Argentarius and his party ascended the Infinite Staircase, passing by countless doors that led to different planes of existence. The only thing they saw were the stairs and doors, giving them no indication of what exactly lay beyond. However, the landings and surroundings of the doors provided faint clues about the worlds one would enter.
His children did not need rest, but he did so very much. The landings provided a convenient place to make camp. He dared not cast any dimensional-magic here. Only the gods knew what laws applied here. One of the few things he had read warned from taking shortcuts via flight, as any unlucky soul straying away from the stairs for more then 25 feet, would be flung somewhere, sometime, in the multiverse. The hole thing about time travel did annoy him very much. He always hated it when in comics and movies the heroes fixed every problem with time travel. Also, he could not imagine how gods would fit into the hole thing, surely they would have forbidden such dangerous things right?
As they climbed higher, the scenery around them changed with each landing. They saw glimpses of strange, alien landscapes and heard eerie sounds echoing in the distance. On some landings, they encountered artefacts and symbols that no spell could help identify. Every door was said to have a riddle or test needed to be solved to open it. Therefore Argentarius did not even bother looking at them, he sucked at riddles.
While travelling he noticed that often times when the stairs seemed to curve at impossible angles, his party members would just walk up walls and celling without even recognising what happened.
If he asked them they would deny having seen something of the like. The next thing was the change in environment, one moment he swore to be standing on marble stairs winding inside a luxuriously decorated hallway and the next he was on creaky wooden stairs hearing the wails of ghosts.
He had no idea how long they had been here. Even his journal could only tell him how many times they had made rest. Five times. It felt a lot longer then that.
The next day he finally recognized a door. On the landing was a giant clock embedded into the floor. Gears of all sizes interlocked with each other and turned in perfect sync. Before the round, golden door stood a small table with tools and parts, apparently to assemble something.
"Noble wizards and knights! I had promised you all a wonderful tour of the myriad planes of existence, I herby apologize for this is the first door I can enlighten you on. You stand before the gear works of the multiverse, the plane of ultimate law, the clockwork nirvana of Mechanus!"
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Argentarius paused for dramatic affect and was rewarded by slow and unsure clapping by his golems who ironically were the only, kind of, living beings with him.
Just as he was about go on a lore rampage the gears near the door started turning.
"Well this concludes my tour here. Please hurry along! We still need to make it towards the Nowhere Inn." He sprinted towards the next flight of stairs that reminded him of obsidian and took three steps at a time. His followers soon followed suit.
Two hours later the chill running down his neck had subsided. He lay on soft grass while the others sat up camp. Still shivering, he ate, drank and looked at his compatriots while calming down.
The three knights seemed also a bit out of it. Their normally steady blue glowing eyes were flickering while they occasionally looked form where they had come. At moments like this he really regretted not having been able to make them talk.
"Arthur you also felt it, right?" The golem looked at him put a hand on his chin and finally nodded after a few moments of contemplation. "What you have felt is probably the spirt of the deity that resides there. I was foolish and drew attention to us by using names and titles. The entire plane there serves, no, is him. He is the sole ruler, inhabitants and essence itself. Well there are others of curse but the modrons are the most numerous."
What he did not dare to speak of even now, was that what he actually felt was more strange and difficult to explain. He felt not repulsed or fearful but the opposite. He longed to go there, even now it took effort to not storm down those bloody stairs and jump into the portal.
Law and Order the state of things preserved at all cost. Moral implications did not matter, at the end of the day as long as live existed the worlds would keep turning.
The call of paradise. He never imagined Mechanus to be his paradise. Probably it had something to do with his alignment of lawful neutral, he had always thought that the Paceable Kingdoms of Arcadia would be his temptation. Yet apparently he also needed to look out for Acheron the Infinite Battlefield.
Why his knights had felt something, he could only guess. Probably because they were constructs made by a lawful neutral caster and blessed by a lawful neutral god.
As he looked up he noticed that his landing was shrouded in a dense mist, making it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction. The party could hear the sounds of rustling leaves and the occasional hoot of an owl, but otherwise the area was completely silent. As they explored, they noticed that the painted trees on the walls seemed to shift and change, almost as if they were alive.
They hastily departed on the next set of stairs, staying to long would always draw you towards the door.
On the 10th rest, they made camp at a landing filled with crystal formations that sparkled in the light of an unknown source. The walls and ceiling of the cave were made entirely of crystal, reflecting light in all directions. Argentarius could make out the distant sound of water dripping and the soft whispers of strange voices echoing through the caverns. Not the worst place he had been today.