It was deeply unfair, in Cheis's opinion, that Umbria DaMoura was allowed to be beautiful, sexy, kind, graceful, and efficient, and also be a good cook. If she ever found out that she could also play the piano beautifully or something similar, she felt that she would scream.

The first course was merlot meatball appetizers, served with a light sparkling beer. Linduin was allowed two sips before it was determined that it upset his tummy and he was given fruit juice instead, which he found mortally infantilizing and put him in a bit of a sour mood.

"So," said Pellamin, hoping against hope that this might not be entirely painfully awkward, "what have you been up to since you returned to Temurin?"

Cheis shrugged, stuffing another meatball into her mouth. "This and that. Cleaning up messes for people, doing research."

Umbria cooed. "I'm always so impressed that you can fight monsters and such things, Cheis. I'd be terrified!" She daintily nibbled a sprig of parsley in a way that raised Cheis's blood pressure palpably.

"She's pretty awesome. I saw her parry a sword with her bare hand!" bragged Linduin, completely missing all of the subtext involved. The second course, a rich coq au vin with a cold beet salad simmered in peach brandy (and served, of course, with a chilled burgundy), stopped conversation for some minutes, until eventually Cheis found herself unable to bear the silence any longer.

"What about you, Umbria? Have you been..." -- she swallowed as much bile as she could -- "...keeping busy?"

Umbria tittered, causing Linduin to look at her dreamily; Pellamin scowled but said nothing. "Oh, just the usual things. I'm afraid I don't quite have the head for complicated business like you and Pels." Cheis made demurring noises in response while her brains practically boiled between her ears. That's my nickname for him, you bitch, she thought, but managed to keep a rictus vaguely resembling a smile on her face. Linduin and Pellamin looked uncomfortably back and forth at each other.

"Obviously you're smarter than you give yourself credit for," Cheis finally managed, "or Pellamin wouldn't trust you with his business." Giving her rival a compliment of any kind galled her tremendously, but she wanted to have this dinner be a success; and it wasn't as though she couldn't live with Umbria stealing her boyfriend anyway, really. In the abstract, she was fine with it; it was only when she actually had to confront it that everything seemed to go so very horribly wrong. The plates were cleared away and replaced with a delightfully crisp beer-battered interlude of fried mushrooms and onions.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the safest topic possible: inducing Pellamin to pontificate on his work, which needed little urging and less encouragement. He droned on while Cheis listened good-naturedly, Umbria gazed at him adoringly, and Linduin alternately rolled his eyes and mooned over Umbria. A selection of very fancy cheeses, paired with light cocktails, meandered its way across the table.

By the time dessert was brought out -- a heavy spice cake which was almost certainly half rum by weight -- the conversation had begun to get somewhat languid and everyone's eyes were beginning to droop. If Linduin had shared some of his misadventures of the previous evening with Cheis, she might have been a bit more suspicious that every element in the meal had been alcohol-related; but the components of each course had been so very well paired and selected that no one noticed a single thing out of place. Cheis's protective wards, which could neutralize any poison, did not register ethyl hydroxide as hazardous in any way, and the other soporific elements of the food -- tryptophans, calciums, and heavy fats -- all conspired to intensify the effects. The steady rumble of Pellamin's oratory was the final note, and one by one, each of them drifted off in their chairs.

Nyoque, wearing its favorite form, walked around the table over and over, practically rubbing its hands together with glee. The effort to arrange this sequence of events had been both exacting and enjoyable; it paused to laugh in a sinister fashion, just once, because it could no longer contain itself. Eventually, however, it decided to stop luxuriating in the situation and move on to the next phase of its plan.

Pellamin required the least work; it sampled his soul delicately, slipping in another few suggestions and compulsions which would bear fruit in the following few days. It yearned to make Cheis its thrall, but suspected that she was well-protected against such subversion; instead, it summoned servants to bear her to the place it had prepared for her previously. It preferred not to watch such things happen; for a rakshasi, all the fun was in the planning, and the execution was a mere formality.

It lingered the longest over Linduin. A number of different options all beckoned, but Nyoque could see quite clearly that simply setting him up to create chaos on his own would be far more entertaining. It pondered various ways of making this happen, and was just about to implant a particular suggestion when a better idea popped into its mind, causing another fit of laughter. Without touching his soul at all, it picked him up and moved him to another room in the estate, then arranged a number of things just so. This, it was certain, would be absolutely delightful.

***

Galar faltered and fell to his knees, the final blast of magic having nearly exhausted him. He wished he could leave the rest up to his troops; he was so very tired. But determination welled up in him swiftly enough; he cast one more spell, which filled his body with vitality and limned his silver spear in white fire, and leapt into the heart of the fray. Of course, such things came at a price; behind him, many of his troops faltered and wondered why their weapons and bodies suddenly felt so much heavier. But Galar knew nothing of the actual thaumnodynamics involved; he simply prayed to Santorana, recited the special words, and struck forth. His spear lashed out, slaying the two giant oakspawn that attempted to block his path with a single stroke each, and he bounded up on their corpses with the lightness of a hare. With a gravity-defying leap, he landed upon the Black Oak itself.

On the other side, Meloria was clambering up the igg's black flesh, ignoring the huge tentacles that flailed at her and the toothy maws that kept springing upon under her hands to try to bite her; her physical form, literally incandescent with power, was not remotely vulnerable to any sort of force that the igg could bring to bear. It recognized that the parameters of the engagement were rapidly becoming untenable for it, and began to execute its contingency plans. Velinaer, who had spent several distracted minutes figuring out how to get his skeletal steed's hooves to grip the igg's flesh, followed behind her and marveled at the scope of what he was seeing. He'd seen videos of li-iggura al-flgath that had gotten out of control before, but certainly never one this size. What the fuck was everyone else doing? Was he, as usual, the only competent engineer around here?

***

Linduin slowly returned to himself, discovering that he was in a sumptuous bed and wrapped in sheets of silk. He yawned, stretched, and scratched himself, idly wondering where his shirt was. Or, for that matter, his pants. Uh oh.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. Had he fallen asleep at the dinner? Worse, had he soiled himself and been cleaned like an infant? He nearly retched at the possibility. Surely things hadn't gone that poorly. He attempted to rise from the bed, encountered some difficulty, and noticed that there was something not quite right about the mattress. His gaze slowly shifted to his left.

In bed beside him, her golden hair spread out across the pillows, was a heart-stopping vision of loveliness; supple limbs ever so artfully concealed by and emerging from tangled sheets which had clearly been used for something other than sleeping. The curve of her flank swelled from the bedclothes like a wave in the sea, revealing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Umbria DaMoura was completely unclothed. Her scent was all over them both.

Linduin's eyes nearly popped out of his head. This was definitely not going to go over well.

***

Galar's blazing spear of light stabbed here and there as he fought his way up the Black Oak's surface, past innumerable flailing tentacles which tried to crush him. Each strike he made shriveled and grayed the black flesh beneath him, or laid a tentacle low and cleared a path for his soldiers to follow him. He could tell something momentous was happening; thick veins and ropes of black purulence were pulsing and moving beneath his feet, swiftly cascading past him towards the spire at the top of the weird alien structure. He sidestepped another tentacle, evaded a jet of acid from a flying oakspawn, and executed a spinning slash which took them both down; it was obvious that flow of noxious substance collecting at the top of the structure was building towards some new appendage or horror. He redoubled his pace, bounding ahead like a mountain goat with the power of the white fire in his veins, as he raced towards his goal.

Velinaer, who had finally reached a slightly more level part of the igg, paused to take a few more readings from his console. Beside him, Meloria punched, clawed, and bit whatever came near them, but he was mostly interested in the diagnostic information he was getting. The biological and metaphysical structures which comprised the igg were complex, and he would need to know how best to target his excisions; but by the time he noticed the payload being prepared for exfiltration, he realized that his chances of stopping it were slim.

At the top of the spire, the igg collected all of its most precious elements; all its neural tissue, the wire and box it had gone to such lengths to acquire, and as much muscle and fluid as it could bring without compromising the integrity of the vessel. Around a jelly-like center of blasphemous demonic flesh, a springy and chitinous shell formed, with a tapered nose and some shapes reminiscent of insect wings around the base; the igg's understanding of aerodynamics was limited, but not nonexistent.

Galar tore through the Oak's last line of defenses, clambering up the tower; he was dimly aware of other shapes -- one of them oddly bright and flickering, the other two rigid and moving stiffly -- climbing up the other side of it slightly below him, but he shut them out and focused on his goal. The strange, rancid-looking fruit burgeoning at the tip of the spire had to be the beating heart of the demonic castle; with one strike, he could end this war. Below him, Velinaer squinted, wondering why the springy figure with the glowing spear above them looked so familiar.

With a final surge of fluid, the igg's preparations reached their climax; a jet of hyper-compressed ichor, a taunt-snapping series of bands, and a number of expulsory muscular actions best not described all combined to produce a spectacular launch. The most critical portions of the igg's physical form, compressed into a huge black egg-like shape roughly two meters long, shot into the sky with a boom loud enough to deafen half the army and rattle the windows in villages ten miles away. It streaked over the mountains, through the clouds, and into the east, leaving behind several things: a cheering, victorious army; an abruptly leaderless swarm of demonic horrors who were quickly defeated; and Galar Kayle, covered in black fluid and staring open-mouthed at what he was seeing. His heart trembled at the sight of his lost wife accompanying a clothing-obscured figure upon a skeletal horse. Had Death come for him at last?

If Velinaer had eyelids, he would have blinked. "Oh shit, it's Cool Staff Guy! What up?"

***

Cheis of Veraleigh awoke with the dim awareness that she was in very, very great pain from a number of sources, but there were so many different ones that she had difficulty even determining whether she was conscious, let alone her situation or location. Her hands felt thick and cottony, and there seemed to be something wrong with her tongue and her throat; she also had a tremendous, splitting headache and a painful, high-tension throbbing all up and down her body. The fact that the room where she found herself was not lit very well did on help at all, but eventually her eyes adjusted to the gloom. A shadowy figure, arms held high, took shape out of the darkness; she jerked back slightly in surprise, and saw the figure move as well. Eventually, realization dawned.

The shape before her was her own reflection in a large, onyx-framed mirror; she was suspended by her wrists from thick iron chains, with her feet dangling a few inches above the floor. Her hands felt thick and useless because they were; large iron spikes had been driven through her palms, shattering her metacarpals and severing her tendons in such a way that she could no longer even twitch her fingers. Her toes had all been severed, and their stumps were dripping into a large pan below her; her first thought was irritation that whoever had crippled and tortured her had probably stolen her good shoes, too. But the most important thing she could see in the mirror was the Sign of Iron Silence, which had been branded into the skin of her forehead and would prevent her from speaking, even telepathically, until her death.

Cheis of Veraleigh had been subjected to every known method for crippling a mage; she had been robbed of the power of speech, rendered immobile, and had had any limb which she might have even considered using for somatic gestures maimed or hobbled or both. The only future which could possibly await her was further torture, possibly interrogation, almost certainly even more torture, and eventually ignominy and death.

All right. Now she was pissed.

END OF PART TWO