Day Zero

0.0.0

Guildfall

WHAM.

Wintergreen’s heavy paw hammered away at the gates into the tunnel, as she put the full weight of her form behind the blow, but whatever enchantment Nathrael’s forces had placed on it held firm. His attack, she had to admit, had been a masterpiece.

The first thing they had done was soak the very aether with an overwhelming telepathic static, blocking all magical communication across the hall and creating an overarching sense of confusion and panic. One thing the Little Warriors rapidly learned was that the invaders grew stronger with every adventurer’s death, and so they had kept their elite warriors inside while sending Wintergreen and Noxala to escort the students and acolytes to the courtyard outside.

Then, as the Little Warriors learned of the twelve greater demons who had established themselves at key locations throughout the guild hall, and dispatched teams to assault them, the demons had struck harder at the hallways connecting these locations, locking doors and establishing barriers, isolating the Little Warriors into pockets of resistance.

All of this proved to be diversionary, a way of soaking up time. For while the Little Warriors were reacting to all this, Nathrael had moved to the World Tree chamber and begun draining its energies. At every point, the Little Warriors seemed to be stymied no matter what tactic they chose. And every tactic of their enemy had proven to be a layer over a layer over a layer, revealing only when it was too late their master’s true goal.

WHAM. The door still didn’t budge. Then Wintergreen felt her sister push in beside her. Both in the form of gigantic bears, Noxala and Wintergreen struck together, and with a CRACK the twin doors shattered off their hinges and fell as one piece, still held together by the immovable rod being used as a cross brace. Well. If she’d known that, she’d have attacked the hinges first. Behind her, Breac Sunfist – still somehow walking on a shattered leg and with one eye and half his face turned into a slashed and bloody mess – let out a battlecry, and the Little Warriors (what was left of them) surged into their own hall. Waiting for them were quasits, babaus, vrocks. Some of those nasty shadow demons that sapped your strength every time you crossed blades with them. Wintergreen ground them all underfoot, while she struggled inwardly against Nathrael’s greatest weapon…

Despair. It was inescapable, relentless. Everything she did felt futile. She could feel its source, further inside. The Abyrrus, the lords of dread and nightmare. But even knowing the feeling was not normal or natural did not help. It felt right, rational, and reasonable. You couldn’t argue with your own mind. Whisper had given Nathrael all their keys, all their secrets. They were already out of time. The Dark Whisperer had already won.

Whump. It was also smoky, and very difficult to see, so she almost barreled into the back of poor Gus as she charged forward, and the monk had to leap up and spring off her head to evade her. There were dark shapes behind him, and Wintergreen realized he’d been setting his foes up, leading his pursuers into the path of her charge. She battered the first aside to allow Noxala to deal with it, simply trampled the second, and pinned a third to the ground with one paw and bit down on what she hoped was a head. It tasted of ash and sulfur, but at least it didn’t explode in her mouth when it died, as many demons tended to do.

Seeing Gus alive gave her a small sliver of hope to cling to. But her enemies seemed numberless, and – damn Whisper – none of the Halls defenses appeared to be working. And where the hell was Rhillaine?!?

“Can we gather any survivors?” Breac asked around his broken teeth.

“No time for that, lad,” Gus replied.

And so into the depths of the Hall they charged. Noxala was slightly in front this time. She had to jump, as a ball of bloodstained, broken adventurers tumbled out of a library, dragging whoever they could behind them – just before the library itself collapsed behind them. There was a pressure in the air, and a swirl of reality itself, and one poor elven sorcerer who was still too close was sucked back into the room and disintegrated. And then there was nothing behind the door except the cold, lifeless grey of non-existence. The World Tree was dying, and with it was dying the pockets of reality that formed half the hall. Wintergreen could feel the coldness of death close in on her heart, and she stumbled for a moment, causing Noxala to glance back over her shoulder in alarm.

Keep going, Wintergreen growled. We just have to keep going.

Two more rooms, much the same as the last. Their charge had become a grim press through an ever increasingly dense cloud of demons, and now there were undead scattered throughout them, as Nathrael’s champions were turning the Little Warriors own fallen against them. Perhaps there were not so many undead as there could have been. Their initial strategy, allowing the weaker and less experienced adventurers to flee, had done that much good at least.

And finally, there was the door to the chamber of the World Tree. But Wintergreen was spent, in both mind and body, and she could sense the door sealed shut by some powerful sorcery. She felt herself slump in defeat.

There was a primal dwarven scream from her right, and then Gus was hurling himself through the air like a cannonball. He timed his kick with perfection, and the demonic wards shattered before him, and the door flew open.

Inside was a scene of utter chaos. Nathrael towered over the scene, almost half as large as the tree itself, and he was enclosed with it behind some kind of bubble of force. The room was otherwise a roiling ball of demons, with the Abyrrus towards the back, but they seemed largely unconcerned with the Little Warriors who had just burst into the chamber. They were turned inward, toward the World Tree. It was very confusing. Were his forces in revolt? They were demons, it was impossible to predict their behaviour, but surely this day they could not be that lucky. But as Wintergreen peered forward to the base of the Tree, she saw small figures moving, and saw that they were indeed lucky – in a different way.

She saw Fredricka, and Boon, and Droots, and Furious, and several others scurrying about on the far side of Nathrael’s form. Twelve of the Little Warriors most experienced adventurers had somehow found their way ahead of them to the very base of the Tree, and were in a desperate battle with Nathrael himself. And darting about them, facing outward and tending to the shield, was Rhillaine, who had locked Nathrael in with them and prevented his lieutenants from interfering. She had lost her hat, but her staff still glowed with energy as she countered the Abyrrus’ attempts to dispel her wards again and again.

And over the vast, roiling din of the battle, she heard Ser Knight screaming. At the onset of the invasion, their man-at-arms had thrown himself at the base of the World Tree, destroying himself but merging his soul with the Tree’s own, granting it his strength. But there was no force that could hold out against the Dark Whisperer for long. Nathrael was fighting off the best of the Little Warriors single-handedly, while with his other hand he wrote in his book, rewriting reality and draining the World Tree of its lifeforce. And as he did so, Ser Knight’s soul writhed and screamed, on and on, and on.

“In! Everyone get in there!” Breac cried out, launching a fireball into the demon’s midst. “If we can fight our way to Rhillaine, we still have a chance!”

As much as Wintergreen doubted that, there was naught else they could do. Digging deep with herself for strength, drawing from reserves of energy she hadn’t thought she had, she pulled her form up and forward. It was impossible to make any sense of the scene. There was pain, and light, and despair. And a great many explosions, from spells, and from demons in their death throes. All she could do was charge, and slash down with her claws, and bite, and shrug off yet another blast of flame, and charge again. And again, and again…

And then she was face to face with an Abyrrus. It looked like a Dark Star Barbarian. It looked like Ser Knight used to, all jet black armor. But where there should be a skeletal form, or indeed any form at all, the Abyrrus showed only a darkness so complete it was incomprehensible. It stepped forward and slashed down with its blade, and Wintergreen screamed. Her wild form flickered and died, and she crumpled to her knees before it. The blow had hammered at her mind, wrenching away the last flickering embers of hope, and left her a shattered wreck of a woman, barely able to remember her own name.

The demon chuckled as it drew its arm back once more. “Your friends will die,” it mocked her. “But you…you fear us. And you will love us. And I will make you love the way I make you kill your own sister. And then, you will be one of us…”

A shadow fell over Wintergreen then, but it was not the blade of the Abyrrus. It was a titanic mass of fur and claw. There was an unearthly scream, as the Abyrrus, used to towering over its demonic brethren, was smashed to the floor by a four-meter high giant, black-furred bear form of Noxala Wintergreen, and her jaws came clamping down on its helm. Its own weapon slashed up then, piercing the bear in the chest, and Noxala lost her own wildshape. But she would not relinquish her position. Her raw fury now granting her elven form claws of its own, she rained down blows on the Abyrrus, over and over, tearing into it with a savage ferocity, until with a final explosion its spirit shattered, and its armor crumpled into ash.

And then there was an odd quiet. Not a true quiet, for the battle still raged around her, but some source of sound had been removed. Ser Knight was no longer screaming. And at the base of the World Tree, Boon was crying in triumph – as Nathrael had left the Tree, and now focused his attention fully on his assailants. And he was on the defensive. Four of the great champions had fallen, but those still standing were no longer aiming for Nathrael’s form, but for his book, and he seemed hard pressed to keep it out of their reach. And then two of their number leaped, drawing Nathrael’s gaze upward…and allowing a goblin to slip in under his guard, and stab her weapon into the very center of the book’s spine.

There was a shuddering moan, as Wintergreen felt first Nathrael, and then the Tree itself, die. The Abyrrus screamed, as their forms were stunned under the shock of their master’s demise, and they fell under the swarm of the younger guild members. And then Nathrael’s pen exploded, throwing lances of dark ink across the room and rending the entire scene with its madness. Anything the lances touched shuddered, then disappeared – teleported? Destroyed? Rewritten? It was impossible to know.

From the heart of the dying tree, Wintergreen felt…something? Someone? It was familiar, but unknowable, ancient but with the innocent gaze of a newborn. And then there were two small, precious seeds rolling across the floor. But the pen was still throwing its beams of dark ink across the room. One lance of ink struck a seed, and it withered, and vanished. Another lashed out, and Rhillaine threw out her staff in desperation to shield the remaining seed, and Nathrael’s ink thundered into its form and sent it flying across the room towards Wintergreen.

“THE SEED!!!” Rhillaine’s voice screamed across the scene. “PROTECT THE SEED OR EVERYTHING WE’VE EVER DONE MEANS NOTHING!!!”

Eyes wide with sudden hope, Wintergreen threw herself forward towards the seed…or tried to. But a sudden burst of vines from the stonework stopped her. Noxala reached the seed first, grabbed it…and turned, and threw it back to Wintergreen. Their eyes met. Noxala's mouth began to move to say something.

And then a lance of dark ink impaled Noxala in the back. She shuddered, her spine spasming in shock, flickered…and she was gone.

Wintergreen heard nothing else. She barely noticed as Gus flung himself across the room towards her, turning her so the seed would be protected at the last by her own back. With her back turned, she didn’t see – but, in some dim way, felt – as another lance slammed into Gus, and the weight of his form left her, and he was gone. She clung desperately to the seed of the World Tree, screaming without hearing her own scream, as Breac and Kheius and Boon and Alvyn, and every Little Warrior who could still stand, adventurer and student alike, all dived on top of her, forming a human shield around this last symbol of hope. And the pen continued to explode, and of Rhillaine, there was no sign. And then Boon was gone, and Alvyn was gone…

And then the pen sputtered, and fell silent, and the roof collapsed, and a block of masonry dropped straight into this mass of flesh and armor and stone, and whatever a fey spirit is made out of, and scattered it. Wintergreen was still clinging desperately to the seed. She had no breath left to scream, but her mind had seized shut. It simply could not have happened. Nothing mattered any more. Rhillaine was wrong. She had protected the seed…but her sister was gone. Everything she had ever done. It all. Meant. Nothing.

SMACK

What the hell? Her eyes blinked. Someone had just slapped her.

“Ruby! Come on, girl, stay with me here, I need you. Ruby!”

Damien. Of course.

“The seeds’ fine, here, I’ll take it. Snap out of it, please! Come on, girl, at your feet, there he is. One more spell. You can do this, just one spell at a time.”

Breac Sunfist had a spike of marble piercing his heart. He was dying.

With a low cry, Wintergreen fell to her knees, letting the seed fall into Damien Ironbrand’s hands. She scooped up poor Breac’s head, cradled it, and whispered a prayer to the Earthmother. Her hands found the wound in his chest, and she pulled once more from the deepest reserves of her strength. Just as Damien had said. One more spell at a time.

The cleric gasped, and blinked. And then he began stumbling to his feet, failing, now just crawling across the floor of the shattered chamber of the World Tree. He grabbed the fallen form of Kheius, the centaur’s head near crushed under a block of masonry, as he stammered out a prayer to the Sun Goddess. Kheius’s wounds closed, he thrashed for a moment and then steadied.

“That’s it,” Damien called in encouragement. “Focus on those able to heal first, but only spend energy on those you can save. Don’t overthink it, there’s no time for that. We just save who we can. Let’s go, Wintergreen, you go left…”

And Wintergreen went left. And together, she and the Little Warriors saved who they could. One spell at a time.