“You are the only illuminary I have left,” Stevos said.
“What in the names of the Five Siblings have they done?” Rasmeth asked.
Beragamos woke from his sleep in sudden shock. He had come to Nysegard with his incarnated body rather than his usual avatar body in order to better hide his nature; thus he had been sleeping in a bunk down with the refugees.
Something was horribly, indescribably wrong. He felt at a complete loss. He felt empty, empty in a way he could not remember ever being before, at least not in any recent Phoenix Cycle.
“Where is Tiernon?” Beragamos exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was wrong.
“In Tierhallon; now go back to sleep!” someone shouted at him.
Beragamos shook his head. He quickly reached out with his mind, following his links. He had no links off-plane! He could sense his team members: Hilda, Stevos, Dashgar, Inethya, Teragdor. They were here, they were fine, but he had no access to anything off-plane. Tierhallon, his HALO and the god pool were gone!
He blinked and tried to stop the sudden onset of hyperventilation. Tierhallon could not be gone! That would be inconceivable. And besides, he could not seem to reach anything off-plane. None of his old links to priests and illuminaries on other planes that venerated him.
No, it is not Tierhallon that is gone from me, but rather I am gone from Tierhallon, Beragamos thought as he stood to quickly get dressed. He needed to find the others. Whatever was happening, this overrode Tiernon’s instructions.
Sentir Fallon was enjoying a glass of wine while reading reports from the local archons and prophets, when something suddenly seemed off. He could not place it. He set his wine down and began searching among his links and illumination streams, both those on his HALO and those he held directly. Dashgar and Inethya! They were gone, gone along with all of Nysegard. The primary illumination streams from Nysegard ran through them. Yes, there were plenty of secondary streams, but the main ones were missing. Even from people who were currently here in Tierhallon, but reported to Dashgar or Inethya.
Suddenly some of the Nysegard links came back online. Dashgar’s and Inethya’s HALOs were going autonomous. This was something he understood full well from his trips to the Abyss. Before traveling there, he always made sure all of his links, including personal ones, were transferred to his HALO so no one would notice a short absence on his part.
In this case, however, Dashgar and Inethya had not transferred their primary links to their HALOs, and so there had been a brief time before the HALOs’ logic systems had detected their absence and failed over their still-active links. There was only one explanation.
“Tiernon damn those liches,” Sentir Fallon swore. Somehow, the Storm Lords had managed to reproduce the Dark Apostle’s work.
This was a variant of the warding that had blocked Orcus from the Abyss. This one, however, was blocking access to the Outer Planes — perhaps even all planes. The Dark Apostle’s first version had blocked all planar contact; it had taken him several more centuries to be able to be able to exclude the Outer Planes. That had been a critical factor in their timing.
Certainly they would not have been able to block the entire world, but with Dashgar and Inethya at the Citadel, which they had been trying to block, all of the illumination streams running to Tierhallon through the two of them would have been broken. They would have their illuminaries on Nysegard, the vast majority of them, but would not be able to relay them off-plane.
It would be only a matter of minutes before Dashgar and Inethya would pull their local illuminaries back from their HALOs. The HALO would then lose access to those streams. Essentially, all of Nysegard would go back offline again. That was going to show up downstairs. An entire world disappearing would impact the charging of the god pool. This would show up as far worse than an accounting glitch. Damn liches!
Another cold thought struck him. Dashgar and Inethya had reached out to their Torean counterparts; had they accepted? Had the two reached out to their other Sibling counterparts? How many other attending archons and prophets had just vanished?
This was bad, very bad. He needed to get on this immediately!
Teragdor was feeling rather queasy with his connection to Tierhallon lost. Fortunately for him, his patron saint had his back. Stevos was actually behind him at this moment, looking over his shoulder at the map.
“Vicar General!” a voice called from over by one of the mirrors.
“Yes?” Grob called back.
“The aerial attack has begun. Catapults are firing as we speak, to take out the ground support,” the mirror’s operator told him.
“Very well; tell them to hold back on sending Wardens into the air,” Grob ordered.
“Kargen!” Grob yelled to someone else in the room. “Scramble the enchanters and aeromancers; they are going to have to be our first line of defense in the sky. We need to keep this a ranged battle. I want to keep casualties down until we have more healing support.”
“Aye, Vicar General,” Kargen’s voice came from the crowd.
Grob turned back to the rest of the people around the map table. “We are going to rely on ranged attacks from wizards and animages for the moment.”
“Vicar General!” another voice called from the mirror region. “Ground assault has begun. The pyromancers are using the fire canons on those attempting to bridge the moat!”
“I need all available wizards and animages at their stations on the walls!” Grob yelled.
“If the Outer Planes are unreachable, then I’d assume so is the Abyss,” Elden said to Grob, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Our conjurors are going to be every bit as out of actions as our priests.”
Hilda, Stevos and Teragdor all looked at the Lord Ranger in shock. “You use demons to fight your battles?”
Rassnon shrugged. “They are not our first choice, but against the Unlife, they are the lesser of two evils.”
Stevos looked to Dashgar in surprise. The archon simply shrugged; he apparently knew and approved of the use of demons to fight the Unlife.
Teragdor whispered ruefully to Rasmeth, “We aren’t in Murgandy anymore.”
“No, we are not,” Rasmeth said, equally in shock that the Citadel would even think of using demons.
Behind them, having moved to fill in the space where Leighton had been standing before being called to duty, Iskerus heard them and added “Sir Talarius’s helmet would literally blow off at the thought of fighting side by side with demons. It’s a good thing he isn’t here right now.”
Chapter 144
“Enough,” Beragamos told the guard blocking his way to the Command Center. It had taken him more time that he would have liked to find his way here. With Tierhallon offline, he had only his links to Hilda and the others here. Links were straight lines; they did not account for walls, ceilings and floors, nor did they come with any mapping assistance. Thus, he’d encountered a great number of dead-ends as he’d made his way to the Command Center.
“I’m sorry, Brother, but we are on total lockdown. The fight has begun; only essential people are allowed in the Command Center,” the guard said.
Beragamos shook his head. This was the problem with incarnated bodies, at least for him. He was wearing real clothes and so could not change them on a whim. They also didn’t come with built-in halos or auras. Beragamos pulled back the hood of his robe.