From here on out I intend to write my journal entries as letters from Asami to her master in Jinin.
To:
Master Seimei of the Council of the Golden Flame
Golden Lotus Pavilion
Ayajinbo
Jinin
Respected Master -
As I told you in my last missive, we had enjoyed the success of releasing an elemental of wood from the clutches of the demons. This event occurred only a short while before the events I describe to you here. In addition to freeing the elemental, it seems that she has presented me with a gift, a wooden pendant in the form of a heart. I have yet to examine it closely to determine what if any special properties it may contain. She also left scattered upon the floor several wooden discs marked with a heart symbol which we believe to be tokens that can cause a tree to grow magically from them. Jiro and I will both be glad to use these to restore some of the trees that have been lost to the evil aura of the Worldwound when the time comes. I have taken charge of all of these objects with the exception of one that Jiro has taken into his care.
After we met the elemental, we had dealt with a succubus who had occupied Citadel Drezen's chapel to Iomedae. This foul creature had gone so far as to disguise herself as the goddess and had convinced several Crusader soldiers that she was the genuine deity. She had used her demonic wiles to cause me to flee back to the army encampment, and to turn Zosta against Runa. Later she also charmed Shim, though to our good fortune he is a talkative individual and continually responded to her commands aloud so that we could easily determine that he had been tricked, and also locate her when she attempted to hide from us with Shim at her side. It was Jiro who gave me the idea to encircle her in a spell that would block her magic.
Sadly we had been forced to slay several of the Crusader soldiers who would not abandon their conviction that the succubus was Iomedae, but we were able to spare two of them. Shim returned to the camp with these men to hand them over and report all that had taken place. While he did this we found the elemental's tokens and saw to our injuries. Shim did not return to us, and we determined that we would continue to explore the interior of the Citadel without him. Our first destination was the chapel, to seek the hidden chamber where Aron had told us we might find the Sword of Valor.
The chapel itself was free of magic, though we feared the succubus might have cast some illusion upon it to reinforce her disguise. But neither Jiro nor I could sense such subterfuge. At first despite Aron's map Jiro was unable to find the hidden panel to open the chamber. Only when all four of us searched for it did we locate it, each of us finding one corner at almost the same instant. The small chamber we found inside was strewn with the remnants of storage boxes and chests, indicating that the occupiers had discovered it, much to our dismay. There was no sign of the banner, but another hidden door was quickly discovered leading from the storage room, and Jiro surmised that perhaps this small room was only a decoy to mislead invaders into thinking that they had found the Citadel's treasury.
The next chamber was longer, lined with statues of an armored woman bearing a sword. Four statues stood along the longer walls, two on the east and two on the west. At the south end hung a tattered tapestry of an armored woman kneeling before a robed man, matching the design of a tapestry that had covered the hidden panel in the chapel. At the north end of he room stood another statue of a woman, but this one held both hands out to support a rod from which a banner was suspended. All five statues wore armor that was not merely sculpted, one of which was covered in gold like the armor Runa had when she first joined our company. The banner the statue held met the description of the Sword of Valor that we had been given, but all of us were suspicious of its authenticity. When I examined it for magical auras I found that it had a strong blue aura of abjuration as I would have expected from the Sword, yet still I doubted. I feared that the demons had left a false, cursed banner behind to harm us.
Iomedae
I was not far wrong, for when Jiro approached the statue it suddenly transformed into two creatures. The nearest creature's long tongue shot out to ensnare him. Jiro immediately recognized that this shapeshifting creature was a mimic, and that he would be unable to pull himself free of the powerful sticky substance it exuded. He also recalled that acid would be ineffective against it, which he quickly called out to the rest of us. He recognized as well that these mimics must be afflicted with the fiendish taint of the Abyss, which meant they would be resistant to harm caused by flame or ice. I had largely prepared myself with spells to defend against evil creatures and their powers rather than for causing harm. I drew my wand, while Jiro summoned a tetsubo of magical force to attack the mimic gripping him. Zosta then leaped over one of the statues to bring her enchanted brass knuckles down upon the monster and her hand promptly adhered to it, but this did not prevent her from pummeling it with her other fist. I sent three missiles at it from my wand but it was resistant to the magic and the missiles faded out like droplets of water striking a hot flame.
Mimic
Runa moved to attack the second mimic and she too was captured by its glue-like hide. One of her blades adhered to it as well. She prayed to Iomedae to bring down a burst of searing radiance on the creature. I called out to the denizens of Elysium for aid and a lantern archon appeared to blast Jiro's captor with divine light while I sent more missiles at it from the wand. The beast squeezed Jiro more and more tightly and I could see his face flushing as he grimaced in pain. Fortunately the combination of Zosta's blows with my missiles and the archon's light slew it in a few moments and we could turn our attention to Runa's foe. It too died to my wand and the archon's attacks after Jiro's summoned daikatana dealt it several harsh blows.
Freed of the monsters, Jiro healed himself and Runa of the injuries the mimics' crushing grasp had inflicted. As we had feared, the Sword of Valor was gone. We would have to search the rest of the Citadel and hope that it remained within. But first we had to wait for the mimics' adhesive substance to lose its effectiveness, which it did quickly after the deaths of the creatures. Once Jiro and Runa were free, I looked at the suits of armor worn by the statues and saw that the gilded suit bore an enchantment. All four statues wore very fine quality heavy plate mail, but the other three suits were not magically enhanced. Runa was instantly attracted to the gilded suit, for she still regretted the loss of her golden suit of mail that had been damaged by a giant amoeba while we were still in the subterranean realm beneath Kenabres. She hesitated only a moment before deciding to exchange her current suit of armor for the golden armor on the statue, for it could grant her some most beneficial advantages. Though she was fully clothed in a gambeson beneath her armor, Jiro still decorously turned his face toward the wall while she removed her armor and exchanged it for the other suit. When she was garbed in the new suit of armor she looked most pleased.
Whil Runa readied herself, I suggested to my companions that I should send forth an eye of arcane energy to look ahead and tell us what enemies might await us. The others found this wise. We determined that we would search the remaining area immediately surrounding the chapel first, as this portion of the Citadel was separated from the other sections by walls. In retrospect I should also have cast a spell to enable us to communicate quietly, and summoned a creature to open the doors that would invariably be closed, I regret that I did not think of this, nor did it occur to me use the rod I carry that can increase the duration of my spells. I am ashamed to confess my foolishness to you, my master.
Zosta exited the chamber that had held the false Sword of Valor and opened the next door, one of two set close together which should lead into a chamber running parallel to the inner bailey wall beneath the ballista towers. When I looked through the eye I saw a mass of bunks thrust close together in a haphazard fashion. At the west end of the long room lay a dozen headless corpses, while at the opposite end were twelve severed heads that appeared all to have belonged to tieflings. Then a furiously angry human woman rushed toward the door where Zosta still stood after having opened it a crack to admit the eye. Because I had forgotten to cast the message spell I could not warn her.
The woman sprang out to attack Zosta, shouting in a language that none of us could understand. Runa ran out into the passageway, casting on herself a spell to allow her to comprehend the woman's speech. The woman was exclaiming something about how she had slain all of the tieflings in the room yet she laid the blame for it upon us, and also feared that the traitor Staunton Vhane would punish her for her failure. Runa reported that she seemed desperate.
Zosta grabbed hold of the woman and held her tightly, preventing her from attacking as effectively as she might otherwise have done, for like Zosta herself the woman was a barbarian, though from another people. While she was held immobilized, Jiro approached her and told her that we wished to help her. She ceased to rage and began to converse with him in the common tongue, telling him that she had slain the tiefling siege engineers after they failed to destroy us, in order to curry favor with Staunton Vhane so that she herself would not be punished. Jiro told her that we would protect her from Vhane. As he contined to speak with her she also revealed that the invaders had constructed a dungeon beneath the Citadel that did not appear on Aron's map. She did not know every detail of what lay within this underground area, but it seemed wise to all of us that we should take her to the army encampment for questioning, as a prisoner but one who would be treated well and offered an opportunity to redeem herself from her association with evil. Zosta then made a surprisingly stirring oratory on the possibility of redemption, and the combination of hers and Jiro's generous words convinced the woman to cooperate. She even offered to accompany us as we continued searching the Citadel. Her name is Jestak.
Jestak
Because my arcane eye was still in effect, we sent it out to explore a bit more of the area around us before we took Jestak to camp. She told us that near the chapel lay an armory, which we went to as soon as we assured ourselves that no enemies awaited us. There were a number of weapons and armors of good quality, some of them magically enhanced, which the demons and their servants had for some inexplicable reason left there. We have observed that the forces of evil here have not demonstrated much knowledge of tactics, for they have closed every door within the Citadel but have not blocked or barred many of them, and when some creatures have been assigned to watch a particular chamber they never leave it, nor do they seem to have any means of communicating with one another or with their leaders. We can only hope that they will continue to be so overconfident and unwilling to cooperate with each other.
For now we have returned to camp to restore our health and replenish our magic. Tomorrow we will revisit the Citadel to seek out this dungeon Jestak speaks of, though I do not know if we will permit her to accompany us. The paladins still detect the taint of evil upon her, but we hope that if a demon can be redeemed it will not be so difficult for a human woman to follow that path.
I will write again when I have more to tell.
Next: part 39, A Clean Sweep
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