As the world of ancient Areth faded around them, and her champions with it, the Hand of Fortune found themselves back within the hollow stone vastness of the Fane of Gheas. But all was not exactly as they’d left it, for the shining face of the Norn hovered above, smiling beatifically down upon the group.

“You have done well, my Children,” he says, her smile growing slightly wry. “And you know the reward for a job well done…”

This elicited a snort of laughter from Devrik and Vulk, Mariala smiled wryly in turn, Korwin just shook his head, and Toran and Erol sighed in resignation. The Norn continued, imperturbable as ever.

“With the natural balance restored, along with the living multiverse, my ability to intervene in the affairs of mortals is fading, once again limited by ancient decree. But that does not mean I may not point my beloved Children in the right direction… especially as it was the recent crisis itself which allowed this problem to come to be. The laws of space, time and causality have bent and fractured under the pressures of annihilation and resurrection… and what was not now is, and should not be.

“But within your Hand you hold the key to set all to rights again, if you will… and so I leave this task to your devices. Fare you well my brave Children.”

With that she slowly faded from sight, his smile, in a flash of golden light, the last thing to vanish…

“Well, that was… enigmatic,” Mariala said in exasperation, after a moment of silence wherein they all considered the cosmic entity’s words. “If whatever it is is so dire, she could have at least given us a clue!”

‘I think she may have, actually,” Toran said . He gestured at the four gateways of the Fane, each floating on their separate stone platforms around them, shimmering pillars of light piercing upward.

“What?” asked Devrik, frowning at each in turn. “I don’t see–“

“It’s the colors,” Toran interrupted excitedly. “In the past, each pillar has shone with a different pale color… now they all shine with the same faint tint of… what would you call that, teal?”

“Don’t ask me,” Vulk shrugged. “They’ve always looked more-or-less the same to me, color-wise.”

“So… we’re thinking that all of the portals are now set to the same destination?” Korwin’s eyes narrowed in thought. “What would happen if you used that key of yours, Toran, to spin the wheel again and bring up four new portals?”

“I suspect that they would all come up the same again, and this same color,” the Khundari replied. “But I’m not willing to risk it, unless the entire group agrees. Clearly, the Norn has pointed us in the direction she feels we need to go, and if we try to test him, for no reason beyond curiosity, we might well lose our opportunity to set right… whatever it is that’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Vulk agreed after a moment’s thought. “She spoke of the renewed restraints on her inability to act directly, and this may have been her one chance to, er, deal under the table, as it were… I don’t think we should risk squandering her gift.”

“If gift it is,” Erol laughed, stroking Grover’s head absently. “I’ve no doubt the job, whatever it proves to be, will be dirty and dangerous — but all the more glory to be gained for us! So let’s stop talking and testing and guessing, and get to work.”

Korwin shrugged acquiescence, clearly outvoted, and the group set to checking their gear before leaving the Fane. They were not as fully prepared as they might have wished. When they’d set out six days ago to investigate some disappearances in Gevdan Town, less than a day after they’d returned from their horrifying encounter with the demonic frog-thing Dol’Gurthog, they’d not expected to be gone more than a few hours. The Chirok Centaurs and the grateful Holbytari folk had provided them with packs and various supplies and provisions, but not all of their usual equipment could be so easily replaced.

“The critical item,” Vulk sighed, “assuming this next jump doesn’t bring us directly home, or close to it, is our supply of Baylorium. Fortunately Draik was able to get our every-other-month supply of fresh potion to us in Zurhan before we left for Gevdan. That was a tenday ago, so what we do have should remain potent for almost two more months.

“Unfortunately, we used some of our supply fighting that damn giant demon-frog, and even more healing up our most seriously injured after the encounter with the insane druid-spirit in Kadara. So what we actually have left works out to… three doses of the undifferentiated base potion and one dose of the activated, specific potion each.

“I suggest you each use a drop of your blood to convert one of your three basic potions into a second dose of your specific potion. It will be three days before it’s fully cured, of course, so better to start preparing now. Also, I have one triple-dose vial of the basic stuff from the previous batch Draik sent us, but it’s near the end of its useful life… if it’s still potent in five days – well, it won’t be.”

Everyone took Vulk’s advice and began the process of creating a second dose of activated Baylorium, after which they took a meal of dried meat and fruit, stale bread, and various junk food items Korwin had liberated from the odd “vending machines” they’d come across on Areth and its various alternates. The packets of small, colorful candy-coated chocolates were the most popular, although the various “chips” ran a close second. Erol was alone in really enjoying the dried banana chips from Areth Ape, and only Korwin seemed to actually like the bitter chocolate of the “Murder Bar” from Counter-Areth.

Eventually they could find no more excuses to delay, and the Hand turned to the shimmering portals of light arrayed around them. As they hefted their packs Korwin looked dubiously at the state of the various stone stairways leading to each portal platform. “Since we think they all go to the same place anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter which one we pick.” And with that he headed for the stairs with the least number of gaps likely to send him plummeting 100 meters to his death.

• • • 

As the shimmering portal winked out behind them the Hand found themselves in the center of a lightly wooded crossroads. It appeared to be early afternoon, with gray, overcast skies and a pleasant, if coolish, temperature. Short and windswept pines were sparsely scatter around them, in rocky, dry soil. The roads themselves were of good stone, well-set and smooth, but the verges were of tufted seagrass and ice plant, rather than proper sward. The air smelled heavily of salt and the sea.

Northward, ahead of them, a road sloped gently downward toward a small seaside town, or large village, the nearer buildings of which were less than 100 meters away. Over the slate and shingle roofs of the mostly one- or two-story buildings the three bare masts of a large sailing ship could be seen and the wide sea beyond, spreading out to the horizon.

To the right a road vanished into the sparse pine woodland. The rising of several plumes of smoke in the distance hinted at further habitation, most likely farmsteads, Vulk guessed. The road behind them wound up into the hilly lands to the south, where the already thin pine trees seems to peter out into stunted scrub and vast tracts of heather. The highest ridges seemed to be of good granite Toran thought.

To their left a road wound up a smaller seaside hill to the west of the town. Atop the rise was set a large and stately-looking manor house, semi-fortified and clearly well-built. A wide tower rose over the roof at the back of the manor, and from between its crenelations Erol spotted a figure, apparently staring down at them through a spyglass or telescope. Before he could react, however, the figure seemed to start, perhaps realizing it had been spotted, and vanished.

“Well, shit,” Korwin said flatly, rubbing the brigde of his nose. “Shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Mariala asked, staring at her friend in surprise. “Do you know where we are?”

“Not precisely, no,” Korwin sighed. “But I can guarantee you that we are somewhere in the Archipelago… that is, the Ocean Empire. This roadway itself is enough to suggest it — nobody else builds roads so well, or wastes them on such obviously minor places — but the architecture of the town, and most especially of that manor house, removes any doubt…. shit!”

‘I’d think you’d be thrilled to be back home,” Devrik observed in some bemusement. “The way you’re always going on about the superior nature of, well, everything in the Empire, I’d’ve guessed you’d be jumping about in joy right now. Why do you seem so… dismayed?”

“It’s… complicated,” Kowrin groaned. “Let’s just say I left the Empire for a reason, and that I’m not thrilled to be back, at least not right now…”

Recognizing this wasn’t the time nor place to press him, his friends backed off, turning the discussion to their next step. “So who do you think lives in the big mansion up on the hill?” Mariala asked.

“That’s the home of the Dominus Legate, I’d imagine,” Korwin answered, grateful for the diversion. “Sort of the governor or Imperial magistrate of the island… I don’t know if it’s a hereditary position on this island or not, that varies around the Empire… but either way they would be the person in authority here.”

“Well that’s were we should start, obviously,” Vulk said. “Go straight to the top, they’re bound to know if there’s a problem.”

“Unless they are the problem,” Erol said dryly. “In my experience you’re more likely to find out what ‘s really going on in a place by mixing with the common people. I say we go down into town first, then visit this Legate afterward, if we need to.

Korwin was all for Erol’s suggestion, on the assumption that if anyone might be aware of his status in the Empire it would be just this sort of administrative functionary. But in the end it was Vulk’s logic, with Mariala’s strong support, that won the day. He smothered a frustrated sigh as they began the half-kilometer hike up the hill to the manor, and simply stuck to the back of the group. Realistically, how likely was it that he’d be recognized after two years, especially in a backwater such as this appeared to be?

The Legate’s Residence, if that was what this really was, was somewhere between a nobleman’s townhouse and a fortified country manor. Perched on a cliff 70 meters above the sea, with commanding views of the town below, it was done in the Koralian Style of two centuries ago, and seemed in good repair, if suspiciously quite. No servants or workers bustled about, the gate to the stables and side court were closed and barred, and no smoke came from any of the building’s several chimneys. Two flights of stone steps led up on either side of a narrow porch to heavy double doors of carved ironwood, upon which Vulk rapped firmly with the foot of his staff.

For several minutes there was no response, despite three more increasingly demanding knocks, the last delivered by Devrik’s gloved fist. They were beginning to fear the place was abandoned, but at last a querulous, muffled voice came from behind the thick doors. “Who is it? Hoag, if that’s you, I’ve told you, I shan’t come down, and you’re certainly not coming in! Now be off! Or I really shall set the dogs on you this time!”

The Hand exchanged bemused looks, and Vulk cleared his throat. “Um, ser, we are not this Hoag you speak of. We are—“

“Oh! You’re not… no, you’re not them, are you? So, are you the ones I saw arriving, in that column of light, down at the crossroads? Have you come in answer to my summons, then? Did the Prince Palatine send you?” The voice grew more animated with this breathless spate of questions.

“We are here to help,” Vulk temporized. “Obviously something serious is going on… if you could let us in, and tell us what troubles you, the sooner we can start setting things to right.”

There was a long moment of silence from behind the doors, but eventually they could hear bolts being drawn and a heavy bar being lifted. The right hand door swung open just wide enough to admit a single person, and the face of a pale, gray-haired man of late middle years peered out at the Hand.

“Come in, come in, don’t dwaddle on the porch,” he said nervously, gesturing them in and stepping aside. As Korwin, the last, squeezed past him the man stuck his head out to scan his foreyard, then quickly shut the door. Before turning to greet his guests he slid home bolts at the top and bottom of the door and lifted a solid-looking bar of ironwood into place across both panels. Torn noted to himself that the bolts, on both doors, looked newly, and somewhat sloppily, installed.

Their host was a slender man with thinning gray hair and watery brown eyes. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and his clothes, while clearly of the best cloth and cut, were rumpled and a bit food-stained. The man had a furtive, hunted look about him as he finally greeted his visitors. He seemed torn between an almost pathetic joy at the possibility of help and a panicky uncertainty that maybe he’d been tricked into letting enemies into his redoubt. Two enormous mastiffs flanked him, and he stroked each massive head, which seemed to reassure him.

“I’m Dominus Legate Peran Charkress,” he said, “supposed governor of this accursed bit of rock in the middle of the ocean, by the command of the Prince Palatine of Chakal.

“And we are the Hand of Fortune,” Vulk replied, bowing in the degree appropriate for a foreign ambassador to an Imperial functionary. “I am Cantor of Kasira Ser Vulk Elida. My companions are the Lady Mariala Teryn, Margrave of Green Tower, Ser Devrik Askalan, Ser Erol Doritar, Toran Quickhand, Shadow Warrior of Düron, and Ser Korwin—“

“Pleased to meet you, Ser,” Korwin interjected before Vulk could finish his name. “You say you’re governor here under the seal of the Prince Palatine of Chakal?’

“Yes, Prince Rapareth posted me here six years ago, after the death of my wife,” the Legate replied, then added as a bitter aside, “Having no living children, I suppose I was the logical choice… for what sane man would wish to bring a family to this isolated, and dangerous, backwater?”

“Dangerous?” Mariala said, puzzled. “It seems a quiet enough spot, from what little we’ve seen. What danger exists, to make it such an undesirable posting?”

“Until recently I would have said the only danger on Arapet was the known one, from the deadly mists off the Fuming Sea,” Charkress said. At the blank looks on several faces he explained. “When the winds shift and blow from the east, if the poisonous vapors for which that sea is infamous chance to be on the waters, then they may reach even this far. When they do, all must remain indoors, for to breath those fumes directly for very long leads to sickness and, often enough, to death. Fortunately, that fatal combination of circumstances happens only once or twice a year, usually. Still, the only reason anyone lives on this miserable rock at all is the iron mine. “

“Iron mine?” Toran asked, his interest piqued. “Iron seems rather a common resource to justify the risk, if these vapors are as dangerous as you suggest.”

“Ah, but it’s not common iron they mine here. Sages believe the lode is star iron, fallen from the sky in ages past when the Demon’s Fist shattered the ancient world. It is almost pure, and once refined and forged, it makes a steel to rival even that of your people, Ser. Indeed, for years the Khundari of Girdyon have been the principal buyer of the Arapet mine’s output, under Imperial charter. They say the Emperor’s own sword is forged of Arapet steel.

“Unfortunately, for the last 20 years that output has been steadily declining, and I fear the lode is close to being exhausted. And once the iron is gone, I doubt the people will linger much longer, between the poisonous air from the Fuming Sea, the thin, barely arable soil, and the mediocre, at best, fisheries hereabout.

“For six years it’s been that worry, along with the the usual troubles of this sort of post… getting the peasants to pay their taxes, adjudicating their petty grievances, making sure they don’t cheat too badly the few ships that stop here … that have occupied me.

“But a scor’night ago something happened… and it all centers around that damn black obelisk in Fisherman’s Square. It just appeared overnight. At first it caused a great stir of fear and consternation amongst the townsfolk, and I sent down two of my Legate’s Guard to examine the object – I’d have gone myself, I was that dashed curious, but I was suffering an attack of gout in my left foot just then.

“As painful as it is, the gout may have saved me… for my guards returned within a few hours, and reported on the nature and appearance of the thing, and the peoples reaction. Both men agreed with the townsfolk that it was most uncanny; they also said that after some time spent near it one began to feel anxious and unnerved. Being men of action, not inclined to introspection or the sharing of feelings, I gauged they must have been unnerved indeed to have even mentioned such effects.

“Yet the next day, when I summoned them, along with the rest of my Guard, to discuss what action should be taken, both men suddenly seemed perfectly unconcerned about the whole affair. They even seemed surprised that I should want to “do” anything to the town’s beloved and long-standing monument!

“Needless to say, both I and my Guard Captain were nonplussed. These were solid men, not given to flights of fancy, nor to ill-conceived jest. Captain Frongar confined them to quarters, and he and I thereafter agreed that the damn obelisk should be destroyed, if that were possible, or at the very least cast into the sea.

“My captain immediately took his remaining four men down into the town to accomplish this task. The gout was somewhat less painful that day, and I managed to hobble up to the tower to watch through my glass. Thus I saw all that transpired.

“My men examined the stone closely for a time, then the captain commandeered a great hammer from the smith and attempted to smash the cursed object. It was a mighty blow, for Frongar was a large and very strong man, but it didn’t so much as chip a flake from the thing. Before he could land a second blow a crowd of angry townsfolk rushed to interpose themselves between my men and the obelisk, demanding they desist in trying to destroy the towns “ancient historical artifact.”

“Captain Frongar eventually dispersed them, between threats of the sword and promises not to smash the thing. No amount of persuasion could convince these people that the obelisk had not been there two days ago, not even when a few latecomers to the square agreed and added their voices.

“With the crowd now busy arguing amongst themselves, my men next attempted to pull the pillar down, to drag it to the quay and drown it. But no matter the number of ropes and levers, all five men men could not budge it — it seemed welded to the stones beneath it. Even more strangely, the townsfolk who had defend it against physical attack now did nothing to hinder the effort. They refused to help, when the captain attempted to dragoon some of the stronger men, but seemed otherwise unconcerned.

“Eventually my men returned, frustrated and clearly spooked by the uncanny nature of the stone, and of the strange belief of the townsfolk that it had always been present. And I became thoroughly spooked myself the next day, when I arose somewhat late after a sleepless night, to find that these same five men, including Captain Frongar, now shared the townsfolk’s belief concerning the history of the obelisk. To make matters worse, the first two men affected by the stone had vanished overnight, apparently gone into the town to join… whatever is going on down there.”

“What is going on in the town?” Devrik asked. The Legate jumped, taken momentarily aback by the fire mage’s deep, grating voice, but answered readily enough.

“I don’t know for sure, but every instinct I have is screaming that it is uncanny and dangerous, if not outright evil. Whatever the ultimate goal is, however, I’m certain it centers around that ship now tied up at the quay.”

“Could the obelisk have been brought in on that ship?” Mariala asked. It seemed the obvious, non-supernatural explanation.

“What?” The Legate seemed surprised at the question. “No, of course not! The ship wasn’t… it was… oh, I’m getting all out of order here. Best I finish my tale in the order events unfolded, and then it will be clear… or at least as clear as this murky business is to me.

“After the distressing realization that my entire Guard had fallen under the evil spell of the black obelisk, I quickly closeted my self in my study, at the top of the tower. During the rest of that afternoon my men — my former men, by that point — tried to convince me to come and see the wondrous artifact for myself, as did several of my domestic staff, those who lived in town rather than here at the manor.

“It was all quite unnerving. I dissembled, and assured them I would come when my foot was better… and that evening when Fongar asked if he and his men could return to “examine the obelisk more closely,” I gave my permission readily enough. I had come to fear that they might take me by force, if I did not eventually agree to come willingly onto the town, so I was glad to see them go.

“Once my former guardsmen and the day domestic staff were all gone, I had my major domo, Athel, and the two live-in servants bar the doors. Fearing the defectors might try to regain entry, I had them add the new bolts you see, and completely seal off the other entrances to the manor.”

“So the entire town is now under the spell of this monolith?” Erol asked. He’d been following the Legate’s story intently, as the tale of possession and/or mind control had him rather worried.

“By this time all who remain are enspelled, yes,” Charkress agreed. “But not everyone in the town was immediately affected by this… altering. In the early days, as the strangeness grew, a few came to me for help, but I couldn’t risk letting them in, and sent them on to the outlying farming hamlets, which seem, as yet, unchanged. Most of these refugees seemed to come from the eastern and southern parts of town… those furthest from Fisherman’s Square, I noted. Some had never visited the monolith; others had, but only briefly… the unaffected began to taper off after another two days, however, and eventually stopped.

“The small fishing fleet continues to bring in the catch each day, and the farms continue to supply the town. But the farmers refuse to come in to sell their produce now, rightfully fearful of what is going on. Instead, the town sends out groups to collect their foodstuffs, and seem content to let the farmers remain untouched by… whatever is happening in town. At least for now…

“But the most uncanny part of all this, and the heart of the matter I fear, is that ship. It was about two days after the defection of my guardsmen that the townsfolk began to build the ship you see now at the quay, and that I began to become truly afraid – for this island has no ship-building facilities, and certainly no shipwright! Yet in a matter of days they had laid the keel and begun the process of forming the ribs — these men, and even women, who had previously been entirely innocent of such skills!

“The work proceeded at an alarming pace, and I decided that the Empire must be warned… I don’t know if they intend to take that odious stone with them, or if they have some other way to spread its malign influence, but I knew that I could not let them just sail away. I dispatched my man Athel and the two remaining servants, in my personal ketch to make for Eari, the nearest island to us, there to warn the people of Fethik town and see that the warning came as quickly as possible to Tishton and the ears of the Prince Palatine.

“But not an hour after they set sail, the winds shifted, suddenly and hard, and the mists from the Fuming Sea overtook the island… I was forced to retreat underground, and I have no way of knowing if my poor messengers were overtaken as well and overcome at sea…. but I fear it was so…”

“But how could they possibly build that ship?!” Korwin burst out, forgetting his attempt to remain unobtrusive. “Never mind the skills – I assume whatever possessing force is involved provided that knowledge– but where did they get the materials? I’d wager my life that there’s neither oak nor ironwood on this island, nor any pines or firs tall enough to produce those masts!”

“Indeed, my young friend,” the Legate agreed vehemently. “You’ve struck to the heart of it! Your eye is good, the vessel does seem to made of oak and ironwood, and you are correct, there is no such wood to be found on Arapet. The tallest pine on this island isn’t half the height of that tallest mast, and there are no firs that I’m aware of, of any size.

“They built the ship on the shelving beach east of the town, until it was seaworthy, after which they kedged it to the quay. Unfortunately, my view of the beach is obscured, so I could never see where the timber came from. But once the ship was in its current position, each morning new materials would simply be there on the docks, ready to be used.

“I tried more than once to stay up through the night to see if the material simply appeared, like the cursed obelisk itself, but as far as I could ever tell, they were carried by the townsfolk in the small hours, from the vicinity of Old Hoag’s Tavern.”

“Hoag” repeated Vulk. “Isn’t that the name of the man you thought was at your door when we knocked? Who is he?”

“Ha! Wilton Hoag has , for years, run a tavern on the east side of town. Old Hoag’s is quite popular with the heavy drinkers of the island, I believe, especially the miners. The man is well suited to be a barkeep, for he drinks like a fish himself, I’m led to understand – yet now, suddenly, he seems to be the leading man of the town! As far as I can tell from here, he is directing the shipbuilding as well as the rebuilding going on in the town… much daily activity seems centered on his establishment.

“The man himself came to see me, several days after my guards and staff had defected to the town, to try and convince me to come myself and allay my fears of the marvelous obelisk of long history. I refused to open the doors, of course, and Hurndal and Rogast,” he thumped his dogs, whom Brann was curiously sniffing, “went wild at the very sound of his voice – I’ve never seen them like that, and as he persisted in his cajolery I threatened to set the dogs on him. The sound of their growling, snarling and barking seemed to get through to him I suppose, for he departed and hasn’t been back since.

“So now you know the full tale, as far as I can tell it.” The Legate seemed to regain some of what had no doubt been his force of personality before his current plight, and he looked sharply at the strange group. “But how came you here, if not in answer to my call for help? And indeed, how? For there are no Nitaran Vortices on this island, yet I witnessed your arrival not an hour past, out of a column of light…”

“We are… travelers,” Vulk said cautiously, considering how best to convey just how in their wheelhouse this situation was without sounding totally insane, nor mentioning the Star Council. “We have been brought together over the years to… bring balance where it is needed. We have come to accept that we are often guided by fate, to be where we are needed, at just the moment we are needed. Thus the name we have adopted, the Hand of Fortune. Please trust me when I say, if anyone can resolve this problem, it is the six of us.”

“Well, I suppose it makes sense of a sort, you being a Cantor of the Immortal Lady of Luck,” Charkress said slowly. Then he smiled gently, and gave a rueful chuckle. “I was an adherent of Kasira, back in my younger years, before the deaths of my children… and then my wife… perhaps this is Her attempt to guide me back to my lost faith…”

“They say the Immortals are parsimonious in answering our prayers,” Vulk smiled himself. “Perhaps She is killing two birds with one stone here.”

“Perhaps,” the Legate said noncommittally. “But come, take refreshment and tell me how you plan to save the people I am charged to govern and protect.”

•••

Being alone in his mansion, the Legate was forced to serve his guests with his own hand, refusing Erol and Mariala’s offer to help. The repast was modest, consisting of cold meats, dried fruit and a surprisingly robust Kadaran red. As they ate the Hand hammered out a rough plan for learning more of what was actually going on in Arapet Town. To that end, once they had refreshed themselves and Vulk had applied his healing touch to the Legate’s lingering gout, they had all trooped up to the roof of the manor’s tower.

“This was crafted by Usarin Degalith himself, in Avantir,” Charkress said as he handed over his very finely crafted spy glass to Vulk. “My father purchased it from the old master craftsman when I was a child… he always believed it was one of the last Degalith made himself, before he became too infirm and turned over most production work to his apprentices. They still turn out fine glasses, of course, but nothing like the masterpieces he produced at his peak. And he’s been gone, what… twenty years or more now?”

Korwin and Vulk were duly impressed, knowing well the reputation of the Imperial artist and craftsman, and most of the others had at least heard of the fabled inventor, sculptor, builder and painter. Vulk handled the elegant tube of brass, gold and crystal with special care as he turned it on the town below, elbows resting on the stone of the tower’s crenellations.

To all appearances it seemed a normal seaside settlement, a bit too large to properly be called a village, perhaps, but not quite so large as to rightly be called a town, either. It did look rather tidy, Vulk thought, and many of its citizens were engaged in various refurbishment projects, from repairing roofs and whitewashing walls to sweeping and planting of flower boxes… which seemed odd if there was some sort of uncanny mass possession going on. Demons were chaos incarnate, after all…

On the other hand the 30 or more townspeople, men and women both, and a few older children, who were working on outfitting the mystery ship was more than just unusual. They swarmed over the vessel without hesitation or seeming concern as they prepared to hoist into place the first of her three vast canvass sails. Not knowing much abut such things, Vulk handed over the glass to Korwin.

“It seems a well-built ship, from what I can tell,” the water mage said thoughtfully after several minutes. “Design isn’t quite like anything I’ve seen before, but not drastically different, either. But the people… watching them work I’d have said they were all old, experienced hands at the shipwright’s craft— even the children! There’s definitely something uncanny going on with that ship…”

After everyone had a chance to survey the town and the vessel, the Hand and their host returned to the Legate’s study. The next step, they agreed, was to interview some of unaffected refugees currently being given shelter in the surrounding farm hamlets. To that end, Charkress wrote out a brief note of introduction, along with directions for the travelers.

“This might not work for many of the townsfolk,” he explained as he sealed the missive with his signet ring and a blob of hot wax. “But the woman I’m sending you to has her letters, well enough to teach some of the village children at least, or so I’m led to understand.”

Note in hand and supplied as best the Legate could provide, the Hand set out for the closest hamlet, Enab’s Steading. An hour easy walk brought them to the small cluster of six cottages centered around a rustic well. Cleared and planted land spread out around the tiny community, and in the distance smoke rising up from several other points indicated other similar, equally humble farmsteads. A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, a young girl-child hiding shyly behind her skirts, stepped out of the nearest cottage to greet them, alerted by the barking of several large dogs.

As it turned out this was the very woman they sought, Erala Karvek, and her daughter Varina. She was, indeed, able to read the Legate’s note and invited the mass of strangers, clearly folk of quality, if foreigners, to take seats around the communal yard. Most of the men and boys were apparently out in the fields, and the women and younger children were occupied with the various tasks of a working farm, sparing no more than curious or worried glances at the strange visitors.

“Yes,” she replied to Mariala’s opening question. “M’ husband and son have been… changed… by whatever’s happening in town. Vidalo is t’weaponsmith’s ‘prentice, and was one of t’first to see that cursed stone, the smithy being right on Fisherman’s Square. He’d allowed Borin to go with him t’at morning… t’boy is eight, and fascinated with t’weapons and tools… and t’forge, of course. T’ey both was upset by t’obelisk, when t’ey came home at midday for dinner, I could see it… although Vidalo tried to hide his fear, for t’boy’s sake. But he left him to home when he returned to work, and Borin didn’t argue nor wheedle, as he’d usually have done.

“T’at night both t’boy and m’ husband had nightmares, but Borin’s seemed worse and eventually he asked to sleep with us, a t’ing he’s not done for years now. I t’ink Vidalo was actually glad – he usually grumbles if t’children want to sleep in our bed. Yet when we woke t’next morning, later than usual because of t’tossing and turning, they both seemed fine… by t’time we finished breakfast t’ey were excited to see t’wonderful old stone again!

“Vidalo not only let our son go with him again, he pushed me to bring Varina and come see t’marvel for ourselves. When I was doubtful, and asked about his fears of t’night before, he shrugged it off as a bit of undigested halibut… but I t’ink he really didn’t remember how he’d felt t’day before. He twas late for his work, or else he might’ve pushed harder… but he accepted m’ half-promise to maybe come in t’afternoon. But nothing I said could make him to leave Borin with me… and to be sure, t’boy seemed eager to go.

“At dinner t’ey both cajoled ‘n wheedled me to return wit’ t’em, and wit’ even Varina wishing t’ go, I gave in. But as we walked t’rough the town m’ doubt turned t’fear, for now t’ey were both speaking as if t’obelisk had always been in t’square. T’closer we got, t’more m’ dread ‘n fear grew… as more of our neighbors ‘n friends seemed equally sure “t’monument” had always been a part of t’town and our history, and t’at it was not’ing unusual t’ promenade about t’square t’ admire it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mariala interrupted, “but did it seem to you that your husband, or any others you knew well, were… well, possessed by some other entity?”

“Like what t’ey say demons can do? Push a soul right out and take over a body?” The woman frowned in thought. “No… no, I don’t t’ink so. You see, when he were cajolin’ ‘n persuadin’ he used… I don’t know… like, t’little jokes only he and I know, and t’ings from our past. T’wer him, but not him, if you catch my meaning… demons can’t do t’at can t’ey?”

“Not generally, no,” Erol replied with a grim, sardonic smile.

Mariala acknowledged this with a grimace and gestured at Erala to continue. “Please, go on with your tale, madam, I apologize for the interruption.”

“Well, we arrived at t’square, and t’ere it was, bigger ‘en life… I found t’t’ing ‘orrible to look at from t’start — it seemed t’… t’… squirm. I felt more ‘n more fearful looking at it, and after only a few minutes I couldn’t take it no more. I made some excuse, I don’t even remember what, and fled with my daughter. Vidalo called after me, but didn’t follow, t’ank all t’Immortals.

“On the way home I stopped at some friends’ places, and found most in t’same boat as me… husbands, brothers, sons what seemed t’ve changed over night, come t’believe t’ere was nothing uncanny ’bout a great futhering stone appearing where none’d been before! No one knew what to do, t’ough, ‘n I came home, hoping t’would all just go away, and everyt’ing would return to rights.

“But that night Vidalo was firm as ever ‘n his belief t’at t’stone’d always been in t’Fisherman’s Square… he grew angry if I said ot’erwise, and I quickly dropped t’subject. But worse t’an t’anger were the sudden likin’ he had for t’at old drunk Hoag, who runs t’at nasty tavern… goin’ on about what a great man he was, a real leader, ‘n his plans to build a great boat. ‘A boat’ says I. ‘With what? Where? We’ve no timber, no shipyard, and no shipwright.’ But he waved t’all off, saying t’at old Hoag had him a plan.

“T’next morning he pushed again t’at we should come down to t’Square, ‘n again I promised t’come after m’ morning chores. But soon as he ‘n Borin were well off, I went next door to m’ friend Mura, whose own husband was… changed. She’d been dragged down to t’Square as well, t’day before, but had stayed wit’ her husband t’his stall t’help sell t’ t’sudden crowds. When she’d returned home we’d chew’d over on the uncanniness of it all, yet t’at morning she t’were as puzzled as m’ husband at the idea t’stone hadn’t always been t’ere!

“ ‘Why, Erala, whatever do you mean?’ she’d said. ‘The Great Monolith has been our pride for generations!’ I knew t’en I had to take Varina and flee, or we would succumb too, sooner or later. I talked a few of m’ still-unchanged neighbors t’ come with, and t’at afternoon we made our way up t’the Legate’s manor, hoping he might know what were happening, or how to stop it, or at least give us shelter. But he were as afraid as we all, since all but a few of his own people’d fallen under t’spell of t’stone by t’en.

“I’d hoped for more from t’man, but really, wit’ his own soldiers gone over, what could he offer us? He feared t’ey’d come for him, as well, and if we was there… his suggestion of taking refuge in t’farming hamlets and steadings twas a good one, as’t turned out. M’ sister took in me and Varina, and helped find places for t’others, and t’… changed… from town haven’t made no trouble, so far. I suppose t’ey need t’food still, whatever ot’er uncanny t’ings may be going on t’ere…”

Mariala, Vulk and Korwin questioned the woman for a few more minutes, while the others spoke with some of the other women and old men around the farmyard, but being removed from the town for so long there was little else to report. The Hand left Eban’s Steading with the heartfelt prayers of Erala Karvek, that they return her husband and son to her, ringing in their ears. Mariala, looking back, was moved by the sad, dark eyes of the little girl, clutching her mother’s skirts, staring after the retreating strangers, her expression inscrutable.

Back at the crossroads they turned right towards Arapet Town, the late afternoon sun breaking through the scattering clouds at last. The settlement consisted of maybe 50 buildings, most of them homes or homes-and-business combinations, with a smattering of dedicated buildings, such as the small Eldarian temple set on a small rise just south of the center of town. Unlike most such villages, life didn’t seem to center around the small temple square and its public well, however, but rather around a larger open space on the west end of the docks. This is where the mysterious obelisk had appeared (or had always been, depending on who one believed, Vulk thought), and it was here that he, Erol, and Toran headed.

“Be careful, obviously,” Mariala called after them. “Don’t stay too long near the obelisk… I know we’re assuming less than an hour is safe, but let’s not cut it too close. We’ll head down to see if we can get a closer look at that ship. Meet us there in half an hour?”

“At most,” Vulk agreed, and waved confidently as his friends continued straight down what passed as the main street of Arapet, toward the stone quay at the water’s edge and the strange ship. He lead the way through the narrow, but surprisingly clean, streets westward toward their goal. But they were only a few dozen meters into the town when Cherdon launched himself from Vulk’s shoulder and flew back towards the pine woods. He came to light on a high branch, and no amount of mental cajoling or commanding could get him to come back. With a disturbed sigh Vulk accepted the temporary defection, and motioned his companions on to Fisherman’s Square.

The large, cobblestoned area was bounded to the west and south by buildings, and along the southern half of the eastern side; the northeast and north were open to the docks and the bay, with a large public well surprisingly close to the water. And in the center of the square rose the object of their curiosity, the black obelisk of debatable history.

The deep black stone was a little over three meters tall, its four sides tapering towards the top before ending in a pyramidal cap. Its edges seemed worn and rounded, chipped in places, and its surface was not perfectly smooth – as if it had been chiseled with a very large tool, as flint or obsidian might be. Yet it was not made of either of those stones, Toran noted as he peered up at it.

Whatever it was, it seemed almost to absorb light, rather than reflect it, and just beneath its surface he could make out twisting veins of a green so dark as to be almost black themselves. Was it some form of jet, then? But no… no… It disturbed him at an almost unconscious level that he could not identify the material… and he could swear those veins were moving in the corner of his eye… yet when he looked directly at them they were as perfectly static as stone should be. And yet…

Erol also noted the almost subliminal sense of movement in the stone when not being looked at directly, but that bothered him far less than the throbbing hum that wavered just at the edge of his hearing. It had the irritating quality of a gnat buzzing in his ear, but with an undefinable quality of… wrongness… about it. Try as he might, even in his own mind he couldn’t put any better description to the noise than that.

Grover also seemed to hear the sound, for he burrowed deep into Erol’s pack and seemed determined to stay there, no matter how much his human coaxed him. Erol tried to ignore the almost-not-a-sound, trying to focus on examining the mysterious monument, but its alien rhythm put his nerves on edge. And he was beginning to get a headache…

“Can’t you hear that damn whine?” He demanded of Vulk, who was examining the stone on the side opposite Toran, with no apparent sign of hearing anything unusual. “It’s driving me crazy.”

Vulk glanced over at his friend and opened his mouth to reply, then apparently thought better about whatever he’d been going to say. “Um, no, I don’t hear anything,” he said instead. “But I have to admit, I’m feeling… unsettled… and I can’t say exactly why. Is this whine you’re hearing coming from the obelisk?”

“Impossible to be sure… it doesn’t seem directional,” Erol growled, moving around the obelisk, varying his distance. “It’s just seems to be everywhere. Do you hear anything, Toran?”

“Hmmm? Oh, no, no I don’t hear anything,” the Khundari pulled his attention away from his increasingly frustrating attempts to identify the stone. “But I don’t like this thing… it’s very… unsettling.”

Almost unconsciously the three moved away from the standing stone, variously discomfited by its presence, if not quite sure why. In silent mutual agreement they decided it was time to speak with some of the presumably “altered” townsfolk, and why not start with the vendors here in Fisherman’s Square.

The area was certainly large enough to accommodate a dozen or more booths or stalls, but at the moment only three vendors were set up — a butcher, whose shop was actually on the western side of the square, had a large table set up outside, displaying various cuts of meat; the town weapons smith, whose business also stood on the square, to the south, was similarly displaying his offerings on an outdoor table; and lastly an apothecary or alchemist was set up to the north.

The latter’s shop was not on the square, and he had a more elaborate set up than his peers – two tables, one large the other small and round, and a red and white striped awning to shield both himself and his various potions, creams, unguents and powders from the elements. Toran approached him and made a show of examining the wares on display while trying to draw out the thin, gray haired, and rather cadaverous-looking fellow. But the man seemed strangely uninterested in making a sale, and his taciturn expression never changed as he gave his monosyllabic responses. Toran was turning away in frustration, and with a growing sense of unease, when something about one of the potions caught his eye…

Vulk had decided to approach the butcher. He was a tall, heavy-set man of early middle years, as bald as a stone, and although his muscular frame was beginning to run to fat, the temple sorcerer still would not have liked to come to blows with the fellow. As he approached his table the man stepped out from behind it, wiping a very large meat cleaver on his already bloody apron. Vulk was suddenly glad for both the sword at his hip and the staff in his hand.

“Good day to you, Ser,” the butcher spoke as Vulk had barely opened his mouth. “Aye, a gentleman, I see. And you’re from off… aye, I’ve not seen you nor your friends on t’island before. But t’ere’s been no ship t’ port a month or more gone now… how came you good folk t’be here, if’n I may be so bold?” His words were proper enough, but his tone was flat and strangely incurious, his face expressionless.

Vulk hesitated momentarily. Why hadn’t they considered this question before? He’d be inclined to claim his status as a mage and explain that they’d arrived via Nitarn Gate, but the Legate had said there were none on the island. Of course this bruiser might not know that, it was a rather arcane thing for a —

“Ah, you must be t’folk our Lord Charkress sent his men for t’tenday past,” the butcher interrupted Vulk’s thought. “Arrived at the Legate’s own dock, did ye t’en? Have you met our dear Dominus yet? No? Took a wrong turn at his dock, did you? Well, you’ll be meetin’ him soon enough, I warrant, and best of luck to you… t’man’s mad as a hatter!” All of this was delivered in a flat monotone, with barely a pause between thoughts. It made Vulk’s flesh crawl, for some reason.

“Er, yes, we’ve not yet met Legate Charkress,” Vulk played along, since the man seemed happy to provide answers to his own questions. “But why do you say he’s mad?”

A smile, far more creepy than the dead-eyed stare, twisted the man’s lips and Vulk involuntarily took a step back. “Oh, well, he denies our beautiful monument, don’t he? But you’ll see… now if’n you’ll excuse me, tis time t’be closin’ up for t’evening.”

With that the butcher turned and lumbered into his shop, closing the door behind him. It was then that Vulk, turning away, finally got a good look at the various cuts of meat laid out for display. The first thing that caught his attention was the absolute lack of flies, or any other insect or vermin, around the table… and then he realized why…

Erol, at the weapon smith’s table outside the man’s smithy, was having a similar experience. The smith was a man of middle height, well muscled in his upper body, as was natural given his profession… and had the same indifferent affect as the butcher and the alchemist. Erol attempted to engage him in conversation about his weapons, but the man seemed strangely uninterested in either selling his wares or talking about his craft. As Erol moved to pick up a sword the smith suddenly turned on his heel and strode without a word into his shop, closing the door firmly behind him.

Erol barely noticed as he gaped at the weapon in his hand. It was no more than a prop, a toy of tin and wood, painted to look real, at least from a distance. A quick examination of the other items on the table showed that they, too, were fakes. Glancing at the now closed up smithy he realized what had been tugging at the back of his mind ever since he’d approached the place – the forge had been cold. Not smith allowed his forge fires to go out, banking them carefully at night so that they could be easily fanned back to full flame in the morning…

“Vulk,” he said, sotto voce as the three men met agin near the obelisk. “The weapons that smith was displaying are all fakes —“

“Yes, and the “meat” the butcher was selling was fake too,” Vulk replied, equally quietly. “It was all just carved and painted wood! What the Void is going on here?”

“A good question,” Toran snorted. “The alchemist was as fake as your two… as far as I could tell his “potions” were just colored water. Why they’re bothering with such flim-flammery I don’t know. But I suggest we discuss it with the others – as far away from this stone as possible.”

All three glanced at the looming obelisk, looking even more alien as it seemed to swallow the setting sunlight rather than be illuminated by it. They turned without another word and headed down to the quay and the mysterious, but perhaps somewhat less uncanny, ship tied up there.

• • •

While the three men had been examining the obelisk and speaking with, or at least at, the local vendors, Mariala, Devrik and Korwin had made their way down to the docks and the quay where the inexplicably built ship was tied up. A wide gangplank was laid across the gap between stone quay and wooden deck, and a large, well-muscled young man, with a very large club, stood guard. He stared blankly at the three friends as they approached, but hefted his weapon suggestively.

“Excuse me,” Mariala said, stopping directly in front of him and looking up into his ox-like face. “We’ve come from the Legate’s and he wishes us to inspect the ship. He’s considered Hoag’s words, and is thinking it might be time for him to come to town himself, but first he wants to know how sea-worthy this vessel is.” She poured every gram of authority and her skill at rhetoric and persuasion into the words.

The guard stared down at her in bovine incomprehension. “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that m’lady,” he finally said. He had a surprisingly melodious voice she noted in surprise. “But no one’s allow’d on t’ship ‘cept t’work crews. Old Hoag’s orders.” Behind him a score or more of men, and a few women, could be seen moving purposefully about ship doing nautical-type things, at least as far as a Mariala could tell.

No amount of cajolery or persuasion, nor even Korwin’s bribe of an entire Imperial gold crown, could move the man from his steadfast insistence that they could not board without “Old Hoag’s” permission. Devrik was inclined to just take the fool out and board anyway, but the on-going debate had attracted the attention of several other large, rough-looking men, who gathered at the top of the gangplank to stare impassively down at the strangers. It was perhaps too early to start a war…

Mariala shook her head and asked her friend to stand down with a subtle hand signal at her side. Instead, she tried a different tack, asking the man about the mysterious obelisk in the nearby square. His rather vapid expression took on a beatific cast at this change in subject, and he grew almost animated.

“T’obelisk? Why, ‘tis been here since forever, ma‘am… t’legend says t’was here even before t’town, although t’others say t’were brought here from ‘cross the Western Ocean long ago… by a powerful wizard, m’haps by Talorin Silvereye hisself… t’ough m’ pa don’t hold with t’idea his own self.”

As the man spoke Devrik had an increasingly difficult time controlling Brann. He’d had to keep one hand on the dog’s collar as they’d passed through the town, for the hound had had his hackles up and had been growling aggressively at everyone they’d passed. Now, the longer he spent near the guard, his growling was turning almost to a snarl, his fur bristling all over. He lunged forward suddenly, almost pulling Devrik off his feet, and the fire mage was forced to drag him away by main force. Mariala and Korwin followed his retreat, leaving the guard to stare after them, seemingly as unconcerned as ever.

“What is wrong with that dog?” Mariala demanded once they’d moved far enough from the ship for Devrik to calm the animal. “I’ve never seen Brann act like that, except in a fight.”

“Yes, which I think should tell us something,” Devrik agreed, frowning. “You know, it just occurrs to me… do you notice something missing from this town?”

Mariala looked around, but shook her head in puzzlement. Korwin, however, got a look of sudden enlightenment in his eyes.

“We haven’t seen a single dog since we entered this town,” Devrik stated. “Nor a single cat, for that matter. A town, much less a port town, without animals everywhere? That’s just unheard of…”

“And there are no gulls,” Korwin added, frowning. “No birds of any kind, actually, and that’s really unheard of in a port town! Maybe that explains this feeling of… dread… that’s been creeping over me since we entered this town…”

“I’ve been feeling it too,” Mariala agreed. “I find myself getting anxious, almost… paranoid… but there’s nothing I can quite put my finger on. Devrik, are you sensing anything similar?”

Devrik’s frown deepened as he considered the question. He’d had a subliminal sense of something wrong with the town, true. But now that he’d realized it was the lack of animals that had triggered his subconscious alarms he didn’t feel any particular anxiety.

“Intellectually, of course, I’m concerned,” he said after sharing his observation with the others. “But I don’t feel any real anxiety… or any other sort of emotional reaction. Not the type of existential dread you two are describing, anyway.”

“It must be that circlet of psychic shielding you wear,” Mariala said after a moment’s thought. “It’s strong enough to protect you from my own mind control, as we’ve proved, so it must be protecting you from whatever is going on here as well. Be sure you keep it on, just in case.”

Ha! thought Devrik, I haven’t taken it off since I got it, and I’m sure not going to start now. But he just nodded, and knelt to sooth Brann some more. A moment later they were joined by the rest of the team, and they all moved down the docks to an unpeopled area behind some large crates to compare notes.

“And did you notice that the temperature near the obelisk was significantly lower than elsewhere,” Toran concluded, once everyone had shared their observations. “I don’t think there’s any doubt at this point that whatever is going on in this town is uncanny, and that it centers around that accursed rock.”

“Indeed,” said Mariala. “But what do we do now? Even if destroying the thing were an option, and I’m not sure it is, do we have any idea what the result would be?”

“Well, whatever ideas we might I have on the subject, I suggest we discuss them elsewhere,” Devrik urged. “It’s been half an hour, and from what you all describe, and frankly from the way you all look, I don’t want to test the Legate’s theoretical limit of an hour in that thing’s presence.”

“Agreed,” said Vulk. “I’m feeling a bit less anxious, since we left the square, but the dread is far from gone. The effects seemed absent in the east and southeast parts of town, from what both the Legate and the goodwife told us, so perhaps we should head in that direction.”

“And the tavern that this old Hoag rascal runs is on the eastern edge of town,” Erol added. “It’s the most obvious place to investigate next… and honestly, I could use a beer right now.”

“Or some rum,” Korwin muttered as the group turned to make there way in the gathering twilight to Old Hoag’s Tavern.

•• •• ••

The tavern was a large, somewhat ramshackle building, a single story of stone, timber and plaster, with a sagging cupola perched atop it. A fancy mosaic portraying the traditional image of the beautiful Sea Witch was worn but in good condition, inset amongst the cobbles before the wide semicircle of steps leading to the establishment’s entrance. Erol led the way as the group entered the taproom, Devrik bringing up the rear after tying an unhappy Brann firmly to a horse ring outside.

Perhaps a score of locals were gathered in the lamp-lit gloom of the tavern, in a space that could have held three times that number/ The low murmur of their conversation came to a dead stop as the Hand entered, and all eyes turned to follow the strangers as they made their way to the long u-shaped bar that occupied the center of the room. The only sound was the crackling and popping of wood in the large fireplace on the far wall, behind the bar.

Behind the bar was a tall, very large man with long, greasy black hair and an equally greasy, but massive, beard. Both were shot with streaks of white and concealed much of his round face, with the exception of two piercing gray eyes. He had obviously once been a man of impressive built, but the muscle was now mostly run to fat. As the group approached he set down the rag with which he’d been wiping his hands and moved to greet them. Mariala noted that he moved a bit jerkily and with some stiffness… did he suffer from some serious joint pain?

“Good even gentlemen, lady. What kin I get ye?” Hoag’s voice, slightly muffled by his beard, had the faintest buzz to it… as if a bit of phlegm were caught in his throat and was vibrating as the air of his speech moved past it.

Conversation immediately resumed in the rest of the tavern, the patrons returning to quaffing either beer, from pewter mugs, or some brilliant blue liquid from thick glass goblets. As with the town itself, there was an undefinable air of wrongness about the scene, difficult to put into words.

“I’ll have a pint, barkeep,” Erol said, and was seconded somewhat absently by Toran, who was scanning the crowd in the flickering lamp light. He spotted both the butcher and the weapon smith, each sitting alone at separate tables, nursing beers. The alchemist he spotted at a corner table with another man and a woman, engaged in a seemingly desultory conversation.

“Whisky for me,” Devrik growled, and for once his vocal harmonics didn’t seem to even raise an eyebrow.

“Rum, my good man,” Korwin said, trying to project an air of friendly comradeship, and not noticeably making an impression.

“Wine, please,” Vulk ordered, seating himself on a stool at the bar in front of the barkeep. “A hearty red, if you have it, but something lighter will suffice if not.”

“And I’ll try some of that interesting looking blue cordial,” Mariala said with a pleasant smile for the odious-looking man. “What do you have in the way of food, ser? It’s been a long day, and we could use a–“

“No food,” the man interrupted, turning his indifferent gaze on her. “And t’blue is only for islanders, not for pretty noblewomen, nor any other from off.” He turned to a tapped keg and began expertly pouring off beers into pewter mugs, quickly setting six of them onto the counter. “No whiskey, no rum, and no wine. Just beer. T’at’ll be one ‘n two.”

Vulk and Devrik exchanged annoyed glances, but Erol just shrugged and dropped a silver penny and two coppers onto the bar. He hoisted one of the tankards and took a long drink… a bit thin, and more than a little sour, but the alcohol content seemed decent and he’d certainly drunk worse. From the look on his face as he lifted his own mug, Toran likely couldn’t say the same… but then his people were known for their fine brews.

The others reluctantly took their own mugs, and glanced around. Devrik headed over to the weapon smith and seated himself across from the man, who looked at him as expressionlessly as he had Erol earlier. While the fire mage attempted to draw the smith out with talk of his craft or of weapons in general, several of the others tried to engage other citizens – a number of whom appeared to be miners – in conversation. Vulk and Mariala remained at the bar to question their ill-favored host.

“Are you the Hoag in this establishment’s name?” Vulk asked, taking a pull on his beer and barely managing not to spit it back into the mug. He smiled innocently at the looming barkeep and raised a quizzical brow.

“Aye, I’m Wilton Hoag,” the man replied. He made as if to return to the other end of the bar and whatever conversation he’d been carrying on with his cronies there, but Mariala stayed him with a touch to his sleeve. Even his clothes seemed slightly greasy, and she suppressed a shudder.

“We understand you are the guiding light behind the construction of the ship down at the quay,” she said. “We might be interested in booking passage with you, if she will be sailing soon.”

“Ship’s not for passengers,” Hoag said shortly, although he did turn reluctantly back. “Tis meant for t’trade.”

Vulk cleared his own throat in involuntary sympathetic reaction to the continuing buzz in the barman’s voice. “Ah, trade! Well, that’s very interesting… we ourselves own a trading ship, Fortunes Favor, and would be very interested in discussing the possibilities here. Have you done much trading in the past?”

“T’iron mine tis almost played out,” Hoag responded after a long moment, his strangely immobile gaze fixing more intently on his two interlocutors. Only his eyes seemed to have any life. “Trade’s what we need t’ survive, once t’ore’s gone.”

“What will you trade then, if not the iron ore,” Vulk asked, genuinely curious. “This island doesn’t seem to–” Hoag turned and walked to the far end of the bar, collecting mugs from the men there and refilling them. He did not return to Vulk and Mariala.

“So, what did you sense,” Vulk asked his friend in an undertone, once it was clear Hoag had no intention of resuming their conversation. “I have to admit, I couldn’t get anything off the man.”

“Nor I, really,” Mariala admitted. “I sensed no lies, true… but then I didn’t really sense anything at all. Just a sense of… anticipation, maybe? And I could detect no trace of the T’ara about him, or anywhere in this place…. no spells, no enchantments, no illusions.”

After another hour of attempts to get Hoag, or indeed any of his patrons, to talk about the ship, or the obelisk, or anything of substance, the Hand decided to call it a night. A few of the tavern’s clientele had already departed by the time they stepped back out into the dark, narrow street. A mist was beginning to rise, and the air had become cold and clammy.

As they turned to make their way back to the Legate’s manor they quietly discussed what their next move should be. Erol and Devrik were all for waiting for the townsfolk to load the obelisk on the ship, then commandeering it and dumping the damn thing overboard in the deepest water they could find. Korwin was just persuading them that the six of them, even if five of them actually possessed considerably more nautical expertise than they in fact did, they could never operate a ship of that size, when a sharp hiss came from the mouth of an alley to their right.

The narrow space between the two buildings was a darker pit in the already dark night – Osel had already set and Aranda was only just rising, and not yet above the buildings to the east. As they all turned, out of that void and the thickening fog, stepped an ominous figure. Stooped, cloaked in rags and foul-smelling, the dark figure gestured at them to stop, hissing again and then breaking into crazed giggles.

Once he had their attention, however, he became hesitant, seeming ready to bolt if any move was made towards him. But he appeared to gain confidence when no move was made to accost him, and he began to speak.

“Your’re not T’EM, are you? No, not yet… but you be fools t’go into t’at place!” He gestured back toward Old Hoag’s Tavern.

“Kin’t you hear it? T’bug people, buzz, buzz buzz… got t’whole damn town under t’eir spell… but not old Harald… no, not me!” He began to cackle manically, and for a moment Toran thought he wouldn’t stop. But eventually the man regained control and went on.

“ ‘Spect tis ’cause ’m mostly deef in m’ left ear, since t’damn mule kicked me inna head… but I kin still hear ‘em buzz… kin you hear the buzz? Tis the bugs inside ‘em, yes, buzzing bugs inside! ‘N I know where it is, too… under t’ground… where t’ey take t’people, t’ones who come back… different… buzz, buzz, buzzz!

“Don’t go back in t’ere, fools, or t’ey’ll take you under t’ground and you’ll come back different too… buzz, buzzzz, BUZZZZZ!”

With a crazed laugh Harald turned and vanished again into the shadows of the alley behind him.

“What the Void was that all about?” Vulk exploded after a moment of stunned silence.

• • •

Retreating to a sheltered spot within eyesight of the old tavern, but hidden from the sight of any occupants by the dark and fog, the Hand dissected the ramblings of the strange, half-mad Harald. It was clear enough that they needed to explore Hoag’s establishment much more thoroughly, and without the presence of either the owner or his customers.

Within another hour the last of the tavern’s supposed patrons had exited the building, and it was not long after that the last of lights were extinguished. Another turn of the glass, and Toran was kneeling at the front door, his lock pick tools deftly working its mechanism.

“Odd, this lock is very new,” he whispered to Korwin, crouched down beside him while the rest kept a nervous eye on the street. “And quite sophisticated– Gheas’ balls!” His teeth ground in frustration as one of the picks snapped off, jamming itself into the mechanism. Great, that had been his favorite pick, now he’d never get the cursed lock open, not without —

“Don’t you have a magic key that unlocks any door?” Korwin whispered. “Why don’t you—“

“Yes,” snapped Toran in irritation, quickly suppressed. “Sorry, I just prefer to keep in practice by doing this sort of thing myself. However, in this case…” He pulled the key, on its silver chain, from around his neck and held it up to the lock, muttering the activation word. With a >snick< the door swung open into the darkened taproom.

It didn’t take the Hand long to determine that there were no living quarters in the building, and no Hoag, either. Since they hadn’t seen him leave, and there was no other standard exits, he must have departed through some less obvious egress. It didn’t take them long to find it. In the cellar, accessed from the store room, was an area of uprooted stone flooring and a wide hole into darkness.

Devrik left Brann to guard their retreat as one-by-one the Hand descended the sturdy wooden ladder bolted to one wall of hole, down ten meters… but not into total darkness, as they’d first thought. At the bottom of the shaft the walls of natural stone were covered in a faintly luminescent fungus which gave off a bluish-green light. It was dim, but as their eyes adjusted it was enough to see by.

Still, Vulk felt it best to attempt to invoke the Blessing of Kasira, in case the fungal light should give out… he doubted very much that it would be wise to light any illumination of their own down here. There was an odd resistance as he murmured the words of the ritual, a feeling of wrongness, and for a moment he thought his connection to the Immortal Lady might be blocked… but then the strange pearly light of Her sight filled his eyes, and those of his companions.

They were in a smallish chamber, seemingly naturally carved from the living bedrock under the town, and only one exit — to the southwestward, Toran assured them. Careful to move as silently as possible they set off, alert for any sign of old Hoag or his minions. But the passage was short, and after a sharp turn soon debouched into a larger chamber, irregularly shaped but maybe 12 or 15 meters across, in two levels. They had entered on the larger, lower level, about two meters below the upper floor, and the first thing to catch the eye was the far wall, it’s stony surface covered in crude chalk artwork.

The scenes roughly depicted on the wall included stars and planets and esoteric symbols, interspersed with images of human-looking figures being split in half and giant winged insect-things emerging from the husks. At the center was a sketch of what looked like two obelisk-shapes, with a door between them, insect people on one side, humans on the other. Mariala in particular found the images unsettling to view, and she soon looked away.

So she was the first to really look closely at the stone basin in the center of the room. The large square structure was filled with a greenish fluid, in which lay several human skeletons. At first glance they seemed to be dissolving in the liquid, but as she stepped closer for a better look she realized the truth was far more disturbing.

“By the 37 names of Shala,” she gasped, pulling on Devrik’s arm to drag him closer. “I think that the flesh is actually growing onto those bones!”

Startled, Devrik stared down into the basin, and after a moment it was obvious that, indeed, the tissues were knitting themselves together, attaching to the bones at a visible rate.

“But look,” he hissed, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. “There are no organs growing inside the skeletons… it’s all just muscle and skin, just the exterior flesh!”

“This is unholy,” Vulk muttered in disgust as they all gathered around the basin, distracted from the artwork on the walls. Murmurs of agreement met this statement, but it wasn’t clear what they should do about it. Mariala attempted to use a spell of understanding to translate the strange glyphs, but all it gained her was a throbbing headache and an almost overwhelming feeling of dread.

Toran, meanwhile, had turned back to stare at the drawings on the wall, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Maybe those scrawls don’t represent bugs, or whatever, coming out of people,” he said finally. “Maybe they’re putting on the human shapes…”

Pulling their attention away from the gruesome, yet horribly mesmerizing, sight of the forming bodies, the others agreed that the pictographs could be interpreted either way. Devrik was all for destroying the obscenities right then and there, but cooler heads prevailed and he agreed it would be foolish until they knew more of the situation they found themselves in.

“But you can burn them to ash on the way out,” Vulk said grimly to his friend as they moved out of the chamber and into another side passage. “With Kasira’s blessing, and mine!”

The passage twisted and turned, widening in places, the patches and streaks of luminescent fungus adding an eerie counterpoint to the Immortal’s miraculous sight. After about 60 meters Toran, in the lead, held up a hand, gesturing for complete silence. Ahead of them a light could be seen between several pillars of stone as the tunnel opened into another chamber… and voices could be heard.

With great care the group moved forward until they could peer through the narrow gap between stalagnates, into the room, where two men stood near a table piled with severed human limbs and a head or two. Neither man seemed to pay the gruesome sight any attention, apparently engrossed in their conversation. The first man was one Korwin recognized from the tavern earlier, a short, dark fellow who had been drinking alone in a corner. The other was taller, older, and Mariala thought him familiar — until she realized it was his movements she recognized. He had the same stilted, jerky way of moving that Hoad had exhibited.

“Ye say you’ll take us beyond t’stars, to a wonderful world we kin’t imagine,” the first man was saying, in a calm, almost dreamy-sounding voice. “But ye don’t say how… and… you look like Jerald, from down the way… and sound like him… sort of… but you’re not him, are ye?”

“You ask too many questions,” replied the second man, and his voice had the same buzzing under-sound as old Hoag’s. “All will be revealed, soon enough. Do you not trust Hoag? Has he not brought prosperity? Just do as we ask, and come along now with me.”

“Yeah, alright.” For all his questions the first man seemed strangely apathetic about what was going on. Yet he persisted. “But t’at’s another t’ing… Hoag… used ta be t’town drunk, pretty much, weren’t he? Now he’s running everyt’ing… now why ain’t I t’ought about t’at before? I don’t–”

He never finished the thought, for his companion had grabbed a large blade from the nearby table and struck off his head in a single powerful sweep. The look on the poor fellow’s face as his head bounced and rolled across the stony floor was as placid as ever, Erol noted, not even a bit of surprise in it.

“You are resistant,” buzzed the remaining man, or whatever he was. “Which is annoying, but also valuable… fortunately, all we need is your brain. Now come along.”

He reached up then and tugged at the back of his neck… his skin split suddenly, and he began to pull it off, his hideous true form wriggling out of the human suit it had worn. It resembled something between a fleshy insect and an animate fungus. It’s head consisted of scores of pyramidal structures, with two elongated antennae-like growths at either side. Bat-like wings stretched out behind and above, as if in pleasure at release from a long confinement. It reached down for the human head it had just severed, picking it up in one of its four crab-like pincers/hands. The thing dropped its human disguise over a lower arm, then grabbed ahold of the decapitated body with a third claw and proceeded to drag the corpse out the chamber’s western exit, stumping along on strange, splayed feet.

For several seconds the Hand sat frozen in place, too horrified but what they had just witnessed to react. What were these creatures? They were not even remotely like anything any of them had ever seen or heard of, and certainly never dreamed of. Even in the horrifying chaos of the demon’s mind, when it had ejected him from his original body, Erol hadn’t felt such disgust as he did now.

“Whatever those things are,” Devrik said at last, his rasping whisper furious, “we cannot let them leave this island!”

“By Kasira, you’re right,” Vulk growled. “Of course! The ship isn’t for “trade” or any such thing – it’s so these vile… things… can spread out across our world. We can’t allow them to get a foothold beyond this island!”

“Nor keep their foothold here,” Erol agreed. “But we have our work cut out for us… how many of them are there? How strong are they? If they’ve… consumed… the whole town, that’s what? 600 people? I assume the Norn would not have sent us against them if we stood no chance, but —“

“I don’t care how many of them there are,”Devrik snarled. “We’ll burn them out like a hornets nest, even if we have to burn the tree down to do it!”

Thinking back to another poor village that had suffered the wrath of Devrik, Mariala looked a little askance at her friend but said nothing as they cautiously made their way into the recently vacated chamber. This was smaller than the first chamber, empty save for the charnel table, a second table covered in various jars and strange implements, and two stone barrels full of offal. A large glowstone lamp, of an odd and unfamiliar design, sat on the second table and gave dim illumination to the area. Its rays glinted feebly off the surface of a dark pool of water along the north wall.

The room had two exits, the western one through which the alien had carried its victim, and an eastern one. From the latter
could faintly be heard what seemed to be whispers, as of a number of people speaking at once. The whispers were unintelligible, the language (or languages) spoken, if any, uncertain. Toran moved silently through the doorway, battle-axe at the ready; Mariala and Korwin followed almost as quietly behind him.

The short corridor opened into another irregularly shaped chamber of about the same size, with three large alcoves. Directly ahead stone shelving led, stair-like, up to a large area where an incongruous rug, of very expensive-looking weave, lay before an alter of sorts, upon which a full human skeleton was laid out. Another pool of dark water filled most of the southern alcove, and some sort of alchemical setup was pumping a blood-like substance into it. That was all Toran had time to take in before his attention was arrested by the source of the whispering…

Three… things, was the only word for them… hovered near each alcove. They looked like nothing so much as columns of rippling, leathery, purple-black flesh, covered in scores of muttering mouths. The mouths varied in size, from child-like to gaping maws that wouldn’t look out of place on a silverback bear, each filled with razor-sharp teeth and spewing forth unintelligible gibberish. Long, almost prehensile tongues flickered in and out of each orifice, almost as if tasting the air. But most disturbing was the inability to see how the creatures actually moved… the lower portion of the thing simply seems to vanish in a shifting play of impossible angles that hurt the eye to even try to make sense of.

A wave of horror and nausea washed over Toran, momentarily freezing him in place. The things had no eyes – Gheas help us, only mouths – yet they seemed to sense the Khunadari’s intrusion into the room, perhaps through those flicking tongues. He had no time to consider the matter, for the nearest one whirled toward him in some way impossible for his eyes to precisely see. Snapping teeth were almost upon him when his highly trained reflexes kicked in, and he swung his battle-axe up in a tremendous blow that cut deep into the monstrous flesh, slicing through several of its mouths. With ululating shrieks from fifty mouths the thing writhed away, then instantly twisted back to a attack anew. Toran rolled under the twisting form, barely avoiding several mouths, with a bellowed “SHIT!”

Unfortunately, this took him deeper into the chamber, and Korwin, following close behind, found himself almost immediately threatened by the second Gibbering Horror. Although he had his cutlass drawn and ready, the water mage was entirely unprepared for the horror that was suddenly upon him, and his defensive swing sliced only air. One of the hideous mouths managed to latch onto his forearm, savaging his flesh and sending his blade clattering to the stone floor. With a scream of pain and horror, Korwin managed to pull his arm from the ripping mouth and roll away before any others could latch on to other of his body parts.

In the doorway Mariala stood monetarily frozen in horror herself at the hideous beings attacking her friends. For an instant her mind was simply blank, unable to process what she was seeing. But as Toran swung his axe around for a second blow, dealing another deep wound to the one he faced, she pulled herself together and began to cast her Fire Nerves spell. Shaken as she was, it was difficult to create the Form properly… but she had to… these abominations must be destroyed!

As she poured Principle into the Form she felt the purity of her rage fuel the spell – the blast of invisible energy that left her hands was stronger than almost any she’d ever delivered before! All three of the horrors shuddered as the spell hit them, and their weirdly harmonic shrieks of pain were so loud they threatened to burst Umantari and Khundari eardrums… but the things didn’t stop. At most the spell seemed to have merely slowed their writhing attacks slightly.

Cursing under her breath, Mraiala was preparing to try again when Devrik, finally realizing that something was going on, appeared at her side. He had heard Toran’s bellow in the other room and rushed in prepared for – anything but what he actually saw. The eye-numbing horror shook him, but like Mariala he felt a surge of rage that such things should even exist. Almost reflexively he summoned the Form to create an Orb of Vorol. Unfortunately, he was perhaps more shaken than he’d realized, and the rage didn’t help… it wasn’t until he’d committed to pouring his Principle into it that he realized the Form was flawed…

He had only a fraction of a second to react. It was already too late to abort, but he couldn’t allow the spell to misfire wildly, not with his friends, especially Mariala, so close! Even as the flames erupted outward from him in every direction he instinctively called on his innate pyrokinetic power to gather them back into himself, channeling the heat through his own body… before the power could cook him from the inside he reached back to grab the hilt of his sword and channeled the energy into the blade. As he pulled it from its sheath the battle-sword burst into flames.

As Mariala unleashed a second blast of searing nerve pain on the alien horrors, Devrik leapt past her to engage the third creature which was now bearing down on her. His flaming blade, almost pulsing with heat and light, came down on the thing’s “head” and split it cleanly in two. The halves writhed and twisted on the floor for a moment, then seemed to turn at some impossible angle and simply vanish.

At the same moment Korwin, having summoned his Frost Blade, plunged it deep into the monstrosity spinning and snapping before him, and ripped upward with all his strength. Like its “brother,” the thing’s halves writhed, twisted, and vanished at some eye-breaking right angle to reality.

Seconds later Toran, dodging and leaping to avoid the slavering mouths, delivered a third powerful blow to his opponent, and the thing finally collapsed to the ground. Like the others it twitched for a moment, then seemed to twist sideways out of this reality. With a great gusted sigh of relief the Dwarf leaned shakily on his battle-axe and looked at his equally shocked-looking friends.

“What in all the Immortals’ cursed Void are we dealing with?! I thought that insect-fungus thing was horrible, but this… this is just… wrong!”

• • •

Meanwhile, Erol had quickly decided that pursuing, capturing, and questioning the vile, murdering insect-creature was their best bet for gaining some intelligence on their enemies. As Vulk and Devrik looked around the chamber where the murder had occurred, Erol took a moment to find that space within himself where time ceased to mean anything. He still couldn’t summon it reliably, but he was definitely getting better at it. He just had to find… yes, there, and with a slight twist… time slowed to molasses for him, and he smiled.

Passing between the two barrels of offal the former gladiator stepped cautiously in to the next chamber. It was about the same size as the previous one, but bare of anything except a single table to the northwest, laden with scrolls, jars, instruments, and another lone glowstone lamp of alien design. No sign of his quarry. On the western wall two closed doors of what looked to be bronze-bound ironwood were separated by a wide stalagnate, and to the east the only other exit was blocked by a mass of thick greenish-gray webbing.

It must have gone through one of those sets of doors, then, Erol thought, but before he could move more than a step or two into the room, a scraping sound from the shadows on the north side of the room brought him to full alertness. As he froze, three shapes moved into the dim light cast by the lamp, and it was at that moment he realized the holy sight granted by Kasira through Vulk had left him at some point. In the shadows he initially thought the creatures were hounds… they were the right size for large hunting dogs, had four legs and a muzzle of sorts… of course they were a bluish-black, with leathery skin instead of fur and an eerie blue light seemed to burn within them, revealed in cracks and seams of the dark skin.

Then the one nearest to him and opened its mouth to howl… and the entire “muzzle” split into four curling triangles of wet flesh, lined with scores of tiny, very sharp-looking teeth and glowing blue slaver drooled out to spatter on the floor. The sound it made was a hideous, high pitched sound, a terrible cross between a wolf’s howl of agony and a human child’s shriek of excruciating pain. Even in Erol’s temporally altered state the thing seemed to move too quickly, and it sprang toward him, hideous mouth agape, the other two close behind.

Moving even faster, Erol hurled his net at the leading beast, and the perfectly timed throw entangled the creatures limbs, bringing it crashing to the ground. Erol muttered the invocation and the net’s magic activated, freezing itself solid and imprisoning the alien hound in its now-immobile folds. The second creature leapt over its comrade, only to take Erol’s trident full in the face – as he tossed it aside one of its mouth flaps ripped off entirely, and it writhed on the ground in pain and fury.

The third hell-hound was close on fellow’s heels, but chose to go low rather than leap. It’s horrifying maw opened to rip out the human’s stomach, but the shaft of Erol’s trident, on the back stroke from having hurled aside the previous beast, took it under the chin and sent it, too, flying ass-over-tea-kettle.

As the first creature struggled to escape the icy net and its pack mates scrambled back to their feet, Erol reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out a glass sphere. Imbued with the power of the spell Blast of Norinos, the sphere should have send shards of solid light slicing into its targets. But something went wrong, whether an improper original casting, or the strange, alien energy of the caverns. It exploded too soon. The shards of light did indeed strike the hounds, wounding two and incapacitating the third, but several narrowly missed Erol as well, and one sliced a deep gouge into his left shoulder.

Wincing, he hefted his trident, preparing for the next attack – only to find all three beasts suddenly cocooned in glowing bands of sticky webbing. Glancing over his shoulder he grinned and saluted Vulk, still in the room behind him, his staff held at a jaunty angle. The cantor grinned back and started forward, only to stop, eyes widening in surprise.

“Lookout!” Vulk screamed, and aimed his Staff at the fourth hound that was leaping from the shadows for Erol’s throat. The ex-gladiator whirled and crouched, bringing his trident up with a word of power – only to have nothing happen. Fortunately Vulk’s volly of Stavin’s Arrows took the alien hound full in the chest, ripping its hideous flesh apart, interrupting its momentum, and sending it straight onto the tines of the upturned trident.

“Nicely done, my friend,” Erol said, laughing as he wrenched his weapon out of the dead thing’s body. “Now help me dispatch these others you’ve so handily bundled up… and let’s keep an eye out for any others. And speaking of others, where are our others?”

“Um, can you slow down, Erol?” Vulk asked, straining to follow the rush of words from his friend. “You sound like a hyper chipmunk.” Erol paused, letting himself come out of his hyper speed place, and repeated his question at a more normal rate.

“Ah, back in the room on the other side,” Vulk replied, unsheathing his sword and running it through the head (and presumably the brain, but who knew?) of the nearest hound-thing. “We heard Toran shout, and Mariala scream, so Devrik rushed to help. I was about to follow when I saw your situation, and decided I couldn’t leave you alone, not knowing how many of these things there were.”

“Hmmm. Well, I appreciate the assist, Vulk. That last one might have had me, if not for your warning.” He was pretty sure he could’ve handled it, but no point in tell his friend that. “I suppose I’ve lost that bug-man by now… we might as well go make sure the others don’t need our help.”

• • •

On joining the others in the eastern room Vulk was just as glad to have missed the gibbering horrors his friends described. The alien dog-things that had attacked Erol were disturbing enough, as was the human-skin-wearing insect-man; he didn’t need more horrors in his head. A quick search of the room and its alcoves revealed nothing particularly useful. In the largest of the alcoves a still set-up seemed to be being used to create the blue beverage they’d witnessed some people drinking in the tavern earlier that evening, but despite the slight aroma of mint no one was tempted to try it.

The Hand soon moved on to the room where the bodies of the alien hounds still lay on the floor, their blue ichor cooling around them. However strange and disturbing they might be, at least they appeared to be fully in this reality. Whether or not they belonged here was another question.

“And speaking of reality,” Devrik said quietly to Vulk as they examined the table and its strange contents. “Do you feel it? That sense that reality isn’t quite… right?”

“Yes, I feel it,” Vulk replied, equally quietly. “I felt something like it, but not nearly so strongly… or wrongly… in those alternate realities we visited with the Vanguard. And you may have noticed that the holy sight from Kasira has ceased, well before the usual time. I think, wherever we are, it’s not entirely underneath the village of Arapet… but not wholly somewhere else, either.”

Devrik nodded at this confirmation, and then shook his head ruefully. He’d entirely failed to notice that the special dark-defying eyesight Vulk often granted them had vanished. He supposed he’d have noticed if they’d been in full darkness, but still… he just tended to become very focused on his goals, blocking out everything else, that was all. He wasn’t really unobservant.

A few minutes later this view was again challenged when he prepared to open one of the two doors in the western wall, after Toran had determined they were not locked. They had determined that the webs blocking the northern exit were almost impossible to cut, and the strands seemed impervious to flame. The two sets of double doors seemed their only option forward.

“Wait,” Mariala now hissed as he prepared to slowly open the rightmost door. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

He paused, as did all the others, straining to hear. Yes, there were definitely sounds coming from beyond the door… both sets of doors, actually. Ears pressed to cracks, the sound resolved itself into voices – human voices. Screaming in terror, bellowing in rage, pleading for help, pleading for mercy, and some begging for death. Gesturing the others back, Devrik slowly cracked the door, inching it open until he could slip through. Struck by a sudden and almost overpowering premonition, Mariala slipped in behind him, urgently gesturing for the others to follow.

Any sound the group might have made in entering was entirely drowned out by the cacophony of voices crying, screaming, sobbing and bellowing. The heart wrenching pleas washed over Devrik like an ocean breaker, even as the horror in front of him pulled him under like a rip tide. The others stood rooted in shock and disbelieve as well, but it was Devrik who saw red.

The far wall of the kidney-snapped chamber, the largest they’d yet encountered, was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of some grayish alien metal. On the shelves were a hundred or more canisters of bronze and glass, each one set atop a mechanical device with a small grill at the front… and each one contained a human brain, floating in a greenish fluid that bubbled almost merrily with aeration. That each of those brains was also fully aware was made gut-wrenchingly obvious as the group realized the legion of voices were coming, individually, from the grills attached to the mechanical base of each cylinder.

Three of the insetoid-fungal creatures occupied the room, apparently oblivious to the almost deafening noise of their victims’ cries. Two seemed to be monitoring the various canisters, move about and reading strange symbols that flashed across screens next to each grill and marking them on metallic slates held in one claw. The third was a little apart, bent over a table where the head of the villager they’d seen murdered was set in clamps. The top of the man’s skull had been removed and the hideous creature was just lifting the brain out … a canister, its top off, waited to one side…

Mariala’s horrified gaze was torn away from the gruesome operation by the feral growl that came from Devrik. His face was white with rage, and as she stared at him his expression hardened with descion. She grabbed him by the arm, his muscles as unyielding as steel beneath her hand, and whispered frantically into his ear.

“Devrik, no! We– we might be able to save them! Maybe the– the procedure– can be reversed! Those poor people are still alive! You cannot just —“

“Can… I… Not?” he growled.

He pulled away from her, lifting his arms, hands held slightly apart. This time his rage was utterly cold and fully controlled. The Form was geometric perfection, and when he poured the Principle into it it glowed hot and pure. Between his palms a spark flared and grew into a swirling ball of flame. With a gesture finality he hurled the fireball at the center of the racks of brain-filled canisters, where it exploded with incredible force. His pyrokinetic ability seized the expanding flames and fanned them, spreading them out to either side until he entire wall was engulfed. The fluids in the canisters boiled, the glass shattered, and the entire structure came down in ruin. The voices fell silent.

Devrik had no concern for the alien monsters in the room – there’d be time for them shortly – but Mariala, when she realized the futility of trying to stop her friend, had taken thought for them. She had readied her Fire Nerves spell, and just as Toran and Erol raised cross-bow and longbow she unleashed it. Unfortunately, she was both unnerved by the horror around her and furious with her friend, and she failed to notice the flaw in her Form. The feedback energy washed over her in agonizing pain and flared away from her in all directions. Devrik, Erol and Toran, closest to her, fell to their knees with shocked gasps. But she had managed, in the last instant, to contain most of the wild power within her own body, and her friends suffered only the nimbus of it, and correspondently mild pain.

Vulk stared in shock as four of his friends collapsed suddenly to the floor. Mariala was completely unconscious, but the others seemed only dazed, if in some pain. He rushed forward, dropping to one knee beside Mariala. Devrik staggered back to his feet nearby, clutching the door behind him to steady himself.

“Her Fire Nerves,” he gasped through clenched teeth. “I think it was… a backfire… she took… the worst of it…herself, I think…” Aware that they still had enemies at hand, and no doubt highly enraged ones by now, he tried to pull his battle-sword from its sheath, but his hands seemed not to want to obey him.

Vulk bent his head, laying his hands on Mariala’s head, invoking the healing power of his Immortal Patron… and got nothing. As he’d come to suspect, this place interfered with his connection to Kasira, and his holy powers were crippled, if not entirely blocked. Fortunately, they weren’t the only resource he had to call on, and he surged back to his feet…

Korwin, while concerned at the collapse of his friends, was more focused on the alien monstrosities that Devrik’s fireball had signally failed to kill. The “surgeon” had been caught in the edge of the flames, true, but didn’t seem seriously damaged. The other two had escaped entirely unscathed, and all three were now shrieking what were no doubt foul alien imprecations at the intruders in their nasty buzzing language. The two nearer creature moved with astonishing speed toward the group of humans, with the injured third slower, but not far behind.

Nicely lined up, Korwin thought with a savage grin as he unleashed the Breath of Arandu. A cone of pure arctic cold blasted forth from his outstretched hands to engulf all three of the sprinting aliens. It stopped them in their tracks, and the two in the lead collapsed to the ground, clearly quite dead in an instant. The third, already singed by fire, now enervated with cold, staggered to one knee and scrabbled at its waist for some metallic artifact hung there…

Before it could utilize the device, whatever it was, Vulk rammed his sword clean through the thing’s skull. He’d been able to get close enough thanks to the burns on the creature’s left side which had apparently partially blinded whatever sensory organs it had there. Surprisingly little resistance for a skull, Vulk thought, as he pulled his blade free. Not wishing to use his own clothes, and given that the alien wore none, he was forced to forgo wiping the almost clear ichor off his blade. With a grimace of distaste Vulk decided he’d just carry the weapon unsheathed for the moment…

It took several minutes for Mariala to come around, and a dose of Vulk’s psionic healing touch before she was fully on her feet again. He applied the same healing to Devrik and Korwin, since they were trying to minimize the use of their Baylorium… they were still not home yet… and his prayers remained ineffective. The worst of the wounds and injuries were minimized, although far from eliminated, but their fatigue remained. Still, everyone felt better for his efforts.

Mariala and Devrik managed to avoid one another for a time, until he called her over to the north side of the room. There, in a large alcove, was a pit – who knew how deep? – and it was almost overflowing with the mutilated bodies of dead villagers, all with the tops of their craniums missing. And their brains, of course.

“Look at that, and tell me you really think there was a way to reverse what those creatures did to these poor souls,” he said grimly. “Or to that sorry sod.” He gestured at the nearby table, overturned and singed, with the head still firmly held in its clamps, filmed-over eyes staring blankly at nothing. His brain was nowhere in sight. “What I did was a mercy, and set a terrible wrong as much right as it was possible for us to do.”

“Maybe,” Mariala said after staring into the pit for a time. “And maybe not. But we’ll never know, because you acted precipitously and on pure emotion. You can rationalize it now, after the fact – and you may well be right – but even if we had eventually found that there was no way to return those souls to their bodies, you could have… dispatched… them then. And if there had been a way… I can’t help but think of that basin and the bodies growing in it… but too late now…”

Devrik was silent for a moment in turn. “You’re right,” he finally said. “I did act on… instinct, I’d say, not just impulse… and I still believe it was the right thing to do. If we’d fought those things – and whatever things are yet to come – and failed, not only would we likely be facing the same fate as those lost souls, there would then be no one left to deliver them. Or us. You heard them, begging for death.”

“Yes, some were begging for death,” Mariala sighed. “And some were begging for mercy, and for help. Did you not hear those, as well?” She held up a hand to forestall his response. “I know you are not a wanton killer, Devrik; that you’re a good and decent man, and you feel deeply. I just wish you would think deeply before you react in these situations… you can always unleash a fireball, but you can never take one back.”

Devrik grunted a short laugh. “Ha! Yes, Raven has said something similar to me, more than once. But I don’t know if I can change my basic nature, Mariala.”

“Perhaps not,” Mariala laughed ruefully. “And I can’t do it for you… at least not while you wear that circlet.” She smiled to indicate it was a joke, and Devrik chuckled politely… although he didn’t find it an amusing jest. “But can you at least promise to try? Occasionally? Once in awhile?”

With a diffident shrug Devrik turned back to the rest of the group, and Mariala walked beside him.

• • •

A gate of steel blocked the northeast exit from the brain chamber, and no amount of effort on Toran’s part, not even his reluctant use of his magic key, could open it. In the end, the party decided to continue through the southeastern exit. Almost immediately the path split, the left-hand corridor winding up a flight of shallow steps toward a relatively bright glow just out of sight; the right-hand passage seemed to stay on level, but lead into darkness and silence. The left was the obvious choice, and as the group reached the top of the climb they peered out into a large cavern of new horrors.

Roughly circular in shape, 30 or 40 meters across and 15 meters high, two stalagnates rose up (and dropped down) from the center of the chamber. The pillars and walls were all lined with a pulsating, sickly green fungus, like fine fur, that gave off a nauseating glow. Strips of the stuff criss-crossed the floor, and nestled into the fungus are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of leathery-looking eggs. Each about twice the size of a coconut.

Two particularly large insect-fungus creatures wandered about the room, tending to the nest in some fashion, or perhaps simply guarding it. A third creature, the largest they’d yet seen, sat a t a table or desk in an alcove nearer the tunnel entrance, and Vulk had the odd feeling the creature was writing… reports perhaps?

As the group surveyed this fresh horror and considered its dire meaning, Vulk once again attempted an invocation of his goddess, this time seeking to bring Her luck to their aid. But if anything, his connection to Kasira seemed even more tenuous than before… his silent prayers brought no response. Retreating back down the tunnel a bit, the Hand briefly discussed their options.

“I assume you have no objections to my frying this nest?” Devrik whispered to Mariala.

She grimaced and waved away any suggestion of conflict. “Incinerate them all, with my good will. If those are the eggs of these horrible things we can NOT let even a single one survive.”

“Are you going to going to be able to cast your go-to spell, Mariala?” Toran asked diffidently. His brush with her Fire Nerves had been brief and light, he’d been assured after the fact, but if that had been “light” he never wanted to feel the full effect.

“Stand in back of me, if you’re worried about it,” Mariala snapped. Damn, but this place was getting on her nerves. She was tired, drained and… “freaked out,” as she’d once heard Blue Flame say. But she knew her limits, and she wasn’t at them yet. “Sorry, Toran… but yes, I can control it, I promise.”

And she did more than control it a few minutes later when she launched the Hand’s attack. The energy that flowed from her hands was as strong as any she’d previously channeled, perhaps fueled by her determination to rid the world of these abominations that, as the Norn had said “should not be.” All three of the insect-things went down buzzing and shrieking in pain, at least momentarily…

Devrik’s fireball, following close on Mariala’s opening attack, was also one of the most powerful he’d ever cast, perhaps even more so than the one in the brain chamber. It burst against the pillars in the center of the room, starting a conflagration of burning fungus, eggs, and the two adult aliens who had been in their midst. Hardly recovered from the nerve attack, their buzzing shrieks intensified and then quickly faded to silence as they collapsed into piles of flaming fungus-flesh.

The other creature, who had been at the desk, was also caught by the fire ball, but only the very edge of it. It staggered out of the flames toward them in a towering rage, and a wave of intense horror and almost paralyzing fear swept over the Hand. Only Devrik, with the psychic protection of his Circlet of Peace, was spared the full brunt of the psychic attack. Toran was firing his cross-bow as the wave of terror swept over him and his hands spasmed, sending the bolt wild, to vanish into the flames behind his target.

Erol’s hands also began to shake as pulled back on his longbow… and the bowstring snapped! One end whipped across his right cheek, leaving a bloody furrow, and his shaft clattered to ground a meter away. Then the creature was upon him. Its four claws flailed madly, and at more than one target – the first Erol blocked with his longbow itself, and the second he dodged by a hair’s breadth.

But the third and fourth claws struck at Mariala. She managed to deflect one with her dagger, but the other bit deep into the flesh of her right thigh and she screamed in pain as she staggered back, the leg nearly giving out beneath her. She scrambled away from the enraged alien, holding one hand over the gushing wound.

Devrik moved to her aid, but at that moment a second of the large creatures loomed up on the group’s right, apparently having been in a part of the room hidden from their vantage point. Its clawed attacks were less wild than its fellows, and as usual, the fire mage counterattacked. His battle-sword inflicted a wound to the thing’s analog of a thigh, mirroring Mariala’s wound. He dodged the alien’s second attack, and evaded the third, but the fourth claw caught him a solid blow to the head and he went down, dazed and almost unconscious.

‘Well that’s not good,” Mariala muttered to herself, pausing before she reached the relative safety of the tunnel. The first monstrosity had moved to follow her, but Erol attacked with his freezing net, entangling several of its limbs. Before he could utter the invocation word, however, its own counterattack raked his side, shredding his armor and leaving two deep furrows in his abdomen. Between the on-going psychic assault and the shock of the wound, he went down like a felled tree.

Toran in turn leapt in to defend his fallen friend, and his battle-axe cut easily through the alien flesh, or whatever it was, taking off one of the thing’s claws. It shrieked in pain and fury, and before it could recover Korwin was driving it back with his freshly summoned Frost Blade. Toran used the diversion to drag Erol back toward the tunnel, where Mariala grabbed him. This freed the Khundari to leap back to the fight in time to block the second creature’s attempt to finish off the dazed Devrik .

Toran’s battle-axe was a blur of motion, blocking the enraged alien’s every attack and allowing Vulk to pull the fire mage back toward safety as well. Then, one claw slipped past his defense and tore into the Dwarf’s side, between the pieces of his armor, and burrowed into his flesh, twisting and tearing. Sudden bloodloss and shock sent Toran tumbling onto darkness… the last thing he saw was Grover, leaping over him to land on the alien’s grotesque head…

Vulk saw Toran go down as he fished the vial, identical to the ones they all wore, on its steel chain from around Devriks neck. With a frantic curse he twisted the stopper from the brass-and-crystal vial and poured its contents unceremoniously down his friend’s throat. As the fire mage gasped and choked his way back to full awareness Vulk reached for his sword and prepared to protect Toran… but Korwin was already standing over their fallen friend, holding off the aliens with his shimmering blade of mystic ice. His fury drove them back a few steps, allowing Vulk to grab the Khundari and drag him back to the other wounded.

Erol, having come around on his own, was tossing back a dose of his own activated Baylorium, feeling the healing power surge through his body. He staggered to his feet as a wounded Grover returned to crawl into his pack. He wanted desperately to check on his friend, but seeing Korwin fighting alone he chose to rejoin the fray. And just in time, as one of the alien claws shattered the water mage’s Frost Blade, nearly ripping his hand off in the process.

A woozy Devrik was suddenly at Erol’s side, as he pulled the dazed Korwin back into Mariala’s waiting grasp. But as powerful as activated Baylorium is, it’s not instantaneous, and Devrik was still semi-stunned himself — which perhaps explains why he again counterattacked. This time he was knocked fully unconscious, and if not for a temporally sped-up Erol and a dagger-wielding Mariala he might well have died in that burning cavern.

But his two friends managed to hold off the aliens and pull him back. With everyone now within the tunnel, Vulk used the Staff of Summer to seal the entrance with an ever-thickening mass of glowing, sticky webs. The two aliens tore at them in fury, but even their great strength found it hard going, and the clinging strands soon slowed them to almost a standstill.

This gave the Hand at the breather they needed to get more Baylorium down the most severely injured and rubbed into the worst of the open wounds. Toran’s injuries were by far the most serious, his gut wound deep and, without the magical aid of Draik’s elixir, almost certainly fatal. Even after forcing the Khundari to ingest his activated Baylorium and applying it topically into the wound itself, Vulk found his patient slipping deeper into shock. It was only after an application of his own psionic healing touch that Toran finally began to come around.

While Vulk tended to the critically wounded Dwarf, he was unable to keep any of his other patients down and resting, as they should be. Instead, as soon as his Baylorium had him feeling halfway functional again, Devrik called Korwin to him, and began whispering a plan into his ear. Korwin began to smile and nod… while Mariala and Vulk tended to the wounded Toran, and Erol saw to Grover’s injuries , the two slipped back down the passage.

Stepping up to the semi-translucent plug of webbing with which Vulk had blocked the passageway, Korwin cast his spell of Strands of Lakmira into the chamber beyond, where the flammable strands expanded to fill as much of the space as possible, incidentally ensnaring the two aliens, who had just freed themselves from Vulks webs. The Strands almost instantly burst into flame, and Devrik again focused his pyrokinesis to fan those flames to even greater intensity. The screams of the burning creatures quickly faded away, leaving only the roar of the flames as they utterly sterilized the alien nest.

• • •
With the conflagration burning behind them and all other passages leading to dead-ends, the Hand was forced to reconsider the northern routes, blocked though they were by steel gate and impenetratable webbing. Toran again bent to the task of figuring out the locking mechanism on the gate, with most of his friends in a semicircle behind him – ostensibly to observe, but mainly to avoid looking at the still smoldering rubble of shattered canisters and smashed brains.

Vulk, however, decided to take another try at cutting through the strange greenish-gray webbing that blocked the exit from the anteroom. To his surprise, his blade now cut through the strands as if they were the gossamer they appeared to be. He hacked away for a moment, but after he’d cleared perhaps two feet of the blockage he again found the webs to be like springy steel. Examining his blade for any damage, he noticed the ichor from the creature he’d killed earlier was now cleaned from the metal… and sudden inspiration struck.

He quickly ducked back into the brain room and plunged his sword into one of the alien corpses, coating it again in ichor and ignoring the startled, bemused stares of his friends. Toran was not at all displeased when most of his audience chose to follow the cantor back into the audience chamber… maybe now he could get somewhere with this cursed lock… he was so focused on the seemingly impossible mechanism that it took two tries for Mariala to pull his attention away.

“Forget the lock, Toran,” she said once he looked up at her. “Vulk has discovered that the ichor of these monstrosities on a blade makes any weapon able to slice through the webs blocking the other entrance.”

Toran was divided between annoyance and relief as he whacked the nearest corpse several times with his battles-axe and stalked into the other room just in time to cleave away the last of the blocking strands from the passageway. He led the way up the wide corridor, glaring at the other side of the steel gate as they passed it. Just beyond the gate the way opened out into… something truly strange.

It was an immense cavern, larger by far than the ones they’d just passed through, and made of a dark, almost black stone flecked with embedded crystals of a color so alien the eye almost failed to register it. The closest Toran’s brain could come in trying to make sense of it was a sort of deep ultraviolet… although it was nothing like that. Shying away from the crystals, he noticed the stone walls had veins of dark, dark green just beneath the surface – just like the stone of the obelisk in the town above.

The cave stretched out in either direction into darkness, but almost as disturbing as the crystals was the vast , dark underground sea to their right. Its waves lapped sluggishly at the cavern floor and at the foot of one side of a wide flight of stairs that led up to an opening in the far wall of the cavern. That opening was an enormous porch of dark stone, with two doors of age-blackened ironwood set into the walls at either side. In the center of the space stood an obelisk of black stone, a seeming twin to the one in Fisherman’s Square.

But this obelisk seemed almost alive, somehow… coruscating ribbons of sickly green light arced out from the pillar to the walls of the porch, rising slowly up the column to vanish into the darkness above, like some horrible version of St. Hakir’s Fire seen in the rigging of ships at sea sometimes. The eerie silence of the display was almost as unnerving as the twisting bands of energy themselves.

There was a blurred line of demarcation between the cavern the Hand now stood in and the darker one before them. The eye had a difficult time focusing on that line, seeming to simply slide away from it if one tried to focus too long on the shifting realities of where one stone began and another ended. And standing near that shifting border, the growing sense of “otherness” that had been growing in them all seemed to have reached its peak.

“I think if we step over into that cavern,” Vulk said at last, “we will really be… somewhere else. I have no desire to do so, but I don’t see what choice we have.”

“None at all,” agreed Devrik. “I have no doubt that this the source of the… alien incursion… we face.”

“I think,” said Toran slowly, “that if we can destroy that obelisk, the one in Arapet Town will also be destroyed, or at least made powerless. We can only hope it thereby breaks this unholy connection between our world and… whatever that it is.” He gestured at the dark, glittering cavern and black, alien sea.

There was general agreement on this theory, but a strange reluctance to actually cross over to the other side. Everyone seemed content to consider various plans for bringing down the obelisk without actually getting close to it. But eventually they were forced to take the fateful step… Toran was the first to cross over, and as he did his stomach did a sudden flip-flop. Gravity seemed significantly lighter, the air smelled, even tasted, odd… and in some indefinable way everything felt gut-wrenchingly alien. And alien in a way that none of the alternate realities they’d visited on Areth had.

Once everyone had crossed over, they wasted no time in putting their plan into action. Toran took the enchanted rope and looped it over the monolith, pulling it tight about a third of the way down the column. He had been worried about the ribbons of energy, but they seemed not to affect, nor be affected by, him at all. Once the rope was in place everyone grabbed on, and Korwin generated a sheet of ice across the floor of the porch in front of the stone…

They’d all been worried that their spells might not work in this alien place, and indeed the connection to the T’ara did seem… attenuated. But like this alien place bleeding over into their reality, some part of their native realm seemed to bleed over here as well. Reciprocity seemed a universal trait, thankfully. Korwin had had to focus a bit harder, and the Form took a little longer to build, but the Principle was there, and it flowed into the Form as it always had.

With the porch made as frictionless as possible, the Hand put all their combined strength into toppling the alien monument. The strain was so great that for a moment Toran feared the enchanted rope might actually break before the stone fell. But in the end it was the mortals who were forced to give up. “There is simply no way I can see to move this thing,” he said in frustration. “It’s as melded to this rock as strongly as I am when I use the Joining of Merkünon. And yet I sense no magic about this at all.”

“Nor I,” agreed Mariala. “We’ve cast Detect Magic, we’ve tried counter-spells, we’ve tried destructive spells… nothing seems to work. Either their magic is so alien to ours we can’t recognize it as such, or they’re as technologically bent as some of our friends in the Vanguard. I’m beginning to think Scion or Quanta might have better luck…”

“Well, I know what Scion would say,” Toran replied thoughtfully. “Look for the “power source” if you can’t get through to the target.”

After a brief discussion it was agreed, however reluctantly, that they needed to penetrate beyond those doors, into whatever lay beyond to see if there was some other method of destroying the connection between worlds. The right-hand door was chosen, more-or-less at random, and Toran checked to see if it was locked. It was not, and he easily swing the massive panel, at least three meters tall, inward on its silent hinges.

“I think it’s time to turn on our comms,” Devrik said as they prepared to enter the dim archway reveal. “I know we agreed to converse the batteries, but if ever there was a time to use them, this is it.” They ran a quick comms check, as Scion had taught them, and Mariala used the lull to cast Wallflower on the entire group. With Toran leading the way they entered the alien edifice.

The first room off the porch was four meters square, with a massive hermetic symbol etched into most of the floor. Queer-looking glowstones of a surprisingly pleasant golden glow were set in a circle around the lines of the symbol, which themselves glowed faintly with a sickly green radiance. No one felt the slightest inclination to step on the alien drawing, and they filed one-by-one around it in the narrow space between the glowstones and the wall.

A flight of stairs to the “north” (for want of a better reference in this disturbing place) dropped down to the “west” into a large rectangular area that appeared to be a library… a library someone had ransacked, by the looks of it. But no one had much attention to spare for it, as the stairs, in a sort of square spiral, wound around a pit that opened into a seemingly infinite void of coldly shining stars. They all hugged the wall and continued on down the stairs past the library, now dropping to the “north.” Only to find that as the next flight turned to the “east” they went upward to a landing, then turned south and dropped down agin to lead back to the place they’d started, but which was above them… several of the Hand almost vomited as their minds tried to reconcile the impossible spatial relationships of that staircase.

Perhaps fortunately their attention was quickly drawn away from the disturbing structure (it reminded Mariala very much of a framed drawing she had seen when she first occupied Artemis’ body on old Areth… an Escher, if she recalled correctly). The sound of a voices came from the large chamber to their immediate “north” and trusting to Mariala’s spell of concealment the Hand crept forward to peer into the room.

It was large, about 30 meters across and 12 meters wide, pillars of the black, crystal-flecked stone carved into grotesque shapes around its vaguely oval perimeter. The floor was inlaid with a myriad of arcane, alien symbols around the edges, and in the center was a stylized image of a kind of hideous octopus-humanoid head. Set near the top of the image’s head was a large stone slab, like some ancient alter, and on this stone lay the naked body of a human male. Standing behind the stone was old Hoag himself… except that his human “suit” had been pulled down to reveal the head and upper arms/claws of his true, alien form… Hoag’s human head and flapping arms dangled loose around his chest .

A half dozen villagers were arrayed in a loose semicircle around the near side of the alter. They seemed enthralled by whatever “Hoag” was saying and watched in rapt fascination as he continued with his – Devrik recoiled in horror as he realized the monstrous alien was performing a vivisection. The human was certainly alive, his eyes staring upward in terror as tears rolled down his cheek, yet clearly unable to move. His torso had been opened from sternum to groin, and several of his internal organs had already been removed, laid out neatly next to him on the slab.

Devrik pulled the others back and they retreated out of sight of the grisly ceremony, or lecture, or whatever it was. He laid out his plan quickly and baldly, and the others nodded, paled faced and shaken. Only Mariala hesitated.

“Devrik, you can’t just fireball those villagers,” she whispered urgently.”They may be mind controlled, this isn’t like the –“

“Listen to them!” Devrik growled. “They have that same buzzing, clicking, chittering voice as the other’s we’ve seen wearing those thrice-cursed human-suits.”

Indeed, the watchers occasional chants of “Nyarlathoep” and “Shub-Niggurath” had the unmistakable taint of the alien speech. “The chittering gives them away,” Korwin hissed. “They’re just wearing villagers’ skins… and if you chitter, you die!”

Mariala was forced to agree, and the group quickly split to carry out Devrik’s plan. He, Vulk and Erol quickly returned to the porch and re-entered the ancient temple by the right-hand door, making their way into a comparable position as Toran, Mariala and Korwin on the left. The false-Hoag was just reaching once more into his victim’s body when Devrik activated the comms’ countdown feature… from five, and at one they all attacked.

Mariala’s Fire Nerves, if not her strongest channeling, was strong enough — both false-Hoag and his audience staggered as the pain racked whatever passed for a nervous system in their alien bodies. Before they’d had time to fully register the attack, Devrik’s Orb of Vorol landed in the middle of the spectators, exploding outward to engulf four of the creatures… but only four. He had cast if specifically to keep the flames from reaching the altar, the poor bastard of a human, and the alien vivisectionist.

The burning “villagers” shrieked and clawed at their human skins, attempting to escape the immolating flames, but only one succeeded in shedding their flesh disguise in time. As it staggered free in its native form half a dozen needles of razor-sharp ice pierced its torso, shredding it in a spray of greenish-clear ichor and fungus-flesh. Korwin grinned in savage satisfaction.

Erol, again in his extratemporal mental space, sent arrows speeding into the two pseudo-villagers who’d managed to avoid the fireball. The first shaft took the one disguised as the local laundress straight through the skull, dropping “her” instantly, and the second shaft tore through the thigh of the “wife” of the baker, severing whatever passed for a femoral artery in the creature. It went down and in less than a minute the alien had ichored out.

The alien who had worn the body of old Hoag seemed momentarily stunned at the sudden, overwhelming attack, and that pause was all Toran needed. His cross-bow bolt took the creature full in the chest, and it toppled over backwards without a sound. Slinging his cross-bow, Toran unlimbered his axe and strode out to dispatch any of the aliens that might be not quite dead, a task Erol was also engaged in. Toran severed the head of the still-twitching, feebly chittering “Hoag,” and then the only sound was the slowing dying crackle of the flames consuming the faux townspeople.

“Vulk, we have to save this man,” Devrik said urgently, dragging his friend over to the stone slab of the foul alter. “I know you can do it!”

The cantor stared in horror at the naked man, whose eyes seeming to plead through his tears. His entrails were dropped over the side of the great incision down his torso, and his liver, spleen and one kidney were laid out beside him.

“Devrik, I can’t — look at this, the damage, it’s just — it’s too much!” Vulk shook his head in desperate negation at the gruesome sight.

“Bullshit!” Devrik barked. “For the love of the gods, Vulk, you resurrected a man once! This can’t be more difficult than that, surely — especially with Baylorium!”

“It’s — oh, damnit, you don’t understand! It’s far more — Devrik, I don’t have any idea how all this goes back together!” Vulk pulled his friend away from the alter and lowered his voice. “ Do you not remember the horror of Ser Andro’s revival? He suffered another painful death from poison in seconds; this could be ten times more terrible than that! This poor man could die a lingering, excruciating death over days if I don’t get everything put back properly.”

“Vulk, I couldn’t save all those people in the the brain tubes, only avenge them, and free them to the mercy of death. But you have a chance to save at least this one person. Please Vulk, you have to try!” Devrik actually saying please shook Vulk out of his inward spiral into panic, and he stared at his old friend in surprise.

“Godsdamnit!” he growled, turning back to the eviserated man. “Bring me all the undifferentiated Baylorium we have. And get as many of those glowstones over here as you can…”

• • •

It took almost an hour, but eventually Vulk managed to get the poor villager’s guts returned to his insides in what he devotedly prayed was the correct order and placement. Not that his prayers had any efficacy in this accursed place – he was truly cut off from Kasira here. He had been forced to rely strictly on his inborn psionic healing ability, and the power of Draik’s Baylorium. Never before had he delved so deeply into the microscopic realm of the human body, and if nothing else it had been a revelation… he had coaxed blood vessels to reconnect, cells to divide and multiply, and had even destroyed a clump of dark, strange looking cells in the man’s lung that had looked — wrong, somehow.

He’d also used a significant portion of the Hand’s remaining undifferentiated Baylorium, starring with his oldest three-unit vial. If they didn’t return home soon, some or all of them might yet suffer for this good deed. Still, Devrik had been right to push for this, he had to admit. It had been the moral thing to do, and as exhausted as he felt right now, he also felt elated. If the Baylorium could keep infection at bay for a few days, and he really had connected everything correctly, then there would be time to use one of few remaining undifferentiated elixirs to make one specific to his patient, and the man’s survival would be assured.

Devrik and Erol contrived to make a sling-stretcher to carry the now sleeping man out on. Whatever the alien monsters had used to keep him awake and block his pain receptors had lasted through most of the restorative surgery. Only as he was stiching the man up had he begun to feel pain, forcing Vulk to administer one of his own anesthetics. Now the fellow rested comfortably, in a deep sleep.

“We think we may have a way to destroy that monolith,” Toran said as Vulk slid down the wall next to him outside the temple, or whatever this hideous place was (Vulk still couldn’t get the image of the immense octopus-headed humanoid statue that he’d finally seen in the great alcove opposite the alter out of his mind). His friend handed him a flask, and he downed a swig without question. Good Khundari whiskey, and it burned going down, but served to revive him a bit.

“Yes?” he gasped around the drink, passing back the flask. “How are we going to do that?”

“With this,” Toran held up the small black stone-like object he’d been using to summon the portal to the Fane of Gheas. The “remote control,” as Chilz had called it when they’d explained the whole story to the Vanguard.

“We’ve been discussing it while you were saving that poor sod, and we think that if I summon the portal on top of the obelisk, the resultant dimensional resonance feedback should destroy the stone and sever the connection between its dimension and ours.”

“Dimensional resonance feedback?” Vulk repeated, raising an eyebrow.

The Dwarf shrugged. “I picked up some stuff from Quanta, what can I say. In any case, we’re going to try it.”

“What will it do to the Fane of Gheas, though?” Vulk asked. He was too tired to think this through properly. “And to us, if we’re still in this… dimension, universe, whatever?”

“Well, as to the Fane, we’re not sure. Probably nothing, but there’s a small chance it might destroy that as well as the obelisk. It’s a chance I’m willing to take… my people have lived without access to the Fane for centuries, thinking it a myth. If it’s truly lost now… well, what’s the difference?

“As for us… we have no intention of being on this side of that line,” he pointed at the blurry, shifting demarcation between this cavern and the one in their world. “I’m the only one who has to stay, and only long enough to summon the portal. It’s a short dash, and I assure you I plan to make it back before the connection is destroyed. Assuming we’re right, of course.”

Devrik, Erol and Korwin returned from their search of the ancient, alien structure, and declared it currently empty of enemies. “Although there seem to be numerous other… gateways… in there,” Korwin said, with a shudder. “Leading to some very… disturbing places… I, for one, am ready to get out of here!”

Once everyone was back in the cave which was presumably actually underneath the town of Arapet, Devrik and Erol carrying the injured villager between them, Toran stood at the absolute edge of the range within which he could summon a portal. He glanced back at his friends. Maybe five meters… and he was fast. He turned back to the black obelisk, the green fire still running up its flanks in eerie waves, took a deep breath… and pressed the button in the proper sequence.

With a roar, the white pillar of light, with its core of faint, shifting pastel colors appeared in the same space occupied by the black pillar. Toran just had time to note, with some satisfaction, that he’d centered it almost perfectly before he was dashing for the line. There was an ear-piercing shriek of tortured metal and stone, and the ground beneath him heaved, hurling him forward. He hit the ground and rolled as a blinding flash of light, of an indescribable color, seared through his closed eyes. Then there was darkness and silence.

“Toran, are you alright?” Mariala’s urgent voice came from above, and he opened one eye to see her peering down at him in concern. The roof of the cavern over her head looked like good Novendian limestone… he turned to look behind him. Less than a meter away a wall of the same stone rose up where previously there had been an alien cavern and sea. And more importantly, the almost subliminal sense of “wrongness” that had plagued him, plagued them all, since their arrival on Arapet Island was gone.

“I think we’re really home now,” he said, climbing to his feet and dusting himself off. “I never thought I’d say this, but… let’s get the Void out of these caves! The sun should be coming up soon, and I think we could all use the sight – and some fresh air.”