Rammaq, the ancient demi-lich, gazed out over the bleak expanse of the Fugue Plane. He'd never really gotten along with Zoab or Ser'ry'u, so when he felt the presence of Akachi reach out to him and bid him retreat to a hill above the City of Judgment, he felt no compunction in summoning his horde to obey. There he waited, patiently, for had he not waited a century or more? The form he had taken was one of a large, fearsome skull, floating in the air by sheer force of magic. It was flamboyant, he knew, but he had always had a flare for the dramatic.
When two approached him, the diminutive black-haired woman escorted by a strikingly handsome hagspawn, something stirred within him. This was the vessel that Akachi's soul had claimed? He paused. This was unlike the last crusades, when the soul within the vessel had reached to him. But that was hundreds of years ago, perhaps its essence had dulled. He had heard the whispers on the wind, tales of a young woman, a brown-skinned black-haired girl who had stormed across the lands of Rashemen, an unstoppable force about to meet the unbreakable wall.
"Rammaq!" she called throatily. She had an accent out of the Sword Coast, bearing down on her R's so they were almost swallowed. Yes. She was Neverese. Luskan? He couldn't really tell the difference. He looked into her eyes, black inscrutable pools, searching for his master within her.
"Rammaq, you rank son of a bitch!" she called again, "The fuck are you looking at?"
"Akaaaachi," he hissed, "Have you come, at long last, to end the torment of the souls in the wall?"
"Well I ain't here to fuck spiders," the bearer of the curse replied, glancing sidelong at her hagspawn escort.
Rammaq paused. He'd heard the shardbearer was a knight of some sort from the Sword Coast. This foulmouthed creature before him didn't seem like a knight at all. Then again, times had changed since he spent any amount of time with mortals.
"And our bargain?" he asked.
"The tomes, yes," the cursebearer said, "I'm a man of my word. Woman now, I suppose. We storm Eternity's End, and you shall have them."
"I will bring the very God of Death to his knees," Rammaq said, "And gather what lore I can."
"See that you do this time," Akachi/Adahni said, smiling, her coal black eyes snapping and sparking, "The others have their orders, but I do have a particular interest in you, being a creature of such… power."
Below them in the forest of stunted trees, a the host of Kelemvor descended upon the armies of the solar and blue dragon, leaving the gate at his back barely guarded. This Akachi was much cleverer than the last one, who had gathered all of them in what was supposed to be a show of force. He'd mistaken the needs of gods for the needs of men, that Akachi had. He had thought that Kelemvor, like a mortal opponent, would have been cowed by such a show. But gods did not fall to fear the way that men did. This Akachi realized this. Very clever, he thought, very clever for a woman a fraction of the age of the damaged soul she bore. The demi-lich would have smiled, had he lips. This one might actually succeed, he thought, or at least not fall before he had gained the wisdom he desired. He cared very little whether the Wall fell or stood, only for the lore contained therein.
"I will send my minions to scout ahead," he said finally, "While they dispatch the forces in the city, it will fall to you to locate the tomes. Search the vault. I know they lie here but not precisely where."
With a wish and a prayer, he sent his minions, sundry undead horrors and lesser fiends, to clear the path for the Betrayer and her blue-skinned companion. They skittered over the servants of Kelemvor, climbing the walls like spiders, knocking doomguards left and right like nine-pins.
As they fell before his ravenous horde, he floated gaily into Eternity's End, surveying it, thinking of the changes he would make when he was a god. Did he even want to be God of the Dead? Seemed like a pretty decent gig. Myrkul and Cyric had been stark raving long before they'd taken the post. Kelemvor had always been a bit of a pike-up-the-arse. What kind of death-god would Rammaq be? No more of this City of Judgment nonsense, of course. He much preferred roaming the realms of mortals, it must have been dreadfully dull to spend your entire afterlife among your own kind. Perhaps he would do away with the Fugue Plane entirely, send the dead to forever plague the living.
To one as old as Rammaq, time - especially on the Fugue Plane - had little meaning. He felt that he had spent but a minute contemplating what he would do with the place when Akachi and her companion returned, spattered with the silvery blood of doomguards. Akachi looked him dead in where his eyes would have been, if he had had them, but her companion was looking up, concentrating on something else. A spell, perhaps, he thought.
"You have the tomes for me!" he exclaimed, trying unsuccessfully to keep the lust for them out of his voice.
"I did find them," the Betrayer said, her black eyes inscrutable, "Whether they're for you however…"
He felt something then he had not felt for a lifetime or more. The cold sensation of a blade in the back of his skull. He whirled. Now this was something he had not felt in even longer. Surprise, as his attacker withdrew the cold ethereal steal of a githyanki sword from him, and as he turned to see the double of the Betrayer, this one staring at him triumphantly with glittering topaz eyes. The wound was deep enough to hurt even one so powerful as he, yet not to kill. She stepped back, holding the blade in front of her. He turned again to see the original, the black-eyed Betrayer, weaving some dreadful magic between her two palms. He recognized the incantation, it was known to none but the most powerful of wizards, stored in the vault of the Red Wizards of Thay. The whispers had not said that the Betrayer was a red wizard. He began his own incantation, to scatter this pathetic band to the winds, but before he could loose it, the yellow-eyed Betrayer struck him again. He turned again, and the black-eyed Betrayer loosed her spell. He staggered - as much as a disembodied floating skull could be said to stagger.
Before him was a hole, blacker than black, tentacles reaching out from the inside for him. He started his own spell again, but as it opened wider and wider, he realized it was not a hole, but a mouth. A mouth that was opening impossibly wide, until it swallowed the world around him. And then, finally, Rammaq felt something he never had in all his centuries of life and undeath. He felt… nothing.
Adahni let out a satisfied burp, "Tastes like… seaweed," she observed, making a face. The color rose in her cheeks, though, and she began to buzz around the edges, "But my Gods, he was ancient, and powerful. Maybe there's something to this whole spirit-eating thing."
"Gods I love it when things go according to plan," Gann said, clapping his hands together.
Adahni sheathed the Sword of Gith in its scabbard on her back. Safiya reached up and scratched her scalp under the black wig, sighing in relief before adjusting it back into place.
"You've got the tomes?" Kaelyn asked.
"Yes," Safiya said.
"Better hang on to them, then," Okku said, "It's best we split up again, before we're noticed."
"We'll circle back to my place in the wall," Adahni said, "Make your way back to the Academy. We will meet you there when we can. We're winning the day, but it's not over yet."
"I admit," Safiya said, "When you explained this to me, I thought it was a long shot."
"It was a long shot," Adahni said, "But fortunately, we lot have impeccable aim. Thank you, Safi, and I hope that, should I fail in my next task, you'll at least try to rule this place and release me."
Safiya cracked a wry smile, "Never thought of it, but…. Goddess of the Dead. Seems like a pretty nice gig."
"Don't get too excited," Okku admonished her, "Godhood isn't all rainbows."
"Isn't it though?" Adahni chuckled, looking at Okku's iridescent fur which, indeed, looked shot through with rainbows.
"Metaphors are not my strong suit," the bear god rumbled, "I am a bear, after all."
"That you are, friend, that you are," she said.
Safi sighed, "I trust you with this," she said, "Both the part of me that is Safiya and the part that is the Founder. You have come further than any before you."
"Hurry back to the Founder's sanctuary," Adahni said again, "I'd like to make it to my place in the Wall before Rammaq's power has entirely left me. This might be just what I needed."
"Farewell, Adahni," said Safiya, "I will meet you again soon, or perhaps a bit after that."
"Farewell, friend," Adahni said.
With an incantation, Safiya had ripped a hole in the fabric of the Fugue plane and disappeared in a puff of woodsmoke.
As they group made their way back through Eternity's End, Gann saw for the first time the waste that had been laid to the city. The servants of Kelemvor, as undead as they were, had retreated to rematerialize elsewhere. If they were quick about it, they would be able to free Adahni before they did so.
They made their way through a landscape at once familiar and alien, the plain in front of the city littered with the fallen. After the rage of the battle, the Fugue Plane had resumed its customary stillness. They found Adahni's soul without too much ado, wrenched loose by the battle that had befallen it.
It lay before them on the ground, limp and vulnerable. It was white, as though drained of all blood, but covered in a green film like a mockery of a newborn babe.
She reached out, expecting to touch flesh, but instead the soul collapsed, its white flesh drawn up into a whirlwind. She heard the voice of her father, Daeghun, but also her father Farishta, calling her home. Then the cries of Bevil as he wept, Amie's corpse in his arms. The voices raised into a cacaphony, and she felt for a moment what it must have been to be Safiya.
It's dead, isn't it.
You're one of us now.
I'm not your father. My conscience is clear on that count.
I don't know why she bothered to send me tonight. You're going to hang anyway!"
We built a cairn for them on the road to the keep. The weather this time of year is not kind to corpses.
Don't ever let them tell you I didn't love you.
Oh good gods it's wonderful to finally be alive!
This memory of joy amid every sorrow of her life was fleeting, and she felt herself borne to the ground by a force she could not begin the resist.
When she rose, she was in a place familiar and yet haunted. Moonlight that was not moonlight streamed down from a blackened sky. She cast about. By her side stood only Gann, his skin luminous in the silver light, and she knew she was in a dream. But whose? The towers standing starkly against the sky were known to her - for it was by her hand they had been raised, stone by stone, she had rebuilt them, the spires of Crossroad Keep. Akachi had never dwelt here. It was her dream, but it was not inhabited by herself alone.
Before her materialized another familiar shape. She bit her words back as she began to call for Safi, for she realized that it was not her. It was the Founder… no. Not her. Nor Tenisha. It was the shade that she had encountered as she slept beneath the Moss-stone.
"I have reached you before he did," the Red Woman said, "He seeks you, ever hungry. This Faceless Man, the only thing that is left of Akachi. He is here. He has no memory, nor soul, seeking only to feed. He is the presence you felt, from the first moment you came to this land. But you can restore him to what he was, end this forever."
"I tore my soul from the wall. Why was I not restored?"
"Myrkul lied, and the Founder believed," the Red Woman sighed.
"So all of this was for nothing," Adahni observed, "I am doomed."
"No!" the Red Woman protested, "You have the mask. The fragment I gave to you in the Winter Glade, the one Arraman gave to you, and the one that your beloved gave you the first time you visited the Wall. With this, he will fear you."
Silently, Adahni reached into her pack and drew forth the fragments, which had joined together like soap bubbles on the surface of a wash basin.
"And now what?"
"You find him. And you free yourself," the Red Woman stated.
Adahni nodded. She slipped the mask over her face, and did something she never thought she would do again. She walked up the long, cobblestone path of Crossroad Keep.