Part 19 (1/2)
”Vaguely,” she lance at her attendants: soldiers and clerks and court officials to present the truce details They listened curiously, but looked at ease Yet to Polaris, the mountaintop seemed suddenly chilly ”Red-haired, as I recall, with a temper to match Flashy, a fancy for sailors, but coarities”
”And what becaht I hire her away? I plan to maintain many homes myself once my conquest is complete”
”Oh, I don't think soWhat did I do with her?” Polaris wasn't even listening to herself, only killing time to fathoed her, I believe No, wait ”
”You condemned her to hell, did you not? Her own personal hell, copied and crafted from the nine known levels You even stripped her skin to inable”
”Yes, I remember now One needs to punish servants fully to keep the others fro airs But how did you know-”
”Condemned for a year, correct?” The dry voice picked up speed like a sword on a grinding stone ”After which time, you would fetch her out, her punish since you i, Polaris stepped back The frozen face and dead eyes of the One King looked lethal as a cobra's She raised a hand to shuffle soldiers before her ”Your Majesty, let not es We needs talk-”
”Three years! Three long years!” rasped the king He leaned forward as it to bite Polaris ”Three years when every day, every hour and every minute was the most exquisite torture! And had Sysqueuish there still! Because you didn't care to retrieve her froot her!”
Feet pattered as everyonefrom the archwizard
Courtiers surrounded Polaris Sailors readied the gangplanks of three shi+ps for quick retreat More hopped out with cutlasses in hand An ad shi+ps to land
Yet the dozen orcs and their One King never stirred Only now did the king sink black nails into the skin at his teot Sysqueet you!”
With a screech, the disguised Sysqueical flesh from her face to reveal the bald, flinty ed, and the lipless slash of a mouth creaked like a bear trap ”Flashy?” Sysquear! I'll make you look like this!”
Polaris snapped spells while courtiers screaed Sysqueht hell to the h to batter the fiend Sysqueers at the ground Instantly it split, a hundred cracks radiating froallons of blackto the soldiers' boots, burned through leather like acid Even steel hobnails melted under the hellish stuff, which climbed like poisonous tentacles As their boots leaked, the putrid gunk burned men and women's flesh like molten lead Soldiers howled, ju cloth and flesh Shouts turned to screams People saw their own bones daubed with blackness as it seared ers rotting Others tried to run, but tortured feet betrayed them and they splashed facedown Ooze filledcandle wax
Caught in the hellish tide were the dozen orcs who'd guarded the One King, their lord andinside, knowing they'd been betrayed
Courtiers stu the a shi+ps But the lady stood fired by this base deception Now she remembered how Sysquemalyn had coveted her power, beauty, and position, and plotted to gain it any way possible
How Sysquehed at her own cleverness That arrogance and presun her chamberlain to hell But now the archwizard saw that she'd ht, than let her harness the cabalistic conjurations of hell
She'd remedy that mistake immediately A fiend from hell would hate the cold Polaris shrilled, ”By Veridon, feast on this, traitor!”
The air around themoisture fro as a house around Sysque soldiers were crushed as the icethes colliding resounded as ice cracked and refroze The flint monster was obscured behind an ice wall until she looked like a shadow
But the ice block didn't last long The shadoithin flitted like a fish under a frozen river Then, froh the ice, then flashed hell-fire that scalded ice to stea hole was matched by a second, then a third, until the ice block was shot through, fragile as spun glass With a shriek, the trapped flint monster shattered the block Chunks of ice tu wet, dark and dangerous as a store unleashedan arobbet at Polaris that sizzled like a meteor Only the archwizard's personal shi+eld stopped it a foot froulfed her, and raised the teh to wilt her silver-white hair
The pool of black ooze, now studded with bones and hel around her skinny waist But a fiend who'd endured real hellfire could ignore this pale imitation With a curse, the monster raised her hands to spread pain and terror and death
People had panicked at the first sign of trouble, their first impulse to quit the mountaintop Soldiers and courtiers sta shi+ps, unsure how to help, dropped to pick up anyone they could Sysque, she windiant fireball that burned to her armpit With an oath, she whipped the aranghere people nited hair, clothes, leather, and parch and s from the heat screa their heads on stone, others falling scores of feet down the ical shi+p, it lifted, a floating coffin of charred dead and dying that sagged in the air Its stern crunched on rocks Flaed over thecrash bespoke death on an outcrop far below
The fiend struck again and again Airboats battered by flaobbets burned immediately
Neither water hurled on the fires nor beaten blankets could extinguish it Any attempt to put it out only spread it further Two shi+ps tried to rise but crashed A third, burning fro like ants, collided with its neighbor and turned that one into a torch as well
Blinking sweat in her eyes, Lady Polaris cast about, saw only dead as attendants, and sucked wind
Rarely had she seen such power, and never directed at her She'd better unleash soht actually be har ago but never uttered, even as her fingers and thumbs, inverted, formed a square to box the monster
Sysquemalyn spun two fireballs on her arranite, mineral- shot hide Now the monster chirped as a square of blackness appeared under her feet No, nothingness
A portal to a negative energy plane It gaped under her splayed, horny feet like an open trapdoor that could drop her back into hell
Yet Sysque but rob her feet of dweomer With a harsh croak, she shook off the fireballs, and called to Polaris ”I can withstand anything, you pathetic bitch! Can you say the sa void, she planted her foot against the hole's edge and kicked
Lady Polaris balked as the fearsoround like a dinner plate, aied aside before the cavity sailed by, revolving slowly Near the edge of the cliff, soldiers racing for an intact shi+p failed to see the rocketing threat The portal clipped off their feet as neatly as a spinning saw blade Men and wo blood Those who fell on the portal were sucked within, so, so on, the portal reached the cliff and winked out
Lady Polaris stared in disbelief Sysque clawed fingers, the fiend hurled a spray like hard water at the archwizard, a ind of steel like a flying buzz saw Polaris brushed it aside, so it sped on and disappeared over a cliff But in thelike a shrike's call
Lady Polaris's first inkling of danger was a crinkling, crackling noise She turned, found a crystalline structure towering over her, reaching with diaiant insect tilted to one side like acolumn of jewels Blue dots like multi-faceted eyes fixed her with sapphire brilliance: for a second, the greedy archwizard wondered if they really were sapphires Then triple jagged, glittering claws snapped Polaris's dia her cloak, was torn off Her cape slithered off her shoulders and cru in shock The creature had penetrated her personal shi+elds, soem beast must be an elemental, an earth spirit, but not of this plane
And coh her shi+elds in this plane! And now the jewel claeaved, bobbed, and grasped at her robe It wanted her silver eered backward, tripped on her fallen cape, and almost fell The ele in its dia at the archwizard's discoe At the cliff, the last two shi+ps gathered frantic passengers One lifted with the gangplank still down and people still clinging to it The fiend's mind was crowded by a thousand evil spells, but one amused her With wry hu shi+p with a finger like a stone stalactite
”Befriend! Befriend! Befriend!”
Ied, distorted Eyes blazed hatred, round their teeth, bit their own tongues so blood flowed And, battle-knives or swords, or plying their bare hands, they stabbed, slashed, tore, bit, battered A screahbor's hair and bit the h her couts in a gory pile A third staplank
Broken-fingered, the woed to her death One berserker was pushed bodily over the side by threewith hi one would chop or loosen ropes and so drop the sail, make the shi+p veer into the ed hu, biting, strangling
Finally the flint ed, balled her fist, then blew it open A wind vortex gathered strength, engulfed the shi+p, knocked the hull at a steep angle so people pitched overboard, and shredded the metal foil sail Stricken, the shi+p sank But Sysque the shi+p to a safe, though ungainly landing She needed ers that chilled, she flicked the sailed like arrows and thudded into the shi+p They punctured wood and people, sheared rigging, crunched gunwales to splinters, and exploded deep inside like giant ballistae So shi+p dropped frooose No safety devices spared it fro the desert floor
Lady Polaris had outrun the crysoas torn at the he froeous hair was disheveled, spilling around her golden face, a novel sight for Sysque in frost ”A sie chided
”You can't stop that? How about this? The best for last!”