Upstairs, Downstairs
5 Tarsakh 1492, Waterdeep
Companions:
- Casindra “Casi” Naïlo, a half-elf warlock
- Devotion, a tiefling cleric
- Lekslufer Biswell, a half-elf rogue
- Popdaka “Pop” Veinfinder, a dwarven paladin
- Thokk, a half-orc monk
“Oooowww!” complained a weak, but very welcome voice.
I breathed a sigh of relief, having feared Thokk hadn’t survived that last vicious strike from the flying sword.
“Thokk! Do you need healing?” Devo exclaimed, disappearing into the room.
“…Yes,” the half-orc admitted, “I, like, almost died!“
I edged further down the hall so I could see better into the room, taking in the trio of glowing chests—Thava and Phelan were awkwardly pressed inside the small room in such a way so as to very carefully not touch them—and the deadly-looking swords mounted on the walls above them. Realizing they were in danger of causing themselves accidental harm where they were, the sorceress and the druid stepped out into the hall, clearing the way for me to enter the treasure room and provide a healing spell of my own to Thokk, as well as some advice. “Next time, leave the glowing chests alone.”
“But they looked so cool!” he protested, confirming my suspicion of what had precipitated the attack.
I glanced behind him, noting that a pair of black stone lions sat on the floor flanking the fireplace in this room. Their eyes seemed to burn with watchful menace.
Devo seemed to be studying the lions as well. “I think the lions are guarding something.”
“What would happen if I touched one of the chests?” Thokk asked.
I laughed helplessly as Devo pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “The golems will probably come to life and kill you, Thokk.”
“But the swords are dead.”
The cleric pointed directly in the stubborn half-orc’s face. “Don’t provoke the bear. Or lions, as the case may be. If these are shield guardians or stone golems or anything like either one, they’re basically immune to anything we could possibly try to throw at them, magic or otherwise.”
Thokk glanced back and forth between the chests and the lions. “So you’re saying I could touch the chests—”
“Once,” Devo corrected, “you could maybe touch one of the chests once, and then you’d be dead, and probably the rest of us, too.”
If Thokk had been a creation of Gond the Wonderbringer, one might have seen the gears and cogs of mechanical logic ticking into place as he contemplated what Devo was explaining to him until it finally registered what a thoroughly bad idea it would be to continue trying to touch the magically-warded chests in the room. Not giving him a chance to reconsider the idea again, Devo steered the battered half-orc toward the door, and I joined the tiefling in ushering him in that direction.
As we neared the door, Thokk’s head suddenly jerked sharply to the right, and Devo and I both tightened our grip on him desperately, thinking him about to make a foolish move. “I’ve never been one to read, but that’s a pretty cool color,” he said unexpectedly.
Our gaze followed his, and to our surprise, another blue-bound book with the Star of Mystra on the spine sat amid a stack of other books on a display case behind the door.
“Yur… yur… Yearn-ing? For… more?” Thokk read hesitantly, squinting at the book to read the small print. “I’m not going to even try the rest.”
Devo and I pushed him the rest of the way out into the hall, then the tiefling quickly slipped the book out of the stack and we exited the treasure room, yanking the door shut behind us in case grabbing the book also awakened the lions or more of the swords.
After a few long moments, it seemed there was no pursuit, and Devo extended the book out from where he’d had it clutched against his side to take in the full title, Yearning for More: The Strength of Laeral Silverhand.
“That’s three!” Devo exclaimed, opening the book and flipping through it to confirm it was as blank as the others had been. “We should take it to Casi.”
And Then There Were Five
“We should go downstairs,” Pop said suddenly as we returned to the reading room.
“Why?”
Pop started to answer, then paused. “I think there’s another floor below.”
“We just came from downstairs,” Devo reminded him.
“Another floor below that,” the dwarf insisted.
Casi looked up from her reading. “How do you know that?”
“The way the building’s built!”
Now we were all confused. We hadn’t been outside of the mansion, and for all we knew, there was no “outside” of the mansion, just the endless purple mist.
“Explain?” I prompted.
The paladin again opened his mouth to reply, but then shook his head. “Dwarven instinct, I suppose. Me gut’s tellin’ me we missed something down there, that’s all.”
I couldn’t help but agree with him on the feeling that we’d missed something, but I also had to agree with Devo and Casi: we should finish exploring the current floor before we went anywhere else.
The door between the bookcases was open a crack, and a light was spilling through. “Lek’s in there,” Thava explained, and then she, Aurora, and Phelan entered the room as well. I could see what looked to be a laboratory full of papers, books, and jarred specimens beyond, so when Pop and Thokk wanted to continue down the hall in the opposite direction and check out the open door there, I decided to follow them in that direction.
Devo and Casi remained in the reading room to finish searching the bookshelves.
The open door next to the treasure room lead into a bedroom, a plush room with dark wood furniture, a huge bed covered in rich fabrics, and a free-standing screen blocking off the far end of the room. More thick purple rugs covered the floor, and two more doors led out of the room: one partly open just beyond and to the left of the screen, and the other closed on the near side and to the right of the screen. A pair of robes—one purple, the other green—hung on hooks on the outside of the screen, lending the room a “his and hers” feel that nothing else in the mansion had conveyed thusfar.
One of the fluffy black cats was asleep on the bed when we entered the room, and Thokk made a direct line to the sleeping cat and began to pet it. The creature woke up at his touch and immediately started up a very loud purr as it slammed its face into the monk’s hands. Grinning, Thokk looked up to see if we’d seen the cat’s delighted reaction, but his attention was, once again, caught by something else near the door. “Hey, it’s another blue book!”
Pop and I looked over and spotted the book Thokk was talking about sitting atop a nearby dresser. The dwarf stepped over and started to reach for the book, but then paused and looked around the room suspiciously. “There ain’t any chairs in here, are there?”
“No? And this fluffy little guy seems pretty happy,” Thokk answered, looking down at the cat he was petting. “I’m gonna go check out this other door!”
The dwarf picked up the book and tossed it at me, then followed close on the half-orc’s heels, as apparently Thokk’s recent brush with death had already been put behind him. Disappointed that the monk had stopped rubbing it, the cat jumped off the bed and likewise followed, its tail waving high in a manner that indicated it was both happy and assumed there to be no danger.
I relaxed, and left the pair to finish exploring the bedroom under Pop’s watchful eyes. As I re-entered the reading room, I waved the newest book at Casi—Devo had disappeared, likely into the laboratory—and explained Thokk had made friends with one of the cats.
“Lek found another one!” Devo exclaimed, bursting out of the laboratory with a yet another blue book in his hands. He stopped as he saw the one I held. “That makes five?“
Casi opened her pack and pulled out her stack of the other three books we had so far, but since we still couldn’t be certain there wasn’t something extradimensional about these books that would make putting them into my pack a very bad idea—under the influence of detect magic, they did glow with the same faint purple hue of conjuration magic as did the walls of the mansion—we decided against storing the books in my enchanted haversack, no matter how convenient it was for its high capacity and reduction of weight. The two new books were Even in Death: The Vigilance of Syluné Silverhand and Thay’s Nemesis: The Wrath of the Simbul, found in the bedroom and the laboratory, respectively, and their pages were just as blank as all the rest had been.
“There should be only two more,” Casi speculated as we divided the books up between her pack and Devo’s. “Seven Sisters and seven books.”
“We just need books for Alustriel and Storm,” I agreed, naming the one Silverhand I had met and the one still-living whom I most wanted to meet.
Heavy footsteps announced the dwarf’s return to the reading room from the bedroom. “We’ve lost Thokk,” Pop announced, then quickly amended to our shocked expressions, “in a good way! He found himself another ‘very nice chair’ on a balcony where he can smell the flowers from the garden, an’ he’s got one o’ the cats fer company.”
Figuring that was probably the safest place to leave the half-orc for the time being—the faerie dragons in the arboretum below wouldn’t do anything to hurt gentle, fun-loving Thokk—we headed into the laboratory to see if there was anything else we could help do in there.
The Stars Align
Most of the laboratory was taken up by long wooden tables that were covered with various tools, pieces of broken machinery, and lots of scribbled-on paper. Cabinets lined the walls to the right of the door and much of the opposite wall, and they were filled with vials containing all manner of preserved specimens. The wall to the left was almost completely covered in a huge tapestry depicting what seemed to be the night sky, and the door on the opposite side of the room was closed, its face emblazoned with a stylized golden sunburst. Devo didn’t seem especially interested in the mark, and it didn’t resemble any variant of any holy symbol of either Lathander or Amaunator as far as I could tell.
As I stepped over to see what Aurora and Phelan were looking at among the cabinets, I could see that they were crammed full of skulls, bones, mounted animals, rocks and minerals, dried plants, and jars with creatures—and pieces thereof—floating in liquid. All of this eerily matched the description the faerie dragons had given of a room full of “parts”, and I began to cast about for some clue regarding the fate of their missing friend. Next to where Thava stood were large fragments of a broken bottle laid inside of a large bowl, but the bottle looked nothing at all like what I recalled of the magical iron flasks depicted in such books at Candlekeep as Artificer’s Compendium or An Old Monster Hunter’s Guide to Not Dying Young.
I was drawn away from my investigation by Lek’s exasperated huff of “Wizards!” I looked up to see him waving a sheet of paper around, but then he paused, turned around, and stared at the star chart for a long moment.
It was actually one of several charts, I soon realized: tapestry-sized star charts that hung on a roll around a spindle about which they could freely rotate. The star chart which was showing now was labeled “Sword Coast North Winter”, and indeed it looked much like the night sky would have in Waterdeep this time of year, though we were now in early spring.
“Anyone here know anything about stars?” Lek asked loudly, waving the hand still holding the paper at the star chart.
Thava shook her head. “I’m good with maps about land, not stars,” she admitted.
Having overheard Lek’s question, Casi stepped forward. “There were books on astronomy and astrology in the library downstairs, I think. Why do you ask?”
Lek again gestured with the paper he held. “Wizards!”
Casi took the paper from him and began to read it. “Oh! It looks like this was where Fistandia was writing notes on a puzzle Freyot put together for her that had something to do with water clocks and stars. Freyot wrote, ‘Check the water clock in the time that never was, and look to the stars for your guides.’ Below that she wrote ‘water clock equals Neverwinter plus time that never was equals winter in Neverwinter equals Sword Coast North Winter star chart’.”
“That’s the one that’s showing,” I confirmed, gesturing to the astrological chart.
The odd-eyed spellcaster nodded. “Next Freyot wrote, ‘Ever watchful are the stars, eyes that twinkle but do not blink, vigilant knights that guard the skies, arrows that soar but never sink, a dagger that bends but does not break, and because I have to finish this rhyme, the last of these is a snake.’ Fistandia’s notes after it… are constellations! ‘Eyes of the Watching Woman, the Sleepless Knights, Arrows of the Gods, Jassa’s Dagger, Auroth the Ice Snake!'”
Lek nodded. “Are they all on this chart?”
Blank stares were exchanged, then Devo chimed in, “I’ll go look for a book!”
“Don’t bother,” I sighed, then cast a mage hand so the floating spectral hand could point out each of the constellations as I named them. “Eyes of the Watching Woman, the Sleepless Knights… Auroth the Ice Snake… what else?”
“Arrows of the Gods and Jassa’s Dagger,” Casi finished, and I traced the last two. I am tall, but I could not have reached those from the floor!
“Do any of the constellation names align with any of the books we found?” Devo asked.
I shook my head. “No, and the only part I find strange here is that this constellation—” I used the mage hand to trace the circular group of stars near the top of the chart “—is called Mystra’s Star Circle, and it’s not on the list.” I shrugged. “Granted, this is a different puzzle than the one we’re working on now.”
“But would a wizard have left a clue in an old clue?”
Unable to answer, I could only shrug.
“Is there anything weird about any of the stars?” Lek asked.
I frowned, stepped closer for a better look, then directed the magical hand to point to a star in each constellation, as well as similar ones too bright in Mystra’s Star Circle and Lavarandar’s Lantern. “These are all too ‘bright’ for these constellations.”
The rogue moved to the table against the wall and leaned over it so he could peer more closely at one of the “bright” stars on the chart, then he spun around and pointed at the door on the wall opposite the entrance to the lab. “It’s the same symbol!” Without waiting for input from anyone else, he marched over to the aforementioned door, examined it briefly, then turned the handle and pushed the door open. It swung into the next room almost soundlessly, revealing… starlight?
The newly-opened room had the same sort of stone tile floor as the laboratory and appeared to have a “half-wall” on the semi-circular portion much like the balcony, patio, and arboretum. However, instead of there being the purple miasma beyond like with the other chambers, there appeared to be rolling grassy hills as far as the eye could see and a cloudless, star-filled night sky overhead. Arrayed around the perimeter of the room were five brass telescopes, each positioned atop a small platform, and in the center of their semi-circle was another platform with a pedestal, atop which rested a pearlescent glass ball. It was the first room—if it could be called that—to not be illuminated by the same mage light-holding sconces as all the others in the mansion.
“I’m going to go get Thokk,” Devo decided, and he ran off to collect our wayward half-orc.
We milled about in the planetarium for several long, quiet moments, each of us no doubt taking some comfort from the familiar beauty of the night sky even if it was an illusion. Eventually, the stillness was broken as Aurora asked about the “strange shiny sticks”, and the huge disparity in the upbringings within our party’s ranks was once again displayed. The young elf hunter, who claimed to have been raised by wolves, had apparently never heard of let alone seen a telescope before, and she was entranced as Thava showed her how the devices worked. Phelan seemed to have heard of telescopes, at least, but he was similarly unschooled in their operation.
Casi remained behind in the laboratory, and I wish I knew what her experience was with telescopes, though I suspected such an expensive and precisely-crafted instrument was beyond the means of a family of simple farmers. Had she been brought up with access to the academic resources Thava and I had, what might she have already accomplished in her young life? The free peoples of Faerûn generally did very well in ensuring their children were literate in their regional or cultural languages and in the Common trade language, but educational attainment beyond that was rare outside of apprenticeships in trades.
There were, of course, a number of institutes of higher learning, and many of the ones in the great cities of the North were ostensibly accessible to the public. Tuition and other expenses were always going to be a challenge for anyone of low means, but a bright and dedicated scholar of ignoble birth wouldn’t be barred from the likes of the Conclave of Silverymoon, for example, and alternative arrangements for payment could be made including employment as a laborer at the university or a period of indenture as a researcher or archivist. I myself had chosen the ancient tradition of apprenticeship to a roving master bard, rather than attending the College of New Olamh in Waterdeep, though my parents certainly had the means to have paid my tuition there or at almost any other institute had that been my wish.
“Five telescopes,” Pop mused aloud, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He peered through one of the eyepieces, then shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to be pointed at anything special. How many stars were there on that chart?”
Lek gestured to the whole sky as if to reply, “This many!”
“There were five constellations named,” Thava mused.
Excitedly, we divvied up the constellations among us and began to point each telescope to a different constellation named in the puzzle. Thava’s talent for maps did apply equally to finding tiny points of light in a sky as seen on a star chart, and she was able to help Aurora and Phelan locate the Arrows of the Gods and the Sleepless Knights. Lek’s noble upbringing showed through in his ability to quickly locate Jassa’s Dagger, and then Thava and I helped Pop to set a telescope toward the Eyes of the Watching Woman before aiming the last one at Auril the Ice Snake. We were all a little dismayed that nothing had happened after the telescopes were pointed to the named constellations until I suggested perhaps they needed to be aimed specifically at the “too bright” stars in each of the five constellations.
After another flurry of adjustments, bright beams of light shot out from the platforms atop which each telescope was positioned, and raced across the floor to converge in the platform holding the globe, where the light rose up within the pedestal and filled the orb. Another beam of light shot out from the crystal ball, this one striking near the top of the stone wall to the right of the door through which we’d entered the planetarium. There was a click, then the sound of stone sliding across stone as a previously-concealed door slid open beneath the light beam, and the illumination of another mage light spilled through the newly-opened door.
The Restricted Archive
“Let ‘big hammer man’ go in there first,” Lek suggested sarcastically, volunteering Pop to scout ahead.
The dwarf huffed, but gamely unslung his warhammer and shield and ventured forward. “Ya, I’ll go first… just hope there are no chairs!” He paused at the entrance. “There’re chairs.”
Lek ventured forward enough to get a look into the room, then retreated. “And a bookcase! And this one has chains on it. Why would a bookshelf have chains on it except because it was an evil bookshelf that was trying to kill people?”
“Oh! That’s actually not uncommon in many public libraries,” I explained. “Absent any kind of special magical protections like Candlekeep has, certain rare or valuable tomes that the library wants to be sure can’t be removed from the library are bound in a special binding that is then secured with locks onto chains attached to the bookcase itself. Some of the guildhalls in Waterdeep have chained libraries in them for things like their member registries, histories, by-laws, and other public records so that both their members and the public can freely access those books but guild personnel doesn’t have to closely watch to prevent any of the books from being easily stolen.”
“And here I thought it was just sewers you were fascinated with,” Lek remarked drily.
“Well, I did grow up in a library,” I retorted. “The only thing I find strange is that there’s a chained library inside a secret room inside a secret mansion, but…” I shrugged and offered up the only explanation any of us had for much of what we’d found so far: “Wizards.”
“So they’re valuable are they?” Lek asked, a glint in his eye.
“Usually, yes.”
He rubbed his hands together. “I’m going to go pick some locks.” Pushing past Pop, Lek sauntered into the hidden room, then leapt back with a startled yell as chains suddenly rattled and there was a crash of something heavy colliding solidly with wood.
Apparently, the bookcase was trying to kill people. Who knew?
There was a clash of metal on metal, and Lek called out, “At least this time I can fight back!”
I exchanged looks of surprise with the others in the room, but even as I started forward, Casi burst into the room, apparently having heard the commotion. She paused as she took in the beams of light coming from the telescopes and the orb, then toward Pop, who was even then charging into the secret chamber to come to Lek’s rescue. There was the rattle of yet more chains, then the crack of splintering wood. I thought at first Pop was responsible for that, but the dwarven battle cry came after the sounds of a chair meeting its doom, and then came the crash of metal meeting stone.
“I’m here to help!” announced Devo, bursting through the door from the laboratory, Thokk on his heels. “Wait, how can I help?”
I waved Devo to follow and slipped into the small room, taking in the sight of the large bookcase and the two chained books it was using as flails in its blind attempt to batter at Pop and Lek, the latter of whom seemed understandably more focused on not being hit than on finding any potential weak points to strike. I drew out my own saber and darted in to see if I might fare any better, but the fine blade was easily slapped aside by one of the chains as it came around for another attack.
Casi deftly took care of that: a quick chant produced a line of writhing arcane energy that struck the bookcase squarely where the chain was attached to the shelf, shearing cleanly through the metal and sending the now-severed book-flail flying across the room to slap harmlessly against the far wall.
Lek turned and stared at the spellcaster incredulously. “How the hell did you do that?” he demanded, equal parts impressed and annoyed that his own attacks had been rather ineffectual.
“Huh,” Casi mused absently, her attention drawn toward the book which had been blasted off of the bookcase. “It’s called Martial Attack Techniques. But really, I think that’s the first time my magic has actually worked!“
Undeterred by the loss of one its “limbs”, the other chain continued its motion, slamming into Pop then wrapping around him, pinning his arms against his side.
“I’ve got, like, woodcarver’s tools?” Thokk began from the doorway. “I could, like, dismantle the bookcase or something.”
“Lek, you’ve not been having any luck!” Devo called, pushing past the half-orc.
“Who asked you?” Lek snarled.
Calling to his god for divine power, Devo called down a bolt of searing light against the body of the bookcase, and though it left no visible mark, the malevolence of the animated object certainly seemed diminished. The sturdy dwarf broke free of the encircling chain and backed up a step, shifting his shield back to its carrier on his back and switching to a two-handed grip on his hammer.
As Lek continued his defensive dance with the chained library, I followed Pop’s lead in retreating a step, for I realized I had forgotten a customary step in my morning routine and had neglected to fortify myself with mage armor against the day’s adventure. But even as I remedied that error, Casi hurled another purple-ish beam at the attacking bookcase, and the remaining book flail at last fell silent.
Saber held defensively in front of me, I stepped forward to examine the books on the shelves. Unlike most chained libraries I had encountered, these books all lacked visible locking mechanisms attaching them to the chains which secured them: no doubt, they had been secured in place by magic. However, there was one book which was not chained, and which I immediately held up in triumph, as it was titled Lady of Silverymoon: The Wisdom of Alustriel Silverhand.
Casi bent over and picked up the severed book-flail. “It’s magical,” she announced, her eyes glowing faintly again. “Indeterminate type.”
“I can try to identify it for us later,” I offered, holding out the blue-bound puzzle book, and we traded. A magical item of “indeterminate type” was highly unlikely to interfere with my haversack’s extradimensional properties, and I stored the flail in my pack without incident.
I had certainly identified something else already—the deadly spell Casi used twice against the chained library—and it told me much about the curious young spellcaster and the origin of her magic, and yet brought with it many more questions. However, it was not my place to pry, nor my place to air these questions in front of the others, especially as I, too, had my own magical secrets to bear: Lek was already paranoid enough about everyone around him as it was!
“But can we take any of these books?” the aforementioned rogue asked, pointing to the chained books which had no locks.
I pulled a book off the shelf and opened it carefully, as sometimes books of magical writing were literally deadly. What I found was a treatise on arcane theory that was likely written by one of the great Magisters, and its ruminations on the complexity of somatic gestures in relation to the direct manipulation of the Weave were detailed and dry enough that just the one page was enough to make my head hurt. “This one’s high level arcane theory,” I explained. “Wizard stuff, way beyond anything any of us is capable of even if any of us were wizards.” I picked another one. “Planar cosmology…” I tried a third. “Alchemical formulae. These are the sorts of books which, at Candlekeep, would likewise be kept under lock and key: they’re very rare. Unlike the books in the library downstairs, I suspect these books are actually originals, or at least real copies of originals.”
“They don’t glow like the ones in the library,” Casi confirmed, which had me doing a double-take. I had put one of the books from the library in my pack, after all, when I’d hastily stuffed both copies of A Visual Guide to Medicinal Plants into my pack. Fortunately, it would seem that a copied book with a finite number of pages and fixed content was not an extra-dimensional container capable of ripping a hole into the Astral Plane when placed inside another extra-dimensional container!
“Boring,” Lek decided, and wandered out of the secret chamber.
“So…” I began slowly. “Where’s the seventh book?”
Behind The Bookcase
Devo turned to Lek. “Did you remember seeing any more books in the bedroom area?”
The half-orc frowned and thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he decided. “Just the one on the dresser.”
“So either there’s a room we haven’t found,” the tiefling decided, “or we missed a book somewhere.”
“You know what?” Thokk amended. “I didn’t check the bathroom. It could be in there.”
It seemed doubtful, but we all retraced our steps back out of the planetarium to the reading room, and Devo, Pop, and Thokk headed back into the bedroom for another quick search. It apparently didn’t take long, for they soon returned, shaking their heads.
Pop snapped his fingers. “I remember now! When we asked the kitchen critters where we could find more of the blue books, they said more were upstairs and downstairs. We were already ‘downstairs’ at the time, so did they mean there’d be one downstairs from where we were then?”
Devo’s eyes widened. “Should we ask the homunculi?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” I reasoned. They’d been helpful to us so far!
We nearly tripped over one another to get to the stairs and back down them, Lek announcing loudly that he “loved the cute little guys”, but he surprisingly allowed Devo to take the lead once we reached the bottom and gathered ourselves in the foyer to decide who would go into the kitchen, as clearly we could not all fit into that small chamber. After a quick discussion, we decided to see if they’d come talk to us, instead.
“Hi, friends, we’re back!” Devo announced, pushing through the kitchen door, and after a brief conversation, the tiny creatures followed the tiefling back out the door on their tiny bat-like wings. After looking to the rest of us to see if anyone else wanted to start the conversation, the cleric proceeded. “Do you know if there’s a floor below this? Like a basement or something?”
“Oh, yes!” Cumin answered happily. “Master Freyot’s laboratory is down there!”
Pop throw his hands up in triumph, and Devo smiled brightly. “Oh, great! Do you know how to get there?”
“Oh, yes!” Coriander chimed in, pointing to the study door. “Through Mistress Fistandia’s study!”
“I assume there’s dangerous stuff there to keep us out?” Devo guessed.
“Ummmm…” The homunculi looked at each other in confusion. “There can be dangerous stuff down there; that’s why we don’t go,” Cumin finally replied. It wasn’t exactly what Devo had asked, but it seemed the tiny constructs didn’t fully grasp the question.
“Do you know any details?”
“That nasty, nasty imp came from there,” Cumin explained.
It took us all a moment to remember what imp the homunculus was talking about, having nearly forgotten about the creature that apparently killed the blustering fool Matreous. “The one that went through the portal with that guy?” Lek asked.
“The elf said that’s where he went, yes,” Coriander confirmed.
“I had a chat with the homunculi yesterday and mentioned that,” I explained, realizing from everyone’s further confusion that no one knew I had spent any time alone with the small beings discussing their masters and the inhabitants of the mansion.
“So where are the stairs down?” Pop asked.
“In Mistress’s study,” Coriander replied, “but we don’t go down there!”
“I mean, how do we find the stairs?”
The homunculus looked confused. “In Mistress’s study… but we don’t go down there?”
Lek chuckled. “It’s all right; you’ve done your best.”
“We’ll find them!” Devo assured the creature.
Lek, Devo, and Pop squeezed into the study and began to look around, while the rest of us waited in the foyer, as it would have been far too crowded in that small space for the whole group of us. I hovered in the doorway to observe, and after about ten minutes, there was an exclamation from Pop followed by a familiar clicking sound and the groan of heavy hinges. The bookcase on the far left side of the room swung outward, revealing behind it an opening in the wall and what appeared to be the landing of a downward staircase behind that.
“The latch was a book called The Hidden Laboratories,” Pop sighed, rolling his eyes, and Lek and Devo likewise groaned.
Wizards!
The Final Piece
Pop readied his warhammer and shield again, then turned around and met Casi’s gaze, as she had come up beside me after we announced we’d found the hidden staircase. “I’m goin’ down the stairs first,” he declared, “but I want you right behind me ’cause you’ve been doing the most damage!”
The half-elf blushed, but looked very pleased by the compliment, and she gamely moved up behind the paladin. Thokk claimed the next place in line, Lek volunteered to the next position, and then surprisingly did not object to Devo claiming the spot immediately after him. I took up the next position in line, and then Phelan and Thava followed me, with Aurora bringing up the rear. The stairs were not long, and those of us at the back of the line were barely down a few steps before Pop called back that he’d reached an intersection and wanted to know which way to go.
Given that our choices were an open door at the end of the hall ahead, a closed door ahead and a little to the right, and a closed door at the end of a short hall immediately to the right, the consensus was that we should make right-hand turns only, and Pop led the way down the short corridor.
“It’s another laboratory!” Devo announced happily.
Given that the tiefling wizard Freyot was reportedly a skilled alchemist, it was therefore fitting that this laboratory seemed more heavily specialized toward that particular art. The air smelled of a variety of sharp chemicals, and the long wooden tables were covered in assorted glassware and alchemical apparatuses including mortar and pestle sets, retorts, and other contraptions I lacked the knowledge to appropriately describe. Like Fistandia’s laboratory upstairs, the tables also held a variety of books and papers, though the chaos was a little more contained than in her larger and considerably more eclectic workspace.
Shelves lined the walls, and the ones to the left were filled with jars, beakers, flasks, vials, and other containers with an assortment of powders and liquids, all labeled with the neat penmanship Casi and I had come to recognize as Freyot’s. The shelves on the wall opposite the entrance seemed to be more for bulk storage of materials in barrels and crates, and the shelf immediately to the right of the door had a number of raw ingredients on it, including what appeared to be a withered bloom like the one Devo had worn tied around his horn only the previous day. Beyond it, the next shelf on the adjacent wall—a wall which also had a door on it which, based on my sense of direction, surely must have led to a space under the stairs—was filled with books and small casks.
Devo picked up a book off of one of the tables and started flipping through it, then looked up happily, “It’s not in code, it’s in Chondathan! I think it’s Freyot’s journal.” He flipped to the back of the book, then began to work his way backward until he found the last entry, his dark eyes darting over the page. “They’re not dated, but he wrote that ‘Fia’ dropped off a blank book about a bard, and he put it on a shelf for safe-keeping.”
“Got it!” Lek announced. He had walked toward the door beneath the stairs to investigate what lay beyond it, but had quickly spotted the blue book on the top shelf near the door. As he passed the book over to Casi, I could see the title was Bard of Shadowdale: The Inspiration of Storm Silverhand.
We’d located the final book!