With a fire roaring, the omnipresent gloom was less unnerving, more of a distant mist, the cave they were in limiting vision of the darkness outside. With all of them, and the servants, it was a little crowded, but at least it would be easy to defend. Hakara had used her magic to blast a hole in the roof of the cave, allowing the smoke out – in any other circumstances it would be quite pleasant.

At the moment, Hakara and Kivata were huddled together, both staring intently at hovering crystals, a warm blue light mingling with the crackling fire-light. Stathis leaned forward, letting Brina unbuckle her breastplate, twisting her shoulders.

‘Damn, that feels good! I’ve been wearing that pretty much non-stop for ages now. Ever since getting sucked through that first weird teleport-gate-thing. So you guys all ended up in Cormontara then?’

Brina started massaging Stathis’ shoulders, her small fingers surprisingly strong as they pushed and pulled at the muscles of her back.

‘Yeah, it was surprisin’ when all these guys showed up! Sounds like you’ve had it rough, going to Setha-in-the-Ash. And then back here again. Hakara, managed to figure out where this is yet?’

‘Yes, I’ve managed to acquire a more specific location. Which is good news and bad news.’

Stathis couldn’t be bothered to stand up, enjoying the massage, as one of the Sethan’s passed her a cup of tea, or at least herbs stepped in water. ‘What’s the bad?’

‘Largely the same as the good. That we are quite far from, um, anywhere else. So that means that the destruction will not cause much damage, at least not unless it should undergo a lengthy period of uninterrupted growth. But that does also mean that it will be some time before we can travel anywhere.’

‘Still too dangerous to teleport?’

‘And without access to any infrastructure, I lack the power for such a spell myself. To transport ourselves here, we had to use ancient elven ruins. Which were a little bumpy, but worked well enough.’

‘Ancient power, much faded.’ Parth seemed unconcerned.

‘So we’re stuck here? Or rather, we can move, but it’s going to take ages to get anywhere? There must at least be a village or something around, where we can leave the rest. Unless they want to try and get back home?’

Sen was knelt by Janaxia, for whom the servants had erected a chair, a wooden frame draped with somewhat tattered silks. ‘They are unsure. Setha is likely a long and dangerous journey away, and it might be easier to stay here, if a place could be found for them.’

‘We’ll see what we can do. Oh, Hakara, have you been able to figure out how big the effect is?’

‘Quite extensive. Certainly several orders of magnitude larger than I expected – I suspect we will be out from beneath the cover of the darkness after several days of walking.’

Stathis paused, quickly trying to figure through the numbers of how far they could cover in each day, before swearing. ‘That large? And without any way to remove it?’

‘Not without focused magical power. It is still possible it will peter out itself. Although now that I have had more time to analyse it, I suspect that it was a deliberate attempt to breach the planar boundaries.’

‘Janaxia, did Zarazonnia tell you anything? You spoke to her a lot.’

Janaxia raised her head, horn-decorations chiming. In the flickering firelight, her horns shone blackly, her makeup exquisite. ‘She seemed to believe she could use it to acquire more forces somehow, although she appeared to be relying on her own ancient knowledge, rather than any terminology I would recognise.’

‘It must have been from that other world! Pulling a load of demons through, use those to bolster her forces. And then probably use that to transport them around or something. Or even just start marching them down from up here, to wherever the closest place is. I doubt they’d be expecting an attack. And then Poratia intervened and then she got betrayed by Ophexia, and now everything’s gone to shit. Probably.’

‘I’m not likin’ the sound of this. Eternal night sounds all kinda vampire-y.’

‘Not good for farms and crops either, I’d think. Right, so what can we do? The Sethans, we can escort somewhere safe. You’ve said there’s not much we can do by ourselves about it?’

‘We would need rather more resources and time. And given that the site was at the middle of a battle, with all sides likely surviving to some degree, then matters are probably even more complicated, I would imagine.’

Stathis sighed. ‘Right. So, what is there that we can do? Other than get the hell out of here? Can we at least send messages to other people and warn them? If teleportation spells can kill people, we should let people know.’

Hakara nodded. ‘I can let some of my friends from the University know? It is harder to get a message through, but I think I can manage something, at least.’

One of the Sethans approached Sen, whispering something, hands gesticulating, before Sen turned to Janaxia, dipping her head in respect and murmuring something to her. Brina continued to knead at Stathis’ shoulders before speaking herself. ‘Sounds like you’ve been goin’ through a lot of shit! Dyin’ must have been pretty rough, before everythin’ else.’

‘Yeah, it’s been… busy. And I’m still not sure what the hell is going on. I don’t suppose any of the rest of you heard a voice in your heads that wasn’t Hakara or Janaxia, talking about slaying the child of dark? Mmmm, yeah, that’s the spot, right where the strap chafes.’

Everyone shook their heads, Semari stood over the fire, flicking her hands in and out as quickly as possible and somehow avoiding being burned. ‘She’s right over there if you want to do it though. Quick and easy.’ The fire flickered faster as Semari’s punches intensified in speed, creating a small breeze, as Stathis heard a mental growl before Janaxia spoke.

‘Tuon raises a point he believes to be of concern. He was in the employee of Yureen Tas-Rutha, one of Zarazonnia’s more sorcerously-inclined underlings. He believes that Zarazonnia’s intent behind starting her conquest here was indeed to bring through allies from another world. Could not the wound between the worlds still burrow through the planar boundaries, just in a rather more unguided fashion? Allowing for rather more disruptive elements to seep through? While I am not the most knowledgeable regarding the inhabitants of the inner planes, then elementals tend to be rather destructive. And if Mother and Ophexia were attempting to seize it for their own power, then it is likely to be a conduit to the more spiritual planes, allowing unquiet spirits and suchlike to break through.’

Hakara’s crystals gave an uneasy chime, the blue light dimming as her fingers flickered through some spell, crystals spinning and whirling through the air. She paled. ‘That is… certainly possible. I saw it theorised once, although more as a joke than anything else, on the grounds that no-one would be stupid enough to try such a thing.’

‘Uh, what does that mean?’

‘The inner planes are the elemental building blocks – earth, air, fire, water, and then the para- and quasi-elemental planes between them. When energy is conjured up, that is typically the source, as well as being the home of elementals and elemental-kin. However, there are also the planes of even more pure energy – positive and negative. I would imagine that you, Stathis, are somehow a conduit to the positive energy plane, as manifested when you glow and imbue healing energy onto others. While necromancers typically draw upon the negative in order to fuel their creations, or cause harm. As the energy on those planes are not filtered through the elements, then they tend to be more overt and disruptive to the usual flow of events. Even an excess of radiance would cause problems, although, admittedly, necromancers do rather more to earn their reputation, while there is no widespread study or school of magic for their counterpart.’

Now that she was in lecturing mode, she was slightly more relaxed, fingers absent-mindedly weaving through her spell.

‘A breach that links all of these, as well as possibly to another world, means that all sorts of things could come through. While some will likely be sucked in and destroyed, it means that there could be elementals, spirits, denizens of that other world, as well as entities without bodies of their own, that will likely attempt to possess whatever they can.’

‘Great. So a hotspot of all sorts of crap, that’s probably going to get weirder and weirder? Hmm, what about time? When I travelled to that other world, then it was out of synch with this one.’

‘I would imagine there would be some harmonisation.’

‘Right. So the fact that demons were being sort of preserved there, is probably bad? As they’ll wake up or whatever sooner?’

‘Yes, that does seem a cause for concern.’

‘Sen, can you ask your colleague if he knows any more about it? Even if it’s just rumours or gossip?’

Sen looked at Janaxia for permission, who nodded, and then she turned and spoke again, everyone else waiting as the conversation went on, Semari leaning in with interest, nodding along.

‘Sounds like all the usual old legendary bollocks. Promised land, forced out and stuff. Although that would make sense for why it’s all crappy and dead, if everything went to shit.’

‘You can speak Sethan!?’

‘Yeah. It’s not that complicated.’ Semari turned to the group and said something, paused and then something else, prompting slightly awkward laughter. ‘See? Although I guess “pigfucker” doesn’t really translate well.’ From the look on Sen’s face, whatever Semari had said was something very unsuitable for polite company, Janaxia’s face darkening in irritation.

If you could kindly stop exposing them to your vulgarities?

‘I’m going to guess they had some prophecy of their own about a champion and everything?’

Semari was faster than Sen to speak, although probably less formal, and using her hands to make horn shapes against her head and nodding at Janaxia was very unsubtle. There was a murmured discussion, one with a lot of sharp looks at both Stathis and Janaxia, before seeming to come to some sort of decision. Semari listened with her head cocked, asking occasional questions, leaving Stathis feeling increasingly impatient before Semari turned around again.

‘Huh, that took a while! So, yeah – exiled from a bountiful land, now cracked and shitty, imprisoned in the sea of ash. Which I guess is the desert? So, like, Zarazonninnannia was going to pull out a load of their ancestors from somewhere and conquer somewhere less shitty to live. And maybe some climactic, end-of-days battle between light and dark? Something like that. Quick stab, could have it over with by next watch.’

‘I’m not stabbing Janaxia!’

I heartily concur! And find it most objectionable how often you recommend it as a course of action, Semari. I only propose violence upon your person when it is wholly reasonable, not as a standard action.

‘That’s not helping! Hey, that’s your shout. Anyway, they were here to do, like, cleaning and cooking and stuff while the rest did the fighting, and then it all went tits up. They seem pretty serious about the Karhacki thing though, and appreciate having Sen around to speak to Janaxia for them. Whole lotta rank issues there I think.’

I do like to think of myself as being elevated above the common ruck.

Stathis tried to move the conversation on. ‘As long as you’re promoting Sen, and paying her enough! So what do they want? As we’ve not really got the resources to deal with them. They’ve got some supplies, and Parth can forage a bit, but this is a lot of mouths to feed. I don’t think you need to be starting a court anytime soon.’

‘True, they will likely slow us down. Not that we appear to have much of a specific plan? Given the scale of events that have happened, perhaps you should focus more on that, rather than finding petty reasons to find fault with myself.’ While, I can’t help but note, being pampered yourself!

‘I was looking after you for quite a while, and that armour gets uncomfortable after a while! You could offer me a massage as well, it wouldn’t be the first time. ’

Janaxia just sniffed and looked away.

‘Well, we’re here now. So, plans – Hakara, rest up, and then tomorrow try and get messages out to let people know not to teleport. Then we can try and figure out where the hell we are, what’s going on, hopefully that an eternal night hasn’t fallen over the whole damn world, and how long it will take to get anywhere useful.’ She sighed in pleasure as Brina’s fingers teased out a knot from between her shoulders. ‘Is there anyone that’s not exhausted and can take first watch? Can’t see there being much out there at the moment that’s going to start something with this many people, but you never know.’

Parth held her hand up. ‘The night falls long. The last watch shall start.’

‘That sounds somewhat ominous, but if you’re volunteering to keep an eye out, I’m not going to disagree. Wake someone else up if you need relief. And if the sun doesn’t rise, then wait until everyone’s somewhat rested, I guess. Janaxia, Hakara, either of you know how long this might last?’

Hakara let her crystals sweep through the air again, before shaking her head. ‘Quite some time, at least locally. It may spread even more widely as well, or cause other odd effects.’

‘Great. Well, we can deal with that later, I’m beat.’ At the moment, even the ground was looking soft and tempting – she could feel herself nodding off already, despite the darkness, barely held at bay by the flickering firelight. She couldn’t even be bothered to do more than nudge her armour into a pile with her legs, slowly slumping into sleep.