While Ravenna recovers from her battle with a wine barrel the night before in Beryl, Mar’khabazza has been working on a scheme to draw out the original merchant owner of the diamond heart. He creates the persona of an adolescent dogsbody named Tom Horn and over the next several days frequents many taverns and talks up a story about how he has come into posession of “something rare and valuable” and is looking to offload it quick. A few nights later, Mar’Khabazza, as Tom Horn, realizes he is being followed by some caravan goons. He easily loses them in the narrow alleyways of Opal, and manages to turn the tables on them – following them back to the lesser house of a rope merchant. With a bit of subterfuge, he learns that the merchant is being used as a patsy under threat of violence towards his wife. He bides his time, observing the house while he waits for Magnus and Ravenna to return from Beryl and their effort to have Davian Vaclav make Duergar welcome there.
September 6, 7762
Ravenna and Magnus return from Beryl and formulate a plan with Mar’Khabazza to rescue the merchant’s wife and defeat the winter elf menace. The plan will require the assistance of Savenia Loresong so it takes a bit to locate her. “Tom Horn” arranges a meeting with the rope merchant for an inspection and quick sale of the diamond. They agrees to meet in an abandoned stable in the north end of town.
September 8, 7762
While the merchant and most of the hired muscle are away at the meeting in the barn, Mar’Khabazza, Magnus and Ravenna attack the house containing the husband’s wife who remains under guard while the merchant goes to the meet. Using Ravenna’s battle link spell to coordinate, Savenia watches the group gather in the warehouse while Mar’Khabazza, Magnus, Ravenna and Naisha try to free the wife. The ambush is is swift and brutal of economy, but wife is slain by a guard before she can be rescued. Reacting quickly, Ravenna teleports across town and ambushes the group in the warehouse with fireballs and other magic, managing to spare the life of the rope merchant and the ringleader of this gambit. Savenia takes husband to the Salt House to momentarily spare him the knowledge that his wife has been killed by agents of the winter elves and arranges to get their house cleaned up.
The party arrived at the Salt House with their prize: a captured Winter Elf Bone Lord who had been posing as a merchant, bound and gagged beneath a tarp in the back of a wagon. After debating the best place to secure him, they settled on Ravenna’s Tower, tucking the prisoner into the smithy on the ground floor under constant watch. Magnus, Rekha Mar-Khabazza, and Naisha took turns standing guard through the long, cold night while Ravenna retreated upstairs to sleep. The Winter Elf proved to be a patient, unsettling prisoner — he shifted occasionally to ease the discomfort of his bonds, but never struggled, never spoke, and never looked away. He simply waited, staring at his captors with an eerie, inhuman calm.
September 9, 7762
By morning, Ravenna descended the stairs feeling fully restored, her power replenished and her mind sharp. The plan was already set: they would transport the Bone Lord far from Opal, to the ruined mountain temple high above the clouds, where no one would hear what came next. Savinia Lorsong joined the group, and Ravenna made several trips, carrying the party two at a time through the void between places until all of them — prisoner included — stood in the frozen courtyard of the Temple of Eternal Sunshine. The corpses from a previous battle still lay there, stiff and freeze-dried in the mountain air, and the ancient statue of the temple’s creator gazed down from the north wall as it always had. The party established themselves in a sheltered side chamber, rekindled the old fire, and turned their attention to the matter at hand.
At the heart of the temple lay the arcane pool — a font of pure energy that cast water-like shadows on the walls despite containing no visible fluid. Ravenna stepped into it almost immediately, overwhelmed by its intoxicating vitality, her fingers tingling, her mind racing with the sensation of boundless power. The party dragged the bound Winter Elf to the edge of the pool, and Magnus, without ceremony, dipped the creature’s leg into the invisible depths. The effect was immediate and horrifying: with a hiss like a teakettle’s scream, the flesh beneath the elf’s clothing began to dissolve, chunks sloughing away and drifting down into the luminous nothing below, where they slowly immolated in white fire. The Winter Elf began to scream.
Magnus loomed over the writhing prisoner and said simply, “I can make it stop.” The Bone Lord, panting and staring at the ruin of his leg, agreed to answer their questions. He gave his name as Henzik, and the words that followed came in a clatter of consonants — the Razzik tongue, all sharp syllables and no vowels — as he revealed the shape of the Winter Elf cell operating inside Opal. There were thirteen of them in total, he said, all part of a caravan that had arrived roughly a month and a half prior, disguised as mule skinners, traders, and craftsmen. Four had already been killed during the party’s earlier raid on the Miller’s home, leaving twelve still at large in the southeastern merchant district of the city.
Henzik spoke of the Razzik hierarchy with the detached precision of a soldier reciting doctrine. Thirteen Razzik formed a squad, producing a White Razzik; thirteen squads formed a platoon under a Bone Lord; thirteen platoons formed a legion under a Fiend; thirteen legions formed a corps under an Archangel; thirteen cores formed an army under a Night Lord; and thirteen armies served Az himself. Killing Henzik, he explained without emotion, would cause a temporary shuffling among those beneath him — a brief disorientation as the hierarchy reorganized and a new Bone Lord was promoted — but the structure would endure. He and a rival Bone Lord named Straz both reported to Yutera Yutar, the Red Puppeteer, a fiend who answered to Pale Night, who answered to Az. Az, Henzik confirmed, was not dead — he was imprisoned, though no one knew where.
Henzik’s mission had been to deliver a perfected heartstone — a greater version of the diamonds that created shapeless ones — to the Duergar Gorboto, who had been living in Opal for decades. Gorboto was to use the stone to create a greater shapeless one and unleash it upon the city as a test of its power. Straz, meanwhile, was responsible for a separate operation: growing a Waystone inside the Church of Eternal Sunshine. Henzik described Waystones as the byproducts of destroyed earth nodes, artifacts that sought to recreate the original node they had come from, which was why they resonated with one another. When the party asked about the figure they knew as the Slenderman, Henzik made a retching sound in his throat and named him: Tharnun. He was an abomination, Henzik said — a bastard hybrid of man, demon, and Razzik, not part of the pyramid, not answerable to any Bone Lord, simply a meddlesome pest with his own inscrutable agenda.
When the interrogation was exhausted, the party made their plan. Magnus told Henzik, quietly and without cruelty, that his pain would be quick. Then Henzik was re-gagged, and the group split: Ravenna, Mar-Khabazza, and Savinia Lorsong would return to Opal to coordinate the elimination of the remaining twelve Winter Elves, while Magnus and Naisha stayed behind to guard the Bone Lord. Before departing, Ravenna established a mental link between all of them, weaving a silent thread of thought that would let them communicate across the miles. The 6 o’clock bell — the signal for the city watch’s shift change — would serve as the trigger for a simultaneous strike.
Back in Opal, the three moved quickly. They went straight to Senior Sergeant Joktuk at City Hall and laid out the situation in blunt terms: a Winter Elf covert cell was operating in the city, they had the leader, and these were the names of the twelve still at large. Joktuk received the news with a grinding of teeth — the most emotion anyone had ever seen from him — and immediately began mobilizing his men and rangers. Savinia Lorsong reached out through her own network of contacts, and Rekha Mar-Khabazza coordinated the broader operation with the authority of a man who had spent his life moving pieces on a board. Ravenna, meanwhile, used her abilities to trace each of the twelve Winter Elves by their Razzik names, pinpointing nine of them gathered at the parade grounds in the southeastern merchant district and three more at Kick’s Tavern in the north end of town. Strike teams were dispatched to both locations with a single instruction: wait for the bell, watch for the seizures, and do not hesitate.
The hour ticked down. At 6 o’clock, the bell rang across Opal, and the world moved all at once. At the temple, Magnus threw Henzik into the arcane pool. The Bone Lord screamed as he dissolved, his flesh consumed by the invisible fire of the font, until nothing remained but a pile of human clothing resting at the bottom of an empty pit. Magnus gathered the clothes and buried them on a nearby hill in a quiet, ritualistic act — not out of compassion, but out of something older and harder to name. In Opal, all twelve Winter Elves convulsed simultaneously, seized by whatever invisible thread connected them to their Bone Lord, and the city watch cut them down where they lay. Witnesses from both locations reported the same strange phenomenon: a rush of cold air, and shadowy forms fleeing the bodies like smoke in a wind.
The strike teams returned to debrief in the shadow of the library, unsettled but unharmed. The bodies were dealt with efficiently — most were carried out of the city and lost in ravines, fed to the wilderness and the scavengers that lived there. Two were kept in Joktuk’s prison cells for observation, in case they reverted to their true form. Postmaster Malown had witnessed the entire operation and said little, which was exactly what the party wanted. Magnus, alone at the temple with the memory of Henzik’s dissolution, noted something that nagged at him: the Bone Lord had shed no shadow when he died. The other Winter Elves in Opal had all released those fleeing dark shapes at the moment of death. Henzik had not. He shared this quietly through the fading mental link, and the observation settled over the group like a stone dropped into still water.
Over the next two days, the stored bodies showed no change. They remained stubbornly, disappointingly human in death.
September 10, 7762
Rekha Mar-Khabazza, meanwhile, was summoned to the Captain’s Table to meet with the Legate and her six advisors — a collection of ageless, sexless, ancient figures who all seemed to blur together into a single unsettling impression. The Legate presented him with an oath of fealty to Emperor Utuhesh II, the 154th emperor of the Kazdushiz Empire, and Rekha kissed the scroll with the gravity the moment demanded. Tailors arrived to fit him for his new uniform, and he threw himself into the process with genuine enthusiasm, requesting bright colors, extravagant fabrics, and most importantly, curly-toed boots with bells on the tips.
September 11, 7762
The morning broke cold and grey over the Mulpara Mountains, and the first snow of the season fell on Opal — a light dusting that turned to rain by afternoon and washed away before the ceremony began. Flyers and criers had been announcing the coronation for two days, and the entire city had been given an emperor’s holiday. The streets were full. Joktuk’s city watch, every piece of steel polished to a mirror shine, formed a cordon around the platform that had been erected near the center of town. Rekha Mar-Khabazza was escorted out of the building and up the stairs to the stage, resplendent in his garish new uniform, bells chiming softly at the tips of his curled boots. The crowd hesitated for just a moment — and then someone started to cheer, and the rest followed.
The Legate sat in her great chair and delivered a speech about prosperity, unity, and the great engine of commerce that Rekha Mar-Khabazza would steward across the Jewel Cities. She placed a circlet — the badge of a regent, distinct from the crown worn only by the Emperor — upon his head, and he swore his oath to Utuhesh II with all the solemnity the occasion required. Then the Legate rose, presented him to the crowd, and retreated from the stage, leaving him alone before three thousand citizens of Opal. Rekha reached into a bag and hurled five hundred silver coins into the crowd in a single dramatic arc, shouting that the future of Opal was going to rain gold. The crowd erupted. Magnus, watching from the front row, quietly lit a cigarette.
The rest of the day was a blur of functions, toasts, and carefully vague promises. Every noble house, every merchant family, every innkeeper in Opal wanted a moment with the new regent, and Rekha Mar-Khabazza gave them all exactly as much as he chose to — which was warmth, charm, and absolutely no specifics. Magnus attended one meeting, with Lady Catriona von Indi, and otherwise kept to himself. Ravenna slipped away to the Menagerie, where she gambled and drank and enjoyed the rare luxury of a quiet evening. Back at the Salt House, Magnus shared a few carefully chosen details of the day’s events with Arlaina Darkmoon, who listened with grateful attention and, later, brought him a cup of tea without being asked. It was, by any measure, one of the calmer nights Opal had seen in a long time — and for once, all was right in the world.