Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour (Updated 29 Jan 2014)
Shemeska said:Well, let me just say that Florian's player rolled a nat 20 on that shot with the blessed crossbow bolt. When she did, Florian's player got up and began to quite literally dance around the table with her hands up in the air, shouting, "Nat 20! Boo-yah!"
"Wait...Why are you smiling?" was one of the next things she said.
But as for what the case actually might have been, you'll have to wait till the next update.![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
I still say yer a right bastard for that.
*grumbles and lumbers off*
Shemeska said:Well, let me just say that Florian's player rolled a nat 20 on that shot with the blessed crossbow bolt. When she did, Florian's player got up and began to quite literally dance around the table with her hands up in the air, shouting, "Nat 20! Boo-yah!"
"Wait...Why are you smiling?" was one of the next things she said.
But as for what the case actually might have been, you'll have to wait till the next update.
Ooh I'm hoping for that lovely "Thou art my slave tattoo" somewhere on his person
Awesome update. <3 the lady rakshasa
Look_a_Unicorn
First Post
*shivers in anticipation*
hbarsquared
Quantum Chronomancer
Well, Shem, here is another one of your fans posting for the first time in your story hour. I just finished reading it yesterday: well done!
Not only have I thoroughly enjoyed your character hooks and plot twists, but I would also like to congratulate you on an impressive and ever-improving writing style. It's been a great read, and I look forward to the next two years or so worth of updates you still have to put up!
Also, coincidentally, I read the Planescape article in the latest Dragon (#339) today, and I would also like to congratulate you your contribution to the official Planescape canon within its pages. I read the small bit about Alisohn Nilesia and her fate at the hands (or, rather, blades) of the Lady and thought it sounded extremely familiar...
Count me in as one of your junkies!
Not only have I thoroughly enjoyed your character hooks and plot twists, but I would also like to congratulate you on an impressive and ever-improving writing style. It's been a great read, and I look forward to the next two years or so worth of updates you still have to put up!
Also, coincidentally, I read the Planescape article in the latest Dragon (#339) today, and I would also like to congratulate you your contribution to the official Planescape canon within its pages. I read the small bit about Alisohn Nilesia and her fate at the hands (or, rather, blades) of the Lady and thought it sounded extremely familiar...
Count me in as one of your junkies!
Shemeska
Adventurer
New story in the Baernaloth cycle. Finally finished number 8 in the series.
Storyhour updates are unlikely till after Xmas, but I may post a short update on this one tommorow evening if time permits.
Storyhour updates are unlikely till after Xmas, but I may post a short update on this one tommorow evening if time permits.
PS rocks, and so does Shemmy,,,
Hey I;ve been reading this since you've started, but never posted on it. I just wanted to say great job, and I can tell you are having fun telling your story. I hope my new story hour (starts tomorrow hopefully) can be half as engaging as yours! Keep it up!
Hey I;ve been reading this since you've started, but never posted on it. I just wanted to say great job, and I can tell you are having fun telling your story. I hope my new story hour (starts tomorrow hopefully) can be half as engaging as yours! Keep it up!
Ohtar Turinson
Explorer
Is there ever any explanation as to why these particular people got screwed over by the 'loths and forced into this string of events? I guess we know about Clueless... but what about the others? Just coincidence?
Eco-Mono
First Post
Association. They all have been working together since that fiasco at the beginning (which merely gathered a bunch of qualified adventurers) and since Clueless is in the party, they became a prime choice as a pack of do-gooders to use. Once that happened, they basically all want to get back at the 'loths, which somewhat perpetuates matters, eh? ;DOhtar Turinson said:
Shemeska
Adventurer
It was known as Pitiless, and the name well suited it as its latest inmate arrived to be handed over into its iron embrace.
Ghyris Vast slouched were he stood and gazed up with disinterest at the trio of guards, frost giants all of them, who stood around where he and his keeper’s waited. Slouching was really all that he could do; the chains that connected to the iron rings at his wrists, ankles, and neck didn’t much give him the option of moving or looking around the place at his whimsy.
But no matter, he was sure to get the guided tour, at least for a little while, and after that, well… he’d have a long while to examine the place up close and personal. Cozy even. Perhaps they’d give him a pleasant cell.
A vacation. That was a nice little spin upon it all. Some time away from his incessant work, slave labor under any other name, indentured servitude to that fuzzy, manic bitch on the Astral.
He really detested her. Not that it mattered though.
“Is this the prisoner?”
The words broke the silent calm that had descended over the chamber for the past few minutes, minutes punctuated by only his own thoughts and the soft clatter of his own chains. He appreciated that. Silence was important to him in its own specific ways, now more than ever.
“Yes. This is him.” Came the voice of one of the two githyanki who stood behind him: his keepers.
A rough hand on his shoulder pushed him forward, rattling his chains. His keepers didn’t seem to think too highly of him, he’d gathered that much already during their momentary transit through the Astral, teleporting to the very edge of the bubble of oddly… quiet… void that surrounded the prison known as Pitiless.
“And why exactly do you wish to place him in our custody?”
The speaker, a dour faced dwarf dressed in robes that concealed armor, glared up at him with a mixture of curiosity and loathing. The dwarf paid particular attention to the tattoos of the Bleak Cabal on the back of his hands, that being the source of his derision, especially given that he iron medallion emblazoned with the symbol of the Doomguard.
“Don’t worry about faction politics.” Ghyris said. “I don’t think it’ll cause any disturbances. And truth be told, I really don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to voice my grievances in any Hall of Speakers here…”
The dwarf chuckled. “No, you won’t. And unless given permission, you will not speak at all.”
That was certainly rude. Irrelevant though it might be.
“I repeat myself.” The dwarf said, a second time more forcefully. “Why do you wish to place him in our care?”
Vast’s keepers shifted warily.
“We were not aware that a reason was required. And our mistress informed us that you had already agreed to this transfer, and had been given the specifics of our deal.” One of them replied. “Besides, you gain another person to watch whither away over the eons; something more to test your philosophy upon.”
“Things fall apart…” A new voice said from the back of the room. Another dwarf, he’d been lurking quietly behind the row of giants that had been assembled in the room.
“I don’t believe you’ve met my brother Jaich, co-warden of Pitiless.” The first dwarf said.
“Jaich with No Spirit.” His brother corrected.
One of the githyanki gave a short bow before returning to the proper topic of their business.
“In any event Aorth, reasons?”
The first dwarf, Aorth with No Heart, waved a hand dismissively.
“I was curious, that’s all.” He said. “But no reason is needed.”
“Good.” The githyanki replied. “Our mistress requires discretion.”
“There is some information that we do require though.” Jaich said softly with a smile that just vaguely hid a streak of smug malevolence.
“Like they’re aware of much…” Ghyris muttered.
And really, they weren’t. They were more tools than he was. He at least had had creative freedom, more or less, while they were simply puppets that did as they were told. That didn’t prevent them from belting him across the back of his head though.
“What information do you need?” One of Vast’s two minders asked.
“Things relevant to what amount of security we provide to imprison him, and what he is capable of should he resort to violence while in our care.”
Vast’s keepers nodded.
“Firstly,” Aorth said. “He appears human. Is he? Because you appear to be githyanki but most certainly are not.”
“We can tell.” Jaich said with a wink, wriggling his pinky finger and the glittering jewel there fixed upon a ring.
“And given the purpose of this place, and the contents here and forever contained,” Aorth continued. “We justly prefer to know who in fact we’re dealing with.”
Jaich gave an idle shrug and waved his hands. “Please dispense with the pretensions of mortality if you would.”
Ghyris giggled as his keepers glanced at one another.
“I know a secret…” He said softly.
There was a sudden snapping of bones and resculpting of flesh as one of his two keepers resumed their native form, its wings casting a heavy shadow across both of the dwarves. Looking down, though just barely now, the giant mentally reassessed the potential threat the pair of ‘githyanki’ represented should their dealings with the wardens of Pitiless go sour.
“Unexpected.” Jaich said blunty, looking up into the fanged maw of the creature.
“Unexpected but irrelevant.” His brother stated. “Your kind have other prisoners here, and this is simply another log upon the pyre.”
Behind him, Jaich spread his hands and wriggled his fingers as if he were sifting dust or sand.
“Ashes to ashes.”
The other faux-githyanki remained in its assumed form, fully half the height of its partner, but both of them stood there waiting for another set of questions from the dwarfs.
“As you said,” Jaich stated. “We’re already aware of the specific details of this prisoner and his transfer here. Your mistress, the honored Lady Brampandra, was quite succinct in her dealings with us.”
“What my brother means to say is that we have nothing more of substance to converse about.” Aorth said. “You’re free to go.”
The faux-githyanki nodded and it hulking companion bent forward, spreading its wings in a conciliatory gesture, though truth be told, it was more a mocking farewell to their former charge. For his part, Vast waved back at them before they turned to leave the prison.
“You belong to us now.” Jaich bluntly stated.
Vast ignored him and glanced back at the departing forms of his keepers, both now in their true forms.
“That wasn’t the secret…” He said knowingly.
“Come with us.” Aorth said, taking a firm hold of Vast’s chains. “We will take you to your cell and explain certain things to you as we must.”
“And if you don’t, we’ll have you beaten, bound, and carried there.” Jaich said with a smile.
Vast turned away and muttered something inaudible in reply. But regardless, he followed them, though he was under no allusions that if he did not they wouldn’t simply drag him kicking and screaming to his cell. Dramatics were entirely unnecessary at this stage. He’d served his purpose to two separate sets of would-be masters now, or so each of them thought of course, and all the while he’d been free to continue his Great Work, his masterpiece.
And there was still that tiny matter of a secret. Oh yes.
“You are to be placed within the high security ward of this prison.”
Aorth’s words were largely ignored by Vast, he was largely muttering to himself and glancing up and around like a child at everything to be seen as they moved through the various wards of Pitiless.
The first hallway was several hundred feet long, while high above them, far out of easy reach, elevated walkways crisscrossed the heights, providing the guards with a birds eye view of the floor.
“We do like to keep a close eye on all of you.” Jaich said. “And we’ve never once had a subject escape.”
“I dare say that it’s impossible.” Aorth said with a grin. “Teleportation, planeshifting, even opening a gate is impossibly within the confines of Pitiless.”
“And we’ve never seen evidence of a portal from Sigil either.” Jaich added.
“If I am wanted, I will be taken.” Vast murmured.
“If your prior owners wish to reclaim you, they simply have to request it.” Aorth retorted.
“I wasn’t referring to them…” Vast replied.
“Then who are talking about?” Aorth asked, though he frankly didn’t care. The man was insane, he’d been made aware of this by Vast’s owners before they had brought him to Pitiless. Vast was a Bleaker, and one long since lapsed into the Grim Retreat or just barely clinging to the raw, bleeding edge of lucidity and not entirely condemned to that Abyss quite yet.
“Who am I talking about?” Vast asked rhetorically. “I suppose we’ll know sooner or later.”
“Just ignore him brother…” Jaich said, rolling his eyes.
“You don’t want to know.” Vast said, slipping into a whisper. “I wish I didn’t either. It’s my secret you see.”
Aorth followed his brother’s advice, and he and Jaich both ignored Vast’s incoherent rambling till they had made their way through the warehouse and up to the security check and the massive gate leading into the first cellblock.
There, at the end of the hallway they paused and from high above the guards, a pair of frost giants, pulled open the gate. Cold iron it seemed, laced with a sparkle of silver in places. Vast smiled at their paltry use of alchemy in the forge, but it certainly helped to contain fiends if they had any bottled up with him.
Fiends…
Vast paused and grew pale at the thought. He shuddered, something not missed by his wardens. They would be watching him more closely.
“Proceed.” Aorth said, prodding him forward with the end of an iron rod. “We have a distance to walk to reach your cell, and teleportation and similar magics do not function within the confines of the prison.”
“So I –do- receive the guided tour then!” Vast said, the manic switch in the back of his Bleaker’s mind flipping over suddenly. “Splendid!”
“Just walk.” Jaich said. “And touch nothing.”
Beyond the gates was a massive warehouse, a storeroom of items, objects, parcels, and the inanimate left in safekeeping. Sequestered. Abandoned. Wanted or unwanted they were left to molder and rust. Thousands of objects, maybe more, ranging from golden statues and imperial regalia to worthless trinkets of sentimental value to persons long dead, and speaking of which there was even a marble mausoleum situated upon the storehouse floor, complete down to its last block of stone, picked up and deposited there for safekeeping.
“Quite a collection you have here.” Ghyris said with a smile. “She’d love to go digging through it all I suspect.”
“She?” Aorth asked, nudging Vast forward, pointing out that yes indeed he was still a prisoner.
“The one who sent me here to visit you. Greedy little bitch.” Vast replied with a wink. “Powerful. Incredibly powerful. But a bit unhinged in the head. Crazy…”
The bleaker spun a finger through the air and laughed without a care in the world.
“You don’t say…” Jaich replied with a snicker.
“I like the decorations!” Vast said, pointing up and grinning at the black spheres that hung suspended in the air over the warehouse floor, likely to scry upon and perhaps channel spells in the event something became active or free.
“They’re like sad little Mediators, lost and away from home.” He said, the manic shine to his attitude bleeding away as something flicked the ephemeral little switch in his brain once more.
“I’m afraid…” Vast whispered as they approached the gates to the next section of the prison and waited for them to open.
“Of what?” Aorth said. “This place is sacrosanct. There’s no way in or out, and half the major powers across the planes have people stuffed away in here.”
“Second only to Carceri itself.” Jaich said with a nod as the gate swung open.
“And each of those people, or groups, races or powers with a card from their hand shuffled away here, they have it in their best interest to keep this place secure.” Aorth continued. “Nothing can disturb this place unless it wishes to disturb all of those persons who want this prison to be secure and inviolable.”
Vast didn’t reply. It wouldn’t have helped.
“Continue forward,” Aorth said as the door settled into its open position. “And do not stare overly long at any of the prisoners in the cells of the next block of the prison.”
Vast shambled forwards and tried to listen to those orders, but he couldn’t help but feel that the inmates in their cells were staring at him. Of course, they were all out on display, penned, put under glass, exhibited… Could you blame them for doing the same?
The hall was several hundred feet long, lined with cells on each side, each of them staggered in arrangement to prevent direct prisoner-to-prisoner contact. Most of the occupants were individuals, all of them locked away for one reason or another, by their own will or not. Most of them simply sat and did nothing, but several prisoners entertained an audience.
Halfway down the hall, a Maralith was coiled at the edge of one cell, staring at its occupant, likely conversing telepathically, while a pair of Bulezau stood behind her. Similarly, further down the hallway, a trio of robed figures were floating through an opened gateway leading to the third, more secure, portion of Pitiless.
Ghyris Vast ignored the visitors, and as he was marched down the hallway he only stopped to look at the inhabitants of one cell; the others were just ignored or maybe given a passing glance. But no, one cell was given more than just a look.
There were five of them packed together in a single cell, all of them identical to the casual viewer, and all of them acting seemingly in unison. Devetes, odd little creatures of chaos, born in the dim past of Xaos, the Outlands gatetown to Limbo, or so legend said. They were small of stature, vaguely reptilian, with blue skinned, sinuous bodies and oversized, luminous eyes that blinked as they turned to look at Ghyris.
Devetes were typically whimsical and harmless when encountered along, but when they gathered in groups, they became something altogether different. This group, known as the Devete Choir, it acted as a hivemind of sorts, but without a defined personality in some ways. They were an emotional sink, a sponge of thoughts and ideas, clay in the hands of their environment, a mirror to the minds of the people around them.
Vast turned to stare directly at them and the Devete Choir stared back.
“You understand…”
The Devetes skin, mildly chameleon-like, blanched from sapphire blue to a sickly gray pallor. Their eyes bulged and they shuddered as one.
“What are you doing?!” Aorth demanded as he pulled up on the slack in Vast’s chains.
“You understand perfectly…”
In their cell, the Devetes began to scream.
Aorth and Jaich dragged Vast the remainder of the way through the cellblock, listening to the obviously insane Bleaker chuckle and mutter to himself as they passed the other cells. It would take an hour for the Devetes to regain some semblance of sanity and rationale behavior, an hour to stop their agonized shrieking.
Eventually though, Vast regained his wits and they allowed him to walk again, though his proverbial and literal leash was shorter. The wardens would be glad when he was locked away in his cell, secluded and out of their hair, just another subject to keep and observe.
And then, beyond one last set of heavy gates, they arrived. The chamber held five massive, oversized cells, the living graves of creatures far too large for the other chambers within the prison: dangerous and deadly things. One was empty, one was flooded with shadows and the sinuous form of a shadow dragon within, and another held a horrific being best described as a segmented, multi-limbed worm with multiple eyes and a massive, fanged maw.
“Delightful little beast you have there.” Ghyris said to Aorth. “A hungry little thing…”
Jaich rolled his eyes. Vast was waving at the Entrope like it was a lost puppy.
The other two larger cells Vast couldn’t see from his vantage point, and given his prior experience with the Devetes, they didn’t allow him the leeway.
“Your cell is over here.” Aorth said, tugging on Vast’s chains.
There were a dozen smaller cells within the block, each bordered by layers upon layers of wards, permanent walls of force, and even less prosaic things to contain, to shackle, to guard, to protect…
Where they keeping him there out of malice or were they protecting him?
All of the high security cells were separated from one another by a full forty feet, and staggered in such a way that the prisoners on one side of the chamber could not gain an unimpeded view of the cells across from them. It was all very well thought out, and the prisoners were truly isolated both from the outside world and from one another. Not that it really mattered to Vast, not that it really mattered at all. Nothing did, but here the Doomguard were, trying to prove meaning in a meaningless void.
Vast stepped forward a bit and glanced around his cell. The dwarves weren’t pushing him too much, they had time certainly, and they probably figured that if they didn’t treat him too harshly on his first day of incarceration he was probably less liable to attempt to cause trouble. It wasn’t him they had to worry about though… oh no…not him they needed to concern themselves with.
From the cell across the chamber there was a commotion. A trio of robed, hooded figures had just departed from where they had been conversing with one of the inmates. Mocking and tormenting him though was more like it. The wizards, they were floating off the ground by a few inches, chuckling amongst themselves in a dialect of abyssal Vast was fluent in.
Oh yes, they were mocking him. Rightfully so it would seem. He’d done them wrong, done them all wrong, fallen from its pinnacle of dark grace. He shouldn’t have been aware of that, but he knew it intuitively.
Whatever his exact sin, or lack of them, the other prisoner was weeping, both audibly, tapping against the tympanic membranes in Vast’s all too mortal skull, and telepathically, slipping across the distance like a pure note from a tarnished instrument left too long in the rain.
The feel of that mind against his, though of a very different kind than before, it brought back memories, unpleasant ones.
Vast paused and shuddered.
A fiend. Not the same, not the same, no not the same… he’d been warned, ordered, and he’d so far obeyed. But It would know if he violated those warnings.
It was watching. Cold. Merciless. Giving but taking. Addition by subtraction. Those eyes…
Vast turned around with a start and glanced at the cells and their hidden occupants. But no, never, no, it was silly to think that It was lurking behind the walls, around a corner, in a distant cell like some kind of bogey-man whispered of to Hiver children to get them to sleep so their parents could go f*ck in the room down the hall.
There was little chance that… what was he saying… It could butcher him at any moment if It willed it to be so. He had seen Its face, seen himself reflected in Its eyes, seen it staring back at him behind his eyes in the mirror’s reflection, in his head, inside of him.
“In the cell with you.” Jaich said. “We have eternity here to watch you rot, but I don’t want to be on my feet in here that whole time. Move.”
In the cell with you? In the cell with him? The cell was empty, that couldn’t be it. In his head. It had to be. Making him go mad. That was it. That was Its gift, Its price, Its inevitable effects upon his fragile psyche. Madness from the mad, to the mad.
Not of course that he’d ever intentionally sought It out. Quiet the opposite, It had come to him, attracted like a moth to a candle, fluttering up on bleached wings and rancid unholy thought, whispering, instructing, teaching. And oh yes, he’d listened all the time as It had helped him complete his Great Work, his Device.
Not that his keepers had been aware of this when they’d come for him, dragging him off of that distant Godisle, torturing him to make him work for them, prying apart his thoughts, making him teach them how it worked and how he’d created it. She’d understood, well, most of it. She was intelligent enough, monstrously so, but still, some of the concepts were hellishly complex, and it would take her time to fully tumble to those darks, him helping her just as It had spoken to him. And she didn’t know.
“I have a secret you know…”
None of it mattered of course. Things simply happened because they happened, not because of any grand pattern or purpose or reason lurking behind the curtain draped across a cold and uncaring multiverse. But even so, Ghyris Vast was frightened. He tried not to show it as the wardens motioned him one last time into his cell.
Ghyris Vast was terrified. It was staring at him, looking at him from the corners of his vision, glaring at him from the back of his jailers’ eyes, It had been there in the countenances of the guards looking down on them, and It had been there in the hollow stares of the other prisoners that they’d passed along the way, the wretches long ago resolved to their fate.
It shouldn’t, It couldn’t follow him, but then again… he knew what It was even if the others didn’t, and that was his little secret. No need to tell them, even as they tossed him to the side like so much rubbish. He lived on borrowed time.
“You can’t protect me you know.” Vast muttered as he stepped into his cell, a hollow ten by ten space of stone, iron, and magic.
Cells could keep you safe. Padded walls could prevent you from harm. Wards and walls and guards would keep you hidden and safe. Nothing could penetrate within Pitiless, which was simply the way things worked. But Ghyris knew what It was.
The cell door closed, the lock gave a heavy shudder, and the wards sprung into being. Might they keep him safe and sound? Could they?
What if it was still inside of him?
“YES!!!!” Florian shouted at the top of her lungs.
She tossed her crossbow to the side and threw her arms up in the air, letting loose a cry of absolute triumph.
"I've been saving that for you!"
Florian kept shouting, the justice of her act expressed in a grin spreading across her face in between jubilant cackles, and the intensity of her stare down at the pool of blood spreading out from the bolt buried in Siddhartha's chest.
All around, Florian's mood of triumph was spreading into a chorus of shouts, raised hands and pumping fists. The fiend had been a thorn buried in their side, just as they had been one in his, and they had finally come out on top.
All around they felt relief. Nothing could rob them of that victory. Nothing.
But be it Cipher's intuition or not, Fyrehowl's smile died stillborn a moment later.
Ghyris Vast slouched were he stood and gazed up with disinterest at the trio of guards, frost giants all of them, who stood around where he and his keeper’s waited. Slouching was really all that he could do; the chains that connected to the iron rings at his wrists, ankles, and neck didn’t much give him the option of moving or looking around the place at his whimsy.
But no matter, he was sure to get the guided tour, at least for a little while, and after that, well… he’d have a long while to examine the place up close and personal. Cozy even. Perhaps they’d give him a pleasant cell.
A vacation. That was a nice little spin upon it all. Some time away from his incessant work, slave labor under any other name, indentured servitude to that fuzzy, manic bitch on the Astral.
He really detested her. Not that it mattered though.
“Is this the prisoner?”
The words broke the silent calm that had descended over the chamber for the past few minutes, minutes punctuated by only his own thoughts and the soft clatter of his own chains. He appreciated that. Silence was important to him in its own specific ways, now more than ever.
“Yes. This is him.” Came the voice of one of the two githyanki who stood behind him: his keepers.
A rough hand on his shoulder pushed him forward, rattling his chains. His keepers didn’t seem to think too highly of him, he’d gathered that much already during their momentary transit through the Astral, teleporting to the very edge of the bubble of oddly… quiet… void that surrounded the prison known as Pitiless.
“And why exactly do you wish to place him in our custody?”
The speaker, a dour faced dwarf dressed in robes that concealed armor, glared up at him with a mixture of curiosity and loathing. The dwarf paid particular attention to the tattoos of the Bleak Cabal on the back of his hands, that being the source of his derision, especially given that he iron medallion emblazoned with the symbol of the Doomguard.
“Don’t worry about faction politics.” Ghyris said. “I don’t think it’ll cause any disturbances. And truth be told, I really don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to voice my grievances in any Hall of Speakers here…”
The dwarf chuckled. “No, you won’t. And unless given permission, you will not speak at all.”
That was certainly rude. Irrelevant though it might be.
“I repeat myself.” The dwarf said, a second time more forcefully. “Why do you wish to place him in our care?”
Vast’s keepers shifted warily.
“We were not aware that a reason was required. And our mistress informed us that you had already agreed to this transfer, and had been given the specifics of our deal.” One of them replied. “Besides, you gain another person to watch whither away over the eons; something more to test your philosophy upon.”
“Things fall apart…” A new voice said from the back of the room. Another dwarf, he’d been lurking quietly behind the row of giants that had been assembled in the room.
“I don’t believe you’ve met my brother Jaich, co-warden of Pitiless.” The first dwarf said.
“Jaich with No Spirit.” His brother corrected.
One of the githyanki gave a short bow before returning to the proper topic of their business.
“In any event Aorth, reasons?”
The first dwarf, Aorth with No Heart, waved a hand dismissively.
“I was curious, that’s all.” He said. “But no reason is needed.”
“Good.” The githyanki replied. “Our mistress requires discretion.”
“There is some information that we do require though.” Jaich said softly with a smile that just vaguely hid a streak of smug malevolence.
“Like they’re aware of much…” Ghyris muttered.
And really, they weren’t. They were more tools than he was. He at least had had creative freedom, more or less, while they were simply puppets that did as they were told. That didn’t prevent them from belting him across the back of his head though.
“What information do you need?” One of Vast’s two minders asked.
“Things relevant to what amount of security we provide to imprison him, and what he is capable of should he resort to violence while in our care.”
Vast’s keepers nodded.
“Firstly,” Aorth said. “He appears human. Is he? Because you appear to be githyanki but most certainly are not.”
“We can tell.” Jaich said with a wink, wriggling his pinky finger and the glittering jewel there fixed upon a ring.
“And given the purpose of this place, and the contents here and forever contained,” Aorth continued. “We justly prefer to know who in fact we’re dealing with.”
Jaich gave an idle shrug and waved his hands. “Please dispense with the pretensions of mortality if you would.”
Ghyris giggled as his keepers glanced at one another.
“I know a secret…” He said softly.
There was a sudden snapping of bones and resculpting of flesh as one of his two keepers resumed their native form, its wings casting a heavy shadow across both of the dwarves. Looking down, though just barely now, the giant mentally reassessed the potential threat the pair of ‘githyanki’ represented should their dealings with the wardens of Pitiless go sour.
“Unexpected.” Jaich said blunty, looking up into the fanged maw of the creature.
“Unexpected but irrelevant.” His brother stated. “Your kind have other prisoners here, and this is simply another log upon the pyre.”
Behind him, Jaich spread his hands and wriggled his fingers as if he were sifting dust or sand.
“Ashes to ashes.”
The other faux-githyanki remained in its assumed form, fully half the height of its partner, but both of them stood there waiting for another set of questions from the dwarfs.
“As you said,” Jaich stated. “We’re already aware of the specific details of this prisoner and his transfer here. Your mistress, the honored Lady Brampandra, was quite succinct in her dealings with us.”
“What my brother means to say is that we have nothing more of substance to converse about.” Aorth said. “You’re free to go.”
The faux-githyanki nodded and it hulking companion bent forward, spreading its wings in a conciliatory gesture, though truth be told, it was more a mocking farewell to their former charge. For his part, Vast waved back at them before they turned to leave the prison.
“You belong to us now.” Jaich bluntly stated.
Vast ignored him and glanced back at the departing forms of his keepers, both now in their true forms.
“That wasn’t the secret…” He said knowingly.
“Come with us.” Aorth said, taking a firm hold of Vast’s chains. “We will take you to your cell and explain certain things to you as we must.”
“And if you don’t, we’ll have you beaten, bound, and carried there.” Jaich said with a smile.
Vast turned away and muttered something inaudible in reply. But regardless, he followed them, though he was under no allusions that if he did not they wouldn’t simply drag him kicking and screaming to his cell. Dramatics were entirely unnecessary at this stage. He’d served his purpose to two separate sets of would-be masters now, or so each of them thought of course, and all the while he’d been free to continue his Great Work, his masterpiece.
And there was still that tiny matter of a secret. Oh yes.
“You are to be placed within the high security ward of this prison.”
Aorth’s words were largely ignored by Vast, he was largely muttering to himself and glancing up and around like a child at everything to be seen as they moved through the various wards of Pitiless.
The first hallway was several hundred feet long, while high above them, far out of easy reach, elevated walkways crisscrossed the heights, providing the guards with a birds eye view of the floor.
“We do like to keep a close eye on all of you.” Jaich said. “And we’ve never once had a subject escape.”
“I dare say that it’s impossible.” Aorth said with a grin. “Teleportation, planeshifting, even opening a gate is impossibly within the confines of Pitiless.”
“And we’ve never seen evidence of a portal from Sigil either.” Jaich added.
“If I am wanted, I will be taken.” Vast murmured.
“If your prior owners wish to reclaim you, they simply have to request it.” Aorth retorted.
“I wasn’t referring to them…” Vast replied.
“Then who are talking about?” Aorth asked, though he frankly didn’t care. The man was insane, he’d been made aware of this by Vast’s owners before they had brought him to Pitiless. Vast was a Bleaker, and one long since lapsed into the Grim Retreat or just barely clinging to the raw, bleeding edge of lucidity and not entirely condemned to that Abyss quite yet.
“Who am I talking about?” Vast asked rhetorically. “I suppose we’ll know sooner or later.”
“Just ignore him brother…” Jaich said, rolling his eyes.
“You don’t want to know.” Vast said, slipping into a whisper. “I wish I didn’t either. It’s my secret you see.”
Aorth followed his brother’s advice, and he and Jaich both ignored Vast’s incoherent rambling till they had made their way through the warehouse and up to the security check and the massive gate leading into the first cellblock.
There, at the end of the hallway they paused and from high above the guards, a pair of frost giants, pulled open the gate. Cold iron it seemed, laced with a sparkle of silver in places. Vast smiled at their paltry use of alchemy in the forge, but it certainly helped to contain fiends if they had any bottled up with him.
Fiends…
Vast paused and grew pale at the thought. He shuddered, something not missed by his wardens. They would be watching him more closely.
“Proceed.” Aorth said, prodding him forward with the end of an iron rod. “We have a distance to walk to reach your cell, and teleportation and similar magics do not function within the confines of the prison.”
“So I –do- receive the guided tour then!” Vast said, the manic switch in the back of his Bleaker’s mind flipping over suddenly. “Splendid!”
“Just walk.” Jaich said. “And touch nothing.”
Beyond the gates was a massive warehouse, a storeroom of items, objects, parcels, and the inanimate left in safekeeping. Sequestered. Abandoned. Wanted or unwanted they were left to molder and rust. Thousands of objects, maybe more, ranging from golden statues and imperial regalia to worthless trinkets of sentimental value to persons long dead, and speaking of which there was even a marble mausoleum situated upon the storehouse floor, complete down to its last block of stone, picked up and deposited there for safekeeping.
“Quite a collection you have here.” Ghyris said with a smile. “She’d love to go digging through it all I suspect.”
“She?” Aorth asked, nudging Vast forward, pointing out that yes indeed he was still a prisoner.
“The one who sent me here to visit you. Greedy little bitch.” Vast replied with a wink. “Powerful. Incredibly powerful. But a bit unhinged in the head. Crazy…”
The bleaker spun a finger through the air and laughed without a care in the world.
“You don’t say…” Jaich replied with a snicker.
“I like the decorations!” Vast said, pointing up and grinning at the black spheres that hung suspended in the air over the warehouse floor, likely to scry upon and perhaps channel spells in the event something became active or free.
“They’re like sad little Mediators, lost and away from home.” He said, the manic shine to his attitude bleeding away as something flicked the ephemeral little switch in his brain once more.
“I’m afraid…” Vast whispered as they approached the gates to the next section of the prison and waited for them to open.
“Of what?” Aorth said. “This place is sacrosanct. There’s no way in or out, and half the major powers across the planes have people stuffed away in here.”
“Second only to Carceri itself.” Jaich said with a nod as the gate swung open.
“And each of those people, or groups, races or powers with a card from their hand shuffled away here, they have it in their best interest to keep this place secure.” Aorth continued. “Nothing can disturb this place unless it wishes to disturb all of those persons who want this prison to be secure and inviolable.”
Vast didn’t reply. It wouldn’t have helped.
“Continue forward,” Aorth said as the door settled into its open position. “And do not stare overly long at any of the prisoners in the cells of the next block of the prison.”
Vast shambled forwards and tried to listen to those orders, but he couldn’t help but feel that the inmates in their cells were staring at him. Of course, they were all out on display, penned, put under glass, exhibited… Could you blame them for doing the same?
The hall was several hundred feet long, lined with cells on each side, each of them staggered in arrangement to prevent direct prisoner-to-prisoner contact. Most of the occupants were individuals, all of them locked away for one reason or another, by their own will or not. Most of them simply sat and did nothing, but several prisoners entertained an audience.
Halfway down the hall, a Maralith was coiled at the edge of one cell, staring at its occupant, likely conversing telepathically, while a pair of Bulezau stood behind her. Similarly, further down the hallway, a trio of robed figures were floating through an opened gateway leading to the third, more secure, portion of Pitiless.
Ghyris Vast ignored the visitors, and as he was marched down the hallway he only stopped to look at the inhabitants of one cell; the others were just ignored or maybe given a passing glance. But no, one cell was given more than just a look.
There were five of them packed together in a single cell, all of them identical to the casual viewer, and all of them acting seemingly in unison. Devetes, odd little creatures of chaos, born in the dim past of Xaos, the Outlands gatetown to Limbo, or so legend said. They were small of stature, vaguely reptilian, with blue skinned, sinuous bodies and oversized, luminous eyes that blinked as they turned to look at Ghyris.
Devetes were typically whimsical and harmless when encountered along, but when they gathered in groups, they became something altogether different. This group, known as the Devete Choir, it acted as a hivemind of sorts, but without a defined personality in some ways. They were an emotional sink, a sponge of thoughts and ideas, clay in the hands of their environment, a mirror to the minds of the people around them.
Vast turned to stare directly at them and the Devete Choir stared back.
“You understand…”
The Devetes skin, mildly chameleon-like, blanched from sapphire blue to a sickly gray pallor. Their eyes bulged and they shuddered as one.
“What are you doing?!” Aorth demanded as he pulled up on the slack in Vast’s chains.
“You understand perfectly…”
In their cell, the Devetes began to scream.
Aorth and Jaich dragged Vast the remainder of the way through the cellblock, listening to the obviously insane Bleaker chuckle and mutter to himself as they passed the other cells. It would take an hour for the Devetes to regain some semblance of sanity and rationale behavior, an hour to stop their agonized shrieking.
Eventually though, Vast regained his wits and they allowed him to walk again, though his proverbial and literal leash was shorter. The wardens would be glad when he was locked away in his cell, secluded and out of their hair, just another subject to keep and observe.
And then, beyond one last set of heavy gates, they arrived. The chamber held five massive, oversized cells, the living graves of creatures far too large for the other chambers within the prison: dangerous and deadly things. One was empty, one was flooded with shadows and the sinuous form of a shadow dragon within, and another held a horrific being best described as a segmented, multi-limbed worm with multiple eyes and a massive, fanged maw.
“Delightful little beast you have there.” Ghyris said to Aorth. “A hungry little thing…”
Jaich rolled his eyes. Vast was waving at the Entrope like it was a lost puppy.
The other two larger cells Vast couldn’t see from his vantage point, and given his prior experience with the Devetes, they didn’t allow him the leeway.
“Your cell is over here.” Aorth said, tugging on Vast’s chains.
There were a dozen smaller cells within the block, each bordered by layers upon layers of wards, permanent walls of force, and even less prosaic things to contain, to shackle, to guard, to protect…
Where they keeping him there out of malice or were they protecting him?
All of the high security cells were separated from one another by a full forty feet, and staggered in such a way that the prisoners on one side of the chamber could not gain an unimpeded view of the cells across from them. It was all very well thought out, and the prisoners were truly isolated both from the outside world and from one another. Not that it really mattered to Vast, not that it really mattered at all. Nothing did, but here the Doomguard were, trying to prove meaning in a meaningless void.
Vast stepped forward a bit and glanced around his cell. The dwarves weren’t pushing him too much, they had time certainly, and they probably figured that if they didn’t treat him too harshly on his first day of incarceration he was probably less liable to attempt to cause trouble. It wasn’t him they had to worry about though… oh no…not him they needed to concern themselves with.
From the cell across the chamber there was a commotion. A trio of robed, hooded figures had just departed from where they had been conversing with one of the inmates. Mocking and tormenting him though was more like it. The wizards, they were floating off the ground by a few inches, chuckling amongst themselves in a dialect of abyssal Vast was fluent in.
Oh yes, they were mocking him. Rightfully so it would seem. He’d done them wrong, done them all wrong, fallen from its pinnacle of dark grace. He shouldn’t have been aware of that, but he knew it intuitively.
Whatever his exact sin, or lack of them, the other prisoner was weeping, both audibly, tapping against the tympanic membranes in Vast’s all too mortal skull, and telepathically, slipping across the distance like a pure note from a tarnished instrument left too long in the rain.
The feel of that mind against his, though of a very different kind than before, it brought back memories, unpleasant ones.
Vast paused and shuddered.
A fiend. Not the same, not the same, no not the same… he’d been warned, ordered, and he’d so far obeyed. But It would know if he violated those warnings.
It was watching. Cold. Merciless. Giving but taking. Addition by subtraction. Those eyes…
Vast turned around with a start and glanced at the cells and their hidden occupants. But no, never, no, it was silly to think that It was lurking behind the walls, around a corner, in a distant cell like some kind of bogey-man whispered of to Hiver children to get them to sleep so their parents could go f*ck in the room down the hall.
There was little chance that… what was he saying… It could butcher him at any moment if It willed it to be so. He had seen Its face, seen himself reflected in Its eyes, seen it staring back at him behind his eyes in the mirror’s reflection, in his head, inside of him.
“In the cell with you.” Jaich said. “We have eternity here to watch you rot, but I don’t want to be on my feet in here that whole time. Move.”
In the cell with you? In the cell with him? The cell was empty, that couldn’t be it. In his head. It had to be. Making him go mad. That was it. That was Its gift, Its price, Its inevitable effects upon his fragile psyche. Madness from the mad, to the mad.
Not of course that he’d ever intentionally sought It out. Quiet the opposite, It had come to him, attracted like a moth to a candle, fluttering up on bleached wings and rancid unholy thought, whispering, instructing, teaching. And oh yes, he’d listened all the time as It had helped him complete his Great Work, his Device.
Not that his keepers had been aware of this when they’d come for him, dragging him off of that distant Godisle, torturing him to make him work for them, prying apart his thoughts, making him teach them how it worked and how he’d created it. She’d understood, well, most of it. She was intelligent enough, monstrously so, but still, some of the concepts were hellishly complex, and it would take her time to fully tumble to those darks, him helping her just as It had spoken to him. And she didn’t know.
“I have a secret you know…”
None of it mattered of course. Things simply happened because they happened, not because of any grand pattern or purpose or reason lurking behind the curtain draped across a cold and uncaring multiverse. But even so, Ghyris Vast was frightened. He tried not to show it as the wardens motioned him one last time into his cell.
Ghyris Vast was terrified. It was staring at him, looking at him from the corners of his vision, glaring at him from the back of his jailers’ eyes, It had been there in the countenances of the guards looking down on them, and It had been there in the hollow stares of the other prisoners that they’d passed along the way, the wretches long ago resolved to their fate.
It shouldn’t, It couldn’t follow him, but then again… he knew what It was even if the others didn’t, and that was his little secret. No need to tell them, even as they tossed him to the side like so much rubbish. He lived on borrowed time.
“You can’t protect me you know.” Vast muttered as he stepped into his cell, a hollow ten by ten space of stone, iron, and magic.
Cells could keep you safe. Padded walls could prevent you from harm. Wards and walls and guards would keep you hidden and safe. Nothing could penetrate within Pitiless, which was simply the way things worked. But Ghyris knew what It was.
The cell door closed, the lock gave a heavy shudder, and the wards sprung into being. Might they keep him safe and sound? Could they?
What if it was still inside of him?
***
“YES!!!!” Florian shouted at the top of her lungs.
She tossed her crossbow to the side and threw her arms up in the air, letting loose a cry of absolute triumph.
"I've been saving that for you!"
Florian kept shouting, the justice of her act expressed in a grin spreading across her face in between jubilant cackles, and the intensity of her stare down at the pool of blood spreading out from the bolt buried in Siddhartha's chest.
All around, Florian's mood of triumph was spreading into a chorus of shouts, raised hands and pumping fists. The fiend had been a thorn buried in their side, just as they had been one in his, and they had finally come out on top.
All around they felt relief. Nothing could rob them of that victory. Nothing.
But be it Cipher's intuition or not, Fyrehowl's smile died stillborn a moment later.
***
