Following Drayl after the Murder Mystery

Drayl Timdrake stood stalk straight outside the high sandstone-colored walls of the Redwand’s Palace. His entire body ached, and the space between his shoulders and the tendons on the back of his neck thrummed with a tensed stiffened agony. He knew why, Drayl only needed to look down.
The mage had drawn his deep blue velvet robe over his midsection and chest. It was in an effort to hide and perhaps somewhat staunch the crimson tide of his own blood that was still spilling from his stomach. Watching the Proprietors depart in their cabbie, it offered the first moment of quiet and solitude that Drayl had all day. Almost.

There was perhaps a 100-yard distance between the Redwand’s Palace and the Governmental Palace. There was another 8 stories of building to ascend until he could get back to his office.

The Proprietors, a term in which Drayl had quietly used in all his reports on or related to the owners of Straight Cal’s, had demonstrated their surprising tactical and combative skills once again. The prize of the day now rested in his hand, stirring and whispering things in the back of his mind.

A black soul gem. Drayl felt the necrotic prison radiate magic from within, sending a chilling spike through his palm that did nothing to soothe the ache in his neck and shoulders—nor quell the bleeding in his belly. The whispers it told to him were clearly Jerri’s, the Redwand’s, but words could not be parsed. Yet, the mood and tone was all there: panic, anger, and above all else eleutheromania. He’d set about solving that particular problem; but the pieces needed to be arranged in the correct order. But first he needed to get to his office, then he needed sleep.

__ A hazy toilet bowl mocked his blurry vision.

“Damn it.”

Shivering, and with sweat beading and falling from the tip of his nose, Drayl flushed the lavatory receptacle, trying his best to control his panting breath and ignore the taste in his mouth following yet another wretch.

“Hey buddy,” another voice called from outside the stall.

Drayl did not respond. He focused on his golden round spectacles sitting on the top of the tank and wished that the man would go away.

“Hey buddy, you okay?” the voice repeated.

Drayl shut his eyes and felt his temples burn, “Yepa…” Being anxious about the man made the nausea return. “—Fine.” His own exasperated breaths echoed.

“Gold Chain that you? You need me to get a medmage?”

Drayl now recognized the voice as Ygriv, one of the Palace’s custodians. Ygriv was a caring man; he wasn’t the type to leave a man like Drayl alone. The black soul gem’s necrotic energy was dangerous to keep close, but more dangerous still would be to leave it alone and unguarded. Sweeping his red bangs from his eyes, Drayl reached forward and retrieved his glasses from the tank.

He opened the stall door to face the mop-wielding Ygriv. Drayl looked awful, clammy and pale with sweat dumping down his face and staining his garments underneath. Ygriv’s face was one of shock; never before had he seen the Gold Chain so labored. The custodian’s eyes went past Drayl for a moment to inspect the sick-splattered floor. But his eyes caught something else.

Ygriv stammered a bit in worry, “You’re bleeding, ser.”

Drayl followed his eyes, the spot where he had been knelt over had miniature puddles of his own sweat and blood. Still panting, Drayl gently shoved his way past the larger man and went to the sink.

“Ygriv… listen to me… I’ll be fine,” Drayl turned on the water to splash his face and clean himself best he could. A spell would have done the work just as well, but Drayl wanted—and maybe somewhat needed—to feel the water and not think about magic.

“Ser…” Ygriv was behind him, staring at Drayl’s mirror-self, or more accurately, his torso. The blue robe had opened, and now both Drayl and Ygriv could make out the three slender lines cutting down his front. Each slice was no less than 14 inches long. The bony fingers of the skeleton that gave it to him were like stiletto daggers given edges. Thankfully, they weren’t deep. Only now though was Drayl growing cognizant of the blood he had lost. Damn necromantic magic.

“Ygriv,” Drayl bent forward, bracing his arms on the sink, “This little interaction stays between us.”

Ygriv still looked at him through the reflection. “Yes, ser.”

Drayl looked back at him, his mouth open and his normally well-manicured appearance beyond disheveled. He gave the custodian a nod of confidence.

“Here, ser.” Ygriv held out one of his clean white rags and gently pressed and applied it to his wound. Drayl winced in pain. “Can you hold it there, ser?”

“I can, yes… thank you, Ygriv.”

The kind man produced another rag and, without taking the time to ask permission, began to wipe Drayl’s speckled face clean of filth and sweat-mixed water.

“You got something that can help you with that, Ser? You’ll get an infection in here…”

“I do. My office.” Drayl had to speak through clenching teeth. The pain of the wound was now becoming more and more apparent.

“Here, my cart,” Ygriv indicated at the custodial wagon he pushed about. Going over to it, Ygriv began to offload its contents underneath the washroom sinks. “If you don’t want to be seen we can use the custodian corridors,” Ygriv wheeled the cart to Drayl, “take a seat, ser.”

The two exchanged a long look, and Drayl climbed onto the cart and reclined backwards. It made one hell of a stretcher, he thought.

“A moment, ser.” Ygriv draped a beige canvas covering, typically used to protect the floor during a paint job, over Drayl and the cart. When it was removed, Drayl found himself in the claustrophobic service hallways.

“Ygriv…” Drayl whispered.

“Ser?”

“Why?”

“You’re the Gold Chain, ser. It must be important.”

__ At the door of his office, which only opened via tapping his eponymous chain to the doorknob, Drayl stumbled inside clumsily. He looked back at Ygriv and gave him a nod, which was returned, before shutting the door. His spacious office was a mix of clutter and organization. Everything had its place, but often times those places were chaotic, with many scattered notes and open books to be found at every corner. A collection of star maps and bookshelves were to be found on every wall that did not have a window or door.

Shambling forward to his desk, Drayl produced a small key from his pocket and opened one of the locked drawers. Inside he found and produced two potions—one pink and one red. The pink one came first, a draught that would serve as an antibiotic and sanitizer. It had a sharp burn like grain alcohol. The red came second and last, this bottle was inlaid with gold. A Linkage-issued potion of supreme healing; concentrated healing magic so powerful that it was considered contraband in most countries. He downed it without a second thought. The powerful cherry cough syrup flavor was welcome and eliminated the sickness in his stomach. Letting out a sigh of relief, Drayl looked down and saw that the lacerations were mending themselves back together.

“Almost didn’t think you were gonna make it, Drayl,” a voice suddenly announced from the back corner of the room.

Drayl started and began to whisper a spellsong before stopping at once. The Tnnilin assassin Kira Rakiri slinked out like a pantheress from behind Drayl’s ornamental globe. The window of his office had been opened from the outside; a detail Drayl neglected to notice in his pain when entering.

“I did not see you leave the party Kira.”

“That was the idea; I vanished with the crowd.”

“What’s this about then? Or do I also have a hit out on me?”

“Nothing like that. I’m done for the day. You still have the Redwand’s Gem?”

Drayl reached into his robe pocket, recoiling as he witnessed the impressive amount of blood now staining the interior, and produced the soul gem before placing it on his desk. There, it moved about like a cocoon about to metamorphize. The inner purple glow of the item pulsed like a lighthouse beacon.

“Excuse me,” Drayl took a few steps away from Kira, who was inquisitively inspecting the gem. He took a deep breath and tapped his fingertips to his golden chain.

“Catena,” the dried blood detatched and fell to the floor in a fine metal-scented crimson powder. The assassin had picked up the soul gem and twisted it about, inspecting its various angles, facets, and cleavage. She carried an expression of doubt and preplexedness.

“Any idea what specifically it is?” she asked.

“About as much as I already told our friends in the Redwand’s office. Magic jar of some variety, a little phylactery almost—though with the Jerri’s soul contained within it may as well be a working phylactery. You feel it fighting against your hand and speaking to you, right?”

Kira nodded and set the gem back down, “I’ve seen slightly similar objects. In Tnnil.”

Drayl gave a knowing nod. “Yes, the Empire hold’s its most heinous criminals inside gems. Though those are amethysts, and even then—”

“—you can still see the captive,” Kira finished for him. She grinned, “Brought one in myself.”

Drayl shuddered, magical imprisonment was seen as a personal right’s violation by the Linkage.

“Well, like I was saying. Even then, the gems are used as the cell, and there is no body left behind. The contents of this gem, however, seem to be the energy and power of Jerri’s soul—or at least her stored magic potential.”

“Does that mean she’s lost?”

“I wish I knew.” Drayl went to the open window and closed it shut to keep the chill autumn are from creeping inside. “Asintain’s faithful should be able to keep her body preserved as long as it is tended to within the hour. After that things get tricky even if this were a ‘normal’ case.”

He continued, “It may very well be that the contents of that gem are simply ‘energy’ and returning the energy to the body would be like forging a new suit of armor using rusted sheets of metal…”

“It was shipped from Bariq al-Bahr,” Kira said, changing the subject, “I thought the Shorecarvers dealt with all of the Sezerekh lunatics down there.”

“But they never removed the head,” Drayl gulped, “A Lich, it’s said. A master of necrotic energies and undeath…” Drayl watched the gem spin on the desk, “And a tapper of souls. Looks like when the thing can’t make the downtrodden consent to his siphoning, he takes by force.”

“He spoke to you specifically, Drayl, assuming that was him. What was that he said about demiplanes?” “Right, ‘easy to navigate’ was how he put it… I believe he was mocking me.” Drayl let out a sharp exhale through his nostrils, “They certainly are anything but “easy” to maneuver within, much less through…” A flash went off in Drayl’s mind.

“Thank you for reminding me, Kira.” He hastily went to the desk to scratch down a note on a slip of ivory paper. “Navigate through the demiplanes is what he said…”

“So what, he can teleport from one demiplane to another? I thought most mages could do that.”

Drayl shook his head, “Portals can be established to easily cross from one demiplane to the other. But it takes considerable time to set one up and even more careful planning to ensure that the portals properly link to each other. It requires infrastructure, time, skill, and access to the two demiplanes in question to begin with.”

“Well, that Pathos… Roger guy, whatever you wanna call him, he seemed like a follower—at least more than anyone else I’ve ever seen. If he’s a warlock, then maybe the patron just hitched a ride?”

Once again Drayl shook his head, “No. Jerri and I specifically engineered the demiplane that night to quell and cut off all communication with any non-planar or extra-planar entity. That includes things existing in the Material at the time. The demiplane was locked.

I can only assume that Sezerekh has somehow found a way to successfully travel through the space between demiplanes. It is a space that I’ve only read about and one that no mage wants to find himself in. The Deep Ethereal. The void between pockets of reality.”

The two were silent as a chill crept through the office; both ruminating on the implications.

“By the way; I think we missed one.”

“What?”

“One of the people involved. We missed one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The Headmaster, Frank Shiller, he can’t cast magic right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why did I watch him vanish into thin air the moment the first wave of guests left the demiplane?”

Once more, the two were silent.