“What do you think?” Nera turned and faced her astonished companions. She spread the fingers of her new hand and balled it into a fist. The metal had a black sheen and was smooth to the touch. The magic imbuing it gave it its own warmth. It didn’t creak or make any noise, the joints flexing as easily as her flesh hand did. The absence of sensation was the only drawback. She wondered if she could stimulate that too, in time.
Malek came to her and took her newly formed hand in his. The metal fingers interlaced with his own, flexible and strong but unyielding, unlike flesh.
“This is marvelous! Your powers are growing—well done.” He cupped her cheek in his other hand.
Nera smiled. “A bit of an eyesore, but it will have to do. Father’s gift will allow me to wield the dagger that will strike him down in revenge.” Her hand went to the pommels of her daggers out of habit, and she frowned when she noticed the left sheath was empty. Lightslicer was in its place, but Bedlam Judge was missing. She could again picture it clattering away when her severed hand had struck the ground.
“What of the bone dagger? Did anyone recover it after the battle?”
Malek shook his head. “I only saw your elvish dagger and returned it to its sheath. Nobody else picked it up, did they, Yosrick?”
The gnome had quietly approached, eyes wide with wonder regarding Nera’s hand. He blinked as if startled for a moment. “Nay, lass, we didn’t see it anywhere—I looked out for it since I carried it for you the last time,” he said, referring to when she had fallen to Lassiter’s blade in the Deep Roads.
“Nesnys. That damned harpy stole it.” Nera was sure of it. Even though the blade had fatally wounded the demoness, she had coveted it and had no doubt taken it.
“Argh… Do you mind, Nera?” Malek winced.
“Oh, I apologize, luv!” Nera hurriedly released his hand, not realizing she’d been crushing it with her iron hand in her anger. The lack of sensation was going to be a problem, she decided.
Malek massaged his hand, which had gone white from the blood being cut off. After a moment, he smiled slyly. “I’ll have to be careful what I allow that hand to touch in the future.”
Nera’s eyes widened, and she laughed at his unexpected levity. “Ha, about time you warmed up and talked a little lusty, luv.” She batted her eyes at Malek exaggeratedly before grasping the front of his robes and pulling him in close for a kiss. She let it linger a moment before letting go, pleased to note his blush.
“Save it for when you can at least share a tent back in camp,” Wyat said with a chuckle.
A polite cough near Nera’s elbow drew her attention before she could come up with a retort. She raised her eyebrows, having forgotten Yosrick was still standing there, eyes locked on her iron hand.
“What is it?” she asked.
The gnome seemed to have missed the entire previous exchange. His eyes were alight with excitement. “You’ve got his power now, don’t you, Nera?”
“The Engineer? Aye, that backstabbing bastard unlocked something in my mind… I can sense the metals now and manipulate them.”
“That means you have the talent to fix the Machine now!”
“Perhaps, but not the knowledge, though.”
Yosrick’s excitement dimmed a bit. “Aye, there is that… but perhaps with Uncle Flurbinger’s counsel, you can repair it together.”
Nera didn’t have it in her to quash his hope. Her friends all looked cautiously optimistic. Gods know we could use some hope right now.
“That’s a worthy idea, Yosrick. First, however, we’d better find a way out of here.” She clasped the gnome on the shoulder and walked over to the rest of the group. “Everybody is up, I see. In the very heart of the Abyss, there stands a portal, which has been deactivated for millennia. I mean to see it take us home once again. So let’s be on our way!”
The cautious optimism she had seen in their eyes, kindled by Yosrick’s observation, fanned into a small flame of hope. Now, we need a victory to get a blaze going.
She hoped she could give them that and not let them down as she had thus far.
Chapter 23
They had been walking for perhaps an hour when Arron sidled up to Nera.
“You know, I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I don’t know that this will work, but it is worth the attempt.”
“Do enlighten me, Brother.” Even as she said it, she wondered if she could even call him that anymore.
From exchanging tales with the others, she’d been told that, during his ordeal with Endira, some of the finer details of which she could tell they had left out, he had somehow acquired the ability to shapeshift into a dragon. When questioned about it, he laughed it off, saying he was more comfortable in the form he’d lived in all his life. Judging from the look in his eyes, he wasn’t telling her everything, and Nera had the suspicion he was waiting for her to inherit her birthright before all was revealed.
She noticed Endira watching them, and the elf smiled at her glance. Their ordeal had left the elven maid scarred, as Nera herself had been. Her beauty was marred by a ridge of scar where her ear had been, yet she was as graceful and determined as ever, which Nera found a source of inspiration.
“…and I can try to move us back to Nexus through the paired spheres Zar Jurrik gave me,” Arron was saying.
Nera focused on Arron’s words. “You can do what?” She stopped walking, and the others clustered around curiously. “And you’re just now saying so?”
Arron flushed guiltily. “After all that’s happened, I had forgotten about it.” He held up a silver sphere the size of a small egg and looked around at the others. “Well, I hope this will work. Gather close, and I shall attempt to return us to Nexus.”
Wyat frowned at Arron. “With that silver sphere that brought you out of Nexus? Will it work here?”
Arron grimaced. “Let us hope so. Mistress of the Night, if you’ve any luck left to spare us, let this work.”
The others gathered around, faces hopeful they could escape that cursed place. Hands clasped Arron’s shoulders and arms.
He held the sphere aloft in the palm of his hand and closed his eyes for a moment before calling out a command word: “Rasirm ruka.”
Nothing happened.
Nera looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m sure that’s it. Zar Jurrik even berated me when I mispronounced it before. Rasirm ruka,” he intoned again.
Again, nothing happened. Dust stirred from the scorching wind blowing over the blasted plain. Green lightning crackled in the thunderheads in the distance.
“The very nature of the Abyss seems to warp magic. I would guess the enchantment placed on those spheres isn’t powerful enough to penetrate the fabric of the plane here,” Yosrick suggested.
“Damn it all.” Arron put the sphere back in his pocket. “Didn’t mean to get everyone’s hopes up for naught. Seems we continue walking and searching for that cursed portal after all.”
Hoping a way out of Achronia presented itself soon, Nera patted Arron’s back in sympathy as they resumed their aimless trek.
The companions slogged onward across the blasted ground, which seemed to never end. At one point, Nera wondered where the damned souls had gone, who had been chained to the Wall of Lost Souls. She hadn’t seen any since before Nesnys had teleported the group to the site where her father had once been imprisoned.
Bored and frustrated, she contented herself with attempting to break a rock in her new hand. The stone, a chunk of basalt, couldn’t stand up to the pressure when she squeezed, and it was crushed into a fine black dust. When she examined her hand, it had not a scratch on it.
“Abyssal iron is the toughest metal in all the planes,” Waresh remarked, clearly impressed by her display. “Ye could stop an axe strike with yer bare hand if ye so wished.”
“Aye, but I’d give my other hand to just get out of this cursed pit and go home.”
Just then, Wyat, in the lead, raised his hand for them to proceed with caution.
Ahead lay a dark figure huddled on the ground. Nera strode closer and recognized it as one of the erinys who had attacked them earlier. She could see the raw wound where Nesnys’s whip had torn one of the black-feathered wings free, leaving a bloody stump in its place. Her legs had been shattered from her fall from the sky, leaving splintered bone protruding from her feathered legs. The fiend’s bow lay out of reach half a dozen paces away. Her head was lowered to her chest as if she slept.
“And lo, the betrayers were smote down by Sol’s wrath,” Idrimel said softly, her eyes locked on the broken erinys. “Their descent lit the heavens as a storm of comets as they were cast into the Abyss for all eternity. Their pure white wings were burnt away in the flames of their fall, and when they regrew, they would forever be the color of pitch to match the blackness of their evil hearts.”
Nera glanced at her askance. “Very poetic.”
“It is a passage from the Book of Sol, which we are taught in the priesthood. It is a warning tale that Sol is a benevolent god yet also vengeful if his trust is betrayed.”
The erinys raised her head, watching their approach without much interest. “Ah, the young half-breed and her mortal friends. Have you come to slake your thirst for vengeance?” the erinys asked, her voice low and throaty. “By all means, you may do so—I shall not resist.”
She shifted around to regard the companions, pinning them with her striking gold-speckled eyes. Her black hair had been cut short, serving to accentuate her high cheekbones and graceful neck.
Nera could see the inherent beauty the creature had once possessed by virtue of her celestial nature before having been cursed and cast out from Sol’s graces. Her beauty looked to have been intentionally marred by her own hand. Patterns of lines and whorls had been carved or branded into her body, nearly every inch of skin not covered by the blackened armor.
Nera regarded her warily, hand on the hilt of Lightslicer, unsure of how to proceed. The creature, even battered and gravely wounded, somehow maintained a regal presence.
“I’m tempted to strike you down, but I’d rather parlay for the moment. Tell me of the one who wounded you—Nesnys,” Nera said.
The erinys laughed bitterly. “That termagant is the daughter of the Lord of Achronia, and her fortunes have risen with his recent elevation after overthrowing his predecessor.”
“Recent?”
She shrugged. “I forget—centuries mean nothing to my kind but whole lifetimes for you mortals. Perhaps a century ago, the current lord seized power through his cunning and treachery, casting down the previous ruler. Upon his ascension, he raised up his daughter, Nesnys, gifting her with her iron wings and position as Executor for Achronia. She has no love for us erinys, nor we for her.”
Nera grimaced. “Aye, she has no love for us, either. We share a common foe.” Nera held out her iron hand.
“You also bear the marks of her wrath? Yet you command the elements as the Lord of Achronia!” The erinys looked thoughtful.
“Aye, I too am a daughter of that bastard. The two of them plotted and betrayed me. You’d be pleased to know Nesnys has been gravely wounded. And the Engineer has gone off to make war on the planes.”
“Another daughter? Curious.” The demoness licked her lips as she stared at Nera. “And he seeks to start another Planar War? With the sanction of the High Lord, I would surmise. That would explain the summons that went out earlier. I still recall the last war as if it were but a short time ago. Pity I shall be unable to partake.” The look of longing on her face turned to one of cunning. “If not vengeance, what is it you wish of me?”
“I seek a portal that we may depart for Nexus to try to thwart the Engineer’s plans.”
The erinys shrugged. “No portals exist that lead from the Abyss, save those opened by the Nexus of the Planes.”
“The one I seek was sealed millennia ago by the gods themselves.”
“Ah, you seek the prime portal, deep in the core of the Abyss.” Her face twisted into a sly smile. “Marakesh himself sealed that portal once the gods realized their folly after they constructed it. You will not survive that journey, Engineer’s daughter, even had you the knowledge or power to reactivate it.”
“We shall see about that. What is your name?” Nera asked.
“You may refer to me as Sirath. My true name is not for mortals to know.”
“I would make you a bargain, Sirath. You take us to the prime portal, and I will restore your powers of flight.”
“You? What can a half-breed such as you do for me?” Despite her words, Sirath’s eyes went back to Nera’s metal hand.
“Nera? Are you sure about this?” Idrimel asked. “The erinys are betrayers—they have no honor. To bargain with one such as this—”
“May be our only way to escape here and reach Nexus in time,” she finished. “Unless you’ve a better idea?”
“You are wise to question, celestial-kin,” Sirath said, regarding Idrimel with a sneer. “Many fools have sought to bargain with denizens of the Abyss, often to their own fateful end.”
Idrimel stared at Sirath for a moment before turning back to Nera. Slowly, she shook her head. “I do not, Nera.”
None of the others spoke up either, apparently trusting her leadership.
Let us hope this works out to our benefit, then.
Nera held up her hand of Abyssal iron, slowly flexing the fingers and clenching her hand into a fist as Sirath watched with interest. “I fashioned this after Nesnys took my hand with that cursed whip of hers, as you yourself were struck down, Sirath. I will create a new wing for you, much like the ones Nesnys herself has, that you may rejoin your sisters in flight once more. In return, you must take my companions and I to the prime portal. Know that what I create, I can take away should you try to betray your side of the bargain. I am no fool and would never trust a fiend unless you also reap some benefit from our bargain.”
The erinys tilted her head thoughtfully and regarded her. “Very well, Engineer’s daughter,” she replied after a long moment. “It costs me little to deliver you to your death where you wish to venture. But if you can deliver what you promise, the benefit is great.” She leaned forward and beckoned Nera to approach her.
“Nera—”
She waved off Arron’s protest and approached the fallen creature. Sirath must have been in great pain from her injuries, yet she made no complaint. Nera suspected the erinys’s shattered legs would regenerate in time but the grievous wound to her wing would not.
“If you were to destroy the Lord of Achronia and his cursed daughter, we erinys could perhaps retake our place of honor. You seek Aolduhrn, the core of the Abyss. Beware, it shall be the death of you, for therein lies in torpor the one imprisoned by our lord himself, its power unspeakable.” Sirath reached out and seized Nera’s right hand. “Witness Aolduhrn and the prime portal.”
Nera could sense the demon’s thoughts and opened her mind. The image of the portal, the same she had seen in her vision, filled her thoughts—ancient beyond measure, standing at the bottom of a large depression in the ground. She knew the creature spoke truly.
After a moment, Sirath relaxed her grip on Nera’s arm and regarded her with glittering eyes. “Once you uphold your side of the bargain, I shall deliver you there forthwith, for Aolduhrn is not a territory in which I will linger.”
Nera stepped back and raised her arms, keeping her eyes on Sirath. She felt the reassuring presence of her friends’ approach, guarding her against any false move by the erinys. Sirath regarded them with amusement but made no hostile move, remaining focused on Nera.
Reaching out, Nera let her senses explore the very substance of the Abyss until once again she could feel the Abyssal iron sparkling amidst the other minerals, as if calling to her. Knowing that fashioning a wing would require a great deal more metal than did her hand, she drew from as far as she could sense. The ground rippled and vibrated, the minerals shifting as the Abyssal iron ore broke its bonds and rose to the surface. As before, grains an
d shards of iron drew together before their eyes.
Sirath gasped, eyes wide as she watched spellbound. The metal combined and thinned, stretching into long, thin sheets much like the Engineer’s own wings. Nera didn’t possess the skill to fashion the finer details like Nesnys’s wings, but she figured the angular sheets more like what the Engineer utilized should suffice.
The erinys leaned down, her scarred back arching up. Her feathered wing fluttered a moment and stretched out. The bloody stump shifted against her back, and black blood again leaked from the gruesome injury. She cried out as the shards of metal lanced into her back, carving the stump free until only a deep wound remained. The Abyssal iron drove into the wound, binding to her skeleton. Flexible strings of iron formed the sinews connecting the wing and allowing it movement.
Nera lowered her hands when it was complete, unsure if she had succeeded. She wobbled as a wave of dizziness overcame her, but Malek steadied her with an arm around her shoulders.
With both Sirath’s wings spread out fully upon the ground, Nera saw the crudely formed metal wing roughly matched the feathered one in size and shape.
After a moment, Sirath stirred. She sat up, and both wings retracted, the feathered one softly whisking across the ground, the metal one carving divots in the packed dirt. With a powerful burst, her two wings beat at the air, and Sirath rose from the ground, hovering there as her wings beat steadily.
“You have proved your worth, Engineer’s daughter. I am indebted to you.” Sirath bowed in respect, her face alight with wonder. She flew upward, banked, and circled before diving down and snatching her bow from the ground.
Nera sensed her companions stiffen, preparing to draw steel, but she waved them off. Sirath skimmed along the ground and pulled up before them, wings beating as she hovered.
“And now I shall transport you to Aolduhrn as you wish.” Sirath spoke in the fell speech and waved her hands. The air shimmered around them, and they were teleported away.
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