Griska Ironrain
Oh, the hidden stars!
Graklak went to see about a star reading before we headed out. He was told that the overcast the night before made a reading impossible. With that out of the way, we headed back to the ruins. As we headed own the stairwell to return where we had left off, we noticed some creatures seemingly posted as guards. There were 2 Barbazu. As we continued forward, another creature suddenly appeared on the stairs below us as well. He was also clearly some sort of Devil. He introduced himself as Urevian, claiming he wanted to strike a deal with us. We listened while he explained he would leave, taking all his Devils with him, opening the way to the sealed lowest level & even have his Fleshwarps clear some other monsters away for us. All in exchange for the soul of the idiot Carmen, who stole the sword of one of the founders of Otari. We chose to attack instead, since his soul was not ours to give... Urevian was clearly displeased & told us we had best not travel deeper, before disappearing. We killed one of the Barbazu. The other one cast a spell and disappeared. We then made out way back to the arena, where we found the corpses had all been moved into the center of the arena. There might even have been a few more in with what we had killed. While the corpses did not have any magic, we did find some buried in the dirt of the arena! We continued exploring to the south back in the hall we had just come through. We found a set of locked doubled doors. Mel heard speech coming from beyond them while she attempted to pick them. After some time passed she managed to pick the lock on the doors, with some magical assistance from Rosa.
Griska and Graklak stepped up to open the doors while Rosa faded back. Inside we saw 4 creatures. 1 of the large Wurm creatures floating near the ceiling, 2 Drider type creatures on the walls, near the ceiling & one of the creatures with many sharp bladed arms on the floor in the center of the room. As the doors swung open the worm creatures cast a spell at Sprite, blasting him and making him afraid! The fight was on. The creature on the ground died very quickly, followed by the 2 Driders. Though, the Driders did cause some trouble, trapping Graklak in the room when we tried to retreat out. We had to get back in to rescue him, though he held his own until we could do so. Lastly, we killed the Wurm creature, which was clearly the leader of this bunch. We found notes in the room about experiments conducted by the Wurm creature. The notes were about the Shanrigol Behemoth in the arena. There was also various loot and magic spread about the room, including several keys, which Mel held on to. We decided to hole up here and recuperate. While we did so, we identified items and looked through the notes we had found. We were able to rest without interruption.
What is over here?
We then continued on past where we had fought the rock creatures. Very soon we found 3 large scaly creatures with many heads resting in a water area. They did not seem to notice us, so we took some time to try to remember if anyone knew anything about these. Rosa and Mel recognized these as Hydras. We decided to leave them sleeping, because they looked scary. Zebott decided to see if he could sneak forward to see what was around the corner, past them. He was gone for a short time, before he snuck back to the group. He told the group he had found another glassed in, seeming viewing area. He also found the bottom of the ladders that led back up to the room where we had fought the mimics. We decided to head back into the central column that led up and down to check out the door on the far side. It turned out to lead to a walkway with the clear stone walls where we could see more of the rough hewn cavern. However, Mel found a hidden door in an alcove along the way. We were surprised to find we were on the other side of the glass wall where we had fought the sonic dinosaur thing. There was no sign of the creatures we had seen watching us fight it. We did find a door with no handle, but it did have several odd looking key holes. Mel tried to pick the locks, but quickly found they were well beyond her skill. We continued searching further. Mel found another concealed door. This one led to some stairs leading down. We left them and turned to a nearby door, where we found a storage closet. Searching in here we found several minor magic items. We took some time to let Rosa identify the items before moving on. Down the stairs beyond the secret door that Mel had most recently found seemed to be a dead end. About this time, Rosa did notice some glyphs outside the room we had just found magic in. He could tell they were abjuration, but not much else. Sprite took a look & was able to tell that the glyph was activated through touch, but not exactly what it would do.
Griska slapped his hand onto the glyph and the clear walls lowered. Trial and error showed that this was a toggle for the walls. The group decided to lower the walls and see where the areas off of the dinosaur room went. We found stairs that led back up tot he teleport area that leads here and following the wide hall leading south we found it led to the far side of the arena we had passed several times. Once again, the Shanrigol Behemoth was standing quietly in the arena. This time we noticed one of the snake creatures taking notes while observing the Shanrigol Behemoth. We decided to give it a show! It was a tough fight, but we took it down. We decided to heal up and then head back to town. However, after the 1st 10 minutes we were interrupted by another group of creatures! 4 of the little razor knife guys led by one of the snake-like casters with a sword held in it's tail. We made fairly quick work of them, before making our way back to town without delay this time. Once we made it back to town, we noted we had left behind a sword and possibly other items, with the last couple of fights. We should head back there and search for items when we return!
Delving Deeper
We spent some time tending wounds & searching the bodies & immediate area. We found a few interesting items, including some magic. We then returned back to investigate to the north. Opening another set of double doors we found 3 large ooze sort of creatures slowly moving toward our group. Rosa recognized them as Ochre Jellies. She knew that most of our weapons would not affect the monsters at all. We closed the doors and continued into the room where the crane had fallen from above. Here, we found 2 more doors. The door to the west led downward and north. We left that for later. The other door in the east wall led into a room with several creatures and pit with a sulfurous stench coming from it. The creatures were 3 Grothluts and a large snake creature wielding a sword with it's tail and casting spells! While the fight was annoying, it was no real threat. Afterward, we took some time to heal up before moving on. This room held a circular staircase around a central open area. We could see that the cylinder led both 40 feet up and down. There was also a window of some sort that overlooked a rough hewn cavern area. We could see no way through to the other side, but it was time to go back to town for a rest anyhow. We climbed the stairs & headed back to Otari.
We heard some complaints from people in town about the Mayor neglecting his job while he paid more attention to his daughter. We rested, with Sprite casting some Remove Disease spells on himself, Graklak & Rosa in the morning. Deciding we had no way to help the Mayor's daughter, we headed back down below. Taking up where we left off, we headed through the western door, into the rough hewn cavern. Soon, we were assailed by elemental earth type creatures, both humanoid and dog shaped. Sprite recognized the dog type ones as Sod Hounds. All had some sort of elemental shackles connected to them. They immediately attacked. These creatures hit hard, but we were able to manage them without too much problems. After the fight, Rosa and Zebott told us that we could have done a ritual to release the creatures, rather than simply pounding them into dust. We backed off, in case they reformed, to heal and take stock of our spells and whatnot. We were not interrupted and they did not reform while we did so.
Victors!
We went back through the portal. Our folks that could speak Aklo were able to tell us that the runes on our heads, that had read "Challenger" before, now read "Victor"! Griska and Graklak thought this meant the others should all be honorary Orcs, quickly adopting them. After taking a bit of time to heal up we headed back to Otari to rest til the next day. The next morning, we spent some time selling our loot and arranging to have some magic brought in from Absalom. Griska spoke with Rin, to catch her up on what we had been encountering below the Gauntlight. She was happy to be filled in on the details. At the end of visit, an aide from the mayor visited to get a healing draught for the Mayor's daughter. Apparently, they were not even gone a day before they returned. Rin did not know why. She heard they had sent for help to Absalom. Griska told everyone else about this once they were together again.
The next morning we returned to the Poltergeist room and took the debris cluttered stairs down. We were somewhat surprised to find they led to a tavern at the bottom with all sorts of exotic creatures and Undead. Luckily, several of the group could speak Undercommon & so could understand most of what was being said. We entered the tavern & did our best to blend in... Graklak bought a round of drinks for the group. Soon a band of 4 creatures came out & began to perform. We sat and enjoyed the music, some as best we could without knowing the language. After the performance, the band called out to our group to see if we wanted to challenge them. Only Sprite was willing to participate, but did so with aplomb, causing everyone to rise to their feet and dance to his song! The band was impressed, even offering him a place in their band. He declined & made his way back to the group. About this time, Graklak tried to find out how long the group of Morlocks had been here. He managed to completely piss them off in record time! Soon, the Morlocks were telling Graklak that he should leave, in very strong language. He managed to convince them to let him finish his drink before leaving. Zebott then went over to the bartender to see what he could learn. He learned that the patrons here had come seeking to be fleshwarped. He also learned that the the patrons all come and go through the set of double doors in the western wall. We chose to leave through those doors to continue exploring. We found a room with a grate that had fallen from above. We recognized the grate as the one that had almost taken Zebott with it from above some time ago. Leaving that room for later we turned back to see what was behind the doors we left behind. Opening another set of double doors we found a large monstrosity inside that immediately moved to attack, lashing at us with long meaty tentacles! When we closed with it, it then started biting as well as flailing it's tentacles around. It was very tough. We eventually managed to defeat it though. After the fight we took some time to heal up. Mel recognized this creature as an Irnakurse.
We continued through the room into another corridor. We soon found a set of double doors to the east. Opening them we saw we were now at the floor level of the arena where we had seen the Shanrigol Behemoth. It did not react to us, so we quietly closed the doors to leave this creature for another time... Continuing down the hall we found another set of double doors. Opening these we found a torture chamber. There were also 2 demonic looking creatures with goat legs in the room who were only too happy to attack! They called out to each other in Infernal about how quickly we would fall to their blades! Sprite recognized these as Barbazu. As we fought them, 2 very odd looking fly aberrations attacked the party from behind. We made quick work of most of them, though one of the Fly creatures did cast Dimension Door to get away.
Continuing to explore deeper
Opening a door in the North wall we found a staircase leading downward, but it was choked with what seemed to be trash. While passable, it looked like it would be greatly difficult to work our way through. We decided to close that and explore any areas we had not fully explored on this level, before heading deeper. We returned to the scythe trap area, where Mel spent some time bloodying her hands before she disarmed the rest of the traps. We checked a hallway, but it just led to a dead end, with more of the "windows" into cells. Next we opened a door, that led to a room with alchemical tools and supplies. We then continued to another door in the southeast wall. This led to another stairway leading down. We closed the door and made our way around to a Grand Concourse, where we found a group of statues of various creatures, seemingly locked in combat. As we approached, everyone became aware of a creature ahead. Rosa recognized it as a Basilisk. Others noticed several more of the creatures nearby. Rosa warned us that these creatures could turn us to stone with their gaze. We strode forward to attack! The creature's did not last long. After the fight, Rosa noticed that the statues had magic on them. Unfortunately, the items had also been turned to stone along with the creatures. Rosa was able to identify the creatures as a Mulventok & an Urdefhan. Both of these creatures, while living, were adversely affected by positive energy like an Undead. Rosa told us that the Basilisk blood could be used to remove the petrified condition, if used within the 1st hour after death. Knowing that the Mulventok were generally neutral, we chose to try to cure it 1st. Unfortunately, it attacked as soon as it was cured, seemingly maddened beyond reason. Rosa, who had moved closer to the large area to the south, saw a very large Undead looking worm. It was seemingly made from many different creatures mixed together. She quickly moved away from it, before we made quick work of the Mulventok. We then moved a ways away from the arena area before taking a bit of time to heal up. Several of us took some time to go rubberneck at the creature below. Only Griska recalled that this was a Shanrigol Behemoth. We decided to leave it alone & turned to the Urdefhan, curing it's petrified condition. It immediately called something out in Undercommon, which Zebott understood. Unfortunately, most of it meant nothing to him, other than the name Belcorra. It then immediately died. We collected the magic from the 2 creatures and then, deciding to leave the gargantuan Undead Aberration worm alone, we investigated a set of double doors at the east end of the arena. Through them we found stairs that led back to an area we had seen before. This was the area with bones strewn through broken tables and a magical circle of runes off to one side. Zebott was able to tell this was some sort of conjuration circle.
Griska then stepped into the circle, with Sprite on his shoulder, to show how nothing would happen... where he promptly vanished in a puff of blue flame. Graklak screamed "Brudder!" and ran into the circle as well, with the same result. Zebott shrugged & followed, again disappearing in a puff of blue flame. Rosa and Mel chose to wait and discuss what just happened. In the meantime, it turned out this was some sort of teleportation circle. Those who had gone through the portal appeared in a room with a large Dinosaur type creature. It viciously attacked with sonic damage, quickly getting the group on the ropes. After a few seconds, Griska inadvertently stepped into the corresponding runic circle in this room, appearing back in the original circle. He realized what happened, waving Rosa and Mel to come help, then quickly stepping back into the circle. They followed and with their help the battle was won! Catching their breath, the group saw a long window seemingly of the same type as used in the prison areas. Behind it, they could see 2 creatures. A large worm like creature, that was taking notes. It was being followed by a man sized creature that seemed to be some sort of guard type creature.
Another Curse in Otari!
We spent a day in Absalom. We returned the following day, returning the horses we had borrowed first. The owner told us that the Mayor had been asking after us. We recalled that his daughter had been having problems. We headed straight there to see how things were going with his daughter. He was thankful to see, but obviously disheveled, which was out of character for him. He said his daughter had grown more withdrawn since last we had been here. We went upstairs to see what we could learn. She ignored us when we started to enter the room, but soon grew very frightened, screaming at us to get out. We left the room and she immediately calmed down. Sprite noticed after a few minutes that she was now talking softly to her doll again, saying the words Motley Man. Mel snuck closer to listen, hearing her repeating basically the same words over and over, thanking the Motley Man for his gifts, such as the stuffed Griffin she was speaking to. Mel also noticed that there was bruising on her wrists in the shape of lettering. She snuck back out of the room and we headed downstairs. Mel asked for paper to draw out the symbols while they were fresh in her mind. She asked the Mayor who had given her the stuffed animal. He thought about it and then recalled it had come from an Uncle who does not live in Otari. He said it was best to leave her alone for several days after an incident like she just had. Mel passed the drawings she had made around the group. Rosa and Zebott recognized that this seemed to be some sort of dream ritual. Zebott also recognized that much of the words were Aklo. With this information, Mel felt that somehow an extra planar creature called a Denizen of Leng was causing this. None of the group knew of a way to protect her dreams, but with this information we decided to see if the stuffed Griffin radiated magic. Zebott cast Detect Magic and snuck closer. He found that the girl radiated magic, not the stuffed animal. Zebott thought more about these creatures & recalled that they were rumored to give someone a ruby in their dream, and they accept it, they become cursed. With this information, we discussed how best to proceed. We felt that the best thing to do would be to get her to the temple of Desna in Absalom. We told the Mayor about the creature, the curse and what we felt should be done. His whole family began making preparations for the journey while Mel wrote a note of explanation with details about the affliction.
We headed to the Crook's Nook for some much needed drinks! We then had a good night's rest. The following morning we headed back to where we had left off exploring. Then we decided to see about clearing the rock fall area that Graklak felt we might be able to clear. It took about 10 hours, but we eventually broke through into a cavern. We were somewhat surprised it let into the area where we had left Carmen with the Cooperative Blade, Smuggler Hideout. He was as surprised to see us as we were to see him. Apparently, he had decided to stay here indefinitely. We decided to camp here for the evening. The next morning we made our way back into the dungeon. We picked a door we had not explored past and headed that way. Graklak and Griska threw the double doors wide. All sorts of debris was flying around the room. We entered, finding 3 creatures throwing everything not nailed down all over. Rosa identified these as Poltergeists. While it was a painful fight, the heroes prevailed. We took some time to look around.
Exploring we will go...
We continued exploring through the door to the south. We found a room full of moldering furniture. We found some valuable old coins, then moved on to the next room to the south. Here we found 3 more doors, one of which was blocked by a divan and nailed shut with pitons. We chose to leave that door for later. Continuing through the southern room we found a large room with a glowing rune etched in the floor and bones strewn all over. As we moved in to investigate the bones rattled and flowed together, turning into a fearsome looking skeleton of giant size! Rosa was able to identify this as a Skeletal Hulk. While seemingly mindless this creature definitely hit hard! We defeated it, but not before it almost dropped Graklak and Mel. After the fight Rosa was able to tell the runes on the floor seemed like some sort of conjuration magic, but nothing more than that. We discussed if we knew of a way to disable this magic, but came up with nothing. We rested and healed a bit, then opened a door in the south wall yet again. This led to stairs down. We chose to explore elsewhere first. One of the 3 doors to the west led to another long hallway. Here we found 3 more doors. The 1st had a bolt on the outside. Opening it, we found a small room that had been used as a cell. The 2nd door was much the same as the 1st, with a similar room. The 3rd door, at the end of the hall also held a small cell. We headed back to the rune circle room. We proceeded to the middle of the 3 doors in the west wall. In here was a mural wrapped around the entire 10'x25' chamber of fleshwarped warriors. Griska was able was able to find a secret door in the west wall. It led to a long, narrow corridor. At the end we found a room filled with more bones. Griska stepped in to smash one of the bones and was rewarded by a blade rising out of the floor & cutting his leg! Before he could react 3 more blades rose up and eviscerated him. Unfortunately, Sprite was on his shoulder as usual. He was also eviscerated. Graklak was able to pull them both back out of the room and use his Lay on Hands on Sprite, who then healed Griska. Mel, now that she was aware of the traps, started attempting to disable them. She disabled one blade before they sunk into the floor. We chose to heal up before she attempted to disable more. However, in this time Mel started feeling very sick. Sprite diagnosed she had contracted Fungal Rot and it had progressed very far already. She could be dead within 2 days if it was not cured. We decided to head back to town ASAP!
We were able to get her disease cured at the Dawnflower Library. Thanks Bandy! We headed back in, deciding to try a different path as we explored the 4th level this time. The 1st door we opened led to a serving room of some sort, with a display case on one wall. Mel found the words "They are watching you" scratched into the side of it and that it would also move, revealing a secret door. Opening it, we continued the passage beyond, with Mel searching for traps this time. In this area we found some sort of transparent walls where we could see through into cells similar to what we had found before. The 1st cell we found had some sort of sludge undulating back and forth on it's own. When we laid our hand on this cell wall we could hear the sludge moving back and forth. These clear walls detected as divination magic, according to Zebott. We continued following the hallway, watching for traps this time! Soon we came to a different entrance into the trap room. We decided to leave it for now and look elsewhere. We returned to the serving room we went through the door to the west. Soon, we found a wide hallway that twisted and turned before we found a very long, wide hallway that formed balconies with railings 20 feet above rooms below. Starting down hallway to the south Griska found a secret door in the wall! Inside they found that it was an empty room with a door that led out onto the trap room yet again. We then turned west and headed past the balconies. Here we found more stairs down. Ignoring them we turned north, finding 3 sets of double doors. The 1st set to the east contained shelves of dusty bottles and surgical equipment lined the walls of this room. An empty push cart stood in the room. We found some treasure amongst the items in this room. Turning across the hallway to the west we opened this set of doors, finding the remnants of a dead Morlock on the table, with chains hanging from the ceiling. It was missing both it's arms and legs. A ghostly creature came screaming towards the heroes! After a fight, where Mel was controlled by the creature and stabbed Graklak hard, the heroes defeated the creature. After the fight Griska recalled this was a Specter. They decided to rest for an hour to shake off the effects the creature had imposed during the fight. During this time we searched the room, finding nothing of much interest. Afterwards, we headed back to Otari to allow the magic users to recall their spells.
We spent a night resting in town, then headed back to the Gauntlight. Returning to the set of double doors we opened them to find another large room, with more pits in the floor & more chains hanging around the room. Off to the west we saw another of the blue-skinned humanoids with chains all over it. She did not hesitate, simply moving aggressively towards us. As Graklak moved in the hanging chains in the room all started to thrash around! He started out right though, sinking his Greatpick deep into her! The fight went well for us, with Griska also slamming his hammer into the creature, knocking her to the ground. By the time she tried to stand both Orcs whacked her, finishing her off. We rested a bit and then continued on. Opening the door to the east we found it led back to the beginning of the level. We turned back to open the double doors to the north. Along the way though Zebott managed to wander over some grating in the floor, sending them crashing into the pit below, followed by a nearby crane... He managed to catch the edge, but was then almost knocked off by the crane. He managed to barely hang on. We pulled him up, healed him up and continued through the double doors to the north. Here we found 3 cells with rotting flesh. The center one had a copper key clearly laying inside. Graklak bounced off the locked cage door trying to get it open. Luckily, Mel was able to open it with finesse! Graklak strode inside to grab the key, but was taken aback as a rotting fleshy creature rose up to attack him! Griska rushed to help him and the fight was on! As the heroes started to focus on it they were very unhappy to see 2 more rise up from another cell and attack! Rosa identified these creatures as Shangrigol Heaps, a type of Undead. These creatures were very gross, but not that hard to kill. We made quick work of them. We did not find anything further of interest. We healed up and continued on, heading to the south where we found a portcullis barring our way. We did not seem to be able to find a way to get it open. Sprite was about to go through a small broken part of the portcullis when he noticed through an arrow slit to the side that there was a lever in that room. Graklak decided to try to widen the arrow slit. Before too long a woman seemingly made of shadow came through a door on the other side of the portcullis to see what the noise was. The fight was on! She stood behind the portcullis, gaining greater cover from our attacks. Our melee stepped back and allowed our casters to blast away. Sprite ended the battle with a blast of holy might! We took some time and got through the portcullis. Beyond was a double door that we opened and continued in to the room beyond. 3 more choice of doors met us! There were 2 skeletons laying here, but they did not rise to meet us. The side doors led to 2 guard rooms and 2 archer rooms. Zebott found a secret door in one of the guard rooms. We also found a couple of talismans. Opening the secret door we followed the passage around to a door that opened on to a neglected bedchamber. Inside we found a magic hat, that Rosa identified as a Greater Hat of Disguise, a book and a pouch full of gems. Mel took a look at the book. She found it was very fragile. It turned out to be a book of poison recipes.
Continuing on to the door in the far side of the room we opened it to find some stairs leading down. We turned around, heading back to the double doors. Opening them we found a tunnel that quickly became rough hewn. After about 10 minutes we found the cavern had caved in. We made note of this cave in. Graklak felt it may be able to be cleared, but would take the group a day of hard work.
Returning to the room with the nailed shut door behind a divan we opened the other door we had not gone through. Inside we saw swirling runes carved into the stone walls. We recognized this as another teleportation chamber. Next we moved on to the nailed shut door. We pulled the divan aside & began pulling out the spikes holding the door shut. Inside we saw a glowing circle of runes on the floor. There was a splintered bed against one wall and we could see piles of parchment. A creature here that looked like a mummy wrapped in parchment papers. He spoke briefly with us before quickly losing patience and deciding to attack. This was a tough fight. We managed to defeat him but shortly after the fight both Griska & Mel fell ill, taking negative damage that could not be healed. We rushed back to town to seek help. Bandy at the Dawnflower Library was able to identify that they had both contracted Mummy Rot. She told them they needed to remove the curse before she could permanently remove the disease. We borrowed some horses & made haste to Absalom, where we were sure we could find help to get this curse removed. We headed to the Starstone Cathedral. The clerics of Desna there were willing to heal us. We donated 40 gp and they fixed us up!
Pick a door, any door!
With 3 choices of doors from this room we chose the one leading east. It opened onto a long corridor with several doors off of it. We started opening doors. Inside the 1st we found a room with several armor stands and some preserved organs & crates full of bones. There were also some surgical tools & a couple of wands. Searching, we found 3 alchemical items in jars. We took some time and identified the items. The next door contained several open pits. As we moved into the room we were attacked by some sort of really ugly frog creatures! They attacked ferociously, even trying to knock Griska & Mel into the pit! Griska shrugged this off, but Mel would have been knocked in had Griska and Graklak not saved her by killing the creature as it started to knock her backwards. Rosa was able to identify them as Gibtas Bounders, after we beat them down. We took some time to heal up before exploring the room. Griska found a secret compartment with some treasure in it. Rosa dropped a coin into the pit with a light spell on it. Watching, Mel saw the light disappear for a few seconds. It was hard to tell what had caused this, perhaps a large creature?? We decided to head back to town for some much needed downtime at this point. While most of us looked to buy some magic and upgrade our weapons or spells, Zebott was approached by the Mayor. He explained that his daughter, Dorianna, had been having nightmares. Even though she was almost an adult, she was sleeping with a childhood toy clutched tightly to her. When asked, she would say she saw something called the "Motley Man" acted as her savior in the dreams. Zebott was not sure what was happening, but went to collect Sprite. They went to see if they could figure out what could be done to help. The mid-teen girl looked gaunt and sickly, but upon examining her, Sprite could not find anything physically wrong with her. When asked about the dreams she kept saying she could not remember much, but that it was terrifying and the "Motley Man protects her". She clutched a stuffed griffin in her hand while talking to them. Between them they could not figure out anything more about this. They gathered the group and noone else could help with this either.
Before we headed back into the Gauntlight we spoke with Wrin to see what the stars had to say. She told us she had dreamt about us climbing an endless stair. We headed back in, choosing to head back to the odd stairs we had seen that we could never seem to get to the top of. This time we found an illusionary wall along the way. Inside, we quickly ran across a very odd looking creature, that Rosa recognized as a VoidGlutton. She told us some stuff about it, stating that we might be in very big trouble here! We rallied and managed to take it down though. After healing up we headed further in. We found some sort of magical, silent images of Belcorra as we progressed. In a dining area we saw her eating what looked very much like a human arm before the image faded. She was sitting with a Drow, deep in conversation. In the next area we found a bedroom & saw her stepping through a shimmering portal. The shimmer faded as she stepped through the portal. In this room we found a door leading to the central area. Here we found several creatures caught in webbing. They were all clearly dead. Rosa recognized the webbing as something that came from the VoidGlutton. There were 3 dead creatures caught in the webbing. There was a Drider, as recognized by Rosa. A lavender skinned Elf and a hideous humanoid with transparent flesh. We cut them free, searching for treasure. As we cut them out they quickly decomposed.
We then headed back down to where we had left off in the long corridor. Heading to the door at the end of the hall we found several weapon racks inside. There were also 2 doors leading out of the room & a trap door in the floor with a ladder leading down. As Griska attempted to pull a crystal hatchet from one of the racks it animated and attacked! One of the doors also animated and attacked the rest of the group. Rosa identified these as Mimics. After a very sticky, but not particularly dangerous fight, we defeated them both. Searching the room we did find some alchemical items. The area behind where the door Mimic came from had a small area with some items. This left one other door & the ladder leading down. We spent some time healing up, bringing us to early to mid-morning.
So many ways to explore!
We took some time to rest and heal up, then continued exploring. We did notice that the dining area doors had all been closed by someone or something. We chose to rest in the secret area to be safe! We opened another secret door from the back out of the secret passage. Inside this room we saw a blue skinned woman covered in chains. Mel could not see it, but felt from the description this was probably some sort of Fiend. After the woman quickly started to become agitated Griska swung the door closed and we discussed whether we should just leave her alone. We eventually decided to just leave her be, heading back to the room where we fought the Crawling Claws and Flickerwisps. Sprite and Rosa were able to identify the shrine here was dedicated to Nhimbaloth. We left the door to the west from here closed, guessing it led to the room with the blue-skinned woman. We headed through the eastern door, finding a narrow North-South corridor with stairs leading up and down. We headed up the stairs to the north. After rising several floors we found a door. We opened and found an underground camp area with a man & his wolf camped there. He allowed us to pass, but did not seem interested in conversing too much. Past his room more stairs led upwards. As we headed up the stairs we saw the green light once again. It coalesced into words on the wall "Gauntlight is a weapon built to raze Absalom. It must be brought down". It then turned back into a moving light and headed down the stairs. We followed it back through the man's camp, apologizing and moving slowly past him and his wolf. The light led us down through a rough hewn area to where it passed around a corner, over some water. The group quickly followed, finding the light had not gone too far. It had stopped on a small island ahead with some rotting humanoid remains. As we approached, a ghost suddenly sprang into being, shouting "Careful, the eyes of the empty death"! At which point 3 glowing creatures popped into existence and attacked! We recognized 1 of them as a Will-O-Wisp & the other 2 as Flickerwisps. We proactively beat Graklak unconscious once again. The Ghost helped us win the fight.
Afterward, he thanked us and introduced himself as Otari Ilvashti. He explained that his companions in the Rose Guard thought he died in the fight with Belcorra. In actuality he had fallen below, into these tunnels that his group did not know about. He died down here and these spirits had been feeding on his Ghost since then. We asked if there was some way to lay him to rest. He said we had done enough, but that he wanted to help us. He told us that Belcorra had returned and was working toward destroying Absalom once again. Something about these lower catacomb areas increased the frequency of Spirits, Ghosts, Haunts, etc within them. He told us that Belcorra was a Ghost, tethered to these ruins. However, her range was increasing. He did not know of a way to destroy her, but felt that there must be clues to how this could be done. He asked if we had encountered "the Barrier". We said we had not, but he felt we would not be able to pass it without destroying it. He explained that we would need to collect and place the 4 icons the Rose Guard once held dear on a nearby altar.. His tools were the 1st icon. We also needed a brooch with the holy symbol of Erastul. A spell book & a longsword. We should place them on an altar we find near the barrier, in a room with a long hall with a shrine and Sarcophagi lined up in alcoves. We recognized this hall by the description! Mel knew that the rest of the members of the Rose Guard had lived out their lives in Otari, after founding it in his name. He answered a few more questions and then laid down in his body and disappeared forever!
As we passed back through the way we had come, Rosa recognized that there were some remains under some fungus along the wall. It seemed to be the remains of an Otyugh! We noticed a pipe angling up into the wall, leading to the west. Zebott looked and could see some sort of door at the far end, just the other side of the wall. However, he could not find a grip inside the slippery pipe. Mel took over, turning into a spider and scampering up the pipe easily! She soon found this led into the room where we had fought the Poltergeist. We gathered up his remains and gear, then headed back to town. We took the remains to the Dawnflower Library. We found Vandy Banderdash in a tizzy. Apparently, sometime the previous night the Blacksmith Carmen had decided to take the longsword of his great-grandfather. The sword was on display at the Dawnflower Library. To accomplish this he had set a fire as a distraction. This was, of course, the longsword we need to drop the barrier! She asked us to see if we could track him down and bring him, and the sword, back. When we told her about needing the icons from the founders of Otari she told us that Morlibint had the spell book and the mayor had the brooch. When we questioned her about the theft we found that noone had actually seen who committed the crime. However, Carmen was now missing and was known to be a trouble-maker. We headed to see the Guard Captain to discuss our investigation. He was fine with us looking for Carmen. We got permission to look for clues at Carmen's house. Investigating the house we found no clues, but as we headed out towards Absalom Mel overheard someone talking about Smuggler's Refuge. This seemed like as likely an area as any for Carmen to have fled to. We headed there. When we arrived we found a campsite with a cold campfire. Mel was able to find some tracks entering the nearby cave. We followed them inside and were soon confronted by 2 Shadows. We were able to defeat them fairly quickly, but not before Mel had her shadow ripped lose! After defeating the 2 original shadows we found that the new shadow just stood there, looking like a silhouette of Mel. We chose to head back outside to rest, after destroying Mel's shadow. We found that each hour rested helped Mel feel better. After 3 hours she was back in fighting form and her shadow had reformed, attached to her once again.
Re-entering the cave we soon found Carmen was indeed here. He turned out to be as much of a schmuck as the Otari Guard Captain said he was. He was unwilling to return to Otari or give up the sword. We talked about it for a while, but eventually agreed to take him with us to the Gauntlight so we could use the sword there. Griska, Graklak, Rosa and Mel stayed to watch him, while Sprite and Zebott headed back to town to get the other 2 icons - the Spell Book and the Brooch. After some explaining to Morlibint and the mayor they managed to gain the items and return to Smugglers Refuge. By the time they returned it was dusk. We rested for the night & headed out the following morning.
Arriving back at the Gauntlight we headed down to the altar. Placing the items on the altar the barrier was dropped. Carmen agreed to wait in the dining hall until we came back to get him. We headed down the now open stairway ahead. At the bottom of the stairwell we encountered a Gibbering Mouther and 2 Grothluts. Before the fight was over Griska was once again engulfed and dropped by the Gibbering Mouther, but not before he could grab hold of it's guts and thump it twice from inside! Luckily, Mel was able to stab it good and drop it right after, revealing the unconscious Orc. We then finished off the last Grothlut & decided to take a rest!
Worms everywhere & a Dwarf rescued!
We took some time to heal up and then turned to making some lunch, since we were in a kitchen and all. We noticed the oven in this kitchen was magical. Rosa was able to determine it transformed smoke in to clean air. Zebott prepared an excellent meal! We then turned to continue exploring the area. The 1st door we opened had some sort humanoid seemingly composed of leeches! It spoke to us in a hostile manner, saying he was Volluk Azrinae. He then started casting a spell at us. The fight was on! Zebott was able to identify this creature as what happens to someone who has read the Worm that Walks book. We had given this tome and some other necromantic tomes to the Temple for safekeeping. After a brief, but violent, fight we defeated the creature. Many of the worms and leeches it was made of scurried away to safety in the many cracks in the room. We wondered if this creature might somehow re-form after some time. We decided to consult the tome once we were back in town to see if we could learn whether this creature still posed a risk. Searching the room we found a secret door and an iron key hidden in the desk. There was also a large set of blueprints of the levels above. We made note of a secret door we had missed back on the 2nd level. We decided to heal up before checking out the secret door. However, part way through the healing we heard screams issuing from beyond the secret door. We sprang into action. Opening the secret door we found it led into the area below the Gauntlight. Strapped to a table, in the light, was a Dwarf. He was constantly burning, with blisters forming all over him. Sprite noticed he was healing at the same rate he took damage, keeping him in constant agony. We sensed a creature in the room, but noone could see it. Griska moved to try unlocking the manacles holding the Dwarf within the light. Luckily, the key we had recently found fit the manacles! However, the negative energy flowing through the table burned Griska as he started unlocking the Dwarf. Sprite healed him before the creature moved to attack! After a running battle with several of the party carrying the Dwarf by turns, they managed to defeat the invisible creature. By the end of the fight it appeared in a glowing blue light, before we defeated it. We also noted that once the Dwarf was removed, the Gauntlight went out!
The Dwarf awoke and several of us recognized him as Lasda Venkervale, an Otari local. His mother and he ran the Rowdy Rockfish bar. We knew his mother had been asking for someone to look for him since he went missing about a year before. We got him out of the ruins and back to town ASAP, taking him straight to the Rowdy Rockfish. Once the reunion with his mother was over we took some time to rest and heal up, including Lasda. His mother went to the back and brought out a shield with an angry looking Rockfish on it. Rosa found it was magical but could not determine it's properties. We decided to take some time to identify a few magic items we had found recently too. We enjoyed the evening with Lasda and his mother. Many well-wishers came to welcome him home and thank us for our efforts, including the Mayor! The next morning we headed back to the ruins. We headed for the secret door in the maps we had found on the 2nd level. It opened onto what turned out to be an elevator between the 2nd and 3rd levels. We then headed back to the 4th level to continue exploring. We quickly found another secret door, from the hidden side. The door let onto a hallway. We headed to the north, passing an opening to the right where rocks fell away. As we moved towards the room 2 Cairn Wights, as identified by Rosa, popped out of 2 of the coffins lining the corridor. We quickly dispatched them and continued moving forward. As we got closer we could see an altar and several severed hands lying near it. Just then we felt a wave of dread pass over us as the hands rose up and started crawling towards us! There were also 4 flying dark flame creatures that appeared and flew towards us. Rosa identified these as Flickerwisps. They were especially dangerous because of their ability to confuse people and then extend that confusion. The hands were quickly dispatched, but the wisps proved to be a bigger problem. Graklak was immediately confused. We chose to dogpile on him and quickly take him out of the fight... Their confusion caused much mayhem in the group, with Zebott and Mel confused most of the fight. Thankfully Griska & Sprite managed to avoid the effect, making things much safer! We turned to investigate the room...
Continuing Deeper
We returned to the dungeon. We decided to check on Chandriu Invisar to see if she had been laid to rest. As we opened the door we did not see her, so we decided to search the room. Then she came drifting through a wall... When she entered the room she demanded that we get back to work. Some attempted to do so. The Orcs tried to leave. She got angry & attacked. Rosa was able to tell that convincing her that Volluk Azrinae was no longer interested in her it might help weaken her so we could dispatch her more easily. Griska told her that Volluk no longer had any interest in her. This enraged her, causing her to be consumed with rage and not able to focus. However, the group seemed to be under some sort of curse... Everyone had the worst luck hitting anything! Luckily, Sprite was able to use his healing magics to heal it back into death! After she dropped we continued our search, finding a secret door. Behind it we found a room with a scroll none of us could read. We decided to take it back to town. We went to see Rin. She said it was written in Infernal and was a contract for someone named Korlok. We recalled this was the Bearded Devil we had offered to try to find the contract for. She was glad to see us as well, saying she had read in the stars that we would have an inauspicious day. We agreed that we wished we had known that before we headed back to the Lighthouse! We agreed to wait out the day and come see her tomorrow morning so she could have read our stars, hopefully getting a better reading for us.
We then took our loads of books to Morlibint to sell. He bought most, but told us he was not interested in 3 of them as they were books about Necromancy. We decided to take these to the Dawnflower Library. The Cleric there offered to buy them, letting us know she planned to store them away in a safe manner. Zebott & Rosa decided to read the books before handing them over. They found that the 3 books were tomes about transforming someone from a living being into a Ghoul, Worm-man or Skeleton. Rosa wanted to keep the books but the group talked her out of it. We delivered them to the Dawnflower Library, where they paid us and agreed to allow Rosa to visit and study the books safely in future, if she wished. We then returned to the dungeon. We took the contract to Korlok, who read it over, finding he had actually been released from his contract long ago. He thanked us for our help by giving us the names of 2 other Devils in this place. One we knew about, it being the cleaner Devil on the level above. He also told us about a "Contract" Devil on the level below, named Urevian. We headed down a set of stairs, picking one of the many at random. At the bottom we opened a door and entered a large room with several skeletons around a large table. They immediately stood up and started to attack as we entered the room! We soon found these were Corpselights, as identified by Rosa. They were more annoying than anything else. We finished them off quickly and moved to explore the area. A nearby room was a kitchen. Rosa and Griska found a secret door here. We rested and healed up, then headed through the secret door. It led to a rough hewn cavern where we found 2 of the Scalathrax. We had fought these in the graveyard some time before. Returning to the first room on this level we searched behind some of the other doors. Most had nothing of value, just some old stinky wine in one room. However, in another room we found an open metal trap door with a chute beneath. As we moved to investigate this we were attacked by a Poltergeist, as identified by Rosa during the fight. It managed to throw Graklak into the chute. Luckily he managed to arrest his fall, Zebott threw a rope to him and Griska grabbed the rope and hauled him up! We managed to defeat the creature. We then gathered it's remains and threw them into the hole in the floor!
Once more into the breach
Healing up after the battle we then decided to head back to town and just be thankful we were all still here! We rested for the night and then headed back in! We picked up where we left off. Following the tunnel we soon found it changed into a more circular hole that we felt was left behind by some sort of creature. The tunnel seemed to lead towards Otari. It turned out to lead into the basement of the Otari fishery! We chose to make note of this and tell them once we were back in town the next time. We headed back into the tunnel, making our way to the area below the lighthouse. We opened the southern door from that room. We soon found another room with 2 Ghouls in it worshipping at an altar of decaying body parts. We finished them off with little effort, then took some time to heal up. In the very next room we found 2 large mushroom creatures. Sprite was able to identify these creatures as Violet Fungus. We quickly finished them off. At the end of this room we found another door that opened onto a blank stone wall. We attempted various ways to get past the wall. Graklak dug at it using his mining skills with his magical pick. He was not even able to scratch the surface. Zebott detected magic & found that it was some sort of magic. Rosa tried to figure our what kind of magic, but was not able to tell anything more than this seemed to be from some sort of powerful ritual. We left the stone wall to it's own devices. We headed back to another area where we had left some doors un-opened. In the first room we found a skeleton grasping something. As we entered the room a ghostly woman appeared and told us to "Get to work"! Some of us sat and started looking over the papers. Some went to look at the skeleton. When the ghost noticed Graklak heading towards the skeleton she became very upset, readying to attack. Griska was able to calm her down by yelling at him to do the work and apologize to her. The group spent a few minutes working at getting information from her, such as her name (Chandriu Invisar), while pretending to transcribe as she watched. She confirmed she worked for Belcorra. Then, it happened... Graklak tried to help. He called attention to the skeleton on the floor, which sent the ghost into wails of grief, then anger! Griska quickly scooped up most of the bones & the picture frame before running out of the room. The rest of the group followed, with Graklak grabbing the remainder of the bones before fleeing as well. The portrait was of a smug looking drow, with a tiny gold plaque that read Volluk Azrinae. We took the remains back to Otari to have them interred.
We stayed the night in Otari, then headed back in the morning. Opening the next door we found stairs leading down. We went to last set of doors that we had found on this level. A double set of doors that led to a large room with an undead woman by a statue made of body parts. She immediately told us to give over our weapons & consent to being made part of the rotting flesh statue. We declined... She attacked and we mauled her. After the fight Mel noticed a secret door in an alcove to the west. We found a book written in Aklo with much information about Absolom, seemingly dictated by Belcorra. Various papers scattered around had information about the Gauntlight. A folio described the teleport pads around the complex, including the ritual! Another book, The Whispering Reeds, described several encounters with the outer Goddess Nhimbaloth. This book was a magical tome. All of this information looked like it would take some time go through. We headed back to Otari to start doing so. Luckily Sprite and Zebott both spoke Aklo! Noone could identify the Whispering Reeds tome, but Zebott read some of it. He discovered while it was originally written with the idea of advising people how to avoid falling under and spreading the influence of Nhimbaloth that the opposite had happened. This created a volume that spread her word & drew followers to seek out the tome & those who possessed it. Dun duh duh...
What's behind this door?
Opening the secret door we looked inside... The next room, while small, contained a non-functional teleport pad. Opening the door in the far wall we continued on. We found a hallway, with stairs leading down to an area where we heard a familiar muttering of many voices. As we headed towards the sound the creature we had seen before came swimming towards us from the pool of water nearby. It turned out to be a very tough creature. It quickly swallowed Griska whole, before dropping the rest of the melee combatants. It them advanced on the casters. Thankfully, they were able to kill it before it got them. Sadly, they found that Griska was dead when they cut him free of the creature. Rosa shatter in her pack. It turned out to be the Soul Gem we had found earlier from the Living Doll we had fought. We felt Pharasma's regard before Griska drew a shuddering breath, returning to life.
Back to the Library
We bought some armor & got Mel cured of her disease. We found Augrael reading some books he had pulled from the Library. He again offered to help us, should we need assistance. We found a smell from nearby was piles of dead Ghouls that Augrael had left on some steps. We asked him to put them in the nearby Haunt (Eye) room. He agreed & started moving the Ghoul corpses. We headed into the Library to continue exploring. Rosa reminded us that we should try to find the name of that Ghost lady & see if she had been laid to rest since we dealt with her remains. We loo0ked about but could not find her name. Griska turned to her, asking for her name. She told him in an irritated manner. We then headed for the next door, finding a "Repair Room" with several magic scrolls. The next door was labeled "Belcorra's Office". We cautiously checked for traps and moved carefully into the room. The first room was a small antechamber with a single desk & several book shelves. Several cracked mirrors were also on the walls. We spent some time investigating the mirrors, finding nothing special. Mel picked a lock into a further room. Inside this room we found a small fairy looking creature trying to balance book that was too large for it. Sprite recognized it as a Lurker in Light. Mel called out a "Hello there". At which point it reacted in a hostile manner. We quickly closed to try to squash it! We were definitely not on form though, taking a long time to defeat this one creature. After we, eventually, defeated it we found that the room held many books. Some looked to be of interest to Morlibint so we took them along. Of through another door we found stairs leading down. We turned back to continue exploring this level. Off in the other direction we found a surprisingly clean washroom. We headed back into the Library proper. We opened a door labeled "North Wing". We headed down the tunnel beyond it. Inside this room we found a sculpture of a sprawling city on a table. We also saw a wooden creature in the shape of Belcorra. Sprite was able to identify it as a "Tree Creature". Rosa felt it was more likely a Wood Golem. At first this creature seemed not too bad, then it started laying into us, dropping multiple heroes before we decided to retreat. We got away and headed back to town.
The next day we asked around about what anyone knew about Wood Golems. Unfortunately, it seems that noone in Otari knew much about Golems. We bought some Alchemist Fire & Griska got himself a really big axe. Heading back in we again struggled to defeat the Golem, but eventually emerged victorious! Looking at the table with the city on the table Griska was able to tell that the damage seemed to match all the damage the city of Absalom had sustained from sieges up until about 500 years ago. This was about the same time that Otari's group defeated Belcorra & founded the nearby settlement, naming it after Otari, since he had fallen in the fight. The books in the room contained information on siege warfare. Annotations in the books taken as a whole told a tale of what went wrong with previous sieges so they could make a better plan to lay siege to Absalom. We decided to collect the books for Morlibint & continue exploring. The next door along opened onto a rough hewn area that seemed as if they were trying to expand the complex. Rosa detected that a pick in the room was magical. We collected it & continued on to the next room. In this room we found a cold forge with mounds of ash. As we explored the room 2 fire spirits leapt out from the forge, attacking! We spent some time trying to fight them before eventually falling back out of the room. Rosa was able to use Ray of Frost cantrips to disable the forge by breaking it. We moved back and found a magic ring in the forge. Rosa then spent some more time, destroying the forge. We felt a cleansing pass over us & the room immediately cooled to a normal temperature.
As this was a dead end we moved back to the main Library. We entered a door labeled "Restricted Collection". Inside here we found a group of Ghouls working to repair things. They backed away from us. One of them spoke in common, asking if we had "Come to speak with the High Priestess Nhakazarin". Mel asked what God the Priestess worshipped. She felt we should speak with the High Priestess ourselves if we had questions like this. It was apparent to everyone, except Rosa, that she was intending to lead us into a trap & kill us. We attacked, killing them all. Afterward we found more books. These ones we decided to keep and see if the Dawnflower Library would want to house but let us still use. We set them aside while we continued to explore. Opening one of the 4 doors off this room we found another couple of Ghouls debating the proper time to allow flesh to ripen before eating it. They exclaimed in delight and leapt to attack when Griska opened the door. Griska finally figured out how to use his new pick, nearly killing one by himself. Mel rolled in to finish off that one and then start in on the next one. However, then Rosa stepped up and sent a truly inspired blast of electricity into the last one's face, killing it in one shot! Searching about we found a secret door. We rested and healed up, before investigating.
Liberating the Library
The group headed down the stairs to explore some more, finding that the stairs did link up where we expected - near the green glow room & Augrael. They found a small cache of magic before going to open a door in the hall across from the green glow room. Inside they found a Haunt, in the form of a large red eye in the wall. It quickly attacked, causing much fear and confusion. Before long all of the group was injured or down. We managed to gather our wounded and fall back, leaving it's area of influence. We then went back to town to heal up. The next day we went back, trying a different route. We quickly found a Bearded Devil, as identified by Rosa. It told us we were under arrest for trespassing & that we should surrender our possessions and step into a cell. Graklak tried to talk with him about this but basically got the creatures name, Korlok, before reaching for his weapon. Griska tried to slow things down again, with limited success. Graklak got sliced by Korlok's Glaive. This caused prolonged bleeding, but hostilities were stopped when Griska offered to find Korlok's contract & to give it to him to free him from his servitude. Korlok agreed but said if the group came back without it he would have to kill or imprison them. We then decided to go see if Augrael was ready to assault the Library & clear out the Ghouls. At the Library we initially found 4 Ghouls. We dispatched them with little trouble. We could see more to the south, but they did not rush to attack. However, we did! This fight was a bit tougher, with one of the Ghouls actually being a caster. This area was also obviously below the base of the tower. If a Ghoul stood in the ribbon of light they healed. If someone living stood in it, they were injured.
After the fight we searched around, finding some interesting books. Mel found a secret door. We opened it and found another portal room. It was dormant like the one we found above. We then started at the first of many doors off the main library. This one was labeled "Work Room". It was locked, but Mel was able to pick it. Inside we found a ghostly woman seemingly working on binding books. She seemed harmless, merely asking us to "Keep it down". Another door off this room led to a small bedroom. We found more books in this bedroom. We also chose to take the skeletal remains of the ghostly woman from this room to bury when we returned above. We started a pile at the entrance to the library for when we decided it was time to return above. Then we chose a door labeled Scrivener's Office. Inside we found a Ghoul who was unhappy to be interrupted. This Ghoul was very much tougher then the others we had fought, quickly paralyzing the Orc brothers. The rest of the group stepped up, including Augrael, to kill off this powerful Ghoul. We explored through another door finding a butcher block with a magical silver hatchet stuck in it. Beyond this room we found 5 dead Morlocks preserved in what appeared to be a store room. Exploring around a bit more we found a room with 3 more Ghouls. We quickly dispatched them. We decided after this to head back to town to rest, taking the books and the skeletal remains back to town. We took the remains to the temple to see about having them interred. The priest suggested if we could find her name it would be nice to put it on the grave marker. We then took the books we had found to Morlibint at the Odd Stories. He gladly paid us for all of them.
When we awoke the next morning, Mel was very ill. She went to see a priest at the temple. The priest was not successful in healing it, but said to come back the next day.
To kill a king
We looked around the rest of the level, finally heading back to where we had encountered the Morlock King. After a brief battle, we defeated him and the lackey we found with him. It was apparent why he was the King, as he was very hard to hit! Afterward, we healed a bit and headed down one of the nearby set of stairs. At the bottom we found an Undead Morlock reading a book. He did not seem overly concerned about the party of adventurer's entering it's home. He greeted us in common, introducing himself as Augrael. It He was really very congenial, offering up some information about this level of the dungeon. He described where there was a circular room that might be the base of the lighthouse we were looking for. He also explained that he fed on any Ghouls he could find by themselves & that somewhere around a dozen of them laired in a Library nearby. He described where this was also. We offered to think of him if we found any books we did not intend to use and/or any Ghoul carcasses we did not intend to eat. Moving through his room we headed down a corridor with a door on either side. One of them had a similar green glow coming from under it. We opened it and looked inside. We saw the green glow we had been following before coalesce on the wall into more words. They read "Belcorra fell to the Rose Guard, but we never knew about these vaults below". Then they slid off the wall again, slowly leaving the room. We followed it through another door into an area filled with a white mist. Once we entered the mist something solidified around several of us, holding some of us in place. While we fought the mist, the light continued moving away from us. After the fight we decided to heal a bit and then head back to town. We were glad for the rest!
The following day we spent some time selling our loot and looking for any interesting items we might be able to afford. Rosa spoke with a spell vendor at Odd Stories, one Morlibint. He said he was interested in any old books we might find. Rosa described our encounter with Augrael below & that there was supposed to be a library of some sort as well. Morlibint was very interested in this information. Griska bought 10 books to trade with Augrael when the group returned. Rosa spent some time learning a new spell she had bought & ruminating on what she could recall about Ghouls.
The next day we decided to go see the Miflit King to let him know we had cleared out the Morlocks from the next level. It turned out the King had lied to us about having shiny gems for us if we killed off the Morlocks. We chose to let them go anyhow. We then traded books with Augrael. He was pleased and offered to help us when we assaulted the library. We told him we would come collect him when we were ready to do that. We headed back to the stairs on the main level where we had encountered the Brownie. Heading back down, we headed away from where we had found the Undead Worm before. We found a room with 7 alcoves in it. Mel found a secret door in the SW alcove. Rosa found the beginnings of a Soulbound Doll in another alcove. She could also tell this workshop was devoted to Construct Lore & Necromancy. Recalling that we had fought a Soulbound Doll already, there was some discussion about the viability and ethics of creating one. Reaching no real consensus, we decided to move on to fight the Undead Worm. This time it was much more in our favor, with Graklak laying into it with his Pick! Rosa was able to tell the device in the same room was something for aiding in the creation of Undead. It was however broken. We spent about an hour healing up before opening the door in the far side of the room, to reveal another set of stairs down.
Continuing to explore the Cellar
We returned the following morning to continue the exploration. We quickly found trouble when Graklak knocked over some stuff, drawing the attention of some odd mixture of a baby and an insect. Sprite was able to identify it as a type of Devil, called a Zebub. It quickly fell back and started calling out in our minds. Rosa was able to understand it speaking in Draconic. It was calling it's surrender. We decided to halt our attacks and listen to what it had to say. It wanted to share with us an experience it had of others like us coming through here. It needed to touch someone to do this. Griska volunteered, with the others standing ready to squash it. The creature reached out, touching Griska's hand. Soon he was drawn into a vision the creature had seen. He saw a Half-Elf pulling himself out of a huge collapsed ceiling. He was covered in burns and cuts. Griska recognized the collapsed area as where the group had first fought the Morlocks here in the basement. The Half-Elf fought some creatures, before stumbling down the hallway to the door with the green glow coming from below the door. The creatures were not the Morlocks, but Griska did not recognize what type of creatures they were. However, he did believe the Half-Elf was probably Otari, who was thought to have perished in the battle with Belcorra. Through conversation we learned that this creature was bound here to clean the complex. He did not have much information to share about the other creatures in the complex. We extracted a promise from the creature to leave us alone in return for us not killing him. We then learned he is not really a very good cleaner, doing light dusting without moving anything. In a nearby room we found 2 large humanoid statues. While they were obviously defunct now, they had been some sort of Automaton in the past. Inside them we found some gem stones. We then headed to the room with the glowing green light under it. Opening the door we found a small room with a well inside. While we watched, letters formed on the wall in green, stating "I was Otari, save me from below". The ribbon of green light then snaked out and flowed down the hallway, under another door. As we followed, it went through a room with bones scattered around some destroyed furniture. As we moved to follow the light, a large skeleton formed from the bones. Sprite was able to tell it was a Skeletal Giant. We quickly dispatched it. As we hurried to follow the light Rosa and Zebott just managed to see the light disappear under a wall at the top of a stairwell. Griska and Zebott found a secret door there, as expected. Opening it we hurried after the light, but it had either dissipated or accelerated. There were several ways we could go, but we decided we should head back upstairs and search the rest of that level.
Opening a nearby set of double doors we found a 10 foot wide hallway with several dioramas of Absalom. Each depicted a different calamity befalling the city. Each showed the Gauntlight in the distance. As we moved in sound and light exploded forth from several dioramas, dropping both Orcs in rapid succession. After they were pulled back to safety and healed a bit, Mel went inside to look for traps. She managed to find all 5 of them and disable them. We healed up for a few more hours before moving past the dioramas. Pulling open the double doors at the end of the hall we found a room filled with webbing. A strange creature stood within. It stood upright as a humanoid, but had spider-like facial features and huge claws. It demanded tribute, referring to itself as "the King" in Aklo. Once again, Zebott's language skills came in handy to translate this for us. After some back and forth a battle commenced. The creature was joined by 2 man-sized spiders. It hit hard, but was downed quickly along with the spiders. Sprite was able to identify the spiders as Dream Spiders. Zebott & Sprite both could tell the creature was a Web Lurker. Searching the room we found several web noose traps & some items hidden under a table. We gathered things up and continued searching the room. We headed back to the secret room and holed up to heal and identify some magic. Afterward, we headed to check out some rooms near the shrine to Belcorra. We found a room that Sprite theorized was for magical transportation to other rooms like it. We then found some stairs heading down to another beach-like area. Graklak started slapping the water with a board to draw out the water creature we had heard about.. He was successful... It rose from the water & spit a ball of acidic mucus at the group, then soon after flew in to fight us. We quickly dispatched it, but it did a good job spreading damage around the group! We took a bit of time to heal up and identify some more magic before moving on.
Lighthouse Cellar
We looked around the room, taking in the decrepit surroundings. We found quite a few debris filled rooms nearby. We searched but found nothing of value or interest. We eventually found another room with 2 larger (medium) Morlocks. They were working on some sort of clockwork creature when we found them. They quickly turned to fight. We felled them just as quickly. Mel took a look at the clockwork and was able to recover an expensive looking gear from it. We moved on and shortly found a large slug-like creature in a nest of some sort. It spit acid at the group, dropping Zebott & injuring most of the rest of the group before we could even close with it! We found out it had nasty claws when we got close too. Sprite identified it as a Grothlut. After a brief but vicious battle we won but the group was anywhere from unconscious to half dead. Most spent some time retching to try to feel better. However, another Morlock entered the room shortly after to see what all the noise coming from this room was. It spoke in Aklo, which Zebott was able to understand, identifying itself as the Maorlock King. It was upset that we had killed it's pet (the Grothlut). It asked us if we wanted to be sacrificed to the "Ghost Queen" or if we would prove ourselves by killing a "Water Monster" and bringing it's head back to him. We chose option "C", running, as we were in very bad shape. We managed to get away, with only Zebott being dropped as we ran. We scooped him up and kept running! We then made our way back to the secret room we had entered from and holed up til we could get healed up. We then chose to head east, away from the scary little Morlock King. We soon found a room with 2 of the larger Morlock Engineers. We moved in and mauled the Morlocks... Unblocking a door to the north we found 3 men locked inside. They turned out to be 3 of the 4 missing thieves we were looking for. We escorted them back to the Crook's Nook & Yinyasmera. She paid us the 50gp reward & we headed back to where we had found them. Opening the door to the east from the same room we found what was apparently the gear of the 3 we had just rescued & a well. Looking into the well we could hear water splashing and what sounded like a small crowd. Zebott volunteered to be lowered on a rope. Both Orcs took a firm grip on the rope and held on tight, lowering him slowly. As the shaft of the well opened below it was clear it opened into a cavern. Swimming below was some sort of aberrant creature. It was apparent the creature was the source of the crowd noises & the swimming we had heard. It noticed Zebott, swimming closer and began spitting acid at him. He was quickly in serious danger, with us pulling him up right after.
We took a bit of time to heal Zebott up & then continued on exploring further north. We soon found a door to the west. Inside we found a torture chamber. Searching around we found a secret door to the south. Heading through it we found the source of the blue ribbon of light we had seen in the base of the lighthouse above. We found another door heading south from this room though. Opening it we found a room with several sarcophagi. As we discussed what to do with them a creature seemingly made of shadow drifted out of one of the Sarcophagi and attacked! It had us on the ropes very quickly, even dropping Mel. Shortly afterward our spellcasters managed to drop it while the melee kept it surrounded. Searching the room we found nothing more of interest. We then decided to head back to Otari. We opened another secret door we felt connected back up. In this room we found a statue made out of old bones and moldy hides. It seemed to depict Belcorra. We continued back to Otari. Once there we rested for the night.
Exploring the ground level... before the basement!
As we advanced into the room we saw an altar with large stained glass windows behind it. We also noticed the 2 skeletons off to one side start to glow & stand up! We defeated them, but not before the 2nd one managed to drop Mel, then Griska, in rapid succession. Searching around afterward we found some magic and valuables. After some healing and identifying magic we chose to go through the secret door into the next room. In this room Sprite found a ring of rusted keys. Most were rusted through, but 2 of them were made of bronze & had, obviously, not rusted. Heading south through another door we found another room with a collapsed ceiling. Searching around this room we found some elixirs and a hidden door with a stairway leading down. We chose to leave the stairs alone for now... After spending some time examining the elixirs we moved on, deciding to go investigate the collapsed boathouse. There was a relatively new rowboat nearby. Looking it over we found some food that was particular to the Crook's Nook & a carving on the boat showed it belonged to the Osprey Club, the local Thieve's Guild. We then chose to go investigate the lighthouse, as it appeared to be the last thing on ground level. It turned out that one of the bronze keys worked to open the magically held trap door at the top of the lighthouse! Once on top of the lighthouse we spent some time trying to break into the, obviously, magical light hoping to put it out. The light turned out to be encased in metal and some sort of very clear glass. It absorbed any blows thrown against it without any apparent damage, even dampening the sound of the impact. Eventually Rosa went back down to the base to investigate the odd "dry" blood stain. It seemed to have changed in that it was rippling more than before. While it was late in the day, we decided to explore what remained of the upper levels of the rest of the keep. We found nothing of interest and turned back to the lighthouse. We decided to wait at the base of the lighthouse for full dark. As the sun dipped below the horizon a ghastly image of Belcorra rose from the blood pool and shrieked! We turned to fight her! Griska recognized she was actually a Haunt. With this information Rosa was able to figure out a way to exorcise the Haunt, at least for that night. We talked a bit about ways to defeat this creature, then investigated the top of the lighthouse, finding nothing different above.
At this point we chose to head back to town for the night. On our way there we saw a light lance out from the top of the lighthouse into the nearby graveyard, which was located above the town. We quickly made our way there, finding that some skeletons and zombies had risen and were leaping off the cliff above the town onto the roof of the Dawnflower Library below. Some of them noticed us entering the graveyard and turned to attack us. We presented a unified front and waited for them to move to us. They did not last long.
We bound our wounds and then turned to look for any other undead that may have risen in the graveyard. As we started to move forward another beam shot out of the lighthouse, striking the group. A spider appeared beside the group, quickly belching some sort of toxic oil over the group. While this was scary, we managed to defeat the creature quickly. Zebott was able to recall that this was a Skalathrax, a creature native to the Darklands. We then checked out the cemetery, finding nothing more amiss. Returning to town, we found the guards quite happy to have had our assistance. The priests at the Dawnflower Library had been quite startled to have undead raining down on the roof, but none of the undead had survived the fall. We healed up and headed to bed. The next morning we visited Wrin to give her an update on what we had learned at the lighthouse grounds. She wondered if there was a connection between the Haunt of Belcorra & the lighthouse coming awake and shooting out beams of light. Also, Mel's condition continued to deteriorate. We decided to spend the day in town trying to help her heal up. Sprite tended to her. Rosa worked on transferring a Rune for Griska. Zebott prepared a meal for everyone, using his excellent culinary skills. Graklak & Griska headed to the Crook's Nook to see what they could learn about the rowboat they had found at the lighthouse. The bartender directed them to speak to a woman named Yinyasmera. She revealed that some of her employees had gone missing with that boat in the last few days. She said there were 4 of them & gave their names. She offered a 50gp reward to find out what had happened to them, preferring that they be brought back alive. The following day Mel continued to be ill. We decided to take her to see the priests at the Dawnflower Library. They were able to remove her disease. We worked helping them repair the Library for the rest of the day.
The next morning we headed back to the lighthouse. When we arrived we noticed an odd ribbon of pale blue light inside the lighthouse snaking upwards from the floor. Upon closer investigation we saw that the light snaked all the way to the top of the lighthouse. It originated at the base from near the Haunt, which showed that it was still active by the ripples in the "blood" puddle. Griska could tell this did not seem to be associated with the Haunt. Zebott thought on it and felt this was probably some form of energy actually originating from below the lighthouse. We chose to leave this alone and head down through the nearby secret door, hoping to not encounter anything as nasty as the worm log from the other stairwell... We found ourselves in a secret area that noone had been in for what appeared to be years. We opened another secret door out of this area to find a group of "mushroom-eyed" creatures searching through some rubble. Griska called out a greeting and waved to them. They turned to the group with murder in their eyes, drawing their weapons as they advanced. They spoke in Undercommon, which Zebott understood. Apparently they saw us as food. We disabused them of this, killing them dead. After the fight Zebott was able to identify them as Morlocks. We took about an hour to heal before moving on.
Investigating the Light House
We spent some time attempting to bandage wounds, without success, & diagnosed Mel with Fly Pox. She was really not feeling well... Graklak also was feeling a little off. These swamps must be making people feel off. We decided to explore a bit more. Griska led the way to the base of the lighthouse. Shouldering the door open they found an odd blood pool in the base of the tower. Rosa spent some time poking at it to see what she could find out, but ultimately did not really learn anything about it. We climbed the stairs to the top, where a trap door proved very difficult to get through, breaking 2 sets of thieves picks and bruising Griska's shoulder before we decided to go see if we could find the key that belonged to it. Rosa was able to detect that the presence of magic on the trap door, but was not able to tell exactly what the magic did. Climbing back down the stairs we headed out of the tower to the west. Out here we saw a dilapidated boat house with a rowboat in good repair. We chose to head north across another bridge to an outlying building. As we approached, a small flame appeared beside us. While we looked at it and tried to determine what it was it started speaking to us. It introduced itself as "Spooky Wisp" and asked us to retrieve a shiny tube from the room to the west. Apparently it was held by a faceless creature there. If we could retrieve it, "Spooky Wisp" promised us a secret from the tower's past. We agreed to retrieve the shiny thing. Along the way we opened a few doors, finding a key in one small room and a set of stairs leading down. The stairs did not seem to have been used in a long time. Further down the hallway we saw 4 old paintings on the walls. The 4th one was a painting of a woman. Some scratches on the walls were recognized as Aklo by Zebott. He told us it said something like "I serve you still". We discussed this, recognizing she was probably Belcorra.
Moving forward we opened a set of double doors ahead. Inside a tiny creature looked up and asked "Is Master Azrinae returning"? It apparently did not like how we responded, as it leapt into the air and attacked! It proved to be hard to hit & hit hard in return! We defeated it, after it had laid a pretty good beating on the party. Zebott was able to identify this creature as a soulbound doll. We took it's soulbound gem. Looking around the room we found a bejeweled spyglass. We surmised this was likely what the "Spooky Wisp" was looking for. There was another door off this room, that led out to another collapsed dock. Rosa noticed a flickering light just below a hole in the dock. Griska got excited and walked onto the dock to see what it was. Unfortunately, the dock immediately collapsed beneath his weight! At the same time the glowing formed into some sort of creature that floated above the water and attacked! It confused Griska, who turned and laid out Rosa. After a bit the group managed to recover and defeat this creature too. After the fight Zebott was able to identify this as a Flicker Wisp. We headed back out to return the spyglass to "Spooky Wisp". On our way back Sprite noticed a creature hiding under a table. He was able to identify it as a Brownie. He called attention to it. When it spoke it was apparent that it was some sort of caster & had been trying to fool us with it's "Spooky Wisp". Now, he introduced himself as Tangletop, explaining that he just used his spells to seem bigger and scarier as he was sometimes not taken seriously in his natural form. He began to tell us what he knew about this place. He told us the lighthouse could shoot out a beam of ghosts. The owner of this place was named Volluk Azrinae & that Belcorra was worse than him. We gave over the bejeweled spyglass, as promised. We then took some time to rest and recuperate, bandaging wounds. We then headed back to the stairs down.
At the bottom of the stairs we turned west into a room. Here (B3) we found a scrap of paper with some book titles on it. To the north we found a small room that appeared to be a servant's quarters. Searching the room, Mel found a loose brick in the wall. Behind it she found some treasure! We then headed into the room to the south. Here we found a large table with some contraption pointing at the table. Upon the table was what appeared to be a log of desiccated flesh. As we moved into the room it moved and rose up, revealing it to be some sort of worm. The fight was on! It very quickly went badly, with Rosa and Sprite down. We quickly scooped up their bodies, closing the door so the worm could not get through. We chose to retreat back to town. Once there we healed up and did some shopping! The store keeper, Keeleno Lathenar, asked several of the party to gather as many wolf pelts as we could. He would pay us for every one we could gather. Wrin found us in town and asked how it was going. We explained that we had to retreat for a bit as we had encountered a very mean worm. The next day Mel's Fly Pox got worse, but we soldiered on. During our travel back Sprite reflected on what he could recall about the worm. While he could not put a name to it, he felt it probably was undead, probably weak to slashing & if it bit something it could drain blood from the bit creature. Once there we continued to explore the ground level. Opening some doors to the south we saw a 7 foot tall skeleton, wielding a morning star & armored in roots. As we peered at it we noticed that it was held together with wood and straps. Rosa cast detect magic and found out that it's morning star was actually magical! Just behind it was a set of double doors. Opening them we found some Miflits and Spiders in a makeshift throne room. The Miflit sitting on the throne was different than the rest. He spoke to us, surprised that heroes had arrived from Otari so quickly. From the way he spoke we surmised that they had been planning an attack on Otari, but did not realize he had tipped his hand to us. He explained that his people were here as they had been pushed out by "mushroom eyed" people. He told us if we defeated the "Mushroom Eyed" people that the Miflits would leave peacefully. He also told us about a swamp dragon that lived below the boat house & warned us we should be careful of it. He also told us about a Scorpion they had been feeding, in a room to the north with Ghosts & to stay away from the dining hall (where we had fought the Haunt). When asked, he introduced himself as Boss Skrawng. We took our leave & headed to where we expected to find the Scorpion. It became aware of us and bashed down the doors, attacking the Orc brothers. It was tough, but we managed to defeat it. We took about 3 hours to heal up after. We searched the room and found nothing of interest before moving to the set of double doors in the far side of the room. Opening the doors we found a chapel of sorts, with a moldering skeleton (a truly dead one) laying just inside the door. He was opening a secret door that it turned out led into the next room over.
Brought together by Wrin
Wrin Svinxi, proprietor of Wrin's Wonders, out a call for help. Wrin's Wonders is an ingenious open air shop, that has a canvas roof that can be drawn back as she wishes. Currently, it stands open to the air & clear sky filled with stars. Wrin herself is an Elven woman with clear Tiefling heritage. She has no pupils, small rams horns curl around her ears, a thin tail & her fingertips glow with sparking lights. She has had a vision and requested the presence of this specific group of heroes. While the vision was not clear, she saw the Dead coming back to life, cities under siege & a shadowy presence that blocked her vision. She started to say more, only to realize some of the group most likely had never met. She asked everyone to introduce themselves. They did so. They were; Zebott Scamper, a Ratfolk Witch; Rosa, an Android Wizard; Melsiavanthe (known as Mel), a Human Rogue; Sprite, a Sprite Cleric; & Graklak, an Orc Fighter. Graklak explained that his brother Griska, another Fighter, was not feeling well & would join the group once he was feeling better. After everyone had introduced themselves, she continued to tell her tale. She spoke of how from here forward our fates were entwined together. She then spoke of a popular children's rhyme known here in Otari. She found when she had her visions that she was humming it. She recited it for us.
When the fog is creeping,
And the moon is low;
When the town is sleeping,
Gauntlight starts to glow!
That's when she arises
For her midnight lunch.
Naughty kids are prizes
For her teeth to crunch.
But if you obey me,
And obey the rules;
You're safe from Belcorra,
She just eats the fools!
She then goes on to explain she has seen Gauntlight glowing again in her visions. Legends say it was the site of the final showdown between a band of Heroes and a Hag named Belcorra. They defeated her, destroying the keep in the process. Since then the keep has stood empty for hundreds of years. However, the Lighthouse has set relatively untouched by time. Sitting, waiting. She pauses awkwardly before continuing. She asked us to investigate the Lighthouse, as while it glowed we were all in danger. She offered the group 5GP each & some training in the occult or spirits. The group took their leave, deciding to head toward the Gauntlight in the morning. When they arrived they quickly encountered a frog with fangs (did we identify this) in the water outside the keep. After a tough fight & some bandaging they continued into the keep itself. Inside the 1st room they found 3 Goblinoid type of creatures, called Mitflits. They were handily defeated. Moving across a dilapidated bridge they found a really big maggot type of creatures (did we identify this) with some more Mitflits. During this fight Griska showed up, feeling better & having followed after his brother.
Then we opened a door & found a giant frog with it's back legs eaten off. We moved to investigate, only to have 2 more of the maggot creatures (again, did we identify these) climb out of the carcass and attack. We smashed them also.
We then explored another nearby room. It contained a few flies the size of ponies. One was quickly smashed, but the 2nd one proved a tougher foe. However, it was dealt with before too much longer. After a bit more healing we headed on to the next room. In here we found a Haunt that caused us to attack one another. This was our biggest threat yet. As we were barely managing to flee Mel let out a huge roar. The ghostly Kobolds of the Haunt looked surprised & slid into the floor. Once we were out of the room we headed back to town to rest & recuperate. We returned the following day to find that the Haunt had formed once again. Sprite went in & tried to exorcise them. He successfully drove them back into the ground. We searched the room, finding some Kobold skeletons along with some other interesting items. We decided to bury the remains, hoping to lay the Haunt to rest. We then turned to another unopened door. Inside we could hear more creatures. Opening the door we found 4 Miflits. We quickly closed ground & defeated them, taking the glowing blue grub they had been fighting over. Graklak ate it. Looking around after the battle, several of the group recognized that a mighty magic battle was fought here in the past. They even found a rubble choked stairway leading down. It would obviously take days (at least) of work to clear the rubble though, with no real way to know how deep it went or how much rubble needed to be cleared.
Shroud of Four Silences - Disclaimer
Hey folks,
This are not mine and not looking to claim anything of the sort. I received these via email once a week while a while back. I could not find a continuous way online to read through these so I have put them here for your enjoyment, in one seamless place. Here is the info right from Paizo's website about these:
About the Author
Liane Merciel is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novels Nightglass, Nightblade, and Hellknight, and a contributor to other books including Nidal: Land of Shadows, Faiths of Golarion, and the Lost Omens World Guide. She has also written for Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and Bioware’s Dragon Age franchise. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two dogs, and an adventure toddler who is extremely into Spider-Man.
About The Shroud of Four Silences
The Shroud of Four Silences is the first long-form Pathfinder fiction in more than 3 years. The serialized novella follows a band of fledgling adventurers as they rise from simple origins to uncover and (hopefully) stop a terrible threat to the town of Otari—the setting of the Pathfinder Beginner Box, Pathfinder Adventure: Troubles in Otari, and the Abomination Vaults Adventure Path. To receive each weekly installment of the novella, please join the paizo.com mailing list and/or ensure that you have opted in to receive emails regarding products, offers, news, and events in your account privacy settings. (We’ll send you the next chapter once a week after signing up, regardless of where we are in the series, so you can always catch up!)
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 1: Work Detail
Come on,” Eleukas coaxed. “Just one more load and you’re done.”
“’One more load,’ he says,” Wendlyn muttered, flexing her scratched and sawdust-smeared shoulders. “’One more.’ My arms are about to fall off, and he wants me to cheer up because there’s ‘just one more load.’”
“You were the one who opted for a work detail over a night in the cells.” Otari’s lumber companies gave away their split, hollowed, and beetle-weakened discards for firewood, provided people used their own carts to haul the loads away. Wood splitting was one of Captain Longsaddle’s favorite punishment details, since the Otari Garrison was in perpetual need of firewood, and whatever they didn’t use could be given to townspeople too ill or infirm to chop their own. The need never ended, which meant the work never ended.
“Well, obviously. A night in the cells is a night in the cells. Rats, damp, terrible food. Whereas with this, I’m out in the fresh air and sunshine, plus you end up doing all the work.” Wendlyn dragged another hollow log over to Eleukas’s stump and dropped it.
“You could always stop stealing things,” Eleukas pointed out, heaving the log into position and hefting his hatchet. A maul would have been more efficient, but efficiency wasn’t the point of punishment details. “What’d you get this time? A handful of coins from some drunk sailor? Was it really worth it?”
It was the closest he’d ever come to openly chastising his friend for her unending larceny, and Eleukas held his breath for a beat, afraid he’d pushed their friendship too far. To fill the silence, he began hacking at the log, splitting it neatly with a few sharp blows.
But Wendlyn just shrugged and went back to the reject heap for another log. “When else do I get to see my oldest friend? Seems like these work details are our only chance to catch up.”
That stung. Eleukas contented himself with splintering the new log as he tried to think of a response. It was true that since he’d joined the Otari Guard, he hadn’t had much time to sit around in taverns with his friends, even though—or maybe because—he was only a raw recruit and felt so far behind in his training. There was always some new technique to learn, or another bit of wisdom to pry from some grizzled veteran, and he was so full of questions about his new life that sometimes he forgot to keep up with the old one.
It really was only on these work details, when Eleukas contrived to get himself assigned to guard duty after Wendlyn’s latest arrest, that he saw her anymore. And it was true that he volunteered to do most of the work, partly because he felt so guilty about letting their friendship lapse, even though she was the one who was supposed to be improving her character through labor.
“Maybe I could—” he began, but Wendlyn cut him off with a sudden, intent look at the tree line beyond the lumber yard.
“Did you hear that?” She rose up on her toes, leaning toward the forest like a hound casting for scent.
Eleukas mopped his brow, pushing sweat-soaked black curls aside. He hadn’t heard anything over the thunk and thud of splitting wood, but her half-elven ears had always been better than his.
“No,” he started to say, cautiously, when a scream split the sap-scented air.
It was a howl of raw rage, and although Eleukas couldn’t have said whether it was made by person or beast, he knew it was a battle cry.
“Come on.” Wendlyn was already running toward the trees. “Bring your axe.”
Eleukas didn’t waste any more time with questions. Otari was a close-knit town, where you helped your neighbors if they needed it, and the forest could be dangerous. Kobolds, wild animals, worse. There were even rumors of saboteurs targeting the log flume that was Otari’s economic lifeblood, and though Eleukas didn’t like to credit such tales, that cry had come from the direction of the flume.
Gripping the sweaty hatchet, he ran after her.
Branches whipped Eleukas’s face and undergrowth snarled at his feet as he charged through the wood, trying to keep Wendlyn in view. The half-elf darted through the trees as easily as a shuttle through thread, and if it hadn’t been for the bright blaze of her red ponytail waving through the greenery, he’d have lost her. Wendlyn never remembered to wait for anyone slower than she was.
Ahead, the clattering bulk of Giant’s Wheel loomed over the treetops, creaking and grinding and throwing a rhythmic rain up to the sky as it harnessed the Osprey River’s power to carry logs down to the sea. Its immense clacking rush drowned out anything as small as a human voice, but Eleukas didn’t need to listen for screams anymore. He could see the person who’d made them.
No, not person. Corpse.
Even as he crashed through the forest’s edge and heaved for breath in the clearing beyond, Eleukas registered the unnatural angle of the neck, the blood that drenched the clothes, the terrible gaping wounds in throat and torso. He’d never actually seen a person murdered before, but he knew immediately that it was too late to save this man. And he knew it would be scorched onto his memory forever: a thing he had trained for, a thing he had expected, and a thing for which he could never have been prepared.
The fight wasn’t over, even if its first victim was dead. Two patchy-furred rats, each the size of a large dog, were menacing Wendlyn with loud hisses and bared fangs. The bright afternoon sun didn’t cow them, and neither did the darting thrusts of her short sword. The rodents worked with uncanny coordination, one feinting at Wendlyn to draw her attention while the other lunged in to bite.
Eleukas had never seen Wendlyn fight before, and was surprised by how deftly she handled her blade. He’d always assumed she just carried it as an affectation, but it was clear she’d had some real training. She was holding her own against the rats. One was bleeding from its jaw, and the other bore a deep cut along its ribs, although they’d torn their share of ugly scratches across Wendlyn in return.
“I’m here!” Eleukas shouted, hoping to distract them. One of the rats turned on him, snarling. He swung at it but missed. The rat snapped at him, sharp teeth grazing the hair on his forearm. Its spittle flecked him like warm rain.
Adjusting his footing, Eleukas tried again. This time he read the animal’s momentum and chopped low in the other direction, misjudging the aim a little—the hatchet was designed for splitting firewood, and was considerably shorter and smaller than the battle axe he normally used—but catching the rat hard in the forequarters all the same.
Bones crunched, and the rat fell squealing. Yet the other one, to Eleukas’s astonishment, didn’t run. Its greasy brown fur puffed up higher, its spine arched stiffer, and its hisses grew louder. Despite the posturing, it seemed oddly reluctant to commit, hopping back and forth just out of reach instead of coming at either of them.
A second later, Eleukas realized why. It wasn’t alone. Something stirred in the underbrush, creeping toward them as the rat spat and snarled in distraction.
"You take the rodent,” Eleukas said, standing back-to-back with Wendlyn so he could focus on the new threat.
It was hard to pick out from the leaves. He glimpsed a gaunt, clawed black hand, its skin hard and glossy as polished leather, its nails curved into sharp talons. The body was a shapeless mass of damp fur or filthy rags, blending into the brush so that Eleukas couldn’t guess its size. And the face—
When he saw its face, he froze. There was no face. From the stump of its neck rose a vortex of shadow, sucking inward to an infinitude of nothing.
The emptiness at the core of that non-face dragged Eleukas’s consciousness into its chilling depths. He felt, in some place beyond rational thought, that if he let it pull him in, he would be torn apart and devoured so completely that nothing of his mind or soul or awareness could remain.
Terror closed cold around his heart. Fear swallowed every shred of reason in his mind. And then, just as Eleukas braced himself to try, somehow, to pull away from the deadly grip of the whirlpooling dark, a plume of soft black powder blew up from the depths of that devouring emptiness into his face.
Blindness seized him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. A thick warm wall choked the air away from his gasping mouth. Eleukas tried to scream, but that heavy, blanketing warmth buried the cry in his throat.
He fell, suffocating, into oblivion.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 2: Oddities
Cool water sluiced over Eleukas’s face. Soft cloth mopped across his cheeks, gently but thoroughly. He opened his eyes, and was astonished to find he could see. Everything was blurry, and his eyes stung abominably, but he was alive, and he wasn’t blind.
“Good. You’re not dead. I was worried. I’ve never heard anyone scream like that.” Wendlyn had been kneeling over him. Her red hair was bright as fire in the sun. Seeing Eleukas open his eyes, she straightened, capping her waterbag.
“Not dead,” Eleukas croaked in agreement. Something limp and warm pressed into his back, reeking of animal musk and death. Cooling blood, not his own, gummed his fingers. He flexed his hand, experimentally, and then tried sitting up.
He wasn’t hurt. Wendlyn was, but not seriously. Shallow nicks and scratches crisscrossed her arms, but she bore no deeper wounds. Both rats were dead, one slumped behind him and the other sprawled in the underbrush.
There was no sign of the black-clawed faceless thing that had frozen Eleukas with fear. Only when he realized that it was truly gone, and they’d somehow prevailed, did his racing heart finally slow.
“Did you see–” he started to ask, then stopped, unsure how to describe the thing.
“Whatever made you scream like that? No. But it was real. Whatever it was, you didn’t imagine it.” Wendlyn held up the cloth she’d used to wipe his face. A sickly greenish-gray powder was smeared across it, collected on the cloth in tiny balls like pollen, or spores. “This is what it used to blind you. So what was it, anyway? The… creature.”
“I don’t know.” Thinking of it made Eleukas’s throat clench again, but he forced himself to continue. The only way to defeat fear was to confront it and push through. “I never got a clear view. What I saw was… a raggedy thing with a black claw for a hand and a face that… wasn’t. I mean it was just an empty space. Like a whirlpool with a… a void in the center.”
“Creepy.” Wendlyn folded the cloth carefully around the balled dust, tucked it into a pocket, and looked around the clearing. “Everything about this is creepy. The thing in the woods, the rats–”
“What about the rats?” Eleukas asked.
Wendlyn raised an eyebrow. She knelt beside the nearest dead rat, the one Eleukas had been leaning against. Lifting up its glassy-eyed head, she pulled back its lips to show him the teeth. The long incisors, which should have been yellow-orange, were dark gray and sharpened to needle points. The pink tongue was spotted black, and the animal’s whiskers had all fallen out. “Does this look normal to you? Does it smell normal?”
“No,” Eleukas admitted. There was an acrid odor to the animal’s body, something caustic and alchemical. Could that have had anything to do with the animals’ aggressiveness? Or their intelligence?
“And then there’s this fellow.” Wendlyn moved to the corpse in the clearing. “Do you recognize him?”
Eleukas approached for a closer look. The body was that of a middle-aged man, black-bearded and heavily tattooed. Savage lacerations tore through his leather armor and the flesh beneath. The wounds were blistered and dissolved into ugly, frothing goo at the edges.
“I don’t think he’s local,” Eleukas said. Otari was a small enough town that he knew almost all its people by sight, if not name, and he didn’t recognize this man. Those tattoos looked like a sailor’s collection, too, picked up in a dozen ports around the world. There were plenty of mariners in Otari, but they tended to stay in town, near the harbor, which meant it was unlikely Eleukas would have missed any of them the way he might have missed a forest hermit.
He gestured to the scorched injuries. “These are axe wounds, but it’s like the axe was dipped in acid, or lye. Something that eats flesh.”
“Naturally,” Wendlyn sighed. “I can’t even chop a load of firewood in peace without some mad rat-poisoning alchemist ruining everything. How tedious. Well, let’s find out why this poor fellow fell afoul of our axe-happy acid-brewer.” She rifled through the dead man’s pockets, coming up with some loose coins and a painted wooden gambling chit, which she laid out on the grass.
“And this,” she added, pulling something out that the dead man had thrust protectively beneath his cloak.
It was a torn-off book cover. Just the back cover and part of the spine, the title missing except for a final “II” and an ornate sigil stamped in gilt on the pebbled black leather. Eleukas didn’t consider himself much of a reader, but even he could tell that the book had been crafted expensively and with great care.
“What do you suppose it is?” he asked.
Wendlyn traced the golden markings thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I’ll bet Morlibint will, though. We should go to Odd Stories and ask him.”
“We should report this to Captain Longsaddle first.”
Wendlyn shook her head. “No.”
Eleukas blinked. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. Maybe you want to risk his temper. I don’t. He’s still got it in for me after the Merrymead candle prank–”
“—with good reason—”
“—and he thinks I stole the two-headed pickled baby goat from Wrin’s Wonders–”
“—which you did—”
“—and he blames me for the goat turning up in the sample keg at Crow’s Casks.”
“Because you put it there!” Eleukas threw up his hands, exasperated.
“I didn’t say he was wrong, I just said he’s not inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt about anything anymore. You of all people should know that, given how many punishment details I’ve gotten lately.” Wendlyn blew out a breath, her brief good humor evaporating as she looked about the clearing’s carnage. “And this, unlike a pickled baby goat scaring a bunch of drunk farmers, is actually serious. I don’t want to get blamed for a murder, Eleukas. Or even a theft. I don’t know what that book was, but I’ll bet it was important. You know how Captain Longsaddle can be. If he needs a suspect, and he hasn’t got a better one–"
“He wouldn’t blame you,” Eleukas said. He was sure of that. Captain Longsaddle did have a terrible temper, but he’d never known the man to be unjust.
“What you mean is you wouldn’t blame me.” Wendlyn smiled wryly, as if she were talking to a child who refused to let go of wishful stories. “Eleukas, it’s different for you. The captain knows you. He likes you. He’s been training you since you were old enough to hold a toy axe. But he only knows me as a troublemaker. You’re a good friend, and I’d trust you with my life in a fight, but I’m not going to trust you on this. I can’t.”
“Well, all right,” Eleukas said. He still thought she was wrong, but he could see how much higher the stakes would be if he, and not she, were mistaken. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to solve the mystery,” Wendlyn said, shrugging and squinting up into the distance, where Giant’s Wheel threw water high over the sun. “I want to know who this man was, and who killed him, and why. I want to be able to give Captain Longsaddle, and the rest of Otari, an answer to what happened here.” She paused, and flashed him a smile. All cockiness and challenge now, no sign of fear. “Do you think we can do that?”
Eleukas smiled back. The terror he’d felt earlier seemed small and silly in the summer sun, and curiosity rose in its place. Besides, it was hard not to feel confident when Wendlyn exuded it so easily.
“Sure,” he told her, and to his surprise found that he meant it. “To Odd Stories?”
“To Odd Stories.”
***
Eleukas, like most people who grew up in Otari, had deep, fond memories of the eccentric stone tower and attached bookstore known as Odd Stories. The sign over the door showed a stack of books with lines of colorful energy curling up from their open pages, and Morlibint, the proprietor, did his best to make that promise of boundless imagination come true for the children who visited his shop. He always knew the perfect book to launch a child onto a fanciful voyage to pirate islands or dragon-haunted mountains, and Eleukas often thought that if only all books were as interesting as Morlibint’s, he would never have fallen out of the habit of reading.
Just seeing the sign was enough to rekindle some of the old magic. It was a grim errand that had brought them to Morlibint’s door, yet Eleukas couldn’t help smiling as he came in.
The red-haired wizard greeted them with his habitual scowl, but his expression softened, like a falconer catching sight of an injured fledgling, as he glimpsed the torn book cover in Wendlyn’s hand. “Now, what have we here?”
“A book, or part of one.” Wendlyn handed it over, moving gingerly, as though her arms were sore. “Found it in the woods. Can you tell us what it is?”
Morlibint slid on a pair of glass-rimmed spectacles and peered at the sigil. A thin line appeared between his brows. “Yes, as it happens. This is a necromancer’s mark. I recognize this very one, in fact. A cowled fellow came here trying to sell it a few weeks back. Part of a set. I hemmed and hawed over buying it, but it wasn’t entirely up to me. Carlthe didn’t want to spend the money, and honestly, he was right. There’s not much call for such things in Otari, and I wasn’t particularly interested in reading it myself. Grim stuff, from what I saw.”
Eleukas and Wendlyn exchanged a look. The dead man had been wearing a hooded cloak. Perhaps it had been he who’d come to Odd Stories.
“Do you suppose he would have tried to sell it elsewhere?” Wendlyn asked.
Morlibint shrugged. “Oh, probably. I’m not the only book dealer in town. And there’s always the Dawnflower Library, for less commercial texts.”
“Yes, there is that,” Wendlyn agreed, with a careful neutrality that made Eleukas wonder whether Morlibint knew about her sister, Lisavet, who was an acolyte there. The two didn’t get along especially well, which was why Wendlyn never went within a hundred yards of the Dawnflower Library if she could help it.
He wasn’t sure she’d be able to help it now, though. Not just because of the mystery book, but because Wendlyn was looking decidedly unwell. She’d hidden her scratches beneath a long-sleeved blouse before they came into town, but there was a greenish cast to her skin and a glazed look in her eyes he didn’t like.
“Thank you for your time,” he told Morlibint, hastily, and hustled Wendlyn outside. When they were alone, he asked her: “Are you all right? You look a little shaky.”
“I feel a little shaky. I thought these scratches were nothing, but–” She pushed up one of her loose green sleeves, showing him that her wounds had become furiously inflamed. Lines of pus swelled beneath the skin, seeping out through the raw red cuts.
Eleukas recoiled in shock. He’d had no idea that her injuries had gotten so bad, so quickly. She’d put on such a brave face inside the shop. “You need a healer.”
“Afraid so.” Wendlyn nodded, swayed, and nearly fell. She let her sleeve fall back down and gave him an unsteady smile.
“Good thing we need to go to the Dawnflower Library anyway,” she added, and collapsed.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 3: Dawnflower's Blessing
Lisavet loved the Dawnflower Library.
Peace and wisdom radiated from its sunlit shelves. Through the central dome’s great windows, she could glimpse the minarets on either side, reminders of how mortals could aspire toward the heights of heavenly perfection—and, despite falling short, achieve beauty and grace in the trying. In the center, sunlight streamed through those windows to fill the temple library’s stacks with the golden glow of enlightenment.
Lore from all across the world was gathered here. Not only lore, but stories: myths, legends, adventures that captured life’s essential meanings and wrapped them in vivid color, so that everything seemed both more exciting and more significant than her own real life ever was.
Not that her life was dull, precisely. But it was quiet, and sometimes she wondered if she’d ever find the kind of meaning that seemed to come so easily to people in books. In her faith, in her life, in her purpose.
That search had brought Lisavet to the Dawnflower Library. Though studying as an acolyte of Sarenrae had given her confirmation that many other people had discovered their answers, it seemed to Lisavet that she was still seeking hers.
She was alone in the library that afternoon, reshelving borrowed books, when a loud and startling knock sounded at the temple’s door.
The other acolytes were occupied with their own chores—tending to the temple gardens, drying medicinal herbs, or copying sacred texts—so there was no one else to answer. Sighing, Lisavet pushed one last book into place, then went to see who was banging so furiously at the door.
It was Eleukas, her sister’s friend. He was sweaty and distraught, and as Lisavet opened the door wider, she saw why.
Wendlyn was collapsed on the steps beside him. She looked awful. Her red hair straggled damp across her brow, and her blouse was soaked with blotchy patches of sweat. Heat radiated from her skin so intensely that Lisavet could feel the fever as soon as she stooped beside her sister.
“Bring her inside,” Lisavet said briskly, helping Eleukas carry the unconscious half-elf toward one of the treatment rooms. “What happened?”
“We fought some rats in the woods,” Eleukas said, setting Wendlyn gently on the cloth-draped table. He pulled up the sleeves of her blouse, showing Lisavet the inflamed scratches that swelled across both of her sister’s arms. “They wounded Wendlyn. At first it didn’t seem like much, but then she took a turn for the worse. This happened within a few hours. I’m worried she might be poisoned. Can you help her?”
“Yes.” Lisavet examined the injuries. In truth, Wendlyn’s wounds looked more serious than anything she’d faced in her training so far, but her teachers had always emphasized the importance of projecting calm and confidence to one’s patients.
She took a deep breath, drawing strength from the chimes of the metallic ornaments woven into her hair. Each of them was a tiny symbol of her goddess, and together they served as a constant reminder that Sarenrae was always with her, watching over all she did.
With her goddess’s presence ringing in her ears, Lisavet began her work.
First she washed the wounds with herbed water, then she made a careful incision along each scratch to drain the pus, then she washed them again. When she was satisfied that Wendlyn’s injuries were clean, Lisavet bandaged them carefully in balm-soaked cloth. As a final measure, she prayed over her sister, asking Sarenrae’s approval of her work more than the goddess’s direct blessing. Lisavet was devout in her faith, but Sarenrae had granted her actual magic only rarely—five times in her life, so far, and each of them a treasured memory.
Six, now. The presence of the divine flowered unexpectedly in her soul, bright as a sudden dawn bursting through storm clouds, and holy warmth flowed through her fingers into Wendlyn’s body, infusing her angry red wounds with a soothing golden glow. The scratches faded to pink, then to tender new flesh, only faint ridges marking where they’d been.
Eleukas sucked in his breath. “You’re a true cleric?”
Lisavet tried to conceal her own awe, and her flash of reflexive pride. It is the Dawnflower’s gift, not mine. “Only by Sarenrae’s grace. But I think Wendlyn will be well now.”
“Thank you.” Eleukas hesitated, then pulled something out of the bloodstained satchel Wendlyn had been wearing. “There’s another thing we need help with. Do you recognize this mark? This book?”
Lisavet canted her head curiously at the torn cover, then blinked. “Yes, actually. That looks like one of the books Vandy bought for the temple library a week or two ago. There was a whole set of them like that. They were stolen shortly thereafter, before we could get them properly cataloged. I’ve never seen her so angry. She really hates book thieves.”
“Do you remember what it was?”
“Local history, as I recall. But a rather macabre version. Legends about buried treasures and bloody tragedies. Haunted sites around Otari, mysterious ghosts, that sort of thing. As I said, the books were stolen before we could catalog them, so I never got the chance to read through them in any detail. No one did.” Lisavet looked up from the torn cover, raising her gold-streaked eyebrows. “Where’d you find this?”
“With a dead man not far from Giant’s Wheel. Where we fought the rats. There was someone—something—else with them too. Something monstrous.” Eleukas sighed, shaking his head. “Wendlyn might not want me telling you this.”
“I want to help.” Lisavet surprised herself by saying it, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt sure of her course. She did want to find the books that had been stolen from the Dawnflower Library. It was the right thing to do—the books had been stolen from Sarenrae, however indirectly, and that was an offense against the faith—and it would lift a worry from Vandy Banderdash’s shoulders.
People thought of the cheery halfling priestess as chatty and sunny, and didn’t always realize how deeply she could be wounded by something that they might account trivial, like a book theft. Lisavet knew better, though. Vandy didn’t want to believe that any of Otari’s people would steal from the Library, and she’d be glad to have the culprit caught.
But, even more than that, Lisavet wanted to solve the mystery for her own sake. Poisonous rats, a monster glimpsed by Giant’s Wheel, a corpse clutching the torn cover of a tome of legends—that sounded like adventure, the kind of adventure she’d only encountered in books until now. If something like that was actually happening, right here in Otari, then Lisavet didn’t intend to let it pass her by.
Lisavet knew that might annoy Wendlyn. She had always treated her adopted little sister as a nuisance to be brushed off—normal sibling conflict exacerbated by the fact that Wendlyn’s half-elven ancestry meant she felt the difference in their years more strongly than Lisavet did.
Well, too bad. Lisavet wasn’t about to let herself be brushed off now. She wanted purpose. This could be her chance.
“You owe me,” she told Eleukas. “For the healing. Well, this is what I want. I want to help get those books back to the Library. They’re rightfully ours, after all.”
Eleukas looked like he wanted to object, but couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say except: “All right. But you have to explain it to Wendlyn.”
“Explain what?” Wendlyn sat up groggily on the table. She winced in anticipation as she used her arms to push herself upright, then blinked in surprise. “It doesn’t hurt.” She patted both arms, astonished. “Nothing hurts.”
“By the Dawnflower’s grace,” Lisavet said, and tried not to be stung by the distaste that flashed across Wendlyn’s face before she could hide it.
“Thank you,” her sister said, begrudgingly, but honestly. “Now, what was it you had to explain to me?”
“That I want to come with you. I want to help.”
“Fine.”
Lisavet closed her half-open mouth. “You’re not going to argue about it?”
“No. We could use you.” Wendlyn flexed her arm again, then slid off the table with an acrobat’s effortless ease. “You know books, and you have Sarenrae’s blessing. Whoever killed the man by Giant’s Wheel, it wasn’t those rats, unless one of them knew how to wield an acid-coated axe. So if we do get lucky and find the killer, we might be in for a fight, and you might come in handy. And if we get even luckier and find the stolen books, you can tell us why they’re so all-fired important that somebody got killed over them.”
“Wonderful.” A warm glow filled Lisavet at Wendlyn’s words. She’d never expected to hear such praise from her sister. “What’s the next step?”
“Crook’s Nook. We have a gambling chit to cash in. Let’s see what kind of bet it made.”
Lisavet had never actually been inside Crook’s Nook, although she’d often walked across it. The tavern was built into the underside of a wooden bridge crossing the Osprey River, or maybe it was the bridge that was built over the tavern’s roof. Either way, it made Crook’s Nook the literal underbelly of Otari, a disreputable haven for thieves and smugglers that upstanding citizens like Lisavet pretended not to see.
There wasn’t much to see, anyway. River moss bearded the tavern’s girders, and rust streaked its weathered boards. Cataracts of grime clouded its windows, and damp-swollen wooden frames squeezed them shut. Because the bridge above it blocked the light, Crook’s Nook was cast in perpetual shadow, its door foreboding even on the sunniest day.
Her companions didn’t seem to share her unease. Eleukas swaggered and Wendlyn stalked through the door, like a pair of mismatched but equally lethal predators. Lisavet edged in behind them, pulling her hood over her gold-streaked braids and hoping no one noticed her.
She watched quietly from an out-of-the-way table as Wendlyn sauntered to the bar, flipped a little disc of painted wood across the counter, and exchanged hushed words with the scarred, gnarled-looking woman on the other side. The woman casually flicked one of her bone-studded braids in the direction of a big man slumped over an ale-pooled table, and Wendlyn slipped her a coin before returning to Lisavet.
“Well?” Eleukas pulled out a chair and dropped into it casually, holding a mug of foul-smelling liquid that Lisavet supposed was meant to be ale. The river rushing beneath the tavern drowned out quiet conversations, ensuring that the patrons of Crook’s Nook were always safe from eavesdroppers.
“That’s our man.” Wendlyn took Eleukas’s mug, sniffed it, and pushed it back toward him with a grimace. She didn’t glance at the drunkard again. “Osgrath. Notice his axe.”
Lisavet stole a peek at the axe. It was a brutal-looking weapon, wickedly spiked, with a haft wrapped in green snakeskin. The axe’s head was cast into shadow beneath the table, but it seemed to be oddly discolored, yet sharp. A peridot gleamed brightly between the blade and back spike, although no light fell on the gem.
“Nice axe for a drunkard,” Eleukas said.
“Very,” Wendlyn agreed. “Though he apparently hasn’t been a drunkard for long. The bartender says he used to be a reliable hand, working security at the dock. A few months ago, he changed. Claims he’s being haunted by a ghost, and started drinking to forget it.”
“A ghost?” Lisavet echoed skeptically. She thought Vandy would surely have said something if there’d been a ghost haunting Otari.
“That’s what he’s been telling people. Doesn’t exactly seem like his perceptions are unclouded, but that’s the story.” Wendlyn shrugged. “Ideas?”
“Yes, actually. If he thinks there’s a ghost…” Lisavet summoned all the confidence she’d learned in her training, pushed back her hood, and pulled out her holy symbol of Sarenrae so that its golden rays gleamed proudly over her chest in the dim light. She strode to Osgrath’s table, Eleukas and her sister a few steps behind, and put a gentle hand to the man’s shoulder, trying not to flinch when he jerked up at her touch.
The reek of alcohol that emanated from the man could have felled an ogre. He looked up at Lisavet blearily, rubbing a stained sleeve across the half-dried drool on his chin. Now that she was close to him, Lisavet could see that, under the ale-sick sallowness, puffy eyes, and unshaved cheeks, Osgrath must have been a formidable warrior once. His strength was still there, in his shoulders and chest, though deeply buried beneath whatever troubles had driven him to hide in his cups. “Whuzzat? Whuryou?”
“My name is Lisavet. I’m a cleric of Sarenrae. I understand you’re having trouble with a ghost. Perhaps I—and my goddess—might help.” She pushed the holy symbol forward, so that it dangled in front of Osgrath’s nose.
He went cross-eyed trying to focus on it, but some of the bleariness in his demeanor did seem to clear. “You’re a cleric? A real cleric? With magic?”
“Sarenrae favors me so,” Lisavet said piously. It wasn’t untrue, although so far she had, admittedly, only managed a half-dozen successful spells. “And if your ghost should prove to need exorcising by some other method, my companions are quite skilled,” she added, gesturing to Eleukas and Wendlyn with a flourish.
“Uh-huh.” Osgrath eyed the three of them dubiously, then belched. “But—hells, I’ve got to do something. It’s killing me as it is. Maybe you’re the best chance I’ll get. Yeah. All right. Meet me at Lisli’s boarding house at sundown in two days. Got that? Sunset on the night of the new moon. It’s the Redfish Room.”
“We’ll be there,” Lisavet promised, as Eleukas nodded behind her.
“Right.” Osgrath belched again, staggering toward the bar and tossing another handful of small coins on the stained counter. Clearly he’d already dismissed them from his thoughts, and was well on his way to dismissing everything else, too, except whatever was in the mug that the bartender was handing him.
But he paused long enough in his drinking to add, with a surprisingly keen look at the three of them: “Bring your weapons. Any weapons you’ve got. Anything. This ghost’s a real bastard, and you’re only likely to get one shot. So don’t miss.”
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 4: Gambler's Curse
Two days later, they went to Lisli’s boarding house, a windowless shack downstream from the fishery that reeked of rotting fish and abandoned garbage. Wendlyn hadn’t expected that Osgrath would be living in the lap of luxury, but she was still shocked to find the place as bad as it was. She hadn’t even realized that Otari held such dismal accommodations.
Osgrath was waiting for them inside, not much soberer than he’d been at their first meeting. His room was one of only two in the shack; the other appeared to be vacant. The only furniture in sight was a heap of dirty clothes that seemed to serve as the man’s bedding.
Wendlyn skirted around the clothes pile and leaned against the safest-looking patch of wall she could find. “Why don’t you tell us a little more about this ghost?”
“Right. Right.” Osgrath fished a dirty ceramic bottle from his pocket and took a swig. Even though it was Wendlyn who had asked him the question, he directed his answer toward Lisavet.
Wendlyn wasn’t surprised. Since they were children, people had shown her younger sister a deference and respect that they seldom granted her. At first, Wendlyn had assumed that it was because Lisavet, being human, had appeared older and more respectable from a younger age. Later she’d realized that that wasn’t it; Lisavet just radiated an innate authority that people sensed, and responded to. She didn’t even seem to realize she did it.
For Wendlyn, who had always struggled to be taken seriously, it rankled. Then she got annoyed with herself for letting it get to her. Eventually she’d mostly given up, and had just accepted that she was going to be the family ne’er-do-well, so she might as well get good at it. She’d learned to float at the periphery of Otari’s underworld, picking up tips and tricks, learning the skills of the con artist and cutpurse and gray-market locksmith, and while she’d always been careful to stay away from anything too heavy, she didn’t expect Lisavet to understand the difference. Most people didn’t.
It still irritated her, though, seeing Osgrath turn toward her sister first. She had to make an effort to push past that reaction and listen to the man.
“It started with gambling debts,” he was saying. “You might not think it to look at me now, but in my younger days, I was an adventurer. Gold, glory, wild excitement. There was a song about us. I had my own verse.” He smiled wistfully, remembering, and then the smile soured and he took another drink. “I won’t bore you with the story of how our party fell apart. Enough to say it did, and I got to gambling, trying to recapture some of the old thrill. Figured I had enough money that I could afford the vice.
“Well, like everybody else who thinks that, I was wrong. Pretty soon I ran through the money and was taking on other work to survive. Dirty work, some of it. Again, the details aren’t so important. What you need to know is that one of those jobs went wrong, and I—I killed a man I wasn’t meaning to kill. A man who didn’t deserve it.” Osgrath squeezed his eyes shut and emptied the bottle down his throat. “I murdered him. Let’s say it plain. It was a murder.
“I skipped town. Changed my name, took a night boat to Absalom. Took another boat from there. Spent a long time running. When I thought I’d run long enough, I came here. Quiet little logging town, nice people, decent work. Figured I could make a new life. For a while, I did.
“Then the ghost found me. The man I’d murdered. He just walked through the wall like it wasn’t there. First night, he didn’t say anything, just sat there and stared at me while I prayed and begged him to go away. I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. In the morning he vanished. I still didn’t sleep. The next night he was back again. This time, he told me I was cursed. That on nights of the new moon, when the world was darkest, he would come to me and lift away my gambling debts, the debts that had led to his murder—but only if I gave him my axe, the murder weapon, and let him keep it for three nights.
“He told me, too, that if I could stay debt-free for three turns of the moon, the curse would be broken and he’d leave me alone. I thought that was a mercy, at first. Now I understand it’s the cruelest joke of all.” Osgrath stared at each of them in turn with haunted, red-rimmed eyes. His voice cracked with the memory of his torments. “I can’t stop. The dice, the cards—I keep thinking, if only my luck could change. I keep going to the tables, looking for a portent, like a sinner waiting for some sign his god will take him back. But the sinner doesn’t change—I don’t change—so nothing does. It’s the tables and then the bottle, the bottle and then the tables. And on nights of the new moon, the ghost.”
“He takes your axe?” Wendlyn asked, fixing on the main point of Osgrath’s story, and casting a significant look at Eleukas. This explained the distinctiveness of the wounds on the corpse by Giant’s Wheel: obviously, it was meant to cast suspicion on Osgrath as an already disreputable character, and to shake off anyone who might be on the real culprit’s trail. Probably that was why the gambling chit had been left behind, too.
If Captain Longsaddle had found those things, instead of her and Eleukas, the drunkard would already be in a cell. It was too easy. He had no alibi, he was desperately in debt, and he was as disreputable as anyone came in Otari. Who would believe his denials, his ludicrous story about a ghost?
Even Eleukas looked like he thought Osgrath was guilty. He was leaning forward on his haunches with that tense narrow-eyed look that he got when he was trying to work out whether he should arrest someone in a training exercise.
Wendlyn wanted to shake him. Can’t you see what’s obvious? But it wasn’t just him. Most people couldn’t, she’d found. They saw what they wanted to see, and believed what they wanted to believe, and went through the world without actually watching or listening.
“Have you ever noticed anything different about your axe when the ghost returns it?” she asked, hoping this might prompt some other useful information.
But Osgrath only shook his head moodily. “It’s been with a ghost for three nights,” he muttered, his words already beginning to slur. He dug around in the pile of filthy clothes, pulling out other bottles and shaking them until he found one that still had something inside. “’Course it’s different. But it’s my axe.”
“Right,” Wendlyn sighed. Hopeless as it was, she had to try to keep Osgrath sober until the ghost arrived. “Well, would you care for a game of cards while we wait?”
He was, to her surprise, a good player, and knew several cheater’s tricks she hadn’t seen before. After a few rounds, Eleukas joined them, and even Lisavet took a hand. They only played for snapped bits of twigs, but Osgrath gambled as intently as if each broken stick were pure gold. His concentration drew them all in, and before Wendlyn knew it, night had fallen and the shack was illumined only by the oily glow of Eleukas’s lantern.
And then the ghost came.
The wall glowed pale blue, and then the ghost walked through, just as Osgrath had said. Its face was gaunt and distorted, bathed in a spectral azure light that brought out the hollows in its skull-like head and washed its other features into an unrecognizable haze. Though the ghost’s face was indistinct, its clothes were sharply recognizable: a city bookkeper’s hat, a good but patched coat, and under it all a tattered, cobwebbed white robe that trailed across the ground.
As soon as the ghost’s empty-eyed head swept toward them, it froze. Then it let out a shrill whistle, and part of the wall it had just walked through swung open. This time, there wasn’t any blue glow to disguise the gap.
“It’s not a real ghost!” Wendlyn shouted, even as four small, shambling figures came through the newly revealed gap. As they came into the light of Eleukas’s lantern, she saw that they were undead goblins: glassy-eyed, mindless, their bellies puffed out with decay. Maybe that ghost was a fraud, but the zombies were real enough.
Wendlyn drew her short sword, dropping into a fighting crouch. Eleukas was already beside her, axe out, and then he was swinging at the nearest goblin. He hit the zombie solidly, knocking its head to the side with a violent crack of bone.
It kept coming, though, claws extended mindlessly, head bouncing against its shoulder. Its empty stare didn’t change at all.
Lisavet chanted a prayer behind them, although Wendlyn couldn’t tell whether the words were actually magical or just meant to hide her sister’s terror. Osgrath was just cowering on his clothes pile, his magical axe clutched in trembling hands. Wendlyn bit off a curse at the man’s uselessness and scanned the fight again.
The ghost—or whatever it actually was beneath its tricks and illusions—was looking at Eleukas, who continued to hack at the goblin zombies. He’d finished off the damaged one, taking its head off altogether, and had started hewing at the next. Wendlyn took advantage of the ghost’s distraction, darting to the left and partially behind it, then stabbing deep into the hooded figure’s unguarded side.
Her short sword bit into solid flesh. Blood spurted from the wound: warm, red, living blood. The ghost let out a shriek and slashed at her with a hooked dagger that seemed to have materialized out of its sleeve. Wendlyn ducked, and the blade clipped through her red hair. She caught a whiff of something acrid on the metal, and the snippets of hair that fell to the floor were curled and discolored at the ends.
She tried to ignore it. The ghost was bleeding. That was what mattered. It wasn’t just a spirit; she could kill it. Lunging forward, Wendlyn stabbed again. This time, it was ready, and pivoted away, but not quite fast enough. She ripped another gash through the patched coat, and this one bled too.
Hissing, the ghost retreated through the gap in Osgrath’s wall, slashing the curved dagger through the air to hold them off. The two remaining zombies shambled forward in a protective screen, using their bodies to block Wendlyn and her friends from following.
Lisavet blasted one of them with a burst of golden light that left it crumpled and smoldering. Eleukas chopped into its companion’s torso, rupturing its swollen abdomen in a grisly explosion of splintering bone and foul gases—and something else, too.
Thick smoke poured from the goblin’s eviscerated belly. There must have been some alchemical trick stuffed inside, disguised by the natural bloat of decomposition. It filled the shack, stinging their eyes and clogging their nostrils. Coughing and gagging, Wendlyn shoved through the falling corpses and stumbled through the gap into open air.
She found only empty night outside. The ghost had escaped.
Wendlyn’s skin prickled, only partly from the sea winds’ chill. Where could it have gone? There weren’t any buildings nearby, and no trees or other natural cover. Yet the moonlight showed her only empty mud, curling wisps of smoke from the shack behind her, and the distant hulk of the fishery ahead.
She wiped her tear-filled eyes, but nothing changed. Somehow, the false spirit had disappeared as surely as a real one.
Cursing, Wendlyn turned back.
Eleukas was dragging the dead goblins through the hole in the wall to the clear air outside. By lanternlight, Lisavet was studying their tattoos and the beaded feather bracelets on their skinny wrists. “These zombies were Gullcrackers,” she told them, sounding surprised.
“Gullcrackers?” Wendlyn didn’t recognize the name.
Apparently Eleukas did. He stopped after dragging the last goblin out, wiping his hands clean of zombie gore on a handkerchief. “They were a local goblin tribe, back in my grandfather’s day. Bit of a nuisance, I’m told. They were always stealing odds and ends from the docks, and setting things on fire when they shouldn’t. Especially seagulls, which they viewed as good luck—and extremely funny—to explode in midair. Anyway, it wasn’t good for business, and people were worried that the goblins might manage to burn down valuable lumber.”
“They did.” Lisavet nodded, coming to study the dead goblins alongside Eleukas. “But they resolved the problem amicably. The town elders persuaded the Gullcrackers to relocate to the western cliffs, where the gulls liked to nest, and planted some redpitch pines nearby for them to burn. We study it at the temple as an example of cross-cultural diplomacy.”
“Looks like that wasn’t actually the end of the story, though.” Wendlyn peered at the dead goblins. She felt a pang of unexpected pity for the scrawny, big-headed creatures, who looked so helpless and pathetic now that they were sprawled in the mud outside Osgrath’s filthy shack. It seemed profoundly unfair that these Gullcrackers, who had likely had a wretched lot in life, should have to suffer the indignity of undeath after all the world’s other humiliations.
She looked from Lisavet to Eleukas. “Do you think you’d be able to find their… village?” Wendlyn wasn’t actually sure that goblins lived in villages, but she couldn’t imagine what the alternative might be.
“Yes, I think so. If I could go back to the library and study some maps,” Lisavet said.
“Perfect. That’ll give me time to rustle up some gifts they might like.” If these goblins were fond of blowing up seagulls, Wendlyn had some ideas for presents that might make them more favorably disposed to help the investigation. Maybe the promise of getting revenge on whoever had turned their fellow goblins into zombies would be enough, but… maybe not.
Did goblins care about such things? She had no idea. And who was to say that these dead Gullcrackers hadn’t been deliberately sold into that fate by their fellows? Humans could be that cruel to one another; goblins might not be any better.
“All right. Let’s meet at the library tomorrow morning?” Lisavet asked.
“Early,” Wendlyn agreed. “It might be a long walk to reach these Gullcrackers.”
“Wait.” Osgrath pushed himself up from the heap of clothes in which he’d sat out the fight. Clumsily, he got to his feet, pulling his spiked axe from the makeshift bed. He came through the gap in the wall, holding the weapon out to Eleukas. “I want you to have this.”
Eleukas stared at the axe, his face unreadable in the flickering lantern light. “Why?”
“It’s been a long time since this axe brought me anything but bad luck. I should have gotten rid of it as soon as… as soon as that murder happened, but I just couldn’t. Maybe I was carrying it around to remind myself that I used to be someone better, or maybe I just carried it out of guilt, but— either way, it’s time to let it go.” Osgrath pushed the weapon at Eleukas again. “You proved that ghost wasn’t a ghost. I don’t know what it was, or why it tormented me, or whether it’ll be back, but I know it wasn’t a ghost.
“There’s a lot I still don’t understand about all of this, but I know that much is true. I’m not cursed. I wasn’t being punished for my sin. I was being exploited for my cowardice. So take the axe. Please. I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of my past.”
Wendlyn could see that Eleukas still didn’t understand, but he nodded gravely and accepted the axe. “Thank you. It’s a magnificent weapon.”
“It was,” Osgrath agreed. He sounded relieved to have the weapon’s weight out of his hands. “In your hands, it might become so again. Its name is Visperath. I trust you will wield it with honor, as I no longer can.”
Outside, when they were well away from the boarding house, Eleukas drew Wendlyn aside. His face was cloaked by the night, but she could hear the concern in his voice. “Wendlyn, what’s happening here? What we saw by Giant’s Wheel was bad enough, but… this? Goblin zombies and a false ghost? If it was false. It did disappear into thin air after we fought it.”
Wendlyn shook her head. “Probably it just ran off in the smoke, or maybe had some kind of invisibility spell. It hid the gap in Osgrath’s wall, and it used illusions to disguise itself. I think we’re dealing with a spellcaster, not a spirit.”
“Even so.” Eleukas grimaced deeply enough for her to see it through the gloom. “To think of such things in Otari…”
“I know,” Wendlyn sighed. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on it, but the thought had occurred to her, too. “Someone who can turn goblins into zombies could do it to people just as easily. Our friends, our neighbors. We have to get to the bottom of this, Eleukas. We have to stop it. We can’t let these monsters run loose in Otari.”
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 5: The Redpitch Grove
Eleukas didn’t sleep much that night.
The events of the past few days had shaken his conception of the world. Otari was a peaceful town. Maybe a little small and sleepy, maybe the kind of place that big-city outsiders dismissed as a backwater, but he loved it all the more fiercely because of that. Community meant something here.
Didn’t it?
They had all assumed that the horrors they’d seen—the venomous rats, the faceless thing in the woods, those undead zombies and their false ghost of a master—had been the work of outsiders. But what if they weren’t? What if the culprit were someone in Otari, and Eleukas was ignoring obvious clues because he just didn’t want to believe that one of his own neighbors could do such things?
It’s impossible. He loved his little town too dearly to accept that any of its people could be capable of such evil. And yet…
None of it made any sense. Osgrath’s axe, just one small part of this puzzle, was befuddling in its own right. Visperath was an extraordinary weapon, obviously enchanted, and valuable for the sake of its craftsmanship and the brilliant green gem embedded in its blade alone.
Eleukas could understand why Osgrath didn’t want it: however magnificent the weapon, to the ex-adventurer it was nothing but a guilty reminder of how far he had fallen from his days of glory. But why hadn’t the “ghost” taken it?
If Wendlyn was right—and Wendlyn was usually right—then the “ghost” had only used Visperath to divert suspicion onto Osgrath. That meant whatever it was doing was worth the trouble of inventing and carrying out an elaborate ruse, and not taking a priceless magical weapon, just on the off chance that somebody bothered investigating a dead foreigner’s body and wasn’t deterred by the giant rats, or the zombies, or… anything else.
What could be worth that much?
Eleukas had never liked pondering the unknowable. His life was built around simple, certain things: steady friendships, honest work, and the solid assurance of a good axe in his hands. He’d found that, most of the time, sticking to those certainties was enough to navigate through life’s murkier waters.
He hoped that would still be true now.
###
He met the others outside the Dawnflower Library the next morning, early enough that his eyes were bleary despite the two cups of scalding coffee he’d downed on the way. Lisavet had drawn up a map showing the way to the Gullcracker goblins’ territory, or at least to the territory that Otari’s citizens had ceded to them. Whether the Gullcrackers had stayed there, none of them knew.
“What do you know about goblins?” Eleukas asked the others as they set off along the western coastline. The sea crashed violently against steep cliffs there, so they had little choice but to travel over land. There was simply no safe place to land a boat near the Gullcrackers’ territory. No doubt that was part of why Otari’s elders had given them that land.
“Not much. They don’t like horses or dogs, they’ve got some strange superstitions about writing, and they’re unhealthily enamored of fire,” Lisavet said. She’d tied her gold-streaked braids up into a high knot, and had exchanged her acolyte’s robes for sensible traveling clothes and a sturdy walking stick, with a steel-capped head suitable for clouting rats and zombies alike. “The Gullcrackers, specifically, have a variety of grisly entertainments involving sea birds, and also regard the birds as a culinary delicacy, as portents of the tribe’s future, and as the spirits of their ancestors. They don’t seem to perceive any contradiction between these roles. Goblin logic is… a little difficult for me to follow.”
“It’s hard for any sane person to follow,” Wendlyn said sourly. “I was up half the night reading some books Morlibint gave me about them. I might as well have taken four shots of rotgut, knocked my head against the wall as hard as I could, and passed out. Probably would’ve dreamed something that made more sense than goblin logic.
“But,” she added, a bit more brightly, “it did confirm that they like things that go boom. As it happens, thanks to my, ah, festive personality and creative preparations for various celebrations around town–”
“You mean the pranks,” Eleukas cut in.
“Yes, fine, ‘pranks.’ If you must.” Wendlyn sniffed theatrically, then grinned, patting her bulging satchel. “Anyway, seems clear the goblins are likely to appreciate my little toys far more than Captain Longsaddle ever did. So it’s a win-win. If we meet the goblins and they’re friendly, we have something to bargain with. If we meet them and they’re hostile, or zombies, then we’ll have a sack of bombs to throw.”
“And in the meantime, all we have to do is… carry around a sack of bombs,” Lisavet said dryly. Eleukas glanced at Wendlyn, half-expecting her to lob an acidic comment in return, but to his surprise, the half-elf just tossed her hair gaily.
“Quite so, quite so. Bombs are handy in all sorts of circumstances. For one, if we start getting lost in the woods, we can use them to blow up the occasional tree as a landmark. But probably that won’t happen, since we have Eleukas with us to navigate. Right, Eleukas?”
“Right.” He glanced up instinctively, but they’d gone far enough from town that the looming silhouette of Giant’s Wheel was lost behind the trees.
This part of the forest hadn’t been cut for years, maybe decades, and had only been touched lightly then. The trees grew tall and majestic, their broad leaves casting the companions into cool green shade. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like primal wilderness, wholly untouched by human hands.
Eleukas, however, could see the subtle signs that Otari’s loggers had left behind. It was a common misconception among outsiders that loggers didn’t care for the forest they worked. That wasn’t always wrong. Some, like the Kortos Consortium, only cared about how much profit they could pull from the trees, and how quickly. They were outsiders with no connection to the land, and they didn’t care what might happen to future generations if they razed the forest today.
Otari’s loggers felt differently. They regarded the woodland as a treasure to be passed down to ensure their children and grandchildren’s prosperity, just as it had supported theirs. Harvests were meticulously planned and divided between the three companies, none taking more than their fair share, and each group was bound to plant new saplings to make compensation for what they took. The companies could and did compete viciously with each other, but all were bound, by tradition and culture, to treat the forest with respect.
This sigil etched into a great elm marked it as a venerable elder, not to be felled; that patch of young chestnuts had been planted to replace harvested trees. Simplified druidic signs pointed out the cardinal directions and marked the way back to Otari, so loggers in future years wouldn’t get lost.
And there was a new sign, one Eleukas hadn’t seen before, which began to appear on the trunks with increasing frequency as they continued westward. It was a two-part sign: the first part was the standard logger’s mark for “danger,” but the second marking he didn’t recognize. It was a circle with two long slashes forking out from its sides, almost like a child’s rendering of –
“Oh,” Eleukas said aloud, feeling foolish. “It’s a goblin’s face.”
“What is?” Wendlyn asked, turning to look at the mark. “Oh.”
“This one’s ‘goblin,’ and this one’s ‘danger.’ And the last one, over here, indicates the danger is in the direction we’re headed. West.” Eleukas traced the carvings in the tree trunk, bark and moss alternately rough and soft under his fingers. He wondered what danger those old loggers had feared. The goblins, or something else?
Noon came and went. The shadows stretched long around them, and the afternoon sky began reddening toward sunset. The loggers’ etchings continued, but became older and sparser, often overgrown by the wild wood.
Still there was no sign of the Gullcrackers. Just rotting old game snares, neglected for months, and a few burn scars that might have been left by goblin pyromania, or might just have been from lightning-struck wildfires. Any tracks had long since been lost to time.
They came to the stand of redpitch pines that had been planted by Otari’s elders as part of their agreement with the Gullcrackers, yet here, too, Eleukas could find no trace of recent activity. There were crusted taps and scabbed-over slashes on many of the pines, indicating that someone had harvested their famously incendiary sap, but nothing had been touched since spring.
“We should stop here for the night,” he said, looking up at the redpitches. The pines’ pungent, almost minty fragrance filled the air. Beneath their boughs, it was full dark. They’d been walking by lantern light for nearly an hour. “We must be close if we’ve reached the redpitches, and I don’t want to stumble on the Gullcrackers in the middle of the night. They might get the wrong idea about why we’ve come.”
“All right.” Wendlyn set down her lantern, and by its yellow glow they laid out their bedrolls. Eleukas gathered enough fallen branches to make a small campfire, and Lisavet put together a light dinner of toasted bread, smoked mackerel, and pickled vegetables.
Midway through the meal, Wendlyn lowered her sandwich, sniffing the air with a frown. “Do you smell that?”
“It’s supposed to smell like that,” said Eleukas, who had never been fond of smoked mackerel.
“Not the fish.” Wendlyn put her sandwich down and stood, reaching for the sword belt she’d left propped against the log she’d been sitting on. “Something else. It smells like something–”
“—dead,” Lisavet finished for her, squinting into the darkness. Slowly the cleric put her own sandwich aside, picking up her walking stick from the needled earth. “I smell it too.”
Now Eleukas did as well. A putrid carrion stench rose beneath the clean scent of the redpitch pines. It reeked of open graves and plague pits, of battlefields so glutted with death that the vultures grew too heavy to fly.
Small figures, big-headed and big-eared, approached the edge of their firelight. These zombies were as dead as the ones they’d encountered in Otari, but in far worse shape. Their little bodies were badly decayed, with patches of skull gleaming bald through their scalps and empty, sagging sockets instead of eyes. Some were missing limbs. Slack-jawed and stumble-footed, they staggered forward, claws outstretched for the blood of the living.
Eleukas didn’t waste any breath on a battle cry. He swung Visperath like a woodcutter setting to work on saplings, clearing the zombies out of his way with wide horizontal strokes that they made no attempt to evade. The axe cleaved through their bodies, leaving hissing trails of acid vapor and dissolving flesh behind, but the zombies only grabbed hold of its haft and blade, heedless of how many fingers they sliced off in their efforts.
Visperath was far deadlier than his old guard axe. Nearly everything it hit, fell. Eleukas cut through at least half a dozen, but more kept coming—an entire tribe of the dead. Those in the rear ranks were even more rotted, little more than maggot-infested skeletons. They came without finesse, without cunning, with only a blind determination to pull him down and overwhelm him by sheer numbers.
One goblin clasped its scabrous hands around Wendlyn’s short sword, which she’d buried in its ribcage. It wrenched the weapon away from her as it fell. Disarmed, Wendlyn danced backwards, then snatched a fallen redpitch branch and swept it through the fire. The dry needles ignited in spitting bursts, and she used the flaming brand to hold the zombies back.
The branch was slower and heavier than a sword, though, and redpitch wood burned fast. Already the flames were licking up toward Wendlyn’s hands, spurred higher by her swings. Eleukas didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to wield it.
Lisavet was faring even worse. Zombies surrounded her, clawing and battering the cleric from all sides. She whirled her walking stick, trying to fend them off, but wasn’t doing enough damage to put them down for good. Half-crippled zombies dragged themselves along the forest floor toward her, spitting pine needles and snarling through teeth full of wet dirt. They dragged Lisavet, kicking and flailing, to the ground.
Eleukas waded in to save her. He couldn’t swing Visperath into that mob without endangering the cleric, so instead he grabbed the undead and hurled them bodily away from her. Putrid flesh squelched between his fingers as he flung the little zombies aside. Maggots flew from their scrawny bodies like wriggling drops of sweat.
Breathing through his mouth to minimize the stench, Eleukas focused on getting Lisavet free. But the goblins were crawling onto him too. One seized his leg and bit his thigh. Another jumped onto his back, hugging his neck like a nightmarish child. Two more tried to push Eleukas over as the piggybacking zombie slid off his side, throwing him off balance. Rotten gore slimed his fingers, making it impossible to hold onto anything in the fray.
He lost his grip on Visperath, and then he lost his grip on Lisavet. The axe vanished beneath the swarming zombies. Lisavet had nearly vanished as well; he could only make out an arm, a kicking leg, and occasional glimpses of her braided topknot.
Is this how it ends?
No. Surely not. But Eleukas couldn’t fight them all. They’d already gotten his friends, and they were pulling him down too. There were too many, just too many.
Fire burst across his vision. An explosion rolled across Eleukas, Lisavet, and the zombies attacking them. The blast knocked Eleukas to the ground and drove the wind from his lungs. He heard Lisavet scream, but he couldn’t see her—he couldn’t see anything but a blurred shock of orange and black. When he tried to rub the afterimages from his vision, his eyelashes crisped and crumbled under his hand.
Wendlyn? She’d brought bombs, but these explosions were fiercer than anything he’d ever seen from her. These were no mere pranks.
And he didn’t think Wendlyn would have thrown her bombs quite so close. This was—was this meant to hit them?
A second blast roared to Eleukas’s left. He rolled away blindly, feeling the wash of renewed heat over his raw skin. Before he could catch his breath, or get any sense of where the explosion had come from, a third fireburst boomed to his right. Lisavet screamed again, this time in pain rather than terror.
The afterimages were fading. Eleukas scrubbed his hand harder against his eyes, fumbling desperately with his other hand until he found Visperath’s handle in the scorched leaf litter. He shook the axe free, unsure of if it would do him any good.
The blasts had come from above. He looked up to the redpitches. There was a goblin squatting in the pine branches. Alive, not a zombie. It wore thick round-lensed goggles and a suit of eccentric leather armor covered in fluttering, partially blackened bits of paper. In its hand was a smoking, bulbous bomb.
“Who are you?” Eleukas yelled to the goblin. “Are you in league with these zombies?”
“I am Gristleburst.” The goblin showed its teeth in a goggled grin. It didn’t answer his other question. Its fangs gleamed in the light of the burning redpitches, and it hurled the last bomb down.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 6: The Last Gullcracker
When the last of the zombies had collapsed into a smoldering heap, Gristleburst hopped down from his tree. Smoke drifted slowly over the bodies of the dead, and a burning redpitch pine spat flaming sap into the night, but nothing else moved in the darkness.
Maybe this time he’d finally done it. Maybe this brutal, exhausting fight had been enough to free the last of the Gullcrackers from their cursed thralldom.
Grabbing a blackened stick of pine, the goblin began poking his way through the corpses. He counted five, ten, five again, ten again, five again, ten again—no, wrong, that last one was a single zombie that had exploded into pieces, not two separate bodies. So one shy of three tens.
That was all his tribe. They were all dead.
Loneliness descended upon him, its weight leavened with grim relief. They were all dead. His work was done. And now he was alone in the world.
Alone, except for–
Gristleburst circled back around to the biggest of the humans, a large male who’d fallen facedown into the scorched humus, next to his acid-spitting axe.
A moment’s examination convinced the goblin that the human wasn’t seriously injured. Just concussed and a little singed, no worse than Gristleburst had accidentally done to himself at least five-and-one times. If the goblin left him, and no scavengers came to finish him off, he’d live.
The two females were also still alive, although the yellow-striped one had been badly hurt by the zombies. Her thigh had been ripped deeply, and was bleeding hard. This one wouldn’t survive without help.
Gristleburst sat back on his haunches, sucking his teeth.
Did he want to save the human?
If the humans died, he could take their things.
On the other hand, they could hardly stop him from taking their things now, and they had, even if unwittingly, helped Gristleburst end his long and arduous quest to lay his dead tribe to rest. He had been hunting down zombies by ones and twos for too many tens-again of days to count—a long, terrifying, lonely time. Several times he’d nearly been killed, either by the undead or by one of his own misaimed bombs. If the humans hadn’t blundered into the forest and drawn the entire horde to one place, Gristleburst might well have died before finishing off his cursed kin.
Maybe that made them worth saving.
He had a few minutes to decide. Gristleburst heaved the yellow-striped female onto her back and rifled through her belongings, looking for something that would tell him whether these humans should live.
She had a golden bauble around her neck. A god-thing, but not an important one. Under her cloak, she had a leather bag that held bandages, bad fish-food, worse cheese-food, and some small glass bottles. Gristleburst opened one curiously, sniffing the contents and then plucking one of the sheets of defeated writing from his armor. Carefully, he spilled an experimental drop across the page and flipped up his blast goggles for a better view. He tracked the liquid’s viscosity, the way its color and odor changed as it was exposed to air, the swiftness and length of the fine vein-streaks it made in the paper’s weave.
As Gristleburst studied the liquid, he blinked in surprise.
This was a potion of magic. Not science, which didn’t surprise him, given that humans were primitive fools who understood nothing of science and relied on such crude and perilous occult arts as writing. Obviously he couldn’t expect such creatures to have any grasp of alchemy. No, the surprise was that any of these three should possess magic, and healing magic, at that.
Gristleburst hadn’t expected that anyone capable of magic would be defeated by zombies, even as many zombies as the Gullcracker tribe had become. Possibly—no, probably—these humans had only stolen the magic potions.
But, still, that meant they were capable of stealing magic. They might know where to get more of it.
And since he could use the yellow-striped female’s own potions to heal her, it wouldn’t cost him much to find out. He circled around the fallen human, pinched her nose, and poured the bottle’s remaining contents down her throat. As the wound in her thigh closed, and the female coughed her way back to consciousness, Gristleburst clambered back up into a tree. He didn’t want to be caught on the ground if these humans turned out to be hostile.
The yellow-striped human roused soon after he’d dosed her. She went to the other two, applying salves and bandages to their injuries. Gristleburst crouched on his branch, interested to see how they reacted to his handiwork.
“Doesn’t look like we’re going to be getting much help from the Gullcrackers,” the red-haired human said as she sat up groggily. She looked different from the other two, Gristleburst noted: her ears were pointed, and her features had a foxlike sharpness that the others didn’t.
Maybe she was from a different tribe. Or perhaps her parents had prayed to the Mother of Monsters for their child to be blessed. If so, they must not have offered a very good sacrifice, because the female’s deformities were trivial, plainly useless, and not at all intimidating.
That was good. He didn’t like dealing with Lamashtans. Not the serious ones, anyway.
“Everyone’s alive?” the male asked, even though the answer to his question was obvious. Maybe he’d been more concussed by the bombs than Gristleburst had realized. “I thought that bomb-thrower in the trees wanted to kill us.”
That was him. Ears pricked, Gristleburst leaned closer.
“Who?” the yellow-striped female asked.
“There was a goblin in the trees,” said the one with the pointed ears. “I saw him too. He hurled bombs into the fight, though it wasn’t clear who he was aiming at. But I guess he must have meant to help us, since we’re still alive and the zombies aren’t.”
“He might still be around,” said the first female, plucking at the bloodsoaked ruins of her pants leg. “Someone gave me a potion, and it wasn’t either of you two. You were still down when I got up.”
That sounded like a cue. Puffing his chest out proudly, and straightening the bits of defeated writing on his armor, Gristleburst leaped down from his branch in a shower of singed pine needles. “Yes! Gristleburst saved you!”
The humans were gratifyingly astonished. They stumbled back with wide eyes and expressions of relief and alarm. “Are you a… Gullcracker?” the red-haired female asked.
“Yes. Last of Gullcrackers. Rest are this now.” Gristleburst gestured to a heap of gore and blackened bones, mostly hidden by a drift of charred needles.
The humans looked at each other. Then, softly, the yellow-striped one said: “I’m sorry. We hoped to help. Do you know who did this, or why they attacked your people?”
Gristleburst blinked at them. Was it possible they didn’t know? Had they not yet encountered the foul ones?
Perhaps the foul ones were so afraid of humans that they hadn’t attacked the human town as they’d attacked the goblins and kobolds. If so, these three might be formidable allies.
Or maybe they were just fools who had somehow failed to see the obvious, but even fools were useful for standing in front of zombies while Gristleburst hurled bombs from behind them. Certainly he’d seen that they could do that much, at least.
“Foul ones did this,” he told them. “Foul ones and Fangsparks.”
“Foul ones?” the male echoed, confused.
“Humans who give themselves to the False-Named One. The Truth-Eater. Their faces are empty like his. They become… un-human.” Again Gristleburst was perplexed that they didn’t already know this, but then perhaps the foul ones disguised themselves when they walked among humans. They’d hidden themselves when they first came to the Gullcrackers, and to the Fangsparks as well.
“Foul ones went to the Fangsparks first. Kobolds are stupid and easily tricked,” Gristleburst added, contemptuously. “They made promises, offered poison drinks. The Fangsparks swallowed the promises and the drinks. Now they belong to the foul ones.
“Then foul ones came here. More promises, more drinks. Gullcrackers not so stupid, didn’t swallow. I put their brewings on my papers to see their truth–” Gristleburst touched the flapping, singed sheets pinned to his armor “—and told Gullcrackers what they really were.
“Foul ones didn’t like that. They don’t like when you see truth. They attacked, and turned our dead against us. Even the children. We burned many, but could not burn all the bodies in time. In the end, some fled. Most died. Only I stayed, to put the dead to rest. Now this is done.” Gristleburst paused, adjusting his goggles to hide the embarrassment of tears behind them. He’d won. The Gullcrackers were free. No use thinking about the rest of it.
“What will you do next?” the red-haired female asked.
“Don’t know.” Gristleburst had never thought about it. Surviving the zombies, and killing them, had absorbed everything the goblin had. He’d never contemplated what came after.
“We’re hunting the… foul ones… too,” the female told him. “Maybe we could join up. You could help us find them, and we could help you get some justice for what they did to your tribe.”
Gristleburst considered the possibility. He’d daydreamed about taking the fight to the Fangsparks and foul ones, but it had never been a realistic option. There were too many kobolds in the tribe, and the foul ones’ magic was too fearsome to chance on his own.
But if he wasn’t alone…
“Look,” the red-haired human told him, apparently mistaking his deliberation for reluctance. She fished around in her satchel, pulling out a string of striped ceramic gourds. “Bombs. You can have them if you help us.”
Gristleburst cocked his head at the offered bombs. He took the string from her, running his clawed fingers over the hard clay casings and examining their construction with an expert eye. He cracked one and then another neatly open, sniffing the contents of each gourd before replacing the caps and fuses.
The human’s work was a little crude, and the blasts didn’t look very powerful, but Gristleburst wanted the bombs anyway. They were made to explode in different colors, incandescent red and blue and burning gold, and some of them looked like they’d make interesting shrieks or whistles as they went off. He did like shrieks.
“Also potion,” he told them, stuffing the string of bombs into his pants. “You give potion too. Then Gristleburst will help.”
“Wonderful,” the male human said, relieved, as the yellow-striped human took out another healing potion and gave it to Gristleburst. “Where do we find these Fangsparks?”
Gristleburst shoved the potion bottle into an insulated pocket on his pack. Precious things, like potions, had to be kept well protected from his bombs. “North. Foolish to go there first, though. Fangsparks and foul ones have many poisons, many tricks. Smarter to go to the witch-pond first. Get ready there.”
“The witch-pond?”
“Where mushrooms and stinky roots grow around the old green rocks. Useful for brewings. Rocks are good too. Many magics leak into them. Very powerful.” Gristleburst mimed an explosion with his hands, to underscore the point.
“Do you mean Stone Ring Pond?” the red-haired human asked. “Where the druids are?”
Gristleburst reined in his impatience—how many times did he need to explain it?—and nodded to the humans. They couldn’t help that they were slow-witted. “Go there, make brewings, then go to Fangsparks.”
Again the humans looked at each other. Evidently they had no leader to tell them what to do, which explained why they couldn’t decide anything. Finally the red-haired one said: “All right. Stone Ring Pond, and then the Fangsparks. Where the foul ones wait.” She glanced at her companions. “Anybody want to do anything else first, or are we ready?”
“I think we’re ready,” said the other female.
The male said something too, but Gristleburst wasn’t listening anymore. He’d already begun to lope through the woods, heading for the witch-pond with allies at his back, bombs in his pants, and new hope in his heart.
Let the Fangsparks see what it was like to be the last one alive.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 7: Stone Ring Pond
We’re not really going to steal from Worliwynn, are we?” Eleukas whispered as they headed toward Stone Ring Pond.
“Of course not,” Wendlyn said. The kindly gnome druid was revered in Otari for her wisdom and her practical advice on stewarding the fish and trees that produced the town’s wealth. Upsetting Worliwynn would be a surefire way of turning the entire town against them, and she was mildly insulted that Eleukas thought so little of her that he even had to ask.
“Stealing from Worliwynn would be a terrible idea,” she told Eleukas, “but going to Stone Ring isn’t. These ‘foul ones’ and Fangsparks seem to have been more active in the forest than they have been in town, so Worliwynn might have a better sense of what they’re up to.”
Eleukas nodded, and they continued through the wood in a more companionable silence. Ahead of them, Lisavet and the goblin were discussing something in animated tones. Wendlyn couldn’t make out what they were talking about, but it sounded friendly.
She was glad for that. She still wasn’t entirely sure they could trust Gristleburst, but she wanted to. The goblin had saved their lives, and he’d been decent company on the journey back to Otari. And if being the sole survivor of the Gullcracker tribe didn’t give him a solid reason to want vengeance against the “foul ones” who’d murdered his kin, Wendlyn couldn’t imagine what would.
Assuming that story was true. And that was what unmoored her, almost more than anything else they’d seen or fought so far: that what she took to be real and knowable might not be, and that she might not be able to tell.
Rats too smart to be rats, ghosts that weren’t ghosts, the lurking possibility that any of her friends and neighbors in Otari might be complicit in the strange plot they’d begun to unravel… given all that they’d witnessed so far, how could Wendlyn be certain that Gristleburst really was a lone survivor, and not an agent planted by the same “foul ones” who’d murdered the rest of the Gullcrackers? Maybe he wasn’t a Gullcracker at all. Maybe he was an enemy from some rival tribe.
Maybe, maybe.
But she had to trust the goblin. She had to. In its own way, that felt like fighting back. You won’t separate us from allies that easily.
Ahead, the trees parted. The circled monoliths of Stone Ring Pond came into view. Twenty-four standing stones, each of them twelve feet high, circled the mirror-bright pond to create one of Otari’s best-known landmarks. An aura of contemplative serenity suffused the cool, leaf-scented air, and a quiet that spoke of deep peace. Even the birds softened their songs around Stone Ring Pond, as if they too felt a sense of reverence around the sacred pool.
“Let’s think about what we want to ask the–” Wendlyn started to say, when something grabbed her by the ankle and flung her up into the air.
It was a snare. There was a game snare wrapped around her foot, holding her high above the ground from a tree branch. Wendlyn twisted around, grabbing the rope with one hand and reaching for her boot knife to cut herself free with the other. It was only hemp. She’d be free in seconds.
Just as the knife bit in, something huge and brown lurched out of the brush beneath her. A bear—the biggest bear Wendlyn had ever seen—charged at the others, roaring so loudly that its reverberations almost shook the knife from Wendlyn’s hand. It swatted Eleukas to the ground with one enormous paw, pinned Lisavet with the other, and let out a second ferocious roar that made Gristleburst drop his string of bombs, which he’d halfway fumbled out, straight back into his pants.
Eleukas got back to his feet, spitting leaves, and pulled Viserath from its sling. He readied the acid-hazed axe, looking for a clear opening. Gristleburst yanked the bombs out again, flicking an odd dragon-headed stick with his other hand. A flame appeared in the dragon’s maw, and he tipped it toward a bomb’s fuse.
“No!” Wendlyn yelled, spinning slowly as she dangled from the tree. “Don’t attack! It doesn’t want to hurt us!”
“Funny way of not hurting someone, smacking them senseless,” Eleukas groused, but he checked his swing and dropped into a guard stance instead. Gristleburst kept the flame ready in his hand, but moved the fuse away. The bear grunted and withdrew its paw from Lisavet, backing up a few steps but keeping a wary eye on them all.
Wendlyn finished sawing through the rope and tumbled to the ground, landing in a smooth crouch. She tugged the loosened knot off her ankle and kicked the snare free.
“It’s a guardian. It doesn’t want to hurt us. It just wants to be sure we’re not here to–” She stopped. To do what?
“To taint the magic of the pond,” said a calm voice from the trees. The bear relaxed immediately and shuffled away from them, toward a gray-robed gnome woman who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. “Yes. You are correct, young Wendlyn. Torhan here did not wish to hurt you. But we have strange enemies these days, enemies who can disguise themselves behind false faces, and we must be careful.”
“We share those enemies, I think,” Wendlyn said. She gestured urgently to Gristleburst, who reluctantly put his dragon stick away. Eleukas had already sheathed his axe. “We were hoping you might be able to help us.”
As quickly as she could, trying not to omit any pertinent details, she sketched out what they’d seen over the past few days: the murdered stranger near Giant’s Wheel, the poisoned rats and faceless monster in the woods, the book theft from the Dawnflower Library, the sad story of the drunkard Osgrath and his “haunting” by a false ghost that tried to frame him for murder.
When she got to the fate of the Gullcracker goblins, she paused and let Gristleburst take up the tale. The goblin recounted how the “foul ones” had murdered his kin and reanimated them as zombies, and how he had finally managed to destroy the last of them with his new companions’ help.
When they had finished their story, Worliwynn looked grave, but also quietly relieved, as if hearing the worst had, at least, confirmed that the problem was as serious as she’d imagined.
“The dead man’s name was Elgrin,” the druid told them, “and it was he who stole the books from the Dawnflower Library. He did so at my behest, for they were too dangerous to leave in Otari. I dared not ask Vandy for them. I am sure she would have given them to us willingly, had I explained what they were, but then she would have known their true location and their importance—as might you, young Lisavet, or some of your fellow acolytes—and that knowledge would have put her, and you, in danger.
“Instead, I asked Elgrin to steal them, reasoning that the secret would be safer if only the two of us shared it. Evidently it was not safe enough. Before he could hide the books as we had agreed, he was murdered, and they were taken from him.”
“Why?” Lisavet asked, at the same time that Wendlyn said: “Who took them?”
“Our faceless enemies,” Worliwynn said, looking gravely from one woman to the other, “because in those books is an old, old secret from the days of Otari’s first founding, when the heroes of the Roseguard settled here and built the beginnings of our town. Some of the legends from their day are well known. Others are less so, and survive only as myths and superstitions. Distorted, half forgotten, yet still dangerous.
“One of those superstitions concerns Inkboil Spring, which lies two days to the north, deep in the Fangspark kobolds’ territory. Its steaming waters are bitter and black as ink, and stain the tongues and veins of anyone who drinks from them. Some say the waters are poisoned by an ancient dragon’s venom, while others claim it is the curse of a vengeful fey. Neither of these tales is true. What is true is that something foul and forgotten lies deep beneath Inkboil Spring, and its influence is what taints the water.
“I do not know what lies hidden beneath the black spring. I do know it is not of the natural world, and that it is unholy. It was locked away by the heroes of another age, as recounted in the books that Elgrin’s murderer stole. Beyond that, its nature is wrapped in a shroud of secrecy that none of my spells can pierce. But in those books were riddles and diagrams that I believe would have informed the right reader—one who was versed in their allusions and cryptic codes—of how to unlock the heroes’ wards and reach the secret buried under Inkboil Spring. And that is what Elgrin was killed for.”
“How do you know that’s the one they’re after?” Wendlyn asked skeptically. She rubbed her ankle where the rope had chafed her, still smarting at how easily she’d been caught. “There must have been plenty of other places mentioned in those books.”
“Yes,” Worliwynn agreed, “but Inkboil Spring is where the Fangsparks and their cowled masters have gathered. The birds in the sky have seen them, and the small creatures of branch and brush. I dare not send any larger spies, but what I have seen already leaves little doubt. What they seek lies beneath Inkboil Spring.”
“And you have no idea what that is.” Wendlyn straightened, pulling the slouchy top of her boot back into place. Her ankle was still sore, but she didn’t think it was injured badly enough to slow her down. “Other than that it’s unnatural and unholy.”
“No. If you find the books, and the key to understanding them, you may find that answer. But I do not have it.” Worliwynn sighed, and the great brown bear came close to snuffle reassuringly at the gnome’s shoulders and the back of her head. She patted the beast affectionately. “I am sorry for our misunderstanding today, with Torhan and the snare. He wishes you to know that he is sorry, too. We both wish you well. If there is anything we can do to help…”
Gristleburst blinked at the druid and her bear through his soot-streaked goggles. “Gristleburst wants rocks and stinky roots for blastings and brewings.”
Worliwynn’s mouth quirked toward a smile. “Yes, we will be glad to help you with ‘blastings and brewings.’ And anything else you might need. The Fangsparks are a formidable tribe, and their new allies are worse. If they could kill Elgrin… well, suffice to say, if you intend to confront them, you must be well prepared.”
###
A few hours later, Worliwynn had supplied them with fresh water, preserved food, healing herbs for Lisavet, and a pile of pungent, gnarled roots and glitter-streaked stones for Gristleburst. She had also sketched a birchbark map of the Fangsparks’ territory, noting the tribe’s known trails and hunting grounds. Finally, the druid had given them a stock of healing potions, as well as antidotes for the kobolds’ most commonly used poisons.
They were as ready as they could be, yet Wendlyn felt only trepidation as they walked away from Stone Ring Pond. She and her friends had barely survived the challenges they’d faced so far. Now they were going to confront an entire tribe of kobolds, as well as the mysterious puppet masters behind them.
Did they have a chance? Did they have a choice? Wendlyn wasn’t confident of either. If she’d had any inkling that their investigation would turn out like this, she would never have gotten started, much less pulled Eleukas and Lisavet in.
But they were all in it now, and they were in it because of her. And there was only one way to get them out.
Forward. There was nowhere to go but forward. They’d picked this fight, and now they had to win.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 8: Welcoming Hands
Silence reigned in the forest around the Fangsparks’ camp.
It was nothing like the air of serene reflection around Stone Ring Pond, nor was it the reverential hush of learning that filled the Dawnflower Library during reading hours. No. This quiet reminded Lisavet of nothing so much as the deafening emptiness that had rung in her ears when she’d come gasping back from the brink of death, scorched and battered and welted with pain, after falling to the zombie horde under the redpitch pines.
It was that kind of silence: the kind that seemed only to be waiting for the carrion flies.
Lisavet held her breath, half-consciously, as they came to a clutter of crumbling huts and dilapidated heaps of stone. Nothing moved among the ruins of the Fangsparks’ homes, not even birds or butterflies. Emptiness and rot had claimed their village as surely as it had seized the Gullcrackers’.
Gristleburst hopped over a low, bramble-covered stone wall and poked at the weeds on the other side. The goblin held up a dirty reptilian skull. “Food lizard,” he explained, tossing it aside and rejoining the little group. “All dead in that pen. They starved. Big lizards ate little lizards first, but then they died too.”
“Where are the kobolds?” Wendlyn asked, looking around at the village ruins. “Are they all zombies, like the Gullcrackers?”
“No.” Gristleburst’s voice was small and taut, wrapped tightly around his anger. “Not all. Fangsparks surrendered. Fangsparks helped. They did not fight the foul ones. They will not all be zombies.”
“Then where are they?” Lisavet tried to subdue her fear as she asked the question. Facing the goblin zombies had been the most terrifying experience of her life. The stench, the wet putrid squelch of their flesh, the way they just absorbed her blows with empty-eyed apathy, never flinching or showing any pain as they pushed indifferently past her desperate struggles to survive. They hadn’t cared. They hadn’t cared about anything.
She understood now why Sarenrae had a special hatred for such creatures. There was no reasoning with, or redeeming, carcasses animated by malevolent magic. One could only destroy them, or die trying.
Lisavet didn’t know if she could handle that again. If the Fangsparks were the same…
“Kobolds live underground,” Gristleburst told them, plainly baffled that he had to spell out something so obvious. “Aboveground is only for growing food and tricking outsiders.”
“Well, how do we get underground?” Wendlyn asked. Eleukas shifted his weight behind her, glancing from side to side as if he could already see earthen walls closing in around him.
“Tricksy, tricksy.” Gristleburst paused for a moment, then waved them all back. When he was satisfied that they were far enough away, the goblin began planting thin sticks all around the village ruins. Each stick was as long as Lisavet’s arm. One end, which Gristleburst thrust into the dirt, had a bulbous, pointy-tipped clay cap on it. The other end was oddly fluted.
Gristleburst set them about thirty paces away from each other, zigzagging the sticks around in a pattern that Lisavet couldn’t follow. About five minutes after he’d set the first, it detonated in a small, controlled blast that didn’t even dislodge the stick, but did cause a curiously deep note to bellow from the fluted end. A moment later, the next stick went off, and then the next, all around the wreckage of the Fangsparks’ village.
The bombsticks’ explosive notes all sounded much the same to Lisavet, but Gristleburst seemed to hear something more nuanced in their all-bass choir. The goblin narrowed in on one particular collapsed shack, setting a new series of sticks in a denser arrangement around its periphery and then listening to the notes that these sounded in turn.
“Here,” he said at last, flipping up his blast goggles with great satisfaction and digging in the abandoned lizard pen next to the shack until he seized upon a fallen branch that came up with a dirt-covered wooden trap door attached. “Tunnel surfaces here. Other tunnels all around, but this is biggest. Made big enough for prisoners and foul ones. Best for you.”
“Good to know we get slotted in with prisoners and foul ones,” Wendlyn said dryly. She tightened her ponytail and refilled her lantern, eyeing the gloomy hole in the ground. “I just hope the tunnels are big enough for us to defend ourselves.”
“Do they know we’re coming?” Eleukas asked, fingering his axe haft. There was no way he’d be able to swing Viserath in the tight confines of a kobold tunnel, Lisavet knew, and the prospect of being functionally disarmed had him unnerved. “The noise from those sticks might have warned them.”
Gristleburst snorted, tugging his blast goggles back into place and rearranging the bombs in his pants, pockets, and satchel with experienced efficiency. “Fangsparks knew this already. Knew long time ago. Spies and scouts everywhere, hearing your heavy stompings, seeing your big heads crash through trees. Blaststicks tell them nothing they don’t know. Blaststicks only shake and break their traps underground, trip up triggers, make them worry we have powerful magics. Better to scare them. Already they know we’re coming.”
“Makes sense to me,” Wendlyn said. “Everyone ready?”
“Yes.” Lisavet hoped it was true. She rubbed the nervous sweat from her palms as she watched Gristleburst and Wendlyn drop into the hole. The glow of Wendlyn’s lantern flickered against the tunnel’s rough dirt edges for a moment, and then they were gone.
“You’re up next. I’ll take the rear.” Eleukas grimaced, shaking his head at the tunnel. “I hope they know what they’re doing.”
“I know I don’t,” Lisavet sighed, and plunged into the dark.
Gray gloom swallowed her. The tunnel twisted and dropped almost immediately, shrinking Wendlyn’s light to a feeble firefly lost in a maze of bends. Lisavet put a hand to her holy symbol, praying to the Dawnflower for light.
Sarenrae answered. Golden radiance flooded the tunnel, soothing Lisavet’s fears with the welcome warmth of her goddess’s presence.
Dark though this place was, she wasn’t alone in it. She had her friends, and she had Sarenrae. With the ornaments chiming in her hair as reminder, Lisavet moved cautiously down the tunnel, clearing the way for Eleukas to follow.
“You’re getting better at that,” Eleukas said, when he’d dropped into the warren and gotten his bearings. He’d moved Viserath to a sling across his back and had a long knife sheathed at his hip instead. “The magic, I mean. It seems to come faster now.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Lisavet agreed. She hadn’t exactly sat and thought about it, but he was right: she had more confidence in Sarenrae’s blessings now, and the urgency of their quest gave her far less time to doubt herself. She could trust that the goddess would be there when she needed help, and that assurance steadied her in a way that she’d only been able to feign before.
Still, unease crept over her as they moved deeper into the Fangsparks’ warren. The air was close and musty, with a dry whiff of reptile droppings and a bitter, nose-burning smoke that Lisavet couldn’t identify. The tunnel was little more than a burrow clawed into raw earth, and loose soil crumbled into Lisavet’s hair as she squeezed between the scattered logs that braced it. Although her companions weren’t far ahead, the bent and narrow corridors blocked them from view. Only their footsteps, echoing dull and strange in the earth, carried back to her.
“I wish they’d slow down,” Lisavet muttered. “Let us catch up.”
Eleukas grunted something affirmative behind her, and then let out a second grunt of sudden alarm. Lisavet whirled back just as the ceiling and floor and walls all erupted simultaneously into a mad whirlwind of flung dirt.
Rotten hands thrust out from the walls, grabbing at Eleukas and Lisavet with brittle claws and sharp fingerbones bared by decay. Some were scaled, some soft-fleshed, all cold and dead and riddled with squirming vermin. Half-buried faces rose from the walls behind them, trying to moan through dead throats choked with dirt, staring blindly out of dead eyes weeping soil and worms.
Lisavet screamed. Then she prayed. Her holy symbol’s light intensified, searing the nearest half-buried zombie so it thrashed like a hooked fish and then collapsed back into its shallow, vertical grave. Eleukas stabbed another, again and again, dirt flying around his knife.
Yet still there were more, so many more, pulling at them from all sides, blinding them with flailing arms and a hailstorm of foul-smelling earth. A zombie in the ceiling grabbed Lisavet’s topknot, hauling her to her tiptoes and raking at her scalp. Maggots rained into her hair, jolting her ornaments into a cacophonous clatter as they burrowed between her braids.
Again Gristleburst saved them.
Lisavet blinked blood and dirt from her eyes to see the little goblin standing in a clear part of the tunnel, out of the trapped zombies’ reach. He dumped the contents of a small vial into a larger bottle and hurled it into the fray, steam and droplets spiraling out of its open glass mouth. An arm’s length from Lisavet’s face, it exploded into a burst of sizzling acid, eating away at dead flesh with such fury that Lisavet felt its heat sizzling against her own skin.
The zombies couldn’t move. They bubbled and frothed in the acid, and Lisavet hit them with blind panicked fury until they went limp under her cudgel. She didn’t run; she was far too frightened to run, and anyway the one in the ceiling still had its ghastly fingers knotted in her hair. She just hammered at the zombies, splashing dirt and acid and dissolving flesh everywhere.
Gristleburst threw more bombs all around her, launching a steady barrage of caustic blasts into the zombies. Even though the goblin was hurling acid rather than fire, presumably so he wouldn’t burn out all the tunnel’s air and suffocate them, Lisavet felt her lungs ache with the need to breathe. So much acid steamed off the zombies’ scalded corpses that it filled her eyes with stinging tears and heated the cramped corridor to near boiling. Acid dripped from the ceiling, and the zombie’s fingers dripped off with it, pattering down onto Lisavet’s head in a final, horrifying hail.
She didn’t look up. She just jerked away and thrust her cudgel into the dirt overhead, smashing anything that felt soft or solid enough to be flesh instead of soil. Globs of bubbling putrefaction tumbled down around her with every blow, and then finally the zombie fell down in pieces too.
It was the last one, or at least the last one she needed to worry about. A few were left struggling in the walls behind them, but they were trapped in their graves and couldn’t reach out to hurt anyone. As long as Lisavet and her companions didn’t try to turn back, they were safe.
Giddy and sick with relief, Lisavet stumbled forward. She had a few cuts and bruises, and some blisters from Gristleburst’s acid, but her worst wound was a headache from having her hair pulled so badly. What she wanted, more than anything, was a bath. No hope of that down here, though.
Eleukas had an ugly gash on his forehead and was holding his arm gingerly. “Zombie wrenched it,” he explained, wincing.
“Do you want one of Worliwynn’s potions?” Lisavet asked.
Before Eleukas could answer, Gristleburst cut in: “No.” The goblin gestured dismissively at the handful of zombies still twitching along the walls like flies on honeyed paper. “These are nothing. Only the beginning. Waste good healings here, none left for bigger dangers. Then you die. This is what the foul ones hope. So we will not do that. No potions for now. Only when hurt worse, later.”
“You’re that sure we’re in for worse later, eh?” Eleukas laughed mirthlessly.
“Oh yes.” Gristleburst’s smile showed a mouthful of sharp yellow teeth. “Much worse.”
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 9: The Warren
To Eleukas, the Fangsparks’ warren was nothing short of a nightmare.
He’d lived his life under open air and warm sun, his world bounded by the salt breezes and endless horizon of Otari’s harbor and the rich green majesty of its forests. Venturing underground, where he was bent almost double and was perpetually conscious of the weight of untold tons of earth, felt to him like being buried alive.
It wasn’t even a peaceful grave. Gristleburst was right: the zombies buried in the walls were only the beginning. Wendlyn disarmed over a dozen traps, ranging from hidden spikes and springloaded blades to deadfalls and corrosive gas vials, as they made their way through the Fangsparks’ tunnels. Once she failed to notice a basket of venomous spiders in time, and the frenzied fist-sized arachnids dropped on their heads, although at least most of the spiders had already killed each other while trapped inside the basket.
They never saw any kobolds, at least not living ones. Twice the tunnel rose back toward the surface, broadening into communal cookfires and fishponds designed to catch enough rainwater and sunlight to sustain the kobolds’ food supply. Yet even here, at the former cornerstones of the Fangsparks’ shared lives, there was only disuse and decay. The warrens seemed to have been as thoroughly abandoned as the Gullcracker goblins’ territory, and it was hard not to think that the reason for their absence was the same.
“Maybe the foul ones did turn them all into zombies,” Wendlyn said when they stopped for a grim, cold meal amid the remains of a former vegetable garden. “Maybe the Fangsparks’ surrender only bought them so much time.”
“Fangsparks are still alive,” Gristleburst said, poking at a moldering scarecrow. Crudely carved and garishly painted, it depicted a hulking goblin with menacing red eyes and a fierce grin that had mostly been washed away by rain and time. “Traps still working. Zombies can’t do that work.”
“Then where are they?” Eleukas asked.
Gristleburst only shrugged. “Deeper.”
They ventured onward. The tunnel stopped surfacing and dove more steeply into the earth. It grew even rawer, with torn roots hanging from the walls and the scent of fresh-turned soil heavy in the air. Wider, better-made branches split off into other parts of the warren, but Gristleburst ignored them, remaining fixed on the path that led down and down again.
“Where are we going?” Eleukas pressed, but Gristleburst didn’t answer. It was as if the goblin had a lodestone that none of the rest of them could see, and it guided him ever deeper into the Fangsparks’ home.
If this was their home. Eleukas wasn’t so sure about that anymore. The tunnels changed as they ran deeper. Above, they’d been crude and primitive, but the logs that bolstered the burrows were sturdy and bore the patina of age. The ground had been beaten hard by the passage of clawed feet over years, or decades. Even the traps spoke of care and concern: this was ground that the Fangsparks meant to protect.
But in this newer, lower section of tunnel, the raw logs leaked rivulets of soil-stained sap. The ground was soft and pocked with claw marks. Over an hour had passed since Wendlyn had found the last trap, and she’d ceded the lead to Gristleburst, which meant she didn’t expect to find more.
It gave Eleukas the shivers. What had the kobolds been digging so intently toward? Why hadn’t they set any traps here, after they’d put so many inventively nasty surprises in the warren’s higher reaches?
Finally Lisavet threw up her hand to signal a stop. Eleukas peered around the cleric, seeing that she’d taken the signal from Wendlyn and Gristleburst, who had halted ahead of her.
Past the goblin, the tunnel just… vanished. A sullen, fiery glow washed up from the depths of some great and precipitous drop, but standing in the back of their little group, Eleukas couldn’t see where it was coming from. He shouldered his way forward, partly because he was curious, but mainly because he felt that if there was some threat ahead, then he should be the one to meet it. Gods knew he’d done little enough in the warrens so far.
“What’s going on?” he whispered to the others.
“Gristleburst says we’ve found the Fangsparks. Be careful, and be quiet. We don’t want them to spot us.” Wendlyn motioned for Eleukas to flatten himself on the ground. She bellied down alongside him, and together they peered over the edge.
Fifty feet below, in a vast cavern lit by hissing green alchemical torches, thirty or forty kobolds dug frantically to unearth enormous chunks of carved stone. They looked like tablets of some kind, their faces covered in foreign letters as long as Eleukas’s forearm. Excavated pieces had been set carefully aside in another part of the cavern, where other kobolds painstakingly brushed them clean under the watchful eye of a cowled figure in long, obscuring robes. Another robed figure oversaw a third, smaller team of kobolds, these evidently tasked with assembling the tablet pieces in their proper order. Large gaps remained in the puzzle, but Eleukas could see that they were at least two-thirds finished.
The script etched into those broad stone tablets was like nothing he’d ever seen. The enormous letters alternated abruptly between harsh angular lines and sweeping curlicues, one wrapped around the other like vines climbing over hewn stone. Shadows pooled deep in the chiseled runes, voidlike in the cavern’s eerie green light.
Something about the absolute emptiness of that darkness pulled at Eleukas’s memory. It reminded him of the void-faced horror he’d glimpsed in the woods near Giant’s Wheel, back when this had all started, and it rekindled some of the mute, shuddering terror he’d felt then.
These things were connected. Eleukas felt it in his bones. The nightmare besieging Otari had its roots here, in the strangling script on those broken tablets.
With an effort, he looked away from the tablets to focus again on the kobolds and their cowled overseers.
Sores and sagging blotches plagued most of the kobolds. Many had stained or withered fingers, and their scales were grayish, cracked, and peeling. They stumbled unsteadily through their work, their eyes unfocused and jaws slightly slack. Eleukas couldn’t tell whether they were sick or poisoned, but it was clear that something was badly wrong with them.
The cowled figures were harder to read. Judging from their height and movements, they were human, or close to it, but that was all he could tell. Dark shrouds covered them from head to foot, obscuring everything but their fingertips, and the shadowless green glow of the alchemical torches cast them in a flat, distorting light. Eleukas couldn’t even determine what color the robes were. Gray, brown, blue – all looked plain black in that light.
He pulled back. Wendlyn withdrew alongside him, and they moved away from the ledge so that Lisavet could look into the cavern while the rest of them conferred.
“We can’t attack from here,” Eleukas whispered. “We have to find a way to get down there. But that’s it. Those tablets. There’s something about them… they feel the same as that faceless thing I saw in the woods.”
“You hear the whispers through the mask,” Gristleburst said. The goblin pursed his lips, miming a soundless whistle. “Feels foul, smells foul. Like secrets you don’t want to know. The voice of their god.”
“We have to stop them,” Lisavet murmured, having left the ledge to join them. The cleric’s eyes were bright with tears. “What they’ve done to those kobolds—what they’d do to Otari–”
“Two ways down,” Gristleburst told them. “First, can climb from here. Steep, difficult. Might get spotted. But they don’t use this tunnel anymore. Used it for a while, when first they found this place, then when they dug deeper, made new tunnel lower down instead of hauling dirt up this high. So maybe they don’t think to check this one anymore. Then we can sneak down, and probably we don’t get attacked from above.
“Other choice is to go back up tunnel, find new branch, come down through lower tunnel. Less climbing, more walking. Might be Fangsparks guarding that way. Then more fighting, no surprise.”
Eleukas glanced at the others. “I’m ready to climb if you are.” Years in the logging camps had taught him how to handle ropes, and although the beams in this tunnel weren’t as solidly secured as he would have liked, he was still reasonably confident that he could find a secure place to anchor their climb.
Wendlyn crept back to peer over the edge again, studying the figures below. After a few minutes she returned to the others, wiping dirt from her elbows. “I don’t see any sentinels. They don’t seem to be keeping watch at all. The kobolds are so sick and beaten down, I’m not sure they even have the capability to pay attention to anything but their drudgery anymore. And those heavy hoods keep the others half-blind and -deaf. I haven’t seen a single one so much as twitch its cowl back. So maybe we can sneak down.”
“I’ll set the ropes,” Eleukas said, glad to be of use. While Wendlyn kept an eye on the Fangsparks and their minders, he tied off two ropes on opposing beams, reasoning that one might hold them even if the other gave way. When he was satisfied that they were as sound as he could make them, he turned back to his friends. “All right. It’s ready. Everyone’s sure?”
“’Sure’ is a strong word,” Wendlyn replied, but she grabbed the ropes and shinnied down, quick as a squirrel.
Gristleburst rearranged his bombs again, looping several of them around his skinny wrists in a pair of dangling bracelets that he could drop at will, and then descended. Lisavet hesitated the longest, swallowing as she tried not to look at how far she could fall, and then lunged over the edge with grim determination, choking the ropes in a death grip.
Eleukas cast one last glance down to the cavern. The Fangsparks were still stumbling miserably through their work. Their cowled overseers were still shrouded in green-lit secrecy. No one looked up; no one cried out at the intruders.
Their very indifference alarmed him. Hadn’t they heard Gristleburst’s blaststicks? Didn’t they know their traps had been sprung? Why weren’t they on guard?
Every fiber of Eleukas’s being cried out that this was a trap.
But even if it was, it didn’t matter. They’d already put their heads in.
He took hold of the ropes and dropped off the ledge.
Eleukas was fifteen feet from the tunnel’s mouth, dangling helplessly in midair, when the first horn sounded. Its bellow echoed around the cavern, shivering in the green alchemical light. As one, the kobolds and cowled figures looked up.
They were caught.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 10: Collapse
The kobolds’ alarm horns rang through the cavern.
Gristleburst froze for a beat on the climbing ropes, stunned by the shock of discovery and the sheer tide of noise rising up from the eerie green lights below. Then, cursing, the goblin anchored his claws in the rough hemp and looked down, surveying the scene.
A sea of danger seethed beneath them. The surviving Fangspark kobolds were sick and starved, but there were lots of them—three or four tens, at least—and they brandished their picks and shovels viciously. None had slings or bows, but there were plenty of broken rocks littered around the cavern, and several Fangsparks were already grabbing them to throw.
A stone clipped Gristleburst’s earlobe with a stinging bite. Another hit Wendlyn, eliciting a grunt. In seconds, these early shots would turn into an overwhelming barrage.
Worse yet, the foul ones had drawn out small crossbows and were fitting ugly, notched quarrels to their weapons. Gristleburst would have wagered every tooth he still had that those bolts were poisoned.
No good, no good. The humans couldn’t fight on the ropes. They’d get knocked off by stones and stuck with venomed quarrels, and then Gristleburst would be alone again.
He didn’t want to be alone.
The goblin shook loose one of the bomb-festooned bracelets he’d looped around his wrists before beginning his descent. Unlike the humans, apparently, he had planned for this. Once more it fell to Gristleburst to save his companions, who had, yet again, shown themselves to be far too dense to manage on their own. Lucky them, having such a clever goblin to rely on.
He took aim at the biggest cluster of kobolds, whirled the bracelet to build up enough momentum to stabilize its arc, and flung the bombs against the cavern floor.
Six explosions went off near-simultaneously, tearing apart the Fangspark mob. Shards of wood and metal ricocheted off the wall as their picks and shovels shattered. Burning kobolds staggered out of the blast, screeching and tearing at their smoldering rags. A few lay motionless on the ground, but Gristleburst hadn’t killed many.
That was all right. He hadn’t been trying to. Only two of the bombs on that ring had been real explosives—just enough to frighten the kobolds into thinking that they all were.
The rest were smoke bombs, meant to give them cover so they could get down the ropes alive.
“Move!” Gristleburst hissed at the humans, as thick gray smoke spread across the cavern. “Now! Before Fangsparks can see again!” A crossbow quarrel zipped past them in the haze, punctuating his words.
With commendable speed for such big, ungainly brutes, the humans hurried down the ropes, stones and quarrels whistling by. Though the Fangsparks scored a few blind hits, none were serious, and all the humans made it safely to the ground.
Coughing and wiping at their tear-stained faces, they tried to clear their eyes of the smoke. Gristleburst could have told them it was hopeless. The smoke was specially formulated to irritate unprotected targets. Only he, with his blast goggles, was immune.
He didn’t bother saying this, though, because it was clear that nothing he ever told them was going to break through the humans’ incurable habit of blundering into everything unprepared. Instead, Gristleburst focused on their enemies.
The Fangsparks and foul ones were in gratifying disarray, blind and shouting uselessly for order. The nearest foul one had pushed back its cowl, probably hoping that might help with the smoke, and as Gristleburst looked at the foul one’s face, he froze.
The foul one wore a mask of tattooed human skin patched together with frayed brown cloth in a diamond pattern. Over the mouth was a strange black spiral, painted or stitched of some light-swallowing material that Gristleburst didn’t recognize. The spiral seemed to suck at the world around it, expanding and contracting as if it had some cursed pulse of its own.
The effect was hypnotizing. Gristleburst had to tear his gaze queasily away before it pulled him down too deep. His stomach lurched; sweat prickled behind his ears. There was a wrongness in that spiral, a secret and twisted evil that waited within the mask to be whispered into the world.
But it wasn’t the only, or even the most urgent, danger in the cavern right now. Something else was coming. Something enormous. Gristleburst couldn’t hear anything above the clamor of battle, but he felt its thudding footsteps vibrate through the earth, and he knew that whatever was approaching was huge.
“Better get ready,” he warned the humans, who were still struggling not to choke in the smoke and not paying attention to anything important. “Big monster coming.”
“What monster?” Eleukas had, sensibly, given up on trying to wipe the smoke from his eyes and had instead used their brief respite to pull out his big axe, now that he had room to swing it. The weapon’s acidic edge sizzled in the fume-filled air. “Where?”
Before Gristleburst could say anything, a furious bellow answered the question for him. A huge ogre strode out from one of the lower tunnels, swinging a massive hook from side to side. Rusting plates of pot metal covered its hairy body in a scabby patchwork. A bloodstained leather whip was coiled at its side. Its sweeping blows swirled the smoke away, offering them a clearer view than Gristleburst, for one, really wanted.
The kobolds screamed and fled when they caught sight of the ogre. Even the foul ones moved respectfully, or warily, away from the behemoth’s reach.
Gristleburst could see why: the ogre was smashing anything that got in its way. One unlucky kobold, struck by the ogre hook, went flying away in two messy, half-crushed pieces.
“How do we kill that?” Lisavet gasped.
“Same way you kill anything,” Wendlyn said, skirting to the right with her short sword drawn. “Stab it a bunch in the places that bleed.”
Gristleburst didn’t think it was likely to be that easy, although he did approve of the plan. Keeping a wary eye on the Fangsparks and foul ones, he fished out a firebomb and hurled it at the ogre.
The bomb landed just above the ogre’s hip, hitting a metal plate, and exploded in a smoke-edged flower of flame. But the ogre’s armor, as rusty and pitted as it looked, was surprisingly solid. The metal plate deflected most of Gristleburst’s blast, leaving only a ring of charred hair and pinked flesh around its edges.
Roaring in outrage, the ogre charged straight at him, scything the monstrous hook. The weapon alone was nearly twice the goblin’s size.
Gristleburst swallowed. His knees suddenly felt all watery, and his throat had closed tight with a terror that he’d previously only felt upon realizing that he’d dumped the wrong reagent into his mixing cauldron. This was a very bad mistake.
Well, there was only one thing to do when a bomb failed: throw another.
And if the ogre’s armor meant he couldn’t get through with fire…
Gristleburst felt around for the telltale triple ridges of a smoke bomb, grabbed it, and punched in the cap with a thumb. He could hear the Fangsparks surging back to the attack, but he couldn’t concern himself with them. Not with the ogre looming close enough that Gristleburst could smell the rotten meat wedged between its yellow teeth.
The humans would have to handle the kobolds. He had his hands full.
Gristleburst threw the bomb high and hard, straight into the ogre’s face. Just one. It was all he had. He hoped it would be enough.
The ceramic cylinder smashed into the ogre’s forehead, square between its eyebrows. As the monster went cross-eyed trying to see what had hit it, acrid liquid dribbled out across its face, boiling off into a fresh wave of irritant-laden smoke.
Gristleburst dove to the side, and not a second too soon. The ogre hook swiped through the air where he’d been standing, leaving a vicious arc cut clear through the smoke.
The lunge left the ogre’s side stretched and exposed. Wendlyn danced in, jabbing her short sword viciously into a gap between two of the rusting metal plates. She stabbed in hard and twisted her blade on the way out, opening a deep wound that poured a steady river of dark, venous blood.
It was a lethal strike. Yet the ogre, with terrifying speed and strength, turned and swung at Wendlyn. Blood spattered across her face and leather jerkin as the ogre spun. The redheaded female threw herself into an impossibly deep backbend, and the massive hook swept over her chest, sparing her life by inches.
Eleukas hit it from the other side, swinging Visperath hard with both hands. The acid axe screeched off an armored plate in a shower of rust flakes and sparks, then chopped into the ogre’s right arm. Not a devastating blow, but it did hurt the beast. Thick rivulets of smoke and blood flowed together down its body.
The kobolds were regaining their confidence, so Gristleburst lobbed a few more firebombs at them to keep them at bay. He darted a quick glance over at the foul ones, and was astonished to realize that they weren’t fighting at all. Instead, while the ogre and Fangsparks kept the humans distracted, the foul ones were retreating toward a side tunnel.
“The foul ones are escaping!” Gristleburst cried, running after them. The foul ones looked back at the goblin at his cry and, astonishingly, fled faster.
They’re afraid of us. The foul ones were actually afraid of them. The realization first shocked Gristleburst, and then filled him with a white-hot joy. He had never imagined that the foul ones who had murdered his entire tribe might run from him.
But run they did, and Gristleburst screamed with the delirious hateful happiness of it, and threw a bomb at their robed backs. It overshot the foul ones, only shaking some dirt from the mouth of the tunnel they were running toward, but still he cackled at how they recoiled from the blast.
“We need help with this ogre!” Lisavet yelled.
No. No. Disappointment flooded Gristleburst’s mouth with the taste of ashes. He was so close to killing the foul ones…
The sight of the tunnel’s crumbling earth, jolted by his misaimed bomb, gave Gristleburst an idea. “Lure ogre here!” he shouted back to the humans, already reaching for another ceramic ball. This time he threw it past the foul ones on purpose, landing the explosion between them and the tunnel.
It worked. Again they hesitated, and this time they didn’t try to push forward through the sticky carpet of alchemical fire. The tunnel’s support beams, hastily laid and rocked by two bombs in close succession, were listing dangerously. Its ceiling dribbled dirt and pebbles like a wounded thing, and the smoke made it hard to see just how bad the damage was.
The foul ones pulled back, abandoning the original tunnel and retreating down a secondary path instead. This time, Gristleburst was content to let them go—for now.
“Lure ogre this way!” he yelled again.
“We’re trying!” Eleukas shouted back. The big male was bleeding and bruised, but the ogre must not have hit him solidly, because he was still alive. As the two females retreated toward the tunnel, slashing and hacking at any kobolds who tried to stop them, Eleukas began a slower withdrawal from the fray.
The ogre followed him, bellowing threats and obscenities. Blood still poured from its side where Wendlyn had stabbed it, and a dozen other lacerations slashed gory red across its body, yet the behemoth seemed no more troubled by its wounds than it would have been by fleabites. Tiny eyes squinted in fury, chest flecked with blood and spittle, it stomped after Eleukas like an avatar of rage.
Wendlyn hesitated, eyes widening, when she saw where Gristleburst wanted them to go. “You’re going to let it trap us in the tunnel?”
“Not trap us. We trap it.” Gristleburst hoped he was right. All he actually knew was that this was the tunnel that the foul ones had wanted to take—but why, he had no idea. Maybe it led to safety, or to treasure.
Or maybe it led to another five-and-ten ogres they’d been about to call as reinforcements.
No use frightening the humans with that idea, though. He coaxed them forward, deeper into the narrowing corridor. “Come. Deeper. Almost there.”
The ogre lumbered after them. As the walls closed in around it, the ogre hurled its unwieldy hook aside and lowered its head, brandishing boulder-sized fists instead.
“Where are we going?” Lisavet demanded as she skittered back alongside the goblin. “Is this a dead end?”
“No,” Gristleburst said, feigning confidence. He gauged the ogre’s position critically, ignoring his companions’ increasing panic and counting the seconds, as calmly as he could, until the beast stood between the support beams that he’d cracked with his earlier bombs.
Then he launched one more explosive out of his fast-dwindling pile, aiming not at the ogre but at the weakest point he could see on the beams. “Run!” he yelled to Eleukas, just as the ceramic globe cracked and the detonation went off.
Gristleburst didn’t dare look back. Taking his own advice, he pelted blindly down the tunnel as fast as he could go. He hadn’t used his biggest bomb—in these close confines, that would have been suicide—but the shockwave of even a small blast, trapped in the tunnel, still punched the breath from his lungs and knocked him stumbling forward. Heat licked at his back, singing the small hairs on his neck.
It wasn’t the explosion he was afraid of, though. It was how far the collapse might follow.
With a terrible creaking crash, the support beams surrendered. Gristleburst heard the sharp snap of wood, the dull avalanche roar of earth, and one last choked roar from the ogre as the tunnel came down to bury the creature alive. Billowing soil rolled forward in a gritty cloud, enveloping Gristleburst and his companions in its choking grasp.
But the ceiling didn’t come down on them. The tunnel stabilized, its collapse dwindling to a few final groans and shudders. The ogre was gone, vanished under tons of earth and splintered wood.
Ahead, through the dust, there was light.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 11: Four Faces of Evil
Anyone dead?” Wendlyn coughed into the dust of the tunnel’s collapse.
“Not me,” Lisavet croaked, although that was at least half a lie. Her body felt like one massive, throbbing ache, with more intense flares of pain along her left arm and ankle, both of which might be broken. The ogre had done the first part, and she’d been lucky it wasn’t worse. A bad twist on a loose rock while running from Gristleburst’s explosions had done in her ankle.
But, strictly speaking, she wasn’t dead.
“Still alive,” Eleukas wheezed, pushing himself up from the ground. Dust caked his face and paled his curly black hair, but his wounds were already cutting wet streaks through it. “What about Gristleburst?”
“He’s still alive too,” Wendlyn said, grimly. “I thought I’d give him a chance to explain why he led us down this way before I strangled him.”
The little goblin had trotted well ahead of them, toward the light that glowed faint and white in the deeper depths, but he came back at the sound of their voices. “Foul ones wanted to run this way,” he explained, unperturbed by Wendlyn’s threat. “Must be a reason. Treasure, or safety. Best way to go.”
“You’d better be right, since you’ve collapsed all the other options behind us.” Wendlyn winced, bracing a hand against her hip as she straightened. “‘Safety’ for the foul ones might mean the opposite for us, so I think now’s the time to use those potions Worliwynn gave us. If none of them got smashed in the fighting, we should have five. That’s one for each of the three of us—Gristleburst’s the only one who didn’t get hurt by the Fangsparks, so he doesn’t need one—and two in reserve. Any objections?”
No one voiced any. Lisavet drank her potion gratefully. It tasted of mint and cool spring water, and it washed the weariness from her mind as surely as it soothed the wounds of her body. The blinding pain in her ankle dulled, then vanished. The agony in her arm loosened its red-clenched teeth. She exhaled, only then realizing how much tension she’d been holding in.
“That’s better,” Eleukas sighed, stuffing his own empty bottle back into his pack. He rolled his shoulders, putting his axe away and bringing his long knife out again. “I’m ready.”
Wendlyn tightened her ponytail and took the lead. She moved with catlike ease, somehow melting into the tunnel’s shadows even though there was nothing but bare. rough earth to hide her.
Lisavet clasped her holy symbol to renew Sarenrae’s light as she followed. She didn’t really need the spell to see, but the cold white glow ahead had a sinister cast, and she felt better with her goddess’s radiance around her.
Eleukas must have felt the same way, because he fell in close beside her, his jaw tense and eyes darting. “I don’t like this tunnel,” he muttered. “Feels wrong. Like the faceless thing in the woods, or the letters on those stone tablets the Fangsparks were digging up. There’s something in the air here, and it’s smart and it’s evil.”
“I know,” Lisavet said. “I feel it too.”
“Then why’s the goblin leading us down this way?”
“He told us why. This was where the foul ones wanted to go.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s where we should want to go.” Eleukas’s jaw knotted even tighter, and his hand flexed around the hilt of his knife. “And now we’ve got no choice. We’re trapped. That’s convenient.”
“You sound paranoid.” Lisavet tried to make it sound like a joke, but she was genuinely worried. Eleukas did sound paranoid. Worse, she could feel the same impulse toward suspicion creeping through her own mind, as if someone were whispering terrible thoughts over her shoulder. Poisonous doubts about her companions filtered through her mind, and though she didn’t think they were her own, she felt them all the same.
“I think,” she said, carefully, “that the wrongness in this place is trying to turn us against each other. I don’t think Gristleburst is going to betray us, Eleukas. But I do think the foul ones, or whatever power they serve, want us to believe that. And I think there’s a perverse magic in this place that’s pushing us to think it.”
“Maybe.” Eleukas shook his head as if trying to dislodge a persistent gnat. “Could be. But then—what do we do?”
“Just… try to recognize that influence, so that we can counter it in our own minds.” Lisavet realized how feeble that sounded, even as she said it, but she also knew it was true. “We have to trust each other. We’re all we have here.”
Eleukas nodded, and they went on, tense but together.
The pallid white light at the tunnel’s end grew closer, but no brighter. It was a chilly and withdrawn light, diffuse and shadowless, as if it refused to betray its source by offering any direction. There was nothing natural about it, and Lisavet’s trepidation grew with every step.
Wendlyn crept back to them, her voice low. “Well, I know who the foul ones serve. And I know why they wanted to come down this way. Best you see this for yourselves.”
There was no door or lantern at the tunnel’s end, only a hanging curtain of tanned human and kobold arms strung with shards of smoked glass and dirty, knotted cloth. Hazy white light, like winter sun filtered through cloudy glass, spilled through the curtain.
“It isn’t trapped,” Wendlyn told them as she ducked through the grisly hanging, “but it is unpleasant.”
When Lisavet followed her through, she found out what her sister meant. The dead hands animated as she passed beneath the curtain, wriggling through her hair and caressing her scalp with hideously soft, wilted fingers. They rubbed over her eyelids and curled bonelessly across her cheeks, and she had the skin-crawling sense that they were trying to grope through her secrets and memories even as they slid over her flesh.
She came through shuddering, her teeth gritted in revulsion. “Norgorber.” It all made sense now. The god of murderers and malign secrets, of plotters and poisoners—that was who had spun this conspiracy beneath Otari.
“Norgorber,” Wendlyn echoed in agreement, as the others pushed through the macabre curtain to join them. “Look at the rest of this.”
They stood in a four-sided cavern, large enough to hold a dozen people comfortably and illumined by a cool, sourceless white light that floated in the air like mist. Each wall had been dug out into a large alcove, and each alcove held a shrine to one of Norgorber’s four aspects.
Blackfingers, the poisoners’ patron, had a shrine of bones and pickled scorpions in smoked glass bottles. Papery-skinned bulbs and gnarled roots dangled alongside spiders’ husks and tiny vials of alchemical compounds. Half-hidden behind this dense, obscuring display was Norgorber’s faceless mask, its single eye a fragile bubble of venom-filled glass.
The next alcove was comparatively bare, holding only tattered rags of gray and black cloth stitched into a monochrome mosaic that suggested, but did not show, the same one-eyed mask, this time rendered with the sinister subtlety of the Gray Master, patron of profiting from others’ losses.
Third was a gruesome patchwork of tanned skins, mostly human, along with a few scaled kobold hides and greenish goblin leathers. Each piece bore some identifying scar, whether cut from the victim’s body or imposed by the harvester’s weapons or technique, as if each piece was meant to be a signed work of art. These, too, were worked into the contours of a face, but this one was more contorted and nightmarish than the last. A grasping hand, each finger made from the blade of a straight razor, reached out from the alcove toward the viewer.
It was a layered nightmare, and Lisavet shuddered as she looked away. Father Skinsaw, who inspired serial killers and murderous raveners, was the most grotesque and violent of Norgorber’s aspects. She was glad to move away from his alcove.
The last shrine held a gleaming pattern of gray and black tiles laid in a harlequin pattern. At the center was another half-hidden mask of Norgorber, this one with an inky spiral laid into the tiles covering its mouth. That was for the Reaper of Reputation, gatherer of secrets and forbidden lore.
In the center of the room, equidistant from the four shrines, stood a dressmaker’s mannequin upholstered in another patchwork of macabre leathers, its face a welter of scars with a single gray glass eye. The mannequin wore a hooded cloak of frayed cloth stitched into a diamond pattern with alternating sections of human skin. The garment’s arms ended in long, clawed gloves, each finger tipped with a black-stained straight razor. A spiral of black velvet covered the lower half of the hood, and the fabric was stiff with what Lisavet guessed might be dried blood, or maybe some alchemical concoction, or both.
“What is that?” Eleukas asked, aghast.
“Something unholy,” Lisavet breathed. She could feel the malign power emanating from the garment like heat radiating from a sunbaked stone. “Something that calls upon all four of Norgorber’s aspects and binds them together into… into…” She faltered, unsure.
“Into something we probably don’t want to touch,” Wendlyn finished for her. “Come on. There’s one more thing I found in here that you’ll want to see.”
“Is it the way out?” Eleukas asked hopefully. Lisavet blinked, belatedly realizing that she hadn’t seen an exit from the alcoved room.
“Maybe.” After tugging on a glove, Wendlyn carefully grasped the razored hand in Father Skinsaw’s shrine, giving it a friendly handshake, and then pulled it to the side. The tiled floor in the Reaper of Reputation’s shrine slid away, revealing a secret passage that led down into the earth. “It’s the only way forward, anyhow.”
“Then we go,” Gristleburst said.
“Then we go,” Wendlyn agreed, dropping into the new passage.
The minutes trickled by in a slow eternity while she was gone. No one spoke. Lisavet struggled not to look at the shrines around her, but even if she refused to see them, she could feel their malevolence pressing in from all sides.
Then, at last, blessedly, Wendlyn called up: “You can come down. It’s safe. Well, safe enough.” There was a pause, and then she added, “I found the stolen books. And maybe the reason they were stolen. You’d better get down here. Quickly.”
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 12: Inkboil Spring
In the room beyond the secret door, the stolen books lay dissected.
Eleukas could think of no other word to describe what he saw. The missing books—or, at least, selected pages from the missing books—had been cut loose as neatly as if by a vivisectionist’s scalpel, and were laid out on a long wooden table in a curiously anatomical design. They weren’t arranged side by side, but at odds and ends, some positioned diagonally to the main body like limbs, others tilted slightly out of parallel or perpendicular.
Next to that table, another held sketches of the broken tablets that the kobolds had been unearthing in the green-lit cavern above. Each sheet duplicated the angular, alien script that had been on one particular tablet, and their configuration precisely mirrored that of the pages cut from Vandy Banderdash’s stolen books.
Other notes and scribblings were tacked up around the room’s walls. A small shelf held blank sheets, uncut quills, and ink. There was nothing else in the chamber. This cavern was as crudely dug as the rest of the Fangsparks’ excavations, but here the walls and rough dirt floor had been washed with a clear shellac to keep the dust controlled. A sourceless white glow illumined the room and its contents, same as the light in the shrine chamber.
The shadowless light set Eleukas’s teeth on edge. He paced around the room, trying to make sense of the diagrams on the walls and the duplicated arrangement of the pages on the table, but their meaning eluded him.
He hated that he was always the last one to see things that seemed so simple to the others. But, once again, Eleukas felt he had no choice but to surrender to his incomprehension. “I don’t understand. Why’d they cut up the books they stole, and why are they arranged all funny? What are these copies for?”
“Book is not for reading,” Gristleburst told him, sounding mildly impressed, as if the goblins hadn’t thought the Norgorberites capable of such good sense. “Book is for understanding.”
“I still don’t get it,” Eleukas said.
“What was important about the stolen books wasn’t the text,” Wendlyn explained. “It was that those pages showed them how to set up this arrangement, like a kind of diagram. Then they would know how to sequence and orient the writing on the tablets so that they could make sense of those. Vandy’s book was just like a… a code key. The buried tablets held the actual message they were meant to decipher.”
“Well, what does it say?”
Lisavet shook her head slowly, the ornaments chiming in her hair, as she studied a diagram on the wall. “Nothing good. Worliwynn was right. They’re trying to reach something under Inkboil Spring. Something that will bring them Norgorber’s blessing for the Shroud of Four Silences, and enable them ‘to walk in the Masked God’s shadow, and carry his blessing with each touch.’ Something that can only emerge ‘in the dark of the new moon.’
“Something,” she added, grimly, “that they’ve been working toward for years. There’s a reference here to ‘deaths without number, to braid the skins and blood the skinsaw and fill the spiral with souls.’ It sounds like they killed an awful lot of people in sacrifices to make that ugly coat we saw in the shrine room.”
“The Shroud of Four Silences,” Eleukas echoed. The name hung in the air. He thought of the garment they’d seen between the shrines, with its ugly razor-tipped fingers and stitched scraps of human skin and the black spiral gag over the mouth. “Does anything explain what it actually is?”
“Not that I can see,” Lisavet replied, still examining the pages on the walls. “But whatever it is, this whole cult has been bent on finishing it for years. Devotees of each one of Norgorber’s aspects gathered together, in rare cooperation, to create this thing. Now they’re nearly done, it seems. All they have to do to complete it is take it to a ‘font of shadows beneath the font of ink’ and do… I don’t know what, exactly. But something there. At Inkboil Spring.”
“What if we destroy the ugly coat?” Wendlyn asked, glancing back up toward the shrine room. “If we burn it, or hack it into little pieces, their ritual is ruined. Problem solved.”
“It would be ruined for now,” Lisavet agreed, turning away from the wall scribblings, “but if we just stopped there, nothing would prevent them from re-creating it and trying again. They’d just murder another hundred sacrifices, or however many it takes, and wait for another night of the new moon, and who’s to say that anyone would find out about it in time to stop that attempt? We barely got lucky enough to stumble on this one before it was over. Think of how many times we nearly died out there, and how close we came to being too late.”
“The night of the new moon’s tomorrow,” Eleukas realized, alarmed. “That doesn’t give us much time to decide.”
“What would we need to do to stop them forever?” Wendlyn asked.
Lisavet shrugged. “Somehow they didn’t think to write that one down.”
“Shroud holds the key.” Gristleburst pulled a page down from the wall. The goblin had squinted and scowled at all the written words, Eleukas had noticed, but he’d studied the sketches and diagrams more carefully. Now he carried one of those drawings to the others, holding it out in the flat, white light.
The sketch depicted a faceless cultist wearing the patchwork garment and reaching into a font of black liquid with one blade-fingered hand. A ghostly key hovered between the razored fingers. Its teeth dipped into the dark waters as if it were somehow unlocking the spring.
“But then what?” Eleukas stared at the picture as if he could force it to give up the answer. “Let’s say we bring the shroud to Inkboil Spring—even though it seems like that’s exactly what the cultists want—and we use it to unlock whatever’s in there, which is also exactly what they want. What happens next? Have we just completed the ritual for them?”
“No.” Gristleburst’s blast goggles reflected the cavern’s strange white light, hiding the goblin’s eyes and expression behind a blank sheen. “Then is a choice, or a test, by cursed water. Foul ones very worried about picking wrong answer, upsetting their nasty god. So is not guaranteed success, even for them. For us—we go find this unholy place, throw lots of bombs at it. Blow it up forever. Shroud too. Then problem solved forever.”
Eleukas looked long and hard at the goblin. It seemed awfully convenient that Gristleburst had led them down this tunnel, after cutting off all their other options, and had then just happened to stumble upon a course of action that might stop the Norgorberites’ plan forever, but might just as easily do the very thing that they wanted.
Gristleburst didn’t have to be intentionally lying to them. Maybe the cultists had just manipulated him somehow. Maybe they’d planted that slip of paper as a deliberate ruse, knowing that a goblin wouldn’t want to read any words, but would seize on the first thing that conveyed its message through pictures.
True, Lisavet had said that seeding paranoia was how the Reaper of Reputation would try to turn them against each other, but that didn’t mean Eleukas was wrong.
And he didn’t like that he couldn’t see Gristleburst’s eyes.
Eleukas ran a hand through his curls, grimacing at how dirty and matted they’d gotten. It felt like there wasn’t any option that didn’t leave him soiled here. “Wendlyn? What do you think?”
Wendlyn didn’t answer for a long while. Finally she shrugged, sounding at once determined and defeated. “I think we should put an end to this. If we can only do that by using the shroud to unlock whatever secret lies beneath Inkboil Spring, then that’s what we’ll have to do.”
“All right.” Eleukas tried not to let his disappointment show. He really didn’t think this was the wisest course of action.
But even if he didn’t trust Gristleburst, he did trust Wendlyn and Lisavet, and if they both believed that going to Inkboil Spring was what they needed to do, then Eleukas aimed to see that they got there.
If that was the wrong choice, at least they would make it together.
###
The cultists were waiting for them at Inkboil Spring.
Wendlyn exhaled softly as she peered through the trees. She counted four hooded Norgorberites, three of the big rats that she and Eleukas had fought near Giant’s Wheel, four or five goblin and kobold zombies – it was hard to be sure; she didn’t have a clear view of those – and about a dozen surviving Fangsparks.
She hadn’t found any traps or fortifications, which was something, but the fact remained that they were badly outnumbered. And, probably, the cultists knew they were coming.
Not ideal. Wendlyn sneaked back through the forest to the others, summarizing what she’d seen. “It won’t be easy,” she warned them.
“Well, they wouldn’t call it heroism if it were easy,” Lisavet said wryly.
“Are we calling ourselves heroes now? Seems a bit premature.” Wendlyn plucked at the knot holding the bundled-up Shroud of Four Silences. They’d wrapped the ghastly thing in a cloak and tied it up with rope, as if it were a living creature that had to be imprisoned. She couldn’t see a thread of it, but still she imagined she could feel its evil seeping out. “We’re all still agreed that I should carry this thing?”
Eleukas stared awkwardly at his toes. No one spoke up. Wendlyn sighed inwardly, unsurprised.
Well, she only had herself to blame. Lisavet was a holy cleric of Sarenrae whose magic might interact unpredictably with the shroud’s, and Gristleburst was too small to carry its bulk easily. Eleukas might have taken the burden, but Wendlyn didn’t think it was prudent to risk having their best fighter taken out by some Norgorberite trick, so she’d practically ordered him not to touch it.
He hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d listened. Which left only Wendlyn to carry it.
Suppressing another sigh, she slung the bundle over her back, trying to ignore how it made her skin crawl. She couldn’t shake the memory of those black-razored fingers dangling from limp sleeves, the patchwork of human skin and gray cloth across its back, the awful crusted stains on the velvet spiral that gagged its hood.
So much suffering. So many deaths. They couldn’t allow any more.
“Is everyone ready?” Wendlyn waited for their murmurs of assent. She wanted them unified, and committed. “All right. Let’s go.”
Without further ado, she slipped back into the trees, moving toward Inkboil Spring. It was still early evening, not quite dark, and the cultists hadn’t begun whatever ritual they had planned for the night of the new moon. One of them was consulting a book by lanternlight, while two others set out ritual implements on a ragged brown sheet, and the fourth ordered the kobolds to stack firewood in a high pyre.
Just as the pyre-overseeing cultist was emptying a skin of dark liquid over the piled firewood, the quiet twilight exploded into flame.
Two of the kobolds and the pyre lit up with angry orange tongues. The cultist hastily retreated, dribbling more liquid from the open skin. Reeling and screeching, the kobolds threw up their burning arms in panicked pinwheels. Behind them, the pyre erupted into a fountain of sparks and then began spewing thick white smoke, swirled with plumes of fine brown dust.
The wind spun the smoke briefly toward Wendlyn. It made her nose tingle violently at the first breath.
“Sivanah’s slippers!” Gristleburst yelled. “Foul ones are burning Sivanah’s slippers! Don’t breathe! Make you see and hear what is not there!”
“Great,” Wendlyn muttered. A hallucinogen was just what they needed. She pulled a scarf around her nose and mouth, hoping the others had heard Gristleburst’s warning. Eyeing the smoke plume, and trying to stay upwind, she circled into the fray.
Smoke flooded the trees and the small clearing around Inkboil Spring, drifting over the spring’s black waters and offering Wendlyn near-perfect concealment. Silent as a wraith, Wendlyn drifted with it, stabbing at victims who never saw her coming. Kobolds dropped in her wake, their corpses hidden by the deepening smoke.
She saw flashes of the others fighting. Lisavet seared the zombies with blasts of holy light, which flared in the smoke like eerie, soundless lightning. Garish red and green fireworks exploded low under the trees as Gristleburst unleashed his remaining bombs, now down to the prankster’s playthings Wendlyn had given him. Eleukas was hacking at all three giant rats at once, surrounded but undaunted by their lashing tails and long gray teeth. With Viserath in his hands, he was faring much better than he had by Giant’s Wheel. Arcs of acidic vapor and sizzling blood hung surreally in the false fog around him.
Then the cultists joined the fight, and the nightmare rose to a higher pitch.
One crept behind Eleukas, relying on the rats for distraction. Wendlyn caught a fevered glimpse of a hooded figure emerging from the white smoke, and something ghastly and squirming under its cowl. Before she could decide whether it was real or a hallucination, the cultist’s knife flashed and Eleukas cried out, faltering as blood ran dark from his side.
Wendlyn shook her head, tightening the scarf around the lower half of her face. For an instant she’d fancied that she could see black fingers spilling out from Eleukas’s wound along with his blood, stretching out across his body. She must have inhaled more of the hallucinatory smoke than she’d realized.
Forcing herself to breathe shallowly, Wendlyn crept closer. She passed an unsuspecting Fangspark but held back her blade, not wanting to give away her position.
The cultist was almost within reach now. The weapon in his hands blurred and shifted before her eyes, from long dagger to skinsaw razor and back. Smoke blew into Wendlyn’s eyes, filling them with painful tears, and when she blinked them away, she couldn’t tell which way the cultist was facing. His head sat backward on his body, staring straight at her, and then it reversed and he was looking at Eleukas, and then he didn’t have a face at all, just a hood that covered his entire head like a sack.
I can’t kill him if I can’t even see him. And Eleukas was in dire straits, weakening fast, unable to hit hard enough to finish off the two rats that were still biting at him. They were quicker than he was, now, and their renewed aggressiveness showed that they understood their advantage. Even without the cultist, Eleukas would have been in trouble. With the additional attacker –
I can help you. The whispered words froze Wendlyn’s blood. They’d come from the bundle on her back. Soft and sibilant, they slid through her mind like an oiled snake, leaving a trail of intangible grease behind. Put me on, and you will see true again. No secret will be hidden from you. No foe will be able to stand. You can save your friends. You can do anything. Knowledge is power, and you will have it all. Put me on. Put me on…
No, Wendlyn thought back furiously, but she had no sense that the shroud heard her. Was it even real? Probably not. Probably she was just imagining that, too, as she breathed in too much of Sivanah’s slippers –
A wet, horrible scream tore through the falling night. It sounded like Gristleburst. For an instant Wendlyn hoped that she had imagined that too, but then she saw Eleukas’s head jerk up and a terrible recognition cross his face, and she knew that the goblin really had fallen.
Your friends are dying, the shroud whispered. Put me on. I am your only chance.
Wendlyn closed her eyes. Hot tears ran down her cheeks in the blinding, maddening smoke. Had this been the Norgorberites’ plan all along? Bring us here, poison us with this smoke, leave only one way out…
But it was the only way out.
Cursing under her breath, Wendlyn threw down the bundle, cut through its ropes, and pulled out the hideous shroud. Its razor-clawed fingers dangled before her, curling up in mocking invitation. The matted black velvet spiral over the hood’s mouth seemed to curve into a smile.
She hated it. She hated it viciously. And she put it on.
Shroud of Four Silences - Chapter 13: Behind the Mask
The garment molded to Wendlyn’s body immediately, smoothing itself against her in a seamless second skin. The gloved fingers sealed themselves over her own, and the claws felt instantly natural as extensions of her hands. The black spiral silenced her breath, and under the patchwork hood, her vision filled with a cool gray light, within which the obscuring smoke vanished entirely. Sivanah’s slippers crept away, and everything was clear.
Wendlyn saw the cultist as easily as if he were limned in fire. She could see the articulation of his ribs under his clothes, the beating rhythm of heart and lungs and all the great and vulnerable vessels that would spill out his life in seconds. He didn’t see her. Couldn’t see her, she was quite sure, not while she wore the shroud. As easily as others’ secrets were revealed to her, so hers were hidden from them.
In two long steps, she closed on him and killed him. It was shockingly easy. Her razor-clawed hand swept up, as simply as if she were beckoning him to a dance, and then he was spasming in the leaves and she was gone.
She killed the rats, too. Just a light little touch across one’s throat, a stroke along the other’s back, and their lives soaked the forest floor in red. None of them saw her. Not even Eleukas saw her. She was a gray ghost in the woods, and death was in her hands.
You see what I can give you? Invulnerability. Absolute power.
Wendlyn didn’t answer. She continued her murderous dance in the dark, and Norgorber’s cult died all around her. None of her friends suspected she was there. No one did. She glimpsed Gristleburst crumpled against a tree trunk, all the sheets of paper pinned to his armor soaked wet and red, but the sight left her strangely unmoved. Whether or not the goblin was dead seemed completely unimportant.
What was important was something pulling her toward Inkboil Spring. Power, the voice whispered, urging her on. All the secrets of the world.
Even now, glancing at her friends, Wendlyn could see truths written on their faces and in the movements of their bodies that they’d never willingly confide. She could see the awkward affection that Eleukas tried desperately to hide, even from himself, and would never dare admit to her. She could see how deeply Lisavet idolized her, and how hurt she was by Wendlyn’s distance, and how she harbored an eagerness for approval that the half-elf had never guessed her sister held.
Yet these things, too, seemed trivial. What did it matter how these people felt? They were insects, blind and weak. Not friends. They were too feeble to be called “friends.”
Wendlyn moved through the caressing white smoke to the black shore of Inkboil Spring. Behind her, near irrelevant, Lisavet was trying to revive Gristleburst. Eleukas was calling, maybe to her. Unimportant.
She plunged a hand into the water, spreading her razored fingers wide. From its depths she could feel something straining to answer her call, struggling like a fish thrashing to break free of its net. Ancient bonds had held it back, ancient magic had stuffed its ears and silenced its mouth, but the faithful had worked hard to weaken those tired old prohibitions, and now the power was almost—almost—
–free.
Her hand came up with a splash. In it was a glistening obsidian mask, its single eye a winking, starlit sphere.
Wendlyn stared at the mask, and the mask stared back at her. Here was power, all the power of a cunning and deadly god. All she had to do was don the mask, take Norgorber’s face as her own, and complete the Shroud of Four Silences. And then—
“Wendlyn? Wendlyn, is that you? What are you doing?”
Eleukas. She turned to look back at him, her lips pulled back in a defensive hiss. He couldn’t possibly see or hear it behind the shroud’s concealing spiral, but he recoiled all the same, raising Visperath reflexively into a defensive pose.
Then, looking ashamed of himself, he lowered the axe. “Wendlyn, what do you have?”
What do I have? Wendlyn looked at the mask again. It dripped in the smoky moonlight, blank and featureless. On its wet curve she could see nothing but her own distorted reflection, and perhaps the blur of Eleukas behind her.
Wrapped in the shroud, a faceless figure of knotted darkness and razored claws, she didn’t look anything like a person.
But he did. Faint and shadowy as he was in the mask’s reflection, Eleukas still looked human.
Wendlyn tried to remember how she’d felt when she first donned the shroud. It had repulsed her then, only a few short minutes ago, though it felt like another lifetime in a far-off land.
And now… now, everything seemed so different.
Why?
She blinked at Eleukas, as if he could give her the answer. And, looking at him, she became slowly aware that he was staring at her with genuine concern, and genuine love.
He cared about her. Truly. The shroud told her that, as clearly as it told her all the other secrets in its view, and though Norgorber’s whispering persuasions tried to make that coin seem small and worthless, even a god couldn’t conceal that it was true gold.
Eleukas cared about her. Lisavet cared about her. Even Gristleburst, in his peculiar goblin way, cared about her. They were her friends. True friends.
The Gray Master didn’t care. Not about her, not about any of his servants. The cultists lying dead around Inkboil Spring had devoted untold years to Norgorber, and had committed atrocities beyond knowing to create the Shroud of Four Silences for his glory. Yet the instant they were no longer useful to him, their god had abandoned them. He’d allowed Wendlyn to kill them, easily and remorselessly, for no better reason than because she was an advantageous tool in that moment, and they weren’t.
He would discard her just as quickly when her own turn came.
What was power like that worth? What would it cost?
Less than she valued, and more than she could bear.
Wendlyn reached up, grasped the hood’s black spiral mouthpiece in a razor-clawed hand, and ripped it away.
A sharp pain jabbed into her other palm, as if she’d been holding a large and venomous scorpion that had just lost its patience with her. The mask slipped from her grasp, sliding into the inky water without a ripple or a sound. It vanished almost instantly, and if it hadn’t been for the dampness in her glove and the lingering ache in her hand, Wendlyn would have believed she’d never held it at all.
“Good riddance,” she muttered, staring at the burbling spring. It revealed nothing to her anymore, and she was relieved to have that door closed. The temptation had been greater than she’d cared to admit.
The pyre’s smoke had begun to clear; the sweet scent of the wild forest was returning. Wendlyn felt that she was awakening, slowly, from a nightmare, and that the familiar contours of the Otari she knew so well were returning.
But were they really?
She’d felt the touch of a god. Norgorber had spoken to her, had given her his blessing. And though Wendlyn had turned away, had tried to cast that unwanted gift back to its underworld—could she? Could any mortal truly refuse the divine?
Was this still just part of the Masked God’s plan?
She hadn’t broken the mask. She’d had it in her hands, and she’d let it slip away. Why?
Standing, Wendlyn stripped off the shroud. It felt suddenly clammy and vile against her skin, its closeness revolting. She cast it away in pieces, deliberately ripping seams to tear the clawed hands off the sleeves, the sleeves off the shoulders, the hood from its neck. It wasn’t enough to take it off; she wanted to kill the thing.
When it was done, she stared at the heap of foul rags, breathing hard.
“Is it done?” Eleukas asked, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
Wendlyn nodded. In a small, grim way, she was glad she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Eleukas’s secrets were his own again.
All of theirs were. Hers, and the spring’s, too.
"It’s done,” she told him. “The shroud’s destroyed. Let’s go home.”
###
Everything felt different in Otari.
Nothing looked different. The buildings were the same, and the faces of the people who bustled among them. The logs rolling down the foaming flume, the prosperous ships in the harbor, the broad blue sea: all were as they’d been for Wendlyn’s whole life. She knew them as well as she knew the beat of her own heart.
And she could sense that Otari, like Wendlyn herself, had been changed, in small and subtle ways, by the events of recent days. It wasn’t anything obvious. It was in the sudden hush that fell over certain conversations, the careful glances directed at strangers by the waterfront, the way people had started seeking out Worliwynn and Vandy to unburden themselves of fear and guilt that they might, somehow, have inadvertently contributed to the cultists’ creeping plot.
The town was healing, but there were scars.
Wendlyn pushed through the doors of the Rowdy Rockfish, Otari’s sleepiest tavern, where her friends were waiting for her. The Rockfish wasn’t a place that any of them frequented, ordinarily—it catered to a clientele that made Lisavet look like a brawler—but after all they’d just been through, all four of them had agreed, without a word of discussion, that the Rockfish was where they wanted to meet. No place in Otari, outside a temple, was half as soothing.
No place at all, really. Wendlyn wasn’t one to find temples soothing, especially not these days. Ever since Inkboil Spring, she preferred to keep her distance from any god.
She nodded to the others as she drew up a seat. They, too, had changed. There was a trust, and an ease, around their table that they hadn’t shared before. Even Gristleburst was more relaxed, settling easily into the company of the humans that he’d once treated as perplexing, dimwitted children.
As for Lisavet and Eleukas…
Wendlyn gave each of them a searching, thoughtful look. The secrets she’d spied through the Shroud of Four Silences were hidden from her now. She couldn’t see any hint of Eleukas’s attraction or Lisavet’s desire for approval, and she didn’t know whether that was because they’d overcome those impulses, or just because she’d lost the magic to read their emotions.
Either way, Wendlyn was glad for it. A true relationship didn’t pry obsessively into everything the other person thought or felt. It granted people the respect of privacy, and trusted that they’d speak honestly about what they wanted, when they wanted. That was something Norgorber and his creatures, steeped in suspicion, could never understand.
She herself hadn’t really grasped it, until she’d been given the shroud’s dubious blessing, and had realized how insidiously corrosive such knowledge could be. With it gone, she and her friends were on equal footing again, and they could be friends again.
That, she knew now, was worth more to her than anything the Masked God could offer.
“Captain Longsaddle finished hauling up the last of those stone tablets this morning,” Eleukas said, after they’d exchanged greetings and pleasantries. “They’re all destroyed now. Worliwynn used some druidic magic to crumble them all into sand at once. I think the captain’s a little cranky about it. He was looking forward to using them for a year’s worth of punishment details, and now he can’t. But Worliwynn said it was safer this way. Keeps anyone from reading them while they’re in storage.”
“Good,” Wendlyn said, making a face. “Chopping wood is bad enough. I don’t fancy the idea of having to smash a bunch of unholy tablets with a big stupid hammer next time I get arrested.”
“So quit getting arrested,” Eleukas said. “You’re supposed to be a hero now, anyway.”
“That was Lisavet’s idea. I never agreed to that.”
Lisavet cleared her throat pointedly. “It’s good the tablets are destroyed, but what’s Worliwynn worried about? We purged the cult and ruined their ritual. Even if they could still decipher those instructions, what would it matter? Whatever they wanted to get out of Inkboil Spring is gone now.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Eleukas wrapped his hands around his coffee cup as if trying to warm them against a remembered chill. “Worliwynn says the taint is still there. ‘Quiescent,’ she said, like it’s hurt or hibernating, but not dead. She wasn’t sure whether it could come back. But that’s why they decided not to risk it with the tablets. If there’s any chance a new cult could revive the threat, then the tablets better be destroyed, not just buried.”
Wendlyn nodded, thinking of the mask slipping through her fingers back into the spring. She could have destroyed it—probably, maybe, if she’d been able to resist its temptations long enough—and she hadn’t.
No one else had seen it. No one else knew. That secret was hers to carry to the grave.
But if Worliwynn had destroyed the tablets, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe the magic that had bound the mask for so long would still be strong enough to hold it down. Maybe the other Norgorberite cultists in the world would be unable to find the thing, or would forget that it had ever existed.
Maybe Otari would escape any further suffering for her weakness.
“Well, I’m glad that’s done,” she said, falsely bright. “I suppose all that’s left to do now is teach Gristleburst to fish, so he can become a proper citizen of Otari.”
“Don’t like fish,” the goblin replied promptly, sticking out his tongue.
“We could teach you to drink coffee instead,” Eleukas suggested.
The goblin blinked owlishly behind his soot-smudged lenses. “What’s coffee?”
Eleukas pushed his steaming cup across the table. “This. It makes you smarter. Helps you think faster.”
Gristleburst broke into a yellow-toothed grin. “Do like coffee.”
“Well, see if you still feel that way after you’ve tasted it,” Eleukas said. “And then… you know, after she finished breaking up those tablets, Worliwynn told me that Elgrin left some unfinished business when he died. She didn’t say what it was, but hinted that it might involve traveling far afield. I said I’d talk to the rest of you about whether maybe we could help.”
“I thought you loved Otari,” Wendlyn said, surprised. “I figured you’d never want to leave.”
“I do love Otari, and I don’t want to leave.” Eleukas looked around the Rockfish’s quiet common room, nearly deserted at this hour and yet still deeply comforting in its familiarity, and shrugged. “But what all of this showed me is that Otari isn’t separate from the world. None of us is. What happens out there touches us here. So I think I should try to understand it a little better, don’t you? It’s a big world, and I should see what’s in it. Then, when the time comes, I can do a better job keeping this place safe. We all can.”
"Sounds good to me,” Wendlyn agreed. She felt a rush of gratitude that she might be able to do something to make amends to Otari for her failure to destroy the mask. Even if she was the only one who knew of that debt, it would plague her until she repaid it. “I’m in.”
“I’ll have to check with Vandy,” Lisavet said, “but I don’t think she’ll mind letting me go for a while. So I’m in, too. Probably.”
“Gristleburst will come,” the goblin told them solemnly, “for blastings and brewings. Also to keep you safe from too many writings.”
“Then I suppose it’s settled.” Eleukas pushed back his chair. “I’ll tell her we’re willing. The Heroes of the –”
“Not heroes,” Wendlyn interrupted. She couldn’t call herself that. “Not yet.”
She could see Eleukas wanted to argue with her, but after a moment, he shrugged good-naturedly. “All right. Not yet. But maybe after this next expedition?”
“Sure.” Wendlyn let out a breath, thankful all over again for her friends, and for their understanding. She smiled, and this time she meant it. “Maybe after this one.”
Comments