***
Ten minutes previous, they had all been walking alongside Jeremo the Natterer and a flock of his attendants, guards and servants. Jeremo had never seemed to actually look where he was going, and simply turned at the last minute before walking into a wall or going down the wrong hallway, never pausing or even slowing down when he did. The factol in all but name just kept chatting them all up as they kept up with him and his staff.
“And so this little bauble is going to be key to your fun,” The Jester had said as he held up a ring in the palm of his hand. It was carved from ivory and inlayed with silver, the gilded head decorated with the symbol of the Ring-Givers.
“More presents?” Florian had asked him as she accepted it.
Jeremo had shaken his head, “Sort of, and frankly if you make it back you can keep the rings. There’s one for each of you.”
Somewhere near the rear of the party, Nisha had squealed with glee when Jeremo had mentioned that little fact.
“As you’ve noticed, everything is warded around here, and you’d just as soon ruffle Her Serenity’s skirts than try to break your way through some of these that I’ve had set up. Thus keys are a bit impractical in the sense of such things, and as always a bit gauche on the less practical side of things.” Jeremo had said as he held up one of the rings before handing it to Tristol.
“The rings are a way around the wards without being flash fried, immolated, melted, turned to stone, or any one of a dozen other things I saw to be woven into them like a particularly expensive and prickly coat of paint on the walls.” Jeremo had said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Just concentrate on the ring and think of being back outside of this place. There’s a contingent teleport on the rings that is keyed to you and only you. Activate it thusly and you’ll immediately return to the room at the end of our little walk without whatever monstrosity or psionic, cheese eating, rodent menace might have been chasing you.”
“They actually eat cheese?” Nisha’s voice had said, piping up at the back of the group again. Skalliska had then muttered something under her breath and Fyrehowl had chuckled.
****
Now, solidly back in the present moment, Fyrehowl wasn’t chuckling as she and the others stood on the other side of those very same wards. Skalliska and Nisha were both tracing the patterns and trails of rat tracks that patterned the dust and tracked tiny footprints of bright crimson in their wake from the trail of blood that lead away and out of the chamber through the northern corridor.
“Skalliska? How many rats were here? Can you tell?” Florian asked.
Nisha looked over at Fyrehowl, “Hey Fyrehowl.” The lupinal was batting at her muzzle in irritation, probably from the dust that they were all kicking up into the air.
The kobold looked back at the cleric, “At least forty. Maybe more.”
Nisha tried to get the lupinals attention again, but once more Fyrehowl was trying to hold back a fit of sneezing from the omnipresent dust and didn't hear her.
“How bad can forty of them be?” Toras asked tentatively.
Florian looked around at the trail of blood and then back up at Toras, “Apparently bad enough for some poor berk.”
Toras nodded to the cleric, “Point taken.”
Nisha finally glanced over at Fyrehowl, “Hey, bignosed goodie goodie with a tail!”
Fyrehowl glanced up with an odd expression, “Goodie goodie?”
“Oh sure, take offense at that and not the nose comment. Anyway, can you actually get any idea of how many people were down here and maybe how many of them got into trouble in the immediate area? Or is the dust too much?” Nisha said as she tapped the lupinal’s nose.
“Well I do have a big nose, comparatively speaking. And no, I really can’t tell other than there isn’t much blood on the ground outside of that smear.” Fyrehowl shrugged as she moved out of the room in the direction of the trail of blood, and the route towards the next stairwell down.
The blood traced a series of crimson lines through the dust for about another forty feet or so before turning into a smaller passage off from their mapped route. They didn’t have to look hard to find the corpse though, and there was no doubt as to how it had died. The body of a human, probably a swordsman, was sprawled against the side of the adjacent passage surrounded by a spattered circle of bloody rat tracks.
“Rough way to go…” Skalliska said as she approached the body. The kobold whispered a cantrip to make sure that the body wasn’t trapped by any spells, and then she crouched over it for a closer inspection.
“Nibbled to death.” Toras said with faint amusement.
“Eaten by food.” Skalliska said as Nisha made a face at the very idea of considering cranium rats to be worthy of snackage.
The corpse was desiccated from the exposure to the dry, overly dusty and stagnant air of the sealed off underhalls of the palace. But more so it was almost entirely drained of blood from a thousand tiny slashes and bites that covered every exposed portion of its flesh from the face down to the frayed fingertips. The rats had bled it dry in what had to have been a very lingering and painful death.
“So, who wants to raise him back to life?” Clueless asked.
Florian shook her head, “Not me. We’ll bring his body back with us on our way out, assuming we have better luck than him. I’m not wasting the spell now when he’s got it coming to him from Jeremo eventually.”
Skalliska held out a ring that was clutched in the hands of the corpse. It was nearly identical to the ring that each of them had been given by Jeremo, though apparently the poor fool hadn’t had the chance to use it before the rats had killed him.
“Either he couldn’t concentrate, or the rats blocked it from working because the charge is still there latent on the ring.”
Skalliska then paused for a moment and glanced around cautiously.
“Something wrong there?” Fyrehowl asked the mage as he continued to glance around.
“Maybe. Felt like I had something reach out and touch my mind, almost like a wizard or a squidhead tried to probe my thoughts. It wasn’t a spell.” She said with a soft snarl.
Clueless swore, “Cr*p… they know that we’re here…”
“That’s what I’m worried about. Though it seemed more curious than angry.” Skalliska said with a nervous shrug.
“Alright. Then let’s get moving towards the spot on the map before they take a less friendly look at us.” Florian said as she motioned them away from the corpse and back to their original path.
***
“They are disturbed by the corpse. No matter, he was one of the Natterer’s hired killers and deserved no mercy. We offered him much and he declined, thus sealing his fate. We will extent the same to these others.”
Several members of the hivemind crept through the burrowed tunnels that honeycombed the walls of the upper layers of the labyrinth, the only place they could since the walls below not only healed but reacted… negatively… to their attempts.
“The kobold, the one that we touched, she has killed one of the slaves of the Godbrain before. She enjoyed the act, it shows like flame upon her mind. She may serve even if the others will die. We will follow and observe before acting…”
***
Over the next fifteen minutes the group passed though one empty hallway, chamber, and gallery after another. Everything was cold, dark and empty, but with a lingering atmosphere of forgotten grandeur. While dust seemed to cake the floors and festoon itself from the moldings and archways like ancient decorations for one of the Jester’s parties, it still retained an aura of prestige and beauty.
Whoever built this place had style, that’s for certain.” Florian remarked as they passed beneath an archway carved to resemble two asuras with their flaming wings touching at the keystone. Carnelian and stained glass sparkled along the length of the sculptures.
“Damn, same here.” Clueless added as he looked back at it from the next room over, noting that from the other side, the asuras were replaced with erinyes, and each feather in the fiends’ wings seemed to have been carved from ivory, frosted glass or some feathery crystalline mineral.
“And don’t look at me, I’m just as impressed as you are and I’m not even pondering snagging any souvenirs.” Nisha said preemptively as they passed into another long corridor of clear glass floors suspended above what might have been the layer below them.
“Still too dusty…” Fyrehowl said with a soft sneeze. “But it’s still damn pretty.”
They continued on without any sign of the rats, though Fyrehowl did stop several times and glance around with a preternatural sense that they were not alone in the halls. But each time there was nothing there to be seen or heard, and strangely enough none of their attempts at scrying or divination worked: they simply failed without comment.
Several moments later they stood on the staircase down to the next level of the underhalls and glanced down the wide, spiraling length of stairs. They seemed worn smooth by the passage of the years, though by the dust that covered their wide, shallow steps, they had not seen active use in centuries at the very least. Railings of darker stone curved down to follow the stairs, and carved scenes of wild game, stags and pursuing hounds decorated it from top to bottom along its length.
They slowly walked down the flight of stairs, though Nisha insisted on sliding down the banister. Her soft cry of “wheeee!” echoed up from the bottom and then it ended sharply.
“Nisha?” Tristol shouted down to her.
“Yeah I’m fine, just… just come down here…” Came the tiefling’s reply.
They quickly followed, if without her initial exuberance, and quickly discovered what had gotten her attention. The dust, or rather the complete lack of dust. The floors and walls were spotless as they emerged into a wide chamber of wooden walls, studded with mirrors and amber mosaics that seemed to glow of their own accord, reflecting back the magical illumination that Toras and Tristol had been providing.
“Alright that’s just strange.” Clueless said as he looked at Tristol. “Spells on the area to keep it clean?”
Tristol shook his head. “Spotless. There isn’t any magic on the walls that I can see.”
Fyrehowl furrowed her brows as she glanced at the mirrors. “The reflections are wrong.”
“Huh?” Florian asked as she walked over to where the lupinal was glancing into a series of the mirror panels between two scenes in amber that depicted a golden portrait of woodlands and a great manor house that seemed to be a stylized depiction of the Palace itself.
Fyrehowl pointed into the mirror, “That’s not the reflection that should be showing in the mirror. It’s showing a reflection from about thirty degrees off from where it should.”
The effect was subtle, but every one of the mirrored panels showed a reflection that was off from what they should have been showing. There was even one of the smaller panels that seemed to display an image as if it were positioned behind the person, showing them from behind on the far side of the room, looking into one of the mirrors there.
“Weird.” Florian said.
“Not weird. Awesome.” Nisha pointed out as she goofed around with the mirrors. Tristol however was simply unnerved by it all, given the lack of obvious magic.
Eventually they passed out of the chamber, off towards the stairwell marked on their map that would lead down to the next level. As they walked under the archway out of the room and down a long corridor to the south, they never noticed that in the amber mosaics one of the tiny, depicted figures turned and watched them leave…
The hallway traveled perhaps a hundred feet or so before Clueless looked over at the map in confusion. “There’re connecting hallways here that aren’t on our map.”
“Then I suggest we don’t take them.” Skalliska added bluntly, glancing around in seeming irritation.
“Well no, the main corridors and chambers we’ve seen down here have all been clearly marked on the map, but the fine details are starting to go the way of the factions…” Clueless replied.
“Skalliska? Are you alright?” Tristol asked as his tail swished idly.
“Someone’s reading my thoughts…” The kobold said through gritted teeth, “And given my past history with Illithids I don’t take kindly to the attempts whoever the hell you are!”
Clueless glanced around, “Not appreciated!”
Tristol’s tail suddenly bottlebrushed as he too felt something rustle around in the contents of his mind and then vanish back into the woodwork, probably just as literally as figuratively.
“At least they haven’t gone after us.” Florian said.
“Yet.” Toras added. “They haven’t gone after us
yet.”
“Or stolen our cheese.” Nisha said as she did her best imitation of a squinted up rodent’s face.
“Come on, let’s get moving…” Skalliska said as she concentrated on keeping out any untoward visitors in her head.
The passage continued southerly and ran directly under the hallway in the level above where they had seen a glass floor. The current hallway at about the halfway mark had an arched glass ceiling that seemed to have either been cast in place or cut from a solid block of the material.
“I want to live here. I really do.” Nisha said as she looked up through the glass.
“What the hell?” Fyrehowl said as she did the same.
Above them, rather than seeing the hallway in the floor above them, they saw nothing of the sort. Through the thick glass was a perfect, inverted representation of the hallway they were currently in, rather than what should have been above them given the map and what they had seen earlier.
“This place is like a funhouse…” Clueless said.
“No, the architect was huffing opium…” Toras said as he tried to make relative sense at the warped layout of the passages that increasingly had begun to deviate from the map.
“The Natterer sent you. The direct and disembodied voice abruptly echoed in all of their minds.
The group looked around hastily, trying to find the location of the speaker.
“We have done nothing to him. He is a fool, ignorant of what he sits atop, and we have greater need for it. Purer, more just purpose to put it to our use. We would ignore him if he did not sent murderers down to seek us.”
“You killed one of his servants.” Clueless said bluntly.
“They were a hindrance and so we removed it like you would pluck a splinter from your finger. In the grand scheme of thing they were nothing and do not matter.”
Fyrehowl quickly motioned them all towards a ragged spot in the carved molding at the base of the western wall. A small hole was burrowed into the stone and in it was nestled a single cranium rat. The vermin’s exposed braincase glowed with a pale green radiance as it twitched its whiskers and glanced at them with black, distant eyes and a mind that was very much more than the sum of its parts.
“So why have you been snooping around in our minds?” Tristol asked as he drew a series of spells into the forefront of his mind in case things escalated.
“To determine if we should kill you immediately, or give you the opportunity to serve us.” The telepathic whisper of the Us had not a shred of pity or compassion.
“Some choice…” Clueless said with irritation.
“How about we let the kobold eat you.” Toras said to the rat just as bluntly as the hive had spoken to them.
Skalliska glanced back angrily at Toras, “Not now…”
“You have killed Illithids before. You agree with us on what must be done. Serve us and you will achieve that goal. You would be valued.”
“No thank you. I’d be valuable perhaps, but I wouldn’t be valued.” Skalliska said as she too drew a spell into her immediate memory.
“Rethink your rash statements. Your bodies would never be recovered down here. Consider our offer and reply within the next two minutes.”
“Not going to change.” The kobold replied immediately.
Clueless was about to comment when he felt a sudden chill race over his mind like something had just opened his skull like a jar and dipped fingers of ice into the interior. Something wrapped around his thoughts, and for a moment he felt as if he was on the verge of losing control over his actions before the influence slipped, snarled and fell away.
“Now that was just f*cking uncalled for!” Clueless said with a shout as he turned about to glance at the offending cranium rat that watched them from the hole in the wall. Then, purely out of instinct, he hurled a spell at the rat, beyond it, and back into the spaces behind the wall: a spell that he shouldn’t have been able to cast by any stretch of the imagination, but one that had been nestled uncomfortably in his mind since his first experiments with heavy magic…
The spell raced out of his mind and enveloped the rat with a dull halo of black, expanding light before. A split second later the hallway was transfixed in a chaos of telepathic shrieks of agony for a brief, flickering moment before the wall detonated outwards in a wash of pure retaliatory hatred.
***
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
We do not approve of this depiction of Us. 
