webcrawl/APGTE/Book-3/tex/Ch-097.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-liesse-iv}{%
\section{Interlude: Liesse IV}\label{interlude-liesse-iv}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Rulers must exercise restraint. Every action ripples across
Creation, bringing three unintended consequences for every one
anticipated.''}

-- Extract from the personal journals of Dread Emperor Terribilis II
\end{quote}

``Well, \emph{I'm} not getting close to that,'' Archer announced.

Their arrival on the bastion had been somewhat haphazard, Hakram
thought, yet the fight had managed to go sharply downhill within
moments. Before they even got their bearings fully half a dozen wards
had blown up and mages had begun screaming, their flesh boiling and
twisting violently. The orc calmly considered the sight even as he rose
to his feet, eyes moving from one roiling shape to another. This was
not, he decided, sorcery. Or not just that. The effects were too varied.
Some rebels were growing spores on their skin, others had bones
protruding from their skin in a crown of spikes and yet more had\ldots{}
stranger outcomes. A woman's silk robes turned into a carapace, her the
ruby set in her thick golden necklace blinking like an eye. He had seen
the likes of this before, in Marchford. When a warband of young Named
had picked a fight beyond their understanding, and come so very close to
annihilation for that arrogance. The rest of the dots connected
themselves without effort. Diabolist had surrendered the demon she'd
unleashed there as part of the terms of settlement in Liesse, and the
custody of it had been granted to Masego.

Adjutant felt like shivering. It was one thing, he thought, for
Catherine to fight fire with oil. Quite another for Hierophant to do the
same. The consequences of Masego making a mistake would be graver in
many ways. It occurred to him for the first time, then, that they had
perhaps learned the recklessness of the woman they followed too well.
\emph{We are no Calamities}, the orc thought. \emph{The crucible of our
forging was one of desperation, and we have learned both the best and
the worst of that.} Victory against all odds, victory snatched from the
jaws of defeat, could never be gained without a cost. Habit had taught
them to disregard that, because behind them more steady hands always
swept away the mess. But those steady hands were dying now. If they did
not learn to check this recklessness, it would bury them. Or worse, the
orc thought as he watched the corruption take hold of the mages. In the
distance a sound like a thousand sharpers sounded and Hierophant
returned to Creation in a storm of power. The orc's eyes flicked, and
his face grew grim.

The Deoraithe had advanced where the demons once stood before Masego
spirited them away, and now that the blind sorcerer had returned he'd
come back among them. Tendrils of power washed over the heart of the
bowmen, corruption spreading with them. They had traded three great
catastrophes for two lesser ones. Hakram seized serenity, let it sink
through his mind and wash away doubts and fears. Clarity took the scales
from his eyes, and he assessed the situation on the bastion. Corrupted
mages, more than a hundred. It was no longer spreading actively, but the
taint had taken them whole. Praesi household troops were hesitating,
split between the duty to clear out the two Named who'd just dropped
down among them and the dim realization that the mages they sought to
protect might no longer be on their side. On anyone's. Could he and
Archer take care of both forces alone? No, he assessed. Their intention
here had been to disrupt, and Hierophant had achieved that without them.
They must now contain instead, and the two of them were not enough.
Without hesitation, he made his decision.

``Who is in command among you?'' he called out to the soldiers.

``Shut your fucking mouth, greens-``

Archer had put an arrow through the roof of the woman's mouth before she
was done speaking and was already nocking a second.

``Not the answer we were looking for, my darlings,'' she smiled.

``Your sorcerers are corrupted,'' Hakram said. ``They must be cleared
out before we all die.''

Power began to feel the air, so heavy he could taste it, but it was
wrong. Like stagnant water.

``Listen to me,'' Adjutant barked, and his Name flared.

Like quill being dipped in an inkwell, void filled for purpose. It was
not Speaking, not quite. He was not Catherine, able to bridge the gap of
a Name too young and thin by sheer stubborn will. But he was the
Adjutant, and they were soldiers. That mattered, in the eyes of
Creation. They turned to him, and there was a glint in their eyes that
spoke of orders awaited. Just a glint, but it would be enough.

``About turn,'' he ordered. ``Rapid advance, watch your formation.
Strike before they can start rituals.''

There was heartbeat of stillness, then the world pivoted. They moved.

``Archer,'' he began, turning to the other Named.

``Disrupt anything big,'' she sighed. ``I know how this goes. Gods, you
take all the fun out of this. It could have been a real messy scrap but
you've gone and made it all orderly.''

Adjutant hefted up his axe and joined the ranks of the men he'd been
about to kill mere moments ago. Sorcery lashed forward and he bared his
fangs in answer.

---

Wekesa had always considered the works of goblins with fond but distinct
contempt. Short-lived creatures that they were, their kind always strove
to leave behind a legacy of steel and chords to pull curtain over the
tragic frailty of their existence. There were occasional sparks of
brilliance in the dross, but in the end even the very best of engines
only ever managed to match a single trick of the many a properly trained
mage had in their arsenal. It was one thing for Amadeus, who had the
preoccupations of an entire empire on his shoulders, to find worth in
this. Sorcerers truly worth the name were few, and even fewer were
willing to have anything to do with the Legions. But for him? The toys
of children were rarely worth a second glance, and those that were worth
more than that tended to attract\ldots{} untoward attention. Warlock was
confident he could survive the carnage that would follow the reception
of a third Red Letter, but the same could not be said for the Empire.
Still, for all that the little engines under him were proving to have
some use in clearing out the devils they should not warrant anything of
the sort.

It was hard to grasp exactly what incurred the wrath of the gnomes, but
they'd tolerated the existence of both scorpions and goblin munitions
for centuries. Greater efficiency in the employment of both should pass
without making any waves being made.

The Fifteenth did swift work of taking the creational side of the gate,
and afterwards swept forward through the Breach in an orderly manner.
The Warlock's chariot tumbled through the air above the advancing ranks,
passing a boundary that few alive would be able to sense. The Hell that
awaited him on the side had amusingly mundane scenery, by the standards
of such things. Endless yellow sands spread in every direction, shifting
dunes and scorching winds. The sky was deep crimson and bereft of any
celestial orbs -- a hint in the location of this particular Hell among
the lay of them. Though his people swore by Below, when they swore at
all, this was broadly mistaken. The Hells were, as much as direction
could apply to them, somewhat to the left of Creation. Attempting to map
them was a fool's errand, of course. Emperors and Empresses and ruined
Praes dozens of times attempting to do as much, only for it to become
undeniable the labyrinth of hellscapes was constantly shifting. It was a
pit of writhing snakes, moving with every heartbeat. It was said that as
soon as a mortal mind thought of a Hell that did not exist, it would
come into being. Wekesa had never managed to conclusively prove or
disprove that adage, but he \emph{had} reliably established that the
Hells were in constant expansion. That had forced him to reconsider some
theories as to the nature of Creation.

Wekesa had long suspected that the reason for the existence of angels
and devils was that the Gods could not intervene directly in Creation or
any of its adjacent realms. Not, like the Book of All Things stated,
because a wager forbade it -- but because the Gods \emph{were} Creation.
That their power had been made into the world all mortals inhabited and
could not be withdrawn without unravelling the entire edifice. Hence the
establishment of catspaws defined as opposite, but ultimately serving
the same purpose: advancing the experiment. It was beautiful work, he'd
thought. Well-deserving of the word divine. Yet if the Gods were
invested in the making of Creation, what power fed the expansion of the
Hells? The Heavens and their Choirs, after all, did not grow. But
neither did they lessen, which was perhaps a hint. Angels had been slain
or made to fall in the past, but no Choir had ever been measurably
weakened. His current theory was that there was fixed quantity of power
behind Heavens and Hells, and that Above had chosen fixed figure where
Below had preferred endless mutability -- at the risk of thinning the
brew. Few devils could withstand even the gaze of an angel, after all.

Ah, so much to study and yet he had to settle these irritating
distractions before returning to what mattered. Wekesa traced a handful
of runes and a line of darkness scythed through the first few ranks of
the devils clustering before the Breach, allowing the struggling
legionaries to establish a solid foothold. The chariot rose into the sky
again and his gaze swept to the distance. The devils here seemed endless
in number, though it was not so. Still, two dozen columns slithering
along the dunes like giant snakes of soldiers were trudging forward
towards the Breach. Tedious, this. Warlock could have begun the work of
slaughtering them, but he could not spare such expense of power if he
was to build upon the work of the Sahelian girl. Crafting a lasting
effect from scratch was already stretching the limits of what he was
capable of doing without burning himself out. Much as he disliked the
thought, he would have to rely on the Squire's men. His nose wrinkled in
distaste even as he guided the chariot downwards. Wheels spun wildly
against sand, splashing yellow hands around as he reined in the
devil-horses, and Wekesa lightly leapt down to the ground.

Eyes sweeping from someone of high enough rank to be worth addressing,
he found a woman with the markings of a Senior Tribune on her shoulders.
It would do.

``You,'' he drawled. ``I'll need a space cleared to work. A circle with
a diameter of seventy feet, and add another dozen around that where your
soldiery is not to step. Precision will be required.''

The woman paled.

``Sir, this may take time,'' she said. ``Resistance is proving stiff,
even with your help, and the engines must-``

``I've not interest in the practicalities,'' Wekesa said flatly. ``See
it done. Now. I'll mark the boundaries visibly as a courtesy to your
general, but do not expect any legionaries crossing it to survive the
experience.''

He truly did miss working with the likes of Ranker and Istrid. Their
officers knew better than to question his orders. Warlock had no taste
for grovelling, but he did believe that the occasional bout of terror
would do a great deal to temper these youngbloods. As promised, he began
by setting a boundary: dots of red light formed around the area he
claimed for his own, legionaries hastily getting out of the way before
consequences could ensure. With that dealt with, the true casting could
begin. First, an outer ward. Circular, diameter of seventy-three feet.
Little more than a filter to prevent the elements touching his work.
Wekesa snapped his wrist and three red flames formed, burning bright,
and began moving. His brow created and guided them with his mind,
burning the sand to glass in the form of a perfect circle. Even as they
began elaborating on that initial pattern he stepped forward into the
circle and knelt in the centre, every lesser rune added as he moved
leading towards him. The Warlock closed his eyes and let time ebb away.
The flames wove in intricate patterns across the sand, arrays and runes
he bolstered by drawing foci from his treasury dimension.

Amethysts taken from lifeless grounds first, clarity touched by death to
prevent the bleed from cascading. Chalcedony from a riverbed, to nurture
the currents of sorcery without them struggling against each other.
Branches of still-living alder for precision, lead ripped straight from
the earth to draw the impurities. Lesser reagents, but he did not dare
bring materials with inherent properties into this ritual. Aspect
sorcery was difficult enough to shape without additional variables being
brought into the formula. How long the work took him, he did not know.
But eventually his eyes opened and around him an intricate series of
interlocking runic arrays marked the grounds of Hell. Wekesa looked for
imperfections carefully, ignoring the sound of fighting ahead and to the
sides. None he could see, and he forced himself to go over the
calculations one last time. He'd done workings of a similar nature in
the past, but never one exactly the same. It would suffice, he decided.
Leave him all but burned out, but not so much he was unable to defend
himself if needed.

``I do apologize,'' he murmured, words meant for the Sahelian girl who
would never hear them. ``It is beautiful work, truly, and to meddle with
it is unseemly. But you have made yourself an obstacle.''

\textbf{Imbricate}, his mind spoke, and the aspect shivered across this
realm. Closing the Greater Breach was, of course, impossible. The ritual
lit up around him, lights to blind all the world, and the Sovereign of
the Red Skies turned his will on the span of the gate. Usurpation had
even been the essence of sorcery\emph{.} What could not be closed could
be \emph{redirected}. Power drained out of him at an alarming rate, but
Wekesa seized that thin boundary and attached the work of his aspect to
it. What had once been a Breach leading to Creation now led to another
Hell, and his veins burned with the effort of weaving that addition into
the heart of the Hellgate's nature. If he did any less, he was only
delaying the inevitable. Panting softly, the greatest living sorcerer of
the age rose to his feet. It was done. The sound of the panicking
legionaries washed over him, the buzz of flies. Wekesa looked upon them,
wondering at the numbers. A few hundred, a whole thousand? There were
even a few Deoraithe he could see. Without the Breach at their back, the
soldiers were already being surrounded. They were stranded, after all.

He was not.

Dusting off his robes, the Warlock stepped onto his chariot and set the
horses to flight. He was not inclined to linger here, and it would be a
long way back to Creation.

---

Ranker's people had a saying, about miracles: sudden dawns blind. It
lost nearly all its nuances when translated in Lower Miezan. The usual
word for dawn in goblintongue meant first-light-after-dark, but in this
case the implied context was Light instead of light and raider-night for
dark. Light for the the searing hatred wielded by heroes, and the
meaning of strife that had been associated with the many defeats of the
Legions since the subjugation of the Tribes. It was a reminder that
sudden upsets always fucked goblinkind, one way or another. Like most
goblin sayings, it had a completely different meaning in matrontongue.
The word for sudden was narrow-vision-of-swiftness and for blind
to-miss-in-wilful-ignorance. Matrons were not warned of the harsh hand
of the Heavens. They were warned of seeking momentary salvation at the
price of a later great cost. The old Marshal watched the Second Battle
of Liesse unfold around her, and found that both meanings had grounds.

The explosion on the bastion must have been the work of the Hierophant,
because that first sorcerous detonation had been followed by a shitshow
of demonic corruption. There was a vicious fight going up there even as
she looked, between two of the Woe and the handiwork of another. If
those two hadn't been up there\ldots{} She turned to Kolo, her balding
and ever-nervous Senior Mage.

``You're sure the control array still stands?'' she asked, for the third
time.

The Soninke licked his lips and nodded.

``It's not in use, the mages are no longer guiding the wights -- they
must be going according to the last instructions -- but it still
exists,'' he confirmed. ``They could take back control if they tried.''

Burning, bloody Hells, they were lucky that demon-juice tended to turn
the affected dumb if the demon wasn't around to guide them. But there
was still potential disaster looming. If the corrupted mages spread that
corruption down the sorcery that allowed them to control the
undead\ldots{} That was the kind of catastrophe that broke cities.
Kingdoms, even, if it wasn't checked in time. And there was no telling
if one of the rebels would wise up before they were cleared out and
start pissing in the proverbial pond. And that wasn't even the worst of
it.

``Scry him again,'' Ranker said. ``Brute force it if you have to.''

``Ma'am, we could have half our mage lines behind that ritual it would
change nothing,'' Kolo said. ``Trying to touch the Hierophant is\ldots{}
He must have something of Summer inside him, because even looking too
close evaporates the entire scrying bowl.''

He grimaced.

``Including the stone, ma'am,'' he added. ``The damned \emph{stone}.''

Wekesa's only son had emerged from whatever sorcerous madness he'd been
up to right in the middle of the advancing Deoraithe bowmen. That had
been bad enough -- at least a hundred had died just for being in the
wrong place when he returned -- but the poison in the wine had been the
fact he'd apparently come back in the middle of a godsdamned storm of
corruption. It'd splashed all over half a dozen companies. The boy had
immediately started scouring the area with flame, which was the right
decision to make. But it also meant he was now torching his way through
the middle of the first wave troops headed to prop up the centre,
killing dozens with every heartbeat. The infantry coming behind the
archers had no idea he was killing only corrupted -- they thought this
was treachery, and now the entire front had gone to shit. Kegan was
barking up about betrayal over the scrying links, and even after being
told what was truly happening she was threatening to pull back her
troops entirely. Ranker had told her if she did there'd be a
court-martial and execution before the day was over, but there would be
no putting this fruit back on the branch. Daoine was going to holler for
blood after this, take it all the way up to the court if they had to.
\emph{And we lost too many men today to be able to afford a rebellion in
the north.} All that, and the most dangerous question had yet to be
asked.

Had the Hierophant been corrupted?

Ranker had seen him emerge in a godsdamned whirlpool of demon essence.
That wasn't something she could just ignore. A Named that obviously
powerful with a demon whispering in his ears was not something the
Empire could afford. Or Calernia, for that fucking matter. There was a
very real chance the boy would need to be put down, and \emph{now}. But
she didn't have the means to carry out that decision if she made it, and
what would come of it was\ldots{} Warlock would kill them all, even if
they were right. Not even Black would be able to stay his hand, not when
it came to family. And Foundling had made Hierophant one of her little
band of roving disasters. The goblin had it on good authority the girl
had lost her shit over one of her legates getting torched by the Summer
Court so badly it had broken half of Old Dormer. What kind of a tantrum
would she throw over losing a Named?

The only saving grace in this entire blunder of a battle was that Wekesa
had come through and the Hellgate was closed. Or something like that,
anyway. Her mage lines couldn't give her a straight answer, but they
agreed that the way the gate had become see-through meant nothing would
come out of it anymore. The troops that had gone through had yet to come
back, though, and Ranker suspected they would never. She'd ordered for
the Fifteenth to prop up the centre anyway and they were on the move --
the sight of those legionaries marching towards her people had gone a
long way in making Kegan shut up. With the wights rudderless, for now,
the flanks were holding steady. This battle, the Marshal thought, could
still be turned around. If they were careful and lucky and there were no
great upsets. The old goblin's eyes turned to the Hierophant standing
alone in a storm of flame, surrounded by charred corpses, and she whet
her lips. Her Senior Mage stayed at her side in silence, knowing better
than to speak.

There was a decision to be made, and Marshal Ranker made it.