Winter Spring

"Well done!" I smiled down at Iris, curling up beside me to begin a recovery cycle. Then cast a look at Eban's shocked visage before turning to look at the nightmarish darkness pouring from the 3rd Eye, the calcified stone covering the 8th Eye, and the gaping maw of the 5th Eye, feeling my name fill the thoughts and cross the minds of the countless bodies suffering within the caverns.

I had judged them and would judge infinitely more, both on this day and in the days to come. Yet, I would still not heal unconditionally, thus their mortal wounds largely remained unhealed. The worthy crawled around in agony, their guts trailing behind them, their skin sunken from the lack of body fluids; skulls and torsos were missing chunks, their wounds becoming infected by the noxious fumes lingering in the air.

Moreover, I would make no more offers; at least in these Falls. Any who could not accept their death had to make offers to me or my troupe, lest they found a way to heal on their own. And so, acknowledging that thought, I flicked my roach over the balcony, then turned to see the shadows coalescing into lithe legs and slender arms of violet-slate skin attached to the body of a towering, well-endowed drow that stole all of Eban's attention.

Sovereign Galendra stalked toward Eban before he could fully turn to her, his eyes dancing up and down her curves as he said. "Well hello."

She remained silent until she was nearly pressing her nose to his. Then her serene hiss danced into his ears. "I presumed you would have agreed to your pact by now, Wizard."

"I- I… am unsure what… power I should subscribe to." Eban nervously droned, unbridled lust fueling his eyes.

"Mine." She whispered, and I felt some of my divine mana flowing along with her intent. It rippled into his mind, expanding into visions of Eban swapping between drow and draconic forms much like her newfound divinity allowed her to; an idea that shocked even me.

"Well then, I'll leave you to it," I said, throwing down a small temporal domain before sitting to meditate next to Iris.

As the abundant necrotic ki began flowing toward my spirit to replenish my ki ponds, a sliver of my consciousness remained focused on the Troupe. Specifically, the pack of winter and springtime wolves prowling the edge of the Zimysta's 7th Leg, House Maerae.

Like its corresponding eye, its edifice was a sickening face of formless stone that seemed as if it'd been melted and cooled a dozen times over. No intricate designs or statues were wreathed in faerie flames, only rippled stone and hardly distinguishable entry points that somewhat resembled a spider's underbelly; for the quirk of House Yril'Lysaen was the demonic blood flowing through their veins; and House Maerae was charged with summoning their fiendish kin and interbreeding them with their slaves.

Being isolated as the Falls' left radial eye allowed them to fester unbothered much like the calcified 8th house across the way. The smell of hot beeswax, burning rubber, boiling shit, and sour eggs permeated the House's outer yards, increased tenfold by the celestial snouts of Geri's crew.

They watched the crude amalgamations of humanoids, spiders, and demons shambling in the dark from afar, plotting routes inside while all but gagging at the smell and the slaves corrupted forms; as was I.

Spider eyes grew like tumors throughout their skulls, if the yellow pits could even be called eyes in the first place. Hairy, wax-covered legs twitched and writhed unnaturally, jerking their hosts around by the sockets formed within their blown-out rib cages. Fangs, spinnerets, crude limbs, and fiery bits grew in the most undeserving of places; and those were only the most common features, developing each time their tortured wounds were readily healed amidst all this fear, pain, despair, and chaos; their demon's most common reported affinities.

As for demon kind's most common enemies, there were devils, of course, but celestials too; and demons could sense them like flies smelled shit.

The scattered sea of heads turned the instant Geri stepped down from her perch, then surged, voraciously clawing and climbing over each other in a blind hormone-induced rage.

Undeterred, Geri responded like a ranger raised by a necromancer, pouncing laterally to race toward the Eye along the wall while her sorcery poured from her wake like a waterfall.

The winds of winter fell rather than water, however. It cascaded down the wall like a glowing curtain that followed the interior contours as it rippled down the Falls, leaving behind a gelid field of compacted ice that crumbled and rose, hardened and detached into faux skeletons that charged with all their might.

Glacial spears of ice clashed with flaming claws of chitin a dozen times per second. Yet, for either side, it went unnoticed.

Geri's conclave followed her above the fray, their paws leaving giant arcane snowflakes in their wake as they strode through the air, releasing all manner of spells toward the House's entrance and the army gathering around it. Amplified yips raced from Katheryn's snout in waves, with some shattering the drow forming up along the face and others burying into the ice-encased rock to infuse the vibrational energy within.

Dusty snow clouded the outer yard as spires fell from the Eye to crash onto the sea of souls or be caught or cut by the countless webs twanging across the space. Yet the conclave spurred forward on their newfound footholds; or in Rhonda's case, lifted and welded them into ramps and stairs for the rising undead masses behind them.

With her undead below and her forces above, Geri formed the speartip of a blizzard that barreled through the eye's pupil- a pinpoint of an opening she scouted from afar.

The blue-white streak funneled through it and blossomed down the path of least resistance, cracking and splitting the stone as it carved a crossed scar on the eye. Vibrant blue-white mana poured from the wound like blood, staining the stone with frost that crumbled into more frozen skeletons that were sent tumbling as the winds of Geri's trailing subordinates passed over them, pulling them onto the eye's untouched parts to break through the stone.

A pinpoint of light in the pupil was the sole exception; a veritable star in the form of a mad king, his crown gilded and glowing with the heat of a furnace as his glare shifted from the demon slaves and undead behind him to the celestial werewolves and demonic drow before him.

It was almost as if he was pouting, the way he moved next. The Umbra Emperor's clenched fists reached up, his eyes rolled back and glowed red, and then the rage of Shujen's Flaming King blew the eye apart.

The igneous shockwave made the stone flash to magma faster than the celestial ice encasing it could melt. Thus it didn't undulate beneath the pressure, it was blasted apart into a field of magma-filled comets.

They rained on both sides indiscriminately, hissing as they soared and whistling as they broke apart into clouds of ice and stone shrapnel. Countless slaves were peppered and blown into a pink mist, leaving the stronger ones to huddle beside the lowest-ranking drow males and hold their chitin carapaces in line with the domes of compacted arcana. Those at the center of their makeshift phalanx poised their hand crossbows and mutated limbs above to launch scattering spells and nets of cobwebs at the scattered werewolves, no matter how many undead surrounded them.

While those in the outer yard weren't a concern, those gathered in the House's first few levels were greater in number and station; namely, those in Geri and Ruel's path.

Theirs was a wide tunnel lined with hardened red-black resin akin to some type of Xeno hive. Ripples and deep folds were seen every several meters, either being alcoves or branching paths packet tight with demon spiders and drow.

To no surprise, many of their fingers reached out to Geri and the arcana reacted, limning her frame in the harmless crimson fire of faerie flames.

Knowing their attacks would be focused on the illuminated target, Ruel skipped to the wall, hopped to the ceiling, and pounced before Geri, her celestial arcana packed densely in her throat.

A soundless howl sent a shockwave rippling down the tunnel, parting the masses into a gaseous red sea that left a hard vacuum in its wake. Drow and slaves alike fell to their knees, clutching their throats while attempting to manifest air from the arcana, only to have it dissipate or fail to form the oxygen they needed.

To make matters worse for them, the undead horde swept over them like a steaming blizzard as the werewolves pressed on. Frozen skeletons slayed the lesser mutated slaves where they stood frozen like the waxy chitin of their tiny demon spiders, their hides having been raked by the gelid claws of winter wraiths. Yet, for each that fell, more took their place.

From behind, ahead, above, below, and to each side, a horde of demons swept in to match the undead 2 to 1. Slaves and drow supported them from all angles, crawling atop the resin walls with the same fluidity as their arachnid companions to add to the frenzy.

Through it all, Geri's conclave kept moving; kept racing toward the House's inner sanctum- an ovoid cavern of pulsating resin akin to Reina's Flesh Kitchen, only much more disturbing and with significantly less purpose. Its design was haphazard. Clusters of chitinous eggs swung by waxy webs at all angles and altitudes, warmed by the smoke of bronze braziers and stone sconces implanted into the walls. Their translucent surfaces depicted ungainly sights as the light passed through them, adding to Geri's disgust tenfold.

It seemed as if she would throw up, the way she doubled over on her hands and knees. Yet, a gelid wind began picking up around her as celestial arcana began pouring from her spirit, covering her form in frozen vines that braided themselves into matted fur, hardened her fingers into glowing claws, and elongated her snarling snout into something feral; then she howled.

Ruel's howl followed, trailed by the howling of Norsh, Penny, Rhonda, Lula, Ruel, and Lemeia; all amplified by Katheryn's magic to freeze the eggs over and rupture their contents, adding to the expanding shockwave of red gelid mist. They did not linger, however. The conclave dove into the expanding frozen plains beneath the cover of chaos, falling into their niches to focus fire on the more powerful drow Lula saw fit to 'sponsor.'

Her voice echoed throughout the House as she narrated the drow's actions to fluster and open their defenses in the same breath. The undead horde swarmed them in droves, aided by the works of those who summoned them.

Norsh was the first of them. Her short, corgi legs seemed to trip as she zoomed around the basin, putting her on a tumble over the snow, stone, and discarded weapons, forming a snowball that steadily increased in size as she rolled up the wall and lifted off, arcing toward the room's center to remain suspended as a mechanical comet- a comet castle, with the halfling barbaric artificer at its center.

At her command, the comet's surface cracked, and drank the ambient celestial arcana in the same breath, morphing the chunks of gelid materials into the mechanical forms of jackals, coyotes, and wolves. Penny indirectly assisted her, following dwarven tradition by singing a prayer to the World Weaver while she thrust her enchanted war banner into the cavern's basin.

The blue-white power of their sorcery blended with the silver-blue radiance of moonlight beautifully, creating a veritable O-type star before the underlying forces of gravity tinged it purple.

The violet light bathed the roiling cavern with full discrimination, ignoring the fighting masses in favor of the frozen fields beneath them. The ground groaned in response, quaking and shivering as if an ancient giant had been awoken. The arched ceiling crumbled like melting ice caps, releasing countless tons of ice to orbit Norsh's castle, simultaneously liberating the ground of demon spider resin to be claimed by the war banner.

The enemy screeched, howled, and bellowed in protest of the violet-blue star cascading into the war banner before it plunged, invoking a silent wail as the frozen stone adopted a steely blue hue.

The undead leaped, dodged, or froze as the wave swept beneath them, then scrambled as the ambient celestial energy bloomed into a winter wonderland. The enemy became all the more enraged as frosted grasses began to sway atop every surface. Geri's forces grew all the more enthralled, releasing more energy to grow frozen flowers and glacial trees to replace the webs once cast throughout the House.

Rhonda was perhaps the most zealous of them. She was a Clerical Artificer like Penny, albeit a cleric of the ArcaTech, and thus worshiped me by pouncing across the environment with her mana cores flowing freely, felling frozen trees and lifting flora, discarded materials, and body parts to weld them into golems, canines, and traps charged with her electrical mana.

Even then, with all their work and with all that fell, their accomplishments were just the start.

It turned out that hellfire and celestial ice were evenly matched. The cannon fodder fell; them, and those just above them. Aside from whatever their matron saw fit to leave in their precious tower, the primary demonic drow, slaves, and spiders of Zimysta's 7th Eye and Leg were all that remained; and they were relatively unscathed. Their misshapen maws drooled scalding fluid on their chitin to have it retain its normal viscosity, even as they frenzied.

Just because it was the start did not mean the end would take long, however.

One particularly unsightly demonic drow latched on to Ruel's scent as she strode through the snow-capped fields. A flaming claw snatched her tail mid-stride and tossed her across the cavern like a sack of rice, then leaned forward to flex, causing the waxy flesh on his back to bulge and burst as two spider limbs reached out to drape over his shoulder, their barbs dripping with ominous intent.

Ruel, on the other hand, only smirked after landing, and then she too leaned onto her paws and shuddered as the air surrounding her form shifted into green flowers and grass that wreathed her form, twisting and writhing into muscle and dark fur formed from the very air.

There was no howl to accompany her transformation, or her leaning back to tower on her hind legs. She only lunged, snarling while the green air surrounding her claws condensed into massive blades.

The speed of her attack caught her enemy off guard but the spectral claws did nothing more than fling him across the room, albeit with enough force to report a dull thud before he bounced back like a rubber ball. Ruel matched his speed, flicking out her hand to wreath him in green faerie flames before she drew back her arm, pulling her celestial arcana into an air cannon of a lance.

The spell took the shape of a spring green songbird as it raced forward to punch through his chitinous skin and bloom upon lancing his liver, reducing a third of his belly to roiling black goo while the rest of him went flying. Yet, the demonic energy within him was so potent that it healed him just as fast.

He bounced back into the fray with the same gusto as last time. This time, however, Ruel allowed her bestial side to take over and give chase, freeing her drow side to look inward and connect with the latent energies that came with her station.

She moved past the frozen winds of winter and the thawing waters of spring to feel the Blistone spread by Penny's war banner and the wintery flora that grew from it; and from them, the drones her new companions made. Mechanical beasts much like the Squid Squealer she was so intrigued by.

My arcane circuits glowed once she finally connected to Geri's branch of technology. In turn, the ArcaTech jumping spider in my hair scrambled down to bite my temple, throwing apologetic messages through the net while he literally drank the engineering essence of my divine mana.

Each greedy gulp ballooned him in size; first from the size of my thumbnail, then to my fist, and on to my head, where he was forced to stand on my shoulder to take one final sip before pouncing into the darkness.

I watched it appear through the darkness a moment later behind Ruel before it dipped into the snow without her noticing; what she did notice was her sorcery cascading from the ambient environment into a point beneath the snow.

Given the context, she assumed it to be a demon countering her energy, thus she cocked her legs, making celestial arcana pool around her feet before it shot her into the air. As she reached high, the giant snowball above began to collapse, its mass cascading into a massive spectral claw she swung down with a snarl.

Her opponent casually danced between her claws, even as the gouges she carved across the enemy ranks made the ground quake beneath him, Yet Ruel reacted accordingly, using another air pillar to launch herself toward the drow, her dirk poised before her. He, however, gathered arcana in his sternum and his corrupted skin roiled in response, increasing in mass and density to the point of the blade clanging harmlessly off its surface.

Ruel's momentum sent them on the tumble. Going with the flow, she maneuvered herself above the drow before reversing the flow of her air pillar with a bang, sending them rocketing into the frozen lake formed in the ruined house; him roaring and her snarling for several meters until they slammed into the basin, releasing the unstable mass above to bury them in place.

Inhaling deeply, Ruel then grasped onto the weaker side of her sorcery and poured it through the surrounding arcana to deprive the enemy of nice things by grabbing hold of it with an iron fist. Her snarling maw peeled into a grin as she and the ice flexed around them, crunching and cracking as it compressed them beneath a solid ice sheet.

She exhaled before the demon's scalding flesh could act, injecting a green breeze into their prison to turn the cracked ice into a roiling celestial spring.

A bubbling eldritch yowling rippled from the lake as the demon-drow began writhing in protest, clawing at Ruel with all his limbs while his feet scrambled for the surface; yet he didn't seem to be swimming or drowning, only flailing.

Being wreathed in a veil of air made evading him far too easy for Ruel, given the ease by which she sunk her claw into the drow's shoulder, allowing her to pull him into the most devastating uppercut.

The predator in her made her unrelenting, however. Even as his feet rocketed off the ground, Ruel gave chase, unclenching her fist to dig her claws into his ribs. The rest of his body jerked into Ruel's remaining claw as his momentum was arrested, then began the flailing; the snarling; the lashing of his grotesque limbs against Ruel's hide; the hisses at the sight of her wounds freezing over, and the yowling at the vernal energy rushing down its maw before his angst turned to panic, for her mechanical beast had awoken.

Upon diving into the frozen expanse, the ArcaTech jumping spider scrambled to do like it did to me and drink as much winterized stone, steel, and flora before turning on its cousins- the winter drones, blue steel beasts, and even the undead to redistribute its internals components, protect its core systems, and create internal modules within its carapace; all in mere moments.

In mere moments, the ArcaTech spider grew from the size of a standard carriage to that of a standard house and maneuvered below Geri, where its feet vibrated the bedrock to gravel and sent it swirling amidst the air, water, and Ruel's springtime sorcery to weave its hair, form its scales, and fabricate its final internal components; and weapon.

As the spring green energy wove the abundant materials into a turreted base atop the spider's abdomen, Ruel guided the same energy from her spirit to her snarling maw, pitting the House's collapsed inner sanctum in a green celestial glow. Naught a moment later, the ArcaTech spider followed, invoking a wave that sent the surrounding energy cascading from the lake to its frame.

The dark recess of its barrel began to glow when the last of the energy faded from the waters. Creaks, hisses, and cracks echoed as the bubbling waters stilled to an opaque cloud of ice, hardly muting the growl rolling off of Ruel's snout as her claws flexed around the drow's fiendish flesh; much less the howl she unleashed.

Not her voice but her spell howled as it left her maw in the form of a tree-shaped spear made of spring-green celestial air. She snarled, digging her claws deeper into the enemy's flesh while she pulled him apart at the seams, acting as the trigger for the ArcaTech spider to unleash its blinding light.

The entirety of the sanctum shook as a 10-meter jet of tepid spring winds ejected from the spider's barrel, reducing tons of compacted ice into a blizzard of razor-sharp water droplets that swept over the pair like a subterranean worm on the hunt. But while the spring breeze phased through Ruel without issue, it met much resistance against the drow in Ruel's clutches.

The winds dented his thawing flesh, even as it tore beneath her strength and billowed out the sides to further blast the lake apart. The razor water droplets cut into and diluted his waxy flesh, only to find higher concentrations of the tainted mess gushing from within. And so, it was up to another to break the stalemate.

The ones who moved according to the paths dictated by the perks of the Masterful Tactician was the former king of the lands above, rocketing toward the ceiling with a veritable star in his palms; simultaneously, his reincarnated daughter raced along the sanctum's circumference, the entirety of her arcana well gathered in her jaw.

Ice, wind, and fire met in a spectacular show of radiant steam that turned gray as the light of a celestial and the darkness of undeath roiled but never mixed. Blots of magma cooled to boulders, sheets of ice flashed to steam, and the air pressure skyrocketed before seeking to equalize in the most violent manner imaginable- by pulverizing everything in its path.

House Yril'Lysaen had become a pressure cooker, and I watched its detonation for minutes.

The few remaining survivors crumpled beneath the force of a hundred atmospheres, their death songs and dying throes, distorted by my displaced sense of time, bounced off the shockwave as their waxy flesh buckled, forcing blood from their mouths, noses, and ears alongside their eyes, crushed into their sockets as if gouged by invisible fingers. Then the pressure spiked to its maximum, smearing them into red paint atop a gravel curtain intent on fleeing the scene as quickly as possible.

Acting as fluids did, the shockwave spread through drainage pipes, blew apart windows, forced open doors, and blew apart walls as it sought to equalize itself, bringing about a violent and in some cases slow end to the thousands of souls hidden in deeper parts of the House. Elders, children, and babes alike were mushed flat by the approaching wave, then blown into the metaphorical void once the air rebounded against the ancient bedrock.

I saw it all. I looked them all in the eyes as they died and watched their souls descend into the Abyss without exceptions. I judged House Yril'Lysaen, above all others, to die and remain so, for the Elven Devil was not compatible with Lilith's demons; and these corrupt abominations deserved not to live. I judged; and then I rode the rebounding shockwave as the compressed air did as fluids did and flowed to the only remaining exits- the front entrances to the 7th Eye and Leg.

Geysers, more powerful than I'd ever seen, spewed across Zimysta Falls, resulting in a deluge that could compete with the Falls themselves, yet more flowed from the gaping holes left behind; steam, mist, and snow, and at such pressures that their gales howled the dying throes of winter; only to be rekindled into the chirping breath of spring.

As was the drow custom, any evidence of the battle had been erased. Although there were some survivors- Matron Phyrryn Yril'Lysaen and her clerical daughters- they would not go unpunished for their house's weakness in Lilith's culture. In theory, at least. It would not fail to surprise me if things were different than we anticipated during this time of legend. Regardless, we would keep moving forward.

As was the Nox's culture, those who fell now resided in my pit- in my Cursed Well, waiting for the unlikely day I returned them to the Mortal Plane, or the likely day I made something exceptionally wicked of them.

As was Eotrom's culture, Geri, Ruel, and the rest of their conclave lay beaten, burned, and bruised inside the voluminous cavern of Zimysta's 7th Eye, gnawing on thawing meat amidst a lakeside meadow while their wounds healed. The lake, supplied by the fresh melt still poured from the gaping hole above, rushing over the crepuscular environment formed and enriched by Reina and my clergy to give the flowers a more violet hue.

For now.