S12 Finale The Coup - 06/06 - Sorrel
Jun 17, 2023 16:24:29 GMT
Velania Kalugina, Andy D, and 1 more like this
Post by stephena on Jun 17, 2023 16:24:29 GMT
It was hot. Sorrel knew from hot. She’d fought in full chain mail in the dunes of Anauroch, for the six months it took to dislodge the Phaerimm - extremely powerful magic-using creatures, nearly all teeth, claws, and tail - but still. Her teeth were on edge. Her armour was chafing. Something felt… wrong.
Towards the end of the afternoon she was called by a council messenger and told she had been selected to go to Kul Goran.
“I will head to the temple and pack,” Sorrel nodded. “How many days?”
“You must go now,” the messenger’s voice was urgent.
“I am, the temple is just over there,” Sorrel pointed to the vast building about an arrows flight away.
“No, to Kul Goran, now, don’t pack, don’t wait, go now,” and the messenger fled.
So it was no surprise to find Keros and Sparks lounging by the portal. “Destiny is a bitch,” she grimaced.
Two new faces - Longwalker, a firbolg warlock, tall and thin, with messy brown hair, looking like they’d just woken up, and Rykan, a dwarf who seemed to be suppressing unbounded rage, was almost hidden by a vast collection of armour and weapons – were listening to Keros account of the situation.
“I mean, it does sound confusing,” Sorrel nodded. “Who do we kill?”
At which point the portal was activated and a deathly cold seeped through her skin into her core. She felt the familiar vertigo, and suppressed the rising vomit as her stomach compressed and expanded. Then she stepped out on other side and regained control of her senses.
--
She was in a high ceilinged room built with heavy stone walls, lined with torches which, though plentiful, were outnumbered by heavily muscled minotaurs. As the party shook the nausea of travel from their souls, the guards pointed to a far door.
“Thank you for coming,” one voice grated like great chambers of rock booming as a mine collapsed into their endless void. “The war council is ready to receive you.”
The War Council room was impressive, even for Sorrel, who had spent a year in strategic planning in the House High Tower, where quarter sized models of most of the known world were constantly updated by teams of scouts and scrying parties. Kul Goran’s map room relied on illusion magic, with stacks of older, paper maps lining the walls. At the huge central table, where a moving image of Kul Goran seen from high above constantly scrolled, she could see the commanders – an air genasi; older, pale skin, white hair and beard summoning illusions and scrolling away; an arch mage, Senator Rhodes from the giant wyrm job; someone Keros identified as Senator Marius Warborn; a slight female air genasi hovering over the table “Leena Breeze-on-the-Water,” Keros whispered; and a very old minotaur with white hide in military uniform leaning over table.
All of them looked up as the party entered the room.
“Thank you for coming at such short notice,” Senator Rhodes smiled. “This is General Cassius Razorback, Leena Breezy Breeze-on-the-Water, Senator Marius Warborn and Nikolaus Morwing. Forgive me abandoning the pleasantries and allow me to summarise what has happened.”
The party settled around the table, craning their necks to see the ever moving illusion.
“Jarvenol city,” Rhodes pointed out. “A hotbed of support for the conservative faction and the paramilitary Behooved. We’ve lost communication completely. That is very concerning. If the conservatives have lost patience, they will be preparing for war. They must know they can’t hold the city forever. We have loyal forces on the march but we fear whoever is holding city may have some sort of plan.”
There was a brief pause and Rhodes cleared his throat.
“There is only one location of note in Jarvenol,” he looked at Keros. “You know this – we are today a republic governed by law not whim. We have discovered that most of our history is based on a lie. Our minotaur ancestors were sent to this land by Zariel, the archduke of Avernus, as part of her long game, opening a portal to allow her forces to invade and open a new front in blood war.”
Sorrel suddenly understood a lot more about Keros.
“Thanks to the Dawnlands we could thwart that plan,” Rhodes nodded gratefully at the small party. “We had sleeper agents among us, the Vanguard, who conducted the ritual to open the gates of Hell. After rooting them out we recovered that there is a structure under Jarvenol used by the Vanguard – the labyrinth beneath the city is the cathedral of the Vanguard. We think it may be the ritual site where the Vanguard opened the gates. Are they trying to repeat this? We think it is unlikely as the ritual is based on the blood magic of an entire war. But it is still a place of power, and we cannot let them complete whatever their plan is.”
The old mage was chuckling. “You realise how ridiculous this all sounds?” he shook his head. “An ancient order of devil worshippers is now serving as the ideal for a group of conservatives who want to return the country to the way it was before – so they are anti devil but using the devil, and they are in open rebellion. It’s madness.”
“Whatever is happening we have the 1st 3rd and 6th legions marching on Jarvenol,” General Razorback snarled. “But they may take too long. We have received reports of false orders. Armies have converged on Jarvenol. We don’t know how reliable our soldiers are. Usually ,we would send in genasi…”
“But most of our veterans died in Avernus and the Gith attack defending the Dawnlands,” Leena Breeze-on-the-Water spoke up. “The troops we have are not battle hardened.”
“This is insurrection,” Keros growled. “You require us to infiltrate?”
“We propose to send a strike team combining a unit of my men alongside you,” the guard commander spoke. “The guard will create a distraction by assaulting and capturing gatehouse. They will open the gate and defend it until reinforcements arrive. We hope that will distract attention sufficiently for you to enter the cathedral.
“I never assumed it could go this far,” the younger senator seemed on the verge of tears. “Whatever these traitors are up to that they would stoop so low to mingle with devils… you have the senate’s full support. Don’t hold back.”
“There is one more complication,” the general hesitated. “Lockdown includes teleportation into and out of the city. Getting to Jarvenol may be an issue.
With immaculate timing, a blonde elf in the most expensive clothes Sorrel had ever seen flung back the door and strode in. “It is I, Ambassador Girelle Veluss,” they proclaimed. “There is a private organisation that can facilitate our travel. A trading company recently opened an office on outskirts of city. This is our route.”
“Who are we looking for in the labyrinth?” Sorrel ventured.
"I bet my right arm Antonia will be there, a known agitator for the Behooved,” Warborn grumbled.
“And we tried to reach Kyra Storm, the most prominent of the conservative politicians and she has not replied,” Rhodes added.
“What does she look like?” Sorrel pulled out a notebook.
Keros placed his hand on her pen. “We have met,” he said grimly.
“And is there an exit strategy?” Sorrel concluded.
“The 6th will relieve us,” Keros insisted.
Sorrel totted up the odds. Potentially unreliable armed forces an unspecified distance from the city relying on a unit of the guard to hold a gate against sustained assault indefinitely whilst they explored a vast labyrinth designed to claw open the gates of Hell which would be occupied by paramilitary guards and powerful magic users.
“Today’s as good a day to die as any,” she shrugged.
“None better,” Sparks nodded.
--
They tumbled out of the teleportation circle in an empty warehouse in front of a nervous mage. From another corridor, a group of minotaurs and air genasi, as well as aerotaurs – a blend of the two native to Kul Goran – marched forward.
This was the Errant Guard
A female minotaur in an officer’s uniform nodded at Keros. “Ready for the fun?”
Sorrel checked her bowstring, pulling it lightly taught and feeling the weight rest in her hands. She counted her arrows, looked for broken arrowheads, drew and examined her rapier and collection of daggers and followed Keros out of the room.
The city walls towered above them like a range of broken mountains blocking out the light. Sorrel could see patrols moving on the walls. It was clearly heavily fortified.
As the Errant Guard huddled, planning their strike, she murmured a few Sylvan words, calling fey shadows to coil around their party as they faced the wall, swallowing up the light and the sound that drifted from them until they moved like ghosts on the breeze.
The Errant Guard moved off, and the Dawnlanders approached the vertical stone. Sorrel admired the craft of the minotaur masons, but for a member of the House reclamation assault team who scaled the steel walls of the Citadel of Thaymount to liberate a book from Szazz Tam’s library during a training run, it was as carefully laid out as a garden ladder and she swarmed to the top as if on a morning stroll.
It took the others a little longer but eventually they were on the street and casting such magicks as would disguise them all as minotaurs.
The wind howled along the narrow high walled road as they prepared, almost knocking them flat if they weren’t paying attention. Above the sun was the colour of bad blood and murder. It was a death day.
And then Sparks cleared his throat a little nervously. “My spell has certain limits in terms of disguising,” he nodded. “There’s what you might call a height limit. No more than a metre either way.”
Sorrel, who was casting the same spell on herself shrugged. So what, she almost said before she realised she was look down on the perky kenku and Rykan the dwarf by his side.
“Ah…”
“I could sit on your shoulders Rykan, if Keros would lend us his redcoat?”
Sorrel assumed not only that this would fail but that Keros would be unwilling to… but no. The coat was swapped and like an upright pantomime horse with a bird’s head that’s been magically transformed into a snorting bulls face the crime against sanity waddled along the street with the rest of the party.
Sorrel poured every drop of her fey blood into the spell of concealing, as she doubted they’d fool a blind minotaur with its head stuck in a giant watermelon. Keros read his map well, though, and soon she was picking locks in an unassuming street door.
As the door swung open, however, the draft of air that roared up felt like the breath of doom from the maw of a monster. The stairs opened into a cellar that seemed almost organic, like the stomach of a beast, with every path that lead away from it emanating despair.
They passed into a vast hall carved from the bedrock with mighty statues of minotaurs in each corner that towered over them like giants from before the time of the gods. The floor and walls were time worn stone, but each minotaur bore a crimson and gold mask that seemed to have been freshly carved from the bones of Avernus. The party seemed smaller than children’s toys alongside them, their ambitions petty against the statues might and majesty.
There were four statues, four walls, four doors. All identical. And as they passed into the second room, Sorrel realised the trap – every room was the same. The same size, the same décor, the same carvings… it was as like to be a mausoleum as a cathedral for nothing could guide any casual wanderer.
Keros had the map and the labyrinth dwellers wits, and Sorrel was used to tracking targets in unpromising environments. She could sport the tiniest marks and scrapes in the floor, or a wispy line in the eons of layered dust that she noted and stored in case they returned to the same room again.
It was hard to be sure how fast time was passing. Every now and then they heard the rhythmic crash of a heavily armed patrol off in the distance. Sometimes they came closer and one seemed about to step into their chamber but the silence protected them and the stomping feet marched on.
Gradually the need for map reading and tracking faded as a low hum rose, at first almost imperceptibly, deep, deep below them - a rhythm, exceedingly faint, like the pulsing of a lifeless heart. As they descended through the vast maze, it grew into the chanting of many voices. Keros began moving faster. Some new and wild note had acted on him in a startling fashion and with a wild cry he forged ahead in the cavern’s gloom.
Then two stone doors, quickly flung aside, opened into an enormous chamber that soared above them so far that it seemed as if they had been clambering several miles into the depths. Proud pillars etched with obscene runes rose out of their sight into the gloom above, that seemed to boil and swirl like clouds on the verge of a thunderstorm.
The circular chamber was carved with strange markings across the floor and had a low parapet around its walls on which stood statues of armoured minotaur warriors and within which strange glowing orbs drifted in an arcane pattern. Every orb held a black clad minotaur cultist, chanting foul summoning words that grated on Sorrel’s ears like a saw on living bone. In the centre, there was one stationary globe, larger than the rest, where a priest or wizard in ceremonial robes – an aertoaur, Sorrel could see through the walls of light - carrying a large leatherbound book, one hand twitching in incantation.
“Kyra Stuurm,” Keros hissed. “And Antonia.”
Stuurm’s eyes flickered towards us and she paused her ritual to howl ‘intruders! We are discovered! They cannot interrupt us. Get help. Destroy them.”
As she spoke, the statues on the parapet turned their heads and observed the party. Whether they were statues or armour clad living creatures, they crashed their spear butts to the ground with a great shout. Across the chamber, a female minotaur – Antonia, Sorrel presumed – pushed open another set of doors, calling for guards.
Keros bellowed across the room, his powerful voice drowning out the massed ranks of chanting. “Antonia Warborn… how fare’s your mother?”
Antonia froze then turned to glare at him, her teeth grinding in fury.
“She was brave enough to stand. Her daughter, the coward, prefers to flee,” Keros sneered.
With a howl of rage, Antonia tore the stone balustrade apart with her bare hands and for a second seemed ready to leap forward, then turned and vanished.
Sorrel felt rather than saw the minotaur guards thundering towards them. She was watching Keros, who seemed to be drawing intricate patterns in the air with his hands as watched the glowing platforms weave in their intricate patterns.
“I have it!,” he cried. “To the centre!”
And as one gleaming platform drew near, he leaped through the arcane field and shoulder charged the terrified cultist.
Sorrel was frozen with indecision. Stuurm was well within range of her bow but as Longwalker loosed a spell into the protective field and had it thunder back towards him she calculated the platforms were well protected.
She span right, raised her bow and sent three arrows, crackling with the power of the storm, into a charging minotaur, who stumbled and fell to one knee.
Stuurm screamed above the crash of steel. “You fools, this is not what it looks like. I’m trying to save people.”
Stuurm’s hands flickered and a bolt of lighting bolt stretched out towards Sorrel like a dragon’s tongue. Her reflexes cut in and she was moving before the bolt was half way across the chamber, but it still seared her side and she winced briefly then fitted another arrow to her bow.
Before she could loose it, Sparks touched her head – “vanish sister,” he murmured and Sorrel could no longer see her arms and legs… or indeed Sparks himself. A more powerful bending of the light than she had ever managed. She nodded respectfully before realising the pointlessness of her gestures.
Behind her, Rykan hurled himself forward in a wild attack at one of the mightier Behooved. Sorrel could see his rage and power but could tell his skills were fledgling – a new made warrior against deadly forces.
Before she could join him, the doors of the chamber crashed open and Behooved warriors streamed in. Sorrel’s bow string hummed, bolts of power shot from where she assumed Sparks to be, Longwalker spread death and Rykan rained blows as Keros made leap after careful leap on his way towards the centre.
Stuurm’s voice was still booming, but seemed softer, more persuasive somehow. “I can end this civil war,” she was almost pleading as she engulfed sparks in a small electric storm.
Sorrel, Sparks and Rykan formed a defensive redoubt trying to hold their point of entry. Sparks blasted a minotaur that came through that very door, Rykan shattered the helm of another and Sorrel took a deep spear wound, almost faltering, before sending three shafts into the eye of the beast that attacked her.
Longwalker was making his way after Keros but, for some reason, Sorrel found herself wondering what the point was.
This violence was such a waste.
If everyone in this room came together they could show the world that peace was the way. All creatures could live together under the gentle guidance of the beautiful Kyra Stuurm.
She shook her head and grasped her bow a little tighter. The awful truth was dawning. This ritual was no simple gate to the abyss – this was an attempt to control the minds of an entire nation… to deliver every minotaur into Kyra’s hands as a devoted army.
She caught sight of Keros and realised he must have felt this too. His face was in turmoil as his passion for the old ways and joy in the new struggled against each other. He screamed in fury at one of the Behooved in a elaborate armour – “the 6th legion shall never betray their colours” – and gouged his spear through his foes chest with a single stroke.
Then he hurled himself onto Kyra’s platform, goring her with his steel tipped horns, the muscles of his powerful neck and shoulders rippling and tensing as he twisted home.
“It was going to be so simple,” Stuurm’s voice was weaker. “They were all going to agree with me, no-one would have to die at all.”
Sorrel dodged one spear strike but a second drove into her thigh. She took out another minotaur but saw two others rise over its corpse into Sparks explosive magic.
“All I wanted was to end this before it starts,” Stuurm’s voice was trailing away. She sat in the centre of her platform watching her lifeblood drain away. “Now look at us,” she raised her eyes to Keros. “Look what you made us do.”
As her mind was shaken free, the platforms started crashing into the walls and ceiling, and great stones tumbled from above.
The Behooved turned and thundered through the door Antonia had fled through.
Sorrel unstrapped ropes and with Rykan’s help pulled Longwalker and Keros up onto the balustrade. Then they ran for our lives as the ritual chamber of the cathedral of the vanguard was buried in mountains of ruble.
--
After hours picking their way through the darkness, they felt a waft of fresh air and eased themselves out onto the street.
As they paused for breath, a crash of armoured hooves behind them sent their hands scrambling for weapons but the soldiers were flying the banners of the Republic.
Leena lead the unit forward and they came sharply to attention.
“I’ve had the strangest daydream – that we would have been better off talking this out,” she seemed half caught in the dream. “Then it passed. I assume you had something to do with this. If they had succeeded Kyra would have controlled the country.”
What followed were medals and handshakes and kindly words from senators and generals. As Rhodes pinned a medal on Sorrel’s chest she bowed gratefully. “Honour from an honourable people is reward indeed,” she placed her hand on her heart.
She turned to Keros and was surprised to see pain etched into his face. “They gave us medals,” he gave her a twisted smile. “And now civil war is inevitable. Thousands are going to die.”
“No correct answers,” Sorrel recalled. There never were.
Towards the end of the afternoon she was called by a council messenger and told she had been selected to go to Kul Goran.
“I will head to the temple and pack,” Sorrel nodded. “How many days?”
“You must go now,” the messenger’s voice was urgent.
“I am, the temple is just over there,” Sorrel pointed to the vast building about an arrows flight away.
“No, to Kul Goran, now, don’t pack, don’t wait, go now,” and the messenger fled.
So it was no surprise to find Keros and Sparks lounging by the portal. “Destiny is a bitch,” she grimaced.
Two new faces - Longwalker, a firbolg warlock, tall and thin, with messy brown hair, looking like they’d just woken up, and Rykan, a dwarf who seemed to be suppressing unbounded rage, was almost hidden by a vast collection of armour and weapons – were listening to Keros account of the situation.
“I mean, it does sound confusing,” Sorrel nodded. “Who do we kill?”
At which point the portal was activated and a deathly cold seeped through her skin into her core. She felt the familiar vertigo, and suppressed the rising vomit as her stomach compressed and expanded. Then she stepped out on other side and regained control of her senses.
--
She was in a high ceilinged room built with heavy stone walls, lined with torches which, though plentiful, were outnumbered by heavily muscled minotaurs. As the party shook the nausea of travel from their souls, the guards pointed to a far door.
“Thank you for coming,” one voice grated like great chambers of rock booming as a mine collapsed into their endless void. “The war council is ready to receive you.”
The War Council room was impressive, even for Sorrel, who had spent a year in strategic planning in the House High Tower, where quarter sized models of most of the known world were constantly updated by teams of scouts and scrying parties. Kul Goran’s map room relied on illusion magic, with stacks of older, paper maps lining the walls. At the huge central table, where a moving image of Kul Goran seen from high above constantly scrolled, she could see the commanders – an air genasi; older, pale skin, white hair and beard summoning illusions and scrolling away; an arch mage, Senator Rhodes from the giant wyrm job; someone Keros identified as Senator Marius Warborn; a slight female air genasi hovering over the table “Leena Breeze-on-the-Water,” Keros whispered; and a very old minotaur with white hide in military uniform leaning over table.
All of them looked up as the party entered the room.
“Thank you for coming at such short notice,” Senator Rhodes smiled. “This is General Cassius Razorback, Leena Breezy Breeze-on-the-Water, Senator Marius Warborn and Nikolaus Morwing. Forgive me abandoning the pleasantries and allow me to summarise what has happened.”
The party settled around the table, craning their necks to see the ever moving illusion.
“Jarvenol city,” Rhodes pointed out. “A hotbed of support for the conservative faction and the paramilitary Behooved. We’ve lost communication completely. That is very concerning. If the conservatives have lost patience, they will be preparing for war. They must know they can’t hold the city forever. We have loyal forces on the march but we fear whoever is holding city may have some sort of plan.”
There was a brief pause and Rhodes cleared his throat.
“There is only one location of note in Jarvenol,” he looked at Keros. “You know this – we are today a republic governed by law not whim. We have discovered that most of our history is based on a lie. Our minotaur ancestors were sent to this land by Zariel, the archduke of Avernus, as part of her long game, opening a portal to allow her forces to invade and open a new front in blood war.”
Sorrel suddenly understood a lot more about Keros.
“Thanks to the Dawnlands we could thwart that plan,” Rhodes nodded gratefully at the small party. “We had sleeper agents among us, the Vanguard, who conducted the ritual to open the gates of Hell. After rooting them out we recovered that there is a structure under Jarvenol used by the Vanguard – the labyrinth beneath the city is the cathedral of the Vanguard. We think it may be the ritual site where the Vanguard opened the gates. Are they trying to repeat this? We think it is unlikely as the ritual is based on the blood magic of an entire war. But it is still a place of power, and we cannot let them complete whatever their plan is.”
The old mage was chuckling. “You realise how ridiculous this all sounds?” he shook his head. “An ancient order of devil worshippers is now serving as the ideal for a group of conservatives who want to return the country to the way it was before – so they are anti devil but using the devil, and they are in open rebellion. It’s madness.”
“Whatever is happening we have the 1st 3rd and 6th legions marching on Jarvenol,” General Razorback snarled. “But they may take too long. We have received reports of false orders. Armies have converged on Jarvenol. We don’t know how reliable our soldiers are. Usually ,we would send in genasi…”
“But most of our veterans died in Avernus and the Gith attack defending the Dawnlands,” Leena Breeze-on-the-Water spoke up. “The troops we have are not battle hardened.”
“This is insurrection,” Keros growled. “You require us to infiltrate?”
“We propose to send a strike team combining a unit of my men alongside you,” the guard commander spoke. “The guard will create a distraction by assaulting and capturing gatehouse. They will open the gate and defend it until reinforcements arrive. We hope that will distract attention sufficiently for you to enter the cathedral.
“I never assumed it could go this far,” the younger senator seemed on the verge of tears. “Whatever these traitors are up to that they would stoop so low to mingle with devils… you have the senate’s full support. Don’t hold back.”
“There is one more complication,” the general hesitated. “Lockdown includes teleportation into and out of the city. Getting to Jarvenol may be an issue.
With immaculate timing, a blonde elf in the most expensive clothes Sorrel had ever seen flung back the door and strode in. “It is I, Ambassador Girelle Veluss,” they proclaimed. “There is a private organisation that can facilitate our travel. A trading company recently opened an office on outskirts of city. This is our route.”
“Who are we looking for in the labyrinth?” Sorrel ventured.
"I bet my right arm Antonia will be there, a known agitator for the Behooved,” Warborn grumbled.
“And we tried to reach Kyra Storm, the most prominent of the conservative politicians and she has not replied,” Rhodes added.
“What does she look like?” Sorrel pulled out a notebook.
Keros placed his hand on her pen. “We have met,” he said grimly.
“And is there an exit strategy?” Sorrel concluded.
“The 6th will relieve us,” Keros insisted.
Sorrel totted up the odds. Potentially unreliable armed forces an unspecified distance from the city relying on a unit of the guard to hold a gate against sustained assault indefinitely whilst they explored a vast labyrinth designed to claw open the gates of Hell which would be occupied by paramilitary guards and powerful magic users.
“Today’s as good a day to die as any,” she shrugged.
“None better,” Sparks nodded.
--
They tumbled out of the teleportation circle in an empty warehouse in front of a nervous mage. From another corridor, a group of minotaurs and air genasi, as well as aerotaurs – a blend of the two native to Kul Goran – marched forward.
This was the Errant Guard
A female minotaur in an officer’s uniform nodded at Keros. “Ready for the fun?”
Sorrel checked her bowstring, pulling it lightly taught and feeling the weight rest in her hands. She counted her arrows, looked for broken arrowheads, drew and examined her rapier and collection of daggers and followed Keros out of the room.
The city walls towered above them like a range of broken mountains blocking out the light. Sorrel could see patrols moving on the walls. It was clearly heavily fortified.
As the Errant Guard huddled, planning their strike, she murmured a few Sylvan words, calling fey shadows to coil around their party as they faced the wall, swallowing up the light and the sound that drifted from them until they moved like ghosts on the breeze.
The Errant Guard moved off, and the Dawnlanders approached the vertical stone. Sorrel admired the craft of the minotaur masons, but for a member of the House reclamation assault team who scaled the steel walls of the Citadel of Thaymount to liberate a book from Szazz Tam’s library during a training run, it was as carefully laid out as a garden ladder and she swarmed to the top as if on a morning stroll.
It took the others a little longer but eventually they were on the street and casting such magicks as would disguise them all as minotaurs.
The wind howled along the narrow high walled road as they prepared, almost knocking them flat if they weren’t paying attention. Above the sun was the colour of bad blood and murder. It was a death day.
And then Sparks cleared his throat a little nervously. “My spell has certain limits in terms of disguising,” he nodded. “There’s what you might call a height limit. No more than a metre either way.”
Sorrel, who was casting the same spell on herself shrugged. So what, she almost said before she realised she was look down on the perky kenku and Rykan the dwarf by his side.
“Ah…”
“I could sit on your shoulders Rykan, if Keros would lend us his redcoat?”
Sorrel assumed not only that this would fail but that Keros would be unwilling to… but no. The coat was swapped and like an upright pantomime horse with a bird’s head that’s been magically transformed into a snorting bulls face the crime against sanity waddled along the street with the rest of the party.
Sorrel poured every drop of her fey blood into the spell of concealing, as she doubted they’d fool a blind minotaur with its head stuck in a giant watermelon. Keros read his map well, though, and soon she was picking locks in an unassuming street door.
As the door swung open, however, the draft of air that roared up felt like the breath of doom from the maw of a monster. The stairs opened into a cellar that seemed almost organic, like the stomach of a beast, with every path that lead away from it emanating despair.
They passed into a vast hall carved from the bedrock with mighty statues of minotaurs in each corner that towered over them like giants from before the time of the gods. The floor and walls were time worn stone, but each minotaur bore a crimson and gold mask that seemed to have been freshly carved from the bones of Avernus. The party seemed smaller than children’s toys alongside them, their ambitions petty against the statues might and majesty.
There were four statues, four walls, four doors. All identical. And as they passed into the second room, Sorrel realised the trap – every room was the same. The same size, the same décor, the same carvings… it was as like to be a mausoleum as a cathedral for nothing could guide any casual wanderer.
Keros had the map and the labyrinth dwellers wits, and Sorrel was used to tracking targets in unpromising environments. She could sport the tiniest marks and scrapes in the floor, or a wispy line in the eons of layered dust that she noted and stored in case they returned to the same room again.
It was hard to be sure how fast time was passing. Every now and then they heard the rhythmic crash of a heavily armed patrol off in the distance. Sometimes they came closer and one seemed about to step into their chamber but the silence protected them and the stomping feet marched on.
Gradually the need for map reading and tracking faded as a low hum rose, at first almost imperceptibly, deep, deep below them - a rhythm, exceedingly faint, like the pulsing of a lifeless heart. As they descended through the vast maze, it grew into the chanting of many voices. Keros began moving faster. Some new and wild note had acted on him in a startling fashion and with a wild cry he forged ahead in the cavern’s gloom.
Then two stone doors, quickly flung aside, opened into an enormous chamber that soared above them so far that it seemed as if they had been clambering several miles into the depths. Proud pillars etched with obscene runes rose out of their sight into the gloom above, that seemed to boil and swirl like clouds on the verge of a thunderstorm.
The circular chamber was carved with strange markings across the floor and had a low parapet around its walls on which stood statues of armoured minotaur warriors and within which strange glowing orbs drifted in an arcane pattern. Every orb held a black clad minotaur cultist, chanting foul summoning words that grated on Sorrel’s ears like a saw on living bone. In the centre, there was one stationary globe, larger than the rest, where a priest or wizard in ceremonial robes – an aertoaur, Sorrel could see through the walls of light - carrying a large leatherbound book, one hand twitching in incantation.
“Kyra Stuurm,” Keros hissed. “And Antonia.”
Stuurm’s eyes flickered towards us and she paused her ritual to howl ‘intruders! We are discovered! They cannot interrupt us. Get help. Destroy them.”
As she spoke, the statues on the parapet turned their heads and observed the party. Whether they were statues or armour clad living creatures, they crashed their spear butts to the ground with a great shout. Across the chamber, a female minotaur – Antonia, Sorrel presumed – pushed open another set of doors, calling for guards.
Keros bellowed across the room, his powerful voice drowning out the massed ranks of chanting. “Antonia Warborn… how fare’s your mother?”
Antonia froze then turned to glare at him, her teeth grinding in fury.
“She was brave enough to stand. Her daughter, the coward, prefers to flee,” Keros sneered.
With a howl of rage, Antonia tore the stone balustrade apart with her bare hands and for a second seemed ready to leap forward, then turned and vanished.
Sorrel felt rather than saw the minotaur guards thundering towards them. She was watching Keros, who seemed to be drawing intricate patterns in the air with his hands as watched the glowing platforms weave in their intricate patterns.
“I have it!,” he cried. “To the centre!”
And as one gleaming platform drew near, he leaped through the arcane field and shoulder charged the terrified cultist.
Sorrel was frozen with indecision. Stuurm was well within range of her bow but as Longwalker loosed a spell into the protective field and had it thunder back towards him she calculated the platforms were well protected.
She span right, raised her bow and sent three arrows, crackling with the power of the storm, into a charging minotaur, who stumbled and fell to one knee.
Stuurm screamed above the crash of steel. “You fools, this is not what it looks like. I’m trying to save people.”
Stuurm’s hands flickered and a bolt of lighting bolt stretched out towards Sorrel like a dragon’s tongue. Her reflexes cut in and she was moving before the bolt was half way across the chamber, but it still seared her side and she winced briefly then fitted another arrow to her bow.
Before she could loose it, Sparks touched her head – “vanish sister,” he murmured and Sorrel could no longer see her arms and legs… or indeed Sparks himself. A more powerful bending of the light than she had ever managed. She nodded respectfully before realising the pointlessness of her gestures.
Behind her, Rykan hurled himself forward in a wild attack at one of the mightier Behooved. Sorrel could see his rage and power but could tell his skills were fledgling – a new made warrior against deadly forces.
Before she could join him, the doors of the chamber crashed open and Behooved warriors streamed in. Sorrel’s bow string hummed, bolts of power shot from where she assumed Sparks to be, Longwalker spread death and Rykan rained blows as Keros made leap after careful leap on his way towards the centre.
Stuurm’s voice was still booming, but seemed softer, more persuasive somehow. “I can end this civil war,” she was almost pleading as she engulfed sparks in a small electric storm.
Sorrel, Sparks and Rykan formed a defensive redoubt trying to hold their point of entry. Sparks blasted a minotaur that came through that very door, Rykan shattered the helm of another and Sorrel took a deep spear wound, almost faltering, before sending three shafts into the eye of the beast that attacked her.
Longwalker was making his way after Keros but, for some reason, Sorrel found herself wondering what the point was.
This violence was such a waste.
If everyone in this room came together they could show the world that peace was the way. All creatures could live together under the gentle guidance of the beautiful Kyra Stuurm.
She shook her head and grasped her bow a little tighter. The awful truth was dawning. This ritual was no simple gate to the abyss – this was an attempt to control the minds of an entire nation… to deliver every minotaur into Kyra’s hands as a devoted army.
She caught sight of Keros and realised he must have felt this too. His face was in turmoil as his passion for the old ways and joy in the new struggled against each other. He screamed in fury at one of the Behooved in a elaborate armour – “the 6th legion shall never betray their colours” – and gouged his spear through his foes chest with a single stroke.
Then he hurled himself onto Kyra’s platform, goring her with his steel tipped horns, the muscles of his powerful neck and shoulders rippling and tensing as he twisted home.
“It was going to be so simple,” Stuurm’s voice was weaker. “They were all going to agree with me, no-one would have to die at all.”
Sorrel dodged one spear strike but a second drove into her thigh. She took out another minotaur but saw two others rise over its corpse into Sparks explosive magic.
“All I wanted was to end this before it starts,” Stuurm’s voice was trailing away. She sat in the centre of her platform watching her lifeblood drain away. “Now look at us,” she raised her eyes to Keros. “Look what you made us do.”
As her mind was shaken free, the platforms started crashing into the walls and ceiling, and great stones tumbled from above.
The Behooved turned and thundered through the door Antonia had fled through.
Sorrel unstrapped ropes and with Rykan’s help pulled Longwalker and Keros up onto the balustrade. Then they ran for our lives as the ritual chamber of the cathedral of the vanguard was buried in mountains of ruble.
--
After hours picking their way through the darkness, they felt a waft of fresh air and eased themselves out onto the street.
As they paused for breath, a crash of armoured hooves behind them sent their hands scrambling for weapons but the soldiers were flying the banners of the Republic.
Leena lead the unit forward and they came sharply to attention.
“I’ve had the strangest daydream – that we would have been better off talking this out,” she seemed half caught in the dream. “Then it passed. I assume you had something to do with this. If they had succeeded Kyra would have controlled the country.”
What followed were medals and handshakes and kindly words from senators and generals. As Rhodes pinned a medal on Sorrel’s chest she bowed gratefully. “Honour from an honourable people is reward indeed,” she placed her hand on her heart.
She turned to Keros and was surprised to see pain etched into his face. “They gave us medals,” he gave her a twisted smile. “And now civil war is inevitable. Thousands are going to die.”
“No correct answers,” Sorrel recalled. There never were.
