WWW #44: To the Bone

This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.

A hazy horizon

of light

creeps

into

your mind

you are swimming up to the surface

from a great depth

shapes

doubled come together swimming back out of focus

is this reality

no

it is the confusion of arriving at consciousness from deep and arcane slumber.

The shapes that come to you do not come to you in the order of their importance or urgency.

Not their danger, nor their significance in the magic that now surrounds you.

A sputtering tallow candle rendered from the fat of some dead animal.

A boot pointed perpendicular to you in conversation with another boot.

Below itself.

Robes in conversation with other robes.

No.

No.

Two wizards, their faces still hazy and obscured.

There's a pig.

Looking up to the sky as if in prayer.

No,

no, not in prayer.

A hook under its chin holds its dead carcass aloft.

Amen.

You can't move

and you can't speak.

You are in

something

like child's pose.

Your knees

together touching the ground, your palms on the ground.

Your palms rest

at the edge of a circle of salt

that you realize has been drawn around you.

You can't take your hands off the floor

and you can't move your knees.

The ship will then need to be back.

Prince gave no orders concerning the witch and her spirit.

Come in.

But we'd better find her.

We'd better find another.

Ooh, she's coming too.

Good evening, witch of the world's heart.

You may find yourself having trouble speaking, but that's alright.

And you see, the wizard Keen ceases to move his mouth as you hear his thoughts in your mind.

we can speak to each other more plainly here.

Your words can come directly from the heart, as opposed to having to trouble with speaking with that mouth of yours.

Better left sealed, I think.

And you can feel

that

there is a sour strip of parchment

pressed between your lips that are just as sealed as if by the weight of a thousand stones as your palms are to the floor.

Where's my fox?

Your fox?

Oh.

And you see that there is a sack

hanging from one of the hooks.

He hasn't moved in a while, but spell should have worn off by now.

Perhaps he's sleeping.

Inside check.

19 plus 7 for 26.

He is lying to you.

I'll ask you again:

what is happening to my fox?

He looks at you.

If I'm able to, I physically meet his gaze.

You are able to.

You see that your the magic circle that has been put around you, which you recognize, this is the thing they use to bind demons.

Your palms may not move from the ground and you cannot move your fingers.

Your knees and the tops of your feet likewise are rooted to the floor.

So you basically have the choice to either rest,

sitting on your heels, sort of prostrate in the middle of the circle, which is not altogether uncomfortable, but will become, you know, maddeningly uncomfortable over time.

But you can move up sort of into a tabletop position.

You could if you wanted to.

But more importantly, you have the ability to crane your head up and meet his gaze directly.

He is crouching at the outside of the circle to be about at your height.

Well.

You're certainly very perceptive.

You see that he goes over takes the sack off the hook hook.

You see that something scurries inside of the sack, and he wheels it over his head and smashes it against a butcher block and kills something in the sack.

Tosses it off to the side.

I was planning to have a little bit more fun with that.

Seems you're a little too perceptive.

Yes, I think you'll find I'm a little less easily rattled than

the other

prisoners you take, the other political prisoners, the other

people, the other bait.

You see that he looks at you and says, What is the coven of elders?

It is

a group of women who gather to make very important decisions.

Hmm.

Such as.

Well, they decided to keep me as a member of their circle this time.

But you didn't answer my question.

Where is my fox

and my friends?

He snaps his finger

and you see that one of the other two guild mages walks over and you see that the fox is hanging limp unconscious.

One of the

guild mages begins to draw a rune.

It has this sort of small silver decanter of salt, begins to draw a glyph on the ground.

Keene looks at you and says,

Witchcraft has been an object not of serious

study for me.

I don't know if you can.

I think I really should have been.

I have a cursory knowledge, but

in my estimation, a cursory knowledge of witchcraft is sufficient to counteract it.

For example, I'm given to believe that I cannot cause you nor your familiar direct harm.

Is that

correct?

Without suffering some sort of consequence.

That's what the legends say.

I understand.

Direct harm is such a fascinating concept.

It seems very rooted in a kind of cultural understanding.

I wonder if you wouldn't mind helping me with an experiment.

You see, one of the wizards takes a small perfume bottle, sprays it on the fox, who

sneezes, and begins to come to as the other one finishes drawing a beautiful double bar, double floor-de-lis, kind of like runic shape with a couple of dots and lines through.

It looks like a small sort of threshold rune,

and you see that as that wizard finishes that, the wizard Keen looks to the fox who's like groggy and coming to

and says,

Animal, it's my understanding that you speak Imperial.

Your mistress before you

is sealed in a magic circle, the magic of which is quite simple.

The salt need only be disturbed to break the spell, and you see the fox goes,

and leaps forward as fast as possible, leaps over the threshold,

and yips and begins to convulse and froth at the mouth in front of the rune.

And you see that Keen looks at the twitching fox on the ground, who is clearly writhing, his eyes bulging out of his head in pain.

And you see that Keene sort of looks at the palms of his hands, looks at the back of them.

Indirect harm doesn't seem to produce any meaningful results.

Fascinating.

I reach for the fox in my mind.

Fox, fox,

all you can hear are screams.

As you hear the fox's screams redoubling over and over and over again in your head, I'm going to need you to make a wisdom-saving throw.

That's a two.

Plus six?

Ruth Nate?

As you go to warg into the fox, where you go to connect with him and understand him,

the pain that courses through your body is unlike anything you have ever felt, as

the greatest gift you have, which is your empathy and compassion, the ability to open a door to feel what another is feeling, is taken ruthless advantage of by one of the most evil men you have ever seen, because that door opens to this spell.

As you convulse with a pain that you know is

at any given second a moment away from killing you.

The Wizard Keen

smiles.

You notice for the first time that his lips are barely a different shade than the rest of his skin.

And he says,

That sort of vulnerability

will no longer serve you now that you are mine.

Ursulan, you and Vandal are perched up in an alleyway.

At the far end, closer to the harbor, there is a hitching post where the three horses are hitched up.

Looking at the butcher's shop, what is Ursulan doing and thinking in this moment?

Ursulan stands, I think having raised his hood,

and is,

I think, even in examining himself, struck by the sense of calm that comes over him.

There is

potential that this is a trap, that the desire is for Ursulan to charge in and save his friend, and thereby, in fact, endanger them.

that Ursulan is able to kind of ground himself in.

And I think feeling that same

white, clear sense of purpose from his chest down to his toes, he feels anchored as he leans against the wall of one of the buildings and watches.

Give me a perception check with advantage.

21

wagon wheels turning, hooves, people chatting

hurriedly and in hushed tones.

A city burgeoning with soldiers, preparing in four days' time to have the infantry arrive from Bracken.

They are getting ready for the push south, 25 miles from here to 12th Brooks.

You are eight miles from enemy lines.

This is the last big settlement before the forces of Gauthmai.

On that 21,

underneath all of that,

you hear a muffled scream.

Vandal,

need you to locate the cellar door.

Let me know if anyone is guarding it.

Gone for a few minutes.

Comes back.

Back behind this one, but there's no alley.

You have to sneak in through one of the other buildings to get back there into the courtyard.

No one's guarding it.

All right, let's move.

Hell yes.

You begin to move.

Go ahead and give me stealth.

With advantage?

With advantages.

You have your

boots.

Good boots.

Good boots.

21 again.

A shadow.

You

move through these streets, your glamour up.

You are

powerful in a way that you were not

before

the Conclave, before Hallaker Forest.

You feel your breath within and around you.

Your glamour has always been your ability to look human,

but it's actually a more nuanced tool than that.

It is an appearance of humanhood, but you can hold that.

You can hold that breath in a way that encourages people ever so softly

to notice you because you are beautiful beyond measure, to not notice you because you seem to be as though you were any man walking down the street and reaching into that energy of, I'm any man.

I am the man you would most expect to see here on the street corner.

You move through shadow around, and you do see that this is towards the city center, meaning there are sort of shops and

sort of flats and townhomes above those shops in a

city block of buildings that you know has a courtyard in the center but no alleyway connecting them meaning to get to that cellar door in the back you would have to go through some other building or scale and like climb over a three-story building

what does ursalon do

moving on what vandalist reported i think ursalan is moving with the idea that he's going to go through whatever establishment hoping it's perhaps not a home, but some kind of shop.

But whatever that is, I think, yes, currently the plan is not to scale anything.

Give me investigation, or you can give me a little persuasion if you like.

I will give you persuasion.

Great.

And Vandal will give you an advantage on this job.

Thank you.

Wow, so this is what it's like having a familiar?

You need a little guy?

I get you a little guy.

No.

17.

Okay.

You get around the block and you see that there is a

small

cheesemonger store.

You see that there are some large wheels of cheese here.

The place looks pretty sparse, and you see is filled with actually a couple of aides to camp.

There are Imperial soldiers here that are buying out rations and supplies.

There's an Imperial wagon out in the front of people just rolling big wheels of cheese out.

And it looks like a very happy,

it looks like an older woman and her wife wife are running the store, just very happy to be kind of selling out the shop.

And you see as you walk in, she goes, hello, dearie.

We'll just be maybe 10 minutes, but there should be,

these gentlemen are only buying out the large wheels, so we should have plenty for you to choose from if you're buying for yourself.

Oh, no, I'm actually here to offer aid.

Is there any way I can help?

I'm going around just trying to support the force.

Oh!

See a couple of the Imperial soldiers kind kind of turn to look.

Is Ursulan wearing any imperial garb or imperial like...

Oh, that's interesting.

I think I might be wearing the blue.

I'm not sure it would be so officially officially imperial, but the colors for sure.

Totally.

I think you see on that 17, they look at the colors and

there's nothing out of the ordinary happening here.

And you look like the guy who's supposed to be here.

They sort of nod their heads and she says, oh, that's very kind, dear.

You see, she says, me and my wife have been sort of running around as much as we can.

There's some larger wheels

of the old smoked Edom out there.

If you could wheel that back in here, that'd be wonderful.

Thank you.

Of course.

And you help yourself to the back of the store where you see there is a small door out to a lovely little flowering courtyard with a couple vined tomato plants and some grapes.

But more importantly, an open cellar that you can see goes down to a cool basement with big wooden shelves covered in wax paper with big wheels of cheese but but the courtyard

i think i proceed quickly uh through the courtyard incredible

you arrive at the back door of the butcher's shop and you can see here that there is like a slick of water near the door where probably like a block of ice was brought down like ships come down from the saluhi taiga with ice to sell along the river for places just like this.

So there's, you know, it's going to be freezing cold down there.

And you

can hear the noise inside.

Ame

in the

unrelenting

ever-cresting wave of pain in that way that when you're feeling pain you wait for the wave to subside to give you a moment of respite.

And this feels like it just keeps increasing.

It almost feels like if you had fallen onto something sharp, that you would at least be able to have the impact stop and you would just have the cuts you had.

This is like you've fallen and your palms are on spikes that you are slowly moving further and further down as it continues.

It can't stop getting worse.

You hear a voice in your head,

and to the degree that you can't even speak or respond, you hear the Wizard Keen say,

I need to be very clear

that

the best way for you to survive is to give me what I want.

I understand

your pride demands that you weather this interaction with your dignity.

Dignity will not buy the skin off your face or the teeth from your jaw.

What is the coven of elders and what decisions do they make?

Ame,

tears streaming down her face, continues to scream both silently and in a muffled, strangled roar

as she feels the fox.

The fox is shrieking in pain.

Go ahead and as you feel the fox's pain, which is that empathy, that openness of your heart is how the spell got to you too.

Give me, if you would be so kind,

some kind of check here.

Make it insight, make it whatever you want to do in this moment.

What are you attempting to do?

Are you attempting to reach out to the fox in this moment?

Yes.

Okay, gotcha.

And even though I

cannot speak or move,

I push a bit of my magic into him

through our connection.

I burn a level one spell slot in order to make sure that he is healthy and alive.

You bring your fox back with that spell slot so that he is not unconscious.

You see his eyes.

Oh, but he's still shuddering under the pain.

He looks at you

writhing on the ground

and

this would be the moment for him to say something in your mind.

Something

funny.

and charming to make it seem like it's gonna all be okay.

But he's an animal and you told him to go under that tarp

and he and you are probably gonna die here in a hole.

I think in this moment I'm gonna ask you to make an insight check.

15.

Keen in your mind goes

oh oh oh no no no don't go down your little hole my sweet fox don't go down and you get to memories.

There are memories here, and you can see that Keen,

like he's got an arcane hand on the back of your neck, pushes you towards your most painful memories.

The most recent one that comes up right away is Suvi asking you not to go to that shrine.

Was it right for Ame

to go to that shrine?

Was doing that thing in the hopes of the best possible outcome right?

And will it still be right if the fox watches this man peel the skin off your face and knock the teeth out of your jaw?

I'm sorry, Suffie.

I'm sorry.

I did what was right.

I did what was kind.

Be kind.

The words, be kind,

are being written on your bedroom wall by you.

Be kind.

You are little.

You're back at the cottage.

Why did you write be kind next to a hole on the wall?

I wake up

every day.

And I'm not kind.

Because that's how I was bored when I was little.

I'm kind because every day I choose not to be wicked.

A mother and a father are speaking to Grandmother Wren in a room.

We've been told that you can fix this.

Fix our child.

She is possessed of something.

She is not.

She is not proper.

Your

daughter's condition, condition, such as it is, is still a mystery to us.

I will be happy to administer tests in whatever is best for the child, because of course the act we will pursue.

You can hear the venom under Grandmother Wren's voice as she tries to say exactly what she needs to say to wrest you away from these people.

These people.

You have mentioned them so little in the long years

since you

escaped or perhaps were thrown away.

These people.

Do you go

to see

these people?

Can you bear to?

I have never been one to flinch from something just because it was difficult.

There's torchlight outside your house.

The town has come to drown you in the river.

Your siblings gaze out from the nursery, a room in which you are no longer allowed.

Your mother and father are outside explaining that they will take you somewhere where you can be fixed.

They apologize to their neighbors for the unruliness of a child who bridges the gap between spirits of chaos, rudeness, mischief.

Things have not been the same in town since you

aged out of your infancy.

A child of five years should know better.

Do you think the villagers are going to get their way, or do you think your parents will be able to persuade them?

I didn't mean to.

I was a child.

I suppose at least they loved me enough

to save my life.

Something behind you or within you snarls.

There's a fox.

They're cute,

but they kill things and they eat them.

There's something with sharp teeth.

It's right behind you.

Now it's closer.

It's in your chest.

It's in your heart.

It's It's in your arm.

It's in your fist.

And you've just punched a hole in Grandmother Wren's wall.

Why did you do that?

I am meant to be

a bridge between the spirits and the humans.

I am meant to represent the realms of the human heart.

But I'm not like them.

I've never been part of them.

I'm not a spirit either.

I can't even be

Grandmother Wren or what she raised me to be.

I have to be me.

I have to be my fox.

And I have to be there for my true friends.

I'm not the rolling pin.

Nor my boots marching to war.

I have to be something else.

Surer and swifter and more cunning.

The word cunning

fills space around you.

You're in Grandmother Wren.

You're young.

You're maybe 12 or 13 years old.

See, Ren goes.

It's normal.

Ami, it's normal for children to ask about parents.

They weren't trying to provoke you.

They don't know.

Not normal.

And

I couldn't make them think I'm normal.

Amy.

Amy.

I'm sorry that I couldn't teach you every lesson.

So let this be the last one.

The greatest lessons are the ones you teach yourself.

You see, a fist drives into the wall.

Ame, go to your room!

Moments of reflection pass into an hour.

The words, be kind.

Perhaps the greatest and most noble calling.

And by a turning of the coin, a muzzle.

Ame, there's a mirror in your room you don't remember seeing there.

I wipe my nose.

Let me wipe my eyes.

Let me pull myself up to look.

You are no longer a child.

You are the age you are now.

Standing tall on hind legs, Robes of white and red matching the color of her fur is a fox spirit, beautiful and tall.

She holds a wide-brimmed hat under one arm and holds a broom, blood streaking from her mouth.

She takes a beautiful paintbrush from her robe, slides it across her lips, filling the bristles with blood,

hands it through the mirror.

to you, her reflection,

and points to the wall opposite.

Be kind.

Is there anything you want to write there?

I reach out, my hand trembling.

I nod to her.

I pluck the brush from her hand.

I can feel it at my fingertips.

It smells the coppery tang of the blood on it.

I look over to the wall.

I paint

in shore, broad strokes.

Do right.

You paint do right on the wall.

As you look at the words,

do right

can mean

anything.

It is a directive that puts the weight of the world and the weight of Wren's legacy on your shoulders.

How on earth can you be expected to do right?

What must you know to do right?

And how can you do it if you will never

be what Grandmother Wren was?

The perfect witch by your own description.

The spirit smiles at you.

You hear a word that you have already spoken echoing in the mirror

you look at the wall

the words do right have vanished

across from the wall that says be kind

are the words be cunning

ursalone

we are going to move to you in this moment in the courtyard.

I think continuing to move stealthily down into the butcher shop,

but also taking a moment to look to Vandal.

Vandal,

I hope this question is not rude.

What can you do?

Peace!

Understood.

Stay behind me and stay quiet.

You stealthily begin...

So first of all, the door is closed back here.

If you're going to open it, you're going to do so with disadvantage.

So, it's going to be a straight roll.

To open it stealthily?

To open a door?

To open the cellar door stealthily.

Yes.

Or you can just fling it open, but it's up to you.

We'll go stealthily.

We'll go flat.

Okay, give me a flat roll.

17.

17.

You open the door,

hearing

muffled screams.

Someone screaming into a closed mouth.

I think Ursulan feels himself again.

Heat, molten, red, wanting to move.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Suvi's voice say, slow is smooth,

and smooth is fast.

It's going to continue to move stealthily and confidently forward.

You move to the bottom of the steps where you see the scene as I have described it unfolding.

You are unseen and within twenty feet of the Wizard Keen, two guild mages of the glass coronet, Ame and the Fox.

In a cave whose entrance is sub-aquatic, under the hillock of the riverbank, a group of shape-changers, partially clothed, still wet with river water, look with wide-eyed astonishment at the wizard Skye, who has just announced that she is on her way to rescue the captured children of the Grineau.

You have just looked at Yorin,

friend of Soft Stone, Steel, and Wren.

He, who you,

from the very first moments of this story, regarded with fear and apprehension, has just looked to you

and when given your mission, has said,

You want some help?

Yes.

Alright.

The...

the children of the Grineau

have been a priority for us.

The Grannot have been a tremendous help navigating the Shroud Mountains unseen.

Their children have been...

not...

their children with a gift, the gift of the great bullfrog, have been taken by the Empire.

Do you have any idea why?

Yeah.

And at this point, I think Suvi's

fighting the urge to

look,

she thought she was dead.

She's waterlogged and confused and reeling and can feel that little bit of her that wants to like float back and dissociate away.

And she feels herself like...

pulling herself back like this is real you have a way forward stay here and stay present so it just takes her a little bit as

the truth of being alive and everything that she's heard in the last couple minutes and learned in the last day just kind of keeps hitting her.

Yes.

Yes.

The great bullfrog, there's a there's spirit.

Sorry, I don't want to explain to you.

There's a great bullfrog spirit that's connected to the children

And

the Citadel

gathered the children together to lure the great bullfrog.

And the wizard silence.

And she feels herself step over the honorific in the title for him.

And it's intentional.

Silence.

When the bullfrog arrived, used some great working of magic to

shrink

down,

make small,

and capture or kill, I am unsure, a great spirit.

What do you know of what silence did to the great bullfrog?

Second hand,

it was explained as the great bullfrog attempted to

make a loud sound and do some fucking spirit magic.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

Sorry.

You're not in your tower, kid.

I won't hear it.

I won't hear it.

Apologies.

Truly.

I do not know the nature of the magic the Great Bullfrog attempted,

but it issued out of his mouth, and silence, true to his name, took the sound of it and the power of it, and he screamed himself smaller and smaller.

that's impossible

i know you speak the truth

i say it as a prayer more than a fact that's impossible i don't know how that can be

in all of the realm of spirits

the taking of a great spirit

to the doors of death, to the

to capture and destruction has been accomplished by other great spirits.

And a bunch of little nerds in a tower,

who I believe have been working on this for quite a while.

I saw a failed attempt earlier in Port Talon.

They attempted to pin Naram

beneath a derrick outside of a calm.

He was ultimately freed.

Neram.

The Citadel

is

discovering in its race for knowledge its capacity

to kick out the foundations of the world.

I pray

that you have heard false.

Because if you have not,

the horror that is meant not by the action you describe, but by the events that will follow from it, is beyond my ability to convey in gravity and horror.

Suvi looks down at her half-eaten second bread.

You're gonna want to take a bite, because I'm not wrong.

All right,

You

were captured.

You were captured by this glass coronet and these imperial soldiers who are being dragged back to Bracken.

Yes.

We've been going after the glass coronet for a while.

They were part of

us trying to track down the Grano children.

But they're involved in some other things here in the mountains.

Like what?

Take me out to dinner and I'll tell you.

Okay.

I did just hand you bread, and I feel like that counts.

He looks and says, You were going by yourself

to go get these kids?

No, I.

I have friends.

Congrats.

Okay.

All right.

You've gotten mouthy.

You get to yell at me one time, and you already did it.

Uh, the witch of the world's heart.

Ren's apprentice is now the holder of her seat.

Oh.

Okay, okay.

Um, I know I didn't like you very much as a child because you were very scary and didn't know how to speak to small children because you're very gravelly.

But I do remember one game we used to play: whenever you had to watch me and you would give me a task, and I could ask you questions while I was doing a task.

So, we're gonna do that now.

But I need a knife-uh, a metal one?

Just heart, pointy, pointy.

He grows his bottom canine out and pulls it out and hands it to you.

He's so hot!

That was incredibly cool.

Um, okay.

Uh, and Suvi takes it in her right hand and slices her palm open and is going to start

beginning to make a blood sigil to ritually cast identify.

Uh, and it's gonna start pointing at the other shape changers in the room.

Bring me anything off of those corpses that looks like they're worth anything.

Of the assorted things in the room, each of these glass coronet mages has two vials of that white dispelling agent.

So you can add two more of those to your inventory.

The Imperial Soldiers and the Glass Coronet have some soldiers' rings on them, but you know the deal with those soldiers rings

that they're not actually pretty healthy.

The brick-a-brac gear is sort of sub-issue of what your gear is, with the exception of two massive bound spell books of the glass coronet, brimming with knowledge.

These guild mages, though not named to the citadel, looked experienced.

These guys looked like heavy hitters that happened to be dragged into the river and killed by shape-changers, but if they had not been suddenly unable to use verbal components because they were drowning, may have been fierce combatants indeed.

Suvi is doing the job of like explaining what she already knows and re-identifying things and double-checking and putting them in piles and organizing them specifically to give back to Jorin and his group.

And when the spellbooks drop,

like she stops casting and looks up and looks at Jorin specifically.

These are mine.

You got it.

We need a night's rest.

We've been going hard.

We and

we should probably change into whatever shapes we want to use as soon as we're done resting so that we can get a move on.

Yeah.

Hold on.

Question time.

I'm doing my task.

I ask my questions.

One.

Why does your blood smell so bad?

Spirits, sorcerers, wizards

expect my tradition

to be predictable.

I made a deal with some spirits

that I would wield weapons

capable of making me fearsome even to those

I aspire to protect.

The bone ones kill wizards just fine, if that answers your question.

yes but subheading

my friend ame

the witch of the world's heart

had a curse on her and when we broke it it smelled like your blood

huh

do you have damn do you know anything that happens to me i feel like every time i come to you with like this thing i know to be true about the world and you're like i don't know anything about that i need a i need better answers from you

do Do I know anything about you?

Nah,

not really.

Was I supposed to?

What would I have won if I did?

Fine.

Other questions.

The last night we were all together,

Ruve attacked the Citadel.

Why were we running from the Citadel and what was chasing us?

The Citadel.

The attack from Ruve

was,

to my knowledge,

coincidence.

There's space in between coincidence and cause.

Do you understand?

Events throughout the Citadel had been ramping up.

The Ruve attacking was part of that.

And us discovering that the League of Whispers was known by the Citadel was also a part of that, but they were not in and of themselves directly caused.

When there's a shitstorm, there's a lot of shit flying everywhere.

You understand?

Yeah.

You don't have to ask the part about it.

Do I understand?

I fucking understand.

I'm incredibly smart.

Congrats.

Thank you.

When Ruve attacked, the flight was sudden.

It was impulse.

We had been given leave that everything was forgiven.

The Akatator had been pardoned.

The extra-legal activities were seen to be within

wanting the best for the citadel and so basically were caught

when you go to the judge and say we got the bad guys and the judge said okay those aren't the bad guys and then kind of kindly says neither are you

it left

everyone with a feeling of of paranoia and softenstone didn't believe that it was genuine stoftenstone did not believe that their pardon was genuine Gotcha.

They thought that the walls were closing in.

Steele was destroyed.

I don't think she ever showed you because you were a kid,

but she had spent the better part of her life thinking, or the better part of that few years, thinking that she was saving the Citadel, only to find out that the Citadel didn't need or require saving.

And so

she

and Soft and Stone

were, I think, not of a like like mind on the level of threat.

Steele didn't think we needed to flee the Citadel, but she went along with the plan because, you know, we'd been sleeping in caves and fighting on airships for the better part of a couple years, and you know, she had a family there.

Okay,

do you have any idea why she wants so badly to find you?

Huh?

Okay, well, I know why she wants to find me.

She probably wants to kill me.

Well, yeah.

I'm an enemy of the Citadel.

We were only working.

You have to understand.

We were only working together.

Why were you working together?

How did you know my dad?

I met your father when he was exploring parts of the near spirit in Gauthmai, working for the Citadel.

He was an enemy of the sorcerers.

I was an enemy of the sorcerers.

We were useful to each other.

And over the course of being useful to each other, I eventually came came to

well that was a big sigh

when he and Stone told me

that they wanted a Gauthmai where shape changers could be free I believed them and I know that they were probably trained to say that but it didn't seem like training

Now, was it to their advantage to you know to oppose the houses of Gausmai?

Yeah, but the houses of Gausmai are fucking evil to the bone.

But you're working with them now?

Yeah, because the Citadel's evil to the bone.

Okay, well.

I don't know.

Try to find some friends that aren't evil to the bone.

Hey, you got me.

I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Do you know about...

First of all, you see, as he gets the spellbooks handed over to you, you pass out the gear to the other shape changers.

He looks out and calls and says,

where are your friends that you're going with?

Oh, God.

They're in Reedport.

Okay, that's not far.

You see, he looks out and says, we can get there by waterway.

The rivers are lessening, but there should be enough water to get there in time.

Everyone, take your rest in a river shape, and we'll,

you know.

Are you going to sleep in the river?

No, no, no, no.

You said in a river shape.

What does that mean?

You see that people change into large constrictors, crocodiles, and a couple of few different like kind of amphibious, but still very aquatic creatures that they can rest in, and you see have another shape left for them the next morning after they're done resting.

Okay, okay.

Before all of you, did any of you have healing?

I did cut my hand.

Yoran takes your hand and

kisses his thumb, drags it across the cut, and it's healed.

That's really sweet of you.

Hold on, one more question.

Uh, I

saw a shape changer with a bunch of tattoos on him.

Is that a thing, or is it just like cool looking?

How does your magic work?

Hmm?

Huh?

How does our magic work?

Yeah.

Well, it's not spellcasting, so that's nice.

What do you mean it's nice?

Spells are great.

No, no, I mean, it's hard for the Citadel to mess with it.

Okay.

I'm not asking as a Citadel wizard.

It's a gift.

And I mean that to say,

you knew Grandmother Wren, who, by the way, I'm sorry to hear that she has passed.

She was always a very kind,

kind woman.

And always tried to do the right thing, even though she was very

forgiving and and

prone to

kindness

and delay.

Um and when it came down to it

she was a part of the Academy until she wasn't.

By which I mean to say that as

things got fast and furious, her

attention

went elsewhere.

And I think that she probably knew before any of the rest of us what the answer was going to be and kind of let us hit the wall.

She advised us to probably move on to other things after a while, but

regardless, the thing I would say to you about witches is witches serve as a bridge between the spirit and the mortal world.

Um,

as a bridge, as a way of mediating between the two.

And my tradition

is that that bridge

existed

before the world of mortals did.

This world

is the dream.

And the things that are real are dreams of the things that are not.

And

when you realize that

we

have

come here

to live a life

in a world of stone and blood.

Coming from a world where the sun never sets if it doesn't choose to.

That occasionally you can wake up

and remember that you're dreaming.

And you see here, he says, remember that you're dreaming.

His hand turns into a claw and a wing, and he bows his head, and it is the beak of an enormous eagle.

And he looks up and you see the kind eyes of an enormous wolf, and he changes back into himself.

This world

has a hard time holding the things that are really true.

But I don't often have a chance to talk about my

beliefs these days.

I spend more time

fighting for them than I do believing them.

That's good.

Ah, that was.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Uh, that ring on your hand is a snitch.

I know.

You did, you're did you know about your dad's, about softs?

Um,

he and Stone both did a

thing so it couldn't snitch on him.

Yeah.

Uh, and

she picks up one of the matchsticks, breaks it over her knee,

and then mends it back together

with the, like, with her mother's mending, dropping the like null clef.

Hell yeah.

You make your own broken war staff and mend it such that the citadel cannot sense it.

As you do so, the sapphire pendant around your neck glows, and the wooden staff seals with a seal of pure sapphire gemstone that binds the halves of the worst aff together.

Oh, that's fun.

All right, you're not allowed to judge me because I know you feel the way you feel about this.

I also feel that way about the Citadel.

Magic is much,

much cooler than they taught us there.

Ursulan,

you are at the bottom of the staircase, unseen in this moment.

You see three guild mages here.

And what does Ursulan do in this moment?

I'll begin with a perception check.

Natural one.

Can I have help from Vandal?

Yes, you can.

Thank God.

Nine.

The way the room is laid out,

there's a spiral staircase leading up to the storefront.

That's what Keen is facing.

Ame is right in front of him.

He's about five feet away from Ame, and the fox is on the ground right in front of him.

Ame's in a magic circle.

You can give me an Arcana check for the magic circle if you'd like.

Nine again.

She's in some kind of wizard ship.

you

see that Keen is crouched down, but you can tell that it's him.

About 10 feet behind him,

side by side, are the other guild mages.

There's two of them.

And then about 15 feet back from them is you in the staircase.

There is one sputtering gasly.

There's one sputtering tallow candle that is the only source of light in the room, creating dim light.

Alright.

If I open my

senses and use my innate detect magic, can I get a sense of where Wavebreaker can cut the magic holding Ahme and the fox?

Ahme has a curse of silence on a piece of paper in her mouth.

So that is a separate magical effect that remove curse could take.

There is also a magic circle on the ground in front of her

that could potentially be physically disrupted.

The fox is there as well.

There is a, so that's a third, so magic circle is not a curse, but it is a spell that is affecting Ami and giving her the restrained condition.

She's got the silence curse on her mouth, and there is a spell of pain

that you believe is being concentrated on by Keen.

Keen is concentrating on a spell that is hurting them.

The other two guild mages are there.

One of them might be concentrating on a spell, or the other, hard to say.

At this moment, you don't see any active spell.

The only active spells you can see are mage armor on the mages

and those three spell effects.

Pain, silence, magic circle.

Okay.

Those are the ones you see.

Great.

Am I able to communicate with Vandal without alerting anyone?

Or if I were to speak, oh, is it on?

I would just ask for a stealth check.

Okay.

21.

Let's go.

Stealthy, stealthy spirit.

Okay, what do you whisper to Vandal?

Vandal,

when I disappear, I need you to piss in that wizard's eye.

I'd love to.

Ursulan's going going to take a deep breath.

Cast hidden step, move to extinguish the candle.

And then I think use his turn

to

break the curse on the silence and interrupt the circle while remaining hidden.

Okay.

What we actually have to do now is roll initiative with everybody.

Because surprise, it will really impact what is going on

if people are surprised or not.

21.

Incredible.

That is one of the more important high rolls that this campaign has had.

I will let you know that right now.

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead and roll for Vandal Abria if you'd be so kind.

I'm sorry, seven for Vandal.

Okay.

Ame.

Pull in an Abria for a two.

What the fuck?

On your own podcast, no lesson.

I go here.

Less three, four, five.

Time for Ahme and the Fox.

Ursulan,

invisible,

you move towards the candle.

As you do so,

Ame,

the pain suddenly stops in your body.

As Keen right in front of you goes

right on time and whips around as his eyes gleam with the sea invisibility spell

urce alone

you surge forward into the room halfway towards the candle

You are just beyond an arm's reach of the candle as Keene turns around and says, hello spirit, reaches out,

and you see

glass,

tattered fabric, translucent and ghostly, explode from his hands towards Ursulan.

And you feel this thing tighten around your body.

These bindings grapple you.

That peddler with the card.

Those paintings in the Kasov collection.

And now the wizard Keen.

Witch, your friend has come to join you and now he's mine as well.

He opens his satchel and you see begins to take out a fine net of gold chain, a physical object.

Ever since I saw you in that beer garden, I just knew that I needed to have you.

And

Ursulan, you look and see Ame.

Ame, what do your eyes.

You're no longer in pain, but you are still muffled.

And we're also, by the way, still in initiative order here.

But there's a moment where your eyes connect with Ursulan's.

What does he see in your eyes?

He sees

tears streaming down my face from pain.

He sees

the glaze of

a return to consciousness, but there is also a gleam in it.

Something

perhaps he might remember from childhood.

My eyes dart over to Keen.

He has made the mistake of crossing a witch, doing a terrible injury to her and those she cares about.

And so I activate my retributive curse of vengeful gleam, and he is wreathed...

in an orange glowing foxfire.

You see, he yelps out in a momentary panic as he sees this thing surrounding him, wheels around in Yuami and says, I'll deal with you soon enough.

He turns to you, Ursulon.

Ursulan, the Casov Collection.

The peddler's card.

You, Oscar, the ogre in the night.

Being consumed by Bodze, you feel Halaker Forest breath.

Your breath behind you.

Keen in front of you.

It is your turn.

What would you like to do?

I think in this moment.

Yeah, we'll go with...

We'll use Dispel Magic then.

I think

Ursulant loses himself to fear.

It's flashes of

trapped, bound.

That feeling of

not

wanting to breathe for fear of being discovered.

Feeling that feeling, that panic, Ursulon is going to send that intention into Wavebreaker and bring the sword up to cut the vines.

Alright, you're going to go ahead and roll with this.

You're going to add a plus five.

You need a 10 or higher on the die.

18.

Woo!

Baby!

Let's go!

Ursulon,

bound by glass, you reach to the spirit of the wave lord.

His sword leaps to your hand, and glass shatters.

As the blade breaks through, that is your action, but you drop to your feet right within arm's reach of the candle.

I will use my other hand to extinguish it.

Audrey's interaction, you smash the tallow down, boom, and the room is pitch black except for a brightly glowing cane.

You have movement, and you are in a butcher's shop in complete dark in about a 30 by 30 space.

Great.

I'll move and use,

I mean, if you'll allow it, just use my foot to scuff the circle.

Okay, what I'm going to ask for here is a um

ooh.

I don't know.

First of all, let me be clear.

I don't care what furbulgs have.

You have dark vision.

So in this moment, you don't have to worry.

You are like vaulting through like pigs hung up and over furniture effortlessly in the dark.

To get to the magic circle, you use an object interaction.

So to get this last scuff, I'm just going to need a DC-10 acrobatics or athletics to get there fast enough.

Got it.

Cool.

21.

Woo, baby.

That's the number.

Ursulan, you slice through the magic.

Boom.

Hit the deck.

Bam!

The candle is gone.

Smell of smoke and a little bit of your burning fur.

By the way, your glamour is fucking gone.

It's gone.

Boom.

You leap through, get to the other side.

Keen is looking around.

You see his own glow, rather than illuminating the space around him, is blinding him.

He can't see shit.

And you come through, kick the salt, and Ahme,

as the pain subsides, you and the fox, but the fox also, his pain has subsided, and you've already brought him back up to full health.

So you see that suddenly your palms and feet are yellow.

You still have the silence spell in your mouth.

We are going to move forward in initiative and

one of these guild mages fires a scorching ray.

I'm going to roll a d8 to literally see if he can just like

get the right direction at random.

That's a four.

He does not get the right direction at random.

The other one more thoughtfully moves to the side and is going to cast dancing lights.

The space fills with light again.

But the Magic Circle is already scuffed.

That is the Guild Mage's turn.

One of them fires an attack spell in the total wrong direction.

Another one brings lights up to illuminate the space.

Eyes turn to behold you now fully in your Wild One form.

Vandal is next to act.

He was instructed to piss in one of the Guildmaster, one of the Guild Mage's eyes.

Go ahead and make a grapple check for Vandal for me.

He is trying to beat a seven.

Okay.

Does meet the pizza, yeah?

Miza Pizza.

Because that's a 11 minus 4 for a 7.

Incredible.

Vandal charges forward to the mage that has just cast dancing lights,

sinks his claws into the temples of that guild mage,

wraps his legs around the nostrils and earlobes, and just pisses out of a genitalia-free crotch directly into his eyes, clamped to his head, screaming expletives at the top of his lungs.

The guild mage, seeing this ink demon fly towards him, grapple the front of his face with the crotch sort of on the bridge of his nose, his mouth is totally free to go, no, please, no!

No!

No!

Oh my god.

That, Ahme and the Fox, that is your turn.

So Ahm, freed from her physical bonds, leaps up, realizes she can't speak and cannot cast a spell, and immediately leaps onto Guild Mage Keen.

Give me a grapple check with advantage.

I can hit that nerd, dude.

You are trying to beat an eight.

This is not a strong nine.

Oh my god, really?

That's a 12.

That's a 12.

You're trying to beat an eight.

So farm girl, you get out of this magic circle.

This guy is like,

you are mine.

And you get your shoulder under his solar plexus, take him up off the ground, crash into a table, straddle him, get an arm behind his back.

And the fox is going to rush over and on a 17 is going to rush over.

And you see the fox jams his paw all the way into Keen's mouth and leaves it there.

Okay, the wizard Keen is going to go.

What?

Does he have any spells that don't have verbal components?

There are like 20.

He has no spells.

The only spell that he has that is that is somatic components only is counter spell, which is not going to help him with a fox jamming upon his mouth or a witch straddling him and pushing him into the ground and putting his arm behind his back.

So the Wizard Keen is going to use his action to attempt to break the grapple.

He's going to get a free bite on the fox's paw.

The fox takes two points of damage as Keen bites down on his paw.

How many hit points does the fox have?

Oh, equal to my witch level, which is

level four.

Yeah.

Okay, so the fox takes two hit points of damage and it's still up.

He goes, ah, as Keen bites down into his paw.

You hear one of his little tiny fox bones crack as the fox keeps his paw in there, snarling and biting.

He's like, yeah, it's nice to be able to talk, right?

And

he's going to make a grapple attempt against you, Ahmed rolls a seven again.

Go ahead and give me athletics with advantage.

Dirty 20.

Unbelievable.

Ursulan, that is your turn.

I'm going to move to attack the unblinded guild mage.

Go for it.

19 on the die,

and we'll make it a divine smite.

Let's do it.

19 points of damage.

Ursulan, describe for me what it looks like as you kill one of the guild mages of the glass coronet.

Ursulan takes his shield off of his back, stands to his full height, and simply walks over and stabs him deep into his chest and lifts him off the ground before throwing him off with his sword and turning to the one being pissed on.

The impact of you ridding your sword of this troublesome corpse can be felt on the street outside.

You did the blood flick on the sword, but it was a whole man on it.

It was a whole man on it.

a whole man

on it.

The guild mage, with Vandal grappled to his head, rather than waste his turn trying to dispense with a ink demon, feels that death stands before him in the guise of an eternal wild one, and is going to take his best shot.

He reaches out his hands, muttering to himself, Kassan!

Saheen!

And fire erupts from him, the red of his robes.

This fire emerges as though from a deep kiln of glass and sand.

You can feel the heat of ancient coals burning.

However, he cannot see, so he is going to roll with this advantage each time.

16 would have hit, but a 10 does not.

Neither of those would have hit, and that ends up being a natural one.

17 would have hit, and another natural one does not.

Ursulan, describe for me as these bolts bolts of fire.

Do these bolts of fire miss you, or do they simply have no effect as you approach?

It's no effect.

I think two go into the shield, and I think one breezes past Ursulan's neck, but thistles.

That is the Guild Mage's turn.

Ame, that is you and the fox.

Ame pulls out from a little stoppered bottle a handful of berries.

She gives them to the fox.

And this is not the Belladonna, Breath of Belladonna berries.

It is

a different handful of dried berries that carries that same spell.

The fox grabs the berries and rushes over.

And you see, he bites the berries, and

your fox leaps forward, the poison berries in his mouth, bites down on them, breathes out,

and a blast of poison mist envelops the guild mage.

And

he's going to make a constitution saving throw.

I need you to roll 3d10 poison damage.

22.

On a natural three, this guild mage dies,

just

chokes, and falls dead on the ground.

As he falls dead, the silence curse on you ends as he breaks concentration.

The curse breaks in your mouth.

Both guild mages lie dead.

The fox takes three points of damage, goes to zero hit points.

Additionally, Vandal is a splatter of red ink on the ground.

I burn through another level of magic and push healing points into the fox.

As he collapses with the weight of the poison,

he gets back up.

Is that an action or a bonus action from Ahmed?

It is, I believe, a bonus action.

Bonus action, great.

What is Ame's action?

You now have the power of speech restored to you.

Ahme, pulling Keen's arm up tighter behind him, reaches around to his front.

With a witch's grasp, a spectral hand extends,

writhing its fingers around his throat.

The lights dim.

The spectral grasp around his throat tightens, wreathed in fox fire.

He struggles as it lifts him up off of the ground, levitating.

You shouldn't have lied to me.

Shrieks out again in pain.

I am going to need a dexterity-saving throw

from Ame, who is right behind him.

That's a 17 on the die.

On a 17, you succeed on your save.

You will take half damage of a full Imperial lightning bolt cast directly on you.

You take

28 points of damage,

halved to 14.

Minus three.

You take 11 points of damage from the full force of anger of damage uh from a fifth level lightning bolt upcast lightning bolt um keen grappled by the witch's dresses your witchcraft is nothing more than trickery fear of the might

of the empire

you shouldn't underestimate trickery

As the lightning funnels into her chest, she is lit from underneath, her hair blowing out behind her, her face illuminated by the unnatural light of the lightning.

Your robes swirl in darkness, and all around you in this space, Hean can see the eyes of foxes seeming to smile as if from a great distance at him.

Ursulan, it is your turn.

Bounding leap across the room to strike Keen.

You will make this roll with advantage.

Total of 19.

19 is a hit.

19 points of damage.

Ursulon, as you leap across the room, describe for me the final moments of the Wizard Keen.

Ursulon pounces from the ground using his shield hand

and his mighty legs.

Raises his sword aloft, brings it down right at Keene's waist, and cuts him in half.

There among the slaughtered pigs and cows,

the wizard Keen

understands at last the definition of his name cloak.

Severed in twain by the smiting of a spirit

and the magic of a witch that he hath wronged.

You are free here in the dark amongst the blood.

Your destiny is yours, though as you have just done, you will continue to fight for it.

That was Lou Wilson as Ursulan, Erika Ishii as Ahme, Abriya Iyengar as Suvi, and Brennan Lee Mulligan as Everyone and Everything Else.

Worlds Beyond Numbered is edited, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse with additional sound design from Michael Gelfie Studios.

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