Post by Zola Rhomdaen on May 21, 2022 16:28:11 GMT
(Continued from Cosmic Love.)
PART I
She almost didn’t go. That would have been one easy way to save herself from all the heartbreak, all the devastation that would follow — to simply not show up. He would be pissed as all Hell, no doubt, having his artistic vision ruined, but what could he do about it?
However, she couldn’t ignore the undeniable truth that she has been the most effective at beating the fiends back in combat. Her friends need her by their side. They will not fall in the Nine Hells if she has something to say about it.
Zola stayed in her room for most of the previous day, only coming out to eat in the tavern downstairs, and just barely. Crying had drained most of her energy away. When the morning comes, she spends over an hour polishing Castor, even though it doesn’t need it, staring at her reflection in the silver blade. Thinking. Meditating. Praying.
Wishing.
Eventually, she gets up, sheathes the sword, and heads out to the Dawn Market to buy rations, stopping by Portal Plaza on the way to pass a note addressed to Haspar Knoll to the portalman. She must have procrastinated for much too long in the market as an urchin child came up to her and said her presence is requested in the home of Archmage Aurelia Archselon.
Marto and Kháos are already there, sitting away from each other in silence in the reception room of the townhouse. He stands up when she enters.
“Zola. Hi…” The concern in his face and voice is obvious. He spreads his arms a little in an offer for a hug, which she rushes to take wholeheartedly. Loud clanging noises are made as her adamantine splint mail collides into his full plate and physically prevents them from fully embracing. Theylook at each other awkwardly.
“That was a bit loud…” She smiles weakly as she pulls away and gestures at her reddened eyes and puffy cheeks. She knows she can’t avoid talking about it with him. “In case you’re wondering, um, I met him again. We talked. And, um…”
The tears have begun flowing from her tired eyes again without her realising. “He wants me to kill him. That’s why he’s doing all this. He wants to die an artistic death. I mean, I should be happy, right?” She scoffs out a short, pained, hopeless laugh. “It makes our jobs easier…”
Marto gazes up at her, his blue eyes wide with deep, unjudging sympathy. He fishes out a handkerchief from his belt pouch and presses it into her palm. “I…I reached out to Adhyël too. So…I understand, Zola.”
“And then we had sex. Really amazing sex,” she blurts out. “It’s the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”
She blows her nose loudly into the handkerchief. Kháos’s mental presence pops into their minds briefly, as if wanting to say something, but wisely decides against it in the end. Marto purses his lips and nods, seeming awkward. “Yeah… They’re…good at that,” he admits.
The two of them sit down on the plush sofa next to each other. The conversation soon turns to what they saw in their respective dreams.
“It was really hot. I mean the place, not the sex, though that was really hot too,” Zola recalls with a sniffle.
“I wonder if he took you to an approximation of Phlegethos, like I was brought to.”
“That’s what I think it was. Did your…previous dreams take place there too?”
“Yeah, they did.”
“The dream I had before this one was in my bedroom at home. Where I reached out to him.” She pauses to take a breath, fanning her glassy eyes with a hand. “So… Did you talk more with him?”
“I did, after we, um…” He clears his throat. “Yeah. I learned more about him actually.”
He’s clearly uneasy, but she isn’t sure about what.
“You don’t have to say anything you’re not comfortable with, it’s okay,” says the drow softly.
Marto nods. “It’s more that…I know I should feel guilty but I just…don’t.” He looks at her. “Is that normal?”
Does she even know what normal means anymore? She shrugs and shakes her head. “I don’t feel guilty for lo…” Her voice trails off, lost somewhere along with her courage. She clears her throat. “I don’t feel guilty either.”
She can feel his stare boring into the side of her face, but she can’t make herself meet his gaze. From the corner of her eye, she sees a shake of the head.
“Zola…” There is a pause that hangs in the air as he seems to struggle to find the words. “This is all forms of messed up but you can count on me. For anything.”
“I know… Thank you, Marto.”
He gently pulls her into another hug, just putting an arm around her shoulders and holding her, still a bit awkwardly positioned on account of both of them being padded out in heavy armour. Nonetheless, she lays her hand on top of his, grateful for the comfort from the only person in the world who understands what she’s going through. He plants a soft kiss on her cheek before he lets her go, and he holds onto her hand for a moment longer before letting go of that too.
He lets her keep the handkerchief.
The others arrive afterwards. The Jackal, Sorrel, Velania, Kavel, and Sorrel’s girlfriend Silvia, a red-haired battle mage who brought warm stew for everyone.
Soon enough, Aurelia summons all of them to her office. It is Zola’s first time meeting the famed Archmage of Daring Heights — a tall, regal, golden-haired woman with high cheekbones and gentle eyes. She smells a very faint whiff of ambrosia in the air around this wizard — something celestial, an angelborn perhaps.
As an unseen servant serves them tea, Aurelia procures a chest and opens it to show them a strange contraption with light bulbs, wires, and gears sticking out all around it. (Pipper would love this, Zola thinks.) A huge dent in its middle, dislodged gears, and shattered bulbs suggests that someone had enthusiastically taken a sword to it. She explains that this machine was responsible for the carnage that happened outside the temple; it emitted some kind of magic that lulled the passers-by into a waking dream-like state, tricking them into thinking that the other people around them were their worst enemies.
The lesson here is spelt out clearly to them: do not trust your dreams. And if something like that does happen, Aurelia posits, “a solid application of force” is recommended.
Finally, the archmage lets out a heavy sigh. “We’re sending you into Phlegethos. It’s a horrid place to be in, and hopefully you won’t be in there for long. However, I can’t come with you as I have my station here in Daring Heights, and…”
She suddenly hesitates, like she is about to ask something of them but doesn’t want to.
“We can’t get you out,” The Jackal cuts in. “I’ve got the juice to get you into the Fourth, but…that’s it. Can only plane shift in and out of Avernus. And I can’t come with you. Your only way out is Rholor. We’ve got reason to believe that he’s still alive, and if you can’t get him — well, you’re fucked. If you wanna back out, now is the time to do it.”
No one in the room budges.
“Good,” The Jackal says. “Any questions?”
Kavel raises his big hand. “Is it true that if you kill a fiend in Hell, he’s dead? Truly dead?” he asks. “There’s no coming back from that?”
Zola flinches, but The Jackal smiles a wide and wicked grin at the goliath. “Aye. That’s right.”
They all walk out of the house and into Portal Plaza right in front of it. Aurelia and The Jackal lead them to a particular flagstone in the centre of the busy square and they fall into place standing around it.
The grizzled, old champion unsheathes his massive greatsword and heaves it upon his pauldron. “Right. On the count of three, I’m gonna drop you lot in there.”
This is it. Zola sees her companions brace themselves. She clasps a hand around the moon medallion under her breastplate, the one with her mothers’ charm looped on it, and starts muttering rapidly in Elvish. “Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden, guiding light of the drow. Corellon Larethian, lord of magic and war. Sehanine Moonbow, lady of dreams and travel. I beseech you, hear my—”
“One.”
The sword is swung into the flagstone. The ground underneath their feet cracks and falls away instantly, and all of them begin to plummet.
As they fall and fall and fall into darkness, there is but a single word on Zola’s mind: Dickhead.
Suddenly they are standing still on a mound of black dirt.
The first thing she immediately notices is the temperature — it is unbearably hot and humid, like the place she visited Ophanim in her last dream, despite the black and sunless sky.
Phlegethos.
The seven of them begin the climb up a steep incline towards the summit of a hill in search of a vantage point. Zola, feeling as if she’s being boiled alive in her heavy armour, can now sympathise with shellfish destined for the dinner plate. Marto is in a similar state, though it seems to wear him down more than her, and so do Velania and Silvia. They all stay close to her as they walk and she rides on Cor’Vandor’s back, the protective aura granted to her by Eilistraee warding off a bit of the heat and exhaustion creeping into their bones.
Reaching the top of the hill, they are greeted with the sight of a band of burning orange slithering through a desolate, utterly barren landscape. The Azellah, a river of liquid fire — what The Jackal instructed them to look out for, the same one mentioned in Themis’s prophecy. In the distance, a grim, black fortress sits on one bank, from where the sounds of whipping and screaming can be faintly heard in the windless silence; and around the bend of the river ahead of them, there appears to be a large, bowl-shaped depression in the ground, glowing dimly in orange against the gloom. Further afield, the horizon is ridged with a vast, towering, seemingly impassable mountain range.
There is no sign of living creatures that can be seen anywhere — no hardy plants, no small, crawling beasts, no wandering travellers, except themselves. Zola has never seen a land that seems so hostile to life.
Her companions decide to go straight ahead for the glowing dip in the earth. Wiping away the constant stream of sweat from her brow, she pats Cor’Vandor’s neck to direct him down the slope.
The large cloud of shadow in the sky swirls and wreaths above their heads. It is a murmuration of ravens with feathers of pitch and smoke, swooping in closer and closer towards them. The seven of them have assumed defensive positions. Sorrel nocks an arrow on her longbow, pulls the bowstring back, and holds patiently. Marto gets in front of Velania and puts up both his physical and magical shields to protect her. Velania holds up Selûne’s holy symbol and utters a benediction for them all, her voice reverberating deeply with godly power. Zola draws Castor and her other longsword, the blessed blade glowing faintly in silver as she braces herself on the ground.
The black storm of ravens fills their vision as it surges forward like a tidal wave and crashes right into them.
The umbral birds explode into smoke upon meeting steel — a seething, noxious gas that fills up Zola’s nostrils, sets her lungs ablaze, and makes her eyes water. All around her, she hears the coughing and retching of her obscured companions. The sword dancer holds her breath and blinks the tears out of her eyes as she keeps on swinging wildly, hacking and slashing at the false ravens left and right.
As the last of the ravens are destroyed and the smoke slowly begins to dissipate, that is when she feels it.
The chain binding around her body. The whip lashing on her back. The pyre burning on her skin. All happening in a flash.
Zola gasps and her body involuntarily writhes in pain. This is Ophanim’s work, she knows it, she feels it in her heart — he’d given her a taste of it before in his anger. And perhaps it is this knowledge that helped her resist the spell of enchantment that attempts to sink its claws into her mind right afterwards.
The creeping fogginess retreats from her senses as quickly as it came. However, when she turns her head to see past the thinning smoke, Marto and Sorrel are standing with their backs ramrod straight in their respective places, their eyes entirely black.
It’s happening. This is what Aurelia had warned them about. Tucking one sword under her arm, Zola rushes forward and whips out an empty hand at Marto’s face, but her palm instead slaps into an invisible barrier in the air — the shield spell is still active. Meanwhile, the halfling warrior pulls Guiding Light from his back and slashes deeply into Velania’s side. The aasimar gasps in pain and shock. “Nice try,” he growls at her.
“Marto!” Zola cries out. She grips her swords with both hands and begins swinging with their blades flipped onto the flat sides, trying to find a way around the shields. “Snap out of it!”
One swing finds purchase and the flat side of Castor strikes the top of his head. Marto stops in his tracks and freezes up entirely. Then the darkness fades from his eyes as the cornflower blue begins to shine through once more.
A glance thrown Sorrel’s way confirms that she too has snapped out of it, now embracing Silvia in a passionate kiss with manacled hands. But just as Zola is about to breathe a sigh of relief, the clattering noises of Guiding Light and the cornucopia-emblazoned shield dropping to the ground draws her attention back to Marto, who is backing away from her and the bleeding Velania with a horrified look on his face.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” he says.
“Marto,” Zola says softly, reaching a hand out towards him, “it’s okay—”
“DON’T—” He flinches away further from her. “Don’t touch me. Please. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here…”
Her hand falls limply to her side. The noises around her become muffled and her inner song mutes into a cold, ringing silence in her head as she stares helplessly at Marto’s ever-shrinking figure — her good, brave, selfless friend, reduced to such a state — with anguish.
This is what Ophanim is capable of. Up until now, she has been choosing to see him as a bumbling idiot, incapable of doing any real harm, after witnessing one failed scheme of his. But that’s never been true.
“It is, for all intents and purposes, my creation,” he had whispered in her ear before his lips softly caressed her neck.
He has been complicit in the slaughter of innocents. Perhaps even done it with his own hand. He is a devil. He feels no remorse. Where a soul ought to be in his body, there is but a gaping, black void.
If she chooses to spare him, he would keep trying to force her to put him down. And that would mean hurting her friends and family until she does.
Sparing his life would be a more selfish decision than not showing up at all.
Her grip on Castor tightens and tightens until the blade shudders and her knuckles under the gauntlet turn pale.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to—
It is Kháos’s voice sounding in her mind that gently breaks her out of her trance. Marto. You are yourself, and you should be here, they say, carefully approaching the halfling. I will open your plate armour to check your back. I believe the mark should be gone now.
“R-really?” he asks.
They help him out of his breastplate and peer down the back of his tunic. It is gone, they confirm.
Silvia checks Sorrel’s back. It is gone for her too.
Likewise, it should be gone for you as well, Velania, Zola, Kháos adds.
“Really?” Zola blurts out, echoing Marto’s disbelief.
I can check, if you’d like.
“Y-yes, please.”
They do the same for her, and a moment later: It is gone.
Zola blinks. It’s really gone. The mark he put on her — the “claim” he put on her — is gone.
She knows she should be happy to be free of a fiend’s grasp. So why does she feel so empty? Why does she feel the ache of longing in her chest? Is she so desperate to be bedded that she wants to belong to him?
Yearning to be a murderer’s plaything, she thinks bitterly. What a base and lustful creature you are.
Kháos is staring at her with searching grey eyes, seemingly trying to pinpoint her emotions. I understand how it feels to want something but still be reluctant when it happens, they say eventually. You are you.
Zola looks at them. They have hinted more than once at having a troubled past, though she’s never felt that it is her place to push with more questions. Nonetheless, she does not doubt that they do understand, but…it is she who doesn’t understand her own feelings.
“Thank you,” she says anyway.
With the danger gone, they all decide to sit down and rest — patch up some wounds and refill their bodies with much-needed liquid. Zola places a folded blanket on the almost too-hot ground to sit on and takes up her lute. As her companions rejuvenate themselves and converse in hushed voices, as Marto skulks farther and farther away from Velania, she strums the instrument and hums a soothing melody. It is a tune that came into her head two days ago, when she still dreamt about saving a devil, but she doesn’t have the words to go with it yet. The subtle bardic magic she weaves into the song provides listeners with a little bit more relief, a little bit more comfort — a tiny, fragile moment of refuge in the middle of a dark, vast, unforgiving Hell.
At the end of her song, Sorrel Darkfire comes up to her and tells her of the word that flashed in the ranger’s head just as the charm spell went away, the final word of the second mark: “self-annihilation”.
Zola blinks again and nods absently. The words represent the activation sequence of the mark — the sensation of a chain, a whip, and a pyre, then turning the bearer into a betrayer, before finally self-annihilating. It’s an admittedly elegant design, and he would have strived for no less. But more than that…
“Five words for five angels. One by one, they’ll become apparent.”
That final word is the one he chose for himself, as is the destiny he is hurtling the both of them towards. He has a need beyond desire for her to realise it for him, like a moth compulsively drawn to her flame.
There are two truths in life that Zola has always been reluctant to acknowledge: that some people cannot be saved and that some people don’t want to be saved. Her heart aches every time she is forced to confront these truths; this time, however, it is shattered completely.
And for what? The love of a devil? How does she find it in herself to love someone like him?
“I think it makes sense,” she says to Sorrel. So much fucking sense.
Sorrel looks at her for a long moment, like she wants to say something but can’t find the words. Eventually, she pats Zola on the shoulder and walks off.
They are here. They are waiting for you, Kháos’s voice enters their mind from somewhere far and unseen. They have him. Come.
The air of grim determination amongst the party, which has steadily become more apparent with every step they took in Hell, is now palpable. They march forward in silence.
They pass several lifeless plateaus and cross the Azellah once or twice on ancient, rickety, wooden bridges. On the way, they cast protective spells on themselves and on one another and drink their potions. Zola feels the strength of a fire giant coursing through her veins, which briefly glow a fiery orange under her skin, and the magical ward granted by the protection from evil and good spell, bolstered by sprinkling a vial of holy water on herself.
Dark Maiden, guide my blades. Watch over your servant. Watch over my friends.
Soon, they arrive at a plain carved in two by the Azellah snaking across it, spanned by two wooden bridges. Kháos suddenly reappears by their side and points at something on the other side of the flaming river: a staired obsidian platform surrounded by three lit braziers, upon which the white-robed figure of the High Diviner Rholor Vuzehk lies unmoving. A thin, white line tethers his body to a white orb atop a small and likewise obsidian plinth in front of the platform.
There he is, Kháos says. And there they are.
A dark pavilion sits just past the platform, with two familiar figures seated around a roundtable within. Ophanim the Vain is drinking red wine from a goblet. Rahmiël the Scorcher is next to him, looking in their direction with an unbothered expression.
Adhyël the Stallion is standing on the edge of a plateau not far from the pavilion. The red points of light in his black eyes are staring right at Marto.
The sound of giggling and leathery wings, and Zah’Ranin the Flesh-eater emerges from the shadow of a rock wall north of them, their monstrous body somehow appearing larger than ever. At the same time, the hulking figure of An’Akhrim the Silent slinks out from under Rholor’s platform with violet eyes locked onto Velania.
Ophanim slams down his final goblet of wine, rises to his full height, and steps out of the pavilion. He is looking directly at Zola. He draws two swords — one whose blade is glittering brightly, as if made of starlight, and one with a blade of dark steel — and holds them out to his sides in greeting.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” he calls out to her.
Zola’s breath hitches in her throat. She gazes back at him from across the river. Her lover and nemesis. Her mirror image. The two of them stand on opposite sides of a terminator line, at the cusp of destiny.
She draws both of her own swords, pointing Castor at Ophanim, before folding her arm back with Castor’s guard over her heart. A warrior’s salute. She barely notices the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“If this is what you want, then who am I to deny it of you?”
The smile he gives her is full of love and adoration.
“It is all I’ve ever wanted.”
(To be continued.)
PART I
She almost didn’t go. That would have been one easy way to save herself from all the heartbreak, all the devastation that would follow — to simply not show up. He would be pissed as all Hell, no doubt, having his artistic vision ruined, but what could he do about it?
However, she couldn’t ignore the undeniable truth that she has been the most effective at beating the fiends back in combat. Her friends need her by their side. They will not fall in the Nine Hells if she has something to say about it.
Zola stayed in her room for most of the previous day, only coming out to eat in the tavern downstairs, and just barely. Crying had drained most of her energy away. When the morning comes, she spends over an hour polishing Castor, even though it doesn’t need it, staring at her reflection in the silver blade. Thinking. Meditating. Praying.
Wishing.
Eventually, she gets up, sheathes the sword, and heads out to the Dawn Market to buy rations, stopping by Portal Plaza on the way to pass a note addressed to Haspar Knoll to the portalman. She must have procrastinated for much too long in the market as an urchin child came up to her and said her presence is requested in the home of Archmage Aurelia Archselon.
Marto and Kháos are already there, sitting away from each other in silence in the reception room of the townhouse. He stands up when she enters.
“Zola. Hi…” The concern in his face and voice is obvious. He spreads his arms a little in an offer for a hug, which she rushes to take wholeheartedly. Loud clanging noises are made as her adamantine splint mail collides into his full plate and physically prevents them from fully embracing. Theylook at each other awkwardly.
“That was a bit loud…” She smiles weakly as she pulls away and gestures at her reddened eyes and puffy cheeks. She knows she can’t avoid talking about it with him. “In case you’re wondering, um, I met him again. We talked. And, um…”
The tears have begun flowing from her tired eyes again without her realising. “He wants me to kill him. That’s why he’s doing all this. He wants to die an artistic death. I mean, I should be happy, right?” She scoffs out a short, pained, hopeless laugh. “It makes our jobs easier…”
Marto gazes up at her, his blue eyes wide with deep, unjudging sympathy. He fishes out a handkerchief from his belt pouch and presses it into her palm. “I…I reached out to Adhyël too. So…I understand, Zola.”
“And then we had sex. Really amazing sex,” she blurts out. “It’s the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”
She blows her nose loudly into the handkerchief. Kháos’s mental presence pops into their minds briefly, as if wanting to say something, but wisely decides against it in the end. Marto purses his lips and nods, seeming awkward. “Yeah… They’re…good at that,” he admits.
The two of them sit down on the plush sofa next to each other. The conversation soon turns to what they saw in their respective dreams.
“It was really hot. I mean the place, not the sex, though that was really hot too,” Zola recalls with a sniffle.
“I wonder if he took you to an approximation of Phlegethos, like I was brought to.”
“That’s what I think it was. Did your…previous dreams take place there too?”
“Yeah, they did.”
“The dream I had before this one was in my bedroom at home. Where I reached out to him.” She pauses to take a breath, fanning her glassy eyes with a hand. “So… Did you talk more with him?”
“I did, after we, um…” He clears his throat. “Yeah. I learned more about him actually.”
He’s clearly uneasy, but she isn’t sure about what.
“You don’t have to say anything you’re not comfortable with, it’s okay,” says the drow softly.
Marto nods. “It’s more that…I know I should feel guilty but I just…don’t.” He looks at her. “Is that normal?”
Does she even know what normal means anymore? She shrugs and shakes her head. “I don’t feel guilty for lo…” Her voice trails off, lost somewhere along with her courage. She clears her throat. “I don’t feel guilty either.”
She can feel his stare boring into the side of her face, but she can’t make herself meet his gaze. From the corner of her eye, she sees a shake of the head.
“Zola…” There is a pause that hangs in the air as he seems to struggle to find the words. “This is all forms of messed up but you can count on me. For anything.”
“I know… Thank you, Marto.”
He gently pulls her into another hug, just putting an arm around her shoulders and holding her, still a bit awkwardly positioned on account of both of them being padded out in heavy armour. Nonetheless, she lays her hand on top of his, grateful for the comfort from the only person in the world who understands what she’s going through. He plants a soft kiss on her cheek before he lets her go, and he holds onto her hand for a moment longer before letting go of that too.
He lets her keep the handkerchief.
The others arrive afterwards. The Jackal, Sorrel, Velania, Kavel, and Sorrel’s girlfriend Silvia, a red-haired battle mage who brought warm stew for everyone.
Soon enough, Aurelia summons all of them to her office. It is Zola’s first time meeting the famed Archmage of Daring Heights — a tall, regal, golden-haired woman with high cheekbones and gentle eyes. She smells a very faint whiff of ambrosia in the air around this wizard — something celestial, an angelborn perhaps.
As an unseen servant serves them tea, Aurelia procures a chest and opens it to show them a strange contraption with light bulbs, wires, and gears sticking out all around it. (Pipper would love this, Zola thinks.) A huge dent in its middle, dislodged gears, and shattered bulbs suggests that someone had enthusiastically taken a sword to it. She explains that this machine was responsible for the carnage that happened outside the temple; it emitted some kind of magic that lulled the passers-by into a waking dream-like state, tricking them into thinking that the other people around them were their worst enemies.
The lesson here is spelt out clearly to them: do not trust your dreams. And if something like that does happen, Aurelia posits, “a solid application of force” is recommended.
Finally, the archmage lets out a heavy sigh. “We’re sending you into Phlegethos. It’s a horrid place to be in, and hopefully you won’t be in there for long. However, I can’t come with you as I have my station here in Daring Heights, and…”
She suddenly hesitates, like she is about to ask something of them but doesn’t want to.
“We can’t get you out,” The Jackal cuts in. “I’ve got the juice to get you into the Fourth, but…that’s it. Can only plane shift in and out of Avernus. And I can’t come with you. Your only way out is Rholor. We’ve got reason to believe that he’s still alive, and if you can’t get him — well, you’re fucked. If you wanna back out, now is the time to do it.”
No one in the room budges.
“Good,” The Jackal says. “Any questions?”
Kavel raises his big hand. “Is it true that if you kill a fiend in Hell, he’s dead? Truly dead?” he asks. “There’s no coming back from that?”
Zola flinches, but The Jackal smiles a wide and wicked grin at the goliath. “Aye. That’s right.”
They all walk out of the house and into Portal Plaza right in front of it. Aurelia and The Jackal lead them to a particular flagstone in the centre of the busy square and they fall into place standing around it.
The grizzled, old champion unsheathes his massive greatsword and heaves it upon his pauldron. “Right. On the count of three, I’m gonna drop you lot in there.”
This is it. Zola sees her companions brace themselves. She clasps a hand around the moon medallion under her breastplate, the one with her mothers’ charm looped on it, and starts muttering rapidly in Elvish. “Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden, guiding light of the drow. Corellon Larethian, lord of magic and war. Sehanine Moonbow, lady of dreams and travel. I beseech you, hear my—”
“One.”
The sword is swung into the flagstone. The ground underneath their feet cracks and falls away instantly, and all of them begin to plummet.
As they fall and fall and fall into darkness, there is but a single word on Zola’s mind: Dickhead.
Suddenly they are standing still on a mound of black dirt.
The first thing she immediately notices is the temperature — it is unbearably hot and humid, like the place she visited Ophanim in her last dream, despite the black and sunless sky.
Phlegethos.
The seven of them begin the climb up a steep incline towards the summit of a hill in search of a vantage point. Zola, feeling as if she’s being boiled alive in her heavy armour, can now sympathise with shellfish destined for the dinner plate. Marto is in a similar state, though it seems to wear him down more than her, and so do Velania and Silvia. They all stay close to her as they walk and she rides on Cor’Vandor’s back, the protective aura granted to her by Eilistraee warding off a bit of the heat and exhaustion creeping into their bones.
Reaching the top of the hill, they are greeted with the sight of a band of burning orange slithering through a desolate, utterly barren landscape. The Azellah, a river of liquid fire — what The Jackal instructed them to look out for, the same one mentioned in Themis’s prophecy. In the distance, a grim, black fortress sits on one bank, from where the sounds of whipping and screaming can be faintly heard in the windless silence; and around the bend of the river ahead of them, there appears to be a large, bowl-shaped depression in the ground, glowing dimly in orange against the gloom. Further afield, the horizon is ridged with a vast, towering, seemingly impassable mountain range.
There is no sign of living creatures that can be seen anywhere — no hardy plants, no small, crawling beasts, no wandering travellers, except themselves. Zola has never seen a land that seems so hostile to life.
Her companions decide to go straight ahead for the glowing dip in the earth. Wiping away the constant stream of sweat from her brow, she pats Cor’Vandor’s neck to direct him down the slope.
The large cloud of shadow in the sky swirls and wreaths above their heads. It is a murmuration of ravens with feathers of pitch and smoke, swooping in closer and closer towards them. The seven of them have assumed defensive positions. Sorrel nocks an arrow on her longbow, pulls the bowstring back, and holds patiently. Marto gets in front of Velania and puts up both his physical and magical shields to protect her. Velania holds up Selûne’s holy symbol and utters a benediction for them all, her voice reverberating deeply with godly power. Zola draws Castor and her other longsword, the blessed blade glowing faintly in silver as she braces herself on the ground.
The black storm of ravens fills their vision as it surges forward like a tidal wave and crashes right into them.
The umbral birds explode into smoke upon meeting steel — a seething, noxious gas that fills up Zola’s nostrils, sets her lungs ablaze, and makes her eyes water. All around her, she hears the coughing and retching of her obscured companions. The sword dancer holds her breath and blinks the tears out of her eyes as she keeps on swinging wildly, hacking and slashing at the false ravens left and right.
As the last of the ravens are destroyed and the smoke slowly begins to dissipate, that is when she feels it.
The chain binding around her body. The whip lashing on her back. The pyre burning on her skin. All happening in a flash.
Zola gasps and her body involuntarily writhes in pain. This is Ophanim’s work, she knows it, she feels it in her heart — he’d given her a taste of it before in his anger. And perhaps it is this knowledge that helped her resist the spell of enchantment that attempts to sink its claws into her mind right afterwards.
The creeping fogginess retreats from her senses as quickly as it came. However, when she turns her head to see past the thinning smoke, Marto and Sorrel are standing with their backs ramrod straight in their respective places, their eyes entirely black.
It’s happening. This is what Aurelia had warned them about. Tucking one sword under her arm, Zola rushes forward and whips out an empty hand at Marto’s face, but her palm instead slaps into an invisible barrier in the air — the shield spell is still active. Meanwhile, the halfling warrior pulls Guiding Light from his back and slashes deeply into Velania’s side. The aasimar gasps in pain and shock. “Nice try,” he growls at her.
“Marto!” Zola cries out. She grips her swords with both hands and begins swinging with their blades flipped onto the flat sides, trying to find a way around the shields. “Snap out of it!”
One swing finds purchase and the flat side of Castor strikes the top of his head. Marto stops in his tracks and freezes up entirely. Then the darkness fades from his eyes as the cornflower blue begins to shine through once more.
A glance thrown Sorrel’s way confirms that she too has snapped out of it, now embracing Silvia in a passionate kiss with manacled hands. But just as Zola is about to breathe a sigh of relief, the clattering noises of Guiding Light and the cornucopia-emblazoned shield dropping to the ground draws her attention back to Marto, who is backing away from her and the bleeding Velania with a horrified look on his face.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” he says.
“Marto,” Zola says softly, reaching a hand out towards him, “it’s okay—”
“DON’T—” He flinches away further from her. “Don’t touch me. Please. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here…”
Her hand falls limply to her side. The noises around her become muffled and her inner song mutes into a cold, ringing silence in her head as she stares helplessly at Marto’s ever-shrinking figure — her good, brave, selfless friend, reduced to such a state — with anguish.
This is what Ophanim is capable of. Up until now, she has been choosing to see him as a bumbling idiot, incapable of doing any real harm, after witnessing one failed scheme of his. But that’s never been true.
“It is, for all intents and purposes, my creation,” he had whispered in her ear before his lips softly caressed her neck.
He has been complicit in the slaughter of innocents. Perhaps even done it with his own hand. He is a devil. He feels no remorse. Where a soul ought to be in his body, there is but a gaping, black void.
If she chooses to spare him, he would keep trying to force her to put him down. And that would mean hurting her friends and family until she does.
Sparing his life would be a more selfish decision than not showing up at all.
Her grip on Castor tightens and tightens until the blade shudders and her knuckles under the gauntlet turn pale.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to—
It is Kháos’s voice sounding in her mind that gently breaks her out of her trance. Marto. You are yourself, and you should be here, they say, carefully approaching the halfling. I will open your plate armour to check your back. I believe the mark should be gone now.
“R-really?” he asks.
They help him out of his breastplate and peer down the back of his tunic. It is gone, they confirm.
Silvia checks Sorrel’s back. It is gone for her too.
Likewise, it should be gone for you as well, Velania, Zola, Kháos adds.
“Really?” Zola blurts out, echoing Marto’s disbelief.
I can check, if you’d like.
“Y-yes, please.”
They do the same for her, and a moment later: It is gone.
Zola blinks. It’s really gone. The mark he put on her — the “claim” he put on her — is gone.
She knows she should be happy to be free of a fiend’s grasp. So why does she feel so empty? Why does she feel the ache of longing in her chest? Is she so desperate to be bedded that she wants to belong to him?
Yearning to be a murderer’s plaything, she thinks bitterly. What a base and lustful creature you are.
Kháos is staring at her with searching grey eyes, seemingly trying to pinpoint her emotions. I understand how it feels to want something but still be reluctant when it happens, they say eventually. You are you.
Zola looks at them. They have hinted more than once at having a troubled past, though she’s never felt that it is her place to push with more questions. Nonetheless, she does not doubt that they do understand, but…it is she who doesn’t understand her own feelings.
“Thank you,” she says anyway.
With the danger gone, they all decide to sit down and rest — patch up some wounds and refill their bodies with much-needed liquid. Zola places a folded blanket on the almost too-hot ground to sit on and takes up her lute. As her companions rejuvenate themselves and converse in hushed voices, as Marto skulks farther and farther away from Velania, she strums the instrument and hums a soothing melody. It is a tune that came into her head two days ago, when she still dreamt about saving a devil, but she doesn’t have the words to go with it yet. The subtle bardic magic she weaves into the song provides listeners with a little bit more relief, a little bit more comfort — a tiny, fragile moment of refuge in the middle of a dark, vast, unforgiving Hell.
At the end of her song, Sorrel Darkfire comes up to her and tells her of the word that flashed in the ranger’s head just as the charm spell went away, the final word of the second mark: “self-annihilation”.
Zola blinks again and nods absently. The words represent the activation sequence of the mark — the sensation of a chain, a whip, and a pyre, then turning the bearer into a betrayer, before finally self-annihilating. It’s an admittedly elegant design, and he would have strived for no less. But more than that…
“Five words for five angels. One by one, they’ll become apparent.”
That final word is the one he chose for himself, as is the destiny he is hurtling the both of them towards. He has a need beyond desire for her to realise it for him, like a moth compulsively drawn to her flame.
There are two truths in life that Zola has always been reluctant to acknowledge: that some people cannot be saved and that some people don’t want to be saved. Her heart aches every time she is forced to confront these truths; this time, however, it is shattered completely.
And for what? The love of a devil? How does she find it in herself to love someone like him?
“I think it makes sense,” she says to Sorrel. So much fucking sense.
Sorrel looks at her for a long moment, like she wants to say something but can’t find the words. Eventually, she pats Zola on the shoulder and walks off.
They are here. They are waiting for you, Kháos’s voice enters their mind from somewhere far and unseen. They have him. Come.
The air of grim determination amongst the party, which has steadily become more apparent with every step they took in Hell, is now palpable. They march forward in silence.
They pass several lifeless plateaus and cross the Azellah once or twice on ancient, rickety, wooden bridges. On the way, they cast protective spells on themselves and on one another and drink their potions. Zola feels the strength of a fire giant coursing through her veins, which briefly glow a fiery orange under her skin, and the magical ward granted by the protection from evil and good spell, bolstered by sprinkling a vial of holy water on herself.
Dark Maiden, guide my blades. Watch over your servant. Watch over my friends.
Soon, they arrive at a plain carved in two by the Azellah snaking across it, spanned by two wooden bridges. Kháos suddenly reappears by their side and points at something on the other side of the flaming river: a staired obsidian platform surrounded by three lit braziers, upon which the white-robed figure of the High Diviner Rholor Vuzehk lies unmoving. A thin, white line tethers his body to a white orb atop a small and likewise obsidian plinth in front of the platform.
There he is, Kháos says. And there they are.
A dark pavilion sits just past the platform, with two familiar figures seated around a roundtable within. Ophanim the Vain is drinking red wine from a goblet. Rahmiël the Scorcher is next to him, looking in their direction with an unbothered expression.
Adhyël the Stallion is standing on the edge of a plateau not far from the pavilion. The red points of light in his black eyes are staring right at Marto.
The sound of giggling and leathery wings, and Zah’Ranin the Flesh-eater emerges from the shadow of a rock wall north of them, their monstrous body somehow appearing larger than ever. At the same time, the hulking figure of An’Akhrim the Silent slinks out from under Rholor’s platform with violet eyes locked onto Velania.
Ophanim slams down his final goblet of wine, rises to his full height, and steps out of the pavilion. He is looking directly at Zola. He draws two swords — one whose blade is glittering brightly, as if made of starlight, and one with a blade of dark steel — and holds them out to his sides in greeting.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” he calls out to her.
Zola’s breath hitches in her throat. She gazes back at him from across the river. Her lover and nemesis. Her mirror image. The two of them stand on opposite sides of a terminator line, at the cusp of destiny.
She draws both of her own swords, pointing Castor at Ophanim, before folding her arm back with Castor’s guard over her heart. A warrior’s salute. She barely notices the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“If this is what you want, then who am I to deny it of you?”
The smile he gives her is full of love and adoration.
“It is all I’ve ever wanted.”
(To be continued.)
