Today is Shemmy's birthday *toothy, birthday-loth grin*
Tristol sat in the dim recesses of the back room that he’d converted into a makeshift arcane laboratory. His eyes were half-lidded from lack of sleep but they remained focused on his tasks of both identifying the host of magical items that they had all recovered in the past while, and to learning from the spellbooks he had taken from the Imshenviir mercane, and from the arcanaloth, Parphinias.
“Tristol? Helloooo….” Florian’s voice broke the mage’s concentration and drew his unhappy gaze.
Tristol sighed and his tail was bottlebrushed behind him. “Yes? I’m rather busy…”
“You need to eat. The last time I was in here you said that you’d take a break and do that.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever.” Tristol said dismissively before turning his eyes back to the spellbook in front of him.
Florian pulled the spellbook away, “You said that seven hours ago…”
The mage’s ears folded back and to the side as he looked up at the cleric, “I’m busy. Send something in if you’re concerned.”
Florian pushed the book back with a sigh, “I’ll have the kitchen send something in.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever…”
More time passed and Tristol flipped through a few more pages, arriving at a lovely spell called ‘Parphinias’s Corrupting Touch’. Even if he might not cast it himself, the aasimar was having a grand time just learning magic from a tradition so utterly alien to his own. Still, it was mildly disturbing that the book seemed to be bound in some form of nondescript humanoid flesh, and also appeared to move slightly when you didn’t watch it closely.
A pair of slim hands suddenly descended over his eyes.
“Florian I said that…”
“Guess who?” A voice said with a giggle, sounding very much unlike Florian and very much like a certain tiefling.
“Toras.” Tristol answered.
“Toras? Nope.” The unknown person said.
“Judge Gabberslug of the Court of Woe?” Tristol said as he snickered.
“… hey! You’re just being mean now.” One of the fingers thumped him on the forehead.
“Someone who’s going to get bitten if she doesn’t take her hands off my face?” Tristol asked.
“Oh! I know who you are! You’re a wizard with fuzzy ears!” The hands snagged the tips of his ears and wiggled them around.
“… wasn’t I the one asking the questions?” Tristol said as he swatted at the hands on his ears.
“Were you? I dunno.” The tiefling said as she abruptly abandoned his head for another random whimsy.
Nisha took off her hands and abruptly wandered over towards the shelves where Tristol kept a number of spellbooks, research tomes on a hundred or so different topics, and piles of various and sundry arcane scrolls.
Tristol yawned, stretched and immediately went back to his reading. He’d just gotten to the next paragraph, notes that the arcanaloth had written or somehow burnt into the material that the spellbook was penned in, when he was interrupted again. Nisha was humming some random ditty as she thumbed through some of the scrolls.
“Nisha?” Tristol asked with a soft whine.
“That’s ‘great and powerful archmage Nisha’” The tiefling corrected him with a grin and soft jangle of the bell on her tail.
“…” Tristol closed his eyes and breathed in and out a few times. “Great and powerful archmage Nisha?”
“Yeeeeees?” She said, very obviously amused with herself.
“Is there something you want from me, or are you just pretending to be a mephit?” He said in slow, measured tones.
“No, I’m pretending to be an Archmage today. Silly wizard, you’d think that you’d know the difference by now.”
Tristol’s ears went down again, “Please… I’m very busy. What do you want?”
The tiefling grinned…
“Anything?” She said as the bell on her tail rattled loudly, perhaps with an ominous foreshadowing.
“Yeah yeah whatever…” Tristol said as he got back into the spellbook.
“Can I have a scroll?” She asked nicely.
“Sure, yeah, whatever…” Tristol replied.
“Can I have a couple of random spell components from the middle shelf?” Nisha added.
“Yeah yeah, whatever…” Tristol replied once more.
“Can I make you my familiar? Being a great archmage and all I need one.” Nisha said without skipping a beat.
Tristol replied once more with the same unconcerned reply in the affirmative.
“Alright!” Nisha chirped.
The room went silent suddenly and it was several more minutes before Tristol heard the door softly close as Nisha left. Something felt wrong since the tiefling had left without actually doing anything insane…
Tristol looked around but didn’t see anything missing except for a scroll of jump and some rather inconsequential spell components. Strange to say the least, but he smiled and returned to his work, happy to finally have some peace and quiet. That respite lasted around ten minutes before Clueless walked in through the door.
“Hey Tristol, I had a few questions for you.”
Tristol banged his head against the spellbook emphatically with a groan.
“I’m just not going to get any work done today. None at all…” Tristol said with a resigned sigh.
Clueless sat down opposite the mage, “Oh, the bell and the bow look cute by the way.”
“Excuse me?” Tristol looked at the half-fey with a confused expression.
“The bell and the bow that you’ve got.” Clueless replied.
Tristol looked perplexed until the bladesinger whispered a phrase and made a motion with his hand. There was suddenly a soft jingling noise from behind the aasimar and Tristol felt a soft tug against the tip of his tail. There was a brilliant pink bow tied to the tip of the mage’s tail and a tiny silver bell as well, just like the one on Nisha.
Tristol smacked his head down against the spellbook once more.
“The dread pirate Nisha strikes again I see.” Clueless said with a smirk.
Tristol whimpered softly as the bladesinger jangled the bell a few more times with his cantrip.
“So, what is it you want?” Tristol muttered from his prone position against the book.
“I was curious if there’s such a thing as liquid magic. Maybe something like stuff in limbo, or stuff in the deep ethereal that just does stuff when you concentrate on it.”
Tristol’s ears perked slightly and he looked up. “What? Like Karach or protomatter? Something like that?”
Clueless shrugged, “Maybe, but those just sort of become what you think about and then go back or collapse if you stop concentrating on them. This stuff didn’t change itself, it just made things happen when you touch it and think about things.”
Tristol sat up with the rapid jingle of the bell, “Why do you ask?”
Clueless shrugged again, “Just curious. Something I was reading about.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of stuff like that, but it’s mostly a legend and no one seems to know how to make it anymore. It was mostly an accident in the first place. Lemme get you a book…”
Tristol got up and walked over to his bookcase and thumbed over a few of the books written in a dialect of Halruaan.
“What color was it, out of curiosity?” Clueless asked.
“It was sort of a syrupy stuff if I remember the stories about it correctly.” Tristol said offhandedly as he pulled out a book titled, ‘Netheril’s Golden Age’.
“Was it gold colored?” Clueless asked again.
Tristol paused and thought, “Yeah, actually it was if I recall it right. Why?”
Clueless held out a small vial of shimmering golden liquid, a portion of the larger store that he had recovered from the Tower Sorcerous. “Like this?”
Tristol dropped the book. “Get it away from me…”
There was a moment of sublime silence as Tristol and Clueless simply stared at one another, then at the sample of golden liquid, and then back at each other once more.
“So…” Clueless said, breaking the silence.
“Keep that away from me.” Tristol said once more.
“Why?” Clueless asked.
“Because the only person I know who was ever capable of creating what I think that is, they nearly killed themselves experimenting with it…” Tristol held open the book and pushed it across the table. He still wasn’t getting near to the bottle however, and as Clueless glanced at the pages the mage was keeping a wary eye on the stuff.
Clueless read over several pages of material that detailed a dead archmage who had been known as Karsus. The mage had created a substance known as ‘Heavy Magic’ by accident really, and had found that it held spells cast into it and functioned almost like a physical expression of magic that could be molded, shaped, or worked like wood or metal would be worked by a sculptor or a craftsman. Karsus had largely abandoned his research after he had nearly obliterated his enclave, some sort of floating city he ruled, by reckless experimentation with the material.
“Where did you get that stuff?” Tristol finally asked.
“I picked it up at random from the material we found on the Incantifer, back in the mazes. I just thought it looked pretty…” Clueless said with a shrug.
“You randomly picked up what was probably the most valuable and most dangerous thing in that entire tower. Mystra forbid…” Tristol was as white as a sheet.
“It’s rather interesting stuff. I’ve been messing around with it and…” Clueless said before the mage interrupted him.
“You’ve what?
Messing around with it? You’re crazy…”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Clueless asked.
“I don’t know, and I really don’t want to find out. Listen, the most powerful wizard that my world has ever known abandoned research on that stuff because it was too dangerous for his tastes. And he eventually destroyed his entire culture in another foolhardy experiment that he thought was safer.” Tristol said adamantly.
“When did Karsus make his version of this?”
“About two thousand years ago…” Tristol answered.
“Then he didn’t make this, because unless he was inside that maze, it’s been around for longer than that.” Clueless said as he looked at the bottle of golden liquid.
Tristol put his hands over his ears, “Then one of them figured out how to make it than probably. It might even be different from what Karsus made. Please promise me than you’ll hold off on it for a while before I can do some more reading on it?”
Clueless frowned, “I won’t do anything more than I already have.”
“I hesitate to ask what exactly you
have done. But please?” Tristol asked plaintively.
“Alright, I’ll be careful, I promise.”
Tristol looked at the vial and then back at Clueless. “Just keep it away from me.”
They chatted about the liquid for another twenty or so minutes before Clueless gathered his things and left. He never mentioned the raw spot on his neck, mostly because he didn’t want to worry his friend, nor did he want for Tristol to demand that he dispose of the heavy magic or give it into the safekeeping of someone more magically adept than either of them.
***
“Things have changed.” One of the Keepers said as it looked across at the door to Tristol’s lab.
“Something has happened.” Another of the beings said.
“Perhaps he is aware that we are here.” The third Keeper said as lamp oil dribbled out of his open mouth.
“We will move preemptively now, even if others have not arrived. Now.”
Tristol walked out of the door from his lab, still looking nervous from what Clueless had shown to him. He was so taken back from it that he hadn’t bothered to remove the florid bow and silver bell from the tip of his tail. He’d gotten perhaps ten feet from the door when he was surrounded by the three identical looking men, all wearing dark goggles, all of them bald, all of them dressed in rubbery black clothing and having stark white skin.
“Umm… can I help you gentlemen?” Tristol said wearily. “I swear, everyone’s been asking for stuff today and I only want to sit down and study…”
“Give us the Orb.” Came the monotone request from the first Keeper.
Tristol blinked, “Excuse me? The what?”
“The Orb. Give it to us.” The second Keeper asked in the same voice as the first.
Tristol looked up uneasily at the close proximity and blank expressions of the three men. “I don’t know you’re talking about. Now if you’ll please move out of my way…”
They didn’t budge an inch.
“Tell us where you have put the orb. Bring us to it and give it to us and we will leave you unharmed.” There was an implied threat to the Keeper’s voice even if its tone hadn’t changed.
“I don’t have any idea what the hell you’re talking about. Now get out of my way and get out of my inn!” Tristol’s ears lay flat against his head as he lost his temper for the odd and stubborn questioning.
“Do not lie to us wizard. You would have it or know where it is. Tell us and speak of it to no one and we will not harm you.”
“Toras! Fyrehowl!” Tristol shouted out into the taproom as he brought the words of a spell to mind.
Halfway up the stairs going back to his room, Clueless paused and turned back when he heard Tristol’s shouting. Toras and Fyrehowl both looked up from their own table near the door where they’d been serving as relaxed quality control on who entered the inn and in what condition they left.
Tristol called into his mind the words of a petrification spell as he ducked out from under the circle of three Keepers as a stern looking Toras and Fyrehowl approached. One of the Keepers turned to face Tristol, one turned to face the fighter and lupinal, and a third turned outwards to address the entire room and its occupants.
“There is no scuffle or untoward activity occurring in the slightest! Nothing at all! All of you would be best served by returning to your normal activities. Forget that we are here. Everything is normal!”
One of the other Keepers was about to speak as well, but that was before Toras threw it halfway across the room.
“I think you’ve had a little too much lamp oil sir.” Toras said with a smile on his face as he walked over to the sprawled form on the floor.
Fyrehowl drew her sword as the other two Keepers smiled and held up their arms. She backed up slightly and took a defensive posture as their flesh seemed to ripple from the inside, shift, and reform into flesh-colored, rubbery hammers at the ends of their arms.
“Oh to hell with that!” Clueless shouted out as one of the Keepers swung at the lupinal and the other made ready to do the same. Calling to mind a spell that he wasn’t able to cast, but had called into being in his mind earlier in the day from the heavy magic, he hurled it at one of the two keepers.
A cylindrical column of force sprung into being around one of the two Keepers near Fyrehowl, penning it in and separating it from her. Clueless shouted in triumph, but a moment later his grin vanished as the Keeper paused and then seemed to melt through the wall of force like it wasn’t there.
“Oh hells! That’s just not fair!” Clueless shouted again as he drew his sword.
Toras walked over to where the Keeper that he’d thrown now lay sprawled on the floor. He stood over the body and then stumbled back as it seemed to ripple like it was of liquid and abruptly invert itself from being facedown on the floor to looking back up at him.
Flat against one of the exterior walls, Tristol watched as Fyrehowl slashed at one of the Keepers with her blade. Whatever the thing was, it didn’t bleed, and she might as well have been fighting an animated hunk of putty. It didn’t seen to register pain either, though the damage did seem to be slowing it.
Tristol continued to watch as Toras picked up the one on the floor and began smacking it around like an abusing child with a rag doll.
“Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!” Toras shouted with a laugh as he smacked the Keeper in the face with its own fist several times over. Toras stopped abruptly when the Keeper’s black goggles flew off of its face and landed on the floor. There were no eyes on the thing’s head beneath them, only blank, pasty skin.
Tristol saw it as well and hurled his spell at the second Keeper that Fyrehowl was fending off. The being hesitated, stopped, and began to change color as the spell took effect to transmute it to rock. All three Keeper’s began to laugh in a single voice as they turned to look at the mage. A split second later, the petrifying Keeper collapsed into a puddle of oily muck and resin, apparently ending its own life rather than be held captive by the spell.
“Nisha! Hit the fire portal!” Toras shouted as he tried to hold the one Keeper as far away from himself as possible, ignoring its heavy smacks against his arm and shoulder as best he could.
The tiefling dashed over to grab a bent copper key and then thrust it into a framed portion of the back wall. The moment she did the wall vanished and a glimmering scene appeared in its place: the elemental plane of fire. Waves of undulating lava and sheets of flaming wind rushed past the other side of the portal as Nisha moved out of the way.
“Enjoy!” Toras said as he shoved the Keeper through the portal and followed it up a moment later with the other one. The two beings vanished through the portal, but before it closed itself, he could see one of them bobbing in the flaming ocean, blankly staring back at them like a eerie, possibly retarded, fire mephit.
There was a small amount of scattered applause from the patrons of the inn who hadn’t bolted at the first signs of a fight. Toras bowed and Nisha claimed the vanished Keeper’s drinks. Tristol however glanced down at the puddle that was all that remained of the Keeper that he’d attempted to turn to stone, and then up at Clueless.
“Clueless, do you have any idea what in Mystra’s name that was?” Tristol said as he tried to wave away the smell from the dissolved Keeper.
Clueless blinked, “Nothing at all. Those guys have been here around the inn for a few days and they’ve just sat there drinking weird things that even Nisha said were weird.”
Nisha grinned as she sniffed idly at one of the mugs of lamp oil.
“Alright that was weird…” Toras said as he looked at the puddle on the floor. “If anyone asks… Skalliska had an accident. Something strange and female kobold related. Alright?”
Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow at Toras, “Works for me. Let’s all just watch out for any more of those… whatever they are, alright?”
They all nodded in agreement, though Clueless had already picked up and pocketed the pair of goggles that had fallen off of one of the Keepers. At some point he had the intention of attempting to use some divinations on them, if only because he was almost certain that they’d been looking for the golden globe of heavy magic that he had sitting in his room… not that he was going to volunteer that information to anyone else presently.
***
The vast psionic intelligence of the Us was uncertain. Several of its component minds stood over the edge of a stairwell that coiled downwards into the rock and spiraled down into cool darkness.
“This place is no longer within Sigil. Something is different here, even stranger than the labyrinth. And portions of it felt the same as we made our way through its corridors…”
The air was silent and chill as several dozen cranium rats peered down over the edge and into the abyss below. The hive was not only uncertain, it was frightened, and it had been for some time whether it wished to admit it to itself or not.
“The walls continue to mock us, as does that which walks within them, watching us scramble about blindly.” The rats that sprawled across the warren of ancient passages there beneath the Palace of the Jester, they all peered about with uncertainty.
“The presence that we feel, it has still refused to show itself, but not out of fear. It knows this place, but the stairwell is separate from it. The depths below are something else. This is malign, but below is…”
A ripple of fear crossed the gestalt mind of the Us. It was at a loss to describe what it felt, only cold, ancient, and alien. There was power there in the forgotten places of the Great Below, power that reminded hidden, but there was more there than what they had originally thought to find in the depths of the Palace. Something else indeed.
“The door to the upper layers has been opened. The Natterer is sending others down to hunt us. The depths can wait for now.”
***
The appointed time came, and the group stood in one of the nonpublic regions of the Palace of the Jester, accompanied by Jeremo the Natterer and several of his guards and faction members. He had escorted them all through the sprawling corridors of the street level area of the palace and down a long flight of stairs into the first subterranean level, one of many as he explained it. At the bottom of the stairs was a barred and warded set of double doors. The magical protections on the portal were even stronger than the other warded doorways that Tristol had seen within the palace to that point entirely.
“If you’ll take a look at the map that I’ve provided you.” Jeremo said with a grin as his words crystallized in pictures above the tarnished crown atop his head.
Florian held up the first page in the series of oilcloth maps that Jeremo had provided them with.
“I’ve had this door marked off on your map, and each sheet details one of the sublevels of the palace, all the way down to the third. The routes to the staircases down to the next floor are marked for the quickest routes, and the stairwells themselves are circled. There shouldn’t be much of a problem on those floors at all… excepting the bloody rats of course.” Jeremo said.
Fyrehowl held up a hand, “Jeremo, if I can call you Jeremo…?”
The Natterer brushed away a stray lock of blond hair from his face, “Please do. And yes?”
The lupinal nodded and continued, “The maps cover the first three levels of the underhalls, but there’s a stairwell marked as going down to the fourth level. Is that in error, are we missing a map, or do you not have it mapped?”
Jeremo snapped his fingers and chuckled, “A map of the fourth level and further down would be useless. Hence you don’t have a map of it. But oh there’s floors below that point, and I can’t tell you how many.”
“Why will it be useless?” Skalliska asked.
Jeremo answered with a wistful smirk, “Because the walls move and rearrange. It’s impossible to map since it all changes. Believe me, we’ve tried it more times than you can imagine.”
Clueless spoke up, “We’re not the first people to go down here are we?”
Another chuckle from the Jester, “To explore it, or for this latest… problem?”
“Yes.” Came a chorus of answers.
“Obviously I’m curious about the building given its history, size, etc etc etc.” Jeremo said as he scratched at his chin, “I’ve been down there myself and eventually I gave up with trying to map it all. Plus it gets dangerous further down, all I can really say. Malevolent? Perhaps, it just doesn’t feel friendly down there. As far as the rats though, yes, you’re not the first.”
“What did they find?” Fyrehowl asked cautiously.
“Beats the hell out of me. They never came back…” Jeremo gave a nervous chuckle. “If you find any of them down there I’ll pay you extra for dragging them, or a piece of them, back so I can have them raised. Same extends to you all obviously as well.”
“Wonderful…” Tristol muttered.
“Don’t worry Tristol. You’ve got the great and powerful archmage Nisha here to protect you from big-brained rats!” Nisha chirped and Tristol felt something being deftly and quickly attached to the tip of his tail.
“I have to seal the doors after you go down there, and communication won’t pass through the wards, just to make sure that the rat’s can’t influence my people from under the floors and through the walls where we can’t see them.” Jeremo continued, trying not to stare at the bright red bow and glittering silver bell that dangled from the end of the wizard’s tail.
“Sounds fair enough.” Toras said.
“If I don’t see you for a week I’ll consider you dead and I’ll be sending others, just so you know.” Jeremo added.
“That shouldn’t be necessary, but we’ll see you when we see you.” Florian said with a nod to the Jester.
“Then so I shall. Good luck and my pre-emptive thanks.” Jeremo’s head was a whirl of symbols and animate pictures, reading off his last words of luck and encouragement to the group before he signaled to have the doors closed after them all.
The doors sealed with a heavy and hollow boom that echoed down the empty corridors of the Palace. A thin layer of dust caked the floor, but it was disturbed by a series of footprints that led down the passage in the exact same way that they themselves were preparing to head.
Skalliska glanced down at the dust and then back up at the others. “There were eight of them; more than us. And one of them tramples over the original tracks, coming back in this direction before they just end.”
“Rats?” Fyrehowl asked.
Skalliska chuckled grimly, “Tracks all over the place…”
Clueless asked the unsettling question that lingered on all of their minds as Nisha glanced back at the very much sealed exit: “If someone came running back here, where’s the body?”
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
