Erin Evans - Brimstone Angels

By the look of things, most of the Ashmadai were just as antsy as Sairche.

“An insult this great,” the warty little man said in a smooth, slippery voice, “is an insult to us all, and worse, an insult to Asmodeus himself.”

Sairche rolled her eyes. One tended to live a great deal longer if one didn’t attempt to put motives in the king of the Hells’s mouth.

“Simply listen,” Glasya said. “Make certain they are coming to amenable conclusions. If they do not, feel free to guide them.”

Sairche was prepared to, but once they were past the point of laying blame on their absent comrades, the assembled Ashmadai spat out information and cobbled it together more quickly than Sairche would have ever given mortals credit for:

The shadow devil had blamed “the Sovereignty.” The Sovereignty was spoken of on the Sea of Fallen Stars. It was a sailors’ tale. It was a true and terrible threat. It was the ruler of the creatures of the sea and spellplague. It was the origin of all madness.

They strung rumors together like pearls on a necklace-the nightmares of the Chasm, the hospital that ministered to spellscarred soldiers and the secret experiments everyone knew were carried out there, the smug priest who ran things, the visits he paid to a certain peculiar gentleman who lived on the edge of the river. The Abolethic Sovereignty. The fearsome aboleths. The Chasm’s monsters, and the strange way they all mimicked one another-the lashing tentacles, the poisonous slime, the reminders of the nightmares everyone knew came with proximity to the Chasm-and didn’t, as if a mad sculptor built them one by one, the Ashmadai mused. As if something was crafting and sending them out. It would be easy, and clever too, to send them out in the guise of the Ashmadai’s known enemies, to harry and winnow them while they in turn harried and winnowed the ranks of other cults. They thought they were clever, these aboleths-well they had not yet met the followers of the Raging Fiend.

As Sairche watched the Ashmadai circling up for the sacrifice that would call up Asmodeus’s emissary to pass along the information of this new and eldritch threat, her mouth pulled down in a frown of puzzlement.

Sairche knew, as well as anyone knew, that getting too clever around the schemes of an archdevil could easily lead to an early death. Or worse. But as she watched the Ashmadai pin down a struggling half-elf woman, she couldn’t help but wonder at Glasya’s intentions. She’d gleaned from listening to Invadiah and Rohini that Rohini’s mission was to infiltrate the Sovereignty and get Invadiah access to an aboleth. Sairche had assumed that Glasya wanted to capture one of the interplanar monsters for one reason or another, and didn’t wonder too hard about why.

But the archduchess had sent Sairche not to lure the Sovereignty, not to redirect the Ashmadai away from her agents, but to drive them toward Rohini, thinking they were fighting the Sovereignty.

It was almost as if the aboleths had nothing at all to do with any of Glasya’s Neverwinter plans.

The woman’s screams broke her concentration and she settled back to watch the rest of the sacrifice. Glasya would want to know if they were successful at passing on this new theory.

Yvon stirred close to consciousness several times. He heard the voices of strangers, saw limbs strewn across his field of view, and once heard Lector’s strident tones, diminished by fatigue or something like it. When he finally broke free and woke from his fitful half-sleep, he sat up and found himself covered over with several stiff bodies. Sekata looked down at him, her chest a ruin and a fly walking over the surface of her eye.

Yvon pushed her body off in a sudden panic and hauled himself dizzily to his feet. The room was littered with bodies and splattered with blood and smears of char where spells had broken over the timbers and brick. His own gut was throbbing in pain, and as he touched his abdomen he found it bloodied and feverishly hot. Still disoriented he fished in his pockets for a small pouch and withdrew a potion-a sample of Sekata’s wares-downing it in one gulp. The wound flared for a moment, then subsided, still there, but no longer a death sentence. He tore lengths of cloth from another fellow’s robes to make a bandage.

Then he remembered the twins.

He froze, looking around the room, but all was still and silent. If they were still here, they weren’t ready to attack. He crept carefully over the fallen bodies, noting faces. So many.…

In the middle of the floor lay a chain and a small silver amulet. Lector’s paralysis charm. Yvon’s shaking, bloodstained fingers scooped the valuable necklace up. Valuable, he thought, but it did Lector no favors. It was what came of putting your faith in breakable things. He crept slowly up the stairs, favoring his wound.

Kalam-poor boy-had been laid out beside the entrance and covered over with a sheet. A new man, a tiefling with broad shoulders and heavy horns, sat on a stool beside him, sharpening a short curved blade.

“You,” Yvon said, his voice rasping. The guard jumped, nearly taking off a thumb. “You there.”

“Hells, are you alive?” The guard was on his feet and ushering Yvon toward the door and fresh air. “Your pardon,” he said. “It seemed like no one down there was still breathing.”

The rush of cool, damp air was a welcome change from the bloody stink of the cellar. “They’re all dead?”

“Don’t worry, brother,” the tiefling man said. “The others are gathering-we will have revenge on those that killed your friends.”

Yvon’s eyes swam. “The Glasyans?”

The man gave him a puzzled look. “The Sovereignty.” He lowered his voice. “They think they are clever, but we’ve discovered them after all: the spirits living in the Chasm. They think to overthrow our lord, no doubt.”

“No,” Yvon said. “It was a pair of Glasyans. It was the Sixth Layer.”

The man snorted. “Those dandies? We had it from your leader’s mouth: four spellscarred orcs and a tiefling warlock claiming the blood of Ashmadai for the Sovereignty.”

“Lector?” In his mind’s eye, Yvon recalled the the crunch of bone, the empty wheeze of breath leaving his comrade’s body. The golden-eyed one had broken something in his skull with that strike. His eyes had been dead before he hit the floor … hadn’t they? “Where is he?”

The guard shook his head. “Gave his report and then died, unfortunately. As you will soon if you don’t give those wounds a rest.”

“There were no orcs,” Yvon said. “The orcs … those were earlier. Elsewhere.”

The guard raised an eyebrow. “So you were all struck down by a single warlock?”

Yvon shook his head. “No. A pair of warlocks … or perhaps a warlock and something else.”

“Aye, there’s killing blows enough to mark at least a caster and a blademaster.” He shifted. “Or a warlock leading a pack of orcs.”

“The Raging Fiend take you!” Yvon cried. “I know what I saw.”

“Bring it to someone who cares, brother. Only wait until after the burning.” The guard grinned. “You marked, did you, the warlock wore the robes of the House of Knowledge?” He leaned down close to Yvon and whispered, “It burns tonight.”

Yvon stared at the man a moment, woozy with the loss of blood. None of this was right-the girl who entered had not spoken, she had come alone, but Farideh had aided her and they had killed ten Ashmadai with their own hands and nearly killed Yvon as well. There were no orcs. There was no claim of any “Sovereignty.”

And now his fellow cultists were coming together to punish … who? Yvon had noted the connection between the Sixth Layer cult and the hospitalers of the House of Knowledge. But burning down the entire temple-one of the largest buildings still standing in Neverwinter-to kill two girls … that was too much. It would draw the notice of every eye in Neverwinter, and news would spread far and wide. Much as he was sorry to agree with poor, dead Sekata, it did not benefit the Ashmadai to unmask themselves so abruptly.