Chapter 138: 8.4 – Descent into Tarin-Tiran

‘I really don’t understand why he likes you so much.’ Jhess complained as they trudged down the ruined street, clambering over the rubble and shattered stone.

‘He’s my familiar,’ Robin answered, reaching up to skritch Rerebos between his fuzzy cat-ears. ‘And he likes me! Isn’t that right cutie?’

I will end you for your impertin—oh. Oh! Right there!

Rerebos began purring loudly. Robin didn’t even bother to hide his grin. Of course as soon as he did so he stumbled, nearly sending both himself and Rerebos for a nasty tumble.

Fortunately his reflexes managed to kick in. Phew! Robin couldn’t wait until he could start sinking experience into his physical properties. A higher Dexterity seemed very nice thing to have right about now.

‘Eyes on where we’re going, please,’ Savra called from behind him. ‘It feels like we’re close.’

‘We are,’ Robin confirmed, after taking a moment to glance around. Even with the decay and ruin he recognised the place from the visions of the illusory book in the library of Noviel. ‘In fact, we’re here. Look.’

The location they’d decided to try first was a small public square. Though there were seven sides to it, so maybe square wasn’t the right phrase. Anyway, there was an ornate fountain in the centre of it.

In Robin’s memory it flowed with ever-shifting iridescent waters, and the walls of the buildings surrounding were inlaid with intricate mosaics.

The memory was far from reality.

Sure, there was still a fountain in the centre. It wasn’t even all that damaged, though no water currently flowed through it. And some of the mosaics were still intact. The ground was littered with bright coloured shards of stone, however, like someone had upended a hundred jigsaw-puzzle boxes.

There was a flicker of movement, a wisp of a humanoid shape appearing and disappearing in the corners of his vision.

‘Savra,’ Jhess called out, ‘some local spirits want you to come out and play. Tell them we’re busy.’

The seeress clutched at the holy symbol at her neck and began to chant. The apparitions flickered and vanished as she finished her chant.  Jhess motioned the party to continue forward.

Robin headed toward the mosaic. He suspected that whatever magic lines of force that had once operated there would be bound up in the picture. He recalled it moving, in his vision from the book.

Sure enough, there were runic lines of force etched onto the stone. He could even see where the lines of the mosaic had once followed them. Keyed into them somehow?

Robin examined what he could still see of the image, cleaning it carefully with [Legerdemain]. The colours blossomed under his attention. There should be a blue chip there, so…

He crouched down and began to sift through the rubble, picking out all the glints of blue he could find. After a few minutes he had a nice pile of them and began the painstaking process of trying ot fit one into place. After a few false starts, he found one!

The line of force sparked, faintly, as he pressed it into place. There was still magic here! The enchantment hadn’t been fully destroyed by time.

A shout of alarm caused him to drop the fragment of stone, however. A flickering image had reappeared. Savra called out another chant, but it vanished before she got even a few syllables in.

A suspicion began to creep into Robin’s mind. He fished around for the fragment of stone he dropped. There.

Robin carefully reapplied it to the wall. The magic sparked to life once more and a flickering image appeared once more.

Savra began to chant, but Robin pulled the fragment of stone away from the wall, breaking the magical circuit or whatever it was once more.

‘Wait,’ he called out. ‘I think I’ve got something here. I don’t think we’re seeing actual ghosts. Look. Wait for it.’

He placed the fragment of stone back on the wall. The figure flickered into life once more.

‘I think there’s some kind of recorded illusion here,’ Robin said. ‘Jhess, help me gather the mosaic fragments. Vance, Savra, see if you can make anything of the lines of force you see. Drev, watch our backs.’

The party set to work, carefully examining their surroundings and gathering up the pieces of the broken mosaic. Even Rerebos helped, though Robin suspected some of the shinier bits of the mosaic might have vanished into the his familiar’s hoard, and getting them back—should he need them—would prove expensive.

With a suitable collection acquired, the party set to work, Robin working as best he could from his limited memory of the mosaic in his visions, Savra adding insight where should could with her Divinations—aided by the coin she had recently acquired—, and Drev and Vance offering opinions based on the lines of runic inscription they could see revealed by the missing mosaic pieces and theories on how those lines likely extended under the existing sections.

It was the most annoying jigsaw puzzle Robin had ever done. Sure, they could make reliable guesses as to colour, but the tiny fragments weren’t nearly as distinct as puzzle pieces, and there were a lot of them, with no guarantee they had all the ones they needed.

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Still, they managed to patch together a small section, linking three of the lines of runic power with the small pieces of stone, held in place by Drev’s growing mastery of magical force.

Robin clicked a final piece into place this one with a bit of gold still shining on it. As soon as he did, the ruins around them flickered to life, pictures and forms taking shape out of thin air. It was a three-dimensional illusion, more real and convincing than anything else Robin had seen thus far.

Or it would have been, had it remained constant. It flickered in and out, stuttering a bit like a streaming video across a bad connection.

But even with that there were details to be seen. The ghostly form from before resolved itself with a shocking clarity into the form of a tall, slim individual garbed in ridiculous robes, though as Robin watched he found he could tell that the attire was mostly illusory. Part of a show.

‘ie—Nilsiir—glo—kha—’

There was sound as well! Stuttering in time with the flickering of the image. The figure—Nilsiir, Robin presumed by the way they turned at the sound—whirled to face someone. Something? Someone and a lot of backup forces. From his Position Robin couldn’t make out the leader, but the flickers of hobgoblins in the background suggested that this was an image from the Fall of Tarin-Tiran, somehow captured in a looping illusion!

Yup. Definitely hobgoblins. Robin could see several of them clearly now as they advanced on the defiant Nilsiir.

‘He looks like some kind of priest,’ Vance said quietly.

‘He is,’ Savra confirmed. ‘Look at the Holy Symbol.’

‘Which one?’ Drev asked. ‘He has them all over.’

Now that they had been drawn to his attention, Robin looked. And blinked. It was a strange symbol, and it almost shifted beneath his eye, like one of those optical illusion drawings from his old world.

Even before his [Bardic Lore] pinged he knew. This was one of Rhyth’s symbols! This was a priest of Rhyth!

Possibly even a High Priest, judging by appearances. Though, with illusionists, that was always a dicey proposition at the best of times.

‘Leivniz—’

Was that a name? The person at the head of the hobgoblin forces? Robin struggled to pick out more details, but the illusion was so incomplete it was a losing proposition.

‘ex—ed—from—not—’

He couldn’t make out all the words, but he expression of distaste and disappointment on Nilsiir’s face was crystal clear, even with the flickering nature of the illusion.

The hobgoblins moved, advancing on the priest. Nilsiir, for their part, didn’t give any ground. Conversely, the priest smiled, a mocking, taunting smile, and raised their fingers before their lips in an incredibly rude gesture.

Nilsiir’s fingers parted, their lips split, and a torrent of riotous rainbow beams of light blasted forth from their mouth in a broad cone, enveloping the advancing hobgoblins.

Chaos and death ensued. Hobgoblins caught fire, or began to melt as if acid had been poured all over them, other froze solid or turned to stone, while still others simply vanished or collapsed frothing at the mouth and choking.

A bolt of black and white lightning sheared through Nilsiir’s form, but it passed through the priest entirely, leaving them—to all appearances—unharmed.

Some kind of projection? Robin’s mind whirred. And what was it about that spray of prismatic light that seemed slightly off to his eye? There was some kind of advanced illusion magic at play there. Of that Robin was certain.

And if he hadn’t been, the notification that appeared before him would have made him so.

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