Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 380
The Thousandfold
The Company has a few seconds to react before the swarm of flapping aquamarine sheets -- a legendary creature called the Thousandfold – will reach Dranko, and they make the most of them. Dranko himself tosses out the Lucent Tower and activates it, though it will be a full round before it finishes unfolding. Ernie casts a mass buff spell of his own design (mass doughy folk that gives everyone a morale bonus to AC and saves). Grey Wolf casts indomitability on Dranko as a precautionary measure. Flicker prepares the flask of body pouring for Dranko, just in case.
The other three unleash destruction. It’s as target-rich an environment as the party has ever seen; the air above them is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of living blankets, making the sound of the world’s largest flock of pigeons. Kibi fires off a prismatic spray into the air, and about ten sheets turn to stone and plummet out of the sky. More are turned to ash from flame or electricity. Then he turns his body and quickens cone of cold up into a different sector, and a few dozen sheets are flash-frozen, dropping to the stone floor with their edges curled and rimed with blue-white crystals.
Morningstar fills the air with the roaring black flames of a firestorm, roasting dozens more. Aravis follows Kibi’s lead, casting his own prismatic spray followed by a quickened cone of cold that goes off as the closest sheets are almost near enough to touch.
And then the swarm, diminished but still filling the air in every direction, converges on Dranko. In an instant he’s wrapped up by dozens of the sheets, plastering themselves over him. Within a second there is no part of him visible; he’s an aquamarine sort-of-human shaped mannequin. Dranko feels stinging pains all over his body, like little sharp shocks of electricity. Each one leaves him weakened in a way he has not felt before.
The damage he takes is enormous, but fortunately he’s extremely hard to kill. The others can hear him over the telepathic bond. “Not good! They’re sucking the life out of me!”
The remaining hundreds are still flapping around Dranko in a frenzy, a flock of deadly creatures waiting for their turn to enfold their pray. They buffet the others as an incidental consequence of their frenzied proximity, but they do not attack anyone but Dranko. Dranko himself can’t see, is bewildered and in terrible pain, and has been knocked to the ground. Over the mind link the Company forms a desperate plan.
The Lucent Tower finishes its unfolding, and thank the Gods, Dranko’s muffled voice and panicked intent are enough to open its door. Morningstar dashes inside and casts prismatic sphere, which takes up about two-thirds of the tower’s interior. Flicker and Grey Wolf wrestle Dranko to his feet, and he stumbles into the tower… and right through the curving wall of Morningstar’s shimmering sphere. He can see its brightness even through his closed eyelids and the dozen or more horrible creatures draped over his head.
Almost every blanket attached to him is peeled away, destroyed by fire, electricity, or other magical energies. A few still cling, mostly around his head. He activates his helm of brilliance and fires off a prismatic spray straight up, and this clears off all but one of attacking sheets. The only one left is wrapped around his thigh; it delivers a relatively small “sting,” then turns gray and falls off, dead. Its withered husk vanishes. Now that Morningstar can see her husband, she sees that he is much the same gray color. But whether the blankets ended up protecting him, or his own natural toughness saw him through, he has personally suffered no ill-effects from passing through the prismatic sphere.
Outside, Ernie casts another firestorm, Kibi another prismatic spray, and Grey Wolf an ironstorm. Then Kibi and Grey Wolf nip inside the tower, avoiding the nearby hemisphere of colored death. Dranko orders tower door to close.
Aravis then casts lightning ring, and the electricity is drawn into the cloud of iron filings, filling the air with crackling heat. They have killed hundreds of the blankets, and still they swarm, though now the density of blankets, along with the sound of their flapping, has diminished.
It seems for a moment that Dranko is out of the woods. He’s inside a prismatic sphere which is itself inside a closed Daern’s Instant Fortress, while outside his allies are systematically eradicating this strange collective with area-of-effect spells. But the party has forgotten that the tower has arrow slits up near its ceiling! The swarming sheets start to pour in through the slits, as surely and quickly as water. Over a hundred get through before Kibi grabs one of the reconfiguration knobs and seals the tower up. These hundred come cascading down from above, but stop short of the top of prismatic sphere. It’s clear they sense their prey hiding inside of it. They start to swirl around in an odd formation, that of a tall cylindrical tube spinning rapidly around its long axis, its bottom hovering inches above the top of the sphere.
Meanwhile the remaining parts of the Thousandfold, shut out of the tower, form into their own rigid circular shape, spinning around the tower-top. Those inside the Lucent Tower can feel the whole thing shudder.
Ernie, still outside, unleashes yet another firestorm, engulfing the sheets up by the roof. The flames clear out dozens more, but still there are many, continuing to swirl around like a rigid whirlpool. Morningstar steps out of the prismatic sphere and casts her own second firestorm – the fourth of the battle – and crisps about half of the ones forming the tube above the sphere. But the tube maintains its integrity, and then two things happen almost simultaneously.
One of those is that the spinning funnel of the Thousandfold drops down about two feet, and its lower edge punctures the top of the prismatic sphere! Dranko and Morningstar can now look straight up to the tower’s ceiling thirty feet away, through the whirling aquamarine sheets. Somehow the blankets have penetrated Morningstar’s spell, and the topmost of them start to fall away and inward, heading downward through the new ingress. Dranko looks up, eyes wide with fear.
The second thing is that Grey Wolf flies downward into the tube from above. He has cast flight of the dragon to acquire wings, and lowered himself down inside the wide pipe formed by the bodies of the Thousandfold just as they were breaking through. Even as the first of the sheets drops to the level of the prismatic sphere, Grey Wolf casts greater fireburst. Fire rips through the Thousandfold, incinerating every single remaining sheet inside the tower. Some of their ashes drift down to settle on Dranko and Morningstar’s shoulders, before the prismatic sphere reasserts itself.
Outside the tower, Aravis fires off a couple of ineffective lightning bolts at the circular swarm of Thousandfold spinning around the roof. He follows this up with a fireball that dusts about three dozen, but still over a hundred remain. And those hundred contract their circle, tearing the roof of the Lucent Tower clean off. Then they pour into the tower, find their prey protected by the prismatic sphere, and take up the same narrow-cylinder formation as the previous set. Ernie flies up to the top of the tower and casts lion’s roar down into it, blasting about half the remaining Thousandfold to shreds. He follows it up with a quickened flame strike (as the Thousandfold, now reduced to something more like the Fiftyfold, have arranged themselves conveniently into the shape of a column). All of the sheets are consumed in Yondalla’s holy fire.
Grey Wolf is also caught in the flames, but is apt not to complain. And so passes the legendary Thousandfold, killed off by a mere four firestorms, four prismatic sprays, two cones of cold, a flame strike, a prismatic sphere, an ironstorm, a lightning ring, a greater fireburst, a fireball and a lion’s roar.
The Lucent Tower isn’t permanently damaged; it’s made of a pseudo-illusionary substance that regenerates its ceiling over the next ten minutes.
Dranko, on the other hand, has suffered permanent hit point loss – not much, thanks to the party’s efforts to protect him, but the Thousandfold leeched away a small portion of his vitality.
>>Dranko lost seven hit points off his maximum, and was lucky to get away with so little!
As the last ashes of the Thousandfold scatter and vanish with little puffs of aquamarine light, Kibi feels a surge of Earth Magic coming up from the stone beneath his feet, like he’s standing above of volcano that’s itching to erupt.
“Do you feel that?” he asks the others.
“No… no, wait, yes!” says Flicker. “It feels like my whole body’s been plucked like a guitar string.”
The others feel it too, emanating from the ground like the subsonic vibrations of an earthquake.
“Kibi?” asks Grey Wolf. “Is this a good thing?”
“Of course it’s a good thing!” says the dwarf.
There is an upwelling of power, and each member of the Company feels as though they stand in a geyser, shaking them, infusing them. Pebbles on the ground rattle and dance. For a full minute this continues, and as it dies down, Kibi hears a voice in his head, the Voice of the World.
Reality will bend for you.
And then all is quiet.
>>The practical upshot of this was that the Company achieved 21st level. I didn’t go Full Epic Handbook for this; the benefits were:
- +1 BAB
- +1 to all saves
- 1 new Feat
- Hit points as though they had rolled maximally for their current class
- Skill points as normal
- Arcane casters got to add 2 new spells as if they had leveled normally
- Ernie and Morningstar each added a 6th and a 10th level spell slot, the latter useful for use with Metamagic feats
- Aravis added a new 10th level spell slot
- Kibi added a new 8th and 9th level spell slot.
As for the earth’s promise to Kibi, he was granted the ability, three times, to nudge reality, to tweak the state of the world or to “rewind” events in some way. He was not sure of exactly how this ability would work, but knew that it was similar to wish, and that in order to use it he would have to be in close proximity to all of his companions.
Dranko feels a bit better after this outpouring of Earth Magic, but has trouble shaking the horror of being wrapped up in the Thousandfold. “Someone down here really doesn’t want me using my tentacular power, whatever it is.”
Once more, Kibi uses stone tell to query the local stone about which tunnel the Evil Trio took, and off they go for the final hour before the motes will fade. They leave the Scuttle tunnels behind, and enter a network of natural caves, full of small pools, blind fish, and dripping stalactites. Kibi has an innate sense of their direction and location, and so keeps them on a course toward the promised coordinates of Leaping Circle Five. Once during this stretch the little ball of orange flame pops up in front of them, but it persists only a second before vanishing.
They sleep in a magnificent mansion that night, and Aravis is granted another vision of the surface.
King Crunard IV, accompanied by Yale and two stoic bodyguards, strides down a richly-appointed hallway in the palace in Hae Charagan.
“My mind is all but gone,” says Crunard sadly, “and the irony is bitter. So many years of fighting the Masking, struggling to rule and understand, while ancient magics destroyed my brain bit by bit. And now that the Masking is ending, and everything should be clear, I don’t have the wit left to absorb what I see and hear. These moments of clarity I still have are almost through; I have decided to open the Vault of Scrolls while I still remember how.”
“Your Highness,” says Yale, pity showing in her eyes, “we value every minute that you give us, and honor your sacrifice every day. The Kingdom has been stronger for your efforts, difficult though they have been.”
“And without you,” says the King, “those days would have been over long ago. Your wisdom and strength have sustained me for so long. Ah, here we are.”
Crunard stops before a portrait of a different King – King Daltric II, who ruled Charagan some 350 years earlier. He pushes inward against the old king’s face, and the entire section of wall swings in effortlessly. “It’s this way.”
Crunard takes an ever-burning torch from the wall and leads Yale and his bodyguards down a narrow, winding stair. At the bottom is a door, which he opens using a silver key strung around his neck.
“I was never certain that the Vault of Scrolls was a real place,” Yale admits.
“It is indeed… and known only to the Kings. It’s one of the few things I never shared with you, and for that I’m sorry, but by law and custom only the Kings know of it.”
“There are other things?” asks Yale, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, yes, of course,” says Crunard, smirking. “I’ve also never told you that I can’t stand the smell of that black tea you always drink. What would have been the point?”
Yale laughs. The bodyguards manage not to, but barely. “I’ll have you know, Your Highness,” says Yale archly, “that bitterbark tea is excellent for the constitution. And being your advisor for so long, Pikon knows I’ve needed it!”
The four of them walk through a long underground passage, lit only by Crunard’s torch. He’s the first person to have walked this hall in centuries, though for a moment he thinks he catches a whiff of something… odd. He stops, and peers forward.
“Sire?” Yale also looks around, confused. Besides herself and the King, there are only the two bodyguards, standing alert and silent in their armor.
The King sniffs the air. “I thought I… well, no matter. My mind is apt to play tricks.”
Yale frowns. “Perhaps we should go back, your Highness.”
“No. It was nothing. Let us keep on.”
They walk for another minute before King Crunard speaks again. “The Vault of Scrolls was created by the first of the Archmagi, a store of powerful spells left for just this sort of emergency. There are none left who could scribe them, but it is said that they were specially inked such that anyone with the basest knowledge of the arcane can make use of them. If we are to mount a defense against Naradawk and his agents, we’ll likely need them all.”
“This would be a good time, then,” agrees Yale. “How many scrolls are in there?”
“I don’t know,” Crunard admits. “I’ve never been inside. But look ahead, there’s the door.”
They reach a small iron door, and one more time Crunard uses his silver key.
“There are enchantments on this door such that only the true King can open it,” he says, turning the key. “And the Vault itself will annihilate any evil creature who steps across the threshold. That’s what I was told by my father, and he by his father. Now, would you like to see what’s inside?”
Crunard pushes open the door, then turns around to see that his two bodyguards are slumped on the ground, unconscious, one on either side of Yale.
“There’s a problem,” says Yale.
Crunard blinks, confused. “What…?”
Yale reaches out and grabs Crunard around the face with a huge claw. The king becomes enveloped in a green glow.
“I’m afraid I have some regrettable news, Your Highness. Yale was killed almost a year ago and replaced by something else. Fortunately for me, the Greenhouse has always considered your polite “after you’s” to be a formal invitation. And your meetings have been so interesting! A shame your heroes will find everyone dead when they return from the Abyss. Really, you people should have been more thorough after the battle at Verdshane; all sorts of nasty things slipped through that weren’t subsequently killed in the fighting. You were so caught up with Naradawk and his dragon!”
Crunard kicks futilely at the scaly monstrosity that, moments ago, was Yale. His flailing hand reaches for his pocket.
“Don’t bother,” says the creature. “Your refuge token won’t work. I’ve got you anchored. But there’s good news, too. Wherever the real Yale is now, you get to join her.”
The monster squeezes, and the King’s face crumples like tin. The thing that was Yale tosses Crunard’s body into the Vault, a small stone room lined with shelves of ancient scrolls. Then, methodically, it sends fireball after fireball into the room until the Vault blazes like a furnace, papers crackling and falling into ash. When nothing inside is left intact, the scaly horror throws in the unconscious bodyguards, closes the door with telekinesis, and snaps the silver key off in the lock before teleporting away.
…to be continued…
