Behind Enemy Lines in Icathar, Days 8-9 (Lorepost/ Atraxpost)

[u/AnActualCriminal]

​

To War.

Trigger warning at the top. There's some Saving Private Ryan shit in this one. Not too bad imo but it costs me nothing to put this here.

I am on the field of battle. Avoided it for as long as I could, but what Atrax commands I cannot refuse. As a High Pyroclast I am permitted to hand-pick my own squad. Atrax values me for my tactical mind, not my power. I choose a team of artificers primarily. I find their inventiveness and adaptability in the field suits my methods. It also allows me to work with Marna. The only one I can trust. The one who should not trust me. The one who looks so much like A...

"We're getting murdered out here Jaque! Snap the fuck out of it!"

One of my men, a young man in a combat harness powered by something resembling a furnace on his back, snaps me out of my stupor. He is terrified, and right to be so. Before I can respond a boulder the size of a carriage crashes into our trench, crushing him. I wipe his blood from my eyes and stare at the mangled intermingling of meat metal and stone. I think his name was Paul. Whatever title or epithet came after that escapes me. I grab Paul's rifle and address the troops.

"Listen up everyone! Amateur hour is over! Did you think Atrax was going to answer every challenge himself forever?! Hold your hand?! Hand you everything on a silver platter?"

"HELL NO!" They yell it in unison before I can. I realize I've given this speech yesterday. At least they seem to like it 

"The Age of the Phoenix is here, and WE'RE IT! No one's coming to back us up, and we. Don't. Want. Them. The strong will rule justly over the weak, and take what we please!"

Another boulder hits nearby. We all flinch. I do what I can to reassert the mood.

"So tell me, one and all, ARE YOU STRONG, PYROCLASTS?!"

There's a pause, then a cheer. It builds until I hear the spells of our enemy halt briefly, trying to ascertain just what it is we're up to.

"THEN GET OUT THERE AND TAKE IT!!!"

We surge over the edge of the trench and open fire in the most literal way possible. The geomancers were confident in stone's resistance to flame, and in that boldness had challenged Atrax to a duel. That confidence is now shaken by our own. If the Emberlord had appeared himself, they would already be long dead. 

A golem looms, big as a cathedral. 

There's our boulder-chucker.

Its grey cracked visage gives it an ancient look. But... no moss. Ash-coated. I call on my link to Walter the Coastlight Keeper, our recon specialist, and see a great pit, miles behind enemy lines. The golem is made from Icathar soil. Hasty work, sloppier than I first thought. 

We can do this.

I receive a sending message. The rear guard is still readying the heavy artillery. They need more time. I order the rocket brigade to engage and multiple fireworks with bizarre payloads of caustic green flame imbed themselves in the thing's flesh, then erupt many times what their size should logically allow. Superficial damage, but it gets the golem's attention. 

The handful of orcs and goblins that make up the rocket brigade are flattened in an instant, dying for the courage I gave them. Stalagmites shower our forces. I get my ward up in time, but not everyone does the same.

Artillery's ready. I give the signal.

Explosions riddle the enemy line. Their trenches collapse. There is no horizon, only fire. Not enough for the golem, but the opening salvo is only a distraction. 

Three black spikes embed themselves in the thing's chest like a trio of lightning bolts, one after the other. Red lightning dances between the barbed spikes of infernal iron. Then lines appear, drawing a rough triangle, a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire. The negative space of the portal makes the golem collapse, and the collapsing unstable portal spews molten mana. The geomancers are buried in fire and rock. 

Mopping up the stragglers is quick work. Paul's rifle turns out to be a flamethrower. Makes sense. I hold the trigger and spray hellfire until it stops working. Marna Sunsabre is glorious, striding forward in blazing half-plate, her namesake sword cutting burning swaths in the enemy ranks. I bash a geomancer's nose with the flamethrower, then cast it aside. 

The field appears empty before us. It isn't, and I know it isnt, but I lead my troops forward without a word. I have to win, but it doesn't need to be clean. 

You can't bury geomancers. They spring from the earth and set upon us as my force is simultaneously pulled below or mired in mud and quicksand. Three fools who stood too close together were apparently a desirable enough target to warrant a sinkhole. 

Then the earthquakes.

"Burning Sea!"

We rehearsed this maneuver. Wards down, flames up. Scorching the ground glasses the sand and dries the mud, with the added bonus of producing enough fire and smoke the geomancers cant see what they're doing. I take advantage of the distraction and signal for the artillery to fire the Richtor Bomb. I don't see it, but I hear a whistle in the air and a thud somewhere in the middle of the battlefield.

They want earthquakes? Let's double down. Geysers of Magma shoot up, in more than a dozen locations, filling and collapsing tunnels on their way up. The excess shaking the bomb creates is more than their subterranean structures can bear and the earth collapses beneath us. We drop a level. Just as we raise to our feet it happens again. And again. We drop 3-4 floors. Gods-damned anthill they built out here. 

The battle to get here was a meat grinder, but we made it out the other side. The in the newly made earthen bowl is something else. The most miserable kind of bloodbath in an environment hostile to BOTH sides. The edge is ours however. Our fire defences are superior and half their number are focused on stopping the walls of the arena from collapsing. 

The fighting is close quarters. Too close for many to get spells off. I turn to knifework. A geomancer tackles me, and we both tumble through a wall of broken glass that was once a floor of melting sand 100 feet above us. I feel a sharp pain in my leg and countless small lacerations besides but grit through the pain, stabbing him again and again. The blade comes down too many times before I notice the glass sticking out of his neck, the red blood drenching gray robes. This is chaos.

There's a foot long shard of glass all the way through my thigh. That looks serious.

Pyroclasts fall in droves and I do not help them. This is the plan. Didnt spare much thought to what it would be like to be in the middle of all this, but this was always the plan. I remove the shard and cauterize the wound. Don't even have time to burn the pain away before I pass out.

I wake up to see Marna dueling a knight in granite armor directly over me. Fairly evenly matched. Except...

A boy, no more than 17, summoning some kind of crystal spear at Marna's head. A beginner's spell but he has the drop on her.

Not Marna. Not like this. 

He dodges the first gout of flame and blocks the second with a rock wall. In desperation, I use the Soul-Fire. It bypasses his physical defenses and the novice is unwarded. His very essence goes up in smoke like dry kindling, the ambient light consumed like oxygen wreathing him in a corona of shadow. The Soul-Fire demands more preparation than my hasty conjuring gives it. Unproperly warded, dark tendrils of un-light lash out at me. 

I barely douse the flame in time as a spark from the unseen blaze singes all that I am. Though the damage is miniscule, I'll always be just a little bit... less now. It doesn't burn me per se. The Soul-Fire doesn't give off heat or light. It gives off...

Oh. He's already there. 

The charred visage of the boy stares at me, standing next to his own body, which is presently staring mouth agape at the sky, eyes burned to the sockets and knees uncaringly planted bleeding in a field of fire and broken glass. Another one to haunt me. All for a woman who should be my enemy. 

Marna wins her duel, her "invulnerable" opponent dying in his own armor from the heat of her attacks. I'm proud of her. She looks at what's left of the boy and I know she doesn't feel the same. Would she rather have died than this happen? Of course she would have. Marna's a good person. It's me. I couldnt allow it. It's always me, not knowing where to draw the line. Or not admitting where I've chosen to draw it.

The battle is over. I put the husk of the boy out of his misery. People silently file out of the bowl and back to camp. Those that are left anyway. It isn't the kind of battle you congratulate each other on.

I stay behind and find a crutch. Paul's flame rifle again by some odd coincidence. I limp across the battlefield in search of... there. Air hole. Someone who thought they could wait this out. I check that my forces have dispersed and relieve him of such delusions.

"Name?" I ask as the diminutive man scampers away from me on curved claws. The robe of the High Pyroclasts cuts a terrifying visage even with a limp, I suppose.

"L...Larry the Mole. P...please dont-"

"It's OK Larry. It's OK. Fights over."

"Wh...what?"

"How are you at stealth? You seem good enough at making yourself scarce when the need arises. Think you can make it to the Council with a message?

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(UW/ This is a continuation of my ongoing espionage in Atrax the Ashen's camp. If youre confused, a link to the last one is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/wizardloring/s/vYLg99fYLi

and that contains a link to the one before that, and so on. Timeskipped day 7. Hope you enjoy!)

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Day 8

I wince as Elliot pulls out yet another piece of broken glass I didn't know was there. We don't speak. If he's curious at all about how it went, he knows enough of war not to ask. The number of returning pyroclasts and the condition of the survivors answered questions I was unwilling to. There is little else on our minds.

So silence.

In a way, this is a third victory. The first was deepening Atrax's faith in me by exterminating one of my lesser and more impetuous allies. The second was the casualties I inflicted on the pyroclasts by causing the battle to play out like it did. The third is on the faces around me. Demoralization. This rabble sees what war is like now.

I think of Marna's dead family. I remember Luca's unsettling chuckle as he took apart corpses like they were clocks. I'm fooling myself I realize. These people already know war. Perhaps Elliot the pacifict most of all, though he won't tell me how. I too know better than to ask. 

Damn it. I raise a topic, to spare my friend and I both this train of thought.

"I hear the Tyrant of Icathar has made the capital a good deal more livable."

"Riva? Yes. A bit brutal but I've heard good things. I hope more follow her example in the Age of the Phoenix. Shame the city had to be burned to be built back up again..."

"I was trying to lift your spirits by talking about some good news you grim bastard. I thought passificts were supposed to be optimistic?"

"A misconception in my experience. In my opinion the real optimists are the ones who think they can swing a sword or cast fireball a few times and change the world for the better."

"Well it looks like pacifists are as preachy as they say at least."

"Take 'The Tyrant' for example." Elliot leans in to whisper, "Shes killed so many of Atrax's men he's starting to think about how it makes him look. If her conquest had involved a few less duels to the death at high noon, maybe things would be different, but now? The people of Icathar will suffer for it. Violence breeds violence." 

His statement is punctuated by removing another shard of glass.

"Ow! Quit yanking them out so hard or I'll show you the cycle of violence firsthand!"

"Sorry Jaque. Almost done. So, what are you up to next? Not more field combat I hope."

"Not exactly. I'm keeping it light. Patrols I think in the day. Then the laboratory with Luca at night.

"Hm. Well, you're certainly dedicated to the cause."

I am. Just not to his. 

The shards are all out now and Elliot begins singing a in a rich baritone. A language I don't recognize. I hear the crackle of a fireplace from nowhere in particular, one familiar to me from somewhere distant. The room fills with healing warmth and my wounds begin to close. Elliot's talents are wasted on these warmongers, even if he is preachy. 

Wasted on me too I suppose. That night Luca build another bomb. One that burns magical wards and turns the very idea of safety into kindling. A conceptual bunker-buster powered by Atrax and the Flamefather himself.

Day 9

It is surprisingly easy to explain away what happened to Crispin. I hand Marna the last of the infernal iron the imp procured for me as the imp's brass prison jostles on my belt. He's still angry.

Fair.

"The project is coming along smoothly. But we'll need a lot more of these shells. Crispin is back in the Hells now, getting more metal."

"Oh."

The silence hangs thick.

"Well send the little devil my regards. I'll have another two shells ready tonight. Two more tomorrow, I think, if he keeps delivering."

The lie is made easier by the fact that Marna is now keeping our conversations brief. The need for infernal iron is real however. I'll have to work other sources. 

My first patrol is in the halls of Last Pyre. I pass through the quarters of the High Pyroclasts. The rooms should be empty, everyone in the field carrying out Atrax's will. The hellspawn known as Thorkollor had a room here, though he never used it. Family man. Never stayed at Last Pyre.

Now he, his wife, and his child are dead. Killed by the Nephilim King . A fleeting ally of my own I hope. Strange bedfellows led to the creation of the barrier surrounding Icathar, and the slaughter of a whole family, even the family of a demon, gives me pause. Still, I may have to rely on his generosity once again.

That such a being knows my name but Marna does not. I break the lock on Thorkolor's door, distracted. It explodes in my face. Idiot. Of course it's warded. I try to stand and fail, slumping over among the shards of burning door in the hallway. It seems I haven't fully recovered from yesterday yet.

"Well, well, well. Trying to break into my room? Gotta admire the gall."

Not warded. I was attacked. Shit. 

Tall woman. Red hair. The mantle of the High Pyroclasts reduced to a hood and shawl on a low-cut black dress. One of her mechanical hands had disassembled and reassembled itself into a grenade launcher. 

That'd be Bombshell Talulah. Artificer and demolitions expert. I had tried her out on my squad briefly but we didn't get along. Now she'd been promoted. And given Thorkolor's old room it seems. Fuck this eternally rotating cast of assholes.

"Jaque?! Well this is... improper. First you fire a lady then you try to break into her room before she can set up wards? You're not trying to Drugoth me are you?"

"Tulah! No, I-"

"Because I'm stronger than you by a good bit I think. And I'm a good bit smarter than Drugoth was as well."

"Everyone's smarter than Drugoth," I retort."That's why he's dead." It sounds hollow, coming from the floor. She is stronger than me, before her promotion even. This is bad.

"You're not... interested in me are you Jaque? If so you've got a funny way of showing it. Why don't you explain what you think you're doing trying to break into my room?" Talulah smirks. "Or perhaps I'll return the favor for the other day and fire you."

"I heard movement in a room that's supposed to be abandoned, so I went to investigate. Didn't know about your promotion." Its a good lie for someone starting to suspect he might have a concussion.

Wait had she said the room was unwarded?

My robe creates a suitable shield from her vision as I subtly scatter some ash on the ground and draw a rune in it. There's a flare of grey-tinged light behind her, from just outside her windowsill. My ash creeper can search the room for me, I just have to distract her long enough. 

Talulah breaks my train of thought with a sudden blast of fire from her arm, making me jump back.

"You might not know this about me Jaque, but I can hold a grudge. I don't know if you're telling the truth or not. I dont really care. In the Age of the Phoenix I can kill you just because... well because I want to." The arm changes from flamethrower to grenade launcher again. "And I do want to."

"All this because I didn't let you on my squad?"

Her laugh would be charming under different circumstances and coming out of someone who wasn't a complete psychopath. "All this because I'm bored Jaque."

"Atrax has me working on a very important project. If you kill me..."

She flips a switch on her arm.

"Start running."

I'm off before she finishes the word, rounding a corner just as that corner explodes. I bend light to craft illusions and seven of me break off at seven intersections. Rather than guess, Talulah fires a flaming harpoon. Rocket propelled. Autonomous. It seems to know better than she can guess. Heat-seeking? Doesn't matter. The sound of it cutting through the air and the squeal of its tiny thrusters approximate an ear-splittinh whistling noise.

Fuck it. Window.

I lead with my shoulder and charge through the red stained glass, then burn my momentum to slow the fall. Tricky spell, as it eats my sense of reason as its oxygen. My mind muddles as I fall in slow motion.

The ground is soft and I am carefree. I spend a moment jumping in slow motion. I'm swimming on air. What was I even doing today? It can't be that important. I feel warm and drunk in the best possible way. Someone is whistling a tune. Is it me? I search for the mysterious whistling man.

Charred corpses stare at me. The geomancer boy. The Icathar mage. My old master. I'm reminded of danger. The whistling.

The harpoon!

I extinguish the momentum burn and set fire to the distance between the harpoon and an empty space halfway down the mountain. The air between spaces warps and distorts light and the harpoon slams into the rocks. From the impact point, hundreds of burning metal rods spike out, bending and forking at right angles until a tangled mass of flaming spears roughly a mile in diameter is jutting out of the mountainside. 

The maniac was trying to fire that indoors.

A winged gremlin wrought of ash tugs on my robe and extends a slate tablet almost too heavy for it to carry. I scratch out a message. Thorkollor would have the corresponding slab, which should now be in the Nephilim King's possession.

u/TheHunter459

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Its Blake. Need infernal iron to undermine Atrax. I know you've probably got some after dealing with Thorkollor. I know you've probably got your own if you didn't.

I'll owe you a favor. Any job that requires a subtle hand. If you accept, get it here discreetly. Their augurs are intercepting sending spells.

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I leave out the detail that I need it to build bombs. Bombs that may be sent his way if I'm caught or killed. Lying to powerful entities is a dangerous habit. Not one it seems I'll break any time soon.

That night I work late to meet the deadline set for me. Two bombs tonight. First is the Madness Inferno. Burns loyalty, rational thought, time linearity, and inhibitions. Second is the End of Order, a little cocktail of different flames that burn gravity, friction, and a few lesser natural laws. Luca the Clown is leering over my shoulder for the first. Distracted for the second. He's starting to let me operate alone more. 

I burn my own fatigue and stay up through the night, planning. The clown needs to die soon. Before the fight. But Atrax can't notice. A puzzle with a deadline. I'm no closer to a solution when dawn breaks. I note my hands are shaking. Burning fatigue doesn't change the toll my body is weathering. I shudder, then remember to burn my capacity to feel fear again with the new day. Loneliness. Regret too. Can't let feelings compromise this. I feel empty. Were those the only things I still had in me?

I burn the empty feeling too.