4.6 A New Plan

By the time they finished the three-hour ascent up the endless stairs and stepped through the doors of Ruzinia’s Temple, Bernt wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep. The sun had long since set and the Sacral Peaks were quiet, with only Nurok’s temple guards and a few night owls roaming the streets.

He expected the place to be dark and quiet, but the sanctuary was still lit, and the smell of burning coal filled the space. In front of the crude statue and warming herself in front of one of the braziers stood a woman. Everything about her looked weathered and solid, from her tanned, leathery skin to her sailcloth robes and her broad, callused hands. She glanced up at their entrance and casually raised her chin at them in greeting, then she turned back to the statue.

“Should we introduce ourselves?” Torvald murmured. “I think she might be our Illurian representative.”

Bernt hummed unenthusiastically. “Don’t you think it’s a bad time? It’s late, and she’s praying.” He wasn’t in the mood to meet new people right now, and he still had something important to do today. Besides, she didn’t look like she wanted them to stop for a chat.

Torvald nodded, but after a moment he leaned against one of the wooden pillars that held up the roof.

“It’s fine, I’ll wait. There’s so few of us here – I should get to know my colleagues. There’s only four of us, counting her, and the Conclave starts in three days. Unless I miss my guess, we’re only getting one more. You go and get some sleep.”

Bernt didn’t totally understand Torvald's reasoning – there was no reason he couldn’t just talk to her in the morning – but it didn’t matter. He nodded and made his way to his room. The bed looked incredibly inviting, but he didn’t want to potentially damage it in his sleep. Besides, his day wasn’t over yet.

Trying not to tear open the blister forming on one heel, Bernt took off the new boots and set them next to the open window where the heat wouldn’t get to them. Then he sat down on the ground and pulled out his stub of chalk. He began to draw a portal to nowhere. Jori hadn’t heard from him since before he’d arrived, and he owed her an update. Besides, he wanted to know what she’d been up to.

The process took even longer than usual because his notes were still buried near the border of the Sacral Peaks and the Phoenix Reaches. He’d drawn it often enough now to have the design memorized, but he still checked his work twice to make sure he hadn’t forgotten something. Finally, he held out his left hand and pushed a thread of his spirit out into the circle.

A small winged humanoid made of dense, swirling mist floated in the air in front of Jori. The imp started a bit at the psychic intrusion, but then sent an impression over their bond, telling him to wait. The creature flickered, and suddenly Bernt was looking at himself. The illusion was good, but it showed him as he’d looked months ago in his old robe and with his Underkeepers’ staff.

A moment later, the image collapsed, leaving only the mist demon behind.

“That’s good!” Jori congratulated her subordinate. “Lots of detail, too. How did you know what Bernt looks like?”

“Oh, ah…” the mist creature stammered, obviously embarrassed. “I don’t know your mortal. I was just trying to improve on my original light in the mists. I guess it doesn’t work on you.”

Jori scoffed. “That worked perfectly! The spell probably picks what to show you right out of your own mind! Or, my mind, in this case.” She stopped scratching at her head musingly. “That means it’s mental magic, right? If you can learn to control it better, you might be able to show people all kinds of things. The only limit is the imagination of your target. Maybe you can make yourself look like an ally – you could go anywhere!”

The mist demon fluttered excitedly in small circle. ““Yes, great one. I will practice!” Then it took off, disappearing behind some rocks a moment later.

“Why didn’t you contact me sooner?” Jori hissed, sending a sense of indignation at him over their bond “You were supposed to arrive days ago. I’ve been worried! What happened?”

Bernt sighed and looked over at his new boots. “I ran into some… issues. Hiking up the mountains took longer than I thought, and then I had to leave most of my stuff behind because I wore through my blanket – I needed it for shoes…” Bernt stopped and rubbed at his face. “No, let me back up, I’ll start at the beginning.”

Trying not to get lost in the details, he caught Jori up on what had happened to him since the last time they’d talked over a week ago in an improvised stone shelter in the Phoenix Reaches. Finally he recounted the days’ events, explaining what he’d learned about sorcery from Song and Uriah.

“Elyn was still out working in the city somewhere, and the others were out running some kind of quest in the countryside, so we only caught up with Uriah. But it sounds like everybody is okay, at least.” Bernt finished. “I wanted to ask you about how you absorb new energies. I know it’s not exactly the same, but you’re a kind of sorceress. The florets from the coal grass did something, but I have no idea if it’ll actually allow me to grow my mana network. Song mentioned something about ‘refining energies’ in my spiritual sea, but he refused to explain when I asked. He seemed to think I didn’t need to know, but it sounded important.”

Exasperated amusement flickered through Jori and she shook her head. “Your mortal friend sounds complicated – I think it’s probably working fine the way you’re doing it already. You should try the burning rain! Not everything has to be tricky. Me, I just drink it in. It feels great – like cold, clean water on a hot day. At first, you don’t notice, but the power builds up and then you just… let it go. I guided it a little, the second time, but it was easy. I just focused on what I wanted to do, and my spirit did it.”

Bernt furrowed his brow, but he let it go. He knew that sorcery had to be simple enough that even an animal could do it – how could something like a sorcerous ant even exist otherwise? Jori was a magical creature by nature. It made sense that she would be more comfortable relying on instinct. But it was clear that the way cultivators practiced sorcery was far more advanced. Song had insisted that Bernt wouldn’t be able to replicate their methods, even if he understood them, but that didn’t mean he wanted to muddle through blindly. He was a wizard, not a witch or a hedge mage.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can figure out.” he conceded. Before Jori could respond to his thoughts, he changed the subject. “What were you teaching that mist demon? And what’s with the ‘great one’ stuff?”

Jori shrugged uncomfortably. “I told him not to call me that, but he doesn’t listen. And I swore to help him grow – it was part of the pact. So, I helped him get enough soul fragments to grow, and now I’m teaching him about sorcery. I’m teaching all of them, actually. The ones who will listen, anyway. Hold on, I’ll show you.”

She turned, took a running start and leapt out into the open air over a cliff. Bernt felt his stomach lurch at the disorienting movement, but she just curved slowly in a circle and landed at the mouth of a familiar-looking cave. The smell of hellfire wafted out, and as Jori entered, Bernt saw that several of the larger imps were using magic to heat the rock walls. Unlike the usual liquid balls of hellfire that Jori had originally thrown, they sprayed flames over the surface in small but steady streams.

Every few seconds, one of them stopped and dug their claws in to pull material out like wet clay, which they piled on the ground behind them to cool before beginning again.

They were enlarging the space. And there weren’t just imps here, either. A snake-like creature with a vaguely humanoid upper body slithered by, hauling a basket full of the cooled rocks past them and out of the cave opening. Its face was almost insectile, with six eyes and a pair of weird, twitchy mandibles that made Bernt scoot back on the ground in his room to create some distance. But he was looking through Jori’s eyes in the hells, and she didn’t see anything unusual.

“I asked Ed to build us a better cave that we could hide in – somewhere Nuros’ fliers won’t easily find us,” she explained, ignoring his distress. “But, he suggested that I have them do it themselves. They’ll care about it more and take ownership of their own work more than they would if it was just handed to them.”

“Um… you’re building a base?” Bernt asked, unable to entirely suppress his alarm. “Why? I thought we would be able to get you summoned back soon. Didn’t you say that Ed and Iriala are helping – did you hear something about Josie’s case? What’s going on?”

Jori snorted. “Of course I’m coming back! But I’m not going to let my pack die when I leave. Besides, Nuros is still after you, right? He has a lot more lieutenants to kill.”

“Jori,” Bernt protested, “you can’t fight a war here – you could die! At least wait until you’re back in the material realm, where you’re relatively safe. Nuros’ demons can’t get to me here – I’m at the Sacral Peaks! I doubt any demon could even look at this place without getting smited.”

The imp snorted and he felt her roll her eyes as she began to pace through the cave, inspecting a corridor that hadn’t been there when Bernt had first seen it through her eyes.

“I’m going to be fine! Nuros wants to recruit me, remember? Besides, I can heal from almost anything. You’re the one who’ll die the first time someone pokes a big enough hole in you, and I don’t tell you to hide in a cave.”

“Yes, I know,” Bernt allowed with a grimace, “but there’s no reason to take risks here. We don’t even know if we really need to fight the Duergar at all. We might be able to resolve this diplomatically like Iriala wanted to try.”

Sudden frustration flickered through the bond and Jori kicked at a wall, gnashing her teeth. “You’re not thinking it through, Bernt! Nuros wants to kill you, not the Duergar. Do you think his minions will stop coming for you if the dwarves back off? This is the best time to go after them. The great mages are helping us, and many of them are being summoned and returned to the hells repeatedly. It keeps them disorganized on this side! If we can kill enough of them, Nuros will have to give up on us. Maybe we can even kill Nuros himself! Ed killed a shade with your cold fire. I saw it! And even if we can’t kill the Great Ones, we can hurt them. We can make them afraid and force them to respect us.”

A cold chill ran down Bernt’s spine at the thought of Jori trying to kill the thing they’d fought down in the Undercity. It had drowned hundreds of soldiers in a tide of living shadows with one spell. Sure, Bernt had done something similarly destructive with a huge wall of perpetual flame – but he’d only managed that by burning the demon’s spell, turning its own power against it.

Jori, of course, read most of Bernt’s thoughts as he had them, but he only felt her resolve grow.

“Look, we won’t throw ourselves at him without a plan, but it’s foolish not to consider it. Besides, it’s not just about that. Iriala made this an official cooperation between the Underkeepers and the Mages’ Guild. I asked her to send the records to Josie so she can use them for my case. Once they realize the potential, they’ll have to let me come back! I’m a vital asset – the only one who can help Besermark kill hostile demons permanently.” She gestured around. “And as you can see, I’m recruiting.”

That… could work, Bernt realized. Maybe. On the other hand, if she was too useful, they would probably try to control her in the long term…

Still, though, it was a good idea. Not one with a legal basis – but the magistrate or the king himself might change the rules if she could directly help the kingdom with their war effort. Normally, any large-scale cooperation with demons would be impossible to justify because of the parallels that would inevitably be drawn to the Circle of Nine and the fall of the Madurian Empire.

But... Jori wasn’t fighting any mortals – not even the enemy Duergar, really. For that matter, she wasn’t even operating in the material realm, and didn’t bargain for any souls or anything else even remotely morbid. It wasn't a sure thing, but still... Clearly the archmages thought it was worth trying, or they wouldn’t be involved in it. And they couldn’t really put Jori on a leash if she didn’t agree to a pact.

“Alright.” Bernt finally conceded. “How can I help?”