Doom of Devils
Seventh Day of the Fifth Month 293 AC
How many devils are in this blasted ship? The thought has a sharper edge than one might imagine seeing your companions whole and still fighting with vigor. Not even all of you together can fight an army and hope to triumph, at least not an army of baatezu, cunning, clever, and tenacious as few mortals can be, for they do not risk death only banishment. Though the pains of failure are many, they know as only those who dwell in Hell can that all pain can be transcended.
Thus you are left with a riddle without an answer: How to make them acknowledge defeat, to abandon the ship and all it might hold, to count their task impossible, even against mere banishment?
The Doom... It is not a whisper this time, it is barely an image, a flash of green to despise and yet so undeniably potent.
These words you do not speak but roar, an echo of pride and madness, of rage and misfortune, and through it all the unshakable knowledge that the power that broke Valyria did not slay
all its children. Somewhere to the west the line of Aenar lived on. Somewhere children played, lovers embraced, and weary elders passed into death content at a life well lived. This too you weave into the spell, the protection of those you hold dear and oathsworn allies also.
The skies darken... for the first time since you have passed upon this sphere of being the light of the Eternal Furnace dims. In the distance thunder, and
more than thunder roars. The eyeless face of the mad oracle turns to you, perhaps sensing its fate through some arcane sense beyond sight. If that it so then it affords him but a moment of respite until ash and flame descend upon the blackened decks of the ship in an echo of ancient tragedy.
Steel screams and buckles, and devils die in agony if they are not so fortunate as to be fused into dragon-glass. Ash pours down from the heavens yet it does not fall without thought, for though the spell mirrors that ancient tragedy it is still your magic and so it is constrained.
You wait... but there is no chanting, no sign of spells work, only the reassuring presence of Dany at the back of your mind, assuring you that you
had constrained the spell properly.
"Well that scared every devil in fifty leagues," your sister's voice is amused and impressed all at once as only a younger sibling can truly be.
"I don't suppose you can break this so we can see more then two feet in front of our noses."
Sadly for the tactical applications of the spell you suspect that she may be exaggerating... still you would not want to fly in that, you admit, contemplating the curtains of ash still sifting down from some unknowable height.
Thankfully the spell is yours and lets itself be unknotted with only a touch of resistance.
"Best check before celebrating?" you reply aloud as you at last descend to the deck of the baatezu ship, noting with satisfaction that eight of the Steel devils and their commander had been transmuted to dragonglass whereas the other bueroza were now but dust on the wind.
"Pardon me for asking, ancient one, but what manner of spell was that?" Siduri sounds shaken, most unlike the face she has shown so far, there might even be the faintest hint of hysteria to her words.
"That was a spell of the eighth circle, by most measures the strongest I can call upon," you answer, trying to be reassuring, at least as much as the form you wear allows.
"Then why the Hells didn't you start with that?!" the mage half-shouts. Yrten looks like he is struggling not to elbow her, or perhaps something more drastic, but for now he restrains himself.
"Because there are ways to counter it," you answer calmly. "It would have been much harder to cast in close quarters where it would have been far harder to separate friend from foe. More to the point I wished to ensure that the enemy captain..." here you motion with your tail to the grotesque 'statue' of the Xerfilstyx, "did not escape to trouble us further. I imagine we
all would dislike finding that in our sleeping chamber."
"It'd give me nightmares for sure," Tyene quips, catching on to your purpose to set your new allies at ease.
"You are far more than you appear..." Siduri says, the question to her words clear for all it is unspoken:
What are you? Perhaps she even wonders at the worth of your word to deal fairly and split the spoils evenly when the field is tilted so strongly in your favor. Taking into account what role you have chosen to play, it is not an unreasonable assumption, however much your pride may sting at it.
What do you answer?
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OOC: The update was too much of a pivotal point not to get its own title IMO.
