Underkeeper

By the time Bernt felt like himself again, hundreds of evacuees were streaming through the Undercity Market, heading from the Crafter’s Quarter into the entrance to a small shop on the periphery of the Market under the direction of the Underkeeper Guards. It was not a small shop, considering that Bernt had already watched at least two hundred people disappear inside.

He didn't know the details of what Kustov had been doing with Janus, but it was clear that they'd been preparing a place for people to evacuate to. Maybe it was just a kind of bunker, but the way he'd talked about it, he'd made it sound like he was expanding the Undercity's capacity for permanent residents. When he and Josie had brought their concerns to Ed, the archmage had decided to take measures to better shelter the people of the city. But was that all he was doing? It made Bernt wonder just how calculating Ed was. At face value, Ed always seemed like a straightforward kind of person, but he'd been a high-ranking officer in the military before he was an Underkeeper, and he was an archmage. Was he using this as a way to angle for more influence?

Whatever the case, they’d decided to fill the older parts of the Undercity first, most likely because they were more comfortable and better developed.

The dwarf responsible for the project was busily warding the entrance that he’d sealed minutes earlier with runes even as Lin painted something different on it with a sludgy mixture that she’d ground together moments before. Her script was completely unfamiliar to Bernt, made up of clusters of short lines at various lengths and angles that all branched off of a single “root” line that ran horizontally under Kustov’s runes. He watched with interest, trying to get a sense for it.

Goblins, as far as he knew, weren’t supposed to have a written language, but that was obviously what she was doing. He looked around. The warlocks, including Josie, had withdrawn into the Underkeepers’ Headquarters, claiming that they needed to perform some rituals of their own to prepare, in case they were drawn into a proper fight. Bernt wasn’t sure exactly what they might be doing, but he supposed there would be a reason they didn’t do it out here where everyone could see.

Most of the Underkeepers were standing or sitting nearby – they needed to be here in case the enemy broke through. Despite the seriousness of the larger situation, he had to smile as Jori scrambled up one of the massive pillars that held up the cavern ceiling and flung herself into the air. She spread her wings, swooping past Nirlig and a small group of goblins and flung little sparks of hellfire out to both sides to cheers and a smattering of applause.

Wandering over to Lin and Kustov, he waited until the witch lifted her brush from the stone to dip it back into her odd writing mixture.

“Is that a type of rune script?” he asked her. “It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in a spellform.”

“No, no,” Lin said with a dry laugh. “This is not a ward. It is praying. Plant ink here is to make connection with a spirit – a clan spirit. Old patron, you say maybe. The shamans teach them the signs and they help us, when they are willing.”

Kustov, having finished with his rune warding, was studying the old goblin’s markings with interest now as well. “I didn’t know you had your own system of writing. I thought goblins didn’t have books at all.”

“We don’t,” Lin sniffed indignantly. “Books are for people with tiny heads.” She mimed a small head on her shoulders. “Writing is sacred, not for foolish children who cannot remember their songs.”

Kustov looked very interested now. “Really? And you can use it to direct a natural spirit? Do you think you could teach me?”

“No,” she said bluntly and turned back to her work. “It is not for you.”

***

Bernt’s stomach was starting to growl. It hadn’t been that long since they sealed the main tunnel – maybe an hour or so, but he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d come down from the surface several hours before that. He’d found a semi-private corner behind a massive pillar to practice his casting again, but he could still hear the dull roar of conversation nearby – he would know if something happened. Determined to find something to eat, Bernt stood up and stretched his legs. He doubted he was going to make any more progress today, anyway. Besides, he couldn’t afford to wear out his concentration too much if they were going to fight again.

If they were lucky, the army would come knocking on their door, soon. All things considered, it was better to plan for the worst. As he rounded the pillar, though, he saw that something was happening. The trickle of evacuees had dried up, and the warlocks were back and performing some kind of ritual out where everyone could see.

Each one carried a container of some kind, ranging from buckets to leather skins, and was using the contents to paint on the floor with brushes and rags. Bernt found Josie in the crowd of people working a short distance away and approached her. He had to pass by another warlock on the way and saw that the black liquid was oddly foamy and smelled awful.

Josie had a large bucket – probably from the Underkeepers’ janitorial closet, and held a brush in one hand, with which she drew an enormous circle on the ground. She was using a string as a guide, which was pinned under Radast’s foot. The head solicitor stood at the center of the large pattern directing the efforts of his people, while the remaining warlocks drew complex patterns inside the circle.

“What is that?” Bernt asked when he reached her. “It smells disgusting.”

Josie looked up and grinned wolfishly. “It’s demon blood. We’re setting up a mass banishment ritual. If they break through here, we should be able to clear out a lot of the demons before they can get into any of the neighborhoods down here."

Bernt stared at her uncomprehendingly. He knew that not all demons had burning blood like Jori did. Josie’s midnight hag didn’t seem to have any association with hellfire, and shades weren’t corporeal at all. But that still left an important question “Which demon did you get that much blood from?”

“Which do you think?” She laughed. “If you want to banish a demon, the best way to do it is to use their own hierarchies against them. We got the blood from Varamemnon.”

Bernt choked.

“You bled a greater demon in the Underkeepers’ headquarters? How?!”

At Bernt’s outburst, a few nearby Underkeepers turned to look and he gave them a placating wave.

“It’s not like that,” Josie said defensively and lowered her voice. “It was perfectly safe. Mostly. We summoned the blood directly.”

“What do you mean ‘mostly’?” Bernt asked.

“It’s completely safe!” she corrected herself. “The ritual is just a modified version of a demon summoning, but instead of the entire demon, you just bring over a bit of it and let it bleed. It’s only dangerous if you summon the majority of its mass – then it might regenerate the missing bits, and you get an entire demon. The bigger the demon, the safer it is to summon a good-sized chunk of it.”

Bernt eyed the bucket, and then looked around at all the other containers. There had to be enough here to fill a small barrel.

“Does that mean you injured him?” he asked. “Over in the hells, I mean. If you can just split a demon in half with a ritual from over here, why don’t warlocks just do that to get rid of all the most dangerous ones?”

Josie laughed. “Because it doesn’t work. We’re not really taking away a part of them on their own plane. We’re manifesting them in our reality. It’s more like an exact copy, rather than their original self. Unless their consciousness came over with it, I don’t think they would even notice. Besides, I'm pretty sure Varamemnon is enormous.”

“Ah.” Bernt said, chagrined. He supposed that, if it was that easy, someone would have done it a long time ago already. “Do you think it’s going to work?”

“Solicitor Radast knows what he’s doing.” The warlock said confidently. “You don’t become a Head Solicitor at a major office like ours just by luck or circumstance.”

***

Iriala leaned out of her window and cast a magic missile, carefully modifying the spellform as she shaped it to give the projectile a much longer range. It shot off toward a streetcorner, taking the head off of a duergar officer just as he poked his head around the side of a building.

“Who do we have?” Iriala asked Nole, the guild’s receptionist. She’d sent nearly everyone to assist in the main battle. The guild forces were currently pushing the duergar advance back with brutal efficiency and the duergar were retreating back down toward the Undercity Gate – unfortunately in relatively good order. They’d even managed to bog down Ambrose using an entire team of enhanced fighters of some kind that she wasn’t familiar with, though they hadn’t managed to actually injure him yet. She wanted to think they were winning, but she suspected that the enemy had gotten what they came for.

She’d lost colleagues and friends today already, and the other guilds weren’t doing any better. The duergar had a way of pulling out surprises at the worst possible moments. Ironically, the simple ones were the worst. One of their warlocks had begun lobbing fire over an inner wall into the Lower District – into a neighborhood that they hadn’t managed to evacuate. She had a pyromancer and a hydromancer on it, but it was already too late for hundreds of civilians and the fire wasn't under control, yet.

Those who remained at the guild tower were too old or too unpracticed to put in the path of demons and rampaging soldiers. It was her own godsdamned fault. She hadn’t been watching the walls. That was Righmond’s job. They still hadn’t been breached, for that matter – it was the first thing she’d checked when she realized that a group of nearly fifty Duergar was rampaging inward from the western walls. A teleport spell, most likely, and a very sophisticated one to have gotten through their wards.

“There's the two of us,” Nole replied as he leaned out of the window next to hers to get a better look, “and perhaps one or two of the engineers.” He raised his wand and sent a bolt of green lightning at the advancing duergar with a crack. Seeing him appear, one of them lifted a staff, and the spell was redirected to strike it instead, shooting out of the bottom to disperse into the ground.

Iriala cursed herself as she sent another magic missile into the street without looking and ripped a hellhound in half. This was what she got for turning her back to Righmond’s incompetence! She was an archmage, yes, but she was also a diviner. While nobody in their right mind would challenge her to a duel, there was a limit to how much large-scale destruction she could wreak. Nole was an accomplished duelist, but similarly ill-suited to this kind of fight.

“I hear fighting!” A reedy but energetic voice said from the door. Iriala looked behind her to find Pollock standing there, his hair and robes looking mussed as if he'd just rise from a nap. “Oh good, is it right out there? Why did nobody call me?”

He shuffled toward them with his slow, geriatric gait.

Something, probably a force spell, bounced off the wards so hard that it sent ripples of color along the invisible barrier that they marked. If that mage down there knew what he was doing they had maybe ten minutes before he figured out how to get through. The wards weren’t really meant to keep people out so much as offensive spells. They could do it, but not forever.

Iriala held up a hand, “You’re not in any condition to fight a battle, magister. You can barely walk unaided!”

Pollock harrumphed indignantly in the way that only genuinely old people could. “I’m not a berserker, girl, I’m a pyromancer. Get out of my way!”

He tugged feebly at her sleeve and, after a moment’s consideration, she relented. Pollock really was the right person for this situation, or he would have been twenty years ago. The man’s true calling was as an academic, sure, but he was also one of the most dangerous people in this city.

The old man poked his head out of the window.

“They have an abjurer down there,” Iriala filled him in. “Other than that, it looks like maybe an arcanist, a few specialized fighters, fire demons and probably some warlocks. It’s hard to tell them apart.”

Without tracing so much as a central rune, Pollock hurled a familiar-looking grayish fireball down, followed half a second later by another. The abjurer below raised his staff again and caught one, but the other struck home, taking an unfamiliar humanoid demon with goat legs in the chest. The flames bored a hole straight through and the creature collapsed.

“Well,” Pollock said, leaning back into the room with a grin. “Not bad! I would say the boy did alright with that spell, wouldn't you? Still, no sense in letting them go to waste.”

Drawing a gnarled looking wand from his belt, he leaned back out the window and began casting something. He took his time about it, nearly three seconds, before Iriala saw what he was doing.

One of the hellhounds standing near the back of the group made a loud hissing sound, entirely unlike the massive dogs that the creatures resembled. Then it rose into the air, and tilted oddly on its axis as the hiss intensified into a high-pitched scream. A moment later, the creature started glowing, and then it melted into a ball of roiling flames.

Someone shouted below, but it was too late to run. There was a sound like thunder and Iriala had to back up and raise a hand to block the light and heat that radiated up from the street.

Nole stared at the old man, his mouth hanging wide open. He was probably trying to calculate just how much mana the old man would have had to channel to create that much heat. It was a pointless exercise – Iriala already knew he’d cheated.

“Everyone always forgets that a lot of these third-hell demons are practically made of fire.” Pollock commented to him in a lecturing tone. “Good stuff, too.” He looked as if he was about to continue, but interrupted himself as he caught sight of something in the street. “Hey! I missed one!”

Iriala looked. The ruins left by the duergar bomber across the street were now well and truly gone. Heat radiated up from the street with such intensity that Iriala could feel it toasting her face three stories up. But, sure enough, the duergar abjurer was still standing there, safe on a small circular patch of unburnt ground. He certainly looked rattled, though.

“Don’t worry about him,” she said. “I think I’d like to ask him a few questions.”