indifferent to the windstorm, a gaunt, tattoo-marked figure nods in acknowledgement, unhooks a coiled whip from his zarong’s waist-sash, and holds it ready in a gnarled hand. Ink-scribed spears adorn both the Hazlani’s bared arms, while arcane sigils decorate the age-wrinkled skin of his shoulders. Dark eyes narrow in concentration, beneath the inked ram’s horns that curl up from his brow, to arch over his shaven scalp.
Even as Viktor proclaims the final “Ten seconds!”, the Mulan’s thin lips enunciate three sharp, harsh syllables in the liturgical cant of his homeland. In reply, a high-pitched screeching tone cuts through the wind-wail, its resonance converging upon the pedestal-mounted ruby. On contact, its sonic shrillness shatters the gemstone into scarlet dust; unleashed, a churning whirlwind of smoke and flame – revealed source of the screaming – gushes forth from its shards and takes root on the platform, roiling impotently within the Cage’s confines.
Not giving the manifesting presence an instant to think, Dommer Zoltan unlimbers his whip, begins to lash the tumult of fire and vapor, forcing it back from the platform’s edge. Around him, the Brethren ready their own defenses lest the Hazlani’s efforts fail, watching the trapped entity’s attempt to take on a solid form: Viktor aghast, Gabrek incredulous, Kristoff revolted, and Anthony (with due cause) both sickened and morbidly intrigued.
Within the whirlwind of manifestation, glimpses of tangible form – a corpulent claw, a stunted wing, a hairless crown – begin to appear, as their unholy captive struggles to wrest free before a new prison supplants the old. Its scream continues, even as it manifests: the anguished outcry of a sentient, utterly malignant spirit being torn in two.
Literally, in two.
At the soul of the swamp, the Lord of the Dead winces: a momentary, stabbing pain.
Midnight, cellar of Chateau d’Is…
A final syllable, a last utterance, to seal the ward. Abjuration complete, to lock the chain irrevokably in its place, the aristocratic voice yields the floor to others’ crows of praise:
“That’s it!” “It’s done!” “Your plan’s succeeded, Your Grace!”
“Done, yes, but … can’t you feel them: those fluctuations? The other Cage, it’s not stabilizing the energy flow as it should, the backlash might— get out, Karla! All of you!”
The nobleman’s warning brooks neither question nor hesitancy. A mad scramble, as four men and one woman abandon the Cage in a wild rush for the stairs. No fear of their captive escaping, on this end of the conduit; this facet of the subject cannot move at all.
Not through normal space, certainly. But across it…
Reality twists.
In the realm of the rats, the Queen writhes in her sleep: a sudden, instinctual alarm.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
The blast of incoming air shakes the house, sends Skully stumbling half off his feet. The ballroom doors are blown open, their hinges bent by the massive out-draft of air.
The Mystickal Cage shatters. Splintered beams, extinguished tapers, and spilt holy water batter the walls and knock holes in the ceiling, pepper the suddenly-inert furnishings like cannon-shot. The harpsichord collides with the wall in a fractured crescendo of off-pitch, broken notes. Tossed aside by the impact like a voodan’s expended curse-dolls, the Brethren are flung from the wrecked Cage and scattered about the chamber, owing life and limb to their last-ditch protective spells and potions.
Dazed and coughing, but uninjured, Viktor Hazan drags himself upright, covered in plaster dust. To his left, Kristoff clutches a sprained wrist to his chest. Gabrek extricates himself from a mound of smashed, once-dainty ballroom chairs; a rueful shake of his shaggy head sets the Voros’s bruised nose to bleeding. Staggering to his feet, Anthony Reuland now favors his left ankle, and his grayish complexion is rather more pronounced than usual. Nor does his expression exhibit its usual cool self-possession.
“ ‘Modest risk of minor thaumic discharge at the apogee’, my eye! I’m going to kill that painted fraud, look what his ‘expertise’ has done to my house again— ”
“Got to find the scrawny fiend-kisser first, Brother,” Gabrek opines, his keen hunter’s senses being first to discern the void in their ranks. “Where is Zoltan, anyway?” Pinching shut his bloody nose, the big ex-ranger scans the devastated chamber, espying only the four of them.
“Down here, of course, gentlemen,” comes the gravelly reply, no umbrage at Reuland’s outrage evident in its accented tones. Looking back to the center of the ruined ballroom, where the Mystickal Cage once stood, the Souragnien cell’s members realize that the clear space where they’d painstakingly assembled the mechanism is vacant no longer. It is now occupied by a gaping pit some thirty feet across, situated precisely where the Cage’s framework had been laboriously constructed.
“And I assure you,” Zoltan continues, his bald head coming into view at the pit’s rim. “The explosion of air was not a mistake in the ritual. If anything, it is a sign of success. If anyone is to blame for that, it is all of us … or at least, of whichever one of us recalled that the ambient air pressure of the Core and that of Souragne might differ, yet failed to mention this detail to his colleagues.
“No, even if it was not anticipated, I believe the sudden influx of air offers proof that Father von Lovenhorst’s plan has succeeded. Or am I the only man to discern a lack of swamp-odor in what we now breathe?”
The Brethren blink at the Mulan’s explanation, and brindle a bit at his imperturbable demeanor. Yet none of four can find an immediate flaw in the newcomer’s logic, and the freshness of the air – fading, now, as the bayou’s scent reclaims its place – does seem to support Zoltan’s claim. Climate and constellations vary between the Core and the farther realms, so why not barometric pressure?
Gabrek, of course, is more down-to-earth than his fellows, and quickly gets to the point. “What the devil are you standing on, man?” He eyes the pit suspiciously.
“An appropriate phrasing,” Zoltan replies, and beckons the others to come see what their double-Cage ritual has wrought.
As the rite’s participants gather near, running footsteps, lighter and quicker than a man’s, rush toward them from the parlor, and the diminutive form of Ambrose Skully – now that all has remained quiet long enough – comes dashing into the ballroom, a pistol clutched ready in his hands. He stops and assumes a firing stance straight out of one of his own tawdry novels, then gawks openly at his colleagues’ battered state, the chamber’s destruction, and the new-made hole in the floor.
Unabashed, the gnome lowers his weapon, shrugs his shoulders, and blinks ingenuously.
“What? Someone had to rescue you lot, didn’t they…?”
From the pit’s depths, a small pattering. Rat feet.
After midnight, Chateau d’Is
Cautiously, four men and one woman make their way back to the cellar, taking care not to stumble or bump each other. They’d sustained enough bruises in their own scramble back up to Van Rijn’s laboratory, and again when the great vortex of air was drawn down the stairwell, threatening to drag them violently below by its suction.
No more than five steps down, Father von Lovenhorst stops in his tracks, and Lady Karla betrays her poised demeanor with a sharply-indrawn breath. The cellar stairs, once straight, now curve smoothly to the left.
The cellar’s air is growing humid, and smells of the bayou.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
“I say!,” Viktor remarks, inspecting the stone walls of the chamber. “Definitely typical Richemuloise stonework – the composition of the mortar is distinctive – and no trace of seepage from the low water table. No, I daresay we’re not in Souragne anymore, fellows.”
“And yet, you can still smell the swamp, even if it’s not leaking in all around us,” Skully retorts, tapping his nose to remind his human colleague of gnomes’ advantage in that department. “Perhaps it’s a brand new realm, befitted to Zoltan’s new ‘pet’ over there?”
“Not likely,” Anthony Reuland interjects. “It doesn’t feel like that kind of … influence … is present. I should think that we’d all be feeling it, if this chamber were part of such a creature’s reality wrinkle.” The gray-skinned scholar grimaces uncomfortably. “Certainly, I ought to discern the difference.”
“Then, the plan has worked? This is the conduit which Zoltan and the Father promised us?” Kristoff asks, uncharacteristically talkative in his ill-veiled state of excitement. A frequent traveler between realms, he has even more grounds to be intrigued by this experiment than most of his Brethren. If the process has succeeded – if it can be duplicated – why, the possibilities are staggering!
“Apparently so,” says Viktor, removing his spectacles to clean them of ceiling-plaster. “Of course, how useable it is will depend on how thoroughly our Hazlani has tamed the creature. It wouldn’t be of much value if we have to put our souls at risk, every time we undertake a jaunt between home and Richemulot!”
“So it’s decided, then? We’ll still be living in Souragne, even now that we’ve got a passage back to the Core?” Gabrek frowns.
“Of course. The security advantages of such an isolated locale remain unchanged, and the conduit will be warded at both ends, to maintain that protection. Even without the Traitor to concern ourselves with, it’ll be to our advantage to have a distant bolt-hole for Fraternity documents and property. Given how briefly the fiend was exposed to the external environment, between Lord Balfour’s soul trap and its confinement between realms, I doubt if our … host … in Souragne will have noticed the disruption.”
Viktor, too, frowns slightly. The ominous Misroi’s response to their efforts is one of the few variables the Fraternity hadn’t been able to account for entirely, in its experimental design. Still, any retribution from that quarter would surely have been well underway by now, if Souragne’s land-sovereign has chosen to take offense at their introduction of a fiend, however briefly loosed, to his territory.
(Then again, it wasn’t actually raining in Port d’Elhour tonight...)
At the center of the underground chamber, Zoltan of Hazlan stands stoically before the pedestal, upon which his quarry is held. Forced into manifestation, the creature is ugly – squat, fat, with warty greenish hide – and incongruous in its tattered mayoral robes. Stubby bat’s wings beat in vain at the shimmering boundaries of its prison, and stunted arms and legs claw and kick vainly at the barrier, raking sparks from its shimmering prison with ragged talons. Its face is over-broad, distorted by the bulbous mass of a lopsided skull, and its movements send eddies of brimstone-scented char drifting upon the air.
Its flabby lips part, and spill forth a torrent of shrill screams and groans.
“Enough of that!,” the fiend-hunter commands, lashing his whip above his head. At the crack, miniature jolts of lightning dance in the column of yellow-green light in which the fiend is trapped, and the captive shrieks in pain. “No more Infernal. Speak Mordentish amongst men, so all here can understand you: I know you can.”
However chastened, the baatezu is far from broken. Its next words, though comprehensible to men, might be better left untranslated. Another whip-crack, another keening cry of anguish.
Under such duress, it grudgingly capitulates: its first concession. Belying its unsightly appearance, the captive devil’s voice is as smooth and syrupy as thick honey, albeit honey writhing with maggots.
“Such insolence, such folly! How dare you! Mortal dog, your living flesh will fatten worms, guts first!”
The whip, the shrieking, yet again. Much longer this time.
Unintimidated by its posturing, Zoltan changes tactics. Arms crossed over a chest marred by the scars of demonic claws, he waits for the captive to recover its breath, then proffers the hope of negotiation. False hope – the Fraternity doesn’t need its active cooperation – but its intransigence is both rude and annoying. Besides, the Hazlani is curious.
“Insolent? I do not believe so. Nor folly, to choose such as you for the task required. Your breed are the Lawgiver’s wardens within the Hell of Slaves, are you not? Service as a gatekeeper is hardly ill-fitting to one such as yourself, Mayor Melano.”
The creature looks up, squinting. Its expression shifts, from raw, distilled hatred, to sneering contempt at the Dommer’s reference to the “Hell of Slaves”, and finally to a wary alertness. Clearly, its mortal captor has done his homework.
“Not my name—” it begins, but Zoltan cuts it off.
“No, it is not. I could, of course, address you by your proper title: you surely realize that your name must be known, else the gem-trap could not have captured you. Would you prefer that I spoke it aloud, for all present to hear…? Not all of us may, as yet, know the name by which your service may be commanded, your spirit imprisoned or destroyed.”
A flash of panic, and another concession. This creature would seem less proficient at deceit than others of its hell-kin, not to better mask its alarm. “No, no! Melano … will do."
Zoltan presses it again. No mercy, no weakness. “Melano will do, sir!”
Another storm of Infernal cursing. Another whip-crack. Another shriek. Eventually, the requisite ‘sir’ is surrendered.
At the far side of the chamber, Lady Karla von Lovenhorst watches the Hazlani’s actions, perplexed. Now that the teams’ initial exchange of congratulations is over, the Richemuloise ritualists have taken to keeping their distance from the Souragnien team, and vice versa. Not from personal distaste, but because the discontinuity in what they are seeing is too discomfiting.
“So he really is viewing the creature in its organic manifestation? They all are?” Karla gestures toward the members of the Port d’Elhour team. “Even the gnome, who did not participate in the Cage ritual? How is that possible? Father’s schematics never predicted anything like this!”
Pierre Lacomte, one of the Fraternity’s top experts on extraplanar entities, nods toward the pedestal. To his eyes – as to the eyes of all those from the Richemuloise end of the conduit – the platform is occupied, not by ‘Melano’s’ squat hideousness, but by a heavy gold chain and ornate pendant. A diabolical travesty of the real Chateaufaux mayoral chain-of-office, which the Fraternity’s meticulous research had correctly identified as this particular devil’s phylactery.
“Not anticipated, but not difficult to account for, after-the-fact,” Lacomte remarks, slipping comfortably into lecture mode. “In a sense, a fiendish phylactery and the creature that bears it are, in truth, one and the same entity. It was this very principle – the simultaneous existence of two facets of the same being – which the double-Cage ritual took advantage of, to force this specimen’s simultaneous manifestation in Souragne and Richemulot. It was likewise that principle, together with the ‘wrinkles in reality’ phenomenon, which the Count surmised might breach the spatial fabric which divides realm from realm, much as the Vistani or other Mist-walkers do.
“Now that we see the results, we find that the conduit is not merely a portal, but a bridge – an artificial Mistway, one might call it – with this old cellar of van Rijn’s providing a transitional zone, suspended between the Lands.
“You and I,” Lacomte continues, “entered through the Richemuloise end of the conduit, and we therefore see this dual entity in its phylactery aspect: that facet of its being which was recovered by Brother Skully, and which we ourselves subjected to the Cage ritual in the Traitor’s former home. Dr. Reuland’s crew entered on the other end, from Souragne, so they perceive its animated facet, in all its grotesque glory.”
The senior Fraternity officer chuckles. “I should think, your Ladyship, that we should account ourselves the luckier of the two groups. First, because we were spared the worst of the backlash, when the conduit broke through; and second, because we are spared the creature’s odious commentary. I daresay, we most likely also enjoy complete protection from its attacks, should the Hazlani’s skills prove inadequate and it wrests free of its bondage. It can no more perceive or harm us, in its aspect as an inert piece of jewelry, than we can perceive or interact with its organic facet!”
“Lucky, indeed,” Karla concurs, warily eyeing the pedestal. Aside from its unpleasant insignia, the chain-of-office doesn’t look dangerous. Still, she wouldn’t care to remain in this cellar – this Mistway…? – for longer than necessary. It stinks of rat piss and swamp water, and the stifling air is far too humid for her Lamordian blood.
Soon enough, the Richemuloise ritualists’ immediate curiosity about the chamber is satisfied, and the recollection of how many repairs their Maison will now require beckons their Souragnien brethren back home. Actual jaunts to and from the Core will have to await the establishment of a suitable cover story, to conceal the conduit’s existence from the unenlightened. Each team departs up a different flight of stairs, which twist round the chamber’s circumference: the counterclockwise stair, bound for Port d’Elhour, the clockwise one, for St. Ronges. Geometry dictates the two teams’ paths must inevitably converge as they ascend, but geometry is on hiatus in this curious place; neither party encounters the other on the way up.
The Fraternity of Shadows’ newest Initiate, Zoltan – for his acceptance had predicated upon the success of this endeavor – lingers a bit longer, interrogating the captive amnizu about its origins, its abilities, and its past activities in Chateaufaux. Questions about “Melano’s” hellish native sphere elicit responses that meet the Hazlani’s expectations closely, perhaps suspiciously so; questions about its time as “mayor” reveal little that the Fraternity’s investigation has not already uncovered. Asked about its companion in that incident, the fiend soundly curses its subordinate for failing to rescue it from Balfour’s gemstone, then slumps low upon the platform in a sulk.
Satisfied for the nonce, the Hazlani moves to depart. Startled, the creature lurches to its ungainly feet, crying out in frustration and alarm. "Wait! You can’t leave now! Why am I bound? What service do you want of me?!”
“What service?,” the tattooed mage-priest replies, mockingly ingenuous. “Why, the very one you already provide, of course. Gate-warden, guardian, you now are a gate. And so you shall remain, bound by your name and nature, so long as the Lawgiver rules.
“Does His Hell-jailer not know the dictates of the Fetters of Bronze? You shirked your ordained duties, creature, in straying from your rightful place to trouble the world of men, and in seeking to reign for your own glory, rather than His. Rebellion incurs punishment, for your ilk no less than for mankind. Such is the Lawgiver’s justice.”
Whether or not it adheres to the dogma of the Iron Faith, the baatezu swiftly deduces the implications of “so long as the Lawgiver rules”. The prospect of eternal imprisonment by mortals is evidently more than its wits or dignity can stomach. It rushes, clawing wildly, at the barrier, is balked again by its shimmering energies. Ready to chastise it once more, Zoltan turns back to face the creature, a scathing incantation on his lips…
…and then pauses, unable to recall why he’d turned back.
The creature’s eyes, bulbous and rheumy, are momentarily more focused – more concentrated – than previously they’d appeared. But only for an instant.
Quashing his uncertainty – for the slightest lapse in self-discipline can be fatal, in a fiend-hunter – Zoltan lifts his whip, glares warningly at his captive. Intuitively, he senses there is still defiance in the creature, blasphemer that it is. Still, he can’t quite put his finger on what it has actually done.
“Here you are bound,” he finally speaks, in parting. “And here, Melano, you will remain. The Lawgiver commands it.” He stresses the creature’s name – its true name – to remind it that he possesses stronger shackles than whips or shimmering walls, if necessary. A valuable piece of knowledge, that name, and one he’ll be keeping strictly to himself. The more his new Souragnien Brothers need him, and his keen knowledge of both arcane and divine fiend-lore, the more secure his claim to membership in this secret society – so much more subtle and cerebral than the archaic, hidebound cabals of his homeland! – will be.
At his words, the amnizu shies away, plainly cowed by the implicit threat of its proper title. Zoltan bows a taunting farewell to the creature, tucks his whip back into the sash of his zarong, and heads back up the stairs to Souragne, pleased that all is going – more or less – as planned.
Below, uncurling from its pose of submission, the devil grins nightmarishly. Bound it might be, but not forever; these mortals have no comprehension of the word. Revenge will not come tonight – not yet, not yet – but this impudent Hazlani’s anguish, when it does, will be all the sweeter for the anticipation.
Moreover, the fiend now knows for a fact that the mongrel among them – the one called “Anthony”, who had deemed this curious place no reality wrinkle – is gravely mistaken. Not an easy task, to erase just one fact from a memory rather than expunge it entirely, and to simply crush the Mulan’s intellect would have been a pleasant appetizer for the trapped devil’s feast of vengeance. Alas, such drastic intervention would surely give the game away to the diabolist’s associates. Rather, it must wait until its captor seeks to reinforce its bindings via its “true” name ... which is certainly not “Melano”.
Now, if only this “Lord Balfour” might be persuaded to use the conduit, and his recall adjusted likewise, the cellar-bound devil’s escape plan, too, will be well underway…
Above, hidden from view at the top of the stairs to Richemulot, an aristocratic figure lingers behind his colleagues, eavesdropping. And smiles, very slowly, to himself.
There are more plans afoot tonight than either mortal or fiend suspect. And those deeper plans are going exactly as intended.
Aftermath, the Land of Mists
In the bayou, sudden tension drains from the realm’s Master. The pain, so fleeting, has vanished too soon to pinpoint its origin, and has not returned. Nothing important, certainly nothing worth pursuing for now … but the Lord of the Dead will remember, even so.
In the Queen’s chamber, beast and woman awaken hungry, and with better things to be concerned by than unsettling dreams. Fortunately, ample food is close at hand, to distract her.
In the Mists, as ever, the Watchers watch.
And wait.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
