Monday, July 27, 2020

To Hell And Back


But all your pain could be gone,” the devil purred.

“My pain is what makes me what I am!” Shadow snarled with uncharacteristic venom. “Take your contract and shove it!”

You could save Brigitte,” Chyvvom promised.

“Only to have her fall to Blood Veil, or some other horror,” Erin countered. “Your offer is a hollow lie.”

“I’ve been a slave to others,” Jax snapped. “I won’t be a slave to you!”

One by one, each person heard the Contract Devil promise them the very thing they’d most longed for – and one by one, they turned it down. With a sigh of sadness, Chyvvom strolled back to the magic circle in the center of the rotunda, where he’d stood when they first saw him. He gave the party one final, sad smile. “Alas – you had the opportunity to remake your lives, to save those whom you loved. Now you will spend the rest of eternity wondering why you threw that opportunity away.” Time resumed its normal flow: breathing and heartbeats resumed, and the summoning circle again crackled with arcane energy. Chyvvom nodded with a slight bow, and vanished from sight.

Nat and Tomas immediately pulled on their Red Mantis masks, activating their See Invisibility power, but there was no sign of the Contract Devil. Wren was certain that Chyvvom wasn’t done with them, so she cast Bless as she moved onto the balcony of the rotunda. Jax and Shadow followed her, and Erin moved through the double doors onto the floor below them. Looking up at the painting on the dome far above them, Shadow had a sudden start of recognition. The painting showed an aged man with a long beard, signing a contract held by a massive, flaming devil. Shadow realized he’d seen that man before – his portrait hung in the entry of Ornelos Hall, in the Acadamae. It was Volshyenek Ornelos, founder of the Acadamae, and ancestor of the current headmaster, Toff Ornelos.

Nat and Tomas were still on the balcony of the room where they’d fought the devourer and barbed devil, scanning for invisible threats, when one appeared directly above them. It was an enormous Bone Devil, and only their ability to See Invisibility prevented it from catching them completely by surprise. As it was, it still slashed Tomas with both of its claws. Nat dodged its jaws, but its tail thrust forward, stabbing him with it’s poisoned stinger. It briefly became visible as it attacked, then just as quickly vanished again.

Nat dashed down the stairs, taking a nasty slash from the Bone Devil’s claw as a small price to pay to put some distance between him and the monster. At the foot of the stairs he spun, and sprayed the devil with a Cone of Cold. It dodged most of the spell, and seemed to not be as bothered by the cold as Nat would have liked, but he followed up with a Cold Ice Strike as a swift action that left it with an even thicker coating of ice.

The devil was right in Tomas’s face, but the ranger had become adept at close-in fighting with his bow; he fired arrow after arrow while deftly parrying all of his target’s attempts to hit him. At such close range, it was almost impossible to miss the huge target, and Tomas had developed a special hatred for evil creatures from the outer planes. The arrows sank deep into its chest, and his final shot hit it right between the eyes, passing clean through its skull to rebound off the far wall. With a whimper, the creature’s body crashed to the floor below.

By the time everyone else ran back in from the rotunda, the battle was already over. Erin did some quick healing on Nat as Shadow and Wren pulled on Red Mantis masks of their own – no one liked the idea of a devil sneaking up on them. Jax descended from the balcony and held a spell of Magic Missiles at the ready, in case Chyvvom or some other threat appeared.

Which happened a few seconds later. The double doors leading back into the hallway they’d come from flew open, revealing the Contract Devil standing confidently in the doorway. Before Jax could cast his spell however, it suddenly became deathly silent in the room. Against all his instincts, Nat ran full speed towards the devil, sliding to a stop as soon as he could once again hear his footsteps, then cast an Empowered Lightning Bolt that crackled down the hallway. Chyvvom staggered slightly under the electrical assault, and Nat was pleased to see that the spell seemed to have done full damage.

Tomas moved down the stairs as he carefully studied the Contract Devil, marking him as his target. Wren started to run down the stairs to help her friends, but reversed direction when she hit the zone of Silence; she’d be better off staying where she could cast spells. Erin saw the devil in front of her, but instead of charging, she moved back into the rotunda. She cautiously approached the magic circle on the floor, and prodded it with her sword, which still pulsed with Holy power from her Divine Bond. She was hoping to trigger some means of escape, but nothing happened. Shadow move back into the rotunda, then used his Ring of Jumping to lightly leap down to the floor below.

The devil’s Silence spell had foiled Jax’s intention to hit it with Magic Missiles, but now he used his Tricky Spell training to silently cast Haste. Unfortunately, only Erin and Tomas were within range, but those were the two he’d most want hastened anyway. And it was just in time, as another Bone Devil appeared in the doorway in front of Chyvvom; the Contract Devil gave the party a mischievous smile and stepped into one of the doors opening off the hallway, out of sight. Tomas immediately fired a stream of arrows into the new enemy. The Bone Devil recoiled as each struck, bellowing in pain, but to Tomas’s practiced eye, everything seemed slightly out of synch, as if the creature were reacting a fraction of a second too late. Unfortunately, he was still in the area of Silence and couldn’t say anything to warn his friends. He waved his arms, then crossed them in front of him like an ‘X’, trying to warn them not to bother attacking the illusion. “Holy crap!” Nat said, seeing his motions. “Is Tomas casting spells now, too?” He retreated to the side of the room, staying out of the Silence and began casting a spell of his own.

Erin had no idea what Tomas was trying to do, but she charged at the Bone Devil, taking advantage of her increased speed to close the distance and strike with her holy rapier. Her blow struck true, and nothing in its reaction seemed off to her. Jax found his way out of the Silence, and finally cast the Magic Missiles he’d been holding onto. They slammed into the Bone Devil in rapid succession, but as they struck, the devil’s image seemed to waver, then dissolve altogether.

Shadow was the only one in the rotunda. He sidled over to where he could just see through the doorway, readying a Lightning Bolt in case anything appeared down the hallway where Chyvvom had ducked out of sight. “Looking for me?” he heard a voice say behind him. He spun, and saw the Contract Devil standing right beside him, smiling down at him. With a yelp, he fired off his prepared Lightning Bolt at point-blank range, and the devil’s expression shifted to one of fury.

The Silence spell covering the doorway into the rotunda muffled most of the sound of Shadow’s spell, but the open balcony doors let through enough to alert those who could hear that something was happening. And the sudden bright flash alerted even those who couldn’t hear. Nat’s spell finally completed, and an enormous Woolly Rhinoceros suddenly appeared behind Tomas. With a Silenced bellow, it charged into the rotunda, goring Chyvvom with its horn – but almost blocking the doorway. Nat couldn’t see what his rhino was going after, but he cast Fly on himself and zipped up to the balcony level and through one of the balcony doors  into the rotunda.

On the floor, no one was quite sure what was happening. Erin and Jax had charged into the hallway after the Bone Devil and hot on Chyvvom’s trail. Wren saw some people heading one direction and some another; she decided to follow Erin and Jax. Tomas was also confused; something big and hairy had appeared behind him, but instead of attacking him, it had run away from him. He couldn’t hear anything, but Wren, Erin, and Jax all seemed to be going down the hall, so he moved forward to join them. As he emerged from the Silence, he heard Jax yelling. “Did you see that? I just saw an elephant run in there!” The city boy had never seen any animal larger or more exotic than a cow, so his mistake could be forgiven, but he was pointing back towards the rotunda, where they could see a large, woolly butt filling most of the doorway. Erin dashed forward, trying to push her way past the rhino, while Jax cast Greater Invisibility on himself and followed.

Inside the rotunda, Chyvvom was more than a little peeved at the turn events had taken. He’d intended to simply Bestow Curse on Shadow then pop out again, but between the sorcerer’s quick reactions and this damned rhinoceros, he was losing patience with this game. He retreated across the rotunda, taking another hit from the rhino’s horn, then pointed his finger at the group clustered around the rhinoceros. A small ball of glowing light flew from his finger, hit the floor near Shadow’s feet, and rolled under the summoned rhino. A second later, the Delayed Blast Fireball exploded. Jax managed to Evade its effects, but Shadow, Erin, and the rhino were badly scorched.



Shadow also wanted this game to end. He darted across the rotunda floor to get a clear bead on his target, then launched an Empowered Lightning Bolt at Chyvvom. All of his draconic ancestry fueled the electrical charge as it enveloped the Contract Devil. Sparks crackled and leaped between Chyvvom’s horns, and he let out a roar that threatened to bring down the roof above them. Thunder rolled through the room, echoing throughout this tiny slice of Hell, and then Chyvvom fell.

As the Contract Devil fell, the summoning circle on the floor transformed. It became a ring of burning flames that gave off no heat, encircling a pit of blackness shot through with sparks. “Looks like our way out of here,” Jax said. “Let’s get what we came for and get the hell out!”

Shadow was already combing through the tangle of scrolls on Chyvvom’s horns, and Nat quickly joined him. All were written in Infernal, and each had a name at the top; most names were written in Common, but Nat saw a few in Dwarven runes, and others in exotic scripts he didn’t recognize. “Here it is!” Shadow cried; he held up a long scroll with the name ‘Severs DiViri’ clearly written at the top.

“Let’s go!” Jax cried, but Nat wasn’t quite ready. “You know, there’s some more magic back there,” he said, looking longingly down the hallway. “Do you guys want to just …” Jax grabbed him roughly by the arm and all but threw him into the gate.

As before, they felt a momentary sensation of falling. When it stopped, they were crowded together back in the broom closet in the Hall of Wards. The orb of light that served as the key still glowed in its sconce, and the gate back to Hell still seethed behind them. “Hmmm … I’m surprised that’s still open,” Nat mused. “I expected it to close. I wonder if …” Jax snatched the orb out of the sconce, closing the gate before Nat could try any experiments.

“What time do you think it is? Erin asked worriedly. They’d found that time flowed differently for those on the far side of the gate than it did back in the ‘real world’. “Do you think it’s daylight yet?”

“We don’t even know what day it is,” Jax replied. “We could have been in there for weeks for all we know. I’m just hoping the headmaster hasn’t already gotten back and found his key missing.”

They cautiously opened the closet door. The Wall of Fire still burned in the hallway ahead of them, but it was difficult to judge the time of day inside the windowless building. Nat carefully cracked open the door to the classroom beside them, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was empty.

No one much wanted to walk through the Wall of Fire again, so Nat and Shadow used Dimension Door to whisk them out of the Hall of Wards and most of the way across campus. To their relief, it was still dark and still when they emerged; the Acadamae was not yet waking up. They hurried back towards the Headmaster’s Tower. As they did, Wren cast a glance back behind them. On the path behind them, she saw a group of people furtively sneaking around the corner of the Hall of Summoning, headed towards the Hall of Wards. There were six of them, and she could only see their backs for a moment, but one was a red-haired woman in armor, another carried a longbow, one wore a tall, conical hat – and one was a slight blonde woman. “Guys – is that …” Wren started to say, but the other group disappeared around the corner of the building before anyone else could see them. Wren looked up at the night sky, wishing she could judge the time by the position of the stars. Had any time passed at all?

Armed with the purloined maid’s key, Jax had no trouble reentering the Headmaster’s Tower and returning the magical orb to its position in his bedroom. He crept quietly back into the servants’ quarters and returned the door key to its spot in the maid’s footlocker. The party gathered on the lawn, not quite allowing themselves to believe they’d actually succeeded. “I guess it’s time to take this back to the Lictor,” Shadow said, holding up the contract.

It was still the middle of the night, and while they were confident the Lictor would be happy to see them return with his contract at any time, they weren’t sure what reception the Hellknights would give to unexpected midnight visitors. So Nat Teleported them back to the village of Colmar, and set up a Tiny Hut for them to use to pass the rest of the night, with Wren adding a Nap Stack to let them recover more quickly.

When the sun rose, they made the trek back up the winding road to Citadel Vraid. Their reception at the gate was more welcoming this time. The guards had been ordered to admit them at once if they returned, and didn’t make them go through the process of surrendering all their weapons. They were escorted back through the bailey and into the keep, up to Lictor DiViri’s office. He was seated behind his large desk, but as soon as the door closed, he practically leaped out of his seat. “Do you have it?”

“Do you have the Shoanti?” Wren asked warily.

“Yes, of course. Give me the scroll, and I’ll give you the prisoner!”

“Show us the Shoanti, and we’ll give you the scroll.”

DiViri’s eyes flashed with anger. “Do you think I keep him under my desk? We have an agreement – give me what I asked for, and I’ll give you the paperwork to get your precious Shoanti.”

Shadow could see that they were in danger of antagonizing the Lictor, and he knew that at this point, DiViri could simply order his men to kill them and take the scroll for himself if he wished. “Here’s what you wanted,” he said, pulling the rolled-up scroll out of his pack.

DiViri snatched the paper with trembling hands, unfurled it, and began to read it carefully. As he did, an expression of triumph spread across his face. “Yes!” he whispered. “Finally!” He carefully rerolled the scroll and slid it into a sliver case he withdrew from a drawer in his desk. He sat down behind his desk again, took a deep breath, and looked up at the party with a broad smile. “You are everything the rumors say, and more! Thank you! You have fulfilled your end of the bargain, and I shall fulfil mine.” He took a paper out of another drawer, and wrote on it with a quill pen, then melted some blue sealing wax that he impressed with a golden seal. He handed this to Shadow. “This is an affidavit of prisoner release. The Shoanti you’re after is being held in Caina – I’ll have guards escort you there, and you can present this to Maralictor Heriphis. It orders him to release the savage into your custody. You’ll also need to show this to the guards at the front gate, to authorize you to remove the prisoner from Citadel Vraid.

“And as I promised, I have a little bonus for you. You’ve probably already realized that Queen Ileosa has entered into a pact with the Red Mantis. With as much trouble as you’ve caused her, I have no doubt that she’s set the Red Mantis after you. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t wait for them to murder me in my sleep – I’d take the fight to them. But that’s hard to do if you don’t know where to find them. That’s where I can help. I happen to know where the Red Mantis have their headquarters in Korvosa. There’s an apothecary shop in the University District, The Perfect Pestle. In the alley behind it, there’s a secret door that leads to a stairway down into the catacombs. There’s a place where the wall’s broken through into the sewers, and that leads to the Red Mantis hideout. I don’t know the exact route through the sewers, but I have no doubt you’ll be able to find it.”

Their transaction complete, DiViri summoned their escort. “These people are taking one of the prisoners from Caina. Escort them to the Forgetful Spire, wait for them to retrieve their prisoner, then escort them back to the gate.” He turned back to the party and smiled. “And good luck to you. Believe it or not, I actually am sympathetic to what you’re trying to do – I hope you succeed.”

The escort party led them back down into the bailey, but instead of taking them to the main rear gate of Bastion Dominus, they led them to a sally port in the side wall. This led to a narrow path skirting the cliffs that rose above the Citadel. Citadel Vraid was comprised of three castles, connected by narrow bridges over deep chasms; this path skirted the chasms, allowing them to pass between the castles without crossing through them. As they neared the third castle, Bastion Ferox, they began to see deep trenches cut into the earth, with people raising things in and out of them. As they drew closer, they realized that the people were Shoanti, and that the trenches held more Shoanti prisoners, who were being lifted out by ropes to go on some work detail. But their escort didn’t stop at the trenches; instead, he led them into the bailey of Bastion Ferox and then to a door leading into a slender tower in its southwest corner. “This is the Forgetful Spire,” he said, pointing up to the tower. “They call it that because people are sent here to be forgotten. Caina is at the bottom of those stairs. Maralictor Heriphis is the warden, and he’ll get you your prisoner.” He and his comrades showed no indication that they’d accompany the party down the stairs, so they set off on their own.

Nat had been worried when he’d heard that the prisoner they wanted was being held in ‘Caina’ – that was the name of the eighth level of Hell, an infernal realm of torture and pain. After what they’d just been through, he definitely didn’t want to go there. He could only hope that the Hellknights named their dungeons after regions of Hell. He proved to be right: at the bottom of the musty staircase was an iron door, with the name ‘CAINA’ engraved in the stone above it.

The door was unlocked, and they pushed it open. They walked into a dark oubliette lined with prison cells. On the left, a large cell clearly served as a torture chamber, with a rack, bottomless chair, and other instruments of pain. A cell next to it held nothing but a long-dead body. On the right, two cells were occupied, one by a man another by a woman. Both laid on their cots, watching the part pass with their eyes but not moving a muscle or saying a word. A third cell on that side was empty. Tomas and Jax noticed that none of the living prisoners were Shoanti; the dead one would require a much closer examination.

A thick stone column with hanging chains and smeared with bloody stains filled the center of the main room; torches on the column and the walls lit the area with a flickering, hellish light. Beyond the column was a desk, with a man in Hellknight armor seated behind it. On either side of the desk sat a pair of lanky, wolfish creatures with fiery eyes and smoke rising from their fur. “Shit – Hell Hounds!” Nat thought as they approached.

As soon as the Hellknight seated at the desk spotted then, he challenged them. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” The party moved forward as confidently as they could under the circumstances, knowing they were under DiViri’s protection. “We’re here at the direction of Lictor DiViri,” Shadow said confidently. His confidence wavered a little as they passed the column and saw there was a third Hell Hound crouching behind it; a low growl rumbled in its chest as they passed. Nevertheless, Shadow walked up to the desk and handed over the Lictor’s affidavit. “This authorizes us to take custody of one of your prisoners.”

Maralictor Ganden Heriphis took the paper and studied it carefully. He rubbed his brow for a moment. “I should have known this was going to get messy sooner or later,” he muttered. He looked back up a Shadow. “Sic ‘em!”

At their master’s order, all three Hell Hounds breathed out gouts of flame. Jax nimbly evaded the fire, and Erin and Shadow were both only slightly scorched. Shadow didn’t appreciate their rude reception, so he opened his mouth and belched out a gout of Lightning that rocked the Maralictor back on his heels. Shadow retreated from the desk as two of the Hell Hounds charged at him, snarling and snapping. Luckily, they both missed, and the third missed Erin as well.

Shadow and Tomas were standing together, Hell Hounds on either side of them. Jax rushed over to help them; one of the Hell Hounds bit him as he moved into position, but he retaliated with a vicious stab. Tomas unlimbered his bow and arrows began flying around the room; within seconds, two of the Hell Hounds were dead and the third feathered. Erin stabbed the surviving Hell Hound, but it was still on its feet.

Nat really did not want to kill a Hellknight and possibly get on DiViri’s bad side, so he tried capturing the Maralictor in a Resilient Sphere, but his attempt failed. Wren was thinking along the same lines. “Do you surrender?” she shouted at Heriphis. He scowled back at her. “There’s nothing you can do to me that won’t be better than what they’ll do if they find out what I’ve been doing!” he retorted. Wren shrugged – at least she’d tried. She cast Chaos Hammer, and an explosion of multi-colored energy ricocheted around the room, killing the last Hell Hound and injuring the Maralictor.

Maralictor Heriphis had to know he was outnumbered and badly outclassed, but he met his end with courage. He charged at Shadow, a flaming longsword in one hand and a shortsword in the other, cutting a burning wound across the sorcerer’s chest. Shadow staggered back and cast Web, hoping to trap the Hellknight, but the Maralictor seemed unfazed. Nat conjured up an Orb of Light and tossed it at Heriphis; it exploded with a blinding flash, sending the Hellknight flying backwards. He lay motionless, smoke rising from his burned-out eye sockets.

There was one exit to the room, a closed door in the far wall, and Tomas immediately rushed to it, in case reinforcements might be coming. Nat was already starting to pull the Maralictor’s armor off the still-smoking body; “This looks like really good stuff!”

“Stop that!” Wren commanded. “It’s bad enough we’ve killed one of his men, but that gear belongs to the Hellknights. If we’ve got any chance of getting out of this with the Shoanti, we can’t afford to be stealing from DiViri.” Nat reluctantly abandoned his looting, but as soon as no one was looking, Shadow reached down and slipped a ring off his finger.

With their warden dead, the two living prisoners were clamoring for attention. “Let me go!” pleaded the woman. “If you let me out, I can tell you what he’s been doing! I’ve been here a long time – I’ve seen what he’s up to!”

“What are you in here for?” Wren asked.

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything! The Hellknights just arrested me in Korvosa and brought me here. I’ve been here more than a year, with no trial or anything!”

“Don’t believe her,” growled the man in the next cell. “She’s a dirty thief. And she’ll get you all killed. I know the warden’s secret, not her.”

“Don’t listen to that asshole!” the woman snapped. “He used to be a Hellknight, but they threw him in here for being a traitor.”

“Well?” Wren asked the man. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m no traitor! Maybe I got a little greedy, sold some Hellknight gear that nobody needed anyway. Just because I sold it to the Shoanti doesn’t make me a traitor!”

Wren’s head was starting to hurt from everyone talking at once. She focused on the woman. “Tell me what you know. We won’t decide anything about letting anyone out until you’re honest with us.”

They locked eyes for a minute, then the prisoner nodded. “The warden has a figurine in his rooms that opens up some sort of gate.” She pointed towards the door that Tomas was guarding. “He takes prisoners through it, and they never come back. What he does come back with are Hell Hounds. I think he’s trading prisoners for them. Or maybe the prisoners get turned into Hell Hounds – who knows? He trains them here for a while, then turns them invisible and sneaks them out – I don’t know where he takes them, or what he’s doing with them. He doesn’t take all the prisoners, though – only certain ones. He’s never shown any interest in taking us.”

“Was there a Shoanti prisoner here, a man named One-Life?”

The woman nodded eagerly. “I never heard his name, but there was a Shoanti here. I think he was some sort of big shot. The warden took him through the gate just a couple of days ago. There’s a command word to tell the figurine to open the gate. I’ve heard it, at least a dozen times. Let me go, and I’ll tell you what it is.”

“Don’t listen to her!” the man in the next cell interrupted. “She’ll get us all killed! The figurine’s booby-trapped. If you say the command word without doing something else, it will blow up and kill everyone here! Let me go, and I’ll tell you how to work it without killing yourself!”



The PCs earned 11,658 XP, putting them at 155,968. You’re now at 12th level, with 210,000 XP required for Level 13.

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