Post by Zola Rhomdaen on Mar 9, 2022 15:11:57 GMT
Co-written with Lykksie , Marto Copperkettle , and stephena . Art by Lykksie .
Following the events of Something In The Night.
The fires roar and bellow into the blackened sky behind the five injured adventurers as they trudge towards a hill, far from the smoke that had filled their lungs, for a moment of hard-earned respite. Still, their steps are heavy, laden with the grimness of the situation: innocents have died at the hands of fiends, their farmlands and bodies burned, and they had failed to save the man they came to protect, High Diviner Rholor’s friend Ivoluin Brynan — his ravaged body now lies on Cor’Vandor’s back, concealed haphazardly with a blanket, endless amounts of blood streaking down the hart’s immaculate white fur.
Before Tayz prepares to cast prayer of healing on the party, he presents them with a drawing — a hand-drawn sketch of the large, arcane pattern the flames had scorched into the fields, visible only from a high altitude the aarakocra gained by flying.
Zola furrows her ash-speckled brow. She recognises this. “Iorveth, is this not the symbol that fiend in K’ul Goran left behind?”
“Yes, you are right, Zola. I don’t know why we didn’t see this until now,” the summer eladrin answers.
“Because we weren’t seeing it from above…?” She feels the inquisitive stares of her comrades on her and turns to offer an explanation. “Er, there was this djinni in K’ul Goran, he was trying to invite his elder tempest aunt over to the Material Plane for a holiday. He went to Sigil to look for a way to do that and this handsome fiend sold him a strange stone. The stone summoned the elder tempest to the Material Plane as expected but it also made her go berserk — she was kicking up, well, a huge storm over there. We got to the djinni’s house and an illusion of this fiend appeared suddenly, saying something like ‘the sun has set on the Dawnlands one last time!’” She makes sure to do an appropriately dramatic voice for that quote. “Obviously, he was way off-target… He wasn’t too happy nor proud when we told him that. When the illusion disappeared, it left this mark on the sofa.”
Sorrel hesitates. She feels out her depth when it comes to lore and arcana and she hates showing weakness. But hates fiends more, so eventually she asks, “Was it the same over-long arms and hands, over-wide smile fiend? I didn’t catch a proper glimpse of the figure outside the circle so I couldn’t nail it in a line up but I’d remember Smiler for sure. It seems a strangely wide ranging approach to toy with elementals and moon gods. In my moderate experience of fiends they’re very focussed. Obsessive. And not in a sexy way.”
“These fiends are different,” Marto says. In the dim light it’s hard to tell if his face is truly ahsen or if it’s just the smoke clinging to him. “I’ve come across this symbol before too, at the Ashkeeper Farm. It led us into the Angelbark Forest where we faced a fiend- a devil… Adhyël.” He swallows hard after saying the name.
“What happened?” asks Zola, the concern evident in her voice.
“Ubric Ashkeeper had been charmed into carving this symbol on the trees in the forest where we fought Adhyël.” He frowns as he thinks for a moment. “Before we did though, when he was still under Adhyël’s charm, Ubric said something similar to what Smiles did, but his voice sounded like many individual but distinct ones, like there were several people reciting the same verse at once.”
Marto closes his eyes, one of his hands lifting up slightly, fingers tapping down as if keeping a rhythm as he recites, “I saw in heaven another great and marvellous sign: Five angels with the five last plagues — last because with them Goddess’s wrath is completed. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, worthy are you, our Lord and Goddess, to receive glory and honour and power.” He opens his light blue eyes and looks at Zola. The drow stares confusedly back at him.
“Wait, so those fiends are serving a goddess?” She pauses and thinks for a good, long moment. The names of female deities with ties to the Lower Planes are too many to list… But now that she has had a moment of calm, away from the fiery battlefield, she recalls the disgust with which Smiles addressed Sorrel. “Could it be Shar? They seemed to have a distaste for Selûne and her worshippers,” she suggests, glancing at the other woman.
Sorrel feels a chill run down her spine. She nods slowly. Zola’s logic feels impeccable. Shar, Selûne’s malevolent twin — her identical polar opposite, the bringer of darkness and destroyer of light. But fiends? Perhaps. And perhaps the arrival of Kavel’s lycanthropes was no coincidence. Selûne had sent werewolves to save mortals before but usually when war threatened. And when the twins, the first of the gods, went to war, even the gods had been amongst the dead. “This is not ideal…” She looks at the faces of her companions.
“Ah… I’ll take that as a yes.” Zola looks increasingly uneasy. She puts a hand on a gash on the nape of her neck — where the fiend grabbed her to pull her off Cor’Vandor’s back — and winces. “Perhaps we should return to the High Diviner post haste. He should have more insight into this.”
Sorrel looks at the gash, touches Autumn Warmth around her neck, and hands ten healing apples to Zola. “Eat these — it will mean forcing them down,” she gives a wry smile. “Just one will nourish you for a day, but they have healing properties and may help with that gash. I agree that we should head for the temple. I want to see what they have on Shar and any alliances she has forged in the past with fiends. I’m curious about lycanthropes too. If war is coming down, we’re so many steps behind the enemy it makes me nauseous.”
“Thank you, I think Tayz has us covered,” the drow says, taking only three apples and nodding at Tayz in the midst of casting prayer of healing. “That was reckless of me, charging in without any defensive spells… Such profane carnage and savagery made me see red.”
“There’s something else,” Marto starts softly. He had had a hand on his left side, holding it like a wound was there, but no mark nor dent could be seen on his armour. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet as he looks from Sorrel to Iorveth then to Zola. It’s in her face that Marto feels something like courage straighten his spine, though his expression doesn’t get any less grim.
“The other night I was visited by the devil I faced in the woods. Adhyël. He came to me in a dream and though I knew it was one it felt—… it felt so real.” Marto grips the battle axe in his left hand tighter, his knuckles going white. His voice shakes ever so slightly as he continues. “He tried to charm me I think but I resisted him… barely. Still, he left a mark on me.”
Marto points to Tayz’s tome, to the drawing of the symbol. The same one that’s burning in the fields.
“That same symbol, here,” he says in a low voice, lightly patting his left side. “He said to come find him…”
“By the Seldarine,” Zola gasps, horrified. “Why… Why did he try to charm you? And mark you?”
The halfling shakes his head, lips pressing together in a firm line, eyes looking into some middle distance. “I don’t know.”
Marto thinks back to that moment, how he was praying to Yondalla for help. Though she didn’t intervene, Marto didn’t fall victim to what Adhyël tried to do. Maybe the Blessed One’s luck had been with him after all. But the look on Adhyël’s face…
“He almost seemed sad when it happened,” Marto adds quietly, those strange and confusing feelings rising in him again. Then He remembers the others are staring at him, and he tries to push those feelings away.
“I tried to identify it, but the most the spell was able to tell me about it is that it’s a magical infernal mark, but dormant with nothing to dispel… yet.”
Zola purses her lips. She lays a hand on Marto’s shoulder and catches his gaze, his uncertain blue eyes meeting her determined amber. And yet, the expression on her face is gentle and brimming with sympathy.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Marto, I promise.”
As the words leave her mouth, Tayz utters the last of his prayer to Horus, and a golden wave of healing magic radiates out from him, sweeping over the group. The gash on Zola’s neck begins to close up with layers of scar tissue quickly forming over it.
“Let’s go.”
Even though Zola draped a blanket over the remains of Ivoluin, they were preceded by a quiet, heavy hush by the time they got to the Temple of Selûne. The High Diviner was waiting for them at the top of the marbled steps, his face appearing to have aged over the few hours they had been away. He tells Zola to bring Cor’Vandor inside the temple and she does, the rest of them following swiftly before Melissa closes the temple doors.
Sorrel is the one to tell the High Diviner what happened, that by the time they got there, the fields of farmland were set ablaze. Ivoluin had been mortally struck by a fiend, who was in fact eating him when they confronted them. It is a grizzly retelling, with some pointed embellishments from Iorveth that sees the divot between Rholor’s eyebrows deepen each time it happens. Sorrel mentions how keen the fiend was on her.
“They said, ‘I’ll come back for you. Wait for me.’” The ranger shudders.
The High Diviner lets out a small sigh. “Was there anything else?”
Tayz, Iorveth, Sorrel and Zola all look at Marto. The young knight softly clears his throat but before he can speak the High Diviner’s piercing gaze is on him.
“What?” His tone is cold and sharp.
Marto begins to tell him what he told the others but before he gets too far the High Diviner is suddenly on him, trying to pull the splint armour off his body forcefully. With some convincing the High Diviner waits the five minutes it takes for Marto to take off his armour — with Tayz’s help — and then he is casting detect magic and identify on the mark.
His cool silvery eyes look at Marto before nodding. “I had to be sure. You were right, there is nothing — for the moment.”
Melissa fetches two other young people from deeper in the temple – a dark skinned half-elven woman with intricate braids and a pale human teen, barely old enough to be called an adult, their jetblack hair falling in a curtain in front of their face. With the help of Marto, Zola, and Sorrel, they wipe down as much of Ivoluin’s body as they can, carefully washing the torn skin.
As Rholor lights incense and starts a low chant that fills the temple, they shroud the brutalised body in soft linen, leaving only the old man’s face revealed. The two helpers flit around the quiet space, lighting more candles, joining in the chant, and a comforting light fills the air. The High Diviner releases his spell and even though he doesn’t have lungs left to draw breath with, Ivoluin’s chest rises gently. His eyes don’t open but his mouth lets out a slow sigh.
“My friend,” Rholor says, “I am so sorry. I could give you excuses but they would not help you now. I only have questions for you.”
He places a gentle hand on top of the linen-clad shoulder of the corpse, squeezing gently.
“How many were there?”
Ivoluin’s voice is nothing but a ghostly whisper, unnatural and hoarse.
“Two. But I could hear them speaking of others.”
Rholor frowns.
“How many others?”
Ivoluin’s whisper seeks out the darkest corners of the temple, echoing and jarring.
“Numbers beyond reckoning.”
Something cynical and dry passes across Rholor’s face.
“They all say that, my friend. Did any of the others get away?”
“None.”
Rholor nods, even as Ivoluin answers, clearly anticipating the harsh reality but asking in spite of himself. His eyes glisten in the candlelight but he swallows against the threatening tears. He glances up at the others gathered.
“I have one more question to spare. You were there. What do you think prudent to ask?”
Sorrel hesitates. She hopes the High Diviner won’t interpret what she is about to say as implying any criticism.
“Your… Holiness?” Sorrel hesitates on the honorific and then skips quickly on if that isn’t the proper title for him. “We know that Ivoluin has worried in the past when the situation was less than grave. But something happened here of such savagery that I have rarely seen it’s like more than a few times a year tops. Certainly since coming to Kantas. What started it? Where does this story begin? In very literal terms,” she adds hastily. “Obviously in one sense it begins with the dawn of time, but I meant at that specific location in the very recent past—”
Rholor raises a hand to put a stop to the cascade of words, cutting her off with tired sadness.
“Enough, Sorrel. What is the question?”
“Was there anything before the attack that signalled it coming - and any warning signs that could help us spot another?” Sorrel looks anxious. “Anything that will help us protect the High Diviner?”
Rholor gives Sorrel a long look of mild surprise, distaste and disappointment. He shakes his head minutely before turning his attention back to Ivoluin.
“Was there anything before the attack? A warning sign? Something that could help us see another one coming?”
Ivoluin’s head twitches once, suddenly, as if remembering brought unrest even to this shadow of his spirit.
“Five points of light.”
The entire ravaged torso of the old man jerks as he tries to pass more words out on non-existent breath.
“Five. Five lights. Five points of—”
Rholor nods again, placing his other hand on Ivoluin’s forehead and hushing gently to settle him.
“It’s alright. Thank you, my friend. I think I know the answer to this one as well, but I have to ask anyway. Forgive a young man his foolishness. Would you like me to bring you back?”
With a final exhalation, Ivoluin’s chest falls.
“Let me rest.”
Melissa covers the old man’s face with the last strip of linen, and Rholor lets the tears fall.
Following the events of Something In The Night.
The fires roar and bellow into the blackened sky behind the five injured adventurers as they trudge towards a hill, far from the smoke that had filled their lungs, for a moment of hard-earned respite. Still, their steps are heavy, laden with the grimness of the situation: innocents have died at the hands of fiends, their farmlands and bodies burned, and they had failed to save the man they came to protect, High Diviner Rholor’s friend Ivoluin Brynan — his ravaged body now lies on Cor’Vandor’s back, concealed haphazardly with a blanket, endless amounts of blood streaking down the hart’s immaculate white fur.
Before Tayz prepares to cast prayer of healing on the party, he presents them with a drawing — a hand-drawn sketch of the large, arcane pattern the flames had scorched into the fields, visible only from a high altitude the aarakocra gained by flying.
Zola furrows her ash-speckled brow. She recognises this. “Iorveth, is this not the symbol that fiend in K’ul Goran left behind?”
“Yes, you are right, Zola. I don’t know why we didn’t see this until now,” the summer eladrin answers.
“Because we weren’t seeing it from above…?” She feels the inquisitive stares of her comrades on her and turns to offer an explanation. “Er, there was this djinni in K’ul Goran, he was trying to invite his elder tempest aunt over to the Material Plane for a holiday. He went to Sigil to look for a way to do that and this handsome fiend sold him a strange stone. The stone summoned the elder tempest to the Material Plane as expected but it also made her go berserk — she was kicking up, well, a huge storm over there. We got to the djinni’s house and an illusion of this fiend appeared suddenly, saying something like ‘the sun has set on the Dawnlands one last time!’” She makes sure to do an appropriately dramatic voice for that quote. “Obviously, he was way off-target… He wasn’t too happy nor proud when we told him that. When the illusion disappeared, it left this mark on the sofa.”
Sorrel hesitates. She feels out her depth when it comes to lore and arcana and she hates showing weakness. But hates fiends more, so eventually she asks, “Was it the same over-long arms and hands, over-wide smile fiend? I didn’t catch a proper glimpse of the figure outside the circle so I couldn’t nail it in a line up but I’d remember Smiler for sure. It seems a strangely wide ranging approach to toy with elementals and moon gods. In my moderate experience of fiends they’re very focussed. Obsessive. And not in a sexy way.”
“These fiends are different,” Marto says. In the dim light it’s hard to tell if his face is truly ahsen or if it’s just the smoke clinging to him. “I’ve come across this symbol before too, at the Ashkeeper Farm. It led us into the Angelbark Forest where we faced a fiend- a devil… Adhyël.” He swallows hard after saying the name.
“What happened?” asks Zola, the concern evident in her voice.
“Ubric Ashkeeper had been charmed into carving this symbol on the trees in the forest where we fought Adhyël.” He frowns as he thinks for a moment. “Before we did though, when he was still under Adhyël’s charm, Ubric said something similar to what Smiles did, but his voice sounded like many individual but distinct ones, like there were several people reciting the same verse at once.”
Marto closes his eyes, one of his hands lifting up slightly, fingers tapping down as if keeping a rhythm as he recites, “I saw in heaven another great and marvellous sign: Five angels with the five last plagues — last because with them Goddess’s wrath is completed. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, worthy are you, our Lord and Goddess, to receive glory and honour and power.” He opens his light blue eyes and looks at Zola. The drow stares confusedly back at him.
“Wait, so those fiends are serving a goddess?” She pauses and thinks for a good, long moment. The names of female deities with ties to the Lower Planes are too many to list… But now that she has had a moment of calm, away from the fiery battlefield, she recalls the disgust with which Smiles addressed Sorrel. “Could it be Shar? They seemed to have a distaste for Selûne and her worshippers,” she suggests, glancing at the other woman.
Sorrel feels a chill run down her spine. She nods slowly. Zola’s logic feels impeccable. Shar, Selûne’s malevolent twin — her identical polar opposite, the bringer of darkness and destroyer of light. But fiends? Perhaps. And perhaps the arrival of Kavel’s lycanthropes was no coincidence. Selûne had sent werewolves to save mortals before but usually when war threatened. And when the twins, the first of the gods, went to war, even the gods had been amongst the dead. “This is not ideal…” She looks at the faces of her companions.
“Ah… I’ll take that as a yes.” Zola looks increasingly uneasy. She puts a hand on a gash on the nape of her neck — where the fiend grabbed her to pull her off Cor’Vandor’s back — and winces. “Perhaps we should return to the High Diviner post haste. He should have more insight into this.”
Sorrel looks at the gash, touches Autumn Warmth around her neck, and hands ten healing apples to Zola. “Eat these — it will mean forcing them down,” she gives a wry smile. “Just one will nourish you for a day, but they have healing properties and may help with that gash. I agree that we should head for the temple. I want to see what they have on Shar and any alliances she has forged in the past with fiends. I’m curious about lycanthropes too. If war is coming down, we’re so many steps behind the enemy it makes me nauseous.”
“Thank you, I think Tayz has us covered,” the drow says, taking only three apples and nodding at Tayz in the midst of casting prayer of healing. “That was reckless of me, charging in without any defensive spells… Such profane carnage and savagery made me see red.”
“There’s something else,” Marto starts softly. He had had a hand on his left side, holding it like a wound was there, but no mark nor dent could be seen on his armour. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet as he looks from Sorrel to Iorveth then to Zola. It’s in her face that Marto feels something like courage straighten his spine, though his expression doesn’t get any less grim.
“The other night I was visited by the devil I faced in the woods. Adhyël. He came to me in a dream and though I knew it was one it felt—… it felt so real.” Marto grips the battle axe in his left hand tighter, his knuckles going white. His voice shakes ever so slightly as he continues. “He tried to charm me I think but I resisted him… barely. Still, he left a mark on me.”
Marto points to Tayz’s tome, to the drawing of the symbol. The same one that’s burning in the fields.
“That same symbol, here,” he says in a low voice, lightly patting his left side. “He said to come find him…”
“By the Seldarine,” Zola gasps, horrified. “Why… Why did he try to charm you? And mark you?”
The halfling shakes his head, lips pressing together in a firm line, eyes looking into some middle distance. “I don’t know.”
Marto thinks back to that moment, how he was praying to Yondalla for help. Though she didn’t intervene, Marto didn’t fall victim to what Adhyël tried to do. Maybe the Blessed One’s luck had been with him after all. But the look on Adhyël’s face…
“He almost seemed sad when it happened,” Marto adds quietly, those strange and confusing feelings rising in him again. Then He remembers the others are staring at him, and he tries to push those feelings away.
“I tried to identify it, but the most the spell was able to tell me about it is that it’s a magical infernal mark, but dormant with nothing to dispel… yet.”
Zola purses her lips. She lays a hand on Marto’s shoulder and catches his gaze, his uncertain blue eyes meeting her determined amber. And yet, the expression on her face is gentle and brimming with sympathy.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Marto, I promise.”
As the words leave her mouth, Tayz utters the last of his prayer to Horus, and a golden wave of healing magic radiates out from him, sweeping over the group. The gash on Zola’s neck begins to close up with layers of scar tissue quickly forming over it.
“Let’s go.”
Even though Zola draped a blanket over the remains of Ivoluin, they were preceded by a quiet, heavy hush by the time they got to the Temple of Selûne. The High Diviner was waiting for them at the top of the marbled steps, his face appearing to have aged over the few hours they had been away. He tells Zola to bring Cor’Vandor inside the temple and she does, the rest of them following swiftly before Melissa closes the temple doors.
Sorrel is the one to tell the High Diviner what happened, that by the time they got there, the fields of farmland were set ablaze. Ivoluin had been mortally struck by a fiend, who was in fact eating him when they confronted them. It is a grizzly retelling, with some pointed embellishments from Iorveth that sees the divot between Rholor’s eyebrows deepen each time it happens. Sorrel mentions how keen the fiend was on her.
“They said, ‘I’ll come back for you. Wait for me.’” The ranger shudders.
The High Diviner lets out a small sigh. “Was there anything else?”
Tayz, Iorveth, Sorrel and Zola all look at Marto. The young knight softly clears his throat but before he can speak the High Diviner’s piercing gaze is on him.
“What?” His tone is cold and sharp.
Marto begins to tell him what he told the others but before he gets too far the High Diviner is suddenly on him, trying to pull the splint armour off his body forcefully. With some convincing the High Diviner waits the five minutes it takes for Marto to take off his armour — with Tayz’s help — and then he is casting detect magic and identify on the mark.
His cool silvery eyes look at Marto before nodding. “I had to be sure. You were right, there is nothing — for the moment.”
Melissa fetches two other young people from deeper in the temple – a dark skinned half-elven woman with intricate braids and a pale human teen, barely old enough to be called an adult, their jetblack hair falling in a curtain in front of their face. With the help of Marto, Zola, and Sorrel, they wipe down as much of Ivoluin’s body as they can, carefully washing the torn skin.
As Rholor lights incense and starts a low chant that fills the temple, they shroud the brutalised body in soft linen, leaving only the old man’s face revealed. The two helpers flit around the quiet space, lighting more candles, joining in the chant, and a comforting light fills the air. The High Diviner releases his spell and even though he doesn’t have lungs left to draw breath with, Ivoluin’s chest rises gently. His eyes don’t open but his mouth lets out a slow sigh.
“My friend,” Rholor says, “I am so sorry. I could give you excuses but they would not help you now. I only have questions for you.”
He places a gentle hand on top of the linen-clad shoulder of the corpse, squeezing gently.
“How many were there?”
Ivoluin’s voice is nothing but a ghostly whisper, unnatural and hoarse.
“Two. But I could hear them speaking of others.”
Rholor frowns.
“How many others?”
Ivoluin’s whisper seeks out the darkest corners of the temple, echoing and jarring.
“Numbers beyond reckoning.”
Something cynical and dry passes across Rholor’s face.
“They all say that, my friend. Did any of the others get away?”
“None.”
Rholor nods, even as Ivoluin answers, clearly anticipating the harsh reality but asking in spite of himself. His eyes glisten in the candlelight but he swallows against the threatening tears. He glances up at the others gathered.
“I have one more question to spare. You were there. What do you think prudent to ask?”
Sorrel hesitates. She hopes the High Diviner won’t interpret what she is about to say as implying any criticism.
“Your… Holiness?” Sorrel hesitates on the honorific and then skips quickly on if that isn’t the proper title for him. “We know that Ivoluin has worried in the past when the situation was less than grave. But something happened here of such savagery that I have rarely seen it’s like more than a few times a year tops. Certainly since coming to Kantas. What started it? Where does this story begin? In very literal terms,” she adds hastily. “Obviously in one sense it begins with the dawn of time, but I meant at that specific location in the very recent past—”
Rholor raises a hand to put a stop to the cascade of words, cutting her off with tired sadness.
“Enough, Sorrel. What is the question?”
“Was there anything before the attack that signalled it coming - and any warning signs that could help us spot another?” Sorrel looks anxious. “Anything that will help us protect the High Diviner?”
Rholor gives Sorrel a long look of mild surprise, distaste and disappointment. He shakes his head minutely before turning his attention back to Ivoluin.
“Was there anything before the attack? A warning sign? Something that could help us see another one coming?”
Ivoluin’s head twitches once, suddenly, as if remembering brought unrest even to this shadow of his spirit.
“Five points of light.”
The entire ravaged torso of the old man jerks as he tries to pass more words out on non-existent breath.
“Five. Five lights. Five points of—”
Rholor nods again, placing his other hand on Ivoluin’s forehead and hushing gently to settle him.
“It’s alright. Thank you, my friend. I think I know the answer to this one as well, but I have to ask anyway. Forgive a young man his foolishness. Would you like me to bring you back?”
With a final exhalation, Ivoluin’s chest falls.
“Let me rest.”
Melissa covers the old man’s face with the last strip of linen, and Rholor lets the tears fall.
