The slaves readily understand Xukong's words, and point out the keys. They're tired, hungry, and many have wounds from staves and whips. In general, they are a sorry lot, but speak to you freely, should you have questions for them. They're eager to be released from they're captivity, and will linger only as long as necessary to speak with you.
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"Ah, you can speak to them. That's mighty of you!" Amba motions the slaves that they mean to harm and tends to their wounds as she speaks in slow Common. "You can probably tell us much about these lizard men. Have they been here long? What Gods do they worship?" She folds her hands in prayer to visualize the words. "How advanced is their magic? And technology?"
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Xukong looks at Amba, literally bending its head sideways. "'How long have they been here?' 'How advanced?' Relative to what? Bear in mind what you're attempting to communicate with. For all we know, they were born into slavery - though granted, their eagerness to escape suggests otherwise."
Still, Xukong attempts to translate.
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Xukong pauses a moment, as if thinking about what it might have forgotten.
The slaves readily answer what questions they can. You make whatever notes you can about the serpentfolk architecture and culture, as well as tactical notes about what lies ahead, but there is little that you believe to be useful to your party. There are serpentfolk ahead. Some are stronger than others. But these things you could have deduced.
Baied works on providing some healing, which furthers ingratiates the slaves as you set them free.
You decide to hurry along your way, and wish the slaves well in their escape.
You travel deeper into the temple.
Voices sound out further down the hall—the guttural and staggered ringing of human speech rather than the lilting hisses of snakes. Men and women—many of them malnourished and wounded but athletic nonetheless—stand over the fresh corpses of troglodyte minders while gripping stolen blades and makeshift clubs.
A stout, powerfully built woman, whose face and arm were heavily burned during her capture, leads the ragged band of humans. She is scowls as you approach, and the humans raise their makeshift weapons in an aggressive posture.
She calls out in an unfamiliar language.
The woman sniffs at Baied, but is mollified at Amba's words. Some of the slaves from the earlier room peek around the corner and recognize the woman. They speak in their own language, occasionally make gestures at the party, and pointing to Baied specifically.
The woman's countenance softens, but only slightly. She turns to Xukong, and speaks in Draconic. "I am Uszanriar. We lead a rebellion of the slaves here. We also seek our group’s commander, general Krahnaliara Lac Suhn. He was dragged away by the priests only an hour earlier. We hope he is now somewhere within this temple."
"We welcome whatever aid you can offer."
Uszanriar answers what questions she can, but it's quickly clear she is not a good source for the sort of historical and cultural information the Society is seeking.
You hear the sounds of fighting and rebellion swell in the corridors around you, and Uszanriar nods at the noise as if duty is calling her. She hurries off in the direction you came from, leading her small band behind her.
You step out into the chaos of the temple plaza. Other teams of Pathfinders have been through here, for you saw them fly up from the base of the temple. Scorch marks and the smell of sulphur are the sole remnants of their powerful spells, and the discarded bodies of serpentfolk priests line the walkways.
You follow the trail of destruction deeper into the temple, past the corpses of those you assume were priestly guards.
The corridor leads to an altar room.
Glowing coals warm this shrine and cast an eerie under-lighting on the towering, snake-headed statue behind the altar. The reek of ammonia and rotting flesh fills the air and burns the eyes.
A small flying snake-like thing swoops down to attack.
The flying creature hisses angrily, its wings holding it aloft. It soars above you, closer, but well outside of a convenient range as the cavern ceiling rises high above you.
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Amba looks thoughtful as they leave behind the rebel slaves and push on. "I was going to suggest that we help them find their general. They are the downtrodden her, after all. But what repercussions would that have? If we save the General, while he would normally had been executed or sommething. Would we be changing the very culture we're here to study?" Amba laughs and shrugs. "It is probably not for us to ponder such questions."
--
As they see the flying snake-like creature overhead, Amba looks at Baied. "No idea. It doesn't look to be friendly, though. If it ever was, our colleagues tearing through here probably changed its mind already." She steps into the room while twirling her sling staff, loads a bullet without effort and letting loose.
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The half orc observes the slave scene with a concerned face. After Amba's monologue, he responds:
"I am a tribesman. I am happy to know how to write in your language. But since we arrived - to the past - I did ponder this. And Amba...", he looks at the halfling. "... Baied was right."
He points at the slaves: "These people are your and mine history. But perhaps ... we are as well? If that makes sense. Whatever happens here, we are a part of it now. If the gods - your or mine - didn't want us in this place, we would be somewhere else, somewhen else."
"What's done is done. We are here and now, and we can still do the right thing."
He continues along the path, quietly.
Once the group arrives to the altar, Malik runs behind one of the pillars and takes a better look at the creature.
"We don't quite know where he was taken, only that the priest took him for a ritual sacrifice. We would cover more ground if we split up. We welcome your help in searching for him!"
Baied launches a vicious sling attack, and the stone takes the creature squarely in the head. It manages to stay aloft, still circling.
Volyana's first throw is well wide, and although her second is better, it too fails to find a mark.
Ama attempts an attack as well, but misses.
The creature flies slightly lower, past Volyana, and spits venom at her eyes. Xukon throws a javelin as the creature comes closer, but misses the small, nimble form. The creature's venom misses Volyana, but only just.
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Malik takes his chance at shooting the creature out of the air when it makes its maneuver. Hoping to inflict enough damage to make it lose breath, he simply lets lose a large quantity of water at the seru.
After he us done, he quickly notifies the other pathfinders of the seru's bodily fluids.
"That spit might be toxic! Careful!"
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A crack of thunder and the tang of ozone cut through the complex. The figures before you, and indeed the walls, the floor, even the air itself seem to crumble and fall away like glittering sands through an hourglass. Unfamiliar figures—their heavy, hooded robes embroidered with the symbol of a winged eye—stand about the field, their hands crackling with lightning. Dozens of Pathfinder spellcasters lie dead at their feet. A gargantuan image of a woman appears and shimmers like a desert mirage. She has a regal bearing, but her features are lined as if by years of endless duty.
”Arrogant Pathfinders! Your ridiculous Society spends fortunes and lives to reassemble a treasure that turns time itself like the pages of a book—a key that could undo all the misery and suffering our world now knows—and you use it for this? Poking at snakes and playing at heroism? Golarion knew a true hero once! Our Lord Aroden—who raised the Starstone from the sea and imprisoned the undead tyrant Tar-Baphon—could already walk the world again were it not for your petty games and delays. Every death in your hours of playtime now hangs as a weight around your collective necks, you spoiled children.
“I am Lady Arodeth, and on behalf of the Harbingers of Fate and the God of Mankind himself, I have seized your Sky Key. Its defenders threw their lives away trying to stop compassion and destiny from returning to this world. I advise you not to throw your own lives away attempting to do the same.
“Behold the return of the Last Azlanti! Behold Aroden!”
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"Oh dear..." Amba tries to make sense of the situation. "I thought we might be straying too far, considering ourselves so mighty that we stepped back in time to do research. But now these people want to bring back Aroden? That seems too much like tempting fate."
Amba grits her teeth, and invokes the blessing of Khepri. "Blessed Khepri, please accept my humble plea for assistence in dealing with this creature. He flies high and mighty above us, and we would like him brought down..."
One of Volyana's shuriken finds its mark. Wounded, the creature is unable to flap its wing on one side, and begins to fall. Malik's blast catches it midflight, just as it regains flight a few feet from the floor. It pushes onward until Amba's spell splits it nearly in two.
The walls shake and large stones from the ceiling fall, burying the dead creature.
Reality falls away around you, as you race back to the center of the time bubble.
The robed Heralds begin casting, and arcs of lightning leap to the rods made of skymetal. A deep thrum from somewhere below reverberates with chest-tightening force, then the earth begins to heave and quake. Emerald green miasma lashes out, snaking back along the arcs of arcane lightning and infecting hooded casters throughout the crowd. Your body—or perhaps the whole world—crumbles to dust and you hear a distant scream of “She’s overloaded it!”
And just as swiftly, the world is whole again, but in place of a flower-speckled field stands the sprawling marketplace of a small city. Ivory-white buildings and columns feature reliefs and endless statuary all depicting physically perfect human specimens in poses of glory over serpentfolk. A chiton-clad crowd of gawkers stares, both at you and at the roiling dome of green light that encompasses nearly a square mile of territory, beyond which this strange city stretches on.
Robed Heralds panic as they sprint beyond the edges of the glistening dome, only to collapse just beyond its border. There they scream and writhe, their bones cracking as flesh and sinew age to dust in mere moments. Meanwhile, those unfortunates consumed by the green miasma scream and stagger, their features warping and bloating as if the power seeking refuge within them were too big for mere flesh to contain.
And high overhead, a looming stone glows with a light visible even in the growing light of dawn.
As you're again moved through time and space, you feel oddly refreshed, as though your energy has recharged somewhat, or that perhaps you hadn't exerted yourself as much as you'd thought.
———
Pathfinders hurry past you in small teams, each focusing on its own task. A Tien man, with a shaved head, weeping water from his pores and with his body sheathed in ice turns to you before running off. "Call if you require assistance; help is only a shout away."
You appear in the center of a bubble in a town square. The architecture is unfamiliar, but the human faces of its citizens staring back at you are not. They begin yelling at you, first one and then another, until a crowd of citizens around you are chanting angrily in an unfamiliar language. Some wield small clubs and daggers, which they wave at you with shooing motions.
You see other teams of Pathfinders move on to other tasks, leaving you to deal with the crowd's growing frustration.
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Xukong twists its head about at odd and disturbing angles as it observes the chaos around it. "The Sky Key's magic is being disrupted - we're being tossed about through time like a bead in a puzzle-box!"
"A mob of frightened humans. Nothing is more dangerous. They've probably never even seen our likes before, and their reaction is pathetically predictable. We need to do something quickly if we wish to avoid violence. Then again, I'm not entirely certain I do...."
Xukong whirls its sword about in what is hopefully a defensive/admonitory manner.
Xukong's actions incite the crowd further. The rest of you have very little time to act before this situation explodes.
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Amba seems to shrink in respons to Xukong's explanation of what's happening. "oh dear..."
--
She looks around as their surroundings are stable again.
"Well, hello there. Oh, I don't think they're friendly. Just as all the last people we met..." Amba bows and puts her hands forward, showing she carries no weapons. She slowly backs away. "We could maybe avoid a fight here, if we just back away. Guys, girls and, eh... thin; can we try to avoid bloodshed here?"
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"Xukong, put that away. Water takes the path of least resistance, and we should imitate its wisdom here." Volyana tucks her whip back into her belt and backs up a few steps, hands raised with her palms out. "We do not want to fight, we will go without any trouble." She repeats herself in Taldane and Varisian, hoping to get some peaceful idea acrosss.
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"These people should barely be a concern to us. Far bigger is determining what happened with the Sky Key and how to deal with the Harbingers. As dubious as the Society is at times, I fear the Harbingers would be far worse. Those who cannot accept the natural flow of the universe can act very rashly." Volyana backs up a bit more and sits on the ground, waiting to see what happens next.
Amba takes the lead and manages to help shush the crowd. They're still nervous, but Amba's smile (and Volyana's reprimand of Xukong, which was understandable in any language) helps ease the tension, and the crowd disperses enough to be less of a threat.
But only just.
You finally have time to look around. The green of the energy dome over the town makes the shadows look strange. Even more frightening is the massive comet that seems to be coming ever closer.
This must be the historic "Earthfall", a very early point in history where the Starstone collided with Golarion, plunging the world into a millennium of chaos and darkness.
The comet looks like it will impact the world in less than two hours, with devastating consequences.
A familiar figure limps out from between two buildings. The weight of years seems to hang over Kreighton Shaine, the Pathfinder Society’s illustrious Master of Scrolls, his face more deeply lined than it was this morning.
“My apologies for not reaching you more quickly, but I have been quite distracted,” he pants. To the left and right across the ancient marketplace, other versions of Kreighton Shaine are speaking to other, equally bewildered Pathfinders.
“It seems redundant to say so at this point, but the Harbingers of Fate have seized control of the Sky Key, and we all appear to be trapped in what the Isle of Kortos used to be eons ago. The same sort of temporal bubble that brought the serpentfolk city of Sessegishoss to us now keeps our forces pinned down here.
“We are attempting to uncover the Sky Key Vault now. While the vault itself seems to be here in this time period, our entrance to it wasn’t projected back, and we’ve lost our bearings relative to its location in this new landscape. What’s more, I worry simply reclaiming the Sky Key will not be enough to allow our escape— that green surge we all witnessed seems to have invested many of the Harbingers with enough of the Sky Key’s energy to maintain our chronological exile.”
Shaine looks worriedly up at the sky. “We will need to work together to uncover the vault and cut the tethers that anchor this time period to the Harbingers’ spellcasters. We must do both so we can use the Sky Key to escape.” A crack of thunder sounds overhead as the dome of green light twists and arcs down to the surface with a thunderous crash, and strange, hairy beasts stride where it struck. “And we would be wise to move quickly.”
"This avatar will travel with you. I can project some of my spells through this form to aid you."
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"Oh, this is bad. This is bad," Amba remarks when she realizes where they are. When they are. "We aren't supposed to be here, at all."
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She nods gravely at the image of the Master of Scrolls, eager to follow his lead. "You have no idea about where the Vault is? Could we maybe use the arcane energies - the green surge - to trace its location? Follow the lines, if you will? Or maybe try to find it the old-fashioned way? Just look for patterns on the ground, and possible find traces of the Vault?"
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"The Sky Key was located underground in our time period, correct? We were standing above it before it was activated, and it seems that objects transported by it keep their position relative to each other. If that is so, we should look for a way underground. It also sounds like these Harbingers need to be severed from the Sky Key's magic, in order to reclaim control. Harbinger cultists often stand out, it shouldn't be difficult to track one down." Volyana remains seated on the ground, calmly waiting for her more arcane-inclined companions to locate the vault or one of the madmen who caused this situation.
"Hmm, actually… Perhaps I could spot one of the Harbingers." Volyana gets up and climbs onto a nearby roof and scans the area.