Session 19: Web of Memory Arc 2

Upon an unexpected vision, confusion struck our heroes, but Seraphim instead felt a glimmer of hope. She shared her concerns with the others, of how she saw the world swift but never for long enough to properly look at it, of the visions that plagued her in her sleep, of memories, or what felt like so. For so long she felt to be falling for the madness inducing affliction that had claimed so many before her, but now she felt more… awoken.

They pressed on and into the building, leaving into the outdoors, finding what used to be a playground. Benches and metal swings, now rusty and creaking, buried into the sand soil, a glimpse of the joy this place brought in days past, slowly being replaced by the jarring present, as the floor gave in, forming a black chasm, where fragments of debry dangle unsteadily, stuck in metal webs.

At first, the party considered climbing down and venture into the black abyss. A torch was thrown down, burning webs in the decent, awakening the residents of the caves. The torch reached the bottom, and its small glow was still visible, but barely. The fall was high, and now the caves echoed with the chitter of thousands of legs, shadows moving around the small flame, like the chasm itself was the maw of a spider, trying to sallow the pitiful ember of a firefly. Before the light fell prey to the shadows, our hero´s saw what laid underneath them, not a natural hole nor a burrowed tunnel, but a man-made structure, an intentfull pathway, at least from what little they could see.

The mystery kept rising, a common occurrence in the Kingdom of Nocturna, but one that by now unfazed our heroes. They pressed on, intending to build a rope bridge to cross the chasm, and climb a dilapidated wall into the second floor. Seraphim, still airborne by Rufus´s spell, flew to the other side, entering what was once a dormitory, a dark and dusty place, although surprisingly intact. At a quick glance, she tied the ropes around the heaviest thing she could find, a massive metal wardrobe, far from an ideal solution, but hopefully an adequate one. With a silent gesture, she communicated at the party of her success, and so our heroes found a solid bench embedded into the ground to tie their half of the bridge.

They ventured into the edge, dragging trough the rope's one by one. First was the brave and nimble Verdan, his smaller and agile frame proving ideal to this ordeal. But then came the Crow, whose grip faltered for a moment - but a moment was enough to fall. And so, he was reminded yet again of fate's cruel sense of irony, that of being born a bird that cannot fly.

The exhausted and tormented hunter put aside her fatigue and lunged at the ropes with ferocious tenacity, quickly grabbing her partner before his untimely demise. Holding the Kenku with a single arm and holding onto the ropes with the other, Cats lunged the bowman towards the other side of the chasm. Her sheer might rarely failed her, but today was not any other, for even the mightiest must rest and gather their strength, and pure adrenaline can only work for so long. As she launched Botas, her exhaustion had finally caught on to her, and the fleetingly flying bird would not be capable of reaching its nest. So why not bring the nest to the bird?

The crow's feathered fall suddenly came to a halt, as a giant net held by a metal loop nailed to the wall materializes around him. Valsali, a bard of creation, shaped reality to his will, sparing the life of his compatriots, by the power of unorthodox thinking.

Cats climbed forward, trying to reach the wall before her remaining strength depleted, but today was not her day, for the hunter's grip became too loose, and the black chasm began claiming for her flesh. Another victim would have been claimed that day, in that forsaken orphanage, where it not for the strength these misfits found within each other, as Botas, still trapped in the suspended net, reached his arm though it and grabbed Cats' wrist. Yes, the will to protect those that are closest can bring out much within oneself, the strength to surpass one's limits.

Rhyia, still on the other side of the chasm, helplessly watching as her companions slowly slip closer to their end, taped into an unknown whirlpool of power deep within herself, and the tame breezes of Nocturna grew into deafening, raging gasps, forming a wall of wind that covered the chasm whole. She rushed forward, walking on air, helping her friends to reach the second floor, and alas, all the misfits were safe and sound. Only then did it hit Valsali: “Wait guys, we were so stupid! Couldn't we all have fit inside the bag of holding and have the floating pipsqueak carry us to the other side?”

With a wounded ego and an awkward silence, the party pressed on.

As they examined the room, a familiar distortion in their vision reoccurred. Another memory was about to play out.

Yet again, the prior glory of the Orphanage was on full display, as one could hear on the inside the symphony of an orchestra, the matinal music class, held in the stage room at the top of the building. Most children were attending on that day, all except for the ill-behaved. Seraphim and Thalindra were scalling the outside walls in a frantic race, while Morgana was quietly reading a book and Lysandra was trying to discourage the brainless bravado, but to no avail. The two girls were already halfway done, one using calculative intent and graceful dexterity, while the other powered through with overwhelming force. The two seemed evenly matched, but Seraphim was gaining the upper hand. She was finally going to be the first, the best, she would show her friends her strength, her value… she was going to show it to herself. But then, her grasp failed to latch her onto the wall, and the little child came falling down, terrified, screaming. Lysandra tried to grab her and cushion the fall, but her sharp horn´s penetrated Seraphim´s abdomen.

The screech of pain echoed loudly, and the world reverted to normal, apart from the present Seraphim now arching back and panting, slowly losing consciousness over the blood lost. The same piercing wound inflicted in the vision persisted so, even out of it. Struggling and choking she exclaimed: “That is not…what happened…it ca…”. Valsali quickly sealed the wound and prevented further blood loss, but before he could do much else, the memory reverted back into being, this time slowed down, stuck in loop, conveying a sense of instability. The team regrouped, took Seraphim´s words into consideration, and wondered what they could change inside the memory, what they could ratify. Many hypotheses were considered, maybe she didn’t fall, maybe someone else caught her, maybe no one caught her. This last option was the one most vividly conveyed, and so the memory, strangely reacted. A new possibility was unveiled, one where no one aided the poor girl, and the results were even more gruesome. This fake world quaked anew, as an echo of pain was heard, Seraphim had felt that pain yet again. The clock restarted, and the world around them crumbled. They could not waste more chances. After the debate, they concluded that someone helped her cushion the fall, someone without horns, perhaps Morgana or Thalindra? Although Thalindra was not in a position to help her friend without risking falling herself, and Morgana was in a favorable position, although much skepticism was raised due to the child’s more fragile frame not being up to this task. So Valsali proposed, “what if Lysandra wasn´t a Tiefling?”.

The words reverberated reality around them, as Lysandra was portraited as a pure white skinned Asimar, with long straight air, and yellow eyes, while Morgana retained her bushy and curly hair, but now complemented with a pair of small protruding horns, a forked tail, and dark purple skin.

The memory kept moving forward. Sometime later, the adventurers saw Seraphim in a bed, legs bound by casks, trying to climb atop a familiar wheelchair. She left the room, into the familiar corridors of the family restaurant, the Hot Wings, but the pictures on the walls kept scaring the poor child, mocking her, changing while they were in the peripheral of her site, seemingly unchanged as she glanced back at them. The corridor darkened, and shadow flooded in. A dark figure with purple eyes, a feathered mantle and a jagged crown, slowly crawled towards Seraphim. All that came out of her mouth, was the muffled sounds of guttural scream “Mahakar”. A quick flash, and a familiar site to all, a garden of half red and white, an image of a black gazebo, and the memory of a fierce battle, seemingly long ago.

The world returned to its grotesque reality, but tensions grew higher, as the wounded child gazed at the rest of them with a new, more gloomy and awoken expression. “You all saw that to, right?” Seraphim said in a confused tone “Whatever it was…Whatever we have pendent to solve, we have come this far. So, for what is worth now, please, help me find the last piece, help me fill…whole.”

Reluctant and cautious, the group ventures forth into the dormitory. A seemingly normal but abandoned room, until the torches are lit, On the ceiling and attached to the walls, cocoons wrapped in metal webbing pulsate ominously. These shells looked plump and ripe, big enough to hold within a small child, or an echo of one. The corridor itself was filled with webs, turning it into a death trap. One false move, and a swarm of newborns would drown the screams of these undesired guests.

This time, slowly and prudently, one adventure after the other moved to the other side of the corridor, where they could see a single, blinding light at the end of this dark tunnel. Valsali was the first to reach it, and what he did find was not the passage to the afterlife, but an open door, leading to an exterior dilapidated staircase, extending to the upper echelons of the orphanage.

One after the other, each of them crawled through the corridor, avoiding disturbing the webs and cocoons. They moved up the staircase, or what remained of it, and reached the co anticipated Stage Room at the very top, only to be greeted with a jarring, but not at all disappointing image.

A great salon, drowned in dunes of ash, painted the illusion of a gray desert. The walls once shielding this room, towering over in distant past, now all crumbled and vanished, all but one. One last wall survived calamity and time, serving not only as background for the still recognizable stage, elevated and unburied still, but also as the bed where the brood-mother laid asleep, each mangled leg planted in the gravel, while the feminine figure atop the monstrosity hanged loosely with her long black air flowing down.

“I sense it” the child said, “the last piece is in there”. With caution they advanced, and with each step the world shifted further. The dunes sizzled and burned, gradually replaced by flying embers, and the walls arised from their ashes, culminating in a crescendo of hellfire.

Seraphim was alone in the Stage Room, fire raging across all she could see, while she desperately screamed the names of her friends, searching for them. She ran downwards throw the staircase and into the dormitory, untouched by flames, but drowned in smoke. She moved further, onto a corridor that no longer existed in present time. From there she could see the main hall, still intact, hoping to find her friends, she spotted a lone figure instead. An adult, a man, Rector Liran, one of the heads of the orphanage, arched down on one knee, touching the coat of arms embedded in the rock. She ran more and more, until the walls started to crumble, eaten away by the flames. Outside, behind a vale of flames, she saw the light of torches, held by crimson red hooded figures, moving away from the building. But down below, in the playground, there they were, her friends, trying to escape throw a hole in the fence. She looked down at fall, one she was familiar with, and before dread filled her mind, she took a deep breath and calmed herself “Like mom used to tell” she thought “my skin is of crimson red, of fire, it will not burn me… and the fall… you survived it once. Land and roll, like you trained”. And so, the child plunged once again, but this time, after the fall, she stood back up. Reunited with her friends, she ripped open one of the metal bars, and the children escaped the inferno behind them.

But this memory held more than anticipated. Time passed, no longer a child, but a young warrior, Seraphim joined the rooks of Nocturna, gaining enough prestige for the honor to be posted in the other margin, DawnMire. There she found her friends once more, at long last. Following the fateful night of the orphanage´s collapse, the remaining 3 girls were brought to the other margin to be raised by the church. A few years passed and Seraphim was now an officer, a distinguished and renowned soldier, about to incorporate the Ravens Guard, the Raven King´s personal troops. On the day of her oath, so too did her 3 friends stood with her, all dressed in black uniform, all in service of the King. The doors of the room close, and so there they were, the group of four mischievous children, in front of the image of the elusive King. Despite the feather mantle and the black stoned mask in the shape of a crow´s skull creating an imposing figure, the king´s figure subverted her expectations. A rather small, thin and slightly hunched individual hid behind those symbols of status. As the four women vowed her allegiance one by one, Seraphim could ear the voice of the patriarch, tired, distaff and wounded. But even behind all that shattered grit, Rhyia, still watching the memory through the eyes of who´s it belonged to, could yet recognize underneath it all, the voice of a woman, not of a man. Finally, the time came for Seraphim to swear, and swear she did, like all the others before her.

The King then exclaimed “I must confess with a heavy heart, a secret which I held so close guardedly for to long. This kingdom is facing a war against a beast, a demon that plagues night and dream alike. A shadow with purple coals for eyes is slowly eating away my subject’s sanity. I have chosen you, not only for your skills, but for your past. The demon´s grip is stronger in Duskmire, your first home, and so, I grant you the title of Emissaries of Nocturna. Your task is to unify the two halves of this kingdom, and to hunt down and exterminate the beast that seeks to divide and devour us. You have the crow’s support. Protect your people, protect each other, and protect your kingdom.”

And so, they went to Duskmire, they found the demon, but the memory becomes foggy. Nonetheless, one can deduce what came after. The Emissaries ended up serving the demon instead, by trickery or by choice is yet unknown, but it all led to that last moment, that last battle in the garden. The memory fades, the dunes merge again, and then, in the mouth of the beast, Seraphim says “We have unfinished business, but now is not the time to solve them. We still need to kill this thing, for her own sake and mine. I what my legs back. We can talk after”.