Chapter Text
They were three days in Westgate when they realized something was deeply wrong. But they didn’t know how to make sense of the signs, and then it was too late.
Piracy, thievery, highwaymen; these things were normal, up and down the coast. Lup and Taako had followed caravans along the bay for years now. The law over Dragonscoast was patchwork at best, policed by a transient cast of rival forces that spent most of their time grandstanding against each other. The only constants in the region were the flow of wealth from trade at the ports, and the organized crime that exploited it.
This suited the twins just fine. Taako didn’t even keep track of the human governments anymore. Their territories and leadership changed by the year, and none of it affected two travel-hardened elves bouncing from caravan to caravan. A bad week might see them making a hasty exit under invisibility, leaving the rest of the traveling party to get sacked. But they’d had nothing but good weeks for ages. They’d even made the coin to pick up new spellbooks, and privacy in the chuck wagon to study them in between cooking meals.
They’d passed through Westgate with five different caravans. The town was a hollowed-out shell of its former self, with warrens of unclaimed, half-ruined houses that made perfects squats. There had been a war when the twins were children. But that was more than a hundred years ago. In recent years, a newly-reopened port had transformed Westgate into a hub once more. The arterial streets stretched from the docks in the north to the road to Neverwinter in the west and were always abuzz.
Taako had thought he felt a literal buzz, hours before the end. He chalked it up to nerves.
The Taako of nine days ago never would’ve conceived of this plan. The Taako of today had seen everything else fail. He and Lup had always hung around the docks to pick up unguarded valuables, or hidden away in crumbling houses in the abandoned boroughs. They’d never been to the south side of town. That was where the wealthy people had their manors, crowded around a luxury shopping district and the seat of government.
Had their manors, past tense. Now the snobby part of town was a charming field of rubble. Only two edifices still stood: the outer wall of Westgate, and a massive stone keep.
Taako had never seen the Burgermeister’s Palace before, but he knew it should’ve been right at the wall, flush on the south side. The mounded wreckage of glass and greying stone at the base of the keep was probably it. The keep itself rose as a hulking, sharp-edged construction of black stone and dizzying precipices. It was definitely committed to a style. That style being ‘ghoulish’ and ‘depressing’.
Nine days ago, some great power had seemingly dropped a several-thousand ton castle of solid obsidian out of the sky. Taako was determined to get gone before the who or the why entered his life.
It had already taken too much time, planning around the shadowy barrier that had swallowed Westgate whole.
This was the plan: get through the keep and get out. Every other fool in town had tried to beat down the barrier near the docks or at the road. Taako had held Lup back, convinced her to save her magic. They’d hidden on a rooftop to watch.
The barrier was undefined mist for three inches and then more solid than rock. The mist swirled in greys and blacks, with occasional streaks of white arcane energy. It would have looked like a stormcloud, if not for the fact that it looked nothing like a stormcloud. In fact, staring at it made Taako’s head hurt. His transmutation expertise told him little of the barrier’s construction beyond that it would be unfathomably stupid to cast touch spells on it.
Of course, he soon got to see someone resort to that. The barrier extended down through solid earth as well as closing out they sky. Thrown rocks bounced right off. Swords couldn’t pierce it. Spears also couldn’t pierce it, which the crowd really should’ve been able to guess after the sword test. By all rights the bullet test should’ve ended with someone getting hit by ricochet, but the crowd got lucky with that one.
The guy who stuck his hand into the mist and then tried to cast a touch spell did not get lucky. He should’ve given up after his fire cantrips were absorbed with muted pulses. The mists billowed out and consumed him in a flash of nauseating, impossible colors. The back of his skull and strips of skin from his shoulders fell away in a torrent of gore.
The twins had fled, stumbling across rooftops while half-blinded from the afterimage. They didn’t stop running until the rising shrieks faded in the distance.
Picking their way across the field of rubble unseen was a cinch. They’d been avoiding other survivors and the shattered remnants of the town guard for days. Later, when a motley force of blue-uniformed rescuers began organizing at the docks, they’d avoided them too. The twins wouldn’t let themselves be rounded up. There’d be no evacuation. The barrier cut through the sea as well as land, trapping a stagnant crescent of water around the docks. They’d overheard survivors claiming that a huge merchant galleon, bisected, had taken hours to sink.
Getting into the keep had also been a cinch. The mounded rubble of the palace dipped into a fetid moat where it rimmed the keep’s walls, and they had to cast invisibility to sneak past a shambling procession of figures on the first bridge. But the second bridge was empty. The gate beyond yawned wide and unguarded.
It was far too easy. But the twins were confident in their magic, arrogant with their caution. The keep wasn’t just flush with Westgate’s outer wall; before he even saw it, Taako knew that the mists thinned at its edge, passing to and into the wall without destroying it. This was the weakest point in the barrier.
Doubtless the master of the keep wanted to come and go as they pleased. So there was a chance they were absent. Maybe not a great chance. But Taako and Lup were vagabonds, sneak-thieves, and wizards. They had decades of experience in skirting danger. They had their elven agility and darkvision. They had each other, picking their way silently across the smooth obsidian floor, hand-in-hand. No one else in Westgate had as good a chance of escaping as them.
They were captured with the outer wall in sight.
They’d seen roving packs of humanoid figures all over Westgate. Forms of sickly-pale skin, ragged with scars, clothed in tatters. And those were the survivors. The twins had mostly stuck to the rooftops, lightening their bodies and casting Featherfall to make impossible jumps. They’d slipped through windows to raid for supplies. Westgate was a bigger town than the people it held; it was child’s play to slink around a corner and disappear, the few times they encountered anyone on the street. The twins spied on other survivors from balconies and rafters, slipped into attics unseen, rested in shifts.
They’d witnessed several vicious fights before they realized that not everyone walking the streets was still living.
The zombies were easy. Lup could incinerate entire packs of them and still have the energy to forage for dinner afterward. Taako could pull his sister through a door and slam it behind them, his hand leaving the knob a twisted, unmoving hunk of iron. The undead unfailingly pursued the living, and other groups of survivors were always noisier targets than the twins.
But doors within the keep were few and far between. The stone façade hid a worm-eaten hollow of spartan corridors and vaulted ceilings, cut across by grand staircases spiraling upwards at random. A preternaturally chilled wind whipped through wide archways from each room into the next. As they ran deeper and the wind died, they could finally hear the rush of footsteps pursuing them. The air only grew colder. The twins had gotten used to the aura of dread and decay pervading the town. But the sensation heightened in the keep to a palpable, oppressive pall that made Taako’s teeth ache at the roots.
They’d been playing cat-and-mouse with the patrolling undead. Undead who had no business haunting empty corridors in these numbers, so far from the bands of survivors holding the line near the docks. The twins hadn’t discounted the idea of a guard. They’d planned on pursuit, and prepared spells accordingly. But they had to run far to break line-of-sight in the empty keep, and Taako had nothing to transmute except the glassy obsidian of the halls.
Lup was flagging. Taako pulled her around a corner, recast invisibility over them both, and then dragged her back and onwards on a sharp left. He was leading now—she’d been blasting fireballs over her shoulder for four out of the last six corners they’d taken. Now she was disoriented, and her hand jerked in his as she stumbled.
He turned to help her catch her balance. Instead, he saw a sickly-green figure digging its claws into her other arm, oblivious to their invisibility. Taako’s heart jumped into his throat. He caught the ghoul’s leering gaze: two black eyes, shiny with malice over a flat, pitted nose. It dragged Lup’s forearm to its gaping mouth and bit straight through her jacket.
Lup clamped down a shriek and pulled her hand out of Taako’s. She beat at the ghoul’s bald head. Flame bloomed from her palm, melting its flesh and filling the corridor with a rancid smell like burning garbage. Her arm crunched in the ghoul’s jaws. Taako shoved his wand into its ear and cast scorching rays directly through its skull. Its eyes boiled away before its jaws slackened enough for Lup to pull free.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she chanted, cradling her arm. She squeezed the wound through her sleeve, blood welling up between her fingers. Taako reached for her and she curled into his arms. “We’re so close,” she breathed, gasping in pain against his chest. She listed in his grip. “That was my last spell. Taako, go.”
“Nope,” he said, popping the p. “C’mon, Lulu, we’ve got this. One foot in front of the other.” He adjusted his grip, slung an arm around her waist to support her. He determinedly ignored the way her blood matted his shirt to his chest. Lup breathed deeply and fixed her eyes forward. There was a set of three archways ahead, staggered just out of step. Through the narrow sliver where they aligned the twins could see an open courtyard of flat obsidian. Beyond the courtyard was the craggy sandstone of the outer wall.
The world narrowed to the rush of Taako’s pulse in his ears, the slow drip of blood from Lup’s cradled arm, and the promise of freedom just meters ahead. Lup grew steadier on her feet as they passed through the first archway. They made it through the second at a shambling half-sprint.
Taako’s foot came down on the threshold of the third and the obsidian went matte and soft under it. Lup yanked him backwards, taking his weight on her bad arm with a muffled grunt.
There’s been no sunlight in Westgate since the barrier went up. The twins had been fine with this; the other survivors were mostly human, and had to announce their every movement with torches and lanterns. Sacrificing color for stealth and relying on their darkvision was a no-brainer.
There was a sense of movement in the dark, from the archway. Nothing appeared to change. The obsidian corridor stayed empty, the stone cold and flat.
Outside, Taako could see where the barrier met the top of the sandstone wall. Here it was as translucent as a soap bubble. No mists billowed; it just slid into the wall and disappeared. It would be easy for him to transmute the stone away, find where the barrier thinned to nothing. But he held himself back. Something was wrong. Some quality of the energy in the air, some dread he couldn’t explain.
Then Taako saw it—the join of the wall to floor shifted. The angle of the seam softened almost imperceptibly. An impression crawled along the archway, thickening its edges.
Taako raised a hand and cast dancing lights in a halo around them.
The smooth obsidian glinted in the light. The black tendrils of shadow sliding over and through the archway, flush with the walls, did not.
Lup and Taako scrambled away. The shadows rasped over the threshold after them. They retraced their steps in a rush. They just had to get around a corner and cast invisibility again. They could find another exit, or wait for the shadows to retreat and sneak past. There’d be some way. They were so close.
Ahead, the mangled ghoul stumbled into view. It turned its empty eye-sockets toward them, gore streaking its cheeks. Lup drew them to a sharp halt and pulled Taako off to the left.
A band of shadow went taut around Taako’s ankle and sent him sprawling face-first.
“Well, this is going to be a lot easier than I thought!” a figure called. Taako snapped towards the voice and blasted out a cone of cold.
The freezing air sunk into a mass of solid shadow rushing towards them. Taako glimpsed a torso draped in thick black folds, silhouetted against the dancing lights he’d abandoned. Then the tendril around his boot yanked him towards the figure. Lup locked her arms around his chest, tried to pull him free. A massive limb launched out of the shadow and seized them both.
The shadows hefted them like dolls. The figure had gone amorphous, suggestion of a torso swallowed. It boiled with creeping folds of black, freezing and dry as bone, the texture of well-worn leather when they were solid at all. The shadows condensed into it, tendrils pooling at its feet. The hand melded into thick bonds and reeled the twins in. Lup tried to kick it and kneed Taako in the ribs.
The shadow turned the twins to face its bulk. It had no face, but seemed to scrutinize them. Lup kicked at it and connected this time. Her leg sunk into the mass of shadows and stuck there. “You guys really aren’t that sharp, are you?” the shadow commented.
The shadow-thing’s voice was oddly flat. The words just came to be, without the mechanical intermediaries of a throat or lips or even vibrating air. Taako had exchanged psychic sendings with Lup before. The shadow spoke with a similar affect, but Taako was sure it wasn’t actually projecting into his mind. It was just completely ignoring how sound was supposed to behave.
The shadow monster would present a fascinating puzzle if it wasn’t so liable to kill them. “Cover your ears, Lu!” Taako yelled. Then he pointed his wand at where the creature’s face should be, angled as high above Lup’s leg as he could, and cast thunderwave.
The thunderous boom from Taako’s wand was suffocated in the folded shadows. Instead of being pushed back, the creature barely flinched. Taako felt sapped after casting. He didn’t have enough left in him for invisibility. The creature just rotated its grasping limb and dangled the twins upside down. Taako’s face was level with the ghoul’s knees, shambling towards them.
“Back off,” the shadow snapped. A tendril whipped across the ghoul and sent it staggering away with a whine. Then the limb shook the twins roughly. “Tell me, what was your plan here? You saw the huge black death-castle and decided to come in for a stroll?”
“Fuck you,” Lup gasped. Taako shifted to look at his sister. Seeing the exhaustion on her face drove home how much trouble they were in. They were freezing, they were exhausted, and they were out of magic. Lup’s mangled arm pressed up against his side, still oozing blood.
This was his fault. He’d been right and he’d still screwed it up for them. He should’ve seen that ghoul coming, not relied on invisibility, prepared different spells. But they weren’t dead yet.
“Hail and well met,” he started, voice wavering. The shadow flipped them upright. Taako fought down rising nausea and continued. “My name’s Taako, and you look like you’re made of curtains. And, just FYI, we had a great plan.”
“Oh, is that right?” the shadow said. “Let me guess: If I would just put you down, you’d show me.”
“Got it in one, my man!” Taako said. He tried for a wavering smile. “My sister—this is Lup, hi—my sister and I have things to do other than be dead. I’m sure you understand.”
“Really, now?” the shadow chuckled, and faint vibrations ran through it. “Should’ve thought of that before you waltzed in here and started slinging spells.”
“What—look man, I’m not sure what you mean,” Taako said. Lup found his hand in the shadows and squeezed.
“Still cracking this nut, huh? Let me spell it out for you. We’ve got something of an idiot-trap for arcane energy here. You’re the idiots, I’m the trap. I should be thanking you, really, for giving this place a boost.”
Oh. The survivor, eaten by the barrier. The suffocated thunderwave. Taako was suddenly even less okay being trapped in grasping shadows. His heart knocked against his ribs.
“Well, now that you’ve… Now that we’re just, completely out of arcane energy, are we done?” Taako said. “Yummy yummy arcane energy, you got it all, you’re welcome. But we need to get out of this freezing hellscape and get Lup some medical attention, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry about this,” the shadow said. It drew its limb to its body, pressing the twins into its bulk. Taako realized they were gliding forward, gathering speed as they slid deeper into the keep. “I know it probably seems a little unfair to you.”
The shadow hauled them back down the corridors, and then up a swooping incline of black stone, cut through with irregular steps and smooth drops. The twins fought. Lup cursed and writhed, threatening the shadow in a weak, dazed voice. Taako made dry observations and offered bargains, even begged. He smoothed a hand through Lup’s hair and tried to give her what comfort he could. He wound her arm in the hem of his shirt, helped her keep pressure on it. Her jacket was soaked through.
They followed the incline upwards for what seemed like an eternity. On their left, the slope dropped off into the cavernous rooms of the keep below. The wall on their right opened to empty windows at intervals. Thirty meters up, the shadow halted at a massive door cut unevenly with the steps. It extended another limb and knocked. The first blow was soft, but the second rang sharply.
“Enter,” a voice boomed from within, raising hair on the back of Taako’s neck. Lup fell quiet. The door swung open on iron hinges, rust shrieking. A blast of foul, sulfurous air assailed them.
The shadow smoothly descended to a bricked floor a meter below the door. The ghoul tumbled in after it on hands and knees. Taako squirmed to get a look at the room.
They were in a windowless antechamber with rough, uneven walls, floored with mismatched bricks in obsidian and unidentifiable stone. Iron braziers more than six feet tall illuminated a path to a massive grey throne, either carved from the bone of an impossibly large creature or transmuted into one piece. The shadow rasped over the bricks and dumped the twins at the throne’s feet.
The throne was empty, but a sense of pressure lingered over it. Taako pushed himself up to sitting. Lup, insensate in his lap, didn’t rise. He grabbed her shoulders with cold-numbed fingers, turned her to face him. Her eyelids fluttered.
The ghoul bolted past the shadow and lunged for the twins. Taako threw himself over Lup. Before the shadow could react, a vast, cloaked monster manifested on the throne. The smell hit Taako first: rotten and sour, beyond even the stench of the ghoul. The monster raised a hand suffused with black mist. The ghoul seized in place, and then fell dead to the ground.
“So, this is the elf woman who was screaming all the way up the stairs,” the monster laughed. He leaned forward on his throne, massive bulk pressing rolls of fat against his robe. The face beneath his cowl was a fanged skull, his eyes black pits with motes of white burning within. Thick horns crowned his head, piercing the cowl to swoop upwards into razor-edged points. He extended a hand tipped with red claws down to the twins. “What do you need from me, that you brought these here?”
“Hello, father,” the shadow said. “I wanted to ask—”
Red claws sunk into Lup’s stomach. Taako screamed. The shadow seized him, yanking him back and away from the throne. He dragged Lup with him across the rough brick.
She didn’t flinch. Her chest didn’t rise. Taako looked up to see the enthroned monster rolling an orb of bright white in his claws, dribbling golden flame like honey.
“Father,” the shadow admonished.
The monster grunted. “Unfortunate,” he said, pressing a claw tip into Lup’s soul. The orb compressed in his grip. “Not banshee material, after all. It's been so long since I made a banshee. So, what were these wizards after?”
Taako wailed over the shadow’s response. “Please!” he sobbed. “Let her go, you have to let her go—”
The shadow mashed his face into the brick. "Stop talking! He's not in the mood to humor you!"
The monster looked amused, still idly squeezing Lup’s soul. He flattened it, rolled it between his palms. The fiery gold sunk into the orb and inflamed it from within.
A shriek rang out. Lup’s voice in fury, echoing once before the monster closed his fist over her.
“Oh gods,” Taako whispered, tears streaking the brick beneath his face. “Please, please let her go. I’ll do anything.” His voice rose and the shadow drew across his face to cut him off.
At this, the monster laughed. “You weren’t here to ask me permission to keep these, were you, Kravitz?”
The shadow stilled. “I mean, as a matter of fact, I was. I didn't especially want to see them killed.”
The monster laughed again, sides heaving. “Ah-hah, I knew it! I was young once, I remember. I suppose you feel idle, with our work so nearly complete.”
Taako didn’t hear the shadow’s answer. He tried to bite down, scream through the shroud over his face. His fingers pried away from Lup’s corpse one by one. He bucked and fought back, breathless, as he was tugged away from her.
The shadow slid away to allow him a gulp of air. On his throne, the monster was holding Lup’s soul to his open mouth, inhaling deeply.
He lowered her and snapped his jaws shut. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll indulge you. You’re young— I haven’t the patience to wring souls for every drop of energy. It’s wearisome. But I know how you like your games.”
“Thank you, father,” the shadow said.
“But you’re not to play games with me,” the monster continued, cupping Lup’s soul. “I won’t suffer him loose in my castle. I don’t want to feel even a dribble of arcane energy from him. And if you drink deeply from my well, if you demand this of me and then grow bored with your gift? I’ll take it back. Order servants as you must, but I don’t want to be reminded he exists.”
“And the woman?” the shadow prompted.
The monster huffed sourly. He rolled Lup’s soul between his fingers a final time, and then flicked the orb of light away. It sailed overhead, trailing red sparks. A faint voice called out for Taako, and was lost as the orb faded from view.
The monster growled. “Wasteful. Get out.”
Taako drew in a breath to yell and the shadow clamped over his mouth. It dragged him out of the antechamber, pinning his flailing limbs before he could wriggle free and pitch himself off the stairs. He fought back as it carried him upwards, until his chest heaved and his vision spotted black.