Holy Opposites 56

	When we returned to the portal room, it was just as we had left it.  Axio skimmed the parchment and found the line he wanted.  “Here it is.”  He stepped up to the stone square and spoke the password.  “Dufriel!”

	An outline appeared in the square.  This room was brightly lit, and we could see people moving on the other side.  As soon as we activated it, the figures on the other side drew weapons.  We couldn’t hear their words, but one of them started screaming something.  Doors flew open, and men charged in, brandishing daggers and spears.

	“Fuck,” Suivi muttered.  “They know we’re coming now.”

	“They were already prepared for us,” Axio said darkly.  “They were in defensive stance.”

	Kyria sauntered up beside him and made an expressive gesture at the cultists beyond.  Some returned it.  “Yup.  They knew we were gonna show up sooner or later,” she remarked.  “So do we keep pushing here, or go up into the meat grinder?”

	Axio stared at the dancing vision of the portal.  The men beyond lined up in a great skirmish wall.  Some brandished shields while others had bows nocked and ready to fire.  One man in the middle had a great lance, like a cavalry charger’s weapon, drawn back and ready to stab.  We were outnumbered at least five to one.

	“We push on here,” Axio said.  “How do I close this?”

	Kyria tapped a fingertip against the stone square.  “Can’t.  Not normally.  Let the spell charge wear off and close on its own.”

	“Damn it all!” Axio snarled.  “Should we just charge in and take our chances?”

	An arrow zipped through the portal and bounced off his armor.  He flinched back and raised his shield.  Several more caught on the metal disk.

	“That’s a no,” I said.  “Kyria, how long until the portal closes?”

	“Maybe a minute,” she said.

	“Put your lights out,” Axio ordered.  “They can’t shoot what they can’t see.”

	We all started extinguishing our torches and cantrips.  The room plunged into darkness.  The arrows stopped, and the only light source became the image of the cultists.  A few cautiously approached the portal, but a magic missile from Kyria dissuaded more.

	The instant the portal shut off, Axio re-cast his light.  “All right, that was a terrible idea of mine,” he said angrily.  “Can this portal be blocked?  Can we make it so they can’t come down here?”

	“I can go grab a chair from that dining hall and use it to stuff up the box,” Luanea suggested.

	“Do it.  Suivi, go with her.  Doshellas, this other door.  Is it locked?” Axio demanded, pointing at the door we hadn’t opened.

	Doshellas hurried over to the second door and crouched.  “No.”

	“Then we open it the second they get back.”  Axio walked over to the door and hunkered down behind his shield.  Moments later, he heard the others returning with armfuls of chairs.  They hurriedly shoved them into the gap in the stone box.

	“Done!” Luanea said.

	“Lock the other door behind you,” Axio said.  “We can break it later ourselves if we need to.”

	“We don’t have the key,” Suivi pointed out.  “These are turn-locks, not bars.”

	“Damn.  Fine, we just move fast.”

	Doshellas took his position beside the door.  The rest of us moved to encircle him as he set his grip on the handle.  “Ready?” the quiet hunter asked.

	“Ready,” I confirmed for us all.

	“Go!”  He shoved the stone door open.

	We charged through into a much shorter hallway.  This one opened to the left, and only proceeded about sixty feet before dead-ending in a second, flimsier door.  It was already ajar.  A cultist with a torch stood there, wide-eyed.  He stared at the six armored warriors as we charged down the hallways towards him.  “INTRUDERS!” he bellowed, and he slammed the door in our faces.  I heard a latch scrape as we approached.

	Axio didn’t even slow.  Divine light spilled bright blue from his gemstone eyes as he simply ran through the door, blasting the old wood right off its hinges.  The cultist squealed in surprise as my partner ran him over, sending him tumbling to the ground.

	Five more cultists had been rushing towards the door when Axio made his entrance.  They all had torches in their hands and daggers drawn.  At the sight of my partner bull-rushing their pointman, one of them took off, but the other four threw themselves into battle.

	Axio finally slowed his charge as his path was clear of targets.  He spun on his heel and slammed the shield into the face of the nearest cultist, sending him sprawling.  Doshellas ran in next and crouched in the corner.  He fired an arrow into the cultist on the ground, pinning him there.  I was next, and I paused to finish off the one Axio had plowed through on his way in.  Luanea followed through and ran straight for the cultist who had made a break for it, though he slipped past her and out into the next room.

	Kyria announced her arrival with a blast of magic force into another cultist’s sternum.  He groaned in pain, but still hurled his torch at her.  It hit her square in the chest, and she yelped in surprise as it set her robe ablaze.  Suivi sprinted past her and vaulted the dead cultist on the floor.  He landed amidst the two last cultists.  His daggers flashed in a whirlwind of cuts and parries.

	The running one made it to the far door and threw it open.  Luanea raised a finger.  “Eilistraee curses you,” she said coldly.  “Sacred Flame.”

	A blast of fire-like radiance erupted from her finger and caught the running cultist right in the back.  He stumbled, but turned it into a roll and kept running.  The one on the ground with the arrow through his gut managed to rise and tackled Doshellas.  The drow’s head snapped back as the cultist punched him in the eye.

	Axio grabbed one of the cultists fighting Suivi and crushed him against the wall with his shield.  He rammed his sword through the other man’s gut and ripped it sideways, spilling him all over the floor.  I stepped in to replace him and tripped the other man Suivi was fighting with my glaive.  Suivi finished him off with a vicious slash.

	The cultist who had ignited Kyria lunged at her and stabbed deep.  She managed to deflect his strike with her arm and leaped back, still slapping at the flames.  Doshellas kicked his attacker and rolled clear, then slammed the other man with a knee strike that left him reeling.  He coolly shot the other man twice in the head with his bow, and he went still.

	“One runner,” Luanea said.  “He’s heading that way.”

	Kyria put out the flames and blasted the nearest cultist with a coil of fire.  He screamed and fell to his knees, writhing in the flame.  I dropped the glaive through his shoulder and he died in a crunch.

	Silence fell.  I turned around, looking for targets.  “Now what?” Suivi asked.

	“Now we pursue the son of a bitch, and we find the man pulling the strings around here,” I said hotly.  “Anybody need healing?”

	“I’m not feeling great,” Doshellas mumbled.  He was bleeding where the man had punched him, and one eye was swelling shut.

	I pressed my hand against his wound and invoked Ryaire.  Doshellas let out a long sigh as I healed his face.  “Thanks, Cavria,” he said.

	Suivi stared down the hall through which the cultist had run.  “All right.  We going?”

	“We’re going.”  Axio wiped his sword clean.  “Move out.”


	Vorthane leaned forward in his command throne and glared holes into the shimmering image hanging in the air before him.  He hated using his finite magic to activate the scry-stone in the throne, but it did allow him to surveil the intruders.  “They beat the security team in a heartbeat,” he said coldly.  “All hands to the armory at once.  Equip armor and weapons.”

	The assembled cultists scrambled off to the armory.  Vorthane had split his forces when the portal had shut down.  His servants in the portal room he had sent down to the dungeon to ensure the attackers did not imperil their Grist.  The other half, he had pulled back to the altar room, leaving only a token guard on the portal.

	“Sir, once they’re armored up, where do we send them?” one of his lieutenants asked.  “Back to the portal room?”

	“No.  They were coming from our own basement portal, the ancillary one,” Vorthane said.  He massaged his eyes as he considered his options.  “There’s no sense in guarding the portal here if they can get through the basement unobstructed.  We keep half the troops in the dungeon, guarding the Grist, and we send the other half through the portal into the basement.  They can follow the intruders.  With luck and Bane’s will, the intruders will go straight for the dungeon anyway, and we can get them in a pincer.”

	“Clever, sir.”  The lieutenant saluted and followed his men into the armory.  Vorthane took one last look at the running team of interlopers and scowled bitterly.  One of them was Suivi Embersson.  How disappointing.  He had been so loyal before.  What had turned his coat?  Simple greed, perhaps?  Had the Ryairans made him a better offer than Toller had?  He doubted it.  The Ryairans were not a wealthy church.

	He rose from the throne and hurried into his own armory.  His options were not yet depleted.  There was no way the interlopers could know of his trump card.  When he reached the private sanctum, he pulled a curtain on one wall aside to reveal a pile of strange metal slats on a humanoid mannequin.  He smiled as he remembered the circumstances under which he had acquired it, then pushed the memory aside.  His time was running out.