“There are numerous instances of churches starting to call out the Gallivants and the organizations they are founding as heretics, blasphemers, outsiders, traitors, and so forth,” he replied evenly. “The gods are quite aware of it, but as it is at the mortal level, they will endeavor not to intervene themselves.
“The forces responsible have no idea that Eternals tend to be in charge of growth and recruitment in those far-flung areas, and are less than impressed with the authorities in most of them.”
Sama winced theatrically as one of the Phantasmal Maids popped up with our cookies, and yes, they were still warm. “I have the feeling there’s our trigger for the next stage, Edge!”
“I agree. Where do you think the flashpoint will be, Lalo?”
“If I were to guess? Hundusvar,” he replied quickly.
“The City of a Thousand Gods?” Sama recognized around a mouthful of tart cream and sugary goodness. “Ohhhhhh. Everyone is represented there. Everyone is starting to make moves. Then they’ll all move at once…”
“Is there going to be a city left?” I had to ask.
“Should I be heading over to there?” Sama had to ask gleefully, heavens-blue eyes radiating expectant malice. “You just know some dumb shit is going to manifest in the middle of that brawl…”
“They can handle the fall-out,” I shrugged it off. “Anyway, I thought you were going to be joining that special expedition of Briggs’, heading home as he was.”
Sama snarled slightly. “Aren’t expecting Tzentotl to manifest there, the cowardly fucker that he is. Briggs is fed up with Hiawatha’s dithering and is finally going to go back home and deal with the Jaguar Clan once and for all! It would also get us a protected realm right on the Strife, whether the other Clans liked it or not.” She devoured the rest of her cookie with savage ferocity in tune with her words.
“They were mostly massacred on Other Nown, primitives that they were. No tools to face the evils thrown in their face, basically sticks and stones and leather. Hiawatha hadn’t come to them, and they had no power.” And the Immortal hadn’t given them a whole lot more here, other than a stronger Druidic priesthood that basically kept them chained to their ancient lifestyle. “Briggs will tear through them like wet cheese, and Tzentotl will just watch from the shadows and laugh.”
“He is one who prefers to be talked about rather than talked to,” Lalo agreed, sitting down with his own cookie after returning from the orders for the Eternals. “He never Ascended on the Other Shore, but his reputation precedes him here.” He gave me a knowing eye. “I presume that he didn’t escape your notice.”
“I had three thousand years to trace him back through. Yes, I found him,” I confirmed, my fingers flickering as something golden rolled over them and vanished again. “Given what he is responsible for in the Hollow World and among my people, his discreet removal is practically required at this point.”
Sama’s eyes widened with sudden interest. “Oh, please tell me you’re going to hunt the bastard down and feed him some True Death pie for a midnight snack!”
“Thanatos was the twat who actually sponsored him to Immortality.” I eyed her right back. “So, how many Eternals do you have in Hundusvar?”
Eight canine teeth gleamed. “Twenty-three. There are overlapping interests and organizations of the Church, you see.”
And those Eternals had been fighting beside those Avatars for three thousand years. Naturally Sama knew where the powder-keg was going to blow, and it was why she wasn’t with Briggs. “And who and what are you aiming for?” I had to ask.
“Glarrut!” she smiled winningly. “Which is another name for Sonr Nalljar over there.”
“He really doesn’t like the two of you, but he’s Eternal-ranked. Are you expecting him to make a personal appearance?” I inquired.
“He’s got yet another Avatar in town, and he’s riling up the people against Catleya’s people there specifically. Really doesn’t like the heroic minstrel template or something, and Chardon’s people seem to bring out something in him, too.”
“He’s a persistent bastard, sacrificing Avatars right and left,” I acknowledged her. “Well, good luck to you, and good hunting.”
“Do you have his home plane?” she asked me directly.
“Yes.”
“No truename?” she inquired.
I gave her an odd look. “There’s a reason I ask you to tell me things when you’re about to kill an Immortal.” She blinked at me. “You axe the Avatar, I Namerip them. You’ve killed him more than six times.”
“Nifl?” Sama went on with a feral and satisfied smile at that news. The Entropic Hierarch was definitely another one that needed to go.
“Oddly enough, has a direct Portal from Sonr’s Halls of Uthallen.” Hinting at an ancient relationship between them… and they were part of Grimr’s pet Pantheon of the Ayenser.
“Yeggtru.” The orcish god of disease.
“All the humanoid Immortals, even those not of Entropy, have hidden Portals to Nifl’s realm,” I remarked casually. “It’s like they know their mother, or something.”
Sama nodded slowly. “Prince Ukker and his fellows have plans for that one, and the Mick and his people indicated they’d like to contribute to that one, too.”
I reflected that Yeggtru and his fellows weren’t going to be long for the world.
Master Lalo watched as two golden medallions scribed with particular Runes were laid on the table and pushed across to Sama. He recognized them because he, Captain Emeril, Himmelstern, Bloodcrown, and Tek all had similar Seals hidden away in secret places.
No other being could use their True Names against them as long as they held those Seals.
Sama picked them up and put them away. “You need to come to Hundusvar. There’s going to be major opportunities there for you and your particular brand of Immortal love.”
I didn’t have to be the one who killed them to harvest a Truename, one at a time, as these lesser Avatars died.
“It sounds interesting to spectate,” I smiled coldly.
Hundusvar was ablaze.
Riots of fanatics driven to religious ecstasy by the will of Immortals and coercive magic rampaged through the streets, looking for servants of the Gallivant gods. Very amusingly, it was not difficult at all to mislead them to attack the servants of other Immortals they’d seldom gotten along with, and soon enough the united pogrom of repression and death against the Gallivants had downgraded into the thousand temples all attacking one another wildly in the confusion and the fire.
Magic was going off everywhere as worshipers and priests went at it, pulling out all their resources, calling on magical aid, and basically doing anything they could to follow the commands of their Patrons… and, uh, exact plenty of revenge on rivals and enemies at the same time.
It was, the Mick reflected, not all that different from what had happened to the independent cities when the Carnifex went after them so long ago.
“Die, foreign cur!” a big muscular man with a dark ringlet beard and bearing a greathammer howled, smashing at the Mick as he leaned away, and the massive hammer plowed through a wooden wall and reduced it to kindling.
Donner’s Avatar recovered instantly, displaying grandmaster-level skills as he controlled the momentum and position of his hammer… not that the Mick particularly cared.
This was a mortal Avatar, and he was an Eternal. Even with his relative power hidden, this would not be a contest unless the Immortal’s true body came down to fight.
He nearly spit the brawny, dark-skinned Avatar on Laird’s tip, breaking the momentum of attack and turning it on its heel as Laird promptly began to butterfly at speed, far faster on the attack than any hammer.
He was probably here as Orum-Or, a thunder god of the local Pantheon. They’d sought out the Order of the Silver Sword, Dame Adama’s order of Paladins, and come looking for a fight.
They’d found a bunch of incredibly adept and motivated warriors, and a whole slew of Eternals waiting for them.
The Mick drove Donner/Orum-Or back across the courtyard, slicing off several fingers from the man as he tried to parry a sword with a hammer’s haft, and couldn’t keep up with his faster, smaller, and nimbler foe.
“You! You are not mortal! But you are no Immortal?!” the Avatar swore, even as he looked at his hand and swore when it wouldn’t regenerate properly, although it stopped spurting blood.
“Aye, a secret ye’ll take to oblivion,” the Mick agreed to the brute a head taller than he was. The Avatar was stronger than any mortal man now, courtesy of inbuilt Buffs equal to a Girdle of Giant Strength, but the Mick’s Null Strike had already cut through his invoked spells, and all that was left was using a hammer against a Sword, and, well, the Mick sparred with Emperor Thor and Briggs alike.
This god had nothing to teach him about hammers.
He knew enough to not bother trying to directly parry any attacks, and he was quick indeed to exploit any openings the other gave him. He backed the bigger man up, Laird just a blur of motion, while markers in his head fell in ones and twos, indicating the attackers around him were dying off quickly.
A group of fanatics pounced on him from the side, shouting out Master Hondi’s name with fervor, and he spun through them and away from his duel, Laird rising and falling and leaving him twenty feet away from the bleeding hammer-wielder as seven men fell to the ground, missing arms and legs and heads as they did so, Laird uninterrupted in its flow of motion.
“You are indeed skilled with a blade,” the Avatar spat, and then coughed up a lungful of blood. He looked down at his mail, and saw a gash had been cloven clear through the steel and into his lung, courtesy of a Sharding to finish off the Cleaving.
“Aye. Ye can go now.” The Mick turned away, and the outraged Avatar was about to call on him to resume their duel when an arrow sprouted out his eye from the back of his head, and he slowly fell over as if poleaxed.
Magic flashed past him as the Avatar died, harvesting something, and the corpse burst into vivus quickly.
The hyn Eternal Jace, powerful short Bow already bearing another arrow, nodded at the mental acknowledgment as he turned on the rooftops to start aiming at squires holding the horses of the faithful of Orum-or invading the chapterhouse. They began to drop with lethal precision, prompting them to scatter for cover… cover that the Mick stepped right out of the shadow of and promptly lit into them with eye-blurring speed. Men who had no business going up against an Eternal came apart with shockingly violent speed… not the best use of the Mick’s time, but then, attacking an order of heroic Paladins wasn’t the best use of theirs.
-Company coming,- Eshauna /warned into the Markspace, marking scores of figures in dark armor hurrying their way. -Templars of Urvik the Conqueror, I think.-
The Mick looked down the main road from his slaughter, knowing Urvik was a great rival of Orum-Or and these fools had likely been delaying their attack until whoever won was weakened.
-Cloud them,- he /ordered back, totally ready to let mages kill large numbers.
The incoming force of, what, two hundred templars and knights didn’t have much time to scream when the rainbow array of clouds erupted out of the ground and swallowed them from colorful sight. Shouts of alarm and confusion, along with the screams of horses, faded with incredible speed.
Only a dozen men staggered out of the poison mists, Eshauna being nice enough to keep it in place, but the bodies were vivifiying with great speed within, man and horses alike, and there’d be nothing left of them but their armor and weapons in moments.
The leader held forth his spiked morningstar and brandished his symbol-like shield towards the Mick, calling down fiery doom upon him.
The howling pillar of fire came smashing down on him with the fury of the Immortals… and faded ten feet above his head into nothing, nothing at all.
The Mick raised Laird and advanced toward the survivors, while the Daisho team of Eternals watched out leisurely for surprises.