Patchwall 5, CY 593
69—Stalk, stalk, stalk.
Through her crystal ball, Prisantha sees Dabus in a shining celestial realm, lost in deep discussion with an angel. “Oh my,” she sobs. “They’re dead!”
“No, no,” Heydricus says. “Lucius is there. They must have plane shifted.”
They see Dabus walk over to a narrow stream and say a few words, his holy symbol clutched close to his brow. “Ooh, he’s scrying us!” Prisantha says. “Wave!”
Heydricus starts to wave, then thinks twice, and puts his hands on his hips. He snatches up a broken piece of worked stone, and uses it like chalk to scrawl ‘get here now’ on the floor next to Prisantha.
The celestial quintet plane shift back to Oerth, and find themselves within a chilly and stark mountainous region.
“Ah, Geoff,” Sonahmiin says. “How you have suffered.”
Between Gwendolyn and Jespo, the four adventurers and deva are able to teleport to Prisantha’s side. Hugs and greetings are exchanged, and Heyricus seems particularly interested to meet the angel whose body Dabus has been borrowing to smite evil with. After catching up, Prisantha writes a brief note of apology for the jail-break, and the Liberators of Tenh walk unchallenged out of the nicest prison money can buy.
-----
Prisantha discerns the location of Lizst’ statue. Surprisingly, it is in the royal wing of the Palace in Chendl—in a room given over to busts and portraits of former nobility! They find Lizst right where Prisantha’s spell indicated they would, and note that it has even been cleverly covered with a layer of dust, and ensconced to the back of a section filled with the most dull and uninspired of all the works.
“Why, Belvor himself must have come through here every day,” Prisantha says. She casts a greater dispelling at the statue, but her spell fails to break the transmutation. “This is tough,” she admits.
Gwendolyn has no better luck, but Jespo Crim proves up to the task. As Lizst returns to the flesh, Sonahmiin pats the frail conjurer on the shoulder and says, “Jespo, I apologize. I underestimated you, and thought uncharitable thoughts.”
Lizst is wounded, and must be healed, but Dabus can and will, and in a flash, the elementalist of air stands whole and restored before them, and is hearing the tale of Piscean’s treachery—and his true identity.
“Amazing,” Lizst says. “I never suspected him—he seemed such the sycophant. And frankly, he seems far to competent to be the infamous Ivid III.”
“We are going after him now,” Heydricus says, “and we’re going to get Belvor back. Come with us,” he suggests, nearly drooling at the probability of having the odds tipped in his favor for a change.
“I cannot,” Lizst says, without a trace of emotion. “You tell me young Pelegrin has been made King—my duty is with him.”
“What?” Heydricus says. “The kid is a pawn! We’re rescuing Belvor, g-ddamnit!”
“I am sworn to the throne, not the man,” Lizst says coolly.
“The cowardice of the wicked should not surprise anyone,” Sonahmiin says, staring hard daggers into the eyes of Lizst, his celestial anger radiating off of him in waves.
But the wizard is not intimidated. He stares back at the celestial, saying, “Neither should the arrogance of an angel.”
The two stare at one another for several long minutes while the rest of the party wonders if it is to be a fight after all.
Prisantha sighs and says, “Well, I hope someone around here takes care of their job, so we don’t have to keep pulling Furyondian asses out of the fire.”
“Aren’t you Furyondian?” Dabus asks.
“Verbobonc,” she says.
“Ah,” he replies.
“Hush!” Lucius says, as he is watching the confrontation nearly as intently as it is being waged. Eventually, the celestial turns and walks away from the wizard, although Lucius would later swear that he saw Lizst look away first.
-----
“Last night, I was thinking,” Heydricus says, as his companions prepare spells and ready weapons. The group is milling about in one of the palace’s forgotten ballrooms—Dabus is rendering his companions immune to cold. “I remembered the Sheildlanders that we led against the Temple, and the horror of that day. You know, I have always thought of that foray as a great defeat. But last night, I realized—we gave those people a gift. We gave them an opportunity to confront an enemy that had plagued them—a cowardly enemy hiding behind the apron-strings of a cowardly god. For a brief and shining moment, their destiny was their own, and retribution was before them.
“How many victims of these cruel men never have that chance? How many live their lives, suffer and die, never knowing their true tormenter? How many of those victims has Piscean made? Today, we are fighting for our own purposes, but we are also fighting for them—the innocents who do not possess the power to avenge the wrongs done by his hand.
“Piscean . . . Ivid . . . is wrong about what it is to be mighty. Power is not a license to serve the self, it is a great and meaningful duty. Sometimes we fail, we are human, but Piscean has embraced his failure and elevated it in his own mind into a truth. Whether we live or die, by our acts, by our action, we are expressing our understanding.” Heydricus starts to say more, then trails off, and lapses into silence.
“Well said,” Dabus states. “Retribution.”
“Retribution,” Jespo says.
“Here’s to one less a-shole,” Lucius mutters, but his cynical words do not conceal the admiration in his eyes as he looks at the Liberator.
-----
Sonahmiin opens a gate to the center of Piscean’s Hyperborean Obverse, and leads the party into Piscean’s lair. Unformed and organic in shape, the interior of Piscean’s tower is still entirely unnatural in appearance; the room is a warped oval, formed from several smaller oblong sections merged together seamlessly; the whole of the place foils the eye’s attempt to trace its outline and turns the viewer’s gaze back upon itself.
Rough stalagmites of ice jut from the floor, both singly and in clusters. Here and there, the stalagmites reach the ceiling and become columns, or protrude from the walls at unusual angles. Some of the stalagmite nests have had steps and shelves cut into them, forming crude balconies and terraces. Drifts of snow are piled against all angles and edges in the place, some of them are no larger than a man, while other mounds reach nearly halfway to the tall ceiling.
As the other Liberators follow the angel through the gate, they notice that an outcropping of stalagmites directly in front of them have all been sheared off at four feet in height, and lying motionless upon this icy bier is Piscean, either sleeping or dead. The pale mage is lying on his back, arms folded across his chest. Behind him, ice-crystals have grown out to form a fan-like shape framing the old man’s body.
As the Liberators move toward Piscean, weapons in hand, Sonahmiin places an antimagic zone directly on the beir. Heydricus bounds over toward the platform, and regards the mage carefully.
Lucius notices that several glittering objects are encased within one of the nearby stalagmites, as if flash-frozen within the thing. Keeping an eye on the bier, he moves to investigate, but as he does so, the stalagmite begins to creak and shudder, tearing itself free of its ground. As it begins to slowly totter toward the assassin, twin spikes of ice crystallize at equidistant points in the center of the mass. They grow out a full ten feet before animating, and as the stalactite shuffles forward, these icy limbs begin to beat at the air with a clumsy whip-like motion.
As the party reacts to this threat, several other stalactites animate, seven in all, each one containing objects within its mass: weaponry, clothing, jewelry and gear—adventurer’s gear.
“Hey, that’s my sword!” Regda says happily.
“And that one has my crystal ball!” Prisantha gasps.
Each of the Liberators has a frozen counterpart—an animated golem of frost and ice with one adventurer’s worth of magic items encased within it.
Heydricus displaces himself, and moves to a position where he can strike Piscean if the old man moves. As he does so, Sonahmiin settles the matter by chopping the prostate body into pieces. At that moment, the golem encasing Gwendolyn’s staff of frost unleashes a cone of cold that blasts the heroes at the gate’s opening. Jespo Crim responds by entangling a pair of the creatures with a summoned field of black tentacles.
“No soul escaped this corpse,” Sonahmiin says grimly.
“Beware a magic jar!” Jespo shouts.
In response, Lucius begins to study the constructs, thinking that perhaps one of them might hold the mind of their enemy, but to his eyes they seem like nothing more than what they appear.
Prisantha is cornered by two of the creatures, and lashed furiously by their writhing tentacle-like arms, so she quickly extricates herself with a mislead spell, leaving her illusionary double behind to take the beating meant for her.
Heydricus, however, is also fooled by the illusion, and cries out in terror as he sees what he believes is Prisantha battered into a bloody mess by the ice-golems. He leaps at them attacking like a madman, and calls for Dabus to join him. The two stalwart servants of Tritherion knock thick shards of ice from their enemies, and soon destroy them outright.
Prisantha, safely invisible, and several feet from her illusionary double notices Heydricus’ efforts on her behalf, and finds herself strangely touched. Never let it be said that the Enchantress of Verbobonc makes the same mistake twice, because she does not share this sudden realization through her telepathic bond: “I am in love with him.” She keeps this to herself, marveling at the simplicity as well as the implication of the thought.
She does, however, assure everyone that she is safe. “An illusion, no more—I have misled them,” she thinks through the telepathic bond.
Sonahmiin makes himself etheric, reasoning that the demi-plane must be connected to the ethereal, and soon notices a thin patch of ice that conceals a secret door. Returning to the physical, he opens the door, and hurries through, followed by Lucius, Redga and Dabus. Heydricus remains behind with the wizards to finish off the clumsy golems before chasing after his companions through the secret door.
But he needn’t have hurried. There are no more dangers within the Hyperborean Obverse, just a three-level tunnel complex containing workrooms, strangely appointed chambers and libraries of rare books. In one unusual chamber, several ice-carvings depict well-known personages of the Marklands. None of them are regulars at court, but are all occasional guests of Furyondy’s King. Many are minor nobility, the sort who have inherited small ancestral claims throughout the realm, but there are also nobles from Veluna and the environs of Verbobonc represented.
After a quick search of the place turns up neither Piscean nor any other dangers, the group returns to the large chamber to sort through the magical gear left behind by the destroyed golems. The group finds all of the equipment stolen by their assassins amongst the ice-shards, save for Heydricus’ holy relics and his portable hole. This latter is discovered beneath the hacked corpse of Piscean’s clone. Relived, the Liberator discovers that his relics are within, along with a note:
Dearest Heydricus,
If you are reading this, then I can only assume that you have accepted my offer. Congratulations on your vision and daring. I never doubted you for an instant, although you do play hard to get! I am confident that you will find that we are perfectly matched. In time, I am sure that you will wonder what you ever did without me, and I the same.
With deepest regards on the eve of our first triumph (may it not be the last!) I await you,
Piscean of the Four
“What the f-ck is with this guy,” Lucius would like to know. But the Liberator only shrugs.
“I think he’s in love with you, Heydricus,” Gwendolyn laughs. “He acts like just like one of your fawning fans. Could it be that he has done all this to win your recognition?”
“Oh yeah, like killing him would work,” Lucius says, rolling his eyes. “Wizards.”
“F-ck what Piscean wants,” Heydricus mutters, clearly uncomfortable with the line of speculation.
Prisantha wipes the ice shavings from her crystal ball of true seeing, and surprisingly, determines to reunite herself with her most prized possession by scrying Halrond. The head of Tritherion’s secular organization is seen riding his horse into a lather across the scrub-plains of Tenh.
“I suppose this means my demand was a success,” she muses. “Although, I am a bit disappointed at his resources.”
“Really,” Jespo says, “a man of his stature riding a horse! How mundane.”
“Halrond has always favored the direct over the supernatural,” Dabus says. “It makes him a better politician, I think.”
“Let us concern ourselves with our enemies,” Sonahmiin says. “Scry the mage.”
Prisantha does so, and disturbingly, her crystal ball reveals a battlefield scene. In a tree-lined river valley, two groups of armored knights hack at one another from horseback. Butrain’s banner can be seen, along with the insignia of several notable Southern Lords. They are opposed by many of the Northern knights who were just yesterday calling for the Liberators’ arrest.
Piscean stands next to the boy-king Pelegrin, on a rise removed from the general melee. He is cloaked by an illusion, however, and seems to mundane eyes to be Furyondy’s new master of arms—Esril’s replacement!
“Where is Esril, anyway?” Jespo wonders, but receives no reply.
As they watch the scene, Piscean is counseling the young king in a fatherly tone. “Choose well my liege,” he says. “You must take care to fight someone worthy of your station.”
As Prisantha breaks her scrying, the Liberators of Tenh discuss their strategy.
“Let us not repeat the debacle in front of the Lords,” Prisantha suggests. “We may find ourselves fighting far too many foes if we enter that battle. We should bring Piscean to us.”
“Well, that would be a refreshing change,” Jespo agrees.
Sonahmiin motions the group for silence, and clasps his hands together. He speaks a wish in Elder Celestial, beseeching Tritherion to return the Liberators to the same state of mind in which they began the day—fully rested, and with a full compliment of spells.
“Well, thank you,” Prisantha says, curtseying to the angel.
“Don’t thank me, earn it,” Sonahmiin replies curtly. “Gratitude is for the hollow halls of Mount Celestia. When you speak to me, you speak to Tritherion, and only deeds interest Him.” And in Prisantha’s head, he sternly adds, “And stop sending dreams to the Liberator!”
Prisantha responds with a sassy wink and a grin. She then demands that Piscean, “Return to your demi-plane at once, and join the Liberator. We are waiting for you, please hurry.” Pris receives the reply “Just a moment, dear,” and says, “I think I got him, but I cannot be sure. We should wait for him here.”
Lucius shakes his head. “All this mumbo-jumbo,” he says. “Did it work? Didn’t it? Here or there what does it really matter? I’m going to stab him in the same spot; his f-cking spine.”
“I want to dispel one of his enchantments,” Gwendolyn says, excitedly. “He is the most powerful wizard I have ever helped to kill.”
“As for myself,” Jespo says, “I resolve not to die.”
“Good thinking, baby!” Regda exclaims.
“You have been getting all Thrommel on us recently,” Heydricus concurs. “I like this strategy; we set an ambush, and no one dies.”
-eating-grin, can still be helpless in a romantic subplot.
