“If he could finagle it, he could very easily drop a god into the Oubliette,” Hendel said, staring directly at Tiernon. “It would make it far, far easier for him to punish oath breakers.”
Tiernon swallowed hard at the thought, but then shook his head. “No, I do not think so.”
“No?” Namora asked, arching an eyebrow.
“First of all, the Citadel and our avatars were preparing for war — a siege by the Storm Lords,” Tiernon replied. “If this interdiction is Orcus’s doing, that would mean he is working with the Storm Lords. I simply do not see Orcus ever taking the side of the Unlife. It is antithetical to everything we know about him,” he added emphatically.
“True.” Namora nodded. “The Orcus we knew would never do that. However, the Tiernon that Orcus knew would never have broken an oath and ordered him permanently slain.”
Tiernon glared at her. “How many times must we go over this? I did not order him permanently slain! I wanted him out of Etterdam, that is all!”
“What, you couldn’t just ask nicely?” Krinna asked sarcastically.
“I tried to reason with him, but Nét had gone too far. Orcus wanted payback and would not listen to me. The entire world was locked in war — a war that would have cost us most of our followers as well as those of the El'adasir!” Tiernon said.
“Your followers. Maybe someone should have instructed his priests to stay out of the fight between Nét and Orcus. It was your church that chose to join forces with the Los Sidhe against the orcs and jötunnkind; not mine or Namora’s,” Krinna said.
“Yes, the church made a mistake, and in large part that is thanks to my avatars there, led by Sentir Fallon. That is why I told him to fix his mistake personally and get Orcus off the plane,” Tiernon said. “You all know this. Why do we have to rehash it?”
“Because the sort of losses you feared on Etterdam may now be happening on Nysegard,” Namora said. “You once again allowed your attending archon to ‘go in and fix things’ and now they are cut off, at peril of their own demise and we can do nothing about it!”
“We could always send higher level archons to assist,” Torean suggested.
“And lose them as well?” Krinna asked.
“We have not had much luck sending our agents in to right these big issues. Perhaps it is time for a true Divine Intervention on our part?” Hendel asked.
The others all looked at him in shock. “Do you understand what an escalation that would be?” Krinna asked.
“If Orcus is behind this interdiction, if it is a trap, do you really want to walk into it?” Namora asked incredulously.
“So far we have been able to keep them at bay with relatively minor injuries,” Eldon reported to Grob and the others in the Command Center. “We have everyone re-tuned to our local avatars.” He gestured to the avatars now seated along one side of the table.
They had needed to get chairs for the avatars in order for them to stay at the table. As it was, they were only able to half pay attention to the conversations. The manual processing of both incoming and outgoing mana streams was quite taxing, particularly when there were only two avatars for a god.
Tiernon’s avatars had it the easiest. Hilda and Stevos were able to take quite a bit of burden off of Dashgar and Inethya, and Beragamos was above them, doing most of the heavy processing and storage. Timbly was able to assist Fassbindr and Delilah, but their workload was still greater than Tiernon’s avatars. The other six avatars were, however, being pressed to the limits of their abilities.
Namora’s avatars had some luck in that they had a good number of priests who were out at sea, not in combat at the moment. So they could provide mana and were not draining much. In terms of mana drawdown, her avatars were fortunate, as most of her priests were working on keeping the moat and catapult Holy Water renewed. This was a steadier, smoother outflow of mana than with active combat.
Krinna and Hendel’s avatars were hitting the limits of how much they could actually channel and contain at any given time. The four essentially kept their eyes closed, completely locked in concentration. Of all the avatars, Beragamos was probably the most actively engaged, due both to his larger team and his far greater capacity.
“The Storm Lords are still in the process of setting up; assembling their siege craft, organizing their regiments, setting up camps and battle lines.” Grob shook his head. “Common sense, our own experience and all of the records are clear that this is their weakest moment, and as you all know, we were going to hit them hard so that they could not get ensconced and positioned to strike.”
“They clearly timed this interdiction thing so that we could not exploit their weakness,” Aeris noted.
Beragamos looked up and over to Teragdor and Rasmeth, who at this point were simply observing. “Teragdor, do you feel ready to go out and exercise your apostolic duties? I am confident that we now have enough control of our mana streams that we can divert some for higher-level combat operations.”
Teragdor’s stomach twisted; he was not sure whether that was trepidation or eagerness to go into battle. This would be his first true battle as a priest of Tiernon, let alone as an apostle. “I am ready, Your Holiness.”
Beragamos nodded and looked to Rasmeth. “Can you support him out there? I suspect Torean’s streams may be more tightly constrained than ours, but you should be able to work at priest levels, if not apostolic. Having two apostles visible out there is worth every bit or perhaps more than anything we have the mana to do.”
“Of course, Your Holiness,” Rasmeth replied.
Teragdor strode the battlements in his apostolic armor, alongside Rasmeth in his apostolic leathers. This was the first time he’d worn this gear outside of his room. His armor and Rasmeth’s leathers had been brought from Tierhallon and Toreanhold, respectively, a few days ago. They were impressive artifacts and Teragdor was grateful for their holy nature, because he was not at all accustomed to moving in plate armor; he’d never worn anything more than leather armor, and that not frequently. He was a priest, not a Rod member.
He held his great shield with its apostolic emblem to his right, shielding himself and Rasmeth from the arrows that were pelting the ramparts. The majority of soldiers were hunkered down below the crenellations with shields above their heads. They were there in the event the Unlife scaled the walls or managed to get over the moat. So far, to his knowledge, none had. The arrows were coming from various Unlife on flying steeds in varying levels of decay. Teragdor had never in his worst nightmares envisioned this sort of battle.
Beragamos had been right, however; the sight of them striding the battlements seemed to cheer people up as they strode by and were seen. Grob had given them the name of a commander on the wall to coordinate with. Teragdor was hoping the commander could tell him what to do because, honestly, he had no experience with battlefield combat. He could fight as well as the next half-orc, or priest of Tiernon for that matter, but as to what one did when working with an army? He was at a complete loss.
He was sure that was the reason for his trepidation. He did not want to make a fool of himself, lose face. He looked to Rasmeth, speaking softly so only the two of them could hear over the shouts of the soldiers. “Have you ever been in a situation like this?”
Rasmeth looked at him, startled. “I am—was a high chaplain; I worked in a chapel!” He shook his head. “As an itinerant priest of Tiernon, no less, you’ve got far more field experience than I do.”
Teragdor sighed. “I pray we do not screw up.”