Holy Opposites 50

	“CAVRIA, DOWN!” Axio suddenly roared.  The children scattered in fear and started screaming as the Aasimar leaped towards her, waving his hands.

	Cavria reacted instantly.  She tucked her feet up into her chest and fell slightly before ramming them both back against the bench, catapulting herself forward several feet in a second.  The girl beside her scrambled under the bench, wailing in fear.

	“What the hell?” she heard from the door.  She landed hard and her lungs compressed.  She wheezed and rolled over.  Suivi Embersson was standing in the door to the church, reaching for a weapon.

	The wall exploded, and the whole garden transformed into a warzone in an instant.


Chapter Thirty:


	Darius Vorthane sat on his throne in the middle of the main altar of the underground Temple of Hate.  A long stone spur jutted from the ground behind him, and through masterful sculpting extended down in front of him like a hawk’s beak, shielding his eyes from the few cultists still assembled there.  The inside of the curved stone glowed faintly with an embedded chain of magic pebbles, though one glowed instead with psychic light only he could see.  The Baneites in the room were standing up to leave.  The mutilated body of a child dissolved into powder on the rock slab beneath them as Vorthane rubbed his eyes and refocused on the embedded stones.  Perceiving the shifting images in each was hard enough when there weren’t pitiful screams coming from right beneath him.

	“God of Fear, let the will of the pious reach you,” he hissed as his hands tightened on the glittering gems embedded in his throne’s arms.  “Let us reclaim what is ours.”

	The other cultists walked out into the portal chamber, where the first team had already departed to return to the city.  A few bags of limp Grist sat against one wall, awaiting Vorthane’s attention.

	Time was becoming a factor.  There was no point in performing the sacrifices any faster than he was already, since the ritual had a fixed length, but if their supply stayed diminished, it would cause problems.  Between Toller’s failure to secure his own trail and the Watch having busted his attempts to find more children ready to be made into Grist in the city, he had had to rely more and more on his allies in the south sending bagged children through the portals far from the Temple.  So far, that was not sufficient to maintain their supply indefinitely.  His brothers in the south were now under daily attacks from the coalition of adventurers and Lord’s Alliance soldiers whom had dispatched from the cities to fight them.  There were even rumors of Cormyr War Wizards and Purple Dragon Knights accompanying some of the retaliatory parties, so now they even had the inbred Cormyrians as a worry.

	The lights went dark as he finished casting the last of his sending spells for the day.  He sagged back in the chair and drew a deep, ragged breath.  He was not a young man, even with the aid of his many life-extending artifacts, and maintaining psychic and magic contact with so many people at once was quite tiring.

	One of his retainers was at his side in an instant with a cup of strong black tea.  “Here, sir, rest yourself,” he said worriedly.  “You’re working too hard.”

	Vorthane smiled warmly at his adjutant.  “Thank you, Clane, that’s very nice of you,” he said.  He sipped the tea and watched dispassionately as the screaming form of a spectral, thrashing half-orc child disappeared into the complex arrangement of magic stones that ringed his impaled corpse on the sacrificial altar.  “Hmm.  That one went through,” he noted.

	“There must be a more efficient way, sir,” Clane said.  “We lose over half the souls we harvest from the Grist this way.”

	“Oh, there are, but long compacts between Lord Bane and Lord Asmodeus about sharing magical technology prevent it from reaching our hands,” Vorthane sniffed.  “Now, my boy, please clean the powder from the altar and get some rest.  The success of Brother Toller’s task force is not a given, so we may as well wait and see what happens next.”


	Brother Toller stood huddled under an awning in the Sea Ward.  His oddly heavy cloak drew a few eyes, but he ignored them.

	The garden of the Temple of Ryaire was at the top of the hill right in front of him.  His people were lurking all around, some disguised, some just hiding.

	He would take back what had been stolen from the Master, oh yes.  He smiled with shaky lips as he thought about making the Master approve.  It would be good.

	A jolt of pain in the base of his mind made him wince.  Vorthane said go.

	Toller raised one pudgy hand, and his men broke cover.  Murmurs on the street turned into shouts of alarm as twenty men and women suddenly ran up the hillside.


	Suivi Embersson walked quickly through the rectory of the temple.  The few monks around didn’t stop him as he approached the living quarters.  Grand Cleric Solen looked up from his scroll.  “Ah.  Young Master Embersson,” he said.  “You have news?”

	“I do,” Suivi confirmed.  He tapped the piece of paper in his pocket.  “I have the five directions and bearings.  Now, we just need to examine the bookstore’s portal.”

	“Ah, good,” Solen said.  “Tell Axio yourself, he’s in the back garden.”

	“Yes, sir.”  Suivi sketched an awkward salute and walked back.

	As he did, he heard laughter and children’s voices.  He turned the corner and saw the two Paladins playing with the children outside, and he slowed down.  He still felt incredibly awkward around the people his former employer had taken.  Taken and tortured.  He still had trouble admitting it, but Axio’s advice during his confession had-

	Wait.  What was that?  Something brown flashed past the bay window’s glass.  He reached his fingers back to the knife he had concealed on the back of his belt.

	Suddenly, on the other side of the garden from Cavria, and behind her as well, two figures in hoods rose up from behind the stone.  Axio reacted before Suivi could.  “CAVRIA, DOWN!” he shouted.

	“What the hell?” Suivi demanded.  He cleared his knife, and the walls exploded.


	Axio flung himself headlong through the dust.  He tripped over a boy who was rolling around on the garden’s soil, howling in pain from stone shards embedded in his back.  A sword swung through the air Axio had been filling, and the Paladin lunged forward in the direction of his attacker.  It was a human man, swinging a scimitar with one hand, and Axio brought both hands up in a grab.  The swordsman squealed as Axio’s hands closed around his genitals.  The sound morphed into a screech of agony as Axio simply ripped his hands away, pulling the hapless attacker’s manhood right off.  Axio grabbed the blade from the senseless man and rolled away, waving any children he saw through the smoke to safety.

	“KILL THEM!” a voice bellowed.  A child’s wails truncated into a gurgle, and Axio’s heart leapt into his throat.  They were targeting the kids?

	“Cavria, they’re after the children!” he roared.  A man in brown robes appeared in front of him, dropping black pellets on the ground.  Wherever they fell, a dark smoke erupted, and the garden was as dark as night in an instant.

	Axio’s darkvision could barely see through the smoke.  Obstructed light was one thing, but clouds of opaque gas were another.  He fought back a cough as he charged the man with the smoke.  The man was wearing goggles and saw him coming.  He dropped the rest of his pellets and they exploded, knocking both men back.  Axio recovered first.  He grabbed the man’s hand as he reached for a dagger and rammed the scimitar into his stomach up to the pommel, then wrenched it downward, spilling his guts out on the ground.  He vaulted the body and screamed in rage as he saw a man with an unconscious, bloody child in both arms running down the hillslope.

	“SINNER!” he roared.  The man actually paused and looked back, eyes wide.  Axio ran up to the edge of the wall and kicked off, flying down the hill.  The cultist screamed and ran.


	Above, Cavria was locked in a duel.  She was bleeding from the face and hands, she had an agonizing cut across her breast, she had blood pouring from her slashed lip, and still she fought.  The High Succubus plunged a fist into a fat woman’s stomach, wrist-deep, then spun around her and drove her elbow into a man’s neck as he stooped to retrieve the little girl he had tripped.  The girl scrambled away as the man fell on the vegetable patch, crushing the plants beneath him.  Cavria pivoted and drove two hard fists into the fat woman’s face, knocking her back over her fallen friend.

	Everybody was shouting.  Brother Cadderly and a few of the other friars had arrived, and were ushering the children to safety.  Grand Cleric Solen’s arrival was unmissable, since a cultist exploding when Solen’s sword rammed through his chest announced it.

	Somebody was dropping more smoke.  Cavria saw a burning torch pinwheel past her face to land in the garden.  Smoke started licking at the plants, and the two downed cultists scrambled away.

	Stars erupted in her vision as something hit her hard on the back of the head.  She groggily stumbled forward and fell to one knee; she felt a second blow rush through her hair as she did.  Solen’s voice was saying something from beside her, and then the world started spinning.  Tinnitus filled her ears.  She slapped her hand on her chest and rolled to one side, pouring her healing power into herself.

	Friar Dreblin collapsed beside her, bleeding from his neck.  He looked at her with panic in his old eyes.  She reached for him without hesitation and cast Cure Wounds, and he shuddered as his skin knit shut.  He said something, but Cavria couldn’t hear.