I. The Shadows Retreat
Emerging into the gloom of the graveyard once more, we caught a glimpse of two shadows flitting among the stones. Undoubtedly, the same shadows that had disappeared from our earlier confrontation—the ones that had slipped away like smoke through a keyhole, leaving us with questions and bruised egos. The cemetery stretched around us in its boat-shaped absurdity, a vessel of the dead anchored in a sea of mist and memory.
Ender stepped forward warily, his bronze medallion held before him like a talisman against the dark. The holy symbol caught what little light filtered through the perpetual overcast, gleaming with a dull, reassuring warmth. The shadows immediately shrank backwards into the gloom and vanished, as if the very presence of dwarven devotion was too bright for their corrupted nature.
II. The Twins Who Weren’t
We noticed an orange glow at the far end of the cemetery, a flickering beacon against the grey monotony of tombstones and tangled weeds. As we approached, the light resolved into a campfire, and around it stood two figures, silhouetted against the flames like players on a stage.
They barely registered our presence as we drew near. Human, both of them, with shortswords hanging at their hips in the casual manner of men who had long ago stopped fearing the dark. Their stillness was unnatural, a predatory patience that made my bardic instincts prickle with warning.
Then, as one, they swung around to face us.
“I am Shaaron,” said the first.
“And I am Aaron,” said the second.
Their voices were identical—not merely similar, but the same voice speaking through two mouths, as if some cosmic jokester had decided to test the limits of nominal creativity.
“Are you twins?” Ender asked, his brow furrowing with the effort of processing this linguistic oddity.
“No,” they both replied at the same time and in the exact same voice.
The effect was profoundly unsettling. I found myself wondering if I had somehow wandered into a theatrical performance—a very avant-garde theatrical performance—where the actors had decided that synchrony was the height of dramatic art.
III. Warnings and Waystones
Crow, ever practical, asked about Castle Maure and the Ghost Tower of Inverness. The twins—if twins they were not—left us in no doubt that Castle Maure was a destination best avoided, their warnings delivered with the kind of emphatic unanimity that brooked no argument.
They did not, however, dissuade us from visiting the Ghost Tower. Indeed, their silence on that matter seemed to carry its own weight of implication, as if the tower’s dangers were of a different order entirely—one that might, perhaps, be navigated by the sufficiently prepared or the sufficiently foolish.
“He-who-shall-not-be-named controls the tower,” they said, or rather, intoned, their voices harmonizing in unsettling unison.
“Who do you work for?” Crow enquired, his hand resting casually near his bow—a casualness I had learned to recognize as deceptive.
“We are unaligned and unassigned!” they replied in perfect synchrony, and I wondered if they practiced this routine or if it came as naturally as breathing.
When we asked about the waystones, their composure cracked. Shock registered on both faces simultaneously—genuine shock, unless they were far better actors than I credited. They appeared astonished that we even knew of such things, as if we had spoken of secret gods or forbidden geometries.
After we told them about Mel—that enigmatic figure who had set us on this path—their demeanor softened. The mention of his name worked like a password, opening doors that had seemed sealed. They agreed to let us use the symbol, which they produced from somewhere within their identical garments: a small token in the shape of a boat, carved from stone that seemed to drink the firelight.
They moved away from us and began to chant the incantation, their voices weaving together in harmonies that made my teeth ache. But before the magic took hold, they turned as one and spoke words that would echo in my memory:
“When all options lead to ruin, find the Fér-nem.”
We knew that name. But from where, and when, we could not recall.
IV. The Sickness of Transit
We decided to travel to Trigol for our very first attempt at waystone travel. The prospect was both exhilarating and terrifying—a magic that could compress six days of travel into moments, but at what cost to body and soul?
We held hands in a circle, our fingers interlaced like children playing a game. I focused on the Trigol waystones where we had met Mel, fixing my mind’s eye on a particular memory: a large standing stone lying on its side in dry grass and patchy dirt, a giant’s plaything abandoned by some prehistoric hand.
The world shimmered.
That is the only word that captures it—shimmered, as if reality itself had developed a fever and begun to sweat. My innards twisted, organs rearranging themselves in ways that defied anatomy. The darkness of Nelix’s graveyard dissolved into a blurry brightness that assaulted my eyes even through closed lids.
My guts arrived first.
I felt them precede me, a disorienting sensation of being unmoored from oneself, followed by my head spinning in a vortex of nausea and dislocation. It was as if my consciousness and body had been momentarily separated—two lovers torn apart by cruel fate—and then violently reunited in an abrupt crash of the corporeal against spirit.
The nausea swept through my being like a tide of bile and regret. When I finally regained my bearings, I found myself sprawled on dry grass, the monolithic stones of Trigol looming around me like silent judges.
At my feet lay Crow, spreadeagled and wretched, his elven dignity quite forgotten as he emptied his stomach onto the parched earth. Ender was nowhere to be seen.
The ranger finally stopped heaving, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand, when we heard a crash behind us. Ender appeared from nowhere, his plate armor crashing against stone with a sound like a blacksmith’s forge thrown down a flight of stairs. He landed hard, cursing in Dwarvish with a fluency that suggested considerable practice.
“Never,” Crow gasped, “again.”
“We have to go back,” Ender groaned, clutching his stomach.
We took our time recovering before assembling the runner symbol for our return journey. The teleportation back to Nelix was no more pleasant than the first trip, and Crow sprayed vomit over several gravestones with an enthusiasm that would have been impressive under other circumstances.
Hopefully, our stomachs would harden with future travels. But we couldn’t help being impressed that we had completed six days of travel in a little over an hour—a feat that would have taken weeks by conventional means, assuming we survived the conventional dangers of the road.
V. The Gaming Dead
We headed west toward the mountain pass and the Ghost Tower of Inverness, our destination finally within reach. The landscape transformed around us as we walked, the cemetery’s oppressive gloom giving way to open country and the promise of adventure.
On the way, we encountered more of those gaming skeletons—the same sort we had faced in the crypt, still obsessed with their games of chance. They seemed to haunt this region like particularly persistent gamblers, unable to quit while they were behind. We managed to fleece them out of a pile of completely worthless pebbles, which they valued as currency and we valued as… well, as worthless pebbles. But the victory was sweet nonetheless.
More intriguing was our discovery of what I can only describe as an interesting oxymoron: a dead undead skeleton lying beneath the branches of a dead oak tree. The creature had clearly met its final end—if such a term applies to the already deceased—and beneath its crumbling ribs, we found three vials of constantly bubbling blue liquid. The stuff churned and frothed as if alive, and we stored them carefully for later identification. Magic, certainly. Beneficial? That remained to be seen.
VI. Wolves in the Foothills
In the foothills of the mountains, we were beset upon by a pack of wolves during Ender’s watch. The beasts emerged from the shadows like grey ghosts, their eyes reflecting the moonlight with predatory hunger.
But Ender was not caught unawares. His bane spell weakened them before they could close the distance, sapping their strength and coordination. And Crow—Crow was magnificent. His arrows flew with the precision of a master craftsman, each shaft finding its mark with deadly accuracy. Between Ender’s magic and Crow’s keen archery, the pack was soon dispatched, their bodies cooling on the rocky ground.
We pressed on into the mountain pass, where thick tree cover gave way to rocky escarpments. The terrain grew steeper, more demanding, each step requiring effort as we climbed toward our goal. After a few hours of energy-sapping uphill travel, we noticed a band of travelers moving toward us from the west.
VII. The Observer on the Mountain
As they neared, the group resolved into four distinct shapes. Humanoid, but not human—their sideways movement was reminiscent of serpents, a slithering gait that spoke of scales and cold blood. As they closed the gap, we could discern four massive yuan-ti: snake-men and women of legend.
The group was comprised of a large male specimen at the front, his scales gleaming with oily iridescence in the afternoon light, flanked by two guards whose scimitars caught the sun like mirrors. In the rear slithered a snakelike female, her movements more sinuous than the others, her hands crackling with the telltale signs of spellcraft.
I did not want to jump to conclusions. These were, after all, civilized times—or so I told myself—and perhaps these creatures were merely travelers like ourselves, seeking passage through the mountains. My bardic training had equipped me with certain skills for just such diplomatic occasions.
I decided that an impromptu sea shanty, “The Wind in the Waves,” might serve to calm troubled waters. Music soothes the savage breast, as they say, and surely even yuan-ti appreciated a well-rendered melody.
I had barely begun my rendition—my voice soaring with nautical enthusiasm, my hands gesturing broadly to convey the rolling of imaginary seas—when we all felt it: intense pressure in the air, a psychic weight that made my teeth ache and my vision blur.
We turned as one to see a strange figure high on a rocky ledge. Its large forehead gleamed in the sunlight, pale and bulbous, and from its face twisted tentacles that writhed like living things. The mind flayer—there was no mistaking it, though I had prayed never to see such a creature outside of nightmare and ancient texts.
We felt the wave of psionic energy flow down the mountain like an invisible flood. It took hold of the two guards, whose eyes went blank and slack, and they turned as one and buried their scimitars in the torso of their own caster.
The female yuan-ti screamed—a sound like tearing silk—and collapsed, her spell dying uncast on her lips.
Not fully understanding what was transpiring—was this rescue? Coincidence? Some game whose rules we didn’t know?—I hit the lead yuan-ti with faerie fire, marking him with violet luminescence. Ender needed no further invitation. He charged into the fray, swinging his war pick with the righteous fury of a dwarf who has found his purpose, and destroyed one of the mind-controlled guards in a single devastating smite.
I caught a glimpse of the mind flayer standing impassive above the chaos below. It took out a notebook from a satchel—an ordinary notebook, bound in leather that might have come from any village shop—and with a long quill began to take notes, glancing down at the melee from time to time with what I can only describe as academic interest.
The creature was documenting us.
Meanwhile, Crow had dispatched the other mind-controlled guard to the mud, though not before the poor creature had fatally wounded his own leader. The lead yuan-ti lay gasping, his scales dulling as life fled from his serpentine form.
The caster was breathing with difficulty but eager to talk. We gathered around her dying form, her blood pooling on the rocky ground in quantities that spoke of wounds beyond healing.
“I was on the way to Greyhawk to cultivate alliances,” she hissed, each word costing her precious strength. “The mission failed. You have to go back and tell her. Go across the sea. Travel to High Port… across the sea.”
She was fading fast, her eyes losing focus, drifting toward whatever afterlife awaited snake-people who died in mountain passes.
“Sarasha,” she whispered, and the name hung in the air like a promise or a curse. “I failed you… Saras… Sa…”
She spoke no more.
A glance at the hillside confirmed what I suspected. Of the mind flayer there was no trace.
We looted the bodies with the efficiency of practiced adventurers. Forty-five gold pieces, to be held by Crow, of course—his fingers counted the coins with the speed of long habit. A rather magnificent set of red leather bracers, clearly meant for an archer, which Crow claimed with a nod of professional appreciation. There was a vial holding a blue potion, though this one did not bubble like the others we had found.
And then—then there was the necklace.
A delicate gold chain with six red balls suspended from fine threads, each sphere pulsing with contained power. I knew immediately what this was: an infamous necklace of fireballs, a weapon of devastating potential in the right hands.
Lacking the brute force of my comrades, I made my case with words rather than weapons. I spoke of tactical necessity, of the battles ahead, of how such an item would complement my existing skills. They listened—Ender with his characteristic good nature, Crow with calculating assessment—and accepted my reasoning.
I took off the amulet of initiative and replaced it with the necklace. Finally, we had the ability to take on groups of adversaries with something approaching confidence.
We continued toward the Ghost Tower of Inverness. Whatever awaited us there, we would face it together. And perhaps, we would survive to tell the tale.