Sarlene's Touch Ch. 45

"She is another agent of the Presence," said Amloth, "whose inner nature I have awakened. She is the one who acquired the censer for us."

Eristacia noticed that the drow had not really answered the second part of the question. For the mystery woman did not look human, but some kind of mix of mortal and demon. She had sharp horns jutting from her forehead, blood-red eyes, and a skin whose colour... well, she could not quite tell in this light, but it did not look normal. A tiefling, just possibly, but one whose demonic taint was far stronger than in any she had ever heard of. More like a demon herself, perhaps. Not that she was an expert, in such things, of course.

"Zarenis," said the stranger, "my name is Zarenis."

She held, Eristacia noticed, some kind of sceptre, with a lightly glowing crystal at the tip. Even Amloth, she could not help noticing, kept glancing at it, as if not sure what it was.

"Oh, this?" said Zarenis, apparently noticing her gaze, "this is how we do without your original ceremony." She smiled, with no trace of warmth in it, but said nothing further.

The awkward silence dragged on, until Amloth at last decided to break it, looking as uncomfortable as Eristacia had ever seen her. "How?" the drow asked, clearly fuming at having to seek advice.

"Ask the Presence," said Zarenis, "and you will know how. You are, I believe, the only one who can speak to it directly."

"I am," said Amloth, a haughty tone creeping back into her voice now that she evidently realised that she still might have the upper hand. She was silent for a while, as if listening to an inner voice, then she suddenly flicked her head up, expression unreadable. "I see," she said, in a surprisingly dead voice. "So be it."

The drow reached into the black bag that she had been carrying at her side all evening, and drew out an engraved purple rod, something like a wand, raising it into the air with a flourish.

She pointed it at the merchant, and spoke a single word of command. A blast of greenish light spat out from the end, striking him in the chest. The merchant screamed.

He fell to his knees, still screaming, as Eristacia and the other two conspirators looked on in horror. Only Zarenis and Amloth looked calm as tendrils of smoke began to pour from beneath the man's robes and he thrashed on the floor. Then flames began spurting from his mouth, and a few seconds later, he had stopped moving.

Amloth looked at the others in the room. "We still needed a sacrifice. And a betrayal," she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Of course," sad Zarenis, "without the full ceremony..." she let the words hang in the air.

"Quite," said Amloth. "One is no longer enough." And she shot the second man.

The other conspirator, the sorceress, realised what that meant just a moment before Eristacia did, and ran for the door even as the second man collapsed screaming on the floor.

Zarenis had thrown a bolt across the doorway, and the sorceress, fingers scrambling, did not even have time to finish pulling it back before she too, was letting out a high-pitched yell of unbearable agony.

Eristacia made a lunge for the door, but Zarenis was in front of her, wickedly pointed sceptre pointing in her direction. The noblewoman dropped to her knees, uselessly covering her head with her arms, sobbing in sudden terror. This hadn't been the idea! She should have been on the verge of unimaginable power and riches, and now she was going to be murdered by own compatriots?

Everyone had betrayed her. She had always been betrayed for all of her life, and it was always, always, the fault of others! What had she ever done wrong? What had she ever done to deserve this fate? The feeling gnawed deep inside her, even though she knew that that emotion was exactly what the Presence wanted. What Amloth wanted.

She realised she was still alive.

Slowly, she uncurled her arms, looking up at the other two women with tear-stained eyes. The three cloaked figures were charred husks on the floor.

"Three should do it," said Amloth.

Zarenis nodded, and Eristacia drew a shuddering breath, amazed at her good fortune. "Out of curiosity," asked the demon-woman, "why her?"

"She has promise," said Amloth, casually. "But mainly because I have an exceptionally large strap-on dildo I was going to use tonight," she patted the black bag, "and I don't intend to let it go to waste." She turned to the shaking noblewoman, "tomorrow, you will be at my side as ruler, perhaps the only one left who is. You will get everything you always anted. But tonight, once I have finished with this matter, I am going to fuck you like you've never been fucked before. And, 'heterosexual'," she spat the word, like a curse, "or not, I am not going to stop until I am sure that you have climaxed at least once."

"Well," she said, her voice suddenly lighter, "fun for us later. But back to business!"

──◊──

Calleslyn wasted valuable magical energy forcing open the door that Valmor had sealed with a spell of his own. The human magician had fled up a spiral staircase inside the Rotunda, closing off the door at the top before she could reach it. Neither of them was moving very fast, she still stinging from her wounds, and he probably unfit even before he had been injured, but there was nobody else here to interrupt them. If any other of the hooded coven had survived, hopefully Dolrim was dealing with them right now.

She threw the door open, leaping through it and rolling to one side. As she expected, a spell flew over her head as she did so. It was good to see that having more combat experience than he did give her some advantage.

Continuing the movement seamlessly, Calleslyn sprang to her feet, hands raised. She did not have the strength left for many of her more powerful spells, but she could still use the one that had felled the priestly would-be rapist. Unfortunately, even Valmor had thought of that, and the sparks of light fizzled to nothing in front of him, a protective barrier evidently already in place.

They were on the roof, she now saw, under the moonlit sky, the great dome of the Rotunda to one side, and a sheer drop not far way, across a short, flat, space that did not even have a railing. Valmor was already gesturing with his hands, and swirls of black smoke were beginning to form all around her, rising up into smoky tendrils that swatted at her body.

"Let's see you learn humility, elven bitch!" shouted Valmor, as one tendril wrapped itself around her leg, pulling her to the ground, ripping her skirt and forcing her to move her aim away from the other magician.

The human rose into the air, a flight spell bearing him aloft, laughing cruelly as he moved away from the edge of the roof, leaving her to grapple with the inky ropes he had summoned. Calleslyn saw him moving his hands in a motion for another spell, one that would surely blast her where she struggled. He had held back from using his most deadly spells before, but there was no reason for that now, and he was already protected from most of what she had left in her own arsenal.

"You are nothing next to me? Do you hear me?" screamed Valmor, a crazed look in his eyes, a split second before she wrestled her hand free and hurled a final spell at him.

It wasn't a combat spell, so it produced nothing physical his shield could protect him against. Instead, Calleslyn cancelled his flight spell.

Valmor let out a piercing shriek of pure terror as he dropped like a stone, cut short as his body smashed into the cobblestones far below. The tentacles around her faded, vanishing into the cool night air.

Calleslyn eased herself over to the edge of the roof. She could see Valmor sprawled in the moonlit street, a pool of blood oozing out around him. He wasn't moving.

And then the ghouls were upon him, a seething mass raking with claws and teeth as they began to devour his body.

──◊──

"This way," said Almandar, examining the old map, "that other way leads to a pit, and some sort of trap beyond it. But this way... this way is the chamber we are looking for, I think. The heart of all this."

They had left behind the water channels of the old drainage system now, and were traversing some very old looking stone corridors, perhaps once part of a temple complex. Doubtless they were whatever ruins Throndar had stumbled across, here long before Haredil had ever existed.

On occasion, they heard skittering sounds in the dark beyond the light, ominous shuffles, or sudden grunts. But whatever was out there did not seem to be approaching them, at least for the moment. They were clearly somewhere that touched the infernal planes in some way, tainted by the Presence. Perhaps there was a gate somewhere through which the monster they had encountered had crawled, as the barriers broke down, and the Presence neared the time of its own release.

The corridor ended, where the map said it should, and Almandar and Tarissa stepped into a large chamber with a high, domed roof. Five ancient and corroded candelabra stood at the apices of a pentangle carved into the floor. The signs, he suspected, of the former adventurers' attempt to imprison what they had found. Within it, near the centre of the room, was a stone altar, dark stains covering its surface.

Four skeletons lay around the altar, three of orcs and one of a human, their bones as dry as dust. This, it was clear, was the chamber from which the dread sorcerer Yluk'Tz'n'o had first tried to bring the Presence to this world. Now his bones lay with those of his sacrificial victims, a stark testament to his failure.

"Now what?" asked Tarissa.

"I don't know," he admitted, walking around the room, outside the pentagram, the darkness lit only by his mage-light, trying to see if there was any hint as to what could be done. He could not see any.

"We have to do something," the paladin pointed out, "we've come all this way."

"I know," he agreed, "I was rather hoping there would be more of a clue."

"Could we destroy it?"

"Perhaps, but it might not be so easy. Between us, perhaps we can think of something. What do we know of demons, of the place that they come from?"

Before she could reply, the room was flooded with brilliant white light, and Almandar stepped back, shielding his eyes from the sudden glare.

"What is that?" asked Tarissa.

He looked, now that his eyes were adjusting, seeing a beam of light projecting from the apex of the dome onto the altar. Orange flames, burning without fuel, were springing up across the stone where it touched, forming into a disc, leaping impossibly high into the air, as if climbing up the beam of light.

"They must be doing it now!" he said, "it must be the eclipse. They're completing the ceremony."

"We don't have time to think about this any more!" cried Tarissa, and he had to agree.

Destroy it. He didn't know if that would work, but what other choice did he have? There was nothing else here, no clue as to what might hold back the Presence. But maybe, just maybe, it needed the altar. Almandar hurled his strongest spell at the stone table, a blast of lightning striking it, shattering the rock, cracking it open as the unnatural fire guttered and spat, as if disoriented, randomly casting about.

"Run!" he shouted to Tarissa, throwing a fireball back into the chamber as he followed her out of the archway and back into the corridor.

In the enclosed space, the explosion was even louder than he had expected, shaking everything about them. He saw a slab of the domed ceiling crashing down beyond the arch, adding to the din, throwing dust and rubble after them. Even the corridor was shaking, crumbling.

They had not wanted to use such magic to fight their way through the deadly plants for fear the corridor might collapse, and now that prophetic fear was proving true. They ran on, pelted with stones, sometimes jumping over fallen boulders, Tarissa panting hard in her armour, choking dust filling the air, until the mage-light proved useless.

He blundered on, hands stretched out to find some hint of a wall -- until something hit him hard on the head, and he fell to the ground, blacking out, unconscious.

It seemed like only a moment later that he awoke, the sound of rumbling fading in his ears. Everything was pitch dark, and something was lying across his legs, the pain intense.

"Tarissa!" he called out.

"I'm here!" he sighed at the familiar voice. "I'm all right, just hold still, while I get you out. It's stopping, I think. This part of the passage is stable. We just got to the end of the dangerous part."

"Thank the gods for that..." he breathed, as he felt her beginning to clear away the rubble that partially buried him.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes, I think. Can you see?"

"No, can you make another light?"

He shook his head, but of course, she couldn't see it. "Sorry," he said, "not yet. My head is... I was stunned there for a moment." He tried to stand, winced in pain as he did so. "Okay, walking maybe not quite so easy as I thought."

"Lean on me. I'll get you out of here."

"I know," he said, "I know."

──◊──

The banging on the doors had stopped. The priests and patients huddled together in the middle of the room, as Vardala stood there uncertainly, sword in hand. There was silence from outside the infirmary.

"Have they gone?" asked Horvan, sounding as if he did not quite believe it.

Neither did Vardala. "I don't know," she said, "I can't see why they would. It's not as if we can open the doors to check." She glanced up at the windows, far above. There was nothing there but night time darkness. "We wait," she decided, "until we can be sure what is happening."

And so they did, until the surviving clerics of Pardror came along to tell them the path was clear. The zombies had all fallen down suddenly, at a single stroke, and were lying, decaying, in the streets. The ghouls, and worse things, had fled, melting away into the night, and nobody could tell where they had gone.

The disaster -- inexplicable to anyone here but Vardala -- had passed as suddenly as it had started.

──◊──

"How many?" asked Calleslyn, as Dolrim averted his eyes from the wide rip in her skirt. She didn't really think it was time to be prudish, but she supposed a lifetime of dwarven habits was a hard thing to break.

"Three you caught with your first fireball," he said, "him over there," he indicated the priest, "and one I took down myself. The guardsman, I think. He was the only one with the presence of mind to come up and fight me. Your magician?"

"Dead. The ghouls started eating him, and then they melted away."

"Somebody's done something, then."

"Almandar and Tarissa; it must be. How is she coping?" She nodded towards the nun.

"Incoherent, really. She's had a nasty shock. But she's alive, we saved her."

"Yes, with the help of the others."

"Five in here, your magician makes six. There were thirteen people that entered this building. Where are the other seven?"

"Good question. The undead are all gone, so she'll be safe enough here. So let's go find those seven. Ready?"

"As ever."

──◊──

Amloth stood before the great disc of fire that had appeared in the room, arms outspread. It was a portal to somewhere else; that much Eristacia understood. This was what they had been trying to summon, and now the moment was almost upon them. She strained her eyes, and fancied that she saw something moving within the patterns of swirling flame, but could not make out any details.

She had joined in the chanting, as she had been told to, but now her role seemed past, and she was uncertain as to what would happen next. They were on the cusp of success, weren't they? In just a few moments she would be... well, she wasn't sure what, now that she thought about it. But victory, final, absolute victory over her traitorous relatives, over the whole of the society that had wronged her, was finally just within her grasp.

Even so, she could not help glancing at the bag Amloth had brought with her, remembering what the drow had said would happen before the morning. 'Exceptionally large', she had said. Just how big was that? The thought repelled her, and yet at the same time, strangely excited her. She didn't know how that would end, either.

"It comes!" cried Amloth, voice exultant, "the Presence comes! All hail the Presence!"

Something was definitely moving within the flame now, growing larger before Eristacia's astonished eyes. Then the flames began to dance, moving erratically, the portal itself changing in shape, rippling into an irregular pattern.

"No..." gasped Amloth, and Eristacia once again knew fear. Something else was going wrong.

There was a brilliant flash of white light, overwhelming everything, and a crashing, roaring sound that filled the room. Eristacia stumbled back against the wall, momentarily blinded.

"What happened?" she wailed plaintively, as her eyes struggled to see again.

"I... I don't..." it was Amloth, worried, uncertain.

"We won."

She turned to look at Zarenis. Her voice was deeper than before, though still just about feminine. The tiefling, or half-demon, or whatever she was, was standing still, a grin across her face.

"We did?"

"Yes."

As her eyes finally recovered, Eristacia realised that Zarenis was even less human than before. Her horns were huge now, ram-like, her skin, illuminated in the brilliant white glow that now poured from the sceptre she carried, was a pinkish red, her fingernails black and claw-like. Swirls of dark mist rose up from her hands, and her blood-red eyes were literally glowing, as if with some demonic fervour. She also had a long, barbed tail, which swished behind her, although at least there was no sign of wings.

"They destroyed the altar," she said, "they think they have ended this."

"Who?"

"Does it matter? They were too late. The Presence has already come through. It is in me now. We have won."

"I can't hear it's voice..." Amloth sounded confused.

"You can hear me. That shall suffice. I can summon demons whenever I wish. I can create an army with a click of my fingers. The city is ours; it just doesn't know it yet."

"But I am the high priestess. The power should be mine!"

Zarenis snorted. "Which among us has demon blood? The Presence needed you to set up the ceremony. It does not need you now. I am the ruler now. I am your Princess, your master."

"No! It should have been me!" The drow screeched, raising her hands towards the demonic figure before her. "It should be me."

"And that," said Zarenis, "is why I can never trust you."

Flame spat from her fingertips, blasting Lady Amloth back into the wall, where the disc of flame had been not long before -- Eristacia had only just realised it had vanished. The drow screamed, a yell of frustration and outrage more than one of pain, as the glowing fire consumed her.

Zarenis turned to look towards Eristacia.

"Please don't kill me!" she begged, falling to her knees, "I'll do anything you want! Anything at all! I'm not like her. You can trust me to be your servant. Just please don't kill me!"

Before Zarenis could make any kind of reply, there was a scrabbling sound behind her, and she turned to see Amloth climbing to her feet. The demon-woman actually looked surprised.

"I am hardly defenceless against demonic power, you hell-spawned bitch!" spat the drow. "Think you can destroy me so easily? Think again!"

She hurled a spell towards Zarenis, but the other woman simply caught the glowing light in her hand as if it had been a ball. It flared and faded. Glowing red eyes examined her now empty hand curiously, then flicked up towards the drow.

"Not really going to work," she said, voice calm.

Amloth screeched and leapt forward, hands outstretched, fingers clawing.

"It should have been me!" she yelled, grappling with the horned woman, eyes wild, lost in a furious rage.