Passing from the Shadowmeere into the Unseeming was like moving through a sheet of freezing water, and Adeena's breath came out as a cloud of vapour as she looked around at the shifted world. She was still in Draz Lorcha, still standing in the city on Ruvera, but everything had changed.
A starfield wrapped around her, obscuring the high cavern ceiling above, and the depths of the city's mines in the ravine below. Cold starlight highlighted every nook and cranny in a cold blue, and she could see now that the torches on the flat space ahead were glowing with deep indigo flames. Strange, inaudible clicks and whispers seemed to echo in the crevices of every other noise, and she found her eyes flicking back and forth, chasing after things that she kept on glimpsing in the corner of her eye, but which vanished when she tried to look at them directly.
The others followed behind. All the rest of her party seemed badly affected, perhaps worse than Adeena. They needed to be quick, this was an even more dangerous place than the one they had left. She drew her sword.
There was movement ahead as they continued across the bridge to the large-ish quarter, and the shapes of dwarves wearing black armour inscribed with glowing sigils came into view. The sigils made her eyes itch to look at, and the whispers that clung to the sound of every footfall, every breath, seemed to grow stronger.
They had halberds, but made no aggressive moves as Adeena and the others approached. In fact, they stepped back and bowed their heads. Their faces were scarred with what looked like ritualised symbols, and all of them seemed to be missing an eye.
"You're… letting us in?" said Adeena.
"The Prophet has been told of your coming, why you are here," said one in a gravelly voice. "She awaits you within, Adeena of Pandemonium, with an offer she knows you will take."
Adeena shivered again.
"Well, that's… creepy," said Heidi as they slowly passed the dwarven guards and entered the settlement composed of squat, double story buildings in classic dwarven style: smooth semi-circular roofs, heavy stone walls, small windows, and octagonal doorways.
"I don't like this Captain," said Xavier as they passed buildings from within which dwarves with the same ritual scars and gouged out eyes stared at them impassively. "We should have tried our luck with the fey lord."
"Creeping and crawling, we hates it!" hissed Clawdia, swiping and batting at the air with a paw. "Wrong, wrong!"
"Keep calm," said Adeena. "Just focus. We'll get through this, we just need to keep it together."
The sound of chanting reached her short pointed ears, growing louder and louder until they turned a corner to find themselves at the edge of a large square. Typically, dwarven squares had statues to famous ancestors at the entrance, or else Herthos, the God of Craftsbeings, but that had been cleared, and instead now there was a large flat altar, upon which a screaming and thrashing dwarf was chained by his arms and legs. Arrayed around the altar were prostrated dwarves, all facing inward and chanting, the words now clear and distinct.
"Sate Its Hunger, Another Cycle, Sate Its Hunger…"
Standing over the restrained dwarf was a dwarven woman dressed in ornate runed purple robes. Unlike the others, her skin was flawless and unscarred, but in place of eyes she had two orbs of baleful burning starlight – the 'Prophet,' Adeena assumed. As they watched she raised her gaze to the heavens and began to speak.
"Oh, Great One," said the Prophet, spreading her arms as the chanting died away. "We offer you this unwilling sack of flesh and sinew! Oh, Great One, feast, feast!"
The square fell silent apart from the screaming and thrashing and sobbing off the chained dwarf.
"Fuck this," said Adeena, drawing her sword. "Get him off…"
She trailed off as above them Something shifted. Adeena's gaze was wrenched upward to where one of the stars was growing brighter, drowning out the others as it slowly shifted from terrible cold blue to a deep, all-consuming ruby light that washed over the town. The terrible star seemed to grow larger, its outline shifting and tessellating as it unfolded itself into infinite, impossible geometries, endless in depth and width and volume, forming shapes that could not be and revealing Truths so terrible that Adeena couldn't even begin to hope to articulate them, and filling her with a sense of such absolute terror that she was frozen in place.
Tendrils of ruby starlight reached down towards the chained dwarf, and a massive, glistening maw emerged from within the depths of the baleful star and distended, growing and growing as the now frothing at the mouth dwarf was ripped upward, screaming as the tendrils of starlight drew him into the maw of the celestial abomination.
The maw closed, silencing the dwarf, and then the star began to fold back in on itself, the hideous red light growing weaker and weaker until it faded and the town was once again bathed in cold azure.
Adeena suddenly became aware that she was screaming. She shut her mouth and rubbed her throat. "Everyone… everyone OK?" she asked weakly.
"No," said Heidi, trembling and staring off into space, her cheeks stained with tears.
"Yeah… that… no… should have… should have stuck to the fey lord," said Xavier faintly, hugging himself. "Nice, easy to kill fey lord…"
Clawdia had put her paws over her eyes, curled into a ball, and was softly mewling. Adeena patted her friend's white fur with a trembling hand. "It's OK sweetie, it's OK, that Thing is gone…"
"Adeena of Pandemonium."
Adeena span around, levelling her sword at the source of the voice – the robed dwarven 'Prophet.'
"Get away from me!" said Adeena, managing to make her sword flicker with a skerrick of golden light.
"I know why you are here," said the Prophet, reaching into her robes and withdrawing a shimmering red Blood Diamond. "It That Hungers told me of your expedition, that your ship would require this."
"It That… that Thing?" said Adeena. "Which- which consumed that man!?"
"The Great One, yes," said the Prophet. "It protects this community, shields us from the Wyrd – for a price. If I had not called to It, all of Draz Lorcha would have been lost."
"You're a monster," spat Adeena.
"Perhaps," said the Prophet. "But we are the last of the holds to survive. And you may put that down, Captain, we both know you are not going to kill me."
"Do we now?" said Adeena. "Because I really feel like killing you right now. I'm not sure I've felt like killing someone this strongly in a very long time."
"Yes, but once you think it through, you will conclude that you cannot, for that would doom this community," said the Prophet. "Without me, It That Hungers would have no conduit. This place would be consumed by the Shadowmeere, and my people turned into husks by the King of Crows."
"And this is better?" said Adeena. "Cattle for that…abomination!?"
"In the Shadowmeere everything they are would be sucked out, consumed by the King of Crows – thirty thousand souls, wrung of everything that makes them, them," said the Prophet. "Here, in the Unseeming, they retain all of themselves. They must, for It would be displeased with a spoiled meal. And all for a single life every cycle, a bargain, many would say."
"So you say," said Adeena. "You could be lying."
"And maybe I am, but I know you won't risk that," said the Prophet, reaching up and placing one of her fingers on the flat of the tip Adeena's sword
Adeena narrowed her green eyes. Her precognition didn't work like that. She saw possibilities, and usually only a few moments into the future: a blow that would fall like this, or an arrow that she could dodge like that. But what was to be was never fixed: sometimes she had deliberately taken an arrow she could have avoided in the place of one of her fellows, and sometimes her opponent was good enough to adjust to her reactions.
Assuming this woman's powers worked like Adeena's, but on a much larger scale, the Prophet didn't know that Adeena wouldn't just cast caution to the wind. Didn't know when all was said and done that Adeena would decide that it was far too risky – that she knew too little about the situation and the rules, and wouldn't gamble with that many people's lives.
So maybe the Prophet didn't Know, but, in this case, she was still right.
Adeena's hand trembled, but she didn't resist as the dwarven woman pushed the blade down.
"Captain?" said Xavier.
"She's fucking right," hissed Adeena. "We can't, we'd be damning everyone who lives here."
"This is a life?" said Xavier, gesturing around to where the dwarves who had prostrated themselves were slouching away into the connected streets. "Food for a monster?"
"What would you have me do, Xavier?" said Adeena bitterly.
"We can kill her," said Xavier, raising a starlight covered finger towards the dwarven woman.
"You will not, Xavier of Hal'varin," said the Prophet. "Because despite your devil-may-care attitude, there is a reason you follow Adeena of Pandemonium. Because you believe in what she believes, and so long as these people live, there is a hope for them to find a way out from this nightmare. You know there is no hope in the Shadowmeere, not for long."
Xavier held the energy for a moment, before releasing it. He turned his head and spat, and did not look at her anymore. The Prophet smiled, before turning towards Heidi, who with a start Adeena saw had her fire-pistol raised.
"Captain, we- we can't let the Unseeming have a foothold like this," said Heidi weakly. "You- you know we can't…"
"You will not fire, Heidi of Althaea," said the Prophet. "You value life too highly, even mine. I am not the first person you kill in cold blood."
Heidi bit her lip, before lowering her trembling hand. "I… I kill someone?" she said. "In cold blood?"
"Yes," said the Prophet. "But not today."
The dwarven woman held out the Blood Diamond.
"You will need this," she said.
"And why would you give that to us?" said Adeena.
"Because It That Hungers wishes your expedition to succeed," she replied.
"And why would a creature like that care about the expedition?" said Adeena.
"This is not the time for me to tell you that," said the Prophet.
Adeena eyed the gem suspiciously, before hesitantly reaching out and taking the Blood Diamond. The idea of a celestial abomination like 'It That Hungers' taking interest in the expedition was alarming, to say the least, although she would have assumed that such a being would be against them trying to investigate and even maybe 'repair' the damage of the Wyrd.
But the Unseeming was, as the Prophet proved, a realm in which past, present, and future were elastic, and she knew personally how dangerous someone who could glimpse the future could be. Unfortunately, it seemed they had little choice but to go along with Its plans.
"Now, you shall need to be swift making your way back through the city," said the Prophet, reaching into her robes and pulling out a small mirror. "The King of Crows will be furious that you bargained with me. This, however, will help you."
Adeena accepted the mirror and carefully examined it without looking directly at the reflection. It didn't appear to by magical at all, however. "Why?"
"He is, above all, a vain creature, and will be entranced by his appearance," said the Prophet. "Give it to him, and then run, and do not stop."
Adeena stared at the mirror for a moment, before pocketing it. She stared the Prophet in the eye, baleful starlight to the green behind her glasses. This was a terrible woman. Perhaps she had saved her people, but she had crossed a threshold beyond which there was no redemption. It was one thing to risk people's lives, to gamble if the stakes were high enough, it was quite another to ritualistically murder someone to achieve some goal. Adeena didn't believe in a calculus of souls, she rejected it fundamentally – that was the logic on Pandemonium, and she wouldn't give it an inch.
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"I will be back," said Adeena slowly. "I will be back with a whole fleet of airships. I will kill the King of Crows, and I will kill you, and I will save these people from you, and your master."
"No, you won't," said the Prophet, not breaking her gaze. "Two of those things, yes, but not all three, and not for some time."
Adeena's grip tightened on her sword and for a moment she was filled with the overwhelming desire to strike the dwarven woman down – just to spite her smug surety, if nothing else. But then she reigned herself in and sheathed her blade. No. Not now. Not yet.
She turned and walked away as fast as she could, passing back out of the town without a word, over the large stone bridge that spanned the deep ravine, and back to where the Unseeming met the Shadowmeere at the edge of the 'Shademarket.'
Despite the oppressive nature of the place, it was an immense relief to step from the cold starlight into the stark black and white of the Shadowmeere. Both of the realms were horrible, and fundamentally inimicable to existence. But the Unseeming… there was nothing as bad as the Unseeming.
"Everyone OK?" asked Adeena, glancing around.
"Never thought I'd be so happy to be in the Shadowmeere," said Xavier. "That was… that was bad, Captain. Felt like I had worms crawling through my mind."
"I'm OK, I think," said Heidi.
"We will survive," said an unusually subdued Clawdia.
"OK, then let's leave this place," said Adeena.
"No, I don't think you will," came the voice of the King of Crows from all around them.
Shadows lengthened and joined, and the now furious bald, elf-like creature formed before them. He was just as unsettling a second time, although now his pitch black eyes seemed to radiate cold, terrible fury.
"You thought I would not realise?" he hissed. "I can feel the Unseeming is still there, you fool!"
Right, the mirror.
"It will vanish, soon," lied Adeena, holding taking out the simple reflective rectangle from her pocket. "See?"
The King of Crows frowned and took the mirror. "What? I don't…" he began, before trailing off as he caught sight of himself. "Oh, but I look good!"
"Xavier, take Heidi!" said Adeena, unceremoniously grabbing Clawdia and throwing her over her shoulder like a sack of rice. She broke into a sprint as she channelled her power into her legs, propelling herself forward at speeds that were the reason that Oathsworn were banned from playing any kind of competitive sport.
Behind her, over Clawdia's outraged yowling, she heard Xavier shift, and the sound of galloping hooves joined her as a large, brown-furred stallion with a surprised looking Heidi on its back drew level with her.
"Been a while since I've seen you manage that," said the horse in Xavier's voice, its dark eyes glancing down at her almost blurring feet. "How long can you keep it up?"
"Long enough," said Adeena as they passed through the market and streaked across the bridge connecting it to the carved halls. Behind them there was an enraged roar, and she looked back to see a massive shadow drawing itself together above the Shademarket, resolving into a swarm of thousands of crows that began to rush towards them. "Clawdia, stop whinging and throw some spells!"
Clawdia continued to yowl and complain, but did consent to start lobbing fireballs which detonated with large booms, pulverising parts of the oncoming swarm of crows and lighting the cavern up with brilliant orange light. Heidi twisted awkwardly atop Xavier as well, and nearly fell off before securing herself and raising her flame-pistol, adding to the barrage behind them.
"Captain they're getting closer!" shouted Heidi.
"Clawdia, can you animate the doors?" said Adeena as they broke through into the entrance-hall. "Close them behind us?"
"Who do we look like, the Archwizard?" complained Clawdia.
"Fuck," said Adeena. "Xavier, wall of thorns?"
"Not that high Captain," said Xavier as they approached the massive doorway through which pure white sunlight was spilling. Adeena glanced back to see the swarm of crows getting closer and closer.
"Heidi, any artificer bullshit to seal the doorway behind us?" said Adeena.
"We could blow up a statue's base?" suggested the gnome. "The ones out the front? If we all work together?"
"Best idea I've heard so far – the left one, it's right leg!" said Adeena as they passed through the doorway. She continued on for thirty more meters, before skidding to a stop over several more and turned, releasing her magic from her aching legs, dropping the complaining grimalkin from her shoulder and thrusting her hands out towards the huge dwarven statue of the left's right leg.
Her blast of force rammed into the stone, and kicked up from dust, but Adeena's powers did not lend themselves to ranged attacks – which is why she normally used a sword.
Thankfully, however, she had a party full of people who were good at blowing things up from range: a pillar of lightning shot from Clawdia's paws, as thick as a person; Heidi fiddled with her fire-pistol for a moment, before aiming it and beginning to spew a rapid solid beam of fire that made the device produce an increasingly high-pitched whine, and as soon as Xavier had resumed his true form he added a torrent of glittering starfire.
The giant stone dwarven warrior's leg cracked and shattered under the barrage, and with a grinding sound it began to teeter and fall, collapsing sideways with a strange, ponderous slowness, before it struck the side of the other dwarf and shattered into a dozen pieces that smashed down on the onrushing swarm of crows. The other statue too began to fall, and with an almighty crash it shattered atop the other, completely blocking the doorway. A few crows made it through, but they melted into shadow, and a moment later there was another enraged roar from within the dwarven city.
"Good thinking Heidi," panted Adeena, putting her hands on her knees.
There was another roar, and a muffled boom that made the pile of rubble shake.
"Let's not stick around and find out how long it takes a fey lord to break through a couple of hundred tons of stone, shall we?" said Xavier.
"Let's not," agreed Adeena.
They followed their monochrome footsteps back through the snow, the enraged roars slowly fading and being replaced by the 'booms' of the Firestorm's guns firing every ten or so seconds.
They redoubled their speed, and rounded the ridge to see that the Firestorm had been righted, so it was resting on its keel, allowing both sides of its hull-mounted weapons to fire at shadowy creatures that were slowly advancing over the snow from the forest, stepping over the corpses of those who'd tried to approach first. The holes in its hull had been roughly patched, and Melicende's priests and priestesses had established some kind of perimeter of holy-glyphs that Adeena knew would be excruciatingly painful to pass through.
They rushed forward over the snow, and were about half-way across when several of the turreted cannons turned towards them and opened fire. Adeena shouted in alarm and threw herself into the snow with the others, but the cannons weren't aiming at them, they were aiming behind them.
She looked back to see a massive swarm of crows.
"Go, go, go!" she shouted, vaulting to her feet and tossing the gem to her friend. "Xavier, take the gem and fly it to Aeviexisitrixia! We need to leave!"
Xavier shifted his form, and a moment later a tawny owl with the red gem took off ahead of them. As he flew away, Adeena grabbed the two shorter women, pushing past the ache in her legs and taking off at a dead sprint towards the ship and its glimmering, holy barrier.
Her instincts screamed at her as she grew closer, and it was all she could do to keep on putting one foot in front of the other. The holy, or divine, energy of Elysium and Adeena did not mix. For most people, that would be a problem, because the most common way to access healing for everything from cuts and bruises to diseases and viruses was at one of the many Churches throughout the world. Druids, like Xavier, were far rarer, since most of the various druidic circles and lodges had perished with the Wyrdcoming. He also wasn't all that good at it either, not compared to some of the druids she'd met in her travels.
The effect of the energy wasn't quite as bad for her as it was for a full-blooded demon, but it was still something she went to significant lengths to avoid. She'd had priests in her company before, but she'd always them fight well away from her. She also, despite her best efforts, often just… disliked the faithful for reasons she couldn't really articulate.
But there was no choice. To get to the Firestorm, she needed to go through the barrier. So, steeling herself, she put on one last burst of speed and hurled herself through it just as the swarm of crows was about to reach her. Sure enough, white flames tore at her as she sailed across the threshold, ripping and tearing at her half-hellish skin and making her stagger and sprawl into the snow.
"Captain!?" said Heidi, grabbing one of her arms and rolling her onto her back. "Clawdia, help me! We need to drag her!"
For once, the grimalkin didn't complain, and Adeena felt, through the haze of pain, herself being dragged over the snow. From her vantage point she saw the swarm of crows hit the barrier a few moments later, its mass roiling and smashing into it, trying to break through, even as the entire front compliment of the Firestorm's weapons unleashed themselves at it.
Behind her she heard the whir of the Firestorm's systems starting up. A rush of footsteps, and then she was hauled up over the shoulder of a tall man wearing the blue-enamelled plate of Lassia. His boots clacked against metal as they headed up a gangway, which swung shut behind her, and then she was being lowered to the ground.
"What happened?" said Laurent, raising his hands to her. "She hit the shield and-"
"No healing!" said Clawdia, slapping the man's hands away as they began to glow gold.
"What? She's- she's covered in burns-"
"No healing!" yowled the grimalkin. "Not from you!"
"Listen, I- I know we've had our differences, but-" protested Laurent.
"No!" snarled the grimalkin, unsheathing her claws with a shick.
"I'll get Mr. Xavier!" said Heidi, running off.
"But-" began Laurent.
"No!" said Clawdia, swiping at his face and making him jerk away. "If the Priest Captain Laurent of Lassia tries to heal the Captain Adeena Yassin, we shall kill him!"
Adeena caught a glimpse of a clearly very conflicted Captain Laurent, and she almost felt bad. She'd fought alongside him, saved his life at least once even, something which, even if they were clearly part of different 'factions' on this stupid expedition, inevitably had built a sense of camaraderie.
On the other hand, a dangerous and very powerful fey promising to kill you if you did something was not a situation you could talk your way around. Clawdia was many things: wildly varying in competence, weird, annoying, and obstinate – and that was on a good day, but she was also very loyal, and in that moment Adeena was very glad to have her by her side.
The hull shifted beneath them as the Firestorm began to rise and turn, and a moment later she felt the tell-tale static-y feeling of the shields engaging. She closed her eyes. Safe. They were safe.
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