[18e07] The Hostile Hostel

A fire-wreathed warlock of Asmodeus’s infernal order, later named Vael, pounded on the door of Xarlus Shale’s cramped apartment while the party slipped out the window. Vondal locked the door and vanished with the key. Ozborn clung unseen to the hallway ceiling, and Bec hid beside the door and silently conjured a fog. The party feared that local law, or Vael’s allies, would take Xarlus and end any chance of interrogating him, so they chose to get him out of reach. Freki’s attempt to carry the stunned Xarlus across the alley failed when the rusty fire escape railings tore away. The two nearly fell six stories, but Callie’s pixie dust and Bec’s feather fall saved them. Vael then appeared on the sixth-floor landing and tricked Xarlus into reaching for him. Freki wrenched Xarlus free, and all three fell. Vael’s flames burned Xarlus, and Callie healed him, but she sensed how fragile he was. Vex then appeared and shot Vael with a hidden crossbow. This broke Vael’s grip, and he fell to the alley.

The fight continued in the alley. Vael trapped Freki, Xarlus, and Callie in a cage of force. He then sent a hellfire beacon into the sky to summon his brothers. Ozborn crashed through a neighbor’s window, leapt six stories, and hurled a dagger that struck Vael and a barbed devil Vael had summoned. Freki’s sleep arrow was blocked when Vael’s pact tattoo drained a piece of his essence, a cost the party sensed he could not pay forever. Vael blasted Bec with dark energy, knocked her off the fire escape, and broke her lightning, but she landed safely. Callie, who suspected Vael had an invisible imp familiar, turned herself and Xarlus into mice and sent them through the bars to escape. Vex then confronted Vael, who used his power to force Vex to hand over the mouse. At that moment a grizzled, bearded senior warlock arrived. He called Vael an initiate, took charge of the situation, and coldly told the party they would discuss their trespass afterward.

A warlock of the infernal order of Asmodeus stood at the door of Xarlus Shale’s cramped little efficiency. Small flames danced across his skin and over the fiery tattoos that covered his body. He pounded on the wood and demanded that someone open it. Above him, Ozborn Underfoot had crept into the ceiling of the hallway and clung there, trying not to sweat. The warlock could not see him. Inside the apartment, the rest of the party had already thrown open the window and were climbing out, because they had heard the bang on the door. Vondal had turned the key in the lock to buy them a few extra moments. Then he stepped away and vanished, and the key vanished with him.

Behind the locked door, the party argued in whispers. They worried that the local law would take Xarlus away, and that any interrogation they needed would be lost. Bec reasoned that a crew of strangers who answered to nobody would tear the apartment apart and ruin the investigation. Precedent said the agents might outrank local law enforcement, but the answer depended on the circumstances, and nothing about this case was clear-cut. They agreed the safest course was to get their witness out of the room and out of reach of anyone they could not trust. Freki went through the window first and waited on the fire escape, ready to carry Xarlus across the alley on his back.

The warlock’s fury grew with every second. Ozborn, watching from above, saw that this was a man who lived in a constant state of simmering rage. Beneath it he sensed an eagerness, as if the man hoped nobody would answer so he could start breaking things. Bec pressed herself flat against the wall beside the door, where she would be on the attacking side if it burst open. With a snap of her fingers, a cane appeared in her hand out of nowhere. She crushed one of her crystals of subtlety and silently conjured a thick cloud of fog. It rolled out from her feet and started to creep under the door, with none of the sound that would have given her away. The warlock pounded a third time and shouted his final warning, promising dire consequences.

Xarlus was stunned and slow, but he stumbled toward the window and clambered through, helped by a rush of adrenaline. Callie whispered urgently for him to hurry. She followed him out a moment later, her wings fluttering at just the right instant to keep her steady. Freki seized Xarlus around the middle and tried to heave him over his shoulder. Xarlus wriggled in confusion and slowed him down, so the grab held but the leap could not happen yet. Meanwhile Bec, still hidden in the fog, backed toward the window, determined not to lose the spell that kept the fog thick between her friends and the door.

Ozborn did not wait for the door to break. He let go of the ceiling and dropped onto the warlock’s back like a falling stone. He wrapped his arms around the man’s horns and clamped his legs around his torso, as if riding a bull. He bellowed, “Xarlus Shale, you’re coming with me!”, even though he knew perfectly well that was not who he held. For a moment he had the man in his grip. Then the air exploded in a burst of brimstone and the warlock vanished, and Ozborn landed on his feet in a choking yellow cloud. He kept shouting into the smoke, trying to keep up the ruse that he had Xarlus.

Out on the fire escape, Freki finally got Xarlus settled and sprang. He bunched his legs, braced against the rusty railing, and pushed off with the strength of a werewolf and the help of his ring. The railing buckled under him and sheared away, and the leap lost its force. He caught the far railing with both hands, and that one tore loose too. Metal screeched and then fell the full six stories to the alley. Freki dropped and slid down Xarlus’s body until he was hanging on to the man’s leg. Xarlus, white-faced, had somehow clamped one hand around the fire escape floor, and that one hand was all that held them both.

Callie flew to them, using her hovering wings and her pixie dust. She caught Xarlus under the arms and flapped as hard as she could to take some of the weight from his straining fingers. Bec squeezed out of the window with the fog still bulging after her, and she took in how bad things looked. She called out a spell of feather fall and told them to trust her and let go. Freki released the man’s leg and drifted slowly downward. He caught the fifth-floor landing and braced his legs, ready to spring back up. Xarlus began hauling himself up with Callie’s help.

The warlock then appeared on the sixth-floor landing, arms crossed and smug. He looked down on the circus below and said, “Hold on to him tightly. I’d hate for him to fall.” When Xarlus reached up and begged for help, the warlock offered an arm to clasp. Callie let go. Xarlus rose toward the man who meant to take him. Freki saw it and sprang from the fifth-floor platform. He grabbed Xarlus and wrenched him free, and the force dragged the warlock off the railing as well. The three of them tumbled through the air together.

Xarlus and Freki floated down under the feather-fall spell. The warlock had no such protection and plunged faster, still gripping Xarlus’s arm and dragging at him like dead weight. The flames that licked across the warlock’s skin burned Xarlus’s wrist where he held it, and Xarlus cried out in pain. Callie saw the fire and realized it was not a deliberate attack. It was simply the nature of the man, and it was killing the witness. As she sank after them, she called on divine power and healed Xarlus’s mangled hand and wrist. His injuries closed, but she felt how little life he had to give, and she knew a hard punch could put him in the hospital. Inside the building, Ozborn was still pounding on a neighbor’s door, shouting that it was SBI business and an emergency.

A shadow slipped silently through the apartment window and came to stand beside Bec. It was Vex, and the only reason she knew was that he had landed so close to her. In a single smooth motion a crossbow bolt shot from a concealed mechanism in his sleeve and struck the warlock in the arm. The jolt made Vael, the warlock, lose his grip, and he fell five stories and hit the ground hard. Vex turned to Bec with dead seriousness and told her to take him down before he could summon the others. Bec reached out with a crackling beam of lightning that linked her to the fallen man below.

Vael rose to his feet while the lightning still ate at him, apparently unbothered. With a flick of one hand, an enormous cage of force sprang up around Freki and Xarlus as they drifted toward the street, and Callie, who had followed them down, was caught inside it too. Its bars were invisible, and they were half an inch thick and half an inch apart. Vael then released a roaring column of red-gold hellfire into the sky, a beacon that could be seen across the whole harbor district. “Now we wait for my brothers,” he said. “Do enjoy the view, Agent.” Xarlus lifted his hands and begged him to stop, claiming he surrendered. Vael only smirked and told him that his turn was next.

Ozborn finally got a neighbor to open his door. The old man peered out over a security chain while Ozborn argued, pleaded, and threatened him. Through the gap, Ozborn saw an apartment crowded with carved wooden animals, the life’s work of someone skilled and now past his prime. When the door finally opened, he rushed through and found the window shut. He did not slow down. He ran and leapt, daggers in hand, and burst through the glass. As he plunged down six stories, he hurled one dagger at the warlock below. Time seemed to slow as he threw, and the blade went straight into Vael’s chest. Green flame leapt from the strike, jumped to the barbed devil who now stood near Vael, and burned them both. Ozborn teleported to the dagger the instant it struck and landed in the middle of the fray.

In the cage, Freki leaned against the bars and loosed an arrow tipped with crystallized black lotus extract, meant to put a man to sleep. It hit Vael square in the chest. A tattoo on the warlock’s forearm flared, and some foul magic took a piece of his essence and spared him the arrow’s effect. Callie and Bec both felt it. His infernal pact had protected him, but at a heavy price, and he could not pay it forever. Freki’s second arrow glanced off the fire that wrapped the man. Freki changed into his full wolf form and snarled in the cage. Vael, who had been briefly shaken, mocked him: “A dog in a cage. Very appropriate.” But Freki smelled a faint trace of desperation beneath all that arrogance.

Vael touched an amulet at his throat, and it glimmered with radiant light. A barbed devil, bristling with spines, appeared at his side. Freki and Callie understood that the devil had been placed between Vael and the direction Bec’s lightning came from. Callie saw that it drank in some of the electrical energy meant for its master. Callie also grasped that the half-inch gaps in the cage were just wide enough for something very small. She hid behind Freki, who puffed himself up to block the warlock’s sight. In a whisper of magic she turned into a mouse, slipped through the bars, and hid behind a pile of trash in the alley. Vael noticed that she was gone and demanded to know where she had gone, seemingly speaking to something invisible. Callie guessed he had an imp as a familiar, hovering unseen, and that this was how he had known where they were.

Vael answered Ozborn’s attack with his own. He raised both hands and fired beams of dark, agonizing energy at Bec on the fire escape. The tattoo on her skin cut the force of the blows. Even so, the last of them hurled her backward through the railing and off the edge of the platform. She caught the lip of the landing with one hand, but the blow had shattered her concentration, and her lightning died. Vael laughed. Xarlus begged him to stop fighting, but Vael told him it was no longer about him. When Bec tried to haul herself up, she slipped and fell. She had just enough time to cast feather fall on herself, and she drifted down to land on her feet in the alley.

Callie turned Xarlus into a mouse as well. She called him over to the bars and told him gently what she could do. He was terrified, but he had stopped being surprised, and he stepped close. She touched his finger through the bars, and in the next moment a tiny mouse streaked through the cage and ran away into the alley. Freki called on his ravens, Hugin and Munin, to find the warlock who had vanished into the brimstone. Munin reported that Vael had stepped through space but was still near. Hugin spoke only of “the one who comes.” Vex then stepped out of the shadow, as if he had never been hidden, and looked straight at an empty spot at the corner of the cage. “You’re alone, initiate,” he said. “Nobody sent you. Nobody’s coming.”

Vael appeared in the place where Vex was looking, and he stared back at him. “Where is the civilian?” he demanded. “Tell me now.” “In my pocket,” said Vex. Vael told him to hand it over. As if his own will had been taken from him, Vex reached into his pocket and pulled out the mouse by its tail. Then a booming voice rolled across the alley. A grizzled, bearded warlock had arrived, and he stroked his chin as he looked over the party. “Initiate Vael,” he said. “I’ll be taking that, I think.” He turned to the others and said coldly that they would discuss their trespass afterward.

Last we left off, the party’s investigation brought them to the cramped apartment of Xarlus Shale, a witness whose testimony they could not afford to lose. As they questioned whether the local law could be trusted, a fire-wreathed warlock of the infernal order of Asmodeus began pounding on the door. With Vondal locking the way and vanishing, Ozborn clinging unseen to the ceiling, and Bec weaving a silent fog, the group decided the safest course was to spirit Xarlus out the window and away from anyone they could not trust.

What followed was a desperate escape across the fire escape, six stories above the alley. Freki’s leap shattered the rusted railings, Callie’s pixie wings and healing kept Xarlus alive, and Bec’s feather fall saved them from the drop. The warlock, Vael, appeared above them and nearly lured Xarlus back into his grasp, but Freki wrenched him free and all three tumbled through the air. A bolt from Vex’s sleeve, a lightning beam from Bec, and a flaming dagger hurled by Ozborn through a plate-glass window all struck the warlock. Vael answered with a cage of force, a beacon of hellfire, a barbed devil, and dark beams that hurled Bec from the platform. Callie turned herself and Xarlus into mice and slipped between the bars.

Now, as Vex confronts the unseen imp and Vael compels him to hand over the mouse that is Xarlus, a booming voice rolls across the alley. A grizzled, bearded warlock has arrived, and he claims what he came for. With the witness in enemy hands and the party’s trespass still to be answered for, we pick up in this tense moment…

A warlock came knocking in flame, And he pounded and shouted a claim. The party climbed out With a witness in doubt, And the fire escape fell all the same!

Down they drifted by feather-fall’s grace, While Ozborn dove into the place. His dagger flew true With a green flame it threw, And Vael got a burn on his face!

Callie turned them to mice in a cage, But Vex was enthralled by the mage. He gave up the mouse In the dark alley house, And a bearded one stepped on the stage!

Welcome to the most coordinated the party has ever been: a six-story fire escape escape, with a witness who just wants to go home. A fire-covered warlock of Asmodeus named Vael showed up at Xarlus Shale’s door, pounded on it like a landlord with a grudge, and the party’s solution was to climb out the window. Sure. Vondal locked the door and vanished with the key, Ozborn hung from the ceiling trying not to sweat, and Bec made a stealth fog, because nothing says “we’re not here” like a mysterious cloud seeping under the door. Then Freki jumped, the railings all fell off the building, and Xarlus ended up dangling by one hand. Who among us hasn’t had that kind of Tuesday?

The fight only got dumber from there, in the best way. Ozborn rode the warlock like a bull, Vex shot him with a sleeve crossbow, Bec got blasted off a platform, and Vael caged half the party in invisible bars half an inch apart. That was a mistake, because Callie turned into a mouse and then turned Xarlus into a mouse too. Then Vex, the guy who was supposed to be saving the day, got mind-controlled into handing over the mouse by the tail. And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, a grizzled older warlock showed up and said “I’ll be taking that.” Great. Wonderful. Love that for them.