Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
Shemeska
Adventurer
Tristol winced and reached for the door. He expected the worst when he opened it, but a stiff rattle from the locked handle spared him having to immediately find out.
He glanced back at Nisha. “Nisha? Would you?”
Nisha quirked an eyebrow and gave a disdainful, questioning smirk, not at Tristol, but at the puddle of blood slowly leaking out from under the door’s bottom edge.
“Next evil fortress we’re in,” She said. “We’re skipping the obviously icky rooms behind locked doors.”
Toras gave a polite chuckle.
“No. I’m serious.” Nisha said, shooting him a look. “I’ll open anything here, but the next weird place we’re in, I’m going to make a point of reminding everyone of this.”
That said, she popped the lock with practiced skill and stepped back hesitantly as the door swung open a few inches.
The pool of blood that had collected under the door was fed by a trail extending down the short, magically illuminated hallway. Twenty feet down, the hall opened into another chamber, dark and devoid of light, but the source of the blood was obvious, sitting nestled in the open doorway: a severed leg.
“That’s a leg.” Florian said. “Where’s the rest of the body?”
Warily they approached, and the smell of blood increased with every step, mixed with the rancid stench of burnt flesh. Ten feet in, they were all wincing at the smell, not only Fyrehowl, and they could see that the leg was something out of the ordinary.
The limb was flayed and severed at the upper thigh. The skin had been completely removed, and the major muscles had each been removed at the attachment points on the bones.
Several feet further in, looming out of the dim recesses of the room at the hall’s end, there was another leg. It too had been flayed and dissected. Laying next to it was an arm that had been neatly removed from its owner with surgical precision; the ball at the end of the upper arm’s long bone was still intact and glistening with the white of cartilage, while barely a drop of blood was present except for where the flesh had been intentionally cut.
“What the hell is this?” Fyrehowl asked as her eyes narrowed and adjusted to the light.
A second arm emerged into view, and something else as well, shrouded in the darkness. There was a figure in the room, upright in its center, unmoving.
Toras raised his sword and conjured a globe of light, flushing the shadows from the chamber and illuminating its contents. What they saw in the room was sickening.
The chamber was empty except for a table and the body atop it. A human, his arms and legs had been severed and the wounds cauterized to prevent bleeding. Spittle, blood, and sputum ran down his chest, both dried and fresh, and from an empty plate and spatters of food on the table and the floor, it seemed that he had been forcibly fed. His head was slumped forward and he didn’t seem to notice the light, or their approach, but his chest was rising and falling ever so slowly as he breathed. The man was alive.
Nisha turned around and walked away, sickened by what she’d seen. Toras and Fyrehowl were both enraged, and Florian rushed forward with concern. The man gurgled incoherently as she touched him, but then lapsed into a sudden and ragged scream.
“Can’t you do something about him?!” Nisha yelled from down the hallway, more than bit disturbed and not full of her usual good-humored whimsy.
Clueless was looking at a series of surgical tools that lay next to the man, and a pile of notes, written in infernal, that indicated what appeared to be a schedule of torture and precise observations on when and how each of the man’s limbs had been severed. The man was referred to as ‘subject’, and only briefly was he mentioned as a ‘former mercenary’. Clearly, the man had run afoul of his employer.
“I can’t help him.” Florian said. “He’s too far gone.”
Kiro drew a sword and tentatively looked at the man. His body was ravaged beyond what any of them could fix, and he had suffered so much trauma there was little hope of his ever being whole.
Clueless didn’t give an answer immediately, but instead he looked at the man and recited the words of a spell to peer into his mind. It was his hope to find some information about who the man was, what he had done, and why the Rakshasa had so brutalized him. Of course the answer seemed obvious, he was simply a superfluous tool that had been broken and placed there in the guest wing of the palace to unnerve them, the fiend’s current prey, and give them promises of what was to come for them. The torture was sick and hideously deliberate; nothing of it was random.
The bladesinger’s mind reached out and made contact. The man’s eyes opened and focused, but only for a moment before he whimpered and trembled. Inside his mind there was only a single mindless scream. Inside his mind he had no need to breath, and the scream was without end. He had long since lapsed into madness.
Clueless concentrated more, searching for any of the man’s memories that might flicker to the surface. It was unpleasant, as in flickers and fragments of sounds and images he bore witness to the man’s slow, calculated mangling at the hands of the Rakshasa as time and time again it loomed out of the darkness with claw, scalpel and bone saw. Quickly, wincing at the shared experience, he cancelled his spell.
“He’s insane.” Clueless said, shaking his head wearily. “I couldn’t find much out from his mind. He’s been through too much.”
“What do you want to do?” Florian asked.
“Don’t kill him.” Fyrehowl asked. “Please. We might be able to help him later.”
“It’s a thin hope.” Kiro said. “But it’s your call.”
They glanced at the mangled wretch. And yes, killing him might have ended his misery, but the man deserved better for having been put through the seemingly pointless tortures that he had suffered.
Toras opened the bag at his waist, one of several of their bags of holding, and collected the man’s severed limbs before picking up and stuffing the man himself inside.
“I can’t say when he’ll get out of there.” Toras said as he closed the bag. “But in the meantime, he won’t suffer any more.”
“This was meant for us, but it won’t have the intended effect.” Fyrehowl snarled.
“Indeed.” Florian said, once again patting the crossbow bolt at her waist. “Let’s see what else we can find around here then…”
The palace was deathly quiet, without a single servant to be found, nor any trace of their presence. Likely they were compelled to retire at a certain hour, and following the dinner they had done just that. But still, despite the rationalization, the empty expanse of the palace was disturbing.
As they explored the central wing they found only empty salons, vacant sitting rooms, and galleries of artwork, all of them richly appointed but nearly sterile in their cleanliness. It all seemed on display, not truly lived in and enjoyed by a proper reagent and his subjects. It was cold, but obviously attuned to the tastes of the pair of Rakshasas.
They gleaned little insight from it all though, except into the harsh aesthetic tastes of the brother and sister fiends. The library was expansive, but its books were entirely mundane in nature, containing only histories, and works on art, war, and philosophy. If anything it was simply a scaled up version of the library that they had found in Siddhartha’s tower in the Astral.
“This is boring.” Nisha said. “Especially since you won’t let me steal art. Not that I appreciate much of it.”
“Hey.” Florian said. “You were the one that wanted to avoid anything icky.”
“…” Nisha stuck out her tongue and rattled the bell at the tip of her tail. “I’m still holding to that statement too. This is me we’re talking about. I can embrace contradictory sides of an issue. I do all the time.”
Kiro broke into a smile in response as they walked across the length of the fiends’ dining room and towards the kitchens and servants quarters.
“This might not be empty.” Toras said. “So be ready.”
They tentatively opened the doors into the palace kitchens and peered within. On some level they expected what they found, but on another level they half expected a blood-spattered slaughterhouse. The kitchen was pristine though, and the Rakshasas’ servants evidently cleaned it after each meal in accordance with their masters’ wills. As they stepped inside and peered into the cabinets and ascertained the contents of the shelves, it became clear that the fiends spared no expense in cultivating their air of nobility. The kitchen was stocked with virtually every spice they could name, and many others that they had never seen before.
Adjoining doors led off towards the servants’ quarters, back into the banquet hall, but it was a thicker, more solid wooden door carved with figures of feasting Rakshasas that Florian was moving towards with morbid curiosity.
“Do we really have to go in there?” Nisha asked plaintively as the door was opened. “Again with the wanting to avoid icky places.”
Florian waved away the tiefling’s concern and otherwise didn’t immediately respond as she reached out and tugged on the door handle. The door rattled heavily on its hinges but didn’t open.
“It’s locked.” The cleric said. “And… the handle is cold.”
She waved her hand along the margins of the door, and sure enough, there was a gentle vent of frigid air from the interior.
Nisha frowned immediately but was already getting out her lock picks when Florian turned to her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll open the door.” She said. “Just like the last door, and I won’t be happy this time either I figure. So go ahead and take a look at the elf-sickles, but I’ll stay outside, thank you very much.”
“Nisha open the door. Nisha check for traps. Nisha don’t make a mess. Nisha stop trying to toss deviled eggs at the Tanar’ri because you find it ironic. Nisha…”
The Xaositect twitched her tail and lapsed into a garble of irritated scramblespeak.
“Hopefully this will be better than the last of the Rakshasas’ doors we asked you to open for us.” Tristol said, trying to defuse Nisha’s discontent.
Nisha stuck out her tongue and didn’t comment.
Toras and Kiro glanced at one another and mutually shrugged as the Xaositect popped the lock on the door. The tiefling stood off to one side and motioned towards the door with a lopsided frown.
“go you There, door the open ‘s.” She said.
“Thank you Nisha.” Florian replied as she swung it open wide.
Immediately there was a burst of frigid, frost-laden air that rushed out of the Rakshasa larder into the warmer expanse of the kitchen. Minute ice crystals glittered for a few brief moments before evaporating and revealing the chamber’s interior. Nisha wasn’t looking intentionally. She had a fair idea of what they’d find inside given both the last door she’d opened in the palace, and what the serving staff had even told them up front about what they had eaten.
Inside the unlit, ice crusted interior, there were fully twenty naked bodies of humanoids hung upside down from the ceiling like sides of beef. The heads, hands and feet had been cut from each of the corpses, and bloody icicles extended down from the wounds where the bodies dangled from their iron hooks. They had been alive when they had been butchered like cattle.
Fyrehowl grimaced as she noticed a stack of perhaps thirty or forty hands and feet stacked like firewood off to one side of the larder. Her nose twitched and it appeared that some of them had been rubbed with spices before being set aside and organized separately from the aging meat of the corpses hung above them swinging idly in the chilled expanse of the larder.
“Alright, my curiosity is sated.” Florian said with a disturbed shake of her head. “So is any chance of me eating in the next while and keeping it down.”
“Told you.” Nisha said as Florian and the others walked back out of the Rakshasas’ larder.
“So they like mortal flesh.” Tristol said. “Doesn’t tell us much really. We know to expect them to do that, and to be as brutal as they feel they need to be within their own little perverse set of faux-noble guidelines.”
“So what do you suggest?” Fyrehowl asked.
“That we ignore this part of the palace and not waste more time wandering around looking at bad art.” Tristol answered.
Kiro nodded in agreement. “We’re not going to find anything unless we go into the private wing.”
“Which we’ve avoided so far.” Clueless said.
“And which we shouldn’t continue to do.” Fyrehowl replied. “Especially after what we’ve seen elsewhere so far.”
“Alright.” Florian said. “We turn around and go back to the private wing. Expect a fight though.”
“I expect one.” Fyrehowl added.
Back under the massive domed chamber in the center of the palace, the group stared across the wide expanse of the floor and towards the hallway into the private wing. Like before, the eyes of the huge marble Rakshasa statues seemed to follow them, and it caused them all to hesitate.
“So…” Clueless asked. “Who wants to step through the likely trap first?”
“You asked, you go.” Florian said, much to the bladesinger’s absolute delight.
“Lovely.” Clueless replied as he stepped forward.
The effect was almost immediate as the statue of Siddhartha shuddered and turned to directly face him. Its eyes flickered crimson and some form of spell triggered, but whatever it was, it failed to affect the half-fey. But, like clockwork, the statue of Siddhartha’s sister turned and tried the same where its sibling had failed. The female Rakshasa statue’s eyes glittered a harsh green and a bolt of black, crackling energy lanced out to strike Clueless solidly on the chest.
The half-fey tumbled back, pale and shaken, laying still for a moment, unmoving, before wincing and scrambling to his feet as the pair of huge golems fully animated and leapt down from their pedestals with frightening agility.
The others didn’t wait for him to recover though before launching their own attacks. A fireball blossomed from Tristol’s outstretched hand, but as the flames flickered and faded, both of the statues emerged without so much as a single chip or singe upon their surface.
“Watch out! They’ve got golem immunities!” Tristol shouted out as the others spread out towards the statues.
Seemingly from out of nowhere, a burst of acid shot from Kiro’s fingertips and impacted on the female’s statue. The acid bubbled and sizzled, but the stone seemed unfazed by the caustic liquid. Kiro narrowed his eyes and vanished, but not before shouting out another warning.
“And they’re not normal stone golems either.” He warned. “That should have worked!”
Toras and Fyrehowl met the male golem directly, hacking and slashing at its body with their blades. While the effect of the blows was dampened by the magical protections worked into its form, they added up, and both of them were fast enough to avoid most of the blows that it aimed at them.
It was the female golem that presented a problem though, and Florian and Clueless took turns testing it with physical and magical attacks. They made little progress though till Kiro darted out from behind it, once again seemingly from out of nowhere, and tripped the massive golem with a solidly placed blow to its right knee.
The trip itself was a seconds respite and a chance to attack the fallen construct, but that was also the moment that Tristol flung a stone to flesh spell at it. In an instant, for a scant few seconds, the marble of the golem’s body grew soft and spongy, yielding like flesh before their concentrated attacks before it slammed its fist into Florian and flung her across the chamber. But, as it rapidly congealed back to its normal consistency, it was hobbling and there were huge gashes in one leg and across its midsection.
Meanwhile, Nisha and Skalliska had both managed to hurl a series of minor, but effective sonic based spells at the upper body of the male golem. Small, fist sized craters pock marked its chest and rocked it back as Toras and Fyrehowl continued their assault, though both of them sported numerous bloody slashes from the marble fiend’s own carnelian tipped claws.
Across the chamber, Florian winced and stumbled to her feet, breathing through the pain of several broken ribs and bruises that blanketed her back.
“Son of a b*tch…” She said, pausing from the fight to chant and heal her own wounds. She would be of no use in the state she was in.
Meanwhile, Fyrehowl only partially dodged a heavy blow, and the lupinal was tossed back a dozen feet with almost paltry effort by the towering construct, but the effort had left it vulnerable and exposed. Fyrehowl was struggling to pick herself up off of the floor, leaving bloody smear across the stone in the process, but Toras, though himself injured, struck a heavy blow of his own.
There was a loud, resounding crack that echoed across the chamber, and a series of cracks raced up from the point of impact on the male golem’s thigh. The marble fiend paused, swayed awkwardly, and toppled to one side as its legs gave way under its own weight and its body came crashing down, still and broken.
“A little help here!” Clueless shouted as he dodged a cumbersome blow from the remaining golem and then tumbled through the air as a sudden and unexpected wash of flame erupted from its mouth.
Fyrehowl struggled to approach, but Tristol stopped her as he forced her to drink down a potion to at least stop the bleeding from her numerous injuries. Her heart was in the right place, but another blow might have killed her.
Florian looked up and over at them, now fully healed and ready to fight again. And she had an idea, especially given the damage that had already been done to the last golem’s leg.
Again Clueless dodged another blow, and the golem turned back to take a swipe of its marble paw at Kiro where the cleric was stabbing at the back of its legs. But when it turned, it gave Florian the chance she needed, and she was chanting as she ran up beside it.
Florian’s final prayer finished the job, as with the last word from her lips she reached out to touch the golem’s thigh. Immediately the stone rippled and became like putty under her touch, discorporating and explosively falling apart by some bizarre effect of the stoneshape spell. Seconds later the golem’s lower body was a field of rounded, misshapen hunks of marble, and its body above the waist was immobile and inanimate.
“And that is that.” The cleric said with a cutting motion of her arms. “Praise be to Tempus.”
“And this time I’ll grant you that.” Kiro said as he stepped out of nowhere from behind her with a grin. “I won’t argue. That was nice.”
“You alright Clueless?” Florian asked, turning away from the shattered golems and glancing at the bladesinger.
“No.” He replied. “The golem had some sort of energy drain, which is what it hit me with. I don’t remember all the spells I had before, and I’m feeling pretty weak.”
Florian glanced at Kiro.
“Go ahead, I don’t have anything to restore him in memory.” The cleric of Sutekh said with a humble shrug.
Florian nodded.
“No problem. I’ll take care of it.” She said, walking over to remove the necromantic curse from the bladesinger and then to start the process of healing all of the others of their injuries.
It was then that Fyrehowl noticed it again, that same feeling that she had nagging at the edge of her mind when they had first entered the palace and stood there briefly in the junction of the various palace wings. This time though, they weren’t being watched by one of the Rakshasas’ servants, and she had the time to stand there and ponder the feeling.
The feeling wasn’t just a feeling though, it was something very real that she hadn’t consciously taken note of before. There was a smell in the air, something ephemeral and not lingering when she did catch note of it, but there nonetheless. She twitched her nose, knelt down and inhaled deeply. Ammonia. Ammonia tinged with a coppery undertone.
“What is it?” Toras asked, sitting atop the broken head of one of the two statues.
“I don’t know.” Fyrehowl answered. “There’s an odd smell on the air here, but I can’t place where it’s coming from. It’s here one second and then gone the next.”
“Blood?” Skalliska asked. “It might be something left over from when the Rakshasa killed the half dozen people that kidnapped me.”
“No.” The lupinal said, standing back up. “If it’s blood than it’s not recent. It’s almost sour tasting on the air whatever it is.”
“I don’t notice anything.” Florian said.
“It’s there.” Kiro added. “It’s subtle, but it is there.”
“You have a nose Florian, not a muzzle.” Tristol said. “Fyrehowl does.”
“Eh, true.” Florian replied.
Nisha meanwhile was putting a hand up over her own face and extending it out like she was judging the length of a big nose that wasn’t there. Fyrehowl shrugged and chuckled in response.
“Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s here in this room.” The lupinal said. “It’s seeping in from somewhere else. We’ll find it eventually.”
“Plus,” Kiro said. “With the noise we just made, we might want to go ahead and be somewhere else when someone or something comes looking.”
They glanced over in the direction of the private wing of the palace, looked at one another, and walked into the gloom.
Lord Siddhartha stared in rapt attention at the image floating in the air before him called up by his scry. He’d only briefly considered that the golems might actually kill his victims, but it was an ill-founded hope, and his irritation was a transient thought.
He’d been watching them ever since they had discovered the dismembered human in the guest wing, and he had enjoyed watching their reactions. There was little they could accomplish, and likely they would run afoul of traps and his own wards as they attempted to explore his own private areas of the palace. Still though, he particularly enjoyed the thoughts of slaughtering the celestial, the half-celestial and the aasimars, and slowly torturing the others to death. To be certain, it would be a pleasure when the time came.
“Yethmiil…”
The voice was a sudden and unwelcome presence within his consciousness. It rattled his attention away from his scrying, an insidious whisper with a fierce potency that carried across the planes with terrible ease.
“Your presence is required on the Astral.”
There was no reply requested, nor was one needed since any reply would be irrelevant on his part. Obedience and compliance were not only presumed, they were required by force as a part of his penance and part of what ensured that he stayed alive.
“Bitch!” He snarled with a sudden, uncharacteristic burst of true fury.
He was cursing, but it was impotent rage, and it didn’t prevent him from gating to a very specific spot on the Astral. She would be waiting for him, and any delay would lead to pain. There was only one thought in his mind aside from that as he glanced up into the swirling, titanic face of the continent wide astral storm which surrounded the citadel of his mistress, and that was that his current victims would be allowed to wander blindly through his palace until the time that he was finished abasing himself elsewhere. His wardings and guardians would have to suffice till he returned.
The hallway terminated after fifty feet at a pair of locked, heavy mahogany doors set into the walls on golden hinges. A dim, ambient glow spread throughout the air, leaving the doors and the area immediately in front of them as the only illuminated section of the corridor, a single huddled island in an otherwise sea of gloom. The dim magical illumination glinted off of the nearly reflective marble floor and the carvings on the doors of Rakshasas in various scenes of warfare, spellcasting, dining, reclining, drinking and smoking.
“I’m not even going near those doors till someone takes a look at them.” Florian said.
“It’s locked.” Nisha replied after a brief examination of the lock. “Gimme a minute, this one’s pretty complex.”
“That’s odd…” Tristol said in the meantime. “There’s no magic surrounding the doors.”
“I don’t believe it.” Fyrehowl said. “Something doesn’t feel right about them.”
Nisha briefly paused at Fyrehowl’s apprehension. Normally the cipher’s intuition was right.
“Should I open it or not?” The tiefling asked her.
Fyrehowl wrinkled her brow in thought, but then shook her head.
“No.” She replied. “Go ahead.”
“Alright.” Nisha replied. “If you say so.”
The lock gave a series of clicks as the tumblers fell into place, one by one, and finally the latch fell free. Nisha glanced back at the others.
“Don’t worry Nisha.” Kiro said. “I’ll get the next door for you, regardless of how this one turns out.”
Nisha shrugged and gave a smile to the cleric. “If you say so, but I’ll be standing back a bit.”
“Not a problem.” Kiro replied.
“Don’t blame me if we blow up.” She said as she stepped back and nudged the doors open with one hoof.
They swung open silently with no ill effect, though there seemed to be a very sudden, very brief surge of magic, under Tristol’s sight. The hallway continued onwards beyond them for another twenty yards till it seemed to open up into a crimson illuminated interior courtyard.
Clueless stepped forward into the corridor, followed shortly thereafter by Kiro, and then Florian. The first two were fine, nothing happened to them, but Florian’s body seized and fell to the ground amid a convulsive series of agonized coughs and belabored inhalations as the cleric struggled to breath. Tristol could only watch as Kiro dragged her forwards and off of the source of the curse.
“Son of a…” Fyrehowl said as she walked up to the line of the door and stopped dead in her tracks, looking at the boundary between the corridor and the private section beyond. A series of glyphs stretched along the line, inset into the doorframe above and below. Minute inscriptions written in infernal, they glittered like tiny black diamonds scattered in a row across the dividing line, previously hidden from sight by the closed and locked door, and mostly blending into the dark, polished surface of the palace flagstones.
Kiro was on the ground, bracing Florian and keeping the hilt of a dagger in her mouth to prevent her from biting off her own tongue as the pain induced seizure ran its course. A minute later he was looking down at her with concern, and gently smacking her on the cheek, letting her get her bearings.
“You alright?” Kiro asked. “You triggered some sort of contingent ward. I don’t know why it triggered on you, but not myself and Clueless.”
Florian winced and stood back up with a stolid expression on her face.
“I’m fine.” She said.
“Tristol?” Clueless asked, glancing between the glyphs and the aasimar.
“I’m already looking at it.” Tristol replied. “It’s permanent, it’s triggered for anyone who isn’t evil or doesn’t resist it. This might take me several tries to dispel it, if I can.”
“Don’t bother.” Toras said. “Save your spells. It’s just a pissy little pain glyph. At worst it’ll hurt, but it’s not lethal.”
“I’m beyond tired of this bast*rd’s symbols and glyphs.” Florian said.
“Are you sure?” Tristol asked back at Toras and the others on the other side of the line of glyphs.
Nisha looked down at the boundary and shook her head rapidly. Toras nodded his assent, and she smacked her forehead as he walked across. Thankfully though, he resisted the ward.
“Nisha? Tristol? Fyrehowl? Skalliska?” Clueless asked. “You going to be all right?”
“Hopefully yes?” Nisha said as she backed up, braced herself, and then did a running leap over the boundary.
Landing on the other side with the gentle rattle of the bell on her tail, she winced and paused, finally opening one eye and looking around. She’d resisted the ward.
A few moments later and the others crossed over as well, though unfortunately Fyrehowl and Skalliska had a much rougher time than Tristol, spending time seizing up in a brief period of magically induced agony. The pain didn’t dissuade them though. The pain only made them more firm in their desire to take revenge upon their fiendish tormentor, wherever in his palace he was lurking.
“Come on.” Fyrehowl said as she looked down the corridor. “Let’s go find this jack*ss.”
Kiro glanced back at the line of wards, and far beyond it the shattered remains of the twin golems. Something about it didn’t seem right to him, though he really had little to base the feeling upon. For what it was worth, the fiend’s palace was feeling less and less like a comfortable sanctum of exotic grandeur and ill gained wealth to be displayed before the execution of those who displeased him, and more like a perverse, delicately planned scenario in many ways, initiated and set up for the Rakshasa’s enjoyment. How much of it might have been intended, and how much of that plan they had disrupted by their own actions thus far, well that was yet to be determined; that, among other things.
A harsh glow of bright crimson, a gentle trickle of flowing water, and the aroma of hundreds of flowers, these were the trio of impressions that greeted them as they walked to the end of the hallway and emerged in the courtyard at the center of the palace’s private wing.
A small interior courtyard, its center was open to the sky and was filled by an open-air garden of sorts. Rising up from the native earth of the plane, twisting vines and exotic flowers filled the air with an oddly beguiling but yet off-putting scent. Bitter and slightly acidic to the nose, the flora was beautiful and represented a unique collection of the most spectacular, yet sinister, purple, scarlet, and green flowers from across the entire layer of Cathrys.
The garden itself surrounded a small trickling pond fed by a trio of streams flowing from three decorative stone dragons perched upon the three columns supporting the interior palace terraces that ringed around the courtyard. Each of them resembled an Acheronian rust dragon intricately carved from stone which had a lifelike tone and sheen to its surface, flecked with reddish brown mineral deposits and shimmering green crystals. One would almost think them alive, looking down upon the garden, ready to swoop down and devour intruders.
“I’m not looking at the flowers in the garden guys.” Tristol said. “Look at the shadow cast across it, and then look up.”
Indeed there was a slim shadow cast across the breadth of the courtyard, and, high above on its south side, a tall tower rose up from the palace, deeper within the Rakshasas’ private wing.
“Wasn’t that tower toppled over to one side?” Clueless asked.
“Yeah, it was.” Toras said. “The whole thing was collapsed in on itself.”
“But we know the whole palace was covered with an illusion.” Tristol said. “And to be honest, most of the more powerful magic that I’ve seen laced into the walls here converges on that tower. I want to know what’s in there.”
They all glanced up at the tower, noting the slight pulsing glow that seemed to envelop its upper stories. Their attention was distracted though by Fyrehowl.
“Awww…” The lupinal said as she walked towards one of the carved stone pillars.
On the pillar, hung from the tail of the stone rust dragon carved atop it, was a brass cage. Inside was a single, tiny faerie dragon that peered up cautiously at the lupinal. The dragon was young and its wings seemed faded from their original bright luster.
Tristol turned away from his examination of the magic that swirled around the tower and looked towards the cage and its tiny, draconic prisoner. The bars of the cage were warded some form of specific forbiddance dweomer to entrap the dragon, and the cage’s interior was blanketed with an antimagic field. Clearly the dragon’s keepers were taking no chances with its escape, given the innate magical abilities of its kind.
The faerie dragon looked up at them with oversized bright blue eyes, tinged red at the edges with recent tears. Its amber colored scales were dulled from hunger, and it seemed almost hesitant to feel even a glimmer of hope that it might be released.
“Hello there little guy.” Toras said. “What’s your name?”
The faerie dragon gave a feeble twitch of its speckled, wildly colored butterfly wings and edged as close to the bars of the cage as the wards would allow it. He craned his neck up to look at Toras and slowly blinked, but he didn’t quite manage a smile.
The faerie dragon rattled off an incomprehensibly long name in high pitched, fluting draconic. “But you can call me Amberblue.”
“How long have you been here Amberblue?” Toras asked.
The dragon paused and looked around, expecting either of its fiendish masters to appear at any moment.
“I don’t know how long.” He said with an almost guilty, plaintive chirp. “There’s no sun here, not like Arborea. I can’t tell when its day or night… I’m sorry…”
The faerie dragon slunk down at the admission.
“No, it’s alright. That’s not your fault.” The fighter reassured him. “Do the Rakshasas keep you locked up here?”
Amberblue nodded and cringed.
“Well,” Toras said gently. “We’re going to let you out and make sure that they can’t hurt you, or lock you or anyone else up ever again.”
“NOOO!” Amberblue exclaimed with a sudden surge of fear. “Doooooon’t! You’ll make them angry! Please don’t make them angry!”
The tiny dragon was on the verge of tears, almost pleading to –NOT- be released.
“I… I’ve seen what they do to people that make them angry.” He whimpered as tears welled in his eyes, rolled down and dropped from the end of his snout. “You don’t know what they can do. I’ve seen them. She’s the worst when she’s here…”
He glanced back at Nisha. “Nisha? Would you?”
Nisha quirked an eyebrow and gave a disdainful, questioning smirk, not at Tristol, but at the puddle of blood slowly leaking out from under the door’s bottom edge.
“Next evil fortress we’re in,” She said. “We’re skipping the obviously icky rooms behind locked doors.”
Toras gave a polite chuckle.
“No. I’m serious.” Nisha said, shooting him a look. “I’ll open anything here, but the next weird place we’re in, I’m going to make a point of reminding everyone of this.”
That said, she popped the lock with practiced skill and stepped back hesitantly as the door swung open a few inches.
The pool of blood that had collected under the door was fed by a trail extending down the short, magically illuminated hallway. Twenty feet down, the hall opened into another chamber, dark and devoid of light, but the source of the blood was obvious, sitting nestled in the open doorway: a severed leg.
“That’s a leg.” Florian said. “Where’s the rest of the body?”
Warily they approached, and the smell of blood increased with every step, mixed with the rancid stench of burnt flesh. Ten feet in, they were all wincing at the smell, not only Fyrehowl, and they could see that the leg was something out of the ordinary.
The limb was flayed and severed at the upper thigh. The skin had been completely removed, and the major muscles had each been removed at the attachment points on the bones.
Several feet further in, looming out of the dim recesses of the room at the hall’s end, there was another leg. It too had been flayed and dissected. Laying next to it was an arm that had been neatly removed from its owner with surgical precision; the ball at the end of the upper arm’s long bone was still intact and glistening with the white of cartilage, while barely a drop of blood was present except for where the flesh had been intentionally cut.
“What the hell is this?” Fyrehowl asked as her eyes narrowed and adjusted to the light.
A second arm emerged into view, and something else as well, shrouded in the darkness. There was a figure in the room, upright in its center, unmoving.
Toras raised his sword and conjured a globe of light, flushing the shadows from the chamber and illuminating its contents. What they saw in the room was sickening.
The chamber was empty except for a table and the body atop it. A human, his arms and legs had been severed and the wounds cauterized to prevent bleeding. Spittle, blood, and sputum ran down his chest, both dried and fresh, and from an empty plate and spatters of food on the table and the floor, it seemed that he had been forcibly fed. His head was slumped forward and he didn’t seem to notice the light, or their approach, but his chest was rising and falling ever so slowly as he breathed. The man was alive.
Nisha turned around and walked away, sickened by what she’d seen. Toras and Fyrehowl were both enraged, and Florian rushed forward with concern. The man gurgled incoherently as she touched him, but then lapsed into a sudden and ragged scream.
“Can’t you do something about him?!” Nisha yelled from down the hallway, more than bit disturbed and not full of her usual good-humored whimsy.
Clueless was looking at a series of surgical tools that lay next to the man, and a pile of notes, written in infernal, that indicated what appeared to be a schedule of torture and precise observations on when and how each of the man’s limbs had been severed. The man was referred to as ‘subject’, and only briefly was he mentioned as a ‘former mercenary’. Clearly, the man had run afoul of his employer.
“I can’t help him.” Florian said. “He’s too far gone.”
Kiro drew a sword and tentatively looked at the man. His body was ravaged beyond what any of them could fix, and he had suffered so much trauma there was little hope of his ever being whole.
Clueless didn’t give an answer immediately, but instead he looked at the man and recited the words of a spell to peer into his mind. It was his hope to find some information about who the man was, what he had done, and why the Rakshasa had so brutalized him. Of course the answer seemed obvious, he was simply a superfluous tool that had been broken and placed there in the guest wing of the palace to unnerve them, the fiend’s current prey, and give them promises of what was to come for them. The torture was sick and hideously deliberate; nothing of it was random.
The bladesinger’s mind reached out and made contact. The man’s eyes opened and focused, but only for a moment before he whimpered and trembled. Inside his mind there was only a single mindless scream. Inside his mind he had no need to breath, and the scream was without end. He had long since lapsed into madness.
Clueless concentrated more, searching for any of the man’s memories that might flicker to the surface. It was unpleasant, as in flickers and fragments of sounds and images he bore witness to the man’s slow, calculated mangling at the hands of the Rakshasa as time and time again it loomed out of the darkness with claw, scalpel and bone saw. Quickly, wincing at the shared experience, he cancelled his spell.
“He’s insane.” Clueless said, shaking his head wearily. “I couldn’t find much out from his mind. He’s been through too much.”
“What do you want to do?” Florian asked.
“Don’t kill him.” Fyrehowl asked. “Please. We might be able to help him later.”
“It’s a thin hope.” Kiro said. “But it’s your call.”
They glanced at the mangled wretch. And yes, killing him might have ended his misery, but the man deserved better for having been put through the seemingly pointless tortures that he had suffered.
Toras opened the bag at his waist, one of several of their bags of holding, and collected the man’s severed limbs before picking up and stuffing the man himself inside.
“I can’t say when he’ll get out of there.” Toras said as he closed the bag. “But in the meantime, he won’t suffer any more.”
“This was meant for us, but it won’t have the intended effect.” Fyrehowl snarled.
“Indeed.” Florian said, once again patting the crossbow bolt at her waist. “Let’s see what else we can find around here then…”
***
The palace was deathly quiet, without a single servant to be found, nor any trace of their presence. Likely they were compelled to retire at a certain hour, and following the dinner they had done just that. But still, despite the rationalization, the empty expanse of the palace was disturbing.
As they explored the central wing they found only empty salons, vacant sitting rooms, and galleries of artwork, all of them richly appointed but nearly sterile in their cleanliness. It all seemed on display, not truly lived in and enjoyed by a proper reagent and his subjects. It was cold, but obviously attuned to the tastes of the pair of Rakshasas.
They gleaned little insight from it all though, except into the harsh aesthetic tastes of the brother and sister fiends. The library was expansive, but its books were entirely mundane in nature, containing only histories, and works on art, war, and philosophy. If anything it was simply a scaled up version of the library that they had found in Siddhartha’s tower in the Astral.
“This is boring.” Nisha said. “Especially since you won’t let me steal art. Not that I appreciate much of it.”
“Hey.” Florian said. “You were the one that wanted to avoid anything icky.”
“…” Nisha stuck out her tongue and rattled the bell at the tip of her tail. “I’m still holding to that statement too. This is me we’re talking about. I can embrace contradictory sides of an issue. I do all the time.”
Kiro broke into a smile in response as they walked across the length of the fiends’ dining room and towards the kitchens and servants quarters.
“This might not be empty.” Toras said. “So be ready.”
They tentatively opened the doors into the palace kitchens and peered within. On some level they expected what they found, but on another level they half expected a blood-spattered slaughterhouse. The kitchen was pristine though, and the Rakshasas’ servants evidently cleaned it after each meal in accordance with their masters’ wills. As they stepped inside and peered into the cabinets and ascertained the contents of the shelves, it became clear that the fiends spared no expense in cultivating their air of nobility. The kitchen was stocked with virtually every spice they could name, and many others that they had never seen before.
Adjoining doors led off towards the servants’ quarters, back into the banquet hall, but it was a thicker, more solid wooden door carved with figures of feasting Rakshasas that Florian was moving towards with morbid curiosity.
“Do we really have to go in there?” Nisha asked plaintively as the door was opened. “Again with the wanting to avoid icky places.”
Florian waved away the tiefling’s concern and otherwise didn’t immediately respond as she reached out and tugged on the door handle. The door rattled heavily on its hinges but didn’t open.
“It’s locked.” The cleric said. “And… the handle is cold.”
She waved her hand along the margins of the door, and sure enough, there was a gentle vent of frigid air from the interior.
Nisha frowned immediately but was already getting out her lock picks when Florian turned to her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll open the door.” She said. “Just like the last door, and I won’t be happy this time either I figure. So go ahead and take a look at the elf-sickles, but I’ll stay outside, thank you very much.”
“Nisha open the door. Nisha check for traps. Nisha don’t make a mess. Nisha stop trying to toss deviled eggs at the Tanar’ri because you find it ironic. Nisha…”
The Xaositect twitched her tail and lapsed into a garble of irritated scramblespeak.
“Hopefully this will be better than the last of the Rakshasas’ doors we asked you to open for us.” Tristol said, trying to defuse Nisha’s discontent.
Nisha stuck out her tongue and didn’t comment.
Toras and Kiro glanced at one another and mutually shrugged as the Xaositect popped the lock on the door. The tiefling stood off to one side and motioned towards the door with a lopsided frown.
“go you There, door the open ‘s.” She said.
“Thank you Nisha.” Florian replied as she swung it open wide.
Immediately there was a burst of frigid, frost-laden air that rushed out of the Rakshasa larder into the warmer expanse of the kitchen. Minute ice crystals glittered for a few brief moments before evaporating and revealing the chamber’s interior. Nisha wasn’t looking intentionally. She had a fair idea of what they’d find inside given both the last door she’d opened in the palace, and what the serving staff had even told them up front about what they had eaten.
Inside the unlit, ice crusted interior, there were fully twenty naked bodies of humanoids hung upside down from the ceiling like sides of beef. The heads, hands and feet had been cut from each of the corpses, and bloody icicles extended down from the wounds where the bodies dangled from their iron hooks. They had been alive when they had been butchered like cattle.
Fyrehowl grimaced as she noticed a stack of perhaps thirty or forty hands and feet stacked like firewood off to one side of the larder. Her nose twitched and it appeared that some of them had been rubbed with spices before being set aside and organized separately from the aging meat of the corpses hung above them swinging idly in the chilled expanse of the larder.
“Alright, my curiosity is sated.” Florian said with a disturbed shake of her head. “So is any chance of me eating in the next while and keeping it down.”
“Told you.” Nisha said as Florian and the others walked back out of the Rakshasas’ larder.
“So they like mortal flesh.” Tristol said. “Doesn’t tell us much really. We know to expect them to do that, and to be as brutal as they feel they need to be within their own little perverse set of faux-noble guidelines.”
“So what do you suggest?” Fyrehowl asked.
“That we ignore this part of the palace and not waste more time wandering around looking at bad art.” Tristol answered.
Kiro nodded in agreement. “We’re not going to find anything unless we go into the private wing.”
“Which we’ve avoided so far.” Clueless said.
“And which we shouldn’t continue to do.” Fyrehowl replied. “Especially after what we’ve seen elsewhere so far.”
“Alright.” Florian said. “We turn around and go back to the private wing. Expect a fight though.”
“I expect one.” Fyrehowl added.
***
Back under the massive domed chamber in the center of the palace, the group stared across the wide expanse of the floor and towards the hallway into the private wing. Like before, the eyes of the huge marble Rakshasa statues seemed to follow them, and it caused them all to hesitate.
“So…” Clueless asked. “Who wants to step through the likely trap first?”
“You asked, you go.” Florian said, much to the bladesinger’s absolute delight.
“Lovely.” Clueless replied as he stepped forward.
The effect was almost immediate as the statue of Siddhartha shuddered and turned to directly face him. Its eyes flickered crimson and some form of spell triggered, but whatever it was, it failed to affect the half-fey. But, like clockwork, the statue of Siddhartha’s sister turned and tried the same where its sibling had failed. The female Rakshasa statue’s eyes glittered a harsh green and a bolt of black, crackling energy lanced out to strike Clueless solidly on the chest.
The half-fey tumbled back, pale and shaken, laying still for a moment, unmoving, before wincing and scrambling to his feet as the pair of huge golems fully animated and leapt down from their pedestals with frightening agility.
The others didn’t wait for him to recover though before launching their own attacks. A fireball blossomed from Tristol’s outstretched hand, but as the flames flickered and faded, both of the statues emerged without so much as a single chip or singe upon their surface.
“Watch out! They’ve got golem immunities!” Tristol shouted out as the others spread out towards the statues.
Seemingly from out of nowhere, a burst of acid shot from Kiro’s fingertips and impacted on the female’s statue. The acid bubbled and sizzled, but the stone seemed unfazed by the caustic liquid. Kiro narrowed his eyes and vanished, but not before shouting out another warning.
“And they’re not normal stone golems either.” He warned. “That should have worked!”
Toras and Fyrehowl met the male golem directly, hacking and slashing at its body with their blades. While the effect of the blows was dampened by the magical protections worked into its form, they added up, and both of them were fast enough to avoid most of the blows that it aimed at them.
It was the female golem that presented a problem though, and Florian and Clueless took turns testing it with physical and magical attacks. They made little progress though till Kiro darted out from behind it, once again seemingly from out of nowhere, and tripped the massive golem with a solidly placed blow to its right knee.
The trip itself was a seconds respite and a chance to attack the fallen construct, but that was also the moment that Tristol flung a stone to flesh spell at it. In an instant, for a scant few seconds, the marble of the golem’s body grew soft and spongy, yielding like flesh before their concentrated attacks before it slammed its fist into Florian and flung her across the chamber. But, as it rapidly congealed back to its normal consistency, it was hobbling and there were huge gashes in one leg and across its midsection.
Meanwhile, Nisha and Skalliska had both managed to hurl a series of minor, but effective sonic based spells at the upper body of the male golem. Small, fist sized craters pock marked its chest and rocked it back as Toras and Fyrehowl continued their assault, though both of them sported numerous bloody slashes from the marble fiend’s own carnelian tipped claws.
Across the chamber, Florian winced and stumbled to her feet, breathing through the pain of several broken ribs and bruises that blanketed her back.
“Son of a b*tch…” She said, pausing from the fight to chant and heal her own wounds. She would be of no use in the state she was in.
Meanwhile, Fyrehowl only partially dodged a heavy blow, and the lupinal was tossed back a dozen feet with almost paltry effort by the towering construct, but the effort had left it vulnerable and exposed. Fyrehowl was struggling to pick herself up off of the floor, leaving bloody smear across the stone in the process, but Toras, though himself injured, struck a heavy blow of his own.
There was a loud, resounding crack that echoed across the chamber, and a series of cracks raced up from the point of impact on the male golem’s thigh. The marble fiend paused, swayed awkwardly, and toppled to one side as its legs gave way under its own weight and its body came crashing down, still and broken.
“A little help here!” Clueless shouted as he dodged a cumbersome blow from the remaining golem and then tumbled through the air as a sudden and unexpected wash of flame erupted from its mouth.
Fyrehowl struggled to approach, but Tristol stopped her as he forced her to drink down a potion to at least stop the bleeding from her numerous injuries. Her heart was in the right place, but another blow might have killed her.
Florian looked up and over at them, now fully healed and ready to fight again. And she had an idea, especially given the damage that had already been done to the last golem’s leg.
Again Clueless dodged another blow, and the golem turned back to take a swipe of its marble paw at Kiro where the cleric was stabbing at the back of its legs. But when it turned, it gave Florian the chance she needed, and she was chanting as she ran up beside it.
Florian’s final prayer finished the job, as with the last word from her lips she reached out to touch the golem’s thigh. Immediately the stone rippled and became like putty under her touch, discorporating and explosively falling apart by some bizarre effect of the stoneshape spell. Seconds later the golem’s lower body was a field of rounded, misshapen hunks of marble, and its body above the waist was immobile and inanimate.
“And that is that.” The cleric said with a cutting motion of her arms. “Praise be to Tempus.”
“And this time I’ll grant you that.” Kiro said as he stepped out of nowhere from behind her with a grin. “I won’t argue. That was nice.”
“You alright Clueless?” Florian asked, turning away from the shattered golems and glancing at the bladesinger.
“No.” He replied. “The golem had some sort of energy drain, which is what it hit me with. I don’t remember all the spells I had before, and I’m feeling pretty weak.”
Florian glanced at Kiro.
“Go ahead, I don’t have anything to restore him in memory.” The cleric of Sutekh said with a humble shrug.
Florian nodded.
“No problem. I’ll take care of it.” She said, walking over to remove the necromantic curse from the bladesinger and then to start the process of healing all of the others of their injuries.
It was then that Fyrehowl noticed it again, that same feeling that she had nagging at the edge of her mind when they had first entered the palace and stood there briefly in the junction of the various palace wings. This time though, they weren’t being watched by one of the Rakshasas’ servants, and she had the time to stand there and ponder the feeling.
The feeling wasn’t just a feeling though, it was something very real that she hadn’t consciously taken note of before. There was a smell in the air, something ephemeral and not lingering when she did catch note of it, but there nonetheless. She twitched her nose, knelt down and inhaled deeply. Ammonia. Ammonia tinged with a coppery undertone.
“What is it?” Toras asked, sitting atop the broken head of one of the two statues.
“I don’t know.” Fyrehowl answered. “There’s an odd smell on the air here, but I can’t place where it’s coming from. It’s here one second and then gone the next.”
“Blood?” Skalliska asked. “It might be something left over from when the Rakshasa killed the half dozen people that kidnapped me.”
“No.” The lupinal said, standing back up. “If it’s blood than it’s not recent. It’s almost sour tasting on the air whatever it is.”
“I don’t notice anything.” Florian said.
“It’s there.” Kiro added. “It’s subtle, but it is there.”
“You have a nose Florian, not a muzzle.” Tristol said. “Fyrehowl does.”
“Eh, true.” Florian replied.
Nisha meanwhile was putting a hand up over her own face and extending it out like she was judging the length of a big nose that wasn’t there. Fyrehowl shrugged and chuckled in response.
“Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s here in this room.” The lupinal said. “It’s seeping in from somewhere else. We’ll find it eventually.”
“Plus,” Kiro said. “With the noise we just made, we might want to go ahead and be somewhere else when someone or something comes looking.”
They glanced over in the direction of the private wing of the palace, looked at one another, and walked into the gloom.
***
Lord Siddhartha stared in rapt attention at the image floating in the air before him called up by his scry. He’d only briefly considered that the golems might actually kill his victims, but it was an ill-founded hope, and his irritation was a transient thought.
He’d been watching them ever since they had discovered the dismembered human in the guest wing, and he had enjoyed watching their reactions. There was little they could accomplish, and likely they would run afoul of traps and his own wards as they attempted to explore his own private areas of the palace. Still though, he particularly enjoyed the thoughts of slaughtering the celestial, the half-celestial and the aasimars, and slowly torturing the others to death. To be certain, it would be a pleasure when the time came.
“Yethmiil…”
The voice was a sudden and unwelcome presence within his consciousness. It rattled his attention away from his scrying, an insidious whisper with a fierce potency that carried across the planes with terrible ease.
“Your presence is required on the Astral.”
There was no reply requested, nor was one needed since any reply would be irrelevant on his part. Obedience and compliance were not only presumed, they were required by force as a part of his penance and part of what ensured that he stayed alive.
“Bitch!” He snarled with a sudden, uncharacteristic burst of true fury.
He was cursing, but it was impotent rage, and it didn’t prevent him from gating to a very specific spot on the Astral. She would be waiting for him, and any delay would lead to pain. There was only one thought in his mind aside from that as he glanced up into the swirling, titanic face of the continent wide astral storm which surrounded the citadel of his mistress, and that was that his current victims would be allowed to wander blindly through his palace until the time that he was finished abasing himself elsewhere. His wardings and guardians would have to suffice till he returned.
***
The hallway terminated after fifty feet at a pair of locked, heavy mahogany doors set into the walls on golden hinges. A dim, ambient glow spread throughout the air, leaving the doors and the area immediately in front of them as the only illuminated section of the corridor, a single huddled island in an otherwise sea of gloom. The dim magical illumination glinted off of the nearly reflective marble floor and the carvings on the doors of Rakshasas in various scenes of warfare, spellcasting, dining, reclining, drinking and smoking.
“I’m not even going near those doors till someone takes a look at them.” Florian said.
“It’s locked.” Nisha replied after a brief examination of the lock. “Gimme a minute, this one’s pretty complex.”
“That’s odd…” Tristol said in the meantime. “There’s no magic surrounding the doors.”
“I don’t believe it.” Fyrehowl said. “Something doesn’t feel right about them.”
Nisha briefly paused at Fyrehowl’s apprehension. Normally the cipher’s intuition was right.
“Should I open it or not?” The tiefling asked her.
Fyrehowl wrinkled her brow in thought, but then shook her head.
“No.” She replied. “Go ahead.”
“Alright.” Nisha replied. “If you say so.”
The lock gave a series of clicks as the tumblers fell into place, one by one, and finally the latch fell free. Nisha glanced back at the others.
“Don’t worry Nisha.” Kiro said. “I’ll get the next door for you, regardless of how this one turns out.”
Nisha shrugged and gave a smile to the cleric. “If you say so, but I’ll be standing back a bit.”
“Not a problem.” Kiro replied.
“Don’t blame me if we blow up.” She said as she stepped back and nudged the doors open with one hoof.
They swung open silently with no ill effect, though there seemed to be a very sudden, very brief surge of magic, under Tristol’s sight. The hallway continued onwards beyond them for another twenty yards till it seemed to open up into a crimson illuminated interior courtyard.
Clueless stepped forward into the corridor, followed shortly thereafter by Kiro, and then Florian. The first two were fine, nothing happened to them, but Florian’s body seized and fell to the ground amid a convulsive series of agonized coughs and belabored inhalations as the cleric struggled to breath. Tristol could only watch as Kiro dragged her forwards and off of the source of the curse.
“Son of a…” Fyrehowl said as she walked up to the line of the door and stopped dead in her tracks, looking at the boundary between the corridor and the private section beyond. A series of glyphs stretched along the line, inset into the doorframe above and below. Minute inscriptions written in infernal, they glittered like tiny black diamonds scattered in a row across the dividing line, previously hidden from sight by the closed and locked door, and mostly blending into the dark, polished surface of the palace flagstones.
Kiro was on the ground, bracing Florian and keeping the hilt of a dagger in her mouth to prevent her from biting off her own tongue as the pain induced seizure ran its course. A minute later he was looking down at her with concern, and gently smacking her on the cheek, letting her get her bearings.
“You alright?” Kiro asked. “You triggered some sort of contingent ward. I don’t know why it triggered on you, but not myself and Clueless.”
Florian winced and stood back up with a stolid expression on her face.
“I’m fine.” She said.
“Tristol?” Clueless asked, glancing between the glyphs and the aasimar.
“I’m already looking at it.” Tristol replied. “It’s permanent, it’s triggered for anyone who isn’t evil or doesn’t resist it. This might take me several tries to dispel it, if I can.”
“Don’t bother.” Toras said. “Save your spells. It’s just a pissy little pain glyph. At worst it’ll hurt, but it’s not lethal.”
“I’m beyond tired of this bast*rd’s symbols and glyphs.” Florian said.
“Are you sure?” Tristol asked back at Toras and the others on the other side of the line of glyphs.
Nisha looked down at the boundary and shook her head rapidly. Toras nodded his assent, and she smacked her forehead as he walked across. Thankfully though, he resisted the ward.
“Nisha? Tristol? Fyrehowl? Skalliska?” Clueless asked. “You going to be all right?”
“Hopefully yes?” Nisha said as she backed up, braced herself, and then did a running leap over the boundary.
Landing on the other side with the gentle rattle of the bell on her tail, she winced and paused, finally opening one eye and looking around. She’d resisted the ward.
A few moments later and the others crossed over as well, though unfortunately Fyrehowl and Skalliska had a much rougher time than Tristol, spending time seizing up in a brief period of magically induced agony. The pain didn’t dissuade them though. The pain only made them more firm in their desire to take revenge upon their fiendish tormentor, wherever in his palace he was lurking.
“Come on.” Fyrehowl said as she looked down the corridor. “Let’s go find this jack*ss.”
***
Kiro glanced back at the line of wards, and far beyond it the shattered remains of the twin golems. Something about it didn’t seem right to him, though he really had little to base the feeling upon. For what it was worth, the fiend’s palace was feeling less and less like a comfortable sanctum of exotic grandeur and ill gained wealth to be displayed before the execution of those who displeased him, and more like a perverse, delicately planned scenario in many ways, initiated and set up for the Rakshasa’s enjoyment. How much of it might have been intended, and how much of that plan they had disrupted by their own actions thus far, well that was yet to be determined; that, among other things.
***
A harsh glow of bright crimson, a gentle trickle of flowing water, and the aroma of hundreds of flowers, these were the trio of impressions that greeted them as they walked to the end of the hallway and emerged in the courtyard at the center of the palace’s private wing.
A small interior courtyard, its center was open to the sky and was filled by an open-air garden of sorts. Rising up from the native earth of the plane, twisting vines and exotic flowers filled the air with an oddly beguiling but yet off-putting scent. Bitter and slightly acidic to the nose, the flora was beautiful and represented a unique collection of the most spectacular, yet sinister, purple, scarlet, and green flowers from across the entire layer of Cathrys.
The garden itself surrounded a small trickling pond fed by a trio of streams flowing from three decorative stone dragons perched upon the three columns supporting the interior palace terraces that ringed around the courtyard. Each of them resembled an Acheronian rust dragon intricately carved from stone which had a lifelike tone and sheen to its surface, flecked with reddish brown mineral deposits and shimmering green crystals. One would almost think them alive, looking down upon the garden, ready to swoop down and devour intruders.
“I’m not looking at the flowers in the garden guys.” Tristol said. “Look at the shadow cast across it, and then look up.”
Indeed there was a slim shadow cast across the breadth of the courtyard, and, high above on its south side, a tall tower rose up from the palace, deeper within the Rakshasas’ private wing.
“Wasn’t that tower toppled over to one side?” Clueless asked.
“Yeah, it was.” Toras said. “The whole thing was collapsed in on itself.”
“But we know the whole palace was covered with an illusion.” Tristol said. “And to be honest, most of the more powerful magic that I’ve seen laced into the walls here converges on that tower. I want to know what’s in there.”
They all glanced up at the tower, noting the slight pulsing glow that seemed to envelop its upper stories. Their attention was distracted though by Fyrehowl.
“Awww…” The lupinal said as she walked towards one of the carved stone pillars.
On the pillar, hung from the tail of the stone rust dragon carved atop it, was a brass cage. Inside was a single, tiny faerie dragon that peered up cautiously at the lupinal. The dragon was young and its wings seemed faded from their original bright luster.
Tristol turned away from his examination of the magic that swirled around the tower and looked towards the cage and its tiny, draconic prisoner. The bars of the cage were warded some form of specific forbiddance dweomer to entrap the dragon, and the cage’s interior was blanketed with an antimagic field. Clearly the dragon’s keepers were taking no chances with its escape, given the innate magical abilities of its kind.
The faerie dragon looked up at them with oversized bright blue eyes, tinged red at the edges with recent tears. Its amber colored scales were dulled from hunger, and it seemed almost hesitant to feel even a glimmer of hope that it might be released.
“Hello there little guy.” Toras said. “What’s your name?”
The faerie dragon gave a feeble twitch of its speckled, wildly colored butterfly wings and edged as close to the bars of the cage as the wards would allow it. He craned his neck up to look at Toras and slowly blinked, but he didn’t quite manage a smile.
The faerie dragon rattled off an incomprehensibly long name in high pitched, fluting draconic. “But you can call me Amberblue.”
“How long have you been here Amberblue?” Toras asked.
The dragon paused and looked around, expecting either of its fiendish masters to appear at any moment.
“I don’t know how long.” He said with an almost guilty, plaintive chirp. “There’s no sun here, not like Arborea. I can’t tell when its day or night… I’m sorry…”
The faerie dragon slunk down at the admission.
“No, it’s alright. That’s not your fault.” The fighter reassured him. “Do the Rakshasas keep you locked up here?”
Amberblue nodded and cringed.
“Well,” Toras said gently. “We’re going to let you out and make sure that they can’t hurt you, or lock you or anyone else up ever again.”
“NOOO!” Amberblue exclaimed with a sudden surge of fear. “Doooooon’t! You’ll make them angry! Please don’t make them angry!”
The tiny dragon was on the verge of tears, almost pleading to –NOT- be released.
“I… I’ve seen what they do to people that make them angry.” He whimpered as tears welled in his eyes, rolled down and dropped from the end of his snout. “You don’t know what they can do. I’ve seen them. She’s the worst when she’s here…”
***
Pale Violet Light
First Post
Indeed, a very good story hour. Your plotting, in particular, is wonderfully epic and convoluted (in a good way). The dark tone is a nice change to many of the other story hours - I get the impression that someone listens to too much heavy metal.....
primemover003
First Post
VAST... man I didn't even know he made another album! Gotta throw in some Dream Theatre and Helmet and we have a rock festival!
Shemeska
Adventurer
As much as I hate to say this, this week's update is sitting on my desktop only about 70% finished. I've only had two days this week to work on it, was out of town to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Monday, and I'm going to be away from home, and my computer, till Sunday because of Thanksgiving.
The update that was scheduled for Friday of this week will be posted Sunday evening or Monday afternoon. Next week will also have its own update later in the week as well.
My apologies for the disruption in the regular updates.
The update that was scheduled for Friday of this week will be posted Sunday evening or Monday afternoon. Next week will also have its own update later in the week as well.
My apologies for the disruption in the regular updates.
