Radegast and Erwen crept nimbly across the
rooftops of Scar Alley, the druid’s pass without trace spell muffling their
footsteps as the hopped from one building to the next.
The northern gate of Helm’s Hold was in
sight – Radegast’s sharp eyes could see members of the Town Watch standing in
the torchlight along the parapets.
Radegast grabbed Erwen’s cloak and dragged
him to a halt. “Wait, this is stupid,” she whispered. “Maybe we should just lie
low for a while, make our way to the inn, find somewhere quiet to collect our
thoughts.”
Erwen looked at her and blinked.
“You know, try not to be all suspicious as
hell?” Radegast continued. “Let’s grab a pastry or something and see if we can
meet up with everyone else and stay out of sight until this blows over.”
Erwen shrugged.
“I’ll buy you a meat pie!” Radegast
offered.
Erwen smiled.
The pair hopped down from the roof of a
swaybacked tenement and hid in an alley. There were few lantern lights lit at
this time of night – apparently there wasn’t much to do for fun in Helm’s Hold
after dark.
Bob watched as Jamie Lysandra shouted
orders at the Gilded Eye guards, who stood warily at the edge of the pile of
rubble that blocked the street.
He walked confidently up to Lysandra.
“Well, Zealot Lannister, what’s the situation and what can I do to help?”
Jamie regarded Bob with an arched eyebrow.
“It’s Lysandra, not Lannister.”
“Sure,” Bob said.
“If you wish to make yourself useful, you
are welcome do to so,” Lysandra made a motion to the rubble, where smoke was
beginning to curl out from between the fallen timbers and stonework.
Bob pushed past the Gilded Eye initiate and
stepped up to the ruined buildings. He noticed that the guards seemed unwilling
to shift any of the stones or poke around for survivors, instead standing back
with their hands on the hilts of their swords.
“What’s the problem?” Bob asked.
A guard glared at him. “Nothing!”
“You dare lie to a Cleric of Sune?” Bob
said, full of righteous indignation.
“A Cleric of Sune?” Another guard repeated.
“Shouldn’t you be off somewhere painting happy little trees on a canvas?”
Bob reached out and cast ray of frost , snuffing out the growing
flames before they could spread and threaten the neighbouring structures.
“How’s that for painting skills?” he asked sharply.
Down the street, Alec waited for a signal
from Varien, who had disappeared into the ruined buildings moments before. He
too noticed that the guards were rather uneasy, looking concerned at the
damaged structure as if waiting for something to happen.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Alec
asked them. “Do something!”
One of the guards shook his head. “There
might be a breach,” he whispered.
“A breach, what do you mean by breach?”
Alec asked.
“Underground!” the guard stammered.
“So what you’re saying is that monsters
might at any moment swarm up out of a hole in the ground, a hole my friend just
dove into?” Alec asked. “He pulled out his sword. “Sounds exciting!”
One of the guards turned to give Bob a
closer inspection. “Hey, who are you, anyway?”
Bob drew himself up to his full height.
“Someone who’s here making a difference, as opposed to the rest of you.
Shouldn’t you be attending to the rest of this mess?”
“Our orders are to stay put in case of
trouble,” the guard growled.
“Trouble?” Bob repeated. “There could be
people trapped beneath all this rubble!”
Jamie appeared at Bob’s side. “Walk with
me, cleric.”
He steered Bob away before he could
antagonize the guards further. “Thank you for the assistance with the fire here,”
Jamie said. “It would be difficult to gather a bucket brigade so late into the
evening.”
“Someone has to do something,” Bob said.
“Indeed,” Jamie said. “Perhaps you could do
something for me.”
“I’m listening,” Bob said.
“Where is the woman?” Jamie asked.
Bob looked at him. “Which woman?”
Jamie sighed. “The woman you are
purportedly escorting on the way to Candlekeep? Pitt Moonflower?”
“Oh, you mean Radegast?” Bob said.
Jamie’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh yes,” Bob said. “Last time I saw her
she was at the Venturer’s Rest when you escorted us there. I have not seen her
since.”
Jamie nodded slowly.
Inside the ruined building, Varien stood at
the edge of the pit, staring down at the spot where the body had just moments
ago been dragged out of sight. He grabbed a chunk of rock, cast light on it and tossed it into the hole,
where it clattered down, illuminating the pile of rubble that had some to rest
at the bottom of the pit.
He could make out streaks of fresh blood on
the stone floor.
Taking one last breath of fresh evening
air, he hopped down into the darkness.
Satisfied that he wasn’t about to be
ambushed, Varien extinguished the light spell
and let his Devil’s Sight take over. His eyes glittered eerily in the darkness.
The collapse of the building’s basement had
opened a hole into what he guessed was the sewer system of Helm’s Hold. He
reached out with his divine sense but could not discern the taint of fiend or
undead amid the generally sour smells of the sewer tunnel. Faintly her could
hear the sound of gurgling water. At least, he hoped it was water.
Varien crept forward, following the smears
of blood on the floor. The narrow tunnel he was in opened up into some sort of
sub-basement antechamber. Here and there were tossed the tools of the stonemason’s
trade – hammers, chisels, and the like.
Varien spied a body, which looked to have
been dragged through the room into another vaulted sewer tunnel beyond. He
moved closer.
The body was that of a human man wearing a
threadbare cloak. He was covered head to to foot in a layer of dust and his
flesh was mottled with deep bruises, as though he had been badly pummeled or
indeed crushed during the collapse. Ragged wounds across his neck, chest, and
arms, however, hinted that something might have mauled him.
Something. But what?
Varien looked ahead through the tunnel and
saw with his Devil’s eyes that there was indeed moving water in an open sewer
that ran perpendicular to the tunnel he was standing in, with a foul miasma
lingering above like a stinking cloud.
Above?
Varien cast his gaze upwards into the dark
shadows of the sewer tunnel’s vaulted ceiling and saw in an instant four pairs
of eyes glaring at him from hidden perches.
Four mouths opened to reveal four sets of jagged
fangs.
Suddenly the creatures lashed out with
long, boneless tentacles that terminated in spiny-padded claws, looking for all
the world like the starfishes Varien remembered from his sailing days. The
creatures hissed whispers at him in a language that seemed tantalizingly out of
reach, but their intentions were clear: they aimed to make a meal of him.
Not
so fast! Varien jumped up using his boots of striding and springing and cast
a thunderous smite on the nearest
creature. Then they were on him in a roiling mass of long arms, with surprising
strength for such small creatures.
Talon rang as Varien blocked their
long-limbed lashings, and the paladin backpedaled, aiming to keep his shield
between himself and his attackers while making for the hole, and backup.
“Alec!” he shouted. “Bob!”
The creatures followed, running first along
the ceiling, then along the walls, and finally onto the stone floor in a
strange, loping gait, their outstretched arms waving unnaturally as they sought
purchase.
Alec heard Varien’s muffled shouts and drew
the family sword. “Brother!” he barked. “Varien needs us!” He rushed pell-mell
into the ruins.
Bob turned. “What?” He looked at Jamie.
“Sorry to cut this interview short, but I must assist my friend!”
“Wait!” Jamie shouted. “If your friend has
gone underground, then he is lost!”
Bob ignored him as he followed his brother
into the ruined building.
The grey-skinned creatures had dark pits
for eyes that seemed to bore into Varien as they attacked. He raised his shield
to block their blows, but a boneless tentacle managed to bend around his
defences to wrap itself around his neck, cutting off his air supply and choking
off the hellish rebuke before he
could make it. Varien felt tiny suckers working their way into the flesh of his
neck as the claws constricted.
Chokers…these
must be Chokers… he thought to himself. Aptly named…
Varien gurgled as a second tentacle lashed
out and encircled his throat tightly. Weakly he fended off another pair of
attacks, but he was soon out of breath and battered as the other creatures
pounded him with their sucker-laced fists.
He struggled to keep his footing as the
tiny creatures surrounded him, aiming to drag him down to the ground so they
could feed.
As his eyes unfocused, Varien thought he
saw someone walk into the antechamber and stare at him.
It
was a short, black-bearded human male clad in a scarlet
robe trimmed with a princely mantle of ermine. His hands were holding a luminescent glass scepter.
A
glass staff? Varien thought. Glasstaff?
The man stared at him silently, fixing him
with a look of utter contempt as Varien vainly struggled against his foes.
This
cannot be… Varien thought. His eyesight began to
fade.
“So,” Radegast said as she and Erwen
munched on pastries and meat pies purchased from a late-night corner store
bakery. “Where have you been, anyway?”
“Well,” Erwen swallowed a mouthful. “I
wandered around through Neverwinter Wood for a while before coming across some
clerics, priests and paladins in the forest outside Helm’s Hold. I decided to
have a little fun with them.”
“Naturally,” Radegast said.
Erwen smiled. “So I wildshaped into the
form of a Giant Elk, real majestic, you know? Strutted out, looked pretty, and
really shocked the priests. It got the reaction I was going for.”
“Of course,” Radegast said.
“They though I was some kind of sign or
portent or whatever, and they high-tailed it back to Helm’s Hold. I was about
to follow, when I saw that we were all being stalked by a wood elf in the
forest.”
“A wood elf?” Radegast repeated. “A member
of the Eldreth Veluuthra, perhaps?”
Erwen shrugged. “I turned into a housecat
and followed the priests into Helm’s Hold.”
“A perfect disguise,” Radegast admitted.
“I tailed them-”
Radegast choked at the pun.
“I tailed them to the Grand Cathedral,”
Erwen continued. “They wanted to meet with someone they called the Holy Watcher
– a woman – and told her they had seen a great sign in the forest.” Erwen
chuckled at the memory.
“So then what happened?” Radegast asked.
Erwen’s laughter faded and he looked troubled.
“I-I heard things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Bad things,” Erwen said, kicking a
cobblestone insolently. “In the depths of the cathedral.”
Radegast halted and stared down at the
Halfling. A glowing coal of anxiety deep within her began to blaze into anger.
“What are you hiding from me, little man?” She hissed.
Erwen cringed. “Screams, okay? Someone
screaming! It was awful! From far below the sanctuary, it was coming up through
the floor!”
Radegast bent down to look into Erwen’s
eyes. “This is important now, Erwen. What kind of screams?”
“It s-sounded…” Erwen stuttered. “It
sounded like someone was in terrible pain.”
“Like someone being tortured?” Radegast
pressed. Inwardly she was seething as she remembered her conversation with
Jamie, his evasiveness, but also his admission that the Order of the Gilded Eye
was persistent in its search for members of a cult that had already been
destroyed.
She felt quite uncomfortable at the
implications of what Erwen was telling her.
“You think there was a torture house
beneath the church?” She asked Erwen.
Erwen shrugged unhappily. “I wasn’t about
to go looking for trouble without backup.”
Radegast smiled a terrible smile. “Well,
Erwen my friend, you now have backup. Let’s check it out, what do you say?”
Erwen paled as he nodded.
Just before Varien blacked out, he heard
the ringing sound of a sword slicing through flesh, spraying him with blood.
One of the tentacles wrapped around his neck went suddenly slack, and there was
a high-pitched screech of agony in his ear.
Out of the corner of his bleary eye, Varien
could see the triumphant face of Alec Trevelyan hacking at one of the Chokers.
From down the hallway he heard Bob’s voice.
“Erotic asphyxiation? I may be a Cleric of Sune, but I am not into this sort of
thing at all!” He threw out his hands and fired twinned scorching rays that struck home on the cluster of creatures savaging
his paladin companion.
He followed that up by casting haste on Varien. “Show them what you’ve
got, paladin!” he shouted in encouragement.
Varien thrust out his shield and blocked a
tentacle attack that would have strangled Alec, and then put all his strength
into a shove against the creature choking him. He pushed the creature back and
then slashed at its midsection, its guts spilling out in ropy handfuls. The
creature screamed and let go of the paladin, pressing its claws vainly against
its torn belly.
Bob manifested his spiritual weapon , sending the flail spinning towards one of the
Chokers, connecting with an uppercut that shattered the bones of the creature’s
face and skull.
Alec ran another one of the creatures
through with the Sword of Trevelyan.
Varien staggered to his feet and bashed a
creature with his shield, which was now streaked with gore.
“And stay down!” he shouted as the last
Choker fell dead at his feet.
Then he coughed, leaning against the wall,
gasping for breath. “I mean, thanks guys, much appreciated.”
“Did you absolutely have to charge into
danger by yourself?” Bob said.
“Thanks again, Bob,” Varien said. He
straightened up. “Wait, didn’t you see him?”
“See who?” Bob asked.
“Lord Albrek!” Varien said, looking around
the antechamber. “He was right here!”
Of the renegade wizard he thought he had
killed in the bowels of Tresendar Manor, there was no sign.
“Glasstaff?” Bob asked, his mouth gaping.
“How?”
“I don’t…I don’t know!” Varien said. “But I
saw Glasstaff down here.”
Bob frowned. “I don’t see how that’s
possible, seeing as you-”
“Don’t you think I’m aware of that?” Varien
sputtered. “But he’s here, and more importantly he’s got his staff back. I
don’t know what that means for our old friend Xylon, but we should probably
find out.”
Bob spat at the sound of Xylon’s name.
The trio prepared to explore the sewers of
Helm’s Hold.
Radegast made a beeline for the Grand
Cathedral of Helm, tugging a reluctant Erwen alongside her. At times she gave
voice to her inner monologue in a tone that made the Halfling very uneasy.
“Desecrating a holy city dedicated to
Helm,” Radegast whispered. “If they’re torturing people under the church…why
didn’t Jamie mention that in his report?” She grew angrier by the step, even as
she felt like she needed a good long rest to clear her head and think things
through.
“Maybe we could stop at the Temple of Sune,”
she said to herself. Then she realized where she’d taken Erwen. They were less
than a block away from the Venturer’s Rest on the main street of the fortified
town.
“Ah!” Radegast said brightly. “I could be
your backup all right, Erwen, but I know where we can get a second, third and
fourth backup for our mission!”
“You do?” Erwen asked.
“Right this way! I have rooms booked at
this very inn!” Radegast strode into the Venturer’s Rest and climbed the stairs
to the inn’s second floor.
“Straight to bed, then we’ll storm the
Grand Cathedral in the morning!” Radegast said to Erwen as she walked down the
hallway towards her room.
Something didn’t feel right.
“Wait,” she said to Erwen. She looked up
and down the hallway.
The door to Dalleg’s room was ajar.
Radegast walked over to the door. “Hello?
Alec? Dalleg, are you all right? Still hung over?”
There was no response from the prone form
on the bed.
Something still didn’t feel right.
Radegast stepped into the room and her
nostrils were flooded with the coppery smell of fresh blood.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
She rushed over to the bed and threw back
the covers.
Dalleg’s sightless eyes stared up at her
from the mattress where he lay in a congealing puddle of his own blood.
He’d been stabbed in the chest, at least
once through the heart.
Erwen’s head stood level with Dalleg’s as
he stepped to the bedside.
“Why is there a dead guy in your bed?” the Halfling
asked Radegast.