Lidia leaned against the door, the brass scrolls chilling her ear as she listened closely.
Sure enough, on the other side, she heard voices, muffled, distant, and faint.
"Someone's there," she said. She focused on the voices again. "Two, I think."
She closed her eyes and directed her thoughts toward the voice's source. Her heart started pounding as she sensed a barrier, her breath coming in faster spurts.
There was something there, something with evil intent on the other side, but it had no focus. If not the voices, what was it? She shut her eyes again, tried again —
Her chest throbbed as though ready to burst. Tremors shook her entire body. Her legs gave way, and she sank to the ground, leaning against the door for support
"What have you done?" Haer'Dalis said, much more sharply than usual.
"I…tried to sense whether any evil presence was in the next room," she said. "There was a barrier of some kind, and I pushed past it, then…" She shivered, wrapping her arms around her legs, trying to calm the sudden turbulence within herself.
He pressed her further: "What happened?"
Aerie raised a hand to his arm, "Haer'Dalis, don't —"
A tremor passed through Lidia's shoulders. She said, "It's fine. I'm fine. It was…it was a lot." Her nerves felt worn, but the sensations were already subsiding. She sat up, her back against the door. "It'll pass in a moment."
"And you're certain that is all?" Haer'Dalis asked. "No sudden shadows cast over your mind?"
"It's hard for me to tell. But I didn't sense it coming from anything, or any being, on the other side — it felt more spread out, more like it was in the air itself."
She wasn't making it make any sense, she thought. But Haer'Dalis said nothing more and finally seemed to relax.
"What was that all about?" Valygar said.
"A close brush with chaos," Haer'Dalis said. "Lidia, if you are attuned to the merest hint of the Lower Planes, then it stands to reason that simple contact with the Abyss itself is overwhelming. But it is nothing compared to what would have happened had you sensed a tanar'ri. The counterstrike — an assault against your mind and reason — would have swiftly fallen, as it does against anyone who tries a similar spell on the denizens of the Lower Planes. And all tanar'ri on this level would have become aware of this sphere."
Lidia shivered again.
Aerie drew her cloak closer, and muttered, "What…what are we doing?"
Lidia spread her left hand over her face. It wasn't devoid of sensation the way her right hand was, but the fingers were still icy cold.
The sudden chill against her skin helped her refocus and gather her wits. She looked up to where Haer'Dalis was still watching her closely.
"No divination spells, then," she said. "Anything else we should know?"
"The tanar'ri cast illusions among themselves and delight in destruction, so these magics flow freely in the Abyss," he replied. "Among planeswalkers, the dark of it is that god-borne spells are greatly weakened — as though many of the more benevolent gods themselves were further away."
Valygar folded his arms. "How do you know so much about how magic acts down here?"
"Beneath this petty poet's skin, I am a planeswalker and a Doomguard," Haer'Dalis said. "Not only have I walked through the portals in the City of Doors, but I have also survived the Outer Planes and a year of service in the retinue of a balor."
"What…what is a balor?" Aerie asked.
"'Passion and reason combined, a lightning dance of pure hatred and emotion unchained,' according to an Outlander elven poet with a lost name. More prosaically, a balor is a demon princeling, a general in the endless Blood War raging on the Lower Planes.
"The one I served had no name, or none he wished to give. I marched endlessly in his retinue through the Quasielemental Plane of Dust. I sang burlesque songs about the parentage of his enemies and so he let me live. It was that simple and that complex."
Nalia is furiously trying to work out which of her spells are still usable, so she asks: "Will we need to be careful about our spells while we're still in the sphere?"
"Yon raven carried the answer from outside the shell," Haer'Dalis said, gesturing towards one side of the sphere-shaped room, across the viewing pool "While we remain within, the sphere perhaps functions as a pocket plane of sorts, a puny, pinched-off piece of the Prime."
"In any case, no one's suggesting we walk into the Abyss," Lidia said, carefully getting to her feet, "not when we don't know what else is here."
Her blood was still coursing fiercely, but weariness was beginning to settle in her limbs. Before long, it'd be more difficult to go forward at all.
They were as ready as they'd ever be, she thought. She curled her numb right fingers over the brass door handle, the tingling in her fingers lessening as the muscles hesitantly twitched. She carried Azuredge in her other hand.
"I'm going in," she said.
She turned the doorknob with a click. Immediately it swung open. With a kick and a loud cry, an armored warrior emerged with a raw yell in their throat, the visor in their helmet drawn over their face, sword drawn.
The warrior lunged forward, though Lidia easily stepped aside. Something was off in how the warrior moved: normally swift and deadly, but something within had fallen into disrepair.
The warrior stumbled forward but soon recovered, looking up. As soon as she laid eyes on the other members of the Company, she let loose a torrent of words in a language none of them understood, though the voice clearly belonged to that of a woman.
She wildly gestured to Valygar, who shook his head and said, "I can't understand you."
The woman carefully removed her helmet. Though she was shorter than Valygar, and her features finer, she looked as though she could have been a sister of his.
The woman, along with two others in her company, was staying in the next room over, a mostly empty round room similar to the one that held the viewing pool. While they themselves had put their best effort into staying clean, the place still smelled like sweat and waste from the long hours they spent here, and the floor was covered with dirt tracks. Here and there, on the walls and the floors, was an old bloodstain.
Two men were leaning against the wall: an older man with a bushy blond-white beard was leaning against the wall, his leg bound in a white rag stained with old blood. A second man, with dark strong features and likely not more than thirty, was leaning against the opposite wall. While he didn't appear to be injured, he seemed exhausted, as though it was a mighty effort just to remain upright.
The woman carefully sheathed the sword, set it against the younger man's side, and gently woke both of them up.
Their languages were mutually unintelligible, but Lidia retrieved her journal and, through a series of hand gestures and crude sketches, eventually came to a vague understanding of their position: these three warriors had gotten into the sphere somehow and had been stuck here after encountering strong resistance elsewhere.
All three of them were lean, hungry; while the Company had limited supplies of food and water themselves, they offered some to the three knights, which they gratefully took.
Lidia tried several ways of asking them how long they had been here, without much success.
Finally, the woman pulled her aside and took her to the viewing pool. She waved across the pool several times, first to the west, then to the east. She did this several times, then nodded, half-smiling and hoping Lidia understood her.
Lidia did not, but she was struck by the woman's strong resemblance to Valygar. Did this group get into the sphere the same way the Company did — with her blood to open the way? Valygar had thought he was the last of Lavok's line but, well, gods and mortals had similar methods of hedging their bets.
The woman continued to make the same gesture several times while Lidia stared at the Abyssal reflection in the viewing pool. Then the realization hit her suddenly: the pool had contained a view of Athkatla and its sunrises and sunsets.
Except, due to where they were standing, the sun's course seemed to run in the opposite direction. She imitated the woman's gesture and nodded in understanding.
The woman reached out a brown finger and tapped the small nub of graphite Lidia carried. She handed her the journal. Flipping to a blank page, the woman started making tick marks, one by one, each standing for a day.
Lidia had been expecting five or maybe ten, but she kept going until the page was covered.
Finally, she handed the journal and rudimentary pencil back, and Lidia silently counted each small line, slowly growing more shocked as she realized how many there were.
Eighty-seven. They had been trapped here since midwinter.
The woman's dark eyes studied Lidia's face, searching for understanding, and seemed to find it. The fine lines around her mouth drew longer as she pressed her lips together, a look that was plainly asking Lidia for help.
"If it's in our power, we'll do it," Lidia said.
Though the woman didn't comprehend the words themselves, she seemed to grasp the spirit well enough. She bowed low, then silently turned, retreating to where the other two warriors were resting.
Nalia said she could memorize a spell that could translate what the three warriors were saying, but until then, they had few options for learning anything else from them. And Aerie could memorize a spell for Minsc's wound, but she would need a night's rest in order to cast it.
Slowly, reluctantly, the Company reconciled to the idea of spending the night here, not that they had any other choice. And though the two rooms provided little more than a roof over their heads, the Company did their best with their lean supplies, setting up camp around the viewing pool.
Aerie and Nalia settled on one side, close to the supply closet. They examined the strange wound on Minsc's arm before getting ready to prepare their spells.
"I hope you will have a cure for us soon, my witch," Minsc said. "Larry tells me he needs to be given a good swing!"
"This one is a tough one, Minsc. I'm not as powerful as Dynaheir was, I'm sure. We won't be able to get it done quickly — but we'll do our best, I promise you that."
While they worked, Haer'Dalis was sitting nearby upon the travertine in the viewing pool, composing something as he plucked away on a small cittern he'd brought.
Lidia sat on the other side, only half listening as she meditated in front of her broken staff.
She had hardly started when Valygar approached her, his pack carelessly slung over his shoulder as though he wanted to move far away from Haer'Dalis as he could.
"Think we can enlist these knights?" Valygar asked. "We could use their help if they're willing to give it."
"I won't know until Nalia can translate for them," Lidia said. "But they've been through a lot; I don't want to ask them to risk themselves without need. From what I understand, there are enemies outside the next door, before we get to Lavok himself."
A sudden thought occurred to her — one that presented an immediate problem. "You mentioned Lavok stole the bodies of his descendants," she said. "If we came face to face with him, what would happen to you?"
Valygar considered this. "I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe he needs me dead, first. Or worse. As I mentioned, it's been centuries since he's last been seen here — or there, since Athkatla is gods know where."
"What kind of magic does he do?" she asked.
A dark look passed over his face. "Necromancy," he said, practically spitting the word out. "Not just animating poor lumps of clay, mind — he felt that tampering with the veil that separates life from death was his prerogative."
"I'll consult with Aerie and Nalia and see what we can do," Lidia said.
For now, she didn't see much in the way of possible solutions. One of them was not going toe-to-toe against an archmage, who could likely shrug off any of Aerie's attempts to break his magical defenses and would likely have several readied ways to immediately kill all six of them.
"Very well," Valygar replied. He glanced towards the staff, lying in two on the floor. "What are you doing?"
"Thinking about broken things," she said, "and how they still have a place. I'm sure that golem we fought won't be the last one here. If there's some way this staff might help me fight and defeat them, I'm hoping Ilmater will help me find it."
"Would that involve a magical solution?" Valygar said. He seemed immediately skeptical.
"If it did, would it bother you?"
"It hardly matters," he said. "Do as you will for the benefit of this group, as long as you can resist the lure of the power you call upon."
She considered saying nothing at all, but she disliked the idea of being lumped in with his ancestor and whatever abominations he had committed — especially since Valygar had a spell or two in his hand himself.
"I know you have a low view of magic," she said. "but it's hardly the fount of evil when it comes from a god — especially a good power."
"I would know little about such things," he said. "I worship no god, and take no comfort from knowing of their existence."
"Truly?" Lidia said, straightening up. "I'd give a lot to make sure Bhaal stays dead, but I couldn't imagine having to face the endless cycle of bloodshed without a purpose. Without any reason behind it."
"None of the gods have impacted my life in any form, though if any would have saved my family from itself, I would have fallen upon my knees and thanked them," Valygar said. "But even your god has a stained name. Several years ago, Calimport was plagued by a cabal that called themselves the Cult of Shared Suffering, who said it was their duty to 'make people understand' Ilmater's pain. They seemingly had no plan or purpose than inflicting harm upon others."
"I know of this cult, and the Crying God was not behind their spells," she said, somewhat indignant.
"Do you think that makes any difference to the people they kidnapped, or the injured or dead in the riots they sparked?" he replied. "In any case, I devote myself to defending natural from unnatural, and that grants more peace than any god, I think."
"How do you discern what's natural and what's not? Especially out here?"
"I may not ever step upon the earth again, but I still have my heart and my conscience. I need no other guide."
With that, Valygar retreated, choosing a side of the round room. He set to work sharpening his katana. Its blade was likely dulled from battling the porcelain golem, which still lay in pieces to one side of the fiendish scene of the viewing pool.
Lidia was about to resume meditating in front of her broken staff, but Nalia approached her, as though she was waiting her turn once Valygar finished.
Nalia nudged one piece of the broken staff with her leather shoe. "That looks pretty bad. Aerie said she's got a cantrip that could fix it if you want. We could prepare the spell, but we'd need some lodestones first to cast it."
"It's all right," Lidia said. "I'll get by without it. Save your spells for communicating with the warriors — and for firepower. We'll need as much as we can muster if we're going to make it home."
"Do you think we can?" Nalia asked.
"We will," Lidia said, glancing over to Valygar.