Dear journal,
The stars on this island are wrong. Don’t ask me how, I hardly noticed it. Juno told me that she was confident we shouldn’t have been seeing the constellations we were seeing so far south. We only spent the night outside to see if we could spot the strange lights that the corpse we found near the watchtower mentioned in its notebook, but that was the only thing out of the ordinary.
Juno flew off to another biome at my request, and she said that the stars were different there as well. It was almost like the morkoth was taking a slice of wherever it wanted and freezing it in space. It was a strange revelation, but it made it clear why we were seeing traces of preservation and protection magics. In a way, it reminded me of a museum. We should have been honored to be seeing what we were seeing, but I was still pretty convinced Thalasar had brought us there to kill us.
That was fairly negligible when I got to spend the night outside next to Juno. Sure, we were surrounded by dangerous lizard creatures that had knocked me unconscious in a single swipe, but with my goggles on, I could inconspicuously watch her as she looked up at the sky. She muttered names of constellations quietly during our watch. I followed my head to where she pointed, but my eyes never left hers.
After a good night’s rest and an embarrassingly long time investigating a boulder…
We were off once again in hopes to complete the tasks that Jake asked of us. Juno yelled at me for calling him Jake, so I guess I need to make it clear for whoever inevitably finds this journal on my long forgotten corpse. His name was Thalasor, the weird man in a squid costume. Not to be confused with Thalasar, the giant morkoth that seems to be hunting us down. Clear? No? Yeah, I don’t pretend to understand it either.
As we passed the sahuagin stream on our way towards the next destination, Matanza peeped a few times and pointed at the water. Juno read their thoughts to find that the Aboleth seemed to be the likely candidate for the invasive specimen that Jake had requested we remove from the island. I thought about what it had done to Juno in a single swipe and shook my head. That would be a problem for later, and maybe we could remove it peacefully. For now, I didn’t want to reopen fresh wounds.
Slender nearly ran into me when I stopped to look back at the stream. He quickly apologized.
“Oh, sorry. I was concentrating on sending a message to Lucienne. I wanted to apologize for lying about Ukko– hoping she’d understand that I did it for her safety, but she’s been…” Slender trailed off.
“A real bitch?” I supplied. No love was lost between me and The Aeon’s replacement champion.
“I was going to say less than receptive.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Fine,” Slender said and waved a hand dramatically. “She’s still mad at me for lying to her. I’m trying to tell her the truth now, and she’s just brushing me off. Said I’m just trying to throw her off her target, but why would I do that? We hate Vesk as much as she does.”
“Have you tried necromancy?” Henry asked from behind me. I stepped aside so he could join in the conversation. With an opening line like that, I couldn’t deny wanting to see where he was going with it. We both looked up the huge skeleton as he towered above us. It was hard to tell what expression he was making, but I think it was meant to be a smile.
“Would that really help with this problem?” Slender asked. His emerald eyes narrowed behind his mask.
“What problem? I was just asking if either of you have given it a shot, being mages and all.” I think both of our expressions answered him. “No? You should really try it sometime.”
Slender looked too eager, so I quickly changed the subject. The last thing this group needed was to gain more of The Aeon’s notice by all learning to raise the dead.
“Henry,” I began, “how long were you trapped under the watchtower?” The skeleton’s jaw set out of place as he began thinking. “Maybe a better question is, what year was it?”
“Oh, it was sometime around 29,907,” he said after a moment’s thought. That meant he’d been down there for over three hundred years.
“Were you lonely?” Henry didn’t get a chance to answer me before we were interrupted.
“Guys,” Juno hissed from ahead, finally back from scouting. “Keep it down. We’re not alone out here. Unless you want to seriously reduce the native owlbear population, I would recommend we sneak through this next region. We’re getting close to a change in biome, but it’s either stealth or a bloodbath.”
“Easy for you to say,” Olaf muttered back at her. “Do we really look stealthy to you?” He gestured over to himself, me, and Henry. Henry smiled again, and I uncomfortably adjusted my chainmail.
Juno pulled her hood back and lowered herself closer to the ground. Shade and Slender did the same thing. Matanza’s size and speed made them fairly sneaky too. Juno pointed at the rest of us.
“Follow me. Exactly.” She led the way forward through the dense forest. We all became deathly silent. The underbrush was thick, and Juno managed to pick a path padded with damp moss that softened all of our footsteps. We heard distant sounds of hoots that would have been dismissable had Juno not already seen that they were caused by more of the same dangerous beasts from the stream.
As we made our way through a particularly dense thicket, Juno suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her little pointed ears twitched as she listened to the sounds of birds chirping around us. She motioned for us to stay put and crept forward, moving with a fluid grace that made her almost invisible. We all stayed silent as we looked at each other, feeling lost without her guidance.
A moment later, she returned, shaking her head. There were more owlbears up ahead, and they seemed to be blocking the path. Juno quickly devised a new plan and led us off the path through a winding series of twists and turns that took us around them.
We approached a series of rocks that Juno climbed to the top of with her superior agility. She didn’t make a sound, even as she quickly summited the largest boulders. She offered a hand down towards the rest of us.
Slender walked up first, warily looking at Olaf and I. He was as doubtful as we were that we’d be able to follow Juno’s lead as easily as the others. For good reason. Us two made a lot of noise. Juno pulled the scrawny bard up with ease, and he watched as Shade got a running start before jumping straight at the largest boulder and sticking right to it with his boots that seemed to defy gravity. Juno lifted Matanza just as easily as Slender, and now it was down to Henry, Olaf, and I.
Henry stepped forward, and Juno grabbed his wrist. It popped right out of socket, and she nearly fell backwards trying to lift him. Matanza caught her right before she fell, and her and Slender offered us a silent glare back down.
“Sorry,” Henry whispered. “It happens sometimes. Particularly when I’m nervous.” He grabbed his arm from Juno and stuck it back in the skeletal socket.
“Make it not happen, please,” Juno replied in a similar hush. Her eyes darted off to a clearing nearby. Olaf and I followed her gaze to see a mother owlbear and her handful of cubs.
Juno pulled Henry up, and he managed to stay mostly quiet even as his abnormally large limbs awkwardly scraped against the stone. Olaf was up next, so I gave him a boost on my shoulders. Henry offered a big arm down, but as soon as Olaf grabbed it, there was a popping sound.
“Oh no,” Henry muttered. Olaf slipped a little, skidding down enough that his boot landed on my mask. I did my best not to grunt, but ow, did that hurt. Juno shoved Henry away and Shade took his place to grab the dwarf.
The mother owlbear raised her head up towards the sky and opened her beak to breathe in the scents of the forest. One of her cubs looked in our direction and made a quiet hoo.
Juno and Shade gave Olaf a solid yank that sent him flying over the edge of the rocks. Matanza helped cover the metal hitting stone with a few well timed bird calls through the wood. Henry caught him in his arm and Olaf helped him slide the other back in place.
Juno was back looking down at me while I watched in fearful silence as the owlbears crept closer. I didn’t want to have to attack a mother and her cubs, but if I couldn’t get up this rock fast enough, it was that or getting maimed. Juno jumped back down next to me so quietly that I nearly screamed when I turned back around. She pressed a finger to my mask, then grabbed the end of my scarf and tucked it under the parts of my chainmail that made the most sound.
“You can’t jump without rattling, so I’m going to boost you,” Juno hissed, and I nodded. She looked up at Shade and Olaf. “Grab her as soon as she’s high enough.” She stooped down and locked her fingers together. I stepped into her hand cautiously, but sudden rustling in the bushes behind us made Juno sharply inhale. I clawed frantically at the rock behind her, looking for some sort of hold to steady myself. Shade’s paw-like hand was just out of reach. Juno gasped, “now or never, Jadeth!” She boosted me up so quickly that I nearly fell on top of her.
Shade snatched my one arm, and Olaf managed to get ahold of my other. They pulled back too fast, but Henry caught my face with a mage hand right before I smashed into the stone beneath us. I gave him a silent thumbs up. Juno was back up with us before I even managed to get onto my feet again.
“You two suck at this,” Slender said as soon as we were out of danger. I ignited my goggles and made a bit of smoke bellow out of the mask of shadows. Slender was unimpressed. “Oh, save it for someone you can actually scare, Jadeth.”
We crossed into a new biome on our way to retrieving the item for Jake, and this one may have been the strangest yet.
There were few free standing buildings strewn between the fallen stone ruins. The sand that accumulated in the corners of the stonework was a reddish brown, and the ground beneath our feet seemed to be made of metal. The only surviving buildings were those made of bronze and connected by brass piping that seemed more or less cracked and destroyed.
The air was thick and harsh without any flora or water in sight. It carried a faint smell of rust to it as the wind kicked up and blew sand across the road in front of us. The metal buildings make low creaking sounds, but other than that, the landscape was fully silent.
A few machines blocked our path forward, looking built for combat, but not for war. They didn’t move in the slightest, so I held an arm around cautiously. My father had studied magicanicals, so they weren’t an unusual sight for me. Still, this one looked different– nothing like the warforged creations of the Republic of Kreme.
Henry stepped past me and looked down behind the stone wall. A handful of corpses laid among the ruin, and I wondered what had killed them. Henry raised a hand, and his eyes began to gleam green. The same glow emitted around the bones, and within a few seconds, all the skeletons were back on their feet. I took a step back and clenched my fists, but Henry looked thoroughly satisfied.
“It’s okay, gang,” Henry told everyone, “they’re more scared of you than you are of them– because they– they don’t have any guts.” His jaw unhinged, and Slender audibly sighed.
The skeletons all stumbled out of the ruins and onto the path. They turned around slowly and awkwardly, looking far less alive than Henry himself.
“Banned magic detected!” The closest magicanical guard whirred. All the lights on it changed from blue to red. “Banned magic detected!” It approached us way too quickly for my liking, but it snapped to a stop right in front of Henry. “Release spell!”
Henry stood up straighter, which made him tower over the magicanical. He looked between the emerald glow in his hand and the group of skeletons he had gathered around himself.
“Surely we can come to some sort of agreement? They’re my company, just as the others are.” Henry patted one of them on the head. Its bones made awkward clicking under the weight of his touch. The machine continued flashing angrily, so Henry sighed and extinguished the light in his palm. All the skeletons collapsed back down around him with some rattling noises. The machine’s light switched back to blue, and it headed exactly back to where it was standing.
A few tiny machines wheeled out from between the crevices in the ruins and approached Henry. He watched as they drove overtop of the bones on the road, causing them to vanish immediately after.
Juno picked one up and pressed the button on the bottom of its frame, and it asked her to reassign it when she turned it back on. She did her best to do so, but it began idling and requested a docking station. Olaf peeked over the ruined walls and gestured to the hole that the other tiny cleaning robots had vanished through. As soon as Juno assigned the docking station, it took off to follow the others.
We ventured deeper into the city past the docking building, seeing pools of teal liquid where the pipes had come detached from the factories. All the magicanicals around us gleamed a passive blue; that was, until we turned a corner.
There were a handful of machines gathered around a courtyard. Their lights were blinking red, and they looked like they had seen combat. Slender stroked his chin and held an arm out.
“Wait here a second, guys. I bet I can heal those robots,” Slender said with a confident smile. Juno leaned out past him, then looked back at his innocent eyes.
“That sounds like a good way to get killed.” Juno yanked him back. “Look at how they’re sparking. How do we know that they won’t explode as soon as you get close to them? This entire ruin is very reminiscent of that goddess we encountered. Catbot tried to kill us last time we saw her, and who’s to say these machines aren’t going to do the exact same.”
“You’re no fun. I bet Jadeth would help me.” Slender wrapped an arm around mine. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I… I guess I won’t stop you.” Juno and Olaf both gave me looks of disbelief. Matanza made the saddest coo I had ever heard. “I can replicate the polymorph Henry cast and fly overhead to keep an eye on the situation.” That made Slender grin.
He let go of my arm, and I grabbed my pendant to focus my energy. Suddenly, I shrunk down even smaller than Matanza, and my vision was no longer obscured. I looked at my hands, but I found black feathers in their place. I had become a bloodhawk, just like the ones that Anny had sent to watch over us.
Slender gave me a thumbs up, and I tried to replicate it, but it wasn’t a gesture birds could mimic. I got a running start and awkwardly took flight above the courtyard full of machines. Slender rushed out below me and held his hands up in surrender. All eyes were on him within a second.
The large mirror-like robots started to surround him, and I could feel the tension rising. Olaf and Juno poked their heads out from behind the building where everyone was hiding. One wrong move, and it felt like we would be goners.
Slender tried to calm the magicanicals. He held out a hand and gestured to the glowing light of healing magic, but the machines continued to approach. I let out a loud screech overhead, and Olaf jumped out with Talon raised.
“Screw that!” He shouted and tugged Slender behind him. The robots lashed out at Olaf, and Henry leapt out to aid him.
“Sorry about this– we truly were trying to help,” Henry said and gathered a cool blue energy in his boney hand. He threw it forward, and an icy wonderland exploded at the point of impact. It froze most of the machines solid and gave Slender time to retreat towards Juno, Shade, and Matanza.
Juno moved past everyone and vanished into the nearby ruins. Even flying overhead, I had trouble pinpointing where she had gone. An arrow fired from behind cover– striking the closest mirror robot. It retaliated with a blast of light just as strong and hit Olaf. He gasped, but stayed upright. It would take more than that to floor our dwarven tank.
Shade ran out and slashed apart one of the frozen machines, letting everyone focus on the mirror robots. Olaf drove Talon into the first, and it shattered like glass. Unfortunately, the four chunks it broke into began to levitate. Shade hissed and backed away, and Henry seemed hesitant to use another spell on them.
Matanza didn’t seem as hesitant, though. The fearless kenku ran out and ignited their gauntlets, then they peeped at Olaf. The dwarf looked at how badly he was surrounded, and he gave Matanza the all clear. A blast of fire shot out of the gauntlets and engulfed Olaf and all the mirrors around him.
I made a terrified caw, but Olaf emerged from the fire looking relatively unharmed save for his slightly singed beard. The mirror machines looked close to crumbling. Olaf, Shade, and Juno were able to dispatch them without much more trouble.
The final mirror floated towards Slender and called him a fugitive. Slender audibly laughed and gave Juno and I pointed looks. He backed up into the ruins of another building, and his laughter became quickly silenced. I soared over the ruin to see that Slender had completely vanished.
Juno followed and yelled that the mirror had trapped Slender inside it. It teleported before she was able to do anything, and began floating upward near Matanza. They peeped furiously and jumped upwards to grip the edge of the mirror with one gauntlet before slamming into the surface with the other. The robot sputtered a few more sparks and crashed into the ground, spitting Slender back out of the magical prison.
He fell to his knees and laughed, “thanks– I really didn’t want to see where that thing was taking me.” Matanza nodded before cooing again as they looked over the wreckage.
I began to circle the ruins from above to get an idea of what Jake had possibly sent us to retrieve from this place. All the doors seemed to be sealed, and the rest of the machines were passive. None of the entrances had locks for Juno to open.
I finally found an area with some broken down doors that looked like we could get inside. I made another loud screech to get everyone’s attention, then began circling above the building. I watched as they disappeared inside from atop of one of the brass pipes.
I heard Juno yell at Henry after the wizard tried to scare her in the dark, and he apologized a few times as he collected his skull from where she had reflexively punched it off his shoulders. A few more silent seconds passed, no more than a minute, before I heard a bunch of screams followed by a blast of icy air shooting out of the doorway. Was that another Henry prank?
I circled lower, trying to figure out what had happened. Shade ran out the door and caught his breath. I made a confused bird sound at him from above.
“Another robot– this one’s got ice. Juno’s trying to sneak past it to grab some papers, but she needs someone Matanza sized.”
There was a loud crash from inside, and I flew down to the ground to see Olaf and Matanza standing over the machine’s body. Henry looked pretty banged up, but he was still moving.
“Jadeth,” Juno began and pointed out the door again. “Go make sure that sound didn’t attract any other magicanicals. I don’t think we can handle a fight right now, but this area has some runes that Henry and I may be able to decipher.”
I gave her a reassuring caw before taking flight again– nearly crashing into a wall on my liftoff. It seemed that the other robots didn’t mind us entering that factory. They were all still idling on the streets and in front of the various other factory-looking-buildings. After a thorough patrol, I landed back at the other building. We all rested as Henry and Juno tirelessly worked at solving the puzzle inside the building.
Someone shook me gently to rouse me from my nap, and I blinked my eyes open to see Henry looking down at me. I jumped, still not used to seeing the dead up and moving. Henry pulled me to my feet, and I saw that everyone else had filed back inside.
“I think we figured out how to adjust the pressure on the tanks inside. It wasn’t easy with the notes all being torn up,” he told me, and I nodded as I followed him into the room where him and Juno had been working tirelessly.
Slender was playing with the ring on his finger in the corner of the room– it still had yet to let go from tearing into his skin. Olaf was watching it with narrow eyes and barely contained disgust. Shade had curled up into a sleepy cat ball next to one of the warm tanks of fluid. Juno was pacing between the multiple tanks, pausing every so often to study one of the glyphs and bring a hand to her lips.
“If you think it’s ready, we can go watch the tanks in the other room to make sure they don’t look explode-y.” Olaf grabbed Slender by the lute and tugged him towards the door. Matanza got up from where they were resting and followed them as well.
Juno rubbed her temple, and Henry mirrored the gesture, even though he had no muscles to massage.
“Okay, this should increase pressure. Then we hold it for three minutes,” Juno said.
“Or until they start screaming for us to shut it down!” Henry added.
She put her hand on the glyph and it glowed. A low hiss began in the pipes, and the liquid bubbled in the tanks. We all gathered around and looked down at it, and then I heard a voice in my head– Slender’s voice, to be exact.
“Jadeth, we need help!” He hissed in my mind. One of my ears twitched down. If the tanks were becoming too pressurized, why wouldn’t he have just yelled? My tail flicked back and forth, but I mentally responded that I was coming.
I exited the room where Juno and Henry were working and made my way down the long metal hallway. I heard a voice– not one that I recognized. It was deep and husky, and it sounded mad. It didn’t sound a damn thing like the magicanical voices, so I increased my pace a little and peered into the room that Slender was in. I covered my mask’s valves to prevent them from immediately creating smoke as my eyes ignited red.
“Shit,” I breathed and backed away from the door.
Nothing could have prepared me to see a 12 foot tall, obsidian-colored demon standing on the tank across from my friends. He was even more muscular than Olaf, and had glowing blue eyes. His head was adorned with dark hair and six large horns.
I peeked back in and saw Matanza looking down at their hands and ever so slightly shaking their head. Slender was covering his hand, but I saw the blood dripping down onto the tank. We had discussed lifting the curse on the ring, but it seemed an interesting time to do it. The demon was sneering at Slender, looking absolutely furious.
“My name is Teneborous. I was owed your soul, and now you try to back away from our deal. Tsk tsk. That isn’t how we operate, mortal. I will take what I am owed.”
I pulled away again and took off down the hallway. I skidded to a stop in front of the room Juno, Shade, and Henry were still in.
“Problem!” I called, and Henry and Juno both looked up from what they were doing. “They uh… They summoned a devil in the other room.” Juno and Henry looked at each other, then back at me. “I’m fairly confident it’s Slender’s fault.”
“That… Actually explains a lot.” Juno followed me first, and Henry gave one final glance to the pressure tank. He deactivated the rune and chased after us.
We all stood in the doorway, and we watched just in time for the demon to deliver all the damage he had absorbed for Slender back to him. The bard crumpled to the floor, and my shoulders sank. He then looked at Olaf.
“And you, my queen. Let me bring you home.” He grabbed Talon from the dwarf, and Olaf’s eyes became blank as soon as it was moved away from him. He was blind without it.
“Hey!” I shouted from the doorway. The demon turned to us and snapped his fingers for the door to close in our faces. The latch clicked shut.
“I can have it open in just a–” I didn’t stick around to hear the end of Juno’s sentence. I grabbed Henry and pulled him in through a dimension door.
“Slender!” I shouted, and the demon cocked an eyebrow. I raised my hand to wake him up, but my magic sputtered out from a counterspell. I looked down at my fingers, then spun towards the demon.
The eyes of my mask were glowing so brightly that I could see them reflected on the glass of the tanks below us. I stepped up to stand across from him, fear becoming secondary to rage at what he had done to my friend. The shadows swirled around us, and for a moment the demon looked uncertain.
“Stop. Being. A. Prick,” I growled, and each word created more shadows around us.
Teneborous stepped back, and his lips quivered ever so slightly. However, they soon pulled up in the corners to create a curious smile. He leaned in and said, “run.” The magic overcame me, and as soon as Juno got the door open, I leapt away from the demon and booked it down the hallway. She watched me flee with a confused stare.
Olaf tensed as Teneborous began to walk away as well, still not being able to see anything.
“Talon!” Olaf yelled. “This wasn’t the deal. We still have a job to do!” Teneborous paused and looked down at the warpick as it pulsed with its flaming hot energy.
“If you insist, my queen. I will leave you with this mortal.” Teneborous handed Talon back to Olaf and started making his way out the door and down the hallway. I was inclined to move further out of his way as he strode out of the factory. I jumped behind the wall of some ruins, and looked up over them to see the demon basking in the sunlight.
Juno followed him out of the building with narrowed eyes. She looked back and forth, trying to come up with something to say to him. She hadn’t forgotten that we needed the horn of a demon for Argos’ “save the world” spell.
“Wait,” she yelled. Teneborous turned around. “You– You have a lot of nice horns. Do you know where we could… Uh… Find some? We need a devil horn. It’s for a good cause.”
“He’s a demon!” I exclaimed from where I was hiding.
“It’s for a terrible cause,” Juno corrected.
Teneborous leaned down close to her and reached out slowly towards her face. He ran a few fingers along the fabric of her hood– his lips curling into a smile.
“I could give you one of my horns. If you give me your wing of Bahamut.” His voice was low– smug, like this was an amazing deal Juno was getting. She pulled away from him. If I wasn’t under the effects of his command, I would have tried to banish him there and then for daring to touch her. Juno shook her head, and he stepped away and shrugged. “Fine, then we’ll just take it from you.”
As he walked away, a handful of lesser demons tore through dimensions around her. She yelled for the others, and I heard footsteps running down the metal hallway of the factory. I jumped over the ruins and looked between her and where Teneborous had gone. Part of me wanted to chase him, but I knew Slender was still lying dead on the floor in the factory. He would have been running out of time to be brought back.
I began to sprint towards the door, getting in between the demons and Juno. A blue ball came flying at me and the demons. I inhaled just before it collided with us. The demons seemed to resist it, but it froze me solid between them.
I smashed my way out of it, but it did slow me down. Henry began apologizing, but I let him know I was fine. I continued past the demons, dodging claws as I went. They didn’t seem as interested in me as they did in Juno and her cloak. The attacks on her were a lot more focused. She gasped in a pained breath after taking a number of hits from one of the demons. Olaf returned it with a furious strike, but it almost seemed like Talon was holding back.
I weaved through them and followed Juno into the room Slender had died in. I slammed the door shut behind us and channeled my divine magic into a revival. Slender shot forward and gasped. Him and Juno were both looking pretty defeated, so I offered some healing magic and shoved my back against the door we had come in through.
“Go out the other door– I can hold them here,” I told them hastily, but a knock came from the other side.
“The coast is clear out here, friends,” Henry reassured us. That seemed… unlikely. There was no chance Teneborous had just given up on his prize. I opened the door slowly, ready to slam it shut in case it was a trick. “Is Slender…?” Henry got his answer when the bard came into view behind me.
“What happened to Teneborous?” I asked, still on guard.
“There was a scream from outside,” Olaf said. “Maybe one of those machine things attacked him?”
“I’ll go get a bird’s eye view. Maybe we got lucky.”
I ran down the hall and polymorphed back into a bloodhawk. I was expecting to see signs of a fight, but there was nothing. I didn’t know where the devil had vanished too, until the sunlight caught the gleam of a gemstone. I swooped towards it, and picked up the ring in my talons.
I dropped it down to Slender as he exited the building alongside the others. Then I shifted back and landed next to them. Slender held the ring up in disdain, but I didn’t really expect him to begin trash talking it immediately. The demon had killed him, afterall.
Henry tried to raise some of the demon corpses with his necromancy, but he was just as quickly reprimanded by the magicanical police. He released the spell, but grumbled under his breath as soon as they headed back over to their stations.
Juno and Henry were finally able finish up what they were working on without interruptions, and a glowing light rushed out of the factory. It lit up all the doors on the other factories with power, and we felt something shake the ground below us. I didn’t know what we had just awoken, but I had a feeling we were about to find out.