by Ian Rodgers
“Flawed as our world might be, I still prefer it to whatever sick fantasy you Void worshipping loons could conceive of,” Enrai declared, raising his fists in a boxing stance. At the same time, his flesh darkened, his tattoos flowed out over his entire body, and an aura of might rose up, cloaking him.
“Bring it on!” Ain and Enrai cried out, and they charged at their opponents with their most powerful techniques.
Dora smiled warmly at her friends, confident in their abilities to hold the Void spawn off. Not defeat them, though. The Healer wasn’t that naïve, and she could feel the power the two abominations were holding back. It was like gazing at a dam fit to bursting, or a pile of rocks teetering on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall and start an avalanche.
‘Good, they’ve bought me a few more minutes,’ Dora thought to herself, pleased by the way the distractions were working. A low moan grabbed her attention and the half-orc sighed to herself, weariness and disgust trickling through her as she returned her gaze to the Queen Swathed in Vermillion.
The lump of demonic flesh was writhing on the couch. To an outsider, it might look like the Demon Lord was in great agony, but up close, the moans emitted were breathy whispers of pleasure, rather than pain.
Dora scowled and fired another crossbow bolt into the Demon Lord, puncturing one of her tentacles and severing it. Purple flames coiled around the wound and consumed the removed portion of the appendage, burning it into a tiny pile of ash.
“Ooog! Aggha!” the Queen uttered, twisting in masochistic joy. “Such… beautiful pain!”
Dora grimaced. It hadn’t taken long before the anguish Dora was inflicting onto the Demon Lord stopped hurting and began to actually feel good. Such was the Queen’s true nature, after all. It’d just required longer for the oversized demon to adjust to the sensations.
Each time the Healer had shot the Queen with her crossbow, she took a few steps forward, making her way towards the couch. With that last bolt, she’d finally gotten near enough to the furniture to walk around it, keeping an eye on the Demon Lord all the while, crossbow poised and ready to inflict more ‘pain’ onto the Queen at a moment’s notice. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw what she was looking for tucked away at the back of an impressively large piece of furniture, and grinned.
A large cage, big enough to fit a person, made out of a black metal that glowed a sickly green. Hopeful yipping immediately reached her ears and she saw for the first time the forms of the Elemental Tails she’d been sent to rescue.
Two adorable fox kits huddled together in their cage, protecting each other. Each kit was the size of a greyhound. They looked like they’d been carved from blocks of solid opal, their fur a beautiful, crystalline substance that made little rainbows everywhere the light hit it. Their eyes, squinting up at Dora pitifully, were akin to tiny silver mirrors that stared into her soul. And each kit was graced with a single large tail, seemingly made out of rainbow-colored fire, though the colors were dulled, and the tails twitched weakly due to their imprisonment.
Before she could approach them and bust the locks on the cages, freeing Nia’s pets, she could feel herself getting weaker as she got closer to the containers. Sensing this she stopped.
‘Weakness enchantments forged into the cages themselves,’ she thought to herself as she sensed the presence of a familiar spell coating the Elemental Tails’ prisons. ‘Clever! My Divine Protection won’t work very well against this type of enchantment.’
She leveled her crossbow at the lock. ‘But this will!’
The bolt fired off towards the lock, but the cage abruptly moved out of the way, her bolt sticking into the floor!
“What the?” the half-orc muttered in surprise, before gritting her teeth in anger as she saw a slick red tentacle pressed against the side of the cage. Sticky mucus secreted from the tip of the boneless appendage had adhered the tendril to the metal of the cage, the Demon Lord’s unholy vitality keeping it safe from the ravages of the Weakness spell. With a jerking motion, the cage flew up over the couch, and into the waiting hand of the Queen Swathed in Vermillion.
“Ooooo… that was a nice, relaxing break you gave me just now,” the Queen said, its voice oozing insincerity. Before Dora’s shocked eyes, the arm she had shot off earlier regrew, looking as if it’d never been injured. The other wounds all across the Demon Lord’s body healed up as well, and an arrogant aura radiated off the mound of demonic flesh. She grabbed the caged Elemental Tails and mockingly shook their prison at the stunned Healer.
“Did you really think you were actually hurting me?” it sneered. “I lured you into a false sense of security, and let you believe you were managing to do me harm. Do you honestly think you’re the first mortal with a Divine blessing to come to the Abyss? That you’re the only mortal in history to make their way here to my palace in the hopes of slaying me? HA! I’ve killed so many holy warriors and righteous champions I’ve lost count! I am the Queen Swathed in Vermillion! One of the Thirteen Demon Lords of the Abyss! You have no power here!”
Her pronouncement complete, a wave of Dark energy exploded forth from the Queen, its vile and destructive aura pressing down hard on Dora, forcing her to her knees. Nearby, Ain and Enrai were caught off guard as well and slammed into the floor from the weight of the Demon Lord’s cursed authority.
The Wailing Tower trembled, a keening screech of sorrow, madness, and pain shaking the Heart Chamber. Above them, the Titan’s heart beat frantically, trickles of black pus dribbling out of the organ as the Queen imposed its foul will over its personal territory within the Abyss. Outside, the Vale of Screams howled loudly, the sonic waves of the voices reaching all across the tortured landscape. Demons close to the Vale popped like balloons full of minced meat from the force of the cacophony, and the landscape cracked and writhed in torment, the ground rising up and forming new extensions of face-studded walls to the scream filled valley.
Dora gasped for air as she felt her lungs constrict, and her head pound with painful vibrations. With a sickening crunch, her Divine Protection shattered, and the Darkness began to crush her.
Dora, her mind hazy from the foul magic trying to devour her, groped weakly for an artifact at her waist, causing the Demon Lord to laugh mockingly.
“Pathetic little servant of Cynthia and Nia! Nothing you have can harm me! Holy water, sacred weapons, divine magic, blessed ammunition… I’ve faced it all and come out victorious! What in the name of the Abyss do you think a worm like you can do?!”
The Healer said nothing, instead unrolling the Depiction of Utopia and activating its power. A bubble of pure protection rose up around her, negating the Abyss’s effect on her body, mind, and soul.
“WHAT?!” the Queen Swathed in Vermillion screeched. “WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT?! WHY DOES A MORTAL LIKE YOU HAVE SOMETHING SO BEAUTIFUL?!”
The two children of Typhon, who moments before had been smirking at their defeated opponents, widened their eyes in shock when they detected the ancient might of Dora’s artifact. The purity of the painting drove Bolgoros mad, and he lunged at the half-orc, desperate to reclaim it, the part of him that was the grandchild of Aun the Celestial wishing childishly for another chance at seeing a paradise that would never again exist. Yet for all his strength, his blows didn’t even dent or crack the shield surrounding Dora.
Selquist too tried to claim the painting, launching his magic at the barrier and trying to possess the half-orc, but each spell rebounded off of the raw, heavenly essence she was cloaked in.
“NO! THAT IS MINE!” the Queen screamed when she saw Bolgoros and Selquist trying to obtain the Depiction of Utopia from Dora. She lunged forward, tossing aside the caged Elemental Tails as if it was naught but trash and crashing into the two Void spawn. Compared to a shard of the original and true Heaven, how could the pets of a young goddess even measure up?
Dora took advantage of the unintentional chaos she’d created and lunged for the cage, grabbing it before it hit the ground. Then, holding it close to her chest,
she broke the lock open, releasing the two opaline foxes. They panted happily, licking Dora’s hands eagerly before sticking close to her legs. She smiled, but a frown took over and she ran towards the collapsed forms of Enrai and Ain.
“Come on, we need to go!” she cried out, grabbing the two of them and drawing them close. As soon as they entered the barrier the Miasma trying to claim them dissipated, and they let out choking gasps as they were saved.
“You… rescued us,” Enrai managed to get out. “Knew you… would.”
“Stay quiet, we’re not done here yet,” Dora replied, aiming her crossbow up at the chains suspending the heart of the Wailing Tower. Three shots and three chains shattered later, and the Titan’s heart tumbled down from the ceiling. Dora ran over and caught it, staggering under the size and weight of the thing.
“Bigger than I thought,” she grunted, hefting the person sized organ onto her shoulders.
“How do we get out of here?” Ain asked, looking towards where the Demon Lord was viciously fighting Bolgoros and Selquist.
A pair of yips was his answer, as the tails of the Planeswalking foxes lit up in a flare of multicolored energy. With a flick of their glowing tails, a hole was torn open in the fabric of reality. The portal was a spiraling rainbow of colors that beckoned invitingly, and Dora and her friends wasted no time leaping through it.
A loud and furious wail of rage followed them through as the Queen Swathed in Vermillion felt the disturbance in the walls of time and space, turning just in time to see the Depiction of Utopia, the pets of Nia, the keystone of her palace’s existence, and the Chosen One who’d foiled her plans in the past disappear beyond her grasp.
As the portal closed, Dora could hear the tone of the Demon Lord’s screaming in fear and disbelief as her precious Tower began to perish around her, the cursed heart no longer there to support the unholy and abominable modifications made to it.
Occupied by the Titan-turned-palace rotting away, the Queen Swathed in Vermillion did not notice the two sons of Typhon escape through a grey vortex that quickly closed behind them.
Chapter 15: Running and Planeswalking
“W-wh-where are w-we?” Ain stammered out between chattering teeth. After a stomach lurching trip through the Elemental Tails’ portal, the group found themselves deposited into a bone biting cold and snowy wasteland, where they could see nothing for miles but snowdrifts and glaciers.
“I d-d-don’t k-kn-know,” Dora replied, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to keep the chill from invading her very soul. The Depiction of Utopia’s barrier was no longer working, it had shut off as soon as they tumbled out of the vortex. She understood that she had been pushing the artifact lately, and it still hadn’t recovered from the previous three thousand years of continuous activation.
Sensing her discomfort, the two otherworldly foxes wrapped their tails around her legs, and the numbing chill abruptly vanished. Surprised, she looked down and felt a potent spell coming from the pair of kits protecting her from the inclement weather.
“Aw, thank you!” she exclaimed, bending down and rubbing their heads. The Elemental Tails yipped happily at the praise and petting.
After treating the pets of Nia to some much-needed head pats after being trapped for so long, the Healer looked over at her other two friends. Enrai was currently on fire, his magic heating up himself and Ain who was huddled as close as he could get to the Monk without burning himself.
“Are you two alright?” she asked, frowning in worry. Her words were whipped around through the air by a gust of icy wind, and even with the Elemental Tails protecting her she couldn’t help but shiver.
“Fine for now,” Enrai said, rubbing a large bruise on his left knee from where he’d been slammed into the floor of the Heart Chamber not too long ago. “My Fire magic is weak here in this dimension. I can keep it going for a while, though, so don’t worry too much. But where do you think we are, Ain, Dora? Are we in the Elemental Plane of Ice?”
“Definitely feels like it,” Ain managed to get out through clenched teeth, a growing black eye marring his facial features. “I don’t understand how Dire Elves can live in a place like this! They must all be crazy!”
“If we are on the Elemental Plane of Ice, we must be near the outer limits,” Dora mused, looking around. “I’ve heard that the closer you get to the interior of the realm, the colder it becomes, the weather freezing mortals solid. Even time itself is frozen right at the very center of the plane!”
“I’d believe it,” Enrai said, steam rising up from him like smoke from a chimney. “Bad news, though: we’re missing two of our packs.”
Dora blinked in surprise at his words, then facepalmed. “Damn it, did you two leave your stuff behind in the Abyss?”
“Seems like it,” the Spellsword said sheepishly, the tips of his ears red due to both the cold and embarrassment. “We took the Bags of Holding off when we started to fight with those two… things.”
“And they were really nice bags, too,” Enrai pouted. A loud growl rang through the frozen landscape, and he blushed red. “Uh, you wouldn’t happen to have enough food to share, would you, Dora?”
“I do,” the half-orc replied after putting her own enchanted backpack down and checking its contents. “But not much. I have enough rations left for… another six meals.”
“Thank the gods we decided to split up our supplies,” Ain sighed in relief. “I couldn’t bear it if we had lost everything in one go!”
“We should find a place to hide from the wind,” Enrai said, stalling Dora from removing the food from her bag. “Being out in the open like this… I don’t like it.”
“Good point,” she agreed. “Where can we go, though?”
“Well, if need be we can make a makeshift igloo by burrowing into one of the snow mounds,” Ain suggested.
“What’s an ‘igloo?’” Dora asked, tilting her head at the name. The Elemental Tails mimicked her head tilt, looking cutely up at the elf.
“Ah, it’s a loan word from the ice barbarians who dwell on the frozen continent of Nora alongside the Dire Elves. It means ‘ice house,’ and is literally a house made from stacked blocks of ice,” Ain explained. “My mentor’s a Dire Elf, and he made sure I knew how to survive in the cold one year. Just threw me out into the winter with a handful of supplies and no warning!”
“Focus, Ain!” Dora snapped as the Grand Elf began to mutter curses against his mentor.
“Hmm? Oh, right, anyways, the main danger of being out in the cold is the wind. It’ll be warmer out of it, so let’s find a place to hunker down,” he suggested after cutting off his mumbled rant against Tein Huntersteel.
Some searching led the party of inter-dimensional travelers to an icy hill that soon had a brand-new cave added to it, courtesy of Enrai punching and melting a hole into it. Huddled inside the tiny, cramped space, the group finally felt warm again now that they were out of the frigid wind.
Dora sat in the middle, with Ain on her left and Enrai on the right, and the two opal furred foxes curled up on her lap. Her pack, as well as the Wailing Tower’s heart, were on the ground in front of them, blocking the entrance.
“Here, Ain, let me heal that for you,” Dora said, reaching out and fixing the large bruise on his face.
“Ah, thanks, that feels better!” the Spellsword sighed in relief. Dora turned to Enrai next, and she healed his knee. The Monk nodded at her in thanks, before eyeing the lump of demon-tainted flesh.
“So, what do you plan on doing with that heart?” he asked, staring at the organ. It continued to throb and beat every so often, still alive despite everything done to it.
“Bury it, or maybe cremation,” Dora said, thinking it over. “Got to purify it, first, though. It’s laden with Dark magic that I don’t think I can handle on my own. Hence why it’s still, uh, moving.”
As she said that, the heart twitched, and a spurt of black ichor spat out and splashed against the snow, staining it black. Dora quickly cast Light magi
c upon the tainted fluid, eradicating the tiny spot of congealed demonic essence.
Afterwards, she passed out a few pieces of hard, black bread and some very hard jerky to the group. She also gave the Elemental Tail kits some Healing Potions to help them recover from any injuries they’d sustained during captivity.
“Gross,” Enrai muttered, eyeing the Miasma filled meat warily as he ate the rations Dora handed out. A thought suddenly struck him, and he looked over at blonde half-orc with a worried expression.
“Hey, Dora, this heart is filled with Abyssal energy, right? Wouldn’t someone be able to locate us if they followed the trail of energy it leaves behind?”
Dora opened her mouth to deny it, to claim that the sheer amount of Ice Element mana around them would mask their presence, before recalling that this wasn’t just any Dark magic. This was demon magic, filled with chaotic energy that was as easily recognizable as Void energy was.
“We need to go,” she declared, Enrai’s worry now her own. “We need to get out of here!”
Ain sighed heavily as Dora began to pack up and prepare to depart from their tiny little snow cave.
“I get that you’re concerned about being tracked down by demons or worse, but where exactly do you plan on going? We have no idea where we are, merely a vague guess, at best.”
“That’s…” Dora paused, thinking the Spellsword’s words over. Where could they run to?
“Can you two take us to the Heavens?” she asked the Elemental Tails. That would be one of the few places in all of the Aether that even the Void wouldn’t recklessly barge into.
The pair of foxes exchanged glances and then looked at their tails. They scrunched up their faces, trying to focus their powers, and while their tails lit up beautifully, the radiance was dim.
“Seems like they haven’t recovered enough of their energy yet,” Dora said, shaking her head sadly. “Well, don’t worry too much about it, we’ll deal with whatever comes!”