Recruitment Drive

  Marci had made a pn.

  Step one: raise an army.

  Step two: figure out how to fly Shardfort.

  Step three: storm Saxmoor prison and liberate friends (try not to hurt anyone?)

  Step four: ???

  Step five: Disentangle soul from Shardfort.

  It was, as far as pns went, a good one. Steps that were, hypothetically, simple. She was a powerful, dread Shardkeeper. Minions of darkness would flock to her banner if she put out the call. Or, at least, that was what Ms. Vos, or 'Jonda,' had said.

  Which was why Marci was currently staring at the eerie portal that hung between a very complex looking, jagged and vicious, hovering vertical brass pentagram inscribed with thousands of runes whose functioning Marci could only barely begin to hazard out. There were elements that talked about space, its folding and parting, in a simir way to what many of the tomes regarding teleportation discussed, but it also seemingly random things like time, and not just time, but extremely small units of time. Still, she could be reading all of that wrong, it was incredibly, blisteringly complex.

  The aperture suspended within the frame shifted and swirled like oil on water, and in the ripples she could sometimes catch glimpses of strange, far-off pces: great stone and iron causeways fnked by va, vast glowing forests of giant bio-luminescent mushrooms, glittering caverns of lined with a rainbow of gemstones…

  "I believe… it is now aligned with Pandemonium," said Jonda, who was adjusting one of several dials on some kind of control column in front of the portal.

  Marci gave her a sceptical look and peered at the dials and the small projected runes that showed, against all odds, the crazed cultist seemed to be correct, and the destination was 'locked in.'

  "You've been here before?" said Marci.

  Jonda rubbed her hands together. "Well… um, technically no," she said. "But I have studied the maps extensively, Dark Mistress! I have memorised all of the street names and orientations, and I know sixteen locations where we might go about beginning to recruit your army of darkness!"

  Marci sighed. She supposed that would have to do.

  "And I won't get attacked?" said Marci. "I'm obviously not a demon."

  "Your eyes mark you as a Shardkeeper, Oh Great and Terrible Mistress," said Jonda. "And mortals are not entirely unknown in the Underworld."

  Right. Warlocks.

  Marci wrinkled her nose, then she frowned.

  Hold on. Was she now a warlock? The criteria was basically 'wizard who consorted with demons.'

  Marci swore.

  Dammit, she was a warlock. Or, at least, would soon be.

  "Mistress? Is something wrong?"

  "Yes. No. Forget it," muttered Marci. "Let's just go."

  The portal was strangely… absent of temperature as Marci pressed a hand against it. It was slippery, like sheet ice, but when she applied a bit of pressure to it her hand slid all the way in. Marci frowned.

  "Is something wrong, Mistress?" asked Jonda in a worried voice.

  "This isn't like any Infernal artefact I've ever seen, or read about…" said Marci.

  It was, from what she could read and sense of it, staggeringly complex. So much so that she didn't even understand the general principles of the device. Infernal wizardry was, in many fields, ahead of the Middle Realms, but it wasn't… this far ahead.

  Was it?

  She hoped it wasn't.

  "Dark Mistress?" said Jonda. "Is there something wrong?"

  "No," said Marci. She paused. "Well, yes, but… it can wait."

  Steeling herself, Marci pushed her hand back through the slippery membrane and then stepped forward.

  For a single long moment, she seemed to hang in infinity. Strange, eldritch currents of energy unlike any power she had ever sensed before churned and swirled around her, giving her something just shy of a glimpse into a reality beyond anything she had ever imagined.

  And then she passed through another membrane, and found herself standing in a rge fourteen-sided pza. Above, the air was open, and showed towering spires of steel and stone. There were thousands of lit up windows in the giant structures, spiralling and reaching up towards a craggy cave roof hundreds of meters away. Here and there, the towers joined to stactites, which had been carved and shaped into buildings, with great bridges and gantries hanging far, far above.

  Winged demons soared through the sulphurous air: pit fiends and succubi and great furry blue demons, which Marci was sure had a name but she didn't know, and many more. Great airships too plied to sky, heading to and from great tunnels that led away from the massive cavern to, presumably, more of the great city of Pandemonium.

  "This is… this is incredible!" said Jonda, who had emerged behind her. "Thank-you- thank-you for bringing me here, Dark Mistress!"

  Marci turned to see that her unwanted 'minion' had tears in her eyes.

  "Amazing…" muttered Jonda, looking up at the city above. "Spectacur."

  Terrifying, more like it. No wonder the Underworld had rolled over the Northnds. Even without their Shardforts, they were still so much further ahead than the Middle Realms…

  Marci forced herself away from her morose thoughts, and instead looked around the portal room. There were frames, simir but not identical to the one that was in the Dreadfort y spaced evenly around the room, with one side leading off into a dark tunnel. Each of the portal frames had a different, distinct design: some were all soft, curving lines, others were square and angur.

  There were a few demons in heavy pte armour around, mostly of the hulking variety. However, they made no moves to attack, and although there were somewhat surprised, they… saluted, and made no move to stop her.

  "Weird," muttered Marci.

  "Dark Mistress, I have taken the liberty of preparing a map!" said Jonda, taking out what looked like a rather excruciatingly detailed hand-drawn map of a city. There were several red areas marked in ink. "Like the overworld, demons have adventurers! These are locations where they are known to gather, and may be a good pce to start recruiting your dark army!"

  Marci gave the map a slightly nauseous look. She knew that she needed help to free her friends, and soon, but the idea of hiring demons… it was bad enough she had taken on responsibility for the clearly damaged Jonda, but actual demons?

  She supposed she could always just kick them out ter…

  That made it OK to use them for her own ends, right?

  ***

  Pandemonium was a modern marvel. Trams and elevators crisscrossed the four great caverns that contained its sprawl. The air was cold, but great bonfires that ran on some kind of magical fuel warmed the air. Concourses thronged with carts, great squares buzzed with commerce, and there were even parks of primarily moss, lichen, and mushrooms where demons wandered or picnicked.

  There were also clear signs of poverty and immiseration. Some demons begged, others toiled in worn and ragged clothes, and beyond all the glitter and gmour there were slums and manufactories.

  Still, even with the clear lead in technology, it was all so… normal.

  This was the realm that had made war on the dwarves for untold millennia, had invaded the Middle Realms and subjugated millions in the Northnds. It had never occurred to Marci that demons might picnic.

  They headed for the closest of Jonda's 'shortlist' of pces where a prospective Keeper might find some minions. Strangely, although Marci got a lot of looks, from what she could tell that was more due to her burning ruby-red eyes which no other demon seemed to possess.

  What was more, although she saw several clearly ensved mortals, many of them dwarves, there were also quite a few of denizens of the Middle Realms who seemed to be coming and going about their tasks unhindered. Warlocks, perhaps: wizards dangerous enough to earn the respect of demons and attracted to the underworld by the ck of ethics-committee oversight for their research.

  "Here we are!" said Jonda, gesturing to a tavern with a sign above the door decring itself to be the 'Scum and Viliny.' Wait, did demons think they were the vilins? Surely not; no one thought they were the bad guys? Did they? Or was it ironic? Some cultural reference she didn't get?

  Inside things were again, fairly normal, with the main difference between the 'Scum and Viliny' and a surface inn the clientele: instead of humans there were pit fiends with hulking, rocky red bodies; instead of elves there were slim, wiry imps a good half-foot shorter than Marci; and instead of dwarves there were succubi and incubi, most wearing stereotypically tight leather, although one of them was dressed in a baggy purple sweater and drinking what appeared to be milk. There were a dozen more types of demons, and even several warlocks, nursing drinks, pying cards, or roaring with ughter.

  Marci drew more looks, and several demons tugged forelocks, tipped their hats, or bowed their head as her gaze slid over them. Maybe this wouldn't be too hard…

  She found a table, and with an effort of will had to resist asking Jonda to order some demon alcohol. As much as she wanted the warm embrace that a beer or stronger would bring, but she knew she needed her wits.

  Her friends were relying on her, not just for something small, but for their lives. That meant that she had to be, perhaps for the first time in her life… responsible.

  Marci hated the feeling already.

  "My company and I have killed over three hundred dwarves," rumbled the Pit-fiend who had an axe bigger than Marci. A hulking, eight-foot-whatever horror, he had red skin, a face like carved granite, and upswept horns — one of which was chipped at the end. "We would be honoured to bring war to the pathetic sunlit nds in your name, mighty Shardkeeper!"

  His 'party' was, in some ways, not so different from Marci's own: the Pit-fiend, whose name seemed to be 'Rafferty "Hopebreaker" Casey,' was their melee specialist; they had an imp called 'Maeve "Inferno" O'Brien' who seemed to use some kind of infernal runic magic; they had a wizard, or, better, a warlock, called 'Saoirse Duin,' who was the succubus woman who Marci had noticed before because of her remarkably conservative dress; and 'Finnley Galgher,' who was four armed, blue-furred and had about a hundred different daggers and knives secreted all over his person—a 'wrath demon,' apparently.

  "Oh… lovely," said Marci, looking over the resume that 'Rafferty' had given her: a list of battles, razings, and raids all minutely and fastidiously and clearly proudly documented. "I see you, uh, worked for Shardkeeper 'Enya' during the surface war?"

  "We served her with honour and distinction," he grinned. "And shed much blood!"

  "That was, uh, before my time," said Saoirse, the blonde haired, red eyed succubus who was wearing a slightly baggy blue and purple sweater, canvas trousers with their cuffs rolled up, and a pair of sensible shoes. "I, um, just finished by Bachelors. I majored in Necromancy…"

  "Yes, good Saoirse repced our old wizard, who got himself eaten by a manticore," said Rafferty. "But Maeve and Finnley were part of my team during the st war."

  "The streets ran red!" said Maeve the imp, a manic gleam in the short, red-skinned woman's slitted orange eyes. "Red!"

  "Well, uh… great," said Marci weakly, putting the resume with the others—all of which had been simirly bloody and terrifying. "I'll, um, let you know if I have an opening."

  The hulking pit fiend pressed a massive hand against his chest and bowed his head. "As you say, Shardkeeper. You honour us with your consideration."

  The party stomped off, and Marci leaned back in her chair and groaned.

  Psychopaths. Every single applicant had been a total psychopath. Dozens and dozens and dozens of murderous monsters who openly boasted about how many people they had killed. She loved her friends- well, she loved most of her friends, but could she really justify unleashing a bunch of demons on a mostly innocent town?

  She was expedient, but she wasn't that expedient…

  Was she?

  "Fuck!"

  "Mistress?" said Jonda.

  "Fuck!" said Marci again, pulling at her hair. What was she going to do? Her friends were going to die because she'd been an idiot and turned into a terrible herald of darkness by touching the Shard.

  "Mistress, is there something wrong?"

  Marci was about to respond when her attention was abruptly wrenched away by an intense and distracting feeling from one of the Kobolds, directed at her. It was insistent, scared, and very, very concerned with getting her attention.

  "Hello?" said Marci, speaking into the mind. "Likes Hammers?"

  "Lady Keeps! There is more peoples! Coming up the gciers! We is working on the door, and we sees them!"

  Marci's eyes widened as she pushed further into his mind, and suddenly found herself staring out through his eyes, over the snowfield, towards where a column of dozens and dozens of men and women, mostly human, all armed and armoured, and bearing the red and gold hart design of House Hirschweg were trooping over the snows towards her. Pennants fpped in the breeze, armour gleamed, and although they were making heavy weather of the snow, they were advancing straight towards her.

  Well, the Dreadfort. But, for all intents and purposes, until she could disentangle her soul from the Shard at the centre, she was the Dreadfort.