Chapter 31
Calamity
The Adventurers Guild smelled of worn leather, stale ale, and the particular mustiness that came from decades of unwashed adventurers tracking mud through the same old hallways.
Calamity had always found it oddly comforting.
Today, though, her tail twitched with unease as the party climbed the worn stairs to Guildmaster Saudane’s office, the Shadowshard still hanging around Nashala’s neck.
The monk moved beside her with that infuriating serenity, her footsteps silent despite the creaking floorboards that announced Calamity’s every step.
“You’re staring again,” Nashala said without turning her head.
“I’m observing,” Calamity countered. “It’s different.”
“You’re seething.” The corner of Nashala’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
“When am I not?”
They reached Saudane’s door on the third floor, overlooking the training yard, where new recruits were currently being pummelled by a particularly sadistic trainer. Calamity could hear the screaming through the open window on the landing.
“Come in,” came Saudane’s gravelly voice when she knocked.
The cluttered desk, walls lined with maps and bounty notices, and complete lack of anything approaching organisation were all familiar to Calamity.
The back wall was built of a different stone than the walls around them, having been knocked down in a battle with the first of The Twelve they’d encountered and since rebuilt.
Saudane himself, their half-orc guildmaster, sat amidst the chaos.
“Ah, the heroes return.” Saudane’s tusks gleamed as he smiled. “I trust the Shadowshard gave you no trouble?”
“Define ‘no trouble’,” Calamity said, dropping into the chair across from him.
Nashala remained standing, ever vigilant.
Liam stood beside the door, Morgana at his side, and Eden took the other chair.
Yorick was absent, having gone to check on his family as soon as they’d arrived back in the Capital.
“We got it, though,” Liam said, “with minimal violence.” No one mentioned the fire Calamity had started, or the number of enemies Nashala had felled to get the shard.
“Very good.” Saudane’s eyes gleamed with something Calamity couldn’t quite place. Anticipation?
“We made some progress on The Twelve whilst you were away,” he said, “and that criminal you’ve been tracking – The Varjo? We’ve narrowed his location to the warehouse district.”
“That’s excellent news,” Liam said, but Calamity was studying Saudane’s face. Had his smile always been quite so sharp?
“What’s that?” Nashala asked from behind Calamity, and she turned, following Nashala’s gaze to a leatherbound tome on Saudane’s desk. A piece of parchment marked a place inside, a twelve-pointed star scribbled onto the visible corner.
“Ah, yes,” Saudane said. “This is a journal we recovered from Captain Cinesha’s possessions.” He picked it up off the desk and handed it across to Morgana.
“This says The Twelve are followers,” Morgana said after reading for a moment. “They all serve the same entity.”
“I thought they all just wanted control for themselves?” Eden asked.
“Maybe they do,” Liam suggested, “but so that they can usher in that entity? Does it say if the entity is controlling them?” He looked over Morgana’s shoulder. She shook her head.
“Not in this section,” she said. “It seems he never appears in person, just sends instructions.”
Calamity’s mind was racing. They’d taken out six of the twelve so far – was the leader a thirteenth?
Or one of the remaining six? They’d uncovered no evidence of new members taking the place of the ones they’d dealt with, but could they still usher in this entity with half their numbers?
Why would they still be trying if they couldn’t?
And where was this entity? Ruling elsewhere? Or in exile, perhaps?
On the wall behind Saudane hung a map of the city. Red pins marked the locations where they’d found each member of The Twelve so far. A green pin in the warehouse district likely indicated where The Varjo was hiding – would that pin turn red once they’d vanquished him, too?
But no, there were other green pins up there, too. One on the Adventurers Guild, one in the palace, one all the way out in the stockyards … how had she never noticed these before?
Calamity stood, her chair scraping loudly against the wooden floor, and the others watched as she walked across the room to stand next to Nashala.
She squinted at the map, trying to focus on the pins themselves.
There were six green ones and six red, alternating perfectly in a circle covering most of the Capital.
No, not a circle. A star.
“What are you doing?” Nashala whispered, but Calamity ignored her. Instead, she strode over to the map, looking up close at the area in the centre. Almost perfectly positioned in the middle of the shape was a landmark she’d walked past dozens of times – The Pandemonium Theatre.
“The Shadowshard,” Calamity said over her shoulder, pieces falling into sickening place. “What exactly were we told it does?”
“It’s a key,” Saudane said as he moved away from her and around the desk. His smile was definitely too sharp now. “A way to breach the barriers between planes. Very dangerous in the wrong hands.”
A key. They’d been told the guild needed it to prevent it from being used. To keep it safe.
But what if that was never the plan?
“When did he recruit you?” Calamity asked quietly over her shoulder, watching Saudane. Her hand closed around her focus, feeling it warm against her palm. “When did my father make you one of The Twelve?”
Saudane’s pleasant expression finally cracked. “Clever girl. Like father, like daughter.”
Calamity’s fingertips flared with magic, but unlike that storeroom back in Southhelm, this room was full of the people she loved most. She couldn’t afford to be careless.
Her hesitation cost her the upper hand.
Saudane ripped the Shadowshard from Nashala’s neck, and then he blinked away.
“No!” Calamity lunged forward, magic crackling at her fingertips. She just managed to stop herself from firing off a spell that would have hit Nashala now that Saudane had disappeared.
“What the fuck?” Yorick asked, appearing in the doorway. He still carried his pack over his shoulder.
“We have to go,” Calamity cried. “The Pandemonium Theatre. That’s where he’ll be.”
They all tried to squeeze through the door at the same time, having to take a breath and step back to go through single file. But Calamity stopped Nashala before she could leave, holding her back with a hand to the chest.
“Did you know?” she asked, her voice breaking. Please don’t have made a fool of me, she begged silently.
“No, I swear I didn’t,” Nashala said, gesturing after the others, who were already down the stairs. “Now let’s go.”
Calamity had a choice in front of her: she could strike Nashala down here and hedge her bets, or she could take what the monk said as truth and expose herself, possibly gaining one more person to help defeat her father.
Gods knew she’d been judged enough for her past just from the way she looked, but Nashala had actively served Trulnuroth. Could she be trusted?
As far as Calamity could tell, trusting Nashala was a roll of the dice.
“This is the moment where you get to prove yourself, then,” Calamity finally huffed. “Because if we can’t stop him, Trulnuroth is coming. And if you choose him, I won’t hold back.”
She turned and sprinted through the door, leaving Nashala standing wide-eyed behind her.
* * *
By the time Calamity arrived at The Pandemonium Theatre, just a couple of paces behind the others, she knew they were too late. She could feel her focus thrumming with power the same way it had in Pandemonium. He was here, or he was on his way.
They burst through the doors of the theatre and ran along the centre aisle towards the stage, where Saudane stood in the middle of a twelve-pointed star made of chalk. Candles burned at each of the six points that had remained green on the map. All but one of the flames was black.
Morgana ran ahead of the others, leaping onto the stage. But just as she left the ground, the final flame turned black, and Saudane crouched down, plunging the Shadowshard into the centre of the star. Morgana’s blade met his neck a moment later, taking his head clean off.
But she was too late.
The shard lifted itself into the air above Saudane’s lifeless, headless body, spinning slowly, as shadows began to spill from it like blood from a wound.
Liam reached out and tried to grab it, but his hand reeled back as he cried out.
The shadows extended like grasping fingers across the floor and up the walls, dimming the afternoon light leaking into the building from the high-up windows.
The temperature rose suddenly in the hot, dry way Calamity had experienced in only one other place.
The shadows drew together, forming a shape. A gateway.
And then reality tore.
The sound was like thunder and breaking glass and screaming all at once. The stage itself simply ceased to exist, replaced by a gaping wound in the fabric of the world.
And through that wound stepped her father.
Trulnuroth, the Prince of Pandemonium, stood suddenly before them.
His eyes burned with hellfire, and when he grinned wickedly, it was with too many teeth.
He wore robes of shadow that moved independently of any breeze, and in his clawed hand he carried a staff topped with a twelve-pointed star.
The same symbol that Calamity now knew marked his organisation; his empire; his return.
The shadows coalesced behind him into new shapes – spirits, demons, things without names – filling the corners of the stage, their presence making the air thick and hard to breathe.
Trulnuroth’s gaze swept the room, taking in Saudane’s body at his feet. Then his gaze shifted to Nashala, at whom he nodded. Calamity’s stomach churned with betrayal.
“Daughter mine,” he said, turning to Calamity, his voice like sliding gravel and distant thunder. “How lovely of you and your friends to deliver my key.”