Circle of Skulls

EIGHTEEN

NIGHTAL 22, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

Jinnaoth crossed the street, his step quickening as the ahimazzi rose to face him. Their curved blades formed a jagged ring around the iron fence they guarded, a robed garden of rusty thorns to match the one at their backs. Several separated from the mob to meet his charge. He gripped his sword tightly, holding it low and back, a spark of primal bloodlust in his eyes as he swung and severed the first left hand that stabbed for him. He shoulder blocked another out of his way and kicked as he turned and slashed again, some part of his ancient soul taking over, directing his blade to the brute-force tactics of a battlefield rather than the finesse of single combat.

The soulless were quicker than normal, grunting and excited as they came for him, but there was no skill in their attacks, using only the press of numbers in their attempts to subdue him. He butchered the handful that rushed him, cutting them down like beasts and leaving them to flounder on the cobbles, clumsy daggers scraping weakly at his boots and tearing at his cloak. He cursed and swore at them in ancient languages, the tongues of the warrior spirits that surged through his veins, as gore covered his blade and splashed across his clothes.

His blood burned at the brief victory, eyes blazing as he turned to the dozens that remained, a stinking, unworthy host, an insult to the long road he had walked to face Sathariel. Pawns and fools of a cult that gave their lives no value, death was a blessing for the mindless existence they had earned. Their eyes regarded him blankly, thin lines of drool and froth dripping on their robes as their teeth gnashed and they growled like animals.

Whispering a prayer for their pitiful lives, he cleaved into the mass like a madman, cutting their throats and kicking them down as curved blades sought his flesh from all sides. He cleared a small circle in their midst, slowing as they pressed closer, roaring as the ground grew slick and uneven with blood and bodies. A dirty blade glanced along his collarbone, fingernails dug into his wrist and scratched at his scalp. They pulled painfully at his hair and tugged at the end of his cloak, but he kept cutting and stabbing, using the bodies of a few to trip up several more.

Losing himself in dull pains and bloodlust, the memories of more than a thousand battles raged in his mind. Each cut he suffered was echoed by grievous injuries from past lives, each wound he inflicted joined thousands more, and each life he took was added to the bloody path of his immortal soul. He whispered long-forgotten conversations as he pushed forward, arguing with dead generals and reciting eulogies from funeral rites no longer observed, in empires that no longer stood.

Flesh and bone split open like mouths at his blade's touch, spilling red secrets. Jinn stumbled forward and slashed instinctively, dried leaves and thorny vines falling to his feet. He whirled to see the open gate, finally at his back, and braced himself for the ahimazzi as they crowded the iron fence line. He spat at them, but they did not follow, their toes scarcely crossing the garden's edge before pulling away.

Lowering his sword, he spat again, the soulless either refusing to enter the garden or prevented from doing so. The evening grew quiet again save for the muffled groans and soft gurgles of the dying ahimazzi, their last breaths steaming around the soiled feet of the mob. Jinn stretched and caught his breath, wincing as little wounds and gouges stung with pain, none of them serious enough to warrant immediate attention but enough to itch beneath his clothes and leather armor. Exhaling, he released the savage spirit that had possessed him.

He wiped blood from his face and turned toward the house, slowing his racing pulse as he crossed the threshold of the open door. Every surface within was covered in patches of dark browns, moldy stains, and creeping vines that bristled with thorns. He proceeded cautiously at first, but as he prowled the dusty hallways and rooms of broken furniture, a sense of familiarity overcame him, as if the house had been waiting for him.

Shadows moved silently ahead of him, featureless silhouettes watching but not threatening as he searched for the basement doorway. Sernitransparent, the ghosts, little more than persistent fetches, followed his progress, peering at him from darkened comers and long halls. He eyed them curiously, pitying them for the deaths that tied them to the property but wary of lingering too long in their presence lest he wake the reasonless anger of the dead.

The basement door had been left open, a black pit at the back of a small servants' kitchen. He descended the stairs, sword drawn. The musky scent of decay wafted up from the oddly warm chamber below. The walls were covered in dark handprints, all in pairs and all displaying only nine fingers.

At the base of the stairs, along the south wall, sat a dusty, old chair, and in it he spied a figure sprawled across its arms. A shock of blonde hair rested across the stained cushion. He crept across the room and knelt cautiously, reaching for the pale hand of Rilyana Saerfynn. She stirred at his touch and moaned, rubbing her eyes as he stood and surveyed the large chamber. A single candle was set in a wall sconce on the north wall, but all else was cloaked in clinging darkness.

"Rilyana!" he whispered as loudly as he dared.

Her eyes fluttered open, finding him and appearing confused. She had several bruises on her arms, and dried blood covered the left side of her face.

"Wake up. You need to get out of here quickly!"

"Jinnaoth?" she mumbled and sat up, yawning lazily. "Haven't seen you since the fire at the tavern."

Jinn half spun at the sound of rough breathing in the dark, a rasping, hungry noise that set his nerves on edge. He grabbed Rilyana's arm and hauled her up, placing his sword between them and the thick shadows. He had no time to coddle privileged young women. He could feel the cloying presence of some dark power gathering in the basement.

"Get out of here!" he said, wide eyed as he searched the dark end of the chamber, trying to pierce the veil of shadows and wondering where Rilyana's brother would be hiding. "Now!"

"Oh, Jinn," she said, and she laid a hand upon his, her fingers soft on his skin. "No, I don't think so."

A shock of alarm ran through his body as he reversed his grip on the sword and turned half a breath too late. He felt a rush of hot breath on his cheek as she whispered an arcane syllable, her lips brushing against his ear as a sudden thrust of force slammed into his side. The candle became a blurry streak as he was hurled across the room and slammed against the far wall. The breath was knocked from his lungs, and he gasped like a landed fish, flopping onto his side and wincing at the pain he felt there. Candles bloomed to life across from him, haloed through the haze of fading pain as he coughed, slumped over in a dirty corner.

Silhouettes passed through the semicircle of light, one graceful and surefooted, the other hunched and leaning, the tap-tap of a wooden staff preceding each step. He shook his head and cursed, trying to sit up as the face of the archmage grew more distinct, the shadows curling away from him and Rilyana like thick smoke. As they did, Jinn noted the sprawled form on the floor before them, the battered and bruised body of Callak Saerfynn.

"We heard your battle outside, deva," Tallus said, his voice weak but mocking. "A glorious tribute of blood, I must admit, but surely you did not think to catch us unawares, eh?"

The wizard stood before a stone pedestal in the center of several concentric circles, similar to those in the archmage's tower, covered in overlapping symbols and glyphs that squirmed with power. Jinn merely glared at Tallus and rose to a crouch, pulling his sword behind him, prepared to make the wizard's once-apparent death a painful fact.

Rilyana drew close to Tallus, wrapping an arm around his waist and gently kissing his neck, her tongue darting close to his ear as she smiled cruelly at the deva.

"He doesn't seem particularly surprised to see you," she said, and she laid her head upon the archmage's shoulder.

Tallus grunted, grinning through his scraggly beard as he produced a wooden chest from beneath his robes and placed it upon the pedestal. "Only because he is a better actor than you, my dear. Had he known I was alive, he might not have wasted his time with that fool Dregg." The pedestal began to glow, the golden clasp and gilded edges of the chest flaring brightly even as the entire house groaned. "Though I must wonder, how did he find us here?"

"Perhaps you've been betrayed," Jinn muttered, lining the blade of his sword along the edge of his spine, leaning forward as he waited for Tallus to turn away once more. The wizard's confidence, though sickening, could serve Jinn's purpose.

"Oh, I've no doubt of that," the archmage replied and passed his hand over the wooden chest, chanting as the house seemed to lurch on its foundation, shaking violently. More dust fell and thorny vines crawled down through fresh cracks in the ceiling, writhing and spreading. The walls pulsed and undulated like flesh made of wood and stone, as though the entire structure were alive. "Too many would be more than willing to kill for my place in this ritual. Had I chosen to wait any longer, I might have ended up like the corpse you found in my tower."

"There's still time for that," Jinn said as the stone floor throbbed beneath his boots. An unholy energy seeped through the cracks that brought bile into Jinn's throat and twisted in his gut. The scents of the Nine Hells wafted through the room: sulfur, rot, and char.

Disoriented and nauseated, he choked and spat, sickened by the power the archmage was summoning, his heart pounding as his celestial nature was repelled by the ritual. Trying to focus on the wizard and his duplicitous lover, Jinn held on, waiting until Tallus finally turned. In a breath Jinn vaulted forward, sword drawn back as the archmage traced sigils on the chest, unaware of the impending doom at his back.

Quessahn stared out at the House of Thorne for several moments before drawing the curtains and returning to her ritual circle. A part of her feared for Jinn, just as another part wondered if she could trust his judgment, wondered if he were capable of sacrificing the lives of hundreds, possibly thousands, to satisfy his thirst for vengeance. She banished the thought, having her own work to complete. She sat, cross-legged, at the center of the design on the floor and shook her hands nervously then laid them gently upon her knees. Closing her eyes, she cleared her mind of all else but the spell prepared around her, mentally tracing each sigil and glyph, turning her mind through the arcane labyrinth of the ritual.

She whispered the runes of the outer circle, each symbol a listed name, all of them drawn from ancient texts and dark cults long dead. She called upon the power of stars and slumbering beings, many of whom were both, whose dreams were alive and whose nightmares fed upon the fabrics of the multiverse, infected by their creators' appetites for the flesh of reality itself. Invoking their essences, she worked to link the vast areas of space between one and the next, tracing her spell, her circle, in immeasurable symbols among the stars.

A dull ache settled in her bones as the pattern took shape, as if the raw magic she summoned had taken notice of her efforts and had begun to test the limits of her will. The names she uttered echoed through the outer circle, thrumming in powerful languages that were old when the world was yet young, naming themselves as she reigned in the power of the pattern. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and stars streaked through her field of vision as she shook, gritting her teeth and holding on to the magic. At length, mastering the power that flowed through and around her, she turned her attention to the inner circle.

The inner circle spun in her mind, the symbols turning as she spoke them, raising her hands and tracing them on the air. Her fingers clawed at ephemeral threads of energy, forcing them into the configurations she desired. Only one name was written within the inner circle, and she saved it for the last, holding it as it slid through her mind like a snake, its forked tongue flicking at her thoughts. It teased her and she trembled, fighting back the doubt that could destroy the spell. Infusing the ritual with her quiet fear, she turned her dread into bait for her target.

"Sathariel," she whispered, the word taking on a life of its own, drifting like smoke within the confines of the circles and tugging at her concentration, begging to be heard. It shouted itself in discordant echoes, over and over in rumbling waves that raised the hairs on her neck.

A quiet gasp escaped her as she fought to contain the power around her, the magic thrashing to be set free, loosed to her desired effect. At length the angel's name quieted in her mind, a cool calm settling among her thoughts, and she knew her spell had been answered.

The dark house grew darker, bereft of light save for the soft glow of the circles around her, a faerie fire to draw the angel in like a moth from the depths of the Nine Hells. Massive wings spoke in tones of thunder as he appeared, his very presence like a weakening of the heart. He drifted down from the tall ceiling, his body crafted of black flame, clothed in silvered armor shaped to resemble screaming faces. A long blade hung at his side, and a halo of flickering shadow curled around his featureless face, tiny, ice blue pinpoints glaring at her from within the twin pits of his eyes.

Is this your part to play, eladrin? his voice growled in her thoughts and shook the tenuous tethers of her spell. To summon me here and somehow foil the dark ritual of the nine skulls? Or is it to save the courageous deva from my wrath? Her mind filled with his laughter, a derisive storm that crashed against her resolve. Your sacrifice is indeed noble but terribly misguided. I can almost taste your ignorance, a veritable feast of empty gestures that only delay the inevitable.

"Y-you mock me. I court with beings far beyond the angelic lackeys of youngling gods," she said as the spell took on its final shape, binding itself to her as she bound herself to its purpose.

Indeed, a passing acquaintance, I am sure, with powers that defeated themselves in an age long before the rise of mortals, Sathariel replied. Ah, but could they smell your weakness now, I daresay they might awaken again.

"Until then… let us speak," she said, and she loosed the spell, sighing as it ran its course, flooding her body with tingling power.

A wave of green energy leaped from her palms at Sathariel as he drew and swung his heavy blade. The sword sparked at the edge of the circle, rebounding from the protective spell even as jade energy gripped his shadowlike body and mingled in its deep black like spilled ink.

What is this, witch? he shouted in her mind as his body shuddered and trembled, unable to escape the cloying power that coursed through him.

"A simple ward, a circle to keep you at arm's length, and this"-she held up her hands, flickering with a nimbus of green energy-"this will tell me a bit of your future, what those slumbering beings among the stars see in their dreams of things that are and things that could be."

Look well, then, elf, the angel replied, roaring in her thoughts as he crashed his blade against the outer circle, sparks showering around them both. For you are a doomed voyeur, a witness to your own death… and the deva's!

"Undoubtedly," she said, a familiar cairn settling her racing heart, her mind's eye drifting to maps of the constellations. Her back arched painfully as power rushed between their bodies. Blinded by a flash of white light, she felt as though she were suddenly flying, the fate of an angel flooding her senses.

A swirl of colors swam on the insides of Jinn's eyelids. Breath, heavy and laborious, poured into his lungs like warm syrup, tasting of fire and things long dead. A grating noise, like boulders roughly dragged down a paved avenue, rumbled in his throat as sparks of consciousness hissed in his mind. He recalled a brief moment of savage fury, light on his heels, a sword in his hand as he leaped for the throat of Archmage Tallus.

All else was pain and rough stone floor on his back.

His skin felt burned as he turned on his side, leaning on one elbow and blinking the haze from his eyes. The edges of the wizard's ritual circle rippled lazily, waves flowing around and around the pair within the concentric rings of magic. Tallus glanced at him once, appearing amused but engrossed in his work as he carried out the instructions of the nine skulls. Rilyana's gaze did not falter, however, her face set in an excited, manic expression as Jinn sat up, grimacing as he took up his stolen blade.

"Do you feel better now?" the archmage asked, inscribing a deft sigil in the lid of the wooden chest on the pedestal. "I suspect your angel will make that attempt as well and gain much the same result."

"Your angel, I believe. I do not ally myself with lapdogs of Asmodeus," Jinn replied, sliding the edge of his blade along the perimeter of the ritual circle, air burning at the contact between magic and steel.

"Well, partnerships of convenience come and go so swiftly, do they not? And I believe you are the last one to be judging the dubious contacts of others, or have you and the night hag had a falling out?" Tallus sat back from the chest, grinning at his work.

Jinn ignored the human and shifted his weight, testing his legs before rising to a low crouch. He studied the chamber as he did so, looking for some crack, some weakness he might exploit to slow the progress of the skulls' ritual.

"Your kind are not welcome within this circle," Rilyana said, kneeling to catch Jinn's eye. "It has lain buried here for three centuries, waiting for this night to happen."

Jinn leaned close to the invisible barrier, a palpable charge around it tingling on his skin. He regarded the young woman who had seduced Allek Marson, Lucian Dregg, Archmage Tallus, and, if the rumors were to be believed, her own brother, who lay unconscious and bloodied barely a stride away.

"No, Mistress Saerfynn, it has been here far longer than that. This circle was a dream long before Waterdeep even had a name. The runes you hide behind owe more to prophecy than the villainy of greedy wizards," he said with a cruel smile, knowing the ambition that brought her to the brink of immortality would be the same that consigned her to the grim delights of a devil-god's court.

Rilyana leaned closer to him, her smile never faltering, her eyes bright and knowing. He could smell the heady scent of her perfume as she licked her lips and lowered her eyes demurely, smirking as she spoke.

"You and Sathariel are much alike, more than I'd expected," she said, adding mysteriously, "I can see why he likes you."

She withdrew swiftly to the archmage's side as Jinn leaned back, speechless as the wizard's voice rose to a shout, a profane chant that sent shivers through the deva's blood. The circle flared to brilliant life, energy spinning low over the carved symbols, raising sparks like the gears of a clockwork machine gone mad. The house shook, groaning again, and Jinn doubled over, sickened by a wave of unholy power as somehow, in the pit of his being, he felt a change in the air and knew what had happened.

The true ritual had just begun.

Hollow voices filled the chamber as Tallus fell silent and turned to the body of Callak, which stirred, writhing and convulsing on the floor.

"Tallus!" Callak cried, the name split among nine screeching tones, all of them furious.

Green flames burst from Callak's eyes, roaring high as shadows flooded from his wide mouth like thick smoke, curling and wrapping around his arms and legs, the misty strings of nine sorcerous puppeteers. He spasmed and lurched, rising on his hands as the darkness obscured his flesh, leaving only the flaming green eyes, which turned and glared at the archmage.

"Idiot! Fool! You have betrayed us!" they cried, voices cracking like a whip.

"Nonsense," Tallus replied calmly. "I have merely quickened the pace of our arrangement, though I suspected you would not be terribly pleased."

"We shall rip you limb from limb, knit you back together, make you a plaything for demons and a temple for maggots!" the Nine shouted.

"No, you won't," the archmage responded as Rilyana leaned upon his shoulder, "for there are a dozen souls left for you to prepare. Time is fleeting, but it has not yet left you behind. That is, provided you contribute your own souls to the ritual before the work is ruined…"

Jinnaoth listened to the exchange intently, quietly urging the souls to act upon their greed and reveal the location of their long-hidden souls. With that, he might draw out the angel, lure Sathariel with valuable secrets to within reach of his blade.

"Very well," the skulls growled at length, too close to the immortal flesh they so desired to resist its siren call. "Find them here…"

They drew a series of dark symbols upon the wooden chest, the characters matching the existing arcane designs as Jinn cursed under his breath, unable to read the language upon the box.

"Do not try us further, wizard. As it is, we shall have an interesting discussion when this business is concluded," they said, backing away from the pedestal, eyes flaring excitedly at sight of the wooden chest.

With an echoing whisper of magic, the nine skulls and the possessed body of Callak Saerfynn were gone. Taking their secrets with them, they left Jinn, bereft of all that he'd come for, alone and barred from the hellish circle where Tallus orchestrated a symphony of immortality for himself-and death for every soul within the reach of the foul ritual.