Mark of the Fool

During the time Alex and company were considering the best way to infiltrate Cawarthin and accomplish the mission Baelin had assigned to them, they’d agreed that a silent intrusion into the demon domain would be their best chance. The plan was to slip into the realm like ghosts, enter the Hold, move through it undetected, then catch Ikarrash’s three sons unawares, and eliminate them before other demons were any wiser.

If they got swarmed?

No problem: their spell-marks would whisk them away to safety even if they were ‘struck’.

Of course, if they were discovered early, their plan would crumble like sand: presenting them with the far less desirable scenario of facing hundreds of demons inside the Hold.

Their silent infiltration would collapse into nothing more than a very dangerous assault.

And this situation?

Well, it was now a very dangerous assault.

“Tiashivas from the back!” Alex cried, summoning another hell-boar. “Claygon, turn one of your fire-beams to our rear! Cedric, reinforce Thundar! The rest of you…survive!”

Alex’s companions fought through an endless tide of demons in the fortress’ halls. At blinding speed, Wizard’s Hands grabbed and flung trapped forks far from their path; elementals swarmed monsters, while forceballs weaved through demons’ legs, sending them sprawling.

Tiashivas and pazuzites pushed through the swarm of summoned monsters, while Theresa and Brutus met their ranks with violence in return. The huntress’ twinblade split demon meat, cutting down monsters like hay.

Brutus stayed close, savaging fiends determined to strike his master and himself from the side. Demon voices shrieked their outrage as the cerberus mauled them, only growing silent when Hart trampled them. The Champion fought beside the hound and huntress, one sweep of his enormous sword sent demons to their deaths by the half-dozen.

His laughter rolled through the passage, echoing above even the terrible rampage of Claygon. The golem brought down a slew of demons, every sweep from his war-spear cleaving and withering monster after monster. He didn’t hesitate. He never paused to catch his breath.

His strikes were a sure, never-ending storm.

Pausing after a deadly stroke that pinned a pazuzite to the wall, he half-turned, pointing a fire-gem backward, then firing. The ray streaked over the group of companions, lancing into schools of agwiagmas, blowing the fish-like demons to fine grey ash.

“Much obliged!” Thundar shouted, his bull-headed mace caving in a tiashiva’s skull, while his illusionary duplicates confused and distracted a group of b'alamxibas. “But I could use a little more—

Cedric’s spear—blazing with Uldar’s divinity—impaled one of the jaguar-headed demons menacing Thundar.

“...much obliged again!” The minotaur called.

“Think nothin’ of it!” Cedric shouted back, whirling his weapon, stabbing foes with the point, and cracking their heads with the butt. “Wish there was less o’ these things! There’s more o’ them than bloody Ravener-spawn!”

“Good. More meat.” Grimloch lifted a struggling pazuzite and bit it in half. He tossed both halves into the horde, then waded into their ranks, his spiked maul blurring in his hands. Every stroke hit with the force of a battering ram, crushing demons to paste.

“That is good! Hold them at bay! I will crush them!” Isolde chanted a spell, materialising a swarm of iron spikes around her. With a quick wave of her hand, she sent the swarm of spikes into enemy ranks attacking from the rear, spearing a dozen or more.

Roars of rage and pain erupted, she followed up with a trio of electric orbs crackling with bolts of lightning sparking between them. The spheres flared with power, the young noblewoman thrust her arms before her and launched the orbs into the horde of demons; they spit lightning in all directions.

Where a lightning boltstruck an iron spike, electricity lanced deep into its target, demon bodies danced grotesquely before collapsing in twitching heaps on the stone.

The lightning-balls’ had more work to do…a heartbeat later…they exploded, electrocuting agwiagmas, hurling smoke trailing forms into the demons’ ranks. Away from the front-lines, the demons were preparing their own magics; Pazuzites capered and danced, building up auras of crimson lightning around their talons.

Their digits were flexing, prepared to send deadly magics at the fortress’ invaders, but Najyah and Khalik struck. Sheathed in powerful stone armour—with talons and beak sparkling in diamond-sharpness—the eagle flew through the capering, vulture-headed fiends; her beak and talons tore at eyes and severed fingers, shattering both concentration and deadly magics.

In retaliation, those that could turned to strike the bird, but Khalik’s spells blasted from her body, lashing out in all directions, conjuring a swarm of living sand, sharp rock, and glass, spraying directly for the demons’ faces.

While the demons clawed at the cloud of living grit, Alex’s summoned monsters joined in: swarms of elemental beetles followed water elementals, the beetles harried the demons in the back ranks, the small elementals slipped along the ground undetected, latching onto the monsters’ limbs, draining their fluids clean away.

“Alex, can you send me some more haste magic!” Theresa cried, splitting another tiashiva in half. The huntress was bleeding from several cuts. “I don’t want to slow down now!”

“Done!” He levelled his staff at her, releasing more haste magic, then glancing at Drestra. “You ready?”

“Yes!” The Sage shouted, her limbs blazing with a colossal tide of mana. “I’ve got it! We should be safe! Everyone get ready!”

Her fingers flexed as whirlwinds of cold magic manifested around her hands. The temperature dropped around the Sage of Uldar, and Alex watched mist condensing around her fingers.

“Here it comes!” She roared, aiming her arms at both their front and back ranks. Two orbs of ice and snow leapt from her fingers, travelling almost lazily toward the demons in front of, and behind the group of mortals.

The spells drifted along until they reached just beyond the demons’ ranks.

Then, they exploded, swirling, turning into roaring whirlwinds of ice, snow, and pure cold magic. Alex’s breath misted as frost formed on surfaces all around, turning demonic war-cries to wheezing, chattering teeth, mixed with the crackle of rapidly freezing flesh.

Drestra’s creations swept the passageway in both directions, consuming everything in their paths. Demons were dragged from their feet, tossed against stone walls and each other like dolls as ice rapidly consumed their flesh. Soon, the tornadoes were filled with broken frozen bodies, striking and shattering unfortunate kindred caught in their paths.

In heartbeats, what was once a passageway filled with an army of enemy monsters, had been reduced to a graveyard of ice and shattered, frozen corpses.

“Damn!” Thundar shouted, lifting his mace and crushing the last half-frozen demon. “I love fighting with you! This is easy!”

“T-thanks?” Drestra cocked her head. “I guess?”

“Save the congratulations for later!” Alex shouted, hoisting his staff. “We’ve got an opening and we’d better use it before they swarm us again. Let’s go!”

“Indeed!” Khalik stepped forward. “We don’t want them draining our resources! Let’s not forget the real fight lies ahead of us!”

“Ach, killjoys,” Thundar grunted as the group charged ahead.

Falling into silence again, Alex swore internally. ‘This is bad. Those bastards know we’re here now and they’re going to start looking for us, even with Baelin distracting the bulk of them. We’ll get buried in demons at this rate. Damn it all! Why’d we have to get discovered so soon? What the hell went wrong?’

He shook his head. ‘Not now. Break down our mistakes after we get back. We have to concentrate and figure out how to salvage this now. Okay. Think. Adapt. Think. Adapt. Think. Adapt.’

He looked at his staff, cocking an ear to the ceiling: above, he heard another demon horde rushing across the floor, probably to intercept them.

‘I’ve got to buy us more time,’ he thought, pouring his energies into the aeld wood. ‘And the best way to do that is to make sure they don’t know exactly where we are. We need distractions. And a lot of them.’

Quickly, he guided his mana into the summoning controls of his staff.

Even as the group flew on, he conjured swarms of elemental beetles, air elementals, aervespertillos, flicker dogs, hellhounds, hell-boars, and even lantern celestials: anything fast…and that could make a lot of noise.

“I want you to run through the halls!” He told the newly summoned monsters. “Go and spread out, make as much racket as you can and attack anything that you see! Make chaos: I want to be able to hear you from half a mile off! Go! Go!”

The summoned creatures scattered, raising a terrible din and spreading out in all directions. In minutes, the halls were alive with roars, shouts and screams from his summoned monsters as they clashed with, and taunted, demonic forces.

Next, he turned to his remaining air elementals. “I need four of you to fly ahead and behind us,” he said in their tongue. “If you see any demons coming our way—except for anything that I’ve summoned in front of you—fly back and crackle as loud as you can. Let us know they’re coming.”

With a whoosh of wind, the air elementals scattered.

“What the hell was all that?” Hart asked.

“Distractions and scouts,” Alex said as sounds of battle echoed through the stone. He quickly explained what he’d done. “—it should buy us a bit of time. The demons are gonna have a hell of a time pinpointing us in all that chaos.”

“Aye, but now we won’t hear ‘em comin’ for us so easy,” Cedric pointed out.

“That’s the air elementals’ jobs,” he said as they paused at another fork in the halls. “We’ll have some warning at least, but it'd be a whole lot better if we find our targets fast—Er, this way! No wait…” He waved the orb back and forth. “The other way, to the right this time!”

His companions turned to the right as Alex drew on his staff, pouring more haste magic into each of them.

‘Gotta keep up our pace,’ he thought, glancing at the aeld staff. ‘But I need to keep as much power as I can for our fight with those triplets.’

Within the aeld wood, he could feel its mana dropping: the dungeon core essence and magical wood had come together and created a deep well of mana to draw from—a well that refilled quickly—but he’d been calling on its power almost constantly.

Its energies were ebbing: he needed to give it time to regenerate.

‘Come on,’ he thought, as the group rounded yet another in a seemingly endless series of corners. ‘How big is this place, anyway? The bloody orb’s warmer than metal on a summer’s day and it doesn’t feel like we’re any closer.’

The group paused, reaching the top of a curving staircase that led deeper into the fortress, its steps were large enough for a giant to walk down with ease. Alex held the orb ahead of him, waving it up and down.

It grew warmer as his arms dropped.

“Down the stairs,” he said. “They’re somewhere below us.”

“Then down we go,” Khalik said, glancing behind them, listening to the sounds of battle echoing through the halls. “Your distractions are working for now, but they’re eventually going to realise that something’s wrong. Come.”

The group soared down the stairs, listening carefully for signs of pursuit. Alex held the orb so tightly, his knuckles had turned chalk white on the sphere. It was growing warmer and warmer as they descended.

‘Alright, we must be getting close,’ he thought, spying a massive pack of hellhounds ahead. ‘Good, it won’t be long—’

He abruptly paused as the group flew toward the hellish canines, they growled at their approach. Alex’s eyes went wide.

“Wait!” He shouted. “They’re not mine!”

But his words came too late.

The monsters leapt for the stairs, their teeth shining in the crimson light. Theresa let out a scream as one pounced on her, its jaws clamping on her forearm.

“No!” Alex cried, reaching forward, but her sword was already removing the offending mouth.

“I’m okay!” She shouted, whirling on the rest of the pack. “Brutus, sic ‘em!”

With a rumbling growl, the cerberus pounced on the others, his three sets of jaws pulling down the smaller creatures, tearing them apart. Hart leapt into the fray, the Champion’s sword quickly finished the rest.

Alex flew to Theresa’s side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she rubbed her arm. “The chainmail caught it. Let’s just keep going.”

“Thank the Traveller for chainmail,” he grunted, his jaw tightening beneath his beard.

Descending, he took in the hellhounds’ corpses, his frown deepening.

Hellhounds aren’t native to Cawarthin, according to the demonology texts, which means that either the books were wrong…or something brought them here.

Grimly, he remembered Baelin’s earlier words: “When one is dealing with demons, one must be acutely prepared for the unexpected.”

‘What else is down here that’s not supposed to be?’ Alex wondered.