carborundum
Adventurer
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 27July2025)
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Shemeska
Adventurer
Half a universe away, the fourfold furnaces of Gehenna raged with their unending, pyroclastic fury and high upon the second mount, their crowning triumph, the Tower Arcane, erupted from Krangath’s burning slopes as a nail in the yugoloth crucifixion of the Lower Planes.
“And what then would the next step be?” Helekanalaith asked, his tone balanced upon the razor’s edge of teacher and torturer as he sat behind his desk, his -predecessor’s- desk, and stared at one of three arcanaloth apprentices. The actual answer was a banal thing, and he wasn’t so much looking for the correct answer but the manner in which the apprentice answered and how they carried themselves and their answer in front of their fellows. Which of them would kill their rivals first was what he was watching for.
The apprentice’s lips parted, they took a deep breath and as they prepared to answer, the Keeper’s eyes remained focused on them, though even as his hand sketched upon his notebook with a burning stylus, his attention focused on the gemstone that hovered above his desk casting down light on him like a perfect crystalline lamp.
Like a river in deepest winter, time froze.
Deep within the gemstone’s matrix the original occupant of Helekanalaith desk, the very architect of the Tower, she dwelled, imprisoned, and there imprisoned, in agony she screamed. Larsdana ap Neut’s unending wail echoed through the vast halls of an inescapable maze that her own apprentice now gazing into the gemstone had constructed, a maze filled with the poisoned, corrosive detritus of her own failure hurled again and again in front of her.
Abruptly the screaming stopped.
Below the great window behind the Keeper that looked out into the endless void, eruptions, falling stars and plummeting souls hung still and silent, frozen in place as much as everything in the Keeper’s chamber as something beyond horror clambered its way up from the arch-yugoloth’s shadow, manifesting moments later in a place of no substance.
Within the null space contained within Helekanalaith’s gemstone, within the labyrinthine prison of horror, love, agony, and regret woven by her once-apprentice and now successor as Keeper of the Tower, Larsdana ap Neut sat, gasping and weeping. She brushed a long stand of black hair fringed in violet at the tips, the motion momentary as it shifted to violet tinged in black, her pale purple eyes widening as her conscious mind drifted to the present and out of the mental fortress she dwelled within to save herself from insanity, an act that left her virtually comatose amidst her imprisonment even as she heard herself screaming in unending torture. But now her agony blessedly ceased for that moment between moments as the baernaloth Alashra the Dream Eater loomed.
“Everything goes according to plan.” Bleeding, purple lips parted in a grim smile as horror gazed down upon its favored child, the imprisoned archfiend who still served as its metaphysical host. “Everything.”
Larsdana gazed up, no joy, but tempered curiosity playing across her pale gray jackal’s muzzle, “A plan that I no longer remember, save that I once remembered a plan.”
“Things lurch towards completion and now each choice made has consequences that bear their poisoned fruit.”
“Will you kill them?” Larsdana asked, a question seemingly unconnected to any prompt of her baernaloth parasite. “That she had slaughtered one child so long ago, a sacrifice to the great plan there at the base of one of the Loadstones of Misery, was something she did remain conscious of, and which Helekanalaith was not. She hadn’t sequestered the memory away and hidden it like so many others, but it was simply nothing that he’d ever bothered to ask her about nor inquire. He had more children to use as tools in his own unending schemes, and the one he bore from her, the only one he was -aware- from her, was neither any more or less important or useful than the others. He did not love them, nor did she, though she did hope to be proud of their actions in service to the baern who had requested she sacrifice the other there upon Waste, eons ago.
A sly, subtle non-answer played across the baernaloth’s caprine lips.
“Each choice bears fruit.” Larsdana nodded, her expression equally unreadable. “Let me be proud of their choice.”
“We are proud of you and so it remains to be seen if we will be proud of them.” The baern reached out to stroke the arcanaloth’s cheek. “They have been given a choice, and they will act as they have been prepared to act, or they will suffer so beautifully. You should take pride in either outcome.”
“Certainly,” Larsdana nodded, her mind tumbling with the possibilities and the potentialities that might arise, “Still, I assume that I will not remember this conversation, the same way that I have not remembered any previous conversation within this prison. Will this play out as I expect?”
“Which plan?” The Dream Eater asked, the black orbs of her eyes reflecting a sly, momentary smile on Larsdana’s face a fraction of a second before the yugoloth actually did, “Yours or ours?”
The Magistrix of Gehenna smiled. Even if she could not answer, having surrendered and hidden away any memories that might compromise each and every plan and buried secrets she would deny to Helekanalaith and any allies of his, the Oinoloth included.
“Yes, most favored child,” The baernaloth replied, suddenly behind the First Keeper, hands upon her shoulders, “Most beloved abused tool of mine. All proceeds according to what was set in motion so very long ago, including the choice that I gave you.”
“When will I know?” Larsdana asked, her voice calm again and devoid of emotion, even if the ultimate goal on her part involved her own eventual salvation and release.
“You will when it is time. You and your machinations are a contingency of course, should our own plan go hideously awry, as we all understood possible. The Oinoloth…” Alashra looked away, a smile playing across her lips, “Worry not child and continue to wait. Here and there. Wait within and without, haunting the halls of the House of Memory.”
A sudden spark of recognition and understanding marked the First Keeper’s face and she laughed, triumphantly.
And then with a blink and a gesture by the living nightmare that held her shoulders, her expression lapsed into a blank, despondent nothing. “I am ready Mother/Father.”
“As you always are.” Alashra spoke and gestured, vanishing from before her host and back to whence she’d come.
The mental knives of Helekanalaith’s prison once more plunged deep, grinding against mental sinew and marrow alike, resuming the chorus of Larsdana’s screams.
Outside, time resumed, an apprentice arcanaloth dutifully gave an answer, and in his unknowing ignorance, Helekanalaith smiled.
“What in the name of all that’s holy…” Florian stared up at the mangled remains of what had once been a great wyrm gem dragon, one of the most majestic and, if angered, most terrible beings to walk the elemental planes. The creature was dead, its eyes glassy but yet still bulging with shock and agony that transcended death, its maw wide and a frozen, volcanic river of molten iron transfixing the length of its body from mouth to where it erupted near to the ground from its belly, cooling and fixing it in place like some hideous yugoloth taxidermy or grotesque totem left behind to ward away all who might follow after the yugoloth armies.
They stared at the dead dragon for several long minutes before noting the other, surrounding corpses, all of them some of the most powerful non-deific beings to populate the gemfields.
“The elemental lords sent a delegation to parlay, and it was one with teeth.” Fyrehowl shook her head, a low, plaintive whine briefly rising from her throat as she gazed out at the loss of so many creatures who had clearly come to discuss and mitigate the horrors being sown in the yugoloths’ wake, only to die horrifically. “Dead. All of them.”
Tristol squinted, the amount of magic utilized in the previous twenty-four hours still raging, ragged and yet dissipating like an angry shadow refusing the bow before the midday sun.
The others continued to discuss the horrors they saw but Clueless remained uncharacteristically silent, preoccupied not on what they witnessed, but on the ever-increasing ache in his ankle. It continued to grow in intensity even as they passed through the massive cavern, leaving the hillocks of piled yugoloth and elemental corpses behind. The thought raced through his mind, ‘Just who or what is ahead that we’re growing closer to? Another yugoloth lord? Taba?’ The notion of the Oinoloth himself flittered through his mind and he dismissed it. There was no way that the Lord of Khin-Oin himself would descend from the Planes of Conflict to… His ankle surged with a brief pulse of agony and his step briefly faltered, and the half-fey worried that it might have been synchronicity between thought and reality up ahead.
They would soon find out.
Then, as they passed through a narrow channel between two towering mountains of rubble and corpses in even measure, they emerged into an open space… and a massive wall of collapsed and fallen rock mixed with the softly shimmering glow of great broken crystals and raw gemstones. Either by intention or by side-effect of some massive spell to lay waste to their enemies, the yugoloths had collapsed the cavern’s ceiling, blocking any further conventional pursuit.
“Aaaaaaaand the way is blocked…” Nisha stuck out her tongue briefly before making a face at the taste of yugoloth corpses and brimstone on the air.
“Cowards.” Florian shook her head.
“Uhh…” Nisha cocked her head to one side and rattled the bell at the end of her tail, “What use is collapsing a cavern of tunnel when you’re being pursued by creatures that can walk or fly through solid rock?”
“Arrogance?” Fyrehowl shrugged, “Some yugoloth general from Gehenna going by usual Blood War tactics? Who can say?”
“I’m going to tell myself that they know we’re following them and they collapsed the roof because they’re worried about us.”
Clueless opened his mouth to respond, but before he spoke, Fyrehowl interrupted him.
“I can smell fresh air.” The lupinal sniffed at the air and scrambled up the escarpment towards and slender ledge in the rubble wall. She moved about before motioning to the others. “The collapse is incomplete here. Tristol, can you disintegrate some of the boulders here without causing another collapse?”
Tristol gestured and floated up to join Fyrehowl, the others clambering up to follow him. Glancing up at the rocks, his head tilting slightly, he then stepped back slightly as he called the spell into his mind and prepared to cast. “Everyone step back a bit, just in case this isn’t as stable as it looks.”
Nisha stepped back, joined shortly after by the others. Clueless stayed silent, but the moment that Tristol’s spell connected with the stone, a brilliant surge of sensation from his ankle blared alarms in his mind, but it was too late. Layers of puissant magic that a god would have been proud of suddenly collapsed, layers of masterwork craft triggering further layers of masterwork craft and for the companions, time’s river suddenly froze over.
The lupinal blinked after the sudden eruption of magical energy, her senses faltering at the abrupt and complete lack of pain, explosive force, or much anything else beyond a sincere sense of wrongness at that absence. It did not take her long to understand why.
“We are not so different you and I.” The voice rang out matter-of-fact but with a wry sense of humor tinged with smug superiority, and it was a voice that Fyrehowl instantly recognized with a snarl of rage.
The speaker, the Oinoloth himself, sat upon an outcropping of rock barely twenty feet away from her, a swirling haze of shadowy motes rising up and trailing away from his feet and the fringes of his cobalt blue robes. The black-furred arch-yugoloth smiled at the guardinal, livid pink eyes glistening, before absently brushing a speck of blood from one of his claws.
“You have simply faltered and paused in your own downward spiral.” He slowly moved a single claw down through the air, flitting slowly, side to side, like a lazily falling leaf.
The lupinal’s fur bristled with fury and it was only with supreme self-control that she held herself back from launching herself at what would only be a wildly suicidal action. Her heart ached however as the Oinoloth picked at her own “fall” to neutrality, a shift in metaphysical identity that she was still coming to terms with, even as it had helped her more fully embrace the Cadence of the Planes and come to terms with the Oinoloth’s hideous brutalization of her native plane of Elysium.
“Go ahead. Take that next step,” The Oinoloth continued with that same, smug, smile, clasping his hands and leaning forward, his eyes flaring in their luminous intensity, “Take that next step toward glorious, liberating damnation.”
Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes and glanced about. The cavern’s walls were blurry and indistinct and that sense of wrongness remained along with the fact that this close to the actual Oinoloth, she should have felt overwhelmed with physical sickness, such was the difference in their natures, even despite her “fall”. It was also only he and Fyrehowl, with all of her companions conspicuously absent.
“This isn’t real.” She said, her terror fading if only slightly, augmented by supreme suspicion as she paced a circle around the still-seated Oinoloth.
“Congratulations at discovering the obvious, wayward child.” Vorkannis shrugged and gestured, his clawed fingers reaching out to pluck the strings of his own magic like a maestro upon their instrument.
“What are we even doing here?” Fyrehowl asked. “What’s the point of this?”
“Speaking of falling…” Vorkannis pointedly ignored her question, “Would it pain you so to suspect that I was once like you? Holy and pure, filled with righteous zeal to crush the fiendish, the unpure, the morally filthy? Like I said to begin with, we’re not so different you and I.”
Fyrehowl stared at the archfiend with abject disbelief, even as his words beguiled, their poisoned revelation sickening if true. It couldn’t be true.
“Liar.” Fyrehowl spat.
Vorkannis responded only with that same smug smile of superiority.
“Why should I believe you?” The lupinal asked, “Why should I believe a single f*cking word you’re saying?”
“You’ve been there.” Vorkannis replied, “Upon Belarian, before and after its fall. So was I of course.” The Oinoloth flashed a knowing smirk, tilting his head slightly as he spoke, “And I was there eons before then. I was there in the plane’s prehistory, wayward pup. Listen to your so-called Cadence and then tell me that I’m lying.”
Despite the lies and falsehoods that radiated from the arch-yugoloth at the best of times, even as he flashed his arch-liar’s smile at her, that last statement was accurate. She couldn’t detect a single doubt within her mind that he was telling anything but the truth, and the implications that the Oinoloth of the Waste could have once been a celestial like herself were staggering. She stared at him, wide-eyed, staggered disbelief playing across her face thrown back at the almost playful smile on Vorkannis’s muzzle.
“I could help your own descent into this glorious pit of illuminated self-realization.” The Oinoloth said, spreading his hands as he stared into the lupinal’s eyes. “The prize is there if you have but the WILL to reach for it and the presence to pay its price. I ask for little, yet would give much. Do you know what your price is for your answer? What is it you want? Your heart’s desire, what it is you would covet and treasure. I can provide if you can pay.”
“My soul isn’t for sale.” She snarled, her mind still swirling, nauseated by the implications of the yugoloth’s words and his calm discussion of asking her to damn herself.
“A soul? Your soul?” Vorkannis snorted, shadows swirling from his nostrils before evaporating like smoke in a breeze, “Now why would I want that? What use is that to me? Tsk tsk tsk… such a tattered used thing is meaningless to me.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged, sitting back slightly, relaxing even. “Too often those who would offer it for their wishes have already lost control of it. Too often it will come to me and my children already without our action. That said, it is a fool’s bargaining chip. I ask for less yet more. What worth do you give to your fondest wish.”
“Your head on a pike.” Fyrehowl spat. “That’s what I want. No dealing, no bargaining, no more lies. Just your severed head impaled on a pole.”
That same sneer once again returned to the Oinoloth’s face. There would be no more discussion. All that needed to be said had been said, but a terrible seed of doubt had been planted within the guardinal’s mind regarding his nature and the fragility of hers. Which of course was precisely his intend.
Toras glared up at the archfiend, his hand instinctively reaching for his blade.
“Oh, please do!” Vorkannis laughed, motioning idly towards the half-celestial’s blade. “Make a good show of your righteous anger and see what good it will do you.”
Perhaps unexpectedly so, Toras did precisely what the ‘loth goaded him into doing. Springing forward without a thought towards his own safety, he was halfway through a series of cleaving blows that would have butchered a pit fiend before the yugoloth lord spoke another word. At no point during the act however did he feel the slightest resistance of flesh and bone upon his greatsword’s blade before the Ebon spoke.
“Stop.”
The word hit like a hammer, and in whatever space-between-spaces they stood within, without the ability to do otherwise seemingly, Toras felt his limbs instantly seize and his body reorient to be facing the Oinoloth at exactly the same distance they’d begun at. Vorkannis was of course unharmed, with not even a stray strand of glossy jet fur tousled by his efforts.
“Aaaaaaand this isn’t real.” Toras sighed as the ‘loth eyed him, “Otherwise I’d have at least gotten a hit in before now.”
“If you want to believe that…” Vorkannis smirked. “But there’s really no need for us to fight.”
“Oh YES there is…” Toras’s response was swift and emphatic, a genuinely optimistic smile on his face as he imagined that fight.
“Please mortal, you’d just exhaust yourself by the attempt even if I did nothing in response.” Vorkannis shook his head, “But no. I’m here to talk. I’m a curious thing you see. Again, not that you would have stood a chance in an actual fight.”
Toras continued to glare as the Oinoloth continued to talk. The fiend was just toying with him, and it took several long minutes before the ‘loth finally got to his point.
“We wish for the same goals you and I.” Vorkannis explained with a magnanimous smile dripping with venom, “There is little difference between your goals and mine.”
Toras laughed and rolled his eyes.
“You wish to protect the innocent and the young, and I,” The Ebon pointed to himself, “I wish to see my own children prosper and be safe as well.”
“Like you actually care about them.” Toras muttered, a statement that probably held more truth than not, and a response that actually earned a subtle chuckle on the archfiend’s part.
“You see mortal, my actions have done more to further the cause of good, and the safety of the innocent fools of the Upper Planes than you, your divine puppetmaster Andros, and all the aasimon combined have ever done.” Vorkannis beamed a smile of ivory white fangs, the shadows that pooled around his feet nearly boiling, “I direct the course of the Blood War you see. By deed, word, and contract I direct the course of the Tanar’ri hordes and the legions of the Baatorian Hells. Can you imagine the slaughter if I simply changed the course of the war?”
Toras frowned, not believing a word.
“Your so-called god would sit upon a spit in the forges of Gehenna and all the precious children of the world would march under the fist of some fiendish overlord if not for me. Can you claim to have stopped such from happening?” The archfiend waxed on, laughing as he continued, “Daily I save the lives of your kind and keep your own holy hands free of the bloodshed and tarnish of the soul that you might otherwise accrue. So, I war amongst my own, fostering eternal conflict to make them strong and capable. How then are any of my actions in the end evil if they cause such as I describe?
“Are you finished?” Toras asked, nothing but anger behind his question.
The Oinoloth’s response was perhaps colder than he expected, the words freezing the air around him and seizing his limbs to make for a more captive audience.
“No.”
From Toras’s perspective, the Oinoloth continued for another eight hours.
Tristol blinked, his vulpine ears flat and laid back against his head, his eyes momentarily blinded by the eruption of magic that overwhelmed his divine-enhanced magical sight. He immediately felt ashamed for not having noticed it, a feeling that he of all people, a literal chosen of the Faerunian goddess of magic, should have seen the trap for exactly what it was. But he still didn’t fully understand the nature of the being who’d thousands of years earlier, pulled the very same wool over the eyes of his predecessor Karsus of Netheril.
“There is no greater sin it has been said, than wasted talents and failed expectations.” The same voice that had once played the Unmaker of the Weave for a fool, and who he’d watched perform his work in the Direwood in flashbacks, the same voice now spoke to him not with feigned submission as it had with Karsus, but with a tone of smug, mocking superiority.
“You…” Tristol turned and faced the Oinoloth, seated atop a boulder a dozen feet away, lurid pink eyes staring down at him.
“And you… I find you lacking Tristol Starweather.” Vorkannis chuckled, shaking his head in mockery at the aasimar archmage. “For everything that you’ve been gifted with by birth and gained by virtue of your own labors you’ve shackled yourself to a vain, manipulative, and selfish so-called deity of magic.” The Oinoloth’s pronunciation of deity was drawn out, expression a nearly palpable contempt on the fiend’s part. “You would bind yourself to the edicts and strictures of a risen mortal, one with no more ability than yourself who rose to her heights by happenstance and more than one occasion of betrayal. But of course, Mystra and Cyric would shed a different light upon events that led to their own rise. She is nothing compared to her predecessors.”
“Do not speak of her and DO NOT speak of her predecessor.” Tristol openly spat upon the ground, “I know what you did. I know what you caused.”
The Oinoloth, for the first time actually had the smug, all-knowing expression that perpetually lay upon his muzzle evaporate for the smallest fraction of a moment, suddenly replaced with a sneer of delighted surprise and pride.
“You do know… oh you do…” Vorkannis held up a single clawed finger, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. He tilted his head to the side in the ubiquitous canid sign of thought or questioning before once more pointing at Tristol in sudden realization, “You went there didn’t you. To the Direwood. You know exactly what I did!”
What happened next wasn’t what Tristol might have ever expected: the Oinoloth grinned. Not a normal smile either, but a beaming, manic smile like a child proud of some secret achievement only suddenly discovered and beyond eager to claim credit.
“You saw and you watched!” Vorkannis laughed and flexed his claws, unable to keep himself calm, reveling not only in the act but the raw emotion itself, like an antithesis of the ultroloth ideal of the highest tier of the yugoloth conception of Evil. That would later gnaw at Tristol’s mind, a dish slow boiling on a back burner, only later making more sense. “I don’t know if you found that out on your own, your slattern of a goddess led you there, or that meddling little wretch Taba fed you tidbits of information to make you go there. The how doesn’t matter. What matters is that you know!”
The ‘loth wasn’t remotely finished as he launched into a soliloquy on his ancient actions on Toril.
“I gave Karsus, the greatest mortal mage to ever live,” The title was pronounced with a palpable level of mocking contempt, “I gave him the noose upon which to hang himself and he gladly tightened the knot and jumped! Blame me for Mystryls death if you wish, because I admit and accept that small triumph. But let you know mortal; I’ve killed powers of greater stature than the predecessor of an ascended trollop named Midnight. I have killed her betters by deed and example. She is a shadow compared to them, and she is fully aware of this fact.”
Tristol’s face twisted and he whispered a reflexive prayer to Mystra.
Vorkannis snorted in response to the prayer and pointed at the aasimar, “You wallow in her shadow. All of your homeland of Halruaa does even as it remains as a pale imitation of Netheril. You will never reach those heights while she remains with her hands gripped on your leash. She prevents you from taking hold of the mantel of Ioulaum, Karsus, Tulethklar, Narthimmur, Lady Polaris, Larloch, Shadow, and the other Archwizards. She bars to you the proud and mighty magics that should be yours by birthright, and you profess to love her. You worship one such as this. Why?”
Tristol’s ears fell flat against his head and his tail bottlebrushed with anger.
“Why does such a being deserve your adoration and devotion?” The Oinoloth continued, “Why would you follow her to the grave? I can cut you loose, Archmage Starweather. Karsus was mad at the end, but you are not told the truth these days by your own church of Mystra. He only wished to save Netheril. He knew that the spell he created with my help was flawed, it had limits.” The Oinoloth seamlessly lied, “It would only give him the power of a single deity for a short period, and it would kill him after that period of divinity had faded. He sacrificed himself for all of his people willingly. The church of Mystra says nothing of this, only that he was insane and caused the death of a goddess and an empire.”
“Liar.” Tristol spat, knowing full well the truth of the matter. He’d watched it all. He’d watched the archfiend play upon Karsus’s genuine desire to save his people, but also his ego, and in the end, he manipulated him like a puppet, leading him to develop a hideously flawed spell, flawed by design by the archfiend.
Vorkannis continued without pause, “The ape that would fly, as the elves in the shadow of Netheril’s might called him, unable to capture his insights for themselves. I can give to you what Karsus squandered. I can free you from the bonds of the weave entirely, and not at all like others who might make similar offers. Shar for instance offers to those who would worship her a second path, her own shadow weave, but I tell you truthfully it is only bondage to another fickle, selfish goddess. It is not freedom; it is not liberation. That is what I could offer to you. I offer you redemption from that greatest of sins, failed expectations. To what price would you assign to that gift, that precious thing. I would offer that to you.”
“Fiend,” Tristol’s response was blunt and heartfelt, “If this wasn’t an illusion, I would set you alight with silverfire.”
“You are more than welcome to try mortal!” Vorkannis once again broke into a manic smile as if daring the action in the future. “When next we meet then…”
Tristol inwardly smiled, looking forward to the attempt when next they met.
“And so, the prodigal toy returns.”
Clueless awoke from the magical flash with his face only inches from the Oinoloth’s sneering muzzle, a shock only dulled by the immediate realization that his ankle wasn’t responding, and thus it wasn’t the actual Oinoloth physically there. Regardless of it being real or not, the fiend’s words stung.
“You.” Clueless’s wings sprung into existence and he deftly floated back half a dozen feet to sit on a stone and stare at the archfiend.
“But it seems your strings are severed. My beautiful monster in Sigil no longer has control over you.” Vorkannis shrugged, “She had her fun with you, and like most things she touches, she grows tired and disposes of them. Like she disposed of you.”
“You destroyed my life.” Clueless’s voice was cold. “You ripped away every memory of my former self. I don’t truly know who I was. I don’t even know my name.”
“And look at you now though!” The Oinoloth gestured idly, “I cut your strings to the past and granted you your freedom and this is how I am repayed? Tsk tsk tsk.” Vorkannis chided the half-fey, “I granted you that most precious of things, liberation from all ties, even your own past in a way.”
“Pompous *sshole,” Clueless snarled. “This is why no one likes yugoloths.”
The bladesinger suddenly felt considerable comradery with the original Jester deep below Sigil’s streets, with their common contempt for the ‘loths burning bright in his mind.
“There’s certainly no accounting for taste mortal.” Vorkannis snorted, “But no, you gained the opportunity to start truly anew, and what have you done with my gift? You harass my painted whore and you shackle yourself to another with no idea of to whom you ally yourself with.”
The Oinoloth’s eyes burned into Clueless’s, a clear understanding there that he sensed and knew of the mortal’s association with the immortal resident of the forgotten halls below the Palace of the Jester.
“Those allies know better than to involve themselves in my affairs, and I have neither conflict nor ties to them or those they serve now or served in the past.” The Oinoloth’s words were a warning, “My affairs are my own and they would do well to avoid them for the appearance of such conflict.”
Clueless opened his mouth, a smart comment perched on his tongue before the Oinoloth gestured, sealing off his windpipe and lifting him up off the ground with telekinetic force.
“So, I ask a question,” Vorkannis began, “Why do you seek to blunt my aims, ineffectual as the attempts may be? A middling conflict with Shylara, my pretty little b*tch, you might eventually manage some success but know your place half-breed. I don’t expect gratitude for my gifts, but I do expect deference. How much do you really know of your keeper?”
Again, the Oinoloth spoke of Clueless’s secretive patron? Advisor?
“You see mortal,” Vorkannis stood and paced a circle around the hapless bladesinger held fast in space like a butterfly pinned to a glass plate in a display case, “I make no pretense about my own nature, none at all. He however, is content to hide in shadows of obscurity without taking a position openly on such things, though his own is as deeply rooted as mine. Trust is based on honesty.”
“And you ar…” Clueless began, only to be silenced by the Oinoloth with a thought.
“When have I deceived you?” The arch-liar asked rhetorically, “I answer queries with the truth you see. My nature and reputation amongst the other fiends depend upon the transparency of my throne to an extent. He on the other hand will betray you like all of the others who’ve found him there in Sigil over the millennia.”
Within Clueless’s mind, another set of eyes stared out with contempt for the Oinoloth before its sight was snuffed like shutters being closed over an open and previously unobstructed window.
Without any uninvited audience, the illusory, mental presence of the Oinoloth spoke mockingly and unceasingly for an interminable time.
Time suddenly resumed as the Oinoloth’s magic bled away into the surrounding structure of the elemental planes like curdled smoke rising up and away from a smoldering fire with a sudden updraft of wind. Toras and Florian cursed, Nisha hissed, Tristol stared off into space with a furious glare, Clueless dry heaved as the effects of his ankle interacting with the magic caught up with him, and Fyrwhowl simply stood there, her absence of an obvious reaction all the more troubling.
“That f*cker is toying with us!” Florian spat, her right hand angrily rubbing her holy symbol as if the arch-yugoloth might somewhere see the gesture and take offense.
“How much time has passed?” Clueless looked over at Tristol.
“I sat there listening to that smug f*ck for most of a day.” Toras replied, “Who knows how much actual time has passed.”
Nisha threw her arms up, stomped her hooves, and promptly launched into a tirade in 100% Xaositect scramblespeak.
Fyrehowl didn’t respond. She remained with a haunted look in her eyes, still staring at the rock from which the perched Oinoloth had taunted her with tantalizing if minuscule poisoned fragments of his own history. How much was true and how much was a carefully calculated lie to pollute her thoughts, she couldn’t yet say, but oh, she intended to find out.
Tristol whispered the words to a simple spell and then simply closed his eyes. His ears drooped and his tail slunk low to the ground.
“How much time has passed?” Clueless repeated.
Tristol sighed and gritted his teeth before finally responding. His answer was not what they hoped to hear and it had sincere ramifications for their goals of stopping the Oinoloth from gaining whatever it was he sought to take from their endpoint in the gemfields.
“We’ve been locked in stasis for five and a half days…”
The group of arcanaloths stood at the base of the Tower of Lead, half of them still nursing injuries incurred over the past week, once regal robes burned, torn, or sullied with ash, dirt, or blood. They’d each witnessed colleagues and rivals alike slain during their trek across the breadth of the quasi-elemental plane, but now finally they stood at the object of their struggle, not that a single one of them actually understood why they were even there in the first place.
G’zellis ap Pluton of Khin-Oin glanced warily at the others, his right hand tightly gripping an ensorcelled staff, the hand missing three fingers from the last elemental assault.
Yermithek ap Khalas opened his mouth to speak but held his tongue. A once-apprentice to Helekanalaith himself, the silver-furred sorcerer understood that they were all disposable, and he had no illusions of being any different. Let the others risk themselves against whatever awaited them inside.
Nektheria ap Othrys snarled as she stumbled forward, a telekinetic push on the small of her back from one of her erstwhile compatriots. She turned back, rage spreading across her features and the words of a spell spilling ink across the pages of her mind as she considered which venomous colleague she’d kill first for the indignity, but her thoughts of revenge were summarily interrupted.
“Open the door.”
The voice was neither audible nor from one of their number as it telepathically issued from a hundred yards back and fifty yards in the air from atop a hovering slasrath.
A chorus of submissive whines and stuttered words of agreement flooded from the assembled arcanaloths, but none of them actually stepped forward to be the first to potentially spring any trap or become the target of anything waiting just beyond the threshold.
The door itself was a thing of understated majesty; simple, prosaic at first glance, but beyond that it could only provoke wonder. Flat, dull gray metallic lead, it glistened at certain angles from an intricate tracery of veins of gold. The ‘loths had noticed that it wasn’t simply decoration, but that at the smallest scale the golden lines formed an almost imperceptible litany of runes. Were they spells? Were they prayers to some primordial elemental god or gods? Were they warnings against entry? None of the assembled sorcerers knew, and it was that lurking fear that prevented them from wanting to be the first to touch the door.
It was not their decision and it had never been.
Staring down at them from atop her slasrath mount, Shylara the Manged smiled, triumph and manic obsession dancing in her eyes.
“Open the door or I will force it open myself using one or all of your number as screaming battering rams.”
“And what then would the next step be?” Helekanalaith asked, his tone balanced upon the razor’s edge of teacher and torturer as he sat behind his desk, his -predecessor’s- desk, and stared at one of three arcanaloth apprentices. The actual answer was a banal thing, and he wasn’t so much looking for the correct answer but the manner in which the apprentice answered and how they carried themselves and their answer in front of their fellows. Which of them would kill their rivals first was what he was watching for.
The apprentice’s lips parted, they took a deep breath and as they prepared to answer, the Keeper’s eyes remained focused on them, though even as his hand sketched upon his notebook with a burning stylus, his attention focused on the gemstone that hovered above his desk casting down light on him like a perfect crystalline lamp.
Like a river in deepest winter, time froze.
Deep within the gemstone’s matrix the original occupant of Helekanalaith desk, the very architect of the Tower, she dwelled, imprisoned, and there imprisoned, in agony she screamed. Larsdana ap Neut’s unending wail echoed through the vast halls of an inescapable maze that her own apprentice now gazing into the gemstone had constructed, a maze filled with the poisoned, corrosive detritus of her own failure hurled again and again in front of her.
Abruptly the screaming stopped.
Below the great window behind the Keeper that looked out into the endless void, eruptions, falling stars and plummeting souls hung still and silent, frozen in place as much as everything in the Keeper’s chamber as something beyond horror clambered its way up from the arch-yugoloth’s shadow, manifesting moments later in a place of no substance.
Within the null space contained within Helekanalaith’s gemstone, within the labyrinthine prison of horror, love, agony, and regret woven by her once-apprentice and now successor as Keeper of the Tower, Larsdana ap Neut sat, gasping and weeping. She brushed a long stand of black hair fringed in violet at the tips, the motion momentary as it shifted to violet tinged in black, her pale purple eyes widening as her conscious mind drifted to the present and out of the mental fortress she dwelled within to save herself from insanity, an act that left her virtually comatose amidst her imprisonment even as she heard herself screaming in unending torture. But now her agony blessedly ceased for that moment between moments as the baernaloth Alashra the Dream Eater loomed.
“Everything goes according to plan.” Bleeding, purple lips parted in a grim smile as horror gazed down upon its favored child, the imprisoned archfiend who still served as its metaphysical host. “Everything.”
Larsdana gazed up, no joy, but tempered curiosity playing across her pale gray jackal’s muzzle, “A plan that I no longer remember, save that I once remembered a plan.”
“Things lurch towards completion and now each choice made has consequences that bear their poisoned fruit.”
“Will you kill them?” Larsdana asked, a question seemingly unconnected to any prompt of her baernaloth parasite. “That she had slaughtered one child so long ago, a sacrifice to the great plan there at the base of one of the Loadstones of Misery, was something she did remain conscious of, and which Helekanalaith was not. She hadn’t sequestered the memory away and hidden it like so many others, but it was simply nothing that he’d ever bothered to ask her about nor inquire. He had more children to use as tools in his own unending schemes, and the one he bore from her, the only one he was -aware- from her, was neither any more or less important or useful than the others. He did not love them, nor did she, though she did hope to be proud of their actions in service to the baern who had requested she sacrifice the other there upon Waste, eons ago.
A sly, subtle non-answer played across the baernaloth’s caprine lips.
“Each choice bears fruit.” Larsdana nodded, her expression equally unreadable. “Let me be proud of their choice.”
“We are proud of you and so it remains to be seen if we will be proud of them.” The baern reached out to stroke the arcanaloth’s cheek. “They have been given a choice, and they will act as they have been prepared to act, or they will suffer so beautifully. You should take pride in either outcome.”
“Certainly,” Larsdana nodded, her mind tumbling with the possibilities and the potentialities that might arise, “Still, I assume that I will not remember this conversation, the same way that I have not remembered any previous conversation within this prison. Will this play out as I expect?”
“Which plan?” The Dream Eater asked, the black orbs of her eyes reflecting a sly, momentary smile on Larsdana’s face a fraction of a second before the yugoloth actually did, “Yours or ours?”
The Magistrix of Gehenna smiled. Even if she could not answer, having surrendered and hidden away any memories that might compromise each and every plan and buried secrets she would deny to Helekanalaith and any allies of his, the Oinoloth included.
“Yes, most favored child,” The baernaloth replied, suddenly behind the First Keeper, hands upon her shoulders, “Most beloved abused tool of mine. All proceeds according to what was set in motion so very long ago, including the choice that I gave you.”
“When will I know?” Larsdana asked, her voice calm again and devoid of emotion, even if the ultimate goal on her part involved her own eventual salvation and release.
“You will when it is time. You and your machinations are a contingency of course, should our own plan go hideously awry, as we all understood possible. The Oinoloth…” Alashra looked away, a smile playing across her lips, “Worry not child and continue to wait. Here and there. Wait within and without, haunting the halls of the House of Memory.”
A sudden spark of recognition and understanding marked the First Keeper’s face and she laughed, triumphantly.
And then with a blink and a gesture by the living nightmare that held her shoulders, her expression lapsed into a blank, despondent nothing. “I am ready Mother/Father.”
“As you always are.” Alashra spoke and gestured, vanishing from before her host and back to whence she’d come.
The mental knives of Helekanalaith’s prison once more plunged deep, grinding against mental sinew and marrow alike, resuming the chorus of Larsdana’s screams.
Outside, time resumed, an apprentice arcanaloth dutifully gave an answer, and in his unknowing ignorance, Helekanalaith smiled.
***
“What in the name of all that’s holy…” Florian stared up at the mangled remains of what had once been a great wyrm gem dragon, one of the most majestic and, if angered, most terrible beings to walk the elemental planes. The creature was dead, its eyes glassy but yet still bulging with shock and agony that transcended death, its maw wide and a frozen, volcanic river of molten iron transfixing the length of its body from mouth to where it erupted near to the ground from its belly, cooling and fixing it in place like some hideous yugoloth taxidermy or grotesque totem left behind to ward away all who might follow after the yugoloth armies.
They stared at the dead dragon for several long minutes before noting the other, surrounding corpses, all of them some of the most powerful non-deific beings to populate the gemfields.
“The elemental lords sent a delegation to parlay, and it was one with teeth.” Fyrehowl shook her head, a low, plaintive whine briefly rising from her throat as she gazed out at the loss of so many creatures who had clearly come to discuss and mitigate the horrors being sown in the yugoloths’ wake, only to die horrifically. “Dead. All of them.”
Tristol squinted, the amount of magic utilized in the previous twenty-four hours still raging, ragged and yet dissipating like an angry shadow refusing the bow before the midday sun.
The others continued to discuss the horrors they saw but Clueless remained uncharacteristically silent, preoccupied not on what they witnessed, but on the ever-increasing ache in his ankle. It continued to grow in intensity even as they passed through the massive cavern, leaving the hillocks of piled yugoloth and elemental corpses behind. The thought raced through his mind, ‘Just who or what is ahead that we’re growing closer to? Another yugoloth lord? Taba?’ The notion of the Oinoloth himself flittered through his mind and he dismissed it. There was no way that the Lord of Khin-Oin himself would descend from the Planes of Conflict to… His ankle surged with a brief pulse of agony and his step briefly faltered, and the half-fey worried that it might have been synchronicity between thought and reality up ahead.
They would soon find out.
Then, as they passed through a narrow channel between two towering mountains of rubble and corpses in even measure, they emerged into an open space… and a massive wall of collapsed and fallen rock mixed with the softly shimmering glow of great broken crystals and raw gemstones. Either by intention or by side-effect of some massive spell to lay waste to their enemies, the yugoloths had collapsed the cavern’s ceiling, blocking any further conventional pursuit.
“Aaaaaaaand the way is blocked…” Nisha stuck out her tongue briefly before making a face at the taste of yugoloth corpses and brimstone on the air.
“Cowards.” Florian shook her head.
“Uhh…” Nisha cocked her head to one side and rattled the bell at the end of her tail, “What use is collapsing a cavern of tunnel when you’re being pursued by creatures that can walk or fly through solid rock?”
“Arrogance?” Fyrehowl shrugged, “Some yugoloth general from Gehenna going by usual Blood War tactics? Who can say?”
“I’m going to tell myself that they know we’re following them and they collapsed the roof because they’re worried about us.”
Clueless opened his mouth to respond, but before he spoke, Fyrehowl interrupted him.
“I can smell fresh air.” The lupinal sniffed at the air and scrambled up the escarpment towards and slender ledge in the rubble wall. She moved about before motioning to the others. “The collapse is incomplete here. Tristol, can you disintegrate some of the boulders here without causing another collapse?”
Tristol gestured and floated up to join Fyrehowl, the others clambering up to follow him. Glancing up at the rocks, his head tilting slightly, he then stepped back slightly as he called the spell into his mind and prepared to cast. “Everyone step back a bit, just in case this isn’t as stable as it looks.”
Nisha stepped back, joined shortly after by the others. Clueless stayed silent, but the moment that Tristol’s spell connected with the stone, a brilliant surge of sensation from his ankle blared alarms in his mind, but it was too late. Layers of puissant magic that a god would have been proud of suddenly collapsed, layers of masterwork craft triggering further layers of masterwork craft and for the companions, time’s river suddenly froze over.
***
The lupinal blinked after the sudden eruption of magical energy, her senses faltering at the abrupt and complete lack of pain, explosive force, or much anything else beyond a sincere sense of wrongness at that absence. It did not take her long to understand why.
“We are not so different you and I.” The voice rang out matter-of-fact but with a wry sense of humor tinged with smug superiority, and it was a voice that Fyrehowl instantly recognized with a snarl of rage.
The speaker, the Oinoloth himself, sat upon an outcropping of rock barely twenty feet away from her, a swirling haze of shadowy motes rising up and trailing away from his feet and the fringes of his cobalt blue robes. The black-furred arch-yugoloth smiled at the guardinal, livid pink eyes glistening, before absently brushing a speck of blood from one of his claws.
“You have simply faltered and paused in your own downward spiral.” He slowly moved a single claw down through the air, flitting slowly, side to side, like a lazily falling leaf.
The lupinal’s fur bristled with fury and it was only with supreme self-control that she held herself back from launching herself at what would only be a wildly suicidal action. Her heart ached however as the Oinoloth picked at her own “fall” to neutrality, a shift in metaphysical identity that she was still coming to terms with, even as it had helped her more fully embrace the Cadence of the Planes and come to terms with the Oinoloth’s hideous brutalization of her native plane of Elysium.
“Go ahead. Take that next step,” The Oinoloth continued with that same, smug, smile, clasping his hands and leaning forward, his eyes flaring in their luminous intensity, “Take that next step toward glorious, liberating damnation.”
Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes and glanced about. The cavern’s walls were blurry and indistinct and that sense of wrongness remained along with the fact that this close to the actual Oinoloth, she should have felt overwhelmed with physical sickness, such was the difference in their natures, even despite her “fall”. It was also only he and Fyrehowl, with all of her companions conspicuously absent.
“This isn’t real.” She said, her terror fading if only slightly, augmented by supreme suspicion as she paced a circle around the still-seated Oinoloth.
“Congratulations at discovering the obvious, wayward child.” Vorkannis shrugged and gestured, his clawed fingers reaching out to pluck the strings of his own magic like a maestro upon their instrument.
“What are we even doing here?” Fyrehowl asked. “What’s the point of this?”
“Speaking of falling…” Vorkannis pointedly ignored her question, “Would it pain you so to suspect that I was once like you? Holy and pure, filled with righteous zeal to crush the fiendish, the unpure, the morally filthy? Like I said to begin with, we’re not so different you and I.”
Fyrehowl stared at the archfiend with abject disbelief, even as his words beguiled, their poisoned revelation sickening if true. It couldn’t be true.
“Liar.” Fyrehowl spat.
Vorkannis responded only with that same smug smile of superiority.
“Why should I believe you?” The lupinal asked, “Why should I believe a single f*cking word you’re saying?”
“You’ve been there.” Vorkannis replied, “Upon Belarian, before and after its fall. So was I of course.” The Oinoloth flashed a knowing smirk, tilting his head slightly as he spoke, “And I was there eons before then. I was there in the plane’s prehistory, wayward pup. Listen to your so-called Cadence and then tell me that I’m lying.”
Despite the lies and falsehoods that radiated from the arch-yugoloth at the best of times, even as he flashed his arch-liar’s smile at her, that last statement was accurate. She couldn’t detect a single doubt within her mind that he was telling anything but the truth, and the implications that the Oinoloth of the Waste could have once been a celestial like herself were staggering. She stared at him, wide-eyed, staggered disbelief playing across her face thrown back at the almost playful smile on Vorkannis’s muzzle.
“I could help your own descent into this glorious pit of illuminated self-realization.” The Oinoloth said, spreading his hands as he stared into the lupinal’s eyes. “The prize is there if you have but the WILL to reach for it and the presence to pay its price. I ask for little, yet would give much. Do you know what your price is for your answer? What is it you want? Your heart’s desire, what it is you would covet and treasure. I can provide if you can pay.”
“My soul isn’t for sale.” She snarled, her mind still swirling, nauseated by the implications of the yugoloth’s words and his calm discussion of asking her to damn herself.
“A soul? Your soul?” Vorkannis snorted, shadows swirling from his nostrils before evaporating like smoke in a breeze, “Now why would I want that? What use is that to me? Tsk tsk tsk… such a tattered used thing is meaningless to me.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged, sitting back slightly, relaxing even. “Too often those who would offer it for their wishes have already lost control of it. Too often it will come to me and my children already without our action. That said, it is a fool’s bargaining chip. I ask for less yet more. What worth do you give to your fondest wish.”
“Your head on a pike.” Fyrehowl spat. “That’s what I want. No dealing, no bargaining, no more lies. Just your severed head impaled on a pole.”
That same sneer once again returned to the Oinoloth’s face. There would be no more discussion. All that needed to be said had been said, but a terrible seed of doubt had been planted within the guardinal’s mind regarding his nature and the fragility of hers. Which of course was precisely his intend.
****
Toras glared up at the archfiend, his hand instinctively reaching for his blade.
“Oh, please do!” Vorkannis laughed, motioning idly towards the half-celestial’s blade. “Make a good show of your righteous anger and see what good it will do you.”
Perhaps unexpectedly so, Toras did precisely what the ‘loth goaded him into doing. Springing forward without a thought towards his own safety, he was halfway through a series of cleaving blows that would have butchered a pit fiend before the yugoloth lord spoke another word. At no point during the act however did he feel the slightest resistance of flesh and bone upon his greatsword’s blade before the Ebon spoke.
“Stop.”
The word hit like a hammer, and in whatever space-between-spaces they stood within, without the ability to do otherwise seemingly, Toras felt his limbs instantly seize and his body reorient to be facing the Oinoloth at exactly the same distance they’d begun at. Vorkannis was of course unharmed, with not even a stray strand of glossy jet fur tousled by his efforts.
“Aaaaaaand this isn’t real.” Toras sighed as the ‘loth eyed him, “Otherwise I’d have at least gotten a hit in before now.”
“If you want to believe that…” Vorkannis smirked. “But there’s really no need for us to fight.”
“Oh YES there is…” Toras’s response was swift and emphatic, a genuinely optimistic smile on his face as he imagined that fight.
“Please mortal, you’d just exhaust yourself by the attempt even if I did nothing in response.” Vorkannis shook his head, “But no. I’m here to talk. I’m a curious thing you see. Again, not that you would have stood a chance in an actual fight.”
Toras continued to glare as the Oinoloth continued to talk. The fiend was just toying with him, and it took several long minutes before the ‘loth finally got to his point.
“We wish for the same goals you and I.” Vorkannis explained with a magnanimous smile dripping with venom, “There is little difference between your goals and mine.”
Toras laughed and rolled his eyes.
“You wish to protect the innocent and the young, and I,” The Ebon pointed to himself, “I wish to see my own children prosper and be safe as well.”
“Like you actually care about them.” Toras muttered, a statement that probably held more truth than not, and a response that actually earned a subtle chuckle on the archfiend’s part.
“You see mortal, my actions have done more to further the cause of good, and the safety of the innocent fools of the Upper Planes than you, your divine puppetmaster Andros, and all the aasimon combined have ever done.” Vorkannis beamed a smile of ivory white fangs, the shadows that pooled around his feet nearly boiling, “I direct the course of the Blood War you see. By deed, word, and contract I direct the course of the Tanar’ri hordes and the legions of the Baatorian Hells. Can you imagine the slaughter if I simply changed the course of the war?”
Toras frowned, not believing a word.
“Your so-called god would sit upon a spit in the forges of Gehenna and all the precious children of the world would march under the fist of some fiendish overlord if not for me. Can you claim to have stopped such from happening?” The archfiend waxed on, laughing as he continued, “Daily I save the lives of your kind and keep your own holy hands free of the bloodshed and tarnish of the soul that you might otherwise accrue. So, I war amongst my own, fostering eternal conflict to make them strong and capable. How then are any of my actions in the end evil if they cause such as I describe?
“Are you finished?” Toras asked, nothing but anger behind his question.
The Oinoloth’s response was perhaps colder than he expected, the words freezing the air around him and seizing his limbs to make for a more captive audience.
“No.”
From Toras’s perspective, the Oinoloth continued for another eight hours.
****
Tristol blinked, his vulpine ears flat and laid back against his head, his eyes momentarily blinded by the eruption of magic that overwhelmed his divine-enhanced magical sight. He immediately felt ashamed for not having noticed it, a feeling that he of all people, a literal chosen of the Faerunian goddess of magic, should have seen the trap for exactly what it was. But he still didn’t fully understand the nature of the being who’d thousands of years earlier, pulled the very same wool over the eyes of his predecessor Karsus of Netheril.
“There is no greater sin it has been said, than wasted talents and failed expectations.” The same voice that had once played the Unmaker of the Weave for a fool, and who he’d watched perform his work in the Direwood in flashbacks, the same voice now spoke to him not with feigned submission as it had with Karsus, but with a tone of smug, mocking superiority.
“You…” Tristol turned and faced the Oinoloth, seated atop a boulder a dozen feet away, lurid pink eyes staring down at him.
“And you… I find you lacking Tristol Starweather.” Vorkannis chuckled, shaking his head in mockery at the aasimar archmage. “For everything that you’ve been gifted with by birth and gained by virtue of your own labors you’ve shackled yourself to a vain, manipulative, and selfish so-called deity of magic.” The Oinoloth’s pronunciation of deity was drawn out, expression a nearly palpable contempt on the fiend’s part. “You would bind yourself to the edicts and strictures of a risen mortal, one with no more ability than yourself who rose to her heights by happenstance and more than one occasion of betrayal. But of course, Mystra and Cyric would shed a different light upon events that led to their own rise. She is nothing compared to her predecessors.”
“Do not speak of her and DO NOT speak of her predecessor.” Tristol openly spat upon the ground, “I know what you did. I know what you caused.”
The Oinoloth, for the first time actually had the smug, all-knowing expression that perpetually lay upon his muzzle evaporate for the smallest fraction of a moment, suddenly replaced with a sneer of delighted surprise and pride.
“You do know… oh you do…” Vorkannis held up a single clawed finger, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. He tilted his head to the side in the ubiquitous canid sign of thought or questioning before once more pointing at Tristol in sudden realization, “You went there didn’t you. To the Direwood. You know exactly what I did!”
What happened next wasn’t what Tristol might have ever expected: the Oinoloth grinned. Not a normal smile either, but a beaming, manic smile like a child proud of some secret achievement only suddenly discovered and beyond eager to claim credit.
“You saw and you watched!” Vorkannis laughed and flexed his claws, unable to keep himself calm, reveling not only in the act but the raw emotion itself, like an antithesis of the ultroloth ideal of the highest tier of the yugoloth conception of Evil. That would later gnaw at Tristol’s mind, a dish slow boiling on a back burner, only later making more sense. “I don’t know if you found that out on your own, your slattern of a goddess led you there, or that meddling little wretch Taba fed you tidbits of information to make you go there. The how doesn’t matter. What matters is that you know!”
The ‘loth wasn’t remotely finished as he launched into a soliloquy on his ancient actions on Toril.
“I gave Karsus, the greatest mortal mage to ever live,” The title was pronounced with a palpable level of mocking contempt, “I gave him the noose upon which to hang himself and he gladly tightened the knot and jumped! Blame me for Mystryls death if you wish, because I admit and accept that small triumph. But let you know mortal; I’ve killed powers of greater stature than the predecessor of an ascended trollop named Midnight. I have killed her betters by deed and example. She is a shadow compared to them, and she is fully aware of this fact.”
Tristol’s face twisted and he whispered a reflexive prayer to Mystra.
Vorkannis snorted in response to the prayer and pointed at the aasimar, “You wallow in her shadow. All of your homeland of Halruaa does even as it remains as a pale imitation of Netheril. You will never reach those heights while she remains with her hands gripped on your leash. She prevents you from taking hold of the mantel of Ioulaum, Karsus, Tulethklar, Narthimmur, Lady Polaris, Larloch, Shadow, and the other Archwizards. She bars to you the proud and mighty magics that should be yours by birthright, and you profess to love her. You worship one such as this. Why?”
Tristol’s ears fell flat against his head and his tail bottlebrushed with anger.
“Why does such a being deserve your adoration and devotion?” The Oinoloth continued, “Why would you follow her to the grave? I can cut you loose, Archmage Starweather. Karsus was mad at the end, but you are not told the truth these days by your own church of Mystra. He only wished to save Netheril. He knew that the spell he created with my help was flawed, it had limits.” The Oinoloth seamlessly lied, “It would only give him the power of a single deity for a short period, and it would kill him after that period of divinity had faded. He sacrificed himself for all of his people willingly. The church of Mystra says nothing of this, only that he was insane and caused the death of a goddess and an empire.”
“Liar.” Tristol spat, knowing full well the truth of the matter. He’d watched it all. He’d watched the archfiend play upon Karsus’s genuine desire to save his people, but also his ego, and in the end, he manipulated him like a puppet, leading him to develop a hideously flawed spell, flawed by design by the archfiend.
Vorkannis continued without pause, “The ape that would fly, as the elves in the shadow of Netheril’s might called him, unable to capture his insights for themselves. I can give to you what Karsus squandered. I can free you from the bonds of the weave entirely, and not at all like others who might make similar offers. Shar for instance offers to those who would worship her a second path, her own shadow weave, but I tell you truthfully it is only bondage to another fickle, selfish goddess. It is not freedom; it is not liberation. That is what I could offer to you. I offer you redemption from that greatest of sins, failed expectations. To what price would you assign to that gift, that precious thing. I would offer that to you.”
“Fiend,” Tristol’s response was blunt and heartfelt, “If this wasn’t an illusion, I would set you alight with silverfire.”
“You are more than welcome to try mortal!” Vorkannis once again broke into a manic smile as if daring the action in the future. “When next we meet then…”
Tristol inwardly smiled, looking forward to the attempt when next they met.
****
“And so, the prodigal toy returns.”
Clueless awoke from the magical flash with his face only inches from the Oinoloth’s sneering muzzle, a shock only dulled by the immediate realization that his ankle wasn’t responding, and thus it wasn’t the actual Oinoloth physically there. Regardless of it being real or not, the fiend’s words stung.
“You.” Clueless’s wings sprung into existence and he deftly floated back half a dozen feet to sit on a stone and stare at the archfiend.
“But it seems your strings are severed. My beautiful monster in Sigil no longer has control over you.” Vorkannis shrugged, “She had her fun with you, and like most things she touches, she grows tired and disposes of them. Like she disposed of you.”
“You destroyed my life.” Clueless’s voice was cold. “You ripped away every memory of my former self. I don’t truly know who I was. I don’t even know my name.”
“And look at you now though!” The Oinoloth gestured idly, “I cut your strings to the past and granted you your freedom and this is how I am repayed? Tsk tsk tsk.” Vorkannis chided the half-fey, “I granted you that most precious of things, liberation from all ties, even your own past in a way.”
“Pompous *sshole,” Clueless snarled. “This is why no one likes yugoloths.”
The bladesinger suddenly felt considerable comradery with the original Jester deep below Sigil’s streets, with their common contempt for the ‘loths burning bright in his mind.
“There’s certainly no accounting for taste mortal.” Vorkannis snorted, “But no, you gained the opportunity to start truly anew, and what have you done with my gift? You harass my painted whore and you shackle yourself to another with no idea of to whom you ally yourself with.”
The Oinoloth’s eyes burned into Clueless’s, a clear understanding there that he sensed and knew of the mortal’s association with the immortal resident of the forgotten halls below the Palace of the Jester.
“Those allies know better than to involve themselves in my affairs, and I have neither conflict nor ties to them or those they serve now or served in the past.” The Oinoloth’s words were a warning, “My affairs are my own and they would do well to avoid them for the appearance of such conflict.”
Clueless opened his mouth, a smart comment perched on his tongue before the Oinoloth gestured, sealing off his windpipe and lifting him up off the ground with telekinetic force.
“So, I ask a question,” Vorkannis began, “Why do you seek to blunt my aims, ineffectual as the attempts may be? A middling conflict with Shylara, my pretty little b*tch, you might eventually manage some success but know your place half-breed. I don’t expect gratitude for my gifts, but I do expect deference. How much do you really know of your keeper?”
Again, the Oinoloth spoke of Clueless’s secretive patron? Advisor?
“You see mortal,” Vorkannis stood and paced a circle around the hapless bladesinger held fast in space like a butterfly pinned to a glass plate in a display case, “I make no pretense about my own nature, none at all. He however, is content to hide in shadows of obscurity without taking a position openly on such things, though his own is as deeply rooted as mine. Trust is based on honesty.”
“And you ar…” Clueless began, only to be silenced by the Oinoloth with a thought.
“When have I deceived you?” The arch-liar asked rhetorically, “I answer queries with the truth you see. My nature and reputation amongst the other fiends depend upon the transparency of my throne to an extent. He on the other hand will betray you like all of the others who’ve found him there in Sigil over the millennia.”
Within Clueless’s mind, another set of eyes stared out with contempt for the Oinoloth before its sight was snuffed like shutters being closed over an open and previously unobstructed window.
Without any uninvited audience, the illusory, mental presence of the Oinoloth spoke mockingly and unceasingly for an interminable time.
****
Time suddenly resumed as the Oinoloth’s magic bled away into the surrounding structure of the elemental planes like curdled smoke rising up and away from a smoldering fire with a sudden updraft of wind. Toras and Florian cursed, Nisha hissed, Tristol stared off into space with a furious glare, Clueless dry heaved as the effects of his ankle interacting with the magic caught up with him, and Fyrwhowl simply stood there, her absence of an obvious reaction all the more troubling.
“That f*cker is toying with us!” Florian spat, her right hand angrily rubbing her holy symbol as if the arch-yugoloth might somewhere see the gesture and take offense.
“How much time has passed?” Clueless looked over at Tristol.
“I sat there listening to that smug f*ck for most of a day.” Toras replied, “Who knows how much actual time has passed.”
Nisha threw her arms up, stomped her hooves, and promptly launched into a tirade in 100% Xaositect scramblespeak.
Fyrehowl didn’t respond. She remained with a haunted look in her eyes, still staring at the rock from which the perched Oinoloth had taunted her with tantalizing if minuscule poisoned fragments of his own history. How much was true and how much was a carefully calculated lie to pollute her thoughts, she couldn’t yet say, but oh, she intended to find out.
Tristol whispered the words to a simple spell and then simply closed his eyes. His ears drooped and his tail slunk low to the ground.
“How much time has passed?” Clueless repeated.
Tristol sighed and gritted his teeth before finally responding. His answer was not what they hoped to hear and it had sincere ramifications for their goals of stopping the Oinoloth from gaining whatever it was he sought to take from their endpoint in the gemfields.
“We’ve been locked in stasis for five and a half days…”
****
The group of arcanaloths stood at the base of the Tower of Lead, half of them still nursing injuries incurred over the past week, once regal robes burned, torn, or sullied with ash, dirt, or blood. They’d each witnessed colleagues and rivals alike slain during their trek across the breadth of the quasi-elemental plane, but now finally they stood at the object of their struggle, not that a single one of them actually understood why they were even there in the first place.
G’zellis ap Pluton of Khin-Oin glanced warily at the others, his right hand tightly gripping an ensorcelled staff, the hand missing three fingers from the last elemental assault.
Yermithek ap Khalas opened his mouth to speak but held his tongue. A once-apprentice to Helekanalaith himself, the silver-furred sorcerer understood that they were all disposable, and he had no illusions of being any different. Let the others risk themselves against whatever awaited them inside.
Nektheria ap Othrys snarled as she stumbled forward, a telekinetic push on the small of her back from one of her erstwhile compatriots. She turned back, rage spreading across her features and the words of a spell spilling ink across the pages of her mind as she considered which venomous colleague she’d kill first for the indignity, but her thoughts of revenge were summarily interrupted.
“Open the door.”
The voice was neither audible nor from one of their number as it telepathically issued from a hundred yards back and fifty yards in the air from atop a hovering slasrath.
A chorus of submissive whines and stuttered words of agreement flooded from the assembled arcanaloths, but none of them actually stepped forward to be the first to potentially spring any trap or become the target of anything waiting just beyond the threshold.
The door itself was a thing of understated majesty; simple, prosaic at first glance, but beyond that it could only provoke wonder. Flat, dull gray metallic lead, it glistened at certain angles from an intricate tracery of veins of gold. The ‘loths had noticed that it wasn’t simply decoration, but that at the smallest scale the golden lines formed an almost imperceptible litany of runes. Were they spells? Were they prayers to some primordial elemental god or gods? Were they warnings against entry? None of the assembled sorcerers knew, and it was that lurking fear that prevented them from wanting to be the first to touch the door.
It was not their decision and it had never been.
Staring down at them from atop her slasrath mount, Shylara the Manged smiled, triumph and manic obsession dancing in her eyes.
“Open the door or I will force it open myself using one or all of your number as screaming battering rams.”
****
carborundum
Adventurer
Oh my
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