It was very dark for a very long time. He felt as though he were sitting on the edge of a precipice, but his eyes could not make it out. The he became aware of the movement. He blinked, and the world began to take blurry shape before him. He was looking at the floor, and it were as though he were being carried, swinging this way and that in the arms of whomever was bearing him along. He saw something dangling down by his side. It was a hand. He recognized the star-shaped scar in the middle of the palm, and realized that it was his hand. Dayven had put a pick through his hand, pinning it to the dining room table. He didn't remember what his sin had been, but that'd been the punishment. He'd freed himself, then taken it gingerly out of his hand. He'd stitched it up as best he could, but it was thanks to a kindly fellow apprentice, not his surgical skills, that he still had full use of it.
As his vision grew clearer he realized that there was something wrong. It was hanging at the wrong angle. He looked beyond, his eyes scanning up his arm to his shoulder to his head...
He was looking at his own face, asleep but seemingly contorted in pain. He felt no pain himself but... well which was himself? Who was the being that was looking at the face of Kyrwan Bishop, who had his memories, but was not in his body? Whatever was going on, they were both being taken somewhere. He found he could look all around, 360 degrees, now that his sight was not bound to the limitations of eyes and a head that could only turn to left and right. He was in a mesh bag of some sort, being carried by a woman in white robes. Next to him, his body was being borne along by a gnoll in the same uniform as the ones who had been guarding the academy. They were going up stairs, up and up, and then up again.
"She's written a note," the woman said. Tenisha. Tenisha was her name, "Oh gods almighty, she's had to retreat to the sanctuary! Quickly, bring him in, we will have to lock the door behind us that none may follow. This is going to be a hellish walk among the planes, I can already tell.."
He heard the creak of a door being opened, and a clang as it closed behind them. Then a faint magical humming, and a series of clicks as though a complicated an arcane lock had been engaged. He swung his gaze up, and saw before them a glimmering portal. He had a brief flash of memory, of a portal like that, through which he could see shimmering clouds. He had watched Adahni go through such a portal, and then had it close behind her when he tried to follow.
There was no such problem this time. First the gnoll carrying his body and then the woman carrying him went through the portal. What lay on the other side was no shimmering cloudy paradise as it looked. It was a dark place. He realized that he had no sense of smell within this spherical prison, but imagined it smelled cold and dank and despairing. The path was littered with bones, some as small as the fingerbones of children, some that must have come from someone the size of a giant or larger. The air was slashed through the wails and screams.
"We are in the Boneyard of the Gods, where all of the dead gods lie," Tenisha said. He tried to speak to ask if she was talking to him, but she did not hear him. They hurried along, through the darkness. There were people there, too. Guards of the dead gods. They passed tombs, mausoleums. Myrkul. Bhaal. All gods that had perished, and their faithful guarding them.
"Hold!" a voice came.
He looked. If he'd had a stomach, he supposed it would have sunk. It did not, though, and he really felt nothing, although his mind was telling him to run, or to fight. Standing before them, in the garb of a Doomguard of Cyric the Mad God, was none other than his master, and tormentor, Dayven Elhandrien.
"Why are you carrying that lout through the Boneyard of the Gods?"
"Don't speak to him," Tenisha warned, "He is not who he was."
They hurried along, leaving Dayven with the rest of Cyric's guards. He called after, "You're only getting what you deserve, you traitorous wretch! May you rot in the Wall of the Faithless until the end of days!"
The Wall of the Faithless.
Oh no. I'm fucked.
They kept going, finding a portal at the other end which led them through into what looked like a shadow version of Thaymount. They went through, and they were in a cool, dry space. An ancient stone building, from the look of it. Tenisha put him down, and the gnoll put his body down.
"Be gentle with that!" a old woman's voice said. He looked to see an old crone, ninety or more, bald as a newborn babe and her face a web of wrinkles. She came to his body, looking at it tenderly with pale eyes. She surprised him, leaning down and picking up his body, which couldn't have weighed less than a hundred seventy pounds, cradling it like he were a child. She laid him down gently on a bed in the corner of the room. "He's going to need it again."
"I don't like this, Nefris," Tenisha said, "It doesn't seem right."
"I do not want to have to give you a lecture on the all-important relationship between the ends and the means, my Tenisha," the old woman said.
"I guess Lienna did not question you like this."
"Lienna was older than you," Nefris replied, "But you and she are one in the same. Because she understood the need for this, so shall you in time. We will keep his body safe and breathing here, none will touch him. And when she reaches the end of her quest, she may have him back."
"But if she fails," Tenisha said.
"Then they will both perish," Nefris said, "But she must not fail. She will realize the magnitude of her quest, and she will gather her will to succeed, much like she did on the Sword Coast. Now, must I take his soul to the Wall myself, or will you do it?"
"I will do it, Founder," Tenisha said.
"Put him next to her," Nefris said, "It will make things easier. Make sure it's in a place she will see. All of this will be for naught if she does not realize what's been done."
"How do you know she will see at all?" Tenisha asked.
"They are going to the Slumbering Coven. Safiya's eyes and ears have told me so, just as they have told you the name of this one here. When they reach there, they will find out what we have found out. She will see for herself the injustice of the Wall of the Faithless, and she will complete the Crusade as we have planned."
"I still don't like it," Tenisha said, "It seems cruel."
"Cruelty!" Nefris exclaimed, "Cruelty is what's been done to those poor souls stuck there for eternity. No, these two will be there for three months at the most. And perhaps take home a lesson on the meaning of cruelty and injustice."
Tenisha picked him up then, he could see the lines her fingers as she did so, and looked into her eyes as she looked into the orb that housed him. "I'm sorry," she said, "I know I said so before, but I truly am sorry for what I'm about to do. Come along now, it'll all turn out for the best in the end."
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. He willed his thoughts into her head. She either did not hear his insults, or chose to ignore them. She put him in her pocket then, and everything was dark.
What is she going to do to me? Is she really going to stick me in the Wall of the Faithless? But I'm not even dead! The old woman said herself, I'm going to need my body again, right? So why are they doing this?
He saw the daylight again after an hour or so. They were before a great wall stretching as far as he could see into the distance. As they drew closer, he could see that it was not made of brick or stone, but of bodies. Or something like that. The forms of men and women, bent and contorted in pain. Tenisha took him out of her pocket, drew her arm back, and cracked the soul casing he was being carried in against the wall. The souls shifted, and drew back, and he felt as though he were being pulled, sucked out of the now broken orb and into the wall. Strong forces bound his hands and legs, and he was stuck, and no matter how he tried, he could not free himself. He looked around. To his astonishment, he saw people he knew. There was his father, the old bastard, and he couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction that the old man would be spending eternity with his face in the armpit of a rather hairy dwarf.
But there, who was that?
There was Addie, but it was not Addie. It was only part of her. The eyes of the others followed him, but hers did not. She was not in pain. It was as though her consciousness had not been removed along with her soul, as his had. It was just a shell of her.
But an important shell. He understood at the moment what was at stake. Whatever was going to happen, if she perished while her soul was still stuck here, in this miserable place, in this plane of punishment, then her consciousness would follow her soul there, and she, too would be trapped in this place of unrelenting agony for all of eternity.
What was it the old woman said.
She will come along eventually. And she will see.
Well shit, Bishop, I guess you're just going to sit here, stuck in this wall like a great bloody fool and wait for her to come along and rescue you. That's what I get for trusting a gods damn red wizard.
Ah well, at least I've got my sanity. I can hang out here with my thoughts and contemplate the meaning of fucking life. Ugh, but the reason I've managed to not become a blithering madman all these years is that I never had time to think about it.
This is going to be a very long wait, isn't it.