“Clueless? Clueless?!”
The bladesinger blinked and shook his head, gradually becoming aware of Florian’s voice.
“Hey!” She shouted, tapping his head. “Impulsive winged thing! What stupid thing did you do this time and are you alright?”
The mental fog lifted and Clueless looked up and focused.
“Damn it…” He muttered. “Shylara is a freak of the first order.”
His companions just looked at him.
“What did you do?” Fyrehowl asked warily.
Clueless winced, shook his head and got to his feet. They gave him room and backed away on the off chance that he wasn’t himself.
“Just don’t try to legend lore the statue.” He said, trying to rid himself of select portions of his memories of the experience inside the fiend’s mind. “That wasn’t pleasant.”
“What happened?” Tristol asked.
“She was aware of it, and she made it rather…” Clueless started and trailed off. “Actually… let’s just say it was unpleasant and leave it at that.”
The statue itself hadn’t changed in the slightest. Whatever the archfiend’s ability to rule over the fortress of her own diseased mind, she was still imprisoned fast in stone.
“How long was I out?” Clueless asked, half expecting an hour or more, which was how long his time inside of the forest of chains had roughly lasted from his perspective.
“Not long.” Toras said. “You cast a spell, touched Madame Baldy’s muzzle, and hit the floor. About three seconds.”
He nodded. “So then what exactly are we going to do with her? Is there a consensus? She’s not exactly happy where she is.”
Meanwhile, having apparently learned no lesson by proxy from Clueless, Nisha walked up to the statue.
“Hey! Tristol!” She called out to him.
Tristol looked over to find his girlfriend standing next to the statue, slowly rubbing herself against the stone, one leg up and curled around the archfiend’s hip in the classical exotic pose. Blood immediately left his brain and rushed to the tips of his ears, and a moment later elsewhere as Nisha leaned in and passionately French-kissed the petrified ‘loth.
Tristol didn’t know what to think, and neither did anyone else, but a part of the aasimar was getting far too turned on by watching it all, a fact that his tail conveniently helped cover in a heartbeat. He was still staring when Nisha broke the kiss and her lusty woman act and fell into a furious giggle.
“Nisha!” Florian said, fighting back a gag. “What the hell?! I didn’t even know you were into that.”
“Statues, ‘loths or girls?” Clueless asked.
“None of the above!” She giggled, shaking her head before glancing over to Tristol. “But the reaction on his face was priceless nonetheless!”
Tristol’s eyes were still wide and his ear tips were flushed as Nisha trotted up next to him, still giggling, to give him a hug. She was still giggling even after she’d calmed her boyfriend down, looked back at the statue, made a disgusted expression and spit out a bit of gravel. She also used the opportunity to slip a sensory stone into his hand along with a well-intentioned pat on his tail.
In the meantime, Clueless had something else on his mind to worry about, so to speak, as there was suddenly a deep, familiar chuckle inside his head.
“This was unexpected.” The agonizingly familiar voice exclaimed.
“Truly unexpected.”
Helekanalaith. What the hell did he want? How was he involved?
Clueless tried to look normal as the archfiend made his mental presence known. The others didn’t know about his presence there, lurking in the back of his head, and it would truly look bad if they found out suddenly that he’d kept something like that from them, especially when they were preparing to abscond with the bloody Overlord of Carceri.
The arcanaloth lord’s presence seemed to grin.
“Tsk tsk…” He chided.
“Arrogance is unbecoming of you…”
Clueless’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m being arrogant?” he thought.
If the fiend took notice, it didn’t matter, because his next words made the context of the phrase much more clear.
“And arrogance Shylara is rather dangerous, but it’s a trait that’s not out of the ordinary for you in my experience.”
His companions talked, and Clueless nodded and made his way towards the edge, putting his hands on the stone of one of the cupola’s open window arches like he was turning away to think and gather his thoughts. In a way he was, just not at all in the manner they expected.
“Do what you will to the godisles, but you will relinquish her trapped surrogate body into my care.”
Almost immediately after the archfiend’s declaration, a surge of information flooded into the bladesinger’s mind giving him the location of a specific color pool on the Astral.
”Dump the body in and do what you will from there.”
“For what benefit Lord Helekanalaith?” Clueless mentally replied.
“Our deal was for information. I had expected you to be a bidder if we’d decided to sell Shylara’s imprisoned form. Why should I not hold her till you’re willing to buy.”
“Our deal provides you information when it suits me mortal.” The Keeper of the Tower replied.
“But not to worry. I won’t leave you with nothing for your efforts.”
“Oh?”
“As for why you shouldn’t hold her and seek to solicit bids, consider fifty gates opening on you ten seconds hence and more fiends than you can count spilling out of them. And not all of them would necessarily be mine. The longer you hold on to her is the longer you risk some contingency plan of hers swinging into effect, or the Oinoloth seeking to reclaim what is his property in every meaning of the word.”
Clueless paled and turned away as he was, he didn’t notice Fyrehowl looking at him oddly.
“Alright, you’ve got a point there…” Clueless replied.
“But what insurance do we have that she won’t strike us upon her freedom? I know your power. I know hers. Have no doubt of that, but the others seem to have no understanding of her rank. I would dearly like her True Name or some guarantee of a sequence of spells on her to keep us protected.”
“She will be… preoccupied for some time once in my tender care.”
The archfiend’s voice was chilling.
“How long?” Clueless asked, not wanting to know what his plans might be.
“At the least, 9 months.” The Keeper of the Tower replied.
“But beyond that on my part, once free she will have other issues to deal with of her own.”
“Long enough.” Clueless said, nodding.
“But my companions will have to become aware of this deal, and of you.”
“Then tell them. And impress upon them its urgency. She will not remain entrapped forever.”
“Noted.”
“Clueless?” Fyrehowl asked, looking directly at the half-fey and poking him in the chest as he finally turned around. “This is twice now that you’ve completely zoned out on us. What’s going on?”
He gave an awkward look and she backed away to give him space. “We’ve got someone interested in taking Shylara off of our hands.”
“Excuse me?” The lupinal asked.
“Helekanalaith.” He replied, looking away. “Gods this is awkward…”
There was nothing but a silence that Shylara’s statue would have had difficulty matching.
“Remember that crystal ball I took from the tower in Elysium?” He said with a guilty voice. “When I used it in Carceri… well… it was cursed. Apparently it had been floating around between various ‘loths for centuries and I just happened to be the next person in line to use it.”
“F*ck!” Florian said. “How much is he aware of, and how much can he do?”
“He can look but that’s it.” Clueless replied. “He seems to regard me as a curiosity more than anything else. And him wanting Shylara wasn’t entirely an option we’re being offered.”
Florian turned and flipped off Shylara. “I repeat what I just said.”
“Is he bailing her out?” Fyrehowl asked, gesturing to the statue. “Or something else?”
“He’s taking her off our hands, and supposedly she’ll be out of our hair for close to a year, possibly more. She’ll be out eventually, but he seemed to suggest that she’ll have a wrecked home back in Carceri, and we’ll be the furthest thing from her mind when she’s back in the world at large.”
They didn’t want to be angry at Clueless, after all the crystal ball was something any of them could have picked up and used. It was freakish chance that the archfiend had wormed into his mind, but he’d kept it from them for some time. Still, the offer or non-offer as might have been, wasn’t as bad as some ideas that they’d originally proposed.
“And if we refuse?” Toras asked. “I take it he knows where you are?”
Clueless nodded and grimaced. “You can guess…”
“Fine.” Skalliska said. “It’s better than some options. What do we have to do?”
***
Twenty minutes of debate, group agreement, and twenty minutes of travel later, they stood at the edge of a massive, deep russet color pool in the Astral.
Tristol looked warily at the swirling tear in the fabric of the Astral, half expecting a horde of fiends to come bubbling up out of it. “Keep in mind that if something goes wrong, I’m pretty much out of spells.”
Tristol had used his last planeshift getting them to the Astral, and they’d been lucky to avoid any conflict on their way to the pool, following the directions that Clueless had been given, carrying the petrified archfiend in tow.
“I think that we’ll be fine.” Clueless said. “At least when it suits him, Helekanalaith seems to be a man of his word.”
Fyrehowl rolled her eyes and kicked Shylara’s statue as hard as she could, sending the fiend spiraling head over heels towards the pool.
“Enjoy whatever happens to you.” She growled. “Tell your master to go f*ck himself.”
The swirling color pool swallowed Shylara’s petrified body and almost immediately there was a response inside Clueless’s mind. It ignored the lupinal’s sentiment, but seemed positively beaming over the statue they’d gifted him with.
“Package received.”
***
The two ‘loths stood on the edge of the natural bowl of land that surrounded the Tower of Incarnate Pain, high up on the rust-red escarpment, just inside the veil of illusions and other wards that segregated them from the rest of Othrys. One of them sat on the cliff, legs dangling over the side, and the other stood several feet back, gazing out at the tower as the wind at those heights buffeted at his robes.
They stood there in silence, having both arrived several minutes earlier, just after things had gone to hell within the tower below. They’d been there when Bubonix and Cholerix, the first lords of the tower, had been toppled. They’d been nycaloths at the time, and though they’d since been promoted, they had retained a pact, a contingency plan that would leap into effect if the leadership of the tower were to ever experience a state of flux.
That time had arrived.
Some of them had sensed it from the tower itself, or seen the ripple in the wards, or the momentary flicker of the furnace of cold illumination burning within the heart of the Reflective Chasm, and then rumor had spread from brain to tongue to ear and loyalty collapsed as should have been expected. The mistress was in a vulnerable state, imprisoned or otherwise detained off plane, while her physical body lay like a corpse in state within her personal chambers.
The ranks of her senior advisors and agents had, in a black little heartbeat, become the ranks of her would-be killers and successors.
“Hmm…” The first arcanaloth mused as he kicked his feet into the wind and felt the cold penetrate through his slippers and kiss at his toes. “…This is a setback.”
“A setback?” The second arcanaloth asked. “Or an opportunity?”
Despite the whistle of the wind and the ambient wail of the tower’s petitioners, the brothers’ smiles were audible.
“She’ll be upset you know.” Alpthis commented. “When she returns.”
“Absolutely.” Apteris replied. “The ashes outside her chamber at the edge of the wards were only two inches deep by the end of the hour. She’ll have wanted more, and she’ll find the lack of treachery as a fault no doubt.”
Seated upon the edge of the cliff, the sorcerer nodded. “Oh indeed, there will be executions.”
They both smiled and went silent, looking down at the base of the tower where the lesser yugoloths in service to the Manged still continued their tasks, ignorant of the situation that absorbed each and every nycaloth, arcanaloth, and ultroloth in the tower above them. The tower’s mistress had stumbled, but her lowest servants still served nonetheless, and the tower still screamed with the misery of its living bricks.
The two arcanaloths said nothing, either verbally or telepathically for some time as they watched the tower. Finally, one of them spoke and broke the silence.
“So what is it that you’re holding there?” Apteris asked, taking a step closer. “I can smell it on the wind, and the normal pitch is different from when we otherwise come up here to chat.”
Alpthis chuckled and moved his hand to place a fist-sized object on the edge of the cliff.
Apteris wrinkled his nose and looked at the black lump of ragged flesh.
It was a heart, freshly removed from its recent body, likely by magic, probably within the last few minutes, and there was a rather pronounced bite that had been taken from the left ventricle.
“So who was the victim?” The sorcerer-monk asked.
“She was a traitor you see. Plotting against the mistress.” Alpthis explained, licking a bit of blood off of his lower lip. “At least that’s my excuse and I’ll be keeping to it.”
Apteris said nothing as he gestured to the heart and telekinetically brought it to his right hand. He looked at the heart, sniffed at it like some expensive delicacy, and then bit into it like it were an apple.
“So?” Alpthis asked while his brother finished his taste. “Your opinion on the matter brother?”
“I recognize the taste. Lucinda Ap Fireth.” He said, taking a second bite before tossing it back for his brother to finish. “I -should- recognize the taste. I was f*cking her you know.”
“Only when I wasn’t.”
“Not even then always.”
They shared a mutual chuckle; a rival out of the way, even if their beds might lack a partner for the short term.
“I’ve shared, both admission of sin and a bite of a stolen heart.” Alpthis said, turning around to look at his brother for the first time. “So now it’s my turn to ask: what’s in your left hand?”
The standing ‘loth tossed the head to the ground where it rolled to a halt a short distance from his brother, the glaze of death dulling the formerly blazing eyes of the ultroloth.
“Congratulations brother.” Alpthis said, poking at the claw divots in the scalp of the severed head. “Seems that you found him before I did.”
Apteris gave a perfunctory bow. “I apologize for the state of the cut, it’s a bit ragged I know, but I was in a hurry.”
“Such can be forgiven.” His brother replied, grinning ear to ear. “I suppose we can share the brain before he begins to dissolve. We’ve never dined on ultroloth before.”
“It would have been the heart.” Alpthis explained, looking at the palm of his hand. “But unfortunately that happened to explode in his chest at some point. Seems that today was my turn to be the impulsive one.”
Again they shared a look, a grin, and a conspiratorial chuckle as glanced from heart to head and back towards the tower of their once and future mistress. Opportunity came to those who had the presence of mind to see it and had the will to grasp it, and at the moment, in the moment of their lady’s weakness, they had an abundance of both.
A minute later and their fingers were scooped into the brain of the former ultroloth, Malzigran of the Fetid Heart, and with a look and feeling of disturbing satisfaction playing across their muzzles and beating a rhythm through their skulls, they shared in their victory meal, consuming their kills while they looked up at the distant tower.
“Here’s to opportunity!”
***
Within the tower, at its heart and nerve center, in the personal chambers of the Overlord of Carceri, things were different. There were no toasts, no smiles, no greedy shared looks of lust for power, nor any words or curses or sounds of any kind.
In the darkness where the mistress of the Tower of Incarnate Pain lay sprawled, naked and catatonic, there was only the vacant expression upon her face and nothing more.
The screams were silent.
The walls of petitioner flesh were frozen in place, faces and merged bodies pushing against one another like they were bricks trying to flee their spots in a tower’s foundations. Once-mortal souls fused together into the unholy abomination that was the Tower of Incarnate Pain… their agony was indescribable, but for the moment they were absolutely quiet.
Tongues were still, eyes futilely sought to close themselves, fragments of individuals trembled and sought to bury themselves beneath the churning mass of their fellow amalgamated prisoners. The entirety of the tower felt the status of their mistress, and their awareness of her titanic fury and shame would have driven the flesh of her home to fever pitched wailing.
But instead, the silence was deafening.
“Despite your claims to the contrary, I know that you won’t delude yourself into thinking that I’ll so much as lift a finger to help you out of the situation that you’ve so foolishly placed yourself within.”
The reddish albino eyes opened in the gloom and the tip of a claw traced along the line of the catatonic archfiend’s jaw. Despite her status, caught between two planes of existence, the muscles of her jaw twitched involuntarily.
“You will suffer for your failure child. And whenever you return to me, it will be on your knees, and the suffering will be more violent.”
Spittle coated teeth, lips parted, and the Oinoloth grinned.
“Of course you are keenly aware of this, but you will be reminded of it nonetheless.”
Claws tapped on cold stone, the same floor that had once been part of his office, and whose walls remembered him keenly. Their silence was out of terror, not respect.
“Still, this impacts me little.” The Ebon remarked, once more tracing fingers along her flesh. “Most of the constructions and wards upon the Astral will collapse in the absence of your active control, and the storm will erase the evidence of our activities in short order. The former Athar citadel atop Aoskar’s corpse will suffer somewhat more of course, both from the additional contingencies that you placed across the area, and a few of my own that you were unaware of.”
Archfiend stood over archfiend and smiled as the wards of the chamber shuddered ever so slightly, vibrated like a harp’s strings, soft yet discordant. Someone had attempted to breach the first of the three doors that led to Shylara’s chambers, but with that action Oinoloth knew that the wards would react, and as if on cue they did. Exerting a bit of influence over his former tower, he dipped his foot into the suddenly liquid surface of the floor and stirred his toes in their substance. He felt the essence of the disintegrated greater yugoloth merge with the substance of the tower’s billionfold tormented bricks.
“One more to join you.” He said to the walls.
The walls remained taught and silent.
“Another one into your collection my love…” He said to the tower’s mistress, sneering in contempt at the last word of that sentence.
“You warded yourself well though.” He added, “And I doubt that they will succeed in killing you anytime soon, probably not at all. But I already have what I want from the Astral, and Vast’s device has already been dismantled and returned to me along with its harvest. That is all that matters.”
The Oinoloth sighed with no little pleasure and leaned down to kiss his lover and protégé, even though she couldn’t have been aware of any of it.
“Let Helekanalaith have his fun with you.” He said, breaking the kiss. “For whatever it is that he might manage to gain, it honestly doesn’t concern me. But know that when you come crawling back, my touch will be anything but kind. Suffer for me.”
***
The color pool still swirled with the telltale glow of its linked plane, but nothing more was forthcoming, for better or for worse. They’d delivered the petrified astral body of the Archfiend of Carceri, but afterwards… nothing.
“We’re still alive…” Florian said. “This is a very good thing.”
“But we’re still here on the Astral.” Skalliska said, backlit by the whirlpool. “And I’m out of planeshifts.”
Clueless waited, expecting the Gehennan archfiend to provide a gate, or at least give some form of acknowledgement beyond his rather terse statement of receipt a minute earlier. But no response was forthcoming.
“Lord Helekanalaith?” Clueless asked, looking at the color pool. “Would you mind sending us somewhere else now that we’ve gone to the effort of delivering your prize?”
The color pool remained silent, and no words resounded inside the bladesinger’s head.
“Don’t look at me.” Tristol said. “I used up my last planeshift getting us here to the Astral.”
Fyrehowl sighed. “I should have expected this. I really should have.”
Clueless gave a plaintive shrug. “He’s probably preoccupied at the moment.”
And truth be told, the Keeper of the Tower was incredibly preoccupied. Some slim fragment of his consciousness was still tapped into Clueless’s mind, but he wasn’t paying attention given what had just been handed to him.
“The f*cker stranded us out here!” Toras shouted towards the color pool. “We should have given her to the Marauder!”
Fyrehowl gave them all an awkward look. “Let’s vaguely insult him once we’re back home and not standing in front of a color pool to Gehenna.”
Tristol sighed, looking irritated. “But we don’t have any way back.”
Nisha rubbed his shoulder and gave him a kiss, “I’d love to say that I had a scroll or something that I’d been holding in reserve… but no. Sorry.”
The wizard sighed and kissed the tiefling back, noticeably relaxing towards his girlfriend at least. “I hate to ask then, but you’ll have to use… you know…”
He was referring of course to the bubble of heavy magic affixed to the bladesinger’s collar, but Clueless immediately waved that off as a possibility, and he didn’t indicate it either. They’d never told Skalliska about it, expecting –rightfully so- that the kobold would want in on it.
“Not going to happen.” He replied. “I’ve used it too much recently, and I just did to poke around inside Shylara’s mind… for all that got me… and it’s irritated. I don’t want to mess around with that.”
Tristol groaned, “We don’t really have any other option though. We’re almost completely out of spells, and we’re stuck on the Astral. It won’t be pretty if we run into a pack of githyanki while we’re out here, and who knows how long it might take to find a color pool to a less hostile plane.”
Skalliska looked up from her planar sextant. “About two days to an Outlands color pool.”
Florian winced. “Joy.”
“Still though…” Clueless shook his head. “I’d rather not… you know… more than I have to. I’ve done stupid things with this, but never one after another. For all I know my head might explode.”
Tristol sighed. “Fine then. Give it to me. I’ll use it.”
,
