Several long minutes passed in complete silence, but nothing happened. The petrified yugoloth lord's statue remained cold and frozen, the spell didn't fail nor did some delayed counterspell on her part release her, and no further projected copies of the archfiend sprang into existence.
"What in the name of Tempus just happened?" Florian asked, still recovering from the double-edged shock of the archfiend’s reappearance, and her subsequent petrification.
The snarling, hideous granite visage of Shylara the Manged gave no reply.
“Grace of Mystra.” Tristol exhaled. “That actually worked.”
Florian turned and looked at the mage. “What Tristol? What just worked?”
“I petrified her.” He replied, breaking into a grin. “Stone to Flesh.”
“Why don’t you look worried?” Skalliska asked. “We just killed her a minute ago and she came back. For all we know she’s just sending avatars after us.”
Tristol nodded, “She was astrally projecting from somewhere else, probably Carceri, and then…”
Skalliska’s eyes went wide and a grin sprouted on her snout as she understood where the wizard was going. “She’s stuck! Hah!”
“Somebody explain to the non-wizard please.” Toras asked, not quite as relaxed as the others.
“I figure she was astrally projecting, and then diving through a color pool somewhere, or multiple color pools.” Tristol explained. “And when you do that combination of things, you form a surrogate astral body on whatever plane the pool goes to.”
“It makes a perfect copy of you.” Skalliska added. “Complete with everything you might have had on you.”
“She didn’t exactly have much on her…” Fyrehowl said with a mock gag.
Clueless looked at the naked statue of the archfiend, and fey heritage or not, the lack of clothing wasn’t helping anything.
“But yeah.” Tristol said. “We kill that form and she just wakes back up, slightly pissed off, but no worse for wear. A few minutes is all it takes and she’s back here going after us again. But she’s not dead.”
Toras smacked his hands together. “You can’t end that spell if you’re petrified. How long is she stuck for?”
“In theory, in perpetuity.” Tristol said. “The petrification is permanent unless you counteract it with another spell, and astral projection lasts till you end the spell.”
“Which the b*tch can’t do.” Florian said triumphantly.
“We have our own archfiend.” Clueless said. “We. Have. Our. Own. Archfiend.”
All eyes turned to the statue, but once again the petrified form of Shylara the Manged gave no reply.
The fight was over, the smoke had cleared both physically and metaphorically, but there was no apparent exit from the demiplane, and the lurid chunk of imprisoned archfiend was still there like a metaphorical 800lb fiendish gorilla in the room.
Nisha noticed the proverbial gorilla. “So what the hell do we do now?”
Good question. Very good question.
“We can’t destroy the statue.” Clueless said. “She’ll just wake up back in Carceri.”
“We’ll stick her in Pitiless.” Florian suggested.
It was a nice idea. But the wardens of the prison weren’t likely to accept such an occupant from them given their recent experience there. Plus, the ‘loths seemed likely to raze the prison to its foundations just to get one of their own back, and to hell with the consequences of various displeased persons and deities who might have had things squirreled away there as well. A dragon, a phylactery, a risen fiend, a fallen avoral… they paled in importance compared to an actual archfiend.
Fyrehowl shook her head. “I’m not sure they’ll even agree to see us, let along take Shylara off our hands.”
Clueless had to agree. “She won’t stay there a week. Her servants or the Oinoloth, or someone who owes her a favor will break her out.”
So no dice on that option. But it was a large multiverse, and there were other choices left; plenty of choices.
“We dump her into the Negative Energy Plane.” Toras mused.
“She’ll eventually decay and
die.” Skalliska countered. “Matter doesn’t last long there.”
The fighter tilted his head. “The Positive Energy Plane then?”
Again the kobold shook her head. The sentiment was nice, and it was a hellish place if there ever was one, but without a way to keep it safe from the environment, it wouldn’t last long there either.
“Like ice in the plane of fire.” She explained. “It’d last longer in Negative.”
Fyrehowl waved her hands, “Alright, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Rather than thinking about
where to stick her statue, maybe we should think about who might think it valuable, and who might take it off our hands.”
Toras started to snicker.
“What?” Fyrehowl asked, looking at him oddly.
“How about we stoneshape her into an awkward position, and then give her to the Marauder?”
Behind the fighter, Clueless opened his mouth and cupped his hand just in front of his chin.
“Dude!” Florian said, trying to avoid choking. “I don’t think she’s got one of those to…”
The cleric shook her head violently, breaking off that line of thought entirely. “No. You know, I really don’t want to know the answer to that question. That’s knowledge I can bloody well live without. Eeeeehhhhhh….”
Clueless and Fyrehowl both laughed and the tips of Tristol’s ears grew red.
“Ok. But seriously.” Fyrehowl asked. “Any ideas?”
“I was being somewhat serious.” Toras said. “At least maybe with the stoneshape part…”
“I’m still worried about her underlings coming after us.” Tristol said. “Or the Oinoloth himself.”
Clueless shrugged. “Her underlings are probably more inclined to kill her and take her place once they discover that she’s in a coma more or less.”
“Loyalty isn’t their strong point.” Fyrehowl said. “And considering how much they were worried about letting their activities here be widely known, I’d bet that the Oinoloth would let her suffer for any failure.”
“And she seems to love him.” Clueless muttered, shaking his head. “She’s messed up.”
“Be that as it might, it’s still a risk we need to consider.” Florian said. “If she gets out, they’ll be coming for us. So we need to think long term solutions.”
“We can always just dump her into one of the upper planes.” Fyrehowl suggested. “You take Belarian, we take one of your lords. Kiro might like the sense of Balance.”
There was a momentary silence at the mention of Kiro’s name. Rilmani or not, he was dead for the moment, and given who killed him, and what he was, it was an open question if they’d ever see him again. It was too soon.
“Maybe.” Toras said with a nod. “Or we could find a god that wants to take her into their domain for safe keeping.”
“How about another archfiend?” Clueless suggested. “Evil isn’t monolithic by any means. And surely Shylara has some enemies on the lower planes.”
One very immediate answer was bubbling up like hot tar in their minds, but no one wanted to be the first to suggest it as a possible answer to their dilemma. There was always one singular, or triplicate, figure on the lower planes who hated the ‘loths with a passion, and they’d already had some manner of communication with it, or at least one of its creations/children/proxies. But was it safe making a deal with an exiled deity/Baernaloth?
“We could sell her to Apomps.” Florian said, speaking what everyone else was thinking.
Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow. “And you’re willing to travel to Agathys to go ask him? And that’s on Carceri, right in the thick of where she holds power.”
“Well, we’ve already spoken to a gehreleth,” Florian said. “And it’s almost as if he can see through them. We just need to find another one, and there was that Xideous fellow that was supposed to get back up with us at some point anyway.”
“I’d rather not deal with yet more fiends.” Fyrehowl said.
“Alright, so no fiends. Let’s take her to Sigil, and throw her over the side.” Skalliska suggested. “I don’t have a clue what actually might happen, but nothing that’s ever been hurled over the edge, be it object or person, has ever been found again.”
Tristol’s tail twitched uncomfortably. “But umm… we’d have to take an archfiend into Sigil. I don’t think that’s exactly safe.”
Nisha stuck her tongue out. “Mazing equals not fun.”
“Point taken.” The kobold replied.
They continued to discuss other alternatives, and Tristol and Skalliska started to examine the interior of the demiplane/tower summit more closely for some hints of an exit, or latent portals. But in the meantime, Clueless was in a mood to gloat, even if the imprisoned archfiend wasn’t in a position to reply, or likely even be aware of what was being said.
“Funny isn’t it.” The half-fey said as he leaned in close to the statue and looked it in the eyes. “I bet none of this ever crossed your mind when we met in Center. Well b*tch, the jokes on you I think.”
He laughed in her face and tapped the top of her muzzle like he was correcting the behavior of an ill-mannered puppydog.
“Oh man…” He said, grinning a mile-wide grin. “I just wish I knew what the hell was going through your head right now. I’d enjoy that frustration of yours more than anything.”
Clueless reached up and comically scratched between her ears, then under her chin, then between her cleavage. “I wonder if you’ve got an itch while you’re stuck like this? Like that spot between your shoulder blades that you can’t quite reach to scratch, but on your entire body, and worse than anything I’ve ever seen. Stuck like that with an itch you can’t worry for a few decades, or centuries, or longer… suits you.”
It felt good to mock her from a position where she couldn’t act against him. Something in the bladesinger wanted more though, either to know what she was thinking, or to have a few questions answered by her from her current position of powerlessness. She didn’t have a mind currently, so a normal spell to detect thoughts wasn’t an option, and she was neither dead nor did she have a regular tongue to use necromancy to speak with her body. But the statue was inanimate for any relevant purpose, so it didn’t seem absurd to attempt to legend lore the hunk of intricate, grotesque stone and maybe glean a few tidbits of information about the fiend and her plans.
Clueless turned around self-consciously. There wasn’t anyone directly watching him to object to his idea, as the others were still discussing what to do with her, or looking for any exit from the demiplane.
Toras grinned at Fyrehowl, “Elysium maybe, but I still say that we should just take her and dump her in the shallows on Celestia’s first layer in view of Bahamut’s domain. I’m past just useful location now and into indignity.”
No, they weren’t paying attention at all. And so all it would take would be a delicate tap of the heavy magic bubble on his neck and another slap of the archfiend’s petrified muzzle. It was easy, it was elegant, and it was a needless and hideous risk to plumb the mind of such a creature.
Clueless tapped his neck and felt the magic well within him as the spell took shape within his mind. A simple spell to use, and it would hopefully take little more than a few moments of real time. The fiend was frozen in stone, and despite her snarling face only a few inches from his own grin, she couldn’t do a thing; of course not. But when he triggered the magic and touched his index finger to her tongue with a soft chuckle, something felt suddenly terribly, horribly wrong.
***
In retrospect, it felt like the momentary pause after jumping over the edge of a massive canyon, that single moment before gravity’s clutches took their hold and pulled you down to earth. Except the abyss he stood over wasn’t some physical chasm, but the unplumbed watery, frigid depths of an archfiend’s mind. The depths were hungry and enraged, and Clueless felt the gravity of his mistake in that one moment before he was ensnared by a multitude of grasping, gripping fingers that pulled him down into liquid darkness.
“What the hell…” Clueless said as he opened his eyes and looked around.
He was no longer in the demiplane, and though his finger was still outstretched in front of him from where he’d touched Shylara’s statue, the archfiend-gone-lawn-ornament was gone. Gone was the gentle breeze and open tower cupola of the demiplane, and Clueless gazed around with a growing tightness in his gut as he saw what had replaced it.
A breeze washed across his face like the breath of a corpse or the wind off of a distant, stagnant ocean bobbing with bloated corpses, warm air that smelled of steel and blood. Clueless blinked and coughed. A moment later his reaction echoed back at him with a rustle of chains, steel on steel, and his first step forward was uncertain as the ground shifted and clattered under his weight.
Clueless stood at the center of an endless jungle of glittering steel chains. The ground was an endless field of free lengths and coils of dulled, worn links spotted with rust, verdigris, sticky patches of blood and viscera, all of which periodically moved, gave slack, or tightened like the coiling of a slowly undulating sea of metallic serpents.
“F*ck…” Clueless said as he spread his wings and lifted off of the ground.
His ascent was blunted only a few feet up, and the hanging canopy of barbed, gore coated chains hung like macabre serpents from great trees composed of upright, coiled columns of the same steel links. The entire forest slithered and shifted, and a dozen barbs lengths gently brushed against the half-fey’s back, some of them touching his neck and cheek where a moment before there had been no chains within reach to do so.
The forest was alive, and it did not take long for Clueless to realize just where he was, and how powerless he might be.
“Sit down mortal.” Shylara the Manged called out. “We have things to discuss, and you are hardly in a position to disagree. Welcome to the mind of an archfiend little subcreature.”
Clueless shuddered as the archfiend was suddenly behind him. He hadn’t seen her move, but it was almost as if the landscape was simply shifting to her whim around him. Hot, wet breath exhaled onto the back of his neck, and several drops of liquid, spittle or blood, dropped onto his back and slowly dribbled down his spine.
“We had such a short time to speak in Center, you and I.”
Clueless closed his eyes and tensed as a claw traced its way across his shoulder blades.
“Other business intervened you see.” She continued, panting softly as the chains rustled in time with her movements. “But you see, you have interfered with much later, much more important business of mine, and again you are here intruding. Twice now, and my irritation is rising.”
“We have your astral form.” Clueless said, eliciting a low growl from the fiend. “I believe that you’ve confused just who controls what.”
Claws dug into the bladesinger’s flesh, just deep enough to draw blood, and reality or not, the pain was sharp and excruciating. He hissed and started to turn, but stopped short in a mixture of revulsion and something else when he felt a tongue slide up his neck to lap at the wound.
“We’re frozen in a moment of time, you and I.” Shylara cooed, slipping from fury to seduction. “I can make this last as long as I want mortal. I can make this agony if I cared, but first a few things for you to consider.”
Clueless shuddered as she licked his ear and tapped her claws along the side of his neck.
“Do you think that the Oinoloth will leave his lover in mortal hands?”
“Do you think something like him actually cares about you?”
Abruptly the chain forest’s light turned red and half of the trees and vines and shifting, slithering iron floor were slick with blood and covered in barbs and blades. He’d touched a nerve, and the environment had responded perfectly in time to her emotions, if not necessarily her direct will. It might have been accurate and daring, but in the short term it might not have been wise.
“What do you know of the Oinoloth, little mortal sh*t?!”
The fiend was no longer behind him, and her snarling, bleeding maw was only inches from his face. Rivulets of emerald flame were seeping out of the corners of her eyes, and her appearance had shifted back to its natural, ravaged state.
“How dare you question something you cannot understand!” She snarled. “You of all people.”
Clueless coughed as the gem in his ankle suddenly erupted with a pulse of agony.
“You might no longer be an assassin, thief, or f*ck toy to that pissant little painted whore in Sigil. But I am the beloved of the very creator of those baubles, and do you think that he would not use you to secure my freedom?”
Clueless spit in her face. “You’re terrified of what he’ll do to you for failing him.”
Her reply was much colder than he expected. Perhaps he’d goaded her too far. “You overestimate your position of power at the moment mortal, and your power back in reality.”
Something snapped at that moment, and his breath was choked off as she closed a hand around his throat and slammed him onto the ground. With the archfiend straddling him, fangs bared and claws pressing into his flesh, multiple things seemed to happen at once. It all washed by in a disjointed, mottled haze of sensations and terrible, violent, lurid moments of clarity that would later haunt him.
- [Incredibly violent, gratuitous, and disturbingly perverse sex with an archfiend excluded for the sake of the Grandma Rule, and the fact that I’m frankly not willing to post that in public just based on the content which certainly qualifies for the "Have you ever crossed a line" thread over in the general section] -
It would end with Shylara looking into his eyes, naked and bleeding from a hideous array of wounds, both self-inflicted and from his hands, leaning back with a lingering line of spittle still stretching from his lips to his tongue.
“Tell me mortal.” She softly snarled. “How do you like the illusion of control?”
***
Clueless shook his head and looked up at the petrified archfiend, unchanged from when he’d touched her. The energy of his spell was dissipated, but his body ached and a phantom sense of pain was only slowly working its way out of his flesh from where he remembered the fiend touching him. He recalled what had happened, what she’d said, what she’d revealed, but it had left him shaken and disturbed to experience even that brief exposure to the interior of her mind, or more likely, what fraction of her mind she’d allowed him to access. He wasn’t sure what to make of any of it.
The illusion of control indeed.
And I suspect, I will thank you for it.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
