Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The Ruins of Alexandria, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

Job Arseoth stood three paces back from the ruined stone wall at stared at the twisted rusted scraps of the wrought iron gate. The gravel drive stretched another four hundred feet to the main door to the house; an elegant black granite monstrosity five stories tall, peppered with shattered windows, dripping with rampant ivy and creeper vines, held high by flying buttresses.

“Impressive. Time-worn, but impressive.”

Lady SiDiabolo punched him lightly on the shoulder, “Admit it, this place spooks you too.”

“This isn't the first time I have walked the streets of a dead city. Mevada was such a place, a city abandoned and entombed, the hunting-ground of wraith and ghost, ghoul and banshee.”

“Entombed?”

“Aye. I do not know the full story, but the local folklore...”

Job broke off as the plaintive wail of a lone wolf echoed from the distance.

“I haven't seen any wolves around here, have you?”

“I have not Job. And that window there...”

Lady SiDiabolo pointed one elegant finger.

“Those boards are recent. I have to wonder why someone would bother to board over the one window... and why the window to my bedroom.”

“Let's go find out then.”

Wisps of red fog dogged their steps, rising from the gravel of the drive as Job and Lady SiDiabolo walked its length. They vanished quickly in the rays of the setting sun, burning away with the faint stench of rotted blood. The sun set as the pair pushed to doors to the SiDiabolo House open, the hinges squealing loudly in protest. They looked about the entrance hall, deciding to camp in its confines for the night and explore in the morning.

Neither of them noticed the doors swing silently shut in their wake.

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: Somewhere under Alexandria, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

She drifted a bit further from her body, slipping up and over the rubble, trying to figure out where she was. That she was in a catacomb complex was self-evident; the question was where. Alexandria had been a growing city, quickly devouring free space. Even in its early days the decision had been made that each temple needed a catacomb complex beneath it so as to not use up precious surface land. The oldest catacombs had grown and spread into a gigantic complex, known simply as the Alexandria Catacombs, but some temples stayed separate by mutual consent, bricking back up any unintentional mergers. The Temple of the Abyss was the largest such example, reinforcing its external walls against the occasional ‘natural’ undead spawned by necromantic energies pooling in the depths.

She stared at the rubble beneath her 'feet'. Brickwork inscribed with runes of radiance and repulsion. Exactly the material used to separate the Temple of the Abyss from the rest of the catacombs.

The Walls of the Temple of the Abyss had been breached, and her body lay just beyond its borders. She felt the heart she no longer had seize in her chest. Not at the thought of a few weak undead wandering free but at the worry that the true secrets burred in the depths of the Temple of the Abyss may have come to light. She looked more closely at the walls on both sides of the rubble trying to sort out which way led into the Temple of the Abyss.

Her body lay within the catacombs of the Temple of the Abyss.

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The SiDiabolo House, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics

Job looked up from the campfire, “did you close the front door?”

Lady SiDiabolo shook her head, “no. Why...?”

“Because it's shut.”

“Uhm... and we didn't hear anything...?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh. Would the expression 'uh oh' be appropriate here?”

“Probably. Can we afford to rest, or do we need to push onward?”

“I think we need to rest. I brought scrolls of Alarm, so we shouldn't need to keep watch.”

“Scrolls? For a common Cantrip?”

Lady SiDiabolo flicked an empty hand in a throwing-away motion, “powerful though I might be, I am also over-specialized. Creation, Artifice, and a bit of Summoning, plus High Magic as a matter of course... and next to nothing of Evocation or combat spells, and even less of simple utility. So, I came prepared.”

Job rolled out his bedroll, “can't argue with that. My question is what might be lurking in these ruins that might want to eat us. I have not seen nor heard any sign of wildlife.”

Lady SiDiabolo cast Alarm from a scroll around their campsite, “The things that always haunt old battlegrounds: the dead and the never-born. Being behind the threshold of a house, particularly as I technically own the SiDiabolo House, is an additional layer of protection. Many creatures cannot enter a house unless invited in by the owner.”

Job sighed, wrapped his arms about his pack, and tried to nod off into fitful sleep, “we'll start our search at dawn then.”

“At the rising of the sun, yes.”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: Outside The SiDiabolo House, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics

It felt the gravel cool as the night drew deeper. The setting of the hated sun meant that it was safe to emerge. It drifted upwards; red fog filtering from the crevices in the gravel driveway and coalescing into a ground-hugging cloud. IT had been so close the night before, so close to a new building to explore, to pass the hated days in its depths and shadows.

It flowed down the drive and pressed up against the door to the building. Crimson drops condensed and splattered to the cooling stones, steaming faintly the twilight. It pressed itself into the cracks between the doors and the frame, expecting to slip inside. IT was forced back, repulsed by an unseen barrier.

It shook itself aside. An old anti-draft barrier still survived. No matter, it knew a way around these things: open the door and walk inside. It drew itself inwards, chilling down from drifting fog to flowing liquid. A bipedal humanoid form emerged; made of old blood and hungering for more, it reached for the door handle. Grasping it in tendril-hands of dripping gore, it heaved mightily. The doors opened a few inches, hinges screaming in protest the whole way. It allowed itself to expand back into mist and flowed eagerly into the gap, eager to explore and consume.

It found itself pressed up against that same invisible barrier, repulsed by a force that it did not comprehend. It fell back, swirling in confusion, trying to recall fragments of lore long forgotten. It pulled desperately on the thousands of shards of memory, each one a remnant of a life it had consumed, searching desperately for an answer. It found one amidst the oldest shards, the ones burnt and blackened by the sun and fires from the day of its second death. This was a threshold, the barrier about house occupied by its owner. It screamed in mixed frustration and exultation. There were more than mere scraps here! There were life-giving sentients full to the brim with blood and memories!

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The SiDiabolo House, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics

Lady Ilelahne SiDiabolo stared at the thing that had woken her. It was made of blood and mist and pressed squashed faces against the barrier of the threshold. Tongues licked and fangs bit futility at a barrier they could not break. Fists of gore and feet of bile splattered and reformed against the impassible barrier.

“A crimson mist. Mad at the best of times, this one has descended into a frenzied state at the merest scent of potential sentient prey. From the forms it takes on – the faces and limbs – this one has feasted enough to form a semi-solid body and possesses enough fragments of memory to establish at least a facade of sanity... were it not alone for decades, if not centuries on end.”

Job gulped audibly, “and we're safe from it?”

Ilelahne shrugged, “so long as we are within the walls of the SiDiabolo house and it's threshold, yes.”

“In other words, we're going to have to re-kill that... thing eventually.”

“Yes, but I must wonder where it came from. Crimson mists are vampires killed in the act of feeding, but a vampire would not have been allowed to survive long enough to feed in Alexandria.”

The word 'Alexandria' seemed to grab the crimson mist's attention. It stopped thrashing, stilling into a drifting semblance of peace. The limbs faded back into fog and the faces shifted and merged into a singular pair of eyes and a fanged slit for a mouth.

“”

Ilelahne threw back her head in laughter, raised her left hand, and snapped her fingers. A deep rolling chime reverberated from her hand causing the black granite stones of the SiDiabolo House to echo and shake in response.

“”

The crimson mist drew back and turned a pale pink in recognition. It swirled on the spot and fled back up the gravel drive. Motes of light moved up the door frame to the keystone at its arched center. Before the crimson mist had made it sixty long paces a lance of bright light lashed out from the keystone and struck it center mass. The crimson mist blew apart into flaming cinders on the driveway, leaving only a brief trail of greasy smoke and a plaintive thousand-voiced scream to mark its destruction.

Ilelahne sagged where she stood, almost falling over under her own weight.

“That was... fortunate. I had hoped that the defenses may have survived... but I have less of a magical reserve then I had hoped.”

Job helped he back to her bedroll, “we'll spend a day at rest now that we are safe here. We've the food for it, and the secrets of your own house should be easy enough to ferret out.”

Ilelahne lay back and closed her eyes, “some of them, perhaps. But my parents built this place for me even before I was born, and I have never found all that they hid within its walls.”

. . . - - - . . .

Date: Twentieth of May, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Location: The Catacombs of the Temple of the Abyss, Armageddon Reef, Sapphire Bay, The Jeweled Republics.

She drifted back to her physical body, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, alone with her thoughts. She was in her ‘home’ temple, although near its exterior walls. She felt the urge to delve deeper, to visit the secret places that she recalled were hidden away. She had to know if the containment cells had held and the status of Project Avatar.

She drifted deeper into the catacombs of the Temple of the Abyss. She needed to find the passageways to the inner rings and from there downwards to the lowest layers. It would not take long once she oriented herself. Even the combat damage would not slow her down; as a spirit she was insubstantial enough to slip through all but the smallest of cracks. She found one of the radial corridors and traced it back to the central spiral-shaft of the catacombs. Known as the Descent it spiraled down from the surface to the lowest layers of the Temple of the Abyss… or so the popularly known fiction said.

She took the exit for the third floor from the bottom, then the third left three times in a row, and stopped at a knee-high row of protruding stones. She needed to press the third one to begin the process of opening the three hidden doors, but she had no physical hands. She roiled in place. The enchantments on the doors might still be active but the evidence of earthquakes and cave-ins that she had slipped past, not to mention the battle-damage, indicated that the doors were probably shattered. She could probably sneak in.

She shook her non-corporeal head. She was the High Arch-Mage of Alexandria! Though she may not have any material components or a physical form, she could still move and ‘speak’. It took her an embarrassing second try, but she managed to cast a Mage Hand cantrip to push the buttons in to proper order. The concealed stone door cracked and groaned, dropping downwards the width of a palm before stopping with the crunch of rusted iron.

She slipped past the door and began the next steps needed to access the containment cells. Down the hidden spiral stair, five right-hand turns at the fifth chance, a sequence of five concealed stone buttons in the proper order. Another concealed stone door crunched and ground partway open before its mechanism broke down. Down the final spiral stairwell, A sequence of seven left-hand turns at the seventh chance - including three that wrapped around into right-hand turns – and a seven-digit stone button combination. The last concealed stone door scraped and groaned, stopping when it had opened only a hairsbreadth. She pushed forwards for the gap to slip inside and screeched to a halt.

There was a black stain all about the opening in the door. She examined to door again and spotted the brown-black drips leaking down the sides of the stone door. She had no sense of smell, or a tongue to taste-test, what the substance was. She didn’t need to test anyways, she had seen it before. Long-dried blood; dripped and smeared about the opening as something had squeezed its way through. She vibrated in worry: something had broken out of the containment cells and escaped. She examined the bloodstains more closely, trying to determine their age, and concluded that they had to be at least five hundred years old at a minimum. Mildly relived that whatever had escaped had done so long ago and was therefore likely slain by heroes also lost to the history books she slipped into the gap and entered the containment cells.

Inside was a dystopian vision of a long familiar scene: bloodstained stone tiles, rusted chains and cages, prison cells littered with the bones of the dead, broken and faded Runes of Torment… all of it was at once familiar and disconcertingly wrong. She remembered this place form when it had been neat and orderly. The inmates had been carefully tended, every scrap of useful knowledge slowly drained away, those too dangerous to be set free and too useful to consign to the Abyss kept alive by arcane and divine means alike. Cell twenty-seven, the only glass-fronted cell in the block, had held the creature that had left the blood-trail. It had been a rare creature called a crimson mist. It was known to not be able to cross flowing water of which the ocean around Alexandria certainly qualified. The Peninsula High Road would have been its only way in or out and would have led it right into the waiting arms of the Silithid Empire’s enemies. She couldn’t bring herself to mourn any damage it may have caused before it was finally unmade.

With the containment cells devoid of anything useful, she glided to a secluded adjacent laboratory. It was a dissection and vivisection lab, though it had been seldom used due to its slightly awkward placement and limited space; it couldn’t be used for a subject larger than a dwarf for example. But that had made it ideal for her purposes and Project Avatar. She drifter down under the stone autopsy table and pressed her Mage Hand into a small channel. Flipping the switch there slid aside a tile on the floor to reveal an ornate eleven by eleven grid of small stone buttons. She punched in the nineteen button combination to seal the lab door, and then the twenty-three button combination to open the last hidden stairwell. Neither mechanism functioned properly, but the way downwards to the Project Avatar laboratory was opened enough for her to slip in.

There in the central room, siting in the center of grand circle of Runes, was the Anvil of Souls. The metallic heart of Project Avatar; a Runefroge capable of manipulating thought and soul as well as flesh and metal. Devised early in the war and improved endlessly as the smith who worked it grew in proficiency and the attendant Clerics grew in prowess, it had transformed weak-fleshed condemned mortals into neigh-immortal war golems. Then she had found a better process: inspired by the Three Gods in the Abyss, she had devised a way to harness more then the thoughts of the condemned into a controllable animating force. She found a way to entomb the very soul of the condemned into an utterly subservient warform. The smith had rebelled at this, and had thus become the first warform to be forged upon the Anvil of Souls. She had learned much from that fiasco and the ex-smith's ensuing rampage. No longer were the condemned sacrificed upon the Anvil of Souls; only the willing were allowed to make the sacrifice and transcend their mortal bodies. The replacement smiths forged them mighty new bodies of the finest metals for them, and the Clerics even devised a way for an individual of importance to transfer to such a body upon death. At least three such bodies had been scattered beyond the boarder of the Silithid Empire before the Great War had closed its noose about Alexandria.

And here, in the cold still heart of Project Avatar, were its last remnants. The Anvil of Souls, without a soul with the knowledge to work it, a completed female heavy war-form, and the half completed frame of a warcaster form. She saw the engram stones hidden in the chests of the bodies, ready to receive a willing soul. She thought of her physical body, Time Split from reality. Here was both a risk and a chance...