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14. We Were Monsters, or The Rasheman Witch Project


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#1 Guest_Oryx_*

Posted 03 December 2002 - 11:00 PM

14. We Were Monsters; or The Rasheman Witch Project

13 FLAMERULE 1400
OUTSIDE THE GNOLL STRONGHOLD

SPLASH!

“Sorry, Onyx! Minsc squeezed his water flask too hard yet again in his haste to drink!”

“Like, you totally splashed Sir Onyx again! That is soooo funny!”

Onyx shook his head out as he returned to the present. He looked over at his Rashemanian friend, the giggling teenaged undead hunter Buffy next to him, and up at the gnoll stronghold now looming before them all. “Actually, it was quite refreshing,” he chuckled.

“The place is far from vacant,” Arra Flyte called from nearby while looking through a spyglass, her elven chainmail glimmering in the afternoon sun. “Gnolls still inhabit this stronghold, apparently. Lots of them.” The multitalented elven Harper handed the spyglass to Valygar, who looked through and nodded.

Onyx pulled out another and looked through. “Yes, there are many more than last time I was here, and they look more organized.” Minsc and Jaheira exchanged surprised glances. “It’s like a whole gnoll town!”

Indeed it was. The various levels of the old fortress were crawling with gnolls, who seemed to be marching around in an organized fashion. Many were carrying crates of supplies to and fro, with their halberds slung over their backs; others held them at the ready as if on guard duty. Many of these were standing beside pyramidal piles of stones; each about as large as a man’s head. “Hurling rocks,” Arra pointed out.

“Guess they’ve finally gotten smart enough to use ranged weapons against intruders,” Jaheira grimaced, “Bummer.”

“Minsc and Boo and friends shall fight their way through gnoll after gnoll after gnoll, kicking gnoll-butt and taking gnoll-names along the way, and when they give little gnoll-pleads for mercy, Minsc will only stick his boot up their gnoll-rears once more, and then…”

“It may not be so simple,” the group’s only druid interrupted. “Arra and Dawn, do we have enough magic to blast them away?”

“Between my repertoire and my wands, I still don’t think so,” Arra, the group’s only mage, bit her lip.

“I concur,” nodded the group’s only cleric, Dawn, idly polishing with a thumb the Lathanderian emblem on her breastplate.

“Don’t forget about our exploding ammunition,” Valygar reminded as he twirled an orange-headed arrow in his fingers.

“Even with enough raw firepower,” Arra began as she continued looking through her spyglass, “We have defensive and range concerns. It’ll be a literal uphill battle, and it looks as though they have some gnoll shamans and mages among their ranks.”

“There’s a decent degree of cover,” Valygar pointed out, “And we have the equipment and spells to protect ourselves from their foul magics to a good degree.”

“Yes, but we’ll still be going uphill against a hail of boulders,” Arra sighed, and the rest of the party looked non-eagerly at the heavily manned (or rather, gnolled) fortress up the rocky mountainside from them. “Wait…why don’t we give them a hail of boulders?” the Harper’s voice brightened as she tilted her spyglass further up.

Everyone followed her line of sight, and it dawned upon each of them (at various speeds) what she was getting it. The gnoll stronghold was built against the side of a mountain, and a rocky one at that. Stronghold Mountain, it was only known as. Higher up, above the stronghold, the mountaintop was dotted with piles of rocks and boulders.

“Avalanche them?” Onyx inquired.

“Exactly!” Arra grinned.

“Very clever,” Onyx chuckled and drew a smile from her.

“Wouldn’t we risk burying our supposed doorway to the Jeweler’s palace under a pile of rubble?” Jaheira wondered.

“Between the natural strength and the giant-belts among us; I think we could clear them away if it came to that,” Onyx said.

“The amount of loose rubble up there isn’t that great,” Arra analyzed, “I don’t think we’d bury the decks of the stronghold, just send boulders rolling across them. As long as we’re careful with our detonation.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Onyx nodded, “The way around to the top was this way, if I recall,” he pointed and began to lead.

Rather than crossing the bridge leading to the front archways of the stronghold, the party ran up a side trail along the far side of a mountain stream that fed into the river over which said bridge ran. The trail sloped upward, steeper and steeper, and they began to climb the side of the mountain. The stronghold and the river delta at its foot now loomed below them, the mountain peak up ahead. Stronghold Mountain was, in fact, once part of the Cloudpeaks, but this river had over the eons cut a wide but rocky valley between it and the other peaks of the range. Now, it loomed a lonely mountain over the coast, with the stronghold built against its base; the reason for the fortress’s placement – and the identities of those responsible - long forgotten.

As their elevation increased, the trail became steeper but the stream became smaller, more of a mountain brook, and finally they crossed it without a bridge. After about half an hour more of hiking, they passed the tree line, and stood upon bare rocks. The view grew ever more majestic; upon the south side of the mountain they could see both the Sea of Swords to the west, the separated range of Cloudpeaks to the south, and the fields and forests of Nashkel’s environs to the east. Still they climbed up, and at last reached the barren, rocky peak of Stronghold Mountain.

Arra looked down through her spyglass at the stronghold set against the side of the mountain below. She carefully traced out with her eyes the paths that a falling boulder would take as it went down the mountain; indeed, the slick side had the look of a place that had seen avalanches in the past. “Alright, gang, the thing to do is to set potions of explosions at the bases of the boulders on their uphill sides; tie ropes around the bottles and tie these ropes back to each other in a branching fashion, making one big fuse, and then to light the end of it once all is set.”

Arra began to point to various boulders, and her companions ran about tying ends of ropes around potions and then wedging the bottles in their bases. Soon they had rigged a few dozen boulders, and began to trail the ropes back, cut them to appropriate lengths, and tie them to one another in a reverse-branching fashion, eventually culminating in a single end. Arra walked about the operation; trying to visualize in her mind the trajectories each boulder would take.

She looked through her spyglass down at the stronghold itself. Gnolls still swarmed over its surface, moving large crates about. She noticed a smithy and an outdoor kitchen – which had a number of humanoid skeletons strewn about it - being operated on different decks; and she saw patrols walking up and down the paths around the stronghold.

“Alright, get back everybody!” the muscular elven lady called and the other six walked back along the rocky plateau to a place well behind the rigged boulders and ropes. She walked back to the one free end of the branching tree of rope on the ground, and squatted over it. She put her hands together and then splayed all ten fingers out in a fan. She chanted a few arcane syllables, and an arc of fire blossomed like webbing from her fingers and caught the tip of the rope alight. It burned along, and as it came to the first fork in the rope, each piece caught on fire, and then these forked and each branch caught fire from it, and after a few more forks there was a single rope burning down toward each boulder. The ropes had been equated in length, curling around when necessary, and each potion of explosions was reached at once.

The party members, now hiding behind a large unrigged boulder, heard a deafening chain of explosions and could see fire leaping high into the sky. Small chunks of rock flew around the sides of their boulder. And then, they could hear the other boulders beginning to roll. The seven eagerly ran around the sides of their hiding place and up to the edge of the plateau. Their boulders were beginning to roll down the sloping side of Stronghold Mountain, and began hitting other boulders as they went, which too began to roll. The impacts slowed down the original boulders, but then gravity would pick them up again, and they would continue to carve paths of chaos down the side of the mountain. So too smaller rocks hit by the others began to tumble end over end, and soon an entire river of rock was roaring down the mountain.

Looking through her spyglass again, Arra could see the gnolls on the stronghold looking up in frozen awe at the great noise and the strange sight, and then they began to howl in panic. But so thick upon the decks of the stronghold were they that few could move quickly in the throng, and they pushed each other around in the crowd as the avalanche bore down upon them. And then, the first rocks of the avalanche sailed over the short cliff just above the stronghold, and crashed into the gnolls upon it. The sounds of their canine howls and their bones breaking filled the air, and more and bigger rocks came too, smashing entire gnolls under them, or hitting the stone of the deck and bouncing and rolling into gnolls, ramming them, driving over them, knocking them off the decks and sending them already broken, to fall and break again on lower decks or natural rocks below. Still more of the avalanche poured over the stronghold, burying gnolls, breaking their bones, halberds, crates, and other equipment. The gnolls knocked into each other, inadvertently impaling one another on their improperly sheathed halberds, and those that managed to survive the first rocks, and tried to crawl over them to safety, were then hit as more sailed through the air and landed upon them.

From above, the party could now only see a great cloud of dust rising over the stronghold, but they could hear the drowning roar of the avalanche, and also the feral howls of the gnolls being crushed under the geological tide. After a few more minutes, both sounds stopped. The air was now eerily quiet by contrast. The party members could hear only the faint rushing sounds of the river below, the idle songs of birds flying through the air around them, the breathing of their companions, and the beating of their own hearts.

The air was pierced by victorious cries from the party, and they hugged one another and cheered. Onyx and Minsc hoisted Arra up on their shoulders and carried her around the plateau in a little mock parade and congratulated her clever plan. She laughed heartily as they set her down, but then bade them to hurry down the mountain; for most of the mission, and the worst of it, was yet to go.

The party came back down the mountain trail, and back to the bridge. It was wise that they had their ranged weapons at the ready, for the gnoll patrols which had been outside the stronghold still roamed about, quite confused and scared, but still did not hesitate in charging the adventurers when they saw them; goaded on by their rage at the recent turn of events in their gnoll-town. They were easily dispatched by the sure shots of the party, who at last came to the makeshift front gate of the stronghold, which had been crushed by rocks that were easy enough to step over.

They made their way up the steps, and Jaheira nodded approvingly as they came onto the lower deck of the stronghold. It was indeed not buried, and in fact it was possible to find one’s way across the actual floor of the deck over the very small rocks. Boulders were scattered about, but they did not cover the deck; and many had been broken into smaller chunks in their fall. A few gnollish bodies still twitched, most partially covered by rocks, but none seemed to be in any condition to offer resistance, if indeed they were still truly alive at all.

“Well, here’s the pit,” Onyx pointed to a pit in the upper deck, in which the Rashemanian Wychalarn known as Dynaheir had once been chained, in which now a huge boulder happened to be sitting. “This is the one…”

“…where….Minsc and friends rescued…Dynaheir….” Minsc looked down at his feet and stroked Boo.

The ranger’s moment of sad reflection was interrupted when one of the doors leading into a tower of the keep burst open and a squad of gnolls began pouring out. First came a row of them with halberds, and though Valygar, Arra, and Buffy wasted no time in sinking arrows and bolts into them while Dawn and Jaheira thought quickly and prepared spells, they came on with the shafts of the missiles sticking out of their armor. Then a squad of gnolls appeared on top of the tower and began hurling down boulders while Minsc and Onyx drew out melee weapons and charged the first group.

The halberd-brandishing gnolls had come a few yards from the door when the warriors from Rasheman and Candlekeep engaged them, both shouting defeaning war cries in their native tongues which caused half the gnoll squad to freeze in terror. While halberds crossed with two-handed swords, more gnolls poured out of the doorway behind the first wave of warriors. First came a quartet of gnolls carrying large two-handed hammers instead of halberds, and bearing emblems of gnollish deities on their armor, and then behind them another in ragged robes with quarterstaffs, and these eight were chanting in strange, animalistic growls. Jaheira and Dawn completed their priest spells, and storms of flame, acid, and lightning descended upon the boulder-throwing gnolls on top of the tower. The rock-hurling snipers howled as their fur and fleshed burnt; several fell over the edge of the tower and conveniently landed upon the gnoll spellcasters below and disrupted a few of them. Into the rest of these Arra cast a burst of chain lightning, which burned gnoll-flesh and disrupted gnoll-concentration. Minsc and Onyx were hacking straight through gnollish halberds, and the warrior gnolls themselves, with easy swings from Gram and Carsomyr, and the two mighty warriors started on the spellcasters once finishing off the front line. Valygar and Arra sent arrows flying around Minsc’s and Onyx’s helmeted heads into their foes, and soon Jaheira and Buffy ran up and joined the melee with their scimitars and longswords flashing. Dawn knocked aside a falling rock with her shield while Arra notched an arrow and shot the gnoll above who had dared survive the storms to toss down this last boulder.

As the gnollish clerics and mages were assaulted and shredded by the adventurers, one mage decided in the nick of time he’d be better off running through the door he’d unwisely decided to burst out of in the first place, and turned and fled just after Carsomyr slashed his quarterstaff in two but before it slashed him in two as well. Onyx gave chase, and Minsc and Jaheira and Buffy followed him, but just as Onyx ran through the door, the gnoll mage, now inside the room, turned and cast a fireball at the cavalier. Onyx ducked and it hit the arch over the doorway with a loud explosion, collapsing the open doorway under a pile of bricks. While the magical fire burned harmlessly around him, Onyx wasted no time in charging the mage and gutting him cleanly on his greatsword, which he then twisted and jerked so hard that he tore the beast-mage in half.

The cavalier turned to see himself trapped alone by the collapsed door, his adventuring companions yelling for him from the other side. The room was dark and foul-smelling, the only light coming from makeshift ‘windows’, i.e. single missing bricks, in the high wall overhead. There had once been usable furniture in the room but it was now mostly smashed up; the only real ‘tables’ were loose bricks that had been piled into larger blocks for setting things upon. He was about to put his sword away and start tossing the bricks blocking the doorway aside when he heard heavy steps behind him and turned. A huge gnoll in unusually well-made and probably enchanted armor and a helmet, all suitably shaped for a gnoll, was coming down the hall from the next chamber, holding a dark metal double-ended double-sided halberd which gleamed with fire and ice at one end and acid and electricity at the other.

“GRRRR!” the gnoll growled, “YOU DARE FACE GNAMESH IN HIS ABODE! YOU WILL PAY, WEAK HUMAN!” He swung the high end of his halberd at Onyx, who parried it with the end of Carsomyr. The gnoll then brought the lower end swinging around forward, and the cavalier hopped over it as it swung by, then brought his huge sword down at Gnamesh and hit him on the head, but didn’t get through his helmet. The gnoll, instead of following through with his first low swing, simply then brought the low end of his halberd swinging back the other way, and its back blade caught the human in the shin and sent electricity crackling around him. The cavalier felt his left it tingling harmlessly across his blue dragonscales, and swung down with Carsomyr again and this time managed to crack through the gnoll’s armor into his left shoulder and cause dark blood to spurt forth.

Gnamesh responded by heaving the top of his halberd forward, bringing the top into the side of Onyx's helmet. The blade was unable to pierce his armor, and the icy shards that leapt from the edge melted as they touched the cavalier's helm. Onyx knocked the halberd back by pushing his blade against its handle, then swung Carsomyr in a quick half-circle down at the legs of Gnamesh, who managed to parry it with the lower half of his halberd just in time. No sooner had they clanged weapons than Onyx swung high again and Gnamesh came in with his top blade, and they clanged between each other's faces. Human and gnoll growled at one another across halberd blade and sword edge, and both tried to push but they were equal in strength. The cavalier's growl gave way to a deep chant to Torm, and a column of light briefly enshrouded him and as it left, he pushed with renewed strength and sent Gnamesh stumbling back into the wall of the room. Onyx wasted no time in sticking Carsomyr forward and charging to impale his foe; and the gnoll braced his halberd shaft to intercept it. The tip of Carsomyr, however, just missed it and speared at Gnamesh's body as the edge of the holy avenger scraped along his weapon's shaft. Gnamesh tried to push his halberd sideways to knock the tip of Carsomyr away, but the cavalier in his imbued might would not have his weapon budged, and stabbed still true, impaling the armored gnoll upon the blade, and pushing it through the wall until it was buried in Gnamesh up to its hilt.

"Humans ARE NOT WEAK!" Onyx snarled, and looked Gnamesh in his eyes, which looked beastlike, but did have the glimmer of intelligence. Gnamesh tried to push forward with his halberd and knock back the cavalier, but his foe simply grabbed the halberd and pulled it away from him, nearly tearing off his thick, furry fingers in the process, and threw it across the room with such strength that it lodged in the floor. Onyx then pulled Carsomyr out of the wall and Gnamesh's chest, and the gnoll fell onto the floor with a gaping hole in his chest and dark red blood rapidly covering his armor and the floor around him.

"You are one who not, I see," Gnamesh growled from the floor in pain, blood frothing out of his mouth. Onyx had a look of shock, not from the gore, but from the gnoll’s grasp of common, even as he lay dying. “Why you here, human? Gold-hunting adventurer? I see your holy sword; you ‘paladin.’ You come wipe out gnolls? I can feel pain of your ‘holy avenger weapon’ – it hurt me more for my beliefs. You think it ‘righteous’ to hurt me for beliefs? Think it noble to wipe out non-humans, human?”

“No, Gnamesh," the victorious human spoke calmly, "I’m here because you serve the Jeweler. I know this because your lair is the only entrance to his, and his minions must come and go through here.”

The gnoll seemed to squint as Onyx spoke, trying to cognize his words, and then he breathed and spoke. “All I know some come through pit, we guard their entrance, they give us food. Simple.”

“You are his minions, then,” Onyx stated.

“Why you go where not wanted anyway? This gnoll home! Not human home! You come here and kill when you could stay in human towns. You just like group that came last year, wiped most of us out! Someday, someday Gnamesh fear all places will be human towns, and no place left for gnolls. Then gnolls and orcs and other large beings will all be gone. Maybe you kill elves and dwarves and others too, leave only humans? That your way. You call us ‘monsters’, come kill us in own home because how we look different from you, even when we not come attack you. You the monster.”

“The gnolls of this stronghold can hardly be said to mind their own business. I have seen what you eat, or should I say whom. And I know of the group who came here last year, I was among them as well. The only reason we stormed the stronghold was that you had taken a human captive. A dark-skinned lady in indigo robes, I suspect you remember her?”

Gnamesh gave a bored sigh, “We capture and eat trespassers. Shouldn’t be here; this gnoll place. She probably just another meal.”

“Wrong. On our way to the stronghold last year, I remember coming across a lone gnoll. He told us he had been banished for trying to eat her; he said the rest were silly for not wanting to do the same. Someone wanted her alive. I want to know why, and I suspect you were on the chain of command, Gnamesh.”

The gnoll chieftain gave a low feral chuckle. “I remember witch lady now. Name Die-na-heer. We get orders to send squad, Wood of Sharp Teeth, capture her. Not know why, but we do as told.”

“Orders from whom!?” Onyx demanded.

“Same as food-for-guarding. Man in black with katanas. Calls himself Saint. He said when and where she pass through woods. I not know how he knew. We ambush them and capture her, and wait for more orders from Saint, but you come first and rescue her too soon.”

“Why did he want her, Gnamesh? Why did he want her alive?”

“I not know. Really I not care. You humans have too complicated concerns. Drag us into it. Make your problem everybody problem. Make us your problem. You think all gnolls problem. I said you weak, but I know truth. Humans very curious, clever, aggressive. Maybe good trait, but not for us. You are better than us, I know. Gnamesh is one gnoll smart enough to see. I see, paladin man, you stronger than any human should be. You humans natural weak, but master invention and magic. I feel your strength, enhanced somehow, you enhance it more during our fight, become stronger than me, a strongest gnoll. And your smiths better, make you better weapon and armor than me. See, humans natural weak, but they have...what your word...ingenuity. Other giants, orcs, gnolls, say you weak. But Gnamesh can see, you will win. Some day the rest of us will all be gone. We have no ingenuity, and elves and 'high' demihumans not enough aggression. I know what will come. Someday, only humans left. I not so sad. I lived good gnoll life. Much eating, battle, mating. I near death anyway; gnolls not live long. I happy to die; not want to live in future, in your world. Someday, only you remain. Your children many generations, famous paladin man, tell their children stories about monsters of old, stories their parents told them, about how you kill evil monsters. They not understand our world. But we understand, you human and I gnoll. We here in our world today, we fought each other fierce, and we know truth. We both know that once, we were monsters.”

Gnamesh gave a final growling sigh and died. Onyx stood up, and quietly took off his helmet, and placed it over his left breast, and gave a solemn goodbye salute with his right hand. “It didn’t have to be this way, Gnamesh,” he whispered sadly to the carcass. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” He bit his lip and a few tears streamed down his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

Onyx began to take loose bricks from the collapsed doorway, digging his way out, but instead of throwing them aside, he carefully placed them over the body of Gnamesh, until he had covered the body in a burial cairn. He drew Carsomyr again, and upon the wall behind the Gnamesh’s final resting place carved the words:

He who fights monsters should take care that he himself does not become a monster.

Words of some ancient philosopher, he could not remember the name, which Gorion been fond of repeating to him, after his training sessions, after his jousting tournaments, after his kobold-hunting romps.

The other party members were busy tossing bricks aside with their hands, trying to open up the doorway and hoping Onyx was okay inside. Just then, a smashing sound could be heard from a section of the wall next to the collapsed doorway, and they stepped back in trepidation. The bricks were pulverized by an unseen force and fell outwards, many in pieces, and they could see Onyx’s gauntleted fists shooting through them rapidly. After punching out a functional door with his hands, the superhumanly strong cavalier stepped through, dusting his gauntlets off on each other.

“I’m fine,” he held up his arms, “I think that was their leader inside.”

“Oh cool!” Buffy clapped her hands. “Sir Onyx killed the chief monster!”

“He was no monster!” Onyx shouted at her, then silently apologized for shouting with an open palm, but it all seemed lost on the young undead hunter anyway.

“Oh, so like, a man was leading them?” Buffy inquired, her words gummed by the smacking of her mouth as she endlessly chewed that weird stuff she never swallowed.

“No, he…was a gnoll.” Onyx sighed. Buffy looked thoroughly confused. “Never mind,” Onyx finished, and Buffy just gave a weird shrug while blowing a bubble. Minsc scratched his bald head and whispered to Boo, and the rest of the group remained silent, tactful enough to let it lie.

“We have kicked the evil gnoll butts once again!” Minsc cried.

“Minsc,” Onyx’s voice took on a serious tone, and he walked up to the ranger and put his hands on the man’s shoulders, and stared up several inches into the large man’s eyes. “Now, I need you to think carefully. Try to remember exactly how Dynaheir got here. Please.”

Minsc’s face grew long. “Minsc does not like to remember these things…he failed his first witch twice…he hopes he does not fail his new witch…”

“So do I, big guy, so do I,” Onyx nodded. That sure was true. Jaheira rolled her eyes. “But I need you to remember.”

“Well, gnolls came upon us in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, and took Minsc and Dynaheir by surprise! They bonked Minsc on the head and made his already bad headache worse, and when Minsc came to, his witch was gone! Minsc learned to hate gnolls then, gnolls very mean! Then Boo said we should keep going, so we got to Nashkel and found you, great heroes to help, and then we began our quests to kick the various backsides of a diverse array of evils across Faerun!”

“But why would they take her?”

“Gnolls are nasty! They are mean and evil and eat people!”

“While that’s true; why would they take only her and leave you?”

The Rashemanian scratched his chin. “Funny I did not think of this! Minsc is after all much more meat to eat! Perhaps he was too tough for their tastes?”

“Minsc, why were you coming to the Sword Coast?”

“To be Dynaheir’s bodyguard and complete my dejemma! Onyx is being silly, he knows these things!”

“No, no, why did Dynaheir want to come west in the first place? She told me once that great things were foretold for the Sword Coast; what was she talking about and how did she know? Why was she here?” Onyx cursed himself for not having pressed her further when he had the chance.

“I do not know! It was not necessary for Minsc to know, only to guard his witch, which he did not do very well…. Minsc is so ashamed!…”

Onyx let go of the ranger’s shoulders and turned away. The other party members could see he was deep in uneasy thought. Onyx looked up at their extremely curious faces and decided he owed a proper explanation. “Their leader in there…he was one who captured Dynaheir last year…and apparently the Saint was behind it…the lead gnoll said didn’t know why…”

“Strange indeed,” Jaheira nodded, “But there is only one way to find out more now.” She looked pointedly at the boulder filling the pit. Onyx signaled to Minsc and the two men kneeled over opposite sides of the pit and grabbed the sides of the boulder. Each grunted and Minsc’s fire giant belt began to glow as they pulled the boulder up inch by inch. They moved their hands around toward the bottom of the boulder as it came up out of the pit, then with a 1-2-3 shout both heaved the boulder to one side and the pit was free.

“Well, here goes nothing,” Onyx cleared his throat as he brushed boulder-dust off his gauntlets. “KLATOO, VERATA, NIKTO! HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!”

At the utterance of the password, the scraping sound of stone-on-stone sounded from the bottom of the pit, and as the party members looked over its edge, they could see the floor beginning to move. It was sliding sideways, disappearing brick by brick into the wall of the pit, which could now be seen to go much deeper. The twisting staircase which had gone the ten feet to the floor of the pit now kept going, spiraling down, down into the darkness. Cold, clean, and slightly salty air rushed up out of the pit and assaulted the party.

“The last leg of our quest begins,” Onyx stated and began to walk down the spiraling staircase, drawing out his sunblade Daystar to light the way as the other six party members followed one by one.

**********

13 FLAMERULE 2000
ATHKATLA – SOMEWHERE IN THE GOVERNMENT DISTRICT

Athkatlan Councilmember Dwein Seroindose laid asleep in his opulent bedchambers, a dozing courtesan on either side of him, mumbling to himself and wearing his precious amulet even in slumber. The amulet began to glow red, and though it emitted no heat or noise and did not outwardly appear to disturb the conjurer's sleep of that of his hired companions, he did suddenly fall into a most unpleasant dream.

He stood in a dark room before a table, behind which sat eight figures in blood-red robes, their faces obscured beneath their hoods.

“Edwin Odesseiron, you progress displeases us,” one spoke.

“Are you going to fail us yet again?” inquired the second.

“Your first mission was so simple, and yet you failed,” hissed the third.

“The Saint got to her first and took her alive. And still you couldn’t get to her yourself,” lamented the fourth.

“Do you know how close the Wychalarn came to fulfilling her purpose?” moaned the fifth.

“Be thankful that Joneleth Irenicus finished your job for you,” chuckled the sixth.

“You’ll find no such dumb luck this time, do your job yourself,” demanded the seventh.

“Do not dare to fail, Edwin Odesseiron,” threatened the eighth.

The red wizard awoke in a cold sweat.




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