Annah, Part II

We stood in a wind-swept, barren landscape. Nearby a huge skeleton of a four legged creature dominated the surroundings. I could easily have curled up and gone to sleep in one of the eye sockets of the towering skull. A few of the local fauna attacked us, but were quickly beaten off.

I pulled Annah aside to talk to her about something that had bothered me since seeing Ravel in the maze. I tried to explain about what happened when I kissed Ravel, but she cut me off.

“Aye,” Annah snarled, “don’t be comin’ and dredgin’ up that wash. If yeh want tae lock lips with a fiend, kissing that hag was probably the safest thing yeh coulda done.” She spat. “Now stop rattlin’ yer bone-box: I donnae want tae hear another word about it, I don’t.” I asked another question, regarding something Ravel had said.

“In the maze, Ravel said you were tormented… what did she mean?” Annah frowned.

“She meant nothing, she did. Barmy hag talk, it was.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was nothing. If yeh donnae know what she was sayin', I don’t either.”

“Well, if you want to talk about it, I'm lis—”

“I…” Annah’s gaze dropped for a moment. “I donnae why I'm travelin’ with yeh! I donnae know why I went with yeh tae find Ravel!” She frowned, but she seemed more confused than angry. “It makes no sense, it does, and I donnae like it.”

“I…” Annah took a deep breath. “I think I have feelings for yeh. It feels strange, it does… I don’t think I've ever liked anyone. But yeh…” Annah gave a half-hearted shrug without meeting my gaze. “I donnae know what it is about yeh, I mean — yeh’re daft a lot of times, yeh walk like yeh’re hips are broken, yeh’re clumsy, yeh smell like a zombie, but…” She sighed. “I like yeh.”

I hesitated, torn. How could I explain to her that it would be much better if she did not want me, that I feared for any who followed me, that especially any who cared for me were doomed? As I stood in indecision, Annah continued speaking.

“It’s cause I think yeh’re doomed.” Annah suddenly met my gaze. “I think yeh walk with chains, but yeh don’t know it yet. So I… feel for yeh, but I'm afraid for yeh… an’ that’s killing me, it is. I donnae want yeh come tae harm, but I donnae know what tae do to stop it!” Her concern, which so neatly mirrored mine, pierced me to the heart. I said nothing, but leaned forward.

I grabbed the back of her neck with my free hand, and I watched Annah’s features go stone as I pulled her to me and kissed her on the lips. At first, it was like kissing a wall, then she started slowly kissing me back, hesitant at first, then with more confidence, her teeth lightly biting my upper lip. I heard her snarl in the back of her throat, and her tail started snaking around my leg, then squeezing, each squeeze matching one of her bites.

We had, of course, forgotten our companions who were standing nearby. Morte reminded us in his own way.

“Would you two cut it out before I have to get a dabus over here to separate the two of you!” Morte hmmphed. “Or at least allow me to cut in.”

As I kissed, I suddenly noticed that Annah’s skin was becoming warm — it was radiating heat, like hot coals. I pulled back, Annah’s teeth giving one last bite, and she looked at me in confusion, then anger.

“What is it, then? I'm not good at it, am I?”

“No, it’s your skin — why are you getting so warm all of a sudden?”

“Aye?” Annah frowned, and looked down at herself; I noticed small wisps of smoke were trailing from the edges of her jerkin. “Fiend blood, it is…” She raised an eyebrow. “Never had that happen before, though.”

“What? No one’s ever kissed you before?” She shrugged.

“No one ever dared tae. An’ even if they did, I doubt it woulda been like that.”

“I'll take that as a compliment, then.”

“Aye… eh…” Annah glanced around, and her tail was flicking erratically. “Are we gonna keep movin’ on now or what? We don’t have time tae be standing an’ chattin', we don’t.”

“Well, I'm not done kissing you yet. Come here.” To the Abyss with my companions presence, I thought. In fact, at that moment I willed to the Abyss all worry about the future and Annah’s probable fate if she stayed near me.

Annah stepped back, alarmed. “Nay — who knows what would happen next — maybe my body'll turn tae flame, it will! Yeh and your lips keep your distance!”

The moment broken, I lead the way to investigate the giant skeleton. I was done with Annah, at least for now.

Fhjull

Beneath the skull of the giant skeleton I found an entrance leading underground. Entering, we found ourselves on a spiral ramp leading down into a large room. Tables lined with alchemical apparatus stood against the walls, and a furnace lit the chamber from the far end. In the room, I saw a broken-winged fiend, with one tattered wing, covered in scars. He was muttering to himself as he worked at one of the tables.

“Distill, else a chamberpot you'll be! Feh!”

We continued down the ramp. We had reached the bottom before the fiend took note of our presence, especially Fall-From-Grace. His voice was clenched, angry, and despairing, issuing from behind gritting teeth.

“A tanar’ri in my home! Of all the indignities! Why don’t you invite your whole filthy species in?! Feh! The fetid stench of a tanar’ri! I can smell it for leagues! Show some respect for my home! Can’t you find some fumes or acidic vapors to try and drown your scent? Feh! I'll never get that tanar’ric stench out of the place. It'll draw baatezu from all over the planes.” Morte spoke up in Grace’s defense.

“I like the way she smells. It’s pretty.” Fhjull swung his gaze at Morte, and then looked more closely at Grace.

“Oh, and it’s not just any tanar’ri, but a tanar’ri whore who’s just walked into my home… things can’t get any worse. Come in! Come in! Please, my home is your home!” He waved his hands in the air in despair. “Why don’t you invite all the rest of your Abyssal harpies into my home to torment me?”

“I extend my greetings to you, Advocate Infernus Forked-Tongue,” Grace nodded with a slight bow. “I will take your suggestion under consideration.”

“Have you come to kill me?! Torment me? If so, know that I still have much power at my disposal!” I thought it was time to take control of the conversation.

“I have not come to kill you.”

“Feh! We shall see, we shall see! If you do not intend to kill or inflict pain upon me, I fear that the torment is of a subtler nature… by far, the worse of many such pains.” I was curious of this Fhjull, and his relation to the deva Trias. I asked him about Trias.

“Feh! Years of service as an Advocate Infernus! Painstaking detail and organization. I never questioned my superiors. I did all that was asked of me. I punished those below me with the cruelest and most inventive punishments when they failed.”

“ then… one slip, and it all comes crashing down! All due to chance. chaos. randomness. And the lesser races wonder why the baatezu wish the multiverse to be an orderly construct.” He paused, hissing in anger. “The deva lied. It lied. Trias the betrayer tricked me into signing a contract, and I, blinded by the possibility of capturing him, walked straight into his trap.”

“If he dies, the contract is over… but I have not been able to find him, and if I did, how would I harm him?! What am I to do? Even these treacherous thoughts make my mind burn in pain. I was so sure I had that paragon of self-righteousness. That short-sighted greed cost me the rest of my centuries of glorious conniving and entombed me in this sinkhole of good will. Bleh.”

“And now I am cursed to do good deeds, to aid those in need of aid. Feh! An eternity of curses on Trias! A pox on his blessed aid! May all the dung heaps of Maladomini rain down upon his head!” He ranted for a few more moments, and then turned his attention back to me, and spoke through gritted teeth. “My contract with the deva now bids me ask what I can do for you.” I was not yet finished with questions about Fhjull, however, and I was relieved to hear his contract with Trias would force him to answer, although I was troubled by the questions it raised about the deva.

“How did your wings get that way?”

“Oh, yes. Aren’t they beautiful…? Feh! They were the first things to be stripped from me before my exile. Before I was forced to flee the burning halls of my people, the wings were taken as trophies by the lowly abishai, for banners in the Blood War. My horns were snapped from my skull, and one was hollowed out as a drinking horn for my Lord Bel, accursed be his name across the Planes.”

“What can you tell me of the Blood War?”

“Feh! Have you drummed your skull against every rock that falls from the mountain of ignorance? In the Lower Planes rages the Blood War. There is not another plane that is not touched by this conflict. Think of the most hideous war imaginable, magnify it a billion times in time and scope, and you have a fraction of the battlefield for which the Lower Planes are fought. It is a war of ideology, to define one of the most basic concepts of multiverse!”

“It gives research a prod… more horrific creations have come about because of the Blood War. Why? Because it’s pain, and death, and evil. The tanar’ri fight for chaos and evil… evil through brute force and sudden flurries of whim and hate. Their ‘evil’ is the evil of the horde, a mob mentality of whirling evil. They kill and plunder.”

“And the other sides?”

“The baatezu wish only strictly regimented evil, promoting the cause of evil in a precise, orderly fashion. The tanar’ri murder. The baatezu exploit. The two are determined to exterminate the other.”

“Part of my assignment… and I was the best, mind you, was drafting new recruits, mostly planar warriors and mages from other worlds to serve as fodder and front-line troops in the war. Word has it that I caught the eye of Lord Bel himself. Even he saw my worth! Feh! Now my humiliation is complete.”

“Do you recognize me?”

He scrutinized me closely for the first time. “Memories run like hollow canyons through my mind, almost-human. Many creatures have I met in an immortal’s time… though I do not believe you were among them.” Forked-Tongue shrugged. “You all look alike to me… and I think I would have remembered the scarred flesh of your body… it is much like the breathing paintings that bedeck Bel’s gallery of skins in Baator, except with less grace and more passion in the scar strokes.”

“The violence is great, nearing acceptable levels, but the scars are applied with almost tanar’ric crudity, without any care for maximizing the pain of the recipient. A baatezu artist would be much more devoted to the following the paths of pain across the body. Some of these wounds look to be clean kills, others look as if a blind butcher were carving up human steaks. Feh. Human art makes me ill sometimes. Such potential, wasted.”

“Is Advocate Infernus Forked-Tongue implying that we tanar’ri are a crude people?” Grace sounded bemused.

“Feh! To say that tanar’ri are crude is to insult crudity. Any lesser race that revels in chaos, allows itself to be pulled and drowned in its stagnant tides, and calls it ‘evil’ are not a race at all. They are beasts.”

“Surely you simply object to the implementation of evil, rather than the degree. Many among the tanar’ri would claim that the closer one is to the primal nature of evil, the more true they are to the ideal.” Grace continued to debate him.

“Feh and double feh! The tanar’ri beasts want to strip law and order from the face of evil! Inexcusable! Intolerable! I cannot —”

“From a baatezu point of view,” Grace said, “it may indeed seem intolerable. However… Advocate, many tanar’ri philosophers would argue that the baatezu are to be no less excused for excising passion from violence, excising passion from the very essence of evil. The baatezu would replace rage with cold methodical cruelty. And thus, the old debate continues: Which is the greater evil? Efficient evil or passionate evil?”

“Feh! You say that simply because you are… what you are.” He waved his hand dismissively. “At least I am still allowed to be cynical.”

“Where is this place?” I asked, drawing his attention back to me.

“Feh. A blasted crater in the Outlands that reflects the emptiness and hollowness of my life. Feh. I need little. Marrow from the creature supplies me with food and the peculiar energies of the place prevent scrying fools from finding me… though idiots apparently can still find their way here.”

“What is this creature?”

“This is the skeleton of Ul-Goris, the father of the goristro. They’re living, bearlike siege-towers, juggernauts of chaos, huge, practically unstoppable, highly resistant to magic… and Ul-Goris’ bones, in the crater where he fell to his death, radiate much enchantment that prevents magic to spy me, keeping this pitiful frame alive for a few more desperate years. Feh!”

I decided I had spent enough time on the preliminaries. I asked what he knew of my stolen mortality.

“Very well, very well.” He scratched his head. “If I recall correctly — and there is so much I do not, thanks to that accursed deva! — I have heard of a case such as yours. It makes you immortal, does it not?” At my nod, he went on. “If so, then death itself is no longer sacred. Feh. In my day, mortals remained so and knew their place… now everybody and their mother has the disease of eternal boredom. We should have a gathering and invite everyone across the Planes and offer them immortal contracts… it would save all of us hard-working baatezu a great deal of effort. Feh.”

“You know that if everyone was immortal, this entire petitioner system would be up the famed fecal creek. Feh. Immortality is not a trinket to be given to unruly children such as you.” I urged him to tell me what he knew of my mortality.

“Feh… as I was saying, I recall hearing somewhere about a place called the Fortress of Regrets.” He thought for a moment. “Yes… yes, that’s it.”

“What do you know of the place?”

“I am pleased to inform you that I do not know. Not at all! I cannot help you to get there, and that chills my heart in such a delightful way. No. I. Cannot. Help. You. Oh, how I have longed to say those words. How sweet they tas—”

“Do you know someone who does?”

“Eh? Enough of your cross examinations! Yes, yes, I know somebody who might know… on Baator lies a pillar of betrayers, liars… and sages. Despite their nature, their knowledge is considerable. They might know where you can find this Fortress of Regrets.”

“How do I get to Baator?”

“Hold on, chief…” Morte suddenly broke in. “Baator is bad news. This fiend is probably holding out on us… and even if there is a ‘Pillar of Skulls,’ we can probably find somebody else who knows how to reach this Fortress without going to one of the most dangerous planes in the multiverse.” At Morte’s words, all my suspicions of him suddenly rushed to the forefront of my mind. I knew Morte was lying about some things, but I had thought what he chose to keep hidden harmless, at least to me. Now he was arguing against going to the one place that might hold the answers I needed.

“Why don’t you want to go there, Morte?”

“It’s a dangerous place, chief. I'd rather not go. I've been, and it isn’t pretty. All right?” An answer that answered nothing. I would consider Morte later, but now I needed information from Fhjull. I asked what the pillar of skulls was.

“Feh… what it is, is a massive pile of heads, the spirits of those dead who got there by telling lies that led to the deaths of others. It’s a collection of sages and cheats, all rolled together, with some of the most extensive knowledge of the planes.” I asked how to get there.

“There is a portal outside my home. It lies in the hand of this giant creature. Go through the arch formed by the left arm of the creature and you will be taken to the Pillar of Skulls. The portal will be active for you now.” I also asked how I could return.

“Eh? Return? Why, I hadn’t thought of that. To return from Baator, you need knowledge and a piece of jagged obsidian to cut your tongue. That knowledge you will gain from the Pillar. But there is no reason for you to return here. And no desire on my part to see you again.”

I decided we needed a short time to rest before we moved on. I took the chance to talk to Fall-From-Grace.

“When we were in Ravel’s maze, Ravel said you were tormented… are you in pain?”

Fall-From-Grace was silent for a moment, her gaze becoming distant. When she turned back to me, her eyes were a strange shade of azure, a shade that spoke of sadness and tears.

“Ravel sees much with her black-brambled eyes, some things which are hidden to other’s eyes, even things about their own natures.” She shook her head slowly. “Sometimes… sometimes, the pain makes itself known. I have learned it is a difficult thing to turn on one’s nature.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes… you are kind to ask. The pain still makes itself known, but I came to terms with my nature many centuries ago.”

“Very well, th—" Grace stopped me before I could continue.

“I thank you for asking about my well-being. Your concern is not unwelcome.”

Grace had firmly shut off my concern. I stared at her, seeking to see if she truly had her torment in hand. Her self control was perfect, and she met my gaze with a slight smile.

Time to go. I gathered the others; together, we passed through the portal to Baator.