"So how do you want to do this?" Florian glanced up at Toras, then over to the stairwell across the street that ascended to the door indicated by a man still stuck, head-first in a door of his own a Ward away.
Toras pointed up to the door, "Well from what I understand they're certain of their safety, they have plenty of guards -inside- but none actually outside to watch the entry and raise an alarm."
"You want to kick the door in don't you?" Florian chuckled.
"Oh absolutely!" Toras beamed a smile. "Bursting into a room full of slavers to deliver righteous justice! The only way I might make it better is if I got to suckerpunch a 'loth on the way out!"
"So what's your plan beyond kicking the door in?"
"I don't need one." The half-celestial shrugged.
"There's times that I'm really glad that I'm not a cleric of the Red Knight." Florian shook her head. "I'd be spitting nails about strategy right now if I was."
"But you're not."
"No, I'm following you up a flight of stairs, not knowing what we'll find on the other side except that those on the other side deserve to be smote."
"It's liberating isn't it?" Toras hefted his blade and stretched his neck to first one side and then the next.
"Abso-f*cking-lutely." Florian motioned towards the stairs and they both crossed the street, continuing their banter even as they went.
"I think I'm finally starting to settle into this city!" Toras admitted as they stepped to the top of the first landing.
“Likewise.”
“And today, we make the city a little bit better.” He raised his eyebrows and stared at the door. Thick and heavy, it would withstand the force of most men’s attempt to burst it inwards. Thankfully however, a cliché statement or not, Toras was not most men. "On the count of three."
"I’ll raise you back if you get killed." Florian nodded and grasped her holy symbol in one hand and weapon in the other.
****
The door shattered with the force of Toras's kick, sailing inwards in a cloud of splinters as the hinges broke and a chunk of the doorframe followed them aloft. A dozen voices shouted in panic and outrage, men and women dove for cover and snatched for their weapons as the two intruders took in the scope of what they saw inside.
Two groups sat at a table in the room's center, one of them clearly the slavers mentioned by those who would have been buying from them later, and by their holy symbols, tattoos, and uniformly tanar’ri-blooded tiefling heritage, they held some associations with the Temple of the Abyss. The second group was not however a group of fiends or savage goblinoids fresh from raiding villages in the Outlands and eager to sell their chattel spoils.
"What is the meaning of this?!" A tall, bronze-skinned human stood, dressed in gleaming, exquisitely crafted armor. "How DARE YOU?!"
Along with the bellowing man, two others wore similar armor, an aasimar woman and a half-elven man. All of them bore scowls of anger and frustration, along with a certain obscene self-righteous self-assurance that bespoke of zealotry in their cause, whatever that cause might be.
Whatever it was however, it was nothing holy. Behind them, a series of cages contained twenty or thirty people, though that was only the ones visible; they were packed together to the point of having difficulty breathing in their confines. Half of them were children.
Ice ran through Toras’s veins and time seemed to slow to a crawl as he stepped over the remain of the door one step, then two steps, and swung his blade as the man screamed in fury and alarm, seeming almost to believe as if his words alone could blunt any attack.
"Close your eyes children, you don't want to see this!"
"Fool! We do as we please! We are destined for greatness! We…”
The mercury that filled the hollow chamber running the length of Toras’s rushed forward with a snap, weighting the blade. Plate resisted for but a split second before crumpling like tissue paper. Mail sheared in twain like a cracker snapped and dredged into a bowl of crimson foodstuffs. Flesh tore and bone snapped, spraying blood across Toras’s face even as the dying man screaming incoherently, not yet realizing that the blade had cleaved him nearly in half.
The room erupted in a burst of already alarmed voices now turned to screams of panic.
The screams of panic turned to screams of pain as Florian stepped from behind Toras. She raised her fist, invoking the name of Tempus, and with the sound of a raging battle, called into being a horizontal field of clashing, whirling, razor-sharp blades. Where both groups had stood before, blood and flesh rained down upon the floor.
Drenched in blood, Toras watched as the whirling field of blades butchered the slavers and their suppliers alike. A single figure stumbled free of the zone of death, staggered and confused, bleeding from a dozen wounds, only to come face to face with the half-celestial. The aasimar mumbled, tears streaming down her face, “You can’t do this! We carry the spark of greatness. We’re Illuminated.”
Toras gave no reply in words as he met her gaze with a scowl and a boot to her chest, sending the woman hurtling back into the thick of the blade barrier. She screamed only briefly, and then all was silent as Florian waved and cancelled her spell.
Spattered with a fine mist of their captors’ blood, the captive slaves whimpered and shuddered at the suddenness and horror of what they had just witnessed, but only a moment. Collectively they began to cheer.
“Roll the bodies and find out who the hell these idiots were in the first place.” Toras glanced down at the mangled remains strewn about the radius of where the blade barrier had been cast. “Well, what’s left of the bodies at least. I’ll see to letting these folks out of their chains and somewhere safe.”
Toras did just that as Florian sifted through the remains, trying to make sense of who the armored slavers were. Ultimately there wasn’t much left intact, and paperwork was shredded beyond recovery. What all of them had in common however was a medallion emblazoned with the symbol of The Illuminated, the recently self-proclaimed “faction” responsible for the sack of Plague-Mort. As to why they were selling slaves and why in Sigil, that much remained opaque at the moment, but not for long.
****
Fyrehowl's eyes were bloodshot and she actually stumbled, nearly losing her balance, as she closed the door to her room and made her way more or less on instinct over to Tristol's. She'd tossed and turned all evening, with what little sleep she'd gotten punctuated by horrific nightmares that kept repeating on the same theme: the whispering/screaming/laughing howlers that she and Tristol had both seen months earlier in Pandemonium. She meant to knock as she blinked, having momentarily fallen asleep in the moment between standing at the door and turning the doorknob, but she didn't knock or even clear her throat before walking into the wizard's bedroom unannounced.
"Tristol?" The lupinal's speech was slurred and groggy, but she didn't get out more than the aasimar's name before he replied with a similar tone.
Tristol didn't even look up from where he sat, half slumped over his spellbook, half leaning into a dead-asleep and lightly snoring Nisha, "I already looked at that envelope for you Clueless. It's not trapped or even magically alarmed to let whoever sent it know that you received it, so please just let me try to get some sleep..."
"I'm not Clueless."
"You're much fuzzier than him." Tristol squinted and sighed, "And carrying much less coffee than he brought up here a while ago. What do you want?"
"Can I sit down?" Fyrehowl asked, having already done so, again purely on instinct.
The celestial and the aasimar sat silently for several minutes, staring at each other. They noticed the equivalence of their state of rest, the bloodshot eyes looking back at their own, and a certain unmeasurable status of being unnerved and frankly scared at something otherwise unmeasurable and unnoticeable except for someone who had been through exactly the same experience.
"You dreamed about them too, didn't you?" Fyrehowl's hackles rose as she remembered the howler in her dreams.
Tristol bit his lower lip and shivered, but didn't respond in words. His expression however, when he met the lupinal's stare, it answered in the affirmative.
"What's going on Tristol?"
"Try not to wake Nisha." Tristol motioned to the snoring tiefling, "I kept her up all night with the dreams I was having. She didn't fall asleep until a little while ago."
"What did it say to you?" Fyrehowl lowered her voice.
Tristol started to reply but then stopped, sighed, and simply turned his spellbook around for her to look. There in the margins, flowing like spilled ink around the intricately penned spells in his normal hand was the same question from both of their dreams: "dO YoU hEaR ThE CoDe?"
"I wrote that in my sleep." The mage shook his head in disbelief at his own actions, "Apparently. At least as far as I can tell. The handwriting is mine, if sloppy and creepy as all hell. I tried to write something coherently, but each time I started to drift off to sleep I'd write that mess like someone trying their hand at automatic spirit writing."
Nisha twitched and opened her eyes, yawning with exaggerated expression and then turning to look at Fyrehowl curiously. "You had creepy dreams too?"
"You could call them that." The lupinal frowned. "Nothing like having a frighteningly realistic dream where you're back in Pandemonium and being chased howlers who keep trying to talk to you."
"What did they say?" Nisha tilted her head sideways, and somewhere below her chair, her tail flicked and rattled the bell at its tip.
Tristol leaned his head on his girlfriend's shoulder, "Absolute gibberish."
"That's totally not fair!" The tiefling protested, hugging Tristol and rubbing her cheek into the top of his head, "That's my schtick."
Both nightmare sufferer's chuckled as Nisha lapsed into several minutes of mind-jarring xaos-speak. But through it all they kept looking at each other, realizing that something from their trip to the depths of the Howling plane had followed them back.
Fyrehowl sighed, "So are we going crazy, is the a howler wandering the streets of Sigil, or is there something inside of our heads?"
Tristol shrugged, "I don't know. I honestly don't know. Like a song you can't get out of your head, I can't get the dream or whatever it tried to say out of my head either. I keep thinking that it said more than I remember though."
"Why do you say that?" The lupinal narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I can't recall it doing much other than chasing me and saying gibberish."
"The more I think about the dream, and about what we saw in Pandemonium," Tristol shook his head in frustration, like a scholar on the verge of a breakthrough, "It's like there's a pattern that I can almost figure out, but not yet. I'll think about it when I have the time, and hopefully we can figure out what's going on sooner rather than later. I rather doubt that we have a howler stalking us in the streets. It's only one night of bad dreams."
Nisha ceased her own babbling and perked an eyebrow, "I'm not going to catch this too am I? I'm already weird enough without a howler in my head."
"You'll be fine Nisha," Tristol leaned over and gave her a kiss, "You've got too much crazy in your head already for anything else to fit, howler or otherwise."
"I'm crazy?" The xaositect's ears twitched and the bell on her tail rattled.
"Only the best kind of crazy." Tristol smiled, "The kind that I like."
Fyrehowl rolled her eyes and yawned, "Ok, that's about enough mushy lovely dovey for me for a while. I should probably go downstairs, get something to drink, and try to fully wake up. Hopefully tomorrow I can sleep better.
"Oh don't go!" Nisha giggled, "I promise that I won't do anything mushy... like this!" She leaned in and licked Tristol's nose. Tristol halfheartedly protested and giggled as Nisha started poking him in the ribs with her tail. The tiefling was laughing and smiling, almost with stars dancing in her eyes. She was probably happier now than she'd ever been in her life.
Fyrehowl was already at the door, leaving them alone for whatever new couples did in the phase where they did cute things that annoyed everyone else who happened to be single. Turning the door handle, she looked back at the two of them and shook her head with a smile, "Gods you two are too cute."
****
Several hours later the Portal Jammer was flush with traffic and where coffee had been sipped greedily from mugs, it was now replaced with spirits and livelier conversations than those grumbling awakenings from the early morning crowd. Conversation was even livelier than usual however due to the gossip and speculation regarding what some described as a "slaughter" barely seven blocks away while others referred to it as "fiends slacking their blood lust" or "sacrifices to a dark god". All of these conversations were of course interreupted and corrected by those proclaiming it to be "something that Sigil needed for far too long" and "a good stern hand of justice to show evildoers that sometimes they go too far, but not longer!". Absolutely none of the voices and viewpoints had a clue of course that the brigands/fiends/justicars/heroes responsible for the murder of seven in the Clerk's Ward and freeing dozens from slavery were in fact part owners of the Jammer currently sitting rather comfortably in the corner without a worry of consequences.
"Did you seriously go out and gank a half dozen people in the same Ward you live in?" Clueless sat down at the table with a slight frown, punctuating his question with the heavy *thunk!* of a trio of ale mugs that he quickly passed over to Toras and Florian, keeping one for himself.
"Not exactly." Toras took a swig of ale, smiled, wiped his mouth, and then smiled more. "It was actually seven people."
"Seriously?" Clueless put a hand to his forehead. "I've heard a dozen different versions of what happened just in the past few hours, so please, tell me what actually did."
"They were slavers." Florian put her hands on the table palm up, "They had it coming to them."
"And I've served fiends breakfast and coffee more than once this week." The bladesinger shrugged, "They're literally made of evil made flesh, but generally people don't go around trying to kill them here in Sigil. What made a group of slavers any different?"
"They were child slavers." Toras ceased smiling. "They deserved what we did to them."
"So I've heard," Clueless eyed the two of them askance, "Courtesy of several different touts in several different parts of the city, plus from more than a few customers here at the Portal Jammer."
"I don't mind people knowing what we did." Toras took a long drink from his mug and studied the half-fey's reaction.
"Listen, I'm not saying that I disapprove." Clueless shook his head, "Honestly I wish that I was there. Razor hasn't had enough practical use for a few months. But at the same time, I wish that you'd told the rest of us before going out and doing something crazy."
"Yet we live with Nisha." Florian deadpanned.
"Who is now openly dating Tristol." Toras gave a chuckle and shook his head. He hadn't really seen the two of them as a match given their disparity in temperament and training, but given what he'd seen, they'd fallen head over heels in love.
"Tristol actually asked me for permission to start dating her." Clueless chuckled, "After she and I spent a lot of time following up on the gem in my ankle a while back on our own, she's been like a little sister to me. Since she doesn't have any family that she's aware of unless you count the chance of there being a tanar'ri somewhere still extant from back in the upper leaves of her family tree, she's alone. Tristol said it was a Halruaan custom to ask a woman's parents or elder siblings for permission to begin a courtship, so he came to ask me."
"I assume you said yes?" Florian smiled with amusem*nt.
"Oh absolutely." Clueless chuckled warmly, "But I spent some time laughing at the thought that he needed permission. I also find it funny to think that Nisha of all people needed anyone or anything looking out for her if she got herself into a situation, romantically or otherwise."
"She finds trouble on her own and trouble usually runs away and asks for help." The cleric swallowed another mouth of ale. "They make a cute couple."
"That they do." Clueless gave a satisfied sigh, happy to see the wizard and xaositect doing well, "But back to what I was going to say before about you going and killing a bunch of people and acting like a pair of freelance heroes that Sigil typically lacks."
Toras beamed a smile and clinked mugs with Florian, then with Clueless a moment later.
"Several of the people that you killed were members of The Illuminated." Clueless explained, letting the implication sink in to the other two.
"The berks that just pulled a coup over in Plague-Mort?" Florian raised an eyebrow.
Clueless nodded, "The same."
"And?" Toras put a single finger on the table and rolled his eyes. "If their 'faction'," he placed a questioning emphasis on the word, "Was involved as a whole, that raises issues but gives me someone new to hate that isn't a yugoloth. If the 'faction' wasn't involved as a whole, they've got egg on their face for the actions of a few of their people and they won't raise a finger because it would only embarrass them while they're still basking in the glory of conquering a sh*thole of a gatetown."
Clueless placed an envelope in the center of the table, "Well their self-proclaimed Factol took notice that you killed several of his people and sent you a letter today. It arrived a few minutes ago from the Runner's Guild. Addressed to both of you. He knows your names apparently."
Florian looked at it warily, "Before we open it, have you checked it?"
"I had Tristol look over it." Clueless tapped it with a finger, "He didn't sleep well and he was grumpy when I asked him, but he says that it's clean. Completely non-magical."
"Didn't sleep well..." Florian snickered, "I wouldn't wonder why..."
Clueless shrugged, "He actually looked under the weather. But regardless, it's not spell trapped as far as he could tell. I trust him on it."
Toras looked over the envelope before reaching out and picking it up. Crisp and white, a practiced and calm hand and black ink had addressed it, 'With apologies, to Toras of Andros and Florian the servant of the Foehammer'.
"This better not be more death threats." Toras sighed as he drew a knife and slit the envelope open. "I've had enough of those this year."
"Well, it doesn't look like it's from a 'loth, that's one good thing at least." Florian remarked with a smile.
Toras pulled the letter out, "Why do you say that?"
"Because what kind of self-respecting 'loth would send a letter with the words, 'With apologies'?"
Toras nodded, "You've got a point..."
"So what's it say?" Florian leaned over to glance past the warrior's shoulder.
"Well it most certainly isn't a death threat." Toras skimmed the letter with a look of genuine confusion. "Huh..."
Toras of Andros and Florian the servant of Tempus, please accept my deepest apologies for the actions against you -if however brief- and for the illegal and reprehensible activities of some of my faction members. I regret that among some of my faction, our creed is taken as an excuse to do as they will, as if the potential for greatness excuses ones actions as you move along the path I lay before them. It does not and you did right in bringing them to swift justice. If you have any level of guilt or regret for your actions in Sigil's Clerk's Ward, if my words have any meaning in the present instance, consider yourself absolved. I would not have desired to entangle you in the failings of some of my faction members, but yet it is funny how the multiverse operates in terms of things fated to occur.
There is potential in you both. You carry the spark of illumination that not all have. Please come and speak with me in Plague-Mort at your convenience.
Green Marvent - Factol of the Illuminated
****
The petrified countenance of Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri and paramour of the Oinoloth snarled silently from its position in the corner of the highest chamber in the Tower Arcane: the office of Helekanalaith the Keeper of the Tower. Magical windows above looked out into the black void between the Furnaces, providing a dull red light and the occasional starburst of an exploding volcanic eruption in the distance. The imprisoned arch-loth said nothing as she stood there in rampant, having been molded and reshaped to fit the Keeper's mood again and again like some great trophy.
The Keeper of the Tower sat not at his desk, but hovered in the air with his back to Shylara's statue, his legs crossed and his ubiquitous notebook open in his lap. Without looking down at it, he penned a running transcript and compilation of notes, thoughts, and observations on his present meeting with the one who sat opposite him: the Oinoloth, Vorkannis the Ebon.
Like Helekanalaith, Vorkannis sat suspended in the air, legs crossed and posed almost leisurely so, as if he sat on a cushioned couch. Since entering the room an hour earlier, the Ebon hadn't seemed to care in the slightest that the petrified astral form of his consort stood there, the anchor keeping her catatonic and imprisoned within her own body back in Carceri. Far from deeply caring about the situation, he'd never so much as addressed the topic while there to discuss several topics involving the Tower's resources.
Listening intently, the Keeper wracked his brain trying to determine the implications of and subtle maneuvers of the Oinoloth's tone and expressions. All the while he scrawled his notes, all of them nearly automatic scrawls of text drawn into shapes to collectively paint a picture of words within words within a picture with a meaning all its own.
"I still want that one remaining annoyance captured, preferably pinned down like a butterfly, spreadeagled and displayed, fit to hang under glass upon a naturalist's wall, continually shifting and changing as she suffers. All of the others are dead or otherwise accounted for, except for her."
"You expect her to seek revenge for what we did to her motley collection of siblings?"
"Eventually yes, when she becomes reckless, absolutely. But she won't come after me, I give her more credit than that."
"She's canny, that one. It isn't a surprise though, given her status as a nycaloth prior to bargaining with the hags."
The Ebon cracked a smile, baring the faintest hints of ivory fangs. "A nycaloth you say?"
"Yes, a nycaloth." The Keeper adjusted the golden spectacles perched on his muzzle. "That's what the records on her life indicate."
"I'd always heard that she progressed from nycaloth to arcanaloth, that in fact she did so just prior to striking her deal with the hags."
"Yet there aren't any records to that effect, neither on herself, nor on any arcanaloth sponsor or group of ultroloths to oversee her promotion."
"Presumably because she killed them, or else managed to have the Tower's records altered or expunged." The Oinoloth stared at the Keeper, silent but for the low background noise of crackling crucible fires and more distantly, wailing petitioners. "Which do you think would be more likely?"
Helekanalaith narrowed his eyes, "It would not be the first individual for whom the Tower's archives present a paucity of information, or simply a complete absence of there very existence."
Vorkannis took a sip of his tea, smiling over the rim of the mug. The Keeper's insinuation was noted with silent amusem*nt.
"Regardless," Helekanalaith paused to dip his pen into a pot of burning coals, ensuring the tip of the metal stylus was white hot once more. "I have my doubts that even she could alter the archive's records; I would be aware of her attempts. I have not always been Keeper however."
"Then perhaps we should ask Larsdana." The Ebon gestured towards Helekanalaith's desk, the same desk where Larsdana ap Neut had sat and ruled the Tower for ages beyond reckoning.
"This is the second time that you've seen fit to mention her in my presence my Oinoloth."
"That because," The Oinoloth smiled, "and I said so at that previous time, that you remind me of her."
"You knew Larsdana?" The Keeper leaned forward, genuine curiosity playing across his features. "You've mentioned her before, but you've never elaborated."
"In a manner of speaking." Vorkannis glanced at the glittering gem that hovered above the Keeper's desk, drifting there like an omnipresent Pole Star. "The two of you deserved one another, and for the record yes, I approve of what you did. So does she. I would have done nothing less. But you've been wondering about my current quandary, though you haven't directly asked my opinion on the situation. With you and Larsdana in mind, do I need to answer your unspoken question?"
"No my Oinoloth, your meaning is quite clear." Helekanalaith changed the subject, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the ease with which the Ebon commented on his relationship with the Tower's designer and first Keeper. Their story was not a matter of record beyond the simple matter of predecessor and successor, teacher and apprentice. Their status as lovers was distinctly not a part of the Tower's records, nor the manner in which he imprisoned her and kept her still as a beloved possession. "Back to our original topic of conversation, do you have any suggestions for where I might direct our efforts to discover our soon to be pinned and displayed butterfly, so to speak?"
"None whatsoever." Vorkannis's reply was oddly flippant for a being so used to being in utter, prescient control.
"Pardon me my Oinoloth, but if you could please clarify your meaning.” Helekanalaith looked up at Vorkannis, eager to infer meaning from the other ‘loth’s facial features, “You have no specific ideas on where to direct my search, or you simply do not care?"
The melanistic 'loth with albino eyes smiled. Momentarily the chamber's lights dimmed, including the gemstone that bottled the spirit of Larsdana ap Neut, putting the Keeper and him in shadow, but for the puissant glow of his crimson-pink eyes.
"She was an arcanaloth before her self-debasem*nt. She isn't stupid enough to strike at me directly. She'll hide and she'll observe from the periphery, marking a target and then striking out at those around me first." The Oinoloth's eyes burned into the Keeper's own, with a creeping implication, unblemished by care or concern. "Do be watchful Helekanalaith, because unlike the third member of our original triumvirate, you aren't bottled up in Sigil where our wayward butterfly cannot flutter her poisoned wings."
With that final piece of advice, the Oinoloth chuckled and vanished, transposing the gulf between Gehenna and the Waste like superimposed atoms, existing in both at once before his smile collapsed the wavefunction to a single location and returned him to the summit of Khin-Oin. Once again alone within the Tower, -his- Tower, with only his thoughts and the entrapped spirit of his former lover drifting above his desk, Helekanalaith felt a gnawing worry creep through his being for the first time in millennia.
"Larsdana, let us pray to the Ebon that you never gave that shapeshifting wretch a way into the Tower to work on your behalf, if you ever did strike a deal with her Larsdana." The Keeper plucked the glowing gemstone from the air, feeling in its cold surface a reflection of her face, the sulfur and perfume of her fur, the malice and potency of her heart and mind, and then the scream that followed as he focused and made her suffer, smiling with the dreamy-half smile of love as he did so. "I know you kept secrets from me Larsdana. I've barely scratched the surface of what you bottled away, and I respect that, I truly do. But if you bargained with her, I will make you suffer. I will not feel afraid and unsafe in my own Tower!"
The Keeper snarled like a trapped animal and slammed his notebook down upon his desk, causing the styling to fall to the floor and spin, trailing spirals of smoke as it cooled. Helekanalaith blinked and released Larsdana's gem as he stared dumbfounded at the notebook and the pages it had fallen open to.
Rather than the voluminous notes of his conversation with the Ebon over the past two hours, and rather than those notes forming a picture of the Ebon, or his office, or anything else, they formed an image of something that he'd never intended. Each page of his notes was the same, not that he remembered drawing it at the time: Shylara the Manged, Overlord of Carceri, her form bloody and broken, marred by open sores and bleeding, self-inflicted wounds, pounding on the surface of the page as if they were windows into a prison cell.
Weeping and pleading, each page was the same, and rather than the words of his notes as he'd chronicled his meeting with the Ebon, the letters spelled out only, "Please Vorkannis! Forgive me! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!" Over and over and over again.
****
"Do you suppose that we should finally make our grand, overdue return to the Tower and you know, actually do our job?" Alpthis ap Othrys casually glanced over at his brother, picking a fleck of raw and bloody flesh from between his canid fangs with a single polished and poisoned claw.
The two arcanaloths sat along the rim of the miles-wide crevasse that housed the Tower of Incarnate Pain, itself still under construction. They faced the Tower itself, and under their eyes they witnessed the gentle undulation of its spires and buttresses, the aggregate motion borne of each individual living, screaming, suffering brick. Behind them, the air shimmered with the great illusory wall that hid the tower from sight and magical divinations, as well as the additional wards that actually moved errant travelers from accidentally blundering their way into the Tower's sphere of influence and exposing the 'loths' great open secret.
In the prolonged absence of the Tower's mistress, Shylara the Manged, her underlings warred amongst themselves and against the spells protecting and isolating the Oinoloth's consort's sessile and comatose body. All of this was done under the vain pretense of normalcy of course. The day to day activities of the Tower went on without any obvious discontinuity. Only the occasional appearance of a corpse and the growing pool of ashes outside of the sealed doors to Shylara's private chambers laid low the illusion covering the organized assassinations and creeping civil war amongst her servitors and would-be successors.
The brothers, both acting as unofficial proxies but empowered with more than a minute fraction of the Overlord's newly gained power, had removed themselves from the game of politics and killings that had raged below the surface like a hungry parasite devouring its host for months. As a result of their own natures and the influence of Shylara's nature now running through their veins quite literally, rather than obediently defend the status quo and their mistress, they were quite content to sit, watch, f*ck, and enjoy the suffering that resulted from the Manged's absence.
A subtle ripple passed through the Tower's surface, like a stone dropped into a pond of souls and suffering, originating near to the Tower's heart at a door only a short walk away from the Reflective Chasm. A moment before the physical ripple appeared, the brothers both received a mental ping and understood precisely what had occurred.
"Well, that would be a signal that someone finally managed to break through the warding on the outer door to the Mistress's private chambers." Alpthis gave a delighted smirk and clapped his blood-covered hands together "Our previous conversation was most prescient then."
"Took them long enough." Apteris smirked and idly picked at a bit of blood on one of his claws. "An hour short of three month's time."
"A pity for all of these would-be usurpers." Alpthis laughed, "There being two more doors, more wards on them, and well, the -other- things keeping the Mistress safe."
"Technically that number of things keeping her safe includes us brother."
"Yes, I suppose that it does." The sorcerer reached into a golden bag filled with an assortment of candied treats, all of them brilliantly colored, all of them at unsettling contrast with the wriggling, moaning walls of the Tower of Incarnate Pain looming in the distance. "Up until now though, we've been superfluous."
"Unnecessary." Apteris shrugged and returned his brother's smirk.
"Unnecessary, yes." The sorcerer held out a pearly emerald sphere, something once alive and now covered in malt, caramel, arsenic, and glossed sugar. He never saw his brother actually move his hand, but the treat was gone from his and then only briefly held up before being popped into the sorcerer-monk's mouth.
"Perhaps we should go check on the depth of the ashes," Apteris paused to swallow, "make a tally of those fallen to the Mistress's layered wards, and see who next feels self-important."
"We also number among the ranks of the self-important."
"Yes, but we aren't stupid."
"No, we aren't. We're opportunistic, pragmatic, and both overly eager to get into her robes once she awakens." Alpthis licked his lips and watched as his brother mirrored the same expression. "Well, what passes for robes on her anyway."
"Alas, neither of us is Oinoloth."
"Give it time brother, give it time." Alpthis returned the bag of sweets to a dimensional pocket as he stood up, "Besides, she's hardly chaste. She just doesn't pick anyone with a chance of harming her, the Oinoloth excepted." He made a deft, nearly religious gesture at the mention, "But in that instance, I dare say that she's not the one making the choice."
"Have you noticed since she invested us with a portion of her power that we've taken to killing our lovers?"
Alpthis paused and glanced to his brother, staying silent for a few seconds before responding. "Yes, I have noticed that. I find myself wondering what exactly led to that preference on her part, since it seems to originate from her. We shared partners before and we certainly made them suffer when it pleased either of us to do so, but we didn't kill them just because... not without reason."
Apteris smirked, "At least we haven't killed each other yet. I think she likes us too much."
"So true, so true." Alpthis leaned in and stroked his sibling's cheek, grazing his claws along the other's lips, "Besides brother, you're far too sweet to kill."
"Flatterer." The sorcerer-monk licked the claw still tracing along his lower lip, "I just wonder if she'll mind you dressing as she does more than once in her absence."
"I'm sure she'll know, and I expect it'll tickle her rotten heart." Alpthis leaned forward and extended his own tongue, tapping the monk's nose, "Which is precisely as I intend. Besides, you rather seem to like it when I do."
"That I do..." Apteris snarled and once again moved his hands in a blur of motion that his sibling never saw in transit, but indeed felt, and indeed smiled as it tangled in his hair and pulled him into a fierce embrace, claws digging into his scalp. The kiss was deep and passionate, and one that they'd shared many, many times at the Overlord's urging, though not by any means first at her design. "The Overlord can wait another hour. We're her proxies, but we're not her only protectors."
"Amusing isn't it how we're both becoming more and more like her?" The sorcerer spoke into the monk's mind, presently unable to vocalize beyond gasps and swift inhalations. I like that. I like that very much.
****
Crackles of energies and expended spells flashed in the heights of the Tower of Incarnate Pain over the intervening hours, betraying the effects of the unraveling wards set upon Shylara's chambers. Slowly but surely the first layer of them were being peeled back in methodical fashion. Should they break it would spark another round of open violence, spilling yet more blood upon a location already permanently drenched in it.
Pausing only a moment to adjust his robes, Alpthis snapped his fingers and teleported himself and his brother of them into a small chamber on the periphery of the Overlord's private sanctum, only a few yards from the vast chamber that housed the Reflective Chasm. Despite being two of her most trusted servitors -and perhaps especially on account of that fact- the twins were unable to actually teleport into the immediate vicinity of where the first wards had been broken and some would-be usurper now sought to delve deeper, closer to where their Mistress lay catatonic and vulnerable.
The two floated above a layer of ashes that grew deeper as they approached the pair of broken, partially melted doors that had already claimed the lives of hundreds. It opened into another short passage, the walls shrouded in artificial darkness, with another glittering, monstrously warded door at the terminal end.
One hand shrouded in black flame, a single figure hovered before the door, not yet aware of the brothers' approach.
"Mellinara ap Cathrys," Alpthis quipped, recognizing the other arcanaloth as she whispered under her breath and moved her fingers gently, teasing apart and examining the furious mosaic of spells woven into the door and all around it.
The intruder's ears perked and she snarled, turning around face the pair. "I see how it is... you sit back and wait till I've broken down the wards for you, then you kill me once I've completed the job the two of you could not accomplish."
Mellinara's jackal head was all teeth and fury, silver fur and onyx earrings. Just barely visible at the neckline of her turquoise robe was a tracery of bleached-white scars that both the other two knew from personal and intimate experience covered most of her body as a 'gift' from the former Overlord, Bubonix many centuries earlier.
"I've slaved here for a thousand years, longer than either of you." The 'loth cursed, "I watched this Tower be razed to its foundation stones on three occasions and worked to raise it back up. I served under Bubonix, I served under Vorkannis, and then he raised up the current whelp to have his position and power when he became Oinoloth. He deserved this Tower and my respect, but the bitch beyond this door did not then, and does not now."
"Can my brother and I assume then that you do?" Alpthis asked with a mocking tone. "Shall we both bow down now preemptively?"
Mellinara snarled and the black fire in her left hand erupted to match her mood.
"You can indeed be rather persuasive." The sorcerer licked his lips and winked.
She snorted with derision but her manner relaxed ever so slightly, "So why haven't you tried to stop me from killing your bleeding whor* of a Mistress?"
"Why would we?" Alpthis shrugged.
"It seems rather pointless." Apteris kicked half-heartedly at the ashes pooled upon the floor.
Mellinara narrowed her eyes, trying to discern the brothers' actual feelings. "I take it then that you desire her dead? Tired of serving and wish the throne yourselves? You're Shylara's proxies if I'm to understand the current state of things correctly. You've tasted her power. Help me kill her and you can taste more of her power and more than just her power."
Alpthis laughed and shook his head, "A very tempting offer, especially the latter, but please don't get us wrong. We're not going to try to break in and seize the throne. Not by ourselves and not with anyone else."
"Why not? Proxies or not, you both aren't loyal in the slightest." She laughed.
"Because three things," Alpthis held up a finger, "For starters, because we're not stupid."
"Not to imply that you're stupid." Apteris interjected with a wave of both hands.
"But we are of course." Alpthis gave a sh*t-eating grin. "Secondly, because despite the mange which we really shouldn't speak of..."
"But she's in no position to hear us of course." Apteris inclined his head towards the second sealed door.
"Of course," Alpthis continued, "neither of us have had the pleasure of serving her in that capacity so we can only speculate, but back to what I said before, from what we have seen, despite the mange, Shylara really is more pleasing to look at than you."
Mellinara snarled and spreads her arms, preparing to hurl a spell at them as a physical rebuke for their insult should a proper apology not be forthcoming. "And your third reason?"
"Oh, yes, there was that other thing." Alpthis snapped his finger as if to punctuate suddenly remembering something.
"The third one yes." Apteris chuckled as he slowly moved closer to his brother, glancing just over Mellinara's shoulder.
"Yes indeed." Alpthis gave a thin smile and glanced at the monk, seeing for himself the thing that Mellinara had not yet perceived. "The largest of the reasons in fact."
"Stop speaking in riddles you little sh*t." Mellinara sneered and spat, "What reason keeps you from doing precisely what I know you and every other 'loth in the tower desires to do if they were able to do so?"
"Being that when the Mistress wakes up, we truly don't want to end up like, well... them." Alpthis and Apteris bowed their heads and softly whispered the Overlord of Carceri's name like a prayer.
Already cloaked in dim half-light, a deeper shadow fell across the three of them and a footfall sent a ripple across the ashes. Mellinara blinked and turned, looking up into the snarling faces of two massive nycaloths as they stepped out of the walls. Not ordinary if physically massive, both were heavily surgically altered. Both possessed an additional pair of arms grafted onto their body and runes glowing from where the Overlord had cut sigils into their flesh with her own claws, yet the most obvious sign of her handiwork was not those appendages, but the glowing crystalline shard of crystal embedded into their foreheads swirling with inner light and ghostly symbols. Prisoners within their own agonized flesh, they reached out, carrying out their mistress's will without question; puppets without strings, but puppets nonetheless.
As Mellinara's attempt at teleportation failed and she began to scream, Alpthis smiled, watched, and casually retrieved his bag of candy.
****
