****
Shylara the Manged stood alone in the room's darkness, physically present rather than engaged in the trickery of projections and color pool-derived surrogates. Her eyes remained glued to the floor, her ears flat against her head, and her tail tucked between her legs. She was not worthy to gaze upon Him. She was not worthy of gazing upon His work regardless of her profound curiosity of its majesty. She made do with fleeting glimpses of his drifting trail of shadows.
"Hold the tome higher." The Oinoloth spoke, devoid of pity and without directly looking at her.
She wore nothing, neither clothing, jewelry, illusions, or perfume, and in their collective absence she slowly bled upon the floor from the open wounds and weeping sores that marked her flesh.
"Enter this chamber wearing only your flesh." The Oinoloth had commanded. She had done so bereft of any sense of worth as much as finery, but it wounded her deeply that she had never entered the chamber prior. Neither had she been the first to enter there to stand in His presence, though she had trembled more than grown excited at the appearance of a dozen of Shemeska's broken teeth that littered the stone along with a puddle of congealed blood, though she'd deeply wished to drop to her knees and lap at the latter.
The Oinoloth had said nothing of the matter, but the Manged recognized her scent: excitement and terror. So too did Shemeska’s former lover and apprentice mirror her now, however unconsciously. Ignoring his consort's inner thoughts even as they remained wholly transparent to him, the Oinoloth remained focused on the mewling, gasping mezzoloths bound by bands of force to several tables and platforms scattered throughout the room. Whereas Shemeska had seen them in an earlier state, hideously tortured and on the verge of death but for magic that refused them the peace of dissolution back into the substance of the Waste, Shylara bore witness to a nearly finished product of the Oinoloth's horrific experimentation.
"You will never be perfect, whatever my efforts." The Oinoloth mused, leaning in and snarling at the mezzoloth and sending the twisted creature into a sudden paroxysm, though it was questionable if the spasm was due to the Oinoloth's physical presence or to the fact that the base yugoloth's body had been fused with equal parts elemental earth and elemental fire.
Watching the creature suffer, Shylara bit her lower lip, even as she wondered if the Ebon's words were meant for the mezzoloth or her. She bit her lip harder, enjoying the pain, and hefted the tome higher, though it was not a source or information for the Oinoloth, but a repository for his own notes on the process she'd watched him undertake with each test subject through multiple iterations, fusing mezzoloths with different elemental admixtures, and then without pause, disintegrating those who failed to meet his expectations, whatever those expectations and grander plan and purpose happened to be. Pointedly the Ebon had explained nothing to Shylara, only instructing her to hold aloft the book she now held: a subordinate archfiend used as a footservant.
The Overlord of Carceri was less curious about his work on the mezzoloths than what she saw and didn't see in his actual spellcraft. For all his treasure trove of spellbooks, for his present work the Oinoloth never actually glanced at the tomes, but spoke in Baern in a fluid, chanting cadence, the pattern similar to the spells penned within the monstrous, oversized librams once held by the Father/Mothers themselves.
The mezzoloths that Vorkannis experimented on had never marched obediently to their doom into that chamber. The doors had never swung wide to admit them, nor had they ever burned their chitinous flesh upon the silver handles. No. The Oinoloth had created them in situ there of his own accord. She'd watched, breathless and wet, as he'd time and again ripped their essence up
from the substance of the Waste itself, channeled through the petrified vessels of Khin-Oin and birthed at the will of their master. How such a thing was possible, the Manged could not fathom.
Vorkannis leaned forward and licked the mezzoloth's blunt, insectile muzzle, his saliva sizzling upon its partially molten surface for but a moment before the lesser fiend's flesh began to corrode from such direct exposure to something far, far greater than itself. The Oinoloth was smiling though, admiring his work as it neared to completion, stewing in his own pride, and perhaps most of all admiring the being's suffering. Whatever his feelings and whatever his ultimate goals, his next words expressed a certain hideous truth about himself, the object of his present work, and perhaps far, far more.
"You are filth that will die for me, never loved, never appreciated, used and thrown away. All of you..."
Shifting her stance and unconsciously clenching her thighs, Shylara was unsure if the Ebon was addressing the mezzoloth and its kindred test subjects or the entirety of yugoloths, herself included.
****
With the glow of one of Her Serenity's portals from Sigil radiating from behind them as they stepped out into the dust of the Waste, the companions glanced at one another with dread and apprehension, a mood altogether worsened by the feeling of overwhelmingly callous oppression exuded the plane itself.
"I hate this place." Fyrehowl snarled, the light of her eyes actually dimming against the darkness of the void that stretched out overhead, punctuated only by the distant glow of the 1st and 2nd Mounts, Khalas and Chamada, that hung within the endless darkness "I truly hate this place. This was a bad idea."
As the others emerged from the gate, its distal end latched into a wall in the Lower Ward, Clueless and Nisha glanced at one another knowingly. Alone amongst the party, while they hadn't been to Gehenna, they'd been to the Waste before and directly experienced 'loths on one of their native planes. They alone had experienced that rapacious misery when they'd gone together
to investigate earlier events, prior to the conclusion of the 'loth civil war. Gehenna was not the Waste, but it carried its own unique brand of nearly tangible misery.
"Darkness, more darkness, volcanoes, and the air smells like vinegar and hatred, and we're standing at an angle. Lovely place..." Toras grumbled as he stepped to the side as Tristol stepped out from behind him.
All of them having arrived, the portal swirled with a whirl of color and then flickered and vanished, the one-way passage from the City of Doors gone, leaving them to their own within the Fourfold Furnace. Almost immediately a cold wind whipped across the rocky volcanic slope that they stood upon, forcing them all to gather their cloaks tighter and Tristol and Florian to cast protective spells to protect against the flakes of acidic snow carried on the wind already, and in anticipation of both greater environmental dangers and those posed by wandering fiends.
As they stood there and sought to fix their location relative to their destination of Portent, only a few hours had passed since they'd sat in comfort in the Portal Jammer, taking in a surprise visit from the soon-to-be Factol of the Fraternity of Order. The Factol's words had made them realize that the apparent resurrection of Nilesia, or appearance of someone who looked and acted like her, had links to the Guvners and to a much deeper and darker plot that wound its roots down into the Lower Planes and the enigma that was the late Professor Cilret Leobtav.
Factol Nathaniel hadn't told them to investigate in Portent, but the illustration sketched by his late mother, the former Factol Lariset the Inescapable had set a fire burning in their brains, just as she had written about what the man who could not have actually been there speaking with her that long ago had done for her. What exactly he'd set her on the path to finding, what she'd found, and what the person posing as Nilesia had sought to steal in Sigil and in Mechanus after murdering Nathaniel's predecessor was something that the group needed to discover, even if Nathaniel had not tasked them to discover, and tasked them to discover on his Faction's payroll.
Nisha of course had refused on principal, being a Xaositect, but after a whispered back and forth between herself and Tristol, she'd relented, effectively. She still refused to be on the payroll of "a bunch of sodding Lawmongers" but she didn't begrudge Tristol accepting double payment and inviting her along because Gehenna was scary and he’d feel much more comfortable with her there, to say nothing of her being worried sick if he went without her. With that rationale in place to mollify her ideological concerns, she cheerfully agreed at that point.
"Do we really expect to find anything in Portent now? Multiple centuries later?" Toras asked, his eyes scanning volcanic landscape, all of it at a gradual slope, but punctuated by erratic and massive regions of significantly more precipitous terrain and sudden, fatal ranges of cliffs and ravines, the latter likely to contain terrors hidden from easy sight.
"I have a feeling that if there's anything there, it might very well try and find -us- whatever that might be." Clueless made a face, “That seems to be the case with basically everything involving us and the ‘loths at this point. Last time it was a yugoloth lord, exiled or not that popped up in the middle of Baator of all places. I assume it’ll be something even worse this time.”
Florian grimaced, "Tempus forbid I hope not..."
"We always have the option of trying to cast legend lore once we’re in the city,” Clueless suggested, glancing at Tristol, “Standing in the same place that Lariset was standing and see if we can divine anything specific to follow up on."
Fyrehowl turned and stared at the bladesinger, "Do you really, honestly want to open yourself up to watching the results of that spell for a spot on Mungoth? It's like detecting undead in the Negative Energy Plane."
"It's worth the risk." Clueless shrugged, "But as I said, I really think it won't come to that."
"Well, get ready for whatever might happen," Tristol glanced down at a planar compass in his hands, "Because I know where we are and I'm ready to teleport us to Portent."
They all gathered closely together, whatever their individual reservations as to the wisdom of the trip and the manifest horror of the surrounds. Already on Mungoth the Third Furnace, the transition to Portent itself was relatively straightforward, or rather it should have been. Tristol had taken pains to scry the fiendish city for the better part of an hour, gaining a feel for the layout of the city streets that meandered far too much like errant, uncontrolled blood vessels around a growing tumor lodged into the dying, volcanic flesh of the Third Mount.
“Say a prayer to whatever divinity you wish because we’re about to be in Portent.” Tristol smiled, feeling the subtle flicker of Mystra’s silverfire there within his veins and cool within his fingertips as he incanted the spell. There was no risk of failure, no risk of being off topic, such was the design and power of that particular teleportation spell and his own skill as a nascent Chosen of the Faerunian Goddess of Magic herself.
And yet it failed nonetheless.
They all arrived in Portent yes, but not at their intended destination.
“The Grand Bazaar of Portent is really kinda low key don’t you think?” Nisha deadpanned as the group materialized in a burst of light.
Rather than a sprawling marketplace that represented the concept of corrupt, crony-capitalism made manifest, filled with petitioners, tieflings, and all manner of fiends there to make their fortune (or take another’s) or simply escape from the tide of the Blood War on the ashen slopes on Mungoth, the party found themselves in a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway. Stone tenements rose up on both sides, with the street and the buildings themselves filthy and crowded to the extent of making Sigil’s worst ghettos look grand by comparison. Broken glass and cold iron spikes decorated every single stoop, eave, crenellation and windowsill, and even the lay of the roofs themselves cast the shadows of spools of barbed wire and other fixtures that carried the omnipresent sense of ‘this is mine and you cannot have it’ that drenched every inch of the city’s property.
High above the sounds of bitter laughter at another’s misfortune carried across a rooftop followed by the distant sound of something hitting the ground with a distinct splash. It might have been a bucket of filth aimed at a pedestrian or it might have been the sound of an unconscious victim’s skull breaking open upon the pavement: both options fit Portent.
“This isn’t the Grand Marketplace.” Toras deadpanned.
“That…” Tristol frowned, “How astute of you. No, it isn’t.”
Some more back and forth banter over how the teleportation could have missed (when technically it shouldn’t have been capable of missing) and Tristol started glancing about. The wizard’s observation of their surroundings took a back seat however to something else much closer.
"Clueless?" Nisha glanced down at the bladesinger's ankle, gesturing to the gemstone there with the tip of her tail, "You're glowing? Sort of."
With a worried expression he glanced down where the artifact lodged in his leg flickered with a sharp green light and then extinguished itself, only to flutter several moments later like the erratic heartbeat of a slumbering, arrhythmic heartbeat. The gemstone hadn't behaved that way at any point prior. The last time that it had activated had been in the presence of the yugoloth lord Taba, and at that point it had burned bright and physically ached. This time it didn't hurt, that was good at least, and it didn't seem as if it were certain about if it should even be reacting or not. The artifact seemed confused more than anything, and that uncertainty as to what it actually meant was even more disconcerting than had it burned bright in warning of a looming theat.
"I..." Clueless blinked, uncertain how to respond to the situation. "I have no idea what that means."
Tristol stared down at the artifact, finding his sight amplified beyond what it had ever been before when he'd studied magical auras. Now he could see the flow of permanent dweomers laced into a magical items physical substance, but in the case of the artifact crafted by the Oinoloth himself, that Mystra-granted insight gave him no better idea of what was actually going on. The twisted miasma of runes were blurred and indistinct, purposefully hiding themselves from scrutiny, seemingly by its maker's intent. After several seconds he realized that continued scrutiny was bringing other runes bubbling to the surface, more distinct, burning and painful, that were themselves baernaloth in origin. The wizard blinked and turned his eyes away, worried that the artifact might have innate protections that his continued, deity-augmented scrutiny might actually bring to the forefront. In any event though, the end result was the same: he had no more clue as to why the artifact was sputtering its sickly light than Clueless himself had.
"Maybe it's just reacting to the distant presence of really powerful 'loths?" Florian shrugged, "Not like Gehenna has a lack of candidates there."
Clueless shrugged, "Maybe? Maybe not. It doesn't hurt like it did with Taba, so for the moment let's leave it be. Not like I've got much other option."
"Tristol, any idea where we are?" Toras glanced over at the wizard.
"Not in the Marketplace, that's for certain." He frowned, his tail twitching with minor annoyance. "I've got a good idea of the city's layout, but given how tight the buildings are packed together, it's harder to see enough to know where..." He trailed off as Nisha glanced up and promptly began scaling up the side of the nearest building.
"Tell you where we are in a second!" The Xaositect called down without pausing her ascent, somehow making it look easy as she avoided the gamut of broken glass, intentionally loose stones, and barbs and spikes intended to dissuade anyone from doing precisely what Nisha was. Less than a minute later she emphatically kicked off from one of the eaves to sail across to the opposite building and then in defiance of gravity flip up and over the edge of the roof.
"She knows I could have just flown up there right?" Fyrehowl raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, but she made that look easy," Tristol grinned, "And stylish and fun to be honest. She’s good like that."
Moments later Nisha peered back over the edge of the roof and began shouting out details of adjacent streets, buildings, and landmarks. Then as Tristol calculated their location and the best path by which to proceed, Nisha scrambled back down, doing her best giant bug impression as she accomplished the task by descending head first, arms and legs splayed off to the sides.
The walk wasn't in fact all that long, distance-wise, but the party's caution given the foreboding surroundings and the twisting, labyrinthine layout of the streets themselves it took them the better part of the next two hours before they finally arrived within Portent's grand marketplace.
While smaller than similar institutions in either Sigil or Tradegate, hundreds of shops, tents, and stalls stood arrayed with a churn of shoppers, merchants, proselytizers of powers and factions calling out to passersby with just as much or more zeal as barkers offering unbelievable deals in adjacent shops, and a large number of fiends of all types moved about like a vision into the dark underbelly of mercantilism. All in all not much had changed since the days in which Factol Lariset had stood there.
"Does anyone notice that almost everywhere here is marked by specific insignias?" Toras motioned to several symbols burned, stamped, carved, or even embroidered into the signs and above the doorways of the nearest tents and stalls.
"They're marks of ownership, either overt or self-declared." Fyrehowl grimaced. "Everything here has a specific place and specific limits, and most of them are imposed from without."
"All the slaves here are free to do as they like! They just happen know what's best for them so they listen to us!" Toras sarcastically added.
True to the fighter's sarcasm the vast majority of merchants and traders within the Bazaar seemed owned in some manner or speaking by one of Portent's sprawling number of fractious and competing gangs, guilds, and other warring institutions, all of them jockeying for power on a daily basis, and as the party moved through the marketplace, that became ever more obvious. Each marked stall or tent seemed to be watched by a guard on duty or curiously passed by at regular intervals by one or two of the same shoppers who seemed to be doing no shopping at all, with their window-shopping restricted to every other individual in the shops' proximity.
"This seems to be the place." Tristol said, glancing about to nearby structures. "This is about where Factol Lariset would have been standing all those years ago."
"So what now?" Florian asked, looking to the others and getting only shrugs in response, with Nisha pointedly glancing only at Clueless's ankle, half expecting it to suddenly glow in warning of some monster soon to manifest and attack them.
The yugoloth artifact continued its odd, disconcerting flickering, but no monstrosity appeared. It gave no warnings to the wholly mundane threat that had followed and gathered about.
"Heads up everyone..." Fyrehowl muttered as a group began to gather around them.
Looking about, the thugs were a mixture of tieflings and humans, themselves just as often petitioners as mortals. Chuckling and holding out their hands to the side, not bearing weapons, though all of them wore swords or daggers at the waist, they crowded around the party, more and more of them emerging with a definite swagger from seemingly every shadow that clustered about the marketplace stalls.
"It seems that you're far from home little gaggle that you are..." A bald tiefling with blotchy, pale blue skin remarked as his tail whipped about behind him, a blade shaped like a scorpion's stinger
attached at its tip. "So I think we'll take into account that you weren't aware of the mandatory entry registration fee, and being honorable representatives of the Nine Fingered Fox, we'll skip the fee avoidance tax. But you do still have to pay the original fee."
"F*ck your laws!" Nisha blurted out as she flipped the tiefling off without second thought before Tristol grabbed hold of her tail and clamped a hand over her mouth before she made the situation worse. She continued to yammer despite her fiancé’s hand.
"Yeah I'm going to have to go with the Xaositect's opinion here..." Clueless chuckled as his fingers closed comfortably about Razor's handle.
"Looks like the little fey boy thinks he's a big man with that fancy toothpick he has there!" The tiefling laughed, "I don't think he knows who we are!"
"Kick his ass Clueless!" Nisha shouted angrily as she managed to escape Tristol's impromptu muzzling.
"Shut up your tanar'ri blooded b*tch or I'll have her gagged and..." The tiefling never managed to finish his vulgar threat before Clueless slipped Razor from its sheathe and lunged forward.
In any rational situation the party would have butchered the gaggle of thugs that surrounded them, but Portent was no rational place. As soon as Clueless drew his blade, soon joined by Toras the fight should have been over and most of the gang-members dead or maimed. What happened objectively however was very different.
Clueless laughed as he stood over the bloody corpse of the foul-mouthed tiefling, watching them sputter as they lay there in a spreading pool of blood. Subjectively he marveled at how simple the task had been, only belatedly though did he realize that he himself was bleeding and fallen to the ground.
"We haven't had this much fun since we watched the 'loths hang the boss last month!" One of the thugs laughed as he watched Toras smash himself in the face with the pommel of his own sword, still wrapped up in a delusion in which he was singlehandedly butchering the gang members.
"Stop! Nobody draw a blade!" Fyrehowl shouted at full volume before breathing in deeply and calming her own emotions. Somewhere between her own celestial origin and her training as a Cipher she could feel a hideous presence rising up from the very stones of Portent, taking any rage and anger and twisted it around, mirroring it back on those expressing it. Looking about at the thugs, she realized that none of them had drawn weapons. None of them had initiated violence. They'd cursed, they'd insulted, they're goaded, and that was their point: to force their enemies to harm themselves by being the ones to draw their blades in anger and strike.
Florian rushed forward and grappled with Toras, fighting to prevent him from smashing himself in the face a second time while Nisha likewise struggled to keep Clueless from disemboweling himself while laughing, lost in the delusional fugue state that Portent had hurled him into.
"Just drop your gold and walk away..." The tiefling demanded, banking on the party's unfamiliarity with Portent's nature, "Unless you want to see your friends bleed out in the middle of the road."
In response the lupinal grinned and drained herself of all emotions, all motivations, and all forethought. Without any prepared plan she allowed the Cadence to speak through her actions as she drew her blade.
"Well well! Another fool wishes to die!" The tiefling laughed, his face full of mirth just before it turned to shock and Fyrehowl buried her blade in his gut. "What...?"
Without a word, the lupinal twisted the scimitar and the previously arrogant gang-leader screamed in agony. Action without thought by the creed of the Transcendent Order had bypassed Portent's curse.
"What was that you mentioned about the 'loths?" Fyrehowl asked, partially withdrawing her blade but keeping the tiefling at her mercy and in considerable agony.
Blood staining his shirt a brilliant crimson, the thug swiftly motioned for his fellows to back away and without hesitation the complied, with fully half of them bailing on the scene entirely and darting back into the maze of tents and stalls, abandoning their leader's plight. Meanwhile, shaken out of their fugue state, Clueless and Toras had regained their composure and Florian began healing their wounds.
"A month ago!" The injured tiefling whimpered and sputtered, "A month ago the 'loths marched a force into the city. The bloody Oinoloth himself was here."
"What?!" Fyrehowl's eyes went wide, "Details!"
The mention of the Ebon's presence in Portent immediately grabbed the attention of every single member of the party. Portent had no major population of yugoloths, and on the 3rd Furnace it was far from the major tide of the Blood War or yugoloth politics. There was no rational reason for the Oinoloth himself to appear unless there was something else going on.
"Didn't I say that we could show up and something of relevance would make itself apparent?" Clueless flashed a smile even as the gemstone in his ankle continued to flicker with internal light.
"I don't know why they came!" The tiefling protested, his face pale with fear and blood loss, "They marched through and they just started butchering anyone in their way in complete defiance of how things work here in Portent. I don't know how. They rounded up the leaders of every faction in the city. They rounded them up and hung and disemboweled them from the eaves of the Great Hall, right there under Laughing Jane's nose. The Oinoloth went in and stayed there for the better part of an hour. I don't know why. Presumably to speak with the babbling crone herself. Whatever went on there were a number of earthquakes immediately thereafter that tumbled more than few buildings."
"And then what?" Fyrehowl asked, the blade still buried in the man's gut.
"And then nothing!" He protested, "The Oinoloth waltzed out with a satisfied grin on his face, rounded up his army, glanced up at the bodies dangling like wind chimes and then vanished with his ilk through a gate. None of us were going to walk up and ask the bloody f*cking Oinoloth to explain himself! I don't think anyone has been back inside of the Great Hall since then to see if Laughing Jane is even still alive! Given what she is though, hell if I'm the one to find out!"
Fyrehowl narrowed her eyes, "And what is she?"
"F*ck if I know!" He winced as the blade bit deeper, "A tiefling as old as Portent itself. She just sits there next to that throne in the Great Hall babbling. Babbling from her mouth and the serpents that grow out of her eye sockets. All the groups here in Portent have always tried to be the ones to catch her ear in the hopes that she'll spill some important dark of prophecy in their favor."
"Get out of here..." Fyrehowl plucked her blade from the tiefling's gut, leaving him to cough and drop to the ground, clutching at the wound before scrambling off and leaving a trail of blood in his wake as the lupinal glanced at her companions, "Oh that spooks me the f*ck out, because that sounds just like the Cagequakes that we've been having of late..."
Collectively the group shivered at the accuracy of the comparison, even if perhaps only superficial.
Several more minutes passed as they finished tending to their wounds and Tristol mapped out the quickest route to the Great Hall and whatever awaited them there.
"So looks like you were right Clueless," Florian nodded at the bladesinger, "But it makes me wonder what here is so important to make the Oinoloth show up."
"They said something about Laughing Jane speaking prophecy, so perhaps he came to speak with her?" Clueless shrugged, "But if so, it's a damn eerie coincidence that the Oinoloth was stealing something from the Fraternity of Order discovered by their factol centuries back who just happened to make her breakthrough based on something she learned here in Portent from a man who shouldn't have existed at that point and who as far as we know had f*ck all connection to this Laughing Jane. There are far too many disparate threads all weaving together, but damn if I can't put my finger on what the tapestry depicts at this point."
It all seemed just on the edge of finding out what linked them all together. Perhaps they'd find out soon.
It took them another twenty minutes before they found themselves standing in the Great Hall's shadow, though they smelled it long before they saw it.
"Again we find something that reminds us of something else..." Clueless frowned as he looked up at the massive, ancient structure of the Great Hall, newly festooned with its rotting, dangling wind chime corpses.
The group paused before the Great Hall's heavy bronze doors and collectively gazed up to where the 'loths had executed the myriad leaders of Portent, hanging them from the eaves, or apparently for some, simply disemboweling them and leaving them to hang in horrid agony to die of blood loss, infection, or thirst rather than instantly from a broken neck. It was ever so much like how the Ebon had decorated Khin-Oin with the corpses of those greater yugoloths who'd failed to support his rise to power, though unlike the corpses of the ultroloths that dangling from the Tower's heights, the corpses dangling from Portent's Great Hall had been set up in a comparatively dispassionate, uncaring capacity. These victims in Portent didn't matter to their killers.
"Before something drips on us from up there, shall we?" Nisha quipped, gesturing at the blank metallic doors, scuffed and marred by age but devoid of any marks of origin or political affiliation. Located in the backwater of Gehenna, Portent was an enigma.
Hoping for answers Toras and Fyrehowl pulled at the doors and swung them wide, revealing the empty vastness of Portent's oldest building. There at its center a bizarre bone throne grew up from the floor itself, empty and enigmatic, and there waiting in the surrounding gloom, Laughing Jane smiled.
****
Colcook shuddered as he closed the door to the Marauder's chambers. Belatedly he turned and mouthed, "I'm sorry..." though the tiefling girl had already stepped inside. He turned to leave but then abruptly paused and listened, the argenach rilmani in tiefling guise's morbid curiosity getting the best of him.
The Marauder had been specific in her instructions as she'd sat in the unlit and windowless chamber, with only her one remaining eye shedding its luminous purple light to peel back the darkness. She'd specified an outfit. She'd specified colors, dimensions, and tactile measure in excruciating, obsessive detail. The woman had been given a persona to adopt, a situation not at all unusual for a prostitute, though she'd never before been tasked at impersonating an arcanaloth apprentice and never before consented to a profoundly invasive use of polymorph subschool magic.
The particular escort was new to Sigil, imported for the evening from one of the Gatetowns, and while she was expertly trained, she had neither a professional network of contacts and clients within Sigil itself. She was alone. She’d been hired under a dozen shell names to hide her actual client, and only once ensconced and under guard in Sigil had she presumably guessed that she’d be performing for the Marauder. That she’d been playing the role of the fiend’s former consort was bad enough, but that she’d do so while the Marauder remained a crippled wreck only made one end point certain: the woman would never be leaving that room.
His ears peeling back the protections of doors and walls, and his nature allowing him to bypass many of the ‘loth’s standard protections for security she kept around her employees except for those few times she interacted with the Oinoloth’s missives, Colcook/Jemorille listened.
For several minutes he heard the Marauder softly sobbing and the muffled sounds of the faux-'loth's pre-prepared dialogue. When the Marauder spoke back, the escort’s well played and in-character responses composed de novo were followed then by the sounds of their initial intimacy as they embraced, kissed, and then far more. It lasted for only a short while, the ending of their scene punctuated first by the Marauder's cries of ecstasy, a damning pause of silence, and then something that surprised even Colcook with its sudden ferocity.
"I NEVER LOVED YOU!" The Marauder screamed, her voice rent with bitterness, hatred, self-loathing, and lies.
The prostitute never had time to scream before she was hurled across the room by the ‘loth’s telekinesis, slamming into the door with enough force to dent it outwards by several inches with a sickening crunch of bone and flesh and the splintering of wood. She was dead before the King of the Crosstrade ripped her body free of the door, telekinetically wrenched it back across the space between and slammed it into the door amidst a blizzard of inchoate screaming by the Marauder before she began to weep.
Wide-eyed, Colcook left, shaken and disturbed.
****
