Underkeeper

“Incoming!” shouted a goblin’s voice. Bernt turned to look just in time to see Rindle come running from one of the small side tunnels.

“They got the vines,” he called, looking dismayed. “They just withered away!”

“Form up!” Glim bawled. “Keep them bottled up in the tunnel if they break through. Somebody get inside and sound the alarm.”

“Kustov, Bernt, Josie, into the tunnels!” Fiora called somewhere behind Bernt. “We’ll slow them down as much as we can.” Bernt complied without a thought, running up to the tunnel that Rindle had just come out of. He slowed unconsciously for a second to allow Jori to stick the landing on his shoulder as she dove down from a pillar. Behind him, he heard more shouts as the defenders worked to get themselves into position. As he ducked into the tunnel, he could hear the bell in the Underkeepers’ headquarters start to ring with urgency.

It was a narrow passage that rose at a shallow angle, barely as wide as his shoulders and he had to shuffle through sideways at an awkward angle. Fortunately, it wasn’t long. In seconds, he arrived at a narrow horizontal slit, barely wide enough to slip a hand through.

His view was partly obscured by a shriveled vine that had grown across it, but he could clearly see the column of dwarves standing below him. They looked fresh, with gleaming, polished armor and armed with identical one-handed axes and shields.

At the front, Bernt could just make out a few dwarves carrying staves – mages of some kind. It still seemed odd to Bernt that they wore the same armor as the regular soldiers. He supposed it was logical, but it still felt wrong. Mages weren’t normal soldiers, so why would they dress the same? Only on closer inspection did he realize that they did wear robes – they just wore a coat of mail over them along with a helm, likely to prevent easy identification as much as for direct protection.

It didn't take a genius to guess what what they were dealing with – geomancers. The tunnel was wider in front of them, hemmed in by Kustov’s rune wards, but he could see the stone cracking in front of them and crumbling away. It was slow going, relatively speaking, but they would get through in just a few minutes.

“Are you ready?” Josie asked from behind him. Bernt turned his head and saw her squeeze in next to him. Jori chirped a greeting at her and she grinned at the demon. “You might want to plug your ears for this part.”

Bernt just barely managed to clamp his hands over his head as Josie put her mouth right up to the slit and screamed.

He shuddered. Muffling the noise helped a little, and this wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with this particular ability, but it was still an uncomfortable experience. The soldiers below were affected much more strongly, though. Their formation had dissolved, and quite a few of them were sitting down while others shuddered violently.

Before Bernt could collect himself enough to act, Jori poured hellfire into the tunnel in a wide, diffuse cone, totally unlike the liquid flames she usually produced. A moment later, the tunnel rumbled and rocks came crashing down from the ceiling – Kustov’s work from his position on the other side of the tunnel. It wasn’t a total collapse, though. Maybe Kustov’s own earlier wards were working against him, or one of the enemy geomancers had managed to counter the stoneweaver.

Just to be sure, Bernt cast a fireball toward the geomancers at the front. It was difficult to aim through the narrow slit, but it wouldn’t matter too much. The entire space was filled with enemies.

In his haste, he used his right hand to cast the spell, but his hours of practice finally paid off. The spell manifested correctly, burning a merry yellowish orange as it shot down the tunnel. He heard screams. Below he could see more soldiers burn in Jori’s flames, screaming in pain and fear as they were shocked out of their stunned state. His eyes watered as the smell of sulfur and burnt dwarf filled the air.

A boom sounded to his left and hot wind pushed into his face from inside the tunnel. Was that Fiora?

The tunnel rumbled, and suddenly everything went dark. He could still hear screams, but they were muffled now. It took Bernt a moment to realize what had happened. One of the enemy geomancers had realized what was happening and managed to seal their access points. Raising his left hand, Bernt cast an earth shaping cantrip. Maybe he could simply open it back up.

The spell activated, but nothing happened when he tried to push the stone in front of them aside.

“It’s dark!” Jori said. A stinky, whirling flame formed in the narrow tunnel right next to Bernt’s head and he flinched away from it.

“Jori! Put that out, it’s dangerous.”

“No!” the imp said. She was proud of her light spell.

Josie looked at the odd light curiously, but didn’t comment. She’d seen enough of Jori’s experimental spells already.

Bernt took a small step away from the fire and shook his head irritably, giving up. “They sealed us in! We have to go back and wait for them to break through. I hope Kustov and Fiora had better luck on their end.” Bernt seriously doubted that they would be able to seal Kustov out, even if they could keep him from dropping the ceiling down on them.

They emerged back out of the tunnel just as a large crack formed across the sealed entrance, bisecting a line of Kustov’s runes. The guards were positioned directly in front, shielded by a powerful force barrier, courtesy of Ed, who stood just inside the warlocks’ banishment ritual directly behind them. The warlocks in question mostly stood at the back – not all of them would be suited to fighting – but three of them were in borrowed Underkeeper armor standing in a semicircle behind the guards together with the remaining spellcasters. One of them was Bartholomew, the same warlock who’d been in the tunnel with Bernt’s unit.

Radast himself stood at the center of the circle at the very back, quietly chanting something to himself.

The stone began to crumble more quickly as Kustov’s runes were destroyed, one after another. A few seconds later, the damage reached Lin’s script as well and the entire wall began to crumble in toward the defenders. Hurrying behind the front line of guards, Bernt and Josie got themselves out of what was going to become a killing ground in a moment.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then a warm sensation brushed across the back of Bernt’s neck so suddenly he flinched. A goblin shouted something in their own language – Bernt thought it sounded like Lin – and then launched into a short chant that she repeated, over and over. The other goblins joined in, and Bernt felt something stir in the air. It was mana, but it wasn’t moving in any way he was familiar with. It was swirling with purpose, forming patterns that he couldn’t quite make out. Many, many patterns. Ambient mana just didn’t do that.

The stone crumbled down, and then finally melted away as the enemy geomancers managed to take full control of the substance of the warded wall. The goblins’ chanting reached a fever pitch and Bernt’s hair suddenly stood on end as a slow wind began to swirl around the cavern, mimicking the strange mana flows he’d noticed.

Duergar started to march, pushing past their mages who were pressing themselves to the tunnel walls – they didn’t want to be the first ones inside. The moment the first dwarf’s foot crossed the invisible line where the wall had been, the wind gusted forward all at once, flowing around the edges of Ed’s shield and pouring up into the tunnel with a deafening howl.

The effect was immediate. Duergar shouted in surprise and fear and some tried to back up, throwing their advance into chaos. As Bernt watched, the skin visible on many of their faces changed color, turning pink and erupting into boils. A few went blind, their eyes turning a sickly shade of off-white as they shouted in panic, only to be pushed down and trampled by their own panicking comrades.

“Now!” Ed shouted, whipping his pipe forward as he cast what looked like an oversized magic missile. It shot over the defenders’ heads and through the space where the archmage’s force barrier had been a moment before, into the duergar. Hellfire, magic missiles, rocks and some kind of screeching shadow magic that came from Bartholomew followed it alongside Bernt’s own fireball spell.

Ed’s spell might have been enough to clear what they could see of the tunnel on its own, but apparently nobody was willing to take a chance in this situation.

The tunnel mouth was filled with smoking gore and bits that Bernt absolutely did not want to examine too closely. Before he had a chance to look away, though, an inhuman scream echoed down toward them, followed by a sullen red light.

Acting on instinct, Bernt raised his left hand and cast a simple heat barrier as quickly as he could, trying to cover the entire mouth of the tunnel. It was a rushed job, but he managed to activate the spell in just a few seconds, in time to catch the expanding wave of fire that tore down at them.

Searing hot air and flames poured around the edges of the barrier, forcing some of the guards to step back and cover their faces. By the time the fire died down, the demons were on them, pouring out in a wave. Hellhounds came first, maybe ten of them, followed by a small army of imps, at least one fiend, and several kinds of demons that Bernt couldn’t identify.

They tore into the guards, scattering them just as Ed’s force shield came back up. Too many had already made it through. Within just a few seconds, Bernt saw a goblin and a dwarf guard go down in a spray of hellfire. A moment later, he saw an imp land on a screaming Solicitor’s face, where it proceeded to gouge at her eyes with razor claws.

As quickly as he could, Bernt cast banefire directly into the melee. The spell wouldn’t harm the guards – at least no more than a bad sunburn – and it might make all the difference here. On the other side, he saw Dayle follow suit and then Yarrod.

Five of the demons went down almost immediately, but it wasn’t enough. Several more guards fell, and the rest were being pushed back. The imps scrambled up the walls, just as Jori liked to do, and dove down at the defenders. As Bernt watched, one landed on Bartholomew’s head and raked savagely at him with its feet. The solicitor went down messily.

Every time a guard managed to drive a spear into a hellhound, flames erupted from the ensuing wounds, ruining weapons and forcing the guards back further.

Jori screeched at the imps and threw herself toward them, spreading her wings and flinging fire. It took Bernt a moment to realize that she was screaming words.

“Xoryath! Maladzhoth! Back off!” The imp landed on one of the creatures and almost casually killed it as it tried to sneak up behind Yarrod. “I can help!”

Bernt wasn’t sure the other imps could even really understand her. Most were smaller than Jori, and seemed to have no access to hellfire. They were mostly like she’d been before the first time she had evolved. A few larger ones hissed at her, glaring, but she paid them no mind, easily dodging as they threw fire her way.

Casting banefire one more time, Bernt backed up, trying to stay behind the guards as they retreated from the onslaught.

“Back up! Faster!” Someone shouted. “Cover the archmage!” Ed was retreating slowly and maintaining his shield, which was keeping the enemy contained inside the tunnel for the moment. While the imps harassed the spellcasters on the periphery, the hellhounds drove straight down the center, trying to reach Ed.

Backing up further, Bernt stepped inside the warlocks’ banishment circle. Most of the guards were there now, trying to protect Ed and Radast, who stood at the center together.

Growing desperate, Bernt flung white plasma at the nearest hellhound.

The flames landed, but nothing happened – the creature completely ignored it, diving at a goblin who barely managed to repel it by ramming his spear into its chest. Burning blood spurted and it hissed and backed away, but the thing didn’t go down.

How could it ignore the perpetual flame? There wasn’t time to work it out, now. It was getting crowded, and the enemy was closing in. Imps flung themselves fearlessly down on the defenders from the pillars and from the backs of hellhounds as they advanced to terrifying effect even as Jori tried to single-handedly stem the tide. Curiously, none of them attacked her, even going so far as to simply let her kill them in at least one case that Bernt saw.

Then an otherworldly voice called out in Beseri. “Minions, heed the call of Varamemnon. Attend me!”

Everything changed at once. Sullen purple light filled the entire cavern as the demonic blood that the warlocks had painted the floor with burst into ethereal flames. The demons hissed and screamed. Some went mad, thrashing in defiance even as others simply disappeared in puffs of purple fire that then imploded into itself, vanishing just as quickly as the demons themselves.

Bernt let out a breath, looking for Radast in the middle of the circle. This had to be him. He didn’t have a clear line of sight to the warlock, but he did see Ed. The archmage was casting something – tracing runes in the air with both hands. Bernt thought later that it must have been something incredibly complex, something to turn all this around. But he never got to cast it.

A massive imp flew down out of nowhere and landed on his arm, hissing as hellfire formed in its upraised right fist. The banishment ritual seized it almost instantly, though, and the imp disappeared in a blaze of purple. Quicker than a blink, Ed was dragged up by his arm into… something. A new direction that had opened up in the purple flames for a split second. Just like that, he was gone.

Bernt’s heart seized in his chest and he looked around wildly as if expecting the old man to be standing right next to him. But he wasn’t.

There was a shout, followed by more voices calling out in an unfamiliar language. Through the dizzying whirl of images coming through his bond to Jori, he caught a glimpse of duergar soldiers streaming into the cavern from a new hole in the wall. Where was it? Bernt couldn’t make sense of Jori’s view, and there was nothing he could do about it right now, regardless.

Ed was gone. They were doomed.