The Marauder's erstwhile pack of adventurers left the confines of the Azure Iris through yet another of the fiend's not-exactly-on-the-blueprints routes of egress, in this instance an obscured back stairwell that very likely wouldn't be in the same place if they tried to locate it a second time. As they ascended down to the ground level, dimly they could make out the cheers of the gamblers, drinkers, diners, and social carousers that packed the floor of the Fortune's Wheel that evening. They wouldn't partake in such revelry that evening, nor would they even see the floor at all as the Marauder's guards whisked them through a series of back hallways, past the kitchens, and then into a poorly lit private alley cluttered with refuse, empty wine cases, and freshly cut back razorvine..
"Good luck to you all." One of Shemeska's guards removed his hat and bowed, looking specifically at Surefoot as he smiled. "From here you'll be heading to the Lower Ward and past the Gray and Hellgate Districts, to the Ditch. Your map should answer any questions you have. Tattershade's servitors will meet you once you make the tunnels."
Surefoot made an obscene gesture and cheerfully returned the smile, "Go to Hell..."
"At least one plane over I should think." The tiefling smirked and slammed the door in the bariaur's face.
A solitary executioner's raven cried out, breaking the silence like the final peal of temple bells after the preamble given by the turning of lock tumblers and deadbolts on the Fortune's Wheel's rear door.
"She and her people -really- don't like you." Ashlanaya laughed as she adjusted her sword belt.
"Obvious is it?" Surefoot gave one final gesture towards the door and to the Wheel itself before turning around and slowly trotting off.
"Exactly how much history do you have with Miss Shemeska?" Corwin asked as they proceeded down the alley towards the main boulevard.
"A lot of history," He shook his head, "But there's no need for Miss or any other sort of fancy title; no need to polish her image or make her something other than what she is: b*tch will work well enough."
"I wouldn't suggest that you call her that." Zenia giggled. "You don't often see people that glow that heavily with magic as she was just a few minutes ago. In fact, I don't think I have outside of maybe old Factol Skall of the Dusties."
"I considered it." Surefoot kicked at a solitary rat as it darted out of the shadows. The rodent hissed angrily and darted beneath a rotten pile of kitchen trash, its beady eyes joining a dozen others warily peering out from the same vantage point. Thankfully it hadn't borne an exposed, glowing brain.
"So with all of this discussion of just how terrible our employer is, and how you and she have a history of disagreement, why hasn't she killed you yet?" Malcolm finally spoke, having till that moment been staring at his companions one at a time, sizing up their abilities and possible frailties in the face of whatever it was that they might encounter in the Great Below.
The bariaur paused and looked at the thief. He pursed his lips, swallowed, and then opened his mouth without saying a word for several moments still. "Why does a cat toy around with a mouse when it could pounce, tear it head off, and be done with it?"
Left unspoken in the answer -an answer that his fellows considered perfectly appropriate- was that to be perfectly honest, he wasn't genuinely sure why she hadn't.
****
Already fading when they made their meeting with the Marauder, Peak's illumination was snuffed beneath the darkening gloom overhead by the time they neared the edge of the Lady's Ward. Greasy clouds overhead threatened rain, and slowly the lights from the opposite side of Sigil's torus began twinkling like artificial stars in what passed for a night sky. As the city lurched towards Anti-Peak minute by minute, so too did the streets, the buildings that graced them, and likewise the citizenry that strolled along faded in wealth, prestige, and glamour. Workshops and apartment blocks replaced temples, boutiques and mansions, cobblestones replaced marble, and laborers on their way from or to work replaced the idle rich and their servitors. The only thing that remained constant was the presence of touts, runners, and if you knew where to look for them, pickpockets.
"This city takes some getting used to." Corwin gazed at the steady shift in their surroundings, though his disconcerted features had remained constant. The druid wasn't reacting to the change in social tier reflected by the city's appearance as they moved from the Lady's Ward to the Lower Ward, but the complete lack of a standard, terrestrial ecology. Everything here was alien, everything an invasive species or an opportunistic parasite depending on how one saw it, be it razorvine, rats, roaches, ravens, mortals, outsiders, and elementals alike.
"It's awesome." Zenia chuckled, spitting a shower of sparks with each.
Ashlanaya smiled and stamped out a smoldering ember from the fire genasi's laughter before it actually caught fire, "It's certainly unique."
Zenia narrowed eyes that glittered like burning coals and doubled over in laughter far greater than seemed socially appropriate for the moment. When her face came back up, she carried a stupefied but gleeful grin, "Seriously? I'm the only actual Sigilian native? Every other one of you is Clueless or might as well be?"
"I'm native." Surefoot explained, though Zenia either intentionally ignored him or didn't hear him, because she acted as if the bariaur was invisible. "Not that you seem to care..."
Ashlanaya raised an eyebrow.
"Is anyone really a native of Sigil?" Corwin glanced at Zenia and then at the wall behind her covered in a snarled wall of razorvine.
"Don't go all philosophical on me now." The genasi chided.
"Says the woman with a Xaositect symbol tattooed on her..." Ashlanaya poked the shoulder of the woman with flaming hair. "You're the only one here that was ever a Faction member."
"Bah!" Zenia stuck out her tongue and walked ahead of the others, babbling to herself in Xaos speach for the next few blocks. Eventually she looked back, made another face, and continued mumbling to herself for the entirety of their transit through the Lower War, with the only exception being to hurl expletives and spit fire in the direction of a bar that someone in the Harmonium had once apparently thrown her out of. Her mind clearly elsewhere, Zenia Fickleflame never actually made a comment on their actual contracted job till they got to the Ditch.
Ashlanaya held her hands up and had the others pause, letting the genasi get further ahead of them, "Let her babble to herself, she'll get into less trouble that way. I'm not entirely sure that she's as stable as I'm comfortable with, but let's stay on her good side."
"Why?" Malcolm spoke up, "More money for us."
"Because," Ashlanaya held eye contact with the thief, "She's a rather skilled sorcerer, because we don't know what we'll be facing down below, and because it's the right thing to do."
"Fair enough." He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets and continued along, not looking at the paladin or the others, possibly feeling ashamed of his suggestion.
"I will admit that I didn't expect to see a paladin working with a yugoloth." Corwin looked over at Ashlanaya. "Nor have I ever met a tiefling paladin, nor a paladin of Nephthys."
"Nephthys protects, and so do I." She explained, firmly aware of the inherent bias against tieflings but also the inherent contradiction between the taint in her blood and her holy pledge to the Egyptian Pantheon's Goddess of Protection and Dying. "The Marauder is evil, terribly so, but my place here serves a purpose for Nephthys, and should my actions cause harm after my work is finished, than that is something that I will need to attend at that time."
"Fair enough."
"Besides," Ashlanaya added with a smile and a hand on her sword's pommel. "Someone has to make sure that you three don't get killed because not a one of you looks like you know how to use a sword, much less survive a blow from one."
"I resent that remark." Surefoot raised an eyebrow and looked first over his shoulder and the two-handed sword strapped to his back, and then to the smiling paladin. "That being said, I like you, and I don't say that about many tieflings after only knowing them for an hour or two, and having met them in the employ of our not-exactly-benefactor"
"The appreciation is very much returned." The paladin smiled back. At the very least, she had a decent mix of well skilled people to work alongside, no matter how the work actually went.
By then, their conversation had taken them through the Lower Ward's unremitting overhead smog and greasy drizzle, through the edge of the ruins that marked the Shattered Temple district, and to the Ditch itself where the street gave way and plunged some fifty feet down to a run of nearly stagnant, polluted and foul-smelling water. A great gaping wound in Sigil's flesh of stone, gloom, and verdigris rust, the Ditch cut through the boundary between the Lower Ward and the Hive, separating the worst of the latter from the working-class and industrial districts in the former. The de facto Ward boundary also served as a primary water source for both Wards when the dabus or the city itself saw fit to open up portals to Elemental Water. During the periods between then however, the Ditch serve more as a dumping ground for refuse, filth, and corpses than as a reservoir - and currently the Ditch was in the lull between periods of open portals and fresh water.
"Why are we here again?" Zenia held her nose, gazed down at the depths of the Ditch and then back at her companions, genuinely confused. "I honestly don't remember. I've been talking to myself and she gets me off track more than you'd think."
"We're here on a job from Shemeska the Marauder." The paladin explained with supernatural patience, "She wants us to retrieve something for her, and in exchange she promised to pay each of us something. You'll be getting a staff of fire."
Zenia beamed and bounced on her toes while the flames licking up from her head turned myriad shades of blue and green.
Malcolm likewise held his nose, "Where does the map say we go next?"
Corwin and Ashlanaya looked at the map and their surroundings, extrapolating where they were on the diagram of streets compared to the location of a tunnel they needed to find. It wasn't far, and with exceeding caution they backtracked and approached the Ditch two blocks up where the slope wasn't as steep, and there they descended down the rancid smelling bank.
"People get water from this hell hole of a well?" Malcolm pulled his shirt over his nose and wiped his eyes as a breeze brought a cloud of flies and a reek best described as corpse-stench and evaporating vinegar.
"Sometimes they do, but the water is fresher then and the portals flush all of the waste out of the city." Surefoot explained as he braced his much larger body against the slope with deceptive ease.
"I think this is it." Ashlanaya pointed to an obscured breach in the Ditch slope, concealed behind an outcropping of rock and visible only from below rather than any other angle.
Ten feet wide and perfectly circular, the tunnel descended into darkness, without any sign to mark the entrance, nor guards, nor footsteps to suggest any recent passage. The map however made it clear that it was where they were intended to descend.
"It looks like something burrowed its way in." Zenia turned her head sideways, forcing Corwin to move a foot back to avoid the rush to flames making for his face.
"Actually it looks like the opposite." Surefoot inhaled deeply.
"How do you mean?" The Xaositect looked at the bariaur curiously.
"It looks like something burrowed its way -out-..."
Malcolm sighed and shook his head, "Well that's a pleasant thought given that we'll be waltzing around down there in the dark."
One by one the five of them descended, with Ashlanaya at the front and Malcolm and Zenia at the rear, allowing for the genasi's natural output of firelight make the human's descent at least mildly easier given the others' ability to see in the darkness to a limited range naturally, and his complete lack of the same. Weapons were drawn and their apprehensive action in doing so was justified within only a few minutes time as a scuffle up ahead and a series of hushed whispers and rodent-like squeaks spoke of a waiting party.
"Well it looks like we are indeed expected." The paladin whispered back to the others. "Be ready in the event that this doesn't go well."
A globe of conjured light appeared suddenly in the middle of the passage, forcing them to squint and bringing into view six figures dressed in ragged, pieced together armor that spoke highly of being scavenged off of corpses.
"It seems we have surface dwellers intruding upon the Kingdom Below." The largest of the six figures emerged into the light, pulling back the dirty hood of a brown, soiled cloak and revealing the muddled rodent and human features of a were-rat. Rheumy yellow eyes glowed like candleflames in a mine shaft, his frontal rodent's incisors were jagged and intentionally sharpened, and his overly-large twitching ears bore a tracery of old scars and burns, speaking of a difficult and violent life in the depths of UnderSigil.
"We're here on the authority of Shemeska the Marauder." Ashlanaya called out to the wererats, causing a chorus of shrieks from the four figures that stood behind the two largest were-rats that stood in front. "You're to escort us to a specific portion of the tunnels. Your leader should already be aware of our employer's directives in this matter."
Trick and Track, the were-rat king's lieutenants narrowed their eyes and scowled, glancing at one another before standing taller and straighter as the others behind them snarled menacingly and raised their weapons.
"King above perhaps, but not below!" Trick snorted derisively.
Track hissed and held out his palm, "Lord Tattershade rules this place, not your mistress."
****
Three days earlier:
The black oblivion of unconsciousness lifted along with the black cloth hood from over Malcolm's head. A brilliant spotlight focused upon his face, burning his eyes and forcing him to squint and attempt to turn his face. A vaguely insectile hand roughly grabbed his jaw and forced him to look forward as another, similar hand painfully held his hair and some sort of tentacle or tongue wriggled near his ear. A third hand grabbed his left arm, pressing upon a nerve in his wrist and forcing his fingers to release wide. A fourth hand gripped his index finger and forced something around it, a ring of some sort.
Where was he? What was going on?
He struggled to move and found the act impossible. He was seated, his upper arms were bound at his sides, and his legs were lashed to the chair.
"So good of you to join us Malcolm." A mockingly concerned voice called out from beyond the nimbus of the spotlight. Without his eyes yet adjusted, he could make no identification, but the speaker was female and confident, arrogantly so. "I trust that your transit here was swift and comfortable? Hmm?"
A buzzing sound resonated within his head, and the hand grasping his hair constricted tightly.
Answer her mortal!
"Where am I?!"
"No no no..." The distant voice chided playfully. "Malcolm you're not quite understanding just how this works. This evening we'll do doing quite a bit. Some dinner and entertainment, much like any evening of mine, but to start things off, I'll be asking questions and you'll be answering them. You don't get to do the same."
"Who the bloody hell are you?"
A gloved fist backhanded him suddenly, causing stars to flash in his vision, and then the myriad of hands on his person were forcing him back up and looking forward.
"You stole something from me Malcolm, or at least one of my couriers anyway."
The woman's voice was unhappy, but not furious. Likely he'd be beaten but he hadn't done anything to merit anything more serious. That line of thought was normally appropriate for the mortals that Malcolm had worked with prior to his arrival in Sigil. Under those presumptions a little bit of mouth could defuse things, earn him some professional respect, even if it was rude.
"See?" Malcolm wisecracked. "You answered my question."
"Break every bone in his right hand." The woman's voice was utterly devoid of concern or empathy. There was no momentary pause where reason overruled ethics or socially constructed moral limits.
The clawed hand on Malcolm's jaw moved down, closing like a vice around his forearm and holding it in place. What happened next he couldn't tell, it happened so quickly and the pain nearly caused him to black out, but it was likely a hammer that slammed into each of his fingers one by one in quick, professional succession. They had broken a man's bones before and they were very good at it.
Someone was screaming, loudly. They were whimpering and howling, begging for mercy. They were apologizing for having stolen something. Malcolm inwardly winced at the agony in their voice. Light then returned to his eyes and he realized that he was hearing his own voice.
"That's such a beautiful sound." The woman sighed, relaxing as if she were seated in a cushioned private box at the opera. "Oh, and one of you not already predisposed, fetch me some wine."
"Red or white your Fiendish Majesty?" One voice obediently asked.
"Given the proposed dinner menu this evening, I'd have to suggest a red. Nothing too sweet, something deep and complex to provide a contrast I suppose. But depending on certain factors that we won't know until it's time to prepare the meal, bring a bottle of Sauternes as well, and a crisp white if the chef serves the sweetbreads."
He could barely feel anything in his right hand beyond the fierce, constant ache of crushed, bleeding tissue. Yet through the pain his eyes were finally adjusting to the room's harsh light, and he could finally make out who was speaking to him, talking about her dinner and wine pairings while watching his torture.
The room was relatively small and the walls were hung with multiple layers of heavy, black cloth, presumably to muffle the noises of screams. A pair of tieflings dressed in black flanked him, one of them smiling and holding a bloody hammer. Malcolm avoided looking down at the damage to his hand, just based on the pain he knew that without a cleric's aid, it was probably going to be crippled or lost. Something larger and inhuman stood behind him, its tongue periodically licking alongside the back of his head.
"Let's start over Malcolm." His captor spoke from where she sat directly opposite him against the far wall, seated upon a cushioned throne, legs crossed and a glass of wine delicately held in one clawed, opera-gloved hand. "It seems that we've gotten off to a bad start."
She wasn't human or fiend blooded. She was a full-blown fiend of some sort, essentially a humanoid jackal groomed and primped like a self-obsessed princess. She wore a long and tight fitting, wine red gown, opera-gloves of the same color, and a purplish black under-bust corset. A dozen jeweled rings, earrings, necklaces, and a ratty tangle of coiled razorvine atop her head completed the baroque and wholly out of place ensemble, unless you also counted the ruby-red polish applied to the claws on her toes and hands where the gloves were open to display her fingers.
Something passed over Malcolm's mind, a series of fingers brushing against his consciousness that were cold and distinctly different from the buzzing, alien voice that had touched his brain earlier.
"It is a nice gown isn't it?" The fiend put a hand at her breast and smiled, looking not at her prisoner but at her reflection in the mirror. "Given the color and material, blood doesn't stain it nearly as much as other outfits."
Two other figures stood between Malcolm and the fiend, both of them on opposite sides of the room from the other. The first was another of her tiefling guards dressed in well cut, expensively tailored black clothing. Unlike the others however he wasn't carrying any weapons or objects of torture: he was holding aloft a heavy, ornately framed wall floor-length mirror. As far as Malcolm could tell, his only purpose was to hold the mirror aloft for the fiend's vanity. Half of the time she wasn't even looking at Malcolm, but rather staring at her own reflection in the mirror and admiring herself in an obnoxious display of rancid vanity. The final person was also a tiefling, but this one wore an ivory white chef's jacket and matching pants, his hair neatly tucked into a white cap. A series of knives and other kitchen implements were stuff into his belt and the table at his side bore the requisite objects of a fantastically high-end kitchen: pots, skillets, bowls, cutting board, and to the side, constructed into the wall, a stove-top and oven.
"Dinner and a show." Shemeska the Marauder smiled at Malcolm and idly held out her left hand. As if on cue, one more newly arrived tiefling handed her a wine glass and poured it full of wine to match her dress. The room operated like a ferociously rehearsed stage play at her desire.
Malcolm looked at the mirror, and in its reflection he could see the creature that stood behind him. The chitinous monstrosity that stood there was easily twice the size of anyone else in the room, and occasionally the tongue that he'd felt touch his head was more a tentacle tipped with a lamprey-like mouth. The creature was a vaath, a native horror of Carceri's second layer of Cathrys, but Malcolm didn't know that, nor was he aware that they fed on their victims both their flesh and their fear, burrowing into their brains and experiencing things through their eyes as well as showing the victim the torture from that end as well. Malcolm was one of the Clueless, only recently arrived in Sigil, and so he only saw it as some horrific fiend. In the reflection he also saw the shard of crystal forcibly embedded into its forehead, leaking a greasy, greenish light, and how its glazed eyes looked to the Marauder for its each and every action.
"Whatever I have done to you Madam, I am truly sorry." Malcolm's tone was genuine as he understood the depths of his mistake.
She didn't bother to respond in words, nor even to look at him as she admired herself in the mirror and addressed the tieflings that flanked her victim, "Is the ring of regeneration firmly in place?"
"Yes your Fiendish Majesty." One of the tieflings drew a serrated filleting knife and the other a bone saw. Still at the table, the chef began sharpening his knives while a dozen sauces reduced and side dishes waited for a main course that was nowhere to be seen at his station.
Malcolm's eyes went wide as he understood what was going to happen.
Taking a sip of her wine, the fiend closed her eyes and savored the taste on tongue and nose. The moment passed and Shemeska the Marauder opened her eyes. Looking directly at Malcolm she smiled, licking her lips, "Proceed."
****
)
