A Knight's Gambit - Sunday
Mar 23, 2020 17:02:57 GMT
Grimes, Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar, and 5 more like this
Post by Sunday on Mar 23, 2020 17:02:57 GMT
Early afternoon, 16th Ches 1497
“Hold on. There’s something else in here... “ She reaches in, fingers curling around the vial of blood-red liquid.
Taffeta watches as Sunday turns to hand her a thin glass tube - and freezes…
Vast feathered wings extended, she drifts down from Mount Celestia. She holds a gigantic sword in her right hand, a banner of shining gold-and-platinum thread in her left. Behind her is arrayed a host of martial perfection: devas, planetars - even a few solars - leading hosts of aasimar; all clad in gleaming plate, all singing battle hymns of beauteous clarity.
Below her is a churning, ravaged landscape hosting a never-ending war. Endless hordes of screaming, melting, reforming daemons boil up out of a rift leading directly from the heart of the Abyss - and are met by countless legions of devils, driven forward by pit fiends and Hell Knights.
Throwing her head back, she sings out an order and arrows forward, banner aloft, sword levelled directly ahead. Her soldiers fan out behind her. To her right soars Galiel, her blood brother and second-in-command. Tears of joy stream from his eyes in anticipation of the glorious struggle ahead. She begins to sing, her angelic voice soaring above the hideous noises rising up from the eternal battlefield of Avernus.
“Is that it?” Taffeta asks. Familiar, awful, blood-red tears start to well up in Sunday’s eyes and spill down her cheeks. But this time, no wilted rose petals fall in a silent shroud around them.
She throws back her head again and screams in agony, in loss. The sound washes over the morass of battle around her, and every creature within hearing is wracked with pain. In her arms she cradles the body of Galiel, his once-perfect form ruptured and ruined from dozens of wounds and grievous injuries. A barlgura rears up behind her, bringing its fists down in a double blow designed to snap her neck. Still holding the desecrated corpse to her, she lashes out with a clawed hand without looking, nails sinking deep into the daemon’s chest and tearing through its heart even as her own shatters.
“...Sunday..?” Taffeta asks hesitantly. The halfling watches as, through her disguise, the bright golden-green of Sunday’s eyes fade to dark purple, as fangs slowly protrude from her gums; as her fingers lengthen into claws; and a vicious spike emerges from the centre of the rose-bud tip of her tail.
Swinging her sword in huge two-handed arcs of whirling destruction, she carves her way through demon and devil alike. Unmindful of the gore and blood drenching her once-alabaster wings, she loses herself in fury and vengeance. She blinks. Days have passed. She has not stopped. Nor has the war around her. She looks up; gathered around her are the remnants of her once-glorious host. The armies of devils and hordes of daemons are undiminished. The battle rages on. She looks up higher, feeling someone watching her. Her red-gold glare bores into golden-green eyes. Through those eyes, she sees the future - her future - a small band of Primers coerced into theft by The Sanguine Rose. The danger it could pose. She reaches into the mind of the tielfing holding her Tears and commands her: “Kill her. Defend me. Kill. Her. Take my rage. Kill them all.”
For an instant, Taffeta watches as Lady Sunday stands in front of her. Behind Taffeta, Daisy also sees the change as the creature wearing Sunday’s armour tenses to spring. “Oh shit...”
“No.”
The golden-green gaze vanishes, and the single word of defiance rocks Zariel back. Back out of the future and into her body. Into realisation. She looks around; at her warriors dying around her; at herself drenched in the viscera of friend and foe - and howls.
Sunday shakes herself, stumbling forward a step, blood spattering from her nose. She catches herself. She looks at the hand holding the vial of Zariel’s Tears, at the claws receding. At Taffeta’s look of fear and determination as the halfling's hand tightens around the stock of her crossbow.
“Sorry. Got distracted there for a moment. I think this is what we came for… Let’s move.”
Morning, 16th Ches 1497
Sunday looks at her reflection in the mirror of beaten bronze. Her long platinum-and-green hair is shorn in a severe, spiked cut; red clay and powder rubbed through it to turn it a dull, muddy brown. Where visible outside her armour - today covered in tulips, roses, dahlias, and lilies in various shades of purple, black, and grey - her skin is covered in make-up and dye to turn it crimson. Tattoos proclaiming allegiance to the Fifth Circle adorn her wrists, her neck, her forehead.
Only her eyes remain unchanged. She couldn’t bring herself to change their colour to the all-too-familiar purple-black of her youth.
Slinging her shield onto her back, she hangs both hammers from her belt. Checking and rechecking the straps and buckles of her armour, and ensuring Idari’s dragontooth still dangles from its yellow ribbon about her neck, Sunday leaves the room and heads downstairs into the Ettin’s common room.
Her companions are waiting for her. Daisy, wearing the form of a duergar; Pieni, still a vibrant blue, but now enclosed in the illusory shape of a large imp; Traav following suit, but retaining his habitual black and grey colours; and Baine and Taffeta as yet undisguised. As they file out into Portal Plaza, eLk drops from the sky to land beside her. Sunday’s heart drops with him to see her companion forced into his Nightmare form: fangs instead of teeth; talons instead of hooves; wings crackling with purple-red flame. He brushes away her mental apology.
No words, no speeches, no goodbyes. They join hands, Sunday and Baine standing either side of eLk, hands resting on his back. Daisy completes the spell and they are pulled sideways - away from home and into hell.
Ash. Ash and grit. Their lungs are full of it. Someone coughs and spits, the moisture sizzling and evaporating before it reaches the ground. Sunday exhales and inhales slowly - the heatwave that passes for an atmosphere on this plane feels... comforting.
She looks around, getting her bearings. The map The Sanguine Rose had provided them had been complex, even baroque. She’d spent most of the previous evening studying and deciphering it, pausing only to share in the meal Pieni had conjured for them, grab a few hours’ sleep, and spend some time with Kas…
Clenching her fists and pushing him from her mind, she looks around. Baine kneels and Taffeta climbs up onto his broad shoulders, as the half-orc pulls his cloak about them both. Sunday rolls her eyes at their idea of a disguise and springs up onto eLk’s back. Everyone was ready to go, looking to her lead.
that’s the only reason i’m here she thought so we can get him back and let him give orders. fuck this responsibility noise.
eLk snorts and stomps his hoof in response as the group heads down the valley towards the ruined keep in the distance.
Midday, 16th Ches 1497
With Daisy’s magic curled around them like shielding vines, they had made it unchallenged to the perimeter of the dilapidated castle. Baine had shocked them all when he’d harnessed his new-found power of Lathander and announced he could sense invisible watchers in the guard towers flanking the approach to the keep.
why didn’t you think of doing that? eLk had mocked her day one with his new abilities and he’s already showing you up
Sunday had ignored that, instead marshalling the group to split and strike quickly and quietly in a coordinated effort.
Daisy had peeled back the magic shrouding the left-hand tower to reveal two small imps, who were given no time to react as bolts from Traav and Taffeta sunk deep into their skulls. At the same time, Pieni had sprinkled the top of the right-hand tower with glittering dust, like motes of light drifting through a forest glade. The shimmering outlines of two more creatures had appeared long enough for Baine and Sunday to dispatch them with ease.
Moving cautiously, the group had crossed the bridge and descended into the undercroft of the keep, signs of recent activity keeping them alert and wary.
The undercroft had been confusing. Full of sarcophagi and tombs bearing traces of celestial presences. Statues of angels with horns and twisted features. Sculptures of human-like warriors of no discernible race. They crept forward, knowing it was only a matter of time before they encountered resistance or discovery. It had been Pieni’s owl companion Owlbert who had triggered things, scouting ahead and finding an imposing doorway but accidentally alerting two more imps to the group’s movement.
Leaving them to flee, Taffeta had phased through the barrier to investigate the other side. Returning, the halfling reported a chamber with a pit of magma in the middle; another door on the far side; and columns around the edge of the room with demons chained to them, some dead and some barely alive.
Gritting his teeth against whatever arcane wards infused the doors, Baine had thrown them open and the party rushed in...
...to a hail of arrows. Traav managed to evade the one aimed at him and ducked behind a rock, his back against the rough stone and his crossbow drawn. Three arrows flew towards Baine, either bouncing off his armour or flying harmlessly past. As the group starts to fan out in response, a cloud rolls over everyone. But, steeled against terror, no-one succumbs. A voice, angry and bitter, barks a word and Pieni clutches his head, a feral look in his eyes. “I’ve got this!” Daisy calls, rushing over to his side, pulling out a handful of glittering dust.
Traav has used the confusion to creep forward and track the source of the arrows: he looses into the darkness and hits something invisible earning a grunt of pain. Sensing something malevolent and vast arising from the magma pit in the centre of the room, Sunday reached out with her senses and found a source of life - corrupted, vile, heinous, but life all the same - protected by a mystic shroud. Tearing the arcane veil aside, she had revealed a huge devil hovering above the magma pit. As she commands eLk to charge, Taffeta reaches up to grasp her foot. Sunday feels adrenaline course through her veins, and bursts forward and up into the fiend’s face just as Baine slams his maul twice into its side.
Having restored Pieni’s mind, Daisy’s form ripples and expands into that of an elephant; she lowers her tusked head and charges forward until she crashes into something invisible, alerting the group to its presence with a trumpeting roar.
The vast fiend moves with lightning speed. Sunday isn’t ready. Its many-tailed whip wraps around her body several times and yanks her forward off elk. The devil leans in as Sunday struggles and its maw closes around her face. The fangs bite deep into her flesh. Sunday screams, blood torrenting out of the hideous wounds.
Then she feels a familiar, light, feathery touch on her mind as healing energy from Pieni suffuses her body, rapidly repairing most of the damage.
Two bolts fly at the gargantuan fiend from either side as Taffeta and Traav comes to Sunday’s aid. The fiend snarls, backing off, and Sunday uses the momentary distraction to free herself from the cruel grip of its whip. Dropping her shield, she draws her second hammer and unleashes a torrent of devastating blows: one, two, three, four titanic impacts slam into the creature’s form, golden-green flashes of light accompanying each hit. Sunday drives the beast down out of the air with each strike; eLk darting underneath her to arrest her fall.
Hearing her friends struggling throughout the chamber and looking into the face of the hellish beast, Sunday laughs a bitter short laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Feeling righteous force welling up through her core, she throws back her head and begins to sing in Sylvan; an ancient song of wood and tree and brook and breeze. Sunday punctuates the uplifting melody with brutal hammer blows, blasting chunks out of the devil’s form. As her song and rage grows, a look of fear crosses the devil’s face as it is driven lower, closer to the ground. As Sunday raises her weapons high above her head, eLk flicks his mane contemptuously and drives his hoof into the centre of the beast’s forehead, rocking its head back and cracking its skull. As its eyes roll up in its head and it sinks below the magma, Sunday, still singing, watches her friends mop up the rest of the battle.
“One’s escaping!” Taffeta cries. “It’s here somewhere. I can’t see it!”
A second later, the doors at the end of the room crash back on the hinges, thrown open by unseen hands, revealing a smaller chamber beyond.
They rush into the inner sanctum, its walls covered with inscriptions in infernal and celestial.
this is it! eLk tells her Zariel’s shrine!
Sunday and the others can sense no sign of the invisible creature. But a stone has been moved aside, revealing a hidden storage place containing a chest, something else hastily removed. Inside the chest, they find a potion and a finely carved javelin bearing the name ‘Galiel’.
Glancing back into the recess, Sunday spots a glimmer of red. “Hold on. There’s something else in here... “
The others watch as Sunday reaches into the hole and pulls her hand back, clutching in it a thin glass tube. Sunday seems to freeze for a moment; fierce emotions flickering across her face. Blood wells up from her eyes. A feral expression surfaces for but an instant. She tenses to spring at...
...no-one. Sunday closes her eyes, shaking the crimson tears away, before looking at them.
“This is it. Let’s go.”
Hearing the sounds of Zariel’s minions approaching, the group clusters around Pieni. Clutching a tuning fork, the aarakocra thrusts their bodies up and out of Avernus, clearing a path through the planar sea to drop them back into the middle of Daring.
They turn as one and hurry towards the compound.
Afternoon, 16th Ches 1497
The training yard is bustling with activity - veterans spar, recruits drill formations, and the persistent clang of steel on steel rings out from the open doors to the forge. Around the edges, soldiers sit doing what soldiers do - eating, joking, maintaining equipment.
Markas looks up from where he’s picking burrs out of Frankie’s coat as the group enters the through the gates like a hurricane, their purpose unmistakeable and irresistible. He sees Sunday, skin and hair red, a long jagged wound down one side of her face. People leap to clear a path, confusion and chaos following in their wake. At the door to the Grandmaster’s chamber, a young man with gently pointed ears raises his hand to stop them.
“I’m sorry, bu-”
Baine doesn’t slow.
“Get out of the way, Squeak.”
The young man swallows hard, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin. Sunday doesn’t break stride, vanishing between one step and the next in a crackle of golden-green light.
“The Master-at-Ar-”
“MOVE!” roars Baine, still moving forward implacably. The recruit leaps out of the way, as the half-orc throws open the door to Varis’ chamber.
The air inside is cool despite the fire laid in the hearth, shutters barred against the pale spring light. At the far end of the room the Grandmaster lies on his narrow bed, still clad in full wargear, a blindfold mostly covering the gaping wound across his face. Aside from the bed and the desk, the room is mostly bare, functional; the only other items of furniture a wardrobe against one wall and a small wooden table in front of the fireplace, a half-played board of some Byzantine game, intricately carved pieces arrayed over three levels, resting on its top.
Sunday stands by Varis’ side. As the others enter, she pulls a large diamond from a pouch on her belt and slams it down on Varis’ chest - no ceremony, no words, no grace: just raw divinity radiating outwards from her form, golden-green light coursing down her arm and into the body of the half-elf.
The room holds its collective breath.
Nothing happens.
“Did it work?”
Baine’s voice is hoarse, a whisper in a tomb. The lips of the corpse start to turn blue as the stasis magic Pieni placed on it fades under Sunday’s spell. His skin pales. There is no movement. No sign of life. Sunday can feel something pushing back, holding her power at bay.
Sunday looks at Baine in confusion. But the half-orc is already speaking, one hand to his temple.
“Yes. Take the fucking vial. Give him back to us. Now!”
As he speaks, an imp appears in front of Sunday, claw outstretched. At Baine’s nod, Sunday thrusts the glass container into its hand and it vanishes. Across the room, Baine is tearing apart sheaves of paper that had magically appeared in his grasp.
Sunday redoubles her efforts against the barrier, eyes closed, arm shaking with the power thrumming through her. And feels something familiar reaching back. Varis’ soul clasps her hand.
There is a sound like wind in a deep mine, like the scream of tortured metal.
With a gasp, Varis sits up.
“Hold on. There’s something else in here... “ She reaches in, fingers curling around the vial of blood-red liquid.
Taffeta watches as Sunday turns to hand her a thin glass tube - and freezes…
Vast feathered wings extended, she drifts down from Mount Celestia. She holds a gigantic sword in her right hand, a banner of shining gold-and-platinum thread in her left. Behind her is arrayed a host of martial perfection: devas, planetars - even a few solars - leading hosts of aasimar; all clad in gleaming plate, all singing battle hymns of beauteous clarity.
Below her is a churning, ravaged landscape hosting a never-ending war. Endless hordes of screaming, melting, reforming daemons boil up out of a rift leading directly from the heart of the Abyss - and are met by countless legions of devils, driven forward by pit fiends and Hell Knights.
Throwing her head back, she sings out an order and arrows forward, banner aloft, sword levelled directly ahead. Her soldiers fan out behind her. To her right soars Galiel, her blood brother and second-in-command. Tears of joy stream from his eyes in anticipation of the glorious struggle ahead. She begins to sing, her angelic voice soaring above the hideous noises rising up from the eternal battlefield of Avernus.
“Is that it?” Taffeta asks. Familiar, awful, blood-red tears start to well up in Sunday’s eyes and spill down her cheeks. But this time, no wilted rose petals fall in a silent shroud around them.
She throws back her head again and screams in agony, in loss. The sound washes over the morass of battle around her, and every creature within hearing is wracked with pain. In her arms she cradles the body of Galiel, his once-perfect form ruptured and ruined from dozens of wounds and grievous injuries. A barlgura rears up behind her, bringing its fists down in a double blow designed to snap her neck. Still holding the desecrated corpse to her, she lashes out with a clawed hand without looking, nails sinking deep into the daemon’s chest and tearing through its heart even as her own shatters.
“...Sunday..?” Taffeta asks hesitantly. The halfling watches as, through her disguise, the bright golden-green of Sunday’s eyes fade to dark purple, as fangs slowly protrude from her gums; as her fingers lengthen into claws; and a vicious spike emerges from the centre of the rose-bud tip of her tail.
Swinging her sword in huge two-handed arcs of whirling destruction, she carves her way through demon and devil alike. Unmindful of the gore and blood drenching her once-alabaster wings, she loses herself in fury and vengeance. She blinks. Days have passed. She has not stopped. Nor has the war around her. She looks up; gathered around her are the remnants of her once-glorious host. The armies of devils and hordes of daemons are undiminished. The battle rages on. She looks up higher, feeling someone watching her. Her red-gold glare bores into golden-green eyes. Through those eyes, she sees the future - her future - a small band of Primers coerced into theft by The Sanguine Rose. The danger it could pose. She reaches into the mind of the tielfing holding her Tears and commands her: “Kill her. Defend me. Kill. Her. Take my rage. Kill them all.”
For an instant, Taffeta watches as Lady Sunday stands in front of her. Behind Taffeta, Daisy also sees the change as the creature wearing Sunday’s armour tenses to spring. “Oh shit...”
“No.”
The golden-green gaze vanishes, and the single word of defiance rocks Zariel back. Back out of the future and into her body. Into realisation. She looks around; at her warriors dying around her; at herself drenched in the viscera of friend and foe - and howls.
Sunday shakes herself, stumbling forward a step, blood spattering from her nose. She catches herself. She looks at the hand holding the vial of Zariel’s Tears, at the claws receding. At Taffeta’s look of fear and determination as the halfling's hand tightens around the stock of her crossbow.
“Sorry. Got distracted there for a moment. I think this is what we came for… Let’s move.”
Morning, 16th Ches 1497
Sunday looks at her reflection in the mirror of beaten bronze. Her long platinum-and-green hair is shorn in a severe, spiked cut; red clay and powder rubbed through it to turn it a dull, muddy brown. Where visible outside her armour - today covered in tulips, roses, dahlias, and lilies in various shades of purple, black, and grey - her skin is covered in make-up and dye to turn it crimson. Tattoos proclaiming allegiance to the Fifth Circle adorn her wrists, her neck, her forehead.
Only her eyes remain unchanged. She couldn’t bring herself to change their colour to the all-too-familiar purple-black of her youth.
Slinging her shield onto her back, she hangs both hammers from her belt. Checking and rechecking the straps and buckles of her armour, and ensuring Idari’s dragontooth still dangles from its yellow ribbon about her neck, Sunday leaves the room and heads downstairs into the Ettin’s common room.
Her companions are waiting for her. Daisy, wearing the form of a duergar; Pieni, still a vibrant blue, but now enclosed in the illusory shape of a large imp; Traav following suit, but retaining his habitual black and grey colours; and Baine and Taffeta as yet undisguised. As they file out into Portal Plaza, eLk drops from the sky to land beside her. Sunday’s heart drops with him to see her companion forced into his Nightmare form: fangs instead of teeth; talons instead of hooves; wings crackling with purple-red flame. He brushes away her mental apology.
No words, no speeches, no goodbyes. They join hands, Sunday and Baine standing either side of eLk, hands resting on his back. Daisy completes the spell and they are pulled sideways - away from home and into hell.
Ash. Ash and grit. Their lungs are full of it. Someone coughs and spits, the moisture sizzling and evaporating before it reaches the ground. Sunday exhales and inhales slowly - the heatwave that passes for an atmosphere on this plane feels... comforting.
She looks around, getting her bearings. The map The Sanguine Rose had provided them had been complex, even baroque. She’d spent most of the previous evening studying and deciphering it, pausing only to share in the meal Pieni had conjured for them, grab a few hours’ sleep, and spend some time with Kas…
Clenching her fists and pushing him from her mind, she looks around. Baine kneels and Taffeta climbs up onto his broad shoulders, as the half-orc pulls his cloak about them both. Sunday rolls her eyes at their idea of a disguise and springs up onto eLk’s back. Everyone was ready to go, looking to her lead.
that’s the only reason i’m here she thought so we can get him back and let him give orders. fuck this responsibility noise.
eLk snorts and stomps his hoof in response as the group heads down the valley towards the ruined keep in the distance.
Midday, 16th Ches 1497
With Daisy’s magic curled around them like shielding vines, they had made it unchallenged to the perimeter of the dilapidated castle. Baine had shocked them all when he’d harnessed his new-found power of Lathander and announced he could sense invisible watchers in the guard towers flanking the approach to the keep.
why didn’t you think of doing that? eLk had mocked her day one with his new abilities and he’s already showing you up
Sunday had ignored that, instead marshalling the group to split and strike quickly and quietly in a coordinated effort.
Daisy had peeled back the magic shrouding the left-hand tower to reveal two small imps, who were given no time to react as bolts from Traav and Taffeta sunk deep into their skulls. At the same time, Pieni had sprinkled the top of the right-hand tower with glittering dust, like motes of light drifting through a forest glade. The shimmering outlines of two more creatures had appeared long enough for Baine and Sunday to dispatch them with ease.
Moving cautiously, the group had crossed the bridge and descended into the undercroft of the keep, signs of recent activity keeping them alert and wary.
The undercroft had been confusing. Full of sarcophagi and tombs bearing traces of celestial presences. Statues of angels with horns and twisted features. Sculptures of human-like warriors of no discernible race. They crept forward, knowing it was only a matter of time before they encountered resistance or discovery. It had been Pieni’s owl companion Owlbert who had triggered things, scouting ahead and finding an imposing doorway but accidentally alerting two more imps to the group’s movement.
Leaving them to flee, Taffeta had phased through the barrier to investigate the other side. Returning, the halfling reported a chamber with a pit of magma in the middle; another door on the far side; and columns around the edge of the room with demons chained to them, some dead and some barely alive.
Gritting his teeth against whatever arcane wards infused the doors, Baine had thrown them open and the party rushed in...
...to a hail of arrows. Traav managed to evade the one aimed at him and ducked behind a rock, his back against the rough stone and his crossbow drawn. Three arrows flew towards Baine, either bouncing off his armour or flying harmlessly past. As the group starts to fan out in response, a cloud rolls over everyone. But, steeled against terror, no-one succumbs. A voice, angry and bitter, barks a word and Pieni clutches his head, a feral look in his eyes. “I’ve got this!” Daisy calls, rushing over to his side, pulling out a handful of glittering dust.
Traav has used the confusion to creep forward and track the source of the arrows: he looses into the darkness and hits something invisible earning a grunt of pain. Sensing something malevolent and vast arising from the magma pit in the centre of the room, Sunday reached out with her senses and found a source of life - corrupted, vile, heinous, but life all the same - protected by a mystic shroud. Tearing the arcane veil aside, she had revealed a huge devil hovering above the magma pit. As she commands eLk to charge, Taffeta reaches up to grasp her foot. Sunday feels adrenaline course through her veins, and bursts forward and up into the fiend’s face just as Baine slams his maul twice into its side.
Having restored Pieni’s mind, Daisy’s form ripples and expands into that of an elephant; she lowers her tusked head and charges forward until she crashes into something invisible, alerting the group to its presence with a trumpeting roar.
The vast fiend moves with lightning speed. Sunday isn’t ready. Its many-tailed whip wraps around her body several times and yanks her forward off elk. The devil leans in as Sunday struggles and its maw closes around her face. The fangs bite deep into her flesh. Sunday screams, blood torrenting out of the hideous wounds.
Then she feels a familiar, light, feathery touch on her mind as healing energy from Pieni suffuses her body, rapidly repairing most of the damage.
Two bolts fly at the gargantuan fiend from either side as Taffeta and Traav comes to Sunday’s aid. The fiend snarls, backing off, and Sunday uses the momentary distraction to free herself from the cruel grip of its whip. Dropping her shield, she draws her second hammer and unleashes a torrent of devastating blows: one, two, three, four titanic impacts slam into the creature’s form, golden-green flashes of light accompanying each hit. Sunday drives the beast down out of the air with each strike; eLk darting underneath her to arrest her fall.
Hearing her friends struggling throughout the chamber and looking into the face of the hellish beast, Sunday laughs a bitter short laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Feeling righteous force welling up through her core, she throws back her head and begins to sing in Sylvan; an ancient song of wood and tree and brook and breeze. Sunday punctuates the uplifting melody with brutal hammer blows, blasting chunks out of the devil’s form. As her song and rage grows, a look of fear crosses the devil’s face as it is driven lower, closer to the ground. As Sunday raises her weapons high above her head, eLk flicks his mane contemptuously and drives his hoof into the centre of the beast’s forehead, rocking its head back and cracking its skull. As its eyes roll up in its head and it sinks below the magma, Sunday, still singing, watches her friends mop up the rest of the battle.
“One’s escaping!” Taffeta cries. “It’s here somewhere. I can’t see it!”
A second later, the doors at the end of the room crash back on the hinges, thrown open by unseen hands, revealing a smaller chamber beyond.
They rush into the inner sanctum, its walls covered with inscriptions in infernal and celestial.
this is it! eLk tells her Zariel’s shrine!
Sunday and the others can sense no sign of the invisible creature. But a stone has been moved aside, revealing a hidden storage place containing a chest, something else hastily removed. Inside the chest, they find a potion and a finely carved javelin bearing the name ‘Galiel’.
Glancing back into the recess, Sunday spots a glimmer of red. “Hold on. There’s something else in here... “
The others watch as Sunday reaches into the hole and pulls her hand back, clutching in it a thin glass tube. Sunday seems to freeze for a moment; fierce emotions flickering across her face. Blood wells up from her eyes. A feral expression surfaces for but an instant. She tenses to spring at...
...no-one. Sunday closes her eyes, shaking the crimson tears away, before looking at them.
“This is it. Let’s go.”
Hearing the sounds of Zariel’s minions approaching, the group clusters around Pieni. Clutching a tuning fork, the aarakocra thrusts their bodies up and out of Avernus, clearing a path through the planar sea to drop them back into the middle of Daring.
They turn as one and hurry towards the compound.
Afternoon, 16th Ches 1497
The training yard is bustling with activity - veterans spar, recruits drill formations, and the persistent clang of steel on steel rings out from the open doors to the forge. Around the edges, soldiers sit doing what soldiers do - eating, joking, maintaining equipment.
Markas looks up from where he’s picking burrs out of Frankie’s coat as the group enters the through the gates like a hurricane, their purpose unmistakeable and irresistible. He sees Sunday, skin and hair red, a long jagged wound down one side of her face. People leap to clear a path, confusion and chaos following in their wake. At the door to the Grandmaster’s chamber, a young man with gently pointed ears raises his hand to stop them.
“I’m sorry, bu-”
Baine doesn’t slow.
“Get out of the way, Squeak.”
The young man swallows hard, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin. Sunday doesn’t break stride, vanishing between one step and the next in a crackle of golden-green light.
“The Master-at-Ar-”
“MOVE!” roars Baine, still moving forward implacably. The recruit leaps out of the way, as the half-orc throws open the door to Varis’ chamber.
The air inside is cool despite the fire laid in the hearth, shutters barred against the pale spring light. At the far end of the room the Grandmaster lies on his narrow bed, still clad in full wargear, a blindfold mostly covering the gaping wound across his face. Aside from the bed and the desk, the room is mostly bare, functional; the only other items of furniture a wardrobe against one wall and a small wooden table in front of the fireplace, a half-played board of some Byzantine game, intricately carved pieces arrayed over three levels, resting on its top.
Sunday stands by Varis’ side. As the others enter, she pulls a large diamond from a pouch on her belt and slams it down on Varis’ chest - no ceremony, no words, no grace: just raw divinity radiating outwards from her form, golden-green light coursing down her arm and into the body of the half-elf.
The room holds its collective breath.
Nothing happens.
“Did it work?”
Baine’s voice is hoarse, a whisper in a tomb. The lips of the corpse start to turn blue as the stasis magic Pieni placed on it fades under Sunday’s spell. His skin pales. There is no movement. No sign of life. Sunday can feel something pushing back, holding her power at bay.
Sunday looks at Baine in confusion. But the half-orc is already speaking, one hand to his temple.
“Yes. Take the fucking vial. Give him back to us. Now!”
As he speaks, an imp appears in front of Sunday, claw outstretched. At Baine’s nod, Sunday thrusts the glass container into its hand and it vanishes. Across the room, Baine is tearing apart sheaves of paper that had magically appeared in his grasp.
Sunday redoubles her efforts against the barrier, eyes closed, arm shaking with the power thrumming through her. And feels something familiar reaching back. Varis’ soul clasps her hand.
There is a sound like wind in a deep mine, like the scream of tortured metal.
With a gasp, Varis sits up.
