Shadowrealm - By Paul S. Kemp Page 0,27

shadows, their numbers legion. He saw the regiments of towering, pallid, shadow giants clad in gray armor and darkness, saw the spire of Kesson Rel’s otherworldly abode hovering like an executioner’s blade over the twisted, shadow-haunted ruins of Ordulin, and saw in the tortured sky a slowly turning maelstrom of shadow and dull viridian light, the rictus of the planar rift vomiting up the corrupting darkness of the Plane of Shadow. Repeated lightning strokes flashed between the clouds and the spire. The sight of it made Brennus dizzy. His homunculi stirred uneasily in their sleep, and one waved a hand before its face as if to shoo away a pest.

Brennus resisted the urge to turn the eye of his divinations to the interior of the spire. He didn’t want to alert Kesson Rel to his spying, lest Kesson redouble his wards. Still, he heard Kesson’s name in the dull thunder that rumbled within the Shadowstorm, and felt like an ache in his teeth Kesson’s immense power, even through the scrying cube. Brennus knew that Kesson Rel was no longer a man. He was semi-divine, a godling, and what the Shadovar intended to conquer and use, Kesson intended to pervert and destroy.

Brennus watched for a short time longer then deactivated the cube. Sweat soaked him. His body ached. Fatigue dulled his mind. But he needed to know more. He knew that Kesson’s divine nature would make killing him problematic.

Brennus occasionally relied on powerful extraplanar entities to assist his inquiries, immortal creatures whose knowledge and understanding sometimes exceeded even Brennus’s. He would have to rely on such assistance again were he to be of assistance to his brother. Knowledge floated on strange currents in the lower planes, and powerful devils sometimes learned important snippets of information about gods and men. Such information was as much the currency of the Nine Hells and the Abyss as were mortal souls.

He strode to the far corner of the room where a large triangle surrounded by a circle had been inlaid with lead into the floor. His movement awakened his homunculi. They yawned, smacked their lips, noticed the thaumaturgic triangle, and sat up straight.

“Devil!” they said, and clapped with glee.

“Retrieve candles,” Brennus said, and they jumped off his shoulders to perform their task.

In moments they returned with wrist-thick candles. Streaks of crimson spiraled around the otherwise ivory-colored shafts of the tapers. Brennus placed them so that their bases exactly straddled the three points where the triangle touched the circle that enveloped it. He backed away, lit them with a command word, and they birthed blue flames.

He cleared his mind and intoned the words to the summoning that would bring forth one of the most powerful devils in the Nine Hells, a fiend of the pit.

After the first stanza, the room grew cool His homunculi shivered and tried to wrap themselves in the loose folds of his cloak, chuckling nervously at the clouds their breathing formed. Ice rimed the lines of the thaumaturgic triangle. The blue flames burned steadily.

After the second and third stanzas, the air grew cold and a point of red light, a hole into the Nine Hells, formed in the air above the center of the summoning triangle. First groans then screams leaked through the hole, a tunnel that ended in a realm of suffering.

Shadows poured from Brennus as he voiced the words to the conjuration. Power coalesced in the room and concentrated in the air between his upraised hands and the summoning triangle. The air became frigid and frost formed on his fingers and palms, the cold like the bite of sharp teeth. He let nothing disturb his recitation of the arcane couplets.

After the fourth stanza the power of the spell peaked and Brennus pronounced the name of the devil he wished to draw forth.

“Baziel, come!”

The mention of the pit fiend’s name concentrated the arcane power, gave it voice, and his call went forth into the Hells.

In answer, a cyclone of coruscating fire formed in the space over the summoning triangle. Darkness gathered in the core of the flames, a black seed of evil that began to expand into a doorway between worlds. The flames whirled around it, flared. Smoke churned above the circle and mixed with the shadowy air, obscuring his vision. The smell of brimstone polluted the room and Brennus thought something had gone awry.

A form materialized in the doorway amidst the smoke and flame, and slowly took on definition, features. Brennus recognized the towering, muscular, red-skinned frame and membranous black