Amdirlain’s PoV - Outlands

  The three portals itched at Amdirlain’s awareness; two were in underground tunnel complexes, which the demons were expanding. However, the third was aboveground, and the demons had masked it with illusory and avoidance enchantments. A spiralling tunnel delved into the ground nearby and eventually opened into a completely artificial cavern. Among the demons, spellcasters were consuming great tracts of stone in all three locations.

  The armies had already exceeded the previous hordes that had mustered. On top of that, there were multiple demon lords already directing minions at each location. An unexpected development that drew a frown from Amdirlain.

  “You might want more than your juiced-up Avatar,” Amdirlain noted to Sarah. “It seems they’re taking things seriously.”

  Sarah’s eyebrows lifted. “What have we got waiting for us?”

  Amdirlain projected the split of foes at each site by their tier of strength and added columns of counts of those possessing prestige classes.

  “How do you know their strength? Is it the same way you just knew about us?” Bornaith asked.

  “With some foes I can hear their strength, so I don’t need to bother the Aspect of Knowledge,” Amdirlain replied. “They supplied me with details about your family.”

  Bornaith rubbed his face. “I feel like I stepped into what I thought was a pond and lost track of the bottom.”

  Uilosdis laughed gleefully. “The realm is a large and mysterious place. It’s best to keep it that way so you can have the fun of exploration.”

  “Do you still want to divide it among the six of you or bring in your servants as well?” Amdirlain nodded at the numbers floating in the air between them.

  Glawaron hummed thoughtfully. “If we oppose their forces, their gods might respond, giving us a chance to punish those responsible for this incursion. Let’s lead our armies into battle.”

  “Let’s make the head bad guys pay,” Sarah twitched a finger at the list. “With so many demon lords present, it will be a rush of experience for all those contributing. If we can lure their gods out and defeat them, it will be even larger.”

  “If they don’t flee,” Glawaron added. “Though I don’t think we should delay too long, I can sense the growing corruption at the sites.”

  “Sarah figured out how to clean it up,” Amdirlain reassured him.

  “I take your enemies aren’t aware of how easily you can detect them?” Bornaith asked.

  “All I’ve shown them so far is how good I am at creatively destroying and rearranging things,” Amdirlain shrugged. “They’ve got some lessons to learn and choices to make yet.”

  “What sort of choices are you offering them?”

  “They can choose to leave me alone, or the amount of pain they’ll experience before they stop trying to grab me.”

  Their primary forms replaced the avatars Sarah and Mars had sent.

  “The easy way or the hard way,” Sarah smiled. “You know, most of them are going to choose the hard way. I’ll take care of the demon lords while my folks deal with the riffraff.”

  A host of Lizardfolk with crystalline scales in tight, orderly lines appeared nearby, and behind them came a host of celestials in legionnaire armour.

  “How much extra space can you provide when we’re ready to go?” Mars asked.

  Amdirlain shrugged. “I can play with dimensions and expand the caverns a thousandfold, shoving them to one end.”

  As their armies arrived, Glawaron regarded the nature spirits of his wife and daughter with concern. “Your servants face permanent death fighting here. Let’s keep them guarding your Domain.”

  “What about the other servants?” Uilosdis protested.

  “Our servants are all connected to other planes,” Sarah advised.

  Mars smiled approvingly. “It’s good that you’re concerned for my servants, Uilosdis, yet we’re old enough to measure the risks as well.”

  “Then my servants will remain near Amdirlain and Livia to provide healing support for the troops who need to retreat. Then I’ll need to accompany Father so Mother can have Bornaith’s servants support her.”

  Livia smiled. “If you’d like, I can provide small contingents for all three caverns. The celestials I’ll bring have prestige classes specialised towards defending positions.”

  “Thank you for the offer. I’m not arrogant enough to decline extra protection for Mother,” Bornaith said.

  He must not deal with the Fey, offering thanks so readily.

  Mars nodded to his commanders. “Sarah and I have defensive troops covered. If you reinforce the others, that would work.”

  Glawaron beckoned Livia to one side. “Why don’t we discuss troop tactics and decide the best approach to assist each other?”

  “I’d like to have a combined set of all our troops together in each cavern, though we keep our distribution as discussed? Do we really believe this is the last time there will be an incursion? I think getting used to working together will ensure the prosperity of all of us,” Calithilwen offered.

  Amdirlain provided images of the caverns and adjusted them as the demons continued to increase. Sarah gave her a mental nudge, and Amdirlain overlaid her requests, expanding and distorting the sites. However, it took some creative planning to figure out how to encapsulate the aboveground Portal.

  “This is the dimensional effect you mentioned?” Bornaith asked.

  “I can transform dimensional layers, turning metres into kilometres, or vice versa.” Amdirlain adjusted the layout further.

  When Mars and Livia added their requests, it prompted questions from others, and the planned landscape ended up quite different. An expanded region for the battlefront, with defensive structures for troops to shelter behind that included traps into which they could lure demons. Throughout the discussion, more celestials arrived directly.

  Few entities from the lower planes possess Planar Shift, but most celestials do.

  When they were at last ready, Amdirlain used a few songs to displace stone to a Demi-Plane, rather than destroy it, resulting in gigantic caverns that she expanded further. Sarah dropped hundreds of enchanted pylons that supported anti-teleportation fields into place to prevent demonic forces from fleeing. Those same fields did nothing to stop the armies from leaping into position, and the first spells and radiant blessings quickly rained down on the demonic troops. Thousands of spells and insidious powers lashed out in response, fouling the air with a torrent of explosions, most of which were shattered against the barriers raised by Livia’s forces. Those deeper in the battle formation deflected the attacks that got through upwards.

  Demons who tried to flee with teleports suffered an excruciating backlash, while attempts to withdraw through portals faced the wrath of their commanders. The attacking forces pressured them towards the portals, trying to make it hard for reinforcements to expand into the bridgehead they’d developed. Ongoing psionic assaults by Sarah’s troops made it difficult for the demons to maintain even their minimal coordination and pack tactics. Their natural resistance and regeneration kept it from being an immediate rout, and spellcasters threw up mental shields over the troops.

  They’re used to succubi from Hell and other demonic enemies poking into their brains, so yeah, of course they have battlefield protections.

  Anchored in the outlands, the stronger demons opened personal gates. Though sometimes the random gates went unheeded, others vomited forth thirty or more demons in seconds, helping to bolster the number of foes in fits and starts.

  Half an hour into the battle, Amdirlain felt more forces arriving behind the portals along with the four deities involved in staging them. Even as Amdirlain warned of their approach, two deities forced their way past their waiting forces, aiming for the Portal that fed the cavern that Glawaron had taken. The stronger of them surged ahead, and his troops dived out of the road to avoid being crushed.

  Arrows from Uilosdis were peppering demon lords and ripping their allies into pieces when the scaled mass of Sargel, the Lord of Terror and Pain, began to emerge. She and her father flinched back from the miasma that preceded him as the colossal reptilian god dipped his head and shouldered the Portal wider. An intermediate Power within the realm, she could feel his comparative raw strength was greater, yet his focus was on mental anguish and physical pain.

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  I’ve got the tools to handle that combination. Let’s make him regret his alliance.

  Amdirlain jumped beside him as the threshold vomited the deity forth, a miasma of horror roiling around him. She transformed the boundary line of the Portal’s threshold into a dimensional pocket to contain Sargel and herself, and ripped it free to float in the chaos between planes. Sargel unleashed a barrage of spells and blessings at Amdirlain, but her greater resistances and fire immunity blunted the worst of them. Yet to Sargel, she projected the smells of rotted, charred, and broiled flesh; True Song perfectly imitating the sensory experience. The apparent success led him to up the ante and throw more effort into those same types of assault.

  A mental onslaught of agony roiled out from Sargel’s aura, hammering at her mind, yet eliciting only a nostalgic smile from Amdirlain. He lifted her to his maw, but she dissolved into tentacles and ooze strands that enveloped his right side and speared across his body. As she expanded further, eyestalks sprouted along her form to release blasts from spell gazes, and Excising Concerto used the negative emotions to empower increasingly strong blasts. Sargel expanded to his full size, slowing his complete envelopment. His mind hammered her with more terrifying assaults, not understanding that the transformation of his own energies fueled the ongoing blasts. Half of the eyestalks started firing uncoordinated attacks at her surroundings, while Mana Font bubbled away and hid that her Mana pool wasn’t lessening.

  His claws ripped across her body, but Amdirlain shifted her flesh before the serrated edge of the talons and let the force crack his scales instead. Fake ichor from her ‘sundered’ flesh sprayed the air, making him consider his own damage a fair exchange. With his armour breached, she struck acidic strands into the gaps, eating into the underside of the scales and tearing some away. Flames erupted from his mouth yet washed harmlessly across her shifting form, so she created fake smoke and ash. Under the cover of the inferno, Amdirlain concentrated all the flailing eyestalks on his mouth and fired them into the soft upper plate of his maw. Feeding on the deity’s flesh, the yin-aligned spells ripped a hole through the top of his muzzle. As he screamed in surprise, a white phoenix the size of Sargel’s head cracked scales and dug at his bulging eyes. Suddenly on the back foot, Sargel fled, Planar Shift snatched him away, and his radiated agony snapped out of existence with him.

  It’s different when you’re the one afraid. Now I know both your Plane and the location you call home. I’ll figure out who your Domain trades with later and cut off your non-magical routes.

  Amdirlain snapped back into her elven form and shifted to where she’d been waiting with Livia. The inky body of Miltra, a goddess of darkness and murder, was being hammered by blazing strikes from Glawaron’s sword. The deities that had emerged into the other caverns were being constrained. Livia had moved to support Calithilwen and Bornaith against the massive juggernaut form of another dark goddess who had torn into Calithilwen’s shielding spells. While Livia blunted the dark goddess, Calithilwen went on the offensive, hurling a continual barrage of shifting magics that probed for their enemy’s weakness.

  The presence of all the dark deities hardened the resolve of those demons, who were ready to flee, as they were certain that the deities would notice their departure.

  Sáraid appeared beside Amdirlain, her rainbow-hued wings tucked tight against her back. “What? We don’t get to play?”

  “I’d planned to save the surprise of your abilities for when they finally hit the Domain.”

  “Oh, we’re strategic reserves?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You know that lots of the Anar and Lóm? would like to help as well,” Sáraid offered. “Are you going to talk to more than a chosen few among them?”

  “I’ll think about it, but I’m worried I’m going to screw up with them again. How did you know where I was?”

  “I’ve friends among Sarah’s servants,” Sáraid grinned. “They told me about the fun before it started, but I was busy finishing a song. Can’t I help in some fashion?”

  “Can you cause some of those demonic spells to shatter at a distance? Perhaps make it seem like the Spell Disruption Skill is being used?”

  “I’m glad N?r broadened our horizons. Singing to create is fun, yet there is a certain zest in combat. Though I don’t have your Resonance range, so I’m going to have to get closer,” Sáraid replied. “Tell me I’m allowed to invite the others. They’d pout for months if only I got to have fun fighting demons, as the last lot got stolen from us.”

  “Stay out at your maximum Resonance range,” Amdirlain instructed. As she let the others know to expect disruptions affecting their enemies’ spells, she shared location details with the Enyali?.

  As her daughters teleported into position atop the mountain range, within the caverns, the demons’ own spells started exploding in their faces.

  ? ? ? ? ? ?

  (Avatar) Amdirlain’s PoV - Elemental Plane of Fire

  While the battle was underway, the roaming Avatar had finished on the last world that contained her faithful and studied the sensors over Veht?. Of the rifts available to access Veht?, a small rift caught her attention. While it would be a tight fight for her Avatar, its artificial formation had drawn her attention, and she moved to its far end.

  Its placement had sent her deep into the Elemental Plane of Fire. Amdirlain slipped up unnoticed on a red-skinned Jinn, his expression twisted in an arrogant sneer as he considered the strain that opening the rift had caused his followers.

  Bright blue flames surrounded her as Amdirlain seized the Jinn by the throat. Without a word, a snap kick hurtled him through the Gate she’d opened behind him. Before the aperture snapped shut, the Jinn screamed in outrage and fear as the waters of an enemy stronghold fought with his internal flames. Dropped in the court of a water Jinn, the Marid and her courtiers ripped and savaged him.

  With him gone, she turned her attention to the rift. Through the opening, she could feel the magical bonfire that had caused the connection and the sacrifices the Hobgoblin tribe had prepared. Amdirlain stepped across the threshold, her passage forcing her True Form to come forth. Her azure hair blended with the flames at the rift’s edges, but the flames and glowing nebulae in her gaze froze the monsters before her.

  A ring of wyvern rib bones supported the Mana-infused coal and alchemical materials atop a volcanic dome. Her knowledge of North American geography was insufficient to identify the relative location of this volcanic range. The rough terrain of the rocky valley stretched out for kilometres in all directions, but the monsters were mere metres away. The closest grey-skinned hobgoblins dropped to their knees, clutching at their heads so hard their claws broke skin, and a moment later their brains exploded.

  Alright, I’ve not used that psionic technique since Aitherlar taught it to me. She didn’t make its impact clear.

  She teleported away from the arrows and array of desperately thrown weapons that came in response. Wrapped in concealments, Amdirlain lashed out with seeking spells and psionic assaults that shut down their minds. Once she’d killed the hundreds of adults gathered for the ceremony, she reappeared near the prisoners. Their songs showed a mix of personalities, and while hard lives had scarred many souls, none carried the sour notes of the damned.

  The group of forty-six battered Slavic cavalrymen stared at her through the bars in disbelief.

  A muddy man sitting slumped against the bars, with a crudely splinted leg stretched out before him, regarded her in shocked awe. “Who are you?”

  Amdirlain smiled with genuine amusement, and her eyes turned a sapphire hue. “I’m clearly not from this Plane, so do you expect me to share anything accurate?”

  The man’s hollow gaze didn’t leave her as the others backed away from the bars. “I’d like to know the name of the one who kills us.”

  Even with the advancements on Veht?, their armour and weapons aren’t mass-produced, so I’ll send them back with their gear.

  “Such pessimism. How about we get you out of those cages?” Amdirlain said, dissolving the metal bars, while packs of gear and weapons appeared around her. “This seems to be all the items from their camp that the hobgoblins didn’t manufacture. Though some of it predates your captivity, I have no use for it. Should I send you back to your barracks or home? Let me know your choice?”

  The soft greenish glow from multiple healing fields washed over the captured troops. As bruises and cuts washed away, Amdirlain numbed nerves before broken bones snapped back into position.

  With the wounds beneath his dirty bandages healed, the man groaned in relief and grew shamefaced. “Forgive my rudeness, but your appearance doesn’t come across as a rescuing angel. Whatever is easier for you.”

  She dipped into their minds to get images of their homes along with recent postings. “What did they have you expecting to come through the rift?”

  “They boasted about offering us to a great Jinn, and your eyes aren’t those of mortals.”

  I’ve purged the infections, sealed the cuts, repaired the organs, and fixed the broken bones and fractures, so now it’s just a matter of fully restoring their overall health.

  “You don’t need to worry about him,” Amdirlain replied. A brush of will extinguished the fire, and the rift slammed shut. “His days of being a slaver are over. I’ll deliver you to your lord’s castle once all your wounds finish healing. Since it would undo my rescue if he declared you all deserters, it’s better to put you right in the courtyard. It might be better for you all to be witnessed arriving.”

  Amdirlain stepped away, so those intimidated by her arrival and the slaughter of the hobgoblins wouldn’t be afraid to approach the gear.

  The man who had spoken to her got them organised and haltingly approached; it was nerves, not lingering wounds, that caused his uncertainty.

  “I’m Zlatan. You have my thanks for rescuing us,” Zlatan offered. “We’ve nothing to compensate you with, besides what you already passed over.”

  “It’s alright, I got to drop a Jinn in hot water and stopped monsters from killing a few people,” Amdirlain shrugged. “That’s enough. How did you come to be captured?”

  “We were scouting in force to find the hobgoblins’ army,” Zlatan explained. “Instead, they found us.”

  His mind is full of fighting. A bunch of soldiers got killed there, and a few more along the route they used to drag them here.

  “It seems the monsters are sneaky this season. They had your capture planned since they dragged you so far from the border forts.” She recreated the bodies and gear of the slain. To the captives, motes of radiant light stitched together their lost comrades and their equipment. “A few of your century successfully withdrew when your commander sounded the retreat. I’ll return your fallen to you.”

  As the first breathed again, their colleagues rushed forward, and the others stirred before they got to their sides. Their commander sat up slowly, a shaking hand rubbing at his face where a javelin had taken him out of the fight.

  Zlatan's eyes bugged out at the mass resurrection that had occurred before him. “Why? How? There is no way we can repay such generosity.”

  "My big sister has had a thousand years of bringing people hope, so I'm allowed to pitch in a little."

  The men found themselves inside the courtyard of their border fortress as Amdirlain had promised; around them, the wards complained vigorously about being breached.

  Should I see the Anar and Lóm? on this trip, or keep my distance? At the very least, it’s something to consider.

  Amdirlain picked a location near the western border and teleported.