****
“YEEEeeeaaaaarrrggghhh!”
Clueless screamed as the fiend lifted him into the air with one hand clamped over his head. His feet dangled and wings beat at the air in vain as the Chronicler leaned in with a look of calm fascination playing over its sickly, diseased lips.
“What the hell!?” Toras blurted out as he reached for his sword, only to pause halfway there. As soon as he made to reach for the blade, every nearly vanished scar on his sword arm ached and burned as if they might suddenly burst open at once. He reached again, only to feel the same sensation and see the faintest anticipatory smile crease the baernaloth’s mouth. He did not attempt a third time.
“Be silent wriggling worm.” The Chronicler’s tone was commanding yet uncaring in tone.
Clueless stiffened as the ur-fiend tightened its grip and stared into his eyes and seemingly beyond. It chuckled.
“I did not expect a larger audience that was immediately apparent,” The Chronicler seemed genuinely amused by what he saw, treating the dangling bladesinger like a curious thing in a cabinet of curiosities rather than a protesting, living creature. “It would appear however that you have not one lurker therein, but in fact two of them in your head.”
“Helekanalaith that son of a b*tch!” Clueless stopped his struggling as he realized that the Keeper of the Tower had of course lied through his teeth about removing himself from his mind per their previous agreement, but then he realized the implications of the last part of the baernaloth’s statement. “Wait what?! Two?! What do you mean two?!”
“Not that you’re alone in that capacity.” The Chronicler softly chuckled, glancing at Tristol and Fyrehowl as it did so. “Unlike theirs however with the screaming malady of generations in the Madhouse, your situation is one much more complicated in the mending. This presence will not go willingly, and perhaps might require a bit of bargaining or leverage on your part since will alone will not suffice.”
Blindsided by the baernaloth’s insinuation, but realizing that it was, in its own uncaring way, referencing the Howler in their dreams, Tristol turned to Fyrehowl. She returned his glance with a worried shrug. The implications that it was both real and curable needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later, but not while the proto-fiend held their companion up by his head like a screaming ragdoll.
“Is that f*cking b*tch Shemeska still looking in through my ankle?!” Clueless struggled to comprehend who else might be the object of the baernaloth’s statement.
“Sigil’s would-be King abandoned you like every other precious thing she has ever lay claim to. You are safe from her in at least this way.” The Chronicler’s statements were largely devoid of inflection. Automatic answers delivered without compassion or care, the baernaloth was more concerned with peering through the bladesinger like a living and unwilling scrying device.
“Helekanalaith though most certainly yes. The Keeper of the Tower has a lurker planted there most definitely, subtle and well crafted. A model of his caste certainly.” The baernaloth tilted its head and continued to stare. “The other I know of, but am on less intimate terms with: the so-called Lady’s Jester, the original, not the current and self-titled factol of the Ring-Givers. Interesting. So he wasn’t dead after all. Sigil is rather difficult for me to keep a close eye upon.”
“What the hell?” Clueless struggled to comprehend just what he’d been told.
So far having stayed conspicuously and laboriously silent, the others exchanged confused and worried glances. None of them recalled what Clueless had seen in the underhalls of the Palace of the Jester: the tall man in the archaic great cloak and hat that shrouded his face, nor his tiny, inhuman servitor. Something had taken an interest there in the Great Below and had been following him ever since.
“Foolish but talented. Both of you.” The Chronicler smirked. “Neither of you matter. Neither of you are crucial. Transient eddies in the current…”
“So does this mean that you can put Clueless down and we can go back home now?” Nisha quipped with far too much irrational hope in her voice. Florian glared at her and Tristol planted an elbow in her ribs to shut the hell up.
If the baernaloth heard her or even cared, it gave no reaction or response, but without any warning it began to speak in its own tongue.
“F*ck!” Toras clutched his head as the blasphemies rolled off the baernaloth’s tongue like barbed arrows and bolts of unholy lightning that echoed in his head.
Within the first few words spoken all of them were on the ground, clutching their heads, bleeding from the ears, blinded or vomiting into the ice and ash. The unintelligible words roared especially hard into Fyrehowl’s mind, even if her own moral convictions had slid since the events in Belarian, and likewise Toras as the half-blood servitor of a power of good. Both of their vomit was streaked with blood.
“You will know and remember nothing of me or this place, both of you, Keeper of the Tower and child of ours, and you hiding in Sigil’s depths, no child of mine, but fallen servitor of others entirely. Forget me and forget my actions here. By my will this is done. The Chronicler orders it so.”
An interminable period of time later, they came to their senses and staggered to their feet. Clueless sat on the ground where the baernaloth had unceremoniously dropped him like a no longer interesting toy. The Chronicler itself sat upon a low pile of stone, watching them and writing within its book.
“Do you…umm… mind if we get going back home?” Nisha flashed a smile as she looked up at the proto-fiend.
“Yes.” Florian nodded her head in agreement, blood still running from her ears. “Please.”
“That would be wonderful thank you.” Tristol smiled as well, in stark contrast to his bottlebrushed tail.
“I care not what happens to you.” Sarkithel shrugged and turned back towards the ruined cathedral. “My interest is sated, though I
will see you again. Every road and path of history twists back on itself to this place where the ouroboros wriggles, chokes, and dies by the noose-chains about its neck.”
“How do you know that?” Fyrehowl asked, even though she could not yet fully see.
The Chronicler grinned knowingly, “You’ll discover that in due time as well. The blade will open the portal for you back to Sigil, as it seems that Sigil wishes to keep a watch over this and me quite keenly. So many things tangled together then, now, and once again.”
Still feeling the effects of the baernaloth’s invocation in its own language, they were terrified beyond belief at their absolute inability to resist its power even when it seemed to not care about hurting them. Clueless was the first to his feet and then into the air, not wanting to touch the sullied, unholy soil below, and the others were swift to join him.
They walked back the way they’d come, avoiding the statues, all of which now were turned in unison to face and watch them as they left, still whispering, still warning, and still begging with their siren song of oblivion. Through it all, they felt the Chronicler watching them as well, but also something else, something barely perceptible there beyond the statues’ eyes, hungry and malevolent.
Only once they passed through the open portal back to Sigil did the feeling of looming dread finally cease.
“You’ll see.” The baernaloth spoke, addressing that very same presence brooding within the ruins of the cathedral. “You’ll see that we were right, even as much as you ignore the chains woven now and ever more, ever tighter. You cannot stop this. You never could.”
Behind the Chronicler, for but a moment, the statues smiled.
****
Three days later:
Tristol’s eyes ached as he glanced down at the brittle pages of a scholar’s travelogue to Pandemonium. It contained a description of the same hallucinations and wasting illness that had latched onto Fyrehowl and himself since their visit to Howler’s Crag. This particular scholar however recorded other, earlier instances of the same affliction and even provided it with a name, ‘The Curse of the Smothering Howls’.
It hadn’t been an easy task to find the record. From the barest hints from the Chronicler (who clearly knew exactly what the malady was, but was in no mood to be altruistic and say more on the manner) he’d delved through records in the Gatehouse. From there he’d gone to the sensory stone-recorded memories of a former Bleaker therapist and healer, and now finally to the record that sat in front of him in the archives of one of the scholar’s descendants.
As he’d recorded the fates of his party members and others before them, all of them had displayed the same hideous dreams, the same waking hallucinations, and the same gradual decline in health and mental fortitude. Most horrifying of all, they’d all eventually died of severe brain bleeding or else been put down by their fellows when they’d launching into screaming, violent fits.
The travelogue’s author however had found a way to possibly cure it. It wasn’t entirely a case of possession, nor a case of a curse or contracted disease, but a bizarre combination of all three. While the record didn’t give a record of the ultimate outcome for the afflicted, it made it absolutely clear that a powerful cleric was able to alleviate the condition by use of a simple remove curse spell. The wording was odd however. Rather than cure or remove, the specific word used was ‘extract’.
“This is it.” Tristol’s ears perked as he smiled. Weary as it was, it was an expression that he hadn’t made for some time. Reading over the author’s speculations, he laughed at his misguided wonder at the malady’s origins and his own theories relating to how mortals and their belief interacted with the base substance of Pandemonium itself.
None of that mattered at the moment however. Given how it had affected both himself and Fyrehowl, it was probably best to let the matter remain an unexplored and unplumbed dark. All that remained was to get back to the Portal Jammer, find Fyrehowl, and see if Florian was powerful enough to cure them both.
****
The wind whistled out of the Gehennan void like the inchoate screams of the damned, breaking the silence of the Vale of Frozen Ashes and stirring the recently disturbed ashes and ice at the feet of the baernaloth dwelling there.
The wind was not a random occurrence however, and the screaming might indeed have actually been just that. The silence descended back upon the Vale only to be broken moments later by the sound of a wooden staff striking the ground, a single foot stepping forward, and another foot dragging lamely behind it.
Sarkithel did not turn around to face his fellow member of The Demented, though a knowing, expectant smile did briefly cross his withered maw as she approached.
“What did you tell them?” Tellura ibn Shartalan spoke as she stared at the Chronicler.
“Precisely what I wanted to tell them.” Sarkithel’s response matter of fact response was devoid of concern.
“I trust your judgment on the matter.” Tellura’s shadow was cold and silent at her feet. “I ask because I’ll undoubtedly be paying those particular mortals a visit at some juncture down the line as events fall into place.”
“If you’re so very curious, you should ask your sibling.” The Chronicler motioned to the ground with his pen. “The Architect was quite keenly listening in.”
“At another time perhaps.” Her tone hid a growing frustration on her part. “The First of the Demented is… occupied… at the moment.”
“As is to be expected of our eldest,” The Chronicler inclined its head respectfully, “Always plotting, planning, infecting more and further. Whatever takes his attention now is not anything of which I’m aware. You will tell me, yes?”
Tellura’s shadow coiled and seethed in the frozen dust at her feet, betraying the emotions that did not show on the aasimar girl’s face. “It is not for me to tell. If my sibling wishes for the rest of us to know, He will inform us. Until that time…”
The silence was profound as the two of them waited there in the Vale of Frozen Ashes amid the ruins. Only the distant screams of the phiuls broke the still as the Chronicler stared out at the void and the Dire Shepherd at the ground, gritting her teeth.
Finally, the Chronicler spoke, “Things are falling into place as expected yes?”
More than you are yet aware. The Shepherd’s mind pictured the image of a singular Key in her mind and for a brief moment she wondered if they had not overstretched their designs. Of all of them however, the Architect did not focus on only one reality, but on larger, grander, more profound things of greater consequence. They had all seen realities rise, fall, and crumble before at their festering hands more often than not time and time again, but He more than any of them.
“Within expected variation, yes,” The Shepherdess eyed her companion, bringing her thoughts back to the present moment, “Probabilities are fuzzy things with their own innate uncertainty, and the ripples of time maddeningly complex. You should know from your own observations what is and isn’t happening according to plan.”
“Everything.” The answer was deliberately, maddeningly nonspecific.
“The Blind Clockmaker is keeping a close eye on the one variable in this all, and he is not concerned. He did not say as much to me mind you, though his brother Daru was quite clear about his feelings on that matter. Thus I am not concerned.”
“Then we have precious little more to speak of.” The Chronicler spread its hands apart in mock sorrow. “If you are not concerned, you have little need to know what I spoke of to the mortals that came here with such a curious blade of black volcanic glass. One never named, never used for its intended target, but used nonetheless.”
Worry danced in the child’s eyes and her shadow’s claws dug into the ground. Tellura eventually spoke, but her leonine tail angrily swatted at the air and she leaned ever more heavily on her staff. “Again, I see nothing here to concern myself with.”
“Good. Then return to me when you –do– have concerns of which you deign to speak.” The Chronicler smirked. “Until then, I have my own tasks to concern myself with.”
The Shepherd was already vanished and gone, leaving only a black, burned smear in the already refreezing ground. Her unspoken snarl was there however, painted into the patterns of crystallization and deposition of ice and soot. The Demented were the closest thing to a family that the chosen servitors of Evil might ever be said to have, but since the start they’d been split apart by divisions, and those same fault lines remained even now.
****