The city is ancient, older even, than storied Absalom, the City at the Center of the World. From the stately mansion of crumbling black and silver brick, doors open, revealing the cobbled street before you.
A faint smell tickles your nose; familiar, yet unidentified. It seems almost... fungal.
Above, black stars sparkle in a viridian sky, and the whole city is bathed in the harsh light of a vermillion moon. Not a soul stirs on the streets in this nameless city, save for you. You know not how you have come to this fabled unnamed city, but this strange city is hauntingly familiar. You walk, and it leads you to a courtyard where a fountain stands.
At the fountain, it has long gone dry and dusty. In the plaza around it, you once sat and listened to minstrels sing ancient tales of far-off Lomar and Oriab. Your feet slow, drawn to a standstill by the haunting remembrance... not quite a memory, but far more than a vague feeling. You can still hear the lyres play, the bard’s songs.
The music's notes still echo in your ears... You feel a sob choke in your throat.
But then unease fills your heart, and you look back.
Behind you is a wall of sickly yellow fog tumbling through the street’s canyon of crumbling and leaning structures like some jaundiced flash flood. On instinct, you run from it. Ahead lies an oddly familiar avenue, curving to the left and right. Your pace slows as you have to choose which way to go.
Behind, from the silent swell of mist, emanates the sound of footsteps; slow and staggered, but somehow keeping pace with the careening, hungry wave of yellow fog. No matter how fast you run, it is always just behind. Ever out of reach but close, and drawing closer.
Within this malignant tide, you can discern faint shapes. The fog swirls and billows in opposite ways, as though stirred by the beats of wings and or animals deep within. Strange half-witnessed shadows of twisted, impossible forms. And always, there are the footsteps.
The shapes in the mist looks frightening, but every footfall makes the hairs on your neck stand up. You can't stay still long.
And still, you run, fleeing the plaza of your half-remembered songs, across a courtyard of pillars topped by cerulean orbs that fold in on themselves in an alien geometry that hurts your mind to contemplate for more than an instant. Your flight takes you down another avenue, and the battered buildings appear almost ruinous, they slump over the path, nearly blotting out the bruised twilight sky.
Again, the grimy cobblestone street splits. This time, one route curves uphill, while the other recklessly descends. Behind, the yellow fog and the relentless sound of pursuit grow closer…
You rush towards the fork becoming vaguely aware that three others flee from the fog alongside you... But first... who are you?
The woman dashing along the cobblestones is tall for a human, about 5'9. It is hard to tell her build because of the burnished scale-mail armor, however, due to her speed and that she doesn't seem winded by the running, you would guess that she is of strong hearty build.
It is hard to tell her exact hair color, the harsh vermilion moon causing the red in her hair to vibrantly gleam, as if the wisps of her hair are catching fire as she runs. When she turns to glance toward you, the moonlight glinting off her violet eyes takes on a eerily devilish appearance. Her pale skin even paler my moonlight glistens with perspiration as she tries to push herself to run faster.
And briefly, as she shakes errant strands out of her face, you see an old burn scar, marring her from her left jawline, down most of the left side of her neck and into the collar of her armor.
This human female is also bolting towards the fork in the road. She looks to be slightly tall for a human, possibly around 5'6", but her agile form looks to be handling her run well. In the harsh light, her auburn hair looks darker, however it also makes her fair, unmarred skin look sickly.
She pauses, turning her blue eyes on the woman in scale-mail, herself dressed in leather armor.
A young Elven man runs beside the group, his frame light and frail from what can be seen beneath the dark blue and black robes. He is quick and balanced, keeping his footing when an uneven piece of cobblestone threatens to cause him to fall. In the strangely colored light, his eyes seem to resemble black orbs rather than any color, the whites of them seemingly gone. Scroll cases and a spellbook, tied to his frame, bounce with every step and beneath him runs a white, beautiful cat that darts between their steps, meowing in danger whenever a pathway they were about to turn into has been filled with that sickening, foreboding fog.
His black hair, shoulder-length and would appear to usually be kept orderly, sticks to his sweaty forehead and gives him the appearance of a madman. He looks at his comrades, his eyes filled with panicked fear, as they continue to run onwards, ever forward, from those awful footsteps.
The last of the four fleeing amidst you is an older looking man, with deeply tanned, almost perfectly uniform bronze skin. His head is bald, and a bristly white and gray beard juts from his face that seems to not shift or fold even though they are running, that's how thick the facial hair is. He notices the rest of you, his eyes gleaming like literal embers, red, orange, that shift and glow on a black background.
As he turns his head to look at another, you see that the back of his head is tattooed in an ornate arrangement of dots that form the holy symbol of Iomedae. His scale mail appears to be quite durable.
For being an older man, he appears to be in great shape. He runs alongside everyone, and he opens his mouth to speak-
-and from the fog behind him comes... something. It grabs him, a horridly deformed hand covering the older man's eyes while the other plunges a twisted, chipped, and warped blade into his neck. Blood sprays you as this being cackles.
The creature appears to be a man, with strangely warped skin and wrapped in yellow rags, of which some covers his eyes... or where his eyes should be, you cannot tell. His mouth is a ring of blistered, puckered lips and needle-like fangs.
The being yanks on the elder man's head as it twists the blade, blood pouring copiously out the widening wound until, with a sickening tearing sound, the being rips the man's head from his neck. It discards the man's head, tossing it in front of your path.
Helena, you see the dead man's face as the head goes tumbling by, his eyes wide and looking about in terror as he hasn't even realized he is dead.
"Me..." the head speaks as it falls to the stones, the words sounding like they're echoing from far, far away. The man's blood spills from his torn neck stump, and anyone who looks at it recognizes the same word spelled in the dead man's gore. The twisted man takes a step forward, turning it's sightless head towards the elven man.
With a scream part horror and part rage, Helene stop running, draws her sword and turning in one swift motion attacks the creature.
Narcisa watches, eyes wide, as the head bounces past her. She turns to look at the twisted man, drawing her rapier. She swallows, finding herself trembling as she faces off with creature, but moves to attack it.
Elren'dor watches the old man's life flicker from his eyes and something breaks. His lips move, his hands shake, and he stumbles away from the monstrous figure that approaches.
"I can't die. Not yet. Not so close." To what? He could not remember. All he knew was he had to survive, he couldn't die right here. He would back away quickly, the cat hissing and spitting as it fled alongside with him, as he saw the woman in leather armor let out a raging yell and go in to fight. "We should run! No! No, we need to help them!"
A rush of Draconic would escape his lips, echoing out into the air with power that made the malignant air feel charged with lightning. His eyes would turn towards the monster and those last words would escape his lips.
From that terrible dagger, dripping with the old man's blood, would become to ooze with some terrible ichor. It would grow slippery, harder and harder to hold.
The man in yellow rags laughingly sidesteps the fighter's swing. The weapon drips with yellow liquid but doesn't slip from the thing's grip. As the fighter is overextended from the swing, it grabs the back of her head by the hair and yanks her head down with it's off hand. Once, twice, three times it stabs her in the stomach with the jagged blade. Pain spikes through her gut like icicles. Scales from her armor fly off with the brutal force of its stabs, and she sees in painful horror as her own steaming innards spill out at her feet.
As Helena slumps to the ground at the yellow man's feet, Elren'dor can hear her breath leaving her lungs. "Up..." escapes her lips. The elf can see some of her intestines on the floor also spell out the same word in elven.
The man in yellow turns to the woman in leather. It's whole body shuddering in excitement, the thing moves towards her.
Narcisa watches in horror as the creature slaughters the warrior. Blue eyes widen as it turns it's attention to her. She turns and tries to bolt away in fear.
You barrel downhill, hoping to leave the thing behind. All about you, the dying words of the other two people echo down the city streets.
"Me..."
"Up..."
They sound like they're coming from far away, not just behind you two as you flee.
The man in yellow, his body unnaturally lurching, covers great distance to appear beside Elren'dor. The elf has barely an instant to look terrified before the thing's blade flashes, and its edge carves across his face, slicing through the elf's eyes. A second sharp pain hits him in the back, and he falls over without trying, his legs no longer responding. The creature stabs him again and again, blood misting into the air as he screams for far longer than he should have been able to.
"Save..." is the last thing he shouts before his next word is cut off with the sound of something wet being crushed.
"Save..." Echoes down the street after you, his last plea falling on your terrified ears.
Narcisa, you bolt down the hill, the sounds of carnage behind you fading until you come up the other side of the decline. Somehow, still dripping with blood and yellow ichor, the man in rags stands before you, as if he's always been waiting for you.
Narcisa slows to a stop in front of the creature, looking at it. Tears begin to slip down her cheeks as her rapier falls from her hand, clattering loudly on the stone. Everyone else was dead and there was no way of escaping this. She gave a quiet sob as she bowed her head, closing her eyes, praying to Calistria that her death would be swift.
It isn't. And Calistria, wherever she is, doesn't answer.
It picks you up by your hair, carving off an ear just to evoke a scream from you before going into the rest. His wicked blade carves through leather and flesh like butter, and he takes his time showing you just how much a human body can endure before expiring...
And thus ends the adventures of Smallest Sun, Helena, Elren'dor, and Narcissa-
You startle awake to the sounds of a man screaming at you. You feel cold, you ache, but you're alive and intact. You're also naked and covered in a cold sweat. Your head hurts, thoughts feel fuzzy. You look down at your hands and feel a bit of confusion... Are these *your* hands? They must be... You realize that the only thing you remember about you is your name... and barely that.
Looking up, you find that you're trapped in a cold cell with iron bars separating you from the rest of the room. Elren'dor and Narcissa are in one cell, and Helena is trapped with Smallest Sun in the one adjacent to it. Anyone's familiars are not here with you now, nor do you remember having one.
Outside the cell, a man is strapped to a table, covered in hundreds of thin cuts and bruises, and a figure in an outfit that could only be thought to be medical stands over him. She holds what looks like one half of a pair of pitted garden shears in her hands as she seems to be considering the best place to slice into his flesh again. The man looks to you four in desperation, while the woman seems far too preoccupied to actually notice you yet...
Narcisa starts awake at the scream and immediately shivers. She looks to her hands in confusion before slowly hugging herself, trying to fight off the chill in her body. Her eyes move to the man, then to those around her once, before moving back to the man and the clothed woman. She shifts to lean against the cell wall to help herself up without pulling her arms from her body. She glances around, looking for something to help, unsure if it would be more to help him or herself.
Head fuzzy, as if stuffed with cotton, Helena tries to blink her eyes open. The room seems overly bright and vibrant, almost unbearable to to look at. As her eyes adjust to the intensity, Helena looks around the cell for something, anything, that can be used as a weapon.
A weapon, why would I need a weapon? I'm stuck in a cell, damnit. The man's screaming breaks her concentration on her internal monologue. No, no weapon will reach, I need something to throw.
Helena, frustrated with the lack of anything usable in the cell, starts looking around the room, wishing for anything she could use. Anything worthwhile to hurt, or distract, or...
Eyes locking on something across the room, Helena desperately wishes that somehow, someway that object would just hit that woman. That it could just send itself at her head.
Narcisa, you see that there's a medical tray on a small table next to the operating table that has a number of items on it laid out like surgical implements, but they are in no way surgical implements. This includes the other half of the shears, as well as a triangular shard of broken glass, rusty nails, and other things all laid out in methodical order.
Elren'dor awakes with a gasp, his dark eyes almost bulging out as he scuffles backwards from the sound of the screaming man to the wall furthest away. Arms wrapping around himself, he shakes for a moment and gasps for air as if he surfaced from the deepest depths of some watery abyss.
"I'm...I'm alive..." The elf whispers to himself, the black eyes flickering up towards Narcisa as she moves. His body aches and his brain seems to throb within a fog as he tries to think of where he is. "Nothing...I remember nothing. Gods, what happened?" Licking his dry, cracked lips, he tries to put together what he can remember before stumbling over the only thought he could remember. "Elren'dor. My name is Elren'dor."
He looks around the room, unsure of what he could do to help the man. They are looked in cells that look too sturdy for his form and he knows not his captor yet. To attack so blatantly would be foolish...or maybe he is just too afraid to. He looks to Narcisa, nodding slightly.
"I....I know you...don't I?" The memories are like a haze but there is a sense of familiarity in her as well as the others locked in the other cell. Elren'dor looks for any set of keys hanging nearby, careful to not gain the torturer's attention as he does so.
The bald man in the cell with Helena groans as he suddenly sits up, grabbing at his throat as he half expects it to be cut open. He doesn't speak at first, his eyes looking around the room in a panic.
"I don't... remember..." he mutters. "Where is this?"
His face flushes with shame, but whether it is at his nakedness, your nakedness, or something entirely else, is unknown.
He rises, hearing the man's plea. He looks around the room, trying to find something that could assist them. "Hold on sir. I'll save you... I think." he says, one hand still on his neck.
As the four of you look around the room, the man continues to shout for your help.
"Ah... let's see... ah, there's a clear spot!" the lady says cheerfully, dragging the blade across a part of the man's exposed thigh, drawing a long and painful scream.
Helena and Smallest Sun, you spot something of particular import: a ring of keys on the waist of the woman circling the operating table.
Elren'dor, you determine that the bars are at least an inch and a half thick solid iron bars. Though they aren't in pristine condition, they're also entirely too tough for you to break or squeeze past.
Narcisa, you determine much the same thing as Helena and the bald man, but you do recognize that the operating table's instruments would make functional improvised daggers if someone could get ahold of them. Additionally, you see some large, lumpy sacks discarded to the side, out of reach of the cells, but possible to get once you figure out how to escape.
"OY! Hey! Hey you! Leave him alone!" Helena shouts as she gets to her feet and approaches the cell wall closest to the woman. "You're awfully tough when you got a guy strapped to a table. Why don't you try that with me!"
The woman whirls to glare at Helena, the lady's face contorting as she leers at you.
Elren'dor moved closer to Narcisa, almost hesitantly as he whispered to her.
"Do...do you see anything we can use? I don't know what magic I have but...maybe I can help." His eyes are anxious as he whispers to the rogue, jumping and looking back at the woman that was shouting and the fierce roar leaving the woman who circles the poor man.
After a brief second to recover, It was just a trick of the light. Just a trick. Helena grabs the cell bars and starts shaking them violently.
"Hey!"
Elren'dor moved closer to Narcisa, almost hesitantly as he whispered to her.
"Do...do you see anything we can use? I don't know what magic I have but...maybe I can help." His eyes are anxious as he whispers to the rogue, jumping and looking back at the woman that was shouting and the fierce roar leaving the woman who circles the poor man.
All your level 1 spells have been expended or lost when you lost your memory, but your cantrips you had memorized during the first sequence remain available. The same applies for Helena.
Indeed, Helena's arms are almost like wet noodles, for all the strength they leverage on the bars. It seems like the only way to get out of these cells is to get the keys. The man continues to beg for help, mercy, death, pretty much anything but what he's being subjected to.
Narcisa nods a little to Elren'dor, inclining her head towards the woman outside, muttering softly, "Yeah..." She flicks her finger a little, trying to indicate the key ring on the woman's hip.
She licks her lips, rolls her eyes with a low sigh, then presses her naked form against the bars in a lewd manner, moaning out loudly in sexual desperation.
"Please, Mistress.. Why is he getting all the fun? Am I next?" She slips a knee through the bars, rubbing her leg upwards along the cold metal with another moan, "Can you spare a moment for me? Please, Mistress?" She bites her lower lip, producing a whimpering, needy moan.
Elren'dor nods in agreement after having the keys pointed out to him. His head would dip low as the rogue moved her nude form against the bars and began calling out for the woman. He would move a distance away from her but in the direction that he would still be able to see the keys.
Crouching low, he'd begin talking to himself and try to recount his dreams. His words stuttered incoherently, the fearful images he could gather making his shake with shivers that did not come from the cold. Yet if the woman came closer, his eyes would flicker up with cunning and he would do his best to try and get the keys.
The woman will angrily hiss again at the interruptions, even with the prospect of a willing subject. She stalks around the table and starts towards Narcisa's cell.
The man on the table, seeing an opportunity, yanks one of his legs. Slicked in blood and considerably more slippery with the sweat of desperation, his foot comes free and he delivers a strong kick to the woman's back.
She crashes face first into the bars of Helena and Smallest Sun's cell.
"Quick! Grab her!" the man screams as the woman shakes her head, her face twisting and warping.
Helena grabs for the woman, trying to pin her against the bars.
Seeing the distraction, the bald man closes his eyes and prays desperately for some kind of additional help. This time, something does answer.
Helena thrusts her arms through the bars and grabs the woman despite her struggling to push away from the bars. The 'nurse' has her arm pinned against the bars and her body, so she can't even bring her garden shear blade to bear against her captor.
Waiting for just this moment, Elren'dor completes his spell, and the key ring floats off her belt (only a single key tucked into her belt kept it in place) and floats it the few feet to where he or Narcisa could grab it.
"Let me go! Just wait your turn!" She shrieks, her face melting into a smooth gray form. Her uniform and clothes (but not the shears) melting into her body, she appears completely alien and strange, with a long bluish tongue draping from a lipless, toothless mouth.
Helena does her best to pin the woman... er creature to the bars.
The woman shrieks and writhes but you manage to get her turned around and an arm around her neck and the other trapping her weapon hand. She still struggles, but seems incapable of breaking out of your grip at the present.
Helena growls in a low huskey voice, "I don't know what your plan is for those keys but do it fast, I don't know how long I can keep her pinned."
Narcisa snatched the key out of the air, quickly moving and jamming it into the lock and opening her door. She moves over and snatches up the other garden sheer blade, turning her attention to the creature pinned by the other woman.
Elren'dor will watch as the woman beside him grabs the keys out of the air, opening the door and going to grab one of the sharp and vicious implements upon the table. "I can do this. I can survive." He thinks for a moment before he watches the torturer's form flicker and shift into something alien.
Her look, her form, it triggers something within Elren'dor's mind and thoughts surge up for just a single moment trying to attempt putting the thoughts together.
"Keep holding it down!" Elren'dor will shout, following the rogue out of the cage. While the rogue grabs a weapon, Elren'dor will begin to quickly whisper in Draconic. The words seems monotonous, echoing in the air, though his attention focuses entirely upon the doppleganger. With the last word said, he snaps his finger. To everyone else, it seems as if nothing happens but to the doppleganger, it is like a thunderous explosion with its head.
Elrendor will rush out the door, following the rogue. Grabbing a piece of sturdy, sharpened glass, he'll approach the strange creature with a look of hostile intent glimmering in his eyes.
Elren'dor follows the rogue out, snatching the large triangle of glass off the 'operating' table.
"Yeah! Kill her! Don't let her go!" the tortured man encourages.
The gray skinned thing tries to slip free, and struggles to do so, but not before Narcisa and Elrendor get a chance to attack her. In the mess and the fray (unless their attacks kill her) she manages to slip partially out of Helena's pin, but not out of her grasp yet.
If she still lives, she will still be grappled, but not pinned anymore.
The bald man finishes praying, and outside their cell there's a POP as a ball of warmly glowing light appears. He stares at it in wonder for but an instant before shouting. "Kill the gray thing!" he exclaims, his voice hopeful.
"Of course, Smallest Sun!" the ball of light replies in a sing-song voice. Two rays of light zap out of the ball at the gray being.
"I will not stop until it is-" It starts to say, and then disappears from this world with another POP.
"Wait! That's it?" He shouts, confused. He runs up to the bars and touches Helena's back. "Don't let go!" he prays, standing to the side anxiously since he can't leave the cell yet.
Narcisa moves to engage the creature, thrusting the blade into it with a frustrated growl.
Elren'dor closes in with the broken glass, swinging wildly at the monster with unpracticed movements.
Feeling the vile creature starting to slip out of her grasp Helena tries to tighten her hold, buying these strangers more time to do whatever they plan to do.
A small voice in her heard whispers, 'An enemy unarmed is easier to fight'. Helena uses the angle of her hold and the cell bars to try to get the woman to release hold on the makeshift knife.
You manage to pull her back against the bars, painfully. Her weapon grip loosens but doesn't leave her grasp.
Everyone else is up again!
Frustrated that the creature was still alive, Narcisa strikes it again.
"Isn't there anything else I can do?!" the bald man laments.
He drops to a crouch next to the bars and tries to figure out a way to help Helena hold down the thing, but since pretty much everyone is naked, there's very little he could hold onto. His hands slip off the gray thing's slippery legs.
The gray creature looks to be in very bad shape, and cannot keep avoiding lethal injuries for very much longer at all.
Again, the squirmy creature manages to slip partially loose and is no longer pinned.