Tal Gor blinked. The “staff” was actually a pole arm with a double-edged glaive at one end and a mace at the other. “Is it a staff or a very unusual pole arm?”
“Both. Use it both ways. The gem there is a mana pool that you should link to; it is designed so that you can bind it as a true shaman’s staff in the traditional ritual sense. The large loop holds your summoning stone. With the blades, teeth and ball, you can stab, slash, eviscerate and crush your enemies,” Völund explained.
“It’s unbelievable! For me, really?” Tal Gor asked breathlessly.
“Yes. Just do not tell the other shamans. I will be making them staves, I am sure, but it will take time. I will put this with your bitch’s gear. I got a harness for the box, and a holding cup for the base, and saddle ties for the staff itself. I will tell the D’Warg handlers to keep it safe.”
“Thank you so much.” Tal Gor bowed deeply to the smith.
“Use it to protect my girl and her rider.”
Lilith entered her private sitting room off of her bedroom, planning on curling up with a good book for the remainder of the evening. She waved the table lantern on near her favorite reading chair. The sudden light revealed Sentir Fallon. She was mildly startled but refused to show it. His shielding skills were truly amazing. She had not detected him in the dark with her demon sight or any of her other senses.
“So you’re back with more news, I guess?” Lilith asked.
“I am. I came indirectly, of course, from a meeting with our Astlan ‘Incident Response Team’ and have more news,” Sentir Fallon said.
“And that is?” Lilith pulled up another chair from a corner into the light of the lamp.
“First, Beragamos has ascertained from the Ithgar archons that D’Orcs have appeared in a trading city there, doing much the same thing as in Astlan.”
Lilith nodded. “As we rather feared.”
“And according to our on-the-ground agent who interviewed a large number of orc witnesses — ”
Lilith interrupted Sentir. “You have an agent on the ground who actually speaks with orcs? Is actually willing to even be in close proximity with them? That doesn’t sound particularly Etonian of you.” She shook her head suddenly. “Wait — how do you get orcs to talk to one of your agents?”
Sentir smirked. “Yes, our principal field agent for Astlan is quite industrious and is very good at gathering information discreetly. They didn’t even know they were talking to an avatar.” He chuckled. “But beyond that, we actually have a half-orc priest who reported this.”
Lilith slowly shook her head and grinned rather mirthlessly at the avatar. “Things are changing, even within the never-changing world of the Etonians.”
“Not that much. We have simply realized that coming down to the material world in all of our celestial glory can sometimes be detrimental to information gathering. So our intelligence services are branching out.”
“You have ‘intelligence services’?” Lilith asked skeptically.
“Well, yes. Now. We are starting it with this incident,” Sentir said. “However, we need to do something about this. We need to stop this demon in his tracks. During her interviews, our agent discovered that the D’Orcs have openly said they will be paying a lot more visits to all the material planes, that their master, Lord Tommus, was planning on reestablishing all the old connections and raising the orcs and D’Orcs back to their former glory.”
“So were you two ever planning on sharing this with me?” a very calm tenor voice asked from the still-darkened corner on the other side of the room.
Lilith jumped at the sound of the voice behind her and angrily hopped her chair around to stare into the darkness. “What the Abyss? Aodh? Why are you lurking in the shadows of my private study? Did someone relocate the entrance to the Abyss into my private chambers?”
Aodh, the Hand of Nét, stepped out of the shadows. His silver wings were, as always, a striking match to his long, silver hair. He was dressed in his typical reddish-silver chainmail and crimson tabard emblazoned with the symbol of Nét, the El’adasir god of war. “I believe I have the outstanding question, which should take priority.”
“Yes, we just wanted to make sure of the facts on the ground before worrying you. We realized that if the rumors we had heard were true, you and your liege would be quite interested. But we didn’t want to cause alarm if none is justified,” Sentir replied calmingly.
Aodh stared impassively at the other avatar.
“It’s the truth, relax,” Lilith told the El’adasir avatar. The high elves were notably moved by little; their gods and avatars even less so.
“A personal illuminary of mine just this evening alerted to me to the events in Murgatroy, having received this information from very high up in the principality.” He crossed his arms. “Who is this Lord Tommus that threatens the alvar?”
“Well, that’s a long story,” Sentir Fallon said.
“All of us in this room are immortal. We have time,” Aodh said with no trace of humor.
Beragamos sighed. He had been summoned to the Palaestra. It was not the summoning that bothered him — there was nothing unusual about that — it was the location. The Palaestra was the training studio for the Holy Knights of Tierhallon, and to be fair, Tiernon was often there in the mornings, watching his knights train.
The problem was that Tiernon’s form in the Palaestra was very similar to his judgement form. It was not Beragamos’s favorite way of talking with his deity. Which, of course, was the point of the form when passing judgement. If he were simply acting as an observer, that would be one thing, but in this case he would have to explain a rather complicated situation and as such, would be the brunt of this form’s eyes.
Beragamos in his outdoor, winged form flew over the rolling meadows surrounding the five-hundred-foot-tall, refleca-marbled building. The scent of flowers was strong on the air. From a long distance, the Palaestra resembled a fairly standard rectangular building girded in Corinthian columns. Only as one got closer, which took some time, did one begin to realize exactly how huge the building was.
Once more, as he had so often done, Beragamos smiled as he thought about how lucky they were that the outer planes only obeyed those laws of physics that pleased their owners. Otherwise, this building would be completely unstable from an engineering standpoint. The weight of a real marble ceiling of the size of the Palaestra’s would need much more support than it had. Fortunately, refleca objects only weighed what they needed to weigh.
Beragamos landed on the top stairs of the main entrance of the Palaestra. He straightened his robes and proceeded forward. The two-hundred-foot-tall marble double doors swung open silently at his approach. He entered, and smiled slightly at the convenient nature of refleca when it came to minimizing energy requirements to open such seemingly immobile doors.
Beragamos passed through the antechamber and into the main arena of the Palaestra. This floor was a large training field, lined inside as well with more columns. Along each of the sidewalls were doors of various heights, all at least fifty feet high, leading to training studios, baths and ancillary chambers.
The avatar walked around the outside edge of the arena, behind the inner columns to avoid the sparring Holy Knights, all of whom were twenty feet tall and armed to the teeth. He purposefully avoided looking toward the far end of the hall, his destination, where Tiernon sat upon his throne.
Even at a fast walk, it took Beragamos’s human-sized legs some time to traverse the field. He finally stopped at the right approach to the throne. This was the waiting area to the right of the throne, where those wishing an audience could wait until they were acknowledged and motioned forward.