Shemeska
Adventurer
It's now 2:41am, and yes indeed I am drinking espresso...
The chamber dissolved into a haze of muted colors and in another step vanished altogether to open into a small chamber with crystalline walls beyond which swirling gray mist floated like unyielding fog. A single stretch of wall shimmered like the curtain had before, presumably leading out into the ethereal at large. Otherwise the chamber was filled by a long wooden table carved with scenes of various mortal races eating, drinking and making merriment. Plush cushions and pillows lay scattered around the chamber to allow a person to sit and rest or even sleep on the otherwise hard glassy surface of the small pocket sheltered off from the rest of the ethereal.
“So…” Florian began, “How did those long fingered blue bastards get you all into this mess? They poisoned me over breakfast the other morning. I would’ve said yes to their request for help. Clearly they didn’t do their homework on me. And before anyone asks, no I can’t remove the poison myself. I already made certain that yes I’ve got something in me and that it resists the normal curative spells that I know. But before I start rambling on here like an angry fool, I’m Florian, servant of the Foe Hammer, formerly of Toril.”
“Don’t worry, you’re hardly the angriest person here…”, Toras grumbled under his breath, more to himself than otherwise.
“Blackmail, lovely little thing that it is. All of us they’ve got something on, or they’ve got –someone- that we know and you can guess yourself from there on. Me? I’ve got holes in my memory you could march armies through. I don’t remember everything in my past so for all I know anything they claim they’ve got on me could be true.” Clueless shrugged and put his sword down at his side as he settled on one of the cushions. Fyrehowl and Florian sat adjacent to him and began to expand upon their own situations.
Nisha walked over to the table and looked at it with sudden delight, “Well, Hashkar on a righteous bender! Evil moneygrubbers or not, they know how to feed us before sending us off to our deaths! They’ve got a hero’s table!”
The others broke off their explanations of their own blackmail situations to look over to where the tiefling was now sitting on the table, kicking her hooves out like a child on a chair too tall for them to reach the ground, pondering something intently.
“A what?” Toras asked, giving her an odd look (not the first time he’d ever done that).
“A hero’s table! What’s your favorite food, somebody, anybody?” she grinned like an idiot and glanced around at her companions’ faces before finally Clueless walked over.
“I don’t know actually what my favorite food is.” He shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter, just think about your favorite food. Maybe if you just think about ‘my favorite food’ as an idea it’ll work. These things make whatever it is you ask them for. It’s the greatest thing since Ooze mephits in the guvners’ law library!”
The others just chuckled politely at Nisha’s –exhuberant- opinion on such things and looked at Clueless as he looked intently at the table and put out his hands. There was a small flash of sparkling light in front of him that swirled away to reveal a small platter of food on a golden plate and an elaborate fluted glass bottle filled with a multicolored and swirling liquid.
“Wow, you’ve got exotic tastes. What is that?” Fyrehowl asked as she sniffed in the direction of the newly created food. She stood up and wandered over to the table as well, hunger getting the best of her.
“I’d tell you but I don’t actually know what it is. Apparently I used to like it a lot though.” Clueless said as he sat down on one of the cushions on the ground as the others gradually made their own choices from the table.
True to Nisha’s word as they made their rounds they came away with smiles on their faces and bowls and dishes of food as well as amble amounts of drink to suit their most wild or imaginative tastes. All the while Nisha kicked her hooves back and forth happily. Eventually Tristol walked up with his familiar in tow and looked suspiciously at the table.
“It’s not poisoned is it? I’m a bit overly cautious with these people considering what they did to me to get me here. I mean… I didn’t do anything to these guys! Nothing!” the mage sighed as his familiar hopped up onto the table, apparently being in a more decisive mood than its master. Nisha cooed at the fox and put out a finger to scratch the vulpine’s head.
“Your familiar is cute. Aren’t you cute!” the tiefling said as she descended into babbling at the fox who simply looked at her with the typical canid expression of perplexion with its head tilted to one side. Tristol chuckled and looked over at her with a smile.
“He’s smarter than he looks, he just can’t talk to people. Not yet anyways.” Tristol rubbed the fox’s head lightly as a small dish of some sweetmeats popped in front of its nose. It barked happily and swished its tail as it promptly buried its muzzle in the bowl and munched away at its meal.
Tristol looked back at Nisha, “So what got you into this? I’ve heard from a few of the others. It seems like Florian over there, he and I have the same situation. And we’ve got a time limit too…” He shrugged off the gloom and tried to smile for the overly perky tiefer who sat there still swinging her legs cheerfully.
“Well, I’m mostly a thi… collector of donations from overly rich perso… overly rich evil fiends who like to punch small children in the mouth and laugh at old people. Exactly.” He chuckled and blushed slightly as she glanced over at Toras who looked at her with skepticism. “Yeah, as I was saying… I do that and I’m pretty good at it if I do say so myself. Yes I do. Well thank you Nisha you’re very kind. Oh you’re certainly welcome.” She babbled back and forth to herself a bit more, even supplying gestures for each persona switch. Tristol tried very hard not to laugh.
“But I also know a little bit of magic. Just a bit, and I’m mostly self-taught and from a few other mages I knew from here and there. However I’m at a distinct lack of my spellbook right now since that piking genasi stole it from me. Without it I know maybe two or three spells that I’ve used enough to remember without studying the book. But that’s what they’re blackmailing me with, my spellbook.” She shrugged, “I don’t think my situation is as harsh as some of the rest of you all though, you especially. That’s harsh.”
Clueless looked up from where he sat tentatively tasting his apparently favorite food. “Well, from what I remember I used to be able to cast spells as well. Only problem is I didn’t wake up with a spellbook on me…”
Tristol looked over towards Clueless as Nisha poked his familiar with her own tail and the fox tried to bite it. “Are you sure you needed a spellbook? Not all casters need one. Some have an innate command of the spells they know, but they usually can’t learn new spells easily. Maybe you fit into that sort of mage?”
Clueless shook his head, “No, I remember having a book. I don’t have any spells left in memory so I can’t just write them back down to preserve it all. If I live through all of this I’m going to have to start over from scratch it seems.” With that the bladesinger took a deep draught of the bottle he’d been given by the table. With a startled look he gasped for breath as a mixture of sparkling light and colored smoke wafted from his mouth.
“Woah…” came his response in a weak voice after he took a few moments to steady himself. “I have no idea what this is, but that’s the first time I can remember any alcohol actually doing anything to me. I tried to get drunk back in Sigil and I couldn’t. This… probably could though.”
Fyrehowl looked at Clueless and laughed as she took a seat next to him with her own meal. Florian did the same and silently said a small prayer before taking a first few tentative bites before he dug in with gusto.
“So… Tristol. Once we’re done with this could I possibly get you to teach me some more magic? Once I get my spellbook back that is. Kind of useless to learn stuff and not be able to write it down and all.” Nisha said with a hopeful grin.
Tristol paused for a moment and looked over at both Clueless and Nisha before taking out his own spellbook along with some other bits of paper, thread and ink. “I can’t give you both back everything you had, but I can get you started.” With that, the wizard carefully and deliberately began tearing out blank pages from the back of his own book as well as a few selected pages already filled out with spells from his own repertoire.
“This should start you out… if you have anything left in memory you can put them down on paper again here after you’re done eating. If there’s a few that you really liked or want again I’m willing to part with a few of them since I’ll still have all of the more powerful ones in here to play around with. I can replace the lower sphere spells easily once we’re done here.” Tristol paused and sighed, “I also won’t really need them all unless I can get an antidote to the poison they gave me.”
“Thank you… I’m not sure what to say besides that. That’s a real sacrifice for you to give up parts of your own spellbook.” Nisha accepted the pages that Tristol bound together with string and handed out to Clueless and her. “Maybe a little bit of your favorite drink might cheer you up? You’re getting too gloomy and we need you in better spirits if we’ll be running up against something with an allergic to fireballs out there.”
Clueless accepted Tristol’s donation with equal humbleness and offered a drink from the bottle he held in one hand. “And if you want something that’s just… different, and potent too, there’s always this. Firewine has nothing on this stuff…”
Tristol’s familiar’s ears perked at that mention and it would have dashed over to pilfer some of it from the half-fey before Tristol firmly grabbed it around the waist and placed it in his lap. “I don’t think so. The last time you tried Baatorian firewine you sneezed smoke and I saw stars. I don’t even want to think what –that- stuff would do to you, or me for that matter. Don’t even think about it…”
The fox whined softly and even made one last ditch attempt to leap up onto the magical table itself to try and request some of the same alcoholic witches brew for itself. Tristol’s hand on one of its tails ended that adventure before it started. But it got Nisha and Toras both to laugh at the tiny canid’s failed exploits.
As Tristol helped Nisha recall the spells that she had once had in her own spellbook, presumably recalling a few of them from his own memory to write down with her, Clueless laid back and tried to relax. His stomach was full and his head slightly buzzed from the fey-wine he’d just drunk. Fyrehowl and Florian both looked down at him and smiled, then they both looked up at each other and glared for a fraction of a second. Fyrehowl looked oddly at the human for a moment before looking back down to Clueless.
“Can I try…” both Fyrehowl and Florian said simultaneously before pausing and looking at each other again. “So tell me…” again, both of them repeated the same words and yet again glared at each other.
“Hmm?” Clueless looked up lazily at them both, still slightly buzzed on the effects of the fey-wine the hero’s table had provided him.
Over the next half hour, Clueless sat and randomly chatted with Fyrehowl and Florian. Had Clueless not lived up to his namesake in that regard, nor had he been slightly inebriated, he might have clued into the fact that both of his companions had gradually been edging closer to him as they chatted about their own experiences and asked him to talk about his. In fact, both Florian and Fyrehowl both seemed to be attempting to outdo each other in terms of getting to know the bladesinger that they both crowded around there on the floor of the chamber.
Nisha noticed and rolled her eyes, Tristol and his familiar were both too busy studying the wizard’s spellbook, Aren was deeply in prayer, and Toras was slumped and brooding to himself. Eventually however, Fyrehowl stood up and walked over to the table in the center of the room.
“Anyways… I’ve not had the chance to bath since before we went to Acheron. And I’m sorry; I can’t stand the stink of that place in my fur. I feel like I’ve got a band of imps creeping up on me. Except the smell’s on me and not from any imps. Can anyone here see in the dark?” Fyrhowl grumbled as she walked over towards the far end of the table. She held out her hands and produced several goblets of water and a large bowl of the same.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to take a bath in here…” Nisha said with a bit of exasperation. “There’s probably a joke I can make about revealing the glory of the heavens and all, but nude celestial isn’t something I like to see.” Behind her, Tristol’s familiar whined and covered its eyes with its forepaws.
“That’s fine.” Clueless said and continued to look in her direction, seemingly oblivious to the idea that she desired some level of privacy.
“Very funny.” The lupinal replied as she stepped to the far end of the room and a globe of darkness suddenly popped into being around her. Unphased and still not getting the hint, Clueless turned away to ponder over the spells that he knew he once had.
Under the cover of magical darkness, all the others could hear were sounds of water hitting the floor and the occasional pleased murmur from the celestial as she washed herself. A small puddle gradually seeped out from the confines of the globe of darkness and inched its way across the floor, spreading along the bottom of the small chamber until the splashing noises stopped and Fyrehowl presumably stopped pouring out any more water.
A drenched and water slicked hand groped out of the edge of the darkness, feeling along the top of the table to finally land upon a towel and drag it back into the darkness with the pile of clothing left on the tabletop as well. A minute later and the globe of darkness faded to reveal Fyrehowl drenched in water with her fur limp and matted down with the added weight. She stepped back a step and without warning rapidly shook from side to side like a mortal dog in from a rainstorm. A spray of water shot out from her fur as she flung the water every which way to dry herself off amid sharp and sudden howls of protest from the others in the room as they scrambled for cover from the sudden unwelcome shower of water droplets.
“Ewww, you could have warned us. But I do approve of the spontaneity!” Nisha chuckled and patted herself dry with a cushion that she had used as cover a moment before.
Fyrehowl smiled from under a mess of still wet fur that flanked both sides of her muzzle like a mop tossed over top of her head. “Hey, I needed it, trust me here. I don’t feel trailed by smelly imps anymore at the very least.”
“You just look like a damp puffball now.” Clueless said as he snickered.
“Drink less. Trust me here, drink less.” The lupinal sniped back, none too amused as she smoothed down the errant and honestly overly poofy fur that covered her.
“Actually it’s probably a good idea to not get soused on that wine Clueless, I don’t care how good it actually is. It won’t do us any good to actually have you drunk while we wander around the ethereal here soon. I don’t want anyone to be at less than his or her best before we throw ourselves in harms way. I won’t, because I have every intention of living through this to pay back the bastards for what they did to me.” Toras sullenly growled and gained some curious looks from the others in return.
“Just what exactly did they do to you Toras?” Aren glanced up from where she had been praying and largely ignoring the conversations of the others.
The half-celestial chuckled very grimly and looked over at her, “It’s not pleasant. Do you really care to hear it?”
“Please do, if it’s on your mind we should hear it.” Aren spoke up softy from where she sat opposite the fighter.
“Well, they don’t have anything on me. Rather, they have something on the one woman I’ve ever had feelings for. She died years ago and I never got the chance to ever really tell her I loved her. I lost it after she was killed. I stormed the keep that the enemies of my local lord had occupied and I killed them to the last mine. I’ll spare you the details of what I actually did to the people directly responsible for her torture and execution, but it wasn’t pretty and I’m not proud of my rage that day.”
Toras took a deep breath and continued as the others looked on with a mix of concern, empathy, and pity, “Trenevain, or the mercanes, or maybe both; they found her body or maybe just called her back from the dead without need of it. But they returned her to life and then tortured her to death a second time! And they’ve been repeating that each day since they first blackmailed us all. Every day that has passed I fear that they’re doing the same and there’s no way that I can stop it unless I do what they tell me. For the first time in a very long time I feel utterly powerless.”
He slammed his hand down with a loud ‘crack!’ on the top of the table before he sat down to clear a few tears from his eyes. “They gave me a sensory stone that showed them doing that. They may have only done that once, or they may, like they claimed, be doing it over and over again, dragging her back from her rest and putting her through a hell she never deserved.”
A palpable silence descended over the chamber as the other six looked at Toras with shock on their faces. “They’ll pay. I will put them through far worse than they’ve done to her and me before this is over. I swear by my god that I will make them pay.”
“And we’ll help you. All of us owe them something and they’ll be paying for each and every thing they’ve done to us and put us through. I know I want to be there at your side when you get that chance.” Fyrehowl cleared a tear from her own face as she looked resolutely at Toras then glanced at the other nods of agreement from the rest of the group.
No other real conversation could truly begin after the emotional catharsis of Toras’s story and oath, and so the group gradually drifted off to sleep. Nisha curled up under the table, Tristol gathered his familiar and spellbook close to himself and curled up with them. Clueless drifted to sleep with one hand curled around his sword and the other curled around the bottle of fey-wine. Fyrehowl and Florian both slept adjacent to Clueless, perhaps closer to the half-fey than might be considered normal for traveling companions but even had he noticed it, Clueless would have been exactly that. Finally, Aren and Toras slumped against the walls of the chamber, propped up by cushions and as content as they might be with the blackmail lurking over them omnipresent in their waking minds.
Several hours passed and the group slept as well as they could, bracing their bodies for whatever they might soon face. They woke eventually and ate a small breakfast to suite their appetite and taste, the food once again supplied by the magical table. There was little conversation amongst them before they gathered their things, consulted the maps the mercane patriarch had provided, and left by way of the ethereal curtain at the far end of the chamber. They all felt more or less the same: uncertain of the immediate future, but resolute that they would all live to return what had been done to them. All of those feelings had no need to be placed into words as they all emerged onto the ethereal plane.
The demiplane behind them shimmered with a blurred orange and white haze that flickered softly against the muted rolling white banks of formless fog that drifted across the void.
“Alright Nisha, you have the compass, which way are we headed?” Clueless stretched his wings and glanced over at the tiefling.
“Umm…” Nisha glanced at the compass and spun around in a circle before pointing at one otherwise featureless spot in the slowly swirling ethereal clouds. “There.”
Toras floundered slightly off to one side, uncertain how to actually move about within the ephemeral ether surrounding them all. “How do we actually move around in this? Anyone?”
Tristol glanced over as he helped usher his familiar into a small dimensional pouch, “Either fly, or swim, or just think about moving in one particular direction and you’ll go that way. No solid ground on this plane, so there’s nothing really to grip onto. But you can still move around regardless. Anyone else need help?”
Clueless grinned and fluttered his wings slightly as Florian took a moment to get used to the odd mechanics of the plane. “Oh by the holy breasts of Sharess! Stop showing off you. That’s not fair and you know it.”
Clueless laughed at the unexpected and novel swear before Aren turned and glanced at them both unapprovingly. “Sorry…” they both said simultaneously.
“Alright, come on you three, we need to get moving. Some of us are on a restricted timetable here.” Fyrehowl said firmly with the smallest hint of a growl and marshaled the group together as they all went diving headfirst into the ethereal shallows surrounding them in all directions.
Hours upon hours passed and ever so slowly the ambient light in the swirling clouds of ether grew more muted and more like an odd partial moonlight they deeper they dove. Periodically the group stopped to consult the compass and/or the maps they had been given by the mercane, but otherwise the travel went smoothly and without incident. But everything has an exception…
Some eight hours into their travel through the ethereal, diving ever deeper into the trackless sea, the group of seven was tested in battle together for the first time as a group. Hurtling out of the misty ether and screaming in their own alien tongue, a group of eight red skinned, four armed creatures emerged. Looking like some unholy crossbreed between reptiles and insects, the Xill swarmed over the party. Natives to the deep ethereal and rumored to use living humans as host for their young, they were formed of a group of seven blade wielding warriors and a single, heavily ornamented cleric who hung back, hurling spells and supporting his lesser.
The battle was brief and spectacular. Before the Xill had closed ranks they were struck by an explosive ball of flame conjured to life by Tristol’s sorcery in their midst. Toras, Clueless and Fyrehowl met them blow for blow as the Xill warriors surged forwards. Florian’s protective spells warded away many of the blows from the two largest Xill that might have otherwise hit before he finally conjured a blinding column of holy flames atop his Xill counterpart some twenty yards distant. Badly injured, the Xill cleric’s invocations to whatever god he served were silenced by another eruption of flame that crossed the distance between Tristol and himself before exploding in pyroclastic fury.
Breathing heavily and smiling with the sudden release of pent up rage and anger, Toras glanced across the ethereal battlefield as the bloodied, inert and scorched corpses of the Xill slowly drifted out of view to vanish into the featureless fog from which they had first emerged.
“Damn we’re good.” Nisha grinned with glee as the group drifted back together fresh from their first combined victory.
Fyrehowl wiped her blade free of the thick black blood of one of the larger Xill as Clueless darted from one side of the group to the next, emotionally high from their success as a group. The half-fey’s wings glimmered with dancing flickers of faerie fire as his passage left tiny eddies in the ether.
“Anyone need to stop and rest after that? If you do, you’ll have earned it. Otherwise we should probably keep on going.” Tristol asked and looked at each of his companions. Upon hearing not a single request to pause and rest, the group resumed their travel deeper into the ethereal.
Hours more passed but little of mention was encountered as they passed from one unremarkable bank of ether to the next. They talked on and off during the time as they suffered no attacks, nor any natural obstacle on the plane to slow them down. However some nine hours after the encounter with the Xill, they found something that drew their attention.
Swirling through the mists surrounding the group were flocks and clouds of shimmering, multicolored beetles. Each of them the size of a human’s thumbnail they lazily drifted with barely a sound through the ether, glowing in ever changing swirls and hues of rainbow colors from one end of the spectrum to the other. Nisha chased after a few of them for a moment before giving up as they swam in circles around her. Compared to them she was clumsy and slow, and she stuck out a tongue at one of the flocks of bugs as she came to the same realization. Florian held out an open hand to one of them and it lighted down on his hand. “Pretty. I’ve never seen one of these before.”
He paused and looked at it closer, “They’re harmless right? Not flesh eating or anything, yes? Tristol? Clueless?”
Fyrehowl laughed, “They’re as harmless as fireflies, and you can pretty much think of them as the ethereal equivalent. I think Aren can back me up on this one.” She looked over at the priestess who nodded and smiled as a cluster of the glowing insects buzzed lazily around her outstretched arm.
“Actually… hold on a second and let me try something. Can you keep that bug on your hand comfy Florian? I want to talk to him for a minute.” Clueless grinned and hovered for a moment in the ether, concentrating deeply on something as his wings flickered with a distinct pattern of colors.
“Try talking to it? They’re not really intelligent. I can normally talk to just about anything, but it still has to be smart enough to speak to someone in the first place.” Fyrehowl blinked and looked curiously at the bladesinger as he stopped what he was doing and floated over to Florian’s side with a flutter of his wings.
“Hello there little one,” Clueless thought more than spoke towards the single ether scarab perched happily on Florian’s hand. He hadn’t tried this trick since waking up in Hopeless and so he wasn’t honestly sure if would work on the tiny animal, or if he’d be able to make it work even if it normally would.
There was a buzzing noise from the sparkling insect as it moved to face Clueless. Clueless smiled at it and it buzzed again. All the others heard was silence from the half-fey and a sporadic buzz and dancing by the ether scarab, almost like the ‘speech’ of a prime material honeybee.
“Hello large winged swimmer. You rare here. Not see many your kind this deep.” The ether scarab’s movements and buzzing somehow made perfect sense to Clueless and he smiled widely before replying in his own mind to the little creature perched on Florian’s hand.
“Hello to you too little one. My friends and I are looking for something deeper still, do you know if anything is down in that direction that we should be wary of.” Clueless mentally remembered the maps that Nisha had been carrying, and then glanced in the direction that the group had been traveling in. The beetle buzzed rapidly in return and danced around on Florian’s hand animatedly.
“Danger. Large angry great huge large one there. Devours things swimming that way. Great ugly one.” The ether scarab seemed extremely insistent about the creature it was describing. In his mind Clueless had a sudden image of a gigantic crab-like beast with claws and a great fanged maw that glowed in the same strange colors as the ether scarabs. Likely all a lure to attract prey.
“How can we avoid it if we’re going that way? We need to dive down below it.” Clueless projected the words into the bug’s mind and it paused for a moment and flitted about on Florian’s hand once more before buzzing in several distinct patterns.
“Swim along edges of swirling whirlpools and currents in the deep. Great hungry thing not go there, slow swimmer. Tricks food come to it. Not hunter.” Clueless smiled as the beetle imparted its advice.
Florian looked to the bladesinger, “What’d it say?” As she asked her question the scarab lifted its wings and buzzed off to rejoin its fellows as they flitted through the ether. Clueless waved to the rainbow shimmering insect and flitted his own wings towards the flock with a rush of faerie fire sparkling over them in imitation of the beetles’ own patterns.
“Well… there’s something large and hungry in the way that we’re heading. That’s the bad news.” The others in the group groaned and glanced warily in that direction. “The good news is that the beetle knew how to avoid it and still not be too far off from where we’re going on our map.”
Nisha pulled out the maps and drifted over towards Clueless, “Lead on, I’d rather not get eaten in transit.”
Clueless grinned, “Thank the beetles, not me. I’m glad I remembered how to do that. Anyways, on the map here there are some areas marked as dangerous because of some storms in the ether, if I’m reading the gith here right.”
“More ‘tornado’ than storm, but close enough.” Tristol remarked as he drifted close and glanced at the maps.
“But all we need to do to keep away from whatever it was the scarab mentioned is to skirt along the marked area here and we should be fine. Apparently for a hungry monster this thing doesn’t like to leave home. Good for us.” Clueless tapped the center of the map with his finger where the creature likely would be lairing. Nisha marked it with the words ‘here there be monsters’.
Before they departed, Clueless took out the remaining scraps of food he had gotten from the demiplane and scattered it out into the ether for the remaining ether scarabs to scavage. He smiled as they hungrily swarmed over the bits of food. "Enjoy little ones, you may have saved us a good deal of time and a world of hurt. That's the least you deserve."
Hours upon hours passed while the group drifted through the nearly endless expanse of misty ether, each mile as unremarkable as the last. The trackless sea certainly was living up to its moniker as they found no landmarks, no denizens and nothing to mark their way. But eventually the ether began to drift and swirl with some unseen turbulence bubbling within its unknown depths.
A wave of trembling mist brushed against the party as they paused, something like the electric calm before a storm seemed to be lingering out among the misty clouds in the deep surrounding them. “Ok… this would be the edge of those storms. Which way does the compass point now back in the direction that we’re headed towards? I’d rather avoid an ether cyclone just as much as I would something with sharp teeth…” Clueless’s wings shimmered with a faint purple as he spoke.
Nisha pointed off in one direction and the rest followed along, leaving wispy trails in the ether as they continued on, brushing the edges of the more turbulent region. Over the next several hours they nearly plunged headlong into the ever fluctuating boundary of the roiling deep, the invisible winds and currents of the storms lurking within constantly making them correct their movement to avoid being lost in the churning mists that served as both a constant threat and a protection against the things that lurked out in the featureless regions surrounding them. But eventually, with frayed nerves being the only penalty for their passage, the group emerged in a more tranquil section of the ethereal.
“Praise be to the foe hammer, now we just need to find that portal and perhaps kick some ass.” Florian touched his holy symbol as he drifted along within the remarkably still fog that marked their current region.
“I’ll second you on that one. How do we look on the map?” Toras floated past Florian, holding his greatsword out like the figurehead slung at the front of a sailing ship.
“Well, the writing here mentions that the area gets darker and more calm as we approach the portal. Again, that’s if I’m reading the gith right. Sodding maps in piking languages that none of us speak natively.” Nisha smirked and offered the maps to Fyrehowl who happened to drift by at that moment.
“More or less that’s what it says.” The lupinal rolled up the maps and tucked them into her belt before plunging along with the others headlong into the mist as they all continued on following after Nisha at the urging of the planar compass.
Three hours later the area had indeed grown darker, almost murky and hazy as opposed to the otherwise light expanses of the ethereal that they had thus far swum though. But till now they had in truth only been skimming upon the surface of the near ethereal, close to the prime and not into the unknown depths of the ethereal deeps. Now with a tentative push they plunged into the darkening mists.
As they progressed into the darkening portions of the ethereal deep it seemed even more clouded and murky than the rest of the deep ethereal in which they traveled. As they dove still deeper and deeper, by the minute the ethereal seemed… congealed, thicker somehow. Nisha glanced warily at the planar compass as they dove deeper into the murky haze. “This is where it says we’re supposed to be going. Nothing else besides that yet. The portal has to be in here somewhere though.”
Deeper still they could begin to physically feel the space around them condense into a tenuous consistency. Less a solid fog of ether than thickening strands of it with a feel like passing one’s hands through water. The place was utterly silent as they descended into the deep, devoid of life and lit from further in by a pale white luminescence that reached out through the denser stretch of ethereal fog like grasping fingers and tendrils.
“Anyone know what this is? This really doesn’t feel good. Tristol? Clueless, don’t you have some connection to the ethereal?” Florian asked with a worried look before he touched his holy symbol out of reverence and a need for reassurance.
Clueless placed a hand on one of the thicker filaments of congealed ether and watched as his fingers slipped through it to leave fickle and transient lines of passage in their wake. “I don’t have a clue. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard of before.”
Continuing tentatively, the strands and filaments of ethereal mist grew thicker and more numerous, almost like a spider’s web or cocoon of some sorts slowly condensing out of the ether the further they dove in. Gradually the light became less diffuse and more definite in source. The majority of the ghostly light still shown from deeper within the mass of filaments, threads and shapes that rapidly emerged out of the ether, but some of those same structures had begun to shed that same pearly luminescence of their own. Those that did were more defined in shape and structure. Tangled through the morass of ethereal protomatter were distinct shapes that resembled blocks and columns of white, translucent glowing alabaster.
“What the hell are those?” Toras remarked as Fyrehowl squinted to make out any further details.
“I don’t know. I can’t focus on them. They’re blurry, or the ether around them is. That’s not natural though.” The lupinal glanced at a number of the columns before rubbing at her eyes and glancing instead deeper into the core of whatever it was they were within.
“Hold on, I’m going to go take a closer look at them.” Clueless volunteered and dove down towards the nearest column where it hung suspended among the threads and filaments of semi-solid ethereal protomatter. As he drew to within a dozen feet or so he stopped and hovered. Something about it all didn’t seem quite right. He hesitated to approach it further. Some malign but indescribable dread held him from getting any closer to the structure.
“Can you see any more detail?” Aren’s telepathic voice drifted into Clueless’s mind as he stared intently at the sides of the column where writing or decoration of some sort seemed to scrawl across its surface. Letters, runes, pictograms; all of them blurry and hazy. For whatever reason he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes properly on them.
Clueless flicked his wings briefly and drifted closer to the column by a few feet and descended down a half dozen more towards where the bottom of the column might be more visible. As he moved he noticed one detail that had eluded him before. The letters or runes upon the column were not in fact written or carved into the material. The letters floated nearly an inch removed from the ghostly glow that emanated from the stone.
Clueless strained his eyes to focus in on the nearest patch of floating pictograms. His eyes seemed to sting from the strain and the glow from the column and runes alike turned a sudden shade of deep red. He blinked and looked back at his companions only to find that his vision itself had turned that solid color. His eyes had begun to bleed internally from simply focusing on the letters, whatever in the names of the powers they were. A streak of fear passed through the bladesinger then and he prepared to dash back to his waiting fellows to have either Aren or Florian heal the damage that stung the back of his eyes like a burn from hellfire. But he stopped dead in his tracks, his wings motionless, unmoving and covered in a flickering faerie fire cover of dread as his blood suddenly ran with ice at what he saw at the base of the column as he drifted into view.
Near the base of the column the glowing alabaster-like stone changed and shifted in structure and appearance. The stone turned to a dull metallic sheen and from its surface sprouted blades. Hundreds of them. Razor sharp and very, very familiar in their appearance…
(And it was at that point that one of my players tossed the sheet of paper on which I'd drawn an example of the -blades- back onto the gaming table with a startled cry and Clueless's player refused to so much as touch the paper itself irl. *GRIN*)
The chamber dissolved into a haze of muted colors and in another step vanished altogether to open into a small chamber with crystalline walls beyond which swirling gray mist floated like unyielding fog. A single stretch of wall shimmered like the curtain had before, presumably leading out into the ethereal at large. Otherwise the chamber was filled by a long wooden table carved with scenes of various mortal races eating, drinking and making merriment. Plush cushions and pillows lay scattered around the chamber to allow a person to sit and rest or even sleep on the otherwise hard glassy surface of the small pocket sheltered off from the rest of the ethereal.
“So…” Florian began, “How did those long fingered blue bastards get you all into this mess? They poisoned me over breakfast the other morning. I would’ve said yes to their request for help. Clearly they didn’t do their homework on me. And before anyone asks, no I can’t remove the poison myself. I already made certain that yes I’ve got something in me and that it resists the normal curative spells that I know. But before I start rambling on here like an angry fool, I’m Florian, servant of the Foe Hammer, formerly of Toril.”
“Don’t worry, you’re hardly the angriest person here…”, Toras grumbled under his breath, more to himself than otherwise.
“Blackmail, lovely little thing that it is. All of us they’ve got something on, or they’ve got –someone- that we know and you can guess yourself from there on. Me? I’ve got holes in my memory you could march armies through. I don’t remember everything in my past so for all I know anything they claim they’ve got on me could be true.” Clueless shrugged and put his sword down at his side as he settled on one of the cushions. Fyrehowl and Florian sat adjacent to him and began to expand upon their own situations.
Nisha walked over to the table and looked at it with sudden delight, “Well, Hashkar on a righteous bender! Evil moneygrubbers or not, they know how to feed us before sending us off to our deaths! They’ve got a hero’s table!”
The others broke off their explanations of their own blackmail situations to look over to where the tiefling was now sitting on the table, kicking her hooves out like a child on a chair too tall for them to reach the ground, pondering something intently.
“A what?” Toras asked, giving her an odd look (not the first time he’d ever done that).
“A hero’s table! What’s your favorite food, somebody, anybody?” she grinned like an idiot and glanced around at her companions’ faces before finally Clueless walked over.
“I don’t know actually what my favorite food is.” He shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter, just think about your favorite food. Maybe if you just think about ‘my favorite food’ as an idea it’ll work. These things make whatever it is you ask them for. It’s the greatest thing since Ooze mephits in the guvners’ law library!”
The others just chuckled politely at Nisha’s –exhuberant- opinion on such things and looked at Clueless as he looked intently at the table and put out his hands. There was a small flash of sparkling light in front of him that swirled away to reveal a small platter of food on a golden plate and an elaborate fluted glass bottle filled with a multicolored and swirling liquid.
“Wow, you’ve got exotic tastes. What is that?” Fyrehowl asked as she sniffed in the direction of the newly created food. She stood up and wandered over to the table as well, hunger getting the best of her.
“I’d tell you but I don’t actually know what it is. Apparently I used to like it a lot though.” Clueless said as he sat down on one of the cushions on the ground as the others gradually made their own choices from the table.
True to Nisha’s word as they made their rounds they came away with smiles on their faces and bowls and dishes of food as well as amble amounts of drink to suit their most wild or imaginative tastes. All the while Nisha kicked her hooves back and forth happily. Eventually Tristol walked up with his familiar in tow and looked suspiciously at the table.
“It’s not poisoned is it? I’m a bit overly cautious with these people considering what they did to me to get me here. I mean… I didn’t do anything to these guys! Nothing!” the mage sighed as his familiar hopped up onto the table, apparently being in a more decisive mood than its master. Nisha cooed at the fox and put out a finger to scratch the vulpine’s head.
“Your familiar is cute. Aren’t you cute!” the tiefling said as she descended into babbling at the fox who simply looked at her with the typical canid expression of perplexion with its head tilted to one side. Tristol chuckled and looked over at her with a smile.
“He’s smarter than he looks, he just can’t talk to people. Not yet anyways.” Tristol rubbed the fox’s head lightly as a small dish of some sweetmeats popped in front of its nose. It barked happily and swished its tail as it promptly buried its muzzle in the bowl and munched away at its meal.
Tristol looked back at Nisha, “So what got you into this? I’ve heard from a few of the others. It seems like Florian over there, he and I have the same situation. And we’ve got a time limit too…” He shrugged off the gloom and tried to smile for the overly perky tiefer who sat there still swinging her legs cheerfully.
“Well, I’m mostly a thi… collector of donations from overly rich perso… overly rich evil fiends who like to punch small children in the mouth and laugh at old people. Exactly.” He chuckled and blushed slightly as she glanced over at Toras who looked at her with skepticism. “Yeah, as I was saying… I do that and I’m pretty good at it if I do say so myself. Yes I do. Well thank you Nisha you’re very kind. Oh you’re certainly welcome.” She babbled back and forth to herself a bit more, even supplying gestures for each persona switch. Tristol tried very hard not to laugh.
“But I also know a little bit of magic. Just a bit, and I’m mostly self-taught and from a few other mages I knew from here and there. However I’m at a distinct lack of my spellbook right now since that piking genasi stole it from me. Without it I know maybe two or three spells that I’ve used enough to remember without studying the book. But that’s what they’re blackmailing me with, my spellbook.” She shrugged, “I don’t think my situation is as harsh as some of the rest of you all though, you especially. That’s harsh.”
Clueless looked up from where he sat tentatively tasting his apparently favorite food. “Well, from what I remember I used to be able to cast spells as well. Only problem is I didn’t wake up with a spellbook on me…”
Tristol looked over towards Clueless as Nisha poked his familiar with her own tail and the fox tried to bite it. “Are you sure you needed a spellbook? Not all casters need one. Some have an innate command of the spells they know, but they usually can’t learn new spells easily. Maybe you fit into that sort of mage?”
Clueless shook his head, “No, I remember having a book. I don’t have any spells left in memory so I can’t just write them back down to preserve it all. If I live through all of this I’m going to have to start over from scratch it seems.” With that the bladesinger took a deep draught of the bottle he’d been given by the table. With a startled look he gasped for breath as a mixture of sparkling light and colored smoke wafted from his mouth.
“Woah…” came his response in a weak voice after he took a few moments to steady himself. “I have no idea what this is, but that’s the first time I can remember any alcohol actually doing anything to me. I tried to get drunk back in Sigil and I couldn’t. This… probably could though.”
Fyrehowl looked at Clueless and laughed as she took a seat next to him with her own meal. Florian did the same and silently said a small prayer before taking a first few tentative bites before he dug in with gusto.
“So… Tristol. Once we’re done with this could I possibly get you to teach me some more magic? Once I get my spellbook back that is. Kind of useless to learn stuff and not be able to write it down and all.” Nisha said with a hopeful grin.
Tristol paused for a moment and looked over at both Clueless and Nisha before taking out his own spellbook along with some other bits of paper, thread and ink. “I can’t give you both back everything you had, but I can get you started.” With that, the wizard carefully and deliberately began tearing out blank pages from the back of his own book as well as a few selected pages already filled out with spells from his own repertoire.
“This should start you out… if you have anything left in memory you can put them down on paper again here after you’re done eating. If there’s a few that you really liked or want again I’m willing to part with a few of them since I’ll still have all of the more powerful ones in here to play around with. I can replace the lower sphere spells easily once we’re done here.” Tristol paused and sighed, “I also won’t really need them all unless I can get an antidote to the poison they gave me.”
“Thank you… I’m not sure what to say besides that. That’s a real sacrifice for you to give up parts of your own spellbook.” Nisha accepted the pages that Tristol bound together with string and handed out to Clueless and her. “Maybe a little bit of your favorite drink might cheer you up? You’re getting too gloomy and we need you in better spirits if we’ll be running up against something with an allergic to fireballs out there.”
Clueless accepted Tristol’s donation with equal humbleness and offered a drink from the bottle he held in one hand. “And if you want something that’s just… different, and potent too, there’s always this. Firewine has nothing on this stuff…”
Tristol’s familiar’s ears perked at that mention and it would have dashed over to pilfer some of it from the half-fey before Tristol firmly grabbed it around the waist and placed it in his lap. “I don’t think so. The last time you tried Baatorian firewine you sneezed smoke and I saw stars. I don’t even want to think what –that- stuff would do to you, or me for that matter. Don’t even think about it…”
The fox whined softly and even made one last ditch attempt to leap up onto the magical table itself to try and request some of the same alcoholic witches brew for itself. Tristol’s hand on one of its tails ended that adventure before it started. But it got Nisha and Toras both to laugh at the tiny canid’s failed exploits.
As Tristol helped Nisha recall the spells that she had once had in her own spellbook, presumably recalling a few of them from his own memory to write down with her, Clueless laid back and tried to relax. His stomach was full and his head slightly buzzed from the fey-wine he’d just drunk. Fyrehowl and Florian both looked down at him and smiled, then they both looked up at each other and glared for a fraction of a second. Fyrehowl looked oddly at the human for a moment before looking back down to Clueless.
“Can I try…” both Fyrehowl and Florian said simultaneously before pausing and looking at each other again. “So tell me…” again, both of them repeated the same words and yet again glared at each other.
“Hmm?” Clueless looked up lazily at them both, still slightly buzzed on the effects of the fey-wine the hero’s table had provided him.
Over the next half hour, Clueless sat and randomly chatted with Fyrehowl and Florian. Had Clueless not lived up to his namesake in that regard, nor had he been slightly inebriated, he might have clued into the fact that both of his companions had gradually been edging closer to him as they chatted about their own experiences and asked him to talk about his. In fact, both Florian and Fyrehowl both seemed to be attempting to outdo each other in terms of getting to know the bladesinger that they both crowded around there on the floor of the chamber.
Nisha noticed and rolled her eyes, Tristol and his familiar were both too busy studying the wizard’s spellbook, Aren was deeply in prayer, and Toras was slumped and brooding to himself. Eventually however, Fyrehowl stood up and walked over to the table in the center of the room.
“Anyways… I’ve not had the chance to bath since before we went to Acheron. And I’m sorry; I can’t stand the stink of that place in my fur. I feel like I’ve got a band of imps creeping up on me. Except the smell’s on me and not from any imps. Can anyone here see in the dark?” Fyrhowl grumbled as she walked over towards the far end of the table. She held out her hands and produced several goblets of water and a large bowl of the same.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to take a bath in here…” Nisha said with a bit of exasperation. “There’s probably a joke I can make about revealing the glory of the heavens and all, but nude celestial isn’t something I like to see.” Behind her, Tristol’s familiar whined and covered its eyes with its forepaws.
“That’s fine.” Clueless said and continued to look in her direction, seemingly oblivious to the idea that she desired some level of privacy.
“Very funny.” The lupinal replied as she stepped to the far end of the room and a globe of darkness suddenly popped into being around her. Unphased and still not getting the hint, Clueless turned away to ponder over the spells that he knew he once had.
Under the cover of magical darkness, all the others could hear were sounds of water hitting the floor and the occasional pleased murmur from the celestial as she washed herself. A small puddle gradually seeped out from the confines of the globe of darkness and inched its way across the floor, spreading along the bottom of the small chamber until the splashing noises stopped and Fyrehowl presumably stopped pouring out any more water.
A drenched and water slicked hand groped out of the edge of the darkness, feeling along the top of the table to finally land upon a towel and drag it back into the darkness with the pile of clothing left on the tabletop as well. A minute later and the globe of darkness faded to reveal Fyrehowl drenched in water with her fur limp and matted down with the added weight. She stepped back a step and without warning rapidly shook from side to side like a mortal dog in from a rainstorm. A spray of water shot out from her fur as she flung the water every which way to dry herself off amid sharp and sudden howls of protest from the others in the room as they scrambled for cover from the sudden unwelcome shower of water droplets.
“Ewww, you could have warned us. But I do approve of the spontaneity!” Nisha chuckled and patted herself dry with a cushion that she had used as cover a moment before.
Fyrehowl smiled from under a mess of still wet fur that flanked both sides of her muzzle like a mop tossed over top of her head. “Hey, I needed it, trust me here. I don’t feel trailed by smelly imps anymore at the very least.”
“You just look like a damp puffball now.” Clueless said as he snickered.
“Drink less. Trust me here, drink less.” The lupinal sniped back, none too amused as she smoothed down the errant and honestly overly poofy fur that covered her.
“Actually it’s probably a good idea to not get soused on that wine Clueless, I don’t care how good it actually is. It won’t do us any good to actually have you drunk while we wander around the ethereal here soon. I don’t want anyone to be at less than his or her best before we throw ourselves in harms way. I won’t, because I have every intention of living through this to pay back the bastards for what they did to me.” Toras sullenly growled and gained some curious looks from the others in return.
“Just what exactly did they do to you Toras?” Aren glanced up from where she had been praying and largely ignoring the conversations of the others.
The half-celestial chuckled very grimly and looked over at her, “It’s not pleasant. Do you really care to hear it?”
“Please do, if it’s on your mind we should hear it.” Aren spoke up softy from where she sat opposite the fighter.
“Well, they don’t have anything on me. Rather, they have something on the one woman I’ve ever had feelings for. She died years ago and I never got the chance to ever really tell her I loved her. I lost it after she was killed. I stormed the keep that the enemies of my local lord had occupied and I killed them to the last mine. I’ll spare you the details of what I actually did to the people directly responsible for her torture and execution, but it wasn’t pretty and I’m not proud of my rage that day.”
Toras took a deep breath and continued as the others looked on with a mix of concern, empathy, and pity, “Trenevain, or the mercanes, or maybe both; they found her body or maybe just called her back from the dead without need of it. But they returned her to life and then tortured her to death a second time! And they’ve been repeating that each day since they first blackmailed us all. Every day that has passed I fear that they’re doing the same and there’s no way that I can stop it unless I do what they tell me. For the first time in a very long time I feel utterly powerless.”
He slammed his hand down with a loud ‘crack!’ on the top of the table before he sat down to clear a few tears from his eyes. “They gave me a sensory stone that showed them doing that. They may have only done that once, or they may, like they claimed, be doing it over and over again, dragging her back from her rest and putting her through a hell she never deserved.”
A palpable silence descended over the chamber as the other six looked at Toras with shock on their faces. “They’ll pay. I will put them through far worse than they’ve done to her and me before this is over. I swear by my god that I will make them pay.”
“And we’ll help you. All of us owe them something and they’ll be paying for each and every thing they’ve done to us and put us through. I know I want to be there at your side when you get that chance.” Fyrehowl cleared a tear from her own face as she looked resolutely at Toras then glanced at the other nods of agreement from the rest of the group.
No other real conversation could truly begin after the emotional catharsis of Toras’s story and oath, and so the group gradually drifted off to sleep. Nisha curled up under the table, Tristol gathered his familiar and spellbook close to himself and curled up with them. Clueless drifted to sleep with one hand curled around his sword and the other curled around the bottle of fey-wine. Fyrehowl and Florian both slept adjacent to Clueless, perhaps closer to the half-fey than might be considered normal for traveling companions but even had he noticed it, Clueless would have been exactly that. Finally, Aren and Toras slumped against the walls of the chamber, propped up by cushions and as content as they might be with the blackmail lurking over them omnipresent in their waking minds.
Several hours passed and the group slept as well as they could, bracing their bodies for whatever they might soon face. They woke eventually and ate a small breakfast to suite their appetite and taste, the food once again supplied by the magical table. There was little conversation amongst them before they gathered their things, consulted the maps the mercane patriarch had provided, and left by way of the ethereal curtain at the far end of the chamber. They all felt more or less the same: uncertain of the immediate future, but resolute that they would all live to return what had been done to them. All of those feelings had no need to be placed into words as they all emerged onto the ethereal plane.
The demiplane behind them shimmered with a blurred orange and white haze that flickered softly against the muted rolling white banks of formless fog that drifted across the void.
“Alright Nisha, you have the compass, which way are we headed?” Clueless stretched his wings and glanced over at the tiefling.
“Umm…” Nisha glanced at the compass and spun around in a circle before pointing at one otherwise featureless spot in the slowly swirling ethereal clouds. “There.”
Toras floundered slightly off to one side, uncertain how to actually move about within the ephemeral ether surrounding them all. “How do we actually move around in this? Anyone?”
Tristol glanced over as he helped usher his familiar into a small dimensional pouch, “Either fly, or swim, or just think about moving in one particular direction and you’ll go that way. No solid ground on this plane, so there’s nothing really to grip onto. But you can still move around regardless. Anyone else need help?”
Clueless grinned and fluttered his wings slightly as Florian took a moment to get used to the odd mechanics of the plane. “Oh by the holy breasts of Sharess! Stop showing off you. That’s not fair and you know it.”
Clueless laughed at the unexpected and novel swear before Aren turned and glanced at them both unapprovingly. “Sorry…” they both said simultaneously.
“Alright, come on you three, we need to get moving. Some of us are on a restricted timetable here.” Fyrehowl said firmly with the smallest hint of a growl and marshaled the group together as they all went diving headfirst into the ethereal shallows surrounding them in all directions.
Hours upon hours passed and ever so slowly the ambient light in the swirling clouds of ether grew more muted and more like an odd partial moonlight they deeper they dove. Periodically the group stopped to consult the compass and/or the maps they had been given by the mercane, but otherwise the travel went smoothly and without incident. But everything has an exception…
Some eight hours into their travel through the ethereal, diving ever deeper into the trackless sea, the group of seven was tested in battle together for the first time as a group. Hurtling out of the misty ether and screaming in their own alien tongue, a group of eight red skinned, four armed creatures emerged. Looking like some unholy crossbreed between reptiles and insects, the Xill swarmed over the party. Natives to the deep ethereal and rumored to use living humans as host for their young, they were formed of a group of seven blade wielding warriors and a single, heavily ornamented cleric who hung back, hurling spells and supporting his lesser.
The battle was brief and spectacular. Before the Xill had closed ranks they were struck by an explosive ball of flame conjured to life by Tristol’s sorcery in their midst. Toras, Clueless and Fyrehowl met them blow for blow as the Xill warriors surged forwards. Florian’s protective spells warded away many of the blows from the two largest Xill that might have otherwise hit before he finally conjured a blinding column of holy flames atop his Xill counterpart some twenty yards distant. Badly injured, the Xill cleric’s invocations to whatever god he served were silenced by another eruption of flame that crossed the distance between Tristol and himself before exploding in pyroclastic fury.
Breathing heavily and smiling with the sudden release of pent up rage and anger, Toras glanced across the ethereal battlefield as the bloodied, inert and scorched corpses of the Xill slowly drifted out of view to vanish into the featureless fog from which they had first emerged.
“Damn we’re good.” Nisha grinned with glee as the group drifted back together fresh from their first combined victory.
Fyrehowl wiped her blade free of the thick black blood of one of the larger Xill as Clueless darted from one side of the group to the next, emotionally high from their success as a group. The half-fey’s wings glimmered with dancing flickers of faerie fire as his passage left tiny eddies in the ether.
“Anyone need to stop and rest after that? If you do, you’ll have earned it. Otherwise we should probably keep on going.” Tristol asked and looked at each of his companions. Upon hearing not a single request to pause and rest, the group resumed their travel deeper into the ethereal.
Hours more passed but little of mention was encountered as they passed from one unremarkable bank of ether to the next. They talked on and off during the time as they suffered no attacks, nor any natural obstacle on the plane to slow them down. However some nine hours after the encounter with the Xill, they found something that drew their attention.
Swirling through the mists surrounding the group were flocks and clouds of shimmering, multicolored beetles. Each of them the size of a human’s thumbnail they lazily drifted with barely a sound through the ether, glowing in ever changing swirls and hues of rainbow colors from one end of the spectrum to the other. Nisha chased after a few of them for a moment before giving up as they swam in circles around her. Compared to them she was clumsy and slow, and she stuck out a tongue at one of the flocks of bugs as she came to the same realization. Florian held out an open hand to one of them and it lighted down on his hand. “Pretty. I’ve never seen one of these before.”
He paused and looked at it closer, “They’re harmless right? Not flesh eating or anything, yes? Tristol? Clueless?”
Fyrehowl laughed, “They’re as harmless as fireflies, and you can pretty much think of them as the ethereal equivalent. I think Aren can back me up on this one.” She looked over at the priestess who nodded and smiled as a cluster of the glowing insects buzzed lazily around her outstretched arm.
“Actually… hold on a second and let me try something. Can you keep that bug on your hand comfy Florian? I want to talk to him for a minute.” Clueless grinned and hovered for a moment in the ether, concentrating deeply on something as his wings flickered with a distinct pattern of colors.
“Try talking to it? They’re not really intelligent. I can normally talk to just about anything, but it still has to be smart enough to speak to someone in the first place.” Fyrehowl blinked and looked curiously at the bladesinger as he stopped what he was doing and floated over to Florian’s side with a flutter of his wings.
“Hello there little one,” Clueless thought more than spoke towards the single ether scarab perched happily on Florian’s hand. He hadn’t tried this trick since waking up in Hopeless and so he wasn’t honestly sure if would work on the tiny animal, or if he’d be able to make it work even if it normally would.
There was a buzzing noise from the sparkling insect as it moved to face Clueless. Clueless smiled at it and it buzzed again. All the others heard was silence from the half-fey and a sporadic buzz and dancing by the ether scarab, almost like the ‘speech’ of a prime material honeybee.
“Hello large winged swimmer. You rare here. Not see many your kind this deep.” The ether scarab’s movements and buzzing somehow made perfect sense to Clueless and he smiled widely before replying in his own mind to the little creature perched on Florian’s hand.
“Hello to you too little one. My friends and I are looking for something deeper still, do you know if anything is down in that direction that we should be wary of.” Clueless mentally remembered the maps that Nisha had been carrying, and then glanced in the direction that the group had been traveling in. The beetle buzzed rapidly in return and danced around on Florian’s hand animatedly.
“Danger. Large angry great huge large one there. Devours things swimming that way. Great ugly one.” The ether scarab seemed extremely insistent about the creature it was describing. In his mind Clueless had a sudden image of a gigantic crab-like beast with claws and a great fanged maw that glowed in the same strange colors as the ether scarabs. Likely all a lure to attract prey.
“How can we avoid it if we’re going that way? We need to dive down below it.” Clueless projected the words into the bug’s mind and it paused for a moment and flitted about on Florian’s hand once more before buzzing in several distinct patterns.
“Swim along edges of swirling whirlpools and currents in the deep. Great hungry thing not go there, slow swimmer. Tricks food come to it. Not hunter.” Clueless smiled as the beetle imparted its advice.
Florian looked to the bladesinger, “What’d it say?” As she asked her question the scarab lifted its wings and buzzed off to rejoin its fellows as they flitted through the ether. Clueless waved to the rainbow shimmering insect and flitted his own wings towards the flock with a rush of faerie fire sparkling over them in imitation of the beetles’ own patterns.
“Well… there’s something large and hungry in the way that we’re heading. That’s the bad news.” The others in the group groaned and glanced warily in that direction. “The good news is that the beetle knew how to avoid it and still not be too far off from where we’re going on our map.”
Nisha pulled out the maps and drifted over towards Clueless, “Lead on, I’d rather not get eaten in transit.”
Clueless grinned, “Thank the beetles, not me. I’m glad I remembered how to do that. Anyways, on the map here there are some areas marked as dangerous because of some storms in the ether, if I’m reading the gith here right.”
“More ‘tornado’ than storm, but close enough.” Tristol remarked as he drifted close and glanced at the maps.
“But all we need to do to keep away from whatever it was the scarab mentioned is to skirt along the marked area here and we should be fine. Apparently for a hungry monster this thing doesn’t like to leave home. Good for us.” Clueless tapped the center of the map with his finger where the creature likely would be lairing. Nisha marked it with the words ‘here there be monsters’.
Before they departed, Clueless took out the remaining scraps of food he had gotten from the demiplane and scattered it out into the ether for the remaining ether scarabs to scavage. He smiled as they hungrily swarmed over the bits of food. "Enjoy little ones, you may have saved us a good deal of time and a world of hurt. That's the least you deserve."
Hours upon hours passed while the group drifted through the nearly endless expanse of misty ether, each mile as unremarkable as the last. The trackless sea certainly was living up to its moniker as they found no landmarks, no denizens and nothing to mark their way. But eventually the ether began to drift and swirl with some unseen turbulence bubbling within its unknown depths.
A wave of trembling mist brushed against the party as they paused, something like the electric calm before a storm seemed to be lingering out among the misty clouds in the deep surrounding them. “Ok… this would be the edge of those storms. Which way does the compass point now back in the direction that we’re headed towards? I’d rather avoid an ether cyclone just as much as I would something with sharp teeth…” Clueless’s wings shimmered with a faint purple as he spoke.
Nisha pointed off in one direction and the rest followed along, leaving wispy trails in the ether as they continued on, brushing the edges of the more turbulent region. Over the next several hours they nearly plunged headlong into the ever fluctuating boundary of the roiling deep, the invisible winds and currents of the storms lurking within constantly making them correct their movement to avoid being lost in the churning mists that served as both a constant threat and a protection against the things that lurked out in the featureless regions surrounding them. But eventually, with frayed nerves being the only penalty for their passage, the group emerged in a more tranquil section of the ethereal.
“Praise be to the foe hammer, now we just need to find that portal and perhaps kick some ass.” Florian touched his holy symbol as he drifted along within the remarkably still fog that marked their current region.
“I’ll second you on that one. How do we look on the map?” Toras floated past Florian, holding his greatsword out like the figurehead slung at the front of a sailing ship.
“Well, the writing here mentions that the area gets darker and more calm as we approach the portal. Again, that’s if I’m reading the gith right. Sodding maps in piking languages that none of us speak natively.” Nisha smirked and offered the maps to Fyrehowl who happened to drift by at that moment.
“More or less that’s what it says.” The lupinal rolled up the maps and tucked them into her belt before plunging along with the others headlong into the mist as they all continued on following after Nisha at the urging of the planar compass.
Three hours later the area had indeed grown darker, almost murky and hazy as opposed to the otherwise light expanses of the ethereal that they had thus far swum though. But till now they had in truth only been skimming upon the surface of the near ethereal, close to the prime and not into the unknown depths of the ethereal deeps. Now with a tentative push they plunged into the darkening mists.
As they progressed into the darkening portions of the ethereal deep it seemed even more clouded and murky than the rest of the deep ethereal in which they traveled. As they dove still deeper and deeper, by the minute the ethereal seemed… congealed, thicker somehow. Nisha glanced warily at the planar compass as they dove deeper into the murky haze. “This is where it says we’re supposed to be going. Nothing else besides that yet. The portal has to be in here somewhere though.”
Deeper still they could begin to physically feel the space around them condense into a tenuous consistency. Less a solid fog of ether than thickening strands of it with a feel like passing one’s hands through water. The place was utterly silent as they descended into the deep, devoid of life and lit from further in by a pale white luminescence that reached out through the denser stretch of ethereal fog like grasping fingers and tendrils.
“Anyone know what this is? This really doesn’t feel good. Tristol? Clueless, don’t you have some connection to the ethereal?” Florian asked with a worried look before he touched his holy symbol out of reverence and a need for reassurance.
Clueless placed a hand on one of the thicker filaments of congealed ether and watched as his fingers slipped through it to leave fickle and transient lines of passage in their wake. “I don’t have a clue. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard of before.”
Continuing tentatively, the strands and filaments of ethereal mist grew thicker and more numerous, almost like a spider’s web or cocoon of some sorts slowly condensing out of the ether the further they dove in. Gradually the light became less diffuse and more definite in source. The majority of the ghostly light still shown from deeper within the mass of filaments, threads and shapes that rapidly emerged out of the ether, but some of those same structures had begun to shed that same pearly luminescence of their own. Those that did were more defined in shape and structure. Tangled through the morass of ethereal protomatter were distinct shapes that resembled blocks and columns of white, translucent glowing alabaster.
“What the hell are those?” Toras remarked as Fyrehowl squinted to make out any further details.
“I don’t know. I can’t focus on them. They’re blurry, or the ether around them is. That’s not natural though.” The lupinal glanced at a number of the columns before rubbing at her eyes and glancing instead deeper into the core of whatever it was they were within.
“Hold on, I’m going to go take a closer look at them.” Clueless volunteered and dove down towards the nearest column where it hung suspended among the threads and filaments of semi-solid ethereal protomatter. As he drew to within a dozen feet or so he stopped and hovered. Something about it all didn’t seem quite right. He hesitated to approach it further. Some malign but indescribable dread held him from getting any closer to the structure.
“Can you see any more detail?” Aren’s telepathic voice drifted into Clueless’s mind as he stared intently at the sides of the column where writing or decoration of some sort seemed to scrawl across its surface. Letters, runes, pictograms; all of them blurry and hazy. For whatever reason he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes properly on them.
Clueless flicked his wings briefly and drifted closer to the column by a few feet and descended down a half dozen more towards where the bottom of the column might be more visible. As he moved he noticed one detail that had eluded him before. The letters or runes upon the column were not in fact written or carved into the material. The letters floated nearly an inch removed from the ghostly glow that emanated from the stone.
Clueless strained his eyes to focus in on the nearest patch of floating pictograms. His eyes seemed to sting from the strain and the glow from the column and runes alike turned a sudden shade of deep red. He blinked and looked back at his companions only to find that his vision itself had turned that solid color. His eyes had begun to bleed internally from simply focusing on the letters, whatever in the names of the powers they were. A streak of fear passed through the bladesinger then and he prepared to dash back to his waiting fellows to have either Aren or Florian heal the damage that stung the back of his eyes like a burn from hellfire. But he stopped dead in his tracks, his wings motionless, unmoving and covered in a flickering faerie fire cover of dread as his blood suddenly ran with ice at what he saw at the base of the column as he drifted into view.
Near the base of the column the glowing alabaster-like stone changed and shifted in structure and appearance. The stone turned to a dull metallic sheen and from its surface sprouted blades. Hundreds of them. Razor sharp and very, very familiar in their appearance…
(And it was at that point that one of my players tossed the sheet of paper on which I'd drawn an example of the -blades- back onto the gaming table with a startled cry and Clueless's player refused to so much as touch the paper itself irl. *GRIN*)
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![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
