Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition
Act IV
The Pan Rin Rainforest
Even after Guanh and Vieng had told her that the enemy had constructed a network of underground chambers for use in their Zuthruhk illusion rituals, Rizawa still found it difficult to believe that such a thing could exist in such an inhospitable environment. Yet here she was, descending down a narrow stone chasm far below the dense snarls of jungle fauna. Even with the Lagovrun to guide them, the sheer depth of these subterranean hideouts meant that locating the surface entrance had been a tremendous ordeal. If it wasn't for Luo's keen eyes, which were able to spot the days-old signs of human feet being dragged through the sodden earth with nothing but the dull moonlight to guide them, she would have wasted the entire night wandering aimlessly through the overgrowth. Even if she had known that one of the ordinary looking boulders scattered around the clearing was in fact a hidden passage, the idea that she would have figured out how to sound out the stones until she heard the distinctive echo of hollow rock was about as fanciful as the thought of her finding her way into a stable, trusting relationship.
As she made her way down the tight defile, she tried not to think about the vulgar Ghakat writing revealed by their torchlight or the obvious signs of resistance scratched into the walls, directing her attention instead to maintaining some foggy reckoning of how far they'd delved into the earth. It wasn't easy. She felt as though they'd gone half a mile underground before they found themselves in a broad, level passageway whose warped stone suggested a much earlier construction than the comparatively recent access tunnel. Not for the first time, she found herself wondering just how long the Ukni had been working on this in secret. If the broad ruts running along the corridor were any indication, this passageway had already seen decades of heavy use.
The Lagovrun cast the hundreds of Zuthruhk inscriptions in the hazy yellow hue of a fog-veiled dawn, and it occurred to Rizawa that all General Chunlao would have needed to do was leave that stone somewhere Meixi would find it while placing it's mate in a trap and she would be done for. It was more faith than anything else that guided her footsteps. As if, by being unwaveringly fervent in her trust in Meixi's discretion, she might negate the tremendous suffering she caused by running out on her. It was only the muddy rumble of distant voices echoing across the stone that unlocked the chains of the mental prison she'd constructed for herself.
“So they aren't even gonna give us a half a watch to pound one out and catch a nap between killing off the scouts and leaving with the rest of the Chadurb?”
“You can beat that thing 'til its red and swollen once the transport ship hits the Gaujong but until then you're on the Dark God's time.”
“Any idea why the fuck they're in such a hurry all of a sudden? Cuz from where I'm sitting it doesn't make one bit of sense for the priests who are responsible for keeping the Onguloch in line to be half-dead from exhaustion at the exact moment when we need to be functioning at our best.”
“You didn't hear it from me, but it seems that Zojhin got a little sloppy with that operation outside the Nezhuan garrison, and the stench of dead whores has got all kinds of vermin poking their noses into things. Krosatir Sethim's apparently starting to get a little bit nervous about our plans getting discovered. So much so that he's willing to risk Banorg's handlers to make sure this ambush goes off without a hitch.”
Rizawa turned towards Luo, his shocked expression a perfect mirror of her own as all the pieces fell into place. An Onguloch, the Dark God's most fearsome weapon save his firstborn, was here in the Pan Rin. The implications pounded down like a landslide: a cascade of gut-wrenching epiphanies that was nearly enough to knock her off her feet. While Saklugz' disregard for the lives of his human subjects was amply attested, he was never so frivolous with his fire born. He couldn't be. He might have been able to secure the backwaters of his empire with nothing more than human lives, but his victories against the great empires of Nezhu, Kusadha, Naviras, and the like had been carried to him on the backs of his Onguloch. If one of them was accompanying the fleet she saw anchored at the water lock, that meant just one thing: the war between Nezhu and the Dark God was not some distant eventuality, nor even an impending calamity. It was right here.
“On the subject of vermin poking their noses where they don't belong...” the first priest continued. “I don't recall anyone mentioning that we'd have company this evening.”
Before Rizawa had even processed what was happening, Luo was on his feet, sprinting into the chamber with a fearsome cry. For an instant, she thought that he'd gone mad at the discovery of Nezhu's mortal peril, but as she watched him dive down on the ground between the two Ka'in, pivoting back to his feet with his sword drawn, she realized what he was up to.
As a wall of Zuthruhk wards materialized between each of Luo's sword-strokes and their targets, Rizawa crept up behind the Ka'ina, who'd been forced to put their backs to the door after Luo got around them. She brought her dagger clean across the first priest's neck, but in so doing she alerted the second to her presence. Dozens of chains shot loose from the wall, whipping into her flesh as she struggled against their inexorable pull. Yet as she gripped the thick metal bonds within her fist, she found that she could snap them in two with just the force of her hands. She began feverishly ripping at her restraints, but each time she tore loose one set of manacles another latched itself around her, burning her flesh and constricting her motion until she felt her consciousness slip away.
The sound of knives hissing against a sharpening stone beckoned Rizawa back to the world of the living. She instinctively stretched out her arms and felt the resistance of chains pinning her against the wall. She cracked her eyes just open enough for the wall of emaciated corpses at the other end of the chamber to impress itself onto her memory, studying the Nezlugz writing that covered the chamber.
“Don't even bother trying.” came a voice to her right, which she recognized as belonging to the Ka'in whose throat she didn't slit. “Hell of a show you put on back there. I wasn't expecting you to be wearing clothes that were blessed by that wretched Quansai Stone, but I made sure to take care of them.”
Rizawa opened her eyes in earnest, confirming that the Ka'in had removed both the cloak and the shoes that Vieng had given her, along with all of the weapons she'd concealed on her person.
“He was a friend of mine, you know...” the Ka'in continued. “Kashtu and I studied together in Dissak. We were both sent into this godforsaken jungle on the same Chakaltun. I don't know what it is you did to get high command so pissed off. I suspect it has something to do with that torn seal I took from your pocket, but to be honest I don't really care. Krosatir Sethim made it clear that you were to be turned over to the Korvadun alive and intact, but that was all he said. Now I won't even pretend to be as good at that kind of work as those boys, but you seem to be a hardy little thing if that fight back there was any indication. I doubt the Krosatir will mind too much if I get things started while we wait for his agents to come collect you.”
Rizawa felt a rush of fear, and she did nothing to fight against it. She let it pulse wild and untamed through her body, guiding her muscles into the exact kind of desperate convulsions that a man like him would expect from his prey, carefully measuring out the distance between her hands and the top of her head. At last, on the tenth or the fifteenth lunge, she felt her finger run across solid metal.
Guanh's words came flooding back: how the Quansai Stone's powers made it's magic invisible to Zuthruhk users. Obviously, there were certain limits to the effect. It was not powerful enough to make a man who clearly witnessed her using an enchanted cloak to break his bonds suddenly forget that she was wearing clothing. But something small and tiny, like, say, a hair pin carefully tucked against her scalp...
“You can strain all you like, but it won't help. Just look at all your friends on the other wall.”
“You seem to have a taste for the Pan Chui.” Rizawa said as she felt her thumb and index finger clasp around the pinhead. “Does torturing the people of the forest do something for you that whores and passing sailors just can't?”
“I'm glad to see that my assessment of your hardiness was accurate. To tell you the truth, right up until the moment that you tore out Kashtu's throat, I hadn't really considered this to be anything but brutal, necessary work. It's true that some of my colleagues, like your friend Zojhin over at the Nezhuan garrison, took great delight in what we'd been sent here to do, but to me it was always just a job. Who knows though, maybe our time together will awaken something new inside me. With the influx of new captives from our attack on the Pan Chui, I'll have plenty of time to-”
Rizawa contracted her legs and stomach, allowing the force of the chain's retraction to tug the hairpin free. As it jerked loose, the thin piece of metal sliced through the chains in an explosion of steam and shrapnel. She caught herself just as she plunged to the floor, driving the pin deep into the shoulder of her captor.
“You're not the only one who can be moved to great evil by grief and necessity.” she said, staring deep into his fear-swollen eyes. “If you tell me everything you know about the attack on the Pan Chui, then I'll leave you just wounded enough for the Korvadun to believe you when you say that you were ambushed by a large detachment from the 22nd.”
“It's a joint operation.” the Ka'in gasped. “At the same time that the 45th were luring the 22nd into an ambush, a division drawn from the 6000 archers and marines onboard the Chadurb fleet were to launch a combined strike against all of the Pan Chui tribes around the canal. They intend to annihilate them outright, alongside any Nezhuan resistance, and then immediately depart for the Gaujong River.”
“So the Thozogh is fully operational, then?” Rizawa asked.
“It has been for months. They were just waiting for the fleet to arrive before they opened the last of the water locks.”
Rizawa brought her heel down on the mans neck, pressing until she felt his trachea collapse beneath her bare ankle. It wasn't that she didn't believe that he would have done his best to convince the Korvadun that there had been a coordinated attack against them, but as the man himself had admitted, those boys were good at their jobs, and they had plenty of ways of learning the truth.
Realizing that she had forgotten about Luo, she frantically searched the chamber until she found him strapped to one of the altars not far from where she'd been tied. She grabbed the torn seal from the Ka'in's body and rushed over, shattering the bonds and breathing a sigh of relief the moment she felt the blood pulsing through his wrists.
“Rizawa... what happened.”
“The Korvadun are on their way. We have to get out of here, fast. Take this: it's Heir Empress Zhe's personal seal. Show it to Major Wan alongside Lagovrun crystal and that Ka'in's signet ring and you should have no trouble persuading them about the coming ambush.”
“What about you?” Luo asked.
“It's not just the 22nd that they're going after. Seems they're of a mind to wipe out all of their enemies in a single stroke, including the Pan Chui.
“Rizawa.” Luo said as he looked over Zhe's seal with disbelief. “You're a spy for the Heir Empress, and the Nezhuan Empire is at war.”
“Guanh and Vieng are her allies, too. It only takes one person to deliver a message. Go now before the enemy arrives!”
Luo did as he was told, stopping at the doorway for one more pleading look. But whatever he saw in her eyes compelled his feet on into the darkness.
She'd been rushing blind through the jungle for nearly a third of a watch before the Phujeng caught up with her. The note attached to its neck was terse, in Vieng's handwriting:
“They came in the dead of night, in numbers far beyond our bleakest estimates. They came for all of the Pan Chui tribes. Guanh and most of the Diengu have been captured. The survivors now gather for war.”
Given how easy it would be for the Phujeng bird to get caught, what with the Pan Rin being lousy with Ukni soldiers, Vieng had chosen her words carefully. Yet it did not take a strategic mastermind to suss out her meaning. If Guanh and the other tribesmen were captured rather than killed, it meant that the Ukni aimed to sell them into slavery. However, while the Dark God loved to use the economic mobility that came with slave ownership as a free incentive to get soldiers to sign on, the very fact that this practice had been Ukni operating procedure for centuries meant that he'd had all the time in the world to iron out the kinks in his system. And of all the many ways that slave-taking could go wrong for the captor, there was perhaps no better example than detaining thousands of hostile indigenous warriors in a single, central location when there were still hundreds more who were ready to fight. Thus the most likely outcome was that, while Saklugz had ordered the Pan Chui's annihilation, Krosatir Sethim had not been able to pass up the opportunity to enhance his personal coffers and chose to sell them into slavery instead. Given the penalties for disobedience in the Ukni, this also implied that Sethim would be rather eager to get rid of his chattel as quickly as possible, hence the need for an immediate counter-strike.
As for the location where the survivors would be gathering, there was no need for details. It was the one place that all the Ukni strike teams in existence would never be able to find. The heart of the Pan Chui's Namapha magic.
Rizawa could feel the tension as she approached the Quansai Stone. While it seemed ludicrous to imagine that any rock, even an enchanted one, could possess the power of cognition, she could not help but feel the presence of volition in the ancient stone. The supplicating posture of the five man long hands seemed to match with the artist's depictions that she'd seen back in Nezhu, but the muscles seemed tighter somehow, as if the bounty and nourishment promised by that gesture were some distant hope that the stone itself now clung to as a bastion against the hard realities to come.
From the dozens of Pan Chui tribes residing close to the canal, but thirty souls remained. They looked little better than the stone that they encircled. It wouldn't be quite right to say that their eyes were cold or dead, but whatever fires had formerly animated them had been snuffed down to a smoldering defiance of their fate: an insatiable rage that even the subjugation of their people could not extinguish.
It was hard to believe that the woman who came to meet her was the same one that she'd known all these years. The weight of whatever authority had been bestowed upon her had warped her features to the point that Rizawa saw no sign of the loss of her brother in Vieng's face. The red coloration around the knuckles fiercely gripped around the hilt of her pike was the only testament to the fact that she was about to embark upon a suicide charge.
Vieng moved to place her hands upon Rizawa's shoulder in the traditional Diengu gesture used by soldiers departing for war, but Rizawa blocked her arm, gripping her hand within her own and drawing their hearts together in the traditional greeting between comrades in arms.
“This is not your fight, Rizawa. Your loyalty is to Heir Empress Zhe, and it does her no good to have her best asset throw her life away.” Vieng said.
“People love saying that to me.” she answered. “But the Heir Empress that I serve would not abandon her allies in the hour of their greatest need. I have done everything in my power to help the 22nd Scouting Company, who appear to be the only unit in the entire Western Pan Rin Garrison to have avoided the corruption that will soon bring the entire fortress toppling to the ground. Besides, the Ukni have placed a rather sizable bounty on my head. Even if I were to flee, both the garrison and the harbors of Shungnath will be crawling with Korvadun agents. More to the point, though, I come here today with new information. I don't know if it'll be enough for us to win this thing, but it might be enough to show our enemy the true cost of going to war with the Pan Chui.”
Rizawa told Vieng of what she saw in that underground passage. How the Zuthruhk nodes that she and Guanh had discovered were in fact linked together by way of an underground tunnel system that was used to cart slaves and sacrifices from the site of the Thozogh Canal. Given that, on their earlier trips, the three of them had accessed the canal by way of the main entrance, the Ukni would almost certainly expect whatever last vestiges of resistance the Pan Chui could muster to attack along the same route. However, her decision to kill that Ka'in meant that, even if the Korvadun had stumbled upon the body within moments of her departure, all of the evidence still pointed to the 22nd as the culprits. If luck was on their side, they might be able to use those tunnels to travel directly to their captive tribesmen and then retreat right back out the way the came before the Ukni could mobilize whatever defenders they stationed around the main gates.
When she was finished, Vieng turned to her with a look that was normally reserved for hopeless yet beloved relatives when they announce yet another sure-fire scheme to strike it rich: the warmth in her eyes reflected the love and the guilt that drove Rizawa to this place, while her pursed lips betrayed what she truly thought about even the possibility that these crushing odds could be overcome.
“The Pan Rin is dying, Rizawa.” she said. “In the fields and valleys of your homeland, you may have convinced yourself that your people stand apart from their surroundings. That the thing you name Nezhu somehow exists independent of the endless fields that carry fresh grain to your sprawling capitals, but the Pan Chui suffer from no such delusions. We are as much a part of this forest as the birds and the foliage. The culture and values of our people came up from the same soil that nourishes the vast canopies overhead. I know that you speak with sincerity when you tell us of the Heir Empress' offer to resettle our people within the Fezhong Valley, but the Diengu have always been children of the Pan Rin, and like an infant whose mother dies to sickness, it is our fate to wither alongside the forest that birthed us. Even if we somehow secure a miracle, with each passing year more and more of our homeland will fall to the axes of Ukni and Nezhu alike until there is nothing left for them to hew. We march to our death, Rizawa, but if it is your wish to journey with us into the maw of the beast, then we would be honored to have you at our side.”
“I do.” Rizawa answered.
“Then it is time for the ceremony.”
As if on cue, the sound of drums began to echo out from the forest. Even as she spun around in search of those responsible for that driving rhythm, Rizawa knew that she would not find them. That the sounds she was hearing came from the jungle itself: the heartbeat of the Pan Rin Rainforest.
The surviving Pan Chui began dancing wildly, spinning about in broad circles that somehow never crossed each other, as if their individual wills had been subsumed within some singular mind. She found herself being drawn into the frenzy, her crazed gyrations feeling as right and as natural as drinking water after a hard day in the fields. She barely even noticed Vieng leaping up into the petrous grip of the Quansai Stone until a large stalagmite shot up from the statue's palm, impaling her through the chest as she writhed in agony or ecstasy; retracting a moment later and leaving only a blackened mark in the place where it had smote her flesh.
One by one, the other survivors ascended the Quansai Stone, each receiving an identical mark where the rock cut through their flesh. When the last had finished, Rizawa felt a compulsion to follow, an urging which she blindly obeyed. The stake burned terrible and exultant as it pierced her chest, and the last vestiges of her consciousness were swept into the tide.
The next thing Rizawa knew she was standing in the clearing, her clothes bearing the same decayed camouflage that adorned the surviving Pan Chui, her mind honed upon the task at hand. They departed in silence, sprinting towards the Zuthruhk node, leaving not so much as the sound of a single, trampled leaf in their wake.
The Korvadun were waiting as they made their descent into the antechamber. Their voices rose up as one, first from shock and then mortal terror, before all sound was extinguished on the tips of their arrowheads. Their grim company swept over the dead like a tidal wave, drawing up two survivors and dragging them into the room where the Ka'in had been conducting his grisly work on their fellow Pan Chui. A few minutes later, a warrior from the Thiphien tribe strode back into the antechamber, confident that he could lead them straight to the captives.
They ran through a lightless maze of narrow corridors. They were as intangible as shadows on a moonless night, as real as a knife peeling back strips of flesh and sinew. At first, their advance was met by little more than armed overseers and their shackled charges carting rock through the phantasmal torchlight. Those in chains were freed to fight or flee as they saw fit. The others were left strewn in heaps as flickering beacons of victory and retribution drew the Pan Chui deeper and deeper into the heart of perdition.
The cramped passages grew into monumental caves as they carved their course through the sunless labyrinth, passing from tight corridors designed to carry the Ka'ina to the site of their foul rituals into the arterial halls used to haul large quantities of stone up to the dig site in secret. Whatever their intended purpose, the Ukni were quick to adapt to the open battlefield, stuffing doorways full of armored infantrymen and lining the walkways with hundreds of archers.
As they moved closer and closer to their target, the Ukni began growing desperate. The fights at the gates deteriorated into mutually destructive slugging matches where unrestrained force, rather than tactics or coordination, determined the victor. But despite their inferior numbers, the Pan Chui continued their advance. Rizawa put her Nobiwaru training to good use dancing in and out of the range of their Tuthranus shortwords, slashing and thrusting to the irresistible rhythm of the forest. Meanwhile, Vieng and the other Namapha stood behind the warriors, drawing upon the thousands and thousands of bats who'd taken up residence in the tunnel complex to loose a deafening storm upon their adversaries. The archers and mages along the scaffolding were stripped of their flesh, leaving only a gallery of bone and sodden cloth to witness the Pan Chui's advance.
They were getting closer. The dust clouds kicked loose by their footfalls and the thick layers of guano along the ground turned into a maelstrom of toppled carts and abandoned tools that suggested that whoever had been occupying these chambers had been forced to hastily abandon them. Suddenly Vieng was shouting, pointing towards a towering double door whose arch was shaped in the likeness of a lion-headed serpent.
“I can sense them, above us.” Vieng said as the twenty odd survivors gathered around her. “Our enemies, however, are cunning. While the abandoned refuse around us proves that our attack through the tunnels caught them by surprise, it is also ample evidence that they've made use of the time it took for us to get here. The mere fact that they were able to evacuate their laborers also indicates that they've had plenty of time to redeploy their forces against us. When we ascend that stairway, we will be stepping directly into the enemy's trap. We have but one advantage in our favor, and that is our Namapha magic. I can feel it pulsing through the hearts of our captive brethren as they draw out the might of the forest in preparation for our attack.”
They ascended the stairs as a funeral procession. As if, knowing that the Ukni would leave their carcasses where they fell, the Pan Chui had elected to use these final moments of calm to mourn not just their own impending demise, but the annihilation of an entire way of life. Rizawa somehow felt this truth pulsing through the hearts of each of the Pan Chui: that, whatever happened once the fighting began, for the Diengu and the Thiphien and all of the other tribes unlucky enough to be situated between the hammer and the anvil of these two great powers, this would be their final battle.
You could not have asked for a better killing zone than what had been prepared from them as they crossed that final threshold. Colossal slabs of granite reached dozens of men's length into the air, ensconcing them from all sides. At the other end of the canal bed, hundreds of Nashragha stood in formation, fully arrayed for war. The harsh light of the thousand Zuthruhk wards lining the curtain wall glinted off their shields as they began their slow, unrelenting march forward. Behind them, bound and gagged, were countless captives from the Ukni raid. Their chains had already been fastened to a single length of rope, as if the Krosatir sought to haul them onto his cargo ships the moment that the fighting reached its end.
Then, the Nashragha began to part, and a black-robed figure strode out from their ranks. Their face was concealed beneath a thick cloak, but rather than draping lifelessly over their flesh, it seemed to hover around them like some kind of specter. Even at that distance, Rizawa could tell that their gaze was not fixed upon the leaders of the Pan Chui as they strode out to meet her.
The cloaked figure came to a stop in front of Vieng, pulling back their hood to reveal a woman with a tangled nest of auburn hair and eyes like a caged predator. She bore the barely suppressed grin of an impish schoolboy, while her gaze snapped between Rizawa and the Pan Chui's surviving commanders.
“The Dark God is not of a mind to send out envoys after a battle's outcome has already been decided in his favor.” Vieng said. “Given your superior numbers, why bother to treat with us at all?”
At this the woman, who bore the marks of a Nektan priestess, burst into laughter.
“What you mistake for a war is in fact nothing more than a drawn out manhunt. If the Dark God had wished to annihilate the Pan Chui, he could have done so decades ago. No. The reason that our soldiers have put your villages to the torch is because you have been harboring a dangerous fugitive: a spy to the Heir Empress herself.” the Nektan said, removing a torn seal from her robes.
The light in Rizawa's heart went out. She didn't know which of the two seals the priestess had acquired, the one she gave to Luo or Meixi, but it hardly mattered. Either the woman she loved was dead or their best chance of preventing this invasion lay in ruins. After everything she'd endured, she lacked the willpower to confront either possibility.
The Nektana reached into the other sleeve, pulling out a second document and handing it to Vieng.
“This is from Krosatir Sethim's own hand. It is a renegotiation of the terms of our peace treaty. It promises the safe return of any Pan Chui tribesman captured in the process of bringing this fugitive to justice, as well as affirming the freedom and security that we have always held to in dealing with your confederation. All you need do in exchange is turn over Rizawa to us and provide a full account of what she witnessed on her trips to the canal with you. I suggest you take the Krosatir up on his offer. The presence of such a dangerous spy has had quite the effect on our high command, but I don't expect his compassion to last forever.”
Now it was Vieng's turn to laugh.
“So that's what this is about. You needed to find out just how much Rizawa was able to discover before she had a chance to die in the fighting and deny your Korvadun their sport. Yes, I suspect that the Krosatir's compassion will not last much longer. Just long enough for you to wring whatever last drops of intelligence you haven't yet been able to extract from our tribesmen. You can stand here all night trying to convince me that Saklugz could have destroyed the Pan Chui whenever he saw fit, but the heaps of Ukni corpses that we've left in our wake tell a very different story. Do you really believe that I'm stupid enough to think that, the moment we've given up our only bargaining chip in this game, your Krosatir will suddenly forget about all the money he could make by selling us into slavery, or that your Nashragha will be too overwhelmed with love and tenderness to take up arms against an adversary that has voluntarily relinquished their own?”
“Yes, yes. They do love their little games, don't they. It's something that we have in common, you know...” the Nektan answered, staring into Rizawa's eyes. “Like that little whore I had back at your garrison. To think that all this trouble came about because one worthless bitch managed to scream loud enough for the guards to finally notice.”
“That hardly seems worthless to me.” Rizawa said, eyeing the woman up and down. “That must make you Zojhin.”
The Nektan gave her a smile.
“Well I suppose that if you're in the business of stuffing the biggest and wealthiest cock you can find into your pock-riddled cunt, then getting fucked by both the Ukni and Nezhuan empires at once is about the best you can ask for.”
Rizawa had always prided herself on her ability to maintain composure in the face of the most repugnant hardships, and, by extension, on the fact that she could treat with the horrors of reality in the aloof vocabulary of wit and banter. Yet no barbed quips came to her tongue as she listened to Zojhin speak. There were no clever rejoinders or righteous polemics ready to be thrown out at her adversary, just four simple words:
“Her name was Chilai.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Zojhin asked. “I was expecting a bit more from the woman who came so close to sabotaging our invasion.”
“The time for talk is over.” Rizawa answered.
Rizawa wasn't even sure what she was doing as she strode forward and raised her arm in signal to the Pan Chui. If she had been in possession of her senses, she would have been keenly aware of the arrogance of an outsider, especially an outsider with such a high bounty on her own head, ordering the warriors of the forest into battle. But whatever it was that had guided her since she left the Quansai stone blinded her to this fact, and at her signal the Pan Chui charged. They formed up around their Namapha mages and rushed against the Ukni infantry. The Nashragha pounded loose a screen of dust as they marched forward to meet them, and from behind, a cacophony rose up from the canal locks.
A great host of birds poured out over the parapets. Hundreds of Royal Kingfishers and Crimson-Tufted Cockatiel danced around the pounding wings of War-Banded Eagles. Birds of Renewal fell from the heavens in their thousands, the wall of multicolored plumes shimmering as if someone had gripped a rainbow by both ends and shaken it violently. The Pan Rin's wrath fell upon the Ukni with sharp talons and terrifying shrieks. Dozens of Phujeng Birds, their expressions no longer fixed in docile confusion, rushed the Ukni shield wall, while a flock of Swordbreaker Toucan descended upon the captives, their titular jaws making quick work of the Pan Chui's chains.
Rizawa did not join them. She may have been on the Heir Empress' payroll, and the ceremony at the Quansai Stone had bound her to the Pan Chui, but she was also a criminal investigator for the Western Pan Rin Garrison: charged with tracking down the killer of a desperate and confused young woman. A terrified little girl with family somewhere who was doing the best she could to survive in this vicious jungle. Chilai's death may have been the opening volleys of a war between the two greatest powers in Aios, but that didn't change the fact that she had been murdered on Rizawa's watch, and that her killer now stood before her, assured in her conviction that their would be no consequences for the horrors that she'd loosed upon the world.
Zojhin had fled into the chaos the moment that the birds began their attack, but a drunkard in a snowstorm wouldn't have had any trouble missing the whirling dome of Zuthruhk wards cutting a straight course towards the curtain wall, where dozens of Nektana stood around the cloaked figure of their high priestess, throwing the combined force of their power into fending off the attack. These mages were alone among the Ukni in having any success at beating back the Pan Rin's vengeance, and Rizawa could not allow her to rejoin the ranks of her coven.
She scanned her surroundings, her eyes locking onto a small awl laying beside a toppled wheelbarrow. Zojhin's attention was split between fending off the birds and arrows raining down from above and cutting a course through the sea of hand to hand combat roiling around her. Rizawa crouched low and tossed the awl like a discus, watching it spin through the air and embed itself into the back of Zojhin's leg. The Nektan toppled forward, and before she'd even had the chance to spin onto her back Rizawa was already in motion: drawing out her blade and diving forward with the tip aimed down.
Zojhin rolled around just in time to throw up a crimson sigil against the impact of Rizawa's hunting knife, the string of archaic Ghakat writing rippling and warping before her blade snapped at the hilt. She had fended off Rizawa's attack well enough, but while that instant of warning may have been enough to throw up some defenses out of instinct, she didn't have the chance to react as Rizawa rolled to her side and wedged her body between the Nektan and her scutcheon.
“Chilai!” Rizawa shouted as she brought her fist crashing into her jaw. “Her name was Chilai!”
Zojhin, her face bloodied and swollen, began to laugh hysterically. The Zuthruhk wards began to uncoil themselves from the curved half-domed of her shield, the words wrapping around Rizawa's arms and legs and constricting her.
“She was a maidservant's daughter, born of an illicit affair. She found work as a prostitute after her mother came down with the weeping sickness, and when it finally took her she signed aboard a ship bound for Shungnath with the hope of starting anew.”
Zojhin smiled at her words, spitting a wad of blood into her face as she burst into laughter:
“You certainly are a feisty one. I can see why she took such an interest in you.”
Rizawa didn't take the bait. Words could not describe how much she hated herself for dragging Meixi into this mess, but there was no longer anything she could do to fix that. The woman who had dragged her into this nightmare, however, was laying right in front of her, and all the confidence in the world would not be enough to save her.
Rizawa's arms and legs were bound to her side, but her body was in an open field, laying on top of the woman she aimed to kill. Unlike her fight with the Ka'in underground, there were no walls that she could be pinned to. Nothing to stop her from hoisting back her chest and hammering her forehead into the Nektan's nose.”
“Her name was Chilai, and she was a human being!”
She brought her head down again and again, each new impact blotting her awareness until she nearly missed the sensation of her bonds loosening. She strained to break free of the writing, but as she did so Zojhin saw her chance, and the ancient Nezlugz script dissolved into a glowing mass before taking on the form of a serpent nearly as thick as her arm.
The snake's venomous fangs glowed from the bursts of mage light while it's black eyes reflected back nothing but untamed malevolence. As Rizawa pulled her hands loose and wrapped them around Zojhin's neck, the serpent snapped upright, burying it's fangs deep into her forearm.
“The woman who you killed was named Chilai, and I'm going to send you to the house of death with that word echoing through your ears.”
The Zuthruhk snake seemed to grow with Zojhin's blind desperation, but Rizawa kept her thumb clamped against her trachea. Her arms hurt beyond anything she had ever known. She could see spiderwebs of necrotic skin spreading from her arteries, but she would not relent.
Then, the thrashing stopped, and the serpent dissolved into the ether. As the light faded from the Nektan's eyes, Rizawa looked down at her arm. Exempting a handful of cuts and bruises, it looked exactly as it had this morning.
Zojhin had made a foolish choice. There were indeed many Nektana whose command of illusion magic was such that they could blur the line between symbol and reality, but she was not one of them. She was a serial killer whose weapon of choice happened to be Zuthruhk magic, and she was no more capable of penetrating the depths of the Dark God's secret arts than she was of understanding mercy or compassion. Rizawa couldn't help but find it fitting, for an illusion mage to die pretending to be something that she wasn't. In the end, she was just as scared and confused as the countless victims she'd left in her wake. Rizawa left the body where it lay and rose to her feet.
All around her, the battle had descended into chaos. The ordered ranks of Nashragha infantry had broken apart into a free-form orgy of clashing blades, completely encircled by a wall of poorly armed yet ferociously determined Pan Chui warriors.
None of it made any sense. The Ukni soldiers had been drawn from the men serving as marines on the Nezhuan invasion fleet. While the Dark God's Chakaltun galleys had earned their reputation as powerhouses on the battlefield, maintaining the speed and maneuverability required to engage with Nezhu's lighter Water Stallions meant carefully managing the number of marines on any given ship. An Ukni field army might have been able to shrug off the loss of a few hundred heavy infantry, but the same could not be said for the marines manning the decks of their ships. Given that the primary function of those infantry units was to keep the surviving Pan Chui from getting to the prisoners, Krosatir Sethim should have sounded the retreat the moment that he realized Vieng and the other Namapha were relying on the birds of the Pan Rin to free their comrades. Then he would have had all the time in the world to seal off the exits and let his Nektana and the hundreds of archers along the curtain wall finish them off. But the impassive silhouette at the top of the highest water lock, whose posture of cold command marked his station far better than any herald or insignia ever could, seemed content enough to let his marines get encircled by a disorganized mob. It was only as her eyes began to take in the form of the large stone slab behind the Krosatir, and the first glimmers recognition cast their light upon the dim memories of her childhood education, that the horror revealed itself in earnest.
Rizawa turned around, sprinting towards where Vieng and the other Namapha had gathered.
“Run!” she screamed. “We have to get out of here, now! The Onguloch has awoken!”
Vieng's neck snapped up at her words, and an instant later they were being echoed out to the other Pan Chui. But it was too late. Dozens of Nektana stepped out from the darkness, forming a ring around the sarcophagus as they began chanting in unison. All along the curtain wall, black flowers with the crimson filigree of venomous insects began blossoming to life, while a new figure strode out into the light, brandishing one of the Havrech staves used to control the Onguloch over his head as he strode towards the graven vault.
The Pan Chui began rushing towards the exit, only to find them all barricaded by more teams of Ukni marines. A deep, grinding sound reverberated across the canal bed. Rizawa looked up in time to see the doors of the sarcophagus burst open, revealing the form of a towering, repugnant figure as it strode out onto the parapets.
It had the pink skin of a newborn infant, but blotched and hardened into a sickly carapace that heaved in and out as it's massive, tooth-ringed maw drew in tremendous breaths of air. The Onguloch's form swelled and dipped to the rhythm of these colossal inhalations, so that it's entire body grew from roughly twice the height of a man to nearly four. A fierce wind came crashing down from the battlements with each exhalation, the acrid air whipping her cloak up as it kicked the screen of dust into a raging whirlwind.
The storm of birds and insects called forth from the forest were swept back like dandelion seeds. Some plunged to the earth frozen and immobile while others were hurled clear over the water locks. Then, just as the Onguloch's power reached its crescendo, the black roses burst open, releasing clouds of spores that fell upon the canal bed like some febrile snowstorm.
Warriors, Pan Chui and Ukni alike, began to stumble and fall. Rizawa suddenly understood the Krosatir's plan in all it's brilliantly repugnant detail: using the surprise raid on the Pan Chui to draw her out of hiding, evacuating the tunnel system rather than trying to defend the tight passages so that all of his enemies would be conveniently funneled into a single killing zone, at which point he could use the Onguloch's wind control powers to spread a potent sedative created by his Nektana across the field. Both his marines and his new slaves would be rendered helpless yet, crucially, alive, allowing him to collect his soldiers and sell off his chattel without the risk of losing either. There was nothing to be done. Nothing, that is, but to wait until the Nektana's magic sapped the strength from her body.
Still, she desperately resisted, fighting against the unearthly weight which sought to drag her consciousness towards the false promise of an unending void. She fought, knowing that there was no escape: that the Ukni had her exactly where they wanted her to be. She fought with every broken fragment of strength that remained to her, until her eyes rose up to the smog-veiled battlements, and the last of her will dried up and dissolved upon the Onguloch's caustic winds.
Standing there, at the very crown of the parapet, with the robes of a Nektanulz high priestess billowing around her body as she led that fell coven in their ritual, was Meixi.
"Rizawa: The Artery of Perdition" has been published freely online in order to introduce readers to the world of the "Under the Burning Tower" series. Because of this, hiring an editor for this project simply isn't feasible. If you happen across any typographical or grammatical errors while reading, especially if you see something that looks like a missing paragraph, please feel free to reach out and let me know.
