Everyone seemed sullen at breakfast.
Finian was in a mood after having his offer to accompany Gwaedry and her parents through the emergency tunnel rebuffed by Abernathy. The Archer insisted but the manservant would have none of it.
"We'll be fine, Archer," the man had said. "Do you doubt my ability to defend my family?"
Abernathy had worn a rapier at his waist and Finian just shook his head.
"Now, if anyone actually assaults Grey House and they make it inside, lure them into the Audience Chamber. The ceiling isn't precisely what it seems," Abernathy had told him with a wink before slipping out through the basement.
Finian had examined the ceiling of the audience chamber - which wasn't really a ceiling at all but a glass canopy through which he could see the night sky - but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Before he left the enormous room, the Archer glanced up at the ten throne-like chairs on the dais that ran the length of the opposite wall and wondered when - or if - he would see the Grey Lords again...
Ledare and Kirnoth were both weary from their lengthy translating session the night before and in plainly showed around their eyes.
Omrixx was irritable because the talk kept returning to the Tome of Brader and the other clues they had collected over the last few moonsdances. "Most scripts that I study involve invoking powers and weaving manna," he grumbled. "I have never been one to decipher riddles."
For his part, Ruze was upset that they wouldn't be breakfasting on Alyllyra's cooking this morning. Of course, that didn't stop him from stuffing the slightly stale tea biscuits and coffee cakes that they had found into his mouth with zealous abandon.
After Kirnoth had finished reading off the portion of the poem that he and Ledare had translated, Ruze made a huffing sound and began to speak around a mouthful of food. Flying crumbs of powdered sugar punctuated his words.
"I can tell that all of you seem to know exactly what to do," he told them. "So I will follow you regarding Aphyx, the Beast's Twin, and the like."
"We don't know, though Ruze," Kirnoth confessed, sounding a little frustrated at having to admit that. "We've got a lot of clues, but no answers."
The Battleguard shrugged.
"I am glad my only function is to cleanse the temple," he said and took a sip of tea. "In that order, I will advise you now of the ritual so you know what to expect. Is that acceptable?"
"Yes," the elf said. "There is much that we could discuss, but I think we need to get to the sewers as soon as possible."
Firstly, a 30 foot radius needs to be cleared of any "pentagrams", marks of chaos, or marks undivided that are established around the altar," Ruze began. "You will not be able to see them until I break the spell that keeps them hidden except to those turned to chaos. Once I have broken the hiding you will be able to see the marks."
As he talked, he dragged the plate holding the coffee cake closer and began to cut a slab.
"Don't be fooled if you don't see a circle with a star in it or a so-called pentagram," he went on. "That is only what you read in your school books or hear about from traveling bards. The marks of chaos can be in any order in any design in any pattern. Actually, what is worse is when they are not in a pattern as that is the sign of a skilled chaos mark maker - true chaos. The "better" ones are made with human blood, gore, bowels, and feces spread into shapes. The easier and less powerful ones use the same elements but can come from any animal. Do not focus on the marks too long for it is like looking at the sun, except here your stomach will turn, your eyes will burn, you will dry heave. So just see it when I locate it and then know to stay out of it."
He took an enormous bite of the coffee cake and made a face of pure pleasure as he chewed. He swallowed, washed it down with a mouthful of tea and continued.
"Do not try to 'break' the mark with hand or sword: again a myth. The marks have to be cleansed by a cleric using the tools of my trade," he said. "What I need you all to do is keep the minions of chaos away from me so that I can move freely within the 30 foot radius. They will assault you like they did before with clouds of flies that buzz in your mouth and eyes, with the touch of rot, with curses, and the like. So prepare yourself. Use whatever mental tools you use to retain your focus."
The Battleguard looked around the Dining Room table at each of his Companions to make sure that the gravity of what they were about to face was clear to them. When he was convinced that they all looked properly afraid, he shoved the other half of his piece of cake into his mouth and went on with his instruction.
"Once the marks are cleansed. I will shout "CLEAR". Then you are to move into me as I need to cleanse the altar," he told them. "The altar has been created by fusing raw chaos - warp stone - and the soul of an aspiring chaos champion who willing sacrificed his life to enter his new chaotic form. To us this would be a horrible punishment but to him that was a favor upon him from his goddess."
Ruze saw Kirnoth squirm a bit in his chair and the Battleguard smirked as he cut another piece of cake.
"The altar is not alive per se, but is very deadly. It will attempt to push me away when it senses my presence," he said taking another large bite. "Yes, you may remember I was able to smash it before, as I was able to tip the balance of power in the room on that night and was able to carry through to the altar. But I only smashed it; I did not destroy it. Now destroying the altar will take all of us."
He took a sip of tea to clear his mouth and pointed at each of his comrades in turn as he assigned tasks to them.
"Finian, you are to guard with your bow and pick off anyone trying to save the altar. Ormixx and Kirnoth, your job is to use your magic to assist in whatever way I may be thwarted. For example if I am repelled from it, I will need your help to get me back in, and the like. You will have to adapt to the situation as it arises. Ledare, I will need you sword arm for I cannot smash the altar at the same time as I purify it. As you smash it, I will conduct the holy ritual that will cleanse it."
He finished his piece of cake and then leaned back in his chair, arms spread.
"Finally, after it is destroyed we much flee the area as I spread a holy powder over the area to sanctify the ground to prevent the immanent return of chaos. And that, my friends, is it," he said. "Oh, one more thing; if I fail, and the altar is able to repulse me, it will explode, and you don't want to know what would happen after that."
Licking his lips he indicated the remaining cake.
"Would anyone like a piece of this coffee cake?" he asked, picking up the knife again. "It is delicious."
Nobody else at the table felt much like eating.
Ledare pushed back from the table and got to her feet.
"Before any of this, I will need new armor and want to check to make sure nothing else of mine has been fried and rendered useless," she said. "I'll be in the armory."
"I want to take a last look at that book and see if I can't find a map in it somewhere," Kirnoth said as he too got to his feet. "I started thinking last night that perhaps the piece of charred note we found is saying the book itself is unimportant, but that within it is hidden a map."
"Did you figure out how to use the harp, Omrixx?" Finian asked and the half-elf nodded. "Make sure that you bring it. It could become useful."
"Are you sure that you don't want a piece of this?" Ruze asked around a mouthful of cake.
"But the idea of a map in the book is a great one," Ledare consoled Kirnoth. "Just because you didn't find it hidden in the cover doesn't mean it isn't there."
"Well, maybe the map is made up of clues contained within the words of the text," the elf sighed. "After the sewer perhaps you and I could work to decipher that."
"I'm all for checking that out as soon as possible," the Janissary told him with a nod.
"Okay," Finian said, stopping them by the back window of the burned-out house that led to the hidden temple. "No more talking."
He slipped on the Invisibility Ring and vanished.
"I will lead the way, invisibly," his voice told them and then they heard him crunch through the open window leading in. "Be ready for a fight."
But no fight came.
The sewers were empty of opposition and they arrived without incident at the temple complex. It too was empty, and the hallways echoed hollowly with the chink and clink of Ruze's scalemail and Ledare's new plate. It seemed very eerie lit by the azure glow of magical swords.
Eventually, a hiss from Finian told them to stop near a charred patch of wall.
"This is where Omrixx burned Nunzio," the Archer's disembodied voice whispered. After a pause he added, "Omrixx, bring your sword over here."
The half-elf did so and eventually bumped into Finian causing the Archer to reappear. He was hunched, examining the ground as he used to so often before the incident with the viperwolves.
"What is it?" Ledare asked.
"Nunzio," Finian replied grimly. "He was hurt real bad. Bleeding."
He crept forward, peering closely at the stones.
"He had to be almost carried out by someone else," he went on. "Probably that other wererat, Rudivan. They went this way."
Finian pointed and ahead they saw the chest that Omrixx had hauled out into the hall. It still sat just as it had, open and bulging with various gear - much of it his. Finian followed the trail beyond it while Omrixx grabbed his backpack, shortbow and quiver. He was securing his shortsword and dagger to his waist when Finian called him onward.
The trail of blood went down a short hallway, passed a closed door on the left to a door set at its end.
Omrixx checked it for traps and the group gathered around as he pulled it open. Beyond was a ten-by-ten room that was empty except for low wooden benches along the walls and a line of pegs set into the walls above them. There was a door on the right hand wall, but the blood trail stopped across from it in the center of the left wall. One of the pegs set into the wall there was smeared with dried blood.
Finian grabbed it and pulled down. With the grinding sound of stone on stone, a secret door opened into a dark shaft. A metal ladder was built into the right hand side of the shaft which both rose and descended into darkness for as far as they could see. There were more smudges of blood on the the rungs of the ladder going up.
"They went this way," Finian hissed reaching out for the ladder rungs.
"We have to deal with the temple first," Ruze said from the rear of the group. "That clearly leads away from our current goal."
"He's right, "Ledare said and Kirnoth nodded. Finian grumbled but ultimately agreed.
The great vault of the temple proper was even more disquieting than they remembered it. The charnel house stench of entrails, blood and feces was very strong. Clouds of flies buzzed maddeningly in the air. The cruel faces of the woman carved into each of the enormous pillars stared defiantly down at them as they entered.
Ruze dipped a silver-handled brush that he had brought into the small cask of holy water and liberally painted the lintel of the door. There was no hissing or smoke, but the stone seemed to age where the water touched it, growing pitted and cracked.
"Stay with me," he said and pulled out a slim leather volume. He shoved the small cask under his arm, held the book open with that hand and began dipping the brush into the water and sprinkling it out in front of him as he walked. He read from the book as he went.
He kept repeating the same five lines over and over as he made his way slowly around the room with the others following close behind. Aside from the noisome waste that was strewn messily across the floor, the room was empty. Fat flies slowly drifted around them seeming to purposefully bump into their faces and buzz in their ears as they passed. There was only one other door, in the back left corner, and Ruze painted the jamb with holy water.
Once they had made one complete circuit of the room, the Battleguard carefully turned the page in his little book and proceeded to spiral in toward the black slab of the altar that they kept glimpsing out of the corner of their eyes when the light was close enough.
The cleric read the passages over and over as he went, sometimes altering his course somewhat to walk straight through the center of a disturbing pile of viscera. After a while, the group began to see patterns in the waste that the Ruze was choosing to walk through. Idiograms of blood and feces were drawn painstakingly on the floor, one atop the other until hidden patterns emerged in an unsettling diagram that seemed to invite the eye to linger. They each were forced to tear their gaze away from the beguiling symbols, but not before Ledare recognized one - an eye inside a star - as being the same one they had seen set into the window in Poppof's laboratory.
They had reached the center of the room and the altar of dull, porous, slightly-corroded black rock. It sat atop a one-foot-high platform of black stone speckled and streaked with olive green and puss yellow. Omrixx could still feel the horrible sensation of the stone pressing against his naked back.
Ruze dropped to his left knee and unslung his warhammer. He rested the butt end against the floor and pressed his forehead against the hammer head. Although he had set aside the slim leather prayer book, he still intoned the words of the next litany.
The room was growing cold. A soul-numbing chill had begun to settle on them, gripping their very hearts, as well as their sanity. There seemed to be movement at the edges of the torchlight, and Finian notched an arrow and peered around. But there was nothing to see. Perhaps it was just the clouds of flies or a trick of the light.
Ruze stood then and handed his hammer to Ledare without looking at her. He kept chanting as the Janissary hefted the weapon and approached the altar stone. She raised the hammer above her head and then stopped and stared unbelievingly at the altar. It seemed that the glow of Omrixx's glowing shortsword was not highlighting the stone's edges anymore. The altar had become a mass of midnight black. A solid shadow. Depth and form were indistinguishable.
The Janissary just blinked, her mouth gone suddenly slack with horror.
The others watched, amazed and stunned, as the altar began to turn translucent, and then almost clear. At the altar's center was pulsing a gangrenous, amorphous mass of slowly-moving cloud. From each of their points of view, the cloud looked to be immense- hundreds of miles across, as seen from a thousand miles away.
Ruze's voice raised to a more defiant level and Ledare shook her head, momentarily free of the rapture. She brought the hammer down onto the altar and several things happened at once.
Firstly, the altar went instantly black again and became dull porous stone. Secondly a deafeningly loud note rang out when the hammer hit the stone. Thirdly, her brain screamed for to not touch the altar. She jumped back immediately, dropping the hammer to the floor. She looked dazedly at her undamaged hands. It had been like touching a hot stovetop, except she was unhurt.
Finian saw movement again at the edge of the light and this time he was sure that something was there. But before he could do much more than register the nightmare shape, it was in motion. It flowed forward, a fetid pile of black iridescence that roiled and bubbled with shimmering, temporary eyes that rose to it surface and then burst apart like soap bubbles. It reared up a pseudopod of plastic flesh and Finian saw a slithering mouth form amidst the bursting pustules.
The thing spoke in a voice that was like a ton of broken glass being dragged across sheet metal.
"I am one 'moonkisser' who says you can kiss me arse!" it cried as it bore down on them.