Amdirlain’s PoV - Material Plane - Qil Tris - Year 4370 (Local calendar)
Roher smiled at Amdirlain’s mental touch. “You can follow the memory if you’d prefer.”
Coughing, Amdirlain gave a bashful smile. “Sorry, your public mind was projecting the scene as you composed yourself.”
“You spent too much time at the monastery,” commented Sarah.
“It is easier,” huffed Amdirlain.
Roher nodded. “If you would, share the memory with the others as well.”
“Are you sure?” enquired Amdirlain. “It was rude to touch your thoughts without your permission.”
Sarah snickered. “Don’t give in, Roher. She’s been exploiting the poor natives who can’t catch her.”
“It was an unpleasant day. Not having to put it into words would do me a kind service,” said Roher. “After all, you all deserve to know the full truth.”
Amdirlain nodded when she felt Roher open his mind wider and freely offer the memories.
* * * * *
The chamber had been within the purification field for weeks, yet the lingering corruption in the stone scratched the inside of his nose. The stagnant mildew within the abyssal rot tore at the knot in Roher’s stomach, and he had to push down the nausea spike. With Amdirlain’s advice niggling in his mind, for the first time in aeons he stopped filtering out his brethren. The complex themes of the hundreds before the tower erupted in his mind. As he took in the mixture of their strengths and flaws, the thousands within the building added to the burden within his developed Resonance. Those within were free from stasis, but its effects still lingered on their minds and made them groggy, and already sour notes sang from some. Suspicion and concern were spiking in many, but some of that Roher attributed to them hearing the abyssal stone.
Avoiding further delay, Roher teleported to where Erwarth stood before the tower door. His daughter loomed over him in full Solar form, wearing her golden armour with Amdirlain’s symbol. The lit candle surrounded by the shattered chains felt significant today, yet a candle’s flame is so fragile, and Roher had to take a steadying breath. For aeons he had filtered out the songs of others with all their shaded complexity; releasing the filter made them press unexpectedly.
“Everyone be on your guard. It seems there might be traitors within,” Roher repeated, despite being sure all had received the message.
Erwarth sighed. “I always thought my choir were the fools.”
“If there were already traitors, then all you did was deliver the instrument of oath, not set the stage,” Roher noted. “Shall we begin? Let’s take it calmly and keep an eye out for trouble. The priority is to get their majesties to destroy the instrument. We can’t risk it being removed from the tower.”
Stepping forward, Erwarth grasped the tower’s outer door handles and pulled on them. They didn’t shift for a moment, but with a flex of her wings showing the effort she applied, the massive doors started to move.
“Protected from songs and magic but not muscles,” murmured Erwarth as she continued to pull.
Roher nodded. “Be thankful the inner locks weren’t in place.”
When the doors unsealed far enough for Roher to see inside, the view matched what Resonance had shown him. The inner foyer was some thirty metres deep, with two large side doors and two doors at the chamber’s rear that led to a guard station. A dozen guards were in the inner foyer; some slumped on the ground in a daze while others leaned against walls. At the door’s opening, a guard pushed himself to his feet using his sheathed sword as a cane. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Choir Master Roher to see their majesties. We were betrayed; they need to hear what has occurred at once,” announced Roher.
The guard worked his head from side to side, the slightest cracking easing pressure in his neck. Silent notes carried a message away even as the guard raised a hand. “Wait.”
“Whoever you sent the message to might not be coherent enough to understand it,” cautioned Roher. “Time is important.”
Erwarth stepped into the gap and, with a burst of strength, added to the momentum of the shifting door. “Listen to where you are, Amathanar. This is not normal times, and we can’t wait on your chain of command.”
“How do you know who I am, Celestial?”
“I used to be Ewdil. We argued over many arcane matters,” stated Erwarth. “Consider the folly of a Celestial in the Abyss if it wasn’t vital.”
Amathanar looked at her in confusion, his befuddled mind working to identify her old features in the giantess before him. “How can you be Ewdil? I saw you leave scarcely an hour ago.”
“It’s been aeons, Amathanar,” Erwath said gently. “The tower’s strongest defences were activated by it being shifted to the Abyss. Listen, and you’ll hear their fading notes.”
Amathanar tilted his head and closed his eyes to focus, the lingering effects still playing havoc on his mind. Erwarth’s Angelic Aura activated, and Roher heard its energies bolster his body and mind. “I’ll likely get a thrashing, but if you can prove you''re Ewdil, I’ll escort you through.”
“I know you enough to know we’d argued in the past,” retorted Erwarth.
“All the guards have at least one Wizard Class, and wizards tend to argue,” countered Amathanar. “And I’m not at my best right now. You might have picked my name and yours from my mind.”
“If you were that vulnerable, we wouldn’t need to convince you at all,” argued Erwarth. “My name wouldn’t have been on your surface thoughts despite my—to you—recent visit. My visits to the tower were infrequent, and our arguments were thousands of years ago. If I could get deep enough to read rarer associations, I’d be deep enough to implant instructions.”
Amathanar inhaled to refute her statement. “I want to find a hole in that logic, but-”
“The Solar Tarlangeth betrayed us and fell; the situation needs their majesties to resolve it,” interjected Erwarth, her tone growing firm. “We were made to suffer while those in the royal tower drifted forward in time. Orhêthurin reincarnated and rescued us. She didn’t intrude now to avoid trouble and being overbearing. Please escort us through, Amathanar. Time could be critical.”
Amathanar’s mouth dropped, and nodding, he stepped off to one side and waved us towards the left-hand side. “We’ll need to go that way. The direct route is blocked, and I don’t have enough access to unseal it. I can hear where we are, and the purification songs.”
“It will still likely be faster than waiting for those who can,” said Roher. “Many minds will be suffering after being released from stasis.”
As Amathanar guided Roher and Erwarth towards the side door, knights and choirs swept into the tower, taking the foyer’s guards and those within the station into their care.
The column of knights and singers marched with Amathanar, Roher, and Erwarth at its forefront through wide, curving corridors of gleaming crystal. As they passed elaborately furnished rooms, they began to evacuate the tower’s inhabitants.
Three double doors, slightly smaller than the outer gates, eventually let them through to the throne room. The elaborate motif of the inner door split along the curving lines of the embossed grove landscape upon it. The canopy of trees and the curvature of the ground made for jagged interlocking edges that supported the door’s seal.
The high vaulted ceiling of the throne room stretched out for two hundred metres, ending at a three-tiered dais upon which the royal thrones sat. Along the sides a decorative facade of columns rose between three recessed galleries. The front lip of each was in line with the outer walls of the throne room itself to allow a relatively unobstructed view of proceedings. The angle let Roher see the galleries were all empty, unlike the main floor.
Even without counting the royal guards and their majesties, hundreds of people making up various choirs were spread along the main floor of the throne room. Many were dressed in attire suitable for battle, but others had dressed as if they were attending an elaborate social event despite days of battle being waged above the cities.
The time it had taken them to reach the throne room had allowed many within to recover and, while the royal guards had taken up their positions, the rest were milling about like colourful flowers that had ignored the tightening grip of the Leviathan and the accompanying dragons.
Around the monarchs stood a ring of knights clad head to toe in crystal armour of various hues. The royal couple wore more flexible armour—crystal plates backed with enchanted hides. The King’s helm sat upon his throne, leaving his silver hair free to spill across the black shoulder guards he wore atop his crystal scale mail.
When the throne room doors had opened, his emerald eyes had taken in those entering and, while he dismissed Erwarth, his gaze had fixed on Roher. Beside him Queen Sailatar, clad in green scale mail of similar make, had been sitting on a playing stool. The red floor harp before her hummed with the lingering strain of the recently supported barriers and she looked ready to recommence play. Her pale green hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, her cold, piercing blue eyes locked onto Erwarth’s symbol.
King Cunnion came down from the dais before the throne and raised his voice, his very tone pressing chattering groups into silence. “Choir Master Roher, would you explain how the Royal Tower and we came to be in the Abyss?”
“The agreement for help from the heavens was a trap, your majesties,” stated Roher. “I would explain further, but I would request you first annul the agreement and destroy the instrument of oath.”
Queen Sailatar kept her fingers from the strings, but the tension humming in her wrists showed her readiness to pluck sharp notes. “Given the tower’s location and your entrance with a contingent of followers, we will need more information.”
Cunnion beckoned them to come closer, and the guards about the dais stiffened.
A lady with electric blue hair elaborately coiffed and wearing a matching shimmering gown stepped forward from among those closest to the dais. Roher recognised her; Lady Maelben, a city architect and a fellow Choir Master.
“Indeed, how are we to know that it is not your devising that has brought us here?” asked Lady Maelben.
As she voiced her question, Erwarth strode down the throne room and radiated calming energy, clearing befuddled minds. Despite her help, many sour notes remained echoing within the room. “The Solar Tarlangeth, after the agreement was activated, moved us away from the conflict. She cast the entire Lóm? city into the Abyss; those who didn’t arrive within places of familial sanctum were bound to serve her purpose per the agreement.”
Many about the chamber hissed in disbelief, but Erwarth carried on. Roher fought through the unfiltered static to listen for those whose anger might betray a traitor but found only dismay and wounded pride amongst them.
“She fell for the deed, but the damage was done. Her purpose wasn’t to advance an agenda of good but to advance her power. Those she caught in the oath of service, she bound into demonic shells and slowly broke, making us undertake horrendous things to corrupt our souls.”
“That’s preposterous; who even is this being?” asked Maelben, and she waved dismissively at Erwarth as Roher took in the prideful, arrogant tone ringing through her.
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“If you’d truly listened to me, you’d know. You once knew me as Choir Leader Ewdil, though I’ve had several names inflicted on me since, and one I am now willing to use. The supposed offer of alliance was an elaborate trap to remove the Lóm? from the realm. The agreement currently binds any Lóm? leaving familial sanctum into the service of the Fallen Tarlangeth, who is known in present times as Lady Balnérith. She used us as pawns in a greater plan, Lady Maelben,” advised Erwarth.
Roher motioned to Erwarth and bowed again to their majesties. “My daughter and others endured much. It is from this Demon Lady’s service we beg you to free our people.”
“Chancellor, bring the instrument of accord from the vault,” ordered King Cunnion. “While it is brought, tell us more. I remember an hour of battle, and now, beyond a complex barrier, I can hear the sour horrors of the Abyss.”
Chancellor Tanwetamo had been leaning against a pillar on the left side of the throne room not far from the dais’ outer steps. He straightened and bowed at the King’s instruction but wobbled and had to lean against the wall. The slowness of his movements, a burbling brook iced over by the lingering temporal stamp. “My apologies, Your Majesty; I’ll need more time to recover myself.”
“Might some of our guards accompany the Chancellor?” asked Roher.
“For what purpose?” asked Cunnion with sudden suspicion.
Roher inclined his head respectfully. “We believe Balnérith, or Tarlangeth as you know her, might have duped pawns still in the tower. While they might take the foulness of the surrounding Abyss to review their allegiance, I’d rather be cautious.”
Scoffing, Maelben gave a sour laugh. “A likely story. Do you seek to steal something from the royal vaults? The council followed their majesties instructions to send away most of the contents, but some of the strongest artefacts of our people remain.”
As she went to continue, Queen Sailatar raised a hand and cut Maelben off. “Quiet, we will ask the initial questions. This is not a time for debate. How did you come by this information, Roher?”
When Roher hesitated, she frowned at the lack of an immediate response.
Searching for a way to cut down the complexity of the situation to speed them along, inspiration struck. Roher crossed his fingers and released Oír? Coivi? Nand? from his storage device. “Oír? Coivi? Nand?, would you speak about the direness of the situation? I need a witness against Tarlangeth, known as Balnérith.”
Oír? Coivi? Nand?''s strings ran, and the thrum of his voice filled the air. “Sailatar, my darling girl, it is true. The false-faced bitch betrayed the Lóm?. Queen Gailneth and the reincarnated Orhêthurin and Morivanesse have worked to rescue your people and you.“
A gong of tension struck the royal guards as Sailatar inhaled sharply, and the harp before her on the dais disappeared into a storage stone. “Oh Nand?, your melody tells me you’ve aged and suffered. Was I right to send you away with the servants?”
“You were, though not all the fleet made the distant lands; the vessel I departed on was sunk by Dragon fire. Queen Gailneth retrieved me from where I’d lain. I waited for aeons beneath the murk that enfolded the wreck,” Nand? sang. “The link between us let her and Orhêthurin locate where you’d been hidden.”
Sailatar stood to approach, and her knights formed a surrounding wall. Giving her another bow, Roher stepped back from Nand? to avoid obstructing the Queen or the knights.
“Wait, Roher, please attend us,” said Sailatar, and she walked towards him directly; the surrounding knights shifted their pattern, and their wave broke around Roher to shield them both.
“What else might I do to convince you?” asked Roher.
Cunnion came forward from the dais to stand beside Sailatar, and his guards joined the formation of the Queen’s. “What is our people’s plight at present?”
“We had been slowly slipping towards annihilation,” Roher said, the memory of the slow decay cracking his resolute tone. “I thought we’d be lost. We remain trapped in this foul place until your majesties could annul the agreement. Tarlangeth fulfilled the barest letter of the deal, but it was all a trap. She moved us all right onto a stage set for our destruction, which worked to torture and corrupt millions of our souls.“
“You have our thanks for your service to the people, Roher,” said Sailatar gently, kissing both cheeks. “We shall reward your endurance.”
“All the reward I need is for our families to reach the Material Plane again,” replied Roher. “Many did more; I speak to you today on their behalf.”
Explosions rang out from high above, and the crystal tower rang like a bell as the wards within collapsed.
“Traitors?” hissed Cunnion.
“None of the new arrivals have ascended beyond this level,” the Captain by his side reported. His theme was flush with fury, and he stabbed fingers towards groups of guards. “Seal the galleries. Let no one access them.”
Maelben glanced up and frowned. “There may be no need for such unseemly panic. The ward’s keystone collapsed. If we were drifting through time, it would have been under constant stress and not repaired.”
Guards who had stood along the pillars ignored her and teleported to the viewing galleries; once there, they immediately set to closing the doors. The first attempts at songs were murky, but they steeled themselves and began putting barriers into place, and the doorways sealed.
Cunnion nodded. “Thank you, Captain Thannion. Roher! Will your choirs lend the Captain aid to secure the tower?”
“Of course, your majesty. Today’s events took turns we didn’t expect, but more are on the way,” replied Roher.
Violent notes screamed from the tower’s heights and on the floors below, the sharp notes of sudden deaths enfolding scores.
Sailatar shot a tired look at Maelben. “I don’t believe those songs are from the wards; they don’t put barriers through people.”
More notes clamoured, and arcane blasts joined protective songs in the heights and depths; klaxon songs of arcane formations filled with Primordial Mana ripped lives apart.
“More than a few traitors,” whispered Sailatar, her gaze growing colder with contained fury. “What songs to use? My thoughts move like thickened tree sap.”
“Why?” Cunnion breathed.
Roher listened, and his stomach twisted at the fragments that made it through the murky noise he battled. “Pride, slighted pride.”
Cunnion flinched, and his mouth twisted in disbelief. “Would any undertake such action for failed ambition?”
“Orhêthurin believes Balnérith—sorry, I’ll try to use Tarlangeth—spent aeons seeding arrogance and pride in the fertile soil of our species,” replied Erwarth. “She’s profited much during her time in the Abyss using others’ pride against them.”
Mocking laughter erupted from Maelben. “That’s rich coming from that murderous bitch.”
“Do not speak about the Lady of Dawn in such a fashion again. I don’t care if you believe the tales,” growled Erwarth warningly. “We’d all be lost, and she’s suffered so much since she’s been reincarnated.”
“I can hear your pitiful strength, Ewdil,” warned Maelben. “I will crush you like a bug if you try to chastise me again; you’re only a fledgling Solar now.”
“Be quiet!” snarled Sailatar as more explosions echoed through the tower. “The next person to speak without our permission or to disregard the Captain’s orders, I’ll assume is a traitor.”
“Captain, have trusted knights secure the Chancellor’s route to the vault. Let them know trusted guests are escorting him,” instructed Cunnion.
The King rounded on the Chancellor. “Retrieve the instrument of the accord at once. You may send who you wish to be beside him, Roher.”
“Agreed,” said Sailatar. "I''m sorry, Tanwetamo, we need to act. If you’re still unsteady; we’ll need someone to carry you.”
Tanwetamo shook his head. “I don’t know. I feel so off, Your Majesty. I’m the only other senior member of the royal council here. The vault wards are separate from the tower’s protections. Carry me if you must, Erwarth; I remember you as Ewdil and would trust your arms.”
Erwarth moved beside the Chancellor and ushered him towards the side door with a dozen knights in tow, her aura reacting to his flesh. “Sorry, Your Majesty, Tanwetamo’s been poisoned. May I clear the injury?”
Tanwetamo nodded his permission, and Sailatar, her eyes widening, swallowed. “Please!”
Against the background of the Abyss, Roher caught a delicate sourness of a strange poison tearing into his mind.
The words of liquid Blessing spilling from Erwarth’s lips were in the Celestial tongue, but their meaning evaporated in the listener’s mind as they carried the energy into Tanwetamo. Before the Blessing had finished, the colour had returned to his cheeks, and Tanwetamo straightened, but his gaze still seemed worse for wear.
Erwarth shrank to her elven shape and, slipping his arm about her shoulder, started him towards the door. Knights accompanying them had already moved through with their weapons drawn and protective songs rippling about them. Thannion motioned to guards on the boundary when they were through the door, a pair sealed the side door tight while others started warding the chamber.
“She waited until the oath instrument was sealed away,” murmured Roher.
“Word came that rescue would take time to achieve, and the ritual would need agreement in advance,” said Cunnion.
Roher caught the edge of the silent songs building within the King.
“I thought you only signed the instrument once Orhêthurin fell to Levitahan the first time,” replied Roher.
Cunnion shook his head. “Our enemies had already shown they were more powerful than expected. We had thought we were gaining allies to keep our peoples safe.”
An explosion detonated floors above the throne room, and the peals of dozens of deaths responded. Sailatar screamed. “Círaglar!”
Roher flinched at the sorrow in her voice, having also caught her son’s death.
Cunnion unleashed a score of barriers, copying earlier attacks to slay his son’s murderers. He immediately started building a new set of silent songs.
Songs from Thannion sent dozens of messages out, and ten figures in the armour of royal knights appeared upon the room''s boundary. A second group arrived, comprised of fifty palace soldiers filled with soured pride notes and malicious themes, and Roher sang as danger scuttled across his skin. Three of the closest soldiers slapped their shields as the Spell they triggered blasted along the lines of knights who had begun securing the room. The blast didn’t kill them, but it slammed them from their feet, breaking their focus and the wards they’d barely started collapsed.
An eruption of Spell and themes struck against Roher’s barrier, but his long practice shrugged off what had flattened other knights and sent it into the air. Sailatar turned towards the harp on the dais, but Roher pointed her towards Oír? Coivi? Nand?. The threads of thousands of themes tried to tear down his barrier.
“They’re a harp of life,” countered Sailatar.
“You’d have to exit my barrier; heal the injured,” instructed Roher as more explosions filled the chamber.
The others that had accompanied Roher struck with quick themes that shackled the palace soldiers and started to quell the fighting. A fractured theme came from beyond the throne room’s wall, and a section of indestructible crystal was cast forward in time.
The blast cut a diagonal through the hall, leaving the dais untouched; it swept past groups that the royal knights had sheltered on the dais, only to strike others still moving to safety. Roher saw the side of Maelben’s dress evaporate into dust before she burst apart, large swaths of skin, flesh, and bone disappearing in bursts of light, their song just vanishing like the crystal’s tune.
Behind the flash of light, two figures pointed staves and a fresh wave unleashed towards Roher as Primordial explosions battered his barrier. Squinting against the barrage of brilliance, Sailatar grabbed Oír? Coivi? Nand?, and a liquid run of sound invoked a melody of twisted life that shrugged aside an attacker’s protections. Spurs of bone from breaks and long-finished growth erupted in all directions, piercing organs and squashing their brain as their skulls’ plates shifted and experienced destructive stresses.
Stepping forward, Cunnion raised a hand to shield his eyes and sent panes of force through the dispersing dust cloud of the dead in a battering ram of destruction. The staff wielders and soldiers in the room beyond were pulped against the back wall. Activating Mana Sense showed Roher the energies lingering in the air.
“A temporal Spell, we need an Anar to counter it fully,” gasped Cunnion.
“I caught part of the theme. I hope I can block another occurrence without breaking our side,” Roher said.
As Roher spoke, new melodies arrived, and he turned towards the opposite wall, adjusting his protective melody to attempt to shed all Mana, regardless of Affinity, upwards. Then Cunnion jumped forward between the Queen and the wall. He had a fresh tune of force upon his lips even as the Queen started a song aimed towards the new arrivals.
In a burst of light, they died together. The Spell left enough to create dust but sprayed pieces of them forward with different velocities. The swathes of Roher’s barrier that had shed Primordial forces were shifted into the future, and he flinched away from the light. Agony ripped up his arm as he turned to dive away; a pulse of blood from the stump burst into dust, the lingering effect cast ahead its water molecules. Before he hit the ground, a knight swept them both to safety as singers unleashed crushing force.
The knight''s melody to seal the wound failed, and he clamped a band of force higher up Roher’s arm as the Spell’s effect ended. They looked at each other in shock when they heard their oath of loyalty to the royal family cracking and failing.
* * * * *
Amdirlain, sensing the pain that lay beyond that moment, stopped sharing the memory.
“The rest of what I have is hearsay,” advised Roher.
“Don’t blame yourself. The King was trying to protect his wife, not you,” noted Amdirlain. “If you’d been even centimetres closer to the wall, the Spell would have carved into your side, and you’d have died as well.”
“He got between me and that Spell. While it might have a set range, it might have operated off a mass limit instead. If it was the latter, he saved my life. I don’t know, as we never found the grimoire.”
“They must have thought the King and Queen were still on the dais,” offered Sarah.
“Or the traitors didn’t know their son had died minutes before,” countered Roher. “Or not counted on it breaking the oath to Balnérith. We didn’t grant any of them mercy to ask.”
“That was one heck of a barrier breaker,” murmured Sarah.
Amdirlain sighed. “If the traitors didn’t intervene, the oath would likely have been broken without the death of the royal line. The royal line had endured unbroken through direct children since its formation. We''re lucky in that their deaths might have prevented the oath to Balnérith from ever being annulled. After all, some oaths keep their power beyond death and are why some undead rise even when the swearer and focus are dead. However, it tells us nothing about what the traitors thought they stood to gain by serving Balnérith.”
“Perhaps to regain their former strength outside the realm?” suggested Roher.
Amdirlain winced.