Session 23

November 2nd

All together, they move down the hallway and they find to their surprise that the cell door with the skeleton behind it is unlocked. After some fruitless back and forth, Eden lifts his pendent to the skeleton. A soft, radient light eminates from it, frightening the skeleton deeper into the prison. They follow it through an illusion wall and find a secret basement to the prison.

They find a large room with a group of people clustered around a circle of fire. Heat radiates from various grates along the floor. Five people they take to be cultists surround the circle of fire, with an alter at the far end that another man stands behind. Eden instantly casts silence on most of the cultists and the man who appears to be their leader. Ophelia, knocks an arrow and fires at a cultist. Della attempts to appear as a normal rat. As the fight begins the cultists are soon aided by two strange creatures that seem to appear from the heat billowing up from beneath the ground. Almost animal-like in their appearance with glowing magma swirling beneath the cracked surface of their skin.

Though the flames around the ceromonial circle don't die down, Iban, who had been in the middle of it, manages to teleport the short distance out of it. Della ends up abandoning the rat plan to help once it's clear Ophelia and Eden are being overwhelmed by the beasts and cultists alike. Even when the cultists are dead they struggle a while longer to kill the creatures before finally ending the fight.

Eden heals them all as much as he can, including a haggered Iban.

Iban admits he'd thought he was going to die here, and was shocked to see the lot of them. He has no recolection of his abduction. Worse yet, he brings them to three bodies that had been in the room prior. Three people burned almost beyond recognition. Almost. Iban reveals the three of them had been his students, and that the cultists seemed to be targeting mages. No one is sure why. He takes a bracelet off one of the corpses. While Iban, Della, and Ophelia investigate that, Eden takes the tome that the cult leader had been reading from, as well as a necklace that seems to radiate with heat. Before they go, Della takes the time to scratch out the runes making up the now-extinguished spell circle in the middle of the room.

Al in the hopes no one would come back and try to continue their practices.

The group of them make their way back to the Black Stag, sticking to back alleys given their state. Iban takes them in through the back door, surprising Attic and prompting them to get Neeven. The siblings embrace and emotions threaten to spill over, but Neeven collects herself enough to insist they all sit down. She serves them lunch, promising to return once the lunch rush settles down.

While eating, they talk about what happened, and what to do next. Figuring out how to approach the basement room proves difficult, as tipping off the town guard openly would bring unwanted attention, but Iban says he may drop an anonymous tip in a few days. As for why the cultists were there at all, Ophelia says it's not unheard of for fanatics to practice human sacrifice to try and earn favor with the lady of fire. There's no way of knowing if they sought power, money, or something else. Eden and Iban both flip through the tome taken from the alter, but find they can't read it. Della realizes they can understand the script, thus begin pouring over it.

While they do that, Iban pulls out the bracelet he'd taken off one of the bodies. It sits in the middle of the table, the object of his deep thought, when Eden opts to touch it and see if there's anything to be gleaned from the wearers death. The vision is as expected. The woman burns alive, filled with anger. Iban takes the bracelet back, and asks what he's doing. As if he hasn't been through enough, Eden's calm explanation only seems to distress Iban more.

After all of that, they mention the symbol carved onto one of the tables in Iban's classroom, and that they cleared out the 'infestation'. Iban laughs weakly hearing this.

That was supposed to be V's job, after all.