WotBS Bonus Time's Burning Sky

Our breath mists as the temperature drops within this sunken chamber. The sound of rattling chains is heard ahead. Osnald brings forth dancing lights. Behind bars we see frost forming on the bars in the form of handprints, as if gripped by an invisible child.

"Whoever ye are, ye can stay where ye are," I say. "Can ye speak?"

"Course I can speak!" growls Fafnir, not seeing the marks. "Want me to check it out?" He advances to the cell. Trevor slips into the room before me. Osnald peeks in.

Inside the cell we can see small manacles against the wall. They seem to twitch. The frost gathers into the shape of a kneeling child in the corner, its fingers stained with symbols reminiscent of Nuadan practices.

"Truth is light. Light is law. Law is mercy," it says.

An adult voice is heard. "Repeat."

We call Viggo and Osnald to lend their heads. We know little of ghosts and haunts. Viggo believes it to be an impression. "There is no entity here, benevolent or malicious. It's a pattern repeating, of a traumatic event."

On the lower wall is writing: Nuada is watching over me. But it is crossed out with another phrase: Nobody is watching me.


Trevor murmurs, "Nuada is watching you. You are seen." He walks out. We all feel a grinding shift in the stone, through the walls.

We exit toward the hall, and Fafnir raises his shield. A group of flaming skeletons awaits, bearing black blades. They wear armor of the god Lugh. Beyond, a large incorporeal figure floats, wearing a black iron crown. I decide it would look better with arrows in it, so I send two into it.

Trevor slides up to stand next to Fafnir, blocking the door. His whip lashes out at the first flaming skeleton, holding it while his blades go to work against its bone. Bits of it fly, and the whip yanks its head from its shoulders. It falls.

Viggo leans around the door and casts starburst, a new cantrip. Radiant light showers around the large cloaked undead.

A flaming skeleton dashes through the door toward me. Trevor, ready, catches it with a whipstroke, but it charges ahead, swinging its fiery blades at me. One connects with my chain shirt, scraping a ragged tear across my shoulder that seals immediately from the fire.


The large creature flies into the room to appear next to me. Fafnir swings at it as it passes, connecting Einherjar with its amorphous robes. It reaches at me with black claws, trying to draw life from me. Two skeletons attack the cleric, using some form of sneaky attack.

Osnald, using a bed for cover, sends five magic missiles into the big creature.

Fafnir gains a second wind and bulls' heads blossom around him, angrily goring around them. A skeleton moves into the radius and gets battered as it moves up to the cleric.

I aim point-blank at the billowing black mass and send a single arrow through it, with colossus slayer and favored foe. I gain my own second wind, hoping not to get slashed or drained. I hear Fafnir telling me to get out of there; he thinks I'm too lightly armored, and too dainty for my own good.


Viggo drops another starburst around the skeletons. Trevor brings the Aquiline Heart to wrap around the large specter, followed by the Living Blade and shortsword in blurs of steel and wood. I feel like I need to duck. Black wisps trail from the creature as it is slashed. Ash and dust spray as it dissipates.

Skeletons get beaten by bulls as they attack. One blade gets past Fafnir's massive armor. Trevor defends himself. Osnald mocks most viciously in a merry rhyme.

I stow the bow and slash wildly at a skeleton with the scimitar, missing terribly. I connect with the shortsword, hoping it looks like I know what I'm doing.

Viggo drops a third starburst. Trevor's whip cracks. The scimitar slashes, the shortsword stabs.I seriously need to train with him at some point. Another skeleton drops. Another shatters, gored from behind by an angelic bull.

Surrounded by splintered bone, we exit the barracks and into the main hall. We climb the stairs again toward the holy-runed door.

Out of the Barracks, Into the Chapel We Were Trying to Get Into Anyway​

Fafnir shoulders aside the door he'd hammered the hinges out of. A rectangular chamber awaits, with five doors leading north, east, and south. Osnald and Trevor get to work listening and looking. Osnald listens at an eastern door cracked slightly open. Religious hymns are heard. He peers in and sees a statue. Viggo smells waste at the southern doors.

The entry doors we came in through are reinforced by immovable rods, operated by buttons and the word "holdoor". We extract and take them; they'll be useful somewhere. The top door is locked, so Osnald turns invisible and slips through the main double doors.

(Osnald tells a momentary story here, since he moves pretty quietly and none of us can see him. - Hawk)

The walls of this narrow hall are lined with statues of eight familiar deities, but I notice that all the faces are scarred in creative ways, as if defaced by clawed fingers. I smell something sort of... sweet? A little sickly? I hold my breath, not trusting whatever incense this might be. I press an ear to the door at the far side. The chanting is louder: "Light is Law. Law is Mercy. Mercy is Obedience." I scurry back out into the entry hall, releasing my breath.

(I hear him come back out with an explosion of breath, like he's been swimming. - Hawk)

He explains the situation: hall, statues, chanting. He then picks the lock on the northern door, or at least I assume so because it suddenly clicks loose, and Trevor opens the door. A tight hallway leads toward the chapel, then bends left, then ends at a door. I notice a slight outline in the wall where the staggered bricks are lined up. I point it out. Three small waist-high holes seem meant for fingers. I switch hands and insert fingers, and a small latch appears: a keyhole. Why did I do that? I could have lost archery fingers. I won’t do that again.

So a secret door, but still locked. I gesture at my companions to deal with it. While Osnald goes to his invisible work, I watch the small door at the end of the hall. Tumblers click and whirr, and the secret door opens.

The place beyond smells a little of soot and smoke, a bare chamber with four glass bowls on the floor. They prove to contain some coins of recent print, via slots in the walls where coins would pour out. An odd donation delivery device, and not a lot of wealth, but then again who's traveling to this flame-wrapped place to leave donations? We leave it be.

Beards in the Kitchen with Poison​

Fafnir walks up and opens the small door, because of course he does, revealing a desk and more small bowls. Three muscular beings bearing glaives stand within: bearded devils. They appear to be actually laboring in this place, which seems like a kitchen, placing their weapons inside a large pot.


"Sarge just told me to check in on you guys. Looks like you're doing good work," Fafnir grumbles, moving to close the door.

I feel Osnald move past me. Faerie Fire blossoms in the room, and the bard appears beneath Fafnir's massive legs. All three devils shake off the effect, being devils and not prone to magical effects. I sink an arrow into the closest one's arm, and follow it with a more solid shot. I retreat back to let Trevor move forward.

That devil moves forward, sweeping his weapon against Fafnir's armor, then tries to follow with swipes of its scratchy beard. His companions follow suit, not getting past the cleric's defenses.

Suddenly a devil appears outside the secret room, having teleported. The fires of teleportation curl around it, but it pays no heed, being immune to heat. Trevor ducks the beard, but Osnald takes the glaive's toxic blade full on his torso and is thrown back against the wall.

Ahead, Fafnir's booming blade sounds, and he swings Einherjar twice against the devil I'd pierced. Infernal curses sound.

Next to me in the secret room, Viggo moves up to the door with the devil on the other side.

Trevor, with his dexterity, whips around the corner to grapple the devil, followed by the scimitar and shortsword. He moves past the hallway on Osnald's other side and delivers a blow from the whip to finish, yanking the devil to the floor. Osnald, angry at being struck, pulls forth a mighty magic, summoning a massive glowing fist that throws an obscene gesture before pounding the devil into mush. The fiend turns into a pile of ash. Osnald moves forward to the kitchen, giant hand in tow.

One of the kitchen denizens finally connects with Fafnir, swiping his face with the wiry beard.

I move past, looking wide-eyed at the mess that used to be a devil, up to the kitchen, drop one devil into ash with an arrow, and stick the last. Fafnir steps onto the pile of ash and presses the attack.

Viggo peers out of the secret room to see Osnald and Fist, Trevor and Whip, and me with Bow. He can't easily move through the tight hall, so shrugs and stays put. Trevor moves into the kitchen, whip cracking and sending an urn into the devil's face, and fells it with a sword thrust through the beard.

Fafnir bars the small door in the kitchen for a moment while we catch our breath, as Trevor figures out what the devils were doing; he feels they were creating something nasty to coat their weapons with. Osnald's giant spectral fist hovers next to my face. I collect arrows from piles of ash.


Fafnir opens the small south door, revealing another hallway. Trevor listens at the east door, hearing movement. He motions to us, and opens it. One of those armored skeletal spellcasters stands beyond, and I put an arrow through it before it does anything.

The dead caster hisses, a shaft sprouting from its ribcage, and fills the room with a ring of fire. I dance aside to avoid the flames licking at my face. Osnald shouts, caught full in the blast. Trevor grits his teeth against the heat, causing the Living Blade to erupt in flames, and attacks the sorcerer with whip and fiery blade. The creature soaks up the fire with a grin, healing itself. Trevor frowns, and snaps the whip around its neck, popping its skull from its body. The ring of fire vanishes.

The place beyond seems to be a larder, with food and dry goods. Why a dead sorcerer was standing in there I cannot guess, but then we notice that the door seems to have been barred from the kitchen side, locking the dead thing inside. I suppose the devils and the skeletons aren't friends.

We join Fafnir in the south hall. Beyond a door lies medical supplies and cabinets. We continue. Around the corner is another hallway ending at a T.

Back on the Chain Gang​

Fafnir peers around a corner to see a large chamber that might have once been a sanctuary. Scraps of burnt finery hint at former splendor. The floor is ankle-deep with ashes of pews that once stood in rows here, as well as from elaborately carved wooden archways of which a few charred bits remain. Soot-blackened stone columns line the sides of the sanctuary. The remains of a pulpit can be seen. Chains hang from the ceiling.

A helmeted creature with bloody spikes and chains turns to look at him. Two bearded devils stand next to it. Fafnir, always eager to make new fiendish friends, stomps around the corner with hammer in hand and a cloud of spirit guardians in tow. He drinks a healing potion, then blinks, for the chain-bearing devil looks like his father Kjell.

Trevor darts around out of view and starts unleashing hell in the form of leather, steel, and wood. I follow, peering into the doorway, and see only the bearded devil facing up against Fafnir, who gets clobbered by angelic bulls but hacks and sweeps its beard as best it can. Trevor and I trade glances from opposite sides of the door.


A familiar bearded devil suddenly appears through a door in the tunnel with us, the one we'd met and fought in the Innenotdar Forest: Kazyk. It grins.

The chain devil, whose face changes to a woman's, shakes off the bulls and slashes its chains at Fafnir with great peals of sound.

Osnald's giant mystical fist comes tearing around the corner and smashes into Kazyk's grinning face. Viggo leans around the corner and sends a mind sliver at the devil for emphasis.

Fafnir goes Fafnir on the devil before him, swinging twice with booming blade and divine strike. He seems to be having a good time. Trevor ducks under the fist, moving up toward Kazyk, who stabs back with its glaive. Trevor marks him and lashes and slashes, dazzling the devil, who crumples into ash. He nods and resumes his position.

I slide into the room, ignoring the dying devil before Fafnir, and aim at the chain devil. Its face suddenly becomes Leska's, which throws me off. Seeing the face of the woman who murdered my parents causes my hand to shake, but gritting my teeth in hatred I manage to send two arrows into its armor.

The devil before Fafnir dies from battle cattle. "Go back to Hell, you fake Kjell," he growls.

The chain devil turns and leaves, deeper into the darkness. We don't like that.

Osnald retrieves his hand and considers what to do. He steps into the room, looking at all the detritus.

Fafnir charges further in after the chain devil, bulls trailing. Suddenly some of the chains hanging from the ceiling writhe as if alive, snapping and cracking at the cleric. Fafnir uses his telekinetic power to yank the devil closer. Trevor runs in, leaping over burnt pews, and marks it. I step closer and fire, missing once and striking once.

The harried chain devil gets gored by radiant horns, and decides to teleport away. Its spare chains clatter on the floor. Osnald's fist smashes into the floor where it was.

"Just missed," he retorts.

"There was some other little devil thing that was here but disappeared," Fafnir says. He comes back in and examines the altar.

Viggo wanders in, looking for foes. I sweep my gaze around the room as well. He notices small tracks in the corner and focuses on it.