Incusion

	So what in the hells did that mean?  There were no gnolls in the Northlands in that number!  There weren’t that many gnolls and hyenas in the northern fifth of the continent combined!  Linus slid his dagger under his pillow and glared at the stars overhead.  He needed answers, and he knew from long experience he wouldn’t get them from Torm.  No fault of his or Torm’s, though.  His god was a busy one, overseeing the lives and deaths of hundreds of millions of people on many worlds.  Still, that didn’t mean he was out of options.  He closed his eyes and tried to force sleep.  He had work to do when the sun rose, once he was done saying hello to Viri.


	Viri needed no more sleep than others of her species, so the night was pure boredom to her.  She sat on the seat in the corner of the little room she had rented, and stared wistfully out the window at the trees beyond.  Perhaps, she thought gloomily, it had been a touch naïve to think that somebody as busy as Linus would be available to simply meet her.

	There she sat, in the dark of her room, a bit cold and a bit hungry.  Had the sun been out and shining, had her belly been full, and most importantly of all had Lumira been awake, she probably would never have gotten up and wandered off.  As it was, though, she was struck full-on by that most turbulent of motivators: boredom, and thus there was no proportional restraint on her impulse to get up and leave.  Taking one of the two room keys and nothing else, Viri rose and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her carefully so as not to awaken her escort.

	Viri smiled nervously at the wide-eyed lad behind the counter.  For a moment she wondered if he had been one of the ones she had sampled that night at the inn with Xuriis, but no, he was new.  Probably why he was staring at her breasts.  She rolled her eyes and walked out.  Primes could be so prudish about bodies.  She remembered the shock on Linus’ face when she had begun preparing him for her that night he had cured her family and giggled.

	Outside, the midsummer air was cooling fast as the night crept on.  Viri wandered off in the direction of the gate, which she noted still had but one guard.  The guart started as Viri left, but made no move to intercept her.  Viri ambled out towards the trees, squinting at their different appearance.  The sticks the Primes had stuck in the ground had started to dry, and Viri noted they had been hung with totems and offerings.  Maybe they had religious value?  She swung wide to avoid them as she approached the remaining trees.

	Eyes followed her after the guard lost sight of her.  A crafty thing with too many teeth, it giggled in delight and hunger.  It had followed the she-goat to the edge of the trees when she had spied on the village before, and now she was reporting in.  The toothed beast held still as Viri wandered up to the edge of the trees and looked around to get her bearings.  It wasn’t forty feet away.  It could have sprung on her before she could react.

	Viri yawned and idly twirled, remembering the times she had spent on the Prime.  Of course, they weren’t all positive.  She had become deathly ill, of course.  The predators here were mean, too.

	One eyed her closely.  The beast tensed and prepared to spring.

	Viri’s head snapped up as she bent down to collect some grasses from the ground.  She froze, her eyes darting about.  Something was close.  Something was moving.  Something was… wrong.

	It sprang.

	Viri opened her mouth to scream and tensed her legs to run, but the cold shock of adrenaline was not enough to push her from her horror.  The monster she saw barrel out of the trees before her was no common predator.  It was a thing of deepest nightmare.  It was all sinew and mouth, a literal mouth on legs.  She had never seen its like before.

	Her knees unlocked.  Maybe it was the glint of moonlight from its fangs, maybe it was the glowing red sockets in its face that could have been eyes, but for some reason, as the beast lurched closer, Viri managed a full-throated hircine scream, and sprinted for the open gates of Conyberry.

	The gate guard lurched upright, and his spear rose to pointed readiness as he heard the animal shriek.  He leveled the weapon at the charging woman he saw beyond the light of the flickering lantern by the door, then gasped in horror.  “MAW DEMON!” he roared.  He slammed his free hand against the wood wall and scrabbled for his little hammer, then began wildly ringing the bell by the gate.  Sheets flew back on beds as soldiers and guards in the town awoke to the sound of the dreaded bell.  Farview Company mercenaries burst from their garrison bunks and began hurriedly strapping on gear.

	Viri put on a burst of speed, but stumbled when her hoof struck a stone on the mussed-up turf outside the village walls.  The guard sprang forward, waving his spear in both hands, and nearly knocked the faun over again when she started to rise in his path.  The demon roared and grabbed the spear from the guard, then broke it over his head, knocking the lad unconscious.  Viri scrambled up and ran for the gate, flinging herself inside.

	She landed on cold stone and rolled over, then saw the demon running after her, a mere few feet from her now, and she cursed herself for a damned fool – of course the gates didn’t close on their own, this was no Ducal palace of the Fey!  She scrambled to her feet and tried to resume running, but the demon’s clawed fist took her right in the eye, and she fell unconscious.

	“BACK!” a new voice screamed, and the demon turned to see a withered old man with great bags under his eyes, holding high a copper rod and a handful of wheat.  A lantern blazed from around his chest, surely burning him with every swing, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.  “BACK!” he screamed again, and slammed the rod against the ground.  The demon hissed as a wave of positive planar energy washed over its body from the force of the spell, then it laughed.

	“Gurat offe culduz?” the demon chortled.  He grabbed the faun’s head and slammed it against the cold stone, knocking teeth out and cracking bone.

	Fauther August snarled.  “By the Great Mother Chauntea and the will of Elysium, fiend scum, I command thee BACK!”  He pointed the rod like a spear and shouted holy words in the tongue of the Upper Planes.  The Maw Demon lurched in pain as August’s curse took hold, but to August’s horror, the monster actually straightened up again.

	“Gurat kulo?” the demon demanded, and threw Viri’s body aside like a ragdoll.  It charged the astonished priest, horrid claws out and mouth open and drooling.

	An eight-foot cannonball slammed into its side with a clap of thunder.  The Maw Demon stumbled and fell to its knees as the haft of a great weapon slammed into it, followed by another clap of thunder that sent it sprawling.  A Goliath, one of the Farview Company men, slashed at the beast with a great two-handed blade, but it caught the blade in its horrid fangs and twisted, pulling it from the Goliath’s hands.  Then a blast of licking flames made of light tore into its flank, and the monster reeled and collapsed into a pile of foul ichor.


	Viri struggled to wake up, then cool hands brushed her temples.  “Whoa, whoa, easy,” a voice said in the Prime language, and Viri lurched upright.  She immediately sank back with a groan of pain as a migraine like she had never experienced savaged her head.

	“Oh, ow, oh…” she whimpered.  Her mouth was raw and bloody.  “What…”

	“Shh, shh, hush, it’ll be alright,” the voice said.  Or at least, that was what he said in his language.  Viri couldn’t understand a word of it.  Still, whomever was holding her had normal hands instead of bestial claws, so she lay still.

	Lumira barged into her field of view, bloodied about the face and wild-eyed.  “Viridian!  What happened?” she demanded in a more legible tongue.

	“Mph… attacked,” Viridian mumbled.  “’s a monster…”

	“Maw Demon,” the priest holding Viridian’s head said curtly.  “Servant of the Gnoll Liege, the Demon Lord Yeenoghu, curse his name.”

	“I guess that confirms it,” Erastus said.  He squatted next to the unconscious guard and began healing him.  “This place has been marked by the Abyss.”

	“That lines up with the Anchor we found in the Grey Spider’s lair,” another adventurer, Ixan, noted.

	Father August looked worried and disgusted as he wiped the blood on the grass.  “Go, then, lads, inform your General Sein.  Have him send backup.”

	“Linus will be back tomorrow,” the Goliath pointed out.

	“Linus?” Viri asked.  She knew that name, even in her addled state.

	Father August rested a hand on Viri’s bruised cheek and healed her injury.  “One moment, child,” he muttered.  He cast his spell of Lesser Restoration, but her tooth did not regrow.  “Curses, the demon punched the root out,” he said.  “And I do not know Regeneration.”

	“Nor I,” Erastus said regretfully.  “Poor thing.”

	“Stop acting like I’m not here!” Lumira snapped, turning all heads to her.  “Who are you people?  Why is this thing attacking?  What happened here?”

	The Goliath, Bonecrusher, frowned at her.  “You tell us, little woman!  Why are you coated in blood?”

	Lumira wiped some of her blood from her face.  “I’m pacted to Viridian.  I’m her guard.  When she gets hurt, I bleed.  That’s not the point!  Where did that thing come from?”

	“The darkest, foulest pits of the Abyss, and the souls of evil people who congregate and mutate from the larvae there,” August said.  He lifted one of Viri’s arms over his head and braced her.  “Erastus, lad, aid me, please.”