Aki and Saelya, Prophayat
The slap to Aki wakes him from his funk, jolting the neraphim into action. A small red bead shoots out from somewhere on your left, blossoming into a fire ball and droping some of the swarm into small charred bits on the sandstone pavilion. It's too little too late to stop the swarm however, as many more the buzzing creatures push through the now swelling curtain. A scream comes up from somewhere, and things start to get blurry as the sunflies begin to mow down on the group; some awaken and begin to run towards the portal back to Sigil while others stay behind, caught up in fatal enrapturement. As you turn to run you can hear the githyanki's bones clink as they hit the ground, you can imagine them picked clean and shining white as you run.
You dash on haphazard, caught up in the crowd and the terror of the danger behind you. Avenues snake and twist as you pound your feet hard into the ground, desperate to get away. Behind you the buzzing grows ever louder as more and more of your fellow expidtion members caught under the swarm. As those too slow to cath up are devoured others move into the mobs path to join the retreat, eventually the entire company is following close at your heels or only a few paces ahead of you.
The humanoid stampede eventually becomes more organized as higher rank and more level headed guild members move into the fray and lead the expidition into the portal house, a sealed iron building which looks quite capable of keeping out the insectoid wave. Most of the expidion, thirty stong after all is said and done, begin organizing themselves into groups and taking the portal back into Sigil. The building you find yourelf in resembles a guard tower with battlements multiple levels of battlements lining the walls, as if it was built to defend against the inside of the tower. Well crafted paintings in an expressionist style line each level of the battlements, any of them looks as if they'd fetch a good price at an art gallery across any of the planes. Your turn at the portal isn't up for a couple minuets, leaving you to decide how to spend your time.
Magnus, an undisclosed location
The portal whisks you off to what looks like some sort of event area. A long table seven foot tall, piled high with...some undescernible something, smelling like a Brothel on Curst... takes up most of the space while your fashionably attiered employer directs a mob of tieflings to walk about the tables surface, securing straps and ropes and buckles as Colook, Shemeska's lead man, holds a mirror up for the Yugoloth to readjust her razorvine crown. A smile like a fox on fresh rabbit corpse stretches tight across her muzzle as you step from the portal. Her voice is velvet soft and low, with a slight hiss of Hadesian accent.
"Magnus, sweetie darling how pleasent of you to come, I do know this meeting is of suuuch short notice. Our after-sup snack of information is right this way."
The fiend gives you a not too subtle wink before slinking up a small ladder that leads to a good view of the table top on a raised platform, where she spreads out one graceful arm to show-off the tables contents that lay out large as a burial mound upon the straining table. A muffled cry comes from whatever is laid out, the Yugoloth motioning you up to join her on the platform.
Ronthias and Halidon, Graet Gymnasium
Rhys shrugs slightly as she nudges open the door behind her. The candle is quickly outshined by th radiance coming from inside the door. As you wish, but I'm afraid contact isn't likely to shed any further understanding.
Inside the chamber is a world of green and yellow light, as your vision adjusts to the bright light you begin to make out shapes and outlines. The room is built of the same dark marble veined with gold as the rest of the Gymnasium, but this mateiral is hard to notice under the layers of glowing writing that fill every nook and cranny. One rune you recognize immeadiately as Halidons name written in common, and most others are discernible when focused on. The runes are a mish-mash of languages and phrases seemingly made of green light. Portions of the writing name locations while othes are recognizable as the names of gods and specific exemplars. Some of the writing is discernable as rhyme or prophecy, but none of it makes any sense when tried to read as a whole, you find yourself forgetting portions as your focus moves from one glowing word to the next. In the middle of the small room is a hafling man, barely recognizable as Vash the Tacit. His eyes are puckered sockets while his mouth is an open cavity from which comes droplets of saliva and blood. Iron plates are grafted on where his ears and hands used to be, the hafling barely holds a large stick with green writing on one end, rapidly scribbling out more of the cryptic writing. Rhys stays a few feet outside of the room, facing you from the exit.
"Vash was the lead of a small group of Transcendants who called themselves the Eclipsed, they were devoted to listening to the Cadence by closing off their own senses, believing that they only cloud their judgement as much as thoughts do. His injuries were self-inflicted, but were not this extreme before madness change came over him. I personally locked him within one of the lower chambers for his own safety since last night, I have not the heart to take him to the Gatehouse, but he seems to have snuck up here without any sort of spell or power, he's been writing and refusing food or water since. I've heard of symptoms such as these before within the Athar, when a cleric first abandons their god, if the entity has a particularly vengeful history. Our diviners have been able to discern a portion of what Vash, or the entity possessing him, is trying to communicate. A god has died with no trace of its corpse floating within the astral, commnication with both its realm and its followers, both extra and prima planar has failed. Halidon here is the only connection to the now nameless god, we have divined it has something to do with your blade."
Mie Ying, Clerks Ward
Cosh responds over his shoulder as he trots on through Sigils dark and hazy streets, fast enough to make you hurry but not so fast as to loose you in the fog.
"Me? I've a mind for trouble, an eye for jink, and that's as far as you need to know. This is a favor to a friend and not to any thought police faction. Ah, here we are then."
Now a few blocks from the Hall of Speakers, Cosh has stoppped near the ajar entrance to a house built somwhat under the street level, he points a hand downward and into the tavern of The Imaginary Meal.
"You'll find Duhrquest down there, feel free to ask around for him as that's an all Seekers bar anyway."
