The Shard

  "I still think we should have handed that report in before heading out," said Gillian in a slightly strained voice as he huffed and puffed up the slope, following Of's footprints in the knee-deep snow.

  It was the afternoon after Marci had thwarted a rather boring report about Goltburg and the surrounding areas being delivered to a demon. Well, the content was boring, the imprint of lipstick on the st page and some very, very poor love poems written by Ms. Vos were interesting in a kind of twisted way.

  Marci didn't usually judge people for their kinks, but kinks didn't usually make people commit treason in a quest to get your hands on a sexy demon. Well, she supposed Succubi were a thing, so maybe it was more common than she'd thought.

  "I didn't like how that sheriff was looking at us," said Of. "We'll drop it off on the way back, discreetly."

  "I just adore being a fugitive because our temp wizard is a crazed arsonist," drawled Anke, who was very smugly gliding over the top of the snow without leaving more than a very faint impression.

  "I'm not your 'temp wizard,'" spat Marci.

  "I note you don't dispute 'crazed arsonist,'" said Anke.

  "Oh, go fall in a crevasse," said Marci.

  The wish for the insufferable woman to plunge into icy depths was actually not particurly specific or unusual, given their locations. They were trudging up the edge of a gcier that had taken all morning to reach from the town. Well, the ndwalkers were all trudging up the steep snow and ice, Marci was flying.

  There was a chill wind, but the sun was bright and warm. From their vantage, halfway up the mountain, Marci got a great view out over the twisted forest that radiated outward from the gcier for several miles before eventually giving way to less obviously tainted abandoned farmnds. The source of the strange 'draw' of the surroundings energy, she could feel, was where they were headed: the 'tomb' that Crence's friend had told them about.

  Marci wasn't exactly sure what in a tomb would be causing that kind of effect. There were plenty of things it could be: some kind of exceedingly powerful curse, perhaps natural, perhaps the work of some archmage; various infernal artefacts that sucked at the lifeblood of the world that could be anything from everyday utilities to their massive flying fortresses; or even some kind of inscrutable fey creature.

  She hoped it wasn't the tter. She hated dealing with fey. Sure, as a Fairy she had the blood of the Feywild flowing through her veins, but her people had gotten out of that mad realm millennia ago and been far better for it.

  The ndwalkers were incredibly slow making their way up the cliff, so Marci flew on ahead, rising up into the air and following the gcier up and into the bowl-like cirque at the top, situated between three peaks and ridgelines. Cirques were great, untouched snowfields that fed gciers with season after season after season of compacted snow that slowly became compressed down into ice which then was forced downwards into the gcier by the weight of the snow above, flowing like the world's slowest liquid, gouging out rock and stone as it went. It was spectacur, but it was also not the sort of pce that people usually built anything.

  Which was why it was unusual that there was a great snow and ice-covered form resting against the ridgeline and the edge of the cirque. It was massive, at least a kilometre across and half that tall, almost reaching up to the ridges and peaks far above. Above it the cliff was half-torn away, presumably quarried to provide material for the massive, irregurly angled structure. As she waited for her party to arrive, she did slow loops of the tomb. It was impossible to make out any distinct features through the yers of snow and ice, even with several scrying and divination spells designed to tell her what she was looking at and who had made it. She did, however, manage to find what she was pretty sure was a grand entranceway, located around the side, very close to the ridgeline.

  It was totally frozen shut, but since Marci had nothing better to do, she set up a few heat-generating rituals, great arrays of runes that would take the ambient ley energy all around them—which was abundant, since so much was being sucked towards the tomb—and turn it into thermal energy to melt the entrance-way clear.

  That done, and a quick reconnaissance flight showing her that the party was still over an hour away, she sat down on a sheltered cliff halfway up the ridgeline overlooking the gcier and watched the day go by.

  Normally, she would have had a hipfsk or something to make the wait less boring, but she was being treated like an irresponsible child, and even Tissa had refused to lend her any cash to grab a reserve pick-me-up back in Goltburg.

  That left her alone with her thoughts, something she hated, since without a warm fuzzy bnket of alcohol her mind ever turned back to every single little thing she'd ever fucked up: all the dumb things she'd said at university that left people thinking she was stupid; the projects she hadn't put enough work into and gotten an F for even though she could have done way better if she'd actually put the work in; the retionships she'd fucked up by getting in her own head, cutting things off before they found out what an unreliable and unlikable person she really was; how she'd blown it with Of the same way; how she'd been too afraid that her thesis was stupid and that it wasn't even worth submitting when it'd just get torn apart by the examiners; how she'd ruined the only reliable thing she'd ever had with the party-

  She grimaced and rubbed her face. No, she hadn't ruined it. Well, she had, but she had another chance. A chance she wasn't going to blow by drinking on the job again. She'd just… have to get used to not having the warm, fuzzy, safe bnket of alcohol.

  She shivered and looked down.

  Her party had reached the cirque.

  ***"Nice job finding the entrance, we could have been at it for days," said Of as he raised a burning azure torch and peered into the darkness that Marci had revealed.

  Marci grinned and fred her wings. "Some advantages to having a fairy, eh?"

  "Definitely," he agreed, giving her a genuine smile that made her heart melt a little. "It's good to have you back, Marci."

  "Maybe this time she won't fuck it up," said Anke, who had a tiny glowing green pixie she'd summoned flitting around her.

  Marci's smile faltered. She scowled and turned away, conjuring her own warelight. Stars, but she hated that elf.

  Their myriad rainbow of lights lit up the vaulted entrance way as they moved into the tomb. The space was grand and imposing, with statues of demons in remarkably good condition lining a frozen carpet that crunched and cracked under the feet of her party members, but had until that moment survived however many centuries it had been since anyone had walked in the dark halls.

  The air was stale and musty, and very, very cold.

  "Some kind of demon cult, perhaps?" said Gillian, raising his glowing hammer and peering at one of the statues, which showed a rather handsome and ripped incubus man with a long, arrow-headed tail.

  "The inscription looks Infernal," said Marci, peering at it. "He was 'Yanderar the…'" Marci considered how to transte it into Southern Common. "The 'Infatuator,' I guess that's the closest transtion?"

  "Demon scum," said Gillian with a grimace, hocking some phlegm and spitting on the statue's feet. "May your ancestors know no rest," he cursed them in dwarvish. Or, at least, his variant of dwarvish. She thought. Her dwarvish was pretty rusty.

  Marci didn't particurly like demons. They'd invaded the Middle Realms, brought their foul corruption with them, conquered and ensved the northerners or else driven them south like Of and his family, and periodically unched raids against the Southnds. They were, put simply, not very nice people.

  Dwarves, however, had been fighting them for millennia. The Underworld was not actually physically separate from the Middle Realms. If you dug deep enough, as the industrious dwarves were wont to do, then you would break into the myriad caverns and caves that made up the vast underground world.

  In the beginning, or so the dwarven legends went, the demons and the dwarves had been friends. They'd traded peacefully for decades, perhaps centuries, until a demon prince had murdered a dwarven king in cold blood, and set off war unending. Centuries upon centuries of fighting in the cold, dark tunnels beneath the world had inculcated in the seven dwarven holds a powerful and deeply rooted cultural hatred of all things infernal. Even Gillian, who was kind to a fault and never had anything bad to say about anyone, hated them with a burning passion.

  They moved through the grand entrance-hall, and up the central staircase at the end. It was wide and wrought from bck marble.

  "This is weird…" said Marci, flitting up and around the great colonnades that punctuated an elegant mezzanine that looked down on the entrance-hall, peering at the architecture. "I don't know of any demon cults in this area that would have had anywhere near the resources to build something this grand."

  "And if you don't know about it, how could it be?" said Anke as she sauntered up the stairs.

  Marci gave her the finger and drifted over to where a pair of shiny silver swords were stuck to the wall.

  "I agree, there's something off about this," said Of.

  The swords were in remarkable condition, the enchantments on them weren't fresh, but they weren't degraded either, and the edges-

  "Ow!" said Marci, jerking back.

  "What is it?" said Of.

  "They're still sharp!" she said, sucking her finger where blood was welling from the wound. "Ow!"

  "A sword is sharp? How unusual," said Anke.

  "Fuck! That hurts," said Marci, casting a quick charm to check that it hadn't cursed her. Thankfully, it hadn't.

  "Damn, you OK?" said Of, moving over and peering at her sliced finger. "Looks pretty shallow. Anke?"

  "I'm not healing stupid," said Anke. "If she wants to touch swords, then she can live with the consequences."

  "This?" said Marci, jerking her head at the elf. "This is your sweetheart?"

  Of looked annoyed and let Marci's hand go.

  "Be careful," he said. "There might be traps."

  But there weren't. Deeper and deeper they moved, past grand ballrooms and stately dining halls, and luxury bedrooms. They looted as they went, and soon their bags were bulging with gold and jewels.

  The others mood improved, despite the cold, but a creeping feeling of unease descended further and further on Marci. This wasn't a tomb. It was both too new, and cking in any bodies. It felt… abandoned, and recently.

  They moved on, passing through what looked like defences, with corridors lined with murder holes and portcullises and retractable spikes that were just… not armed.

  As they drew closer, the concentration of ley energy, the lifeblood of the world, grew stronger. In addition, now that she was closer, she could feel some kind of… twisted echo seeping back the other way. They were approaching the source of the corruption.

  They passed through three more guard houses, and then finally some kind of opulent throne room featuring a raised dais and a giant, plush red leather throne with gilded edges. Marci's feeling of unease ratcheted up another notch. This had not been built by a demon cult. This had been built by demons.

  By why?

  And, moreover, how? Someone would have noticed.

  Then, after one final set of complex-looking, but totally unarmed defences, they reached what was probably the central chamber.

  It was spherical in dimension, with a suspended walkway that led out to the centre of the room, the point which all the flowing mana led.

  A giant red and bck, hovering crystal, within the depths of which bright red stars twinkled and strange shapes seemed to swirl, lithe and sinewy in forms.

  "Oh, my Stars," whispered Marci, putting her hands to her mouth. "This isn't a tomb."

  "What?" said Tissa. "What is it the Friend Marci?"

  "This is a Shardfort."

  Shardforts were perhaps the greatest weapons that the demons of the underworld had ever developed. Flying fortresses that sucked up mana from the world around them, drawing their power inward and empowering their Shardkeepers, demons somehow bonded to them and able to draw on vast quantities of arcane power. Able to not only fly and armed with batteries of weapons, but also somehow connected to the Underworld via magic; they had been the spearhead that had shattered the Northnds.

  There were thirteen in total, and had their Keepers not fallen to infighting, it was likely that they would have washed over the whole of the Middle Realms.

  A few sorties had made it at least partially inside them during the war, but no one had made it this far. What fragments of knowledge the wizards of the south had were vague, and often contradictory.

  Was this one of the thirteen? Perhaps a lost fourteenth? A prototype? How had it come to be here? How had it crashed?

  "We should leave," said Gillian. "We should leave right now!"

  "What?" said Marci, turning to him. "No, this is- this is an unbelievable opportunity. If we can- if I can figure out how this thing works, even gain a sliver of insight, it could… we could find a way to fight these things!"

  "We'll tell the academy, they can send a research team," said Of.

  "Yes, but… but I want to have a look first," said Marci, wafting forward.

  She could tell that the Shard was more or less dormant—the influx of ley energy into the Shard was far, far, far below that of the Forts she'd read about during her studies. But despite that, it felt, somehow… alive?

  Calling to her? Whispering into her mind…? It was aware of her, wanted her to touch it…

  She reached out a hand.

  "Marci!? What are you doing?" shouted Of. "Don't touch-"

  Her thumb, the one she had cut earlier on the sharp sword, and which was still smeared with her blood, touched the crystal, and with a roar of energy and a burst of scarlet starlight it surged back into life. Burning, vicious, baleful crimson energy shot up her arm, and she screamed in pain. She tried to draw her hand back, but the energy held her firm.

  The whispers that had been calling to her became deafening, swirling around in her pointed ears like oil and drilling deep, deep into her mind.

  "W?e? ?w?i?l?l? ?e?l?e?v?a?t?e? ?y?o?u? ?a?b?o?v?e? ?a?l?l? ?o?t?h?e?r?s?.?.?.?" it whispered. "W???e??? ???w???i???l???l??? ???m???a???k???e??? ???o???f??? ???y???o???u??? ???a??? ???G???o???d???d???e???s???s???.???.???.???"

  "Marci!" shouted Of, his voice distant and faint. "Marci!"

  Marci screamed and began trying to cast dispels, counter curses, anything she could think of. Behind her, she could feel Gillian using his runed hammer to try and do the same, even Anke seemed to be calling upon some contract or other to try and break her free.

  But it was useless. It had her, and it would not let her go. The energy burned deeper, making its way up her arm, lighting her veins up beneath her skin in scorching pain. Deeper and deeper until it passed her shoulder and wormed its way into her heart.

  Her arm began to char and burn, fking away as the energy spread further and further, up her neck and towards her head. She redoubled her efforts, trying even a fourth level decurse spell without supports, but she couldn't manage that at her best, she couldn't manage it while being consumed by the terrible, excruciating crimson starlight. The spell fizzled before she had barely begun, sending another, different nce of pain through her body as the gathered energy backfired.

  "Marci!" screamed Of.

  She looked back, and through a veil of agonised tears saw her ex-lover scrambling to try and break free of Tissa's iron grip.

  "No! It is too dangerous!" said Tissa. "The Friend Of will be killed!"

  "Marci!" he said, punching the lizard-like woman in the face. "Let me go, let me go!"

  The power reached her eyes, plunging the world into terrible crimson. The charring spread higher, and beneath the burning flesh she felt the energy beginning to… eat away at her bones, at her very being, spreading further, consuming and devouring and changing her at not just physically, but at the level of her very soul.

  This was it, she knew. This was the end. There was nothing that could save her now.

  Her wide, burning eyes met Of's terrified ones.

  "I lo-"

  Marci exploded.