[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapter 22

Row upon row of colorful liquids encased in brilliant shining crystal rattled behind Altres where he was tending bar. He swiped his crimson hand through the air, channeling a [Stasis] spell to halt the inevitable crash of valuable liquor.

Elsewhere in the Devil’s Due, plates and cups crashed to the floor as patrons, too slow with drink and food, failed to catch the suddenly ambulatory dinnerware.

Altres felt the wash of magic crash against the wardings hidden about the place. Judging by the screams outside in the Cloud Ring, they were doing good work to attenuate the surge of raw draconic magic.

There weren’t many people in Murkmire who understood the danger for what it was, but Altres was not one of them.

At the door, the hulking orc, Guilo, looked at the red tiefling at the bar for an order. He was not the brightest of people, but he had a good heart and that was well enough for Altres.

There were few enough of those people as it was without adding further qualifiers of intelligence to the mix.

A dumb person who knew right from wrong was worth a hundred educated people who pontificated and extemporized about just where that line was.

He should know, Altres was a Bard. Countless songs had been composed by those types trying to pin down such things, and what was right changed with the ages depending upon who controlled the power.

Altres shook his head, and the orc relaxed. He helped to right chairs and patrons alike who had fallen over in the quake of magic.

Guilo was simple. An axe blade is simple as well, and people so easily forgot that it didn’t matter how simple the blade was if it could split your skull.

His mistress had talked about the Trinic Call at length.

Altres’ normally crimson skin took on a paler color as the heat and life drained from his face at the memory. Icy crystals of sweat trailed down his spin as he remembered her words.

“You mark my words, young Reita, once you hear the Trinic Call, you will see the true end of all things. And if you are good, you will be by my side as we toast to the death of our world and watch with front row seats as everything around us burns.”

Altres shuddered at the memory of his old name. Altres had music to it. It suited him. All the more for being something other than the name of slavery his mistress had given him.

She’s coming, he thought to himself. There is no way that Call won’t reach her too, wherever she is. It could probably reach all the way to the Seven Hells.

He wasn’t ready for her arrival. Probably never would be.

With Leis gone and the Murkmire Council sniffing around for a traitor in their midst, Altres had his hands full, juggling all of his responsibilities. Of course, that was where he shone, but it did mean he’d need to pull out a few trump cards before all was said and done.

Even with Leis and her little friend at Hal’s doorstep, the Founder didn’t have much time before he found a lot more than an old face showing up out of nowhere.

He trusted Hal an unfathomable amount, but he was no match for his erstwhile mistress. Not yet. She would chew him up and spit him out, turn his head around and get him to dance to her tune.

And if she didn’t, she’d find a way to kill him.

More than any other soul he’d met on Aldim, his mistress scared him. No other being was so cruel and calculating as her. You could say that she was almost single-handedly responsible for people like Hal appearing.

After all, she had killed a dozen Founders in her long life.

Altres slipped out into the back room to make sure that number didn’t grow to include Hal.

***

Rinbast sat up in a sweat, the chandelier over his bed swaying and tinkling gently. He could feel the power of the magic emanating from the Shiverglades.

He cursed, went to call for Ralst and then stopped himself. No. He couldn’t risk interfering. The Geas had been very specific.

With a flick of his hand, he pulled it up.

Geas: Locked Struggle Brand

While you are participating in the Ascension Rites, you may not harm your opponent outside of the Primacy Trials. Likewise, your opponent will not be allowed to harm you. Should either participant seek to harm the other, they will immediately be stripped of this and all future Ascension Rite eligibility, all accumulated Chapters, and associated powers will automatically be forfeited.

Rinbast looked at the black mark on the back of his Founder’s Mark, a black runic tattoo in the shape of a spoked wheel with a closed eye at its center.

He knew Hal carried one just like it.

Rinbast waited a moment and then laid back down. He had been bedridden for days since his experience with the Old One. They had struck a deal, though it was tentative at best.

It was the best hope for Aldim’s future. Time was running out. There hadn’t been a Trinic Call in at least a dozen iterations. Not since that close call with the dracolich.

He wasn’t strong enough to deal with this, and the Geas made it clear that he couldn’t directly do a damn thing. But what about Alnafein, his shadow, or Ralst?

They could do something… but would it count as him interfering if he ordered it? The System could be weird like that. It didn’t like loopholes unless it created them for you.

Trying to be clever with the System was like trying to be clever with a viper. Sometimes it just bit you for trying.

And the Primacy Trials might just be Rinbast’s ticket to staving off the Calamity that had befallen Aldim time and time again. There wasn’t much magic left in the world for another go around.

After a long internal deliberation, Rinbast realized it was too risky to leave unanswered. He struggled out of bed, using a cane to limp to his armoire and dressed himself quickly in a somber robe befitting his mood.

As he came out of his chambers, he saw Alnafein look up from his post. The other guards were relieved that the drow’s stare had lifted from them.

“Has Hirash finished his little journey?” Rinbast asked.

Alnafein shook his head.

The Founder cursed. It had been a disciplinary measure, but Hirash was the Archmage. He should have more than enough clout and knowledge to have been back at Castle Fallwreath by now.

So either one of the Broken managed to kill him, or he’s gone off on an errand of his own that he feels more—

Rinbast groaned. He knew which it was.

“My Lord?” one of the guards asked.

“Nothing,” Rinbast told him. “Dedica, is she still in command of the Tower?”

“Yessir.”

“Have her meet me in the Chamber of Blossoms.”

The guards saluted and left, more than comfortable leaving the Founder in the care of his Shadow.

Alnafein came into Rinbast’s chambers when invited. “You do not think that Hirash has gone rogue, do you?” the drow asked him as he scanned the room for non-existent threats.

Anybody who tried sneaking into his bedroom would have many nasty surprises to contend with, none of them quiet.

Rinbast rested on his cane and shook his head. It was beautiful and ornate, with plenty of magic to amplify his powers, but he hated using it. It made him look frail. Few had seen him since the incident with the Old One, but he could not delay orders for the Tower any longer.

Hirash needed to be found. And if he wasn’t dead, he would sure as hell wish he was by the time Rinbast was through with him.

“He was ever a man of mercurial temperament,” Rinbast explained. “It was what made him such an excellent mage. But he does not like being beaten, and I fear that he has seen Hal’s ascension as something of a stain on his otherwise perfect record.”

Neither man mentioned that Hirash likely thought that because Rinbast had taken him to task—rather severely—over the fact that Hal had gotten away and slipped into a place that even Rinbast struggled to navigate.

I won’t make that mistake next time, Rinbast thought. If there is a next time.

“Ralst could—” Alnafein began but was cut off by a wave of Rinbast’s hand.

“She has enough on her plate as it is.” After a while Rinbast added, “You have tried following her on these mysterious errands of hers?”

“My sister has earned her nickname well,” he said with just the slightest bit of pride. The siblings couldn’t be further from each other in skill, size, or temperament, and yet there was a fondness for each other that Rinbast envied.

“Let us hope she has something to show for all her absence.”

***

Closer to home, the longhouses within Brightsong shook from the force of the Trinic Call. Trees had been felled, grass was bent double in a flat plane radiating out in a perfect circle that any idiot could have followed to the epicenter where a young man was just rising from his knee.

A crown of stars glittered momentarily on his head and was gone a second later, but the gathering crowd had seen it all the same. Some of the dwarves dropped to their knees, scrubbing hairy forearms across misty eyes.

Not for the Brightking, of which they only knew the merest of a fraction about, but for the beautiful song. This close, the Trinic Call was still a commingling of three voices lifted in hope and honor. The farther the Call traveled, the more of a primal force it became, but up close it was something to behold.

It was a song of sorrow. Of sun and star and moon that shone on a world aged beyond reckoning.

A world where its people were wearied and toiled beneath the ashen sun. No harps wrung out with song; darkness dwelt in the old dwarven halls.

This was something every dwarf felt keenly. Dragons and dwarves were closer to kin than either race would ever admit. They understood their hearts as if they were their own.

It started as a song of sorrow, but lifted into one of hope. It spoke of a Brightking to make the world fair and tall once more, just as they had been in the Elder Days. Of mighty kings in Faldorin and Mystora who would see light once more, undimmed by cloud or shade of night.

These were ancient kingdoms even by the reckoning of fossilized dwarven memory, and yet they sparked great joy and hope. Many young dwarven companies had been lost searching for the ancient kingdom of Mystora, the dwarven stronghold rumored to have been in the Shiverglades but never found.

Just as suddenly as the song had come, it shut off. The echoes of its three voices faded into the distance to travel the world. By the end of the day, there wouldn’t be a soul in Aldim who wasn’t aware of the Trinic Call.

“There’ll be trouble fer this,” Durvin muttered. He was, perhaps, one of the few dry eyes in the group of bearded faces. “Ye mark me words. The lad’ll need them defenses the lass’ have drawn up.”

“We can do it,” Athagan said at the same time as his father, Bardan.

They looked at each other, and Durvin held his breath for a mountain shaker of a row, but instead they both seemed slightly abashed.

“We’ll get it done,” Bardan confirmed. “Ye can count on it. Especially if that Goremad—”

“Gourmage, da,” Athagan corrected.

“Yer, that,” Bardan said, adjusting his wide belt studded with gems. “If’n he can get them durned farms workin’ we’ll be in fer a good spell. If.”

“The others think he can do it,” Durvin said thoughtfully.

“Don’t count yer ore afore it’s dug up, I always say.”

Durvin nodded. It was an old dwarven saying but no less true than when his father, the true King of the Anvil, had first said it to him as a young lad.

They lapsed into silence as all eyes latched onto Hal rising from the circle of smoldering grass. The crown was gone unless you looked at him just right, and then you could still see a mirage of it.

“Humans,” Bardan said with a shake of his hairy head. “Ain’t never seen a human who did somethin’ softly when they could do it loudly.”

“It’s a challenge, all right,” Durvin agreed. “And he’s countin’ on us to back him up.”

The dwarves around the king-in-exile nodded. As the young man stood, he staggered slightly, but no one dared to help him. They all watched as he steadied himself and turned a slow, slightly feral grin on all the faces watching him.

He raised a hand to the sky, his Founder’s Mark clear for all to see as golden lightning rushed out and arced through the sky, grounding itself into the earth in the clearing.

Hal uses [Copper Kol’thil Sigil: Beacon].

You gain the effect of Regen.

All healing potions and spells are increased in potency.

The young lad’s laughter filled the clearing like silver bells as the beam of light rose higher and higher. Even after he dropped his arm, the beacon of soothing, hope-filled healing stood tall and defiant against the cold of the Shiverglades.