Alex walked to the gate at the end of the room. Beyond the gate, more shelves came into view, each overflowing with ancient books, their spines cracked with age. Scattered papers lay around a round pedestal in disarray, as if hastily abandoned by those who once used the chamber. Alex’s tendrils slid from his arm, intricate and fluid, slipping into the lock with eerie precision. The mechanism clicked, and the gate slid silently to the floor, unveiling the hidden chamber beyond.
"So that's how he can open lock so fast." Astarion said few steps away from Alex.
The rest of the party moved toward him, weapons sheathed but tension still radiating off their bodies. Gale lingered behind, his eyes catching on a book he'd stumbled upon while they hurried to the next trial chamber. His fingers traced the faded letters embossed on the cover as he cracked the brittle spine open.
"The Gauntlet of Shar, from where an army of Dark Justiciars shall rise and join battle against those who shun her embrace..."
Gale’s brow furrowed as he read. The words clawed at his mind, filling him with unease. The Gauntlet wasn’t just a series of trials; it was a proving ground, a breeding pit for Shar’s most fanatical warriors.
"What awaits us at the heart of this temple?" Gale thought as his gaze lingered on the words. An army, hidden beneath layers of ancient stone, waiting for a chance to rise. He placed the book down gently on a nearby table and glanced over at the shelves filled with books, each meticulously placed as though guarding their own secrets.
He could see his friends gathering around a pedestal, their postures tense, their gazes sharp as they inspected the strange runes and inscriptions. He could help them, lend his insight to whatever puzzle they were solving, but something in his gut told him he would be more useful here. Among the forgotten pages. Who knew what secrets these tomes held? Secrets that could change the course of their battle.
His eyes fell on a nearby volume, Teachings of Loss: Dark Justiciar. The cover was worn, its title barely legible, but something about it drew him in. He opened it, flipping through the delicate pages. The scent of old parchment filled his nostrils as he scanned the text.
None can match the fervour and dedication with which the Dark Justiciars serve Lady Shar. They are her most loyal, most ruthless warriors...
Gale’s lip curled slightly as he read on, the cold, fanatical devotion described in the text sending a shiver down his spine. These Justiciars weren't just soldiers—they were zealots. Each one sworn to murder in Shar’s name, with the blood of Selûnites marking their initiation into the dark ranks. "Interesting, but ultimately useless," he thought, as he slid the book back into place.
But as his fingers brushed another tome, Teachings of Loss: Forgetting and Loss, something in its weight, its faded gold lettering, made him pause. He opened it carefully, the pages brittle beneath his touch.
"Loss teaches us the truth. In its void, we are our purest expressions of ourselves. There is nothing nobler than to forget, and to surrender oneself to the darkness..."
Gale stopped, his chest tightening. The words struck deeper than he expected. His thoughts turned inward, unbidden memories surfacing—the absence of his father, a void that had shadowed his childhood. His mother, always distant, lost in her work, leaving him to navigate the world alone. There had been so few people who had stayed by his side. And those who did, left too soon. His hand clenched unconsciously around the book, his throat tightening with unshed grief.
He had learned to mask the pain, to tuck it away behind arcane formulas and scholarly pursuits. But reading this, in the quiet stillness of this cursed place, he felt a raw empathy for the followers of Shar. He understood loss. Under different circumstances, a different step in life, he might have been one of them. A man seeking solace in the void, rather than the light.
But then he thought of Tara, his faithful friend, the mischievous tressym who had stayed by his side when no one else did. A small smile tugged at his lips. "I wonder what she’s up to now," he mused, the memory of her antics breaking through the heaviness in his heart. That tiny creature had given him something he hadn’t known he needed—companionship, loyalty. Perhaps, had it not been for her, he would have followed the same dark path as these Justiciars, surrendering to the seductive promise of forgetting, of erasing the pain.
Gale’s gaze shifted to his companions across the room. Alex stood with his hands pressed against a wall, his tendrils weaving through the cracks in the stone like dark vines. They burrowed into the statue of Shar, pulling the stone apart as if it were mere clay, revealing a hidden chamber behind it. Shadowheart stood nearby, her lips pressed into a thin line, watching with an unreadable expression. She didn’t seem particularly pleased with Alex’s method, but she made no move to stop him. The stone wall crumbled away, and the secret chamber was laid bare.
"Seems they’ve got things under control," Gale thought, his eyes flicking back to the books in front of him. The distractions of the unfolding events faded as his fingers skimmed over the spines of ancient tomes. One caught his attention: Tome of the Soft-Step Trial.
“The initiates of Shar must excel in her cherished arts—stealth, lockpicking, disarming, evasion... The unsubtle are destined to fail.”
A small smile played at the corner of his lips. “I wonder who would fare better at sneaking—Shadowheart or Astarion?” He chuckled softly to himself, imagining the two of them in a silent competition, both too proud to admit defeat. He slid the tome back onto the shelf, his curiosity wandering as he carefully stepped over the shattered remnants of an animated armor.
His eyes locked on another piece of parchment, its title scrawled hastily across the top: The Final Sacrifice of the Moon Daughter.
“The sacred spear, once wielded by the Nightsinger herself, awaits her chosen champion... A final sacrifice can be made at last... Let the followers of Selûne weep bitter tears...”
Gale’s heart tightened as he read the words, a cold realization settling in. The trials were not just about surviving—they were about the total submission of Shar’s enemies, the eradication of light itself. He turned the parchment over in his hands, but before he could continue, the sound of footsteps echoed from behind. He spun around to see his companions approaching, their faces twisted with unease, except for Shadowheart.
In her hands, she held a spear—simple and silvery. A helm rested atop her head, unmistakably that of a Dark Justiciar. Gale squinted, noticing something strange. Were the shadows clinging to her? As he focused, he realized that they were. The tendrils of darkness coiled around her form as if recognizing her as one of their own.
“What happened?” Gale asked, stepping closer. “Why the long faces?”
“There’s no gem here,” Alex responded.
Gale’s brows furrowed. “No gem? But how are we supposed to reach the heart of the temple without it?”
“The rats … they know where to find the gem. I just need to consume more of them. ”
Lae'zel scoffed, with a small grin on her face . “Maybe he'll leave a few for you, Astarion, for a snack. Wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”
Astarion glanced toward Lae’zel, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “Honestly, I think I’m starting to develop a preference for frogs. Their skin looks remarkably similar to yours.”
Gale watched as the sharp barb flew toward Lae’zel, expecting her usual explosion of rage. But to his surprise, she only inhaled deeply, her eyes narrowing with restrained fury. Her chest rose and fell in slow, measured breaths.
“Just wait, spawn,” she muttered darkly, her voice simmering with barely contained venom.
The tension between them was palpable, like the calm before a storm. But this time, Lae’zel didn’t strike. She stood still, silent, simmering under the surface but not erupting. Gale couldn’t help but marvel at the restraint she was showing—though whether it was wisdom or a buildup to something worse, he couldn’t tell.
"Let's move," Alex said with a calm finality, his voice cutting through the thick silence of the library. Without hesitation, he headed towards the exit, the rest of the group falling in step behind him. Gale cast a lingering glance at the shelves filled with ancient tomes, feeling an inexplicable pull towards the secrets they held, before he too turned away and followed his companions.
The moment they stepped out of the library, the ground trembled beneath their feet. Dust fell from the ceiling, and the walls groaned as if the temple itself was alive and unsettled.
----------------------------------------
Alex strode purposefully toward the edge of the balcony, the one he had peered over earlier. His arms shifted, morphing into three-fingered, elongated appendages as he quickly knitted a sturdy rope from silk. He tied it securely to the stone railing of the balcony. Without a word, he leaped from the ledge, plunging at least ten meters down.
The party watched from above, eyes wide as Alex landed with supernatural grace on the rampart below, his feet touching down lightly amidst a sea of bones. The snap and crackle of old, brittle skeletons echoed through the chamber as he straightened.
“Little vermin!” Ketheric’s voice thundered from above, punctuated by another violent tremor. The ground shook harder this time, sending small rocks tumbling from the temple walls.
One by one, the party descended the rope, their eyes darting nervously to the source of the voice as they joined Alex.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“By the hells,” Wyll muttered under his breath, his voice barely audible as he took in the scene before him.
At the foot of an imposing statue of Shar lay thousands of skeletons, their bones scattered haphazardly across the ground like discarded toys. They formed a morbid sea of the dead, their skulls and ribcages interwoven in a grim display of the temple’s dark past.
“Just how many people lived—and died—here?” Gale asked, his voice thick with shock, his mind trying to grasp the sheer scale of it all. He had seen death before, but not like this, not in these staggering numbers.
Alex, without speaking, knitted another rope and tied it to a large, jagged rock. He leapt down into the field of bones without hesitation. The brittle remains snapped and cracked under his weight, a grim reminder of the countless lives lost to this forsaken temple. The rest of the party carefully followed, stepping lightly to avoid disturbing the fragile skeletons beneath their feet.
As they approached, Alex stood before an infernal pentagram etched into the stone floor to the right, the dark lines filled with what looked like dried blood. In his hand, he held a book, its cover worn and frayed, . He turned to face his companions as they drew near, his eyes scanning the pages before he began reading aloud, his voice cold and deliberate:
"In each of us is more than what we are;
Parts and multitudes that form our thoughts, desires, nature itself.
Manifold are the creatures inside you - and what you can become when you speak my words is all your parts made manifest.
Your weakness can become strength if it is made legion: quaking hearts can find courage in their numbers, the lowliest vermin can humble a goliath if they stand as an army, and a ruin can become a kingdom for one soul made many.
Speak Itori mustag thrice.
Become your finest self - all of them."
At the bottom of the page, scrawled in a chilling, sharp hand, was a signature: Raphael.
Gale’s eyes widened in sudden realization, the pieces falling into place. He looked at Alex, then at the book, the meaning of the cryptic passage snapping into focus. “The rats… Someone used this ritual and became a swarm of rats,” he said, his voice shaking with the weight of the revelation.
Alex nodded, his gaze never leaving the pentagram as flames flickered into life at his fingertips. With a swift motion, he hurled a firebolt into a shattered effigy , the flames greedily consuming the bloodied remains. The fire crackled hungrily, its light casting long shadows across the chamber.
Suddenly, a cacophony of tiny screeches and hisses filled the air. The party tensed, their weapons drawn as hundreds of rats emerged from the darkness, surrounding them on all sides. Their beady eyes glinted with fury, their tiny bodies quivering with rage.
Alex, under the influence of a potion of animal speaking, could hear their words clearly, the anger and betrayal in their voices unmistakable. The foremost rat, larger than the others, stood its ground, glaring up at him with malice.
“I pleaded, I bargained. I warned you,” the rat spat, its tiny voice trembling with emotion. “But you didn’t listen—you made me remember again, hurt again. I’m coming for you—all of me.”
But before the rat could finish, Alex’s tendrils lashed out, flesh writhing from his body like living chains. The tendrils surged forward, engulfing the rats in a swift, brutal motion. They writhed and squealed in panic, but it was too late. Within seconds, the swarm was gone, consumed and absorbed into Alex’s form.
The tendrils retracted, slithering back into Alex’s arms as he turned to face his companions, his expression unreadable. The air around him was thick with tension, the faint echo of the rats’ final cries still lingering in their minds.
“The orthon took the gem,” Alex said flatly, his voice devoid of emotion as if the slaughter of the rats hadn’t even registered.
“Great,” Astarion lamented, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Just what we needed—another obstacle. Lovely.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, but beneath it, there was a trace of unease.
Alex crouched low, the muscles in his legs rippling before he launched himself upward in a single, fluid motion. He soared through the air, his hands grasping onto the rough stone wall as if it were second nature. Silently, he climbed higher toward the wing of the temple where the orthon resided, every movement calculated, his form blending with the shadows that clung to the ancient stone.
The rest of the party watched as he threw down another silken rope, its gleam barely visible in the low light. One by one, they ascended, weapons drawn as they reached the ledge. Alex put a finger to his lips, signaling silence, and pointed to a broken path on their left that would lead them to the upper floor.
They moved in near-silence, each step carefully placed to avoid the loose rubble and debris beneath their feet. Shadowheart’s gaze drifted downward, drawn to the circular stone door below. It seemed to beckon her, a silent whisper in the back of her mind. The pull was intoxicating, almost as if it was calling her to something.
A firm hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality. Shadowheart turned to see Karlach, her strong grip offering reassurance. Her gaze shifted to Alex, who nodded at her, a wordless command. Shadowheart understood—there was no time to succumb to distractions now.
Then it hit her—the smell. The stench of blood and rotting flesh hung heavy in the air, an all-too-familiar scent in the forsaken ruins of Shar’s temple.
They turned left, stopping at the entrance to a destroyed chamber, now an open wound in the temple’s structure. Inside, the scene was one of unspeakable horror. Bodies littered the ground, twisted and mangled in grotesque positions, some half-decomposed, others disturbingly intact. The walls were adorned with strips of human skin, stretched tight and pinned like grotesque tapestries. At the far end of the room, a massive face made of bodies loomed—tusks jutting from the lower jaw and a pair of twisted horns curling from the forehead. It wasn’t just a face; it was a grotesque effigy of death.
A massive elongated skull looming over it .
And at its feet, just slightly to the right, was what they had come for: the Umbral Gem, glinting faintly in the dim light.
Alex’s voice brushed against their minds, a telepathic whisper. 'Stay here. Intervene if I signal.' With that, he rose from his crouch and stepped into the room, his presence masked by the stillness of his movements.
But after only a few steps, a displacer beast materialized in front of the macabre throne made of corpses. It was a fearsome sight—its sleek black fur rippling as two tentacles ending in barbs flicked in the air menacingly. The beast’s yellow eyes gleamed with malevolent intelligence.
“What’s this? Fresh entertainment...” A low, rumbling voice echoed through the chamber, vibrating with ancient power. “But you’re too fresh for this place, aren’t you? There’s a whiff of the surface about you…”
Karlach’s eyes widened in shock as she crouched near the entrance. “Holy shit,” she murmured under her breath. “That’s the fucking orthon…”
The creature’s voice deepened. “I can smell a tiefling nearby—got the stink of the Hells on her. And something else… a hint of dragon on the breeze…”
Without warning, the orthon dropped down next to Alex, its massive form slamming into the ground with a thud that rattled the bones scattered around the chamber. Up close, the orthon was even more terrifying—a towering behemoth with skin the color of blood, deep and rough like the surface of a cursed battlefield. Its horns twisted menacingly, and its glowing eyes burned with a rage barely contained. The grotesque trophies of skulls hung from its neck, and its jagged blade gleamed in the dim light, each notch in the metal a testament to the lives it had claimed.
The creature’s scarred chest rose and fell with heavy breaths as it stared down at Alex, expecting fear, submission. But Alex stood his ground, his expression calm, unshaken by the towering beast.
The orthon’s face contorted into an ugly snarl, its fangs bared in fury. “Raphael!” it spat the name like poison, the sound filled with venomous rage. “I can smell him all over you! Where is he?” It whirled around, its booming voice shaking the very stone beneath them. “The song is gone! The contract is completed! I am free now!”
And then, from the shadows, Raphael stepped forward, his devilish smile broad and insidious, a picture of smug satisfaction. He had been waiting for this moment. He always was. His eyes gleamed in the dark, the faintest trace of triumph lingering on his sharp features.
In that moment, the room seemed to still, the weight of power shifting. The party, hidden in the shadows, watched the two infernal beings square off. Alex’s eyes darted to the Umbral Gem, their real prize, lying forgotten at the feet of the monstrous effigy.
But the orthon, oblivious to everything but his rage, roared, “Tell me, Raphael! Where is my freedom?!”
Raphael’s voice dripped with a dark, mocking amusement as he addressed the hulking orthon. “I think ‘freedom’ might be rather overstating matters, Yurgir. Devil’s in the details, you see—and the details, well, they’re in the fine print. You were to fulfill the deal. Nowhere does it stipulate you could subcontract the last kill to the first adventurers’ party that came trotting along.” He paused briefly, his gaze sliding to Alex and the rest of the party, their forms half-hidden in the temple’s shadows. A smirk pulled at his lips. “In short: you’re in breach of contract, my friend. Oh dear.”
Yurgir's snarl was like the growl of a caged beast, his massive hand tightening around the hilt of his blade. The muscles in his arms bulged, and his glowing eyes burned with fury. “Back to the Hells with what we agreed!” The orthon’s voice thundered through the chamber, filled with raw, unbridled rage. “I have you now, Raphael! Pay the debt, and I will make this quick!”
Raphael’s response was a mere scoff, barely hiding his contempt. “Consider your position,” he said coolly, the mirth never leaving his voice. “You are about to forfeit what little reputation you have left. No contract, no fame, no power. You’ll be nothing—a streak of excrement even lemures would slither away from. Unless, of course, you reconsider and accept my infinite mercy. A new contract, perhaps? A chance to balance the books? Not to mention,” Raphael added with a smirk, “a welcome change of scenery.”
The orthon's entire frame trembled with barely contained fury, his teeth grinding audibly. “Bastard!” Yurgir growled, the word rumbling up from deep within his chest. His nostrils flared as he took a sharp breath, trying to steady himself. “Fine. One condition—” his voice lowered to a dangerous rumble, “no. more. songs.”
For a fleeting moment, silence reigned as Raphael’s eyes glinted with mischievous delight. “What’s a contract without whimsy, I say, but fine,” he replied with a mock bow, “no more songs. Now, off to the House of Hope for cocktails and canapés—and a brand-new signature on a brand-new deal.” He turned to the orthon, his voice growing sharper. “But first, it would be only fitting if you rewarded your subcontractor. The greater reward for the greater hunter, don’t you think?”
Yurgir sighed deeply, the sound filled with reluctant resignation. “Anything I leave behind is yours. Pick over it however you like.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Raphael raised his hand, glowing with infernal energy. In a brilliant flash of red smoke and flame, the orthon’s massive body dissolved into nothingness, consumed by the infernal magic. The towering behemoth that had once filled the room with terror was now gone—whisked away back to the depths of the Hells.
For a long moment, the room stood still, the only sound the faint crackling of fire still lingering in the air. The tension finally broke when Astarion's voice, tinged with frustration and anger, cut through the silence. “Now the orthon’s free to traipse back to the Hells, and I’m left with nothing.” His tone was bitter, filled with the sting of disappointment. “No information about my scars, no leads on where to turn next.” He stared at the spot where the orthon had vanished, his fists clenched tight at his sides.
Alex remained silent, his eyes fixed on Raphael, who now turned to the party, his expression one of smug satisfaction. The devil’s eyes sparkled with amusement, like a predator who had successfully cornered its prey. As the group stepped out from their hiding spot, Raphael’s smile widened. “Ah, my favorite adventurers…” he began, his voice low and mocking.
Before anyone could respond, the devil vanished in a swirl of smoke, leaving behind only the faint scent of sulfur and a lingering sense of dread.
“That smug bastard,” Karlach muttered under her breath, her fists clenched tightly as she glared at the spot where Raphael had stood moments before. “He’s toying with us—always toying.”
A heavy silence settled over the group.The Umbral Gem lay nearby, cold and lifeless—a reminder of the tangible, physical prize they had come for, but it offered no comfort. Raphael’s presence had left a bitter taste in their mouths.