Igniting townsfolk wail their agony.
"You aren't real," Hendregan burns. Though secretly, he wishes they were.
A rainless storm rolls in, gathering up the flames and bearing them throughout the bounded kindling world. Hendregan feels through each flicker, each ember, as if they are extensions of his fundamental self. This is still unreal, still a trick, but now the trick is his. A foreshadowing—or is that fore-flaming?—of his final destiny.
As his advancing fire reaches the last untouched fringes of this paper world, Hendregan commands them to burn through the unreality to the greater truth beneath.
He makes an oval of flame in the wall of his prison, in the tower of Yath. He scorches Yath's vacated flesh, melts its imploding bone.
He steps through into swaying, bucking chaos.
"Wah-hah!" he exclaims, delighted.
A demonic guardian, all horns and insect parts, tries to carom past him. The mind-flame summoned in his doomed prison is still upon him. Its magnitude exceeds that of the common spells he would wield on any other day. He leaps at the demon, wreathed in a protective ball of fire. The demon disintegrates before the flames reach him, crisping it in rippling waves of heat.
"Wo-hoh!" Hendregan says.
Awareness filters though the haze of another death. Vitta groans to a sitting position. The iron chamber surrounds her once more. She'll have to do it all over again. Crawl to the spot on the wall. Remove the plate. Get at the lock, then try to find a way to disarm it. She suspects there isn't one. Not consistently, at any rate. The trap is chaos. It changes itself in reaction to her escape attempts. It's playing with her. The game is stacked. She can never win.
A change in circumstance has occurred, she senses. It takes her a moment to discern it: The chamber is hot. Hotter on one side than the others. The iron wall sweats. She stumbles over to it, burdened by the weight of her toolkit. The dripping substance condensing from the wall smells like the musk of some terrible beast. No matter what it may look like, she reminds herself, this place is alive. It is paradox, both mortal and demonic, both Abyss and Golarion, at the same time a structure and a creature. It hisses in muffled torment. The iron undergoes a metamorphosis. It loses its placeness, changing its state to flesh and blood. Pink veins spread across the metal surface. Rivets transform into infected buboes. Seams reveal themselves as lines of bone. The panel, so difficult to find and remove, shifts into a slab of jouncing meat. Smoke rises from its edges. It cooks, heated from the other side.
The wall mechanism shudders vengefully, as if preparing to shatter her prematurely.
Vitta wonders: if the link between the Abyss and world has been severed, if her prison has been pulled from a realm of the impossible to one of natural law, what happens if it kills her now?
Only one hypothesis compels: she dies for once and all, that's what.
She lunges for the meat-panel, rips it from the wall, finds a network of torpid veins and delicate, intertwined nerves. Vitta reaches in and grabs as much as she can in her compact halfling fist. She yanks it loose. A mixture of blood, bile and pulped viscera fountains over her. The lock, red with heat, has transformed into a moaning face of metal and bone. Reluctant to touch its sizzling surface with bare hands, she bashes it with her elbow. The face-lock crunches into pieces.
Flame jets through the opening. Vitta, ready for it, ducks.
"Hold up, Hendregan!" she calls.
Jittering laughter is her only reply. The fire sorcerer wades into the curtain of molten metal and searing flesh, unharmed, tearing it down, making a hole for her to step through.
"You found its weak point," he observes, with seeming lucidity, as she clears its sizzling edges. Then he says, "Woh, woh, woh."
"The same to you," Vitta replies. Her toolkit has vanished. It must have been Abyss-stuff, part of the trap. Her real gear will be outside, with that of the others, where the demon-ridden guardian let it drop. She runs to find it, and to take up her sword.
Vision blurred, eyelids clamped shut, Tiberio kills his way through a legion of foes. Gore slicking his limbs, he begs for their forbearance. He can't stop killing them. When he runs out of enemies to slaughter, they rise again, slit throats fusing shut, splintered bones loudly snapping back into place.
The fight ring grows hotter.
Tiberio's vengeful foes lose their impetus, confused by new arrivals into the chamber. They exist to torment only one soul. Their Abyss is meant to contain a solitary inmate. They look to one another, seeking guidance.
Hendregan blows into his hand. A ball of rippling heat forms there. He lofts it to the ceiling. There, the emanation splits apart. Like so many fireflies, its fragments seek out the false souls. The bloodied figures, caressed by the heat particles, disappear as puffs of steam. A gentle exhalation accompanies them as they fade away.
Tiberio backs himself into one of the fight ring's posts. The wooden platform wobbles beneath his feet. He hides his face.
Vitta bounds into the ring. Pieces of ceiling dislodge themselves and fall. They start their fall as pieces of stone and mortar. They land as chunks of decaying demon-meat.
"Time to go," Vitta says.
"Leave me here," Tiberio sobs.
"They weren't real."
"These weren't the real people I slew," Tiberio says, "but the real people, I slew them."
"Remember the plan. This place is coming down on our heads. We've got to get out before we're crushed."
"That's what I deserve."
"You've atoned already."
"Not enough."
She clambers onto the swaying chains to look him in the eye. She grabs onto his arms, steadying herself. "How are we supposed to feel about that? You know the rule. Everybody gets out."
"No."
"These people are on your conscience. You want you to be on ours?"
He stammers wordlessly.
"You going to get selfish on us now? Now, of all times?" She ducks, avoiding a steaming gobbet of plummeting flesh. "You want me to have to tell Gad?"
"Let's go," he says.
They run for the scorched hole to the corridor outside. Behind them, the portal to the Abyss winks out. A curtain of melting skin materializes to seal the hole between worlds.
Hendregan looses a column of flame at the last of the cell doors. Jerisa stumbles out. She falls into Tiberio's arms. He shakes himself from his own sorrows to hold her tight.
"Alone," she says.
"No, you're not," Vitta answers, thrusting Jerisa's gear into her hands: the pack, the crossbow, the belt of knives.
"We're all together," Tiberio manages.
A burning worm-demon drops from a hole in the ceiling to confront them, its masklike face hissing at them over a quartet of clacking mandibles.
The shock of its appearance triggers Jerisa's reflexes. A dagger, plucked from the still-dangling belt, is in her hand. Then it is buried deep in the demon's forehead. Tiberio rushes up to grab its mandibles. He uses them as handles to twist its neck. The demon's head nearly comes off in his arms. Green ichor spews.
"Demons I can kill," he announces.
The four of them hurtle through collapsing corridors and down bleeding stairs. They push their way through a tunnel as it tightens around them. They scuffle with cultists. They heave a spider demon into the pit of tar. Its eight flailing legs fold in on one another as the tar river is sucked away into the Abyss. They press on through a rain of acidic slime and into a maze of forking tunnels.
A white blur slips past a tunnel mouth as they pass by.
Jerisa stops. "The rest of you keep going," she says.
"Have you gone crazy?"
Jerisa bolts down the passageway toward the pale figure. "Business to finish," she calls, already inaudible to her comrades. Veins form a quivering V on her tightened forehead
. She charges at Isilda, daggers out.
Gad and Calliard run a gauntlet of stinging tentacles. They reach out to grab at them even as they wither and melt. Ten yards after the last poison feeler swings uselessly in their wake, they slide into a knot of armored, helmeted cultists.
"The ones who did this—they're back there!" Gad exclaims, pointing behind them.
"Why are you fleeing them?" the biggest of the cultists demands.
"Reinforcements!" Gad cries, pushing past. Calliard follows.
The cultists run deeper into the dying tower.
Gad and Calliard press on. In a chamber lined with insect hairs, the two find themselves standing back to back, warily defending themselves from a trio of scorpion demons. Pincers and double sets of stingers rise from scaled, vaguely equine bodies. Wrinkled, half-formed faces slaver and groan between the pincers. Mushy, vestigial teeth gnash in pink and outraged mouths.
"Thieves!" they hiss, in eerie unison. With clacking pincers they emphasize their hate.
"You have robbed us! Robbed us of Yath's embrace!"
"I guess they know what we did," Calliard whispers.
As if in agreement with his statement, the scorpion creatures furiously bark and yelp. Venom oozes from the barbed tips of their bifurcated tails.
"At least the cultists don't," Gad replies.
A demon lunges at Calliard; he pushes it back with the tip of his sword. The point barely punctures the Abyss-spawn's carapace.
"Make a run for it," Calliard says.
Jerisa follows Isilda deeper into the tower. The structure lurches, throwing her against a collapsing wall. She falls through a stretch of deteriorating muscle, hitting her shoulder against a support strut of gleaming black bone.
Isilda's fly-creature herald, wings already crushed by some prior mishap in the collapsing tower, stumbles into view. Addled, it spins on his segmented heels.
Jerisa waits until its uncontrolled spinning leaves it facing Isilda and away from her. She plunges a dagger into its back. She twists, pushing deeper into the squishy mass beneath its external armor. When she withdraws the blade, ropy green gore arcs across the corridor. The demon drops to the floor, buzzing feebly.
The priestess reaches the threshold of her chambers. She fumbles her key into her lock. Jerisa looses a dagger at her head. Isilda drops, leaving a strand of white-gold hair pinned to her door under the vibrating blade. Green blood drips languidly from it.
Isilda utters an invocation to the demonic hosts. Ruby lips purse in frustration as it fails to take effect. Jerisa launches herself at her, a swinging blade in each hand. Isilda shrinks back. Jerisa presses into every inch her enemy gives her. Impact! A gash opens in the priestess's shoulder.
"Can't tell you much about demons," grunts Jerisa, "but I just heard you call on Yath. And my guess is, he's distracted right now." She smashes Isilda in the face. With a snap, the cult leader's porcelain nose breaks. The assassin clamps her hand across the priestess's mouth and jaw, pressing the broken nose flat.
Isilda kicks her in the leg, pushing her off. Jerisa looks down at the hole in her leggings. A white line on her thigh turns into a long red gash. Sodevina's description of Isilda flashes to mind:
Razors in the soles of her boots.
Isilda's boots are edged in metal, the soles honed to a sharp cutting edge. The priestess kicks at her head; Jerisa narrowly slips past the blow. She slashes at the retreating boot with her dagger. Isilda kicks it from her hand, leaving a red slash across her knuckles.
Jerisa drops low and punches her in the ribs. The priestess doubles over; the assassin grapples her. Isilda tries to get free. Jerisa hammers her with a repeat shot to the same spot, and another. Finally Isilda cuts her with her knifelike boot, forcing her back.
The two stand, panting and bleeding, as the tower comes apart around them.
"Why aren't you running?" Isilda gasps.
"Why aren't you?" retorts Jerisa.
"You're an idiot," the priestess says.
Jerisa plucks another blade from her assortment of sheaths. "He may not be mine, but he's certainly not for the likes of you."
Isilda's pitiless smile survives for only an instant, then Jerisa leaps at her. The priestess leaps away. Jerisa compensates. Her dagger-strike slices Isilda's ear, leaving behind a bloody notch.
"Enough of this, then," Isilda hisses. She adjusts her invocation, omitting her plea to the intercession of Yath. Instead she calls on the prevailing power of the Worldwound: "Deskari, Lord of the Locust Host, devour this carrion!"
A cycling buzz of crazed cicadas ricochets deafeningly from the buckling walls. Curls of Abyssal power wreathe Isilda's long-nailed fingers. She waits for Jerisa to stab her. Her enemy's blade punctures her forearm. She grabs Jerisa's weapon-hand. Demonic energy courses from her hand into Jerisa's. It flows through the assassin's forearm, up through her bicep, into her shoulder, up the side of her neck, and across the side of her face. Everywhere the demon force travels, Jerisa's flesh is scourged and contused. Her veins blacken; her pale skin becomes translucent. In shock, she rocks on her heels. The demon force surges through her muscles, devouring them. Her feet sail out from under her. She lands on her knees.
Isilda kicks her in the face.
"Make a run for it," Calliard repeats. Skittering scorpion-beasts hem them in.
"Not without you." Gad dodges an ill-placed tail-strike. The stinger lodges in the puckering muscle of the wall behind him. Gad lops off the demon's second stinger. It yowls out an imprecation.
"I'm not feeling self-sacrificial," says Calliard.
"Good," says Gad.
Calliard severs a front leg from his nearest opponent. It flops on the quaking floor. "But let's face facts."
"Facts aren't for facing, they're for getting around." Gad lets his scorpion catch his short sword in its pincers, then unexpectedly twists. With a snap, the claw wrenches and breaks. It dangles loosely from the demon's arm on a thread of chitin.
"I'm no good anymore," Calliard says. He grunts in pain as a pincer clamps itself onto his leg.
"Bullshit and you know it," Gad replies, stabbing his blade deep into his enemy's mouth parts. It scuttles back to gurgle and die. A third demon darts in to replace it.
"You're the one who won't see the truth. One,
two ...three!"
Calliard sidesteps his demon's lunge. Gad likewise leaps out of the way. In a tangle of arthropodal limbs, the bard's demon collides with Gad's. Struggling to reverse their entanglement, the scorpion-things worsen it, lashing each other with tails and claws.
"I can't be trusted," Calliard says, slashing down with his sword. A tail flies off. Calliard hops to avoid it as it bounces across the floor, leaking toxin. "With the shadowblood, it's worse than ever."
"You held out on Xaggalm."
"If you knew how close I came to ratting you ..."
"But you didn't."
They take opportunistic blows at the tangled demon-scorpions. Calliard consults his demon sense to find their vitals. He drives an impaling blow into a gap between scaly plates.
"This is going to go bad. As soon as it wears off, I'll want more. And what I'll do to get it ..."
Gad has an opening to run. He stays. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."
"This is one problem glibness doesn't fix."
"I reject your premise."
The scorpion beasts separate themselves. Rearing up, they come clacking at Gad and Calliard.
"Go, Gad."
"The rule, Calliard."
"It's too late for that."
As one, they plunge their swords into the demon's foolishly exposed underbellies.
"The rule," says Gad, pulling on his friend's arm. "Everyone gets out."
Jerisa feels her cheekbone gape as the priestess unlocks t
he door and slips into her chambers. The heir of Suma forces her ravaged muscles into action. She totters to her feet, uses her lack of balance to push herself forward, and drops into a shocked and graceless sprint. Pain rockets through her as she hits the door, preventing it from slamming shut.
The priestess retreats through the curtain separating her salon from her bedchamber. The floor shakes. A heavy candlestick slides down the polished surface of an upending side table. Jerisa catches it and hurls it at Isilda. It hits the priestess between the shoulder blades. She goes down, falling into the bedchamber. A cicatrix appears in the stoneflesh flooring. It opens into a bleeding fissure. Jerisa leaps over it as Isilda pulls herself to her feet, yanking on the dangling strands of curtain. The priestess lurches into the other room; Jerisa is on her, pulling her hair and punching her in the throat. Isilda elbows her in the chest. Jerisa falls away; Isilda keeps her at bay with a wide kick. The high cultist climbs, half-dazed, into her wardrobe, and through the open panel inside.
"You're here to retrieve your treasure, aren't you?" Jerisa's incredulous laugh spills a dark line of blood from the side of her mouth.
Rejecting the pain that wracks her, she lunges into the wardrobe. She plants a boot in the small of Isilda's back, kicking her the rest of the way through.
Tiberio, Vitta, and Hendregan tumble toward the tower's cavernous foyer. Its death throes toss them bodily from the passageway. They roll over the corpses of mangled cultists. A tick-demon the size of a plump housecat plops onto Hendregan's chest. Giggling, he hugs it tight until it bursts into flame.
The three land in a shallow pool of blood. Frantic cultists heave themselves toward the chamber's exit. Certain of their demon masters fly for the ruined gateway. Others prowl through the mass of panicking mortal worshipers, opportunistically slicing off heads or tearing open rib cages. The tower's juddering momentarily ceases. Sheets of skin fall from the chamber walls, revealing pumping veins and girders of glistening ebony bone. With a puff that is somehow audible beneath the screams of dying demon-worshipers, blue flame appears, wreathing the bone beams. The flames spread from the ground up.
The Worldwound Gambit Page 30