webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-104.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-74-eyewall}{%
\section{Chapter 74: Eyewall}\label{chapter-74-eyewall}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``My husband thought himself a cynic for believing that men so
often race towards the bottom of the barrel. I found it charmingly
idealistic that he believed there was a bottom at all.''}

-Queen Yolanda of Callow, the Wicked (known as `the Stern' in
contemporary histories)
\end{quote}

Leaving the gate open wasn't an option, not really. The more my
opposition saw that trick in action, the higher the chances they'd
figure out how to counter it. Rubies to piglets there was some Night
equivalent to the Pilgrim's miraculous beam o'death, and I could not
afford to be knocked out of the battle literally moments into it. I'd
adjusted my tactics accordingly, and so after five heartbeats I closed
the opening. Gravity and mass turned the water into a massive hammer
blow coming down on the Rumena, but I wasn't dealing with amateurs: of
the three `officers', two immediately fled in shadow form and the third
was swallowed by a hulking shape of Night moments before the impact.
Neither would have been a bad answer, if water was all I'd brought to
the table. Instead I strung Winter and loosed it again, turning the
entire ploughing mass into ice just as if fell on the drow. There'd been
two hundred of them, when I'd opened the gate. The vast majority of that
had been dzulu, and those died instantly when the water hit. The lesser
Mighty were crushed by the ice, and the two officers who'd fled in
shadow form found themselves stuck in it.

The last, though, I knew to be untouched. The Night construct had taken
the impact without flinching, and was now tearing its way out. It'd been
too much to hope for to take out the enemy commanders with the first
blow even if it'd been a sneak attack. Didn't mean I was going to make
it easy on them, though. Even as my sigil flowed around me, heading into
the fray without a single battle cry, I seized the reins of the ice I'd
crafted and slapped my palms together. The entire construct contracted
around the Night-shrouded drow at the centre and I felt its defense
flinch. My lips stretched into a grim smile when I realized I'd forced
the other two officers back into drow-form as a side effect, bloodying
them in the process. There was another pulse of power and the
Night-construct began pushing back. I could make this a slugging match,
I thought, but that would be missing the point. I didn't want to
annihilate the Rumena, I wanted to drive them back to the central
district after weakening them. Their sigil was, after all, a part of the
force I intended to put between myself and the Longstride Cabal.

Another exertion of will had the ice collapsing into mist, a thick fog
that would blind them for a while. Good enough that I could move on, I
decided.

A quick glance told me that the Losara Sigil had added a fresh current
to the mess in the Flowing Gardens but hardly affected the entire lay of
the battle. At our angle of entry, we were taking the pressure off one
of the coalition sigils -- making a semi-stable line of battle on the
northwestern side. I didn't intend to meddle there, since Ivah had been
ordered to return and drive away any Mighty that were too much for them
to handle. No, I'd go make friends of my own. The half-dozen islets in
the middle were so chaotic a melee I couldn't even tell exactly who was
fighting, but to the northeast a Rumena detachment was tearing through a
mix of sigils both `neutral' and allied. A good place to start. Wings of
shining light burst out of my back and I took flight, rising above the
mess to hurry things along. I went high to avoid distractions, but even
then I still had to dive out of the way of a javelin roiling with Night
some Mighty tossed in my direction. I could have batted it away, but why
take the risk with a trick I didn't know? My brow rose, however, when
after arcing a dozen feet above me the javelin finished the curve and
flew in my pursuit. Someone had it out for me, huh.

Evidently I'd made an impression.

I was quicker than the projectile, so I was less than worried, but I
slowed my flight to allow it to catch up. Not close enough to hit, or
even explode if that was how that was supposed to end, but close enough
the Mighty controlling it might think it had a chance to clip me. I
angled my flight downwards after reaching the battlegrounds I'd picked
out, javelin howling behind me, and landed in a crouch. The two Mighty
in front of me, who'd been hacking at each other with obsidian blades,
paused and turned towards me.

``Surprise,'' I said, and turned into mist.

I took solid form again half a dozen feet to the side, just in time to
see the javelin strike them. It did not, to my surprise, explode. In the
heartbeat where it hung in the air between them, tendrils of Night came
boiling out and wrapped around to the Mighty. Almost instantly they were
dragged into the projectile, leaving behind only half-finished screams.
No trace of a corpse. Whoever had tossed that, I thought, wasn't fucking
around. I checked if there was another flying towards me just in case,
but there was nothing coming so I pressed on. It wasn't difficult to
find the Rumena: I just had to follow the screaming and the runners. A
crew of four stood in a loose diamond formation, steadily advancing
through the opposition. I ran through the melee, drow parting around me
cautiously, and leapt on the one at the front. Even as I swung my sword
towards its throat I saw it begin to turn, surprise passing in its
silver eyes, and I could tell exactly when it realized it wouldn't be
able to raise its own sword in time. And yet there was no fear to be
found. I learned why a moment later, when the strike that should have
carved through its throat instead shattered my blade. It'd been like
throwing an egg at a wall, I thought.

It countered smoothly, blade coming down to hack between my shoulder and
throat, but I kicked at its side and used the momentum to throw myself
backwards. The tip of the iron blade came within an inch of my nose as I
landed on my feet, and immediately I pushed forward. I couldn't allow
the four of them to strike in formation, it was bound to get messy.
Shifting its footing skillfully the drow began a backswing.
Unfortunately for it, I slid down between its leg and grabbed its left
ankle as I did. Hoisting it up was easy as lifting a feather, and I rose
even as the other three Rumena watched me with visible surprise.

``Look,'' I said. ``It's just \emph{really} hard finding a weapon that
won't break. Bear with it.''

``You-'' the Mighty at the back started, Night blooming around its
wrists, but it was interrupted.

I took my angrily flailing mace and smashed it into another drow. Bones
crunched, though they snapped back into place with a hiss -- jawor,
then, since they had more than a single good trick -- and the drow went
flying. The other flanking Rumena tried to slide around and ram my back
with a spear, but I caught my drow-weapon by the throat and used it as a
loudly protesting shield. The spear pinged off like it'd hit steel, just
in time for me to sidestep two hissing whips of Night wielded by the
fourth. They snaked back around towards me, but I batted away their tips
with my drow after releasing its throat. My mace screamed in pain as the
Night punctured its flesh, dropping its sword. In a show of good drow
sportsmanship, my disruption of the Rumena advance was followed by an
opportunistic attack from other sigils. The left side of their force was
swarmed by an angry sigil so thin on Mighty it must have taken a brutal
beating before I arrived. Sadly, drow opportunism applied to everyone.
An arrow flew at my back, the head of it glinting with shadow, and I had
to pivot so my mace could take it in my place after I seized it by the
crook of the neck. Heat licked at my fingers as the arrow failed to
pierce through but dark flames charred the Mighty's skin.

I was kind of impressed it hadn't passed out yet.

My drow weapon was beginning to try wrestling my wrist into loosening,
so our love affair had sadly come to an end. I crouched low and spread
out my stance, heaving it in the same direction the arrow had come from.
Halfway through it flicked into shadow-shape, but to my amusement our
friend with the bow shot it and it fell to the ground with a scream.
Well, no longer my problem for now. The Rumena had identified me as the
person whose head needed to be on a pike before they got their footing
back in this section, so I found myself swimming in Mighty soon enough.
We played for a while, my frown deepening as we did. They were
outclassed against me, but the longer I got them striking at each other
by weaving into their midst the more I realized these were bottom
feeders as far as Mighty went. Maybe there were a few jawor in there,
but not a single rylleh. Most of those were ispe, the lowest kind of
Mighty, with maybe a few pravnat -- practically speaking those were just
ispe showing promise, but drow were touchy about titles -- thrown into
the mix. But they'd been wrecking the opposition, and I could see why.
My own sigil had ispe, and the Rumena Sigil's made them look like
bumbling amateurs. The fact that I'd yet to fight dzulu here was
telling, too. I'd been told that the Rumena made up almost a third of
Strycht on their own, but I hadn't though they had quite that many
Mighty to spare.

The quality of the opposition was going to be a problem, if these were
their third-stringers.

As if to reinforce the point, I got a lesson in why Mighty Rumena had
judged that three officers were enough to take care of this front. Three
falling stars impacted the battlefield, less than a breath of delay
between them, and as stone and drow went flying the Mighty I'd ambushed
earlier made their entrance. Steam drifted off their frames as they rose
in unison, unbothered by the fact that most casualties resulting from
their landing had been of their own sigil. The Night construct from
earlier flared, and I finally got a good look at it. It looked like
stylized panther, though one vaguely humanoid and standing on it
forelegs, and its eyes were empty socket. I could feel the power coming
off of that, and to be frank I did not want to find out what'd happen if
I got hit with it. The other two advanced with long tridents of bones
held in loose grips, fanning out in a circle. I could fight them, I
thought. The collateral damage from it would hurt their sigil more than
anyone else's. But I'd already accomplished what I'd come for,
disrupting their success in this sector. There was little to gain from
an all-out brawl with these three.

``Well put,'' I said, ``But if I may retort?''

I opened a gate behind me and retreated through it. The cold breeze of
Arcadia scattered my hair as I strode across the waters of what had once
been Lake Strycht, ice forming under my feet. I cast a look back to see
if they were following, and to my pleasure they were. I quickened my
steps as the followed in hot pursuit, one of them stretching out its
shadow for the others to walk on as if it were a solid thing. The exit
gate beckoned, and I called it open with a thought before leaping
through. The one we'd entered through was already closing, so my
pursuers wasted no time in following suit.

All four of us started falling, because why would I make the gate lead
to the ground when I could \emph{fly}?

Wings burst out of my back again and I left for greener pastures as they
fell impotently back to the floor, landing in the middle of the bloody
central melee. None of them would die from it, but they'd be stuck in
another fight they had no time for. Another arrow flew towards me, this
one without Night woven into it, and I almost struck back blindly where
it'd come from. Luckily I glanced first, and found it'd been Archer
who'd fired the shot. Frowning, I crafted a platform of shadow under my
feet and landed. Indrani was, rather unsurprisingly, surrounded by
corpses. It'd take too long to make my way to her, so I closed my eyes
and took a shortcut.

---

The corpse rose, the lingering warmth chased away by Winter coursing
through the veins. Archer eyed me skeptically, nocking an arrow.

``Cat?'' she asked.

I spat out a glob of blood and phlegm.

``You have my attention,'' I croaked out.

``Left corner, three sigils massing,'' she said. ``Tickled their
lookouts, but they're playing the waiting game even under provocation.
Should I start shooting leadership or do we leave them be?''

The dead drow's neck was horridly stiff, but I forced it to turn with a
snap and followed her pointed finger. Couldn't make it out from here, I
wasn't high up enough, but from up in the sky it'd be no trouble.

``I'll handle it,'' I said. ``You should- oh \emph{shit!}''

---

Height was no guarantee of safety, in a fight like this, even if my
distraction lasted only a few moments. I didn't see what broke my
platform but it vaporized my right foot with it and I began falling
again until my wings slowed it to a halt. Which was exactly what my
enemies wanted, as it happened. If it'd been the three Rumena from
earlier going after me that'd have been fair game, but it wasn't: four
Mighty from a sigil I was pretty sure I was theoretically allied with
stood atop long pillars of Night and were forming a globe of the same
around me.

``\emph{Really}?'' I said. ``Fine. Have it your way.''

I snuffed out my wings, opened a gate under me and fell right through.
Arcadian air howled around me and I crashed into the water, ripping open
a gate under me. The sudden whirlpool drew me in and I fell along with a
mass of water more or less over the sigils Archer had pointed out to me.
Streaks of shadow immediately flew up but a flick of the wrist had the
water around me turning into a large spike of ice I casually tossed into
the midst of the gathering warriors. I landed among screams and fleeing
dzulu, brushing off my shoulders. The sigil-holders would be on me soon,
but my eyes were drawn to the corpses I'd just made. There was Night in
them, though like with all dzulu not much of it, but it was fading.
Going away, and I could quite say where. I tugged at the chain binding
Diabolist to me, allowing her to see through my eyes. I felt the trace
of her presence come, lingering only a few moments before disappearing.
She tugged back one, a message received. Had she already known? Quite
possible, if this was happening all over the city instead of just here.
Then the Mighty were on me, and the time for musings had passed.

Three sigil-holders, each with a pair of rylleh backing them. Difficult
to deal with, if I'd intended on fighting them. Instead I tossed a few
spears of ice at them to get them riled up and began a retreat. They
followed, and our merry chase began. I could have called the Flowing
Gardens the stuff fairy dreams were made of, but I'd \emph{had} fairy
dreams -- and this was much more surreal. We danced through canals where
vines had grown thick and sprouted thorns and hooks, bursting through
faded poems carved into stone. Tortured sculptures of bronze and
obsidian sang dissonantly as shards of Night were tossed, stirred by the
wind in their wake, and towering trees whose only produce were leaves
red like blood shook as Mighty rode shadows in my pursuit. A sluice gate
of oily metal was torn open like parchment as I leapt over it on
translucent wings, the sigil-holder who'd done it looking like a
creature of nightmare in the light of the glowing flowers and ferns it'd
torn through in its haste. And everywhere we went, drow fought and
ambushed and bled on stone and water. There were Hells, I thought, not
even half as grim as this. I stoked their anger with darting strikes
followed by vanishing into mist, clipping a few with ice spears to
little more effect that mounting frustration on their part.

They didn't realize what I was doing until we'd barrelled into the
central melee, and by then it was too late.

It was such a mess down here that another few Mighty in the crowds
hardly made a difference, the fight ebbing for a moment before forming
anew around them, and just like that my job was done. The Rumena were
losing here now, though the situation was slowly turning around as the
warriors from the section I'd flipped earlier joined up with their
fellows. It must have gone quite badly there after I'd left for them to
outright abandon the fight. Good. The cauldron was near the boiling
point, a little more and they'd be ready. In my absence, the Losara
Sigil had pushed deep. Moving as a cordon along with our allies, it was
moving slowly but surely towards this mess. Seeing my sigil's symbol as
war paint and adornment was surprisingly moving, but it ended up costly.
By now, my identity was no mystery to the people I'd tangled with. And
if they couldn't pin me down themselves, then there \emph{was} one way
they could force a fight.

Three falling stars hit my sigil, and in the span of a single heartbeat
I lost at least two hundred warriors.

Gone, in a shred of flesh and bone and stone dust. People it had taken
me months to bind and empower, dead in the snap of a finger. I clenched
my fingers, pushing down my fury. War could not be waged without losses.
I rose in the sky and dived for them, deciding that gating close to them
was too much of a risk. In the time it took me to arrive, I lost another
hundred drow. The Rumena officers slaughtered them with contemptuous
ease, be they dzulu or Mighty, and only ceased when I landed at their
back. I rolled my shoulder, weaving a glamour without missing a beat.

``All right,'' my illusion said. ``You got me here. Now what?''

``The worthy take,'' one of them said. ``The worthy rise, Losara
Queen.''

I circled around them, footsteps muted, but one of them must have had a
trick to see through that because the two with bone tridents ignored my
glamour and turned towards me. The Night construct erupted for a third
time tonight, the blind panther roaring out, and they charged. There
was, of course, one thing they hadn't accounted for. The leftmost drow
ducked under an arrow, batting it aside, but there'd been a second shot
hidden in the curve of the first and that one took it in the throat. It
gurgled, unsurprisingly still alive, but then its throat began burning
green. Indrani had spent quite a while with Robber and his miscreants,
hadn't she? She'd been due a few new tricks. That one I immediately
discounted as dead, flesh reknitting or not, and that left me two to
deal with. Or it would have, if Ivah hadn't cut into the dance. My Lord
of Silent Steps moved with unnatural agility, waiting until the bone
trident had struck out before\ldots{} moving. The description failed to
convey what had taken place, though. One moment it'd been standing in
the way of the weapon, the next it'd been behind the Mighty and striking
with its own glass staff. Afterimages followed a heartbeat later,
revealing how it had moved and the whole affair reeked of Winter.

It'd skimmed the edge of Arcadia, I realized with a start.

Move along the boundary between it and Creation, steps silent and sudden
until struck. Merciless Gods, \emph{I} couldn't do that. Was it the true
face of its title? Or was it just better at using power, after its
centuries as a rylleh? It'd didn't matter, I thought, at least not right
now. Its opponent was far from dead, even after taking the blow, and I
still had one to contend with. The shaped Night pounced, carrying the
drow within as if it were lodged in the belly, and if I'd not batted
wings to hurry my retreat it would have hit me. As it was, the panther's
claws tore through the stone beneath us and it turned to face with as
its tail swung. As suspected, I did not want to get touched by any part
of this. The thing was, I couldn't really afford a slugging match with a
rylleh when I was supposed to be getting this cookpot off the fire. Not
even an obviously powerful one. There was a part of me that found it
only natural to get down in the mud and brawl, but I couldn't afford to
fight that way anymore. Not with the kind of opponents I had, these
days.

I'd done it at the Battle of the Camps, and what had that gotten me?
Nothing I'd done there had actually mattered until the gate had been
opened, and the Saint of Swords had batted me around until I fled. Keter
had been more of the same, struggling through one messy gambit after
another while a dead elf and a Horned Lord made sport of my best
efforts. All this had happened while the fucking Dead King as good as
named me a peer, while he'd be able to handle those matters easy as
picking apples. Not because he was more powerful, because terrifying as
Neshamah was Winter's abyss ran just as deep. But because he knew how to
use that power, while I muddled along using only the barest portion of
mine. \emph{Akua} was better at using these powers than I was, and she
didn't even have a title. So what did I have that neither of them did?
Because that was the question, wasn't it? If I was going to sit at the
same table as Sve Noc and the King of Death, then I needed to prove I
had the qualifications to claim a seat. Catherine Foundling, the woman
who brawled with rylleh and lost limbs by the dozens before finally
putting it down, did not have those qualifications.

I looked at the Night construct, watched its legs bend as it prepared to
pounced, and I shaped it in my mind. I'd never done it simultaneously
before, but why couldn't I? Maybe I wouldn't have been able as the
Squire, but the Squire was dead. Devoured by a harsher mantle. \emph{How
many of my limitations}, I thought, \emph{are self-inflicted?} I could
be mist or hard as steel, I could grow wings and walk away from the loss
of half my body. Lies and mirrors, and what was this but a different
kind of lie? The panther skimmed across the ground, unnaturally swift,
and I let Winter flow into me. Fill my veins and my lungs, steal away my
breath. I embraced it, as I had in Liesse, and formed what I had shaped
in my mind's eye. The first gate opened in front of the Night construct,
and it slowed by a fraction as it prepared to leap over it. That was
enough. Another two, caging it in a triangle. Another two, above and
below. All of them leading to the bottom of the Fields of Wend, that
depthless glacier lake at the very heart of Winter. How many miles of
water were there in it? I didn't know, not for sure. But water came out
from all sides, and in a heartbeat Night and drow were crushed like a
bug by the gargantuan pressure. I breathed out and the gates closed as
one, leaving behind only water and flesh made into paste.

No, Catherine Foundling had no place at that table. But maybe the Black
Queen did.

I looked back, found the battle had gone on uncaring of what'd just
taken place. Just another current in the sea. It was time to get them
moving, I thought. Soon enough the Rumena would have taken the central
district, and the madness in Great Strycht needed to be brought to its
climax. I couldn't get all these drow moving with my own power, it was
true. It'd take hours to go around killing every sigil-holder and
asserting command, assuming it was even possible at all. But I'd been
taught by a man who had been an artist in the ways or ruling through
fear, and his lessons had not all gone to waste.

``Retreat,'' I called out to my sigil. ``As planned.''

I left them to the grisly business of disengaging from a furious melee
while I reached for my power one last time. Terribilis the Second had
once said that a threat was useless unless you'd previously committed
the level of violence you were threatening to use. I didn't agree,
though, not exactly. It was useless if the level of violence you were
threatening wasn't believable, I'd say instead. And I'd stolen a lake in
front of these people, used it as a weapon and bribe both. They would
believe quite a bit, coming from me. Even as my sigil began fleeing
towards the heart of Great Strycht, to the surprise of their foes, I
wove a glamour. A gate facing upwards, and through it came a deafening
rumble. Illusory molten stone flew out, landing on the muddy lakebed and
the edge of the Flowing Gardens, smoke and lava following as the
glamoured volcano erupted in full.

The Losara Sigil fled, and every godsdamned drow in the north followed
close behind.