"That's where you're wrong." Nemeniah's voice was smooth, her face taking on the beatific look it was made to wear. "Whether or not our crusade succeeds, we've made a point to the only entities that really matter: the gods of justice and light. Iomedae, Erastil, Torag, the Empyreal Lords—we've shown them that we're ready to move beyond a simple truce, to resume the holy war that will ultimately bring peace to all the planes. They've been testing us, waiting to see if we're mature enough to take initiative. And now we are."
"That," Salim said, "is the most ludicrous crock of piss I've ever heard. Your proof that they want you to do this is the fact that they've made laws against it?"
"You want proof?" Malchion yelled, stepping forward and spreading arms and wings wide. "Here's your proof, mortal! If the gods disapprove, where are they? Why haven't our patrons struck us down? Even your own goddess—the one we transgress against most in the course of our quest—hasn't stood against us herself. Instead, she's sent you, and a handful of servitors. What does that say?"
"Maybe you're not worth her time," Salim said. "You're beneath the notice of any of the gods."
"Or maybe they're tired of deciding everything," Nemeniah said. "Maybe they're leaving this one up to us."
Part of Salim admired the sheer hubris. He used the feeling, letting himself smile like an indulgent parent as he shook his head. "Nem, Mal, please—the gods haven't stopped you because you're not real threats. The game of planes and gods is bigger than any of us can really understand. You, me, Maedora here—we're just pawns."
"Maybe so," Nemeniah said, voice lowering. "But even a pawn can challenge a king, if she survives long enough." She turned and unslung the enormous hammer from her back. Malchion followed suit.
"Angels!" she cried, raising her weapon high. "For justice!"
They spun and brought their hammers down toward the psychopomps. The angelic line surged forward around them.
Salim looked at Maedora. "I think we got what we wanted."
"Well executed," Maedora agreed. "You really do have a talent for this." Then she raised her own staff and pointed.
They charged.
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Thirty
Pulling Threads
Salim had seen plenty of charges in his time—guards storming a house, infantry rushing fortifications, cavalry thundering toward an army's flanks. Yet this was the first time he'd been part of one quite so three-dimensional. He and Maedora let the rush of their own forces catch up and sweep them along. As they ran, winged shapes on both sides took to the sky, creating not just two battle lines, but two vertical walls rolling toward each other like storm clouds.
Next to him, Maedora raised her staff and shouted. As she did, portions of the wrappings she wore unraveled into the long tentacles he'd seen in the Forum of Tears, thrashing the air around her like an enraged octopus.
She gave another, equally incomprehensible shout, and the remaining spider silk against her skin bulged grotesquely, then burst, releasing a torrent of hand-sized spiders that fell to the ground, already scuttling toward the enemy.
Salim ran without looking down, trusting the psychopomp's arachnid children to stay out from under his feet. Somehow, he didn't think he was ever going to be able to look at her in quite the same way again.
Still, she was right to take the opportunity. If Salim was going to cast any spells, now was the time. He felt the old, familiar hesitation.
Screw it. If he was going to fight the goddess's battle for her, she could damn well watch his back.
Salim reached down into the dark well of her magic, filling himself with her oily essence. This he pushed outward, shaping it into a bubble around him. The air shimmered briefly in a globe, then became transparent again: a simple shield spell, but possibly enough to turn one of the angels' flaming blades. He dipped again, and this time cast the magic wide, spraying it thin over those around him in a blessing to sharpen blades—or beaks, or claws—and dull the enemy's.
No doubt the other side was doing the same thing, blessing each other with whatever magic Heaven's gods still granted them. Salim would be damned if he'd let them hog all the divine advantage.
The armies met. With a howl of exhilaration, Salim drew his sword and threw himself into the fray.
∗ ∗ ∗
It was strange to have Salim in the back of his mind. In fact, everything about this situation was strange.
Bors considered himself a simple man. Sure, he was more educated than most, but Roshad was the one who exulted in plotting and being clever. Bors liked things clear and straightforward. And nothing was more straightforward than a fight.
Screams rang out from the other side of Caramine's blockaded neighborhood. That would be the majority of their force hitting the western side, led by the Ardoc wizards and their skittering clockwork creatures. With any luck, Caramine's people would all be sprinting to shore up the defenses on that front, leaving only a token guard in other areas—or none at all if they weren't properly organized. Which meant that no one would see him and Roshad come over the eastern blockades with the fastest warriors the remaining Freemen had.
It was a simple plan, and that made Bors happy. It also made Roshad happy—and therein lay even more strangeness. Despite all the years that the two of them had been szerik, Bors had never felt Roshad literally inside his head before. Yet now he could close his eyes and see through Roshad's—see himself and the rest of the infiltration team crouched in the darkened alley, counting off the seconds till they moved. He felt the fiery little sorcerer's love for him like a hot stone in his chest, distinct from his own and yet so familiar.
If this was what true szerik felt like, then he and Roshad would pursue it until the end of their days.
"Time." Roshad spoke not for Bors's benefit—not anymore—but for the others. Vera, the big cleric of the Drunken God, nodded and signaled to her people. They stood silently and sprinted across the street, Bors and Roshad at their head.
The barricade between the houses was weak at this point: little more than furniture from nearby homes slapped together with a few nails and support beams. Bors reached up and grabbed the back of a chair, then a protruding table leg, and hauled himself up and over. Beside him, Roshad and the lightly armored Freemen bounded over it like squirrels.
He landed on the other side, facing the spears of two shocked guards. The men hesitated, and Bors's Freemen raised their crossbows.
Roshad stepped between them and raised a hand. "Sleep."
The guards' eyes rolled back in their heads, and they slumped to the ground.
Vera paused to clap Roshad on the shoulder, then continued to race down the street with her people. Roshad and Bors caught up but hung a few paces back from the front, letting the locals lead them through this warren of streets.
Bors's heart surged with pride. Vera's Freemen weren't just fighting a battle—they were facing down their former friends. Soon, they'd have to start killing those misguided comrades, and that was how it had to be—war was no place for sentiment. Yet Roshad and his magic had saved them from having to kill these two. He'd seen this spell more times than he could count, and by the time the men woke, the battle would likely already be decided. The men would keep their lives, and Vera's people would keep their innocence a few moments longer.
Wordlessly, he sent his love across the new connection between their minds, feeling the answering glow from Roshad. The sorcerer might pretend to be crotchety and jaded, but Bors knew the heart that burned underneath that veil. His Rabbit was a good man.
∗ ∗ ∗
Roshad spread his fingers and burned the men at the gate, bowstrings snapping and bolts flying wild as the men screamed and clutched at blackened skin. He put a boot in the chest of one and kicked him into the other, knocking them both aside, then directed two Freemen up and over the wooden gate. The rest of the warriors strung out to either side, hiding in the shadows at the base of the wall.
The smell of burning flesh wafted up from the corpses, and for the thousandth time Roshad wished he'd bothered to enchant his veil. He didn't regret burning them—they'd resisted his sleeping spell, and these people were a murderous cult, angels or no—but gods, the stench was like the Rough Beast's chamber pot.
The gates swung opened as the two acrobatic Freemen withdrew the bar. Vera led the rest of her team inside—a proper leader, that one. Big women always knew how to get things done. Bors was right behind her, unslinging his huge sword and then automatically pausing to wait for Roshad.
Bors. Even with his face hidden behind the litchina, the man was beautiful. Big as a bear and prowling like a lion, even in his heavy lacquered armor. Roshad might have magic, but Bors could pick him up with one hand. In anyone else, that might have been intimidating. With Bors, it made him feel invincible.
They crossed the grounds between the wall and Caramine's brick monstrosity of a manor at a run, all of them keenly aware of the windows hanging open above their heads, waiting for the arrows to begin flying. Yet none came. As they had hoped, Caramine's troop was built more on religious fervor than proper discipline. They'd heard an attack on the west side, and now all eyes were staring that direction.
Roshad moved up to the front. Last time he'd come in through a window, but he'd still seen the side door. He led their twenty-some warriors down the side of the house toward it. It was nothing grand—the sort of door servants used to take out garbage and night soil without going through the kitchens—and if one of the Freemen could unlock it quietly, perhaps—
The door opened. Something huge passed under the lintel and then unfurled, bright wings over dark, corded muscle. A mace as long as Roshad's leg burst into brilliant flame as the angel turned toward them.
"Oh shit," Roshad said.
∗ ∗ ∗
Salim fought. As always in these situations, there was no room in his head for anything else. Glimpses of Bors and Roshad crept through, the assault on the manor, yet were pushed out again by the rush of action and reaction. A glowing mace came in from the side and he ducked its sunburst head. A flaming blade met his own and pushed him back a step before he slipped free of the bind and riposted, drawing blood from an angel's knee.
The battle was unnaturally quiet. Maedora's psychopomps made no sound but the fluttering of wings as they fought, and when they fell there was only the sharp cracking of dry bone. The angels had their war cries and shouted commands, yet they too fell with unnatural grace, not demeaning themselves with the shrieks and sobs of wounded mortals. Neither side soiled themselves as they bled out on the dusty stone. They were only half-real—creatures of the planes, a literal battle of ideas.
A golden arrow tore through the skin of Salim's left arm, gouging a bloody furrow along the outside of his shoulder. The pain brought him back into the moment. Surreal or not, this was still a battle of life and death.
He fought side by side with Maedora, keeping her on his left to give his sword arm maximum room. From the corner of his eye, he watched in horrified fascination as her swarm of spiders flowed up angelic forms, pumping poison into perfect flesh with a thousands tiny fangs. Those enemies who got too close met her spinning staff, or the white ropes of webbing tentacles which lashed out with unnatural precision, grabbing up enemies and tossing them out of the way. One tendril caught an arrow in midair, snagging it just inches from Maedora's eyeless mask and snapping it in half.
A vulture-headed psychopomp slammed to the ground in front of Salim, and he leapt over its jumble of bones. Above, the battle raged, a swarm of activity that reminded Salim of the fish that schooled in Azir's harbor, how as a child he'd dived down to the reef and looked up through their flickering shapes.
A lean angel with dark purple wings and a flaming sword landed in front of him, squaring off. Salim tried to dodge around him—he couldn't afford to get bogged down, not if he wanted to reach Nemeniah and Malchion. The angel responded by bringing one wing around in a buffet that smashed into Salim's side with the force of a horse's kick, knocking him back into place.
Beneath glowing eyes, a perfect lip curled. "After all that talk, you're afraid to fight?"
"Only afraid of you wasting my time." Salim brought his blade in line, but the bravado tasted false in his mouth. Among ordinary warriors, Salim figured he could hold his own on any battlefield. But angels didn't obey the same rules. The magic inherent in his blade might let him hurt them, but they were still larger, stronger, and faster. They also had about a millennium of experience on him.
Or at least, some did. Salim seized on the thought. "So, you new here?"
The angel didn't respond, just swung in for a high line attack. Salim met the flaming blade with the flat of his own, angling so that the angel's weapon slid harmlessly away. Even so, the force of the strike was immense.
"Not that I object," Salim said, "I was just really hoping to fight someone with seniority, you know? I don't want to wear myself out on every novice with a fresh set of wings."
The angel snarled and swept around for another strike. This time Salim simply stepped back out of range at the last second, the sword's flames licking at his robes, then darted in and scored a hit on the angel's side.
"Who knows?" Salim said. "You might even get a lucky hit, and then where would I be?"
With a roar, the angel brought his weapon down in an artless overhand chop designed to split Salim in two. Salim stepped aside and turned his blade almost vertical, guiding the strike down into the dirt, then spun inside and slammed the Melted Blade's point through the angel's chest. The angel jerked with surprise as bright red blood fountained onto his chin.
Salim looked up into the angel's eyes, their glow already fading.
"You might be shaped like an angel," Salim whispered, "but inside, you're still just some dumb bastard from Kaer Maga." Then, remembering how indiscriminately Caramine had begun harvesting, he added: "Find your rest elsewhere."
He let the angel slump to the ground and withdrew his sword. Dodging past angels and psychopomps locked together in growling, grappling tangles, he spotted Maedora and made it to her side just as the press in front of her parted and two figures stepped through.
"Finally," the psychopomp said, smiling.
∗ ∗ ∗
Even if the angel had been human, Bors would have thought twice before challenging it. The huge flaming mace dangled easily from one of the creature's hands, and it moved as one born to combat.
"Did you really think we would leave this place unguarded?" Its voice was neither masculine nor feminine—the cold tolling of a winter bell.
Bors raised his sword and moved in.
"Back!" Roshad yelled. A spark flew from the sorcerer's hand, growing into a massive fireball that slammed into the angel, filling the courtyard with the stench of burning feathers. The angel staggered backward, slapping at the flames, its own blazing weapon flailing wildly.
Bors already understood the sorcerer's plan, but Roshad shouted it to the others. "Get to the main hall! Don't waste time!" Without waiting to see if the Freemen would follow, he ducked past the momentarily distracted angel and through the door, Bors hot on his heels. Behind him, the angel shouted in surprise and frustration, his words cut off as Freemen slammed and barred the door.
They wove through the hallways with Roshad in the lead, following one of the preplanned routes. Bors didn't bother trying to follow his own mental map—Roshad knew where they were, and that meant Bors knew, too.
A knot of Caramine's Freemen appeared, rushing toward the sounds of conflict. Roshad didn't even break stride as he shot flame down the hall, torching several of the warriors and sending the others tumbling into doorways for cover. One tried to duck back in and hamstring the sorcerer as he passed, and Bors opened him from navel to throat, then kicked him into the side room and kept running.
Several warriors were in the process of closing and barring the doors to the great hall just as Bors and his team reached it. Seeing th
e iron-banded wood swinging shut, Bors put his shoulder down and charged.
He hit the narrowing crack of light between the doors at a sprint, armored shoulder slamming into the wood in unison with several Freemen and sending the heavy doors flying open. The warriors holding the bar on the other side went sprawling backward onto the tiled floor.
The grand chamber was much as Bors remembered it. The grotesque machine still whirred and thrummed on its dais. Beside it, Freewoman Caramine still squatted on her throne like a toad, the blood-filled tubes running into her wrists. Unlike last time, however, at least twenty men and women lay bound hand and foot on the floor in front of the dais, like hogs ready for slaughter.
There were also more defenders. Dozens of heads turned toward the intruders as the doors burst open. Worse, another angel stood in the middle of the guardians, a full foot taller than anyone else, with golden wings that stretched toward the ceiling.
Caramine turned her eyes from the latest sacrifice strapped to her vertical altar. They landed on Bors and Roshad.
"You two again." She sounded bemused.
Her hand came up, and Bors flung himself to the side just as a crackle of lightning shot from her finger. It slammed into the man standing behind him, then through him to the next and the next in a sizzling line. Eyes boiled and burst as the victims fell to the ground, twitching.
Half a dozen crossbow bolts flew through the air toward Caramine. An arm's length from the throne, however, they suddenly swerved, veering off in different directions and clattering harmlessly against the stone walls.
Vera's Freemen leapt forward with a roar, and Caramine's force rushed to meet them. Bors felt Roshad slip in behind him and began to hew them a path through the press toward the dais.
A woman with two handaxes ducked his swing and tried to move inside his guard, and he lashed out with an armored elbow, breaking her nose. Another enemy managed to squeal the tip of his rapier across Bors's litchina, just barely missing his eye, before Bors's heavier blade half-severed the clever sword arm at the shoulder.
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