S10 Finale Ex Astris Mors Omnibus Sorrel 28/6

"My dearest
To
For the wonderful

Sorrel, I have not known you for as long as I would wish, but I have known you for as long as I have stepped foot in these lands, and I have come to love you almost as fast.

This is my home now, as much as I can call anywhere a home after the past 8 years of my life but more importantly you are my true home. I will fight to defend this land because it is mine, and because it is right, but also because I hope that you see it as I do, as ours.

I caught sight of you with another unit, preparing, beautiful and terrifying as ever. I just pray you stay safe in the coming fight, that you stay alive. When this is all done we can return to Daring Heights, you can check the temple and I can put a hearty meal on. How does that sound my love?

But first we must finish this, may you go in the grace of the Moon Maiden and the Morning Lord. Good fucking luck.

Yours, always and no matter what,

Silvia"


Sorrel stared at the letter for a long time. Somehow Silvia had slipped it into her backpack without her noticing. First Kavel sneaking up on her, then Silvia planting something on her.

She sat back against the wall of the fort in the afternoon sun and smiled. Happiness was making her slack.

And was that so bad?

It’s true she’d always sworn to stay on the road. It’s true that she had vowed never to love again. And it was fundamentally the case that Sorrel Darkfire had refused point blank from the moment she could remember – and most specifically to Silvia – that she was not the settling down kind.

She remembered the speeches she’d made that night when Coll… she stopped and looked out over the plains towards the shadow approaching. She touched the Moonmaiden’s charm to her lips. When Coll had secured the table for her, pulled the 20 year old Thorian brandy out of the cellar and Sorrel had done her level best to explain why she was the worst thing that could happen to Silvia.

She shivered as she remembered her final attempt to persuade her away.

“I am not the girlfriend experience, Silvia. I am the difficult borderline personality disorder commitment-phobe experience. I've had half of Kantas tell me off for running away from you over the past three weeks and I wasn't even really running away from you. I am not the cottage and baking in the kitchen type - I'm not even an Oziah and Delilah room in a fort type. I am a partner in crime. I'm someone you can drink with, fight with, fuck with and work with. I come alive on the road. I don't cuddle in bed all day. I don't want to walk away from this. But I don't know how to do relationships."

And then Silvia had bought a cottage next to the temple and Sorrel had turned up once. And then again. And then left a few things. And before she knew it… she was living with her girlfriend.

Sorrel laughed out loud, which turned disapproving heads amongst the toiling warriors and craftsmen preparing the last defences. Sorrel Darkfire had a girlfriend.

She looked at the note in her hand and thought – "I found you in the clarity of the moon, not the rigour of the sun. Not in the light, where it’s easier to see, but when the world is blind and loves eyes are free. No one has imagined us. We want to live like eagles, dappled with scars, still flying until the bitter end then resting on the branches of an oak tree, our animal passion rooted in its ancient bark. After years of disappearing, you make me feel reappeared. Reimagined. Your touch shapes me, draws out the boldness that had been hiding in my core. What I do tonight, I do for you. And you will disapprove and chide me as you bind a wound and make something I have never tasted before but is the only thing I want to eat."

She folded the note and slipped it into her armour above her heart then made her way to the briefing room for the infiltration unit’s lockdown.

Aurelia briefed them. “Your mission is to deliver Xeron to the Gadenthor control centre by any means necessary. You will have the fiendish warrior Ynade to accompany you. Your group is to stay out of sight until the battle has progressed long enough for Gadenthor to be closer. The Dracolich Ormund will then provide stealthy transport to the city. The Lich Comerath Merroska is on Gadenthor already and will endeavour to rendezvous with you there after you land. Your secondary objective, if feasible, is to locate and retrieve Coll's soul from its imprisonment and reunite it with his body, currently inhabited by Xeron. You may wish to do this before the first objective, but getting Xeron to the core is critical. Everything depends on you successfully wresting control of the city from the Githyanki. Your exit is being secured, but we anticipate it to be Taffeta Thistletop's flying ship.”

“You may wish to do this…” Sorrel thought. “I will not return to Fort Ettin without Coll – I can never look Velania in the face again if I fail. We will succeed in both missions. And we will not die. Love is more important than victory. I have learned this now.” And she patted the note by her heart. “But there cannot be love if we do not win.”

They sat in the performance room on the second floor of the north east tower – Celina, the tiefling who purported to be an apple seller and why not? It wasn’t Sorrel’s business. There was Kelne and Laurel, two halfling clerics she noted with wry amusement, although Laurel, she supposed, was more the druid. Then there was Felix, the sharp tongued, hard fighting bard and Grimes of the Watch, a world weary paladin with endless years of sorrow in the depths of his heavy eyes.

Siting a few feet away was Xeron – the… whatever it was that was occupying Coll’s body, eyes glowing blue with a strange band around their head where Sorrel could see what appeared to be – but clearly can’t have been – a faint model of Gadenthor scudding through the night.

Ynade, apparently a fiend but looking like a tall, blonde powerhouse in a dress that just about leaned towards the skin-tight and escaped the skimpy, was impatient for the fight. She strode around the room, sheathing and unsheathing two glowing blades.

Moving in and out of the room as they prepared were the Wings of Luthic, the nimble, deadly flying orcs lead by the mighty Beatride. Sorrel met Beatride’s eyes now and then, and small smiles passed between them. The humiliation of the Dawnlanders and their clumsy recruitment strategy still made the orcs snigger on occasion, but Beatride was a noble warrior and Sorrel enjoyed discussing the complications of airborne warfare.

“We’re not staying in Gadenthor,” Beatride warned her. “We will punch a hole in their defence and peel back into the battle.” She licked her lips. “There’s good killing out there when your opponents are this strong.

Sorrel wished they would stay. She had been delighted when she discovered the Wings of Luthic were with them. They were invincible.

Outside the storm bellowed and buffeted the walls of the fort. The glass dome on the floor above shattered in the fierce winds. At midnight the doors were barred to keep Xeron’s position a secret.

And so, they waited.

Gradually they picked up the sounds of battle above the winds. They could hear the screams of the defenders, the thunder of the ballistae and above all the roaring of dragons. The thunder of the beast’s fury soon drowned out the passion of the storm until it seemed that the very stones of Fort Ettin must be glowing with their fire.

Ynade’s impatience was catching, and the team began to stir, rising and stretching, moving to the doors to hear a little better.

Sorrel just sat cross legged on the stone floor, resting, conserving her strength, running through her drills, and letting thoughts of Silvia drift through her mind every now and then. She watched the others itching for combat. For once, she wanted the fight to be over so she could walk through Silvia’s door and smell the smoke in her hair.

Finally, it was time. Above them, the thud of a creature, the dracolich.

Felix, who had been idly strumming, half spoke, half sung a tune that Sorrel had never heard before but seemed to have always known.

“I must not fear,” his voice was soft. “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Sorrel felt the warmth of some magic pass into her blood and rose to her feet, ready for the trial. She met her companion’s eyes. No words were spoken, but in that moment she knew them.

Glass crunched and low rumble echoed from above. “Are we going? I’m not a taxi.”

The stepped lightly upstairs into an empty room. “It’s a good thing I’m an undead being powered only by arcana and hatred or I’d have trouble carrying all of you,” the voice boomed. “Right, you should be invisible I suppose.”

For a second the speaker appeared as they dropped their own invisibility to recast the spell. There stood a dragon who was a skeleton who was a lich with three heads, four pairs of wings, five different tails, a hydra head…

And then they had all vanished.

“Climb inside,” the voice rumbled. Sorrel felt out the curve of the beasts rib cage and wedged herself between two vast bones, roping herself in for safety as a rushing noise suggested mighty wings were beating the air.

They were moving fast, buffeted by wind, and Sorrel could see the battle laid out below them.

The fort was beset from every side with rank upon rank of Githyanki foot soldiers advancing in formation.

Dragon riders climbed, soared, banked and dived down with fire bursting from the beasts mouths. Ballistae flung back a defence, bursting into flames as the dragons roared low overhead.

Sorrel could not believe the overwhelming power brought to bear by the Githyanki. She had seen dragons in battle before but not in serried ranks, spread across the sky like a thousand squads of cavalry.

We cannot win this, she realised. Unless Xeron takes the city, the Fort is doomed.

And then her thoughts returned to the party as Ormund banked and dived, dodging bolts of lightning as they crackled past.

Gadenthor slowly loomed into view above them, crawling across the sky as dragons wheeled and screamed around it.

She watched in awe as the Wings of Luthic darted across the sky, striking out in what could almost seem to be random attacks. Six of them descended on one dragon and turned it into mincemeat in seconds before shooting off to the next one. It was only from within Ormund that Sorrel could see their carefully concealed pattern – taking out anything that might threaten their path to the city, whilst hiding the fact that anything else was moving in the sky.

“By the goddess, but that’s fighting,” Sorrel breathed, as Beatride flew into the jaws of a vast ancient red dragon, taunting it to follow her into an ambush that sliced the wings from the beast and sent it spiralling into the rocks below.

Finally, probably two hours after midnight, Ormund alighted on the roof of an old warehouse at the edge of the city. Overhead, the storm thundered and blazed.

Sorrel could see foot patrols working the streets, but there was surprisingly little Githyanki presence.

As they disembarked, the Wings of Luthic peeled off and dived towards Fort Ettin. 

Ormund spat. “I’m an eternal being not a ferry. I hope we never meet again.”

Then he roared a challenge so loudly that the bones of the city shook. “Younglings, you are nothing. Fight a real dragon you pitiful wyrms,” Ormund flickered into visibility and three dragons rose from their guardhouses and flew towards him, each one annihilated in second.

The party slipped down into the warehouse where a skeleton in a wheelchair clad in the finest robes was waiting.

“It is I, Comerath Merroska,” the skeleton was speaking in her head. There was silence.

“Comerath Merroska!” it repeated.

Another long beat.

“I have been fighting the Gith for 1000 years. You’re welcome. Now, where’s the weirdo?”

Xeron stepped forward. “We must get to the cardium arcane and be reunited with the core – then we shall be in control and evict these thieves.”

As it walked towards the door Sorrel asked, “just in case you have a nasty fall, any chance you could sketch us a map?”

--

Sorrel transformed herself into a Githyanki officer with drow magic and walked ahead, dodging aside when patrols threatened to cross the party’s path. At one point Xeron sniffed the wind and said “Coll’s soul resides in this city. You may wish to recover that soul.”

Ynade groaned and fell, her skin ripping as a nine foot tall succubus rose from the feeble human form.

“You need to track a soul do you? I don’t mean to toot my own horn but tracking this body’s soul… couldn’t be easier.”

She sniffed Coll’s body. “Oh that’s a good one, I can track that through a thunder storm.”

“Which is fortunate,” said Felix, “as we appear to be in one.”

“It’s roughly in the same direction,” Ynade summarised.

“It is worth saying the situation could be volatile,” Xeron added.

“What do they mean?” Sorrel turned to the bony mage.

“Xeron is a collective of past mages of Gadenthor,” Comerath shrugged. “I’m hazy on the details. I just lived here. Do you care who organises the rubbish disposal where you live? It’s an amalgam of souls and magic. I suspect if you find Coll’s soul you can put the two near each and they have a tendency to snap back together.”

“A tendency?” Sorrel raised an eyebrow. “I’d prefer something a little more definite if we’re making tactical decisions.”

“We will find Coll first,” said Grimes, with the authority of a soldier.

--

It was a huge building, and looked as if it might have been a hospital many centuries ago.

They moved carefully through the pitch black, Laurel’s magic trapping every noise they made.

At the top of a flight of stairs they could see a light ahead, spilling out of a single door.

“Shall we charge?” Ynade drew her weapons.

“Could we scout it first?” Sorrel suggested, indicating her Gith uniform.

Felix nodded, vanished and the two moved softly forwards.

They reached the door and Sorrel saw four gith warriors and three better armoured knights with wands in their scabbards sitting around a table spinning a light blue gem about the size of tankard.

They all turned to look at Sorrel.

“Is this interrogation room one?” she barked.

“You came for your own first,” one of the mages beamed. “How predictable.”

Over the sound of Gith weapons being drawn, Sorrel heard a ferocious boom, as if a thundercloud had descended on the room.

Felix winked into view and stepped back as waves of noise flung the standing Gith back against the walls. Some held steady, others were badly hurt.

Ynade pushed past Sorrel, charged one warrior and sliced him into mincemeat in seconds.

Sorrel saw the gem flying across the room, bouncing under the force of the dissipating thunder. She invoked the assassins step, moving between the photons of light with deft fey whispers so none could see her, leaped for the gem, caught it with the fingers of her right hand, then backflipped in the air, hit the ground running and was through the door and heading towards Xeron before Ynade’s victims flesh had finished squelching to the floor.

Behind her, she heard a barrage of spellfire traded in and out of the room – flames and smoke drowning the clang of swords and battleaxes.

She saw Xeron ahead of her and winked into view two steps away. They saw her and guessed her intent, twisting to avoid her fist as she plunged the gem into their chest.

The gem glowed brightly then fell to the floor, a cold rock.

Xeron staggered back and collapsed.

Kelne came rushing up. “What have you done?”

“Either the smartest or the dumbest move I could have made,” Sorrel looked at them as Xeron twitched on the ground, slowly rising to their feet.

--

The cardium arcane took Sorrel by surprise. The room seemed almost infinite – stretching high up as if it was reaching out to the clouds and sinking down so low its floor, if it had one, was lost in darkness way beyond her sight.

A long stone bridge brooked the chasm, reaching a towering statue of a strange, cold figure, all angles, muscles and shining metal.

An array of githyanki filled the bridge and the steps around the statue - warriors, knights and mages.

One mage, clearly mightier than the rest, watched them enter and roared with laughter. “The more I threatened the Fort, the more they assigned to its defence,” she cried. “It’s so delicious that this tiny handful of fools is all they have sent to stop me. I am Grand Commander Nomina,” she barked at them. “And mine is the last face you will ever see.”

Sorrel wasn’t having this.

“When I cut your face off and stretch your skin across my shield, then yes, you may be the final face I see but that will be many years from now.”

Nomina nodded thoughtfully. “Nice line,” she waved her arms in command. “Kill them.”

“My objective is that big statue,” Xeron’s voice sounded in their heads.

Here we go then, Sorrel thought as she hauled back her bowstring and imbued the arrow with lighting fey magic. She picked a commander surrounded by troops and set the arrow to burst in their chest. It flew forward and she followed up rapidly with two more before checking, with some satisfaction, the damage caused. The knights were just staggering long enough for a lightning bolt from Felix to finish them off on its way to Nomina.

Then Grimes shouted “if this fails, forgive me,” grabbed Xeron and vanished.

The room held its breath.

Suddenly Grimes and Xeron were at the statue, and Xeron thrust their arm into the golden form. Colls body dropped to the ground.

Laurel flickered into an eagle and flew across the chasm to hover above Grimes as Celina hurled magic at the Gith’s feet, and Grimes held off the blades of the surging warriors.

Nomina suddenly spoke with cold authority and Sorrel almost knelt before her. “I am your commander,” she addressed Xeron. “I am the rightful ruler of this city.”

Sorrel was certain this was true. But Xeron shook and continued their work.

Gith dropped to the ground behind her, weapons drawn. Ynade cried out the same claim, demanding Xeron turn the city over to her.

Again the certainty, again Xeron shook off the magic and worked on.

From then on, Sorrel knew that victory was theirs.

Ten githyanki knights charged through a doorway to fall on Ynade’s swords.

A young red dragon lurking beneath the bridge roared out to attack them, flying towards Sorrel’s dragon slaying arrow with its jaws flung wide, the spark of flame forming as the enchanted shaft struck home and it fell from the sky.

Celina’s sword danced death to the clumsy gith warriors.

Grimes shield held true, and his blows were mighty.

Laurel swooped low in attack and in healing, keeping Grimes and Coll safe from harm.

Kelne bewildered their foes, sending them this way and that, but always to their doom.

Felix blazed power into the collapsing ranks of their foe.

Finally, as the scale of their defeat became clear, the githyanki began to retreat, winking out with magic into whatever plane they came from.

Commander Nomina was the last to leave, sending her troops away and stepping towards a magical portal when Felix shook his fist and cried FARSTEP!

The gate closed and Nomina was trapped. She turned towards them and for a second Sorrel braced for her attack, then the Commander bowed her head and held out her empty hands. Sorrel walked forward and plucked Silvia’s manacles from her backpack to secure Nomina’s wrists. Silvia had infused them with a little magic, enough to restrain an exhausted Nomina. Sorrel smiled at the memory of the first time they had met, how Silvia had manacled her to save her from the Hunger Spirit.

As Xeron reached the climax of their transfer, Comorath stepped forward and spoke over the final words that restored control. “As the sole living resident of the city, I demand to be recognised as the rightful ruler of Gadenthor!”

Alarm spread through the party. How had they not seen this coming?

Xeron’s eyes flickered back into their head, accessing records. We recognise your rights to this city.

Then Coll’s voice forced itself from Xeron’s lips – “no no no, I think you’ll find that I have spent the last several months not idly standing by. I have property now – I am the landlord of every tavern. I am the largest landowner in Gadenthor and as such I am the rightful ruler.”

Xeron’s eyes flickered again, then opened.

Greetings Coll, we recognise you as the rightful ruler of this city.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Comorath cried. “I have spent literally 1000 years in a sauna waiting for this and some barman snakes the ancient Netherese city out from under my nose!”

“To be fair,” Celina said reasonably, “you don’t actually have a nose.”

Comorath turned to look at her. “There is literally nothing I can say that can top that, damn you,” he seethed. ‘You steal my city AND my closing line.”

“But what are we going to do about Coll?” Laurel asked.

--

They walked carefully through deserted streets. Sorrel had an arrow nocked and moved a few feet ahead checking every junction. Grimes held Commander Nomina’s arm as he marched her along. His grip was gentle but firm, Sorrel noted. He treated his prisoner with respect, despite his weary, angry, hard set face.

Kelne and Laurel moved through the party, healing and soothing. Celina strode in silence, her eyes darting left and right. Suddenly she stopped.

“When did Ynade leave?”

The party stood facing each other, brows knotted. Nomina shook her head and tried not to laugh. “I can’t believe you beat our finest then accidentally lost a succubus… how do you do that?”

Grimes spun her to face him and the words died on her lips as she looked deep into his eyes.

Then he turned back. “We will have to tell them the truth about Coll, if anyone fully understands it,” he sighed. “And Ynade may trouble us yet. I just hope Coromorath…”

He let the thought drift as Taffeta’s skiff glided to a stop at the city’s edge. Sorrel counted them all on board then turned and her eyes searched the waning gloom, hoping against hope that Coll would emerge and join them.

“Come Sorrel,” Kelne called softly. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

--

As they coasted slowly to the ground they could see the havoc wreaked by the conflict. Here and there small squads of dragons fought desperate retreats against platoons of centaurs, which roamed the battlefield picking off the stragglers and looting the bodies.

The ground was blackened and split, like an alien moon, and bodies lay everywhere.

As Sorrel clambered off the skiff she could hear Aurelia calling out the roll call of the missing or dead. Sorrel searched the crowd for Silvia, her arms already shaping themselves to hold her slender frame.

“Sammy Plumbstead,” Aurelia read from a scroll and Sorrel felt Celina reel beside her. “Silvia, Bally of the Three Headed Ettin, Qirliria the Bright…”

Sorrel gave a little laugh. For a second she thought Aurelia had said Silvia. They’d laugh about that later.

Then her soul caught up with the truth and she fell to her knees heaving and weak, holding back the bile that rose in her throat.

“…Oriloki Manyvoices of the Daring Academy, Ventria of the Errant Guard…”

The sky cried, the rain coming down hard over her and she felt Silvia in every drop. It was as if even the heavens knew she belonged on Earth.

“…Cane Clovenstep of the Errant Guard, Chloris Skysplitter of the Errant Guard, James Tanner of Fort Daring…”

Look, she thought. The trees are dead. Blackened in sympathy. Charred by the same enemy. Like soldiers lining the funeral parade. And I who did not die, who am still living, still standing in the dawn light behind all my questions, clenching and opening one small hand.

…”Vwyk of the Frog Bog, Silas Potsworth - Chef of Fort Ettin, Danse Macabre of the Carnival of Dreams…”

Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this - the fires and the black river of loss. All I can hear are kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken, hearty meals left uncooked, uneaten.

“… The Willowmaid (Nasiphe) of fiore popolare, Derek Stoneglass, Priest of Primus, Lady Antonia du Montpasse of the Sword of the Dawn, Lady Cheryn Hale…”

And Sorrel ran.

It was black, the darkness again.

She passed into silence.

--

Much later she recalled standing at the moats edge, staring into the deep, cool water, through small break in the filth and dirt. Down there it was peaceful. Down there, trouble had flown.

Aurelia was walking out of the Fort towards her waiting coach and saw her.

“Sorrel, there you are,” she called. “I just wanted to confirm, there isn't really any loot for this job - you and the team prevented Gadenthor from becoming a Githyanki City-Ship, a Fiendish Hellhole in Carceri, or the resurgence of the Netherese Empire. You did a good job. To pay you… it would seem an insult.”

Sorrel bowed her head in agreement and turned away.

She watched the sun climb slowly into the sky, spreading its light across desolate broken lands.

Your soul is away from mine, she thought, locked in some dark house I cannot see. But there is a window open from my heart to yours.

From this window, like the moon, I keep sending news secretly.