Chapter 5.16: The Sightless Citizens of Saal

“Did Phenilias do this?”
Mero is appalled by what he sees.
“No”, the skull says carefully. “He found it in this state near the edge of the town border.”
Its scaled green skin is covered with dried up dark blood. Almost all teeth are missing and the end of its tongue is torn off. Its four eyestalks dangle limply beside his body, all missing its eye at their tip. The most horrid observation is its central eye. Nails are slammed into its eyelids to keep the big eye open, which looks dry and has the same orange glow to it as the cursed citizens.
“This is horrible”, Oslando says underneath his breath. “Who would do this?”
“And why?” Lyssa wants to look away, but she can’t. “This is just torture for the sake of torture!”
A pained sigh leaves the dry mouth of the maimed creature. It tries to lift its eyestalks, but it lacks the strength to do so. It’s a sad sight to see.
“What should we do?” Bruq takes his backpack and grabbles inside to find something useful. “Do we feed it? Should we remove the nails?”
Mero takes a few steps forward and raises his hand, reaching for his uncle’s hurt kin. He hesitates. It’s in pain, but what if taking out the metal will hurt him even more? It looks like it’s on the brink of death. This could kill him. He might end its suffering, but he might increase the agony its in even more.
“Can’t you heal it?”
Mero turns to Dargothoth, desperation resonating in his voice. There is something about the way asks it that strikes a chord within the sivak. It’s not sentiment, not in the slightest, but rather the feeling that he is needed. Of course he is superior to these ‘companions’ and he doesn’t feel anything for them or their pleas, but to have someone turn to him in times of need, knowing fully well what kind of person he is, is a new experience.
“I can do my best.” Even when Dargothoth doesn’t try to sound ominous he still does. “Make way.”
With sharp clanking sounds the golem takes a few steps back. He wants to rush the slowly moving cleric, push him to help it more quickly, but he knows the discussion will only delay it even further. He almost can’t help himself. Every passing moment must feel like another eternity of suffering for the spectator.
Dargothoth raises his hands and closes his eyes. When he starts to mumble the first few words of his spell, he is interrupted.
“Stop this nonsense.”
He opens his eyes to find where that hollow female voice came from.
The spectator’s dried up central eye glows brighter and its tongue whips around.
“What in the hells?” The sivak observes how more live seems to return to the beholderkin just a few feet away from him. “Did it speak?”
Dargothoth turns around to see the others nod, their startled gazes not losing the creature out of sight.
“Leave this town. Leave and let it be consumed by powers that should be left unchallenged by your kind.”
Anger replaces his confusion and he turns back towards the taunting creature.
“Whoever talks through this vermin’s mouth, hold your tongue! Do you know whose disciple you are speaking to?”
The spectator chuckles and a nasty gargling of phlegm and half-dried up blood mixes with its laughter.
“We see everything, faceless pawn. We saw you enter this town and meddle with businesses that aren’t yours to meddle with.” The creatures inhales with a sharps screeching, like it’s running out of breath. “You will discover soon enough that your deity can’t be trusted, but it will be too late!”
The sivak growls.
“You killed Phenilias, didn’t you? Whoever you are, hiding behind possessing this defenseless creature, I can see you’re scared of facing us. Watch your back, because we will come for you and when I find you, I will gouge out your eyes and feast on your bones!”
Silence fills the room. A crooked smile spreads across the twitching spectator.
“Poor thing.” Now its voice sounds like three women instead of just one. “You will find nothing but darkness!”
The central eye opens completely and protrudes from its socket. The orange glow intensifies.
“Akura irath imen!”
The three females scream and the light dies, just like the spectator. It stops moving and it lies lifeless on its side.
“No!” Mero screams. “Dargothoth, can you save it? Dargothoth?”
No response.
“Dargothoth!”
The cleric turns around so the others can see what has silenced him.
“Oh, no.” Lyssa covers her mouth and walks up to him. “Your eyes. They’re…”
The sivak nods once.
“They’re orange, right?”
She nods, but he can’t see. Dargothoth has gone blind.

Chapter 5.15: The Sightless Citizens of Saal

A few ligaments connect the upper jaw with the lower one. The tendons still look surprisingly fresh, for the lack of a better term. The whole skull is stripped of its skin and it looks like it’s been polished frequently.
“If this truly is his wife’s head”, Bruq says, “that would be disturbing.”
He kneels in front of the skull and takes a good look at it. Missing teeth have been replaced with glass ones. Two shiny black stones are placed on the spots where her horns used to be.
“Well, your face ain’t pretty, either!”
The satyr falls backwards, startled by the grim phenomenon in front of him. The skull mocks him and laughs now that it sees how much it scared him.
“Holy hells.”
The hunter’s voice is high and he gasps for air, hand pressed against his chest.
The skull laughs again.
“I was waiting for one of you to come closer. Took you longer than I expected. Thanks for the help, painted me!” The skull makes a subtle gesture to the woman in the painting, who happily waves back at her. “So, you’re looking for my husband?”
Bruq gets up again and the others gather around the woman’s head.
“Yes”, Dargothoth says. “He has answers about this curse and we want them.”
Mero wonders what kind of necromantic spell keeps this head ‘alive’. He has heard about a few, but keeping only a head so well preserved and intelligent requires powerful magic.
“Sorry to break it to you, lizardman, but he’s dead. Three demons came, took his body with them and hid the blood with ointment the half-elf found. Luckily, I’m here to help. I’m Callysta. Since you didn’t ask, I thought I would just introduce myself.”
“Hold up”, Oslando says with raised hands, slowing down the rambling demon head. “Go back to the part of Phenilias getting killed. What happened?”
The skull bites the air in front of her, creating a rhythmic ticking of her teeth.
“This is best I can do since I don’t have any eyes to roll or eyebrows to raise.” She continues the ticking. “My stupid husband meddled with things he should have stayed away from, but as the village’s mage he made it his responsibility to find out what kind of spell was causing this disaster. After burning through some major detect magic spells he found out that there was a lot of transmutation activity somewhere in the city. He made a rather ordinary looking lantern for detecting magic so that he could subtly check around the city at night where the source was. The fire inside changed colour when it came closer to magic. It got him killed.”
She stops speaking. She ticks her teeth again, slower this time.
Oslando wants to ask a multitude of questions, but it feels like it would interrupt a moment of grief. Dargothoth is not as patient.
“Tell us about his killers and we will avenge him.” The sivak’s voice sounds more ominous than helping. “You said there were three. What did they look like? Did you know them?”
There are more spells at work than just a reanimating spell, because the skull can shake his head a bit.
“I didn’t see their true form. When they barged into the store, Phenilias immediately recognized the transmutation magic. They looked like the average citizen, but they are shapeshifters. Anyway, that’s what he said to them. They were spellcasters, all three of them, and they had one of those floating eye monsters with them that paralyzed him before he could do something. When he broke the spell, they maimed him so badly already that he lost a lot of blood. It was an unfair fight and I couldn’t do anything but witness it all.”
She imitates a swallowing sound and stays quiet. Dargothoth takes a step closer and picks up the skull.
“Can you tell us anything useful? How are we supposed to find three demons who shapeshift? Do you have any idea how difficult those are to track?”
Bruq puts his hand on the cleric’s lower arm.
“Take it easy”, the satyr calmly says. “I know compassion isn’t your strong suit, but you can at least try it.”
Dargothoth growls.
“It’s okay, sweetheart”, the skull says to the satyr. “After all this time without physical contact, a little manhandling was just what I needed. Your friend just wants to show how dominant is.”
The priest looks at her with a crinkled nose and squinted eyes.
“Disgusting”, Dargothoth replies and he puts her back on the table. “We are doing this for you as well. You had your fun, now tell us what we want to know.”
A short cackle bursts from the skull's mouth.
“For me? That’s crap and you know it. You’ve been raiding our home since the moment you stepped in. Take what you want. We can’t use it anymore, but don’t act like you’re a saint!”
Her animated voice imitates the sound of breathing heavily, like he has screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Please”, Mero says to break the tension, “we want to help. Tell us more. You said something about a floating eye. We know about those, but they aren’t supposed to do things like this. Was there something strange or different about it?”
He hopes she can tell him something useful to help his uncle. It already worried him that Oanoa can’t see the spectators anymore, but to hear they are attacking civilians is a on whole other level.
“This one had metal parts to it, very different to the one Phenilias found.”
The glow in Mero’s eyes brightens for a second.
“He found one?” He sounds just as surprised as he sounds worried. “Where?”
“Go to the bookcase and take out ‘Hidden Words of Ozephelyx’ and ‘Nomicon Nomiconai’. Those are on the second and third shelve.”
They turn towards the massive cabinet and quickly spot the two books Callysta mentioned. The first is a hefty tome with a thick black leather cover and golden letters on it. It seems less dusty than the books beside it. The same applies to the other book, a thinner book with a blue cover and red markings at its edges.
“Good”, the skull says. “Now switch them.”
Bruq and Lyssa trade books and put them in place where they found the other book. A sharp clicking sound comes from the wall to the right of the bookcase. A couple of bricks sink into the wall and slide sideways. Mero covers his mouth in disbelief when he sees the spectator.
“There you go.” Callysta sounds happy with herself. “There is your eye monster.”

Chapter 5.14: The Sightless Citizens of Saal

“Such a waste!”
Oslando stands in front of the desk, hands resting on his hips and shaking his head. A dozen of broken vials surround the table legs and stains in an array of colours have bespattered the floor and table. Only two small flasks remain intact, one full and one empty.
“Luckily, at least one potion seems to be left.”
The half-elf picks up the flask and moves the liquid inside around. The red colour reminds him of the kinds of apple he picked at the market when he was younger. They always looked like the best and healthiest ones. He has seen this exact shade of red many times before. That’s why he, probably like many other adventurers, recognizes what this is.
“A potion of healing”, he elatedly says. “It’s enough for two persons if we drink with some moderation. Keeping in mind of what we have to face here in Abaddon I suggest we take this with us.”
Technically, he is stealing and he knows that’s wrong, but Oanoa’s words linger in his head.
“Sometimes, sadly, you have to accept the things that feel wrong to prevent something far worse”, he told him.
If a potion like this can save their lives at some point, their potential deaths outweigh taking it without asking.
“Always nice to have some of those”, Bruq responds. “Helps me save the goodberries for later.”
The half-elf chuckles.
“I believe these magical concoctions are more potent than your transmuted mistletoe. I don’t know if it beats the taste. It’s been a long time since I drank one.”
Oslando digs deep into his memories, trying to recollect the last time he drank one of these. One ingredient, some type of mushroom, gives a surprisingly tingling sensation on the tongue. The slight fizzle of the substance is rather unique for a consumable drink that isn’t enriched with alcohol. How they discovered what ingredients were necessary to create this elixir is still a mystery to him, but he suspects it was a lot of trial and error.
(Investigation 14)
After that detour down memory lane he puts away the potion of healing and picks up the other vial. It’s empty, but there’s still something very interesting about it. It looks like there’s no cork sealing off the glass, but when Oslando runs his finger over the open end, he most certainly feels it. On further inspection, the glass has a subtle tone of pink within it, which gives him the idea that someone altered it to give it different properties. Turning the flask around to read the label put on it definitely helps.
“Ointment of invisibility”, he reads out loud for the others to hear. “Too bad it’s empty. Judging the size of the potion it had a lot of it in it. Shame.”
While the half-elf monologues, Dargothoth stands at the other side of the room, next to the stairs and right in front of two peculiar paintings. The depiction on the right shows a female demon, dressed in a black gown, hiding her face. The cleric can see she’s crying, because he notices her shoulders shaking and how she wipes away her tears.
“The picture moves.” The sivak speaks without any sign of surprise or awe, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Why would Phenilias have such depressing art in his home?”
Oslando and Lyssa walk up to him and stare with their questioning companion at this unusual spectacle. Against their expectations, the woman in black looks up. She seems to be making eye contact with them. She holds up her quivering hand and taps on a ring around her finger. Her weeping intensifies.
“You were his wife?”
Lyssa asks this question carefully, afraid of the pain she might inflict with it. Even though they’re talking to a painting, the composition is so lifelike that it feels like she’s speaking to an actual person. This feeling is confirmed even more when the grieving lady nods.
“Do you know what happened to Phenilias?”
This time, Dargothoth asks the question and his intonation is a lot less cautious. The painted woman nods again and gets up slowly. She needs to push herself up from the armrests of her chair. She shuffles steadily towards her right, to the left side of the frame. When she reaches the edge of her portrait, she continues walking and disappears entirely. Unexpectedly, she reappears again in the painting hanging left from her own one. The other painting is a realistic depiction of the home they’re in right now, but in a totally different state. In contrast with the chaos and havoc in this home, the painting shows where everything stood before, everything neatly ordered and nothing smashed or broken. She picks up a big potion off the table, turns towards the adventurers and points with her other hand to the corner of the room.
“I think I recognize it”, Oslando says as he tries to read the intelligible scribbles on the flask. “Guessing by the size of it, I’d say it’s the invisibility ointment. Mrs. Arkhon, is something hidden there? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
She comes closer to them, until the painting is nothing more than a close-up portrait of her face. Her eye sockets are empty and the contours of her head are very much like a bare skull. She slowly nods her head. She raises her hand in front of her face and taps on the ring again. With small steps she back up, grabs her head with both hands and lifts it off of her neck. She stumbles towards the desk and places her head on it, after which she falls on both knees and disappears from the painting.
“Gruesome”, the half-elf says.
As he keeps inspecting the two pieces of art, Dargothoth turns around and approaches the table. He moves away an opened book to reveal what is hidden below it.
“I have found her head”, he says.

Chapter 5.13: The Sightless Citizens of Saal

The iron and copper box vanish into thin air when the bluish-grey chest folds open. The singing stops and the key disappears.
“Thank the gods.” Lyssa sighs as she rubs her fingers against her temple. “Thank you, Oslando. I don’t think I’m ever getting used to this.”
She puts her head on the floor and closes her eyes for a second. Tranquility has returned inside her mind and it’s so soothing that the lingering ringing the key left doesn’t even disturb her. She tries to recognize by touch whatever was hidden inside the mysterious box. She moves a thin metal strand between her fingertips, feeling the small rings connected with one another. The moment she feels a disc in the shape and size of a coin she opens her eyes immediately. Her delighted expressions diminishes when she gazes upon what she hoped to be golden jewelry.
“Too bad.” She dangles the amulet in front of her eyes, boredom written across her entire face. “This is not really my colour. Anyone else interested?”
Lyssa holds up the necklace for the others to behold. The string itself is made out of small oval chains with a tiny beat between every few chains. The material seems to be iron or something similar to it. The circular pendant is outlined with the same metal as the necklace. The entire coin is black and thin symbols are engraved across the edge.
“I don’t think we could stand the sound of that thing dangling against my metal body”, Mero says, trying to withhold laughing. “That’s going to be annoying with every step I take. So, please, someone else take it.”
Lyssa gets up as the conversation continues.
“I already have my own talisman”, Dargothoth replies. “Keep it.”
Without paying attention to the rest of the discussion he turns his attention to the jewelry hanging around his neck. He rubs his scaled finger across the gold surface and rests his eyes on the glyph that Cyrzana told him about, the Mark.
“Find the Mark.” The deafening voice of the Faceless God echoes in his head. “I will guide you.”
The sivak zones out, listening to what his deity has to say, eager to follow his every command.
“Well, if I can be forward”, Oslando says, “I would like to have closer look to see if I want it. Maybe I make something of the inscription.”
(Arcana 21)
The siren hands the amulet over to the half-elf. The black coin is cold to the touch, but not as cold as the metal around it. It helps him determine the pendant is made out of a stone or crystal like obsidian or onyx. The symbols carved into it are fairly basic and he recognizes them as glyphs of the magic school of abjuration. Based on the limited knowledge he has about wardings and their complexity, he deducts this piece of jewelry to be an amulet of spell warding, one with minor magical properties, but magical properties nonetheless.
“I would like to have it”, he says after he’s finished his inspection. “It gives a small advantage when someone or something throws a spell at me, improving my chance to endure whatever is cast on me. Since I’m on the frontline of battle, it would be wise for me to wear it.”
He looks at his companions. The eye contact he has with them, Dargothoth being the exception, tells him it’s fine if he keeps it. He nods to them as a silent ‘thank you’.
“This is turning out to be a very useful investigation”, Bruq says enthusiastically. “Mero has a new kind of spell, you have a magical amulet and Lyssa’s very pleased with the grain or seed or whatever it is she found.”
He stops talking for a bit, picks up the lit that fell earlier and puts it back on the jar. He holds it front of his face, observing the tiny gelatinous cube that munched on his hand.
“And I… I have a new trophy.”