The black and towering Gothic spires of Maladomini soared overhead, darkening a sky already overcast with soot-laden storm clouds. Every structure seemed to be in a perpetual state of construction, elaboration, and elevation as each sought to compete with the next and all its fellow kindred in terms of obscene grandeur stretching ever skyward. Never satisfied and always seeking something better, eventually the lords of the Baalzebul's court would tire of the city itself and cast it aside, soon to join the abandoned, shattered ruins that littered the layer's hinterlands as a reflection of their master's insatiable, rapacious pursuit of self-defined perfection that vanished as soon as it drew within sight.
"Red and black," Toras gazed up at Grenpoli's skyline, "Always so welcoming."
For a baatezu city, the City of Diplomacy adhered more to the sensibilities of its mortal "guests" than not. The temperature was warm rather than scorching or freezing, and the smell of burning sulfur was at the faintest minimum below the myriad of flowers, trees, and deftly perfumed breezes conjured into being. Everything was intended to entice and to impress upon those same mortals the majesty and supremacy of Hell, but with a velvet glove and gentle tongue rather than at the end of a burning spear.
"I'm sure that they'd love for us to stay." Clueless watched as devils and mortals mixed and mingled in the streets as if there were no ulterior motives behind Grenpoli's academies and universities at all.
Across the street, a human and a gnome walked alongside their erinyes tutor and keeper. The angel-winged devil wore the finest silks and jewelry, with only her horns and eyes like burning coals showing her as something other than tyranny and punishment made flesh. Cradled in her arms like a toy dog, a larvae with a necklace of diamonds mewed and drooled, very likely the spirit of another mortal who had previously graced her side just like her two currently smiling companions.
"In one form or another..." Fyrehowl suppressed a growl as she eyed the hissing larvae and the dissonance it added to the entire scene.
Collectively frowning at the elegant yet unsettling, foreboding cityscape, the group moved on, following the map drawn for them by Green Marvent. The streets seemed to wind and coil like a great serpent, despite the map showing a perfectly ordered arrangement of linear boulevards and neat, even angles.
Grenpoli was not as it seemed. But while the City of Diplomacy thronged with the traffic of determined, starry-eyed mortals as much as it did erinyes leading the same at the end of a golden leash or columns of barbazu and osyluths, none of the city's intended ideological poison was remotely the focus of its present visitors.
The secluded, palatial manor of Duke Melikaros of Grenpoli lay on the city's eastern terminus, nestled on private grounds amidst neatly arranged vineyards and walled gardens bussing with hellish breeds of insects. Iron gates tipped with golden sculptures of tormented, screaming souls greeted the party as they approached.
"No welcoming party." Toras glanced at the gates and shrugged, "So much for this place being all welcoming and all accepting of mortals."
True enough, as they passed the open exterior gateway, no regiment of guards waited to turn them away, nor did any elegantly dressed, hellish dandy meet them with a poisoned smile. Outside of the buzzing drone of the garden's insects, the estate grounds were oddly, eerily silent.
"I'll admit," Florian snapped her fingers to punctuate the irony, "I'm disappointed that there isn't an immediate fight going on. These things usually work out that whoever we're here to kill, they know that we're on our way, they have legions of guards waiting for us."
"And they usually make a big speech before we fight." Fyrehowl smirked. "Usually being always when it comes to fiends it seems."
"So color me curious then as to why everything is peaceful and comfortable." Clueless grimaced with suspicion. "This is Baator, and we're walking unescorted onto the estate of a baatezu noble. This seems way too easy."
Nisha glanced up at a black marble statue of copulating fiends and frowned, sticking out her tongue. "Please tell me we haven't shown up on the occasion of the Duke's weekly orgy with assorted fiends and mortals, non-optional. Eww."
"That's..." Tristol shot a confused look at the tiefling, "... a really bizarre leap of logic there Nisha. Not that I should be surprised there."
"Logic? Me?" Nisha giggled and resumed making faces as an overly endowed cornugon. "Perish the thought."
"I'm perfectly alright with us not wandering into any sort of bizarre diabolic sex party as well." Fyrehowl grimaced at the mental images the words brought to mind.
"I might be ok with it..." Clueless smirked and muttered under his breath.
"Really?" Florian shot the bladesinger an incredulous look. "Seriously?"
"It's a good excuse to be wandering around the estate with less attention if they're occupied like that." Clueless put his hands up, trying to justify his comment as anything but puerile. "Besides, I date a Sensate. It'd hardly be the worst situation that I've been caught in."
Florian coughed, Nisha stuck out her tongue and contorted on one leg, and Clueless smirked as the others reacted before finally quenching any blushes and moving on.
Uncertain if they were walking into some hellish, gilded trap, the group proceeded down the path, past manicured thorn-bushes and obscene, baroque statues in the same vein as the one Nisha had noted. Halfway between the open exterior gates and the steps of the manor house's marble portico, Clueless paused, nearly stumbling mid-step.
"The hell?" Clueless glanced down at his ankle in irritation, frowning as he slowed down and shook his foot. Below his clothing, unseen for the moment, the gemstone lodged into his ankle pulsed and burned.
****
The osyluth that was not an osyluth moved through the manor's interior, flowing from shadow to shadow like a sentient liquid more than a defined, static creature of blood and bone, even one wrought of metaphor made flesh. Only when the osyluth strode through a lit and open room or hallway was it there in the perfect guise of its last victim.
Past the first few intersections, it paused. The interior was layered like an onion into public, semi-public, and private sections, each with their own distinct patrols. Segmented in such a way, each only knew the full layout of their assigned portion of the estate. Despite having absorbed and tasted on the osyluth's memories and knowledge, that all ended as Taba stopped at a trio of gilded doors, uncertain.
With practiced ease, the leftmost door opened to reveal a black-scaled cornugon dressed in velvet and silk regalia, carrying a bejeweled, ceremonial halberd. A member of the inner contingent of guards, for all the appearance of pomp, the altraloth's eyes pierced through the illusions that cloaked the heavy armor and very real weapon it carried.
Neriakendrilla of the 17th Iron-Cloaks Legion of Grenpoli scowled at the osyluth standing before her, "Why are you out of position?"
"I was ordered to report here." Taba shrugged and gave an obeisant half-bow. "I did not question my order. Why would I?"
"What?" The cornugon narrowed her eyes as the notion of questioning the proper orders of authority was turned on her instead. "Who gave you this order?"
"Agrefaz told it to me, as relayed to him by Ruzalia." Having previously tasted the memories of its current guise and its barbazu comrade on the outer walls, Taba easily answered the question with two names that made sense within the estate's hierarchy so far as it regarded security protocols.
The cornugon nodded and cast out its mind, searching for the mental presence of two named fiends, intending to ask them directly. Searching for their presence, it found nothing. In the bloody remains splattered across the pavement stones on the outer ramparts and another incinerated to fine white powder only yards away, no spirit lingered to give a reply.
Taba smiled as a look of confused concern crossed the baatezu's face, her eyes burning red in the osyluth's stolen sockets. Neriakendrilla turned to her, prepared to ask a question, but Taba was swifter. The cornugon opened her mouth to speak and then died twitching, impaled through the throat by a wriggling tentacle in place of the osyluth's tongue that lanced out in the space of a single heartbeat.
The cornugon lifted off of the ground, convulsing in near perfect silence as the tentacle divided and expanded. Finding purchase on its bones and hefting it aloft, another newly grown length lodged in its vocal chords and snuffed the passage of air and scream, and finally another severed the brainstem and burrowed into its brain.
"Where are the Duke's guests?" The words pounded into the devil's brain, both telepathically and carried on the strangling physical caress of thousands of fimbriae branching off of the altraloth's weaponized tongue.
The cornugon's brain seized in a storm of rebellion against the burrowing intrusion that plucked at its fortress of memories, sifting through its experiences and knowledge, licking, tasting, and drinking to take what its killer required.
A flash of the interior of the mansion, the paths of the interior guard patrols, the faces of those visitors in the past twenty four hours. Taba smiled, locking eyes with its victim, watching the cornugon die in agony as she failed in her duty to protect her master's secrets.
Somehow, inexplicably, the devil's fury and blind devotion to her master forced her left hand up, pawing and grasping at the osyluth's shoulders and left arm. The act of resistance was but momentary as the altraloth's hip rippled, suddenly liquid, and a new appendage formed. Somewhere between a tentacle and prehensile tail, the newly formed limb lanced out with almost casual disdain, forming a bladelike tip in the heartbeat moment it took to reach the cornugon's hand. Severed at the wrist, the hand fell to the ground, limp and dead, and in just the same period of time so too did Taba's newly formed limb merge back seamlessly with its osyluth guise.
Another series of images flickered through the altraloth's mind as the cornugon's resistance broke and vanished. She saw the pathway there, the guards waiting in the main hall, and then finally, the face of her quarry.
"There you are." Eyes glittering like rubies, Taba smiled an osyluth's rictus grin, only ever so briefly with three more rows of razor teeth forming and then melding back into the flesh.
****
Standing on the paved, mosaic decorated frontage between the entry path and the mansion's steps, Clueless reached down and gingerly lifted up his pant leg. There, lodged into his ankle as it always was, the Marauder's gemstone glittered with an inner light, only now it throbbed like a beating heart and shed a fierce radiance.
"F*cking razorvine crowned c*nt..." The bladesinger snarled and angrily spat, "That's not good."
Not since the King of the Crosstrade had voluntarily given up the artifact's controlling stone had the gem seemed active. Though still lodged within Clueless's ankle, it had been a curio in the intervening time, never before acting in any capacity as it originally had when the fiend had used him like a marionette. Somehow, inexplicably, the artifact was activated and functioning, though to what end and why remained unknown.
"You alright there?" Tristol asked, looking down at the half-fey's ankle gymnastics.
Next to the aasimar, Nisha did the same, but she also hopped forward on one hoof and giggled as she did so. She abruptly stopped as she saw the glowing gemstone, frowning as she realized the implications.
"I thought that she gave up any control over the gem in your ankle." Tristol looked back up at the bladesinger.
Clueless snarled, "She did."
"Then why is it glowing?" Fyrehowl gave a wary eye towards the half-fey and the yugoloth artifact lodged in his leg. She remembered all too well how the Marauder had used him like a puppet when she's had the opportunity before. "It hasn't ever done that before, not since she gave up control, has it?"
"No, it hasn't." Clueless sighed and once again wiggled his ankle, kicking the air in discomfort. "It never felt like this before either."
"Does it hurt at all?" Florian crouched down and looked at the gemstone. The surrounding flesh was completely normal, unchanged from how it had always been.
"Not exactly." Clueless fidgeted. "It's like holding your hand too close to a fire and feeling the heat, but it doesn't exactly feel like it's burning. Buzzing maybe? It's annoying as all hell."
"Well, we're in the right place for that then." Nisha quipped with a wry smirk, "So says the Xaositect."
"It's an artifact." Tristol shrugged, "I wish that I could tell you more, but there's not much that I can that you can't, what with with it being part of you more or less."
"Just..." Clueless sighed and put his pants leg down to cover the glowing gemstone, "...just watch me and make sure that I don't do anything I wouldn't normally do. I'm not sure what's going on with it, but I doubt that it's for no reason."
"Will do." Fyrehowl put a hand on his shoulder as the group proceeded up the front steps of the manor.
"I really feel like I should be casing the place." Nisha whispered as they came within a dozen feet of the door. "Because really, how often do you get this close to a baatezu noble's estate with the chance to really just outright burgle something. Is burgle a word? No guards, no explosive spell traps, no dire warnings of doom and despair. Graffitti! We can totally paint our names and lewd, pro-tanar'ri or pro-slaadi slogans all over the place! We can..."
Nisha's babbling stopped as a smiling Tristol lifted her tail, moved it around to her face, and deftly put the silver bell at its tip into her mouth, mid-sentence.
"Mmmph, mmmph! Mmmph." Nisha mumbled, giggling with a blush to her face. The point was made however as Toras stepped past her and up to the door itself.
"Everyone act calm." The half-celestial did his best to smile as they stood before the massive bronze door before them, decorated with silver inlay of screaming, damned souls, and silver handles, each sized for a pit fiend and little else smaller.
"I should be calm that we're not surrounded by a hundred, heavily armed barbazu." Fyrehowl's ears lay back against her head. "Except the creepy lack of even a single one of them is doing just the opposite."
Putting his hand to the door, Toras knocked.
****
Blood spurted from the severed neck of one of a pair of cornugons as Taba's pinchers lifted it into the air and slowly moved down, severing the body in a crude act of impromptu vivisection. Silent except for a trio of smiles from mouths formed at various points on her perpetually shifting and adapting body, the altraloth was silent, communicating only through those smug, arrogant smiles of razorblade teeth.
The other cornugon would have screamed except for the barbed tentacle wrapped about his body that slowly, agonizingly constricted about his ribcage, depriving him of air and then breaking bones with dull cracks and the resulting spasms on the part of the dying fiend. Finally, when it opened its mouth to scream, the tentacle moved forward, relaxing its grip before forcing itself into his mouth and down his throat in a rush of blood and foaming spittle. The baatezu dangled in the air, bulging and contorting from the inside out like some obscene hand-puppet before the penetrating tentacle burst forth from its gut in a shower of pulped viscera.
Hoping that the death of its kindred would distract the yugoloth nightmare from whatever task it was there to complete, a tiefling burst from cover behind a marble statue of the Duke and his current, politically favored paramour. The butler scampered forward, hurling a serving tray and drinks in the opposite direction to buy him seconds in order to reach another door. He did not however take into consideration that the altraloth casually dismembering the Duke's guards was both already aware of him. Taba could smell him, could taste his fear, could feel his mind on the roaming engine of its own telepathy, and of course see him through the full-spectrum panorama from more than one set of eyes.
The tiefling died with a smile on his face as his clawed hands touched the handle of a door back to the servant's wing. All he perceived was a whistle as a newly formed tentacle lashed out from Taba's body, changing even as it made contact to sink a stinger, much like that of a great scorpion's into his flesh.
The butler's eyes went wide as the corrosive poison pulsed through his body, killing even as it paralyzed. Were it not for his fiendish blood, it likely would have liquefied his guts even before the stinger-tipped tentacle extruded into him like a living fishing hook and dragged him back towards the silent, smiling altraloth.
"You will do." Taba smiled as its midsection rippled and split open. Trailing thick ropes of mucus, a massive, lantern fish-like maw formed and opened to accept the tiefling's body.
Bones crunched and splintered as a trio of black, forked tongues licked at the pulped flesh as well as the butler's memories of the private wing of the estate and the non-tangible elements of its soul. With each horrific crunch and emphatic swallow, Taba's form shifted and altered until finally a perfect copy of the butler stood there in the center of the room, flanked by the dismembered corpses of two cornugons.
Smiling and stretching, accommodating the balance and feeling of its new flesh, the altraloth smiled as its eyes glittered like points of blood. Knowing exactly where its prey was housed, it gathered up the deceased butler's serving tray, whispered a phrase to repair and refill its wine glasses, and then stepped towards the exit as if nothing was amiss.
Abruptly mid-stride, there came a knock at the main entrance. Snarling, Taba turned and walked towards the door.
****
(but excluding clueless' girlfriend and the obvious red eyes of vorkannis i sadly couldn't find anything)
