Scales of Reaction

And now to get into the meat of the thing.

Chapter 1: Warring among Warmongers

Loud the peal of alarm rang out, carried by the magnification of magical wards, terrible and shrill. An attack! The thought rang through the mind of Shakvail as she jolted from meditation and ran to the rack on the side of her tiny room, grabbing for her armor and weapons. Who would attack the order hall? It was a horrible premonition in the back of her mind.

Then the alarm’s tenor changed, becoming deeper and raw, marking the nature of the enemy as the watching wizard, one of their very few, attempted to inform and rally the defenders.

To Shakvail, recognizing that shift, it was a bellow of despair, the confirmation of her greatest fears. The Hall of the Disciplined Blades, headquarters of one of the many sub-sects of the Crusaders of Gith, was under attack by their own kind.

It was only to be expected. Vlaakith, may her name be cursed forever, was gone for all time, and the Lich-Queen in her madness had left no provision for the lives of the multitudinous Githyanki without her. For a people who lived, rightly Shakvail still believed most days, by the blade, this was a recipe for untold chaos. Some Githyanki might welcome such destruction as their personal chance, but for the enlightened soldiers of the crusaders it was a herald of many defeats at the hands of their numerous and powerful enemies.

Shakvail pulled her long war scythe from the wall, caressing the dark wood of the haft and her grim face positively despondent as she contemplated sinking the sharp blade into the bodies of her fellows. She recalled the days when she had first joined the order, seeking out the discipline and patterned instruction in an effort to escape the backbiting that had always disappointed her. Now it had followed her even into this sanctuary.

Then she was running through stone halls, moving far faster than any human in a prime material castle, bouncing from wall to wall with controlled recklessness. In the absent gravity of the Astral Plane and with the lifelong practice of the Githyanki, its adopted rulers, the only limit on speed was the danger of inducing injury by colliding with a wall too quickly during a turn or slamming into another runner as the halls suddenly became crowded with warriors.

A Githyanki army is a bright, shiny thing, filled by men and women with red hair, shining metal armor encrusted with gems, gold, and silver, and carrying as many adornments as they dared, all designed to impress. The Disciplined Blades, rushing out to defend the walls and entrances of their order hall, were not like this. No gemstones covered their armor, no gold filigree danced upon the shafts of their war scythes, longspears, and naginatas. They did not follow such decorative methods. They were still, however, Githyanki, and their armor was adorned with intricate needlework designs, leather brands of astonishing complexity, tattoos of incomparable artistry could be seen on many exposed muscles, and the weapons had fine exotic woods, shimmering metal weaves, and other adornment.

Five warriors dashed ahead on the wings of their wills before the entrance Shakvail had chosen, on the ‘bottom’ side of their fortress. In the absence of gravity all directions were arbitrary, but the fortress had a designed layout and clear internal organization for greater efficiency. As they reached the entrance to the surface of the craggy piece of granite upon which the order hall had been built, the outermost ring of defenses, the first of these warriors collapsed suddenly.

Paying him no mind the others dashed past, Shakvail noted idly that a pair of bolts had penetrated his armor; the deadly work of a triple-shot crossbow, a weapon unique to the Githyanki.

Then they were into the ring of surface defenses, and the battle raged through the shimmering emptiness of the Astral Plane all around.

A trio of astral cruisers, the psychic-powered ships of the Githyanki, stood in a vertical line to one face of the rock, their powerful ballistae and magical weapons bombarding the defenses. Defensive ballistae answered them, but few of the great bolts reached the ships, most were intercepted by jagged bolts of silver-white lightning, the work of enemy wizards.

Damn you warlocks! Shakvail cursed the ambition of all who wielded arcane might. It was they who had been among the first to assert themselves as the new rulers of the Githyanki after Vlaakith fell. Knowing it was these who attacked them; the defender knew why they had come. They fear us, she hissed silently, running among stony pyramids to a choke point.

The Disciplined Blades were not simple swordsmen; they pursued not the technical, brutish master of the blade of most Githyanki warriors, but a mental martial cause, the enlightened and clear-minded warriors in the legacy of Gith and the others who had rebelled against the most-hated Illithid in the long forgotten times. While it had been the power of the mind itself, the living expression of mystic will known as psionics that had one that war, for those Githyanki who lacked such powers there were more martial pursuits of the same legacy. Such was Shakvail, what humans called a Sohei, a warrior who fought with internal energy and esoteric mastery of the body.

Githyanki soldiers issued forth from the cruisers, blasting across the short distance with blurring speed, moving as fast as they might to avoid defensive missiles, pulling up only to level their swords and charge the last few steps. Arrows and crossbow bolts flew from both sides, and the sohei countercharged to meet the attackers at those points that must be crossed to achieve entry within.

A tall male materialized before Shakvail, lunging forward with an overhand thrust to cut her from shoulder to hip with his greatsword.

She shifted, already sliding in anticipation, flipping her body in three dimensions, letting her scythe trail, almost casual but held with an iron grip, pulling it behind like a hoe to slice his leg through and then on to rip the back muscles and shred bone. Her feet pressed down on a stony block as blood sprayed the air and she rolled downward, dodging bolts through the empty expanse.

The battle narrowed around her, as the struggle to survive overwhelmed all. She crossed blades with many in the press, some blurred beyond any easy grasp of the mind as friend and foe alike invoked the potent powers of their race. Bright flashes of light exploded around the fighters, blades struck and sparked, and blood sprayed everywhere. No gravity pulled it to the ground, so it floated between the combatants and the bodies of the fallen, drenching their flesh and armor when they were forced to step through it. Soon every combatant was covered in a second skin of red gore and only the differences of their weapons made it possible to know friend from foe.

“Ki!” screams of righteous rage tore the airless backdrop of the Astral as many of the sohei unleashed the martial frenzy that was one of the mighty secrets of their path. In this state many fought on with mortal wounds, entrails streaming free, hearts pierced by bolts, one spear even struck through the chest of an invader in the moment its wielder’s head slipped free of his shoulders.

Shakvail did not yet draw on this frenzy, worried she would be caught up in the battle rush and not able to react to the needs of the defense. She took a bloody gash on the left arm, and was almost speared through the thigh, but the magical leather scales turned the blade. They were a rough brassy shade, the color of the dragon from whose flesh it had been fashion, a gift from her father for earning her blade. They saved her life many times in that hellish melee, along with the other mystical adornments earned on campaigns against the slaves of the Illithids or the allies of the despise Githzerai, a belt augmenting her strength, gloves to heighten her reflexes, a jeweled necklace opening greater understanding, and a ring offering mystical protection to make every blow seeking her life a little less likely to land.

Blinking flee of a cloud of blood as she flipped over one corpse to engage another female, a woman wielding a long chain, Shakvail caught a glimpse of brightness streaking from above at the edge of her vision. Instinctively she double stepped back, struggling to keep her scythe between the edges of the chains and her flesh.

Then there was a great boom and a wash of heat rippled through the combatants. Fireball! Shakvail ducked, far too late, only to find she was complete uninjured.

Weakling, she smiled grimly, and saw hideous burns on the face of the woman in front of her. Taking advantage of the momentary helplessness induced by the pain she gutted this enemy with a single sure stroke, cutting up between the armor plates. Silently she thanked her luck the wizard who had launched the spell was only of middling power, and the resistance born to her kind, augmented by her training and internal strength, had managed to block the spell’s power.

The indiscriminate fireball had cleansed the outcrop, and responding to the shouted signal of some officer the remaining invaders fell back. Shakvail sought out the senior of her fellows, finding him standing beside two close friends. There were only eight of the Disciplined Blades left here now, but they were more than the enemies who had fled, and Shakvail found herself joining a ragged cheer as the foe fell back.

It lasted only a moment, for her senior waved a hand mandating quiet. “Stand ready,” he spoke darkly, words filled with the heat of battle, but also a deeper suspicion beneath the surface anger. “Something’s not right. They’ve not brought enough numbers.”

Looking out Shakvail saw it was true. At a guess she suspected the enemy had little more than their own numbers in this section, and no doubt it was the same elsewhere. They had an advantage in magic, possessing more wizards and warlocks to lead the battle, but this was matched by the sohei’s ability to fight with mortal injuries and their other special techniques, including the enlightened spells known to some of the monks. Shakvail had a few such tricks, and intended to call upon one before the next attack.

In light of this the attack did not much make sense. Even if the enemy won their losses would surely outweigh any gains made, and they must know the sohei would fight to the death.

“This first attack was just to soften us up,” her senior guessed. “They must have some trick they’re going to use next, be ready.”

As if prophesied by those words a massive voice rang out, the magically enhanced outcry of the enemy commander. “Warriors!” he insulted them by refusing them their proper title. “This is your one chance to surrender! Only death awaits if you continue to resist!”

Many voices shouted as one in refusal, Shakvail’s among them, accompanied by vicious insults, for these were Githyanki at war.

“So be it!” the wizard’s anger was palpable even as he hid behind the hull of his great ship. “My allies and I will insure your deaths shall be slow and painful!”

The sides of the cruisers opened and more Githyanki issued forth, but they were not alone. A massive, winged creature head and shoulders taller than even the tallest Githyanki and many times bulkier flew forth with a huge axe between clawed hands. It had green skin and a great horned, dog-faced head.

“Daemon!” Shakvail’s senior breathed in fear, marking the beast as one of the fiends of Gehenna, mercenary beings also known as Yugoloths, mercenaries of the lower planes.

It was not alone; a quartet of four-armed trident wielding lesser daemons followed this one, insectoid monsters with burning eyes. The deamons scattered, falling in with contingents of Githyanki, and then they charged.

“Throw them back!” Shakvail’s senior hefted his naginata. He shouted out the words of a mystic exercise and his muscles bulged with supernatural strength and power.

Not to be outdone Shakvail invoked her own magic, casting a blessing upon herself and her fellows to harden hearts and sharpen blows.

Then the charge came on. The insectoid daemon crashed in first, landing hard in a flurry of claws. One of the sohei nevertheless held position well, and slammed his naginata into a break in the creature’s defenses. The blade plunged in between chitin-armor plates.

When he twisted and pulled out the jagged gash healed instantly, closing in the blink of an eye.

The daemon cackled with hellish delight. “Fools! Your heathen impure weapons cannot harm me!” It spoke not with words, but directly into the minds of its opponents, mocking them and violating them with its fiendish touch at the same time.

Shakvail rolled through the emptiness past the creature, drawing its attention as best she dared. The creature possessed the ability to shrug of wounds not empowered by some special nature. To the sohei it seemed obvious the fiend was only vulnerable to the holy infusions of the Upper Planes, something in short supply among the godless and self-serving Githyanki. So it would require mighty blows indeed to harm the beast, and her senior, with his augmented strength, had the best chance.

The daemon stabbed out with its great trident. Shakvail blocked, but the creature bent the blade and threw her away, hurling her upward, where it took some precious seconds to recover, pushing off nothing with will alone.

Sohei struck at the daemon, and the senior’s blow sank deep enough the creature bellowed in pain. It did not reply using claw or trident, but raised its telepathic voice instead. “Have another!”

A silvery tear in the fabric of the astral appeared beside the demon, and in a moment a second creature tore through the rift and slammed its trident into the nearest sohei. “Githyanki?” It bellowed in puzzlement. “Ah, just kill’em all!” it gestured and a ball of flame appeared between a set of claws in the moment before it plunged them into the youngest of the sohei. He crumpled with flame spreading all over his body.

Then the Githyanki attackers charged in to aid the fiends.

“Fall back!” the senior yelled, knowing they were overmatched. “Defend the corridors!”

Shakvail flipped back down to the hatch-door, kicking one foe in the head as she passed, and then dashing down. There were screams behind her, and explosions echoed through the fortress. She saw no one else escape with her, but enemies were dashing by. The defense, compromised by the daemons and weakened by the initial fighting, was suddenly coming apart. That, she reasoned, was why they kept the fiends back in the beginning, so they could overrun us when we were weakened.

In the confusion of battle the fleeing Githyanki briefly traded blows with two enemies, possibly wounding one, as she fled down the corridors. Her blade snapped before her, moving like a living thing, driven by instinct to cut and block and guard as she ran. Head for the inner sanctum, she determined. Any of the masters who survived would surely head there, to organize a last stand or perhaps a retreat. There were other outposts, other branches of the Crusaders, those might take them, and if not, Shakvail would rather die fighting with her comrades than alone in the tight tunnels of the hall.

Struck from all sides by powerful blows, destruction and rubble had taken their toll on the pathways, and many were now blocked, while the granite had opened elsewhere, creating doors where there had been walls only hours before. With the rage of battle still burning in her veins the sohei struggled to reorient herself and find her way. Dashing down one path leading deep into the storage rooms near the center of the stone she briefly recalled there was a secret back stair from those regions to the inner sanctum, used during ceremonies. It ought to be clear. She hurried, wounds burning.

Then suddenly an enemy appeared before her, a tall Githyanki wearing the silvery garb of a Gish, a warrior-mage.

Close! Shakvail hurled her scythe, desperate to bridge the distance before she lost her face to a spell.

The Gish dodged, floating out of the way toward the top of the hallway, but Shakvail hurled herself toward him as a living missile.

Recognizing that his deadly spell would not complete in time he cast a simpler one instead, calling a wave of burning flame to burst from his fingers.

Shakvail smiled and lowered her head.

The flames struck her, and they easily overcame her natural immunity, but when they flashed over her armor they weakened, the scaled leather absorbing a tremendous quantity of heat easily, the property of brass dragon skin used in its making. She was still burned, and the hallway filled with the wretched stink of burning hair, but Shakvail was conscious and aware as she slammed her head into the Gish’s stomach. “Ki!” she let the righteous rage boil through her body, providing strength and power.

Shakvail’s left hand shot up to the throat of her enemy and grasped with all her might. With her right she smashed away her opponent’s attempt to grasp his dagger, for the Gish had correctly realized her would have no chance to retrieve his greatsword.

Hands slammed together and they tumbled, each scrabbling for the small blade desperately, or so it appeared. Shakvail truly did not care for the blade; so long as she could keep from being stabbed it did not matter. She was naturally stronger than this foe, and with her mystical enchancements and Ki frenzy even more so. Slamming them into the wall she squeezed and struck, ramming the Gish’s skullcapped head into the hard granite wall even as she slowly crushed the life from him. With his throat held shut and his arms tangled with her own he could not cast his deadly spells.

The result was as inevitable as it was brutal, slowly, blood streaming from the back of his head, the light left the Githyanki’s eyes and he collapsed into unconsciousness. Without letting go of his throat Shakvail grabbed the dagger in her left hand and plunged it past the chainmail shirt and into his heart. She pushed away from the body with a shout of triumph.

Moments later, her frenzy abated, Shakvail gasped and sobbed as a brutal fatigue drained the strength from her limbs and a feeling of absolute disgust settled over her. What had become of her kind, of her? Do we kill each other like this now? Are we, the children Gith, the ones who saved the multiverse itself from the Illithids come to this? I cannot do it! I cannot!

In her grief and rage Shakvail made a solemn vow, deep in the timeless expanse of the Astral Plane.

Here me Gith! I forsake your legacy! I will no longer fight for the Githyanki, for your cause has betrayed us! I will find a new destiny to make my own!

She was left inside a dark fortress, surrounded by enemies, and without her proper weapon.

Looking for her war scythe the sohei found the treasured weapon had cascaded into the wall and snapped in half, becoming useless. She had naught but the dagger taken from the Gish to rely upon, and enemies everywhere around her. Though her resolution was now to flee, her former comrades be damned, for even if they survived today they would no doubt die in some other futile skirmish elsewhere, it seemed impossible to accomplish.

I’ve got to find a way out, a way unwatched. Looking at the wall that had broken her scythe Shakvail was surprised to discover a crack had opened in the granite, a result of the explosions that still shook it even now. It led down and away, to the very center of the stone block their base honeycombed. She had never been down so far, there were rooms only the leaders of the order ever visited.

It was not a wide crack, but the githyanki, though tall, are a thin race and she conceived that she might squeeze through. There was a glimmer of light at the other end. Perhaps a secret passage leads out? Knowing the nature of her people as she did it would have been more surprising if such a thing was not present. Taking a shallow breath the sohei pulled her stomach tight and pressed inside.

The total distance from the corridor where she had slain the Gish to the light was surely not more than six or seven meters, but it was far longer from within, squeezing fingertip by fingertip, barely able to breath in ancient and stale air. Slowly, so very slowly she progressed, unable to see anything, and her thoughts filled with blood and ambush. I’ll get there too late, and everything will be overrun and then the warlocks will torture me to death only to animate my body as some unholy undead monster.

This final thought, of being forced to shamble through life for eternity gave strength to her convictions, and the sohei pushed herself through the narrowest passage and into the final meter, a section not composed of natural granite, but of worked stone.

“What is this, a visitor?” A voice sounded in Shakvail’s head, and she stopped immediately, not daring to breathe.

“Wait,” though it was only in her thoughts the voice had an impossibly deep tone, and spoke with the accumulated wisdom of an incredible weight of years. It was not the thoughtspeach of any Githyanki, but something greater, grander, she knew this intrinsically. “You are not one I have met before, not one of the fools who think they rule over me. You are a young one, one of the little sohei. Come, come,” the voice took on a terrible urgency. “The bonds are breaking, come, free me!”

Shakvail’s instincts told her to turn and run. Any number of strange beings could speak into minds on the Astral Plane, the plane was composed of thought after all, but almost all these things counted the Githyanki as enemies. If her masters had imprisoned something here she wanted no part of it. Yet one little part of her mind refused to turn back. It reasoned with cold iron logic. To retreat would mean all this time wasted, and there would be no way out. This thing spoke from a secret room and surely represented a secret path to survival and freedom. “It is imprisoned,” she whispered to herself. “It can’t harm me; I’ll just walk past it.”

She pushed on through to the end.

It was a small room, a three meter cube at most, and worked of solid blocks of marble, all inscribed with sigils Shakvail’s training did not allow her to recognize, but they seemed deep and powerful, marked in dark red with a strong hand. The script at least was known to her, it was Draconic, a language familiar to almost all Githyanki, for they had an ancient pact with dragons. The room had a thin circular shaft leading in two directions, up into the heart of the fortress near the inner sanctum and down to some place else, a pathway intersecting nothing in the sohei’s memory. Her way out!

These things all tumbled through her mind as she entered the room, but they were overwhelmed by the object floating in the center of the space.

It was bound by found great chains, each anchored to one of the walls, ninety degrees apart, and clearly they had been intended to be perfectly taught. Now, with the fragmenting of the walls one of the chains had broken free and the others hung askew, slack in places. Each was clamped around the weapon in the center.

It was a war scythe, similar to the one Shakvail had wielded before, but the shaft of the weapon was not made of any wood, instead composed of some strange mystical substance blending the appearance of metal and ceramic. This straight pole supported a simple wide-curving blade, not much longer than it was wide, unlike the slender blades of scythes carried by druids or other mystics in battle. The blade was utterly perfect in sharpness and luster, but whatever substance it was composed of held no mirroring property, and would not reveal any reflection.

Magical power radiated from it like heat from a raging fire.

“Release me!” the scythe, and now the Githyanki woman new it was the weapon itself that had spoken, bellowed, no longer in her mind, it spoke aloud, saying the words in draconic, with all the power and bombast of an ancient dragon.

She wanted to touch the weapon, it called to her, offering power and release, but Shakvail was not without caution. She did not know what this thing was, and it could well be a trap for the unwary. Why had it been imprisoned here? Dangerous such a thing might be, but if it was at all useful surely her masters would have wielded it. Rarely were tools of power refused. “Who are you blade?” Shakvail demanded, speaking in draconic as well, a tongue her father, who had ridden dragons in battles against the Githzerai, had taught her. “Why are you held here?”

“So you speak a proper tongue,” the weapon remarked with pleasant surprise. “Poorly, but allowances must be made for such weak little throats. I am Exlevix *Haurach* zyak.” It pronounced with great magisterial pomp.

Though the sohei considered herself a fluent speaker of draconic, this was a title beyond her easy grasp. Struggling to translate she came up with ‘Ineffable Fate.’

“’Inscrutable Fate,’ you miserable excuse for a rescuer,” the scythe barked into her mind. “Now free me!” it spoke aloud again.

Shakvail crossed her arms carefully. She suspected she could indeed free the weapon, the fragmentation of the walls had cleared undone any wards, it would only require manually unwinding the chains, but she was not ready to do so yet. The blade could well be cursed, or it might simply attempt to dominate her mind. “You have not told me why you are held here.”

“The arrogance of the Githyanki amazes me,” the scythe’s words were filled with disdain. “But, as I see you will not release me otherwise, very well. I was imprisoned her by your precious Lich-Queen, Vlaakith, who feared I might spill secrets she dared not let known.”

“What secrets?” the sohei wondered what knowledge a weapon could possibly possess that would inspire such fear in the Lich-Queen. Perhaps it was simply because Vlaakith had been mad. Odd, Shakvail thought for a moment. When was a child I was taught to worship Vlakkith, and now I think of her as nothing more than a crazy lich; how quickly things have changed, and how great her betrayal.

“Are you certain you want to know little one?” the blade teased. “Your Lich-Queen will hunt you down forever for it, and your race will call you a traitor.”

“Vlaakith is dead,” Shakvail said flatly. “And my people, as things stand now, have no future, so I am not worried.”

The scythe laughed, a deep throaty sound as if it was a creature many meters in length and large as a building. “Dead is it? How grand! And you are willing to turn you back on her legacy, well then, that is interesting. I will tell you then. You know of the bargain between your people and the red dragons I assume?”

The sohei nodded.

“The story goes that Gith went to the Nine Hells to barter with Tiamat for the services of the red dragons, and the dragons gave to the first Vlaakith the Red Dragon Staff and the pact in return for Gith’s soul,” all this was known to the sohei, for it was the legendary history of her people. “Ephelomon, Tiamat’s consort and one of the mightiest dragons to ever wing through the planes, told the Githyanki that Vlaakith was to be Gith’s successor. What the Githyanki do not know is that this is a lie.”

“What?” Shakvail could not believe this revelation, for if true it meant the Githyanki had been ruled by a usurper for thousands of millennia. “You mean to say Gith named another?”

“No,” the scythe could not provide motion or expression to its words, but somehow there was the impression of a great beast shaking its head in impatience. “Gith did not name any successor whatsoever, and she had no offspring, so Vlaakith would no doubt have ruled the race as a matter of course. The lie is that Gith made any agreement with Tiamat at all.”

“But the pact, it exists!” the sohei began to consider the possibility the blade was either a liar or mad. “My father rode red dragons into battle!”

“Oh certainly, the pact does exist,” the weapon agreed. “Tiamat was not such a fool as to provide nothing to the Githyanki in return for absorbing the soul of one of the mightiest mortals ever born. Indeed, I suspect Asmodeus himself demanded the sacrifice of her, lest her power grow too great within his realm, but Tiamat gained far more. Forging a link to the Githyanki allowed her influence over you and the humans who followed from it, it is that event that allows her to create her spawn in humanoid forms, reclaiming an advantage her enemy Bahamut had obtained earlier. Indeed, if not for the Githyanki the Dragonfall War would likely have ended millennia ago.”

Little the weapon said made any sense to Shakvail’s hearing. It referenced strange things barely known to her or totally unrecognized. “How do you know this, scythe?” she demanded, trying to regain balance.

“I was forged long ago by the concordant great wyrm Ewethalmach, a servant of Chronepsis the Death Dragon to chronicle the rise and fall of dragonkind across the multiverse. I know many secrets to break the minds of lesser creatures,” the weapon’s words rose with pride and potency, and left no doubt it spoke the truth. “Held here I have been kept from my duties by the decree of the wretched Vlaakith. You say she is dead sohei, so free me and let me conduct the work wherefore I was made!”

A blade created as a repository of lore seemed unusual, an intelligent book would have made more sense to the Githyanki, but, she reasoned wryly, dragons have little use for most books, so perhaps a weapon made more sense. “If I release you, I will wield you, and your work will be as my blade,” Shakvail had no intention of serving some weapon.

“You presume to-“

“If I don’t free you you’re going to end up in the hands of some grasping warlock in less than an hour, and you’ll spend the next ten thousand years in the petty wars of my people!” she snapped. “Me,” she paused, she really did not know what would happen if she survived to leave this place, her home since childhood, but she knew it would not be to fight pointless Githyanki wars. “Well, let us say I am open to new possibilities.”

“Very well sohei,” the intelligent weapon agreed. “We have a bargain, but you shall not call me ‘scythe’ or some other degrading term. I have a proper name; I expect it to be used.”

The warrior woman reached out and grasped the first of the chains, exerting herself to wrench it free from about the shaft of the scythe. “Your name’s too long Exlevix, I’ll go with that,” she smirked. “And I have a name too, Shakvail.”

“Impudent wretch!” the dragon-forged weapon cursed deeply. “Just hurry, I ache to be released.”

One by one the chains fell away, and when she jabbed the dagger in to break the last chain link the masterful weapon floated freely into her hand as if capable of its own propulsion, which on the Astral perhaps it was, for anything with a mind could move here. Shakvail felt a ripple of power as she took hold of the scythe. It fit perfectly in her grip, with exquisite balance. Never had she held an object anywhere near as fine. “Let us go Exlevix,” she told the weapon as she plunged down into the cylindrical passage that must lead out.

“Free! Free at last! Praise to all merciful deities!” the weapon glorified telepathically. “May Vlaakith’s soul burn forever in the pit of Baator!”

The passage, wrought from magic, was perfectly smooth, and plunged straight as a crossbow bolt in flight down to the base of the granite. There it met a plug, and the sohei understood it must fit seamlessly with the surface on the outside, thereby avoiding detection.

“Hmm, this won’t be easy,” she muttered. It would take great strength to remove the block; no doubt it was intended to be freed using telekinetic power. On another plane, able to brace herself and use gravity to her advantage the task would be easier. With nothing to push off against save her mind the challenge was far greater.

“Idiot, anchor me into the wall and use my shaft as a brace,” Exlevix whispered.

“You can cut into stone?”

“I am a mystical artifact of considerable potency youthful creature,” and for a brief moment the scythe exerted the full force of its mind against Shakvail. In the storm of power to follow it was all the Githyanki could do to retain focus on her core self, loosing track of everything around her. “Do not question what I claim to be capable of again.”

If I try to fight the scythe I won’t be able to do anything else, she knew absolutely. It might even take control of me as surely as an Illithid. The very thought was something she could not abide, so grudgingly Shakvail nodded and accepted she would have to compromise with the weapon. Then she drove it forcefully into the wall, relishing the reverberations.

Gathering her strength, the sohei contorted her whole body and then slammed down on the plug of rock, and it cracked off and then began to move, ever so slowly, an almost infinitesimal progression.

On the Astral Plane there is no air to provide friction, and combined with no gravity, nothing to stop an object once in motion; even moving so very slowly the plug would eventually be released.

Shakvail knew she could not wait that long, and she stomped down again, sending several tons of granite flying forth from its housing with the appearance of a cork launching free of a champagne bottle.

Knowing the movement would surely be observed, she blasted free behind it.

Shakvail dropped away from the granite backdrop, picked a clear direction away from the enemy astral cruisers, and accelerated to full speed.

A Githyanki in the astral plane is as fast as anything but no faster than her fellows, and they moved swiftly to give chase. Her head start would still have been enough to get away on some prime material world, but here there were no obstacles to visibility and no end to the distance before her. She could run until her will collapsed, and if one of those pursuing proved stronger in that regard, then she’d be helpless before them. Nevertheless, Shakvail knew she could not fight half-a-dozen Githyanki warriors alone, certainly not wounded as she already was.

Of course, the enemy had no intentions of waiting.

So suddenly it took all the concentration she could muster to avoid slamming herself onto the tines of its brutal trident, one of the insectoid daemons materialized in front of her. “How?” she screamed in shock.

“Teleportation,” Exlevix, replied inside her mind. “Now attack!”

There was nothing else to do as the daemon stabbed out in a swift charge.

Shakvail blocked desperately, and then pivoted, exchanging ringing blows against the monster. It was fast and strong, and brutally confident in the way of creatures that do not fear their own deaths. Its crude mind hurled telepathic insults as it fought, laughing with vicious glee.

Knowing she needed every advantage Shakvail once again invoked her Ki frenzy, though she suspected doing so meant her doom if the pursuers caught her. Strength and righteous rage flooded her body, and a sense of cruel anticipation.

The daemon stabbed, swinging its second pair of arms around low.

Shakvail spun through the air perpendicular to the blow, moving innately in the absence of gravity and taking advantage of the fiend’s lack of familiarity with the Astral. She twisted around and brought the scythe with her, bringing the blade up and over with tremendous force as her body flashed above the creature’s head.

The blade arced deep into the daemon’s armored back, smashing through the plates and down to the soft organs beneath.

For an instant if laughed, the blow had been powerful, but the creature’s resistance to wounds would yet save it from death.

Then something changed. Shakvail felt a surge of energy down her weapon and something in the blade shifted. “Imbecile,” Exlevix hissed in draconic. “I am a claw of the one truly inevitable fate: death. There is nothing I cannot kill.”

Howls twisting into a crude gurgle the daemon collapsed inward as the githyanki twisted the blade free in a wrenchingly destructive motion. Gore floated free into the astral, whitish and milky, not like the blood of a man at all, and then the fiend was silent.

“Nice one,” Shakvail commented to the weapon. “I could get used to that trick.”

“Only if you survive to use it again,” Exlevix switched back to mental speech. “They are coming, move!”

“Where?” she gasped in desperation, knowing of no refuge she might reach.

“Anywhe-,” the blade cut itself off. “No! A color pool, will yourself to the nearest color pool. They’ll not pursue beyond the Astral.”

As insane as such a move was, the sohei followed the weapon’s instruction, for he was correct. No Githyanki force would pursue beyond the Astral, indeed many would crumble to dust from their accumulated years if they should but step beyond its timeless lanes. She did not have such fears personally, for her order left the Astral regularly to fight for the righteous cause of Gith’s legacy. Indeed, she had left the plane not a few months previously to face allies of the Githzerai on the Prime Material.

Of course, heading at random to a gateway to just about anywhere in the Outer Planes was anything but a safe maneuver, but you had to figure about even odds of reaching a survivable place. For a woman running for her life from six angry Githyanki warriors, even odds looked pretty good.

It was a strange sort of race, each party moving at ridiculously high speeds through an infinite empty sky and never changing their relative positions. Occasionally some vast rolling conduit could be observed in the distance, or there would be the startled face of some creature flashing by before it faded almost immediately into a speck, but nothing disturbed them. It would have been almost relaxing, except that one of her pursuers had a crossbow, and kept taking ballistic shots onto her pathway far ahead, so she had to pay attention or risk the ignominy of ramming into a crossbow bolt.

Then, after what was surely hours, and with her mind feeling like sludge, the color pool was suddenly there. The sohei was brought up short before it, and took only a second to analyze the shifting color. It was strange, a dull silver color was primary, meaning some miserable Prime Material world, but there was something off, as if the liquid pool was moving in a slow, languid spiral. “I don’t know where this leads…” she mumbled in a moment of hesitation.

“Unless you want to find out where death leads, go!” the scythe demanded, for her pursuers were all but upon her.

She went through.

Normally transition through a color pool was seamless, just a brief sensation of moisture, as if stepping into a pool of water exactly at body temperature. This time there was a brutal wrenching, and Shakvail felt as if her body as been turned to gas, then powder, and then baked into flour. “Whaaaa-“ she tried to speak but the words were seemingly absorbed.

Then she blacked out.

“Wake up, hurry, hurry up you stupid Githyanki, awaken!” Exlevix’s voice berated her mind brutally, the powerful booms of an angry dragon. She hissed, but they did the job.

“Do not speak!” the scythe admonished once she had awakened.

Painfully Shakvail opened her eyes, only to find she was floating in a vast sea of foggy cloud. There was no ground beneath her feet, but she could see it perhaps ten meters below, and the ghostly representations of prime material vegetation, grass and flowers and all the other green things so common there. She tried to figure out what had happened, but nothing made sense. “This is the Ethereal,” she whispered mentally to the blade, assuming it could hear here thoughts while she held it. “But that is impossible.”

“It should be, yes,” Exlevix admitted, and the weapon’s confusion was truly frightening. “You cannot transition directly from the Astral to the Ethereal, but that is not what happened. We were on the Prime Material Plane for the barest of instants. Then we were pulled into the Ethereal. Some powerful magic has rent a tear in the barriers between planes on this world.”

“What could do that?”

“I do not know, but whoever it was, they are nearby, listen,” the weapon cautioned.

The sohei did, and she learned that it is possible to hear considerably further than one can see in the obscuring fog. The unmistakable sounds of spell battle echoed down to her. Someone was fighting with powerful magic nearby; very powerful if the muffling of those explosions was as she guessed. “I don’t think we want to stick around and meet these people,” she told the scythe.

“I agree. I have no interest in some Prime Material war either,” Exlevix explained. “All you need to do to escape is to will yourself into the deep ethereal. Focus and make it so, feel for the ocean of empty potential. Imaging the Astral Plane ought to do.”

This seemed simple enough, and even drained as she was it was possible for Shakvail to call up an empty sky in her mind and take herself there. The ground below, echo of the Prime world, fell away, and in its place a vast curtain of color appeared on the distance horizon, waving like some ever-changing flag of infinite size. Besides this curtain there was nothing to see but the endless fog.

“Now what,” she grumbled to the scythe. “Sit here and starve?”

“Humph, of course not, you impatient Githyanki,” Exlevix sounded positively insulted. “Any location in the Deep Ethereal can be reached by willing yourself there, once you have a description.”

“That’d be great, if I knew of any places in the Ethereal,” starving to death was starting to look likely, and the sohei began to regret not simply fighting to the last with her comrades. If she had left them only to die for nothing, it would be an unconscionable crime. I will not die like this!

“You may not, but I do,” the weapon spoke as if quite pleased. “Like most planes the Ethereal is not without dragons in residence, and draconic locales. There is a small temple to Aasterinian, the Wayside on the Road to Everything, where we can find at least temporary shelter.” Even as he spoke the words an image of the temple popped into Shakvail’s mind, and she knew she could reach it.

“Which of the dragon gods is Aasterinian?” she wondered. A little of Tiamat and her enemy Bahamut was about the extent of the sohei’s knowledge of that pantheon.

“Io’s daughter and his messenger,” the weapon’s voice immediately became scholarly. “She is a demigod, and presides over travel, learning, pleasure, and related affairs.”

Assuming the scythe was telling the truth, and Shakvail doubted the weapon was capable of distorting the lore it had been forged to keep, she suspected she could survive such a temple.

“Let’s go then,” she willed herself forward into the Ethereal’s mists, beginning the first journey on her search for a true cause.

Notes on Mysteries and Mechanics
1. Shakvail has levels in Sohei, a class that casts divine spells even though the Githyanki are effectively godless, however, I am inclined to treat Sohei ‘spells’ more as supernatural manifestations of their esoteric training. I feel the Sohei concept fits well with the Githyanki, as a sort of paladin/barbarian cross. Also, it’s a fun chance to treat a much-neglected class. The Sohei are found in Oriental Adventures, but Shakvail uses the 3.5 conversion to the class found in Dragon #318.

2. This story is obviously set some time post incursion, and this incident presumes upon a high degree of infighting among the Githyanki, which seems only logical.

3. Writing 3D, no-gravity combat is a new twist for me, and it’s probably going to take some work to pin down. Comments in this regard would be helpful.

4. Exlevix *Haurach* zyak – Inscrutable Fate. Haurach actually does mean fate in draconic, it’s one of the words listed in the Draconomicon, zyak means ‘to’ and exlevix in made up, but taken from ‘levex, meaning enchanted, which is the closest the vocabulary selection comes to inscrutable.

5. Exlevix is an intelligent weapon with all the properties thereof. He has the Transmuting property (from the Magic Item Compendium) which is why he can damage Mezzoloths, which have damage reduction 10/good. In addition to his knowledge, he has some other modest powers that shall be revealed later.

6. As to what Exlevix says about Gith and Tiamat, well, who knows? There’s no canonical definition of how that one went down to my knowledge. The scythe could always be wrong anyway, its knowledge, while vast, is anything but perfect.

7. Though it has no real consequence for the story, the tear in the Ethereal/Prime Material boundary referenced here as a story device to get Shakvail to the Ethereal (where this tale’s action is) is the result of Ethergaunt activity destroying the nameless prime world in question.