Having dealt handily with the Order of the Black Banner, Quick Jim stops Sif in the middle of her tossing of the villain's bodies on the Nordic bonfire she has erected to send their souls off to their damnation. With the gleam of a scheme in his eye he argues, persuades and cajoles Belton into bringing back the hapless Wizard, Pudge Whartley, back from his coma with his divine power. Restored to consciousness from the very edge of Pharasma's Boneyard, the wizard, barely alive is promptly force-marched on a trail of tears back to the Traveler's Rest Inn and handed over into the custody of Sheriff Blundde. The groups sleeps a night in the comfort of the in, regaining strength and healing up for the next of the Arthfell Forest's Druidic challenges.
Rising and setting off into the forest with the morning's light, our heroes make their way back quickly and without incident to the former camp of the Black Banners, a mere half a mile through the treacherous woods from the Grove of the forest giant, hinted at on the standing stone of the first Druidic holy-site. Sif and Najáre discover hoofed tracks in the pathway leading into the grove. Sif notes their depth. and that they separate from each other. This is no Elk or Stag picking it's way through the forest. These are the footprints of two bipedal yet hoofed creatures. This wood being storied for its Fairy folk, the sturdy Satyr or slender and mischievous Faun might be near. They are Fey of the old world and should be approached with caution. Looking more closely, Najáre picks up the scent of sulfur, the word in the Common tongue that she uses to describe the strange odor of burning rock. Sif suspects that it might actually be the trace of Brimstone, the telltale sign of Abyssal or Infernal outsiders. Demons or Devils. But here? In a Holy place?
They move cautiously from here to the edge of the next grove. searching for its threats and constantly on their guard for perils. In short order they espy the heavily manacled and chained form of an Elven Aasimar bound cruelly to an ancient sacrificial disc-stone near submerged in the brackish, murky swamp marsh at the base of the dead, colossal tree that dominates this ancient place of fear and bloodshed. As Belton and Sif break left and right through the trees and creep into the clearing, Sif slips down to the water's edge creeping like a serpent through the tall reeds, unseen by all. She starts as she find the dark water of the mire to be full of soft and bloated corpses, some humanoid. She nearly treads on the gray, dead hand of a human girl, lifeless beneath the algae and scum, staring endless skyward but never to rise above the black pool that claimed her life. Sif thinks better of a waterborne approach and slips back through the reeds to the treeline to intercept her cohorts. Najáre and Quick Jim are gone.
Belton, tracking left blunders along the periphery of the clearing, unused to such dismal terrain and unable to hide his passing with the same easy skill as the Nordic ranger. Creeping to the leeward side of the tree he passes through a boneyard of fallen adventurers. Orcs, Humans, Goblins, worse, some days, some weeks and some clearly years long dead. Their arms and armor fallen into the entropy and decays that this place wallows in. His eyes settle on an overgrown corpse of a dwarven Cleric. all entangled with something like a moss or a mold. in it's jumble of leftover finger bones rests a fine and heavy Warhammer crafted in the way of his people. But as Belton pries it from the mud and leaves it's true worth is revealed! The hammer's head is of pure, otherworldly Adamantium. The Warhammer is crafted by a true Dwarven master, it's cunning workmanship inviolable to times terrible march. Brushed free of its coating of detritus, it is as ready for battle as ever. He hefts it in his hands, testing its swing and glad to have lucked-into such a magnificent find at so little cost. He casts about carefully now, searching again for the two hoofed beings that carried something into the grove. His vigilance is rewarded. A hulking shape moves about next to the roots of the great tree. A shape that defines itself into the form of a leathery, bat-winged succubus of unsettling comeliness and allure. Her dark charms tugging at his desires even as her abyssal nature is clear to see. small but sharp horns rise above her luxurious hair, black as the void and framing a flawless face which men look upon and despair. Ever to be the thralls of her impossible beauty, ever to see mortal women as pale shadows of true beauty incapable of inciting lust or desire having been so overshadowed.
Meanwhile Sif, finding no sign of Najáre or Jim Barleycorn, has moved to flank around the opposite shore from Belton. In so doing she catches sight of Jim, covered in mud and swamp vegetation, slipping up to the sunken altar-stone and working quickly and silently on the locks binding the Aasimar woman. Sif, with the sure feet of a warrior born to the wilderness, moves like a fox through the undergrowth only to nearly fall prey to a horrific trap from the black battlefields of the outer realms when Devils and Demons war endlessly with angels in a conflict that spans back impossibly through all time. A landmine forged in the black smithies of The Pit and designed with Fiendish cunning, it explodes outward with a tangle of hooked, spiked chains for yards in every direction, snaring and catching on nearly everything in it's path. Save for the viper-fast Sif, who has leaped to the forest floor, under the flashing iron chains and remained untouched. She witnesses in horror as the Pit-born chains snap taut after catching on various trees and rocks, then inexorably drag everything so struck back to the small portal to the Abyss that they sprang from puling the object down into the darkness and madness of the Outside Realms before snapping out of existence with a crack of foul black vapor that instantly rots the vegetation around it with it's vile poison.
Picking herself up, Sif has been spotted by the terrible Succubus. Events begin to unfold like an avalanche now as everyone springs into action. Quick Jim frees the beautiful Aasimar from her bonds and she springs into a crouch, working her wrists and limbering her fingers for casting. Jim slips through the reeds like a shadow staying below the rise of the tree-roots and out of site of the demon, creeping toward the other side to flank. Sif, never one to shy from battle but separated from her foe by a steep muddy bank, black waters of unknown depth and a tangled rise nearly 10 feet high of moss-covered slimy roots, taker her battleaxe in hand and like mighty Thor, hurls it across the intervening space with the accuracy of divine providence. It crashes into the Succubus' chest passing through her leather cuirass, cutting deep into her tough abyssal hide and splitting ribs as it sinks into her chest.
Seeing the manxome foe so vigorously assaulted, the celestial inquisitor leaps from the far bank of the fen, his wings beating in powerful stokes as he hurtles toward the Demon, swinging back his hammer to bring it crashing into her while her attention is trained on the Viking Raideress. But this is a dire trick on the part of these hellish forces. As he reaches the middle point above the deepest waters, fiery iron chains slick with unnatural venom bust from the water's surface lashing with clear animated articulation and driven at hellish speeds, their barbed hooks pierce through the delicate skin of the half-angel's wings and bind fast, bearing him crashing to the ground as he struggles against the waves of nausea with each pulse of his heart, the black venom of the hooks spreading through his system. He pushes through the sickening effects of the deadly ichor and climbs to his feet, rising to face the demon as she turns. The exalting cry of another terrible foes sounds out through the marshlands from on high. High atop the Giant of the Forest, over 60 feet above the fray, the dark and malevolent form of an Erinyes she-devil passes from it's invisible state into vision, her astounding, otherworldly beauty also crushing to behold. Her eyes dance with infernal pleasure at the suffering of the half-angle below as she raises a crackling headsman's sword formed of the starry void over her head, a blaze of unholy fire roaring along its length and pluming into the iron-grey skies above her. Then she seems to tumble forward. With great sweeps of her black feathered wings she plummets like a meteor to the ground, a trail of vile, blasphemous fire streaming in her wake like a comet.
Losing not a moment, the Aasimar maiden sprints to the angle to push him from the path of this terror but no mortal could cover the paces in time to halt the inevitable. as her graceful fingertips brush his broad shoulders the Erinyes crashes to the forest floor behind him. her sword having missed the awestruck soldier of faith. Or so it seems for a moment. After single heartbeat, the mighty Infernal chains of the water-trap snap taught and his beloved wings that set him free and separate him from the earthbound mortals, fly back in a spray of silver and crimson blood, so cleanly severed in such an instant that the cut didn't even upset his balance. Unable to comprehend what has happened in his pain, Belton goes into a kind of shock, thinking only to get out from in between this wicked Succubus and her diabolical Erinyes partner he totters , all out of balance after a lifetime of the weight of wings on his back, down the drop of the rise toward the water's edge, turning to face the accursed pair as his wings disappear below the black surface of the waters.
In horror at the blasphemy she has witnessed, the Aasimar maiden reaches out with her hand and Sif's sharp axe tears free of the Demon's shoulder and arcs lazily over to the charging Huntress and she scrambles up the incline clambering over the enormous roots of the Giant. Her hand flashes upward and snatches the axe from the air and without breaking the motion, she brings it swinging around again to bite into the Succubus' tough demonic flesh. Still the Beast stands. And her face twists in terrifying rage as she raises her hand to evoke some thaumaturgical torture from the lore of The Pit only to have her vengeance plucked from her fingertips as a blur of sleek, shining fur and razor-like ivory claws flashes between her and the Warrior Maiden, tearing four deep, ragged gouges out of her throat. Her vile curse dies in a gurgle of unintelligible choking as the power of her spell fades back in to the background of the universe from whence it came. The Demon collapses to her knees as a gout of black, dead, acidic, ichorous blood pours from her neck onto her chest and splatters to the ground.
Then the depth of what is truly wrong here is ultimately revealed, instead of gleeful cackling at the demise of an Abyssal foe, as Cosmic Law dictates should noe be coming from the Erinyes mouth, their arises a terrible, piteous, wailing shriek of love and loss and disbelief and rage and passion as the Fair Knight of Hell reveals her true love for her race's sworn enemy. These two were working together. These two shared an unholy, impossible bond of true love. It is the sound of Ultimate Suffering from a being who knows what it is to suffer eternally. So powerful is her despair that the very air of the Prime Material Plane around her begins to catch fire, burning with her poisonous rage and sorrow and dismay and destroying everything that it touches, instantly consuming all in it's absolute embrace. The heroes watch transfixed in horror and disbelief at this ever growing wave of mutilation that spreads from the Devils tortured form.
Then comes a crack of thunder like firmament splitting asunder. a bolt of pure golden light smashes down from the sky, driving the fire of the Erinyes wrath into the sodden debris of the grotto's floor and crushing down the Demon and Devil alike slowly until their very faces are driven, worm-like into the dirt. On the beams of expanding, pure sunlight from the heights of the Seven Ascending heavens, descends a blinding, golden haloed, fiery form with wings like the sky itself. A being of pure light and love and limitless energy and power passes down from the clouds as they part far, affording a generous glimpse at the pure blue skies beyond. Then a voice like the origin of time falls down upon them. The tones of this Celestial, a Solar from the Celestial Choirs, the greatest of all Angels, pacify all in this spreading light.
It speaks in the Celestial tongue owning the fact that because of their true love, he cannot destroy the evil outsiders where they stand. And that because of the balance of the cosmic truce on the Prime Material plane he may not deny them their fair-won prize of Belton's angelic wings. He bids them begone and they creep away to nurse the Succubus' wounds and they disappear in to the dark woods beyond the light with their bloody trophies in tow.
Belton's Father in his Terrestrial Manifestation
It speaks in the Celestial tongue owning the fact that because of their true love, he cannot destroy the evil outsiders where they stand. And that because of the balance of the cosmic truce on the Prime Material plane he may not deny them their fair-won prize of Belton's angelic wings. He bids them begone and they creep away to nurse the Succubus' wounds and they disappear in to the dark woods beyond the light with their bloody trophies in tow.
Turning it's attention to it's wayward son the Solar then speaks further in the TrueSpeech. Belton is admonished for his turning from his ancestral path of law and his courting of mad chaos in his heart. His father gently chides him to return to the one true path. The Inquisitor dares not speak against him. With his peace having been said and a warning that he may only intervene three times in Belton's lifetime, the Angel then turns a gentle and sorrowful hand toward the awful mutilation that has been done to his true-born son. rising to his full height and stature he unleashes a stream of the language of creation instantly deafening every mortal in earshot, for no mortal mind can withstand the power of such words. Then, coalescing into being above his kneeling son's back, there appears first one and then many swords. Sabers, scimitars, falchions dance into being, each made of the purest, skyforges steel of the Outer Celestial realms. Then kris-knives, Kukri and the curved blades of the holy knives of the clerics of ancient Garund form in place as well, the whole of them taking place in the form of flashing, ever-moving wings, constantly passing before and behind each other but always maintaining a winged silhouette outline. with a final phrase the Creation is done and the new wings dance on Belton's back. The Solar begins to ascend into the sky again. he raises aloft his radiant hands and beams of positive energy, the wellspring of life and creations flash down amidst the golden sunlight, healing all wounds among the party of heroes. Restoring their lost hearing. He is seen one final time, eclipsing the slowly closing portal into the Heavens as he takes a final look at his son. and the he is gone and the world is right once again, the clouds slowly reform into the gap created by this otherworldly intrusion. And the group stand in awed disbelief.
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