03- The Apostles of Doom

by J. Langland

  Fire Line Around the Citadel: Late Sixth Period

  “That is the last of the land-based beacons,” Ramses told Exador as one of his demons secured the nearest beacon in place.

  “Good,” Exador replied, looking at his map under a small ball of Demon Fire. “The ships with beacons should also be in place. I will head out to them and run final tests on the aligning mechanism.”

  “I’ll stay with the land beacons in case I need to adjust any settings with the drift compensating mechanisms with the beacons on the shore,” Ramses said.

  “Hopefully, the other ships will be able to keep any of Namora’s priests outside the range of the beacon ships. The last thing we need is to have giant waves shoving the beacon ships out of position,” Exador said. “They’ve got every single sorcerer and aquamancer on the ships working to keep them in position.”

  “Good. I will also double-check the links to our demon agents guarding the beacons on land, if you will take care of those at sea,” Ramses said.

  “I will. I’ve placed some of my brighter demons on the ships. Defending a beacon on a ship is a bit trickier than one on land,” Exador said.

  “Fortunately, if things do go badly for our demons, they will be able to simply fly outside the perimeter and return to the Abyss. We have lost so many mortal forces that we can’t afford to lose demonic ones as well,” Ramses said.

  “You really are not going to let that incident and Lenamare’s school go, are you?” Exador asked, shaking his head.

  Ramses chuckled. “Nope. Not for another few centuries, at least.” He glanced up into the night sky. “Don’t look now, but here comes Daerth Tromlane.”

  “I am sure the Thirteen are anxious to begin.” Exador shrugged.

  They waited quietly as Daerth Tromlane landed his massive—well, Exador wasn’t quite sure what he was riding. It was some form of dragon; it did not, however, look like a zombie dragon. The best guess he and Ramses had come up with was that it was a lich dragon; however, neither had ever heard of such a thing.

  Daerth Tromlane came over to them, the red embers of his eyes smoldering through the openings in his golden helmet. Exador once again noted that all one could see within the inky blackness of the helmet were the glowing eyes; there was no sign of flesh within the helmet.

  “Are we ready?” Daerth Tromlane asked in his typically dour hiss.

  “Nearly,” Exador said. “All beacons are in place; we want to fine-tune the ship beacons and assure they are aligning properly. We should be able to test within two hours. If the tests go well, we should be able to bring it up shortly before dawn.”

  Daerth Tromlane stood there. Exador took a small motion of his helmet to be a nod of acceptance. They were on schedule after all.

  “We will join you at the command center for the activation,” Exador finally said.

  “Very well. I go now to arrange for the storm clouds to block the morning atunlight,” Daerth Tromlane said before pivoting on his heel and marching back to his dragon.

  Exador stood silently watching the Lord of the Sky as he left them.

  “He is ever so sociable,” Ramses observed.

  “If you think he has a stick up his butt, you should have met Stoivenychas, whose work we have recreated. That guy had serious issues,” Exador told his colleague. “Serious issues,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  Citadel Command Center: DOA + 19, Early First Period

  “The Wardens are reporting changes in air pressure indicating a storm front is moving in,” Warden Commander Fielos, Eldon’s most senior commander, reported.

  Ashena Brightfeather chuckled. “Well, they wouldn’t be the Storm Lords if they didn’t bring in their black storm clouds to shield their armies from Atun’s light. We will have a little surprise for them this time.”

  “You are going to break up the storm clouds?” Garion Hearthhand asked.

  “Indeed. While our mortal priests have not been able to break their lock on the clouds in nearly ten thousand years, I have every confidence that with the power of Krinna at my disposal, we will not have too much trouble,” Melona Tramen replied confidently.

  “One question, if I might?” Stevos asked. Dashgar nodded to the saint. “They are going to need an incredible amount of time get their forces in place. They have not bothered with any attacks, not even aerial, and we do nothing to disrupt them, either. Why is this?”

  Dashgar grinned. “War with the Storm Lords and the Citadel is something like a game of chess. Rushing too fast causes errors. They will not launch aerial attacks until they have the proper ground game in place to support the attacks.”

  “The moat is filled with running Holy Water,” Eileen Sealegs added. “That will prevent any casual ground game by the Storm Lords; they will need to do very coordinated tasks to cross it on the ground. Further, the running water disrupts many of their aerial forces; they will want magical support on the ground ready to be able to counter the running water on behalf of the aerial forces. From the sea? We have strong currents in place sufficient to act as running water and similarly disrupt their air game.”

  “I believe I saw Jacquesparrow heading down to the docks earlier,” Inethya noted.

  “Indeed. They will not come by sea while he is there,” Eileen Sealegs replied.

  “Now as for us?” Dashgar said. “We are going to be observing where they set up their various support operations—specifically those Eileen just mentioned—we want those all located and well understood so that we may attack them directly while they are at their weakest and we can do the most damage. Meaning we want all of their forces here, not in the surrounding woods or on the roads. They will need most of the day to construct their war machines. We should have the lay of the land by dawn, so we strike then with Atun in the sky, and the storm clouds dispersed.

  “Other than clearing the sky of clouds, this is all part of the standard plan that has developed over the millennia. The major difference is that this time we have the firepower to quickly cut their knees out from under them and press the offense.” Grob said. “However, for now, we want things to go exactly as usual so that we may take them by surprise.”

  Fassbindr chuckled ominously. “They are not going to know what’s hitting them.”

  Nysegard, Exador’s Command Center: Early Second Period

  “We are ready?” Daerth Tromlane asked, or was it stated? Exador was not quite sure which. His voice was almost entirely without inflection—simply a single monotonous note of dour ominousness.

  “All tests have been passed, all beacons are online,” Ramses said.

  “Then begin the spells to bring them up,” Praelgeis, Lord of the Night, instructed.

  Exador glanced to the circle of lich wizards assisting him and Ramses. They all nodded readiness, and he began the chant to bring up the wizard links. Unpleasant, moldy-tasting wizard links, but wizard links nonetheless.

  Citadel Command Center

  Hilda watched intently as Dashgar laid out the battle plans that would commence within the next few hours. The key would be to allow Atun to rise sufficiently high in the sky so that when Malona# stripped away the Storm Lord’s black clouds, the unfiltered atunshine could do its work on the unprotected night dwellers.

  At the same time, the Sky Wardens would launch their aerial assault against the daylight-safe troops, hitting the aerial ones first to disable their air power. Meanwhile, they had located all the major zombie squadron locations and would be targeting the Holy Water catapults on them. The Storm Lords, being tricky, had made several of those into difficult targets; the catapults were deadly, but not new.

  “Now, as for the ice dragons and liches…” Dashgar began before suddenly trailing off.

  Hilda suddenly felt a deep coldness sweep over her, coldness and nausea.

  “What in the name of Krinaeria?” Ashena exclaimed, turning ashen in the face.

  “What in all that’s unholy?” Eileen Sealegs cried.

  Several other people in the ro
om, mortals, started shouting startled remarks as well.

  Hilda swayed. Something was very seriously wrong. Incredibly seriously wrong. The feeling was extremely similar to when the Inferno had vanished, yet different. Far worse. Far, far, worse. She tried to synchronize with her HALO, but it was gone! Her HALO and every one of her illuminaries had suddenly vanished! She quickly reached towards Tierhallon’s master HALO, only to find that it too was gone—Tiernon himself had vanished as well!

  “Tierhallon is gone!” Hilda shouted, even as Stevos said the same thing.

  Ashena looked at Hilda, her eyes wide in shock. “As is Krinaeria!”

  “Namorafjord is also gone!” Eileen Sealegs cried.

  “The only links I have are personal links to people here in the Citadel,” Hilda said.

  “Me, too!” Stevos said with a note of panic in his voice.

  “I am able to manually reconnect personally to people here on Nysegard,” Dashgar exclaimed over the increased shouting in the room, “but I can’t reach my HALO or the god pool!”

  “Hendel help us!” Garion Hearthhand exclaimed. “I can get to every illuminary I have tried, so I think the local ones here are fine, but I can’t get to the god pool.” He stared at Seliana, his archon. “Our personal link is up, but I can’t verify anything with our HALO links.”

  Seliana nodded, concentrating. “I am in the same position. My illuminaries here in Nysegard went down, but I can manually relink to them. I am not finding any of my off-world illuminaries that I’ve tried. While I can manually reconnect to illuminaries here on Nysegard, I am unable to reach any on the other Planes of Man.”

  “What in the name of the Abyss just happened?” Inethya asked.

  “It seems we are cut off from the Outer Planes and other material planes as well,” Delilah, the archon for Torean said. She glanced to Timbly and then to Fassbindr, who both nodded.

  “I’ve got a link to you, Stevos,” Teragdor said, turning to the saint, who was deathly pale.

  “You are the only illuminary I have left,” Stevos said.

  “What in the names of the Five Siblings have they done?” Rasmeth asked.

  Citadel of Light, Refugee Quarters

  Beragamos woke from his sleep in sudden shock. He had come to Nysegard with his incarnated body rather than his usual avatar body in order to better hide his nature; thus he had been sleeping in a bunk down with the refugees.

  Something was horribly, indescribably wrong. He felt at a complete loss. He felt empty, empty in a way he could not remember ever being before, at least not in any recent Phoenix Cycle.

  “Where is Tiernon?” Beragamos exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was wrong.

  “In Tierhallon; now go back to sleep!” someone shouted at him.

  Beragamos shook his head. He quickly reached out with his mind, following his links. He had no links off-plane! He could sense his team members: Hilda, Stevos, Dashgar, Inethya, Teragdor. They were here, they were fine, but he had no access to anything off-plane. Tierhallon, his HALO and the god pool were gone!

  He blinked and tried to stop the sudden onset of hyperventilation. Tierhallon could not be gone! That would be inconceivable. And besides, he could not seem to reach anything off-plane. None of his old links to priests and illuminaries on other planes that venerated him.

  No, it is not Tierhallon that is gone from me, but rather I am gone from Tierhallon, Beragamos thought as he stood to quickly get dressed. He needed to find the others. Whatever was happening, this overrode Tiernon’s instructions.

  Tierhallon

  Sentir Fallon was enjoying a glass of wine while reading reports from the local archons and prophets, when something suddenly seemed off. He could not place it. He set his wine down and began searching among his links and illumination streams, both those on his HALO and those he held directly. Dashgar and Inethya! They were gone, gone along with all of Nysegard. The primary illumination streams from Nysegard ran through them. Yes, there were plenty of secondary streams, but the main ones were missing. Even from people who were currently here in Tierhallon, but reported to Dashgar or Inethya.

  Suddenly some of the Nysegard links came back online. Dashgar’s and Inethya’s HALOs were going autonomous. This was something he understood full well from his trips to the Abyss. Before traveling there, he always made sure all of his links, including personal ones, were transferred to his HALO so no one would notice a short absence on his part.

  In this case, however, Dashgar and Inethya had not transferred their primary links to their HALOs, and so there had been a brief time before the HALOs’ logic systems had detected their absence and failed over their still-active links. There was only one explanation.

  “Tiernon damn those liches,” Sentir Fallon swore. Somehow, the Storm Lords had managed to reproduce the Dark Apostle’s work.

  This was a variant of the warding that had blocked Orcus from the Abyss. This one, however, was blocking access to the Outer Planes—perhaps even all planes. The Dark Apostle’s first version had blocked all planar contact; it had taken him several more centuries to be able to be able to exclude the Outer Planes. That had been a critical factor in their timing.

  Certainly they would not have been able to block the entire world, but with Dashgar and Inethya at the Citadel, which they had been trying to block, all of the illumination streams running to Tierhallon through the two of them would have been broken. They would have their illuminaries on Nysegard, the vast majority of them, but would not be able to relay them off-plane.

  It would be only a matter of minutes before Dashgar and Inethya would pull their local illuminaries back from their HALOs. The HALO would then lose access to those streams. Essentially, all of Nysegard would go back offline again. That was going to show up downstairs. An entire world disappearing would impact the charging of the god pool. This would show up as far worse than an accounting glitch. Damn liches!

  Another cold thought struck him. Dashgar and Inethya had reached out to their Torean counterparts; had they accepted? Had the two reached out to their other Sibling counterparts? How many other attending archons and prophets had just vanished?

  This was bad, very bad. He needed to get on this immediately!

  Citadel Command Center

  Teragdor was feeling rather queasy with his connection to Tierhallon lost. Fortunately for him, his patron saint had his back. Stevos was actually behind him at this moment, looking over his shoulder at the map.

  “Vicar General!” a voice called from over by one of the mirrors.

  “Yes?” Grob called back.

  “The aerial attack has begun. Catapults are firing as we speak, to take out the ground support,” the mirror’s operator told him.

  “Very well; tell them to hold back on sending Wardens into the air,” Grob ordered.

  “Kargen!” Grob yelled to someone else in the room. “Scramble the enchanters and aeromancers; they are going to have to be our first line of defense in the sky. We need to keep this a ranged battle. I want to keep casualties down until we have more healing support.”

  “Aye, Vicar General,” Kargen’s voice came from the crowd.

  Grob turned back to the rest of the people around the map table. “We are going to rely on ranged attacks from wizards and animages for the moment.”

  “Vicar General!” another voice called from the mirror region. “Ground assault has begun. The pyromancers are using the fire canons on those attempting to bridge the moat!”

  “I need all available wizards and animages at their stations on the walls!” Grob yelled.

  “If the Outer Planes are unreachable, then I’d assume so is the Abyss,” Elden said to Grob, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Our conjurors are going to be every bit as out of actions as our priests.”

  Hilda, Stevos and Teragdor all looked at the Lord Ranger in shock. “You use demons to fight your battles?”

  Rassnon shrugged. “They are not our first choice, but against the Unlife, they are the lesser of tw
o evils.”

  Stevos looked to Dashgar in surprise. The archon simply shrugged; he apparently knew and approved of the use of demons to fight the Unlife.

  Teragdor whispered ruefully to Rasmeth, “We aren’t in Murgandy anymore.”

  “No, we are not,” Rasmeth said, equally in shock that the Citadel would even think of using demons.

  Behind them, having moved to fill in the space where Leighton had been standing before being called to duty, Iskerus heard them and added “Sir Talarius’s helmet would literally blow off at the thought of fighting side by side with demons. It’s a good thing he isn’t here right now.”

  Chapter 144

  Citadel Command Center: Mid Second Period, Dawn

  “Enough,” Beragamos told the guard blocking his way to the Command Center. It had taken him more time that he would have liked to find his way here. With Tierhallon offline, he had only his links to Hilda and the others here. Links were straight lines; they did not account for walls, ceilings and floors, nor did they come with any mapping assistance. Thus, he’d encountered a great number of dead-ends as he’d made his way to the Command Center.

  “I’m sorry, Brother, but we are on total lockdown. The fight has begun; only essential people are allowed in the Command Center,” the guard said.

  Beragamos shook his head. This was the problem with incarnated bodies, at least for him. He was wearing real clothes and so could not change them on a whim. They also didn’t come with built-in halos or auras. Beragamos pulled back the hood of his robe.

  “Tell me, Shield member. Have you never seen a statue of me?” Beragamos asked.

  “When did they start making statues out of Brothers of Tiernon?” The guard asked.

  “I’m not a Brother of Tiernon. I am Beragamos Antidellas.”