Alturiak 2, 1489
Dre'zel, my love,
As we raced from the Tower of Enchantment toward the mythallar, nothics and magen rushed toward the familiar howling of yeti that sounded the arrival of the Frostmaiden’s army.
As we ran through the streets, Taimen sent Princess Skullscrusher to retrieve Graven, and we grabbed some handfuls of ice for the necessary ritual step. Beyond the Tower of Abjuration, we could see the battle at the bridge. Frost giant skeletons with greatswords and axes tore nothics apart and tossed their remains into the abyss. Winter wolves, polar bears, and yeti clawed at the hovering magen.
As soon as we reached the barrier of force surrounding the mythallar, we formed a circle and prepared to start the ritual. After asking Professor Skant to confirm some of the terms and pressuring him to do it concisely, we were ready to begin.
After securing the twigs we acquired from the evil nether oak, we did our best to conjure flames in our palms. Taimen shot a Fire Bolt into her palm, Rowan cast a Continual Flame in their hand, and the rest of us used our tinderboxes to light flames of bramble in our palms.
Beginning the third step in the ritual, JoJo somberly revealed, “I regret killing my mother.”
“I exaggerated my sexual escapades by twenty percent,” Gosse nonchalantly added.
“I’m so fucking sick of being a paladin,” Taimen agonizingly shared, “I feel like Umberlee tells me what to do with my body, and I fucking hate it, and I want to die all the time.”
“I’m terrified of the water,“ Rowan sincerely disclosed. “I hate it when any of you make me go in there.”
“I failed out of cleric school,” Talyth embarrassingly admitted.
“When we are done,” I concluded, “I plan on hunting down Arveiaturace.”
Beginning the fourth ritual step, I asked Talyth, “What is your greatest fear?”
“Getting everyone killed, because I follow Auril,” Talyth sobbed. “Everyone dying because of me.” Then she turned to Rowan and asked, “What’s up with dad?”
“He’s finally dead,” Rowan shared, “but he made my life a living hell for the first twenty-six years. I’m twenty-seven.” Rowan then turned to Taimen and asked, “What would you like to tell me?”
“Smash, smash, pass, pass, smash,” Taimen responded, indicating each of her companions in turn. “Gosse?”
“Smash, smash, smash, smash, smash,” Gosse added, then turned to JoJo with, “Give us a secret, or I’ll cut your throat.”
“I think Vellynne is hot,” JoJo stuttered, “or she was.” Then he turned to me and said, “Secret. What is it, Frizzt? Come on, mate.”
“I constantly feel like I’m in competition with a previous drow hero,” I shared.
We each picked up the ice we had prepared and used it to extinguish the flames burning in our palms. Then Taimen cast Minor Illusion, creating a mask over her face. Gosse used a mask from his disguise kit. JoJo, Talyth, and Rowan placed makeshift masks over their faces. I donned my drow wedding mask.
We used the ashes we’d retrieved from the Tower of Necromancy to trace a circle around us, then I licked one of my poisoned bolts and passed it around for the others to do the same.
The dose of poison was low enough not to harm us, but was enough to satisfy the ritual as JoJo stumbled through the barrier of force, and we all quickly followed.
The air felt surprisingly warm as we entered the barrier. Then we heard galloping, and saw Princess charge inside the barrier followed by the Shield Guardian. Graven was running right behind them, but bounced off the invisible barrier, exclaiming, “It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.”
Seeing the Frostmaiden’s horde approaching in the distance, Taimen instructed Princess Skullcrusher to carry Graven somewhere else. The moose left the barrier and, with Graven mounting her, galloped away toward the north.
Before us, in an ornate cradle, was the mythallar, a 50-foot-diameter crystal ball that shed radiant light throughout the city. Fifty feet above the orb, the Spire of Iriolarthas rested on enormous black stone struts.
“This mythallar,” Professor Skant lectured, “is a relatively small one. This might be the last functioning mythallar in existence. Their capital cities had mythallar stretching 300 feet in diameter. To find it intact and functioning after two millennia buried under the ice, after what we’ve learned of the spindle's attack on its essence, I’m in awe.”
As the Frostmaiden’s army was running toward us, a spectral figure appeared next to Taimen. His detailed features distinguished this kindly bald man wearing a long purple gown from the similarly translucent magen. Turning to Gosse, he greeted us in Common with a smile, “Greetings, wizard. I am the Everlast. Have you come to revive our fallen city?”
“Yeah, sure,” Gosse agreed. “Nice to meet you. We gotta attune to this thing to save the day, or whatever, so could you walk us through that process?”
“Perhaps the mannerisms of our kind have changed,” the Everlast replied. “It gladdens me to know that our Netherese brothers have returned to save our city. Surely, the mythallars in your city are not that different.”
“When the Netherese empire collapsed,” Gosse explained, “we lost much magical knowledge.”
“The Netherese empire collapsed?” the Everlast incredulously repeated.
“Oh, yeah,” Gosse insisted. “We’re from Netherese Secondus. We’re sort of the last surviving remnant. We’re trying to reinvigorate the empire. You know?”
“If you are here to aid the Netherese empire,” the Everlast replied, “then I will aid you. Let me know how I may help.”
“We gotta attune to this bad boy right here,” Gosse reiterated. It was then that the first winter wolf reached the force barrier and gnashed its long fangs against it. “There’s a time element here,” Gosse continued, “because the winter god Auril’s trying to stop us for like an eternal…”
“If you truly seek to bond with the mythallar,” the Everlast proposed, “perhaps you can fly our city out of here. You can use it to melt the ice that surrounds us. Up to eight of you may attune to the mythallar, although I’m afraid one of the slots is currently taken by my master.”
“And who might your master be?” Gosse enquired.
“Iriolarthas?” JoJo surmised.
“You stand beneath his spire,” the Everlast clarified. “Indeed.”
“Is he home?” Talyth asked.
“My master has wandered much recently,” the Everlast expounded, “but yes, he should be in his tower, above us.”
“You know, while we’re attuning,” Gosse suggested, “you should let him know that an invading army of a rival god is basically here to fuck up his day.”
“Iriolarthas might be mighty,” the Everlast corrected, “but he is no god. In fact, in Netheril, those who keep faith are few and far between.”
“Well, look,” Gosse continued, “you don’t have to believe in Auril, but she believes in you. And she’s got a shit ton of wolves and crap.”
“Is that what is trying to break through the force field?” the Everlast enquired. “Monsters have tried to break through in the past. They will try again. That monster beyond our wall does not concern us.”
“Why hasn’t Iriolarthas, you know, zapped the city outta here?” Gosse questioned, responding to Taimen’s awkward stare.
“My master has diminished in the two thousand years since we’ve arrived,” the Everlast explained. “His decisions are my own, and I long to see him restored to his former glory. He is, after all, my creator.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels,” Gosse acknowledged. “Is that a possibility, you think? How would that go about being done?”
“That I do not know,” the Everlast admitted. “I am merely a construct.”
Rowan and I stood guard as the others began to attune to the mythallar.
“I do not think my master would take kindly," the Everlast objected, “to nonhuman mages attuning to the sphere.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Gosse assuaged. “The new Netherese empire has a much more cosmopolitan view.”
“Your choices are your own,” the Everlast resigned. “I’m merely letting you know my master is a bit old-fashioned. If others attune to the sphere, he may not take kindly to it. It probably goes without saying, but there’s no need to touch the mythallar. In fact, it would probably be very bad if you did. Just meditate upon it for fifteen minutes, within thirty feet, and its power will be yours.”
Almost fifteen minutes had passed when the ground began to tremor, and the Shield Guardian lifted Talyth up and away as a Tomb Tapper rose out of the ground, swinging its hammer and crushing the ground where Talyth had been.
Sensing another tremor beneath me, I warned, “JoJo, Rowan, we need to move!” Running between JoJo’s legs and up his torso, I slapped his giant face.
Disturbed from his meditation, JoJo rose just in time to avoid the second Tomb Tapper’s hammer. Leaning over JoJo’s shoulder, I drove an arrow deep into the construct’s maw. Swinging around to the other shoulder, I sank another into its torso. Rowan transformed into an earth elemental.
Seeing Rock-Rowan, the second Tomb Tapper dropped to a knee in apparent reverence. Rowan began speaking with it in a rumbly Terran.
As the first Tomb Tapper swung its hammer at Talyth, her Shield Guardian interposed itself, absorbing some of the blow. Circling its foe, the Shield Guardian slammed the construct. Her meditation broken, Talyth summoned Twilight Sanctuary.
I swung around as JoJo engaged the first Tomb Tapper, and my arrows flew wide.
The second Tomb Tapper raised its hammer threateningly at Rock-Rowan. Flanking the construct, JoJo sliced its torso wide. Digging both claws into the larger barbarian, it pulled him close and began gnawing with its torso maw.
The first Tomb Tapper’s hammer began to glow as it brought it down on Talyth—her Shield Guardian absorbing some of the blow—before burrowing into the ground. As Talyth maneuvered the Shield Guardian next to Taimen, she blasted the first Tomb Tapper with a Sacred Flame.
Leaping off JoJo, I cast Hunter’s Mark on the second Tomb Tapper but missed it as I ran up one of the struts. Rock-Rowan slammed it with a jab and a crushing cross. JoJo slid his sword into its belly maw, and it turned to stone and fell into its hole!
The Shield Guardian slammed the first Tomb Tapper as it appeared next to Taimen and delivered a crushing blow to the dragonborn. Despite being hurled back by the blow, the paladin managed to maintain her focus on the attunement. The Tomb Tapper slammed the Shield Guardian with its backswing and burrowed into the ground. Talyth maneuvered next to Gosse.
The Frostmaiden’s army had begun circling the barrier from the south. First giant skeletons slammed their blades into it. Snow golems threw balls of ice at it. Yeti, polar bears, and winter wolves clawed at it. Cold Light walkers blasted it with their eye rays. Ice mephits exploded against it.
With Hunter’s Mark, I detected the first Tomb Tapper burrowing under the Shield Guardian and shouted for Rowan to lift Gosse up before I hid further up the strut. With a grinding stride, Rock-Rowan lifted Gosse high off the ground.
As the Tomb Tapper emerged under Gosse, JoJo wrapped it up in a bear hug from behind, I sank an arrow into its shoulder, and Talyth blasted it with her Sacred Flame. As it tried to swing its hammer, the Shield Guardian slammed it with a pulverizing cross and a jab. Still holding Gosse up, Rock-Rowan slammed it with two rocky fists. JoJo swung the construct into the glowing mythallar, and it was immediately disintegrated!
As the Frostmaiden’s army continued to throw itself against the unyielding barrier of force, Taimen and Gosse opened their eyes, their attunement complete! Rock-Rowan placed Gosse on the ground, and he shared knowing looks with Taimen.
“I told you my master would not be a fan of a nonhuman attuning to the sphere,” the Everlast repeated.
“I am the favored concubine of Drakareth the handsome,” Taimen argued, indicating Gosse, “and he’s asking me to help out.”
“Drakareth’s tastes have always lain in the extreme,” the Everlast begrudgingly acknowledged. “In the dangerous. In the scaly. If you truly are who you say you are, then I’m sure my master will entertain you. He would want to speak with you if you truly are here to help. If Drakareth sent you, then please, into the spire.”
The Everlast indicated an elevator, beyond the horde to the southwest, explaining that it was the only entrance to the spire and was also protected by the force barrier. But it suggested that we would have to step outside the barrier’s protection to reach the elevator, which we could do freely, though no magic or uncarried items could be sent through it. Explaining that the windows were warded and could only be opened by its master, its smile, once friendly, appeared to enjoy our predicament.
Graven scrambled through the barrier from the north, Princess Skullcrusher casually trotting in after. Witnessing this, the Frostmaiden’s army encircled the barrier from all sides.
“I’m here, and I’m ready,” the kobold exclaimed to Taimen. “What is it, a suicide march to the elevator shaft? Is that what I overheard?”
I was scanning the spire above as my companions debated the best way to reach the elevator. Besides making a mad dash, they considered using Talyth’s Bag of Holding or the miniature Netherese skycoach.
Our attention was drawn to a polar bear as its claws pierced the barrier and it lumbered inside. As we prepared for a fight, JoJo urged us to calm down. It rose onto its hind legs and transformed into a humanoid-shaped goliath polar werebear. After speaking with JoJo in a language I didn’t understand, it transformed again and withdrew from the barrier, unimpeded by the wintry army.
Talyth took out the bottle and broke it, and the miniature Netherese skycoach within grew large enough to carry five humanoids, with two seats in the front and three in the back. It hummed as it hovered slightly off the ground. Taimen hopped into the captain’s seat.
Knowing that we could not all fit in the ship, I began running up the strut to the spire above. Spotting a balcony, I ran to it.
From high above, I could see the Frostmaiden’s army spreading throughout the city. The Coldlight Walkers’ eye rays illuminated the streets. The magen defenders had fallen. Frost druids made beelines to various towers, no doubt trying to get through the barrier.
Reaching the balcony, I found a locked set of double doors. As I walked up the walls to get above it, each footfall landed like a drumbeat. Undeterred, I hung from above the balcony and removed my masterwork thieves' tools. Carefully adjusting the latch inside, I heard a pop, and the door opened.
Inside, I saw the backs of eight chairs facing a miniature star constellation floating in the air beyond. Each chair had a familiar symbol of the eight schools of magic.
As the skycoach rose, it was battered by a hail of rock-hard ice. Taimen steered them clear of the cylindrical ice storm, and I waved them to the balcony. Far below them, JoJo and the Shield Guardian carefully scaled the spire’s smooth black walls.
As Taimen steered the skycoach to the balcony, the frost-covered dome above us split open, revealing a night sky as icicles the size of towers fell into the city. Through the crack, we saw Auril on her roc, its two-hundred-foot wingspan seeming to grow as it descended!
The skycoach almost slammed into the balcony, tossing Taimen, Talyth, Gosse, Rowan, and Graven into the spire. The icy dome’s crack sealed itself as I leaped in after them. Peering out, I caught a glimpse of Auril circling the spire!
Auril’s roc dove, its long talons reaching for JoJo, who was still climbing the spire far below. But they skidded on the barrier as the gargantuan monstrosity was deflected.
They continued to circle the spire as JoJo and the Shield Guardian slowly made their way up its walls, eventually squeezing into the balcony entrance.
Then Auril’s roc rose to the level of the balcony and hovered in front of us, outside the barrier, but staring right at us. “What have you done?” the Frostmaiden asked Talyth.
“What have you done?” Talyth mirrored nervously.
“I’ve kept this secret safe,” Auril replied. “I’ve enshrouded this dangerous place, and you have split its shelter. Whatever befalls the world now is your fault alone.” With that, the roc flapped its wings, and they were out of sight.
Turning back to the chamber, a vortex of glowing stars hung in the air beyond the chairs, slowly rotating on an axis. As the constellations moved, they cast radiant starlight across the walls, which arced to a thirty-foot domed ceiling. Eight high-backed chairs, each bearing a different arcane symbol, faced this starry miasma. Beyond the constellation were eight doorways opposite the eight chairs, all covered in Darkness. There were archways to the east and west.
Beyond the archway to the left, I found a ten-foot-tall spindle of gray stone hovering upright and slowly rotating inside a twenty-foot-diameter circular chamber. All around it, the surfaces of the room's walls were cracked, as though some terrible energy once coursed through them.
Beyond the archway to the right, Gosse found a triangular library, its walls filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Hundreds of books and scrolls had been thrown free of their resting places when the city crashed and now covered the floor, worn and rotten from time and the bitter cold.
The Everlast appeared with a start. “Oh, you’ve summited the tower. Fantastic.”
“We took a shortcut,” Taimen explained. “Where’s Iriolarthas at?”
“In his study,” the Everlast replied. “It is only accessible by one of the eight high wizards.
“Everlast,” Gosse questioned, “are you able to communicate with Iriolarthas?”
“Long has it been since I could communicate with my master,” the Everlast admitted.
“If you had to send him a message,” Gosse pressed, “what would you do?”
“I would try to appear to him directly,” the Everlast answered.
“Could you go do that,” Gosse continued, “and let him know there’s a party of adventurers here that needs him to ally with them against the evil god of frost or the whole city’s going to get destroyed, including him?”
“My friend,” the Everlast replied, “I have been trying to reach my master for years. I can see him. I can walk beside him. But he cannot hear me. His ears have long since vanished. He is but a skull.”
“What do you mean, only an archmage can get through those doors?” Taimen asked. “Are they fingerprint locks?”
“My master will only grant admission to one of the eight,” the Everlast explained. “They would sit here, in the Chamber of the Ebon Star, to get access to his library.”
“Is it through those double doors?” Talyth quipped. Seeing our confused expressions, she shared, “Oh, sorry. Behind those,” she pointed to the eight doors in Darkness, “are double doors.”
“That I do not know,” the Everlast answered.
While Gosse and Talyth were arguing about whether they should go through the double doors—which Talyth said stood wide open, while Gosse insisted that they were armed with deadly traps—Taimen sat in the high-backed chair bearing the symbol of evocation.
Nothing happened. She tossed a Fire Bolt on the floor, and the symbol on the back of her chair began to glow. Then it dimmed and returned to normal.
While she argued with Gosse, Talyth searched the library and found a Scroll of Comet, protected from the ravages of time inside a display case, a metal key that we assumed would open the balcony doors, and a brittle old tome with a black eight-pointed star on its cover. The tome recorded the Wizards of the Ebon Star’s past meetings. One passage explained that to open the door to his study, Master Iriolarthas required three apprentices or one of the high mages to be seated in their chairs. She also noted that the chronurgy section was completely missing.
“Everlast,” I asked, “what do you know of this spindle?”
“Spindle,” the Everlast replied, “I know that is what has brought us here. This Spindle, Iriolarthas tried to activate it. I was not privy to its activation, but I was created as a failsafe so that in the event his use of the spindle brought down the city, I could aid adventurers in restoring Ythryn to its former glory.”
“Is there a way to deactivate the spindle?” I questioned.
“I know casting spells upon it will not work,” the Everlast answered. “My master tried many times, before he entered his current state, to teleport it away. To move it. To banish it. None could get rid of it.”
Talyth cast a Detect Magic ritual and detected nothing from the spindle, but detected transmutation magic emanating from the floor ahead.
We placed the head of High Necromancer Cadavix on the chair with the symbol of necromancy, and suddenly a black star began to grow in the center of the constellation. Looking upon it, my mind became clouded in shadow as if portending some future doom in the night sky. The black star continued to expand until it was the size of a large doorway.
Detecting conjuration magic on the doorway, Talyth urged us through the portal into the blackness beyond.
Passing through the black portal, we found ourselves on the upper level of a large chamber covered in a thick layer of dust. Tables all around us were covered with wizardly paraphernalia. There was a soft groaning sound coming from behind the portal. Staircases to the east and west descended to the lower part of the room, where a sunken library was situated in a ten-foot-deep, twenty-foot-diameter pit. A ladder running along a circular track inside this hole allowed easy access to the many tomes on its shelves.
Three nothics perched on the edge of the pit turned to stare at us with their single eye. Rising from the middle of the pit was a human-sized skull surrounded by floating arcane sigils.
As we all entered through the portal, Gosse approached the skull, with Taimen and JoJo following closely. Graven ran up to Taimen’s side. A shadowy patch moved silently along the northern wall.
As soon as Gosse addressed Iriolarthas, the skull let out a bloodcurdling howl that left us terrified of the demilich. The rogue and the kobold fell unconscious, bound in chains of necrotic energy.
Channeling Twilight Sanctuary, Talyth defiantly rose toward the thirty-foot-high ceiling.
The three nothics turned their rotting gaze on JoJo, and black veins briefly lined his huge face. The black portal vanished with a snap, and the black shadowy patch appeared on the floor beneath Rowan, who was now in their elven-goliath form, and managed to jump aside. Turning away from the skull, JoJo sliced into the shadowy patch with his sword, shredding it. As the shadowy blackness of the living demiplane collapsed upon itself, it evicted two flesh golems and three galvan magen. I ran up the wall, away from the flesh golem as JoJo slashed at it, but was unable to harm it. At a reassuring glance from Talyth, he was no longer frightened. The skull turned to Taimen, draining her life essence.
Rowan conjured a flaming sphere between two magen and a flesh golem, burning them all and sending the flesh golem into a frenzy as it struggled to extinguish itself. Iriolarthas rose to the ceiling, thirty feet up. I transferred my Hunter’s Mark to the burning flesh golem and shot it with my eldritch wand as I ran along the northern wall. Thrusting her glowing trident, Taimen stabbed a hole in the side of the skull. The magen turned their shocking touches on the flesh golem, healing it as it slammed JoJo. The skull began absorbing the life essence from JoJo and me, as well as Taimen.
After casting aspersions at Iriolarthas, Talyth cast Mass Cure Wounds, reviving Gosse and Graven, their necrotic chains dispersing. Dropping his sword, JoJo lifted the flesh golem over his head and tossed it into the chamber’s library pit, where it screamed in agony. Rising, Gosse blasted the skull right between its eyes with his eldritch wand. A gem fell out of the skull’s eye, and Gosse grimaced in pain. As Rowan’s Flaming Sphere continued to burn the magen and the flesh golem, Rowan blasted them with a Thunderwave, forcing the flesh golem back into the Flaming Sphere. Rearing up on Princess Skullcrusher, Taimen impaled the skull of Iriolarthas, shattering it!
The magen vanished. The flesh golem withered and fell apart. Two of the nothics cowered. The third nothic rushed over to Graven, cradling the kobold in her gangly, leathery arms. Turning to Taimen, she croaked, “I will be taking my apprentice back now.”
Before anyone could respond, the spire began to shudder as the roc landed on the roof!
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