The Malevolent Seven

Cade¹ leaves his tent intending to murder Lucien,¹⁰ but Corrigan's² bat familiar intercepts him, and a second charm on the bat's bite knocks him unconscious. He awakens hanging upside down by his ankle from a tethering spell in a village tavern. His fellow wonderists have assembled a tribunal.

Narghan the incarcerationist bound him. Lady Smoke, a mist-wreathed sorceress, wants to give him waking nightmares before death. Zyphis, a skeletal interrogationist, longs to suck his intestines. They accuse Cade¹ of drawing Glorian Justiciars through his Infernal dealings.

Corrigan² argues Cade¹ should be spared and forced to lead tomorrow's massacre as penance. Before Corrigan² can land his disciplinary blow, young Cousin Green bursts through the door, shouting that Ascendant Lucien¹⁰ has been murdered by a hellborn conjuration bearing Cade's¹ magical signature. The eight surviving wonderists freeze in panic.

Green, an amateur luminist, uses a backwards-gaze spell on soil from outside Lucien's¹⁰ tent to project the murder. The assembled wonderists watch in horrified silence as a shadowy hellborn slithers through the camp, passes effortlessly through the Ascendant's¹⁰ magical wards, and tears Lucien¹⁰ apart piece by piece before reassembling his body to maximize suffering.

It places the severed head on its own shadowy shoulders and dances a jig before expiring. When the vision ends, panic erupts. The Glorian Justiciars are already sealing the camp. Since leaving Cade's¹ body intact means the justiciars will magically extract confessions naming everyone, the coven votes to obliterate him completely.

Corrigan² volunteers, priming his aetheric lightning spell. Then he spins and the lightning strikes every corner of the tavern, incinerating Narghan, Lady Smoke, Zyphis, and all the others. Only Green's terrified eyes meet Cade's¹ before he too is consumed.

Returning to his tent, Cade¹ finds dead soldiers, their bodies covered in a crimson sheen, blood oozing from every orifice. Galass³ stands amid the carnage, her dark hair now a radiant, floating scarlet. Inside a spell circle lies Fidick's⁷ perfectly preserved corpse.

Galass³ explains that after Cade¹ left, Fidick⁷ entered a trance and replicated the summoning ritual flawlessly. He tortured Tenebris⁸ with cursed sand until the diabolic capitulated, trading two spells for Fidick's⁷ soul. The first was the hellborn that murdered Lucien.¹⁰ The second awakened Galass's³ latent attunement to blood magic, the only form of power native to the Mortal plane.

She killed the soldiers who came to the tent instinctively, without understanding what she was doing. Cade¹ drapes a blanket over Fidick⁷ and recites the only prayer he can still tolerate without making himself sick. They are joined by Mister Bones,⁷ a jackal that has been following the children around the camp.

Traveling by sloop along the Jalbraith Canal, Cade¹ teaches Galass³ to attune herself to the flow of life through waterways and root systems rather than human blood. They reach a wooded glade where four wonderists are under attack by a swarm of rats. Corrigan² blasts the female thunderer, Elania Scourge, with a bolt of lightning, killing her instantly.

The remaining three flee into the forest. The rats then excavate a buried man from a mound of dirt. Aradeus Mozen⁴ emerges, brushing soil from his elegant grey coat and straightening his swept-hilt rapier.

He is a rat mage,⁴ handsome and theatrically gallant, with a waxed moustache and a smile that makes one want to follow him anywhere. He refuses to join their mission to the Blastlands unless they first help him rescue an angelic being⁵ held captive aboard Prince Stercus's pleasure barge, a floating brothel whose red sails are visible in the distance.

The team dresses in their finest wonderist coats and boards the Serenity Divine, Prince Stercus's opulent floating brothel. The major domo greets them obsequiously, offering the services of beautiful young courtesans bathed in dancing colored lights. Corrigan² selects a voluptuous older woman, matching her leer for leer.

Galass,³ asserting her newfound power, chooses a girl her own age and declares she wants to know what it feels like to hold power over another. Aradeus⁴ departs with an eager sibling pair. Cade¹ asks for books instead, earning the major domo's suspicion.

The major domo then mentions nine wonderists provide security aboard, including two with unremarkable brown hair and no ostentation who hang back from the others. Cade¹ recognizes them instantly despite their dyed hair and awkward costumes: Dignity and Fidelity,¹⁴ Glorian Justiciars in disguise. Their presence means the Lords Celestine have their own interests aboard this vessel.

A crisis erupts when Galass³ accidentally exsanguinates a noble who mistook her for a prostitute and touched her without consent. Cade¹ spins the death as tragic hubris, earning the major domo's gratitude and the key to the prince's most exclusive cabin. At the bottom deck, Dignity and Fidelity¹⁴ guard a red door.

Cade¹ confronts them, deducing their current orders prevent them from attacking him. Inside, he finds an angelic being⁵ forced to serve as the ultimate prostitute, her body instinctively transfiguring to match whatever form each client most desires.

She tries to seduce him through an exhausting catalog of forms and provocations. Cade¹ resists, creating mental space for honest conversation. She reveals the Lords Celestine condemned her for questioning orders, sending her here as a warning to other angelics. Aradeus⁴ once spent a night with her and begged her forgiveness afterward.

Trapped with the justiciars¹⁴ preparing to blast through the door, Cade¹ summons Tenebris⁸ a second time and offers his soul for safe passage. Shame⁵ intercedes, whispering something to the diabolic that makes his silver eyes go wide. He agrees to a deal.

His blood creates a shimmering path above an ocean of writhing, screaming damned souls. As they walk, Tenebris's⁸ blood suddenly veers left, pulling Cade¹ away from the group. He follows and finds Hazidan Rosh,⁹ his old master, the former First Paladin of the Glorian Justiciars, now blind and living in a self-created replica of the justiciars' training hall in Hell.

She reveals that the Lords Celestine have been manipulating Cade¹ all along, herding him toward the Blastlands. The Glorians were not hunting him; they were guiding him toward a confrontation with the Seven Brothers.¹¹

Hazidan⁹ introduces Alice,⁶ a lithe demoniac with bat-like wings, silvery-white hair shorn close to her blue-black scalp, and ritual scars on her face that form the symbols of justiciar virtues. She wears an ivory justiciar's shirt with golden fringe and carries a bone-hilted whip-sword.

Hazidan⁹ has trained her in both philosophy and combat, treating her as a student rather than an Infernal creature. Alice⁶ views Cade¹ with open contempt, calling him 'fallen one.' On the return journey through the darkness, she deliberately lets Cade¹ nearly fall into the grasping hands of the damned, then rescues him at the last moment to assert dominance.

Cade¹ responds by punching her in the face when she reaches for her weapon, then punching her a second time when she tries again. An uneasy truce forms. She is driven by fear of failing Hazidan.⁹

Tenebris's⁸ portal deposits them not at the canal but deep in the Blastlands, a wasteland of cracked red clay and pinkish fog created by an ancient war between a thousand wonderists on each side. In the town of Mages' Grave, the residents have skin stained crimson by the toxic soil and are addicted to crops grown in it, unable to survive elsewhere.

Mayor Vidra¹² leads them to their supposed client, Baron Tristmorta. He hangs six feet off the ground from a rope attached to nothing, his skin and hair stripped away, his lidless eyes tracking their approach, screaming continuously.

When Corrigan² blasts him, the blood soot in the air begins regenerating his flesh. Shame⁵ and Galass³ combine their powers, the angelic⁵ transfiguring his body while Galass³ manipulates his blood, to grant him a true death. In his final breath, the baron gasps that the Seven Brothers¹¹ 'want the red. '

A goat-man servant named Madrigal¹³ greets them at the fortress gate, offering pastries or feces as traditional diplomatic gifts. Inside the great hall, forty-two preserved corpses of previous wonderist delegations hang upside down from invisible threads, their faces frozen in horror.

The Seven Brothers,¹¹ pale men with crimson irises and spidery veins across their cheeks, explain their origin: their parents fought on opposite sides in the ancient mages' war, and the seven of them were born attuned to the devastation itself.

The Pandoral plane, a small realm of three hundred benevolent beings, is dying, and the brothers¹¹ seek to give them a new home in the Blastlands. They appear reasonable, agreeing to all of Cade's¹ demands regarding the townsfolk. Then they offer the Apparatus itself, a brass casket inlaid with gold and silver, as a parting gift, claiming they no longer need it.

Outside the fortress, Mister Bones⁷ frantically digs in the red clay, unearthing severed heads. Dozens of Glorian Justiciars are buried just beneath the surface, still conscious and aware. Dignity and Fidelity¹⁴ are among them. They use their dying breaths to deputize Cade¹ as a Paladin Justiciar, commanding him to stop the brothers.¹¹

Then Mister Bones⁷ begins convulsing, bones cracking audibly, grey fur shedding and regrowing as blond hair, until he transforms into Fidick,⁷ naked and smiling. The boy explains the full conspiracy: the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish collaborated, orchestrating every event, from Lucien's¹⁰ murder to the pleasure barge, to destroy the Seven Brothers.¹¹

The brothers¹¹ were never protecting the Pandorals. They were constructing the first permanent gates between planes, gates that the gods and devils could use to enter and wage war upon the Mortal realm itself.

The team enters the fortress through a sewer as reality itself warps around them, stone walls rippling like water. Corrigan² absorbs an entire corridor of continuous lightning strikes so the others can pass. In a seven-sided chamber, the brothers¹¹ stand frozen, their mouths agape as copper-shelled insects crawl out and coalesce into a tall, twelve-eyed Pandoral.

Nothing they throw at it causes harm. Cade¹ realizes the only way to destroy the gates is from the other side. The team joins hands, mixing their blood so Galass³ can infuse Alice's⁶ Infernal essence through them all, poisoning the gates in the one way the Pandorals cannot tolerate.

As one, they reach inside the brothers'¹¹ mouths and unleash their combined power, obliterating the siblings. But Shame,⁵ weeping, reveals her deal with Tenebris⁸ bound her to serve both divine factions. On Fidick's⁷ command, her unwilling transfiguration magic remakes six of the brothers'¹¹ corpses into larger gates. The Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish step through onto the Mortal plane.

Fidick⁷ departs, telling Galass³ she should grow up. Shame⁵ is released from her bondage but sits weeping over what she was forced to do. The Apparatus has one use remaining. Cade¹ offers it to Galass,³ who refuses, accepting her blood magic as now part of who she is rather than a curse to be shed.

Alice,⁶ Aradeus,⁴ and Shame⁵ all decline as well. Corrigan² suggests Cade¹ use it. Cade¹ chooses Fortunal attunement, chance magic, claiming they will need all the luck they can get. Outside, Tenebris⁸ visits, warning Cade¹ to pick a side in the coming war between the Lords. Cade¹ picks the diabolic's pocket, stealing back his bag of spell-sand.

On the fortress steps, he draws a line in the dirt with a stick and declares a third side: for everyone who refuses to let gods or devils rule. Corrigan² blasts a ten-foot trench with his lightning. The six of them stand together as the Malevolent Seven, one member short, but committed.