"You know, the biggest mystery surrounding you is your encounter during last year's ceremony. It has been told that the humans pitted you against a young red dragon. Dragons, young ones at least, aren't so much of a problem for elves as it is for other species, minus demons. And so, many of us assumed you raised it in undeath.
"To think you made a deal with her instead."
"How devious of me. It's almost like I'm an elven devil or something." I snorted, skimming over the contents of their pact and seeing how it related to the dragon in drow form he was ogling. "Anyway, seems like we'll all have a bestial side."
"Even Etan?" Eban asked incredulously. "With what?"
"My Sphinxes."
As Eban erupted in the maniacal laughter of disbelief, I turned away from him and Sovereign Galendra, enveloping him in her bosom, to fall back into meditation, leaving a sliver of consciousness focused on Zimysta's remaining three eyes and legs alongside the Owl.
Moments later, the dragon in drow form stepped back from him, leaving him shrouded in shadows for a bit while she approached me and the Owl to gaze upon the Falls with a cunning eye.
Seeing it made him and thus me reflect on how much more reserved she'd become after her temporally dilated hibernation. Now, she was the same physical age as my mental age; 150 years. Yet, we hardly knew each other as individuals. I knew of her need for a horde, her want of more lairs, and an ensuing demand to breed; eventually giving rise to her dominion. Aside from that, however, I knew next to nothing of her ways.
The irony was not lost on me.
Just as it was with Toril, Jaimess, and the others, it was the same for Sovereign Galendra and indeed my Troupe; doubly so for the celestial twins.
I'd known Geri and Freki far longer than anyone else in the Troupe, at least in spirit. Their knowledge of my ways was instinctual, a byproduct of adopting Skoll and Hati's memories. And, while I knew of their ways as wolves, they had yet to develop ways to live, fight, and die as humans on this Mortal Plane. And so, I paid the closest attention to the more extroverted, ambitious twin, for I knew his ways would be affected on this day far more than his sister's; his way, the drow of House Abaeir, and Zimysta as a whole.
With the strongest source of demonic entities frozen over and thawed into pulp by Geri, all that was left was for the demon spiders to be burned from the memories of my fellow drow. While the waters to drown the inferno were positioned around the 2nd Eye and the morbid festivities were being prepared around the 4th Eye, the spark had already caught within the 6th Eye, which held an anomaly, of sorts.
The burning undead Freki rose and gave away to one Asyrlla Abaeir, the 6th daughter of the 6th House, gave me a window into the once-Great Woven Yards of House Abaeir, where waxy webs and precarious stone was all that stood amidst a magical smog of darkness.
The embers burning through its charred skin were the only light within; a candle to my senses but a veritable sun to theirs. Its dull radiance simultaneously blinded and illuminated the pierced faces of the 4th and 5th daughter of the House from the front and Asyrlla from the rear.
While their eyes were searing, tearing, and sealed shut, the eyes of their demon spiders were not; nor were their senses. Yet, there were no words to share between the sisters, only a sadistic pleasure from those at the front and a deep understanding of what was necessary for her at the rear.
Asyrlla seized the initiative by gathering arcana in her palm to manifest a dense cloud of smoke from it, then transmuted the excess energy into a heat wave that sent her arcane smoke screen billowing over her assailants. In the same breath, she ditched her mana veil and retreated into the darkness, concealing her presence while the burning undead began swinging its gnarled fists with reckless abandon.
She remained clear to my senses as she distanced herself, focusing on the one who indirectly aided her under the solace gained by the pervasive magical darkness. She knew her sisters were as visually impaired as she was, yet she also knew their beasts were not. Thus she quickened her pace, moving toward the exit by memory alone, keeping her senses sharpened to the height of their ability to evade the many noises scuttling about.
Wide berths were taken around the skittering, chattering calls of the demon spiders. Wider berths were taken around the arcane signatures of her sisters. But when she heard growling and howling precede the crackling of burning roots, all caution seemed to be thrown aside.
She dared to hope as rushed toward them and felt that hope split into opposing emotions as smoldering roots rushed past her. Rage clouded her senses and billowed once the crimson webs she'd grown so familiar to refused to show. Yet, there was no rage toward herself, her sisters, me, or anything but the Queen Demon Spider for being so fickle- nay, so paranoid that she'd cast her out for claiming an undead as an asset.
That was fine for her, however, for she was made aware of a Drow God who was much less fickle and higher in station than even the Queen Demon Spider.
Like so many before her, the initial thought of submitting to the divine forces she once opposed flashed through her mind, birthing feelings of fear and shame and thoughts of skepticism before the fundamental truth was finally acknowledged; in Lilith's name, mine, or hers, death was the only outcome. And so, she looked into the veritable void for a bit too long, and I looked back.
Gilded rays wreathed her form as my name uttered from her lips, opening the rays of twilight to pierce the veil and show her the way to the one she sought. As she rushed, my divine touch rushed after her to correct and develop her genes to their pinnacle.
As things went, she could not feel such things. The divine worked in subtle ways, after all. What she did feel was the sense of freedom as she realized, for the first time in her life, her future was hers to decide, birthing a burning passion that kicked her into overdrive.
I flagged her on the Net and looked through Freki's eyes as she rounded the final bend. An unneeded act, as it were, for Freki had long-since caught Asyrlla's scent and was hardly surprised to see her sliding to a halt before him, weapons thrown to either side.
Her attempt to demand Freki take responsibility for recent events was sundered by Freki's clawed hand clenching around her waist to draw her shoulder closer to the scalding drool dripping from his fangs.
Freki's teeth bit into her shoulder like all the rest, searing and smoking as the venomous drool sank into her flesh before he tossed her aside. The cracks and distorted howls of shifting bone and an evolving spirit were largely ignored by him. Instead, he focused on the grimacing visage of an elderly woman who'd been mummified by frost. Her skin, frozen in time to a doll-like state, nearly mimicked the tan hues of her son. Yet the hollow holes in her eyes were filled with a radiance similar to his sister's.
"Make sure she bites only who she's supposed to. Keep her occupied." Freki growled at his mother. And though the Undead Ice Queen of Shujen followed his orders to the T, it wasn't without backtalk.
"Worry not about your mate, Boy. You have a harvest to tend to."
Freki's sneer forced a plume of smoke from his snout, yet the snout on his pauldron glowed. Its eyes burned with the radiance of the sun while the adamantine cannonball in its mouth rippled with heat.
The Hesperus Star detached when Freki returned his gaze to his hunting grounds, falling into an orbit around him as he pulled arcana from his spirit with all the grace of a barbarian.
It roiled rather than flowed through his spirit and used no organs to change its nature to a seasonal spectrum of summer and autumn; red and brown. Yet it had purpose, flowing in two paths to his fist, reaching out to pluck the star from its orbit and imbue his voice with power before uttering. "Summer Sun."
The words banged against the Hesperus Star like the drums of a gong or, better yet, like a batter hitting a home run, launching the glowing orb to suspend itself around the Great Woven Yard's zenith.
The plucking strings, yips, and howls of the Fruitful Four echoed as the dull amber light of a rising sun splayed across the yards for the first time, casting eerie shadows as the lupine forms of the harvest wardens scattered to hunt the beasts and slaves sent to end them. They found the hunt much more of a challenge than expected, however, as the beasts were demonic by nature and thus at home in the smoldering environment.
For now.
Until then, claws and fangs clashed amidst the dull orange glow, with either side dealing blows that would kill a civilian a dozen times over and healing them through all powers innate, druidic, divine, and arcane. Searing webs cauterized wounds and reattached limbs as quickly as they were dismembered while all but magical, adamantine, or mithral weapons bounced harmlessly off the werewolves' hides, creating a stalemate that would have lasted through the ages, were it not for Freki's recent recruits.
A short whine sent the Black Pack Alphas rocketing skyward on pillars of fire, seemingly toward the burning orange orb above until they split to the four winds. Arcane stone layered itself atop their bodies as they arced above the gathering enemy, forming humanoid boulders that gulped the ambient heat until they were churning, roiling, and glowing as bright as the Hesperus Star before they crashed into the enemy ranks.
The House rolled beneath the four thunderous quakes, striking its interior like the ill-tempered fist of a giant, throwing countless tons of scalding stones and magma skyward to later oppress the once-Great Woven Yards. The enemy, cannon-fodder though they were, had been reduced to an afterthought, as there was nothing left to bite or raise in death. That was merely the pre-harvest, however; both for the Meteor Pack and House Abaeir.
The counterattack came swift enough to surprise even me. Spiders scrambled from a hundred unseen trapdoors, their sizes ranging from palm-sized to the height of a small estate. Drow dropped from above or cast spells from below, rising to outnumber the spiders 2 to 1 while twice as many slaves rushed from the tunnels to back them up, eager to meet their deaths and escape from this hell for good.
However, the veritable bosses of this battle appeared as a pair of crimson streaks emerging from the same tunnel as Asyrlla to shoot past Freki, leaving his towering form riddled with scars from head to toe.
The sonic wake of their movement came a moment later, as did Freki's growl, rising into a snarl that banged against the star above, and it flared in response, brightening to a bright yellow glare that sent the drow and spiders scrambling for cover, freeing Freki to focus on the roiling energy in his spirit and guide it toward his heart.
The spiritual chain and dagger wrapped around Freki's heart glowed white as his arcana flowed through it, injecting an adrenal concoction into his system that made his heart rate spike. His rising blood pressure raised venous ridges across his skin as his breath became labored , pulling his lips into a smoking snarl.
When his eyes glowed with the same white heat, Freki turned and pounced, crushing a crater into the ground as he ascended several meters and soared several meters more, his massive fist clenched back to be unleashed in the stalagmite his closest assailant darted behind.
The impact was like a shotgun built for a giant. The concussive boom was enough to shatter the bones of many bystanders, but the actual damage came from the stone shrapnel pelting off the chitinous armor of Afae Abaeir, sending her cartwheeling in the air where she was opened to Freki's claws.
Despite it all, the 5th daughter spat webs and made the arcana roil around her to coil between Freki's massive claws, drawing a dirk to thrust at his neck in the same breath as if to showcase her superiority complex.
Freki remained prepared, however. The celestial arcana flowing down his arms peeled off before his flurry, forming spectral burning brambles that wove themselves into claws that converged their nails into a singular point before striking her unguarded side.
Unguarded though she was, she was not unarmored. Her chitinous breastplate rippled beneath Freki's red-hot claws as its surface was impacted, devolving into a waxy mess that seemed to drain the claws of their heat before the kinetic energy launched Afae across the cavern.
Her sister, Erellara, levitated above the fray, carelessly watching the druid fail to catch herself in webs and crash into the far wall, her mind seemingly concentrated more on a prayer to her sadist of a Goddess.
Her prayer to restrain the filth before her spawned a crimson spear from above to cut through my darkness like shears through paper before it exploded into a domain of hellfire and waxy webs. Yet, past the devil's darkness, there was the Summer Sun's celestial light to smother and burn.
Freki turned toward the spell as it sizzled away, yet fell back, allowing the field of smoking weeds at his feet to consume him wholly. Erellara went on the defensive immediately, drawing a dirk while another prayer formed on her lips.
Before the first word could be spoken, however, the space beneath her filled with smoke and soon ignited, opening a conflagration that spat out the giant of a bestial man.
In turn, Erellara spat; literally. Her prayer was cut short with a contemptuous loogie she spat at Freki before canceling her levitation and diving dirk first. The arcana reserved for the prayer was instead imbued into the phlegm, making it stick to her lips and draw out into a line as it closed the distance. Just before it smacked Freki, however, it seemed to anchor itself in space, forming a hypersonic zipline that pulled her in when she sucked in her spit.
She descended as a blur Freki struggled to track. All he could sense was the cold bite of her blade sinking into his neck, burning as crimson arcana flowed down the edge before a pain he'd never felt surged down his spine.
Freki swayed as the pestilential venom spread through his body like a legion of baby spiders, devouring his organs and clouding his senses with the burn of a million bites. Yet his rage pushed him through it, bringing his senses back to the drow priestess kneeling on his shoulder.
His arms blurred and his left claw caught her ribs, his right dug into her thigh, and he dragged her down with a ravenous roar. In turn, Erellara dragged her blade through Freki's collarbone and left lung, yet failed to remove her face from the burning maw.
As Freki inhaled a ragged breath, the burning adrenaline in his spirit exhaled something pure and poured it in Freki's mouth, concentrating it into a radiant inferno that growled louder than he did.
Even while being blinded, Erellara didn't falter. She deftly forwarded her reversed grip and swept her blade up just as the conical beam of celestial energy sprayed from Freki's maw, parting it harmlessly around her frame.
Sneering, Freki jerked forward and snapped, then reeled back as he felt blood sizzle around his gums and metal clenched between his teeth, and so he jerked, pulling his maw away while throwing the drow off him.
Ever pragmatic, Erellara swung into the far distance to heal and swung herself further upon seeing an enraged Afae guiding a veritable legion of beasts toward Freki. Freki, however, didn't see things that way.
Au contraire. Freki saw it as fearful cowardice, activating his predatory instincts, in turn furthering his rage. Yet, he simmered in place, clenching his fists and growling in tune with his roiling spirit. His breath grew more bestial, more… voracious, as his tan skin charred, cracked, and began to glow from within. His flowing black hair ignited into a raging conflagration around his skull and was snuffed out as he haunched forward, condensing into a burning halo as smoky fur flowed down his form. Then he unleashed his wrathful howl and all the energy roiling within him.
Freki's detonating spirit vaporized the surrounding stone before the ambient air could superheat and expand. The mass contained within the ensuing pressure wave skyrocketed as the gas compressed, expanding the crater that'd formed and peeling back its bottom layer in a fraction of a second.
The resulting floor to ceiling wall bled with heat and changed phases as the shockwave finally blasted it apart, utterly ruining the Great Woven Yards and immolating all but the strongest creatures who claimed it as their domain. They sliced or simply barreled through the blast in ways that made me nerd out, despite their need to die.
As if it echoed that sentiment, the Summer Sun inhaled more of Freki's flowing energy and flared to an A-type star that sought to bless the Darkworld cavern with the life-giving energies of summer.
Its radiance burned the aberrant landscape in the retinas of those who witnessed its glory, leaving them to listen to the stone hissing in protest of their inner compounds vaporizing as they charred and burned. Those who clung to the shadows felt despair rising as the walls began to shift and slide to the floor, mitigating their cover more and more by the second. Yet, the spiders were undeterred, continuing their march through the pooling magma without a care.
A line of arcane explosions halted their progress, shaking them to their core but otherwise doing nothing but stalling them, with only a few giving chase to the Black Pack Alphas; covered by the harvest wardens. And so, Freki turned his attention to the handless priestess, levitating in the shade of a giant stalagmite as she tried to heal.
A dull boom signaled his leap into the air and she reacted accordingly, hastening her witchcraft while compressing arcana into a shield behind her. Freki, on the other hand, soared, gathering his sorcerous might in his fist and throat before punching at the empty air.
"Meteor Fist!"
A searing stone fist materialized from his knuckles as they struck the air and flashed into superheated magma as it met the Summer Sun's light, yet remained a compressed solid mass as it plummeted toward Erellara's hiding spot.
Much like the pre-harvest, the meteor strike made Priestess Erellara an afterthought. Having nowhere to run, she could only continue hiding behind her stalagmite, even as it melted and fell around her arcane shield. Then the meteor shattered said shield, burying and smashing and incinerating her before it all went splashing amidst the shockwave.
The carnage made the Summer Sun flare in approval, adopting the blue-white light of an O-type star that put Freki in a majestic light as he surveyed the alien environment. Pillars, buttresses, daises, railings, and other adamantine structures floated amidst the growing lava lake like lost islands; armor, furniture, and the infrastructure released of their foundations being their jungles and cities, glowing white hot but remaining as solid as ever.
The sight birthed a sadistic pleasure in Freki that turned his sights back on Afae, engaging his men in the distance. Unlike her sister, she remained shielded from the heat by her chitinous armor and protected from the oppressive light by her giant spiders, standing in a huddle above her like a living phalanx.
With a mind to end the hunt with a bang, Freki launched to land alongside his men and fell into a barbaric frenzy. Yet, it was to little avail. The spider's numbers were too great, their hides were too resilient against their heated claws, and even with their strength, they could not sustain their momentum if their numbers increased.
So it was, Freki looked deeper into his spirit than ever before, looking past the simmering beast's head to find its hind quarters buried in dust, and he resonated with it. On the outside, Freki pounced away from the line and let his rage be tempered by the rains of summer, cooling his spirit to a more autumnal shade of brown.
As he took a deep breath, the cracks of thunder bellowed and the Summer Sun's light began to shimmer as thick clouds swarmed it, releasing a deluge from their gullets to be vaporized at once, forming more clouds of billowing steam that soon cleared as they absorbed the ambient heat and lost its opacity.
As he inhaled, the ground beneath him surged. The lava surrounding him flowed outward like a tidal wave, revealing a dais of blackened bedrock that cracked beneath the emergence of colossal autumnal roots. Brown vines crept over his skin, if only to burn into an ashen cowl beneath the Summer Sun. Gray trees sprouted around him, only for the oppressive heat to strip them of their bark and send them toppling over Freki's form, where it seemed to melt and harden into metallic plates, clawed gauntlets, and spurred boots that perfectly mimicked his form. Orange squash, corn, and other crops tumbled down the vines reaching across his back, if only self-immolate and weave its crackling flame into a pair of radiant wings, poised behind Freki to sweep the rains of autumn forward.
As the rain rushed forward to flash into steam, so too did the land burst forth to birth creeping vines, burning bushes, and smoldering trees, lifting or sinking the molten terrain to fit the wolves harvesting it. Yet that was only the beginning. As Freki began howling, spurring his pack into a frenzy, billowing plumes of dirt and dust ejected from his spirit, falling in place of the rain to pelt the spider's fleshy, wax-like carcasses en masse.
Freki's fertile soil effectively smothered the demon-spiders the same way ants smothered slugs with dirt to counter their mucus; which was fitting, due to the spiders being equally disgusting. While mighty and exceptionally deadly, they weren't the brightest creatures on the block, remaining unaware of their exploited weakness until Bazra's fist blasted a chunk out its chitin.
With their weakness exposed, the predatory nature of Freki's men took hold. Their yips and calls drowned out Freki's howling as they worked with each other to reduce the outer layers of this spider onion Afae made for herself, stripping legs before they went in for the kill and tossed the stripped layers aside.
Within minutes, Afae became an afterthought. Yet, Freki continued howling. Freki continued indiscriminately releasing his autumnal sorcery from his spirit, having it manifest as a geyser of celestial roots and volcanic soil that swept over the cavern in irregular waves.
Every centimeter of the melted house was covered in the roots before a subsequent blast added a layer of soil, then Freki's howling would taper and the soil would melt beneath the Summer Sun, only to be covered in another layer of celestial roots after he caught his breath. Repeatedly, until the cavern was filled in its entirety; giving the Meteor Pack veritable highways to chase down those with the enchantments, spellcraft, or wits to survive.
Layer by later, soul by soul, House Abaeir was harvested; their Great Woven Yards were limed with blood of demons, fertilized by autumnal stone, sown with the heat of a star, and watered by magma; sustaining the cycle of change.
From where I stood in the Arcane Tower, I could see the 6th Eye of Zimysta lose the purple-orange glow of its Faerie Flame infused architecture before a stream of bodies poured from the 6th Leg a few ways away, chased by a pillar of steam. Orange-white magma flowed from the entrances soon after, appearing as vibrant strings that spilled into the newly reformed grazing yards, sending the rothay and the new beasts hunting them skittering away.
A prelude to what was to come.
When the smoke began pouring from the eye and glowing dull orange soon after, the result was akin to a plastic film being burned away. Parts of the wall began to glow, first red, then white before their surfaces peeled back, allowing superheated magma to fall as a wave with less viscosity than the Falls themselves, splattering as high as the ceiling as it fell to the basin's depths to be corrupted by Cononthoth's Draconic essence.
I paid little attention to the Shadowfire magma, however. That was something for Eban to focus on, for a part of my spirit was standing alongside Freki, rewarding his efforts by attending his revelry.