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\hypertarget{villainous-interlude-calamity-i}{%
\chapter*{Villainous Interlude: Calamity
I}\label{villainous-interlude-calamity-i}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\nameref{villainous-interlude-calamity-i}} \chaptermark{Villainous Interlude: Calamity I}

\epigraph{``That's the thing with invincibility. You have it until you
don't.''}{Dread Empress Prudence the First, the `Frequently Vanquished'}



Nicae had been built thrice, with three different intents. The original
settlement had spawned from the federation of a handful of fishing
villages banding together to facilitate trade with the Baalite colonists
settling the shores of Ashur after having absorbed or exterminated the
tribes that lived there. The shape of them could still be seen, the
three largest of those villages having over the centuries grown into the
three ports of the city. The second time had come after Stygia took half
the infant Free Cities by military force, back in the ancient days where
they were the only Calernians to have a standing army. Nicae was
occupied for decades, until the Stygian army attempted to force their
general onto the throne of Stygia and the chain of events that would
lead to all freeborn Stygians being forbidden to take arms began and
heralded the collapse of the fledgling Stygian empire. The office of
Basileus was proclaimed as absolute ruler, tall walls built to shield
the people from marauders and a war fleet built. What was left of that
intent was now known as the Old City, the beating heart of power in the
maritime city, raised in old stone and winding streets.

The third and last time Nicea was built anew was after the Second Samite
War, when repeated defeats at the hands of the Ashuran fleets proved the
ruling Basilea's incompetence in matters of war beyond question. So the
office of Strategos was born, the admiral who'd managed to bring them
back from the brink give control over all military affairs and promptly
overstepping his given powers by raising a second set of walls to circle
the slums that had grown past the old ones and ordering the construction
of the Greenstone Rampart. A set of greenstone towers jutting out from
the sea and protecting the three ports, warded intensively and bristling
with dwarven engines. There had been foresight in this, in Black's
opinion. Though Nicae had never won their wars over rule of the Samite
Gulf in the centuries that followed, the Greenstone Rampart ensured the
city itself never fell from the sea. Ashur had to settle for terms
instead of subjugation, and Nicean sails continued to be seen in every
ports -- if never quite as free to trade as they would have liked.

The city had been built to resist armies not led by villains, unlike the
hardened castles of Callow, and it showed. If Summerholm had been
assaulted by a handful of floating towers as Nicae was, the Royal Guards
would have been focusing trebuchet fire from the positions behind the
walls to bring them down before the outer rampart could be overrun. All
that the Niceans managed was sporadic ballista fire that did little more
than chip at the foundations. The massive ramps being tugged forward by
enslaved citizens of Atalante and Delos lumbered forward, archers
killing the slaves by the score by barely slowing the advance. A
mistake, this. They would run out of arrows long before the Tyrant ran
out of expendables. How it would unfold from there was as good as writ,
if the heroes did not get involved. The Stygian phalanxes would climb
the ramps and scatter the mercenaries and militia that held the rampart,
forcing the Niceans back behind the taller walls of the Old City as the
Helikean army passed through the gates untouched. From there, it would
be butchery. The armies of Helike were better fit for field battles than
siege, but their infantry was hardened and well-armed.

The famous Helikean horse would not be able to bring their full strength
to bear inside cramped streets, would not be able to used their
devastating combination of horse archery and spears, but they would run
down scattered mercenaries like animals. This was the writ of the
battle, as it stood. The only question was of where the heroes would
intervene to attempt to turn the tides. The outer walls seemed the most
likely stage, for whether it held or broke would decide the battle. Yet
the towers were hero-bait in its finest incarnation. Amadeus was not
unaware of the tactical advantages that having a force in the sky gave,
against a mundane army, but there was a reason he'd stamped down on any
notion of the Legions of Terror fielding them. There were practical
concerns, like the logistics of feeding a host that was leagues above
the ground and the requirements to raising such a fortress in the first
place, but most of all it was that flying fortresses tended to
\emph{crash}. It was like hanging a sword with rope above the heads of
the men in that fortress and sending a formal invitation to any present
hero to cut it. Whatever fleeting advantage was gained by the fielding
of the fortress was inevitably overshadowed by the massive costs
incurred when it was brought down.

``Slid past their wards,'' Wekesa whispered in his ear over the
enchanted piece of silver he'd inserted under the skin. ``Someone tried
to improve them recently, but their caster has more breadth than depths.
Scrying patterns in place.''

``Locations,'' Black said.

``Hedge Wizard is headed for the towers,'' Warlock replied after a
moment. ``Valiant Champion with the Proceran fantassins on the wall.
Can't find the White Knight or the Bard, though the scrying grows
unstable over on three, twelve to fifteen diameter. I'd say our boy
Hanno got his hands on an amulet to scramble us.''

Tricks rarely worked twice on heroes. It would have been overly
optimistic to believe that the enemy would not seek to neuter the
tactics they'd displayed last time, even if this was only a mildly
effective parry. As the communication spell that connected Wekesa to
Amadeus and Sabah was derivative of scrying, it was likely it would be
made ineffective when the Duni engaged the White Knight. Only inexact
sorcery prior to the distance being closed could feasibly be deployed.

``No sign of the Ashen Priestess?'' Amadeus asked.

``Not a one,'' Wekesa confirmed. ``She might actually be dead,
Amadeus.''

``I imagine she will be,'' the Black Knight replied. ``Until it is
decisive for the heroes that she is not. Too many third aspects remain
unknowns for us to assume we've seen the last of her.''

``Once in a while,'' Warlock said amusedly, ``we do take Creation by
surprise. We might have gotten lucky, for all you know, hit some
weakness we were unaware of.''

``We do not belong to the side that gets lucky, my friend,'' Amadeus
murmured.

The villain closed his eyes, weighing his options.

``Sabah, keep an eye on the walls,'' he said. ``Do not back the Tyrant
against the Champion unless it is a certainty the city will hold.''

``And if he's about to die?'' the Taghreb replied through the spell.

``Let him,'' Black said. ``Our only concerns are that Nicae falls and
the White Knight dies. He is essential to neither.''

``I hear you,'' she said.

The instructions were enough that she would be able to tap into Obey, if
it proved necessary.

``Wekesa,'' he said.

``The Hedge Wizard again, I'm guessing,'' he mused.

``Yes,'' Amadeus confirmed. ``And more. Red Skies protocol.''

There was a lengthy moment of silence.

``We haven't gone that far since the Conquest,'' Wekesa said, and his
voice was pleased. ``You're certain? No collateral damage concerns?''

``Reputational damage is irrelevant if the Tyrant becomes the Hierarch
of the Free Cities,'' the green-eyed man murmured. ``All targets of
opportunity are fair game. Use what you will, save for what falls under
the Dark Day protocol.''

``Ah, you sweet thing,'' Warlock drawled. ``I \emph{have} been meaning
to try out a few spells.''

Power bloomed in the distance. The stars above them began to grow
crimson, staining the night, and the Black Knight moved. He had a hero
to kill.

---

He'd crafted another decoy, for he had no reason not to. As expected,
the Hedge Wizard ignored it. She flew directly for the towers, her great
wings flapping on one of the three dozen open scrying links he'd
crafted. It had taken decades to refine this particular method of
farsight, creating runic arrays that would grant him eyes wherever he
needed them without actively needing his attention and steering. It was
also one of the reasons Wekesa rarely took the field in person: the
arrays were exceedingly easy to disrupt, if found. Using distractions to
keep the enemy guessing at his true locations while he worked his Gift
from behind wards was the most effective use of his abilities. Warlock
did occasionally miss the vindictive pleasure of incinerating the
opposition in person, but he was no longer a young man. Incautious
villains did not get to live as long as he had.

``It will be good night,'' he smiled, watching the battle unfold.

How long had it been, since Amadeus had granted him this much leeway on
the field? Too long. Oh, his old friend still forbade the use of any
sorcery that would grow unchecked if not stopped and any permanent rifts
in Creation, but Wekesa was not eager to use the spells that would fall
under the Dark Day protocol. Magical plagues had a nasty habit of
growing beyond anyone's control, and only a fool would expect to keep a
leash on a permanent portal linking to another dimension. The Dead King
had managed it, some Soninke argued, but even millennia past that man's
apotheosis mages still sifted through the remains of his reign to
advance their craft. Warlock was disinclined to renounce his humanity
for another form of immortality when villainy alone could yield the same
results, properly used. It was a poor man's escape of the Final
Shackles, anyway. For all his power, the Dead King remained undead. His
nature had grown eminently less changeable, his ability to learn
crippled, while humanity\ldots{} Humanity was such a miraculous
fluctuating thing. Tikoloshe would not have remained so eternally
fascinated by it otherwise.

Behind his wards, watching it all, Wekesa stroked his beard and found
three opportunities. The first was the outer walls. Sabah had yet to get
involved there, and so he need not be worried about her being caught in
the crossfire. Dead under the walls, killed in hatred. And now the the
Stygian phalanx was marching up the ramps, more blood would flow. Power
was largely irrelevant to what he was setting out to accomplish, for the
kind of force that could be gathered by mass sacrifices and theft of
godhead was a blunt instrument. It would be used then spent, leaving the
practitioner that called on it spent as well. No, what he sought was
\emph{affinity}. Finding similarities on both sides of the boundary
before thinning it enough the realities grew muddled and overlapping. It
was not a flawless method, of course. There were an infinity of Hells
and more adjacent dimensions than even he could discover, but he could
only use those he knew of. Knowledge, as in all things, was the great
limitation.

Wekesa knew many things, though, secrets old and new ripped from ancient
tomes and the minds of lesser gods alike.

``\textbf{Imbricate},'' he murmured.

Two-hundredth and seventy-third Hell. The realm of slaughter unending
and meaningless. On the weaker side of the scale, weak in devils and
imprisoned souls both, but it was so very close. The Tyrant was
responsible for it, stripping this battle of much meaning save his own
whims. The blood across the field and walls shivered, then boiled.
Guiding the alignment took all his concentration, balancing the power he
was willing to invest through the runic arrays to the depth of
imbrication that was useful. Creation and Hell snapped into place, and
his lips quirked. Men rose around the ramps and on the wall, missing
limbs and bleeding and every one of them dead. The corpses took up their
weapons, broken or whole, and those that could not struck with bare
hands instead. Driven by endless hatred the dead turned on everything in
sight, including each other. Screams and chaos spread across the
battlefield, but Wekesa paid no attention. The imbrication would fade
away within the hour, and needed no more supervision from his will. Now,
where was the little Wizard?

Inside one of the towers, if the trail of her Name could be trusted.
Which it could not, given there were tricks to fake this and given the
nature of her Role she was all but mandated to have them. An interesting
thing, this Name. The Hedge Wizard relied on providence more than the
average hero, in his eyes. By Heavenly mandate she would always have the
exact trick needed to escape the trouble she was in, more irritatingly
hard to kill a pest than any save a bardic Named. Abandoning subtlety
was occasionally needed to deal with the likes of her. The Tyrant had
lost his finest mages, and so his floating towers were even more
unstable than ones the heroes had wrecked at Delos. No doubt the boy
expected to detonate them at some point in the battle, and Wekesa would
grant him his wish this once. Delving past the outer wards was a thing
of ease, given that there were Helikean standard and so a century of
learning behind anything come of the Wasteland, or even Callow for that
matter. Callowan Gifted were largely amateurs borne of a particularly
shoddy apprenticeship system, but centuries of being assaulted by Praesi
mages had forced them to develop very effective, if simplistic, warding
schemes.

Actually attacking the core was unnecessary. The conversion array that
kept the tower afloat was so flimsy any proper disruption would lead to
cascading failures. Wekesa's own offensive, meant to manifest limited
kinetic force within the range of a mile at a regrettably high
conversion rate, shone and one single rune in the tower's array was
damaged. Thirty heartbeats later the tower exploded, heated rocks
carving a swath of destruction in the outer city. Civilian casualties,
he noted, would not be light. Ah, well. It wasn't like Amadeus was
trying to annex this one. The scrying spell he had pointed at the
location blanked until he adjusted the parameters, reforming to deal
with the arcane energies still filling the air. The Hedge Wizard
\emph{had} been inside, he saw. Yet remained largely unharmed by the
explosion. Half-phasing into Arcadia, by the likes of it. Clever, but
given the unstable nature of the tower's array the energy would have
scattered across the spectrum. She would have been affected. The Hedge
Wizard, running across floating tiles, began to head for his decoy.
Warlock smiled fondly. Trying to trace his location through it, was she?

``Ah, youth,'' he said.

He'd cleaned off the rust. It was time, he supposed, to get serious.

---

The young woman was bleeding, bent in a corner and moaning in pain. The
White Knight slowed as he came by her and came close. Amadeus raised an
eyebrow, but Hanno was not so foolish as that. The sword cleared the
scabbard in an instant, cutting through the animated corpse's neck. A
twist of will had the other three corpses he'd scattered across the
rooftops pull the triggers of the crossbows just as the hero's sword
began to touch flesh. It was not enough. The sword flashed out and
parried the two bolts that would have taken him in the back, letting the
third pass him by for it would not have touched him. \emph{Mistake}. The
third bolt hit the goblinfire ball he'd put inside the woman and green
flames erupted instantly. The Light formed a blinding halo around the
White Knight before the fire could touch him, the Heavenly power soon
devoured but allowing him to retreat without it touching his flesh.
There was only so much of the Light the man could call on without
hollowing himself out, but Black knew better than to turn a death match
with a hero into a matter of endurance. That way lay the wiping of a
bloody lip, a trite quote from the Book of All Things and an improbably
second wind when he himself was at the end of his rope.

The three corpses leapt down the rooftops and ran towards the White
Knight, open and clearly visible wounds across their bellies. The kind a
villain might put a ball of goblinfire in, if he so wished. Amadeus had
not, of course. It would have been a waste of substance he had a limited
stock of as well as the introduction of an uncontrollable factor to a
battlefield where precision would be key. But Hanno could not afford the
chance, and so he backed away to give himself room. \emph{Mistake.}
Amadeus' shadow snaked across the gloom behind him, puncturing the loose
pavestones and detonating the demolition charge under his feet. The
explosion would have earned broken bones from less powerful a Named, but
for a White Knight the only advantage won was toppling him. Another
twist of will and three crossbow bolts whistled at his prone form. He
rolled over at the last moment, evading all but one, yet that last bolt
struck his arm. Not his sword-arm, unfortunately, but he would have to
deal with the wound regardless. The three corpses retreated out of
sight. Hanno ripped the bolt out of his arms and cauterized the wound
with Light, predictably.

``Is this all you amount to, Black Knight?'' he called out. ``Smoke and
mirrors, ambushes and a handful of tricks.''

As if engaging a hero on their own terms was anything but sheer
stupidity. The provocation was not a very skilful one, a betrayal of the
man's youth for all the danger he represented. Amadeus gave him what he
wanted. From the ruins of a home across the street, a corpse in armour
identical to his plate strode out. Unsheathing a plain steel sword, the
undead offered Hanno a mocking blade salute. The hero charged, but he
had learned. He flared the Light before coming close to the puppet,
shrugging off the crossbow fire from the other dead. \emph{Mistake.}
There was no need for him to arrange detonation when the hero's blade
was wreathed in Light. The sword went clean through the plate and the
goblinfire blew, spreading across the edge. The White Knight hastily
dropped it, and there went the shapeshifting weapon that was of clear
Gigantes make. The hero's lips turned to a snarl and he made a blade of
Light. A liability to exploited. Killing heroes, in Amadeus' eyes, was
much like peeling an onion.

Layer by layer it went, until all that remained was the weeping.

---

Gods, she'd forgotten how nightmarish it got when Warlock went off the
deep end. The sky had gone red and the dead were rising. Typical. That
strange Levantine girl was having the time of her life with it, though,
and so was the Tyrant. He'd begun screeching about treachery from his
hovering throne, pleased as a cat that got the cream. The boys were
underestimating this one, she thought. Amadeus thought he was straight
out of the old Imperial mould and so doomed to shoot himself in the foot
at his moment of triumph, but he did not smell of that kind of crazy to
her. Whatever schemes he had going, and Sabah did not care to parse out
the insane maze that would be, she doubted they would involve rising too
high. He was the kind of irritating prick that made a virtue of defeat
and pissing everybody off, just like the Heir had been. And Wekesa,
well, he did tend to think that everybody that wasn't a mage was a
little slow. Considering he'd been set to starve or freeze to death in
the Wasteland while on the run as Apprentice, back when he'd met
Amadeus, she was a little amused at how he kept turning up his nose at
practical skills. Like starting a fire without getting a devil involved.

The Champion kept the wall afloat when the mercenaries began to run by
using an aspect, though Sabah was too far to hear what it was. Whatever
it'd been, though, it had turned Proceran rabbits to lions. They were
carving their way straight into the Stygian phalanx, not that the Tyrant
seemed to care. When it came to the two of them, the Taghreb judged it
an even match. The heroine never managed to land a proper hit, but the
beams of light the villain used hardly scuffed her plate. Sabah
sympathized, having taken a swing at the muscled girl herself in the
past. Anything but the war hammer the Levantine with the badger helm
walked off: it was like hitting a wall. A different story when the Beast
came out, but there weren't a lot of things in Creation that could
ignore Sabah when she let that loose. Captain sniffed the air, and
grimaced at what she got from it. Brimstone, and the red in the sky was
getting deeper. Sooner or later something nasty was going to start
raining down. Better if she could finish off her heroine before it got
to that.

She seemed like a good kid, the Champion. Heart in the right place,
spoiling for a fight the way the young ones often were. Heroes still
cutting their teeth tended to think they were invincible, before running
into their first proper villain. Those that survived that emerged
stronger form the experience, and there lay the problem. Sabah didn't
particularly care if someone worshipped the Heavens instead of the Gods
Below. Her people's deities were most loved when they were looking
somewhere else. \emph{Imagine the kind of pricks they'd be if we weren't
on their side}, \emph{Sabah}, her mother had been fond of saying. The
issue was that when heroes got a little killing under their belt they
tended to go looking for a bigger fight, and right now Praes was the
biggest fight to be had on the continent. Except for the Kingdom of the
Dead, but who'd be dumb enough to try that? Hye didn't count, she had an
odd knack for killing things she shouldn't in the place where she should
have godsdamned common sense. Still, it was a shame. The Champion truly
did seem like a good kid.

Sabah had killed a lot of good kids, over the years.

Didn't particularly enjoy it, but if the choice was between the people
she loved and some young fools who thought they could fix the world with
a spell or a sword, well, that wasn't a choice at all. World didn't
really want to be fixed. Wasn't supposed to be. But the broken chariot
kept on rolling down the road, so why fuck with what worked? Amadeus had
tried it for forty years and he'd had good days for a toil, but a lot
more bad ones. Wekesa had understood quicker, washed his hands of the
whole thing and instead taken care of his son and his experiments. But
Sabah wasn't willing to let Amadeus into the deep end with only Eudokia
to prop him up, so Captain she had been. Was and would be. Sometimes
that meant doing things she didn't like, but she doubted anyone in the
world enjoyed their work everyday. She got her hands bloody, but it
could have been worse. The truly dark things Amadeus always did himself.
He'd never been one to let others do his dirty work for him, if he could
avoid it. Sabah watched the fight on the ramparts turn, biding her time,
and she was not made to linger.

The Tyrant summoned a stream of what looked like spectres -- he'd regret
letting something like those loose with Wekesa on the battlefield, she
mused -- and while the Champion held the mercenaries around her died
until she was forced to retreat. Best keep an eye on that, Captain
mused. Wouldn't do to let the girl meddle in Amadeus' fight with her
leader.

Sabah followed the heroine into the streets, eerily quiet for a woman
her size.