The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (44 page)

Antefalken was peering at it more closely. “See these two lines that entwine the bar?” He pointed to two parallel lines that striped the bar, sort of like a barber pole if the red line were composed of two different colors. Although at the moment, both were pretty dark. “They are crystalline, and each appears to be an unbroken single piece. That is very unusual. The only place I’ve seen anything like it was in the Crystal Caverns, but those were straight lines. How you would get crystal to grow like this is beyond me.”

Antefalken stood up. “Of course, that might explain the residue of mana you sense,” Antefalken said. Tom looked at him curiously. “Crystals are often used for mana pools.”

“I’ve heard the term, but am not that familiar with them,” Tom said.

“Mana pools are constructs that wizards and others use to store mana in. You can put mana in them and link them to a magical artifact to provide mana, or you can link to one yourself to draw on it for extra capacity in battle or as needed,” Antefalken said.

“So that’s why wizards like gemstone rings!” Tom exclaimed.

“Yes—to a point. You can really only safely attach to one mana pool at a time. Trying to keep two of them in synch with yourself and each other is extremely difficult and can result in feedback loops, which can be unpleasant or even deadly,” Antefalken said.

“Good to keep in mind,” Tom said.

“Which makes this device odd,” Antefalken added.

“Why?” Estrebrius asked, and Tom nodded.

“Because there are two different crystalline strands here: one ruby, the other sapphire, I believe. That would imply two mana pools in the same artifact, which would be highly unstable.”

“Unless one is for the device, and one for the user as a personal pool?” Talarius suggested.

Antefalken’s eyes widened. “Yes, that would make sense. Your knowledge surprises me.”

Talarius shrugged under his armor. “I am a mana wielder myself, and as you may have noticed, I have a couple of arcane objects on me. I’m not a stranger to the mechanics of mana manipulation.”

Antefalken smiled. “I see that.”

There was some noise outside the door, in the distance.

“Did they get through the wall?” Rupert asked.

Estrebrius flew out to the landing and listened. “No, I think the noise is coming from up the stairs!”

“Curse it!” Talarius said angrily.

“We took too much time with this stupid thing,” Antefalken complained.

“Sorry,” Tom said.

“Not your fault; we were all curious,” Boggy said.

“Well if we are going to fight our way out, I want something for it. I’m taking the bar!” Tom proclaimed.

“Seems reasonable. If nothing else, you can use it as a club to pound D’Orcs,” Tizzy said.

Tom grabbed the bar, intending to pick it and the marble blocks both up, but it would not budge. “Shit!” He could hear the noises from outside, still distant but getting closer. He moved to the block at the thinner edge of the bar. He scraped the runes with the arrowhead, forcing himself into the runes. They fought back; he was going too fast.
To hell with it.

Tom reached deep inside and gathered up as much pure mana as he could and shoved it hard into the runes. He would overwhelm the damn thing. In he went, racing through the runes, filling them with power. To his surprise, he found himself mentally jumping over the rod to the second block; the two blocks were linked. He filled those runes , flooding them with power, willing them to release, unlock, dissolve.

They did not want to budge; the space between the blocks was glowing now, as if the bar of metal was inside a force field or something. “I think you guys might want to get out and onto the landing; I think this is going to blow!” Tom yelled.

He shoved mana into the blocks as hard as he had shoveled it into the dagger.
KABLOOM!
The blocks shattered into dust. Tom was thrown back by the force of the explosion, stunned. The metal bar fell to the floor with a loud thud.

“Shit.” Tom shook his head and got back up and moved to the bar. Now that the ends were free, he could see it was more like a staff, or would be a staff for a human. For Tom, it was more like a bat or club. The narrow end had a silver-rimmed end cap with a very sharp nine-inch long metal spike on the bottom. The wider end came up to a hexagonally shaped top cap about six inches across from side to side, and from that rose a two-inch round cylinder or neck with a large metal ball, or sort of amorphous blob of unshaped metal, about the same diameter as the hexagon cap.

“Okay, it will work as a mace then,” Tom said to himself. He grabbed it. “Ouch!” The damn thing had shocked him! He was pissed. He had just freed it and now it was going to shock him! Yes, he knew it was an inanimate object, but he was in a hurry, and getting angry.

Tom reached down and grabbed it again, ignoring the shock, and willed himself into it. He did not need to use the arrow this time, which would have been bad. The thing did not like the arrow’s magic, he could tell that. This thing was a mana pool, huh? Well, he would see what would happen if he filled it.

He willed himself into the rod even as it shocked him. He was determined to win. He would treat it like an unwilling priest, or an unwilling rune. He flooded it primarily with his own mana, but also god mana. In and in, envisioning himself becoming one with the mace, intertwining his essence with its molecules and atoms. He mixed and merged until he could feel the crystalline pools. There were only the two crystals, as Antefalken had said: unbroken ruby and sapphire strands. He flooded them with mana; the sapphire with god mana, the ruby with his own.

He
was
the crystals, he was the adamantite bar, and he was the mithral end caps, the mithral ball. He, Thomas—Tommus! He was the rod, the mace, the staff. This was the Rod of Tommus and
he
was Tommus! They were one; they were the same. Tom suddenly realized that the rod was not fighting him; it was embracing him, joining him. Welcoming him. He did not know how he knew this, but he did. He was the rod, the rod was him!

“Yes! We are Tommus!” Tom shouted at the top of his lungs. The rod flashed, its ruby and sapphire strips glowing brightly and radiating the room in red and blue, melding into purple.

The room suddenly lurched. Was that him? No, the room lurched again. Earthquake!

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Boggy called to him. The others filed back into the room, blinking in the purple light from the rod.

“So… you recharged the mana pools?” Antefalken said.

Tizzy was grinning from ear to ear and doing a little dance for some reason.

“Cool!” Rupert said.

“Wicked!” Reggie slapped his thigh with his lower left hand.

“Did you feel those tremors?” Tom asked.             

“Yes. Did you do that?” Boggy asked.

“No, not that I know of. I just took control of the mace,” Tom said.

“I have to say, that is one nice mace,” Talarius said. “I am hoping we don’t regret this.”

“Why?” Tom shrugged. “I fully control it, and it’s like a part of me. I have no idea what I can do with it other than smacking people, but for now that’s about all we need.” The ground rumbled again beneath their feet.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Boggy said as the ground shook some more. “We just need to face the D’Orcs up above and be done with it.”

“I agree,” Talarius said as yet another tremor rocked the room.

“I will go first,” Tom said, leading them out onto the landing and heading up the stairs. The stairs went up and up for a long way.

“It’s amazing we can hear any noise from the top, given it’s so far,” Boggy said.

“Perhaps there is a very large echo chamber at the top,” Antefalken suggested.

“You know, it seems a lot quieter since the tremors,” Estrebrius noted.

“Maybe it scared the crap out of them!” Rupert said excitedly.

“I doubt that,” Tizzy said. “Not yet, at least,” he added softly.

They finally reached a landing at the top of the stairs. At the opposite end of the landing was a marble portcullis engraved with Etonian runes. On the other side of the portcullis was a large room with wall carvings and several Tom-sized benches as well as more human-sized benches. There were also marble tables of various heights between the two. At the opposite end of the room was a large double door that had apparently been opened recently, given the tracks in dust on the floor. However, no one was in the room. Light was streaming from beyond the door.

Tom examined the runes, found their starting point and quickly intoned the runes. The portcullis began rising on its own. Very slowly—it took about a deminute—but eventually it was raised.

“That’s convenient,” Reggie said. “I guess.”

They went across the room to the open door. Tom peered through and then opened the door wider and stepped through. He found himself standing on an open bridge with a deep cavern beneath his feet. The bridge started at the door and went about fifteen feet before opening up onto a huge platform.

Tom looked up, and up. There was sky above them! The others filed out onto the bridge with him. They were in a large… something. It was a huge oval room open to the sky above. Its walls were somewhere on the order of two thousand feet high. Along the walls, starting at about two hundred feet up, there were openings like balconies, spanning both sides of the oval room. There were probably a dozen rows of balconies on each side.

The platform spanned the center of the room, with various bridges to other doorways or landings around the room. The platform appeared to be suspended over a large chasm. On the platform at the end of the bridge was a raised dais about forty feet across with steps leading up from the bridge to a dais. The dais appeared to be square or rectangular with large black-and-gold marble pillars at each corner. What appeared to be large gold braziers were set on the top of each pillar. In the center of the dais was a massive malachite throne, its back facing them, trimmed in mithral and adamantite with very large gems on the back posts and possibly on the arm end posts, although it was hard to tell from this angle.

As Tom’s gaze went to the top of the throne and pillars, he suddenly realized there was a huge metal emblem over the door they had entered through. He had to turn and look up—the angle was very bad—but it appeared to be an absolutely huge, upside-down pentagram.

That seemed a very odd thing for an amphitheater in the Abyss. Pentagrams were a symbol of demon slavery. Of course this one was upside down; did that make it a symbol of power? As he was thinking this, the ground lurched again and what sounded liked an enormous burp came from underneath them. Their attention was whipped to the right side where, between three and four bridges down, a bunch of rock came spitting up and then a glob of hot lava jumped up and fell back down.

“Okay, this goes without saying, but didn’t you say the volcano was inactive?” Reggie asked Tizzy. Tizzy was grinning widely. “Only for the last four thousand years. Apparently only napping.”

“Well, that explains where the D’Orcs would have gone. They’ve fled the volcano,” Antefalken said.

“Maybe.” Tizzy shrugged, his grin fading. “Maybe not.”

“Why would they stay?” Reggie asked Tizzy. “That would be insane, to stick around an active volcano?”

Boggy’s eyes suddenly widened. “Maybe not,” he said. Rupert and Reggie turned to Boggy. “What were we doing yesterday?”

“Playing in the lava flows of a small volcano?” Tom said. Tizzy grinned.

“So you think the D’Orcs have decided to open a health spa at the exact moment we arrived?” Talarius asked sarcastically.

“No, only that an active volcano is not that big a deal for them.” Tizzy shrugged. “After all, they were here when it was active before. For them, it’s probably like the furnace kicking in after a long summer.”

“They were here when the volcano was active?” Reggie asked incredulously.

“So that’s why they are here? Are you saying this is where their dark god stationed them?” Antefalken asked.

Tizzy shrugged. “That would make sense.”

“None of this makes any sense,” Reggie complained.

Due to his height, Estrebrius had mainly been flying since they had encountered the hydra hounds; he could fly faster than his stubby legs could walk. After the first eruption, while the others were talking he had floated up to see over the dais. Now he floated down. “Uhm, sorry to interrupt, but the D’Orcs haven’t actually gone anywhere,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Talarius asked.

“They’re on the other side of the dais. A few thousand, I would say. More are filing in as we speak.”

“So why can’t we hear them shouting?” Reggie asked.

“They seem to be on their knees in front of the dais,” the little demon said.

“Kneeling?” Tom asked incredulously.

Estrebrius shrugged and made a puzzled expression with his mouth.

“Well, if we hadn’t already established that lava isn’t a problem, I’d have said ‘crazy volcano death cult waiting for the end.’ But that no longer seems so likely,” Reggie said.

“Maybe we should just go up and take a look from the dais?” Tizzy asked. He turned and started walking towards the dais.