Murder In the Temple 18/8 Nessa undone

CW: really nasty undead waxy skinned horror. Revolting things scuttling about. Honestly, don't read on an empty stomach. Or a full one. Best just leave well alone. 

Good vs Evil – the diary of Nessa al-Kiram, aged 5,362 ¾

I am ashamed to write this.

I have made the wrong choice for selfish reasons and cost an innocent priest her life, perhaps her very soul.

It was not an evil choice, but what is evil if not the failure of good people to make the right choice?

I was at the temple of Bahamut in Kan… Khandar? Kanda? A place of dragons, whatever its name.

The city cascaded down a mountainside, each new level revealing colour-washed walls and red-tiled roofs with tiled passages winding through the shadows created by the many levelled houses.

The narrow streets winding up the hilltop city were filled with dragonborn and kobolds and our party excited some comment and some disapproval. Perhaps a spear wielding minotaur, a midnight blue tiefling, a fairy beetle and a rotund little old lady with a big basket of baked goods were an unfamiliar assembly.

As for me, I pass for human. I think I blended in. There were few clad quite the way I was, but I believe the glances were admiring.

There was an impressive statue of Bahamut in the wide, sunlit square outside the temple. The Father of Dragons carved out of the purest platinum as befits his splendour.

Although, as we looked a little closer – and Beets sat on the thing – we noticed scraps of silver covering what appeared to be holes in the rare metal.

This temple was falling on hard times indeed if it could not maintain the very image of its Lord and Master.

I fished out the note…

Dear etc etc.

The Temple of Bahamut requests your assistance in a urgent matter, over the past few days several of our clergy has been killed in the most horrible of ways, they all appear to have had their very life drained out of them and we fear this may be the return of the vampire menace that plagued our city not long ago.

Please etc. and so forth.

Sincerely
Junior Assistant Cleric
Madaline Highland

Vampires. I had not... behaved as expected the last time I had dealt with them. This was my chance to do the right thing. 

Then Madaline appeared and took us into the temple. 

Madaline Highland, a nervous kobold cleric with sparkling eyes who spoke so quickly the words seemed to push each other aside as they rampaged out of her mouth.

Madaline Highland, so young, so eager, so filled with the joy of her job, so humble in the service of her Lord.

Poor Madaline. How we betrayed you.

---

A tall, smarmy looking silver dragonborn, Fra Cornelius, took over from sweet jittery Madaline and lead us down into the basement where the bodies lay.

“The effect on the bodies is quite severe,” he warned us as he stepped to the first stone table of five. “This was the first,” he pulled back the cloth covering the corpses face to reveal a youngish human male. “He came to the temple five days ago ranting in gibberish, speaking in tongues. We thought his mind sick but cures proved ineffective.”

He pulled back the cloth still further and we could the side of the man’s chest had been torn open. We looked closer and, goddess save us, his heart was missing. Something had ripped his ribs open, reached in and pulled his heart out. There were scratch marks around the wound like animal claws, but this wasn’t what made Booysa gasp.

“Something other than the heart is missing here… could they have…?”

Madaline moved forward her eyes downcast. “Yes, grandmother, I did the autopsy and this man’s life force, his essence was sucked from him. I pray his soul is intact and can still journey to our Father but my heart weeps at the possibility that it may have been devoured by this thing.”

Booysa bowed her head respectfully to each corpse in turn then placed her fingers lightly on Fra Cornelius arm. “I wonder, dear, if I might talk to one of them?” she made it sound as if she was asking to rearrange their shroud a little. “It will help.”

Cornelius looked uneasy but I suspect no-one has ever said no to Booysa in her life.

He pulled back the winding sheet of one of his clerics – a male, silver dragonborn whose chest had been violently caved in.

Booysa took a stick of incense – “smelling salts for dead people,” she gave me a sad smile – waved it through the air and sang a strange melody. For a little while, nothing happened. Then the smoke from the incense began pouring into the dragonborn’s nose, almost as if it was being breathed in by a living thing.

Suddenly the corpses eyes opened. There was an unspeakable gurgling sound from its shattered rib cage as it gasped for air that could never come.

Slowly, with the patience of stone, it lifted its head, mouth open, jaw slack, and turned its face to Booysa, its milky eyes failing to focus.

“Who killed you, dear?” she sounded solicitous and caring.

“I do not know their name,” the voice was dark and cold, like slabs of stone dragging across each other in the halls of the dead. It was the voice of a tomb, the sound of endless night.

“You poor thing, was it a vampire?”

A grating gasp. “It moved very quickly…. So quickly. I didn’t see it coming.”

“Where were you when you were attacked” Orianna, the tiefling druid leaned forward.

“On the way to my room in the east hallway,” its lips formed around the words painfully.

“Was there any warning?”

“There was a noise, something unsettling about the noise.” It fell silent but was clearly trying to say more. “A scream,” the words tolled like a lonely bell on a barren heath. “It sent a shiver down my spine. Then my heart… gone.”

The incense started pouring out of the dragonborn’s nostrils and the corpse fell back with a slow sigh, its eyes closing at last.

We checked every inch of skin and found just the rendered flesh and the marks of claws but no puncture wounds, no tooth marks.

“The shrieking is odd for a vampire,” Booysa mused.

“May I pray for the guidance of my goddess in your hallowed grounds?” I asked Cornelius. Again, he looked uncomfortable, but with the air of someone without any choice he nodded.

When you leave the celestial sphere, you learn how a tiny part of your mind can briefly find its way back when you are lost in the prime material. Those who serve at the mercy of the goddess can touch her infinite kindness and grace and she will help soothe your doubts. I sent my prayers to her, and my heart was filled with her magnificence and power. For a moment it was all I could do not to weep as I drifted in her love, then I formed my doubts into simple questions – are we dealing with the undead?

A thousand winds whirled across worlds and from them, her beloved voice. “Yes, my child.”

Is it a vampire?

Again, the rush, again her kiss. “No, sweet Nessa, not a vampire.”

Is it still here? I felt a twinge of fear as I asked, and she could feel my concern. There was a pause, and I could sense her mind probing the realms of mortals for the answer.

Eventually, hesitantly, she spoke. “Sweet Nessa, it is unclear to me. I do not have the answer child.”

And then our bond broke and I was bereft on an empty shore, her absence like a spear in my soul.

Orianna was drawing on the Old Magic to probe for any arcane echoes, and as I came to she found the dying echo of something dark and necrotic on each corpse.

“This sense will fade,” she gasped. “Let us to the corridor while it lasts, and I can search for traces there.”

Madaline said she would remain and attend to the bodies, some simple rites to help their journey home to the Father in his Wisdom. I looked at her delicate frame and thought of the mighty blows that had torn these poor wretches hearts from their bodies and worried for her here alone.

I pulled a sacred mirror from my pack, drew a crescent sigil across its glass as I looked at her and a tiny pinprick in the fabric of reality opened above her head.

She saw my plan and smiled. “It is good of you to watch over me, Nessa, but have no fear. What harm can come to me in the temple of my Father?”

---

The corridor was white stone and oppressively silent, as if the very slabs were waiting for something awful to happen. We found murky stains and scratches on the walls and Keros, the minotaur whose muscles rippled around each other like boulders in an avalanche, gave a cry when he looked up at the ceiling. Orianna was by his side in a second and we looked up to see deep welts and finger marks as if something had scuttled across the ceiling, its claws sinking into the volcanic stone as if it was butter.

Then Beets found the tip of a claw embedded in the wall. It was only the tinniest fragment, but for scrying magic that is enough.

I reached out and took the fragment in my hand, but the mirror can only watch one thing at a time.

And so, I stopped scrying Madaline and started searching for this creature.

Why?

Perhaps pride. I wanted to prove my worth to my comrades. They were so skilful and confident. They had experience and weaponry. I, on the other hand, literally don’t know why I’m here.

Perhaps to prove myself a hero. When I traded with the undead family before the Githyanki came I felt a strange pleasure at the outcome. I was… affected by the portraits of physical love I saw in Glint’s book. I found the family romantic. Perhaps more than that…

Perhaps overconfidence. Maybe the thrill of the chase. It could have been thoughtlessness. I don’t know. I may never know.

All I do know is that the scrying failed. I could not find the faintest echo of whatever this claw had belonged to.

“Perhaps it isn’t on this plane,” Beets ventured wisely.

I nodded, then we were distracted as black fire burst forth and seemed to consume Orianna as if from nowhere, its flames wrapping around her and pouring into her ears, her nose, her mouth until she fell to the ground.

Then it seemed to melt away. She rose, shaken but unchanged.

“It wanted to… take something from me,” she gasped. “So many voices screaming, so much hunger…”

“We should examine the rooms of the other victims,” Booysa ventured and Cornelius lead us swiftly through the main hall only to freeze as we all heard it echo through the temple.

An unearthly, tormented scream as something unspeakable caused a terrified soul to cry out with all it could muster, begging for aid and for mercy.

I knew at once, but still we ran as if there was some chance.

When we reached the simple morgue Madaline was slumped against the wall, her heart torn from her chest by unimaginable force.

I heard a scrabbling and turned to the window.

The first victim, the human, was huddled there. Its body was bent and twisted as if reassembled by a drunken god. It was cradling Madaline’s heart in its arms. Her heart was glowing, a strange holy radiance.

As we watched, it chittered and screamed and disappeared through the window and I felt the power of Selûne grow within me, although whether rage or despair I cannot say.

I hurled myself after it, heedless of the risk, and my heart lurched as I saw the sheer drop below, falling hundreds of feet past the temple’s stone walls then down the sharp teeth of a long rocky cliff that tumbled almost out of view into a strangely twisted valley far below.

But the moonmaiden blessed me still and her holy wings unfolded to save me as I dived after this offence against life.

It hurtled down, propelled by gravity alone, and crashed to the ground shielding her heart with its foetid body, which all but shattered when it collided with the jagged rocks.

And then, Selûne protect us all, by some ghastly arcane power it somehow, slowly, with an awful sound, snapped its broken limbs back into place and by the time I had dived down, it was up, first staggering, then sprinting with unholy speed. I sent fire after it, bolt after bolt into its waxy skin, and it took some hurt but not as much as I had expected. Some abyssal protection at work.

The others were suddenly beside me. Orianna had summoned mighty mountain eagles – Beets, of course, had her own wings – and they swooped to the ground where Keros hauled his spear forth and charged the creature, blocking it from clawing at his comrades with his own body.

Orianna grew and changed before my eyes, becoming a celestial archer like a vision from the night sky. She sent bolts of radiance searing into the beast’s flesh, but to my horror it seemed to absorb and resist the light of the gods.

What kind of undead nightmare was this, that could sneer at the holy flame? What power did this necrotic flame pay allegiance to?

What in the name of the goddess were we up against?

Suddenly, from behind, I heard dull, wet thuds – a nauseating sound that told its own story. The other corpses had reanimated, the necrotic fire blazing within them, and their bodies had crashed to the ground after leaping from the window in blind, drooling fury. With stomach churning clicks, snaps and squelches they moved their twisted limbs back into place and rose, crimes against nature and the goddess, to scuttle towards us like cockroaches.

I held the symbol of Selûne before me and summoned her rage. “You shall not approach the light of the Holy, unclean wretches and spawn of the grave. The Power of the Goddess compels you to flee. Begone from my sight and her glory.”

They reeled, falling back, although one rallied and continued to charge.

But that was not my concern. Madaline’s heart was in the claws of darkness and I would not have that sweet girl further defiled.

Keros leapt forward and grabbed the fleeing creature, his muscles taut and rigid as he held its squirming form. He forced the thing against a sharp rock and I bore down on it in my fury with a cry – “in the name of the goddess, hold.”

The creature froze, paralysed by holy command. I reached out and plucked Madaline’s heart, still shimmering, from its grasp then called on Selûne’s blade, a sword of pure moonlight, which lanced into the abominations heart as Keros braced, his eyes sparkling with battle rage behind the faceguard of his elegant helm.

The black flame flickered and died in the pure light and the creature crumbled.

I noticed a cave mouth looming ahead. It seemed to be the beasts destination. I could sense no evil emanating from the first few feet of the place but before I could investigate further, another of the things leaped on me from behind.

I repelled its blows with a flare of holy light, and it fell to the ground. I could hear the sounds of battle as my comrades fought the undead. They were mighty indeed, the eagles claws joining Orianna’s magice and Beets blade while Booysa wove charms of protection and fortification.

I had no fears for them. It was Madaline’s heart that was in peril.

“I will take this heart to safety,” I cried.

“Go,” Keros shouted. “We have the measure of this filth.”

---

Cornelius was a broken man.

We lay what remained of Madaline before him.

Her heart had lost its sheen and her body was twisted beyond repair.

He stared the corpses of the twice fallen in silence for a long time.

“How are we to bear this?” he asked.

We could not answer.

He offered us money. I gave some back, my shame too great to accept full payment but my mind on weapons and material that I needed for one good reason.

I would return.

“There is something behind this, and I think it lurks in those caves,” I knelt before him. “I will be back. This fight is mine too now, for I failed Madaline and my heart will never know peace again.”