Underkeeper

Bernt was stunned by the sheer amount of magic being flung around in such a small space. Enemy mages and warlocks tried to hammer through their defenses with force, fire, and lightning, but nothing penetrated. The lightning was drawn down into Kustov’s runes, the fire splashed against Bernt’s heat barriers, and the force was countered directly by Ed. While the archmage held his position, the duergar troops couldn’t advance, hemmed in by his magic.

Only Bernt’s perpetual flame could cut through the noise, burning through magical barriers as if they were dry tinder. It didn’t go out, either. Small white fires burned on corpses all around the room, occasionally interfering with spells that passed by too closely and getting in the attackers‘ way. After taking out two more enemy mages and a few fighters who had apparently been wearing heavily enchanted armor, his and Jori’s fires were beginning to take their toll. The tunnel was starting to get too hot, despite the heat barriers he’d cast and recast to protect them.

As the battle progressed, the heat circulated around the barriers and began to radiate from the walls themselves. In the end, it forced them back. Bernt extinguished his own flames reluctantly with an effort of will, but the temperature kept rising even after Bernt stopped adding to the problem to focus entirely on shielding himself and his fellow Underkeepers. The enemy warlocks threw hellfire around as if collateral damage wasn’t an issue. The Duergar didn’t seem to be affected – maybe they had heat resistance potions or some other kind of protection from ambient heat.

But that didn’t matter now. They needed to back up. Ed’s unit had been blocking the upward end of the tunnel that led toward the surface. They’d been exposed to the worst of the heat, and were forced to move first. They filtered around Kustov’s wall, heading down toward their defenses at the Undercity Market and leaving the way out to the surface clear. Ed, Fiora and Dayle stayed behind, covering their retreat as best they could.

They were already backing up when the tunnel wall crumbled once again near their original position. A mole’s weird snout emerged and then withdrew, replaced a moment later by an armored duergar who stepped into the tunnel, shouting something down to the combatants and lifting an odd contraption in his hands and training it on them.

Kustov cursed and slammed his hammer down on the ground. The tunnel shook and rocks rained down from the ceiling up ahead, forcing the duergar to move and ruining his aim. The area they stood in was entirely unaffected. That seemed to surprise Kustov as much as it did Bernt, and he hesitated for a moment before shouting at the other mages. “Move it! They’ve got your flank!”

They didn’t need to be told. Moments later, they were backing down the tunnel in a fighting retreat, with Ed, Kustov and Bernt providing the rearguard. Ed maintained his powerful force shield to physically hold the enemy as well as most of their attacks back while Bernt blocked incoming fire and heat. Unlike Ed, who could move his force shield as he walked, Bernt’s temperature barrier was static and he had to recast it every ten seconds or so to keep it ahead of the advancing enemy. Kustov, for his part, was constantly casting to counter whatever the enemy’s geomancers were doing to get around them.

Bernt wasn’t sure how good duergar geomancers were, but Kustov was better. Every so often, a tunnel wall would start to shift, or a crack would form in the ceiling, but the dwarf was always on it before it could get any worse than that. Stone resealed, shaking quieted, and bands of runes appeared on the walls and ceiling to redirect further spells meant to reshape them. Runes carved into stone would only do the job once or twice against a skilled geomancer, but it was still impressive.

Bernt stepped on something soft and he spared a quick glance down. There was moss growing on the stone floor. The tunnel walls were covered in thick vines that looked nearly black, with dark green, red-veined leaves. Rindle’s work, Bernt guessed.

As they continued their retreat, the attacks suddenly lessened, and then stopped entirely.

“Quickly! Get inside!” Someone called. It was coming from the walls – one of the defensive slits.

“Back up and seal everything!” Someone else shouted.

Bernt coughed. Some of the vines further up the tunnel were smoking. That was strange, He hadn’t cast any fire spells.

But no, wait. The duergar had mages and warlocks, too.

Bernt laughed.

Why was that so funny?

He made it through the door, followed by Ed and then Kustov. As soon as they were through, the dwarf set the head of his hammer down, clearly casting something, though he didn’t move his hands to do so. One side of the tunnel began to shift, closing the narrow gap like a gigantic stone door. A moment before the crack sealed, one of the solicitors – a prim-looking man who had gone bald prematurely – slung hellfire out into the tunnel with an unnecessary flourish of his wrist. A moment later, both sides met and melted together to create a smooth, unbroken surface.

“That should keep them busy for a little while.” He grinned and winked at Josie, who was standing nearby, catching her breath along with the rest of their unit. She nodded tiredly and didn’t respond. Bernt hadn’t seen her fight, but she had blood running down her arms.

It looked too vivid. Why was it so red?

A moment later, Bernt realized that he was sitting on the ground. That wasn’t right. He looked up to ask Ed what was going on, but the archmage was looking a little green around the gills himself. Kustov cursed loudly.

“Where is that witch?” the dwarf grumbled. “Godsdamned druids. Has anyone seen Lin? I’ve got a job for her!”

***

Bernt obediently sipped on the concoction that Lin had made for him and kept his mouth shut as Ed and Kustov got the latest update from Palina. Ed didn’t seem to be affected by the smoke in the same way as him, though he didn’t look like he was enjoying it, either. The archmage held a cup of the same remedy. He looked as though he might throw it back up at any moment and Bernt suspected he only drank it because Lin was sitting there watching him.

“About four hundred people have made it down from that little Crafters’ District stairwell so far.” Palina was saying. “They’re being funneled into the empty portions of the neighborhoods first – so far the dwarven and the crafters’ quarter has managed to accommodate everyone. It's slow going – they destroyed a building next to the stairwell with some kind of artillery spell just as I was leaving. They're digging it out now. It's not all bad, though – it'll convince people to evacuate. We expect things to speed up in a few minutes. Last that we heard, the guilds were mobilizing to take a defensive posture at the Undercity Gate, but I doubt they'll be able to bottle them up that easily. The Paladins’ Hall is closest, and I can’t imagine that they would ignore this, but It’ll still be a mess. Besides, I’ve seen berserkers fight before, and a lot of adventurers aren’t any better. The collateral damage alone...”

“How many can we take?” Ed asked, looking at Kustov.

The dwarf shrugged. “Space isn’t really an issue. With Janus to help, we managed enough room to house maybe six thousand people. Temporarily, the space can hold three times that, enough for the entire city – not that we have time to evacuate everyone. Ventilation would also be an issue. We’ve got pretty good systems in place, but it’s not designed to handle that many people. Still, it’s nothing to worry about in the immediate term. We can take everyone who can make it down here.”

Ed nodded. “Good. Is there any word on what’s going on with Arice? The army should have been here by now. Even if they’re fighting, they can’t afford to have the enemy in their rear.”

Palina shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything. Either the dwarves broke through, or maybe they intercepted our messenger.”

In the silence that followed, Bernt cleared his throat. “So. What exactly was that in the tunnel? With the vines, I mean.”

“Rindle’s idea!” Lin said proudly, as if he were her own son. “Very clever. It is an intoxicant, use it sometimes for medicine to help pain. It has side effects.”

“That’s great.” Bernt said, impressed. “So, when the vines got burned, everyone in the tunnel was dosed, and since it slopes upward, they got the worst of it. Does it work against demons?”

Lin shrugged. “It is hard to say. The dark spirits are not like us.”

“Whatever the case, it doesn’t look like they want to try knocking on our door for the time being.” Palina said. “They’re probably happy to leave us bottled up here, anyway. They’re trying to get into the soft underbelly of the city before anyone can stop them, and that’s not here.”

Ed grimaced. “Nothing to do but hope that they have their end covered up there.”

***

Iriala watched as the Duergar poured out of the Undercity Gate. She was sitting in her office, but her glasses provided her a top-down view of the entire Crafters' District. She could see that the defenders weren't quite in position, yet.

How had they made it into the city so quickly? The duergar had broken into the main access tunnel somehow, between the Undercity and the army. Doing so without prematurely tripping any wards would have required some creative tunneling, but they'd done it. Still, Ed's people should have been able to hold them longer than this. She scried the tunnel down to the Undercity and found it filled with Duergar. There were some bodies, but most of those were Duergar — nothing like an Underkeeper rout. It looked like the Underkeepers were bottled up below, safe for the moment. What had forced them back?

Switching back to the Crafters’ District, Iriala's eyes widened in surprise at what she found. Nearly a quarter of the district was already burning. The enemy was in the streets, setting fire to buildings and trying to penetrate the haphazard barricades the defenders were building on the fly wherever they could. For now, though, it looked like they'd managed to respond quickly enough to keep the enemy somewhat contained, thanks in no small part to her efforts in coordinating their initial deployment.

Righmond and his guards were still on the wall, which she supposed was just as well. They needed to be wary of an external assault complicating the situation further, and she certainly didn’t want him down here making a mess of her work. She had enough worries.

As she monitored the battle, Iriala noted that the duergar’s rapid advance into the city had made them vulnerable. While they were far more disciplined and better armed than the kobolds had been a few months before, the guilds were prepared and mostly ready to face them. Experienced parties of adventurers held individual streets and alleyways, backed up by paladins, berserkers, and mages. Rangers hid on rooftops, taking out enemy mages, warlocks and anyone who looked like they might be an officer.

The duergar were taking losses, and Iriala could see that communication between the enemy units was breaking down in some cases, with some overextending themselves and paying the price. Other times, though, the duergar were hiding surprises – hidden war mages, warlocks with unfamiliar abilities, alchemical weapons. They were taking losses.

Then Iriala saw something new. It came rolling out of the Undercity Gate in a cart hauled by a hellhound of all things. The rough, unworked crystal loaded on it must have weighed as much as the cart itself. She didn’t recognize what it was at first, but the nine robed figures walking alongside it were a pretty clear hint.

She wasn’t really sure why warlocks were so obsessed with that number. There were nine hells, supposedly – but they could only interact with the denizens of five of them. As far as she knew, a demon of the sixth hell had only been summoned once, on the isle of Harrowick, to the sorrow of all who lived there.

Regardless, a lot of warlock rituals required exactly nine participants.

They unhitched the cart and took up positions in a precise circle around it before raising their hands to chant something. Iriala wasn’t sure what kind of ritual this was, but it couldn’t be good. Sure enough, a light ignited inside the stone just a moment later, flaring briefly, then again and again in an unpredictable rhythm. She recognized the crystal, once it was lit from within like that. It was a gigantic soulstone, collecting souls as people died – probably their own as well as those of the people living here.

Iriala gestured to one of the messengers she had lined up, even as she searched for Ambrose in the streets, adjusting the scrying spell in her glasses as quickly as someone flipping through the pages of a book. Ignoring the various other small emergencies she saw, she finally found the colossal man rescuing a team of adventurers that had gotten itself surrounded.

They had lost their healer to a hellhound and been cut off when they tried to retreat. The duergar were closing in. An experienced adventuring party wasn’t easy prey in any situation, but surrounded, the dwarves had them dead to rights. Then Ambrose entered the fray, diving headlong into the contingent that had cut the party off. The usually even-tempered man was screaming, though Iriala couldn’t hear it, and spittle flew from his mouth in a froth. A heavily armored dwarf moved forward to intercept him, holding a heavily rune-engraved shield and a one-handed axe. It didn’t help.

Quicker than a snake, Ambrose ripped the shield away from the dwarf, arm still attached, and rammed its edge straight through his armor and into his chest as though it were made of paper.

In seconds, the entire contingent was down and Ambrose was moving in on the pursuing group. It happened so quickly that it was difficult to process just what he’d done. Their bodies were crushed. Blood and worse leaked out of what was left of their armor and dripped from the walls of nearby houses.

But it was war, and the enemy had brought monsters of their own.

Iriala turned to the messenger.

“Message to Branchmaster Ambrose on Tailors’ Lane, moving toward Marin’s Bakery. The enemy has a device that needs to be destroyed at the Undercity Gate, can’t miss it. Tell anyone who looks important that you see on the way. Go!”

Radast had warned them something like this was going to happen, but seeing it was something else. If this Nuros actually managed to become a greater demon, Besermark’s tribulations were only just beginning. Iriala couldn’t allow that to happen.