There are Archons everywhere here, thousands of them.  Some moving in massed arrays of flame and steel and electricity, some moving in smaller groups, or singly, carrying instructions, or requests, to those whose concern they are, or will soon become.

Most of those Archons, though, while here, are not precisely here.

There are thousands of Archons, and yet any of them could pass within a hair's breadth of the intruders, and never detect them, so long as that heir's breadth lays in the right... direction.  Time, and space, and other, more esoteric, dimensions make up the shape of this place.  Illusion, spirit, and shadow are as much a part of its substance as mere matter and energy.

A hair's breadth, a minute fraction of a heartbeat, a difference in quantum state... all of these mark the difference between here, and precisely here.

Senses reach out, and shrouds of insubstantial shadow fold and billow, and slowly, oh so slowly, the intruders race through the Underflow, sometimes passing through Archons, who detect them as no more than a brief, passing discomfort.  Most ignore it, but a few attribute it to the proximity of others of their kind, and occasional disagreements erupt.

The War Room lays within the fortress, from some perspectives.  From others, it is a bare mountaintop beneath a sky filled with burning clouds.  And it is empty.

No Archons.  Just hundreds of glittering spires of crystal, hundreds of feet tall, surrounded by shimmering images which change and shift constantly.

Aaron's eyes immediately darted here and there, centuries of combat (if not necessarilly warfare) experience simply falling into place automatically. There were no corners to check, no possible hiding place save for the very makeup of Reality itself.

That was a startling concept. Aaron didn't have time to be surprised.

So instead he gazed upon the spires in their multitudes of imagery, and smiled slightly.

"Big Brother is watching you!" he chuckled quietly, then shook his head. "Sorry. I humbly request that someone make sense of what I'm seeing, please."

But even as Aaron said it, his own mind was already filing things out into logical statements for later perusal. This was a War Room. Indeed, perhaps the single place they could cause the most damage, if they worked it out correctly. He began to find excitement 'neath the feelings of intensity.

Dorian turns about, studying the strange environment. It wasn't too far from what he had imagined, save the mountain peak and the exact form of the spires. He had suspected such things were possible, and if his guesses were correct it opened up a few interesting possibilities.

"Good, let's see what we have here."

He turns to the second closest spite and narrows his concentration on it.

Aaron, it seems, is as perplexed as her by the War room.  Things were different when Cyan was here, again.  Now there is no need for an interface she can operate.  "I remember the spires," she mumurs, moving to one, her footsteps near-silent.  "I had my own means of accessing the information...."  Berd, on her shoulder, concentrates fully upon his surroundings, allowing Dorian to peruse the information.  Some of his many minds scan and search, filtering the Underflow through his perceptions; others hold up shielding, cloaking, prepare lightning-swift sequences of spiritual assault.

_{Dorian.  When you have determined the methodology of accessing the information, I may be able to assist.}

Leave the research to the man who has studied the Archons.

"Devlin, Aaron...if we are no help here," Cyan whispers, "we should be prepared.  If we are discovered at any time, we must attempt to overwhelm our opposition in an instant.  If we cannot, we must flee.  And...while Berd can take us into the Underflow, he cannot easily evade the Archons as he might do with another creature.  They will follow.  If you have any ideas on how to prevent their following, to confuse our path, or to defend against them, now would be a good time to consider them and prepare."

Replying to Cyan's request, Devlin says quietly, "I've been thinking of a way I might be able to effect them, not all of them, I mean the fire wheels."

The man avoids using any of their proper names, though he's not sure that means anything.

"I'm not sure the skills I've begun to develop are sufficient yet, but I'm willing to try it."

Then Devlin looks at his wrist, at the black band there, and then directly at Cyan and asks, "Would you watch after Nightbrand? It cannot change to a form that would match the one I would take."

Reality is fluid here, in the War Room of Harbonah.  Images around the pillars blend, and flow together, flickering into an endless montage.

Here, a city burns, surrounded by armies, as Archons rain flame upon it from the skies...
Here, there is a wheel of blades spinning against a star-filled sky, and every blade is an Archon...
Here, Archons howl through a city of glass, and glittering metallic spiders strike at them with strange weapons, while darker, more savage creatures pin their spinning forms beneath a mass of bodies...
Here, a world where lightning dances constantly across a storm-tossed ocean, and wheels of actinic light and gleaming metal prowl...
Here, Archons race across the heavens, leaving runes of fire behind them, and then they are gone, as a hole opens in the sky, and the sun falls upon the land beneath...
Here, there are Archons...
Here...
Here...
...

Everywhere, in all the images, across innumerable worlds, Archons do battle, and in most of them they are winning.

Only one scene remains distinct.  It does not join the flow of the others, hovering instead at the centre.  A hellish, shattered world, the surface molten and boiling into vapour, and the very atmosphere burning.

Dorian nods. "I believe they may be similar to Amber's trump cards and your Palanquet. At least in function, I mean. They are windows, utilizing the Underflow, to many different worlds. I'm not sure yet how to control them, but it may also be that Harbonah is capable of watching all of them at once with no need to focus them on any particular world. What do you think, Cyan?"

"Overwhelm?" Aaron thought about it for a moment, then nodded to Cyan and smiled.

"You got it." He reached behind him, loosening his blade in its scabbard.

Turning, he looked upon the images arrayed before them, focusing - but not concentrating - upon the surging, flaming world in the middle.

"It's like a sun," he said quietly. "Either that's an example of the ultimate result of what the Archons are planning, or..." He didn't finish, keeping the remainder of his thoughts to himself.

OOC - Apologies everyone - stuff crept up on me, and I forgot I had things to answer.

IC -

"Certainly, Devlin," Cyan replies, holding out her hand without hesitation.  Berd studies Nightbrand with a cautious eye, scuttling around Cyan's neck to seat himself on the other shoulder.  The bard merely cocks her eyebrow at his antics, waiting for the device to be passed over.

At Dorian's words, her eyes emerald turn toward the images.  As expected, his probing mind has found answers.  "It may be...let me see."  The bard concentrates on the vistas, seeking for hints of palanquet amidst their terrible beauty.  She winces as her gaze falls on the world where the arachnids battle the wheels.  "THX1178..."  Her lips thin.  "They have weapons.  They have learned.  By the spirits, they hold."  For an instant she recalls their greeting of her, their aid, their people and world.  And the web that may still hang outside of Cyan's home.

Her free hand rises to brush her eyes.  It seems like so long ago.  Years, now...

"I would say your theory is correct, Dorian.  They have other uses, of that we may be sure, but yes.  Windows into the worlds.  I am attempting to see if they use the same energies as palanquet..."

Aaron stands ready, as always, his attention drawn to the center of things.  As always.  Devlin forms plans.  Dorian searches for weaknesses.  Aaron regards the center.  As it all should be.  "What do you see, Aaron?" she asks, still focused on deciphering the energies around her.

"What do you all see?"

The images continue to flicker and move, blinking from one to another with dazzling speed, making it hard to maintain a hold on the details...

"Correct," Dorian says, "but only in a sense. They do show multiple images, which I have not seen your palanquet do. I am merely noting the differences."

He turns to the central image, the burning world. His hand reaches up to stroke his clean-shaved chin. Eyes narrow and flit from detail to detail. A hellish, shattered world, the surface molten and boiling into vapor, and the very atmosphere burning.

"This one, however." His voice lowers and he gestures towards it. "I see lines of force, shadows of continents and oceans and mountains, all burning."

His eyes sweep over the point that burns brighter. The ocean swirls around that point. It's a vortex of fire that flows like water.

"And in the sky, points of flame. Constellations, yes. I know this place. This was.... "

This was.... WAS. This place is no more. He brow furrows deep, heavy eyebrows descend, as he tries to discern the meaning of this vision. Was it some kind of recording of the event? A memory? Or was it more? Did Harbonah have some gate that transcended time as well as space? Did the Underflow ... flow ... in more directions than they had guessed?

No. Harbonah used the event as a rallying cry to unite their kind. This was a recording, a reminder. Nothing more.

"Hosk."

He reaches out for it, as if to either caress it or snare it from some fate at the last moment.

Devlin reaches out his own hand to hold Cyans. There seems to be some delay until the man says quietly, "Do as I've instructed." Then the band on his harm shimmers, almost like a liquid, and then it moves in a fashion similar to a snake and if transfers itself from its place on Devlin's arm to the same place on Cyan's arm.


Almost at the same time the Nightbrand begins to move Devlin's form also begins to change. His from blurs, and unlike other times it does not solidify again. Instead he begins to transform into more of a cloud, a dark storm cloud about the size of a man. Then the cloud begins to rise.

Cyan briefly turns her gaze to a single pillar and studies it.  For a long moment, the scenery holds in place as she concentrates, the pillar keeping to the same scene.  Then she releases it, blinking amber eyes, and the flow of images reccomences.  "Curious," she whispers, then raises her voice slightly.  "It appears to be...what is the word?  Scanning?"

But her eyes darken as she studies the burning world, and she knows it.  The world destroyed by the allies of the Despised One.  The Nursery World, shattered and ruined by the Hated Foe.  Her teeth clench, and her stare fades toward obsidian.  The General's hand twitches, the Warrior tensing at the sight.  She would hunt them down, crush them for their betrayals, for their abandonment, for their-

<b>"Hosk."</i>  Dorian's hand, reaching for the pillar, invades her field of vision even as the man names the world.  Cyan blinks, her eyes ruby now, and turns to regard him.

She reaches out, lays her fingers on his wrist.  "No, Dorian.  Touch not the past."  The bard shakes her head.  "It is done."  For an instant, her fingers close on his arm.  Squeeze, but only just.  Then she releases him, her smile pained but true.  "Forgive yourself, Dorian.  All of yourselves, yes?"  A rueful exhalation follows, almost a laugh.

Reaching out to Devlin, Cyan accepts his hand.  Berd hisses once as Nightbrand moves across the bridge of their fingers to settle around her own wrist.  She blinks in surprise, one eyebrow rising in mimicry of Berd's spine, bowing like an enraged cat's.  The drake's burning eyes fix on the bracelet, but Cyan holds up a finger.  "I believe I am safe enough, Berd.  Cyan, if you would, Nightbrand.  That is my name."

Berd subsides with only a single glare for the once-glove.  He seems far more edgy, far more...protective than is his wont.

The Devlin begins to change, and Cyan pauses in her study of the bracelet to watch in wonder.

Devlin shifts, gradually becoming a cloud, heavy with moisture, at first, but in this place moisture does not easily exist.  The cloud starts to shrink rapidly, stablises, then begins to gradually expand again.  But, though it grows slowly, vapour still boils away constantly around the edges.

Standing close by, the others can feel the heat of that vapour, as it billows and drifts around them.  Only slightly cooler than the air in Harbonnah's War Room.

As Devlin begins to rise away from them the band about Cyan's arm speaks, in an almost whisper; it had been instructed to stay out of the minds of others and told it could speak, so it does so. "Cyan is safer with me about her arm than without, but I fear Devlin is quite vulnerable without me."

The cloud struggles at first to maintain it original size, but then it begins to slowly grow. The larger it gets the faster its moisture boils away from the heat of this place. It becomes quite obvious that that at some point it will be impossible for it to get any larger. Devlin the cloud knows it, but he also knows now that in another place, away from this heat, perhaps there is some defense against the eshurianti. Disappointed that he can do nothing to protect his friends in this place he decides that he must give up this form before he becomes fatigued and the heat wins the battle.

The cloud begins to drop lower to the ground once again.

Her touch pierces. It sends little pulses of desire careening through his heart, which he swats away (for now) like pesky flies. Now is not the time. There may never be a time. Focus on the quest. Lives are at stake. Emotions ... later.

Then her fingers close around him, light, but grasping his soul like a titanium trap. He could give in so easily; lean in, and slip an arm around her. It would feel like coming home from a weary battle, he knows. But he doesn't. He cannot.

So she gets nothing more than the same soft smile and he lets her pull away. It feels like dying.

Forgive himself? he ponders. What an odd thing it seems to be. He isn't even sure what it really means. The past is what it is. This ... forgiveness ... is just a shift of stance, a difference of category, but nothing changes. What does she mean?

He blinks away the thoughts, returning from momentary reverie--a swell of memories and thoughts, half shared with an identical twin being now lost somewhere in the tides of the underflow.

He nods and says, "I shall try, Cyan." For you.

"A burning ocean," he answered Cyan in a near-whisper, and, so he thought, mostly to himself. "A whorl of flame. Like the mouth of a dragon..."

This last was spoken almost in verse. Aaron's shifting eyes were clearly captivated, as if they were made for this vision. He studied it more and more carefully, wondering as to its importance to this journey. To him.

For each of them there was something here, he felt. This flame... no, this conflagration, had caught his eye alone. Aaron pursued it.

Cyan studies the cloud/Devlin for a long moment, watching with some concern as it struggles against the heat to find stability.  She grasps his strategy immediately, but realizes as he does that maintaining such a battle-ready body in this place will prove all-but impossible.  The heat is incredible, and she, herself, sorely misses her old apparel.

For Devlin, attempting to exist as a cloud of moisture, it must be agonizing.

"Best that you return to him," Cyan whispers to Nightbrand as Devlin begins to shrink, to coalesce.  Soon he will return to his solid, yet-mutable form, no doubt.

"To try," she says quietly to Dorian, her eyes jumping between the dark man and Aaron, lost in contemplation of destruction, "is all we can do, is it not?"  To try and fail, it might seem.  Dorian cannot turn away from his past - everywhere he goes, it faces him directly.  Cyan knows the feeling intimately, uncertain whether she might rise above her own.  Another glance to Aaron, and she realizes how many of them are caught by their misdeeds, the poor choices in their histories.  Dorian, for certain, though this one is only in part responsible for the actions.  Herself.  Aaron, and his journeys.  James' past within the world of his birth.  Even Devlin hides sorrows, recent ones.

And then the newcomers to the quest - ciphers, all.

Her smile returns, and she meets Dorian's eyes with her own, emerald gaze.  "Do what you can for yourself."

Moving away from Dorian, she hunts for answers only half-heartedly - in this place, it is her responsibility to guard, along with Berd, crouching upon her shoulder, holding the cloaking in place, defenses prepared, psychic batteries armed and waiting.  It is upon the others that she places her hopes for deciphering a clue.  An answer.  And to that end, "Aaron," she calls out, raising her voice a touch.  "What do you see in the fire?"

A trio of Archons hurtle through the War Room, there, and yet elsewhere, at the same time.  In this place, now that Harbonah no longer has to consider his all-too-human General, time and space are no longer the simple things that they were during her time there.

The leader of all the Seraphim neither needs, nor desires, such artificial constraints.


Shadows move, more felt than seen, and there is a presence, simultaneously nearby and infinitely distant, gliding across the War Room.  If it detects the intruders, it gives no sign, but moves directly to one of the crystal pillars, where it coalesces into a wheel of flame...


The images within that particular crystal freeze, and an Archon comes into view within it - one of the danioti.  The wheel of fire screeches out a single word, + REPORT. +

+ A GROUP OF THE TRAITORS WERE DISCOVERED HERE, JUST AS THE SPIES INFORMED US.  THAT GROUP HAS BEEN DESTROYED, BUT SOQED HEZI WAS NOT AMONG THEM. +

+ MIGHT HE HAVE EVADED YOUR FORCES? +

+ IMPOSSIBLE.  IT IS OUR BELIEF THAT HE WAS NOT HERE.  AT LEAST, NOT RECENTLY. +  The danioti seems very sure of itself.

+ VERY WELL.  DESTROY THE SPIES AND MOVE ON TO FENESCH. +

+ DESTROY THEM? +

+ A PUNISHMENT.  WHETHER FOR DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD, OR FOR NOT ADEQUATELY ENSURING THE ACCURACY OF THEIR INFORMATION, IT MATTERS NOT.  IN THEIR NEXT CYCLES, SHOULD THEY BE PERMITTED ANY, THEY MAY PERFORM THEIR DUTIES MORE DILIGENTLY. +

"I see Amber fallen!" Aaron hissed, his teeth gritted in a rictus of rage and pain as the City itself exploded in his mind, that explosion echoing out and out through the myriad worlds of his personal vision.

He stumbled a moment, leaning low, hands gripping his thighs. Aaron released his eyes from the image, from the vision, and took a few measured breaths to gather his thoughts and stabiility.

"This place... I don't like it. 'Avenge Hosk', I heard, an echo carried on a wave of destruction that did not cease. It swallowed world after world." He shook his head. "It was not like the motion of a conquering army. It was the disintegration of Reality."

Snorting, Aaron stood straight just as motion caught his eye. His blade was out instantly, but soon he was assured of their anonymity, and decided instead to simply wait out this interesting occurence.

"Spies?" He asked, glancing at Cyan and Dorian. "They search for Soqed Hezi. Wasn't he one of the Archons who assisted us at Charyk?"

"Careful!" Cyan whispers, though sound volume is likely unecessary.  On her shoulder, Berd focuses his entire attention on keeping them cloaked...while another 'entire attention' begins preparing a way out.  The fast route. "The distance between Harbonah and this world is the thickness of an onion skin.  He..."  She pauses.

Images flood back to her, disjointed, fragmented memories.  Voices.  Discussions.  Pain.  Reward.  Her stomach clenches violently, her face paling as her eyes darken.  She stands straighter out of reflex, almost as though to attention.

She knows this being.

"He is preoccupied," the General whispers, as she studies how Lord Harbonah interacts with his people.  "He does not even require torment of the spies before their deaths.  Something..."

A nod to Aaron.  "The traitor assisted the Hated One and the Destroyer at Charyk," the Warrior notes absently, her eyes still fixed upon the burning wheel.  Soqed -"  She closes her eyes for a long moment, her lips thin, and breathes out.  Then Cyan shakes her head, opens amethyst eyes.  "Harbonah will be most interest in finding Soqed Hezi," she continues, her voice dropping to a whisper.  "His lack of care toward the failure of the spies speaks volumes about his attention at the moment.  Not on us, not upon the spies and Soqed Hezi...Aaron, you see Amber, fallen?  Where?"

The cloud descends until it is almost at the ground and then begins to coalesce into the familiar form of Devlin. He is aware of what is going on, but it does not matter. He must return to a form that will not boil away.

"I can do nothing in this place." He whispers, apparently to himself.

The man looks fatigued after his failed attempt to provide some defense for the group and he looks unhappy that he was unable to succeed.

"Where?" she asks of him, and somewhat reluctantly, he returns to the burning image, desiring detail, meaning.

"In my image, Amber is a sea of flame." Aaron said it again, as if cementing the unbelivable. "What is this place, Cyan? Is it a place of future portents, of possible things? Or is it a mirror, reflecting the reality of myriad worlds, the deaths of 'other' Ambers and the countless realms surrounding?"

He heard the change in vocal inflection, the accessing of knowledge forced into entombment in his comrade's psyche. Cyan kept the General just beneath the surface. Aaron kept that information close at hand.

"It's possible," he continued. "That Harbonah is staging mock-yet-real-invasions of Amber in worlds that mirror her in specific ways. If I had Harry's resources, and his particular taste in genocide, I might do it just that way..."

He halted, shaking his head, deciding not to put himself in that frame of mind or even remotely close to comparison with Harbonah.

A shift of scene in the crystal, and a burning wheel is there, like a dimmer reflection of Harbonah.

+ REPORT! +

+ WE KNOW WHERE THEY WERE, UNTIL RECENTLY, BUT WE DISCOVERED THEIR PRESENCE ONLY AFTER THEY LEFT.  PRIOR TO THAT, CONDITIONS WERE UNSUITABLE FOR CLOSE INVESTIGATION. +  An image of a city appears, blue rooftops glistening wetly on a mountainside, above a harbour filled with floating wreckage.

+ SO, SALAMIEL, YOUR FIRST DUTY IN YOUR NEW POSITION IS TO INFORM IS OF YOUR FAILURE? +

+ NO, WE SHOULD CONSIDER IT MORE OF A LIMITED SUCCESS.  WE WERE ABLE TO LOCATE THEIR TRAIL, SOMETHING WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE BEFORE, UNLESS THEY CARRIED ONE OF THE RECORDERS WITH THEM.  OR, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, PURELY DEPENDENT UPON RANDOM CHANCE. +

Harbonah dims slightly, and reduces in size.  For a while, he says nothing, until Salamiel, sounding almost desperate, speaks instead, + WE BELIEVE THAT THIS PROVES THE WORTH OF THE TRACKERS.  MORE SHOULD BE PRODUCED. +

+ WE SHALL CONSIDER IT.  MEANWHILE, DESTROY THE CITY AT THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY. +

+ THAT MIGHT NOT BE ADVISABLE. +

+ YOU WOULD DISOBEY ME, ON THE SAME DAY THAT YOU REPORT YOUR... LIMITED SUCCESS? +  Harbonah flares, bright as a sun, and his voice shakes the pillars of crystal.

+ ONLY TO SUGGEST THAT, SHOULD THIS WORLD REMAIN UNTOUCHED, THEY MIGHT BELIEVE IT TO BE AN UNCOMPROMISED SAFE HAVEN, AND RETURN TO IT, ALLOWING US TO ENSNARE THEM. +

+ VERY WELL, DO AS YOU SUGGEST.  BUT BE AWARE THAT WE ARE OBSERVING, AND HAVE LITTLE PATIENCE WITH LIMITED SUCCESSES. +

Salamiel disappears from the crystal, and Harbonah goes back to studying the evershifting images.

"We've arrived in a timely fashion, it would seem," Aaron quietly said to his comrades. "Rotten bastards."

He ran his thumb over the hilt of his blade, eyes glued to the flaming scene before him while he payed attention to Harbonah's meetings with his advisors - or lackeys, more likely.