PBEM Game: Yarnspinners 2 (Running)

[djo]

Here is Vanheim 36: a long one, but keep reading...the second half is better than the first.


In which Vethru meets an old acquaintance, and Pherios loses more than his way.


Vethru

My scouts have found something interesting in Imictan, which we've finally retaken from Pythium. Again. The province is still chaotic, and I swear, if I didn't know that this world was without a deity at the moment, I'd say that God was pissed at Imictan. I take a tough crew with me; a small army of dead, led by Plague the Bane. Kor is here, or maybe it's Gor. Or was Gor the one who was killed in Venna? I can never keep the dwarves straight.

I've brought Irulia of Alteion with me. I don't know her well, but the word is she's a tough *****. Kestumaia and Lorakeia, my two Valkyrie bodyguards, know her, and they grumble and glare behind her back, so it's probably true.

I leave Quellian Ji home. He's getting moody. I tell him to go north and make sure the Air Force is doing its job against Ermor.

We reach the ruins by midday. My guards are all dead (again). "Pherios is here," I say. "Look sharp. If you see him, try to capture him, but don't hurt him."

We circumambulate the statue, widdershins, into a world with little light and less color. Irulia looks at me questioningly. Plague squints. "We're in a pocket universe," I tell them. "Watch yourselves. Different rules apply here. Be careful with magic--I get the feeling it's not as puny as in your world."

Kor grumbles--I'm sure it's Kor now--and I say, "I don't care what your grandfather told you about the old days, your magic is puny now."

When we reach the first branching in the maze, I send Kor off to the north, with Plague, because I want to keep her on my good side. I give them each a dozen dead and a few wights. "Look for Pherios. Bring him back if you can. I'm headed east." East is where I sense the first thread of what I hope will become a thick skein of power.

As I walk, it becomes clearer that what I'm feeling really is what the stone angel called "The Rune." I used to call it "The Plan" myself, before I found a better metaphor in a high-tech world. It's permeating this entire dimension. For someone like me, who's seen at least a piece of the bigger picture, it's a simple matter to follow the emanations to their source.

Along the way, I'm attacked by some strange shadowy creatures. They aren't real shadows. That would be too easy. I know a couple dozen ways to deal with things that are dead or ought to be. These things are kind of like cold holes in space. They try to grind you up and suck you in. I tell my Valkyries to stay back, and while the shadow things try to drain the life out of something already dead, I search my brain for the right spell to take care of them. Aha. Fiat lux. At my words, they explode in brilliant light. Oh, ho! Magic is strong in this dimension. This was going to be fun.

There's a palace, of course, at the end of the labyrinth. Totally black. Topped by three spires. Very predictable. Undoubtedly inside, I'd find some kind of self-styled existential evil, and judging by its guards, it'll probably be insubstantial as well. These guys are all the same. Let me give you some advice. If anyone ever offers you immortality, but you need to give up your body and become a "being of pure thought," or some such nonsense, refuse. You'll hate it, and like all the rest of them, you'll eventually go nuts. Keep your body, like I did. Food and sex, that's what keeps you sane. Friends don't let friends discorporate.

So I get myself psyched up for a fight against pure evil, which doesn't sound so bad, because this dimension has my mojo flowing, and when I walk into the throne room, I'm more surprised than I've been in a thousand years, because I know this guy.

"Who dares intrude upon my domain?" thunders the shadowy form at the end of the hall. "Know that your suffering will seem eternal, and you will beg to serve me before your ending."

At least he doesn't look like an eyeball. These dark, incorporeal guys always like eyeballs.

"Save it for the tourists, Graknor," I say, as I walk toward him.

He stops ranting. When you get old, you develop a lot of tricks to keep your memories straight, and Graknor is a lot older than me. It only takes him a few seconds. "Well, well, well...little Vethru. You've hung around longer than anyone would have guessed. And should I expect old Apichio to walk in behind you?"

"He's moved on," I say. "It's just me."

"And Vethru! What's this? You're dead! What would he say?"

That's the mark of a survivor. A couple dozen millennia pass, and he remembers exactly what an old wizard and his apprentice were arguing about. Always probing for leverage. And dead on, too--Apichio never approved of necromancy. He died and moved to a higher plane, his work unfinished. I took the path less traveled, and it's made all the difference.

More and more shadow creatures enter the hall. Many small ones, a few large ones. My Valkyries look around nervously.

"And what brings you here? Not still looking for magic words, are you? After all this time?" Graknor asks.

Wait--that was a bit too eager. "Curious you'd ask. Makes me wonder why I find you here."

"This old place? It's quiet, comfortable. Out of the way."

"Don't condescend, Graknor," I say. "This place is lousy with magic. You know what I'm after. You got anything?"

The darkness around me starts to ripple. There are now shadow creatures seeping out of the walls. Larger, more solid forms are entering from the corners. "You are in no position to presume so," he replies. "This is my world. I make the rules here."

Kestumaia and Lorekeia stay close, tense, but my intuition tells me Graknor is only bluffing. In the old days, he'd kill anyone who so much as looked at him wrong. He hadn't even leaned on me yet. Last time we met, I was young and still learning. He had no way of knowing my power now. He should at least be testing me, trying to gauge it.

Then I notice it. "Graknor! I can't see through you any more!"

"The darkness hides many mysteries," he says. "You'd be foolish to attempt to penetrate them."

Another passed opportunity! He should have at least killed one of my minions by now. It's almost discourteous of him not to.

"How long have you been here?" I ask.

"Long enough to make it my own," he snarls. "Long enough to learn its ways. Long enough to have buried intruders far more dangerous than you."

The power...it isn't a source I'm sensing. It's an effect--a vast effect, centered on Graknor. Solidity. Of course. I smile. "How does it feel," I ask, "to be trapped like a rat in a cage?"

"You dare!" he cries. "Do you want to leave this place alive?"

I don't bother correcting him. That slip tells me that I've hit it. I know his weakness. Time to put up or shut up. If this dimension isn't as mana-rich as I thought, this could be difficult. But I've got a number of high-powered spells that I haven't been able to use in Inland, and I was itching to try. "I'll walk out before you do. You're stuck."

That does it. He knows that I know. He signals his court, but before they can attack, I freeze my dead, to keep them out of the way, and shift my Valkyries to a timeless side dimension for safekeeping. Then I let loose.

It feels good. I catch the first wave of shadow creatures in a dimensional vortex, and dissipate the second wave with a mini-nova (always good against darkness-based enemies).

Graknor counters by opening holes in space-time around me, about twenty-five, I think. I feel their tidal forces trying to suck me in. I increase the local gravitational gradient in a ring around me, and they drop through the floor. I lose a few toes on my right foot in the process.

His more solid minions are upon me now. I take advantage of the fact that they're made of normal matter, and I suppress all the molecular orbitals in their bodies. Their atoms don't stick together anymore. Fortunately I don't need to breathe. Powdered minion is highly carcinogenic.

The hall is nearly clear. Graknor pulls out his trademark power. He's channeling the pure essence of emptiness, which is sort of what he is. Or was. He can't pull it off anymore. I shrug it off, and then I reach out and solidify his outer shell. Now he's just roiling black fog caught in a glass statuette.

"Damn you," he says, twisting in his prison. "How did you know?"

"How did it happen?" I ask. "Was that your palace, in the ruins? Or were you visiting? Or maybe summoned by the local wizard?"

He says nothing.

"And then a stranger came to the court. You threatened him, he took offense, you didn't back down, and he congealed you. Stuck you here forever. Not only turned you half solid, but bound you to the very spot."

The churning inside his shell increases, but it's secure. He can't get out.

"Over the years, the best you could do was create your own dimension, right here. And it's been a long time, hasn't it? Quite a comedown for world-shifting creatures like you and me."

"Just shut up and kill me," Graknor says. "I don't need to hear the ravings of a mere stripling like you."

"I'm not going to kill you," I tell him. "Not yet. I want to know about who did this to you, what he said, everything he did. Everything you know."

"Free me," he says, "And I'll tell you everything. Just get me out of this world."

"This isn't a negotiation."

"I'll serve you. For a thousand years."

"You don't get it, do you? I've been searching for fragments nonstop since the last time we met. And I've been successful. You can't stop me. Someone came along and plugged you into the equations. And I'm the mathematician."

"If you won't free me, I'll tell you nothing!" he says.

I really doubt that.

* * *

After I was finished with Graknor, it was a simple matter to fold this universe enough to meet up with Plague, Kor, and Irulia again.

"Is everything all right?" Irulia asks. "I heard a fairly unpleasant scream."

"I met an old acquaintance," I say. "He needed to be persuaded to answer my questions. But we're done now. Time to go. Any sign of Pherios?"

"None," says Irulia. Kor mumbles the same.

I hesitate before I collapse the dark dimension behind us. I regretted leaving it for the magic-poor Inland, but what could you do?

Oh, well. With the information I have, I'm one step closer to something beyond magic. Magic is only a way to cheat the rules. I intended to rewrite them.



Pherios

Imictan was a cursed province. Conquered by Pythium, then overrun by troglodytes, it had changed hands a dozen times since the beginning of the war. We owned it now. There weren't many people in the streets, and half the buildings were burned out or abandoned. It wasn't a pleasant place to be. But I had two reasons for coming: first, something Vethru wanted was here, and I knew where. Second, only in a place like Imictan could I find the people I needed to steal it away from him before he got to it.

"They're ready for you," said the barman. As he hurried away from me and the private room where they waited, I unwrapped the bandage around my left hand. The wound left by Galameteia's blade was still open and seeping. I hoped that the sight of it would give me a reputation as a badass. I was too well-educated to pull it off by my words or manner. An ugly, decaying wound might make the right first impression.

There were six mercenaries drinking in the back room, all of them too wild for organized warfare. My uncle told me they existed in every conflict. People who liked war too much. In Vanheim, we make them into einhere, and three of them were just that, renegades from our army. Another was a deserter from Marignon. He was brash, loud, and angry. The other two sat apart from the rest. Two women, as savage as the men, if not more so. One, a minotaur from Pangaea. The other, a Valkyrie. I knew her, or of her, anyway.

"Good evening, Maliana," I said. "Far from home, aren't we?"

"From what I hear, my lord, neither yours nor mine any longer," she replied, with a healthy dose of sarcasm when she said "my lord."

"So what's it about, then?" asked Reggie, the Marignonian.

"Seven gold each," I said, "For one raid."

They murmured. That was more than a month's pay for your average mercenary.

"Plus anything you can plunder, after I've found what I'm looking for."

Tasha, the minotaur, said something in a language I didn't understand. I interrupted Maliana as she started to translate. "Most likely half of you won't make it. And where we're going may drive a few of you mad. That's why."

Reggie snorted. "What scares you don't necessarily scare me, mate."

"He's coming, isn't he? Vethru?" asked Maliana.

"Sooner or later," I said. "He won't be alone when he does."

Reggie smiled and cracked his knuckles. "Well, then. Seven gold, and a proper fight besides? What are we waiting for?"

* * *

"Only five of them? And all deaders? No problem," said Reggie. And they weren't. Half of my mercenaries didn't get to draw their swords.

We were high on the slopes of a small mountain; leafless trees poked through a few inches of snow. The five zombies had been patrolling an area that was curiously flat. Once we reached it, the others could see what I found on my previous visit. We were standing in sparse ruins, in the remains of a courtyard. A few crumbling walls poked through dead ivy. The amorphous shape in the center of the plaza was an eroded statue.

"We're here," I said. "Now it gets strange. Walk around the statue," I told them. "No, the other direction."

"What the hell difference does it--" Reggie's jaw dropped when Tasha disappeared. "Sonofa*****!"

"Where are we?" asked Maliana, when we had all emerged into the eerie, twilight landscape. There was no color in this world. A dim full moon bathed us in pale light. One of the einhere lit a torch. It flickered gray and drew no color out of our clothing, our gear--or our flesh. We might have been ghosts.

"Somewhere else," I said.

"No [censored]," said Reggie.

"This isn't our world. Be careful. I'm looking for a building, possibly a temple. It'll have inscriptions." I was thinking of the papers that Vethru had me show around Triastellus, two years ago. Some of them had the look of stone-cut lettering.

They were unruly, as one would expect. We had spread out a fair bit over the dark, rolling plain, when I heard Tasha roar. "A labyrinth!" called Maliana. it sat at the beginning of rough, rocky territory. The walls were ten feet high, and it was open to the sky. It extended across our path, with no way around. It was the only sign of habitation we had seen, so I took us into it. Tasha, predictably, took the lead.

After only three turns, I'd lost my bearings. You wouldn't think it could be possible, but I did. The moon seemed to shift in the sky, as did the few stars I could see. By the fifth turn, I saw Tasha hesitate, just for a second. Reggie did, too. "[censored], are you lost? Damn animal."

"Why don't we rip off your balls to mark the trail?" said Maliana.

"Flying *****," I heard him mutter.

After an hour, we had found several small rooms, most of them empty. Inside the ones that weren't, bones. Old ones.

"Screw this, there's no plunder here," said Reggie.

"Do you want to go back?" I said.

"Quiet," said Maliana. "I hear something."

No one else did. "Take a look aloft," I said.

She was gone only a minute. While she was away, we struggled to perceive anything in the darkness. Nothing stirred, except perhaps the whispering wind. "It's too dark to see [censored]," Maliana said. "I'm not risking getting lost. But I definitely hear something ahead."

We pressed on, and soon we all started to hear distant voices, conversing quietly in a language we couldn't understand. I didn't need to order them to draw their weapons as we sneaked forward. We rounded one last corner, and then we all heard it. The whispering again, but behind us.

The dark pressed in on us. The wind blew chill, and ghostly forms boiled over the walls, surrounding us. They were diffuse, and cold. The einhere were cut off from the rest of us. "Onbec!" cried Reggie, "St. Onbec!", as he waded into the dark mass of them. His sword cut air. All their swords cut air. There was nothing to these monsters. They weren't proper shadows--I could deal with those. These were wispy, cold yet jagged when they slashed you. The fallen einhere began to scream, not the berserk scream of their kind, not even the scream of the tortured or dying. They screamed like their souls were being ripped from their bodies.

Tasha rushed in, trying to trample. They swallowed her, too. "Wing and spear!" yelled Maliana, and she surged forward, but I grabbed her arm and dragged her away. Only Reggie still stood, and his pointless fury was a thing to behold. I thought of Molly, then, and I cast a lightning bolt at him, just as they overwhelmed him. It flashed brighter than I had ever seen before. Some of them scattered, some disintegrated in the flash. Others came for us. Maliana and I fled through the twisting passages. Thankfully, the lightning had done its job: there were no screams to follow us.

* * *

"Rich boy had his fun? Are you done playing soldier now?"

I ignored her. We'd been wandering in the maze for hours. Twice the whispering shadows had come for us, and twice I had driven them back with violent, blazing lightning. But even though we had only seen them twice, we heard them whispering around every corner. And every corner looked the same as every other corner. The moon was now high in the sky, and even if it had never strayed from a predictable path in the sky, its position overhead made it useless for navigation.

"Did you forget your compass? What kind of a sailor are you?"

She wasn't as angry as Onbec, or even Reggie, but I could see why she got thrown out of the Valkyries.

"Are you sure you're related to Belletennares? He conquered ten provinces and lost fewer people than--" Suddenly she stopped.

And that was why I tolerated her. She had the senses and reflexes of a cat. "Someone ahead," she whispered. "Someone real."

We stepped silently through an opening on the left and came face to face with someone else moving just as silently. Only surprise kept our drawn weapons from being used.

"Pherios," said the woman. "I was told you might be here."

She was tall and thin, and dark haired, for a Valkyrie. Her face was carefully expressionless. I had never known my cousin Irulia very well, partly because of that reserve. She was always quiet, and somewhat mysterious, even to the family. She was thought to be clever, and rather fierce, when provoked. She had not been in the capitol when I left.

"Cousin," I said. "You have the better of me. But I'm glad to see you."

Maliana had edged behind me somewhat. She didn't say anything, no doubt sensing that I was her best chance of avoiding offending my cousin and the fifteen dead man behind her.

"Your old boss is here," said Irulia. "I think he's angry with you."

That statement was carefully noncommittal. She was working with him, but was she working for him?

"How is Petema?" I asked.

"We haven't spoken recently."

Not good. "I have my reasons," I said. "I haven't betrayed Vanheim."

"I suppose you haven't."

She wasn't giving me anything. "Irulia, please. Tell him you saw nothing. Point the way out, and we'll disappear."

Irulia motioned me to a corner of the dim room. "What do you know of what he is doing?" she said in a low voice, out of earshot of Maliana.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here. I only know what he's done. Ask Petema. She knows the story. Ask her about Galameteia."

"What have you seen?"

I hesitated, not wanting any information to get back to Vethru, but I had no choice. I wouldn't raise my blade against family. If she wanted to deliver me to Vethru, she could. "Two wars," I said. "One outside, you probably know with who. One inside."

"Civil war? Why?" she asked. Damn, she was cold. How could anyone ask that question without any trace of curiosity or emotion?

"He's wasting us. He's going to burn through us in this...search. He's going to use us up."

She stared into my eyes. A minute, five, I don't know. The spell was broken by Maliana. "Whispers!" she called softly.

Irulia didn't hesitate. "Ignore the sun," she said. "Look carefully; there are three spires on the eastern horizon. Keep them to your back. And hurry. It gets much worse here at night." She paused, and I thought for a second she was going to embrace me. She didn't. Then she and her dead men were gone, leaving me no wiser as to her intentions.

Maliana and I ran west. We almost made it. On the way, we passed whispers, and moaning, and we heard a single, lingering, tortured scream from the depths of Hel, but we almost reached the entrance before they came. I threw lightning at them, but they were on all sides of us. I turned after every bolt, to cover all angles. Maliana pressed her back to mine as she futilely stabbed at them with her spear. As I tired, she grew furious. I learned that day that a Valkyrie, too, may become a berserker. When her frustration overtook her sense, she sprang forward and thrust her spear into the thick of them, wild and savage as any einhere, and that's when they took her.

I cursed my folly as I remembered the sword at my belt, a sword that she could have used, a sword that surely would have reached them. I drew it, feeling its chill. Fitting that the weapon of a dead Valkyrie would avenge another dead Valkyrie. I advanced, wondering how my rage would serve me.

When I walked around the statue again into the light, numb and battered, I was alone and empty-handed. No answers, no survivors. I evaded the new sentries Vethru had left in the ruins, and I quickly left the cursed province of Imictan. My plan had failed utterly. I'd killed six people in my ignorance. Next time, I would act alone. And I would strike directly at the location where I knew my answers must be: Paistellus. Vethru's castle.