#101 - Toothy Crowns and Fallen Feathers

The Journal of Wynn Dennavar
Zarantyr, 999 YK, part four

I hoped that going last through the mist meant no one would see what it projected when I passed through, but the exit was a wall of mist identical to the entrance. No one spoke for several minutes. Then Simel broke the silence and proposed we forget what we had seen. Simel the changeling. More than one of his secrets had been revealed by the mist. No one seemed satisfied with that answer, least of all Magnus. He wanted to talk through it, ascertain the truth of the visions. Too introspective for a barbarian.

So we talked. Magnus failed to kill a man who later subjugated his people. Simel tortured a member of the Emerald Claw. Those borderline-traitors have none of my sympathy, but I have only seen torture that severe and so dispassionately conducted a few times in my life, and I would rather have seen none of them.

Changelings are subtle shapeshifters

capable of disguising their appearance.

Old stories suggest they formed from

the union of doppelgangers and

humans, eventually becoming a separate

race distinct from either ancestral tree.

They do not possess the full shapechanging

ability of a doppelganger, but they

can create effective disguises at will. 

This ability makes them consummate

spies and criminals, and many

changelings live up to that potential.

— some gnomish scholarly

monograph at the

Library of Korrenburg

The warforged Clarion also committed crimes against a Karnn, executing and dismembering a crippled, surrendering soldier to fiddle with his bones like a child attempting, and failing, to piece together a broken toy. It was all the more disturbing coming from an impassive, seven-foot construct.

Aleae as a child killed another child and then concealed the crime. It was her behavior after the death that shocked me the most, but Simel praised her for quick thinking. It seemed I had less in common with this Karrn than I had thought. I have had minimal dealings with changelings; I would be lying if I said this didn't present a negative impression. Aleae had a secret like Simel's to hide: she wasn't an elf, but an Eladrin—an unfamiliar word and race t me, but somehow still analogous to an elf. An elf from the faerie realms beyond Eberron, like in children's stories. Now the unicorn manifestation earlier makes a little more sense. A little. Perhaps this also explains why I can't read her expressions. She's not even from this world.

Cypher claimed not to remember much about his crime. I am not certain in what city he had planted explosives or what building he destroyed. It might have been residential or it might have been state property, but I am certain there were at least some civilians within. It made me wonder how many innocents he destroyed during the Last War, denying them a fair fight.

I can claim ignorance for my crime, that the slaughter of Cyran soldiers and refugees on the Day of Mourning was conducted without knowledge of the country's total destruction. But we knew—I knew—that something was wrong that day, and that those we killed weren't the competent, well-armed, and hostile Cyran company we had expected. The Mourning did enough devastation that day without my interference.

When Magnus was satisfied with our discussion, we rested. The contrast of the two warforged drew my attention. From what little I had seen of Clarion, I got the impression he harbored a great capacity for emotion, at least for a warforged. He spent the rest period in prayer. In contrast, Cypher appeared unaffected by the weight of what we had seen. He insisted on checking everyone's equipment and making repairs, unaware that we all wanted to be left alone. I was unwilling to break the silence to explain and eventually gave in.

We progressed. The room beyond the hall was circular, floor splattered with old blood stains, mostly old but one fresh puddle near the center next to a chest-high stone pedestal. On it sat a horrid crown, constructed of downward facing fangs longer than my fingers and as thick as crossbow bolts.

A portcullis blocked our progression on the opposite side of the chamber, unrusted iron marked with silver, out-of-place for an ancient fortress. But then again, so was this clearly magical, untouched crown. After Cypher checked for traps, Aleae, Clarion, and Magnus approached the pedestal, while Simel and I explored the edges of the room.

Magnus called us stragglers forward, and we saw writing surrounding the crown. It fuzzed for a moment, as if my eyes couldn't focus on it at first. It read: Only the one who has sinned the worst must feel the bite of the Crown of Damnation. Once wounded, the gate will open. Something made me certain that if I spoke those words aloud, I would suffer terrible consequences. This place was filled with intrusive magic. The crown was in Aleae's hands before anyone could move—I couldn't stop her, though I was certain that a child's crime couldn't possibly fit the inscription. She tried to force it on her head, but it wouldn't touch, repelled by the force of her...well, not innocence. None of us claimed to be innocent.

One after another, we tried to wear the crown. It rejected each in turn. Though both my crime and guilt was real, after seeing it reject others, I felt little fear trying it myself.

Then Magus said...the words we should not say. I could tell that he was as aware of the prohibition against saying it as I was, but he said it fearlessly. The backlash struck him like a hammer, staggering him. But confirming that we all shared this knowledge didn't help.

We pondered and explored the room for another way out. I shot a bolt through the gate, toward distant light. I heard it ricochet off metal, and a backlit figure moved. Cypher and Aleae both cast spells at it. Aleae tried to communicate with it, but the little she did share of her attempted conversation made no sense to me. I was still too new to understand the complexities at work here.

I had gone far astray in my search for Garrick, but I was committed now. No one suggested going through the mist again.

Magnus struck the door with his bone mace, yelling "Once wounded, the gate will open!" Hah! I've spent enough time around wizards to know that literal thinking is well beyond them. This did not, of course, suffice, and the sound of bone and metal clanging together was jarring.

The barbarians of Seren are an enigmatic, savage people.

Eventually we decided that the crown wouldn't accept self-sacrifice—we had to select and condemn one of us. That was why the mist revealed our sins to each other.

It was another moment where designated leadership would have proven useful, someone with both the capacity and responsibility to make the choice and be done with it. But no, we had to dredge everything up again.

Magnus made a good argument for himself. His regret was honest, and from what he explained, a great many people are suffering because of his actions. Simel's crime came close. Unlike Clarion and Cypher, his crime wasn't conducted in war—the man he tortured was a fellow Karrn.

The words we said were different, but I know what most of us were thinking. The four of us from Khorvare, who had fought during the Last War, couldn't condemn one another without facing the magnitude of our own crimes. It had to be one of the outlanders, and no one could condemn Aleae for what she did as a child.

During the argument, Aleae said something to me that was deeply unsettling. That I had committed the greatest crime because I did not question my orders. Everyone else, she argued, made a choice and took action. By not allowing myself to think about what I did, I refused to even acknowledge that I was committing a terrible sin. My justification that I "didn't know" became further evidence of my crime, not an excuse. I felt further shame: the longer we waited the more desperately I did not want to wear that crown, and so said nothing.

Magnus's will won out. Aleae crowned him with the monstrosity. I feared it wouldn't work, and it would go on my head next. But in the next moment, I instead became certain that this object was no angelic creation. It allowed us to condemn the only one among us whose sin involved not killing.

The teeth of the crown touched Magnus's head and vanished. No blood. I had the beginning of a suspicion, one that grew over time, that this wasn't over.

I didn't hear the portcullis open, but when I looked, our passage was unbarred. Magnus could still walk, so we progressed.

This room was larger. The floor looked like it divided a perfect sphere, with stairs across the room leading into the lower hemisphere. Scraps of blackened armor and huge black-and-white feathers littered the floor and a strange, incense-like odor pervaded the space.

To the left, three people sat or lay on slabs of stone to the left, all human, all unknown to me. To the right stood the giant-sized figure of a man, looking down at us calmly. The light we had seen issued from its direction. I looked just long enough to see that it wore scraps of armor and had a backdrop of feathers—undeniably wings—and was filled with the overwhelming urge to look away.

The atmosphere demanded reverence. We entered silently and wandered each our own ways. I inspected the fallen armor and feathers, but when I reached out, the words Do not touch thundered quietly but with authority in my head. There was little doubt that they came from the being. Angel, Magnus called it. I was not so blind as to call it a mundane creature, but there was nothing holy in what we had just experienced. I did my best to ignore it.

Simel inspected alcoves in the walls. Clarion and Aleae approached the being and studied it. Magnus stood near the prone figures, seeming concerned.

He and the others discussed matters with the being that I did not understand. The man encased in ice, Kard, was evidently a mission for the being "beyond this world," somehow, and would die if he failed. That it did not explain further. The other man was the "Saleessh" I had heard of, the one who left the others shortly before they met me. He looked very little like Magnus but appeared equally foreign. He held the hand of an unconscious woman of his own tribe and looked deep in meditation. The woman looked ill: pale, sweating, feverish, caught in the throes of a nightmare. She was not on a death-quest for the being, but was called an "unknowing assassin" by the winged being. It said that she'd been sent here by the prakhutu (which I later learned meant something akin to "chief servant") of a...demon lord? She was able to pass through the challenges—such as the crown?—where neither this prakhutu nor its minions could.

The being said the woman harbored a monster within her somehow, and had been sent to interrupt the being's "vigil." It spoke of guarding something but would not say what, even when asked. The monster within her had been made dormant only. In the begin's words, "I have stayed the transformation, but I could not destroy it without destroying her." The being suggested that Sahlessh had been given a choice when he came here shortly before us: he could not stop the transformation, but he could save the woman's life by taking the monster into himself. The being then explained, again minimally, that once he did this, there would be no more suppression of the "assassin." It would overtake him.

I could make little sense of this, and was not sure how much I could believe. I wanted to object, to question, to call it out as a fraud, but I couldn't break the silence. There was magic in the air, and some part of me found it difficult to disbelieve the being's warning about the danger. Angels and demons I have no sense of, but monsters I can understand, and if there would be a fight I could participate with my own hands.

The beging promised that if we survived the coming destruction, it would share with us dangerous information. The others wanted that information, though I did not know why.

We waited and watched Sahlessh. I was surprised that no one, namely Simel, suggested cutting the man's throat. They seemed willing to take the words of the being at face value, but maybe there was some lingering affection for their erstwhile companion. Though I did not disbelieve that something would happen, it would have to reveal itself as a true monster before I would take action. Whether it was here for the being or not didn't matter if I felt that we were all in danger.

After only a few minutes, Salessh convulsed and began to scream even as his teeth and a great deal of vile black fluid erupted from his gaping mouth. Black vapor poured out of his body, as his body appeared to shrivel beneath it. The fumes warped into a huge cyclone of screaming skulls and emaciated faces. And many-jointed, razor-sharp claw arms.

We attacked.