Shemeska
Adventurer
CONTENT WARNING: This is rough. This scene and the previous one made some of my players cry. This content is rough. So please, please be aware that it will be straight up horror material with torture and dismemberment, and implied of the same towards minors.
They departed with the three willing children and the village elder in the swirling glow of Tristol’s gate spell, opened directly into the heart of the baernaloth’s demiplane. Unlike what they had experienced in their first attempt at breaching the Clockwork Gap, this time they experienced no redirection, and instead the gate opened up at the front of the keep, rather than outside, at the fringes of the hedge maze. Expecting them, the baern allowed them to enter directly. Still, the ur-fiend intended for them to walk through the entirety of the fortress to subject their ratatosk charges to the uncertainty and fear of what was waiting for them.
Tristol, Clueless, and Florian took their charges by the hand, holding on tightly to comfort them as they walked into the fortress and tried to ignore the mocking, half-heard whispers that issued from the swirling depths of the ether gap that the castle perched atop.
“It’ll be alright.” Tristol gently said, blatantly lying as the young ratatosk quivered and clutched his tail.
All three of the children grew more and more frightened as they wandered through the keep’s empty halls, and the vacant passages seemed to stretch onwards just until the young ones’ resolve was at its breaking point. At that moment, timed for the worst, they passed by the chambers that held the Clockmaker’s twisted experiments and gruesome displays, the doors swinging wide open at their approach. The moans, shrieks and other noises from the still living abominations reached out into the hallway and the children went pale at what they saw before screaming and averting their eyes. Clueless, Tristol and Florian quickly clasped their hands over the children’s eyes and ears to shelter them from the assault as they hurriedly moved them down the passageway. Minutes later, as they still cursed the baernaloth’s sick pleasure, still trying to comfort the little ones, the central chamber and the end of their task loomed before them.
The ratatosk elder whispered a prayer to Yggdrasil as they stepped into the massive, cathedral-like vault with its bizarre, arachniform clockwork device perched atop the swirling core of the ether gap. The baernaloth was not to be seen as they stepped hesitantly towards the center of the room. All they heard were the echoes of their footsteps, the maddening whispers from the swirling whirlpool of ether, and the cold, uncaring clockwork grinding.
Having fully entered the room, they stood next to the massive device, all turning to look back at the entrance, half expecting the door to be gone, or the baernaloth standing there. There was nothing there however when they turned and looked, but then one of the children screamed in horror.
The Clockmaker stood only scant feet from them, its hands clutching the device above the gap to steady itself, its blind eyes wide with anticipation. Its jagged, yellowed teeth shown in a wide grin as it twitched its nose, sniffing at the air.
“Great Mother!” The ratatosk elder stumbled backwards and fell to the ground in shock at the size of the fiend, its composition ripped from his nightmares and the long-held stories of his race. The blind darkness from myth leered down at him and the three terrified children.
“We’ve brought what the ratatosks gave to us. They came willingly. We wouldn’t have forced them.” Tristol said angrily.
“As I knew you would…” Harishek chuckled, reaching back to adjust the myriad of knobs and dials on the monster clockwork device, hinting at the same level of precognizance as it had before, when they first came to it and made their hideous bargain.
“I hate you for this.” Tristol sneered, “I hate you for making us do this for our answers from you.”
The baernaloth didn’t seem to care one way or the other as it paused and sent its mind flowing across the chamber to brush against the fearful thoughts of the seven that stood there before it. Harishek tilted his head in either curiosity or irritated disappointment as it noted that Toras, Nisha, and Fyrehowl had not returned with the others. Their thoughts were absent, the brightness of their souls absent from a place of uttermost darkness.
“Only three of you… the godslave, the godpuppet, and the half-breed. Where are the idealist fool, the Elysian filth, and the chaos touched bitch?” The baern swiveled its head and focused its clouded, blind eyes in Tristol’s direction as it sneered the last of the three titles before turning back once again to fumble with and adjust the gears of the massive device.
“You said we could leave the deal at any point without retribution or breaking the agreement. They couldn’t justify this.” The archmage’s voice trembled with emotion as below him, the ratatosk child clutched at his leg, crying and cowering in fear. “I can’t fully justify what I’m doing, what you’ve made me do. I will regret this and seek atonement and forgiveness for the rest of my life. The only thing that makes it ache less is that I might save more people by doing this, and that the ratatosks give of themselves willingly to preserve their Great Mother as an act of worship. I cannot fathom the sacrifice they put upon themselves out of love for Yggdrasil, nor can I fathom the evil that would make you enjoy your deal with them…”
The Gloom Father smiled and laughed, “So I did say that, promised you an answer… as for the bargain they and I made, some things happen because they must. Accept that mortal and live your life under all those moral pretenses you hold onto. Nothing comes without sacrifice. For anything to happen, anything –great– to happen, there must be two things: blood and terror.” The Clockmaker paused and turned its sightless eyes towards the elder Ratatosk. “We are well acquainted with both…”
The Baern suddenly moved closer to the elder ratatosk, the space between then contracting in an instant and depositing the ur-fiend there, rather than it taking a single step, as the children whimpered in abject horror, clutching onto Clueless, Tristol and Florian. “Uncover their eyes. Make them watch this.”
“WHAT?!” Tristol’s eyes went wide with fury.
Looks of revulsion crossed the faces of the three and they paused, pondering their options, and ultimately did nothing. What could they?
The baern slowly snarled, “Do as I command or I shall pry open their eyes myself mortals!”
Slowly and with an ache in their souls they complied, turning the ratatosk children towards their elder, uncovering their eyes and holding them up to watch what would follow.
“Now now now…” The baern looked down towards the elder ratatosk, its blind eyes unfocused and wandering, before snatching the elder up with one hand around its neck, its other hand held out to one side, hand open and palm up, fingers curling open and closed. “Give me the vial now and watch closely for what your great sacrifice begets you.”
Florian took the vial from Clueless and made to hand it to the baern but didn’t finish the task as the ur-fiend flicked one elongated finger and caused the crystalline vial to hover in the air near the ratatosk dangling in its grip. The elder struggled for air, gasping for breath before the hand around its neck was released and he hung suspended in space, still searching for breath as his previous brave resignation broke, replaced with whimpering terror.
“And there we see the fruits of your faith.” The baern cooed, seeming to revel in the change in his spirits as it broke into a wide, almost ecstatic smile as the elder began to writhe and scream in agony. “Yggdrasil is not here. Yggdrasil is not coming to help you.”
“Bastard!” Tristol hissed.
The children and the three could only watch, compelled to witness the torture of the ratatosk elder suspended before them.
“GREAT MOTHER!” The elder wailed before giving a spasmodic shriek as his limbs jerked and danced as if on invisible puppet strings.
“Yggdrasil cannot even hear your prayers.” The Clockmaker hissed, its voice rising above the elder’s screams, delivered telepathically to its audience’s minds. “Not here.”
The elder continued to scream while his body was struck by such pain that his back arched and seemed at the verge of snapping from the tension. And then, with a sickening, audible snap, it did, as first one vertebra and then another and another in turn broke and cracked from the torment. Bones along the length of the elder’s body shifted internally and seemed to shatter and contort beyond their natural limits as the baern broke him in every sense of the word.
The baern placed a hand over top of the elder’s forehead, its lips moving silently as it spoke into its victim’s mind, the torture mental and spiritual as well as physical.
“STOP!” Tristol screamed, only to be ignored by the baernaloth completely.
The elder should have died from the damage, he should have felt less pain as his spine broke in half, but he screamed till his vocal chords bled and tore and silenced his agony into bloody gurgles, staining his lips with ruddy foam.
“And there you see! There you have it!” The baernaloth pronounced, as with each dying scream a tiny sparkle of light sprang from the elder’s mouth, eyes, and nostrils to flicker on the air and fly into the vial hanging suspended in space.
“Oh f*ck…” Clueless cursed as he and then the other two fully realized the ratatosks’ sacrifice and what it would accomplish. Yggdrasil survived only on the agony of her children.
When the elder’s screams finally stopped, his eyes glazed over in death, the baernaloth released him and his body crumpled to the floor with a sickening crunch.
Gleaming in the air as it hovered like a grim trophy, the vial was ¼ full, and the three ratatosk children remained. Ten minutes the hellish execution had taken and the children forced to watch it all, a harbinger of their own fate…
“Please no… please no…” Florian whispered, clutching her holy symbol in the vain hope that they would not be forced to witness the same, one by one, with the ratatosk children.
“Tempus cannot hear you here either godslave.” The baern chuckled, seeming pleased with itself as it crouched down next to the body, pawing with outstretched hands before finding it and dragging it close. The Clockmaker sniffed at the ragged corpse and turned it face up before glancing back up towards the children and the three companions who had brought them to their doom. “Send the children over into one of the corners of the room. I will deal with them later.”
With supreme trepidation and loathing in their hearts, the three gathered the children and walked them over into one of the corners of the room, holding them tightly and whispering words of encouragement that they knew would, in the end, be absolutely meaningless. Pale and shaking, the children cried out with raw voices, tiny streaks of tears working down their cheeks. They should not have ever been there. No creature should have ever been there.
“I’m so sorry…” Clueless whispered as he put down the orphan. “You three are strong and so very brave. Whatever happens, we’ll remember you and make sure that your people do as well. You can do this.” The bladesinger shut his eyes, not wanting to see their faces as he forced himself to walk away, leaving them to her fate.
Tristol alone managed to glance back, his heart screaming to do something other than abandon them, but powerless to do anything, he, Clueless, and Florian alike walked back and past the Clockmaker as it hunched over the elder’s broken body. Averting their eyes once again, the Clockmaker picked up the corpse in its hands, and with a wet, tearing sound followed by a sickening crunch began devouring it.
“You promised me answers to my questions.” Tristol called out to the ur-fiend, hate and defiance in his voice. There was no point in disguising his loathing. “How do I read the Oblivion Compass?”
“Did I promise you now?” There was another crunch as the fiend’s naked incisors snapped through the elder’s ribcage to rip out muscle and viscera and chew upon it noisily. “You demand much godpuppet.”
Another bloody crunch and below it, the sound of whimpering, crying ratatosks.
“The clock, the Oblivion Compass, will strike 11 in two weeks, three days, five hours, four minutes and 3 seconds from now.” The fiend snapped two bloody fingers at the final word of its declaration and focused its blind, milky eyes at Tristol’s again, chewing upon a hunk of muscle and lung from the corpse.
“What happens then?” Clueless asked, “What does that even mean?”
“You have been there, have you not?” The baern snuffled and gestured at the bladesinger, “You reek of it, all of you, your timelines frayed and eroded like the embankments of a river touched by a seasonal flash flood. But you witnessed what our creation shows. You felt it in your bones, it screams in your memories even now!”
The Clockmaker stopped, panting with zealotry, caught up in the moment, half-chewed ratatosk dribbling from its blood-smeared maw to spatter upon the ground. Its eyes moved in their sockets, wide and ecstatic.
“You saw them! You saw them all yourselves! A multitude of possible futures waiting, flowing, spiraling, converging to one singular moment.”
Behind the baernaloth, below his great nightmare device, like a smaller version of the Compass itself, the ether gap swirled with ever greater potency as if it reflected the Clockmaker’s madness itself.
The ur-fiend ceased speaking and once again the room was shrouded in silence, punctuated only by the sound of crying ratatosks and the roiling churn of the ether gap.
Tristol scowled.
“You still wish to know how to read the clock yourself?” The baernaloth asked, tilting its nightmare-caprine head to one side.
“Yes…” The wizard replied angrily.
The baern reached down and lifted the desecrated elder’s corpse up to its mouth and bit down, cleaving pelvis and hip, leaving one leg to dangle in the air by torn tendon and muscle alone. It noisily chewed its bite of bloody flesh and bone, open-mouthed, mixing its mouthful with its own syrupy black mucous before reaching up and pulling forth a gobbet of the mass forth and held it up in the palm of its hand towards Tristol. “Eat…”
“The f*ck?!” Florian cursed.
“EAT!” The baern repeated, “Or leave.”
Tristol grimaced and stepped forward, Florian and Clueless looking away, feeling sick as the aasimar took the bloody handful without a word. Mentally whispering a prayer to Mystra, begging for forgiveness, he shuddered as he put it into his own mouth, chewed it twice and swallowed it.
Tristol gagged and fought to keep it down as the baern stared in his direction, a sneer upon its face: waiting.
“What does…” Tristol began only to stop as the baern’s sightless eyes locked onto him and its mind forced itself into his like a burning hot iron spike. A flood of images rushed into his head: living modrons being welded into place on the compass, the horrified secundus screaming in agony as it was fused, conscious and aware, into the nightmare engine, the moignos being bound into the device’s core, a blizzard of chaotic, nonsensical mathematical equations to be processed again and again, sifting and filtering, and through it all the horrid spinning of the mutltiplicitous gears and hands.
Tristol screamed in pain, doubled over on the floor, gagging and choking. Then, through the sensory overload and physical effects, a pattern emerged. Suddenly he understood the meaning of the dials and hands, if not the purpose of just what they were counting down towards.
“Tristol are you ok?” Clueless asked, a hand on the wizard’s shoulder.
Tristol waved a hand and nodded, remaining on the floor as he fought a wave of nausea.
“And there you have it. Your answers and the prize for your success in my task.” The baernaloth laughed harshly at the aasimar while it drew forth a length of slippery innards from the partially devoured corpse like a glistening string of popcorn. “It would appear then that we are finished here. No?”
“Let’s get out of here.” Florian said, pointedly not looking at the ratatosks.
“DON’T LEAVE US!” One of the children screamed out.
Still on the floor, Tristol’s eyes went wide and his vision blurred with tears.
“I however am not finished with my work.” The ur-fiend chuckled, “No. Not finished at all.”
“F*ck you!” Tristol shouted.
“Oh?” The Clockmaker paused, drool and bloody viscera dropping from its open maw. “You know, you could always spare the children the pain that will come to them .”
Tristol stood up and narrowed his eyes, still staggered from his experience of absorbing a memory from the Clockmaker. “What do you mean? How?”
The baern resumed chewing on the bloody loop of intestines and then turned its gaze towards the whimpering children. “Kill one of them now. Kill one of them with your bare hands. Snap their neck with one clean motion and give them a quick end, a merciful passing into oblivion. You may kill one of them now and spare them the experience at my delicate hands.” It extended up a single bloody finger, “Each of you one or none at all.”
“We have to.” Florian swiftly answered, not looking at the ratatosks.
“Wait.” Clueless narrowed his eyes.
The fiend further punctuated his offer by dropping the elder’s corpse with a wet thud and unfolding its hands as if offering up a sacrifice, the slim, clawed digits drenched in gore. “And your answer?”
“If we do this,” Clueless demanded, “Will the vial’s contents be filled as it would have been otherwise? Or will this sacrifice be in vain, and more forced to this end?”
The baernaloth chuckled and licked its withered lips, “It will not fulfill my bargain with the ratatosks.”
Tristol’s eyes flared with horror and rage, “No.”
“One way or another…” The Clockmaker muttered to itself as it turned back to its meal.
“I have a question now.” Clueless spoke up as Florian was already walking towards the exit and Tristol at her side.
“Ask away fool.”
“Just what is this place? What even is the ether gap you seem so concerned with, and what is it whispering?” He stared at the baern who glanced up briefly at the question before it scoffed.
“Not all answers are for you to know. That particular question would cost you far more than you have to give. This,” The baernaloth gestured towards the ratatosks, “This is paltry by comparison.”
“Clueless,” Florian called out. “Let’s go.”
“Listen to the godslave.” Harishek wiped the blood from its face, “I have other business to attend to. Be gone now, and realize as you go that since you have entered this room I have butchered you seven times each in variant realities and withered, broken timelines, hewed and thrown to nothingness like chaff to the flames. Such futures were not to be. Probability collapses to a single destined future, one out of many. And while those other futures are not to be, this one is. I promised you no harm and an answer to a question. I provide both because it suits my wishes in what is to come. Unlike the baatezu, or their forerunners… I hold to laws only so long as I see fit to do so. Remember that keenly puppets.”
“We’re done? Just like that?” Tristol asked, deliberately trying not to look towards the children.
The baern looked in the aasimar’s general direction, its face painted crimson on gray, stray bits of fur and flesh dotting its wasted flesh. “Unless you wish to watch what comes for your little ones, then yes. You are free to go. I’ve had my fun with most of you.”
Tristol said nothing more and joined Clueless and Florian on the other side of the room. However as he began to incant the words to open a gate and bring them to the Outlands he felt the baernaloth’s blind eyes upon him and its poisoned mind brush against his own as it muttered softly, “Oh what your timelines say…and what they do not…”
The gate swirled open in a burning radiance of colors against the ashen grey of the baernaloth’s lair, the sounds of Tradegate suddenly drowning out the screams of the abandoned, doomed ratatosks.
The three of them stepped through the gate and it snapped shut behind them, ending the cries for help, and any chance of it being granted.
Florian burst into a string of expletives and curses while Clueless stared at the ground, his right hand on Razor’s pommel. Tristol was deathly silent.
“Are you two alright?” Clueless asked as he looked up and out at the Infinite Spire that graced the horizon.
“I will be eventually.” Florian scowled, “But damn it! In a universe that holds good as a virtue, that … thing… has no right to exist. We fed it, we delivered innocents to it. We didn’t just watch it happen and do nothing, we actively had a part in it.”
“Let’s not tell Toras or the others what happened after they left. We can spare them what we have to live with at least. Yes?” The bladesinger suggested.
“Agreed.” Tristol finally spoke, his voice numb. “Toras would go crazy with anger, Fyrehowl has already seen enough loss and doubt, and I won’t put Nisha through that.”
The aasimar finally smiled, if only slightly, as he spoke Nisha’s name.
“Still,” Clueless said, “It’s over for us at least.”
It was not over.
Tristol exhaled in relief for that blessing, and then it happened.
“Now my little ones, you belong to me.” The Clockmaker’s voice rang out clearly inside of Tristol’s mind as if he were still there in the demiplane.
“…” Tristol clenched his teeth as the voice continued, crackles of silverfire at the corners of his eyes as the Clockmaker pumped into his mind what he would have heard had he never left the baernaloth’s corrupt presence.
“NO!” Tristol shouted out, stumbling. “NO NO NO NO!!!!”
Florian and Clueless turned to him in alarm, not understanding that the baernaloth intended to give the wizard a moment by moment description of each and every horrific act it would perform to fulfill the ratatosks’ corrosive salvation for Yggdrasil.
“What’s happening?!” Clueless grabbed hold of Tristol as the aasimar dropped to the ground clutching at his head, covering his ears as if that could stop the horror.
“You are mine now, and you will all eventually die, one by one.” Harishek’s mocking voice flooded into Tristol mind, the sounds of the Clockwork Gap now rushing into his mind more strongly than before, now joined by the smells: the baernaloth’s rotten, sour breath, the reek of the gutted elder’s bowels, and the fresh smell of fear-voided urine. “There is nothing for you but pain and then oblivion, if even that.”
The whimpering cries turned to unintelligent screaming and the baernaloth blindly stumbled towards them, a rictus smile on its blood-stained face.
Tristol’s inchoate screaming joined the trio in his mind.
“No one will come to rescue you. Those that brought you here have abandoned you willingly. They knew what would happen to you and they left you to me. They chose not to help you and here you are.”
Florian and Clueless shouted at Tristol, picking him up and trying to understand as they panicked and their companion wept.
Tristol screamed, hoping in vain to silence the dialogue within his mind, but it only grew in intensity and volume to compensate. The Clockmaker had every intention of forcing him to listen, to make him hear all that happened, every detail, every scream, and there was nothing that he could do.
“I CAN HEAR THEM!!!!” Tristol screamed, and as he did, understanding and horror washed through Florian and Clueless.
“Oh Tempus preserve!” Florian shouted.
“Which of you will be first?” The Clockmaker asked, one bloody hand reaching out, one finger extended to hover over one head, then another, and then another. “Which of you will I rip apart first, piece by screaming piece?”
“Do something!” Clueless screamed at Florian, “It’s making Tristol f*cking watch!”
Florian clutched her holy symbol and in an instant blanketed the area with a zone of null magic, snuffing out, at least temporarily, any curse or malignant magic that could have possibly reached them.
“I know which I will choose!” The baernaloth seemed delighted as it lifted one of the ratatosks into the air by its head, its limbs scrambling to no avail, eyes wide in terror. “You. You the one who would be a hero.”
“I CAN STILL HEAR IT!!!!!” Tristol screamed as the spell even doused the flickers of silverfire in his eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“SH*T!” Clueless screamed, his panic reflected in Florian eye’s. "HOW!?"
“One by fragile one you will suffer and you will die.” The baernaloth chuckled, a claw beneath the ratatosk’s chin, forcing it to make eye contact.
The baernaloth had slaughtered the ratatosk elder swiftly, but everything afterwards would be measured and sickeningly slow. It would whisper blasphemies and stories of unrewarded suffering, breaking its victims’ sanity and faith before it broke them physically, and it intended for Tristol to witness it all.
“Where’s the gate?!” Clueless shouted, glancing about to orient himself to where Tristol had deposited them in Tradegate.
“What?” Florian asked, confused.
“The portal to Sigil!” Clueless explained, “Do you really think The Lady would let this thing’s influence into Her city?!”
The shrieks of pain began in Tristol’s mind.
“Know, all three of you that your sacrifice is meaningless.” The baernaloth whispered, its face pressed against a small ear, “You prolong your people’s suffering and they will never know.”
The screaming in Tristol’s mind dipped in volume as a hand squeezed a windpipe and snuffed the flow of air to a trickle.
Tristol screamed as Clueless and Florian grabbed him and dragged him through the streets of Tradegate, rushing headlong towards the permanent portal to Sigil, hoping to stop their companion’s agony.
“A little tale before you die, and for your audience as it screams in the Outlands. I’ve saved this story just for you, fragile ones.” The grip tightened and now added to sound and smell was sensation as Tristol gripped at his throat, immaterial talons on his flesh as the baernaloth suffocated the first ratatosk. “Your Great Mother Yggdrasil was never sterile before I came to your people and offered you my salvation.”
Feet and arms scrambled, fighting in vain and Tristol did the same, feeling the same sensations as the first of the ratatosks. The portal was in sight as the aasimar felt a second grip applied, not on his throat, but on his left leg, testing, finding its place before it would rip the limb free like a dismembered child’s doll in the mouth of a dog.
Nearly there, the two rushed towards the portal, carrying Tristol, unable to see bruises forming on his leg to join those upon his neck as Tristol’s screaming dropped to a gurgle and invisible hands clenched upon his throat, mirroring the actions in the nadir of the Clockwork Gap.
“And so, my little mortal hero,” The Clockmaker laughed, “Do you think that your soul will ever see paradise?”
Tristol felt his femur begin to dislocate, tendons tight and near to the breaking point, the force higher up now crushing his spine as well as his windpipe.
And then it was gone. The voice of the ur-fiend. The screams. The crying. The agony. The hellish sensory blizzard ceased, snuffed out in an instant.
Silence descended upon them as they entered the portal and reappeared in the City of Doors.
Tristol blacked out.
Only later when he came to, would he be even vaguely aware of laying atop his bed, his head on Nisha’s shoulder, her arms wrapped about him. She held him for hours, holding him tight as he cried, unable to verbalize what he had witnessed, but she held him nonetheless.
“I love you.” The tiefling whispered. “You’re safe now. You’re safe with me.”
They departed with the three willing children and the village elder in the swirling glow of Tristol’s gate spell, opened directly into the heart of the baernaloth’s demiplane. Unlike what they had experienced in their first attempt at breaching the Clockwork Gap, this time they experienced no redirection, and instead the gate opened up at the front of the keep, rather than outside, at the fringes of the hedge maze. Expecting them, the baern allowed them to enter directly. Still, the ur-fiend intended for them to walk through the entirety of the fortress to subject their ratatosk charges to the uncertainty and fear of what was waiting for them.
Tristol, Clueless, and Florian took their charges by the hand, holding on tightly to comfort them as they walked into the fortress and tried to ignore the mocking, half-heard whispers that issued from the swirling depths of the ether gap that the castle perched atop.
“It’ll be alright.” Tristol gently said, blatantly lying as the young ratatosk quivered and clutched his tail.
All three of the children grew more and more frightened as they wandered through the keep’s empty halls, and the vacant passages seemed to stretch onwards just until the young ones’ resolve was at its breaking point. At that moment, timed for the worst, they passed by the chambers that held the Clockmaker’s twisted experiments and gruesome displays, the doors swinging wide open at their approach. The moans, shrieks and other noises from the still living abominations reached out into the hallway and the children went pale at what they saw before screaming and averting their eyes. Clueless, Tristol and Florian quickly clasped their hands over the children’s eyes and ears to shelter them from the assault as they hurriedly moved them down the passageway. Minutes later, as they still cursed the baernaloth’s sick pleasure, still trying to comfort the little ones, the central chamber and the end of their task loomed before them.
The ratatosk elder whispered a prayer to Yggdrasil as they stepped into the massive, cathedral-like vault with its bizarre, arachniform clockwork device perched atop the swirling core of the ether gap. The baernaloth was not to be seen as they stepped hesitantly towards the center of the room. All they heard were the echoes of their footsteps, the maddening whispers from the swirling whirlpool of ether, and the cold, uncaring clockwork grinding.
Having fully entered the room, they stood next to the massive device, all turning to look back at the entrance, half expecting the door to be gone, or the baernaloth standing there. There was nothing there however when they turned and looked, but then one of the children screamed in horror.
The Clockmaker stood only scant feet from them, its hands clutching the device above the gap to steady itself, its blind eyes wide with anticipation. Its jagged, yellowed teeth shown in a wide grin as it twitched its nose, sniffing at the air.
“Great Mother!” The ratatosk elder stumbled backwards and fell to the ground in shock at the size of the fiend, its composition ripped from his nightmares and the long-held stories of his race. The blind darkness from myth leered down at him and the three terrified children.
“We’ve brought what the ratatosks gave to us. They came willingly. We wouldn’t have forced them.” Tristol said angrily.
“As I knew you would…” Harishek chuckled, reaching back to adjust the myriad of knobs and dials on the monster clockwork device, hinting at the same level of precognizance as it had before, when they first came to it and made their hideous bargain.
“I hate you for this.” Tristol sneered, “I hate you for making us do this for our answers from you.”
The baernaloth didn’t seem to care one way or the other as it paused and sent its mind flowing across the chamber to brush against the fearful thoughts of the seven that stood there before it. Harishek tilted his head in either curiosity or irritated disappointment as it noted that Toras, Nisha, and Fyrehowl had not returned with the others. Their thoughts were absent, the brightness of their souls absent from a place of uttermost darkness.
“Only three of you… the godslave, the godpuppet, and the half-breed. Where are the idealist fool, the Elysian filth, and the chaos touched bitch?” The baern swiveled its head and focused its clouded, blind eyes in Tristol’s direction as it sneered the last of the three titles before turning back once again to fumble with and adjust the gears of the massive device.
“You said we could leave the deal at any point without retribution or breaking the agreement. They couldn’t justify this.” The archmage’s voice trembled with emotion as below him, the ratatosk child clutched at his leg, crying and cowering in fear. “I can’t fully justify what I’m doing, what you’ve made me do. I will regret this and seek atonement and forgiveness for the rest of my life. The only thing that makes it ache less is that I might save more people by doing this, and that the ratatosks give of themselves willingly to preserve their Great Mother as an act of worship. I cannot fathom the sacrifice they put upon themselves out of love for Yggdrasil, nor can I fathom the evil that would make you enjoy your deal with them…”
The Gloom Father smiled and laughed, “So I did say that, promised you an answer… as for the bargain they and I made, some things happen because they must. Accept that mortal and live your life under all those moral pretenses you hold onto. Nothing comes without sacrifice. For anything to happen, anything –great– to happen, there must be two things: blood and terror.” The Clockmaker paused and turned its sightless eyes towards the elder Ratatosk. “We are well acquainted with both…”
The Baern suddenly moved closer to the elder ratatosk, the space between then contracting in an instant and depositing the ur-fiend there, rather than it taking a single step, as the children whimpered in abject horror, clutching onto Clueless, Tristol and Florian. “Uncover their eyes. Make them watch this.”
“WHAT?!” Tristol’s eyes went wide with fury.
Looks of revulsion crossed the faces of the three and they paused, pondering their options, and ultimately did nothing. What could they?
The baern slowly snarled, “Do as I command or I shall pry open their eyes myself mortals!”
Slowly and with an ache in their souls they complied, turning the ratatosk children towards their elder, uncovering their eyes and holding them up to watch what would follow.
“Now now now…” The baern looked down towards the elder ratatosk, its blind eyes unfocused and wandering, before snatching the elder up with one hand around its neck, its other hand held out to one side, hand open and palm up, fingers curling open and closed. “Give me the vial now and watch closely for what your great sacrifice begets you.”
Florian took the vial from Clueless and made to hand it to the baern but didn’t finish the task as the ur-fiend flicked one elongated finger and caused the crystalline vial to hover in the air near the ratatosk dangling in its grip. The elder struggled for air, gasping for breath before the hand around its neck was released and he hung suspended in space, still searching for breath as his previous brave resignation broke, replaced with whimpering terror.
“And there we see the fruits of your faith.” The baern cooed, seeming to revel in the change in his spirits as it broke into a wide, almost ecstatic smile as the elder began to writhe and scream in agony. “Yggdrasil is not here. Yggdrasil is not coming to help you.”
“Bastard!” Tristol hissed.
The children and the three could only watch, compelled to witness the torture of the ratatosk elder suspended before them.
“GREAT MOTHER!” The elder wailed before giving a spasmodic shriek as his limbs jerked and danced as if on invisible puppet strings.
“Yggdrasil cannot even hear your prayers.” The Clockmaker hissed, its voice rising above the elder’s screams, delivered telepathically to its audience’s minds. “Not here.”
The elder continued to scream while his body was struck by such pain that his back arched and seemed at the verge of snapping from the tension. And then, with a sickening, audible snap, it did, as first one vertebra and then another and another in turn broke and cracked from the torment. Bones along the length of the elder’s body shifted internally and seemed to shatter and contort beyond their natural limits as the baern broke him in every sense of the word.
The baern placed a hand over top of the elder’s forehead, its lips moving silently as it spoke into its victim’s mind, the torture mental and spiritual as well as physical.
“STOP!” Tristol screamed, only to be ignored by the baernaloth completely.
The elder should have died from the damage, he should have felt less pain as his spine broke in half, but he screamed till his vocal chords bled and tore and silenced his agony into bloody gurgles, staining his lips with ruddy foam.
“And there you see! There you have it!” The baernaloth pronounced, as with each dying scream a tiny sparkle of light sprang from the elder’s mouth, eyes, and nostrils to flicker on the air and fly into the vial hanging suspended in space.
“Oh f*ck…” Clueless cursed as he and then the other two fully realized the ratatosks’ sacrifice and what it would accomplish. Yggdrasil survived only on the agony of her children.
When the elder’s screams finally stopped, his eyes glazed over in death, the baernaloth released him and his body crumpled to the floor with a sickening crunch.
Gleaming in the air as it hovered like a grim trophy, the vial was ¼ full, and the three ratatosk children remained. Ten minutes the hellish execution had taken and the children forced to watch it all, a harbinger of their own fate…
“Please no… please no…” Florian whispered, clutching her holy symbol in the vain hope that they would not be forced to witness the same, one by one, with the ratatosk children.
“Tempus cannot hear you here either godslave.” The baern chuckled, seeming pleased with itself as it crouched down next to the body, pawing with outstretched hands before finding it and dragging it close. The Clockmaker sniffed at the ragged corpse and turned it face up before glancing back up towards the children and the three companions who had brought them to their doom. “Send the children over into one of the corners of the room. I will deal with them later.”
With supreme trepidation and loathing in their hearts, the three gathered the children and walked them over into one of the corners of the room, holding them tightly and whispering words of encouragement that they knew would, in the end, be absolutely meaningless. Pale and shaking, the children cried out with raw voices, tiny streaks of tears working down their cheeks. They should not have ever been there. No creature should have ever been there.
“I’m so sorry…” Clueless whispered as he put down the orphan. “You three are strong and so very brave. Whatever happens, we’ll remember you and make sure that your people do as well. You can do this.” The bladesinger shut his eyes, not wanting to see their faces as he forced himself to walk away, leaving them to her fate.
Tristol alone managed to glance back, his heart screaming to do something other than abandon them, but powerless to do anything, he, Clueless, and Florian alike walked back and past the Clockmaker as it hunched over the elder’s broken body. Averting their eyes once again, the Clockmaker picked up the corpse in its hands, and with a wet, tearing sound followed by a sickening crunch began devouring it.
“You promised me answers to my questions.” Tristol called out to the ur-fiend, hate and defiance in his voice. There was no point in disguising his loathing. “How do I read the Oblivion Compass?”
“Did I promise you now?” There was another crunch as the fiend’s naked incisors snapped through the elder’s ribcage to rip out muscle and viscera and chew upon it noisily. “You demand much godpuppet.”
Another bloody crunch and below it, the sound of whimpering, crying ratatosks.
“The clock, the Oblivion Compass, will strike 11 in two weeks, three days, five hours, four minutes and 3 seconds from now.” The fiend snapped two bloody fingers at the final word of its declaration and focused its blind, milky eyes at Tristol’s again, chewing upon a hunk of muscle and lung from the corpse.
“What happens then?” Clueless asked, “What does that even mean?”
“You have been there, have you not?” The baern snuffled and gestured at the bladesinger, “You reek of it, all of you, your timelines frayed and eroded like the embankments of a river touched by a seasonal flash flood. But you witnessed what our creation shows. You felt it in your bones, it screams in your memories even now!”
The Clockmaker stopped, panting with zealotry, caught up in the moment, half-chewed ratatosk dribbling from its blood-smeared maw to spatter upon the ground. Its eyes moved in their sockets, wide and ecstatic.
“You saw them! You saw them all yourselves! A multitude of possible futures waiting, flowing, spiraling, converging to one singular moment.”
Behind the baernaloth, below his great nightmare device, like a smaller version of the Compass itself, the ether gap swirled with ever greater potency as if it reflected the Clockmaker’s madness itself.
The ur-fiend ceased speaking and once again the room was shrouded in silence, punctuated only by the sound of crying ratatosks and the roiling churn of the ether gap.
Tristol scowled.
“You still wish to know how to read the clock yourself?” The baernaloth asked, tilting its nightmare-caprine head to one side.
“Yes…” The wizard replied angrily.
The baern reached down and lifted the desecrated elder’s corpse up to its mouth and bit down, cleaving pelvis and hip, leaving one leg to dangle in the air by torn tendon and muscle alone. It noisily chewed its bite of bloody flesh and bone, open-mouthed, mixing its mouthful with its own syrupy black mucous before reaching up and pulling forth a gobbet of the mass forth and held it up in the palm of its hand towards Tristol. “Eat…”
“The f*ck?!” Florian cursed.
“EAT!” The baern repeated, “Or leave.”
Tristol grimaced and stepped forward, Florian and Clueless looking away, feeling sick as the aasimar took the bloody handful without a word. Mentally whispering a prayer to Mystra, begging for forgiveness, he shuddered as he put it into his own mouth, chewed it twice and swallowed it.
Tristol gagged and fought to keep it down as the baern stared in his direction, a sneer upon its face: waiting.
“What does…” Tristol began only to stop as the baern’s sightless eyes locked onto him and its mind forced itself into his like a burning hot iron spike. A flood of images rushed into his head: living modrons being welded into place on the compass, the horrified secundus screaming in agony as it was fused, conscious and aware, into the nightmare engine, the moignos being bound into the device’s core, a blizzard of chaotic, nonsensical mathematical equations to be processed again and again, sifting and filtering, and through it all the horrid spinning of the mutltiplicitous gears and hands.
Tristol screamed in pain, doubled over on the floor, gagging and choking. Then, through the sensory overload and physical effects, a pattern emerged. Suddenly he understood the meaning of the dials and hands, if not the purpose of just what they were counting down towards.
“Tristol are you ok?” Clueless asked, a hand on the wizard’s shoulder.
Tristol waved a hand and nodded, remaining on the floor as he fought a wave of nausea.
“And there you have it. Your answers and the prize for your success in my task.” The baernaloth laughed harshly at the aasimar while it drew forth a length of slippery innards from the partially devoured corpse like a glistening string of popcorn. “It would appear then that we are finished here. No?”
“Let’s get out of here.” Florian said, pointedly not looking at the ratatosks.
“DON’T LEAVE US!” One of the children screamed out.
Still on the floor, Tristol’s eyes went wide and his vision blurred with tears.
“I however am not finished with my work.” The ur-fiend chuckled, “No. Not finished at all.”
“F*ck you!” Tristol shouted.
“Oh?” The Clockmaker paused, drool and bloody viscera dropping from its open maw. “You know, you could always spare the children the pain that will come to them .”
Tristol stood up and narrowed his eyes, still staggered from his experience of absorbing a memory from the Clockmaker. “What do you mean? How?”
The baern resumed chewing on the bloody loop of intestines and then turned its gaze towards the whimpering children. “Kill one of them now. Kill one of them with your bare hands. Snap their neck with one clean motion and give them a quick end, a merciful passing into oblivion. You may kill one of them now and spare them the experience at my delicate hands.” It extended up a single bloody finger, “Each of you one or none at all.”
“We have to.” Florian swiftly answered, not looking at the ratatosks.
“Wait.” Clueless narrowed his eyes.
The fiend further punctuated his offer by dropping the elder’s corpse with a wet thud and unfolding its hands as if offering up a sacrifice, the slim, clawed digits drenched in gore. “And your answer?”
“If we do this,” Clueless demanded, “Will the vial’s contents be filled as it would have been otherwise? Or will this sacrifice be in vain, and more forced to this end?”
The baernaloth chuckled and licked its withered lips, “It will not fulfill my bargain with the ratatosks.”
Tristol’s eyes flared with horror and rage, “No.”
“One way or another…” The Clockmaker muttered to itself as it turned back to its meal.
“I have a question now.” Clueless spoke up as Florian was already walking towards the exit and Tristol at her side.
“Ask away fool.”
“Just what is this place? What even is the ether gap you seem so concerned with, and what is it whispering?” He stared at the baern who glanced up briefly at the question before it scoffed.
“Not all answers are for you to know. That particular question would cost you far more than you have to give. This,” The baernaloth gestured towards the ratatosks, “This is paltry by comparison.”
“Clueless,” Florian called out. “Let’s go.”
“Listen to the godslave.” Harishek wiped the blood from its face, “I have other business to attend to. Be gone now, and realize as you go that since you have entered this room I have butchered you seven times each in variant realities and withered, broken timelines, hewed and thrown to nothingness like chaff to the flames. Such futures were not to be. Probability collapses to a single destined future, one out of many. And while those other futures are not to be, this one is. I promised you no harm and an answer to a question. I provide both because it suits my wishes in what is to come. Unlike the baatezu, or their forerunners… I hold to laws only so long as I see fit to do so. Remember that keenly puppets.”
“We’re done? Just like that?” Tristol asked, deliberately trying not to look towards the children.
The baern looked in the aasimar’s general direction, its face painted crimson on gray, stray bits of fur and flesh dotting its wasted flesh. “Unless you wish to watch what comes for your little ones, then yes. You are free to go. I’ve had my fun with most of you.”
Tristol said nothing more and joined Clueless and Florian on the other side of the room. However as he began to incant the words to open a gate and bring them to the Outlands he felt the baernaloth’s blind eyes upon him and its poisoned mind brush against his own as it muttered softly, “Oh what your timelines say…and what they do not…”
The gate swirled open in a burning radiance of colors against the ashen grey of the baernaloth’s lair, the sounds of Tradegate suddenly drowning out the screams of the abandoned, doomed ratatosks.
The three of them stepped through the gate and it snapped shut behind them, ending the cries for help, and any chance of it being granted.
Florian burst into a string of expletives and curses while Clueless stared at the ground, his right hand on Razor’s pommel. Tristol was deathly silent.
“Are you two alright?” Clueless asked as he looked up and out at the Infinite Spire that graced the horizon.
“I will be eventually.” Florian scowled, “But damn it! In a universe that holds good as a virtue, that … thing… has no right to exist. We fed it, we delivered innocents to it. We didn’t just watch it happen and do nothing, we actively had a part in it.”
“Let’s not tell Toras or the others what happened after they left. We can spare them what we have to live with at least. Yes?” The bladesinger suggested.
“Agreed.” Tristol finally spoke, his voice numb. “Toras would go crazy with anger, Fyrehowl has already seen enough loss and doubt, and I won’t put Nisha through that.”
The aasimar finally smiled, if only slightly, as he spoke Nisha’s name.
“Still,” Clueless said, “It’s over for us at least.”
It was not over.
Tristol exhaled in relief for that blessing, and then it happened.
“Now my little ones, you belong to me.” The Clockmaker’s voice rang out clearly inside of Tristol’s mind as if he were still there in the demiplane.
“…” Tristol clenched his teeth as the voice continued, crackles of silverfire at the corners of his eyes as the Clockmaker pumped into his mind what he would have heard had he never left the baernaloth’s corrupt presence.
“NO!” Tristol shouted out, stumbling. “NO NO NO NO!!!!”
Florian and Clueless turned to him in alarm, not understanding that the baernaloth intended to give the wizard a moment by moment description of each and every horrific act it would perform to fulfill the ratatosks’ corrosive salvation for Yggdrasil.
“What’s happening?!” Clueless grabbed hold of Tristol as the aasimar dropped to the ground clutching at his head, covering his ears as if that could stop the horror.
“You are mine now, and you will all eventually die, one by one.” Harishek’s mocking voice flooded into Tristol mind, the sounds of the Clockwork Gap now rushing into his mind more strongly than before, now joined by the smells: the baernaloth’s rotten, sour breath, the reek of the gutted elder’s bowels, and the fresh smell of fear-voided urine. “There is nothing for you but pain and then oblivion, if even that.”
The whimpering cries turned to unintelligent screaming and the baernaloth blindly stumbled towards them, a rictus smile on its blood-stained face.
Tristol’s inchoate screaming joined the trio in his mind.
“No one will come to rescue you. Those that brought you here have abandoned you willingly. They knew what would happen to you and they left you to me. They chose not to help you and here you are.”
Florian and Clueless shouted at Tristol, picking him up and trying to understand as they panicked and their companion wept.
Tristol screamed, hoping in vain to silence the dialogue within his mind, but it only grew in intensity and volume to compensate. The Clockmaker had every intention of forcing him to listen, to make him hear all that happened, every detail, every scream, and there was nothing that he could do.
“I CAN HEAR THEM!!!!” Tristol screamed, and as he did, understanding and horror washed through Florian and Clueless.
“Oh Tempus preserve!” Florian shouted.
“Which of you will be first?” The Clockmaker asked, one bloody hand reaching out, one finger extended to hover over one head, then another, and then another. “Which of you will I rip apart first, piece by screaming piece?”
“Do something!” Clueless screamed at Florian, “It’s making Tristol f*cking watch!”
Florian clutched her holy symbol and in an instant blanketed the area with a zone of null magic, snuffing out, at least temporarily, any curse or malignant magic that could have possibly reached them.
“I know which I will choose!” The baernaloth seemed delighted as it lifted one of the ratatosks into the air by its head, its limbs scrambling to no avail, eyes wide in terror. “You. You the one who would be a hero.”
“I CAN STILL HEAR IT!!!!!” Tristol screamed as the spell even doused the flickers of silverfire in his eyes. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“SH*T!” Clueless screamed, his panic reflected in Florian eye’s. "HOW!?"
“One by fragile one you will suffer and you will die.” The baernaloth chuckled, a claw beneath the ratatosk’s chin, forcing it to make eye contact.
The baernaloth had slaughtered the ratatosk elder swiftly, but everything afterwards would be measured and sickeningly slow. It would whisper blasphemies and stories of unrewarded suffering, breaking its victims’ sanity and faith before it broke them physically, and it intended for Tristol to witness it all.
“Where’s the gate?!” Clueless shouted, glancing about to orient himself to where Tristol had deposited them in Tradegate.
“What?” Florian asked, confused.
“The portal to Sigil!” Clueless explained, “Do you really think The Lady would let this thing’s influence into Her city?!”
The shrieks of pain began in Tristol’s mind.
“Know, all three of you that your sacrifice is meaningless.” The baernaloth whispered, its face pressed against a small ear, “You prolong your people’s suffering and they will never know.”
The screaming in Tristol’s mind dipped in volume as a hand squeezed a windpipe and snuffed the flow of air to a trickle.
Tristol screamed as Clueless and Florian grabbed him and dragged him through the streets of Tradegate, rushing headlong towards the permanent portal to Sigil, hoping to stop their companion’s agony.
“A little tale before you die, and for your audience as it screams in the Outlands. I’ve saved this story just for you, fragile ones.” The grip tightened and now added to sound and smell was sensation as Tristol gripped at his throat, immaterial talons on his flesh as the baernaloth suffocated the first ratatosk. “Your Great Mother Yggdrasil was never sterile before I came to your people and offered you my salvation.”
Feet and arms scrambled, fighting in vain and Tristol did the same, feeling the same sensations as the first of the ratatosks. The portal was in sight as the aasimar felt a second grip applied, not on his throat, but on his left leg, testing, finding its place before it would rip the limb free like a dismembered child’s doll in the mouth of a dog.
Nearly there, the two rushed towards the portal, carrying Tristol, unable to see bruises forming on his leg to join those upon his neck as Tristol’s screaming dropped to a gurgle and invisible hands clenched upon his throat, mirroring the actions in the nadir of the Clockwork Gap.
“And so, my little mortal hero,” The Clockmaker laughed, “Do you think that your soul will ever see paradise?”
Tristol felt his femur begin to dislocate, tendons tight and near to the breaking point, the force higher up now crushing his spine as well as his windpipe.
And then it was gone. The voice of the ur-fiend. The screams. The crying. The agony. The hellish sensory blizzard ceased, snuffed out in an instant.
Silence descended upon them as they entered the portal and reappeared in the City of Doors.
Tristol blacked out.
Only later when he came to, would he be even vaguely aware of laying atop his bed, his head on Nisha’s shoulder, her arms wrapped about him. She held him for hours, holding him tight as he cried, unable to verbalize what he had witnessed, but she held him nonetheless.
“I love you.” The tiefling whispered. “You’re safe now. You’re safe with me.”
*****
