Erin Evans - Brimstone Angels

Sairche waved the ring again and bade the mirror show her Aornos. The mirror swirled and formed an empty street under a dark, drizzling sky. Neverwinter again. But there was no sign of red-haired Aornos. Sairche peered at the image, but as she did, the image blurred and wavered and reformed into the plains of Malbolge. Into the Birthing Pit, where the damned became devils and the devils killed out in the world incubated.

Sairche raised her eyebrows, and felt a small smile sneaking its way across her lips. “Oh no.”

She pressed the mirror to find Nemea, and again it showed her the same twitching images that settled, resolutely, on the boiling pit of souls. No doubting its message: Nemea and Aornos were dead.

Had Aornos and Nemea been stupid enough to pick a fight with Glasya’s hellwasps? Sairche shook her head sadly at the bubbling pit. Why did she even ask? Poor stupid Nemea. Poor stupid Aornos. They were exactly the sort to take Invadiah’s rage as an exhortation to kill the hellwasps.

With luck they would emerge as erinyes once more, though Sairche doubted their luck was that good. If Sairche was lucky, they wouldn’t remember her at all when they were reborn.

Hellwasps, she ordered the mirror. It snapped but flowed more smoothly, forming a window into Glasya’s audience chamber, where the hive of hellwasps swooped and swarmed around the throne of their chosen queen. Sairche frowned.

The ring, she remembered, and directed the mirror to find the hellwasp which carried the green stone ring in its mouth. The mirror’s surface dissolved into wavering light, as if the request were too difficult to manage, but then, abruptly, it cleared to show another rainy street. Then the Birthing Pit. Sairche’s eyebrows went up again.

As if for good measure, the mirror changed to the street again, then a wide, ancient wall, under the same drizzling sky. Nestled in a crack in the poorly repaired mortar sat the green stone ring-the second hellwasp must have snatched it up when the first was destroyed. Organized little beasties, Sairche thought. She would have liked a swarm of her own.

But then the mirror shimmered again and returned to the pit.

Sairche took a step back from the mirror. Both hellwasps dead. Both erinyes dead.

Lorcan, she ordered the mirror, her throat tightening. Show me Lorcan.

The mirror moved smoothly this time, but when it stopped, it showed her Lorcan launching up from a city street, a woman clinging to his neck as he took to the air. She peered at the woman-the Brimstone Angel.

Sairche grinned. Not one part of Invadiah’s retaliation had come out right.

She stirred the scrying mirror once more, and this time her adaptations worked. The mirror parted the temple’s forbiddances and obliged her-for only scant seconds, but still-with a glimpse of how Rohini’s end of the plan was going.

Rohini stood, exposed, unglamored, traces of tainted blue magic squirming over her dusky skin. She swayed on her feet like a drunk. Four people stood arrayed around her-a dragonborn and a man she had clearly charmed, and two empty-eyed, slime-skinned slaves of the aboleths. There was no question that they knew what she was. There was no question, in Sairche’s view, that Rohini was under their control.

Delicious, she thought again. And Invadiah was out on her training field without an inkling that everything was falling apart. Heads were going to roll this time. Starting with Rohini or with Lorcan? she wondered.

Starting with the messenger, she thought grimly. Sairche wet her lips, and racked her brain for a devil who was foolish enough or desperate enough or indebted enough to deliver such a message to Invadiah. If she wrote it down, they didn’t have to know the contents.…

Or, she thought, perhaps not Invadiah.

The Neverwinter mission, after all, was a disaster, and such disasters led to dramatic shifts of power. If Sairche played her hand right, she could gain some of that power. She had Glasya’s ear, after all. Invadiah would call her traitor, but that wouldn’t matter if Invadiah fell.

Both, she decided. She would find a stupid imp to carry her message to Invadiah and then find a way to get an audience with the archduchess.

Because regardless of whether Glasya thought Invadiah had ruined things right now, things would start to crumble when Invadiah inevitably went blazing into Neverwinter.

The moment Lorcan’s feet were solidly on the ground, Farideh untangled herself from him, falling to her knees as if to reassure herself the ground was solid beneath her. Lorcan unwound her tail from his knee where it had wrapped itself.

“You know,” he said, “most people literally dream of flying.” He helped her to her feet, still smirking. “I rather enjoyed it.”

She swatted him away. “Never again,” she vowed. But at least he had gotten them there quicker than the streets would have, and far ahead of the Ashmadai. “Thank you,” she added. She pulled the rod from her belt and scanned the empty courtyard. “Where’s your portal?”

He drew his sword and wand, ignoring her question. “You’d do well to get that sword out,” he said pointedly. “Who knows what’s waiting for us.”

“Acolytes,” she said, “who will panic when they see you with a bare sword. Show me where you left Mehen at least.”

They crept through the dim corridors, Lorcan leading the way. Farideh’s heart was in her throat, and at every turn, she expected to find herself facing one of the acolytes or new-marked Brother Vartan or Rohini herself.

“You do know,” Lorcan murmured, “that if Mehen doesn’t break free of his domination, you’re going to have to break it for him.”

Farideh nodded. “I’ll just tell him Havilar’s in trouble.”

“No,” Lorcan said, “I mean I hope you’ve learned enough about swordwork from him because you’re going to have to subdue him, and I’d rather you didn’t get hit with that cleaver of his.” He glanced back at her. “Still certain you don’t want to come with me?”

Farideh bristled at that. “If I’m killed, you can always go make a pact with Havilar. Get yourself a Kakistos heir who knows her bladework.”

Lorcan muttered a curse under his breath. “Look, don’t start this now. You … I’m going to get upset and you don’t want me to get us both killed by doing something like shouting at you not to be so stupid as to listen to bloody Sairche.” He started moving again. “I hope you are not such a fool as to believe she has your best interests at heart.”

“And you do?”

He spun on her again. “No,” he said. “But your interests are closer to mine than any other devil in the Hells. I guarantee you there is not a one among them willing to venture into a shitting temple to help you rescue a man that hates him above all others.”

She returned his glare. “What were you going to do with Havilar? She’s just as valuable.”

For a long tense moment, Lorcan didn’t speak. His mouth twitched as if he were choking on the words, and a muscle in his jaw pulsed as he bit down on them.

“You want to talk about this, fine,” he finally said. “We will. Not now. She’s safe,” he added. “Nobody knows there are two of you. No one’s going to find her.”

Off the main hall, Lorcan turned down the corridor that led to the acolytes’ quarters and abruptly stopped. Lying half out of the open door on their left, the body of an orc scintillating with blue fire blocked the path.

Lorcan reached back to press Farideh against the wall, but she’d dropped low, out of the eye line of anyone in the doorway. She crept forward, ever so slowly, until she could see the form of Brother Vartan standing near the door. Beyond him there were more of the spellscarred orcs and two men whose skin glistened in the torchlight. One stood to the side holding a wooden box. The bodies of another orc and one of the men lay on the ground. Beyond them stood Mehen, holding his falchion and rocking on his feet. Beyond Mehen, standing on a chair with her wings spread as if she could fly from the small room, was Rohini.