Shemeska
Adventurer
Yuvaraj turned to face her, but outside of a flicker of light from within its component soul gem, he made no response as he waited for her question.
“Sorry, let me be more specific I suppose.” Inva paused and pointed directly at the ring. “Are you able to tell me about this particular ring?”
Yuvaraj nodded, "Without restriction and with pleasure."
His response carried with it a tone that had been absent in any previous conversation: he seemed pleased, almost deviously so.
"This line of questioning is something of a loophole in my state of being. I was asked this very same question once before, by the very wizard whose bones you collected the ring from in the first place. I told the ring's history, most of it at least, to the now deceased Iutep, and I can happily discuss the record of that conversation, and a great deal of tangential facts related to it. It allows me to talk about my people, and I appreciate that. Thank you."
The Grand Artificer's skull bobbed like a happy child.
"Well..." Inva chuckled. "With all the irony of me saying so, I'm glad I could put a little ray of sunshine into your situation. But, having said that, I'm a tad concerned that a number of people have asked about this particular bauble, and they correspond with a trail of corpses in this thing's past. I wonder what I've gotten myself into, but hopefully you can tell me a bit about this ring."
"Indeed I can, but I should say that you might take the earliest portions of my knowledge about the ring with caution, because its nature and precise history are somewhat muddled. The Imaskari were notoriously secretive. What in particular would you like to know about it?"
Inva held up her hand and gently tugged at the ring. Of course, it didn't budge from its position atop her finger. "Call it whimsy or greed, but I put this on and can't seem to take it off now. Is it possible to remove it?"
"Yes. It is within your power to do so now."
Inva looked at the ring and then back up at the skull. "Hmm. What's the catch?"
"You would have to die." Yuvaraj bluntly replied, drawing a rather nonplussed reaction from the tiefling. "A particularly existential escape I suppose: you always have the opportunity to exercise your free will and take your leave of this life. Upon your death, the bond between you and the ring will be broken, and if a new wearer takes the ring, were you to be subsequently resurrected, you would be free of that companionship for better or for worse."
Behind her, Inva's tail alternately twisted into a tight curl and then relaxed, belaying her irritation at the answer. "Not quite the answer I was hoping for. Is there anything that doesn't involve existential despair and me dying?"
"Loopholes always exist, especially among those desperate enough to try to find them, and Towapesh himself, the ring's current namesake, was just such a person as I'll explain later. So yes, there is another way besides dying, though it is considerably more painful."
"Joy..." Inva said, frowning and glancing down at the ring. The tiny crystalline serpent wrapped around her finger made no reply, mental or otherwise, but Inva spoke her mind regardless. "But don't worry about me, I'm not giving you up, not yet. I'm just making sure I'm informed of my options."
She turned back to Yuvaraj. "So what's the second option?"
"First you'd have to sever the finger while under the effect of regenerative magic. You'd also have to have a recipient, so to speak, also under such magic. They would have to sever one of their fingers and willingly accept your finger, and the ring, to be magically grafted to their still-bleeding stump. Once the magic on them had accepted the graft and eventually replaced it with their own flesh, the new host would be bound to the ring and your link would be severed."
"And my missing finger?"
"After the ring was bound to the recipient, your finger would grow back due to your own regeneration magic, but not before that point. Perhaps a bit of spite from the ring, or perhaps not, and this may or may not hinge upon the ring accepting a new host in lieu of yourself."
Inva nodded and bobbed her tail lazily from side to side, "It's a spot better option than dying."
Back on the other side of the room there was a sharp cry of "OUCH!". Inva looked over and past Yuvaraj to see Marcus wincing and staring at a yellow, fist-sized gem in Victor's hand. Crystalline mist seemed to swirl like a jaundiced fog within the gem's faceted interior, and its light spread uniformly out to a distance of around fifteen feet, apparently not blocked by any obstacles.
"What the hell happened over there?" Inva asked, momentarily distracted.
"Marcus lied." Phaedra said, pointing to Victor's brother.
Inva raised an eyebrow. "Congrats to him I suppose, but what's so special about that? I lie too, quite a lot sometimes, but I don't make a girly scream afterwards."
Victor shot an apologetic look at his brother and held up the gemstone in his hand, prompting Inva to step back a foot as its light moved a fraction closer.
"It's something of a lie detector." Velkyn explained. "The divination we cast on it didn't say what exactly it did if you lied within range of it, so we told Marcus to lie. Apparently it hurts."
"Nice little toy." Inva said, belatedly adding. "Keep it away from me."
Phaedra grinned, "I'll scratch Inva's name off the list of anyone wanting to claim that."
The tiefling shook her head and looked back at Yuvaraj who hadn't bothered to turn back to look at what had happened, and who seemed entirely unconcerned with any of it.
"Yeah I thought that was amusing too." Inva said. "Have to see if I can get them to trip over that from time to time. Anyway, let's get back to this ring now."
Yuvaraj nodded and finally seemed to bring his attention back to the present. On some level it might have been that when not being spoken to in the capacity of a mimir, he might have lapsed into dormancy of a sort, consciously or not.
"Something I should add about the latter method of transference. During the period when the ring is transferred to its second user, before the regenerative magic replaces your finger, the ring has the capacity to speak to both people and it may object if it feels the shift in users is for the worse. While the shift is not necessarily unpleasant to the ring, it may object up to the point when this occurs, but never violently. It is simply attached emotionally to any current wearer of the ring much as a familiar would be."
"Hmm." Inva said, looking at the ring. "I've never had a familiar. I've always considered them cute, sometimes useful, but far too often targets and liabilities. You're a bit different though."
She looked back up at Yuvaraj. "So what about the ring's history?"
"The first reference to the ring that I am aware of, was in connection with Towapesh, an artificer of moderate ability who lived approximately 1000 years before the fall of Imaskar. Towapesh died at the hands of an improperly bound Pit Fiend, but he was the first known holder/companion of the ring that now bears his name, though it isn't known if he constructed the ring himself or obtained it elsewhere. The ring was stripped from his smoking, partially devoured corpse however, and afterwards it passed into the possession of Imenseph the artificer-governor of the western city of Kaeleish. Imenseph was ultimately killed by the deific manifestation of the Mulhorandi God-King Anhur. I was never told of the rings fate from that point till it arrived on Iutep’s finger, a space of roughly one month, but that seems immaterial."
"You didn't say that Towapesh actually made the ring though." Inva said. "Just that it first showed up with him as far as you know."
"That is correct." Yuvaraj nodded. "While the ring's design and material of construction does suggest an Imaskari origin, it does not bear a makers sigil that would be common for such objects if it was truly made by one of the artificers, be that Towapesh or an earlier predecessor. Towapesh would have marked his creation prominently if he'd made it, because it would have been the crowning achievement of an otherwise unremarkable career. Additionally, there exists an outside prospect of the ring having been created during the centuries of my reign as Grand Artificer, and by magical accident or planar anomaly it could have been sent backwards in time to Towapesh's period of history. If there were any maker's sigil from my period I would immediately recognize it, but again, no such mark exists, and for such an item to have entirely escaped my attention during my rule is unlikely."
"So what do you think is the most likely origin?"
"I would speculate that the ring is either from an older period of Imaskar, well over 1500 years before my reign, and that it was likely created by an obscure artificer. But of course, there is always the chance that the ring came from another source entirely, with no direct connection to the Imaskari other than its period of circulation among a known pair of wizards, and then into Iutep's hands."
"Other sources?"
"As I revealed to Iutep under much different circumstances, Imaskar gained portions of its arcane traditions from a diverse number of sources, many of them extraplanar, and so what appears at first glance to be an Imaskari object, might not even be from the prime material, and might in fact predate Imaskar entirely."
Inva tapped the spade on her tail against her thigh. "You've got me curious about that now. When you say extraplanar sources, whom specifically are you talking about?"
The skull lowered its chin and shook from side to side. "Sadly I cannot say due to the bindings in place upon me. Where material touches upon our magic, the Untheric and Mulhorandi gods were terrified of a resurgence of our lore, and the ideology that went along with it, and so they took what steps they could to bury it."
Inva shrugged, "I'd assumed so. Oh well. So what can the ring actually do? It hasn't said much, and it's not really self-identifying."
"As I mentioned before." Yuvaraj explained. "It acts in a capacity similar to a familiar, and it has offered advice and knowledge to its current bonded companion. The ring may have gained its arcane knowledge simply by association with the succession of wizards who held it over the centuries, or some unknown wizard may have supplied such knowledge to it at the time of its creation of old. However much of its knowledge may be its own, resulting from a being that was intentionally bound into the essence of the ring."
"That..." Inva drew out her response. "...has interesting implications. If it's a bound creature, it's not exactly a familiar. What do you think it is?"
"Good question." Yuvaraj replied. "The ring does not behave as an entrapped being at all, so I find this latter origin scenario unlikely. But this is speculation, and the ring, if it has informed past wearers as to its origin, including Imenseph who I knew personally for several centuries, or Iutep who I knew briefly, that information was not passed on to me or any others that I'm aware of."
"When I was old, Towapesh's world was yet stardust in the void, drifting around its parent star in its infancy."
Inva went rigid as the ring broke its silence. The former Purple Emperor droned on, but she was no longer listening to him. The ring had her captivated entirely.
"My perspective is expansive my dear." The words were spoken in a fluid dialect of Calishite, Inva's native tongue, almost as if the language had been pulled from her mind and curled around the ring's serpentine tongue. The voice was seductive, seeming to slither across her mind with the spreading warmth evoked by a lover's touch, words whispered in her ear by a courtesan in the process of undoing her corset. "I will say Inva, that you are correct about my not being a simple familiar. I am here in this form for various reasons, but in the end, only this reason needs to be known: I do this because it pleases me to do so. I wish to experience the world through like-minded beings, and having tasted your mind and your blood, I see little that I do not like. We shall prosper and enjoy ourselves, you and I."
Inva's face was flushed and she brought a hand down to her stomach as the ring withdrew from her mind and left a few gentle, trailing contractions within her in its wake. She was glad she was sitting down.
"...the ring seems capable of reading the thoughts, moods and memories of who it is bonded to." Yuvaraj continued, oblivious to Inva's contact with the ring's intelligence, oblivious to the fact that she had just learned firsthand that particular capability.
"So what's the drawback?" She finally asked, still flushed. "Surely this isn't completely a benefit for the wearer. The ring is intelligent, or harbors an intelligence, and surely it has its own wishes. Have any past wearers mentioned such?"
"They have." Yuvaraj replied. "The ring has been known to question its holder on their thoughts, even as it combs the surface of their mind and reads what bubbles to the surface. It listens and asks for clarifications, reasons, details etc, perhaps to invoke a better sense of the personality of whom it has been linked to. Iutep mentioned that it seemed to harbor an intense dislike of vrocks, something that apparently brought about an argument between ring and wearer when Iutep summoned a flight of those demons early during the campaign against Imaskar."
Interesting, but it didn't give an absolute identity to the ring's inhabitant. Hating one particular type of tanar'ri might mean it was diabolic in nature, or simply another form of abyssal demon. And if it felt it was compatible with Inva, that didn't mean much either since she wasn't particularly drawn to either of evil's opposite ends. The ring might fall to either side, but still consider her largely like-minded.
"Based on everything I heard of the ring, particularly from Iutep, it honestly seems to just desire to be bound to someone of equal or compatible nature and then experience life vicariously through them, helping as it can. It is very obvious however that the ring is rather selfish towards the welfare of itself and its bound companion collectively."
Worry not my dear. The ring whispered into her mind. We should make a very nice match, and yes, I do seek to experience the world through my companions. I enjoy the experiences, and I will act as I see fit to ensure that you survive to continue to provide me this window into the world. Call upon me in the future, and we shall see what I can provide to you.
Inva looked down at the ring, growing more and more comfortable with it the more it spoke to her. She no longer felt worried, nor did she feel any desire to take it off even if the process were easier. The shift in mindset might have been genuine, or it might have been a result of the ring's increasing bond; she honestly wasn't sure, but as their relationship progressed and evolved, she was curious to learn more about it, and what it could provide.
"Sadly, that approaches the limits of my knowledge." Yuvaraj stated. "Or at least that approaches the limits of what I am capable of saying."
Inva nodded. "That's fine. I appreciate what information you could tell me though."
Yuvaraj said nothing more and simply remained hovering in mid-air, and stayed there the remainder of the night, silent and motionless like a dim, skull-shaped lantern.
By the time Inva had finished speaking with the unliving mimir however, the others had finished their divinations on the remainder of the items that they had scavenged from Nergal's tomb. More wine had also been delivered to the room, and Inva took a bottle and rejoined her companions to celebrate their success. The warmth of the wine slowly diluting itself into her bloodstream, and the increasingly jovial conversations with Phaedra, were superficial to the latent presence the tiefling now felt in the back of her mind from the ring on her finger.
That night, with a bottle and a half of wine to her credit, she finally crawled back to her room in the inn to sleep. She slept alone that evening, but she wasn't truly alone as she pulled the sheets up to her neck and gently toyed with the sparkling, glowing ring upon her finger almost as much as the holy symbol around her neck. Still, she felt no worry or threat. The presence was compatible, even though for the moment it continued to keep its secrets with a dangled lure of power and knowledge in her mind's eye. Time would reveal more.
Daylight saw the group eating a small breakfast and paying their tab before leaving and making as quick a trip as possible to Center. Quickly returning to Sigil through the Tradegate's portal, they made use of the previous route through the City of Doors to make their way to the City-at-the-Center, arriving in the city's Pluton district, under the long shadow of the Palace of Dandy Will.
Victor was uncomfortable, and so was Garibaldi, but despite the city's location in the middle of the Waste, it was a trade city, and disturbingly free of conflict and political entanglement. Plus, arriving by way of Sigil, they managed to avoid the disease risk, and quarantine period that using the Oinian gate into the city would have carried. As uncomfortable as they might have been walking along a street in the Waste, passing by fiends and unsavory mortals of every stripe and color, they knew that portions of Sigil were actually more dangerous, and that things could have been much worse.
Eventually though, and without incident, they turned onto Hag's Head Avenue and approached the junction of streets where presumably Aspaseka would be waiting for them after they had informed her of their success via a sending spell the night before. She struck them as a rather organized, rather punctual person and so they didn't doubt that she'd probably be there when they arrived.
"Oh for f*ck's sake..." Phaedra grumbled as she glanced at the corner of Hag's Head Avenue and Ebon's Walk, noting a familiar face standing there.
It was the proselytizer, the same one that she'd seen before when they were last in Center. The very same black, silver and scarlet robed arcanaloth from before was still standing at the street's corner, verbally and mentally harassing anything with a drop of yugoloth blood that passed by. Knowing that it was one of the Oinoloth's fold was knowledge enough for Phaedra to keep herself as far away as possible, lest it approach her, especially given the uncertainties of how it might react to the less damned half of her bloodline.
The half-'loth pulled up her hood to mask her face and immediately shapeshifted into a rather average-looking human woman. Still though, morbid curiosity did cost her a passing glance at the fiend, which was enough to notice a few disturbing details and incongruities in the process.
Standing on the large and polished obsidian flagstone that marked the junction of the two streets, the 'fiend was casting a triple reflection into the glass. It wasn't a property of the glossy stone itself, because none of the other passersby were giving off anything but a normal reflection, and it didn't seem to be an obviously simple illusion. Otherwise identical, each of the three were cast in a different color, none of them entirely matching any of the ambient sources of light there on the street: one in scarlet, one in rusted, bloody red, and a third in bleached, ashen gray.
The same iconography was repeated on the amulet hung around the 'loth's neck, a trio of intersecting circles in the same color pattern, each bearing the symbol of one of the planes of conflict to which the color corresponded. Additionally there was another symbol centered between them, but without obviously looking, and without getting closer, it was too difficult to make out fully.
Phaedra turned away and back towards the Prancing Nightmare Inn as they neared its doors. She didn't look back as she heard the fiend call out to a passing tiefling, seemingly knowing the particulars of their blood just by a glance. Phaedra didn't know the 'loth's message, neither what it was selling, nor what it was asking in return, but she immediately knew that she didn't want to get involved. The politics of purity were something of her father's race that she wanted absolutely nothing of.
"If that dumb*ss is always out there on that corner,” She complained, “We really need to find another location to meet in."
Garibaldi nodded rapidly as he glanced around the tavern's common room. The clientele alone disturbed him, to say nothing of the city's location in the Waste.
"Hey look!" Inva said, nudging the fighter and then tapping Victor's shoulder as well. "They've got a succubus dancing this time."
Phaedra stuck out her tongue and made a face, a rather strange face since at the same time she shifted back to a largely 'loth form.
For his part, Garibaldi tried not to look, even as Inva poked him in the side again. But morbid curiosity got the better of him, and he took a sidelong glance at the fiend prancing around the stage. The bat-winged woman, wearing nothing but a loincloth, noticed him looking and then winked and beckoned to him. Inva snickered when the fighter jerked in surprise and abruptly turned away.
Victor rolled his eyes and took it in stride, handling the situation much more calmly and stoically than Garibaldi, even though he probably felt a stronger disapproval about their surroundings. No need to proselytize or warn the occupants of such a place, because they were already well aware of their location, of the danger, and it wasn't likely that they would be receptive to any message outside of the jiggle of the succubus’s breasts. Voicing any objections in such a place would only invite danger, and so he stayed quiet and in the background as much as he could.
That was Victor's plan at least, but when they passed by the stage on their way to the stairs, the fiend couldn't resist making a pass. Gripping tightly to the iron pole running from stage to ceiling, she arched her back and leaned over backwards to glance at the passing cleric, tasting the air like a snake with a disturbingly long, forked tongue.
"Greetings mortal." The succubus cooed. "I could offer you something so much sweeter on the tongue, so much more warming than what's on tap."
Victor smiled back and replied cheerfully, without blinking or missing a beat to his step, "You'd burn."
Spurned, the fiend gave a hiss and a few sputtered words in abyssal, but neither Victor nor any of the others looked back or really cared to return her smoldering gaze. The cleric though was smiling when they climbed the stairs and made their way to where they'd last met Aspaseka.
When they arrived, the door was open, spilling a warmer, richer, and much more comforting light out onto the second floor balcony. Aspaseka hadn't opted for a locked and guarded room, but the rest of the upper floor rooms seemed unoccupied and there wasn't a line of sight from below into where they’d be meeting, so there was little to worry about if they wished to be discrete.
Their employer's agent sat in a relaxed posture at the room's central table, chair leaned back onto two legs, feet propped up on the tabletop as she read through a small book nestled in her lap. She seemed to have just eaten as well, as the empty bottle of wine on the table might have suggested, but more so the silver platter covered with an obscene pile of bones, half of which seemed to have been gnawed open at the ends for the marrow. Sticking out from the mess was even what looked like a hoof, but beyond the bones there wasn't anything left, though Aspaseka was delicately tapping a napkin at the corners of her mouth with an almost baroque and practiced elegance as they knocked on the door frame.
“Sorry!” Aspaseka said with a start as they walked in. “I just finished breakfast and I didn’t quite expect you here so soon. Excuse the mess, they haven’t sent up one of the wait staff yet.”
Blushing slightly, she took her feet off the table and hurriedly unfolded her napkin and tossed it over the pile of bones on the table. It didn’t entirely cover them, nor did it make the juxtaposition of gnawed but daintily cleaned bones without a drop of blood on the table any less confusing. There weren’t any knives or forks either.
“Good morning.” Velkyn said as he sat down at one of the chairs already arranged for them.
Aspaseka glanced at them all as they walked in and took their chairs. All of them were present. That was good. No good ever came from losing employees on their first job. She liked this group more and more. “I take it everything went well?”
“Too cold.” Inva said. “But otherwise I had fun.”
Victor smiled, “I hate undead.”
Inva poked him with her tail. “No, I think it’s the other way around there. Undead hate you.”
He smiled, “That too.”
Aspaseka seemed anxious, as if asking how they were doing was something of a formality. The tone of her question was genuine, and her concern for them as well, but she clearly had her mind fixated on the object that she’d sent them to receive within the Great Barrow in the first place.
“You told me that you’d found it.” She said, leaning forward slightly. “May I see it?”
Velkyn nodded, “He’s in one of our bags. Let me get him out.”
Their employer’s head tilted to the side. “Him?”
“Yeah…” Velkyn replied, reaching into his bag of holding. “The Codex wasn’t exactly a normal book or anything of that nature.”
“It’s a mimir.” Inva said. “Or rather, he’s a mimir.”
A mixture of curiosity and confusion crossed Aspaseka’s face, with wonder being added to that list as the glittering skull of Yuvaraj was produced from the bag.
“That’s the Codex of Long Shadows and Last Breaths?” She asked as the skull gently floated in mid-air. “That… that wasn’t expected.”
Yuvaraj slowly rotated to face her, and as he did so, it was obvious that she was taking her time to read the inscriptions carved and inlayed into the skull. Her attention on the carvings was rather abruptly taken away and replaced with more surprise though when she saw the glittering soul-gem lodged in the mimir’s mouth. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t ever normal.
“I can’t really say that you’re all that I expected.” Aspaseka said. “I’m impressed and surprised.”
“Hmm…” Yuvaraj responded, drifting closer. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one of your kind either, nor precisely anyway.”
“Sorry, let me be more specific I suppose.” Inva paused and pointed directly at the ring. “Are you able to tell me about this particular ring?”
Yuvaraj nodded, "Without restriction and with pleasure."
His response carried with it a tone that had been absent in any previous conversation: he seemed pleased, almost deviously so.
"This line of questioning is something of a loophole in my state of being. I was asked this very same question once before, by the very wizard whose bones you collected the ring from in the first place. I told the ring's history, most of it at least, to the now deceased Iutep, and I can happily discuss the record of that conversation, and a great deal of tangential facts related to it. It allows me to talk about my people, and I appreciate that. Thank you."
The Grand Artificer's skull bobbed like a happy child.
"Well..." Inva chuckled. "With all the irony of me saying so, I'm glad I could put a little ray of sunshine into your situation. But, having said that, I'm a tad concerned that a number of people have asked about this particular bauble, and they correspond with a trail of corpses in this thing's past. I wonder what I've gotten myself into, but hopefully you can tell me a bit about this ring."
"Indeed I can, but I should say that you might take the earliest portions of my knowledge about the ring with caution, because its nature and precise history are somewhat muddled. The Imaskari were notoriously secretive. What in particular would you like to know about it?"
Inva held up her hand and gently tugged at the ring. Of course, it didn't budge from its position atop her finger. "Call it whimsy or greed, but I put this on and can't seem to take it off now. Is it possible to remove it?"
"Yes. It is within your power to do so now."
Inva looked at the ring and then back up at the skull. "Hmm. What's the catch?"
"You would have to die." Yuvaraj bluntly replied, drawing a rather nonplussed reaction from the tiefling. "A particularly existential escape I suppose: you always have the opportunity to exercise your free will and take your leave of this life. Upon your death, the bond between you and the ring will be broken, and if a new wearer takes the ring, were you to be subsequently resurrected, you would be free of that companionship for better or for worse."
Behind her, Inva's tail alternately twisted into a tight curl and then relaxed, belaying her irritation at the answer. "Not quite the answer I was hoping for. Is there anything that doesn't involve existential despair and me dying?"
"Loopholes always exist, especially among those desperate enough to try to find them, and Towapesh himself, the ring's current namesake, was just such a person as I'll explain later. So yes, there is another way besides dying, though it is considerably more painful."
"Joy..." Inva said, frowning and glancing down at the ring. The tiny crystalline serpent wrapped around her finger made no reply, mental or otherwise, but Inva spoke her mind regardless. "But don't worry about me, I'm not giving you up, not yet. I'm just making sure I'm informed of my options."
She turned back to Yuvaraj. "So what's the second option?"
"First you'd have to sever the finger while under the effect of regenerative magic. You'd also have to have a recipient, so to speak, also under such magic. They would have to sever one of their fingers and willingly accept your finger, and the ring, to be magically grafted to their still-bleeding stump. Once the magic on them had accepted the graft and eventually replaced it with their own flesh, the new host would be bound to the ring and your link would be severed."
"And my missing finger?"
"After the ring was bound to the recipient, your finger would grow back due to your own regeneration magic, but not before that point. Perhaps a bit of spite from the ring, or perhaps not, and this may or may not hinge upon the ring accepting a new host in lieu of yourself."
Inva nodded and bobbed her tail lazily from side to side, "It's a spot better option than dying."
Back on the other side of the room there was a sharp cry of "OUCH!". Inva looked over and past Yuvaraj to see Marcus wincing and staring at a yellow, fist-sized gem in Victor's hand. Crystalline mist seemed to swirl like a jaundiced fog within the gem's faceted interior, and its light spread uniformly out to a distance of around fifteen feet, apparently not blocked by any obstacles.
"What the hell happened over there?" Inva asked, momentarily distracted.
"Marcus lied." Phaedra said, pointing to Victor's brother.
Inva raised an eyebrow. "Congrats to him I suppose, but what's so special about that? I lie too, quite a lot sometimes, but I don't make a girly scream afterwards."
Victor shot an apologetic look at his brother and held up the gemstone in his hand, prompting Inva to step back a foot as its light moved a fraction closer.
"It's something of a lie detector." Velkyn explained. "The divination we cast on it didn't say what exactly it did if you lied within range of it, so we told Marcus to lie. Apparently it hurts."
"Nice little toy." Inva said, belatedly adding. "Keep it away from me."
Phaedra grinned, "I'll scratch Inva's name off the list of anyone wanting to claim that."
The tiefling shook her head and looked back at Yuvaraj who hadn't bothered to turn back to look at what had happened, and who seemed entirely unconcerned with any of it.
"Yeah I thought that was amusing too." Inva said. "Have to see if I can get them to trip over that from time to time. Anyway, let's get back to this ring now."
Yuvaraj nodded and finally seemed to bring his attention back to the present. On some level it might have been that when not being spoken to in the capacity of a mimir, he might have lapsed into dormancy of a sort, consciously or not.
"Something I should add about the latter method of transference. During the period when the ring is transferred to its second user, before the regenerative magic replaces your finger, the ring has the capacity to speak to both people and it may object if it feels the shift in users is for the worse. While the shift is not necessarily unpleasant to the ring, it may object up to the point when this occurs, but never violently. It is simply attached emotionally to any current wearer of the ring much as a familiar would be."
"Hmm." Inva said, looking at the ring. "I've never had a familiar. I've always considered them cute, sometimes useful, but far too often targets and liabilities. You're a bit different though."
She looked back up at Yuvaraj. "So what about the ring's history?"
"The first reference to the ring that I am aware of, was in connection with Towapesh, an artificer of moderate ability who lived approximately 1000 years before the fall of Imaskar. Towapesh died at the hands of an improperly bound Pit Fiend, but he was the first known holder/companion of the ring that now bears his name, though it isn't known if he constructed the ring himself or obtained it elsewhere. The ring was stripped from his smoking, partially devoured corpse however, and afterwards it passed into the possession of Imenseph the artificer-governor of the western city of Kaeleish. Imenseph was ultimately killed by the deific manifestation of the Mulhorandi God-King Anhur. I was never told of the rings fate from that point till it arrived on Iutep’s finger, a space of roughly one month, but that seems immaterial."
"You didn't say that Towapesh actually made the ring though." Inva said. "Just that it first showed up with him as far as you know."
"That is correct." Yuvaraj nodded. "While the ring's design and material of construction does suggest an Imaskari origin, it does not bear a makers sigil that would be common for such objects if it was truly made by one of the artificers, be that Towapesh or an earlier predecessor. Towapesh would have marked his creation prominently if he'd made it, because it would have been the crowning achievement of an otherwise unremarkable career. Additionally, there exists an outside prospect of the ring having been created during the centuries of my reign as Grand Artificer, and by magical accident or planar anomaly it could have been sent backwards in time to Towapesh's period of history. If there were any maker's sigil from my period I would immediately recognize it, but again, no such mark exists, and for such an item to have entirely escaped my attention during my rule is unlikely."
"So what do you think is the most likely origin?"
"I would speculate that the ring is either from an older period of Imaskar, well over 1500 years before my reign, and that it was likely created by an obscure artificer. But of course, there is always the chance that the ring came from another source entirely, with no direct connection to the Imaskari other than its period of circulation among a known pair of wizards, and then into Iutep's hands."
"Other sources?"
"As I revealed to Iutep under much different circumstances, Imaskar gained portions of its arcane traditions from a diverse number of sources, many of them extraplanar, and so what appears at first glance to be an Imaskari object, might not even be from the prime material, and might in fact predate Imaskar entirely."
Inva tapped the spade on her tail against her thigh. "You've got me curious about that now. When you say extraplanar sources, whom specifically are you talking about?"
The skull lowered its chin and shook from side to side. "Sadly I cannot say due to the bindings in place upon me. Where material touches upon our magic, the Untheric and Mulhorandi gods were terrified of a resurgence of our lore, and the ideology that went along with it, and so they took what steps they could to bury it."
Inva shrugged, "I'd assumed so. Oh well. So what can the ring actually do? It hasn't said much, and it's not really self-identifying."
"As I mentioned before." Yuvaraj explained. "It acts in a capacity similar to a familiar, and it has offered advice and knowledge to its current bonded companion. The ring may have gained its arcane knowledge simply by association with the succession of wizards who held it over the centuries, or some unknown wizard may have supplied such knowledge to it at the time of its creation of old. However much of its knowledge may be its own, resulting from a being that was intentionally bound into the essence of the ring."
"That..." Inva drew out her response. "...has interesting implications. If it's a bound creature, it's not exactly a familiar. What do you think it is?"
"Good question." Yuvaraj replied. "The ring does not behave as an entrapped being at all, so I find this latter origin scenario unlikely. But this is speculation, and the ring, if it has informed past wearers as to its origin, including Imenseph who I knew personally for several centuries, or Iutep who I knew briefly, that information was not passed on to me or any others that I'm aware of."
"When I was old, Towapesh's world was yet stardust in the void, drifting around its parent star in its infancy."
Inva went rigid as the ring broke its silence. The former Purple Emperor droned on, but she was no longer listening to him. The ring had her captivated entirely.
"My perspective is expansive my dear." The words were spoken in a fluid dialect of Calishite, Inva's native tongue, almost as if the language had been pulled from her mind and curled around the ring's serpentine tongue. The voice was seductive, seeming to slither across her mind with the spreading warmth evoked by a lover's touch, words whispered in her ear by a courtesan in the process of undoing her corset. "I will say Inva, that you are correct about my not being a simple familiar. I am here in this form for various reasons, but in the end, only this reason needs to be known: I do this because it pleases me to do so. I wish to experience the world through like-minded beings, and having tasted your mind and your blood, I see little that I do not like. We shall prosper and enjoy ourselves, you and I."
Inva's face was flushed and she brought a hand down to her stomach as the ring withdrew from her mind and left a few gentle, trailing contractions within her in its wake. She was glad she was sitting down.
"...the ring seems capable of reading the thoughts, moods and memories of who it is bonded to." Yuvaraj continued, oblivious to Inva's contact with the ring's intelligence, oblivious to the fact that she had just learned firsthand that particular capability.
"So what's the drawback?" She finally asked, still flushed. "Surely this isn't completely a benefit for the wearer. The ring is intelligent, or harbors an intelligence, and surely it has its own wishes. Have any past wearers mentioned such?"
"They have." Yuvaraj replied. "The ring has been known to question its holder on their thoughts, even as it combs the surface of their mind and reads what bubbles to the surface. It listens and asks for clarifications, reasons, details etc, perhaps to invoke a better sense of the personality of whom it has been linked to. Iutep mentioned that it seemed to harbor an intense dislike of vrocks, something that apparently brought about an argument between ring and wearer when Iutep summoned a flight of those demons early during the campaign against Imaskar."
Interesting, but it didn't give an absolute identity to the ring's inhabitant. Hating one particular type of tanar'ri might mean it was diabolic in nature, or simply another form of abyssal demon. And if it felt it was compatible with Inva, that didn't mean much either since she wasn't particularly drawn to either of evil's opposite ends. The ring might fall to either side, but still consider her largely like-minded.
"Based on everything I heard of the ring, particularly from Iutep, it honestly seems to just desire to be bound to someone of equal or compatible nature and then experience life vicariously through them, helping as it can. It is very obvious however that the ring is rather selfish towards the welfare of itself and its bound companion collectively."
Worry not my dear. The ring whispered into her mind. We should make a very nice match, and yes, I do seek to experience the world through my companions. I enjoy the experiences, and I will act as I see fit to ensure that you survive to continue to provide me this window into the world. Call upon me in the future, and we shall see what I can provide to you.
Inva looked down at the ring, growing more and more comfortable with it the more it spoke to her. She no longer felt worried, nor did she feel any desire to take it off even if the process were easier. The shift in mindset might have been genuine, or it might have been a result of the ring's increasing bond; she honestly wasn't sure, but as their relationship progressed and evolved, she was curious to learn more about it, and what it could provide.
"Sadly, that approaches the limits of my knowledge." Yuvaraj stated. "Or at least that approaches the limits of what I am capable of saying."
Inva nodded. "That's fine. I appreciate what information you could tell me though."
Yuvaraj said nothing more and simply remained hovering in mid-air, and stayed there the remainder of the night, silent and motionless like a dim, skull-shaped lantern.
By the time Inva had finished speaking with the unliving mimir however, the others had finished their divinations on the remainder of the items that they had scavenged from Nergal's tomb. More wine had also been delivered to the room, and Inva took a bottle and rejoined her companions to celebrate their success. The warmth of the wine slowly diluting itself into her bloodstream, and the increasingly jovial conversations with Phaedra, were superficial to the latent presence the tiefling now felt in the back of her mind from the ring on her finger.
That night, with a bottle and a half of wine to her credit, she finally crawled back to her room in the inn to sleep. She slept alone that evening, but she wasn't truly alone as she pulled the sheets up to her neck and gently toyed with the sparkling, glowing ring upon her finger almost as much as the holy symbol around her neck. Still, she felt no worry or threat. The presence was compatible, even though for the moment it continued to keep its secrets with a dangled lure of power and knowledge in her mind's eye. Time would reveal more.
***
Daylight saw the group eating a small breakfast and paying their tab before leaving and making as quick a trip as possible to Center. Quickly returning to Sigil through the Tradegate's portal, they made use of the previous route through the City of Doors to make their way to the City-at-the-Center, arriving in the city's Pluton district, under the long shadow of the Palace of Dandy Will.
Victor was uncomfortable, and so was Garibaldi, but despite the city's location in the middle of the Waste, it was a trade city, and disturbingly free of conflict and political entanglement. Plus, arriving by way of Sigil, they managed to avoid the disease risk, and quarantine period that using the Oinian gate into the city would have carried. As uncomfortable as they might have been walking along a street in the Waste, passing by fiends and unsavory mortals of every stripe and color, they knew that portions of Sigil were actually more dangerous, and that things could have been much worse.
Eventually though, and without incident, they turned onto Hag's Head Avenue and approached the junction of streets where presumably Aspaseka would be waiting for them after they had informed her of their success via a sending spell the night before. She struck them as a rather organized, rather punctual person and so they didn't doubt that she'd probably be there when they arrived.
"Oh for f*ck's sake..." Phaedra grumbled as she glanced at the corner of Hag's Head Avenue and Ebon's Walk, noting a familiar face standing there.
It was the proselytizer, the same one that she'd seen before when they were last in Center. The very same black, silver and scarlet robed arcanaloth from before was still standing at the street's corner, verbally and mentally harassing anything with a drop of yugoloth blood that passed by. Knowing that it was one of the Oinoloth's fold was knowledge enough for Phaedra to keep herself as far away as possible, lest it approach her, especially given the uncertainties of how it might react to the less damned half of her bloodline.
The half-'loth pulled up her hood to mask her face and immediately shapeshifted into a rather average-looking human woman. Still though, morbid curiosity did cost her a passing glance at the fiend, which was enough to notice a few disturbing details and incongruities in the process.
Standing on the large and polished obsidian flagstone that marked the junction of the two streets, the 'fiend was casting a triple reflection into the glass. It wasn't a property of the glossy stone itself, because none of the other passersby were giving off anything but a normal reflection, and it didn't seem to be an obviously simple illusion. Otherwise identical, each of the three were cast in a different color, none of them entirely matching any of the ambient sources of light there on the street: one in scarlet, one in rusted, bloody red, and a third in bleached, ashen gray.
The same iconography was repeated on the amulet hung around the 'loth's neck, a trio of intersecting circles in the same color pattern, each bearing the symbol of one of the planes of conflict to which the color corresponded. Additionally there was another symbol centered between them, but without obviously looking, and without getting closer, it was too difficult to make out fully.
Phaedra turned away and back towards the Prancing Nightmare Inn as they neared its doors. She didn't look back as she heard the fiend call out to a passing tiefling, seemingly knowing the particulars of their blood just by a glance. Phaedra didn't know the 'loth's message, neither what it was selling, nor what it was asking in return, but she immediately knew that she didn't want to get involved. The politics of purity were something of her father's race that she wanted absolutely nothing of.
"If that dumb*ss is always out there on that corner,” She complained, “We really need to find another location to meet in."
Garibaldi nodded rapidly as he glanced around the tavern's common room. The clientele alone disturbed him, to say nothing of the city's location in the Waste.
"Hey look!" Inva said, nudging the fighter and then tapping Victor's shoulder as well. "They've got a succubus dancing this time."
Phaedra stuck out her tongue and made a face, a rather strange face since at the same time she shifted back to a largely 'loth form.
For his part, Garibaldi tried not to look, even as Inva poked him in the side again. But morbid curiosity got the better of him, and he took a sidelong glance at the fiend prancing around the stage. The bat-winged woman, wearing nothing but a loincloth, noticed him looking and then winked and beckoned to him. Inva snickered when the fighter jerked in surprise and abruptly turned away.
Victor rolled his eyes and took it in stride, handling the situation much more calmly and stoically than Garibaldi, even though he probably felt a stronger disapproval about their surroundings. No need to proselytize or warn the occupants of such a place, because they were already well aware of their location, of the danger, and it wasn't likely that they would be receptive to any message outside of the jiggle of the succubus’s breasts. Voicing any objections in such a place would only invite danger, and so he stayed quiet and in the background as much as he could.
That was Victor's plan at least, but when they passed by the stage on their way to the stairs, the fiend couldn't resist making a pass. Gripping tightly to the iron pole running from stage to ceiling, she arched her back and leaned over backwards to glance at the passing cleric, tasting the air like a snake with a disturbingly long, forked tongue.
"Greetings mortal." The succubus cooed. "I could offer you something so much sweeter on the tongue, so much more warming than what's on tap."
Victor smiled back and replied cheerfully, without blinking or missing a beat to his step, "You'd burn."
Spurned, the fiend gave a hiss and a few sputtered words in abyssal, but neither Victor nor any of the others looked back or really cared to return her smoldering gaze. The cleric though was smiling when they climbed the stairs and made their way to where they'd last met Aspaseka.
When they arrived, the door was open, spilling a warmer, richer, and much more comforting light out onto the second floor balcony. Aspaseka hadn't opted for a locked and guarded room, but the rest of the upper floor rooms seemed unoccupied and there wasn't a line of sight from below into where they’d be meeting, so there was little to worry about if they wished to be discrete.
Their employer's agent sat in a relaxed posture at the room's central table, chair leaned back onto two legs, feet propped up on the tabletop as she read through a small book nestled in her lap. She seemed to have just eaten as well, as the empty bottle of wine on the table might have suggested, but more so the silver platter covered with an obscene pile of bones, half of which seemed to have been gnawed open at the ends for the marrow. Sticking out from the mess was even what looked like a hoof, but beyond the bones there wasn't anything left, though Aspaseka was delicately tapping a napkin at the corners of her mouth with an almost baroque and practiced elegance as they knocked on the door frame.
“Sorry!” Aspaseka said with a start as they walked in. “I just finished breakfast and I didn’t quite expect you here so soon. Excuse the mess, they haven’t sent up one of the wait staff yet.”
Blushing slightly, she took her feet off the table and hurriedly unfolded her napkin and tossed it over the pile of bones on the table. It didn’t entirely cover them, nor did it make the juxtaposition of gnawed but daintily cleaned bones without a drop of blood on the table any less confusing. There weren’t any knives or forks either.
“Good morning.” Velkyn said as he sat down at one of the chairs already arranged for them.
Aspaseka glanced at them all as they walked in and took their chairs. All of them were present. That was good. No good ever came from losing employees on their first job. She liked this group more and more. “I take it everything went well?”
“Too cold.” Inva said. “But otherwise I had fun.”
Victor smiled, “I hate undead.”
Inva poked him with her tail. “No, I think it’s the other way around there. Undead hate you.”
He smiled, “That too.”
Aspaseka seemed anxious, as if asking how they were doing was something of a formality. The tone of her question was genuine, and her concern for them as well, but she clearly had her mind fixated on the object that she’d sent them to receive within the Great Barrow in the first place.
“You told me that you’d found it.” She said, leaning forward slightly. “May I see it?”
Velkyn nodded, “He’s in one of our bags. Let me get him out.”
Their employer’s head tilted to the side. “Him?”
“Yeah…” Velkyn replied, reaching into his bag of holding. “The Codex wasn’t exactly a normal book or anything of that nature.”
“It’s a mimir.” Inva said. “Or rather, he’s a mimir.”
A mixture of curiosity and confusion crossed Aspaseka’s face, with wonder being added to that list as the glittering skull of Yuvaraj was produced from the bag.
“That’s the Codex of Long Shadows and Last Breaths?” She asked as the skull gently floated in mid-air. “That… that wasn’t expected.”
Yuvaraj slowly rotated to face her, and as he did so, it was obvious that she was taking her time to read the inscriptions carved and inlayed into the skull. Her attention on the carvings was rather abruptly taken away and replaced with more surprise though when she saw the glittering soul-gem lodged in the mimir’s mouth. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t ever normal.
“I can’t really say that you’re all that I expected.” Aspaseka said. “I’m impressed and surprised.”
“Hmm…” Yuvaraj responded, drifting closer. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one of your kind either, nor precisely anyway.”
