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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6417899" data-attributes="member: 11697">****"It's just a door." Malcolm looked askance at the native Sigilians' apprehension."Oh hell with this all..." Surefoot help up his hands in defeat. "If the razorvine-crowned b*tch-king wants what might be inside, she can walk her fat a** down here and open it on her own.""Just a door?" Ashlanaya grimaced, "It has The Lady's face on it.""Actually... it is just a door," Zenia's eyes were glowing with the aftereffects of a spell, "It doesn't have any magical aura, just a spooky one, so to speak.""Yes, but it's a door with Her Serenity's face on it." Surefoot protested."We came down here to get this Key, and it's got to be close." Malcolm took out his lockpicks, should the door be locked. "We find it and we get out of here. Simple as that."Ashlanaya put a hand on the rogue's shoulder, "Listen, we don't know where the Key came from."The rogue brushed away her hand, "We're not being paid to bother to be concerned about its origins really. To be perfectly honest I'm doing this so that she doesn't have my throat slit in the middle of the night. I made a mistake and this is making up for it."Ashlanaya grimaced again, "I understand your position Malcolm, I can very much empathize with it. In theory I'm getting something out of this too, but the closer that we get to the Key, the worse this feels. Something isn't right about all of this. The story about the Key, what happened when it was first used, and what's down here now, there's something terribly off about it.""I'm still not seeing why I should care." Malcolm looked over the door, searching for a lock. "I've every intent to skip town as soon as we have this delivered. If our employer wants to mess with an artifact, and from what you all have suggested, risk getting herself mazed or killed as a result, she's welcome to do so. That isn't my concern."The argument began almost immediately, with each of them questioning the reasons behind their presence there in front of the door, the danger potentially lurking behind it, and the ramifications both to themselves and Sigil at large should they find the Shadow Sorcelled Key and return it to the Marauder. Something hellish had happened there centuries ago when the Key first appeared and when the Key was activated. Something more than history dared remember and pass down to the present day."We don't know why it was used in the first place or even why, except that it was used during a revolt against the Incanterium." Surefoot refused to look directly at the door, averting his eyes down to the ground or towards his companions. "I'm tempted to bail. The b*tch is going to kill me eventually.""We're replaceable you realize." Malcolm deadpanned as he stepped back from the door and put away his lockpicks. "If we don't get what she wants, she'll kill us and then go drinking, and then send some other poor fools to do the same. She'll have it in her hands one way or another. We might as well find it, gain our own safety, and let whatever horror befalls her, well... befall her."Mouths opened for retorts, paused, and then closed, frowning more than not. He was right of course they realized. If they didn't gain the Key, others would, and they would suffer for not having done the job themselves. Despite their apprehension and worry about the door and what waited beyond it, they had no other real option than to proceed."Fine." Ashlanaya nodded, still rubbing her thumb across her holy symbol. "You're right. Let's go.""F*ck it." Surefoot motioned for Malcolm to be the first through the door."I'll happily go in first, but I'll need some help opening it." Malcolm chuckled. "It's solid stone, and I'm not quite that strong to move it myself.""Fine, fine." Surefoot lowered his shoulder and tentatively pushed against the door, helping the human push it open.****The door opened with a heavy amount of resistance, both from its own profound weight, and the dirt and grime of many centuries, apparently having never been opened in the intervening years. There was a rush of air, cold and stale, and a bright, cool light emerged from the chamber beyond. One by one they entered, curious and wary expressions playing across their faces as they saw the object within."That isn't the key." Zenia quipped, wrinkling her nose and stepping off to the side as the others followed in after her.The room was empty except for a single, round gemstone at its center. Roughly the size of a ripe apple, it hovered at waist-height above the ground, surrounded by a rotating circle of ephemeral glyphs and symbols."What the hell is that?" Surefoot blurted out as they fanned out and surrounded the object."The door wasn't magic, but this most certainly is." Zenia once again whispered a spell, examining the room's magical auras. "Really powerful and really, really bizarre. Certainly above my pay grade. And yeah, there's another door." She motioned towards a molded archway in the opposite wall. It wasn't a door, but a bound space certainly."Is something going to explode and kill us all if I touch this?" Malcolm glanced over to Zenia. The genasi shrugged and motioned him forward, even as she backed up and edged behind Surefoot."Thanks for the vote of confidence there." Malcolm grimaced as he reached out and made contact with the gemstone.Abruptly the gem shattered with the sound of breaking glass and the distant sounds of a shouting mob, roaring fiends, and crackling flames: the shadow of a moment in time now long past. Each of the gem's fragments evaporated into a thin fog as they fell, forming a column of smoke that swiftly congealed into the figure of a man. Translucent and drifting a few inches above the ground, his clothes were antique, and his face sorrowful as he looked at each of his guests."That's not possible." Ashlanaya whispered as she stared long and hard at the spectral figure, "He's a ghost."Ghosts weren't possible on the outer planes, yet here one stood, translucent and ephemeral despite the utter lack of connection to the Ethereal plane."You sure?" Doran asked."I serve the goddess of the honored dead and the protection of graves," The tiefling replied with a rapid nod, "So yes, I'm very sure.""We have more problems than a ghost that shouldn't be able to exist here." Malcolm pointed back to where they'd entered. The door was gone, vanished, replaced with a blank wall without even a hint of an archway or bound space. There was no option now other than finishing the Marauder's request, or die in the process."Sh*t..." Surefoot groaned. "I really wonder if king pretty-dresses knew that we'd be locked in. She had to know more about the Key being down here than she told us.""I thought that was clear before we even left her parlor." Ashlanaya laughed half-heartedly at their own misfortune."Someone else comes looking for the Key?" The ghost sounded mournful. "Then they are a fool, and you their puppets. I above all should know..."All eyes focused on the ghost as he hovered there, regarding his visitors with misery and jaded anger."Who are you?" Surefoot spoke first."Hello planar." The ghost sneered. "In life I was called Johannis Calimorn, one of the Speakers of the Prime Council. I was part of the rebellion that revolted against the tyranny your kind inflicted upon us. I fought the tools of the system, the self-appointed Golden Masters, the elite, the proxies of uncaring powers, the Incanterium and their servitors the Sodkillers. None cared about us, so we revolted from our ghetto and nearly shook the city from the Spire. That was our intent; high minded, foolish, and desperate.""The Clueless Rebellion." The bariaur nodded, understanding that the ghost was himself an undead window onto the past. He'd been there, and he'd probably been intimately entangled in the use of the Key."Even the name mocked us and our plight based only that we came from the Material Plane." He sighed, "Nothing has changed I see. Nothing at all.""How is it that you're here?" Ashlanaya asked, "A ghost on the Outer Planes shouldn't be possible.""How is it that we momentarily bucked the Lady's Authority and forced open every portal within the Prime Ward?" He narrowed his eyes in scorn. "Not everything is rational, and there are things that happen beyond our capacity to understand except to suffer the aftereffects of our own hubris.""You used the Shadow Sorcelled Key." Malcolm interjected, "We're here to find it.""What was the Key?" Ashlanaya noted the ghost's mood about its role in the rebellion. "We only know what it did, and only then what history has chosen to remember about it."The ghost laughed at the name of the artifact, but his face showed only misery and regret, all without a drop of humor.“The Shadow Sorcelled Key was the tool of our rebellion. Packed like sheep, penned, sequestered and oppressed, it was given to us unasked. But we took it anyways. ‘If you have but the will to use it’ we were told, and greedy, headstrong and filled with righteous zeal we took it. ‘The choice is yours, do as thou wilt.’" Johannis went through the motions of inhaling. Despite the space of years, the spirit still raged and grieved at his actions, and, based on the tremble in his voice as he spoke the words of whomever or whatever had provided him the Key, it terrified him."History hasn't provided much of a record of the particulars behind those events." Surefoot coaxed the spirit to tell them more. "You didn't make the Key yourselves? Someone gave it to you? Why?""Yes, it was a gift. A terrible, hideous, poisoned gift." The ghost held out his hands, cupping them as if he were still holding the artifact. "We should have said no. We should have hurled it over the side of the ring. We should have given it to a dabus and begged them to take it to The Lady, lest our anger cause us to use it. Some gifts are best never taken.""But you used it anyway." Ashlanaya's voice carried a tone of sympathy as she gazed at the long-dead Sigilian. "We always view our past mistakes with perfect clarity and perfect guilt, given enough time to reflect. You've had plenty of time. No one should blame you."Johannis smiled, if only for a moment, genuinely happy at the paladin's words of comfort and understanding."What exactly happened when you used it?" Malcolm's question jolted the spirit out of his moment of calm."The prime ward was razed! Fiends roamed the streets, slaughtering each other and any they found. Many of our own died even as the Sodkillers and the Incanterium battled the swelling darkness we had unleashed upon the City and were slaughtered. It was ended only by the actions of Her Serenity.""What did The Lady do?""She appeared in the midst of the carnage." Johannis explained with fear and awe in his voice. "Speaking not a word, she drifted through the carnage and in her wake the portals sealed. We only noticed later that the center of the Ward, the place where it had all begun, it was no longer there. The city had swallowed it up, subsumed it and all within, with not even a scar upon the streets to mark its passing. The damage was immense however. The sky was choked with soot and sulfur, the arrangement of the portals was changed to reflect a majority now only reaching out to the lower planes. Untold lives perished in fire and fang. Those of us who had used the Key, we survived, somehow. The Lady passed us by.""She passed you by?" Malcolm narrowed his eyes. 'How was that possible'"What happened to the Key?" Doran circled around the ghost, genuinely curious above and beyond their task for the Marauder."Our so-called gift was taken back from our hands by the one who granted it to us." The ghost stared off into the distance, somehow growing paler with the memory. Dead and separated by the space of centuries, it still terrified him. "As before, so again.”"Who gave it to you?" The druid pressed. "That's one element of the Key's story that we've never known.""I can't tell you." The ghost looked away, fearful even in its cursed immortality. "It won't let me. Ezra the Key-Maker will tell you more." "Why can't you tell..." Zenia paused as the ghost faded from sight and the crystal reappeared, only this time cloudy and, as she guessed, no longer capable of summoning its tethered spirit. "...us? Drat."As if on cue, the archway in the far wall of the chamber shimmered, grew transparent, and then the stone wall vanished entirely. Not needing an invitation, they proceeded through, expecting another gemstone like the first room, but instead finding another spectral figure awaiting them, dour and impatient."Hi!" Zenia waved at the hovering form of a middle-aged woman dressed in the outfit of a crafter or artisan. "And you would be Ezra I assume?""An elemental blooded, I should have figured." Ezra scoffed and crossed her arms. "And judging by your outfit, manners, and the tattoo on your arms, one of the Babblers. I should be so lucky to have forfeited my life to free my people and now in death find myself surrounded by our oppressors once again."The ghost smiled grimly, looking at the assembled group, reserving her deepest frowns for the planars: Surefoot, Ashlanaya, and Zenia."Johannis spoke with us." Ashlanaya bowed with courtesy despite the figure's distaste for her outsider blood. "He called you the Key-Maker. Did you make the Shadow Sorcelled Key?""No. I most certainly did not." Ezra's response was swift and tempered with again, a streak of fear. "I was fool enough to touch it, and fool enough to thank its maker for their gift. But such a thing was beyond me in even my wildest dreams.""But your title?" The tiefling glanced at the objects dangling from her belt and the prominent spellbook visible in a leather side satchel. The woman had been a wizard of some manner.The ghost laughed, "I crafted keys for the Lady's portals. I divined the nature of each, I and my guild fashioned the necessary keys to turn the locks that were already in place, and we sold them to any that would pay. I was the wealthiest woman in the Prime Ward, but I was still a pauper to the Golden Masters.""Why did you even care to rebel against a system that had made you wealthy and respected?" Surefoot raised an eyebrow. "You can't have suffered like so many others.""Because I wasn't one of the Heartless! I had compassion, and I saw the people around me starving, spat upon if they dared leave the Ward named after our kind. I wanted none of that, and eventually those of us on the Prime Council had no other choice but to fight and claim our dignity and our place in Sigil."Ezra stared off into the distance, just as Johannis had before when he remembered the events of the Clueless Rebellion. Like him, he seemed harrowed by the memories."We weren't the first fools to have accepted the Key, nor the first to have used it. I think it was always intended to find its way to Sigil though. I can even remember the swirling eyes of its maker when I met them in the Outlands. They said it could open portals, it could be used as a weapon against our enemies, and that they had used it before.""Used it before?" Doran was troubled by that new piece of the Key's story."Who were they?" Ashlanaya pressed again, hoping this time to receive an answer.“From prime to prime it was a tool of death," Ezra shivered and looked away, "A tool of chaos incarnate, and a tool of brutal repression. Both extremes personified, reflected only in the hand of the one who had but to accept their gift, and turn it, unlocking the darkness within, and without. Our greed and our hatred prompted us to accept it. A means of salvation or revenge so terrible, but gift or not, ‘the choice was ours’ and we alone are to blame for the path of hells fury it has woven through the eons. The Shadow Sorcelled Key is a gift, it always is, and a tool, but one that uses the gifted just as they use the gift…”"Forgive me," Ezra clutched at her robes. "They Key will be offered to you. It desires to be used again. It hungers. But do not..."Abruptly the ghost was gone, replaced by a hovered, matte gemstone, silent and censored from what its inhabitant would have warned."And we want to give the Marauder access to this thing?" Ashlanaya verbalized the thought on most of their minds as they watched the ghosts' regret and misery at their own role in using the artifact."From what it sounds like, she really isn't aware of what she'll be getting her painted little claws on." Surefoot chuckled, "If she wants to doom herself, I'm not going to stop her.""So what do we do now? Because there isn't another..." Zenia began and then stopped as the far wall rippled and text appeared, initially something foreign and alien to each of them, and then shifting and self-translating into whatever language they each preferred. "... door."“Seekers of the Key of Dancing Shades will not find what they seek, if only for why they seek it out. Why do you seek it? Answer me and the first door turns.”"Oh lovely," Surefoot crossed his arms. "Not only do we have to crawl through Sigil's underbelly, we have to justify why we even want it."The five of them entered the room and stood before the text, pondering its question, as well as the implications it held."So should we be honest or not?" Malcolm mused, looking first to Ashlanaya and then to Surefoot."Think about what the ghosts said to us." The paladin explained. "The key was given to them, and it caused horrific side effects. Whatever creature gave them the Key was not benevolent. Nor do I suspect that it wants to give the key again to anyone that could be remotely seen as altruistic.""Then we're safe telling the truth." Surefoot motioned above his head, pantomiming the Marauder fidgeting with her razorvine crown. "Because the b*tch sure as hell isn't a kind soul."Zenia giggled.Doran nodded, "That sounds like the best plan to me.""So we're in agreement then?" Ashlanaya looked to each of the others. Seeing no disagreement she stepped forward and placed a hand upon the text."We seek out the Shadow Sorcelled Key not for ourselves, but for our employer, Shemeska the Marauder, the King of the Crosstrade. We seek it for her in exchange for various payments," She then glanced back at Malcolm, "Or for excuses of debts otherwise incurred. The fiend that hired us will benefit and so will we."Without any other sign of approval or disapproval at the paladin's words, the words faded from view. The wall behind the words first grew transparent and then faded away entirely, revealing an archway and through it, another chamber."Clearly the Key's maker approves of our answer." Malcolm chuckled."That doesn't fill me with any measure of comfort Malcolm." Ashlanaya's expression bore no smile, and inwardly she felt only a growing sense of dread. "But in any event, let's keep going. This should be over soon."Stepping through the archway, the next room was exactly the same as the last, again with a line of text floating before the far wall in the language they each preferred.There are two doors now, though both lead to the Key of Dancing Shadows. You have a choice now, for free will is what you possess and must now utilize for better or for ill. The left and one of you dies, the right and their life is saved but at dire risk and challenge for all of you now in the next chamber. Make your choice and accept your fate.Malcolm blinked as he read the text, confused as it rippled and changed, shifting from the familiar letters of planar common to the alphabet and convoluted, multilayered syntax of yugoloth. He human opened his mouth but as the words formed in his mind to voice his confusion and his concern, they never sparked the synaptic storm that would have carried the impulses to his throat, past his lips, and to the others' ears. The thing implanted into his mind by Shemeska the Marauder awoke, looked through foreign eyes soon to be its own, and acted. In a moment and without any outward sign, Malcolm effectively ceased to exist. The man's mind rewritten by a pattern of thought spun off from the King of the Crosstrade, it was independent of her, but utterly subservient to her will, knowing its place, role, and nature, acting as an extension of her will. All that matters is the Key."That's a hell of a non-choice." Surefoot rolled his eyes at the text as he drew his sword, "I suppose we should be ready for whatever we find in the next room.""I don't like this at all." Zenia winced as she pondered the two choices written in Ignan, though in her mind there was only one real option. Whimsy was whimsy, but she couldn't just kill someone randomly to save her own skin.The first into the room, and a few steps in past the others, Malcolm smiled wickedly, stepping forward and mouthing to himself the thought, 'Please be Surefoot. Please be Surefoot.'"Go ahead and press the right door and be ready." Doran nodded at Malcolm, unable to see the expression of the rogue's face.'Please be the f*cking bariaur. Please be him.' Malcolm stepped forward, smiled, and touched his hand to the left.****</blockquote>

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