Chapter 3.a: Citadel Infiltration

After distributing equipment and potions and saying your goodbyes to the members of the distraction party, Willitan and the young man Alain whose father was taken by the Crows lead the group to the door that should lead into the basement of the citadel. Alain informs you that, to the general knowledge of the townsfolk, this door leads into a storage room in the basement that once held food and general supplies for the citadel. No one knows whether it is currently in use or not, since no one's dared go through it since the Crows came to town. It is known that none of the Crows have ever come into the tunnels via this door, which is kept barred and under surveillance at all times by the townsfolk.

It is a simple but stout door, wooden with heavy iron bands that hold it together. A stout timber is used to bar the door shut, but there does not appear to be any sort of lock on it as far as you can tell.

There do not appear to be any traps on the door, at least on this side. As far as you can tell, the only thing keeping you from safely opening the door is the bar, which is easily lifted from this side.

As expected, this room was clearly once used primarily for storage: shelves dominate the space. But there's no longer much being stored here, certainly not enough to sustain much of a population in the citadel for an extended period of time. Your initial guess is that whatever supplies were here have been taken elsewhere, and not very carefully. A few boxes of random household items are lying on the ground, their meager contents spilled on the stone floor.

As you look around, you notice that the walls and floor are made of seamless stone construction. Not that this is unusual; most significant buildings were constructed at least partly with the sort of magic that could make this happen. Even someone without a lot of knowledge about building or engineering could see, however, that if the rest of the citadel is constructed in a similar way, it could withstand just about any sort of mundane attack you could think of.

Assuming the magic in its bones holds fast.

There is a single door out of this room, which is currently ajar. A bit of light from the corridor outside spills through into this room.

There is a vague sort of shuffling noise out in the corridor. Not really like someone walking, which would have a more regular cadence, but more like something sitting or lying on the ground, moving sort of aimlessly.

The corridor is wide, lit with lanterns every twenty feet or so, which makes it easy to see what's outside the door. That doesn't mean it's easy to identify what's outside the door...

Sitting on the floor of the hallway, leaning against one wall in the vague shadows between lanterns, is a humanoid shape. But even from here, you can see that there's something wrong. Maybe it's the way the arms don't quite line up like you'd expect, or the strange tilt to the head, the unnatural twist to the torso. The fact that it seems to be trying to move toward the other end of the corridor from where you are -- you can see a stairway up -- by dragging itself along the floor rather than standing up and walking, is definitely more than a little eerie.

You would have to pass the creature first. You're guessing the corridor is probably 80 feet long, the cells are at the opposite end from where you are, and the creature's about 30 feet away. There are two doors on the left side of the corridor, three on the right (you believe the third is the entry to the cells), all evenly spaced from one another. The corridor itself is 15 feet wide. The creature is near the first of the two doors on the left side.

The longer you watch it, the more you're not sure that the creature really has any intended direction. If it does, it's having a hard time getting its twisted body to go in that direction. As a result, it slowly shamble-slides around the corridor and doesn't appear to be leaving.

As far as you can tell from this distance in the lantern light, its back is currently to you. It's stopped for a moment, tired from its efforts perhaps.

You're not able to get much information from where you are. The light's not quite good enough, and you can't get a good look at the creature to see if you recognize anything about it.

As Verrian and Viani creep out the door and into the corridor, coming closer to the creature, they can hear it making a low mewling whimper. It once again tries to scuttle toward the stairs but all it can do is drag itself in that vague sort of direction. Finally, when you're about 10 feet away from it, it collapses in a heap of flesh. Its head turns your way, and in the soft glow of the lantern, you finally get a decent look at it.

This scrawny once-human has been horribly altered. Its skull is misshapen, bulging at the back with some sort of pulsing mass. One eye is in its proper place, but the other is centered in the pale forehead. It lacks a lower jaw, its tongue lolling down openly from a pink mass of flesh that was once its mouth. It has only one arm, sprouting gruesomely from its chest, and its twisted hips and flaccid legs make it only able to drag itself along the ground rather than stand.

It makes a muffled grunt, but rather than try and escape or attack, it lifts its one remaining hand -- empty -- and reaches pitifully toward you.

You take stock of its clothing and the long knife at its belt, and you are just starting to reach a realization of who this must be when it speaks in a whine. Even without the lower jaw and the benefit of a full set of teeth and lips, you recognize the voice. It's Ildemu's toady, Squeaky.

"Kill... eeeee. Leeess."

Squeaky's head droops as though exhausted from trying to keep it up, the rest of his body slumping in turn. "Yessss," you can hear him say.

If Squeaky noticed the movement, it doesn't seem he cares much. He makes no attempt to fight or argue.

What was once Squeaky is remarkably light. Between Verrian and Viani, it is easy to carry him back to the room, even if he's unable to carry any of his own weight to make it simpler on them.

When Verrian speaks, he rolls his head back to cast one eye at her. "Yes, stor," he says. It is distinctly unsettling to watch his tongue flap about in an attempt to form the right sounds without his lower jaw. "Locked out. Stuck in the courtyard... I could... eel it enter eee. Change eee. Hurt."

From a more... whole human face, the wide-eyed look Squeaky gives Verrian would appear bewildered. With mismatched eyes and no facial expression to speak of, it's significantly hardly to interpret. "Who iss Garand Dissoss?"

His one hand clutches out toward whoever it might be able to reach. "Lee-ing ssoon. Ildeh-oo, the crows. Leht ee here to rrot. Lee-ing town." He reaches his hand toward a pouch at his belt, but with his mangled physiology, he can't manage to do more than rip it free and toss it at Viani's feet. "Take that. It ill o-en the restraints. In the cells."

His eyes flicker between the faces of those he recognizes. "He knows who you're here... to rescue. Ildeh-oo."

This speech seems to sap him of energy, and his frame goes limp. His breathing is shallow and labored.

Inside the pouch are a few knick-knacks of significant interest only to Squeaky; a shiny red pebble, a small wooden hand-carved flute, a bit of cloth. The other item seems a bit more unusual: a piece of black metal shaped like a plus sign or X, small enough to fit in the palm. The metal isn't just black, it's so dark as to seem like it's drawing light toward itself, and curiously cold to the touch regardless of who touches it.

From the tiny viewing area the panel affords, Verrian can see a windowless room with a single light source hanging motionless above the center of the room: it's a light globe like they have back in Meriava, but unlike those you've seen around town, this one is still working. There are two chairs, both occupied. In one is a middle-aged woman, streaks of grey through her dark hair. She sits stiffly in the chair, blindfolded, and her wrists bound in front of her by what appears to be a white rope.

Draped idly in the other chair, one arm flung over the back, legs stretched out with feet crossed, is Ildemu. He's looking directly at the door, a lazy smile crooked on his face. As the panel opens, he says in that casual half-drawl, "You can stop fiddling with the lock, Red. It's open."

"Be my guest," Ildemu says with a smile. He sits up a little more in his chair, though he still manages to look as though he's been casually flung into his seat like one might toss a coat; loose-limbed and utterly unconcerned. He's dressed much as you saw him the last time you met, wearing a chain shirt over clean, neatly tailored clothing, black pants tucked into black leather boots. He wears an iron ring on his the ring finger of his left hand, which you only notice because he absently twists the ring with the neighboring fingers while he talks.

"It's taken you long enough. Moon and stars, did you go all the way out to the estate and back again? Long trip, for no benefit," he says with that lopsided smile. "She was right here the whole time."

"Countryside’s a lot more pleasant now that it’s been cleaned up a bit," Ildemu agrees, gesturing calmly at the bound woman next to him.

"But no, sadly, I didn’t know what you were after until you left town. Communication out here is sometimes... unreliable. Not like that soft life you all lead back in Meriava, where everything still works like it used to."

Verrian smiles calmly. "So my friend and I are here for this lady," she says, gesturing toward Renaya. "Perhaps we can make some sort of deal."

Ildemu rises slowly from his chair, not making any sudden movements that might provoke a response. He stands behind Renaya, hands on the back of her chair. "A deal? For her?" He shrugs, evidently unconcerned. "She's all yours. We've taken care of her, so there's no more use for her."

He lifts one eyebrow, smile angled across his dark face. "Really, I just wanted to make you and your little gang one last offer before we ride off into the sunset. Figuratively speaking."

"This... thing you're doing," he says, waving sort of vaguely. "You don't have to follow them. They cower inside their wards, they cling to the dying embers of a fire that destroyed the world." His hands grip the back of the chair more tightly. "You haven't seen what's out there, Red. If you had... you'd be begging to join us, first in line to tear down that festering monstrosity that sits like a fat, bloated spider out there in the lake."

For once, his manner becomes intense, eyes hard and words clipped as he nearly bites them off coming out from his lips.

"Then you're a fool," grunts Ildemu, and with that, his easy, friendly manner seems gone. He pushes Renaya's chair, and the woman tumbles forward to the ground, able to put her bound hands out enough to keep from landing painfully on her face. She doesn't struggle, doesn't try to stand, simply lays there.

"You're welcome to her. She's of no use to me, or to you at this point. But I'm not taking her with us, so go. I won't bar your departure, but don't think it'll go this easy for any of you the next time we meet up."

Ildemu points a finger at Verrian and Viani in turn. "You haven't earned it yet. You made your choice, and you'll have to figure it out the hard way. The way the rest of us have had to."

The moment of anger seems passed now; the lazy smile returns to his face. "We've got other places to go. Other people to visit, other things to get cleaned up." He juts his chin toward Renaya. "Take your prize and go on your merry way. We have no more business with you."

Ildemu laughs, holding a hand to his chest in mock injury. "Combative? Contemptuous? Oh, on the contrary, my dear. I have been the very soul of solicitousness." He gestures at Viani and her drawn weapon with a jerk of his chin. "I'm not the one with a weapon out."

"Do you tell everyone you've just met all of your secrets, Red? I'll wager that I know more about you now than most of the people you're traveling with. In fact, I'll wager I know more about all of you than you do about each other. You're not the only one chatting with folks back inside the Wards, you know."

He spreads his hands in a sort of welcoming gesture. "But go ahead. Ask me a question. One question. I promise I'll answer it honestly. Just to show you what a wonderful human being I am."

Ildemu tilts his head, staring at Verrian for a long moment as though she'd suddenly grown a horn out of her forehead. "Do you think I'm a murderer?" he asks in disbelief. He shakes his head. "I suppose you'd have no way of understanding," he murmurs under his breath. "I'm saving these people, not eradicating them." He waves a hand back behind him. "Out there... maybe not here, so close to the city, but out there... nothing is like it was. The storm? What it did to Squeaky? That's happening everywhere. And who gets blamed for that?"

He gestures at Renaya. "It's for their own good. It's for everyone's good. When no one can use these powers, then we'll all be a lot safer, and we can rebuild. Until then..."

Ildemu just shakes his head.

"Focused on the details, I see," Ildemu replies, a sardonic smile scratched across his face. He nods to the white restraints around Renaya's wrists. "Those are a form of whitestone, melted down and recrystallized with a small amount of a metal ore that has anti-magic properties. Mixed in the right proportions, the material is malleable enough to be shaped into restraints. Over a period of time, usually no more than a day or two, a mage restrained in such a fashion will lose their ability to use magic. I always thought it curious that it works on all manner of mages, no matter if talent is inborn or learned. But I didn't create it, so what do I know?"

He holds up a hand. "And I'll give you this for free: there is no way to reverse it that I know of, even when the restraints are removed."

Ildemu clicks his tongue with a disapproving shake of his head. "So dramatic. Sometimes sacrifices must be made. Or taken. It all works out the same in the end. If it hurts them, I'm not aware of it."

He gestures to Renaya once more. "As I've said, she's no longer of any use to us. Squeaky had a piece of the metal that goes into the material the restraints are made of. Touch it to them, and they'll fall apart and free her."

He folds his hands, resting them near his waist. "Are we done here? I've other business to attend to, so if you wouldn't mind my departing..." he says, trailing off and nodding toward the open door.

Ildemu rolls his eyes ceilingward and sighs. "Very well. I thought we could do this the polite, civilized way, but if I must be rude, so be it."

"I won't say it's exactly been a pleasure speaking with you all again, but it's certainly been enlightening. If you keep on your noble mission, I'm sure we'll encounter each other again," he says, offering a flat, forced smile. He takes hold of the iron ring he wears and gives it a full turn around his finger.

Renaya, her hands freed and blindfold removed, settles back to her knees. She looks from Verrian to Viani to Ildemu, only showing emotion when she sees that last face. She fixes Ildemu with a flat stare, but doesn't appear angry, necessarily. Just... serious, focused, and intense. She absently rubs at her wrists, though there's no sign that they physically harmed her in any way.

"If I thought I stood a chance of killing you with my bare hands, I would rip your throat out myself," she says in a low, harsh whisper. "You and your ilk will pay dearly. For everything you've done to me and my people. You have stolen my soul, Ildemu."

As she speaks, her words become more strained, her body more tense, to the point where she is actually trembling.

With a twist of the ring, a line of light appears behind him, expanding slightly wider than he is. He makes a slight half bow, then steps into the light. As soon as he does so, there's a brief flash and the line of light winks back out of existence. He is gone.

Can we take a look at these other cells now?
There may be other prisoners.

As you go to the other cells and look inside, you find that they are all empty. In fact, they all appear as though they have been empty for years, judging by the dust and stagnant air.

Renaya shakes her head once, sharply. "Nothing you can heal," she replies flatly, and then her features soften somewhat. "I apologize. It has been some time since anyone offered kindness."

She draws in a long, slow breath, and lets it out again before she continues. "They besieged the keep. We'd heard about the takeover of the citadel, but we didn't think they had the strength or will to take the fight to us out in the country. But when they arrived, they had something that dulled our magic. And without my spells..."

Her eyes go hollow for a moment, and her head bows. "I am essentially useless," she says in a strained voice.

Ephwrath checks her over for physical ailments. She seems physically healthy, if tired and a little undernourished.

Verrian pokes and prods around at the lock, and after a time hears a satisfying clunk. The lock seems to be disabled now.