Most of Tandos’ clergy fled. A few of the war god’s Elven champions laughed as they leapt into their last, brief battle, showing their dark nature at the end. Some acolytes had the sort of sudden epiphanies that only a well-armed horde of clerics and paladins can inspire, and opted for conversion rather than martyrdom. The players changed, but the scenes were the same as all of the temples across Arth came together to stand against the traitor god.
Almost.
The one temple conspicuously absent from this brief holy war was the same one that had been prosecuting battles against Tandos for centuries. The Temple of Al’Matra in Andarun had no time to participate in its vindication; its clergy had more pressing matters to attend to. Such as the emerald flames consuming their sanctuary.
Priestesses, scribes, and the rest of the All Mother’s displaced clergy watched the otherworldly fire from the courtyard. They stood in small clusters, little islands of priesthood arranged by seniority, trying to work through the madness playing out all around them.
“Doesn’t make any sense,” Sister Varia told a cluster of her fellow third-year acolytes.
Sister Alithana struck her most beatific pose. “Well, the All Mother—”
Meni cut her off. “Don’t you tell me the goddess works in mysterious ways. We’ve all seen mysterious. I can handle mysterious. Inscrutable, even.”
“Downright crazy,” offered Brother Tuomas.
The others shot Tuomas a sidelong glance; even if the All Mother’s memories had returned, it seemed too soon to lift the ancient taboo on saying the c-word in the All Mother’s sanctum.
“But not… not harmful. Not dangerous,” insisted Sister Meni. “Not to us.”
Brother Cheesemonger nodded. “I once heard High Scribe Pathalan say he liked his gods like he liked his chocolates: sweet, readily available, and set neatly in a pretty box.”
A few of the junior scribes gasped at the irreligious notion. Most of the priestesses in training smirked and exchanged knowing glances.
“Some people are saying the fire is to punish the high scribe for not being devoted enough,” said Sister Piniana, an emissary for the sixth-year acolytes on a mission to spread gossip among her juniors.
“More like for pinching so many bottoms at holy feasts,” said Sister Varia.
“Do you think he’s all right in there?” Brother Filks wrung his hands.
The other third-years exchanged winces. Brother Filks was the sort of gentle soul who saved bread crusts for sparrows and stopped to let caterpillars cross his path. Whatever dam held back the tears behind his red-rimmed eyes was already leaking.
“I suspect he’s in a better place,” said Sister Alithana diplomatically.
The acolytes watched the temple burn and ruminated on High Scribe Pathalan’s famously hedonistic lifestyle.
“Hopefully,” said Alithana, mustering her beneficence.
“The fires are probably less green there, anyway,” sniffed Sister Varia.
“Is anybody going to put it out?” asked Sister Lemba.
“Oh, I heard the senior priestesses tried,” said Sister Piniana. “All it got the bucket train was some singed eyebrows and a face full of steam. Besides, it’s not actually burning much.”
“It looks like it’s burning everything,” said Brother Cheesemonger.
“Yeah, it looks that way,” said the sixth-year acolyte, rolling her eyes. “But it doesn’t burn paper, or carpets, or wood, right? It’s holy fire, not like… real fire.”
“So it’s a metaphor?” asked Brother Filks.
“Something like that. We just need to stay back here and let it play out, and we’ll be fine,” said Sister Piniana, happy to share her expertise. Unfortunately, her observation acted upon Nove’s first principle in the same way a lit match might react with a fireworks warehouse.
The explosion rent Al’Matra’s ramshackle temple into a fountain of flaming stones, wooden beams, and sculpture. The shockwave sent Al’Matra’s clergy flying through the air. Chunks of stone columns and support beams embedded themselves in nearby buildings. A flying statue of a shrimp missed crushing the high priestess by a hand’s breadth.
As acolytes helped each other to their feet, Sister Alithana shrieked in fear and pointed back at the crater where the All Mother’s temple had stood. Jade fire still erupted from it, but in the flames, a shape was visible. The bronze sculpture of High Scribe Niln stood amidst the inferno like a sea captain bracing himself against a storm. His hands were balled into fists, and his sculpted robes flapped against him as though blown by the backdraft. Yet his face… his face radiated pure joy, grinning wildly, empty eyes staring toward the Pinnacle.
And behind him, another figure rose from the rubble.
The stones shifted, then began to grind over each other like a horizontal rockslide borne on currents of glowing water through the towering pillars and branching walkways of the Black Fathoms. They bobbed and weaved to the spot where two broken bodies lay beneath the blasted remnants of a stone tower, without any credible path forward.
But magic, especially low magic, is the triumph of destiny over credulity. The song of the Sten was rising, and the stones would not be stopped. And without any possible way to go, the stones and streams took an impossible one.
Granite slabs bobbed upward as though borne on a rising tide. The water flared with light as ivory statues approached the shaft of the ruined staircase, illuminating the edges of the great stone tree forming at the top of the cavern. The dancing masonry bobbed in the glow, swirling around the point where the fallen ascended.
Gorm’s heart pounded with the frenetic force of a war drum as he raced toward the top of the staircase. Ahead of him, heroes and Tandosian prisoners alike scrambled to heed his cries of retreat. Behind him, Mannon’s screams grew nearer with every step the Dwarf leapt over.
His mind raced as he ran. The statues were the key. The Sten had protected them with old magic, even a dragon. Mannon and Johan had plotted and schemed and turned the kingdom on its head just for a chance to destroy them. The old Stennish sculptures had to be the one thing Mannon feared. And while most of the sculptures resided at the bottom of a deadly drop on the opposite side of the King of Demons, Gorm’s brain alighted on the one Stennish sculpture that he knew was central in prophecy.
The Dark Prince was supposed to bring back Al’Thadan and the Sten. Everyone who bothered paying any attention to the old Al’Matran prophecies assumed that meant the Seventh Hero would stop the Dark Prince. But if the Sten were Mannon’s foes, if Tandos was the true evil, and Al’Thadan wasn’t the traitor everyone thought, then bringing back Al’Thadan to stop Mannon and saving the world were the same thing. He just needed to…
It occurred to Gorm that he had no idea what to do when he reached the statue, but he quickly moved on to more pressing thoughts, such as: “There’s the door toward the exit,” and “Mannon sounds very close,” and “Why am I airborne?”
Gorm suspected the last two were related right before he hit the wall opposite the stairs. He picked himself up just in time to scramble away from a clump of black, thorny tendrils that poured from the staircase. The oily brambles of a thousand of his nightmares waved at him with menace, and Mannon’s faces were crowing eagerly somewhere just out of sight. Yet Gorm could see green ooze dribbling and pooling at the top of the stairs. Mannon bled. The fact that evil itself could bleed suggested that it was theoretically possible—if philosophically challenging—that it could be killed. Of more immediate importance, it could at least be forcibly dissuaded with an axe.
Gorm slashed, and several tendrils fell. They quickly slithered back to join the oily bulk pushing through the door from the stairs, but Gorm was already running. He struck wildly at another probing tentacle and ducked through a doorway.
