Twitch lay on the cot in the necromancer Haliss Cost's undercity study with her back pressed firmly up against the wall, eyes darting impulsively around the scene before her. In the dim candle light, her shifter vision easily made out her companions Lukar, Envy, Legion, and Sh'Nezz'Tar as they sat around a small table and spoke in low tones with the necromancer. In the shadows cast into the corners of the room by the candles' flickering light, Twitch could make out the forms of several ghouls, zombies, and minotaur skeletons. The undead creatures stood silently and impassively but fixed their lifeless eyes on Twitch and her group. Although Twitch knew that she needed to rest and restore her energies to be able to focus the divine powers of The Traveler in what was likely to be a fearsome battle with the celestial Zoval the following day, Twitch's nerves tingled with fire as she lay awake. Nearby, Yipping was snoring loudly. Or was that the kobold's metal giant weasel creation, the mechanical construct he called Drangus? Can a construct even snore? Twitch squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to refocus. The preceding day had been a dizzying blur. Envy and the Outcasts had set off to find Haliss, who was rumored to live in the undercity beneath Stormreach. The group had decided to travel in the morning to an entrance to the undercity with which they were familiar, reasoning that while Lukar, Yipping, and Sh'Nezz'Tar all suffered in direct sunlight, they were likely to spend most of the day in the darkness of the caverns. However, a group of gnolls blocked the companions' descent down the spiraling stone steps and demanded a toll. Diplomacy turned quickly to aggressive negotiations as the gnolls attacked. Despite their limitations, the team disposed of the gnolls fairly readily after Lukar blinded the gnoll leader, who tried to escape but ended up falling sightlessly off the stairs to his death. At that point, we thought highly of our prowess--too highly, mighty Traveler, Twitch thought bitterly. Our pride and overconfidence had led us astray from Your path. How many stories warn of such peril! Having suffered some light wounds and wishing to enter the undercity fresh, the group elected to rest briefly in the darkness at the base of the stairs. But the darkness held unseen danger, and none in the group were alert enough to see its approach. Two gazers--floating melon-sized aberrations with four eyestalks, a central eye, and a gaping maw--silently closed upon the group while accompanying a huge creature that was the stuff of nightmares. It was a beholder zombie--like the gazers, a floating sphere sprouting eyestalks and menace--but with its central eye and flesh sallow and sunken with pale undeath. The beholder-kin ambush struck with deadly effect. Catching the group by surprise, the creatures' eyebeams blasted the companions with rays of fear and telekinetic force. But it was the beholder zombie's disintegration ray that struck Envy. In an instant of shock and horror, the group's tiefling bard--the inspiration and herald for the misfit band--crumbled into a pile of dust and ash. Too late, Twitch regained her wits and called upon the power of The Traveler to cause the creature to flee. The rest of the companions regained their fighting form as well, dispatching the smaller gazers and organizing a pursuit of the undead creature. With concerted firepower and a heroic leap by Legion onto the creature's back, the remaining companions destroyed the zombie aberration. Shock and grief quickly replaced the rush of combat. Lukar carefully collected Envy's ashes while the companions discussed their next steps: should they turn back or press on? The group quickly reached the consensus that they would push forward, not only in memory of their fallen companion but with the hope that the necromancer they sought might be able to restore Envy. Twitch had thought it a dubious prospect. As one following in the path of a divine, Twitch was aware of powerful magic that could restore the dead to life. But such magic typically required a whole body; and Envy had been reduced to ... ash! Even if the necromancer could somehow bring Envy back, what sort of twisted undeath might a necromancer provide? In the necromancer's study, Twitch's eyes darted in turn around her companions as she considered. Just how much did she know about them, anyway? Even before the incident with the beholder zombie, she had already accepted traveling with Lukar, a vampire. From time to time over the course of the past tenday, Twitch had noticed that Lukar would forget to pretend to breathe when lost in thought or otherwise distracted. Of course, the creature of the night didn't need to breathe--or sleep--or eat mundane food. He did need to feed, however. Twitch had noticed that Lukar would vanish into the night at times over the past tenday, only returning before dawn. She hadn't asked where he had gone or what he had been doing. Perhaps she hadn't wanted to know. Lukar wasn't the only one who didn't need to breathe. The warforged Legion, his cloak shrouding his metal form, was leaning into the conversation around the small table with his head cocked in a facsimile of attentiveness. Although Twitch frequently expected a metal man dressed in breastplate armor to squeak and creak when he moved, Legion did not; indeed, the warforged moved almost completely silently. And while the magical boots that Legion wore certainly aided him, Twitch noticed that a faint shimmer surrounded the warforged in the light, making it difficult to focus her eyes on him. In the darkness, despite her keen shifter vision, Legion became completely invisible. A silent, invisible killing machine: who had created such a thing, and for what dark purpose? A deathless vampire. A mechanical assassin. A giant weasel construct. And now Envy, restored from ash and returned to life, her hair now streaked with white from the journey beyond the veil of Death. Twitch wondered if Envy, too, now no longer needed breath to sustain her. Nearby, Yipping snored even more loudly. Lying loyally by the kobold's side, the steel defender Drangus kicked out a hind paw reflexively and knocked Yipping in the side. The kobold snorted and rolled over in his sleep, his breathing subsiding to a low drone. At least Yipping is still the same, Twitch thought. Under all of that armor he has constructed for himself, he's still the Big Dragon I knew back in the arcane cannon shop. His newfound skills haven't changed him--yet. And then there was Sh'Nezz'Tar, the brooding, intense drow. What did Twitch really know about him, either? Yipping had remembered him from the shop when they first rescued him from the phase spiders in the forest earlier in the tenday, but Twitch barely recalled him. She did remember something else, though--a tale told by the pirates of The Heartbreaker about a fearsome drow that had pillaged the seas off the coast of Xen'drik decades earlier, seeking vengeance for some ancient wrong done to him and his people. Twitch knew that drow lived much longer than she or other near-humans did; could this be the same drow from the stories? Watching Sh'Nezz'Tar listening intently to the necromancer as she described the powers over life, death, and undeath that she possessed, Twitch wondered: who was this drow companion of hers, and what did he really want? Twitch's thoughts returned to the events of the day. After resting briefly and mourning Envy's death, the companions had entered the undercity and fought off strange crab-like cave creatures with sticky webs like spiders. They soon found a group of turtle-like humanoids camped nearby. With an offer of assistance to help the tortles reach the stairs to the surface, the tortles directed the companions to the home of the necromancer Haliss Cost. Within, the necromancer's undead servants--the ghouls, zombies, and skeletons that now stood lifeless but animate in the corners of the study--led the companions to the necromancer. Haliss agreed to help restore Envy. Using a pair of spells first to restore Envy's body to its original form, and then to restore Envy's life-force within it, the necromancer worked what appeared to Twitch's eyes to be a miraculous resurrection. Envy--weak, but alive--was back. The group gratefully paid the necromancer for her aid. But that was not all; Haliss had information important to many in the group. She knew of the sahuagin and a nearby temple that might contain a sahuagin religious artifact the group could use to engage the sea creatures; she knew of The Dragon Prince, a collector of rare magic items who wielded immense arcane power; she knew of the "Docet," ancient artifacts that somehow paired with the modern, recently constructed warforged; and of course, she knew of the powers to restore life even to the long dead. And all that the necromancer asked of the companions in exchange for her aid was that they stop the celestial Zoval, who had sworn to destroy all undead, from interfering with her work. No wonder Twitch couldn't sleep. She had seen a companion reduced to ash; she had encountered an entity so powerful that it could restore Envy from ashes and summon her life-force back from beyond the grave; and now that same entity had asked Twitch and her companions to defeat another being so powerful that even an entity with powers over life and death itself could not defeat it? Twitch's eyes darted around the room from deathless eyes to mechanical ones; from those vowed to death to those returned from death; from those with immense power to ... well, Yipping. Mighty Traveler, Twitch thought. Where have you brought me?
