The avariel snapped smartly to attention as they entered the library. "Hold on just a second. You can't go in there - this library is a public place! Come back when we're closed."
Yasha sighed. It was going to be another one of those conversations.
"That doesn't make any sense," she replied, trying to sound reasonable.
What followed was an utterly illogical story, as befitted this cursed town. He told her of his wife, a beautiful librarian turned to a book burning medusa, and himself, her adoring husband now protecting everyone from her. As much as Yasha wanted to reason with him, every time the elf started to be lucid in his replies, he would cringe in pain, and return to his irrational declarations.
Yasha rubbed her temples. She wasn't sure if it was the after-effect of Talona's Fever or just plain exhaustion, but she was getting a bear of a headache. He had just finished telling her once again that she could not pass when she dug into her belt pouch and showed him the magical shard she had won from the temple.
"We're looking for a piece of glass rather like this. Have you seen one?"
He narrowed his eyes at it. For a brief moment, his eyes flickered once again with lucidity. "Yes, my wife had one just like that when I talked to her."
"Of course she would have it," Yasha groaned, unexcited about dealing with the medusa. At times she felt her joints were still stiff from the last time she had to deal with one. Then she gave the elf a sharp look. "You spoke to her after she became a medusa? How?"
He answered with a sarcastic laugh. "That's the great joke of all this. My wife became a mad medusa, and her make-up was transformed into a potion that allowed me to safely gaze upon her. There is powerful magic at work here. Magic that likes to twist and taunt us... unh!"
His words were cut off as he doubled over in pain. Yasha flinched in sympathy. She was beginning to be sorry she tried to get reason out of the poor man, as it caused him so much agony to fight the curse. Still, after a second, he composed himself again. "In the room in the southern side of the library - the room I once shared with my wife - there is a potion that allows you to look upon her without fear of being turned to stone. But the effect is temporary and the potion is almost gone. That's why I stay out here. That, and the fact that Quathala has lost much of her sanity. It isn't safe to deal with her."
Yasha stared back at the man for several moments, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
"And you won't let us pass," Yasha confirmed.
When the avariel nodded grimly, she turned to give Deekin a meaningful look. The kobold sat his pack down, and was slipping the lute from his back when she looked back at the elf. He saw this as well and narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but he shifted them back to Yasha when she spoke again.
"I need that shard, unfortunately," she told him matter-of-factly. Putting her hands behind her back, she squeezed them together quickly twice before leaving them loosely clasped. She kept her eyes firmly on the avariel the whole time, however, and trusted Deekin to have noticed.
"And I will not let you in until the library is closed," he replied grimly.
Yasha nodded to herself, even as Deekin began to pluck at his instrument. "Then I will apologize to you in advance for what I must do."
Alarmed, the elf reached for his weapon. Yasha brought her hands from behind her back and held them up and away from her.
"I will defend myself if you attack, but I have no intention of harming you or your wife. Please believe that," she assured him sincerely.
He hesitated, then released his sword. "Then what...?"
At that moment, Deekin's lute reverberated with a single note. It was a harsh and jangling sound, and filled the air with the tingle of magic. The librarian's husband never finished his sentence.
Yasha paused a moment, making sure the spell took effect. Elves were notoriously tough to catch with spells like this. When he made no further move, she turned to Deekin.
"Good job." He grinned at her and nodded as he pulled his lute back over his back. Yasha walked forward and frowned as she approached the magically held elf. His head was still tilted, and his lips parted in the middle of his curious question. She looked at the ground for a moment, feeling rather ashamed at herself, before meeting his frozen stare. "Again, I am very sorry."
Then she stepped right past him.
The doorway into the main part of the library was choked with a thick, clinging smoke. Flakes of papery ash floated throughout the air, still glowing a dull red from the flames they had recently escaped. Yasha pulled her cloak up over her face, and crept up to the corner. Above the crackling of a distant fire, she thought she heard a faint hissing noise, but it was brief and almost indistinct. The southern wall was, conveniently, one of those adjacent to the doorway. Bookshelves were pushed perpendicular to the edges of the main room, but the center was open and empty. No doubt the librarian had already burned anything that might have once been there. Squinting through the smoke and the gaps in the shelves, she thought she could just make out a doorway in the middle of the south wall, but whoever went to fetch that potion would have to walk through part of the main open area and be exposed to sight. The paladin squatted down by the entrance, trying to avoid the worst of the smoke while she considered their next move.
Valen made a small sound of disgust as he knelt beside her. "The stench of smoke and ash in this place is enough to make one gag!" he growled, though he kept his voice low.
Yasha nodded at him. Her own eyes were already stinging fiercely, and it was all she could do to smother a cough that might give them away before they could secure that potion.
"I think I saw the door," she said as soon as Deekin joined them. "But someone will have a trick sneaking in to get it. Sneaking isn't my strong point, I'm afraid."
"Nor mine,"Valen replied.
They both looked at Deekin. He returned the look, eyes shifting between the two, before nodding at Yasha. "Deekin has an invisibility spell, boss."
She grinned at him over the edge of her cloak. She knew he would volunteer, despite the danger. Shrugging off her packpack, she dug through it until she found a small sack. Then she dropped that on the floor and, letting her cloak drop from her face, started rummaging through that as well.
"Just keep in mind, Deekin," she said, pushing her arm in nearly to her shoulder to feel around the magical space within the bag, "that she doesn't need to see you for her to turn you to stone. You just have to see her. Keep your eyes away from her and on your objective."
The kobold wrinkled his nose as he laid his pack gently on the floor. "Deekin remembers, boss," then he looked up at her with a frown. "Traveling with you is funs, boss, but Deekin is hoping for less stone turnings this time. That not so fun."
"I remember last time too, Deekin," Yasha replied, finally finding by touch what she had been searching for. She brought out a brown canister, its stony sides engraved with snarling basilisks and wild haired medusas. Deekin's eyes lit up with relief when he saw it. Beside her, Valen leaned forward to get a closer look at the bottle.
"This is a magical cure for being turned to stone, then?" he asked quietly.
Yasha nodded, offering the bottle for him to see. "There should be about six or seven doses left. I hope that would be enough, anyway, if things go bad."
Deekin readied his lute, his fingers twitching silently over the strings in a nervous gesture Yasha recognized as a sign of worry. She laid a hand on his shoulder.
"If you run into any trouble, just give a whistle and we'll be there to back you up," she told him quietly.
His fingers paused and he turned his head sideways to look at her mischievously for a moment. "You mean like this, boss?"
Yasha's arm snapped up and her leather-clad hand wrapped his muzzle closed as soon as he began to pucker up. She brought her face down close to him, her nose nearly touching his snout, and tried to look serious. "I know you know how to whistle, Deekin. We're trying to be quiet, remember?"
Under her fingers, his thin mouth curled up into a grin. She shook her head at him, still smothering a matching smile, and let go.
As soon as she had backed off, his fingers hovered over the strings of his lute once more. Carefully he started strumming them, and the lute responded with a quiet, quivering set of notes to his light touch. He hummed a bit, under his breath, and the two sounds matched and joined. The electric feel of magic jumped in the air once more.
And then he was gone.
Yasha wrinkled her nose and stared for a minute at where he had been. No matter how many times she saw it, watching someone turn invisible always seemed so strange to her.
"You two have faced a medusa before, I take it? And the kobold was turn to stone last time?"
She looked briefly at Valen, then dropped her gaze sourly to the bottle she held in her hands. "She was both a medusa and a powerful sorceress. Unfortunately, I only knew about the later, though in hindsight I suppose there were plenty of clues as to her true nature. We went to confront her, and I led us into a trap. It was...not my finest hour." She looked back at him wryly, trying not to act too embarrassed. "We were both turned to stone."
He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head curiously. "You had to be rescued then?"
Yasha grimaced. "Rescued? That's one word for it I suppose. Some desert dwelling lizard folk found us. They thought we were ancient statuary, and that we might fetch a good price from collectors. Their chief knew better. He decided I could have...other uses. Therefore, he snapped a slave collar around my neck before curing me."
Valen frowned darkly. "A slave collar? Surely you didn't accept this once you were flesh again."
He laid an armored forearm over his bended knee, his eyes fixed on her in rapt attention. Yasha, for her part, felt a tingling pleasure at this admittedly flattering amount of interest, though she tried to shrug the feeling off. This was merely a good chance to gain some measure of his respect.
"I did not," she assured him dryly. "I told him where he could stuff this slave nonsense, and when he still claimed...ownership of me, I decided to show him the error of his ways more forcefully. The result was..." she paused, and raised her fingers to her throat at the memory. "Well, it was rather shocking. After I came back to consciousness for the third time, I decided to ask what he would demand of me." She half smiled at him. "To be honest, I was somewhat fortunate."
His tail lashed once, sweeping across the ashy stone floor with an agitated hissing noise. "You found it fortunate that you were enslaved?" he growled.
Yasha glared at him. "Hardly." She snorted softly once, both to clear the smoke from her nose and to express her annoyance at his inexplicable, angry reaction. "It so happened that they had brought me to the same ancient ruins that Heurodis, the medusa that had trapped us in the first place, had gone. His commands were simple: enter the heart of the ruins, defeat the guardians I encountered, and return with any powerful magic I found. Since my plan was to enter the ruins, defeat any guardians I encountered, and find Heurodis, I decided to cooperate for the moment. There were many worse things he could have demanded of me. Or tried to demand, at any rate."
Valen's face softened, but only a little. He looked through the doorway into the main library, though whether he was looking for signs of Deekin or just lost in thought, Yasha could not tell.
"I could not take action against him directly, unfortunately, but I would not have cooperated had he tried to force me to do anything else," she continued, following his gaze. There was, as she suspected, no sign of Deekin's passage, even through the swirling smoke the choked the room. His invisibility spell still held him safe, or so she hoped.
"You obviously are free of the collar now, however," he said finally, looking back at her.
"I am. The collar ceased to function at his death," she replied, returning his gaze levelly.
"Yet you could not confront him directly. Did you poisoned him?"
Yasha's nostrils flared as she sucked in an offended breath, only to have to stifle a sudden sneeze. She clutched her cloak up to her face until the urge had passed, then grimaced up at Valen. "I did no such thing." She shrugged. "I dropped a city on him."
Valen lowered a brow and looked at her dubiously. "Figuratively speaking?"
Yasha shook her head, her mood lightening once more. "No, no. Quite literally. The ruins were an ancient flying city, you see. Heurodis had used a stolen artifact to power it, intent on using it as a base to conquer my homeland. When I faced her, I destroyed the artifact." She looked down at the floor, suddenly very grateful that it was both solid and unmoving beneath her feet. After a moment she looked back up at Valen in grim satisfaction. "He died on impact. Or shortly thereafter, perhaps."
Valen shook his head. "Then how did you and the kobold survive?"
Yasha winced and shrugged. "That would have been the blind jump into the Shadow Plane I mentioned before," she admitted. He still watched her with that curious intensity, and Yasha felt the beginnings of an embarrassed flush warm her neck. She tilted her head at him, and continued, "But that story I'm saving for trade, remember? No more free stories out of me."
Valen blinked at her. He opened his mouth once more, and by his expression was clearly about to protest, when Deekin's popped into existence between them. Both Valen jumped back in surprise, and Yasha lost her balance and teetered over onto her backside before she could catch herself.
"Boss," the kobold groaned, "How is Deekin supposed to make a living if you keeps telling the stories for free?"
From her new perch on the floor, she smiled at the bard. "I'm sorry, Deekin. I thought since you had already written the book, it was safe to repeat. I'll try to be more considerate in the future." She sobered quickly, though. "Did you find the vial?"
Deekin replied with a toothy grin and handed her a small vial full of a milky white liquid.
"Good!" She examined the intricate vial carefully for a moment. Though she had been told that some of the finer ladies in Waterdeep used such make-up when attending public affairs, she had never seen a bottle of it herself. Still, it appeared to be the right thing, and there was very little left, just as the avariel at the door had said. She glanced quickly over at the held elf. He seemed still frozen in place, though she wasn't sure for how much longer the spell could possibly hold him. There would be little time for second guessing.
She unscrewed the top, and drank about half of what was left. "Ugh. It tastes like chalk," she complained, smacking her lips in disgust. She looked at it suspiciously after a moment, as she only felt a small amount of tingling in her throat where she had swallowed it. "Do you think I was supposed to drink it or apply it to my face?"
Deekin shrugged when she looked at him, and Valen merely replied, "The man said it was a potion. Potions are normally drunk, I suppose."
Yasha sighed, then handed the bottle to the tiefling. "Well, if it doesn't work, you can try the other way."
"Right," he replied dryly.
After a moment's thought, she also left the curative on the floor between the two of them before standing. She squinted through the heavy pall of smoke before her.
"Good luck, boss!"
She winked down at Deekin before striding purposefully through the doorway. The librarian turned medusa was actually fairly easy to spot, as she hovered over a huge, smoldering bonfire near the center of the room. She was just tossing another tome onto the fire when Yasha approached and cleared her throat. "You are the head librarian here, I presume?"
The woman turned her eyes on her, and Yasha saw them flash briefly as their gazes locked. For a moment, she felt a tightening in her throat at the fierce memory of the last time she had seen such a thing. She did not feel, however, her blood congealing in her veins, nor the painful panic as her lungs struggled to expand in one last breath. Despite the smoke, she risked a deep, relieved sigh.
For her part, the medusa didn't seem to be even aware of the sudden nervousness in her guest. Indeed, she appeared quite calm and friendly. The snakes that tangled like hair on her hair hissed at Yasha, though they seemed only to reflect their mistress' curious attention.
"Yes, I'm in charge here," the medusa said. "Hello and welcome to the library. My name is Quathala. I'm sorry, but as you can see the books can't be checked out right now. I have to burn them."
Yasha looked down at the cinder and ash pile that had obviously once been a majority of the tomes in the library. She was tempted to ask why the librarian was burning them, but felt fairly certain that she would receive no more coherent or meaningful answers than she had received from this poor woman's husband.
"I'm looking for pieces of a broken mirror," Yasha replied instead.
"You're looking for broken mirror pieces? That's rather odd, isn't it? I'm half mad and even I know a broken mirror is bad luck. Of course, I do have a mirror shard of my own..."
The medusa looked down, and pulled out a small shard of glass from her vest. Yasha's heart skipped a beat. It looked very familiar.
"I've seen my own reflection in this mirror shard," the medusa continued sadly. "I know what I've become."
The woman's momentary, depressed lucidity made Yasha's heart ache. The poor woman was aware of her curse then. No wonder she acted half-crazed.
"I thought I could turn myself to stone," the medusa sighed. "But it didn't work. Maybe because the mirror is broken. I don't know. Now I keep the shard with me to remind me of what I've become. It seems a bit... unhealthy, but I can't help myself."
"Maybe you should give the mirror shard to me," Yasha suggested quietly.
The medusa's scaly hand snapped closed protectively over the shard. "I'm not just going to give my mirror shard to you. It isn't worth much, but it does have some sentimental value for me." The medusa's expression turned odd, and the glint of madness added an even more terrifying element to her gaze. "Maybe we could play a game for it."
Yasha frowned. A game? No, if she was to acquire this piece without bloodshed, she felt he must try to appeal to the last bits of sanity left in the poor woman. Encouraging this craziness might only lead to violence.
"You don't need a constant reminder of what you've become," Yasha told her, putting every ounce of calm reason she could muster into her voice. She tried desperately to project, somehow, the compassion and sympathy she felt for the elf trapped in this monstrous form. Somehow she must reach that woman. "You should really give the mirror up."
To the paladin's relief, the frightening glint in the woman's eyes dimmed once more. "Maybe... maybe you're right. Maybe I'm dwelling too much on what I've become. It's enough to... well, to drive a woman mad."
Yasha smiled sadly at her.
The medusa held out her hand. "Here, take the mirror shard."
"Thank you," Yasha replied, accepting the magical glass. Yasha locked her gaze once more onto the lethal one of the librarian, and saw the shadow there of the learned librarian that she once was, before that window snapped shut and the medusa turned away.
"Now, please excuse me. I have to get back to burning these books. Busy, busy, busy, that's the lot of the librarian."
Yasha sadly watched her return to stoking the fire. How many centuries of knowledge were being destroyed in this poor woman's madness? What value of tomes now lay, completely stripped of their worth, in a glowing pile of ashes?
Yasha's eyes widened and she looked with new interest at the pile of burning tomes. Cautiously, she stuck an armored foot into the very edges, and kicked one of the books free. She glanced back briefly, but the librarian seemed too engrossed in grabbing another few books from the nearby shelves to care, so she kicked the still glowingly hot book once more towards the entrance. It trailed ash, embers, and half burned pages as it skittered across the floor.
She nudged it forward again as she rounded the corner back into the hall. Deekin yelped as the still burning book slid past him.
"Sorry Deekin. Well, I have another shard," she said, holding up the piece of glass.
"So we heard," Valen said thoughtfully. Yasha frowned curiously at his odd expression, but he glanced down at the floor and continued before she could comment. "Why did you bring one of the books?"
He pulled off a gauntlet and leaned down, grabbing the half-burned tome from the floor.
Alarmed, Yasha jumped forward to try to stop him. "Be careful. I just got that out of the fire. It's still..." Her voice faltered. He held the crumbling book calmly in his hands, though some of the binding was yet glowing from the heat of the bonfire.
He smiled wanly at her, and shifted his grip on the book so he could hold out his hand to her. Though his palm was covered in ash, it otherwise bore no mark that he had been handling the fiery object.
"I have some natural resistance to such things," he said.
Yasha shrugged after a moment, shaking her head. She had seen odder things, after all. "I picked it up because it is completely worthless. An object once filled with knowledge, whose words have now been irretrievably lost. Which of course means its value is...without compare."
"The merchant?" he asked immediately. Ah, yes. Now he was definitely impressed. Yasha struggled not to beam with pride.
She nodded, and pointed at the still cooling book. "Why don't you just carry that until we get there?"
His answering smile was just as priceless.