Year Null. Brass Tower - Heaven

ORLANTHA XATHIA

“What lies in this place, Lady Xathia?” she heard the Bear Maiden ask. Next to them descended a great pit of abyssal darkness, stretching further down than they had climbed despite being in the center of the same staircase. Dark wind howled throughout the ascent like a pack of wolves chasing the incorporeal night—chilling flesh and stiffening joints. The walls were bare save for the tattered flags of civilizations gone to ages no longer in memory.

Orlantha spat down the abyss, cursing it. “Horrendous things, Gíla,” she said darkly. “Things that make our fight on Khirn as pointless as a gnat trying to take down a Tahririan steed.”

“Describe them.” Gíla demanded this rather than asked. “I want to know what makes this place Heaven.”

Orlantha stopped on what was either the six-hundredth landing or the eight-hundredth landing. She had lost count somewhere earlier. Gíla stopped next to her. Dead Sodon clutched in her arms. Orlantha wondered why Gíla cared so much about a dead man before looking back down the abyss. She cleared her throat. The sound echoed shortly in their vicinity and then boomed incredibly some thousand feet below. “Leather-bound beasts with the faces of sharks and the claws of insects. Their blood is not blood. It is colonies of spiders with arms for legs. Human arms. The books you see on the wall are sometimes just that. But other times, they are mimics. Shapeshifters that can take the appearance of anything they wish. I have almost fallen to a few of them. One once had my head in its mouth, but I was lucky. It was old. Toothless. I escaped only barely. Of course, that’s just on some levels of this Tower and only on levels that contain these staircases and great ascendences. Other levels contain bull-like beasts with tumorous flesh. Others have things that resemble dragons with chitinous scales and mechanical parts bleeding pints of oily ichor a second. Once, I was forced to contend with a horde of halfling-like creations with their arms amputated and replaced with maces and swords. Their eyes were cut open, their mouths were stitched shut, and their ears were burned to deaf nubs.” She turned to face Gíla. “There is nothing Heavenly about this place, Drayheller. Accept that soon or find yourself going insane like so many of your guild.”

Gíla was quiet for a long moment. Or was it a short moment that Orlantha stretched into something it wasn’t? She was never sure how time passed, now more than ever, with someone else alongside her in this hell. “How are we to escape such horrors, Lady Xathia?” Gíla inquired with a smallish voice.

Orlantha quirked a brow. She had become used to a certain sense of confidence in the Bear Maiden. To see her drop herself to this was unusual but not unexpected. Orlantha recalled her own shock in morale after the Siege of Acocaea went awry in moments. The denizens of the Brass Tower did little to alleviate that issue. Finally, she said: “Kill them. Run when necessary. Continue looking for anything that can help us escape the Tower as a whole. Perhaps we can find ourselves back in Acocaea.”

“Would we be back in our time, though?” Gíla peered over the edge of the staircase. The abyss greeted her and brought a frown to her already somber expression. “Time flows strangely here, according to that Milligan person. Who is to say it will not be the same for our world?”

“No one says that. We have no idea. We could end up in the past. The present. The future. But it is a chance we must take lest we remain here for the rest of our days. Do you want to?” Orlantha smiled sharply at her question.

Gíla sighed. “Not particularly.”

“Then we climb.”

“Stairs end here,” Orlantha said as they stepped onto the final ascended landing.

Gíla hoisted her arms to further secure the dead Sodon. Another wonder of why Gíla cared so much. “And the Heartforge?”

“Somewhere close, if we’re lucky.”

“Are you not sure?”

Orlantha continued, stepping with careful purpose. Her sword was drawn, her shield strapped to her arm. She was collected. Calm. Pulling from all knowledge of the past few months and all training from her life. Gíla followed closely. “You can never be sure here. Not here. Not this place. It will change on you. It will change you if you aren’t careful. So, if we’re lucky, we can get Sodon here to the Heartforge and get him back up again.”

In the darkness of the hallway they entered, Gíla’s eyes glowed like suns. “What will happen when we do? Will he be like...those things?”

“No.”

“Is it not one of His tools? Tools that he uses to make these things?”

“The Heartforge is not His tool. A stolen tool, more like. From another God. Nn’reo.”

“Nn’reo?” Gíla repeated, aghast. “That’s an Orc-kin god. The-the God of Rebirth.”

“Just so,” Orlantha nodded, peeking around a corner. In the distance of the passage, a thing shuffled into view. Illuminating light from diodes along its body, Orlantha saw all of it. It was armless or rather had its arms sewn into its chest with crude wires. Its face was a gaping, bloodless hole with a ruby crystal hooked to the inside of what skull remained that pulsed in the rhythm of a heartbeat. Orlantha pulled back around the corner and silently motioned to Gíla to move quickly.

“So it is true then? The other Gods were real?” Gíla asked with a strained, almost tear-filled voice as they moved down an opposite passage from the shambling creature. “The stories I have read were real?”

“I suppose so,” Orlantha answered. “To an extent, obviously. I don’t believe any myths state that God is a raving madman with a penchant for remaking mortals into monsters.”

Gíla tried to chuckle. “I do not believe so either. What else have you learned here? Have you seen Him?”

Orlantha stopped at the end of the passage. Barely visible in the darkness, a door stood in front of them, opened by the wheel in its center. Sheathing her blade, she began to turn it. “I have learned some, but probably not as much as you would be able to when given the chance. Enough to lead you around this place. There is...a safe place here that Milligan told me of sometime last month—a study. I’ve yet to find it, but if you...perhaps you can use it to learn more.”

“I hope so.”

Orlantha glanced at the Bear Maiden as the door squeaked open. Sodon was weighing her down. In a fight, Orlantha would have to do everything. That posed a detriment to more than just her life. She could not say what, only that it did. The image of that shambling thing was fresh in her mind. “Gíla...you should leave him.”

“What?”

“Leave Sodon behind. As I said, I’m not sure we will even find the Heartforge; he is just weighing you down. More than that armor you are wearing.”

“How can you say that? I can carry him just fine; it isn’t an issue.”

Orlantha scoffed. “Gíla, even if we find the Forge, we might not be able to use it correctly. It would be a wasted trip.”

Gíla nearly yelled. “I’m not leaving him behind! He is a good man who does not deserve to die in this place.”

“No one does, but he is dead. That is set. And so far, we have only climbed stairs and walked hallways. No sign of the Heartforge. It would be a waste if we get there and it does nothing.”

“He should have a second chance. He does not deserve this. Not after what he went through, not after—”

Orlantha had to push the Bear Maiden out of the way to keep the rapidly lunging thing from tackling her to the ground. The hallway was confined, almost claustrophobic, and Orlantha no longer had the time to draw her sword. The thing’s ruby face raced with a rapid heartbeat, a hum of noise emanating from the hollowed-out pit that was its neck. It thrashed at the knight, attempting headbutts and kicks. Orlantha pinned it to the wall with her shield, her arms straining as the thing’s strength was unexpectedly equal to hers.

Gíla’s hammer crushed its head the moment Orlantha’s shield lowered and cracked the wall behind it. The thing flopped to the ground. Orlantha turned to the Bear Maiden, who carefully placed her hammer back onto her hip and picked up Sodon from the ground.

“I’m not leaving him behind,” Gíla declared. “I’ll be able to fight as necessary. Tell me to leave him again, and I will...I will...I will leave you behind.”

“Very well, Bear Maiden,” Orlantha said with a smirk. Gíla’s eyes flashed with discontent, likely at the expression. “Let’s keep searching?”

“Yes, let’s.”

The room they entered was unusually well-lit. Torches, candles, and braziers dotted a great stretch of stone pillars, shattered marble sculptures, and preserved plaques. Tables also dressed the room, themselves dressed in old tablecloths with journals and books laid on them. A remarkable statue of iron was at the front of the room, directly blocking the next staircase up. It held a greatsword in both hands, a massive kite shield hooked to its back. Gíla was impressed—awed, even. Orlantha was wary. “Be careful in this place,” she warned, sword drawn again. “Let nothing distract you from our goal.”

“Is this not the study?” Gíla asked.

“I doubt it,” Orlantha answered, eyes glued to the statue.

“You doubt many things,” Gíla muttered with a snark tone.

“It is my job to doubt. Keeps Lord Anthiti alive. Keeps me alive.”

Gíla placed Sodon on one of the tables after testing its stability. “Is that why you doubt the rebellion we fight in so much? Doubt the people who lead it, like Jira? Doubt the difference between us and a single Dwarf who tried to kill you in Aqella?”

Orlantha stared hard at the Bear Maiden. “You have yet to answer that question.”

Gíla shook her head. “There is no answer to give that would satisfy your inane curiosity, I’m afraid. If you cannot figure out the difference between the two yourself, then I am not going to waste my time trying to explain it to you.”

“So declares the supposed professor of the rebellion,” Orlantha mused.

“You sure are talkative for two people trying to sneak through danger,” said a drawling voice.

Orlantha cast her eyes and sword over to the tall man in the green and black coat leaning against a pillar. “Milligan.”

“In the flesh, my dear Orlantha,” he said with a bow. “How long it has been.”

“Only a month,” she said, lowering her sword. “Which is not nearly long enough to soothe the irritants of your voice.”

Milligan shrugged a shoulder and looked to Gíla. “Big lady. Glad to see you alive and well.”

“Where’s the Heartforge?” she asked immediately. Orlantha blinked in surprise.

Milligan held up a hand. “Woah, slow down there, big lady. Let’s get properly acquainted here—”

Gíla approached the enigmatic man, her eyes blaring gold and angry. “You know how to navigate this place; you must know for the Heartforge is. Get us to it.”

“What makes you think I can navigate this place?”

“Logical deduction. You found us. You’ve been here likely far longer than anyone else I know of. So where is it?”

“I can’t say,” Milligan answered. Orlantha knew it was the truth, one of the few truths the man ever uttered. “This place changes all the time. I found you two because you talk so much. Which, I might add, has attracted quite the horde a few levels down. You might want to hurry and keep moving.”

Gíla walked away from the man after sharing a glare with Orlantha, throwing her hands in the air and grumbling. Orlantha approached Milligan and pointed to the statue. “Our way out is through that, but it’s blocked. Any idea of how to move it?”

Milligan stared at it. “Oh, yeah. I can think of one.”

Orlantha could not take her eyes off the statue. An idea came to mind, and her heart sank. “Does it involve fighting it?”

Milligan snorted. “Yeah, it does. Isn’t He just great like that?”

“No. Kill Him quicker.” Orlantha moved toward Gíla, tending to the dead Sodon’s more apparent wounds, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Bear Maiden, ready your hammer. We’re on.”

The Bear Maiden cocked her head. “How do you mean?”

Orlantha motioned to the statue. “Fighting that.”

Gíla groaned loudly. “You cannot be serious. Why? Why do we have to fight that? For what specific reason do we have to fight that? Can’t we just find another way?”

“Other ways are blocked by the growing hordes your chitter chatter built up,” Milligan announced. “And it’s just what you have to do to move on.”

Gíla rubbed her eyes. Orlantha pitied her. She had spent many years telling tales to her guild, espousing her own opinions on the matter in the mean as she did. Orlantha had held her own opinion that the Bear Maiden believed many of these stories to have been true in some aspect or another. But now, she was being faced with the improbability of it. The insanity of it. The “why is it like this” of it. She confirmed as much when she spoke. “This isn’t a fairy tale, Milligan. The-the-the logic behind having to-to-to-to fight a statue of iron to move up the next flight of stairs is something out of a-a children’s story. Make-believe. Tall tales. Myth! That makes-that-it-that makes no fucking sense.”

“Myths exist for a reason, big lady,” Milligan smiled. “You think this place is bad? Wait till you see the rest of the world.”

Gíla slammed a fist into her hand. “It is not moving. We can sneak past it, right?”

“It will once you attempt to move past it,” Milligan announced. “Motion sensor. Big upgrade He’s been working on with His creations. Want me to look after your dead boy?”

Gíla slumped. Defeated. Orlantha pitied her more. “I suppose you’ll have to.”

The iron statue had kicked Gíla across the room the instant they approached. Orlantha was uncertain if the woman was dead or merely unconscious. She had collided with one of the pillars, crashed into a sculpture, and yelped as stone and marble buried her—a catastrophe of art on its own. Orlantha grimaced. Milligan chortled.

“You know, you could help!” she shouted as the construct swung down with its greatsword. The ground beneath them was split at the impact sight, with fracture lines spreading out in vein-like formations.

“I could,” he extended the word like a snake’s hiss. He sat on the table next to dead Sodon, reclining on his hands with a wide grin. “But, I also have to consider what a great moment of growth this is for you.”

Orlantha avoided another attack, grunting loudly as the air before her face was sliced thin. Through the veil of that damage to reality, she saw something. An old man hobbling through a workshop with two others. A man in rainbow armor and a woman of Belanore. “Growth? What the hell are you on about? I don’t need to work on anything right now, Milligan. I just want to go up the next flight of stairs.”

Milligan clapped. “Come on, Orlantha! You have to acknowledge some things about you that need fixing.”

Orlantha rolled under a wide swing. Her sword arched into the calf of the construct, slicing through a few inches of the metal. Trickles of bubbling oil leaked from the wound, trailing down the metallic form like weeds. “Not exactly what’s on my mind right now.”

The construct swung again and again. Sculptures, torches, and pillars were all brought to ruin by the statue’s rampage, reducing the art of this room into a new design—an artistic display of ruination. Orlantha breathed slowly and calmly, never letting herself push too far beyond her physical limits to get a quick edge. That wouldn’t work here. She attacked when she could, cutting where she could. The ground was soon desecrated with splits of the greatsword and trails of black oil that sizzled in the cold air and howling wind. A hack to the construct’s right knee brought it low momentarily, allowing Orlantha to swing at its neck. Her blade chipped off the metal as the construct rolled impossibly to let the sword hit the shield on its back. It rose to its feet and retrieved that shield, bearing the sword in its opposite hand.

“I prefer the rebellion,” Orlantha said as the construct lumbered toward her.

Blow after blow was traded and avoided, each of Orlantha’s attacks deflected by the monstrous kite shield the construct now wielded.

Milligan laughed. “Sword ain’t going to work no more. But look at you. You’re as big as the bear! Look at your arms! Fight that thing. Punch it!”

Something large and black-armored erupted from the debris of the construct’s first attack. Gíla charged the construct, her face a mask of primordial fury. The Bear Maiden did as Milligan requested. Her fist, clenched hard as a chunk of arcaenic stone, collided with the statue of iron’s left shin, cracking it inward. Oil erupted geyser-like from the split metal.

“Piss off!” Gíla roared as she sent a flurry of blows into the construct’s body, shield, and face. “I will not have my story end because of some ridiculous requirement to climb a bloody staircase.”

Oil spurt from each impact and finally burst like a volcano as the Bear Maiden quickly switched to her hammer and sent a crashing blow down onto the top of its head. The construct roared—no, something inside it roared. It slammed its shield into the ground, a surge of blue shooting from its hand to its back, which opened up like a door. Something slid out from it, a thing of ooze with pockets of flesh and air-bubbled muscle here and there. It rose to its feet, bending its body with slopping, suckling sounds to avoid injury as Orlantha and Gíla immediately went at it with hacks and slashes. Milligan laughed more as the oozing creature slithered to the bottom of the stairs and shaped itself into a creature resembling a knight. Tahririan. Scale plate for armor with a blue cloak, tabard, and finely crafted doublet underneath it all.

“I hate this place,” Gíla said.

Milligan and Orlantha answered in unison. “Me too.”

Milligan continued. “Now you see why I’m going to kill the man. He made it all...this.”

From its arms, the creature produced twin curved swords, single-edged. Wordlessly, the three engaged. Around the room, they fought, trading blow after blow, with neither warrior gaining an advantage despite wounds being dealt on both sides. It was a crash of reality, understanding, how the world should have been, and how His Heaven should have been. Gíla bellowed in a fury, an ancient energy corrupting the peaceful Bear Maiden into a castrophony of brutality. With each hammer blow the creature deflected, the Bear Maiden lunged at it with a fist or a gnashing bite, crunching armor with the impunity of a barbarian. But it opened her up to be slashed and stabbed in a dozen places. Orlantha was dextrous and precise in her attacks, belying her size and strength. Yet, for each piercing of a weak point, the creature caught her dexterity with grotesque power and cut her armor and flesh like fresh bread.

Milligan sat back and laughed, audibly counting the wounds dealt.

Finally, a break was made. Orlantha ducked low and swung up for the creature’s exposed neck as it reared back for a twin-bladed swing. Gíla braced her body to take the attacks and lunged at its face with a hard fist. Metal sliced corruption; metal sliced flesh; flesh crushed corruption. The creature melted into a pool of itself as its helmeted head crashed into the bottom of the stairs, its blades lodged in Gíla’s left arm to the bone. With a grunt, she removed them and let the blood flow freely. Orlantha stared at her and, for a moment, felt fear. Gíla’s eyes were no longer gold.

Until they began to ascend the stairs, the Bear Maiden’s eyes a pitch black ringed with red.

The four - three living and one corpse - reached the top of the new staircase just as the horde broke into the room they had swiftly departed. Hundreds of them were below, following the trail of destruction and death they left in their wake. Orlantha felt a tinge of worry that they would catch them sooner than later, but that was before she truly examined the area around her now. Before them now was a great hall, more like a cathedral, with six doors on either side within the wondrous brass-silver aisles. Rows upon rows of pews lined this cathedral’s nave, with more filling the gaps between the doors in the aisles. At the far end was raised dais and lectern. Behind that were cushioned seats of honor, far too large for human bodies. Far too large for any mortal body. Behind that was an incredible stained-glass window that offered muted glimpses into the wasteland outside. Above them, chandeliers of candles lit the room with a comfortable warmth. Warmth. Orlantha noted this last. It was no longer cold, and there was no wind.

“A Hall of Contemplation,” Milligan said, strolling ahead. “Once a place common in the other realms of the Gods before the fall. Guess ol’ Aedol couldn’t let his precious freak tower go without one. The bastard.”

“What fall?” Gíla asked.

“The Godfall,” Milligan answered with a mirthful, almost childlike tone. “The end of everyone else, back when the powers in charge were uniform in their control of the universe, with bad apples here and there. Every pantheon needs a few bad apples. Apocalypse myths and all that.”

“Explain,” Orlantha ordered, rushing the man in the green and black coat. “The silos, the staircases, the creatures, the wasteland outside, everything else I will let go unspoken for now, but this? This will be explained.”

Milligan nodded and beckoned the two to follow. Orlantha kept pace. Gíla lagged behind, marveling at the architecture. Milligan stroked the plaits of his beard with one hand as he walked and used the other in motions to emphasize his words. “I’ll start with the present, yeah? Put into words you can digest. Your rebellion below on the world is nothing more than background noise, I’m afraid. You were going to learn that eventually, but now is good a time as any. Maybe it will give you a chance to get things a bit more in your favor.”

“What do you mean?”

“This analogy works if you let it. Think of your life as a card game. A lot of players are at the table trying to win the game. The only thing is that every one of those players has a winning hand. Another thing is that they are all, ultimately, working together to win the game for the same exact reason, whether they know it or not. Kind of ensures things are a bit skewed in terms of fairness. Your Queen Aslofidor is the biggest player of them all and is the reason this game is even happening, with the Runearch trailing after her. Soon though, that pissant son of hers is going to take over for his mother, take her hand, and that’s when things are going to get really fucked up. You fellows don’t want to be in your current situation when that happens. You need to be outside of your destined fate. Thankfully, you are somewhat already out of it while you’re in here. Barriers between the realms keep things like that in check.”

“Destined fate?” Gíla caught up to the two.

Milligan stopped to sit in a pew, crossing his legs and sighing. “Aye. Destined. The players hate the idea of the game not being fixed for them. So they started tampering with the weaves of fate. Mutating it. Pretty much everyone in Khirn and Aqella is affected by it. The lives of everyone not at the table are now inextricably forced to ensure that the fixed result is met for the players. The rest of the world...eh, not so much, but if the game is won the way they want it to be, then that won’t matter. They will have won.”

“What do they want to win?”

“What don’t they want to win?” Milligan asked in turn. “Power, glory, power, power, and power. All it comes down to is a bunch of mortal shitheads learning about things they shouldn’t have, deciding they want to meddle in the affairs of things beyond them, and only getting by because the one living or awake piece of shit that could stop them just so happens to be Aedol, who your Queen and Runearch somehow got to agree to this madness...well, as much as the man can agree to things. Hell, he’s the cinch in their plan. Without Him, they got nothing but dreams. So now they have this rebellion going on to fuel up the juices of violence necessary to kickstart things into gear. Give God the pounds of flesh He needs.”

“So the Belanorians were right...Duke Audax was right?” Orlantha mumbled in confusion.

Milligan snapped his fingers. “Yes, ma’am.”

Orlantha sat in the pew opposite Milligan. “But what happens if Duke Audax wins? What happens if he kills the Queen? The Runearch? The Runemaster?”

Milligan’s grin was wolfish and unsettling. “Do you think the Duke isn’t a player at the table, Orlantha Xathia? What could a Duke ruling the largest city in Khirn stand to earn from such a game?”

“Then the game is still won...” Orlantha said the words with pain in her voice.

“Of course, you turn out to be right doubting the fucking Duke,” Gíla swore, stomping up the nave with thunderous steps.

Milligan shifted in the pew and leaned onto his knees. “The winner doesn’t matter in the end, Orlantha, because they all stand to win the same thing.”

“What is it? What’s the winnings?”

Milligan initially said nothing, only gazing at the gargantuan seats of honor on the dais. Orlantha understood immediately. “Aedol won’t be alone anymore. But they won’t be how they used to be. Nuh-uh.”

“How bad?” Orlantha leaned onto her knees as well, fear chilling her voice. “How bad will it be?”

“What they come back as will make the shit inside this Tower pale in comparison, Orlantha. You can kill a God, and that does its own kind of damage. But reality fixes itself to allow it. It has to. But you bring one of them back...you bring all of them back? Orlantha, you don’t bring a God back.”

“So what’s the plan then? How...how do we stop it?”

“Simple, really,” Milligan said with a grin. “We kill God.”