20


    And then the sun set on the Shortest Day, which now flowed into the Longest Night, a fulcrum of shifting powers and terrible portent. Strengthened Chaos squirmed free of its ancient bindings, spawning creatures of darkness and waking the violently dead.


    In troubled Karellon, the rubble-strewn ground first trembled, then cracked asunder as a massive tarrasque spawned and burst from concealment. Roaring like the storm at the end of the world, casting an aura of absolute terror, the titanic monstrosity rose to its full, awful height. Shattered buildings and screaming laborers rained from its armored flanks like dust. With a crashing flex of its spiked tail, the tarrasque demolished Karellon''s half-built palace and walls. Fires erupted and spread, setting shanties and tents ablaze all over the City.


    The creature''s frenzied bellowing cracked stone, shattered windows, rent steel.


    Its fanged mouth yawned wider, creating a tornadic vortex that sucked in mountains of rubble, fleeing oxen, terrified horses and dwarves. Only Sherazedan''s tower still hung in the sky, supported by nothing but magic and wards of defense; engulfed in lightning and flame, but never consumed.


    High Lord Arvendahl lunged from his silken pavilion; armoring up with a shouted spell. He leapt to the back of his rearing white unicorn, summoning the adamantine Spear of the Plains: Grassfire. Called his forces to battle with the Arvendahl rallying cry, projected onto the low, cloudy sky rather than spoken, for no one could hear over the monster''s continual bellows and shrieks. He was joined in the fight by three paladins and a seer of death.


    In Snowmont, a mad-eyed behir clambered out of the town''s deserted copper mine. Created by giants in the second age of the world, it had awakened to chaos and hunger and wrath. It crept into Snowmont now, seeking dragons to slaughter; dissolving all in its path with caustic juices and poisonous fumes.


    Kellen, Sandor and Arien raised the surviving town guards and a unit of elves, vowing to save their lord''s holding. As the behir slithered into the square like some slimy, acidic shadow, they were reinforced by the big male Tabaxi and Hilt, a scowling, dwarf shopkeeper.


    Over in Lobum, home of the wood-elves, a crippled, long-hidden green dragon convulsed as it rose from druidic concealment and sleep. Horns sounded and war bells rang out as the injured creature… just a torso, smashed head, one ragged wing and loose organs… began changing. Healing.


    They''d kept it alive all this time out of pity; an act of kindness the elves would very soon come to regret. As archers and spearmen formed up and druids prepared mighty spells, something shining and utterly good rose out of the distant plateaus. They would not fight alone.


    Further east, Starloft was all at once flooded with the animate corpses of drowned and crushed people, rising from mud and uprooted trees like a plague of undead mortals, darklings and elves. Still burning from the pyres or drenched with seawater, the awakened dead became ghouls, barghests, banshees or hobgoblins; all of them thirsty for spurting veins and warm flesh.


    Reston''s remaining troops, the noble beasts and wood-elves were quickly surrounded. Hemmed in on all sides by screeching and laughing undead. Then a portal opened up in their midst. Flickering, juddering and attacked by Chaos as soon as it formed, the gateway allowed Lady Alyanara, Lord Galadin and twenty-three others to cross from their plane. Didn''t last long. Was crushed by the gathering darkness, crumpled like burning paper onto those still trying to pass.


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    With the help of her divine mother, She-of-the-Flowers, Alyanara was able to save one or two. The rest discorporated, shrieking. Then there was only a long, bitter, back-to-back fight against a tide of undead that never stopped coming.


    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


    Down below, aware of all this through Firelord, Valerian grasped at ideas that scattered like the game pieces from an overturned board. Meanwhile, the Mother''s foul remnant had fully emerged.


    Gildyr shifted forms a few times, trying things on for size against a five-headed necrotic horror that boiled and seethed with stolen flesh and dried corpses. It hissed toxic fumes from each head but one, and from sphincters that tightened and gaped in its lumpy, mismatched hide.


    One neck, alone, did not end in the moldering head of some monster, giant or beast. One, the divine central neck, was topped by an oddly lovely, violet-eyed face. To meet that sorrowing gaze was to lose one''s will; to sense how very much She loved all of her stubborn, rebellious children. How much She only wanted to make them her own, forever.


    The druid wrenched his eyes away, then turned himself magically inside out with a last-chance, incredibly powerful spell. The chant caused irreversible transformation. All at once, there was no more gentle wood-elf. No druid. No peaceable vagrant. There was only a griffin; plumed in gold feathers, coarse hair and tough scales. Gildyr''s spark, his very self, faded entirely, overwhelmed by the hot, angry mind of a flying monster. His faerie pockets emptied all at a rush, spilling the bits and bobs of a quiet lifetime all over that littered and blood-spattered floor.


    Val wasn''t looking for battle. The opposite, rather. Taking to the air seemed like a good idea, though, and he still had all of that griffin tack along with the butt-end of slow time. Still wracking his mind for a non-violent plan, the journeyman mage misty-stepped over to his transformed friend, reaching into a pocket of his own.


    "By your leave, good druid," he said, bowing slightly, "I would request a brief ride, with the use of this bridle, for guidance."


    The griffin was very much taller than Valerian, who had to look up into that golden-eyed, fiercely-beaked face. Saw the last, drifting hint of Gildyr, there, as his friend became in truth what he''d recklessly summoned. Val''s heart clenched.


    "No…" he whispered, bereft of something he''d only just realized he''d had. "What have you done?"


    The griffin uttered a rattling screech, flexing great wings and lashing its dragon tail. Not attacking, because something within it remembered the high-elf. Trusted him... And the candle was burning to midnight.


    Somehow, Val got himself back together enough to strap that bridle on and fasten its buckles. No time for the saddle or harness. Just vaulted aboard, as he''d learnt to do in Mystical Steeds practice. Then powerful lion''s legs launched the great beast high into the air. The ground dropped and tilted away like a whirling trick floor. Up they climbed, higher and higher, slanting sideways to bring them over that simmering hydra.


    Down below, Salem felt her curse now as almost a separate entity; one that had long lived inside of her, controlling her fate since kittenhood. Not yet, but soon, it would emerge, rocking the plane on its crystalline hinges.


    Pretty One was healed; hauled back to life by potion and scroll. Had found her staff and gathered some manna. As the hydra''s foul zombie heads spewed poison and bile, as its beautiful central face whispered of love, Pretty One squeezed Salem''s hand, then let go. A sorceress, able to stand on her own.


    As for the ranger, she was still shaking off death. Still leaning hard on Frost Maiden, but reaching again for the weapons and strength of an arcane archer; defender of all who fled fire and steel and the hunt.


    "Draw no blood from the central head!" shouted Valerian, on griffin-back, now; swooping around for a pass at the monster. Glowing with the light of his god, he called out, "She must not be injured!"


    …and that''s when he came up with a notion.