Post by Sunday on Mar 5, 2020 14:46:26 GMT
Dawn, 2nd Ches, 1497
The familiar wrench pulls them sideways and upwards as Daisy finishes incanting the spell to take them home.
home... Sunday thinks, as they touch down in Daring’s central square and she fights to keep her balance in the abrupt aftermath of the relocation magic then where did i just leave?
eLk snorts loudly in her ear, shaking her out of her reverie, and reminding her that this is our home. don’t be so foolish.
Laying a hand on his neck in fond thanks, Sunday quickly scans her friends. Unbelievably, they all seem physically fine; but emotionally, mentally, who can tell? Pieni is showing the strain of the ordeal more visibly than most, knelt and trembling on the ground; unable to stand; unable to talk. Sunday starts to move towards him, but Baine is already there, comforting and consoling in the way he knows best.
As Sunday reaches the pair, Pieni looks down at her from where Baine has deposited him on a broad shoulder, and fishes out a clean hankie from one of his many pouches and bags, wordlessly handing it to her in a small claw. Sunday nods her thanks, takes it, and turns away from the group. She pulls a vial of faintly glowing, crystal-clear liquid from her belt and dabs it against the fabric, before lifting it to her cheeks to wash away the two dried and neatly parallel blood-tear tracks running down from her eyes to her jawline.
Balling up the linen and tucking it into her armour, Sunday turns back and her eyes meet Taffeta’s; the halfling’s gaze intently focused on her and a question forming on her lips. Sunday forestalls the enquiry with a weak smile, shaking her head softly to indicate she’s fine.
With murmured, tired agreements to reconvene after a brief rest and decide what to do about Varis and Avernus, the party splits up and drifts off in small groups or by themselves. Taffeta and Daisy staying by Pieni’s side, talking quietly to him; Baine heading purposefully towards the Order’s compound; and Traav already making his way towards the Ettin, intent on availing himself of Coll’s services even at this hour.
With a glance in Traav’s direction that can wait Sunday pulls herself up onto eLk’s back, as he launches himself into the air and wheels away in the direction of the Gilded Mirror.
The sun is just starting to rise above the eastern horizon, its rays spilling out slowly to warm the land.
Late afternoon, 1st Ches, 1497
They had talked and talked and talked for so long over the last few days. Sunday had kept them talking. “We plan and plan - and plan again. We cannot be too prepared for what we are attempting.” She had said this because it was true; but more because if she kept talking she felt she could postpone what they were about to undergo.
Deep down, even as they had been planning, Sunday had known Fierna wouldn’t let them simply reach into her realm and pluck Khingo Khan out of hiding. She had known she would never let that happen - purely to spite them. Let alone to save face or because of any issues of jurisdiction and ownership. And yet Sunday had tried to kid herself that this was a viable course of action; that by doing this, they wouldn’t have to go to Phlegethos… that she wouldn’t have to go back hom- there. Go back there.
And so they had planned and talked and argued and discussed and debated and talked some more. She’d wanted to spend the time with Markas before they’d had to leave; she’d felt guilty about only having the one night - on the eve of their departure - to spend with him. But, like trying to avoid thinking about the possibility of travelling to Phlegethos, she’d been too afraid to face him. To tell him how she felt. To never see him again after finally admitting to him - to herself - that she loved him. And so she had thrown herself into planning and strategising.
But eventually the time had come to stop talking. It had to. They had agreed to meet Taffeta at a specific time and location; and she couldn’t let her best friend down.
could i?
Sunday had seriously thought about not going; about not showing up. No-one could find her if she truly put her mind to it. She could leave. She could take Markas and leave Daring. Leave Kantas. Leave the responsibility, the decisions, the guilt, the pain - leave it all to someone else. She could leave and no-one would be able to find her. And even if they managed to, who could stop her?
But here they were. Here she was. On the road to New Hillborrow with the others: with Baine, with Traav, with Pieni, with Varis, with Dais- No, not Varis. He wasn’t there. For the first time she could remember, Varis wasn’t there. She shook herself, forcing the painful absence from her mind. focus! She glanced over to where Rholor rode along in Varis’ place. what the fuck is he doing out of his temple? She thought to eLk it’s that serious, isn’t it? we’re fucked.
But there was no response from eLk. Oriloki Tertius had informed her that he had the ability to transport only nine creatures, itself included, to Avernus. No room for eLk. fuck. no varis. no elk. the fuck are we doing?! we can’t do this! The horse she had borrowed from Coll sensed her disquiet and shook his mane, taking a nervous pace or two to the side before she had laid a calming hand on his neck.
The party had dismounted at The Hearth and Road, New Hillborough’s only inn, leaving their horses there and finishing on foot the rest of the journey to the appointed rendezvous with Taffeta.
Once Taffeta was satisfied each was who they claimed to be, things had moved so fast. Rholor had warned them that they would only have a small window to subdue the Rakshasa once he had summoned it from Phlegethos. A small window to subdue and contain Khingo for transportation to Avernus where they would kill him befo- focus! one thing at a time.
Their plan had been working, their stupid, dangeorus plan. Sunday couldn’t believe it. Rholor’s magic had torn a rift in the air before them and they could all feel something been drawn through. it’s working! it’s fucking working! But then the plan had suddenly, terribly, stopped working at all.
“Well, well. And who are these foolish mortals attempting to open gates and portals in my realm? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Oh! Lady Kyleria! What a lovely surprise.”
no! nononononono! As soon as she’d heard that voice, Sunday had spun in place, reaching towards Rholor, trying to get him to break the spell, to shut it down. But it was too late.
Between one heartbeat and the next, they had vanished from the grasslands outside New Hillborough and reappeared… home. no. not home. not. home. phlegethos. not home not home not home.
She’d frozen. All those years thinking about how she would act, what she would say; all these years avoiding it, longing for it, fearing it, violently anticipating it, killing for it, postponing it. And she had frozen. The second she had realised where they were. Who they were talking to.
Not that Sunday spoke to her.
She had stood locked in place, eyes staring down at the ground, while her friends tried to converse with the ruler of the fourth. Daisy and Taffeta had even tried to threaten her! the wonderful, beautiful idiots! As if Fierna wouldn’t just collapse the sky in on their heads.
But it seemed she needed something from them all. That she wouldn’t be turning their bodies and minds inside out today just for fun.
Taffeta’s outburst in particular had shaken Sunday out of her stupor. Her fear for her friends - for herself - had burned away the paralysis in time to hear Fierna say she had lost control of a portion of her realm, where their quarry was hiding, and that she needed them to investigate and end this intrusion - without ever sharing with another fiend what had happened. That, at least, Sunday had understood: her aunt was proud beyond reckoning, and having outsiders clean up a mess would enable her to save face both in her own realm and with the rulers of the other eight layers of Hells.
On gaining their acquiescence, Fierna had transported them to the edge of the area where her influence had been usurped; to the last place where Khingo had been sensed. She had kept Rholor behind, however, unwilling to let a cleric of the Silver Lady wander about her realm. Sunday hadn’t cared. They were here for Khingo. Rholor was in Selûne’s hands now. And Fierna’s.
The door to which they had been sent had been a writhing amalgamation of flesh and metal; the structural integrity of the inorganic barrier fighting with the living matter slowly closing over and subsuming it. It was merely a small sample of the horror that lay beyond.
They had emerged into a large, fully enclosed cavern anywhere between 100- and 120ft long and 80- to 100ft wide. The interior had once clearly been a stone chamber, carved out by the lava flow still lapping around the edges of the room; lapping - and rising. But any resemblance to a simple cave ended there.
Like the door, the room was fighting against a writhing mass of flesh and bone and sinew and tissue that threatened to overwhelm it. The floor of the space was a morass of heaving bodies: devils, in various states of dismemberment, were woven into the very fabric of the stone. The walls were punctuated with yawning mouths and eyes and faces screaming in silent pain. The starry sky above as they moved into the room…
the sky..? how was that possible?!
They were deep underground. Sunday had grown up here. She knew there was no sky. Not for hundreds of miles. And yet…
And there. At the far end of the room. Khingo Khan. Clearly undergoing some hideous transformation in sympathetic concert with the rest of the gigantic chamber. The Rakshasa’s tiger-striped skin was broken in places by green-grey flesh moving and crawling over his body; long, looping tentacles and appendages coiled about him, covering his body but not his face, not his features wracked in agony.
Steeling themselves, the group had moved into the room.
As they stepped over the threshold, creatures had materialised in the gloom: two huge hulking beasts, none of them had even seen their like before; and a Beholder drifting, materialising, into view - blocking their path to Khingo.
And then…
Chaos.
But even down here, Sunday could feel life around her. From her friends. From the plane of Baator. From within herself. She pushed through the planar barriers and called eLk to her side. As he broke through from the Feywild, Sunday reached into that vibrant, chaotic realm and drew power into herself before exploding it out around her in a vast golden-green sphere, encircling her friends and providing them with some measure of protection.
As she strode out to meet the horrors head on, the rest had followed. Baine at her side and a step behind, maul aloft; Pieni and Daisy fanning out to either side to offer support and protection; Traav cranking a bolt into place and drifting off into the shadows.
And Taffeta… Leaping onto eLk’s back and soaring across the chamber, her eyes and weapons locked on the creature that had been tormenting her family for the better part of a year now.
As the halfling had raced towards the other side of the room, beyond the reach or help of any of them, one of the hulking creatures had torn towards them. Baine - not slowing, not taking his eyes off Sunday’s back - had smashed a straight arm into the gigantic creature’s throat and sent it crashing to the ground. Sunday unloaded her rage and fury into its prone body, punctuating each hammer blow with coruscating golden-green light. Leaving Baine to dispatch its broken form, she had moved on, marshalling the others around her.
Traav had found his deadly range, sinking bolt after bolt into the Beholder’s laughing maw. In retaliation, the deranged creature had launched beam after beam into the group. A combination of the divinely created meal Pieni had provided them with before leaving and Sunday’s unquenchable intent to protect her friends saw no harm come to them as they dealt with everything the Beholder could throw at them. As they moved deeper into the cavern, disposing of the second lumbering creature, the Beholder had grown desperate, using the eyes forming and disappearing in the fleshy cavern walls to bombard them from all angles with more rays. Undaunted, they had continued their relentless march up the centre of the cavern… until the mad aberration had turned its huge central eye on them. And they all felt their magic fade and wither under that hideous gaze...
...and the sick, twisted flesh and living bone of the cavern floor had splintered upwards as the largest single creature any of them had ever seen rose towering and screeching above them. An inconceivably huge worm-like body, topped with cunning, intelligence features that leered down at them and reached into their minds, raking their psyches with pain. Shaken, Sunday turned to see Daisy’s eagle shape scream in confusion as she dropped out of the sky, returning to her dwarf form and looking back at them all - an all-too familiar look of insensibility and pain and bestial confusion in her eyes.
Memories began to flood Sunday’s mind. Of Daisy reduced to a gibbering wreck the first time they had travelled to Avernus. Of having to make a deal with The Sanguine Rose to restore her faculties. Sunday closed her eyes, already preparing herself to either fight her way out of this realm now Daisy could no longer teleport them home or asking… no. That was too much to contemplate.
Even as Sunday’s resolve started to fail, Pieni scrambled forward, frantically rummaging through his many pouches and pulling out a handful of glittering dust, a look of determination in his eyes.
A scream from the far side of the chamber tore Sunday’s attention away. Taffeta?! But it wasn’t her voice, not screaming anyway. Sunday could hear the halfling shouting something at Khingo even as she fired bolts from her position on eLk’s back and into the Rakshasa’s writhing, agonised form. Off to one side, Sunday caught a flicker of movement as another figure seemed to emerge out of the darkness to approach Taffeta and her target.
But, as a green decaying ray of pure anti-life surged towards her, Sunday was forced to dive to one side, losing sight of the struggle at the far end of the room. Meanwhile, reaching Daisy’s side, Pieni had thrown the precious dust over the dwarf and restored her mind. Almost crying with relief, Sunday watched Baine swinging his maul ineffectually into the side of the hideous, gargantuan worm that had reft away Daisy’s mind, as it reared above them for a second time, its maw distending impossibly wide.
And then, like the sun’s warmth emerging from behind a cloud, Sunday felt her and her companions’ magic returning to them - but the relief was short-lived, as the Beholder had simply swept its gaze from them to Taffeta. At the same time, Khingo reached forward a hand now almost-entirely transformed into a tentacle, its appendages dripping blood and slime. A rift opened in the air behind Taffeta as the Rakshasa cackled insanely. Sunday, with a premonition flickering across her mind’s eye of her friend being thrown through that void, yelled a single word in desperation across the planes.
Will!
Feeling a mere hint of the ancient celestial’s power melding with hers, Sunday sent her life force rippling across the chamber, expanding her aura to encompass the entirety of the room for a split second. Just in time, she enveloped Taffeta in a protective shroud long enough to prevent the halfling from being flung from this plane - before the tiefling’s aura collapsed back in on itself.
Sunday - sweating, exhausted - stood stock still for a moment, unable to move, watching her friends battle across the chamber. Taffeta unerringly placing a last bolt into Khingo’s form as he collapsed; Baine and Daisy - now in the form of a tusked elephant - trying to break through the monstrous worm’s armour even as it tried to devour them; bolts sporadically sprouting from the Beholder’s back mute testament to Traav plying his deadly business from...somewhere…; and Pieni, mastering his fear, to call forth protective spirits to encircle his embattled friends in healing light.
Sunday went to adjust her footing, mindful of the heaving, churning bodies that now constitute the floor of the cavern. And almost stumbles. The floor is still. The room is still. The air… is cold. Icily, so. She whips her head around as she hears Taffeta’s cry of triumph echoing through a dead-silent room. She sees Khingo fall, as - bafflingly - the Beholder and unknown worm-giant start to rise up in the air towards the starry sky; and a rift open in the canopy that churned above them, revealing a roiling mass of tentacles and whispers and unholy constellations.
Unable to understand what is happening, the group stares in mute incomprehension as the two entities rise towards the portal, spewing guttural, insensible phrases as they depart, phasing through the tear in reality, air and noise rushing back into the room with an implosive boom as the plane seals itself up again.
Putting this impossibility from her mind, Sunday rushes to Taffeta’s side as her friend picks through the wreckage of now-still bodies, searching for confirmation that Khingo was dead. As Sunday helps her look, Pieni heals the others on the far side of the chamber, Traav emerging from concealment to stand silently beside Daisy and Baine.
As Taffeta holds up an orb plucked from Khingo’s chest, the two of them watch, hand-in-hand, as the Rakshasa’s body, now ash on an unseen wind, shreds and dissipates, finally passing into unexistence - a threat to Taffeta and her family no more.
Wearily, the two of them turn to rejoin their friends - even as Fierna’s minions file into the room, studiously ignoring the Primers and starting to clean up the mess. An imp appears at Sunday’s side, holding a chest, offering it as a reward from Fierna. The creature opens it, revealing some gems and unknown vials of liquid. Sunday waves the imp and his trinkets away, using the dismissive motion to surreptitiously pocket a letter resting inside the casket - a letter addressed to her and written in Fierna’s hand. Glancing across at Taffeta, who hasn’t noticed, Sunday slips the paper inside her armour, guilt and trepidation welling up inside her.
Daisy already has the tuning fork out and, her eyes closed, is mouthing the necessary incantations even as Taffeta and Sunday close the circle, reaching out their hands to clasp their friends’. The cavern disappears from view as the magic throws them back towards Kantas and the teleportation circle in Daring’s town square.
Dawn, 2nd Ches, 1497
eLk touches down on the roof of the Gilded Mirror, letting Sunday slide off his back before taking to the skies once more. Letting the sun’s early rays warm her body, Sunday takes a moment to herself.
To wrap herself in stillness and calm.
She breathes out slowly and picks her way across the roof tiles. Swinging herself over the edge, she steps through the arcane void to reappear on the windowsill of Markas’ rented room. Sitting there, looking into the room, she watches Markas - oblivious to her presence - meditate as the sun comes up fully behind her. The small, ornately decorated card hidden against Sunday’s breast burns cold against her skin in stark, bitter counterpoint to the dawn of a new day.
The familiar wrench pulls them sideways and upwards as Daisy finishes incanting the spell to take them home.
home... Sunday thinks, as they touch down in Daring’s central square and she fights to keep her balance in the abrupt aftermath of the relocation magic then where did i just leave?
eLk snorts loudly in her ear, shaking her out of her reverie, and reminding her that this is our home. don’t be so foolish.
Laying a hand on his neck in fond thanks, Sunday quickly scans her friends. Unbelievably, they all seem physically fine; but emotionally, mentally, who can tell? Pieni is showing the strain of the ordeal more visibly than most, knelt and trembling on the ground; unable to stand; unable to talk. Sunday starts to move towards him, but Baine is already there, comforting and consoling in the way he knows best.
As Sunday reaches the pair, Pieni looks down at her from where Baine has deposited him on a broad shoulder, and fishes out a clean hankie from one of his many pouches and bags, wordlessly handing it to her in a small claw. Sunday nods her thanks, takes it, and turns away from the group. She pulls a vial of faintly glowing, crystal-clear liquid from her belt and dabs it against the fabric, before lifting it to her cheeks to wash away the two dried and neatly parallel blood-tear tracks running down from her eyes to her jawline.
Balling up the linen and tucking it into her armour, Sunday turns back and her eyes meet Taffeta’s; the halfling’s gaze intently focused on her and a question forming on her lips. Sunday forestalls the enquiry with a weak smile, shaking her head softly to indicate she’s fine.
With murmured, tired agreements to reconvene after a brief rest and decide what to do about Varis and Avernus, the party splits up and drifts off in small groups or by themselves. Taffeta and Daisy staying by Pieni’s side, talking quietly to him; Baine heading purposefully towards the Order’s compound; and Traav already making his way towards the Ettin, intent on availing himself of Coll’s services even at this hour.
With a glance in Traav’s direction that can wait Sunday pulls herself up onto eLk’s back, as he launches himself into the air and wheels away in the direction of the Gilded Mirror.
The sun is just starting to rise above the eastern horizon, its rays spilling out slowly to warm the land.
***
Late afternoon, 1st Ches, 1497
They had talked and talked and talked for so long over the last few days. Sunday had kept them talking. “We plan and plan - and plan again. We cannot be too prepared for what we are attempting.” She had said this because it was true; but more because if she kept talking she felt she could postpone what they were about to undergo.
Deep down, even as they had been planning, Sunday had known Fierna wouldn’t let them simply reach into her realm and pluck Khingo Khan out of hiding. She had known she would never let that happen - purely to spite them. Let alone to save face or because of any issues of jurisdiction and ownership. And yet Sunday had tried to kid herself that this was a viable course of action; that by doing this, they wouldn’t have to go to Phlegethos… that she wouldn’t have to go back hom- there. Go back there.
And so they had planned and talked and argued and discussed and debated and talked some more. She’d wanted to spend the time with Markas before they’d had to leave; she’d felt guilty about only having the one night - on the eve of their departure - to spend with him. But, like trying to avoid thinking about the possibility of travelling to Phlegethos, she’d been too afraid to face him. To tell him how she felt. To never see him again after finally admitting to him - to herself - that she loved him. And so she had thrown herself into planning and strategising.
But eventually the time had come to stop talking. It had to. They had agreed to meet Taffeta at a specific time and location; and she couldn’t let her best friend down.
could i?
Sunday had seriously thought about not going; about not showing up. No-one could find her if she truly put her mind to it. She could leave. She could take Markas and leave Daring. Leave Kantas. Leave the responsibility, the decisions, the guilt, the pain - leave it all to someone else. She could leave and no-one would be able to find her. And even if they managed to, who could stop her?
But here they were. Here she was. On the road to New Hillborrow with the others: with Baine, with Traav, with Pieni, with Varis, with Dais- No, not Varis. He wasn’t there. For the first time she could remember, Varis wasn’t there. She shook herself, forcing the painful absence from her mind. focus! She glanced over to where Rholor rode along in Varis’ place. what the fuck is he doing out of his temple? She thought to eLk it’s that serious, isn’t it? we’re fucked.
But there was no response from eLk. Oriloki Tertius had informed her that he had the ability to transport only nine creatures, itself included, to Avernus. No room for eLk. fuck. no varis. no elk. the fuck are we doing?! we can’t do this! The horse she had borrowed from Coll sensed her disquiet and shook his mane, taking a nervous pace or two to the side before she had laid a calming hand on his neck.
The party had dismounted at The Hearth and Road, New Hillborough’s only inn, leaving their horses there and finishing on foot the rest of the journey to the appointed rendezvous with Taffeta.
Once Taffeta was satisfied each was who they claimed to be, things had moved so fast. Rholor had warned them that they would only have a small window to subdue the Rakshasa once he had summoned it from Phlegethos. A small window to subdue and contain Khingo for transportation to Avernus where they would kill him befo- focus! one thing at a time.
Their plan had been working, their stupid, dangeorus plan. Sunday couldn’t believe it. Rholor’s magic had torn a rift in the air before them and they could all feel something been drawn through. it’s working! it’s fucking working! But then the plan had suddenly, terribly, stopped working at all.
“Well, well. And who are these foolish mortals attempting to open gates and portals in my realm? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Oh! Lady Kyleria! What a lovely surprise.”
no! nononononono! As soon as she’d heard that voice, Sunday had spun in place, reaching towards Rholor, trying to get him to break the spell, to shut it down. But it was too late.
Between one heartbeat and the next, they had vanished from the grasslands outside New Hillborough and reappeared… home. no. not home. not. home. phlegethos. not home not home not home.
She’d frozen. All those years thinking about how she would act, what she would say; all these years avoiding it, longing for it, fearing it, violently anticipating it, killing for it, postponing it. And she had frozen. The second she had realised where they were. Who they were talking to.
Not that Sunday spoke to her.
She had stood locked in place, eyes staring down at the ground, while her friends tried to converse with the ruler of the fourth. Daisy and Taffeta had even tried to threaten her! the wonderful, beautiful idiots! As if Fierna wouldn’t just collapse the sky in on their heads.
But it seemed she needed something from them all. That she wouldn’t be turning their bodies and minds inside out today just for fun.
Taffeta’s outburst in particular had shaken Sunday out of her stupor. Her fear for her friends - for herself - had burned away the paralysis in time to hear Fierna say she had lost control of a portion of her realm, where their quarry was hiding, and that she needed them to investigate and end this intrusion - without ever sharing with another fiend what had happened. That, at least, Sunday had understood: her aunt was proud beyond reckoning, and having outsiders clean up a mess would enable her to save face both in her own realm and with the rulers of the other eight layers of Hells.
On gaining their acquiescence, Fierna had transported them to the edge of the area where her influence had been usurped; to the last place where Khingo had been sensed. She had kept Rholor behind, however, unwilling to let a cleric of the Silver Lady wander about her realm. Sunday hadn’t cared. They were here for Khingo. Rholor was in Selûne’s hands now. And Fierna’s.
The door to which they had been sent had been a writhing amalgamation of flesh and metal; the structural integrity of the inorganic barrier fighting with the living matter slowly closing over and subsuming it. It was merely a small sample of the horror that lay beyond.
They had emerged into a large, fully enclosed cavern anywhere between 100- and 120ft long and 80- to 100ft wide. The interior had once clearly been a stone chamber, carved out by the lava flow still lapping around the edges of the room; lapping - and rising. But any resemblance to a simple cave ended there.
Like the door, the room was fighting against a writhing mass of flesh and bone and sinew and tissue that threatened to overwhelm it. The floor of the space was a morass of heaving bodies: devils, in various states of dismemberment, were woven into the very fabric of the stone. The walls were punctuated with yawning mouths and eyes and faces screaming in silent pain. The starry sky above as they moved into the room…
the sky..? how was that possible?!
They were deep underground. Sunday had grown up here. She knew there was no sky. Not for hundreds of miles. And yet…
And there. At the far end of the room. Khingo Khan. Clearly undergoing some hideous transformation in sympathetic concert with the rest of the gigantic chamber. The Rakshasa’s tiger-striped skin was broken in places by green-grey flesh moving and crawling over his body; long, looping tentacles and appendages coiled about him, covering his body but not his face, not his features wracked in agony.
Steeling themselves, the group had moved into the room.
As they stepped over the threshold, creatures had materialised in the gloom: two huge hulking beasts, none of them had even seen their like before; and a Beholder drifting, materialising, into view - blocking their path to Khingo.
And then…
Chaos.
But even down here, Sunday could feel life around her. From her friends. From the plane of Baator. From within herself. She pushed through the planar barriers and called eLk to her side. As he broke through from the Feywild, Sunday reached into that vibrant, chaotic realm and drew power into herself before exploding it out around her in a vast golden-green sphere, encircling her friends and providing them with some measure of protection.
As she strode out to meet the horrors head on, the rest had followed. Baine at her side and a step behind, maul aloft; Pieni and Daisy fanning out to either side to offer support and protection; Traav cranking a bolt into place and drifting off into the shadows.
And Taffeta… Leaping onto eLk’s back and soaring across the chamber, her eyes and weapons locked on the creature that had been tormenting her family for the better part of a year now.
As the halfling had raced towards the other side of the room, beyond the reach or help of any of them, one of the hulking creatures had torn towards them. Baine - not slowing, not taking his eyes off Sunday’s back - had smashed a straight arm into the gigantic creature’s throat and sent it crashing to the ground. Sunday unloaded her rage and fury into its prone body, punctuating each hammer blow with coruscating golden-green light. Leaving Baine to dispatch its broken form, she had moved on, marshalling the others around her.
Traav had found his deadly range, sinking bolt after bolt into the Beholder’s laughing maw. In retaliation, the deranged creature had launched beam after beam into the group. A combination of the divinely created meal Pieni had provided them with before leaving and Sunday’s unquenchable intent to protect her friends saw no harm come to them as they dealt with everything the Beholder could throw at them. As they moved deeper into the cavern, disposing of the second lumbering creature, the Beholder had grown desperate, using the eyes forming and disappearing in the fleshy cavern walls to bombard them from all angles with more rays. Undaunted, they had continued their relentless march up the centre of the cavern… until the mad aberration had turned its huge central eye on them. And they all felt their magic fade and wither under that hideous gaze...
...and the sick, twisted flesh and living bone of the cavern floor had splintered upwards as the largest single creature any of them had ever seen rose towering and screeching above them. An inconceivably huge worm-like body, topped with cunning, intelligence features that leered down at them and reached into their minds, raking their psyches with pain. Shaken, Sunday turned to see Daisy’s eagle shape scream in confusion as she dropped out of the sky, returning to her dwarf form and looking back at them all - an all-too familiar look of insensibility and pain and bestial confusion in her eyes.
Memories began to flood Sunday’s mind. Of Daisy reduced to a gibbering wreck the first time they had travelled to Avernus. Of having to make a deal with The Sanguine Rose to restore her faculties. Sunday closed her eyes, already preparing herself to either fight her way out of this realm now Daisy could no longer teleport them home or asking… no. That was too much to contemplate.
Even as Sunday’s resolve started to fail, Pieni scrambled forward, frantically rummaging through his many pouches and pulling out a handful of glittering dust, a look of determination in his eyes.
A scream from the far side of the chamber tore Sunday’s attention away. Taffeta?! But it wasn’t her voice, not screaming anyway. Sunday could hear the halfling shouting something at Khingo even as she fired bolts from her position on eLk’s back and into the Rakshasa’s writhing, agonised form. Off to one side, Sunday caught a flicker of movement as another figure seemed to emerge out of the darkness to approach Taffeta and her target.
But, as a green decaying ray of pure anti-life surged towards her, Sunday was forced to dive to one side, losing sight of the struggle at the far end of the room. Meanwhile, reaching Daisy’s side, Pieni had thrown the precious dust over the dwarf and restored her mind. Almost crying with relief, Sunday watched Baine swinging his maul ineffectually into the side of the hideous, gargantuan worm that had reft away Daisy’s mind, as it reared above them for a second time, its maw distending impossibly wide.
And then, like the sun’s warmth emerging from behind a cloud, Sunday felt her and her companions’ magic returning to them - but the relief was short-lived, as the Beholder had simply swept its gaze from them to Taffeta. At the same time, Khingo reached forward a hand now almost-entirely transformed into a tentacle, its appendages dripping blood and slime. A rift opened in the air behind Taffeta as the Rakshasa cackled insanely. Sunday, with a premonition flickering across her mind’s eye of her friend being thrown through that void, yelled a single word in desperation across the planes.
Will!
Feeling a mere hint of the ancient celestial’s power melding with hers, Sunday sent her life force rippling across the chamber, expanding her aura to encompass the entirety of the room for a split second. Just in time, she enveloped Taffeta in a protective shroud long enough to prevent the halfling from being flung from this plane - before the tiefling’s aura collapsed back in on itself.
Sunday - sweating, exhausted - stood stock still for a moment, unable to move, watching her friends battle across the chamber. Taffeta unerringly placing a last bolt into Khingo’s form as he collapsed; Baine and Daisy - now in the form of a tusked elephant - trying to break through the monstrous worm’s armour even as it tried to devour them; bolts sporadically sprouting from the Beholder’s back mute testament to Traav plying his deadly business from...somewhere…; and Pieni, mastering his fear, to call forth protective spirits to encircle his embattled friends in healing light.
Sunday went to adjust her footing, mindful of the heaving, churning bodies that now constitute the floor of the cavern. And almost stumbles. The floor is still. The room is still. The air… is cold. Icily, so. She whips her head around as she hears Taffeta’s cry of triumph echoing through a dead-silent room. She sees Khingo fall, as - bafflingly - the Beholder and unknown worm-giant start to rise up in the air towards the starry sky; and a rift open in the canopy that churned above them, revealing a roiling mass of tentacles and whispers and unholy constellations.
Unable to understand what is happening, the group stares in mute incomprehension as the two entities rise towards the portal, spewing guttural, insensible phrases as they depart, phasing through the tear in reality, air and noise rushing back into the room with an implosive boom as the plane seals itself up again.
Putting this impossibility from her mind, Sunday rushes to Taffeta’s side as her friend picks through the wreckage of now-still bodies, searching for confirmation that Khingo was dead. As Sunday helps her look, Pieni heals the others on the far side of the chamber, Traav emerging from concealment to stand silently beside Daisy and Baine.
As Taffeta holds up an orb plucked from Khingo’s chest, the two of them watch, hand-in-hand, as the Rakshasa’s body, now ash on an unseen wind, shreds and dissipates, finally passing into unexistence - a threat to Taffeta and her family no more.
Wearily, the two of them turn to rejoin their friends - even as Fierna’s minions file into the room, studiously ignoring the Primers and starting to clean up the mess. An imp appears at Sunday’s side, holding a chest, offering it as a reward from Fierna. The creature opens it, revealing some gems and unknown vials of liquid. Sunday waves the imp and his trinkets away, using the dismissive motion to surreptitiously pocket a letter resting inside the casket - a letter addressed to her and written in Fierna’s hand. Glancing across at Taffeta, who hasn’t noticed, Sunday slips the paper inside her armour, guilt and trepidation welling up inside her.
Daisy already has the tuning fork out and, her eyes closed, is mouthing the necessary incantations even as Taffeta and Sunday close the circle, reaching out their hands to clasp their friends’. The cavern disappears from view as the magic throws them back towards Kantas and the teleportation circle in Daring’s town square.
***
Dawn, 2nd Ches, 1497
eLk touches down on the roof of the Gilded Mirror, letting Sunday slide off his back before taking to the skies once more. Letting the sun’s early rays warm her body, Sunday takes a moment to herself.
To wrap herself in stillness and calm.
She breathes out slowly and picks her way across the roof tiles. Swinging herself over the edge, she steps through the arcane void to reappear on the windowsill of Markas’ rented room. Sitting there, looking into the room, she watches Markas - oblivious to her presence - meditate as the sun comes up fully behind her. The small, ornately decorated card hidden against Sunday’s breast burns cold against her skin in stark, bitter counterpoint to the dawn of a new day.
