Mazes, Spellhaunts, and Incantifers. Oh My!
The group clustered closer together and raised their weapons in the direction of the approaching noise. Seconds later they could see the creature emerge around the corner of a building, partially floating along, partially scuttling like an insect between the wall of the building and the dusty cobblestone street. It was a tangle of twisted black lines suspended in a moving, fluid, jelly-like cloud that seemed as insubstantial as a ghost. With the same rustling, skittering noise is closed to within some thirty feet and paused, wavering slightly as it hovered and seemed to examine the group before it.
Tristol warily eyed the creature and he shrugged as Clueless and Toras glanced at him with unspoken questions. The wizard muttered several words in draconic and examined the creature for any latent dweomers. The surprise and confusion on his face was startling as the creature darted forwards.
Clueless held out his hand and gestured at the approaching beast. A flick of his sword carrying hand and a whisper under his breath called forth a crackling bolt of lighting that struck the surging form full in the bulk of its nebulous body; it made no attempt to evade. Like water to a sponge the spell was absorbed into the creatures bulk, lines of energy crackled along the black streaks within the creature’s body, and aside from the pungent reek of ozone there was no effect. The creature stopped, reoriented, and began to snake towards Clueless. The bladesinger began to backup…
Aren invoked a spell of her own, sending a cluster of burning missiles of orange light into the beast’s side that elicited only the same effect. She too backed up as Tristol’s eyes went wide and a single word came rushing into his memory, “Spellhaunt”. With shaking hands he reached into his memory and formed the patterns for a greater dispelling. With any luck he thought he might be able to undo the structure of the living spell that would otherwise hungrily devour the magic of his entire party and himself. Meanwhile Clueless and Toras hacked ineffectually at the beast, their blades passing clean through the ephemeral body of the Spellhaunt.
“This isn’t doing anything, there’s nothing to sodding hit!” Nisha exclaimed as she crouched at the rear of the living spell and repeatedly jabbed her sword into its interior. For all of her efforts, she may as well have been stirring a soup kettle with her blade. When the dweomers on the sword began to flicker and fade she withdrew it with a sharp exclamation and backed away hurriedly.
Then Tristol’s spell struck. With a rush of air the creature seemed to implode and the lines within its body coursed with a black radiance. As it collapsed upon itself it coalesced and with a ragged rush of cold, black fire a black bolt of force erupted from its withering form to arc to the closest target. The bolt hit Toras clear in the chest and made the fighter stagger and have to steady himself.
“Toras!” Aren shouted his name and helped to steady her larger companion as he grimaced and tried to remain standing.
“I’ll be fine… that just took more than a bit out of me.” He waved away any further help and steadied his grip on his sword. “Just what in the hells was that?”
“Something I never want to see again.” Tristol deadpanned.
“Hmm? Do tell.” Fyrehowl asked as she made sure that Toras was fine.
The aasimar took an unsteady breath. “A spellhaunt. A living spell. They’re mistakes and accidents. Every so often under the right, or wrong, circumstances and conditions a spell gets miscast and doesn’t just fail. When that happens the spell becomes alive in some sense, but it fades away eventually unless it can find magic to sustain itself.”
Nisha looked at her sword with a worried expression.
“It eats spells. It’ll drain the charges of scrolls, staves, and wands. It’ll pluck spells from my memory. The only way to destroy them is to either dispel them like any other spell, or counterspell them if you know what spell it was that went wrong originally to create it. This one was some sort of enervation spell… sorry Toras.”
“Not a worry, I’ll be fine.”
Fyrehowl paused and looked at Tristol. “But the faction that got shunted to this maze also ate magic. Either that thing was a mistake during their war against each other, or some bloody fool made one on purpose to take down his enemies.”
“Oh pike it all. If it’s the second case, there’s probably more.” Nisha cursed at her magic-dead sword.
“And if so, we’re probably the only things left alive in here, not counting any spellhaunts. They’d have drained the entire maze dry centuries ago and the wizards would have starved to death even if they could have fought off their own mistakes.” Tristol sighed with resignation.
Florian walked over to Toras, whispered a prayer and laid a softly glowing hand on his shoulder. Toras seemed suddenly more invigorated and thanked the cleric.
“Hope there aren’t more of them, I don’t have any more restoration magic for another half a day or so. Healing wounds, not a problem; causing them, even less of a problem; but restorative magic, that was all I had.”
“We should get moving to that tower. And everyone stay alert, there might be more spellhaunts lurking around here…” Fyrehowl said as she moved down the street, pausing to glance into each building, especially the ruined ones that would have provided dozens of hiding spaces for an ambush.
As they moved through the maze, they realized that true to its name, the streets seemed to double back upon themselves and warp in bizarre fashion. One intersection might lead to three blind alleys, then bring them back to a point they had seen, or thought they had seen, some twenty minutes and a mile earlier. While quiet and dead, the cityscape labyrinth was hardly unoccupied. As they gradually made their way towards the looming edifice of the Tower Sorcerous, the maze came alive around them.
Spellhaunts, dozens of them, seemed to stir from a hibernating torpor instilled on them from centuries of starvation in the magic-dead maze, devoid of any prey but themselves. Each of the ravenous creatures glowed with a color corresponding to the school of the spell whose disastrous warping had birthed it. The spellhaunts seemed to unerringly seek out the magic of the group and rather than fight, they ran.
Eventually the companions reached progressively widening streets and finally they paused at the outer defensive walls that had originally surrounded the block of land upon which the Incantifers had constructed their faction headquarters. Beyond the walls stood the Tower Sorcerous, rising dozens of stories overhead like an infernal black pike awaiting a cavalry charge from the heavens. Not a glimmer of light marked the windows that dotted its exterior.
“Alright, here’s the damn tower. And no welcoming committee…” Fyrehowl growled and glanced back down the broad avenue behind them. Already her ears could listen to a dozen or more spellhaunts crawling like great scuttling insects, hungering for their magic.
“Except for the welcoming committee that we’ve already been acquainted with…” Clueless smirked and stared up at the tower’s defensive walls. “Wow…”
Even with the steady approach of waves of Spellhaunts then being heard softly in the distance, they all looked up at the fortifications surrounding the tower with awe. Most of the thick, heavy walls were intact, but they were uniformly scarred by flames, pitted by acid, and gouged with the telltale traces of lightning strikes. Craters pockmarked the streets surrounding the battlements and one or two sections of the walls, each nearly 10 feet thick, had collapsed from the ravages of time or the original war that had washed over the tower when its makers turned on each other.
Still standing in silent vigil atop the walls were the dead and crumbling remains of twelve stone golems, each blindly looking outwards into the maze. Several iron golems remained in their own guardianship near the ravaged and crumpled remains of the main gate, the golems now little more than piles of vaguely humanoid rust. Also littering the battlements were nearly twenty human skeletons, each still dressed in the frayed remains of wizardly robes, though some had been obviously killed by spells that had incinerated their bodies ages past. One body was partially fused into the stone of the exterior wall, either the result of a failed teleportation or an insidious attack by another while the mage had been hiding within the stone by use of some now forgotten spell.
“Umm… yeah. Let’s stop looking at the dead people and make for what used to be the gate and get inside. The spellhaunts aren’t going to stop and stare here like we are.” Nisha gave a nervous chuckle and began to move toward the twisted remains of the main gates some twenty yards distant.
Each of the gates had once stood some twenty feet tall, crafted of glittering greensteel and embossed with runes of warding. Little was left of them. The once proud gates were both piles of twisted scrap, partially melted from heat or acid, their hinges barely clinging to the stone of the defensive walls, blasted loose by the force of the explosion that had rent them asunder.
“There’s not even a glimmer of magic left on the gates, even where I can make out some old warding symbols. Either devoured or discharged years ago.” Tristol sighed as they picked their way through the twisted metal and entered the courtyard.
Florian and Clueless were the first to stride across the courtyard between the gates and the tower. Thirty feet ahead of them, the silver doors of the tower still stood intact and closed. Florian stopped and turned back to look at Tristol as Nisha poked and prodded at the lumpy remains of a clockwork animal that had rusted in place on the grass that covered much of the courtyard.
“Tristol, are the gates warded? They’re still intact and closed. There’s a pretty stark contrast between them and the gates we just walked through. I don’t think the place is as dead as we thought.”
Tristol recast his spell to detect latent dweomers and gazed at the tower’s entrance curiously. After but a moment of concentration his head tilted sideways and he furrowed his eyebrows. “Clueless… don’t move.”
“Huh? What did I… oh…” The bladesinger paused on the steps of the tower and looked over his shoulder to see that the nimbus of faerie fire that normally washed over his wings had died except for a glimmer of sparks at their very tip.
Clueless’s sudden concern was broken by the overly enthusiastic laugh of the tiefling as she walked up to Clueless. “Oh wow!”
“Wow what? Can I move Tristol or is something going to blow up?”
Tristol shook his head, “Nothing’s going to blow up at all. Step back though.”
“Whatever you say…” Clueless flicked his wings and fluttered back to the base of the steps. As he cleared the boundary of the cracked marble portico, the faerie fire on his wings reignited. As the other’s noticed and began to understand the exact effect, Nisha was busy with a wand of light, happily extending and removing the glowing tip from the extinguishing boundary at the foot of the stairs.
“Antimagic… they blanketed the entire tower in antimagic. That’s incredible.” Tristol’s voice rang with frank astonishment.
“Except didn’t they eat magic to stay alive? That’d be a self-imposed death sentence for them to do that. That doesn’t make sense.” Toras said as he walked up next to Nisha.
“Clueless. Do me a favor and walk to the top of the steps. You’ll be fine.” Tristol walked to the fringe of the antimagic and stopped there along with the rest of the party. Clueless looked back warily and walked up slowly, step by step. As he reached the top of the stairs, a distance of perhaps ten or fifteen feet the magical fire about his wings flashed back on suddenly.
“That’s no death sentence. They sealed themselves in a –shell- of antimagic. The spellhaunts can’t pass it. Whoever did this was trying to protect themselves from the spellhaunts they’d either created by accident or as a weapon against their fellows. No wonder the entire tower looked magic-dead from the maze.” Tristol’s eyes glittered with fascination.
“Anything magical would be snuffed out like the cover over the light in a bullseye lantern.” Fyrehowl added with equal amazement.
“Speaking of which, I’m not touching that door. There’re active spells on the front door. Get up here and take a look for yourselves.” Clueless said as he turned around to examine the silver doors with cautious curiosity.
The doors, while not nearly as large as those upon the blasted exterior fortifications of the tower, were some twenty feet tall and ten feet across on either side. Embossed runes sparkled with magic upon the surface of the doors while a flight of dragons cast in silver and onyx soared along the top and bottom margins of the elaborate, but nonmagical decorations on the faces of the doors.
As the group gathered around the doors, Tristol sat and concentrated on the patterns of magic he saw dancing across their surface. Nisha began to examine the fringes of the doors, the stone around where the recessed hinges of the doors would be, and the stone blocks immediately in front of them.
“No traps, just spells on the door. And the doors are welded shut.” The tiefling pointed with amusement to the vertical line of fused silver that formed the centerpoint of the two doors.
“Oh bloody balls of Tempus…” Florian sighed and leaned against the wall to his left.
“Any progress on those spells Tristol?” Aren asked softly.
“They’re not offensive. There’s a simple mage lock still on the doors. Though not that it matters since the original caster, or someone else, made sure of the doors never opening by fusing them together. There’s also another spell on there, also an abjuration, but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s cast on the inside of the doors, or just inside the tower on the floor. Either way it’ll be sprung by opening the doors or going past them.” Tristol mused as he stood up and dusted off his robes from the dirt and debris that caked the steps.
“Well then it begs the question, how do we get in the place?” Nisha asked.
“I could always just break the door down.” Toras said with a smile, seeming just a bit too eager.
“I’ve got a spell that can ferry us in, but it’ll take me a few times of casting it. Who wants to go first?” Tristol smiled, feeling not only useful, but needed.
“Aww, I wanted to see Toras break his arms breaking the door down!” Nisha faux pouted.
Fyrehowl, Florian, and Clueless raised there hands and were the first of group to be transported into the tower. They vanished with a blue flash and moments later Tristol reappeared to do the same for Aren, Toras, and Nisha. Unbeknownst to them all, the moment they breached the doors, magically or not, a single spell activated, triggering an alarm that sounded in the mind of its original caster, and any other that might have been watching.
Momentarily disoriented by the effects of Tristol’s spell, the group stood and regained their bearings. They stood in the well of a massive chamber that reaching up through the center of the tower. Twin sets of spiral stairs reached up into the heights of the tower, each of them pausing at landings at each subsequent floor to link the many levels of the tower. The stairs and the central chamber climbed up to some point around two thirds of the way up the height of the tower. Beyond that it was likely that the areas there had been restricted in some way to the rank and file of the faction.
The chamber was desolate and quiet. Dust rose into the air with each and every footstep the companions took, filtering through the light that streamed down from overhead from the cracked but glowing stained glass window high above that had once held some mosaic, perhaps even the faction’s symbol. Now it was ruined, a mute victim of the violence that had scoured the faction’s former demesne. All around were similar physical remains of ruined glory that served as sad, ancient epitaphs to the Incanterium.
“Well damn if this place wouldn’t have been magnificent during its heyday. Geez.” Nisha gawked at the ruined faction hall’s interior as the others spread out, slowly investigating the galleries and chambers that branched off from the central chamber at ground level.
If they had expected to find any evidence of living faction members they found nothing of the sort. Room after room they found abandoned, cluttered with the debris of former classrooms, laboratories, scriptoriums and personal chambers. Everywhere it was deathly quiet and utterly devoid of magic. Slowly climbing the central stairwell towards the higher levels of the tower they found the same. Rooms cluttered with magical paraphernalia, wands, scrolls, books and random items, hoarded like the place had been infested by packrats or dragons that had long ago died and left their stashes behind. But uniformly all of the trappings of a faction of wizards were drained of their last sparks of magic.
Here and there in the rooms, frequently associated with the magic-dead hoards of drained and devoured items, the group found the ancient and decayed corpses of former Incantifers. They had each died in violence where they had stolen themselves away to, each hoping to live as long as they could before starvation eventually overtook them. Hope against the hopeless inevitability that had claimed them all.
Aren shed a tear and turned to Fyrehowl, “This is horrific. How could someone have thrown them all together like this and locked them away. The Lady had to have known what they would have done to each other!”
Fyrehowl looked back at the succubus, “I think that was Her intention all along…”
The lupinal’s comment seemed to draw a cold pallor over the group as they continued to find more and more victims of the original cannibalistic war of survival amongst the members of the faction.
“Alright, I’m officially getting depressed on behalf of these poor sods as well.” Nisha frowned and her tail drooped sullenly behind her, mirroring the same exact posture on Fyrehowl and Tristol while Clueless’s wings had assumed a solid violet shade of faerie fire to reflect his own mood.
“I’ll agree to that too. I…” Clueless paused mid sentence as they ascended the stairs to the next floor of the tower. Tristol, Aren, Florian, Clueless and Nisha paused immediately as well and glanced around with concern.
“What in the blazes happened?” Toras asked with alarm, not privy to whatever had snagged the concern of his more magically adept fellows.
“We just got hit with a scry.” Nisha said, trying in vain to locate the nigh invisible magical eye that was the telltale sign of the spell.
“No, we got hit by –two- of them…” Tristol said as his tail bottlebrushed and his ears laid flat against his head.
As the five of them struggled to locate the source of the scry spells, Fyrehowl’s ears perked with alarm. “Someone’s walking this way.” The lupinal closed her eyes and tried to discern the location of the noise that only she as yet could hear. “Much higher up, probably at the top of the stairs. Two sets of footsteps, fairly light on their feet and walking –fast-. Both of them are coming from opposite directions at the top there.”
“Well cutters, looks like we found who we came here to find… lets hope that they’re agreeable…” Clueless’s wings shifted from their previous violet hue to a flickering staccato of blue and yellow.
“I just hope that they’re not hungry…” Nisha said with a worried tone.
A feminine voice flooded into the minds of each of the six as they ascended the stairs and into view of the top of the two stairwells. “Hurry! The lich approaches! Hurry this way and I will protect you. He’s insane and will kill you for your magic!”
A second voice echoed through their minds in response to the first, male, angry, and carrying with it an unsavory, but authoritative, taint. “The bitch would sooner carve you in half upon a silver platter! She will protect you only to devour you later. I will deal with you if you will hear me out.”
The group paused and looked up at the top of the stairs where two figures stood upon the railings having just emerged from doors on opposite sides of the tower. The figure to the left was little more than bones wrapped in velvet. The mage had once been human, but long since succumbed to undeath. The ravages of time had stripped his bones of the last traces of flesh and only a crackling web of spidery silver energy bound them into a humanoid form. Where its eyes had once been, there were not the pinpricks of light normally associated with liches, but rather two featureless, glowing orbs of liquid silver.
Opposite the lich, and glaring at him from across the chamber was a blue robed woman, half-elven by appearance. Unlike the lich however, she was alive but didn’t seem a year over forty. Her blond hair was flecked with gemstones woven into the dozen or so braids that trailed down to her shoulders and dodged a number of glowing ioun stones that circled in erratic orbits around her head. While not undead, she shared one trait with the lich opposite her: her eyes were orbs of glowing liquid silver.
As the two wizards glared at each other some thirty feet opposite, the air was charged with a palpable electricity of raw, unbound magic. The lich turned once more to the party and his voice echoed through their minds like a breeze over an open tomb, “She is not as she seems. She started this war that decimated us. We are the last of our faction and our imprisonment has cost me my humanity, and she her mind. I am willing to deal with you rationally. She… she is starving… and you know what we are.”
“Silence Valdros! Lying corpse!” The half-elf archmage snarled in fury and held up one hand towards the lich, violet energy played along her fingertips. The lich snapped up one skeletal hand as a bolt of energy lashed out at him to snarl and gnaw at his hastily erected warding. The woman yelled out again to the group, “The corpse lies. He was responsible for our imprisonment in the first place. He unleashed the spellhaunts upon us! You have to believe me, he will betray you for his own benefit!”
“Will I now Areya? Shall I tell them what you did to your own apprentices?” The lich asked mockingly and hurled a half dozen flaming spheres in her direction. Like her spell at him a moment before, his too was blunted and nullified by her own defenses. A stalemate, one that had lasted centuries…
The companions glanced at each other nervously. Either of the Incantifers was capable of incinerating them as an afterthought, and both clearly hated each other with a passion. Given their opposition, it wasn’t at all likely that they would sit down and talk and not launch into a spellbattle at the drop of a hat. They would need to approach only one of them, and likely come to some agreement with them for protection from their counterpart. Such were the circumstances.
“Quickly now, my portion of the tower is warded against his kind. Hurry!” The sorceress’s voice was tinged with urgency that bordered on desperation.
More spells flew between both archmages and again no damage was done to either. “Examine us, two of you are clerics, then decide who you trust…” The lich’s eyes gleamed silver as his living counterpart unleashed a flaming hailstorm against his wards and shields.
“Aren? Florian? Who’s evil and who isn’t?” Fyrehowl asked as she nervous watched the exchange of spells between both mages.
“He’s lawful, she’s… not. We can probably at least deal with him. Even if he’s out for himself he’ll be honorable.” Florian said as he finished a quick prayer and glanced at both Incantifers.
“No, there’s got to be some way to dealing with them both? If we side with one, they’re going to demand we help them kill the other…” Aren’s eyes flashed red as she expressed her concerns.
“So… who are we more afraid of? The thousands of years old lich? Or the living woman who’s held him at a standstill for all that time?…” Clueless flicked his wings and moved slightly towards the lich’s side of the tower. “Come on, we go now or we risk her blowing us to scraps.”
“No, I can’t…” Aren sighed and stopped talking as her companions nodded in agreement with Clueless and began flying or running up the steps in the lich’s direction. She stood her ground and looked up at the half-elven woman. Her companions left her standing there, already having decided to put their trust in the lich. Clueless yelled back at her once to follow them, to hurry, but she ignored him and stepped towards the stairs up to the female archmage. As Aren watched her companions climb the stairs towards the undead archwizard, the woman he had called Areya shrieked in abject fury. “Damn you to the nine hells Valdros! If I can’t escape this powers be damned maze neither will you!”
As she screamed, her eyes burning with silvery light and she hurled spell after spells at the lich who hovered several inches above the ground, counterspelling or absorbing each and every one of his counterpart’s curses and invocations. They were too well matched against one another. Their assaults had to have been repeated thousands of times over the long years, never with a surprise and never with an end before, nor in sight. They knew each others means and tactics.
“That’s the thing Areya… I gave up that hope long ago…” The lich that was called Valdros laughed and cast out both of his hands. His robes fluttered without any breeze below his fleshless form and a transparent, softly glowing barrier appeared in the center of the chamber, sealing off his half of the tower from the other. He turned to the five who had climbed to his landing upon the stairs and nodded at them. “Follow me. The Spellbreaker shall destroy my barrier in short order if she deigns to expend the energy. My section of the tower is too well warded for her to make an attempt upon us therein. Please, come and we shall discuss terms. I am curious as to who sent you and why you are here. I expect that you want something…”
Clueless looked back to the stairs below and at Aren who was sealed off from them, trapped on the other side of the lich’s defensive wall. Already the succubus had spread her wings and was slowly and warily approaching the half-elven wizardress. The bladesinger looked to the lich and pointed towards the cleric, “What about Aren? We can’t just leave her.”
“She is dead. My fellow factor will drain her of magic and then slowly consume her soul as a delicacy. I cannot easily retrieve her from beyond my own barrier without risking your, and my, safety. She made her choice and must live with it. Just as I have had to live with mine… follow me.” The lich’s eyes sparkled with their lustrous metallic sheen as he nodded slightly and began to silently float towards the open doorway through which he had originally entered.
As the lich walked out of sight with Aren’s companions, the succubus flew up to the other Incantifer and paused several yards from her. She smiled and bowed slightly. “May we talk? We came here looking for information this faction once had, we need it to save the lives of several people. My companions may have followed your rival but I’m willing to strike a deal with you.”
The archmage stared at the succubus with those glowing silver eyes, not a fleck of emotion on her face.
“I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.” Aren’s voice was tinged with hope.
Archmage Areya Fenthillis the Spellbreaker, Factor of the Incanterium, began to whisper the words of a haste spell.
“We… we don’t have to fight…” Aren’s voice was pitifully hopeful in the face of impending obliteration.
The Spellbreaker smiled. Aren smiled back and took a tentative step forwards. The Spellbreaker looked the succubus up and down, smiled and licked her lips like she was inspecting a choice cut of meat for a feast. The air hummed with power.
“I…” Aren’s voice quivered as she stepped backwards. The redeemed fiend knew fear and then her world went black.
…
The lich paused as he ushered the group into a small chamber off from the main hallway he had led them down, higher into the depths of his portion of the Tower Sorcerous. They had passed by numerous wards and guardians on their way, without the lich to allow them passage it was unlikely that they could have breached them and lived, not in a hundred years. “Your companion is no more.” Archmage Valdros Peralthon, Factor of the Incantrium stood silent for a moment out of respect for his new allies though his own statement had carried the emotionless tone of one already well acquainted with death.
There was a long moment of silence among Aren’s former companions before the lich broke the unease by gesturing them all towards a set of chairs against one wall as he sat hovering in midair across from them. “Like it or not we are now allies, and as such do not be afraid for your safety under my watch. This place is sacrosanct. I have had nothing if not time to ward my lairs. Consider yourselves my guests for the time being, I have never had any since I was condemned to this place. That said… my former colleague, Areya Fenthellis the Spellbreaker, will not allow you to leave this tower. So… who sent you and what is it that you came here for? I doubt that anyone would willingly maze themselves or blunder into one as heavily armed and enspelled as you appear to be. I am curious.”
As the lich sat and hovered his guests looked at each other, considering how to answer him. Florian softly whispered a spell to detect evil. He was certain the lich was, but in case he wasn’t, the knowledge would be useful. As expected, Valdros glowed a brilliant, telltale glow of evil. But lawful evil was less prone to random violence and dishonor. His imprisonment had tempered and mellowed his outlook on things if nothing else.
“Well, we’re not here willingly. Our ‘employers’, we don’t really know who they are. Led us here under false, or at least misleading pretenses. They’re blackmailing each of us, some with information, and two of us will die within a short period of time without their aid. Nice people…” Clueless said with a smirk.
The lich nodded. “Can I get you anything? Food or drink? I do not require such, but you appear tired. As I said, I have had no guests nor anyone to speak with for a very long time. This is a joy.”
They looked at each other again, “No” “I’m fine, but thank you.” “Umm… that’s alright.” They all politely declined.
“What happened here?” Toras spoke up.
“We sinned against Her Dread Majesty and were punished. Our power waxed too high, too fast. We dared to brush the steps of the bladed throne and drew the wrath of The Lady. We were given what we deserved and brought upon ourselves. When we were all mazed, all six hundred and thirty of us, we spent the first few months searching for an exit from this hell. The punishments of Her Serenity are not so easily circumvented. Our divinations failed, our mapping of the maze was fruitless and we slowly came to realize that we had little chance of escape.”
The group nodded respectfully and the lich continued.
“Within the maze we did not age, and food appeared in the courtyard of the Tower each and every day. But we do not eat, we consume magic. Slowly we began to realize that we would all begin to starve in a matter of time. Each of us began to covet any magic we could fine, be they objects, scrolls, potions, anything with a dweomers. Each of us took precautions to prolong our own lives against the coming winter, metaphorically speaking, and then the killing began. An apprentice or a namer killed in the hallways, a lower ranking wizard vanishing without a trace, it all started there. Full scale conflict broke out soon thereafter and you have seen its effects outside. The war killed half of us in the space of a week. Something went wrong, or one of us in spite created the first of the spellhaunts to hunt their enemies. They were drawn to each of us like flies to a rotting corpse. But then more and more of them appeared and our spells began to create more and more of them without rhyme or reason. Perhaps The Lady saw a need to slay us by our own means. I cannot say for certain.”
“As the threat posed by our own errant, living spells grew and more and more of us died by their hands we gathered upon the steps of the Tower and sealed it away in a bubble of antimagic to preserve our own lives. The greatest spell I have ever cast, and I did so with the help of my greatest rival. We have never worked together since then. Sealed in as we were, we fell upon each other more and more to prevent ourselves from starving to death. Over the long years our numbers thinned till only Areya and myself survived. Before that point I sacrificed my humanity for undeath to stave away the hunger that flowed in my blood, and still does in hers. I still retain my powers as one of the Eaters, but I will not starve. She retained her humanity, so to speak, but is little more than a brilliant but insane fiend of a woman wrapped in the flesh of a half-elf, slowly dying and consuming the stock of magic she stole from those she killed. You were wise not to trust her.”
Florian glanced down for a moment, feeling pity for the lich and his rival alike, trying hard not to imagine the horror that they had been through. His divinations of law and evil were both still active however and he could not help but notice something odd as he stared down at the floor. A soft glow of evil exuded from Clueless’s ankle, mostly hidden by his trousers. Florian stopped and stared as the glow was slowly growing in intensity, seeping outwards from its spot just above the knob in the ankle. As he watched the taint began to flow upwards through Clueless’s otherwise unmarked body. The half-fey was not evil himself, but with the quickness of a striking asp his entire body was awash in a pyre of evil that passed the intensity of the lich’s by easily an order of magnitude. Florian’s eyes went wide and he stared up at Clueless.
“But we’ve thrown in our lot with you now. We came here seeking information. What do you know of Shekelor?” Clueless spoke to the lich, his tone and stance at odds to his normal behavior. The lich turned and looked at him, paused, and began to answer as the seething glow that had begun at Clueless’s ankle only increased by the second.
