Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 142b
Flicker bravely volunteers to try disarming the magical traps detected on four of the five of the interior doors, knowing the painful price of failure. He gets the first three, but an ill-timed sneeze while working on the last one sets off the harm glyph. Ernie is waiting with the healing wand, and Flicker’s agony is short-lived.
Dranko first opens the near door on the right – the one that wasn’t trapped. It opens into a small room containing only a cot and a magical pitcher that never runs out of water. After a bit of searching fails to turn up anything sinister, Dranko tries the nearest door on the left.
The room beyond is also not large, maybe 20’ on a side. It is full of shifting shadows, though there is no obvious light source inside. A grey metal cauldron squats in the center of the room, filled with either a black vapor or a black liquid. It’s hard for Dranko to say which, because when he feels the familiar chill and wave of unease indicative of proximate Null Shadows, he slams the door as fast as he can and puts his back to it. "I think I know what’s in there," he says, his face pale. When no Null Shadows come out of the room in the next few moments, the party decides to check the other doors before dealing with the cauldron.
Some thirty feet down the hall, Dranko opens the other door on the left-hand side of the hallway. It creaks open revealing another smallish room, stone walls and floor, slightly larger than the one with the cauldron. There is a small round pit in the center of the floor, perhaps four feet in diameter. Suspended above this pit is a small iron cage, hanging from the ceiling by a metal chain, and in the cage is a chunk of black rock. Dranko doesn’t need to cast detect evil; he can feel that the rock is evil, just by standing there. Greasy vapors waft up from the pit, playing over the cage and the black stone.
There is another chain linked to the cage, and at the other end of the second chain is a metal ring clamped tightly around the head of a man. The man, unshaven and filthy, is curled up in the fetal position in a corner of the room. Around him on the floor are scattered empty flasks, just like the ones filled with green liquid that the party found earlier in the magically-protected cabinet of the alchemy lab on the floor above. Black energy plays along both chains.
The party is hesitant to go into the room, but Ernie cannot stand to see the man suffering. He runs into the room despite the party’s protests. As he passes by the pit, he sees that it is full of a thick mostly-clear oil, and that several objects are suspended therein. But he ignores that for now, and goes to check on the bedraggled victim. Ernie reaches out and touches the man’s shoulder, and the man stirs, turns slowly, and lifts his head. Dranko, watching from the door, gasps in shock. He knows this man. His hair is longer, his bones thinner, and he didn’t have a beard when Dranko last saw him, but there’s no mistaking him. It’s Califax.
The black iron ring is affixed so tightly to Califax’s head that they cannot loosen or pry it, but an enlarge spell causes it to come free. It takes a layer of skin with it, leaving a red band around his head. They carry him out and take him to the room with the cot, where Ernie spends another charge of healing wand, and trickles some water into his mouth. Califax has said nothing coherent, producing only moaning noises and occasional snippets of babble. Morningstar casts detect thoughts, but Califax is deranged. When Dranko and Ernie try to make it clear that the Black Circle has been defeated and that he’s safe, Califax’s tortured mind cannot comprehend it, and he thinks it must be a trick, or that he’s not understanding them. He says something incomprehensible, and Morningstar, reading his mind, says he’s trying to say "You have to stop them! You must stop them!"
While some stay tending to Califax, the others go back to take a look in the oily pit. Dranko drops a magical light source into it, and the light sinks about halfway down before stopping. It illuminates a folded up piece of paper, which Kibi lifts out with a mage hand spell. Neither oil nor paper detects as magic, so they unfold it on the floor of the room. It’s a chart of magic schools; there’s one like it in apprentice wizards’ rooms in mage guilds across the kingdom. Aravis, Grey Wolf and Kibi have all seen numerous posters like this one, showing the relationships between schools of magic, which ones oppose other ones, and what basic hand-gestures form the roots of casting. Grey Wolf takes a closer look, when he sees a slight tear on one corner. The chart he had in his room studying under his master Melido had the same tear. It also had the same discolored spot from a misfired ray of frost, and the same pattern of creases…
There’s no mistake. It is the poster from Grey Wolf’s room as a young student, so many years ago. It's here, now, in this Black Circle den of abominations. But why would they have gone through the trouble of...
The resurrection! Califax had warned the Company that the Black Circle had some means of resurrecting Grey Wolf against his will, should he die. Grey Wolf looks up again at the evil black rock hanging over the pit, and the Company realizes the terrible purpose of this room.
They move on to the door at the end of the hall, wondering if what's beyond it could possibly be worse...
...to be continued...