Apostles of Doom

The party followed the arch-diocate along the corridor. The winged man proved quite adept at clearing a path in the crowded hallway. Teragdor certainly understood why; the large muscular priest was extremely intimidating, and the fact that his elegant arch-diocate robes actually matched not only his plumage, but his hair as well, made him quite visually striking.

There were two large double doors at the end of the corridor that were opening and closing rather frequently with people going in and out; Teragdor assumed this was the command center. This was quickly confirmed as guards at the door moved to open it for the arch-diocate and his party.

Inside was a very large chamber. Quite interestingly, along all of the walls were arrayed freestanding full-length mirrors on wheeled bases. Teragdor had to blink in some surprise; he was not sure he had ever seen so much glass in his life. While his initial thought was that the people in the command center were worried about vampires; he quickly realized that many of the mirrors reflected locations not inside this room. They were magic mirrors used for communication and scrying, apparently. That would certainly make sense for a command center, and it would still be useful in detecting any vampire spies.

Of course, he was not sure if there were such things as vampire spies. He had never actually encountered a vampire, or a vampyr, or any undead, for that matter. Humans in and around Murgatory tended to have the decency to stay in their graves after death, thank Tiernon, and orcs burned their dead. It was more than a little difficult to reanimate ashes.

He was pretty sure that his experience was about to change. From the sound of the horns, and the bustle and activity in this room, it appeared that an Unlife attack was imminent. Given how put out about the fact that so much heavenly horse power had shown up to rescue one Knight Rampant, he was pretty sure it would be in very bad form for them not to pitch in and help. For one thing, it was pretty clear that being surrounded by Unlife would make getting out to locate Talarius rather difficult. That would probably have to wait until after this siege was taken care of.

One should think that having a bunch of saints and archons raining down from the heavens would allow them to make pretty short work of the Unlife forces. At least, Teragdor hoped they could do that. Stevos had indicated that Sentir Fallon was not in favor of risking any more saints and archons on Nysegard. Apparently they had permanently lost quite a few. That was very disconcerting, given that saints and archons were immortal and if slain in the material worlds, should just return to the Outer Planes.

He was pretty sure that such restrictions would not apply to off-world apostles. Did they? Teragdor wasn’t sure. It went against his training, and in fact, his very nature to see Tiernon’s flocks in danger and not work to defend them. He had taken oaths, as had they all. He just wasn’t sure how up to the task he was, but he was more than ready to try.

The good news was that a mace was his preferred weapon, and all the books said that maces and blunt instruments were typically best for most undead. Squashing them seemed to work best as he recalled, skeletons had nothing to cut, just bones to smash. And one did not want to slice zombies; if you lopped a limb off, rumors had it that the limb would continue attacking you independently of the zombie. Brain smashing was the only option.

They approached a large map table in the center of the room. Teragdor was taken aback to realize that it was a three-dimensional physical map made of painted clay and wooden pieces as various elements. He had never seen such a sophisticated map. It was quite remarkable.

“What news?” Asferóth asked.

Grob looked up at Asferóth, noting the saints and apostles with a cursory glance before replying. “It appears they intend to try and surround us. We have confirmed reports in five of the eight cardinal ground directions, and the three we don’t have are spread out. We have aerial sightings above four of the five cardinal directions.”

Asferóth shook his head. “It has been a very long time since they’ve managed to muster this many forces.”

“Longer than either of us have been alive,” Aeris replied, gesturing to a uniformed and decorated alfar, whose gray hair and youthful visage suggested a Nurel Alfar, a mountain elf.

“Indeed, at least two thousand, if not twenty-five hundred years,” the elf Teragdor assumed to be Vicar Sky Warden Elden confirmed.

“Since you are still here, I assume they were defeated? Do you have records of how that was accomplished?” Stevos asked.

Grob snorted. “We have some, but more in terms of oral history. Twenty to twenty-five hundred years is a long time to preserve paper without the use of magic, or alvaran materials. We do not have the resources to transcribe everything, only the most important things.”