"You mortals are such odd creatures," Thael-ka remarked, looking into the casing housing Torio's soul, "I didn't think such a thing was possible."
"We're not like you," said Adahni.
"Not when you're living, anyway. That's why you've got us to sort you out once you're not any more," Oronock said, "It is too bad to part with such a promising damned soul, but you have earned it, I suppose. I must say, it's quite satisfying to accomplish a bargain with an aasimar such as yourself."
"I'm not defined by my parentage," Adahni said. She held out her hand, and received another soul casing, this one not so much lit inside, like the others, but blacker than the blackest night. She gingerly slipped it into her pockets, but declined to shake the pit fiends' hands - talons really, opting instead to wave and bow, and leave them to their devices.
"That's three more infernal creatures I'd planned to meet with since the outset of this adventure," Gann said, "You know I'd never even seen a fiend, even with all my wandering. Except in dreams, of course. They're much more frightening and menacing in dreams, you know."
"So why are you so intimidated by them here?" asked Adahni.
"I'm used to seeing them as unthinking monsters, they're much more unsettling when they can talk and look you in the eye, right into your soul," he replied.
"I imagine they won't be the last, may as well get used to them," Adahni said, "They tend to crop up when you mess with matters of the afterlife, wouldn't you think?"
Gann just shuddered and shook his head.
Damned soul in hand, the two of them mounted the stairs back up to the tower and crossed through the door, just in time to be showered by some deceptively luke-warm sparks as Safiya detonated something that went up in a brilliant flash. Kaelyn and Okku were sitting in the corner, reading as the red wizard stared pensively at the workbench where she stood. On a stand in front of her was another soul casing, this one radiant blue.
"Try this one," she said, picking it up and holding it up, waiting for someone to come take it.
"Nope," Kaelyn said, not looking up. She held up one hand which bandaged from a nasty burn, "It's Okku's turn."
"I don't have hands," the bear god said.
"Fine," Safiya said, "Forget that in the mere days we've been here I've managed to succeed at the very experiments that my mother began."
"...days?" Gann asked.
"Gods, there you people are," Safiya said, "I was going to give you a few more hours before waking you from that trance. Do you have what you went looking for?"
"Days?!" Adahni demanded, "We were gone maybe an hour or two at most."
"It's been three days. We sent Kaelyn to go and make sure you wouldn't die of thirst and that nobody would wander into the locker room," said Safiya, "And you've haven't. You don't even feel hungry, do you. You're fine. What happened to the tattooed fellow?"
"He's gone," Adahni said, "Back to the Sword Coast. But… so what were you saying about what you've been doing?"
Sick of waiting for someone to take the soul casing from her, Safiya walked up to the deadbolted door and, standing on her tiptoes, eased it into the place in the lock. Some magical roots grew out of the door to hold it there. Adahni took the damned soul from her pocket and put it into the fourth groove. With a shuddering sigh, the stone door slid open. Within lay a portal, of the same design as the one in shadow Mulsantir.
"Where do you suppose it leads?" asked Gann.
"You were right, Araman," a female voice said behind them. The companions turned away from the portal. Adahni's blood ran cold as she saw a coterie of red wizards standing behind her, all bald and tattooed, of various ages and genders, but all seemingly human, "If we let them be, they would figure out the lock on their own. We thank you, Safiya, for doing our job for us."
"Zerzura, I should have known you would have betrayed us," Safiya said, her voice dripping with venom.
Adahni's focus shifted to an old man in the middle. His face was familiar, so familiar, but she could not place him. Nor could she as he approached her. He put a hand up to her cheek, and she batted it away.
Undeterred, he spoke quietly, right into her face, ""Do you know my face... the face of a brother who once ran laughing in your wake? My smiles have faded, and your face has changed many times, but something of you must still remain..."
The echo of a young boy's laughter scampered across her mind, "I am not your brother, Araman," she said, though if she weren't, how did she know his name? "Those things I saw, you, beneath the Wells of Lurue, those are the memories of the spirit eater. I am not the spirit eater."
"You are but a mask that my brother wears. You have worn many masks."
"I am Adahni Farlong of West Harbor. I am Adahni Elhandrien of Luskan. I am Adahni Farishta, Knight of Neverwinter, Lady of Crossroad Keep. I am also Dania D'Shadizar of the schooner Dance of the Damned. I have worn many masks, but underneath, I am not your brother. I am the daughter of a ranger of the Sword Coast and all the cloaks I have worn were of my choosing," she said.
"Turn away, case your eyes back to Rashemen, to home," Araman said, "Leave now, and none with hinder you. Beyond that door, you may find truth, but also folly. A folly that will sunder the planes, and render meaningless all that you have suffered."
"You expect me to accept my fate? Allow this hunger to consume me?"
"You are the hunger. The rest is a garment, to be worn and cast away. But if you are intent upon this then I cannot protect you further. My fight is not with you."
"You call this protection?" Adahni demanded, appealing to the old man's delusion, "You would let your brother die another death?"
"Die, or don't die, you will return," Araman said, turning and leaving the tower.
"He is mad, madder than Nefris ever was Come, let's make an end to this, before he changes his mind," Zerzura said to her companions. She raised her wand threateningly and Adahni drew steal, prepared to put a hole through her hand before she could do anything with it.
"Master Djafi, please!" Safiya addressed the old professor, who had been hanging at the back of the group as though ashamed to be there, "You and I, we live with Thayan ambition and treachery all around us – it taints our actions. But I know that our friendship was never a lie."
"She's right, Djafi," Adahni said, honeying her words, trying to eke some magic out of the air where there was no melody to aid her, " Even I could see that your affection for Safiya is real." In as much as any feeling can be called "real."
"I know you stood by and watched as they murdered my mother," Safiya said, going in for the emotional kill. She's learning from me, Adahni thought. She continued, "I know you must think that condemns you to their side, but it doesn't. They would have killed you for opposing them. You are the same man that comforted a frightened girl, terrified of the voices in her mind And taught her to craft little chattering creatures of twigs and clay, real voices to drown out the false"
"You shame me, my dear," Djafi said, hanging his head, "Surviving has become a habit – if I am to break it, you are the best of reasons."
"Find," a younger wizard, whose tattooes descended down on to his face, marring his cheeks and chin, "We'll appoint another in your place, Djafi – a wizard with more sense and fewer wrinkles."
"Turn and say it to my face, young man," Djafi said, "Or have you forgotten the adage?"
"And what's that, fossil?" the young wizard asked, turning.
"Beware an old man," Djafi said, his words slow and deliberate. Under the voluminous sleeves of his robe, Adahni could see his gnarled fingers turning and twisting intricately, weaving a spell, "Beware an old man in a profession where men die young." With the last word, he raised both arthritic hands in the air, palms up. A look of horror crossed Safiya's face as she realized what it was he was doing. A great storm came from his palms and swept the four other wizards up in a great whirlwind. When it died down, all four had been turned to stone statues.
Djafi dropped to his knees, the magnitude of the spell having drained him. Safiya went to him to support him. "I've always wanted to try that one," he said, looking up with eyes young and sparkling, "Never thought I would have used it on them. My former students." He coughed then, and spat red onto the floorboards, "Fools, all of them."
"That looked pretty easy," Gann said skeptically, "Why couldn't you have done that when you could have saved Nefris, during the initial rebellion?"
Safiya looked up at him and shook her head.
"I'll need to sleep now," Djafi said, "Sleep. And something to eat I think." He coughed again, this time the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, "And then I think… I think a vacation."
He collapsed against Safiya.
"Is he going to die?" asked Kaelyn bluntly.
"No," Safiya said, "I don't think so, at least, but he'll be out of commission for awhile. Addie, I would appreciate it if you would allow me to stay here, care for him until he's out of the woods?"
"He just saved us," Adahni said, "It's the least we could do."
"Thank you," the red wizard said. She managed to wake the old man up and support him as he slumped towards the unmade bed in the corner, where he lay down, and curled into a fetal position.
"You should go before Araman changes his mind," she said, "I don't know where he's gone or what he's up to, but it can't be good. The further ahead of him you keep, the better."
Adahni nodded, "We'll meet back in Mulsantir when we're done. I hope to see you there."
"I'll be there," Safi said, "Now, quickly, through the portal."
Adahni crossed into the little closet where the portal yawned, blacker than midnight in its cetner. "Here goes nothing," she said, and stepped through.
The world that materialized around her was more foreboding even than that of the Wall. Adahni felt the voices rising around her rather than heard of them, the vibrations echoing up her arms. Above and all around her, black spires rose into the lowhanging blue sky. Upon further examination, she realized that they were ribs.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"This is the Boneyard of the Gods," Kaelyn said, her voice hollow, "Where the deposed deities and their faithful go."
"Is it a plane?" asked Adahni.
"You could call it that," Kaelyn replied, "Like many of the planes of the dead, where one goes to seek out a soul, what it looks like is entirely up to you."
"No wonder it looks so much like the cemetery outside Luskan," she said.
"Is that what you're seeing?" Gann asked, "Fascinating."
Adahni looked at him and reached out to him with her mind. The scene changed all of a sudden to a path through a murky mire, the faces of the dead man - but not men - for they were the size of boulders.
They passed tombs, grander and larger than any she had seen, though she imagined that size here was entirely arbitrary. They were marked in a language she couldn't read, she thought perhaps it was Imaskari, for it didn't looked like Illefarn. As they passed further down, the names were written in common script. They passed familiar names, dead gods whom Adahni had read of in books. There were shades there, little immaterial things that may have once been men, but only flickered in and out of existence, guarding the tombs as they had for eons previously. But the guards, too, became more substantial as the gods they served were younger and younger.
Finally, one of them flickered into existence and stayed there. He wore a black cloak, with a hood that covered his face. He stepped into the road in front of them. "Who goes there?" he called hollowly.
"We are passers through," she called, hoping perhaps he could be negotiated with, "We seek an audience with Myrkul."
"Myrkul Myrkul Myrkul. Everyone wants to talk with Myrkul," the guard sighed, "No love for the other dead Gods. Sometimes I wonder why I do this at all."
"Because you dedicated yourself to his service in life," Kaelyn replied, not recognizing what had been a purely rhetorical question.
"But you," the guard said, drawing closer to Adahn, "Don't I know you?"
"I'm not your dead brother. I'm not whoever you think I am, I'm not whatever person carried the spirit eater before me. I just have it now, I don't have their memories, I'm not here to comfort you with shared recollections of fishing or hunting whatever you think we used to do when I was someone I'm not..."
"No, no you're not. You're my wife," he said, "I remember you, when we lived, you were my wife…."
"For fuck's sake, did you not just listen to what I said? I carry the curse. I'm sorry if it consumed your wife, but I am not…" Her eye slid over to the name on the tomb the doomguard stood in front of. Cyric, "Oh no…" She wasn't quite sure what emotion it was that seized her heart at that point, but by the pained look that crossed Gann's face, it was strong enough that he felt it as well.
The shade pushed his hood back. He was whole and handsome again, tall and blond and greeneyed, with all his teeth.
"You're older than me now," he said, looking into her face with confusion, "You still live?"
"Despite your very best efforts," she said, "Death suits you, Dayven. So tell me, what is it I must do to be rid of you for good?"