Rickley's show was one I thoroughly enjoyed, for it was the second to last of such battles that I would see for some time. And so, my eyes lingered on the Dead Parade marching out of Zimysta's fallen 4th Eye for several moments before I opened my shadow, then let my eyes linger on the undead I kept trapped in my umbral pocket.
Free of their confines, low-level skeletons and zombies shambled in mobs toward those unloved by the darkness, with some losing their 'train of thought' and falling behind, only to be directed by the few of them with umbral smoke pouring from their hollow orbits or the radiance of my arcana in their decaying eyes.
In the absence of orders, the Undead Pages scattered their forces throughout and defaulted to aggression by patrolling the Falls, only for the Undead Knights to guide them toward the place that mattered the most. That, however, was not what I wanted, so I finally took command of the dead with the mere suggestion of a thought.
As one, my undead and Rickley's turned to meet in the middle of the Falls and soon turned to rework the stone in natures image, tailored to the likeness of a divine dragon of shadow and fire- a largely unneeded effort, as the potent arcana within these falls bent to my will above all others. It rippled against the intent in my mind and ignited that divine spark contained within, rippling into the Falls to grab hold of the ruined stone, fields of dust, and destroyed houses to Mend, Recycle, and Fabricate in their stead.
The voluminous alcoves of the fallen Eyes expanded and shifted in the same breath, becoming expansions of the fiendish energies displayed within or, in the celestials cases, overtaking the heavenly energy to imbue the magma and snow with a violet-black undertone.
It had pestilence and death, given by the bounties of famine and war. The niche opened by the fallen mushroom forest was now filled with dusk woods. It had magma and thus it had stone, interspersed with the metals and jewels dislodged from the ancient eyes. Ice fell from the walls like glaciers, adding to the great basin below; yet there was not enough water, even with the… I suppose stream of Zimysta pooling in.
So it was. The undead paraded around the missing eyes to vacate the Troupe and weave the stone into a multi-staged dam or, more precisely, a series of chambers fed from above and below- a foundation for what was to come. The exception was the 2nd Eye. Not because of neglect, however, but because Blude was the only one who chose to play by Drow rules.
Further below and ahead of the Falls, she built her second franchise for her Grand Hadal Estates. After destroying the slaver's guild, she returned to her estates with the corpse of Welvd'al, the 2nd son of House Casia-Psellus. Having killed one of the Matrons' sons, she's been using her Artificing Witch Class to perform cosmetic surgery on Raki, making her appear just like him and more, to obtain his key memories.
It wasn't until now, when the House was so focused on the events outside, that Raki acted.
She emerged from the bulbous coral as a burly drow with a combed crop of silver hair, dressed ostentatiously in silken robes and jewels. Unlike those he wore, they remained bone dry as she let the current take her down the falls.
No doubt aided by the slope, Raki whipped her hand toward the wall after falling a dozen or so meters to catch herself on the stone, where she counted to 90 to ensure the coast was clear before swimming upwards, climbing the Falls like a salmon and coming to a landing at the base of the 2nd Eye, unseen.
She adopted an indignant visage before she stormed through the House's private entrance, lashing out at Welvd'al's subordinates as they approached to explain the 1st son Divdiirn's failure to return from Nydorden Halls.
Following Welvd'al's mannerisms, Raki reacted to the presumption of Divdiirn being a traitor or dead in the most extreme manner possible, by killing both the messenger and a nearby slave just for the hell of it.
Almost laughing at the absurdity, I watched my divine mana strip some of my ki from my spirit and sow it inside them, keeping them gasping and suffering on the brink of death like tens of thousands of others across the Falls.
Meanwhile, the disguised Raki retreated to Welvd'al's quarters, ensuring to take the long route to spill wide puddles from her waterskin in the most obscure places and to leave coral rings in the pockets of select individuals, drow and slave alike. I needn't even encourage her to move with purpose, for she knew more than I that Welvd'al would be hunted. Welvd'al and many more.
While Raki evaded those who hunted Welvd'al, those chosen few noticed their rings and felt an unyielding urge to put them on, then followed the stronger urges into the puddles scattered throughout the house.
Their shame and ridiculousness washed away as the cruel house they had known was replaced with a lush environment of black stone and shining bronze filled with a bubbling fluid that eased their fall. Yet, they were given no time to admire the views before Blude appeared to free them from their bonds.
Like they were thrown on an assembly line, Blude took them to be bathed and clothed before her direct subordinates took them in sequence. Their injuries and ailments were treated by Kali before Gwehn assessed their capabilities, then Lizlee took them to gather intel and give briefings to the growing masses.
Intelligence gathering continued as they passed through Redd's domain, who picked their minds for hidden vaults, caches, and other architectural secrets while Jayde documented the numbers and figures of what Zimysta's wealthiest house held
Only then did they enter Sam's grandiose hall, where they were blessed with the privilege of being the first mortals to witness the perks of her Bardic Monk class.
The ambiance served to ease their minds as they were seated, wherein the music picked up to lift their spirits. The sizzling sounds of searing rothay caught their ears before their noses pulled them to Sam, demonstrating how to cook a perfect steak meal while her subordinates replicated the dish a hundred times over in the kitchen.
Their wonder turned to reverence at the thought of eating such a meal; some for the first time in their lives. Yet the many drow present remained skeptical; doubly so once Sam poured her Victual magic over the platters, making potatoes pop with golden radiance and their portions double. They thought them poisoned, despite her explaining their effect.
Steak unlocked their potentials, mashed mushrooms reversed the damage done to their bodies, cave pike gave them a day's worth of healing, cave roots heightened their abilities, and the desserts, blessed by me, turned them into paragons, including several humans who became more ape like in response.
They left with their spirits inflamed by Sam's performance and all but stormed through the domains of Sam's subordinates, Emily and Chloala, who filled them with combat drugs like cocaine and amphetamines before arming them with magical items strong enough to raze villages.
They left the Estates in mobs and emerged from the puddles they disappeared through in small teams. Relishing in their newfound power, they predictably sought to return the pain that'd been inflicted on them tenfold or more, keeping the drow distracted with their chaos while Raki delved deeper into the house, laying traps and wards as she snuck along.
As spells and slaves spread in Raki's wake, abyssal waters spread in theirs. Black wellsprings shot forth like water jet cutters to collapse the paths behind her and flood the halls before her. Ahead, spiders writhed in fury, sending the drow they dominated into a state of madness. They pushed against the arcana to form bubbles around their bodies or outright manifested air from the water and gave chase, using tenacity and arcana to fight the currents sweeping through the house.
As things went, they were too infuriated to notice the aqueous hands of Blude's Umbra Emperor pulling their wealth into the dark depths. The entirety of it went to Jayde, back in their estates, who sorted the bounty appropriately, discarding the things with too much demonic energy and forwarding the items that would aid the slaves in their battle for liberation.
In the interim, Zimysta Falls began its nightly silent ritual; though not by nature's demand. Not entirely.
Jayde's Matriarch, Redd, was poised before the Falls, using manipulation more than her sorcery to will the immense volume of fluid into a stagnant mass of ice and stone that expanded into Zimysta's maw, spilling jagged shards of ice over the main entrance to mark the official beginning of its end.
As easily as I melded with this darkness, Redd willed the frozen lake to rise like a glacial geyser, shooting countless tons higher and higher until they smashed through the ceiling to torment the houses carved above them. Then the ice surrounding her shattered as she dashed, leaving a semi-frozen tunnel in her wake as she gracefully swam through the entrance, holding her hand out before her to push a snaking stream of ice ahead of her.
Redd poured her sorcery through the great snake of ice as it coiled through the entrance, morphing its jagged frame into a smooth body, headed with rows of jagged teeth that greedily sank into Zimysta's 2nd eye. Disregarding those scattered atop it, Redd swam through the ice, occasionally breaching the surface to harpoon or catch spiders in her net and drag them to their gelid graves while the glacial eel's teeth froze the surroundings solid.
Inside, the drow of House Casia-Psellus and the lesser House Baerrn felt the ripples of the Mafia's actions, yet were hardly effected, doing little more than stumbling in place as they followed long-established protocols to secure key items, evacuate key personnel, and catch up to the anomalous figure parading through the house.
As she had been before, Raki had been moving with the indignant confidence Welvd'al would have possessed in that situation. The slaves' thinning numbers gave her a wider berth than ever as she delved closer to the Matron's sacred chambers, noted by the stark transition from blue faerie flames to red fires set within onyx sconces stabbed into that waxy resin at regular intervals. Yet, that meant nothing in the face of Welvd'al's sisters. All of them.
<<"There you are, worm.">> The eldest, High Priestess Iivxyra, hissed, ignoring Raki completely, as she concentrated on the divine webs restraining the 5th and 6th daughters, while the 2nd daughter led them through a copy of the wicked door I saw in House Za'Darmondiel.
Being two heads taller than Welvd'al and wreathed in adamantine armor with a mithral-weave tabard, she was quite a threat to the disgusted Raki; her, and High Priestess Iymssysn to boot.
<<"The worm has become First Son. Only because Divdiirn is a traitor.">> Priestess Jankiira snickered while Priestess Elvyl'cice stalked the disguised Raki from afar; lesser threats, given their chitinous armor and mithral weave robes, yet threats all the same.
Her one solace was that there were no spiders.
<<"How fleeting that is.">> The 4th daughter hissed from her stalking position, blade dripping with as much venom as her words. <<"A shame you couldn't be the one to end him.">>
<<"Hounonia and Ginssysn have failed to secure the House from our eternal enemy. Your source of revenue- your only use has fallen. Thus, you all are failures.">> Jankiira grinned wickedly as her elder sisters disappeared down Lilith's web, their voices being the only things discernible beyond the crimson veil.
<<"Do not take long.">>
I felt a candle of uncertainty light within Raki before she snuffed it out, steeling herself to remain as indignant yet submissive as Welvd'al would be; at least until the Priestesses acted.
Jankiira reached back and leapt before her sister could pounce, concentrating the crackling arcana into her palm to forge a mace from her mana and swipe it across Raki's disguised maw.
Raki staggered from the impact but remained standing, sneering as the mana infused in and around her face fizzled in and out of existence before cascading away, causing Welvd'al's visage to shift and crack back into Raki's bleeding maw and snarling face. Then it was her turn.
Raki stomped forward, cocking a backhand that even a child could see coming. Thus, the high priestess sought an easy block with a raised arm. Being imbued with the density and strength of Rippa, however, made Raki anything but easy.
Jankiira's arm crumpled beneath Raki's ultra-dense fist, forcing jagged bone out the skin to push against the sleeve of her mithral-threaded robe, as if that would protect her from the energy transfer rippling down her shoulder to liberate her of her footholds and send her skipping across the cavern, right into the healing webs of a demon spider.
Despite the web, Raki bolstered herself to pursue; then, Raki became the Rippa, allowing the divine magic ingrained within her spirit to take root and bloom.
She haunched forward as her skin took on an onyx hue, highlighting the growing knot on her brow that demanded her body follow suit by stretching the skin on her back and having it filled by dense connective tissue. A blanket of compact muscle and blubber filled in her thickened skin, stretched into webs between her fingers and toes and elongated down her backside to form her dorsal fin and a wide tail, lazily descending to the ground as it took shape.
The flicking of her tail pushed against the ambient arcana as if it was water, forcing the flow retrograde relative to her pouncing advance toward Elvyl'cice.
Showing her experience, the priestess allowed herself to be carried by the current and dove into it, her mana forged scimitars poised before her like crossed fangs. Before they could meet Raki's lowered head, however, the were-whale released a shrill whistle through the house.
Amplified by the watery arcana, the call shattered the stone and the priestess' eardrums alike and hardly muffled as it echoed through the Falls, chased, as it were, by the abyssal waters spewing from Raki's blow hole.
The priestesses were blown back by the umbral geyser and crumpled against the door leading to Lilith's temple, mimicking the stone shattering around the threshold to reveal a foundation of waxy resin akin to the hives of House Yril'Lysaen. Then the tide took them, crushing them and everything in its path as Raki raised the pressure to abyssal depths.
The abyssal waters were similar to Peter's fusion of water with water, as his ability was the natural version of Raki's sorcery- waters, so deep and with such pressure that it was like darkness itself. A crushing shadow, indiscriminate in nature.
It wreaked havoc as it spread through the house, filling every vent and pipe to flow where few could traverse and crush all who it faced. All but the Orcinus Mafia.
Raki's call had sent them into action, with Redd being the first to fully transform and plague the frozen eye of the 2nd House. Her colossal form breached the ice wherever spiders roamed, barreling into them from below to bite at their legs and drag them into the frozen depths.
Meanwhile, Blude swam through one of her puddles and transformed into Chako to wade about the sea growing from the drowning house. Her cold eyes watched spiders trapped in webbed bubbles churn about, flailing in an attempt to save themselves from the absurd pressure and give themselves a chance to breathe. Her massive form added to the carnage as she barreled through the heartiest of structures with ease, throwing contemptuous trills at the spiders and many drow popping like balloons to stain her waters with their filth.
The lazy waves of her tail sent green and beige arcana lapping over the ruins as she passed, seeding the rubble with fields of swaying kelp with yellow bulbs that shed a stark light on the clusters of coral colonizing the house. Yet, part of her awareness remained focused on the furthest reaches of the house, where the Rippa was bent on delivering the final blow to the priestess who didn't flee.
Raki slammed her tail and lunged forth at shocking speed for one of her size, crossing several meters in a flash with her scimitars raised high. While wounded, Priestess Jankiira raised an arcane shield faster than Raki's flash and it shattered, filling the space between them with countless shards of dissipating energy that Raki reached through without hesitation.
Jankiira's head snapped back as Raki's webbed hand gripped it and tugged, sending cracks rippling down her spine as her feet separated from the ground. Effortlessly, Raki lifted her overhead and reached to grasp onto her other arm and pulled.
She tugged and stopped as the mithral threads of Jankiira's robe pulled taught- as did the priestess, who thrashed and coughed up a fit of blood while Raki, uncaring of Jankiira's plight, adjusted her grip to grasp an arm and a leg, and when she pulled again, there was much less resistance.
One moment, Priestess Jankiira was there, then even Raki was gone, having been concealed within a cloud of blood and stretched out intestines.
The gore soon cleared as Raki's flow tapered off. The house had been filled or, at the very least, the pressure had equalized. Thus, Elvyl'cice, who allowed the flow to carry her past Lilith's door and either escape or protect her mother's treasure, washed up on the shores of the Matron's vault.
The massive adamantine safe had been Raki's destination from the beginning. Yet, she was not meant to be the first to make it there. That was reserved for Sam, who'd trailed and surpassed Raki to unweave wards and lay traps of her own making. And now that Raki had felled her prey, the time had come for the young drow to use Welvd'al's memories to unlock the safe with a mana crafted key.
Once open, Sam treated the house like a gastrointestinal problem and released her traps in two ways, sending the safe's contents through an interdimensional vent to Jayde while the other vent cured the House of its cold constipation.
The spike in pressure shattered Redd's frozen expanse as if it was never there, releasing a geyser of water to shoot across Zimysta's length and fall to overshoot the basin by several meters, plaguing the Fall with enough rain and splatter to make Sovereign Galendra return a growl of dissatisfaction.
A growl I echoed; albeit for different reasons.