Chapter 442
“How do you know that?” Arun asked. “Hers was a name we’d heard a lot, in Cauldron… but we’d never seen her, the whole time we were in the city.”
“Yeah, even when we trashed the temple of Kelemvor,” Mole added.
“After our last… encounter,” Cal explained, “While we were in Redgorge, I spoke to several of the members of the Chisel about what we’d learned in Cauldron. Maavu Arlintal was able to match my description of the woman we met in Shatterhorn with the name of Aloustinai.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” Beorna said.
Dana had leaned into the cell, staring at the woman. Embril did not react, but the chains seemed to tighten around her body, opening new wounds as the barbs dug into her flesh. It wasn’t clear how she could continue to take so much abuse and still live.
“Careful, Dana,” Mole said. “I think those chains are… alive.” Remembering an encounter with a chain-creature in the depths of the Malachite Fortress under Cauldron, an encounter that had not ended well for her, the gnome rogue shuddered.
“She deserves to die for her crimes,” Dana said.
“She may yet have information that may be useful to us,” Cal said. “She was a leader among the Cagewrights… and she knows more of… of both of our enemies, I think.”
“She is mad,” Dana said.
“Madness can be healed,” the archmage returned, softly.
“We are not far from the top of the spire,” Lok pointed out. “If she is not… going anywhere…”
“I do not condone torture, but in this case I must agree with the genasi,” Beorna said. “Adimarchus is not far, I suspect.”
At the mention of the demon prince’s name, Embril’s head shot up, causing the chains to twist reflexively tighter around her torso. Even barely unable to draw breath, she shuddered and screamed, “The Eye! The Eye! The Smoking Eye! It burns! It burns forever!” The sound of her voice filled the hall and distorted eerily up and down the spire, until it echoed back as a grotesque cackling.
“Shut up, SHUT UP!” Dana cried, finally slamming the haft of her spear into the woman’s face. The screams shut off as the Cagewright crumpled, blood oozing from her broken nose.
For a moment the Heroes of Cauldron just stood there, silent with the noise of Skullrot surrounding them.
Finally, Cal sighed. “Let’s go.”
They made their way up the last few flights, until the stairs opened onto a massive open chamber, a rough hemisphere with a ceiling that rose to a dome nearly fifty feet above them. Other than a hole in the center of the floor that accessed the hollow interior of the spire, the room was devoid of unique features. There was a small hole in the ceiling, opened by Dana during the battle with the lichfiend and its minions, through which the ruby sky of Carceri could be seen. The only other design element was a large cage of black metal, suspended over the opening by a long chain that passed through a socket in the ceiling, trailing across the room to a secure mooring on the far side of the chamber. Sitting inside the cage was the figure of a man, the details of his form obscured by the thick bars and ugly flourishes that decorated the structure. The cage itself was familiar, resembling too keenly the soulcages wrought by the Cagewrights as part of their bid to join Carceri and Cauldron, and free their master.
“Echoes of madness,” Cal said, as the companions stepped warily from the stairwell into the open space of the room. Spreading out, they slowly approached the cage, each step reluctant, as if they were fighting the reflexive and sensible instinct to flee this place and never return.
Adimarchus did not respond to their presence, to the sounds of their approach, or even to the holy light of Arun’s sword as it penetrated the cage and spilled over his flesh. He was slumped over, looking away from them, an ebon-skinned figure clad in a skirt of metal scales, with four tentacles that rose from his back, culminating in mouths that unconsciously gaped open every now and again, as if tasting the air. The body of the captive god was muscled, shorn of hair, impressive even in captivity.
As they watched in silence, the form of the imprisoned figure shifted, blurred. Then they were looking at the same being, yet at the same time completely different in form and appearance. Still in the shape of a man, the captive prince’s body became a violet hue covered in golden runes that crawled over his body, disappearing beneath the golden breastplate he wore. Golden wings spread out from his back, replacing the tentacles, and he wore a golden gauntlet that culminated in sharp points that idly scratched at the flesh of his thigh, without conscious realization of what he was doing. Still he did not acknowledge their presence. After a few moments the angel-figure shifted, again reverting to the form of the black-skinned demon.
“By the gods,” Dana said. “What… what is he?”
“A demon prince,” Cal said. “A godling… a being of incredible power. But mad… whether through the collapse of his own mind, or by the efforts of his captors.”
Arun looked unsteady, and did not refuse Beorna’s steadying hand. “The Taint… so strong… I have never felt the like.”
“Does he even know we are here?” Lok asked.
“On some level, I am sure he does,” Cal said. “But from what we’ve observed, and what we have learned, most of his influence is more subtle, working through the minds of his followers, drawing them into his madness. The Ritual of Planar Joining… even the design of the soulcages; they have been shaped by him, from within the confines of his prison.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get the feeling that we are treading upon a very, very narrow bridge, overlooking a great precipice,” Lok said.
No one offered any disagreement.
“So after all of it… after everything we’ve gone through to get here,” Mole finally said. “Now what do we do?”
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
