November 25, 2025
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I. The Messenger from the Void
We walked in silence toward the Ghost Tower of Inverness. The encounter with Sarasha’s minions and that academic Mind Flayer—observing us with its notebook like some professor of carnage—still haunted our thoughts. What did it mean? What game were we pieces in?
The path wound upward through scrub and stone, the air growing thinner with every hour of climbing. he temperature dropped steadily until our breath came in visible clouds. I found myself grateful for my warm traveling cloak, though even its thick wool couldn’t dispel the chill that had settled in my bones—a chill that had less to do with weather and more to do with the weight of unanswered questions.
Rounding a corner carved through ancient rock, we were once again assailed by that same mental pressure we had experienced earlier—that peculiar tightness in the temples that felt like someone pressing their thumbs against your skull from the inside. The sensation brought us to a halt, and as one, we looked upward.
There, perched on a jagged outcropping some thirty feet above, was the Mind Flayer.
This time, however, there was no leather-bound notebook clutched in its tentacled grasp. Instead, an incorporeal hand—translucent and shimmering with psionic energy—drifted down the slope toward us. The hand moved with deliberate grace, halting some ten feet away before releasing a single sheet of blue parchment that fluttered downward like a dying butterfly.
The ethereal hand dissolved into nothingness.
I approached the parchment with the caution of a man who has learned that mysterious messages from tentacled creatures rarely bring good news. The blue paper was oddly warm to the touch, and the script upon it elegant but brief:
“Vyzolta did you a favor. The yuan-ti would have probably killed you.”
If Vyzolta was setting out on a charm offensive, he—or she, or it—had their work cut out for them. I have received warmer correspondence from tax collectors.
II. The Necromancer’s Warning
We slogged on for another few hours, our eyes scanning the slopes above for any sign of more illithids lurking among the crags. The mountains were silent save for the wind’s mournful song and the occasional cry of some high-flying bird of prey. We saw no more Mind Flayers, no more ghostly hands, no more cryptic notes—only the relentless upward march of our own exhausted feet.
Then, through the mist that clung to the upper peaks like a shroud, we caught our first glimpse of it: the weathered Ghost Tower of Inverness.
It rose from the fog like a finger pointing toward judgment, its stonework ancient and crumbling. The structure was impossibly narrow—no more than fifteen feet on each side at its base—and yet it climbed upward into the mist, disappearing from view long before its summit could be seen. It seemed to violate the very principles of architecture, defying gravity and common sense in equal measure.
“There can’t be much room inside,” Crow observed, his elven eyes narrowed with professional assessment. “A large store cupboard, perhaps. A very tall store cupboard.”
Ender grunted his agreement, stroking his magnificent dwarven beard in that thoughtful way he has—the way that suggests he’s calculating the odds of survival against various courses of action. Neither he nor Crow spotted what my sharper eyes detected: there was no door. The tower presented four solid walls of ancient stone to the world, seamless and unbroken.
“No signs of recent activity,” I noted, scanning the base. “No extinguished campfires, no trails, no indication that anyone has been here in… well, possibly centuries.”
Ender stood staring at the tower, his hand still working through his beard like a man wrestling with a particularly stubborn philosophical problem. We waited, patient as always for the paladin to reach his conclusions. That is the way of our company: Ender decides, Crow finds the angles, and I chronicle the results for posterity.
Before Ender could announce his decision, a figure emerged from the mist.
The black cloak billowed behind him as he strode forward—not walked, strode—with the confidence of a man who has long since stopped fearing death because he’s made it his profession. The fog seemed to part for him, as if even the elements recognized a kindred spirit in their midst.
“It’s the necromancer,” Crow whispered in my ear, his breath warm against my halfling-height head. “Vracus. From the graveyard in Willip.”
Vracus stopped before us, his pale face unreadable in the grey light. His eyes—dark and deep as freshly dug graves—passed over each of us in turn. When they settled on Ender, something flickered in their depths. Recognition? Resignation? Amusement? With necromancers, one can never be certain.
“It would be you,” Vracus said finally. A long pause stretched between us, filled only with the wind’s whisper. “The tower is set.” Another pause, heavy with unspoken meaning. “Jack requires a secret.”
Crow stepped forward, his elven features arranged in that expression of innocent helpfulness that I’ve learned to recognize as performance. “We broke Brimaz’s curse on Phlegan,” he offered.
Vracus considered this with the gravity of a judge weighing a life sentence. His head tilted slightly, as if the words needed to be examined from multiple angles. Finally, he spoke:
“It is a good secret.”
He raised one pale hand, a finger extended in warning. “Know this,” he continued, his voice dropping to that tone that men use when delivering prophecies of doom. “You will either beat the tower or be trapped inside for eternity.”
With that cheerful farewell, he turned on his heel and vanished into the mist as abruptly as he had appeared—leaving us to stare at one another in the silence that followed.
To tower or not to tower? That was the question.
It was Ender who moved first, of course. Our dwarven paladin has never been one to shrink from danger, even when that danger comes in the form of mysterious magical towers guarded by cryptic necromancers. Crow and I fell in line behind his massive armored frame, and together we made our way toward the impossible structure.
As we approached, the mist began to clear—almost reluctantly, I thought, as if the fog itself were curious to see what fools might enter. Where there had been only solid stone, there was now a doorway: ancient, weathered, but undeniably real.
III. First Floor: The Sapphire Chamber
We found ourselves in a small stone room that smelled of dust and centuries of stillness. The air was heavy with the scent of old stone and older magic, that peculiar dry odor that fills ancient places where time has forgotten to pass. My boots scraped against the floor, the sound shockingly loud in the enclosed space.
Around the walls were pictographs carved into the stone—primitive but clear images repeated in sequence: the sun, the moon, skeletons, hands, and a variety of birds. Five motifs, cycling endlessly around the chamber.
In the center of the room, a large stone pedestal dominated the space. Upon it rested a stone arm—life-sized, disturbingly realistic—its hand outstretched and clutching a sapphire the size of a hen’s egg. The gem caught what little light filtered through the high windows, scattering blue reflections across the walls like the ghosts of drowned sailors.
Behind us, where the door had been, there was now a staircase spiraling upward into shadow.
I reached for Ender’s hand—partly for comfort, partly for balance—and attempted to enter the staircase. An invisible wall stopped me cold, pressing against my palm with the unyielding solidity of magically reinforced force.
“Sealed,” I observed, stating the obvious because someone needed to.
Crow approached the stone arm with the caution of a cat investigating a potentially dangerous new toy. He tried peeling the stone fingers away from the sapphire, grunting with effort, but they didn’t budge. The sculpture might as well have been carved from a single piece of granite.
We turned our attention to the pictographs, each set into its own stone slab. They were clearly meant to be interacted with—this was a puzzle room, a test of wit rather than strength. I found myself torn between appreciation for the craftsmanship and irritation at being toyed with by whatever ancient architect had designed this place.
Crow touched the moon.
The room plunged into total darkness—not the darkness of extinguished candles, but the absolute blackness of a void where light itself had ceased to exist. I heard Crow’s sharp intake of breath somewhere to my left, felt Ender’s armored form tense beside me.
“Crow?” Ender’s voice rumbled in the blackness.
“I’m here. Moving…” The sound of careful footsteps. “Got it.”
Light flooded back as his fingers found the sun pictograph. I blinked against the sudden brightness, spots dancing before my eyes.
“That’s one function established,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “The moon brings darkness, the sun restores light.”
My attention returned to the hand impressions carved among the other symbols. Five of them, scattered around the room. I placed my hand upon the nearest one—my fingers fit the grooves perfectly, as if the stone had been waiting centuries for a halfling’s touch.
The stone fingers on the pedestal curled back from the sapphire.
“Aelfric!” Crow’s voice carried that particular excitement he reserves for discoveries.
I moved quickly around the room, placing my hand upon each impression in turn. One by one, the stone fingers retracted, until at last the sapphire sat upon an open palm, free for the taking.
Ender stepped forward and claimed the gem with the decisiveness that characterizes all his actions. The sapphire disappeared into his pouch, and we turned as one toward the staircase.
This time, there was no barrier.
IV. Second Floor: Frozen Tableaux
We emerged into a room that defied everything I understood about architecture and geometry.
While the first chamber had matched the exterior dimensions of the tower—small, cramped, barely spacious enough for the three of us—this space extended in all directions far beyond what the walls outside could possibly contain. The ceiling soared upward into shadows, and transparent walls on each side afforded views of the mist-shrouded bay that stretched to the horizon.
“Magic,” I breathed, though the word felt inadequate. Madness might have been more accurate.
The room’s interior was dominated by three demonic figures, frozen mid-combat in attitudes of violent conflict. They were not statues, I realized—not quite. There was too much detail, too much life in the rendering of their snarling faces and straining muscles. They had been stopped, suspended in the moment of mutual destruction.
The first demon—cross-eyed, long-snouted, with curved horns spiraling from its brow—held a massive spiked flail above its head, the weapon poised to crash down upon its enemy. Its left hand, extended to the side, clutched a gold-colored gem that caught the pale light.
The second demon faced away from the first, its single enormous eye wide and staring at the third combatant. This one held a bright red ruby aloft while thrusting a flaming longsword toward the final figure.
The third demon—the most disturbing of the trio—possessed three eyes arranged in a triangle on its face, and a single horn jutting from its forehead like a accusing finger. Its right hand gripped a long trident, primed to throw at the first demon. Its left arm was extended, palm open and empty.
On the floor between them, a twelve-pointed star had been inlaid in silver.
“Each holds something, but the third…”
“Is empty-handed,” Crow finished, kneeling to examine the star. He shrugged—no obvious mechanism, no hidden switches, no writing to guide us.
Ender examined the figures with the eye of a warrior assessing opponents. I could almost see him calculating: If they animate, which poses the greatest threat? How to position for advantage? Where are the vulnerabilities?
Then he reached into his pouch and withdrew the blue sapphire from the floor below.
“Ender,” I started, but he was already moving—stepping forward with that dwarven confidence that brooks no argument, placing the gem into the outstretched palm of the three-eyed devil.
The room exploded.
Not with fire or force, but with motion and sound—three frozen figures suddenly living, weapons swinging, flames roaring, bodies twisting in the dance of combat that had been interrupted centuries ago. It lasted only a second, perhaps less—a single heartbeat of violence compressed into an instant.
Then silence.
We stood dazed, staring at three corpses scattered across the marble floor.
The one-eyed demon lay at Crow’s feet, blood still spreading in a widening pool across the smooth white stone. The spiked ball of the flail was buried deep in the back of its skull—so deep that two spikes emerged through its face, grotesque metal horns. On one of these spikes, its single eye was impaled, the pupil still rotating manically, until with a wet sound like a cracked egg, it slid off and plopped into the spreading crimson pool.
The three-eyed demon lay flat on its back, the flaming sword buried in its guts. Its arm was thrown back above its head, fingers still curled around the trident it had launched in that final moment. The weapon had pierced through the skull of the first demon and pinned him headfirst to the floor, horns scraping against marble.
The smell hit us then: charred meat, coppery blood, and the acrid stench of burning demon-flesh. I pressed my hand to my face, fighting the urge to retch.
“The star,” Crow managed, his voice thick.
I looked down. The twelve-pointed star was pulsing with soft light, inviting us forward.
We stepped onto it one by one, grateful to leave that charnel house behind.
V. Third Floor: The Hellscape
Teleportation, I have decided, is not a natural mode of travel for civilized beings.
There was that moment of dislocation—that fraction of a second where consciousness and body separate like quarreling lovers—and then jolt, we were elsewhere, gasping, stumbling, assaulted by heat so intense it felt like stepping into a dragon’s mouth.
The air was wrong—thin and sulfurous, burning in my lungs with every breath. My eyes watered against the haze, and I struggled to make sense of our surroundings.
The room—if room it could be called—was twice as large as the previous chamber, but its walls displayed a scene torn straight from the Nine Hells. A rocky wasteland stretched beneath a sky the color of old blood, dark red and suffused with constant light that had no source. Fireballs traced arcs through the heavens like malevolent comets. Volcanoes spewed smoke and lava in the distance, their rumbling providing a constant bass note to the scene.
Around this infernal landscape, huge skeletons battled each other in eternal conflict. Fire elementals lumbered through the charred terrain, leaving trails of flame in their wake. Fire sprites flitted from rock to rock like sparks escaping a forge.
“Avernus,” I whispered. “The first layer of Hell.”
“An image of it,” Ender corrected, though his voice was strained. He was suffering most in his heavy plate armor—metal that was now conducting heat against his skin like a cooking pot. Sweat poured down his face, and his breath came in short, shallow gasps.
Crow was pointing upward. “There.”
On the ceiling, written in letters of flame that shifted and danced: TNEMHSIRUON.
We exchanged glances. Between us, we spoke many languages—Common, Elvish, Dwarvish, fragments of Draconic and Infernal and Celestial—but this meant nothing.
Ender reached out to touch the wall, his hand stopping against invisible resistance. “A barrier. The scene is… contained.”
It was then we saw it—a flash of black and orange, flames licking from a mane that shouldn’t exist on any natural horse. A demonic steed, fire-maned and wild-eyed, galloping around the perimeter of the room. It stopped periodically to stare at us with eyes like burning coals, then resumed its mad circuit.
“The key,” Crow said, certainty in his voice. “The horse is our way out. But how?”
We tried everything—calling to it, approaching it, offering it the various items from our packs. The beast ignored us with the disdain only demons can manage.
Crow, drawing on whatever knowledge he possessed of animals, watched its movements carefully. “It’s… hungry?”
Ender had been studying the flaming letters above, his face twisted with concentration despite the heat. Sweat dripped from his beard, sizzling against his armor. “It was there above us the whole time,” he gasped. “Read it backwards.”
We looked up. TNEMHSIRUON.
I spelled it out: “N-O-U-R-I-S-H-M-E-N-T.”
“Nourishment,” Crow breathed. “We need to feed it.”
I stepped forward, drawing myself up to my full halfling height—pathetic as that must have appeared before a hell-horse—and commanded with all the authority I could muster: “HALT!“
Crow had been fixing the remains of a loaf of bread on the end of his shortsword and thrust it through the invisible barrier. The horse lunged forward and took the hunk of bread in one ravenous bite.
The transformation was instantaneous.
The hellscape dissolved like a nightmare upon waking, replaced by rolling green pasture thick with wildflowers. The heat vanished, replaced by a cool breeze that carried the scent of grass and honey. The demonic horse was gone; in its place, a majestic white stallion pranced around the perimeter, tossing its mane with equine pride.
We stood there, breathing easily for the first time in what felt like hours, broad grins spreading across our faces despite our exhaustion.
Ender summoned us to the twelve-pointed star, pulsing invitingly once more.
VI. Fourth Floor: The Icy Oubliette
The contrast could not have been more stark.
I remember the vicious chill wind that struck us like a physical blow. I remember struggling against it, my cloak flapping wildly, my fingers already going numb. And then—
Nothing.
What follows is reconstructed from my companions’ accounts, for I spent this portion of our adventure unconscious. Whether this was due to the cold, a magical effect, or simple exhaustion, I cannot say. But my friends proved themselves worthy of the trust I place in them.
According to Crow, there were levers in that frozen chamber—ancient mechanisms that controlled vents and passages. He spoke of pulling them and suffering icy blasts, of navigating cliffs and stalactites and stairways that seemed to lead nowhere. He described pillars that rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling, forming a maze of ice and stone.
Ender’s account was more straightforward, as is his way. He spoke of battling across an icy expanse, of choosing wrong directions and backtracking. Of fighting gelatinous cubes—those bizarre oozes that exist somewhere between monster and substance. He was engulfed by one, he told me, restrained inside its acidic body, unable to breathe, unable to break free.
“I cut my way out,” he said simply, as if this were an everyday occurrence.
They found a key in the remains of the gelatinous cube—Ender’s sword had been thorough—and located a keyhole hidden among the ice formations. When they placed the key within, the twelve-pointed star appeared, glowing with that familiar invitation.
I woke as they stepped through, finding myself whole but for an inexplicable itch at the back of my neck, around my waistline, and in my right boot.
“You’re awake,” Crow observed, with something like relief beneath his usual dry tone. They related their travails in that frozen hell but I was sceptical. While pondering the truthfulness of their stories, I was drawn back to the discomfort I was feeling.
I checked the itches. In all three locations, I found residue: acidic, gelatinous, faintly luminous. The proof of their tale.
“So,” I said, brushing the ooze from my skin with a shudder, “we have survived the fourth floor.”
Ender nodded, his beard still flecked with ice. “The tower goes higher still.”
We looked at each other—the three of us, battered, frozen, exhausted, and somehow still alive.
“Onward?” I suggested.
“Onward,” they agreed.
And so we climbed.