“Shit!” The giant was about to enter the Citadel and he was pinned down. He whipped his tail around and jabbed the frost giant with everything he had, concentrating the funneled lightning from the Doom of Nysegard through his tail. He’d never tried this before, but it was worth a shot.
The frost giant’s armor was crackling with electricity, and it finally let go of him to get away from his tail. Tom rested for a moment, thinking. They needed a new tactic; this wasn’t working. He glanced up to see several avatars attacking the fire giant on the top of the wall. Even so, he could detect screams of mortals being hurt by the giant stomping on them.
He’d had several more opportunities to examine the risar. They were physical bodies that were reanimated, much like a zombie, but with far more bindings than any of the zombies he’d seen. The dark tendrils that crawled beneath their skin seemed to be both a shield from attacks like Inethya’s as well as a container for the antimus inside. He had also confirmed that there was some small core of animus inside the bodies. That was not something he had seen in any of the other animated undead or Unlife.
Tom suspected that the animus inside was the true soul of the risar; that it was trapped in an Unlife prison, unable to break free. He needed to be able to cleanse the antimus, burn away the dark tendrils and hopefully release the trapped animus.
The problem was that the black tendrils were more than capable of blocking divine magic. He needed to be able to pierce the tendril shield and get something inside the giants. He needed, he suddenly realized, Excrathadorus Mortis. Tom blasted the frost giant with fire from the Wand and began making his way to Inethya. “Inethya, do you have a link to Iskerus?” he shouted.
“Yes. Why?” the prophetess shouted back as she swung her sword at the wind giant.
“I need to find Excrathadorus Mortis — I left it with the arch-diocate,” Tom shouted.
Inethya grimaced as she dodged a fist, and then she nodded. “Give me a moment.”
Roth Tar Gorefest slugged the frost giant in the location its kidneys should be. Ice armor crinkled with the impact.
“Bad news!” Inethya shouted. “He says it vanished from its heavily warded container. Vanished with no trace and without any seals being broken.”
Tom was still blasting the frost giant as Roth Tar Gorefest struck again.
“How is that possible?” Tom shouted to Inethya.
“I have no idea! Divine Intervention?” She shrugged, refocusing on her own battle.
Divine Intervention? If she was a prophetess, an avatar, what would she mean by something so vague as Divine Intervention? It made no sense. Tom shook his head; it suddenly made sense. She meant that Tiernon himself must have taken it.
“Shit!” Tom cursed again. The fire was still not working. He swapped the fire for a sustained electrical blast. This thing’s armor was unreal.
If Tiernon took it, it would be in Tierhallon. How the hell would he get it back? Did he just ask Tiernon to return it? That didn’t seem particularly likely at the moment. He was going to need to get it himself. Of course, he had no idea where Tierhallon was, so that was a bust.
Tom frowned, thinking. Wasn’t Tiernon’s god pool in Tierhallon? Could he follow a link to Tierhallon and find it? He’d had a link to Excrathadorus Mortis. He’d turned it off, but if he got close enough, based on what he’d read in Freehold, he should have no problem reconnecting to it. He just needed to get close enough.
“Roth Tar Gorefest! Can you handle this guy, keep him down while I work on something else?” Tom shouted to his commander.
“We can!” the commander replied and gestured for several of his subordinates to join the battle. Big as the giants were, only so many could fight them at once before getting in each other’s way.
Tom nodded and took off into the air. As soon as he got to a good position above the fray, he reached towards the kilt pouches on his arm. Crap! The arrows would be too small for him at this size. Tom returned to his normal size and began fastening his kilt on his waist, his tail holding the Rod of Tommus. Finally, he got one of the arrow-darts of Tiernon out and he began looking for Inethya’s link. He was going to have to drill into her link and then go through Beragamos to get to Tierhallon. He was not sure what that would take. He could see her link; it was quite wide and strong compared to what the priests had had.
He tossed the arrow, funneling himself through it as he’d done several times now, and locked it into the stream. Don’t panic! I give you my oath, my word of honor, that no harm shall come to Tiernon, nor his avatars! Tom told Inethya, who jerked in surprise as she felt his intrusion. He could feel her shock — horror even — at his violation. I am very sorry, but I need to do something drastic if we are to defeat these risar, he said. He winced as the wind giant pounded her face with his fist. Her guard was down; she was distracted by Tom’s actions. He hoped she wouldn’t fight him; he wanted to get in and out fast.
Tom swayed suddenly with massive vertigo. What was happening? Was Inethya fighting back? He shook his head as he felt links shifting inside the Rod of Tommus. “The interdiction is broken!” he shouted. “We are all at full power!” That was the vertigo! Inethya’s link now went straight up to the Outer Planes without routing through Beragamos.
Tom raced up the link with his mind, up into the sky above, going where he had not previously gone. He blinked, reeling as he suddenly found his astral self in a very strange place. It was like being in some sort of house of mirrors. That was the only way he could describe it, but he had no idea what that description actually meant.
He had very little time; he was certain his intrusion would be detected. He felt for Excrathadorus Mortis, allowing his mind to expand, willing the link to activate. Where is it? There it is! The blade was in some sort of bubble of stability. In a non-mirrored area, if that made sense. Actually, nothing made sense here; the mirror thing was simply a metaphor for how he experienced the place.
He reached out to Excrathadorus Mortis and solidified the link. He could now understand the bubble a bit better. Excrathadorus Mortis was a physical object in a non-physical place. The bubble was some sort of pocket universe or something. This was more instinctive rationalization than anything he actually knew. But what was clear was that he could open a true gateway into the bubble to bring the dagger physically through to Nysegard.
As Tom did so, a small ring of fire appeared before him on Nysegard. Tom reached his free hand through and grabbed his dagger. My dagger! he suddenly realized. It was his dagger. It had slain Orcus, had nearly slain him, and he had remolded it, he had remade it in his own (and admittedly, Tiernon’s) image. It had been Tiernon’s mana after all, wielded by himself.
Tom pulled the dagger through the hole in reality even as he let his mind race back down Inethya’s link. He closed the hole to find Inethya staring at him in anger from about five feet away.
“What in creation’s name did you just do?” Inethya yelled at him in fury.
“I retrieved my dagger from Tierhallon,” Tom said matter-of-factly.
“You cannot invade my link and ride it to Tierhallon to steal things!” Inethya was definitely pissed.
For some reason, perhaps guilt at his invasion of her link, Tom also got angry. “Why not?” he snapped. “It’s my dagger. My stepbrother had it, and he seriously owes me one! I’ve known him longer than you’ve been an avatar. This is between him and me. If he has a problem with me doing this, well, he knows where I live.”
Inethya blinked in shock, not fully comprehending what Tom had just said.