I'll be away at GenCon the rest of the week, so this update is about double the length of a normal one, or maybe double and a half. I'm rushing a bit to put this out, so pardon any grammar goofs.
***
There was little preamble before the bells of Pitiless rang out a clear, hard note, signaling the approach of visitors. It was not a strange event, as many of the prisoners were not simply abandoned to rot, but they were regularly observed and their status checked upon by those who had incarcerated them in the first place, or the servants or descendants of those.
The bell was a formality really, as the prison-fortress had never been put under siege during its long history. But still, the wardens and guards of the edifice took no chances, and when the gates swung wide to admit its latest motley group of visitors, it did so with heavily armed formality.
A trio of blue skinned frost giants stood in the gap and stared down at the group, easily two to three times any of their heights. They said nothing for a few long moments, just observing them, before finally one of them, an officer, stepped forward and asked their purpose for coming to Pitiless.
“Are you here to deliver a prisoner, petition for one’s release, or speak to one?”
“Well… that depends.” Clueless said, looking up into the giant's face. “We wanted to speak to one particular prisoner, assuming that he’s still here. But if we can ask for his release and take him with us, that’d work out too.”
“Speaking with a prisoner should be no issue, though you will have to explain your reasons, answer other questions, and we will have to determine that you pose no threat to our security.” The watch captain said. “Anything beyond speaking with a prisoner depends on the circumstances and strictures placed upon them at the time of their incarceration.”
Kiro looked at the giants. "We're not here to cause any trouble. We just wished to speak with one man."
"Besides," Florian said. "If you're the greeting party, I really don't think that we're a threat to the place."
The giant looked amused by the cleric's sentiments, and he even chuckled, but not once did his hand leave the hilt of his sword, nor did his deputies take their eyes from the group.
“Well that’s good that we shouldn't have issues talking to him.” Skalliska stated. “How would we go about finding out the details.”
“Step through, you’ll be escorted to a room and one of the wardens will speak with you." The captain continued. "Aorth or Jaitch will determine the specifics of your visit.”
"Well I suppose we're off to a good start at least." Nisha said as they followed down a series of twisting hallways.
Of course as they followed the guards, she looked first at Skalliska and then to the giants, pantomiming the size difference with her hands with a giggle.
"It would have been a better start if you'd yet me bring along Amberblue." Nisha quipped after a few minutes of walking.
"This isn't a place for fairiedragons and you know it." Toras said. "At some point we do need to figure out what to do with him, but let's keep walking and we'll handle that later."
Nisha shrugged. "Maybe they'll have dragons in here."
"Several of them actually." One of the giants said, turning to mention that to the tiefling. "But follow us, Aorth will speak to you shortly."
***
They didn't have to wait long, a few minutes really, before a door opened to admit a lightly armored dwarf dressed in garments similar to the fire giant guards, and bearing the distinctive symbology of the Doomguard.
"Do you think he knows that the doomies fell apart five years ago?" Nisha whispered, just low enough that the warden didn't hear her.
"Interesting." Skalliska said, ignoring the xaositect and addressing the approaching dwarf. "I wasn't aware that the Doomguard still operated Pitiless. I take it that you're a member of one of the faction's splinter sects?"
"Salt." He gruffly replied. "I've thrown my lot in with the Salters, though it's more an expression of their preeminence among the splinter groups than ideological agreement with them in particular. It makes sense for our stability, and stability allows us to continue to observe our prisoners, watching for the inevitable decay of all things, even here in the Astral."
Based out of Citadel Sealt in the great brine expanse of Quasielemental Salt, under the rule of Greater Doomlord Roth, their branch of the Doomguard held that the collapse of all things was not happening fast enough, and that the process needed to be encouraged when appropriate. They were the most radical of the surviving groups, and their numbers had swollen in recent years along with rumors that they had managed to take control of a Ship of Chaos, and had used it in their siege and destruction of Citadel Vacuous, and the more moderate Vacuum sect of the faction. The wardens of Pitiless had gone with power and resources, something the Salt sect had in spades.
Aorth pulled back a chair and took a seat opposite them, running his fingers across an obviously divinatory medallion around his neck.
"Now that explains what we do here, but not who I am, and what we need to discuss." He explained. "My name is Aorth with No Heart, co-warden of Pitiless along with my brother Jaitch with No Spirit. What brings you to my fortress?"
"Do you have prisoner here named Ghyris Vast?" Tristol asked.
The dwarf studied him intently, his hands folded in front of his face, obscuring any reaction he might have immediately had to the question. One by one his eyes moved to the others, finally returning to the aasimar.
"Yes we do." He replied calmly. "And why would you be interested in him?"
"Less him than the people who put him here actually." Clueless said. "We've had some ugly dealings with them, and we were hoping Vast could tell us something about them."
"Hmm." Aorth said, fingering his medallion again, perhaps attempting to sift through the surface thoughts of his guests. "I doubt that you had worse relations with them than Vast did himself. His parting with them was not of his choosing, and he doesn't seem to much care for them."
Behind the dwarf, the same door that he'd entered through opened and admitted his brother. Similarly dressed, though he seemed more ragged than his brother in appearance and attitude, the familial link was obvious.
"They've had unfortunate run-ins with Vast's owners as well." Aorth said to his brother.
"F*cking Rakshasas..." Clueless muttered, curious if that would garner any response from the wardens, or if they knew the true nature of Vast's 'owners' as they termed them.
The statement gained a cocked head and cold chuckle from Jaitch almost immediately. "Rakshasas eh?" He asked questioningly.
"That was what they presented themselves as, isn't it?" Fyrehowl said. "Or did they take another guise around you when they delivered him?"
"Rakshasas..." There was a vaguely bemused tone in Aorth's voice. "Well, I'm not at liberty to discuss anything about who placed him here, or what the conditions of his release were. If Vast wishes to be frank with that matter, that is between you and him, but I won't provide you any details on the subject."
"So we can speak with him?" Tristol asked.
Aorth nodded and put away his amulet. "You can speak with any prisoner here so long as they'll humor you, though with many prisoners due to their nature or their tendency to become violent, we limit the duration of such visits."
Kiro hadn't said a word the entire time, but he occasionally glanced up at Jaitch. The other warden of Pitiless was watching the party, toying with a ring on his finger, and Kiro was likewise staring back at that ring. For a moment he seemed a bit on edge, but when Jaitch glanced at him and said nothing, he fully relaxed.
The two brothers looked at one another, a shrug and a nod confirming their mutual lack of objection.
"We don't judge you to be a hazard." Aorth said. "Therefore we will allow you to speak for a short time with Vast. However, security is paramount here and you will be observed and under supervision at all times. If the prisoner does not wish to speak with you, you will leave."
***
Pitiless was simple in layout once past the front gates, a series of mostly linear cell blocks each separated by gates and checkpoints. The sections of the prison were separated and subdivided into increasingly more secure sections, holding prisoners judged to be more dangerous or problematic than others the further one walked through the prison.
The first section however was not precisely a cellblock, being that it held no living prisoners. Rather, it was a carefully organized warehouse, a massive chamber holding thousands of crates, chests, tagged and segregated items of all kinds kept secret, hidden, protected, or simply forgotten.
"Do not touch any of the objects." Aorth said as the group stared at the mass of objects within just the first ten feet from the walk. "Though if you must, you may visually examine them."
Books, royal regalia, heirlooms, weapons made famous for who they had killed, who had used them, or simply from latent power thrumming through their length, the storehouse was a treasure trove fit for a god. All of it was observed though, just as much as any prisoner was.
High above them, wide iron gantryways crisscrossed the heights, and more guards, giants all of them, gazed down on both visitors and objects alike. At the same time, like black and bejeweled apples hung by a fiendish deity, black and glittering orbs hung suspended thirty feet high, each fifty foot increment in a grid pattern over the chamber. Constructs or magical scrying devices, they emitted a low hum and rotated a random 90 degrees every other minute.
Tempting as it might have been for Nisha to make faces at her reflection in one of the polished orbs suspending above, she was more curious about the fully constructed stone mausoleum of pale grayish marble that occupied a substantial footprint of space.
"Dare I ask if there's someone inside that tomb?" Florian asked. "That's just rather creepy."
The tomb was ancient, whatever it was, and it showed heavy wear from the roots and tendrils of adherent, climbing vines and lichens, the green, almost verdigris stain of which still marked the stone in places, and had left only the vague and tantalizing outlines of old runes and low relief carvings left to adorn its sides. But outside of age and wear, it was well built and seemed to have been either moved in one piece, or deconstructed and then rebuilt stone by stone inside Pitiless itself.
"Well it's one way to get your tomb free from looters I suppose." Fyrehowl said.
Aorth didn't reply, but his knowing grin probably said that they were more right than not.
They continued on through the chamber, reaching the halfway point before stopping once more to look at one of the objects. This time it was a relatively small thing, only a few feet wide, long, and tall, but they felt it more so than saw it immediately.
It was a solid block of ice sitting upon the floor, but instead of being surrounded by a pool of spreading meltwater, it was bordered by a radius of frost and cracked stone; unmelting despite the room's temperature. But such things, while rare, were not unknown, and the coldest regions of Paraelemental Ice did provide non-magical, unmelting ice.
"There's something inside of it." Skalliska said, peering at the very center of the ice, careful not to actually touch it.
"No." Fyrehowl said. "There's
nothing inside of it."
Skalliska frowned and pointed at an obvious dark shape in the center of the ice.
"It's not something inside the ice." Fyrehowl explained. "It's a hollow in the ice of some sort."
And indeed it was a hollow, a shape, an abscess in the ice. A word. A rune. Locked in the ice was a shape, and though it was bizarre and distorted, viewed through the bars of its frozen tomb, it did resemble a symbol or word of sorts. It was an odd thing, and even more disquieting, the cold that radiated from it seemed to leak over onto an emotional level as well, chilling the heart just as much as it did the flesh.
"Weird..." Clueless said. "Don't know why, but that reminds me of something I've read about before."
Tristol gave a wistful shrug. "I could probably spend a decade just looking at everything in here."
"But I won't give you that long." Aorth said, motioning them all forward towards the gate and checkpoint at the rear of the chamber. "Please try to restrain your curiosity and not look at everything."
They took the hint and continued on their way, progressing finally into the first of the formal cellblocks. It was starkly arranged, that was certain: a single long hallway with cells each forty feet, staggered and set on each side so that no two prisoners had direct eye to eye contact with one another. Prisoners were separated: from the rest of the multiverse, from time, even from one another.
Be that as it might, the hallway was far from entirely empty though, as several of the cells and their occupants had visitors present, ostensibly to speak with them, or perhaps simply to watch or torment them during their incarceration. The largest and most visible such group was centered around a cell near the end of the hall, where a pair of babau and a trio of ragged and diseased bulezau stood as escorts for a marilith who hissed and cursed at the occupant of one cell, her massive coils tightening and relaxing by the second.
Thankfully though, they and the Tanar'ri were not there to speak to the same prisoner.
Aorth noticed them staring at the cells. “As I’d mentioned before, you’re free to speak with any of the prisoners here, though if they’re already occupied you’ll have to wait as long as their visitors remain. Do not take overly long though.”
Not as far off, nor as colorful as the Tanar'ri contingent, perhaps a dozen yards down the hallway a single pentadrone modron stood before a cell, blankly staring at whatever was inside. Behind the hierarch, a group of four spherical monodrones stood in perfect, equidistant alignment, a golden glow flickering across their metallic bodies from whatever it was that had gathered their superior’s attention.
“Hehee! Modrons!” Nisha said, giggling and pointing at the group of geometric beings as they suddenly turned and began to move away from the cell.
Aorth gestured them all out of the way of the marching exemplars of law, and the modrons passed them without comment, or even any acknowledgement that they were there. Whatever it was that they had been concerned with, it had been in the cell, and they seemed oblivious to anything else.
“What the hell was that about?” Florian asked, turning to watch
“They were here for me.”
The voice echoed from out of the cell, a sound that was as beautiful as it was cold, and the group turned immediately to face its source. A single figure, at first glance she appeared to be a tall, almost spindly woman with chalk-white skin dressed in a form-fitting black leather gown. But she was not human; her face was unmoving, appearing as a sculpted porcelain mask topped with black, bristled tufts of hair that faded to gold at their tips. Golden light poured through her rigid lips and glassy, sculpted eyes, betraying the presence of a single ball of coruscating golden light that hovered in the blackened hollow behind the mask. The prisoner was a parai, one of Mechanus’s native races, and one who embodied a different aspect of universal Law than the Modrons.
They stared at her for a few moments and the corners of her porcelain mask shifted and turned to a smile before she spoke again, lips parting and leaking golden light once more.
“What is it you seek here within the walls of Pitiless, this place of entropy’s death?”
“We…” Clueless began, uncertain how to answer her, and uncertain
if he should provide her an answer.
Skalliska however was less uncertain.
“You’re not a normal parai.” The kobold said. “What exactly are you?”
“What am I?” The parai responded, her voice a thing of sterile, musical beauty. “I am perfection taken form, laws and truth given beauty, given purpose and life. I am what all will be.”
Parai believed that beauty was perfection was law, and examples of each were to be made to conform to that logic, brought by force and assimilation into their own race. They reproduced by absorbing the traits or knowledge of a victim that they saw as beautiful, burning off any remaining substance as dross, and recasting that victim as one of their own. This parai though, it was different. It had more emotion that normal, and its patterns of color differed from the standard of its race, making it more unique than others of its kind.
Without any response, she continued. “The Modrons fear me, what I am, what my existence entails and foreshadows regarding their own fate and domination of Law. But of course, you have yet to explain to me what it is that you came here for. I doubt that you are here for me.”
She turned and gazed in the direction that the modrons had gone, casting a golden aura out across the hallway.
“We’re here to see a mortal.” Fyrehowl answer. “A human named Ghyris Vast.”
The golden orb seemed to turn and rotate upon its axis, shedding its light through the mask’s open lips in waves, almost like the parai was thinking, pondering the lupinal’s response.
“The mad inventor. The Bleaker.” She finally said. “His mind was beautiful, complex, terrible to behold. I would have gone to him, but alas my imprisonment makes his beauty a caged songbird, something I cannot touch and tend.”
“What exactly are the conditions of your release?” Clueless asked. “Not that I’m inclined to release you. I’m just curious.”
“Umm… good.” Nisha muttered. “Don’t release scary lawful things, that’s one rule I’ll happily go with.”
“I cannot be released from here while the fortress yet stands.” The parai said, regarding the Xaositect with a mixture of scorn and pity before continuing. “I was imprisoned not by The One and the Prime, but the pretender, slayer and usurper of the Gears, and He is dead and fallen, no longer The Prime.”
“Why?” Kiro asked, finally speaking up for the first time in their trip to Pitiless. He seemed honestly curious.
"I saw Him for what he was,” The parai said, staring at the cleric of Sutekh oddly for a moment. “I saw the changes within him, the shadow that he was, the burning within him that sucked at his soul, withered him from within and ultimately consumed him. I saw that, and so out of fear, worry, jealousy I was confined by Him rather than risk my death spilling his secrets across the gears. And so, here I am, perfection. Perfection exists, and is unattainable to the multiverse at large… for now. But this place is not perfect, and it shall not last forever, and then I will be free.”
Kiro shrugged, but already the others had left the parai and begun to wander down the hallway with Aorth, put off and mildly disturbed by the cold manner of the lawful exemplar in the cell.
Further down the corridor, the group passed by several cells, only giving them a cursory glance but not stopping: an empty cell filled with nothing but a blue haze and exuding a dull malevolence, a catatonic human with pitch black eyes slumped in the corner of their cell, another empty cell that echoed with the sounds of bestial snuffling and heavy, plodding footsteps, and one cell holding a lizardman or similar reptilian creature dressed in a pale yellow robe and simply staring off into space.
“Lovely things you have here.” Florian said to the warden as they passed a cell with a small black lacquer box containing in three warding circles.
“We have a rather diverse group of inmates. Sanity is not something all of them keep however. They were put here to remain here, and we’re only concerned with watching them linger and potentially die despite the so-called timelessness of the Astral. Their mental well being is a separate issue entirely.”
“The prison is well named.” Tristol said with a frown.
“So am I.” Aorth replied.
They continued, passing into another cellblock, but eventually they stopped as Toras paused and looked into one cell. It contained a bleached pile of bones, some of them inscribed with symbols and runes, a grinning skull perched atop of them all with a halo of pale green flame licking from its eye sockets.
“Wow.” Toras said. “This is one of those times that you don’t even need to bother with a ‘do not tap the glass’ sign.”
Tristol looked into the cell, whispered a spell and then stepped back. The entire cell was warded with multiple anti-magic fields and layered with walls of force. Whatever the object, or prisoner was, Pitiless was taking no chances with its escape.
"What'd you see?" Florian asked, taking note of Tristol's expression.
Tristol gave a nervous chuckle. "Very powerful. Very undead. Whoever they are, or where, they're doing their best Larloch impression."
"Who's Larloch?" Fyrehowl asked, getting another nervous chuckle from the halruaan.
Meanwhile Clueless was also taking his time looking at the patterns of magic radiating off of the bones.
"Wow," he said, turning to Florian. "It might as well be grinning and holding up a sign that says, 'Please, please try to turn me. I haven't laughed in millennia. Give me reason to do so puny mortal.'"
Toras grinned. "Then he won't mind me taking my time to make obscene gestures to very powerful evil undead."
"Umm... is that really wise?" Skalliska asked.
"I'll agree with Toras here." Florian said. "When will we ever have the chance again to flip off a demilich with impunity."
"Still though, is it wise?" The kobold repeated. "Sure it's just sitting there now grinning like only a lich's skull can do. But what if it does something?"
“The demilich, or whatever it is, hasn’t ever responded to anyone.” A voice called out from the cell opposite. “Tap the glass all you like, I’ve never seen it respond to anything, nor have any visitors.”
The group turned away from the burning pile of bones and towards the source of the voice. Seated in the center of the cell, gazing out at them with tired looking green eyes was an elf with tattoo covered, coppery skin and long, jet-black hair.
"It's been some time since I spoke with anyone myself for that matter.” The elf remarked.
"Who are you?" Clueless asked.
He shrugged. "To tell the truth, I don't remember my name. It hasn't been spoken since I locked myself away in this place."
"You locked yourself away here?" Fyrehowl asked.
The elf nodded in the affirmative. "I'm a different sort of creature than the others here. I can walk out of my cell at any point you see. The only thing keeping me here is me. I put myself here, and I don't wish to leave, it's safer for me that way."
"Besides, even if I left, I don't have anything to return to. My world is dead. Threnody is gone and lost, and I'm the last of my kind. But those who killed us, they would finish their genocide in an instant if I opened myself to their eyes and gave them the opportunity."
"But surely you..." Tristol began to say.
He waved a hand, "This is my place. I can leave at any point, but I won't. I have my own conditions that might change that, but that's for me and my own inner solace to ponder. I've made peace with my fate, but I appreciate your words."
They felt bad for him as they walked off, following the warden, but he seemed at peace, as much as he could be.
“At least the bones aren’t annoying.” The elf said wistfully as they left. “Better boring than loud I suppose. I have solace here at the very least.”
As they continued down the corridor, further into the prison, Aorth didn't bother talking to them. Their repeated stops along the way however had started to get on his nerves and he was pushing them forwards a bit more intently, especially when they passed the cell containing the Devete Choir. The creatures were still acting disturbed since their collective attempt to mimic Ghyris Vast, and since this new group of visitors was looking to speak to that man, he didn't want them causing problems with the blue skinned mental chameleons.
Likewise he whisked the group past the cell adjacent to the Devetes, the one containing the glittering, multicolored fog. The Scile, the Ravagers of Color, had the habit of attracting people to stare at them, and on rare occasions they’d been known to feed on the colors of those who’d gotten too close to their cell. It wasn’t lethal, but it was dangerous and it was difficult to reverse given the advanced nature of that particular colony, which probably was the reason behind their imprisonment in Pitiless, especially given who had put them there in the first place.
But the dwarf rapidly put his mind off of that old matter, and back to the present as he gestured the new visitors into the next block of cells. Though once they did, they'd barely had a chance to look at it and the even more incredible level of wardings, when a prisoner called out to them from the first cell. The voice was pleading, desperate, and spoken in an archaic dialect of Elysian.
"Help me!"
Almost pressed against the invisible force barrier of her cell door was an avoral guardinal. Her hands were splayed out on the ground at first, but once they looked at her, she clasped them together on her chest as if she were praying.
“You!” She pleaded, looking directly at Fyrehowl. “You have to help me. Please.”
She was weeping, and her eyes were red and bloodshot with grief, while the rest of her body seemed to have suffered from the rigors of seclusion. Her feathers were dulled, a mixture of black and speckles of gray, and the floor of her cell was littered with a considerable number of them. Exquisite tattoos danced down from her face, swirling around her neck in plunging rings, and then crisscrossing her bare chest on flesh and feathers alike.
"Who are you?" Toras asked, oddly enough being quicker on the take than Fyrehowl who had been the imprisoned guardinal’s target.
Standing slightly behind him, quiet and tense, the cipher had yet to say a word. In fact she was looking intently, almost warily at the avoral in the cell, lips pursed and coiled as tight as a spring. Something wasn't right.
The avoral looked up at the fighter. "I have no name," She said with a weary, tired voice. "They took it from me, so long ago. Since then, I have known only despair."
“This is disgusting.” Florian said, turning to look at Aorth.
The warden shrugged, showing absolutely no concern. “You had no complaints for the lich, the parai, the balor, the alu-fiend, or anything else. We don’t have any philosophical bias in who we incarcerate. But this is between you and the avoral.”
"How long have you been here?" Tristol asked the imprisoned celestial.
"Over a thousand years." She replied, looking with a glimmer of hope in her eyes up at the aasimar. "So long I can barely remember my home. Elysium is a memory, and it pains me to remember it, so bittersweet the thoughts are. How I long to soar above Oceanus, flit above the warm air of Belarian, soar above the great seas of Thalasia. They have denied me that."
Tears welled in the avoral’s eyes, and gut-wrenching pity flooded through Florian, Toras, and Tristol alike.
"You can release me though.” She said to Tristol, wiping her face on a hand half bereft of feathers. “Please, I just want to go home. You…you or the lupinal can open the door."
Florian motioned the aasimar forward, and almost without hesitation he moved towards the cell and the avoral.
"Don't." Fyrehowl said, abruptly and deftly snagging Tristol's hand and holding him back.
The figure in the cell might have sneered, or it might have just been the light.
"Who put you here?” Fyrehowl asked. “And why?”
“Please, this place is torture.” The avoral pleaded. “Removed from Elysium's grace for so long is agony. You have the power to release me...”
The prisoner began to cry again, her despair at being denied release by her own kind seemingly too much to bear. The emotional catharsis was having an effect on her would be rescuers as well, and Florian and Toras were staring at Fyrehowl.
"The Guardinals put you here didn't they? They wouldn't kill you." Fyrehowl said with calm composure. "What was it that you did? Why did you fall?"
Tristol’s ears fell to the side with Fyrehowl’s accusation, and likewise it took the others largely off guard as well, though Kiro seemed entirely to take it in stride. But their manner of surprise was short lived, and was soon replaced with surprise of another matter entirely.
The avoral snarled, a sound of absolute and utter contempt. "Stupid b*tch, all it would take is you or the vulpinal blooded one to willingly open the door and I would be free.”
“Guys, let’s go.” Fyrehowl said. “We don’t have anything else to do here.”
“Don’t you even want to know why I fell?” The sneering, fall celestial asked.
“No.” Fyrehowl said bluntly. “I don’t really care to know.”
“You can still let me out.” The avoral retorted. “You can have mercy on me, that wretched little virtue I don’t have to believe in to benefit from. Is it right to let me suffer here? Isn’t it better to release me in the hopes that I’ll find redemption outside?”
Fyrehowl motioned the others to walk away, but she lingered for a moment more.
“You only need a guardinal to release you.” She said. “You’re capable of redemption here, here where you can’t hurt anyone else. If you rise, you’ll be able to free yourself. I won’t set you lose, I know what you’ll do.”
The fallen avoral hissed and spat, her talons seeming all the more wicked and her feathers darker and more like serpentine scales. Fyrehowl didn’t response though, she just turned and walked away.
"You're not so different you and I!" The avoral screamed out, raw and ragged at the lupinal. "I've stood at that edge! I've looked over into that void! I'm just looking at it from the bottom now! We are not so different you and I, but even though I rot inside this cell, I'm more free than you will ever be."
We are not so different you and I... something in Fyrehowl felt cold and sick from that statement as she walked down the central corridor of Pitiless with her companions. Elysium's child felt nauseated at the idea of a willing fall from grace, an abandonment of universal altruism, it was alien and horrific. But something else, the lupinal weeping at the blood soaked walls of Rubicon, crying out in misery to ask Elysium, asking herself, asking a cold and unforgiving reality why it sat by and did nothing in the face of atrocity... that part of her felt something very different.
"Fyrehowl? Fyrehowl? You ok?" Florian asked.
The cleric’s voice prompted the lupinal out of her thoughts and she waved away the concern.
"Sorry, that just disturbed me before. Don't worry about me."
Yes, yes it did disturb her.
***
The group had moved forward into the final section of the prison, facing several massive cells, the oversized holding pens of some of the largest and most dangerous of the prisoner’s residents. Aorth didn’t seem to want them to linger, especially in front of the nearly utter gloom that seemed to fill the first of the cells.
“What’s in there?” Clueless asked, noting that his own eyesight wasn’t helping him any in regards to the darkness beyond the walls of force.
The darkness momentarily swam in response to his question, and when a pair of massive yellowed eyes opened in the midst of the darkness, he had his answer. Despite its lack of obvious substance, the shadow wyrm was gigantic, and it was an impressive feat that someone had ever trapped it in the first place in order to confine it to its cell in Pitiless.
But the shadow dragon paled in comparison to the occupant of the next cell. A twenty foot long segmented worm with jointed, centipede-like legs, pinchered foreclaws, and a vaguely humanoid and vaguely insectile head that sprouted a ragged mouth full of tentacles and fangs.
“What the hell is that thing?” Florian asked, watching as the creature drooled upon the floor and shimmered a dozen different colors like the surface of its skin was a film of grease atop a puddle of water.
Aorth grinned like a proud parent but said nothing, instead letting Skalliska take the question.
“It’s an Entrope.” The kobold answered, glancing back at the warden. “I’d never seen one before now, but they were something that the Doomguard created. They can eat their way through virtually anything, including weak spots between adjacent planes. Thing is, everyone thought that they were lost, or had been killed around the time that the Doomguard as a full faction collapsed in on itself.
“Seems you were wrong.” Kiro said, a vague bit of distaste in his voice as he looked into the segmented eyes of the beast.
Finally, turning away from the two massive cells containing the Entrope and the Shadow Wyrm, the group followed Aorth along towards a block of smaller, more compact cells, each of which glowed like bonfires under any sort of divinations.
"Son of a..." Toras muttered as they turned the corner. "Do these jokers have to show up -everywhere- we go?"
The next cell down the corridor had gathered a crowd of yugoloths and thus Toras's unamused ire. Clustered together some thirty feet distant, the group comprised several mezzoloths, three snarling and laughing arcanaloths, and the tall and spindly figure of a lone ultroloth.
"Sh*t!" Clueless said. "...I don't want to be around this guy if they're already there watching him. I don't want them to even suspect we know much more about them than they think we might."
"That's not the cell that I'm taking you to." Aorth said brusquely, giving a cursory glance and nod towards the yugoloths. "They're here to see another prisoner entirely. They always are. Every three days for as long as I've been warden of Pitiless. If you wish to speak with their ward, you may do so after they've left."
"Oh..." Clueless said, dropping his notions of just leaving to avoid the 'loths.
Of course his words, or at least the general gist of them, his displeasure at their very presence, had been overheard by one of the arcanaloths and the ultroloth as well. As Aorth motioned the group off to one side to pass the 'loths, one of the jackal headed fiends perked his ears and snarled, and a wave of cold malevolence from the Ultroloth washed over their minds like swimmers caught in the undercurrents of a freezing riptide.
"It seems the mortals take offense at our presence." Came the ultroloth's voice like a buzzing cloud of angry wasps hurling themselves at a pane of thin glass.
The trio of arcanaloths turned and sniffed at the air, curling their lips up and snarling at Fyrehowl as if her proximity fouled the air.
Aorth felt the tension in the air and touched a second amulet around his neck.
"The feeling is likewise though." The faceless fiend explained, his eyes burning and discordant above the mocking, sterile cadence of his voice.
The lupinal shot back with a hard stare, but the 'loth wasn't finished.
"Is it not enough that a layer of your worthless plane and so many of your dead along with it must rot upon the Waste, that you feel the need to personally appear and become an affront to our senses now, in person?"
Fyrehowl snarled violently and her hand snapped to the hilt of her sword a split second before the hard rattle of footsteps on the iron walkways above heralded the arrival of a squad of guards, and exactly timed with Kiro laying a hand on her shoulder.
The air was taught and the lupinal only barely managed to hold back from gutting the fiend then and there. Her nerves had been rattled, her anger provoked, a bitter memory stoked, and a race's collective wound made to run fresh upon her heart. The ultroloth's mouthless face gave no expression, but the sick and petty smile could be felt regardless of its lack of a grin.
"But I wouldn't wish to cause difficulty for our hosts." The 'loth said, turning and bowing its head ever so slightly to the warden. "We've had our customary time with this piece of incarcerated filth, and we'll return again as we always do. But for now, the stench is growing so thick that it disturbs the mezzoloths, and it would be best if we left."
With Fyrehowl still snarling at them, the group of 'loths hurled their last insults at the prisoner they had been tormenting, and then departed down the hallway, the arcanaloths laughing amongst themselves and the trailing, telepathic touch of the ultroloth licking at the minds of those left in their wake like a serpent tasting the air.
"Irredeemable son of a b*tch." Fyrehowl spat as she watched the fiends depart, letting her rage simmer for a moment before turning to thank Kiro. Had it not been for him at that moment, she probably would have acted, and very likely would not have survived. The cleric's timing was as good as hers normally was.
But that said, as she regained her composure, she glanced over towards the cell that the 'loths had been gathered around in the first place. What she saw inside made her previous comment a twisted bit of irony.
Small and stark, a single pale gray figure was seated on the floor, resting his back against the rear wall, his chest rising and falling slowly and erratic like the pattern of a grieving man. The light was pale and cold, almost physically so, and either the cell or its prisoner seemed to radiate a tangible aura of sorrow, melancholy and resignation, though under it all there might have been a twinge of hope that flickered like a tiny smoldering candle flame.
The figure was slumped, and it was clear that it had been weeping, or hiding its face in the folds of its robe, avoiding the gaze and mockery that its yugoloth tormentors had been inflicting on it. But regardless, the being was distinctive enough that it didn't have to lift its head and show its face for them to realize that it was an ultroloth.
Normally the telepathic voice of an ultroloth was a terrible thing to behold, words like poisoned knives, a state of mental corruption honed and sharpened like razors, but this one... it was different.
"And are you here to mock me as well?" The ultroloth's voice was a hollow thing, mental words that resonated through a recipient’s skull but which did so only gently, with reluctance, a weapon grown dull with misery and shame.
"No, we..." Tristol began.
"Do as you will.” The ‘loth said with a sigh. “They have done worse than you could. Though perhaps I deserve it.”
"Who are you?" Clueless asked.
"I was known as Felthis Ap’Jerran, but that was a distant time." His head was still slumped, his wide, luminous eyes casting flickers of color across the floor. "But none have used that name for a very long time. They simply call me traitor, filth, heretic, abomination, wretch..."
"Why?" Fyrehowl asked, her own voice touched by a bit of lingering emotion from her spat with the fallen avoral.
"Guardinal, let me ask you a question." He said, looking up and fixing his luminous eyes on the cipher, their gaze and his blank expression somehow soothing to her in a way she couldn't explain. “Does salvation exist for evil? True evil? Does it exist for what I was, what I still may be? Can one such as myself find redemption?”
Could she answer him? Could she say, ‘Yes?’ or maybe just, ‘I want to believe that it does.’ Too many conflicting ideas were filling her mind, and honestly she wasn’t sure how to answer. Could she even trust the fiend?
“I want to believe that you can.” She answered, though with some hesitation.
“Seeking redemption.” The ‘loth replied. “That was my sin against my kind. I rejected everything of theirs once I ascended the pinnacle of their mountain of purity in vice. I stood at the summit and looked down, and I was horrified. I fell, or maybe I sought to rise, depends on your perspective I suppose. But my kind will never allow me to escape. This makes certain of that, on top of my own reluctance to use many of my abilities, and they’ve stripped me of many others.”
“How can you escape?” Tristol asked.
“Nothing so simple.” He answered. “You’d have to find mercy among those who even then would have been my superiors. It’s a concept that makes me smile, that warms my heart, but even so it still feels alien. Could they feel it for an instant and release me? No. But perhaps that’s just another drop of penance for my crimes, and those are many.”
Fyrehowl felt inwardly sick. Something inside of her felt shame by comparison. The guardinal standing on Rubicon, suffering a crisis of faith was watching her own candle be eclipsed by a creature that’d climbed his way up from an abyss of utter darkness. He suffered, and here she was with doubts regarding everything that she’d thought herself composed of. This was difficult. Could the ‘loth be a risen fiend?
“I partook of actions that would make a celestial weep, but I pray to whatever powers might hear me to forgive me, because my victims are far beyond my ability to ask of them what I do.”
"They locked you away here simply to prolong your torment?" Fyrehowl managed to ask without her voice breaking.
Felthis nodded sullenly and his voice echoed in their heads, “They won’t kill me, they won’t grant me the gift of oblivion, which is perhaps more than I deserve. They’ll keep me here, make me live forever in this cage they can, but they won’t allow me to reclaim anything of the twisted bits of soulstuff I once possessed. There was a spark of something better there at the beginning, and though millennia of promotion and purification might have done their best to scour and sterilize it, they only cut it free and allowed it to surface."
A risen
Ultroloth? Such a thing was unlikely. Perhaps the fiend was just another puppeteer, experimenting on those
outside the cage rather than the other way around. Or might he be telling the truth? They might not kill him for fear of letting an infection or flaw resurface in the flesh of another mezzoloth, or spread to others. Bottling him up in Pitiless might have been worse than death anyways, being that it would never allow for the fiend to actually complete any rise that he'd begun on the Waste. He'd never find true redemption and they'd dangle that in his face for eternity.
The ultroloth turned to look down the hallway where his kindred had departed. Their mocking laughter was still audible both in barks and insectile chitters, and from telepathic broadcast alike.
He sighed once they had fully departed, and then continued. "I’m a hollow shell of a thing seeking to find itself, having given itself up so so long ago, but I have only myself to see and search, my own mind to plumb. And what exists here but sorrow, regret, and the inability to change the past? A broken creature condemned by its own kind."
They looked at him with pity, and though by default they didn't trust him, simply being what he was, his self-loathing misery and bittersweet desire for penitence made them wish they could help him.
"We know how they are, we've had dealings with them before.” Clueless said. “That's somewhat why we're here to see another prisoner."
Felthis nodded. “If your prisoner has had interaction with my kind, then nothing on the surface may be valid.”
“We’ve already learned that to some extent.” The bladesinger continued. “We didn’t even know till recently that we were dealing with yugoloths in the first place.
"Never trust my kind." The ‘loth said emphatically. "Don’t trust them, not in anything. That was my first mistake, perhaps my greatest. Carceri and Gehenna simply hold the overflow of the traitors from their sister plane, its source that bubbles over, with the Styx the merest trickle. Beware, and take care of yourselves.”
“Can’t we help you?” Clueless asked.
The ‘loth shook his head. “I doubt you could, not now anyways. Maybe one day, but for now go speak with the prisoner you came here to see. Perhaps later if you think I could provide some insight, I’ll be here to speak with you. Temporary release from my own isolation would be the most you could give me, and I would enjoy that.”
There was a cough from behind the group.
"When you're ready, Vast's cell is right across from you." Aorth said with a bored tone to his voice.
The dwarf gestured with one hand towards a cell virtually opposite from the ultroloth's, one that seemed even more insanely overly warded for a single occupant.
“You have fifteen minutes after you start." He said, the bored tone of his voice shifting steely and authoritative. "Try not to rile him up, he may seek to hurt himself again."
***
The man was sitting in the middle of his cell, tracing his finger along the stones in the floor like they were a chalkboard, and perhaps in his mind it was, because he muttered to himself incessantly, and even glanced down from time to time as if double checking notes. He was a spindly thing, wasted from lack of food prior to his incarceration, and less well dressed and kempt than any but the most absentminded member of the Fraternity of Order. A single look at him left no doubt why his own faction had tried to incarcerate him in the bowels of the Gatehouse, but the yugoloths had done them one better in Pitiless.
“Ghyris Vast?” Clueless asked the deranged looking man.
Vast stopped and very slowly turned to look at the bladesinger.
“Hello…” Clueless began, trying to avoid looking at the disturbingly intense look in the mad Bleaker’s eyes.
Vast grinned as the bladesinger turned back to his companions.
“So how exactly do we start this? We’re here, what do we ask him?”
“I figure that you want what everyone wants from me.” Vast muttered proudly. “You want to know about my machine… my creation…”
Clueless turned back to the madman. “Alright, that’s a start I suppose.”
“Yes I created it, not that it matters…” Vast admitted before turning and looking at the floor. “Oh look, another crack in the floor…”
“It’s talking to me…” He whispered before putting his ear to the floor and giggling softly.
“And you call
me crazy.” Nisha said, tapping Tristol with her tail.
“Oh yes I do too, thank you for asking.” Vast said in a singsong voice to the crack in the floor that had gathered his rapt attention.
The group looked to one another awkwardly. Getting information from Vast might have been easier said than done. His grip on lucidity was tenuous at best.
“GET OUT! Go away! Don’t you see that you’re upsetting him!?” Vast bellowed at them, startling them with his sudden outburst, pounding his hands on the floor before mellowing in an instant like a switch had been flipped in his brain.
“My name is Ghyris.” He said. “Have we met before?’
“No, we haven't.” Kiro said. “But we've heard of you."
"I'm famous!” Vast said, clapping his hands together. “A captive with an audience!"
His audience grinned at him, hoping to keep him in good humor.
"What to talk about what to talk about...” Vast muttered. “I've all the time in the world you see. No hunger, no sleep, no wine, no woman, not much to do but slowly go mad."
He was far past that point.
"I'd read something about you.” Tristol said. “It said that for a while you'd hired some reave mercenaries to guard you and your work on the Astral, and that you'd been working with a pair of Rakshasas, Siddhartha and Brampandra."
A disturbing grin spread across the man's face.
“Oh, the Rhakshasas? Them? Those two?” He asked.
There was a sparkle in his eyes, and he seemed absorbed by a moment of nostalgia.
“Yes, them.” Toras answered.
“Oh, they were killed.” Vast blurted out rather matter-of-factly.
No surprise there of course. It would make sense that they’d killed the original Rakshasas before they stole their identity.
“Someone named Yethmiil.” Vast continued. “He had a
lot of interest in me and the device…HE STOLE MY MACHINE!… Nice chap he was. Didn’t talk much, not in that sense anyways. Said stuff, just didn’t talk.”
Telepathy. The ultroloth's mind had spoken as much as any tongue, and even without a mouth, his voice still rattled cold and discordant in their memory.
"Then there was the woman, kept him on the proverbial leash, what a BARMY she was…” His voice trailed off and he turned his head before bickering back and forth with himself. “Oh you’re one to talk Ghyris…Shut up you….”
They let him babble to himself, and eventually his pride made him turn back to them, the intensity back in his eyes, and his focus returned.
“Heh…” He said derisively. “Mangy little furballs, both of ‘em. Mostly her in comparison. Manged I mean. Powerful, but still… Ragged little rag doll of a b*tch. Never explained to me what she wanted, too busy killing those Godsmen to really appreciate the view of the storm from Aoskar’s corpse. Not that it mattered of course.”
Fyrehowl glanced at Clueless, then to the others. Busy killing godsmen? Storm? Aoskar’s corpse?
"Finger painting..." Vast explained, holding up his hands and wriggling his fingers before adding the sound effects and pantomime of a person ripping open a victim's chest and drawing with their guts and viscera.
The bleaker gave a whimsical shrug as his audience expressed their disgust. They knew what he was talking about. She’d painted the wards that they’d seen on the Astral and in Carceri.
“She had sparkly eyes.” Vast said. “Bits of green and blue and red and orange all flicking and dancing. I remember that.”
Another Ultroloth? It certainly sounded like Vast was describing an ultroloth’s flickering, multicolored eyes.
Anything further on that train of thought was lost though as it flew off its tracks. "Oh you don’t remember much you nutter…Didn’t I tell you to shut up?"
“What did they want from you?” Clueless asked.
They wanted everything that I'd worked on.” Vast explained. “They valued me, they believed me, they -needed- me."
“What did they need you for?” Tristol prompted.
Vast might not have heard the question, but he began to ramble nonetheless.
“Oh... but they've had their fun with me.” He snarled. “They've taken my device and plundered my brain, and now they think they know everything they need to know."
Vast laughed, a bitter and vindictive sound. “But there's something I didn’t tell them you see, something they don't even suspect...”
They hinged on his answer, and he didn’t disappoint, even pausing for dramatic effect.
“I. Had. Help.” He giggled and gave an insane grin.
Vast had help in constructing his device, whatever the hell it was? This was something new. Something the ‘loths didn’t seem to know in the slightest if Vast was right.
“Never told me his name… OLD f*cker… Just as crazy as me!” He said with a cackle. “Said EVERYTHING was falling into place even if it took them eons.”
They collectively felt cold at his answer, even if they didn’t necessarily understand what it meant.
Vast clapped his hands again and gave a wild shrug. “But not that it matters of course! Sad he was… depressed… full o’ despair… Much like me, but worse… told me I wasn’t supposed to EVER tell anyone about him. But… then again… that was before I gone and went barmy off my sodding skull! SURE he’ll kill me!”
“But!” He exclaimed, punctuating his mad ramble with a poke of his finger against the force walls of his cell. “Not that it matters, he muttered about it being a present for an old friend, long time in the making. It seemed to bring a gleam to his white eyes.”
What the hell did much any of that mean?
Vast looked around as the pendulum of his mood shifted back from its extreme.
"Ah but there... I've gone and said too much I think." Vast muttered, looking away and tugging repetitiously at a loose thread on his right sleeve.
"You're locked inside a high security cell in Pitiless." Toras said. "You're in no danger of anyone killing you, not there."
Vast smiled, eyes ablaze with a frightening intensity, his expression set somewhere between fear and pride. "You really think so? You really think so... that I could retain that ignorance still and die in my sleep."
What use were wards and veils, symbols and sigils? What use were doors and locks and gates? What use were any of those things when it could simply rip and tear its way across and through the planes, burning the spaces between them... escape was a hollow word, sanctuary a foolish notion, Pitiless was only a postponed damnation.
"It isn't right for them to take my ideas! It isn't right for them to steal my device! It's mine! They have no right to profit from what they do not understand!"
And again, like a switch being flicked, Vast flipped from righteous indignation to whispering and bitter pride.
“...even if they where supposed to do so in the first place... that was the plan..."
“What does it do? What did they want with it in the first place?” Clueless asked him.
“Please leave.” His request was simple, cold, and given the rules of Pitiless, final.
“Time is up.” Aorth called out to them. “He’s requested that you leave. Come with me.”
They didn’t have all of their answers that they’d wanted. The man’s insanity had prevented that. But they had little option otherwise. And of course, Vast was already muttering to himself as they walked away.
"I listened. I learned from you. Oh please... please don't... I did everything that you asked me to do... oh please... please please please..."
Vast watched them go, eyes blurry with tears. Ah but at least he'd made a name for himself, he'd had a chance to stand out from the crowd, he'd been a made man in a universe where nothing was given, where the utter meaninglessness of it all was as much opportunity as it was damnation. He'd done as he'd wanted, even during his so-called slavery to the mock-tigers, but he'd done so willingly, a price paid for a glimpse into theories undreamt of.
So much for a last meal before the headsman's axe, no need to eat within the Astral.
And then he felt it. He was no longer alone. It was there. It had come.
A last pair of teardrops fell, poetic and simultaneous. One of them froze before it struck the floor, the other boiled away in an instant. But without turning to look, he'd seen its terrible face reflected in their surface.
"Please, make this quick..."
Behind him, Lazarius Ibn Shartalan smiled.
***
