Storm clouds burst…

The seven companions followed the battle-hardened brute towards Seafoam’s docks, wondering where Bacillus had decided to make his grand entrance. Without warning, the half-ogre stopped suddenly before the entrance of Arravis’ tower and jerked a thumb as thick as the pommel of Jekka’s sword, Sparkspitter, towards the door. Standing beside the door was an oily-looking human with pockmarked features, soot-colored hair and eyes and well-kept leather armor. Armed with twin long- and short-swords, as well as a strung bow propped at his side, he appeared hungry for a fight.

The half-ogre chuckled, a thick sound like a drowning man struggling for air. “Bosh ish waitin’ fer yash up dere.”

The Misfits exchanged glances of unbelief and their thoughts, propelled on mental winds by Huntress, flew between them like psionic wildfire.

Vaskesh: ‘Who doesss thisss fool think he isss…he cannot live here…this tower belongsss to Yilren now!’

Quela distributed the mental image of a nod to the group, but remained silent. Her mind was flooded with the painful thoughts of losing Master Arravis to the hag-infested disease, despite both her’s and Oricx’s best attempts to save him.

Oricx: ‘Vaskesh is correct. By law, this tower passed to the apprentice upon the death of the master.’

Jekka: ‘Meybe Yilren inside wit’ High-Guy’

Quela: ‘Jekka’s got a point – maybe Yilren has a new master?’

Karma: ‘And this is a good thing? I think not?’

Oricx: ‘The druid has a point, is this relationship something we should support, knowing what we do of Bacillus?’

Vaskesh: ‘What right does this Bacillusss have…taking over the magessss home?’

Dromar, swept up within the mental web of the Huntress, was unusually quiet, his red eyes staring up at the top of the Tower, his thin lips drawn tightly over his pointed teeth.

Ug, as usual, outside of Huntress’ mental connectivity, simply stood there looking up at the intent faces of his inactive compatriots. ’Me wonder why dem doos dat…’, Ug thought to himself, ’Dey just stand-stand-stand and not doos nufin.’. The horned goblin shrugged.

Jekka: ‘Enough talk, talk-talk-talk; Jekka go.’

The half-orc barbarian rubbed her short spiky hair in frustration and moved to open the door which led into the mage’s tower, but before she could do so the door was opened quickly from the other side. Standing within the darkened foyer beyond was a trim and pressed half-elf who regarded the companions with forlorn, jaded grey eyes. The impeccably-dressed half-elf had thinning salt and pepper hair and a pencil-thin moustache; while he was obviously advanced in years, he also seemed fit and healthy, like a man thirty years his junior.

“Greetings”, he spoke in a slow, drawn-out manner; his voice sounding like it had been withdrawn slowly, like thick syrup, from the trunk of a tree. “The High Inquisitor has been expecting you. Please walk this way. Your…pet -“, the half-elf looked down the ridge of his hawk-like nose at Ug, his left eyebrow cocked slightly, “- must remain out-of-doors. The High Inquisitor does not allow non-experimental or un-summoned beasts into his residence.” The house-butler’s words were measured and even, as if he had just this morning read over the policies and procedures manual and memorized the section on “Unauthorized Beasts”. He seemed, in a word, unflappable.

Ug’s heavy brow furrowed and Jekka began to growl through her clenched tusks, but the manservant had already turned and began ascending the stairs, as if he had absolutely no doubt that his words would be followed to the letter. Quela shrugged and Jekka snorted in return, with a nod of her head, silently instructing Ug to wait outside for a few moments. “Jekka be back”, she said thickly.

The horned goblin chuckled a bit, turned and trundled back out the way he’d come.

---

At that moment, far to the west, a trio of cloaked and hooded forms gathered silently in a darkened room of their own. This darkened room was far from Seafoam, in the bowels of the City of the One in the center of the Eternal Ocean, but the small port city was central in the minds of those therein. The forms moved towards a triangular table, centered in the small room, which was lit by a single, flickering candle. As it sat, the largest of the cloaked forms bobbed its hooded head; a wan voice issued forth, “Welc’m, bruthers.”

Instantly, the tallest of the cloaked forms lashed out at the speaker, striking him in the face with a gloved backhand. The blow was brutal and vicious, knocking the speaker to the floor and spattering chunky blood across his now revealed pale features. The speaker’s eyes, which protruded too far from his face, like an odd-looking fish, seemed to roll about in his head for a moment, finally coming to rest on his attacker. His mouth gaped open in complete shock, only solidifying the ichthious analogy.

“Never speak that ignorant appellation to me outside the Temple, you spineless buffoon”, “Striker” hissed, its voice showing far less emotion than one would have expected. “Fish-Eyes”, who still seemed to be gasping for air, nodded – a tiny, ineffectual gesture and slowly began pulling his bulk up from the floor. As he did, the smallest of the robed forms, which had been as still as a statue up to this moment, raised a robed arm, out of which snaked a long, slimy tentacle. The tentacle shone even in the pallid light of the lone candle, iridescent colors flowing and swimming along its black surface. The fell appendage slithered through the air, across the room, and gently wiped the blood from Fish-Eye’s face, cleaning it completely. It then returned whence it came, with unnatural swiftness, sounds of satisfied slurping issuing forth from its owner’s darkened cowl.

Striker sat down as if the events which had just occurred were nothing out of the ordinary and began speaking. “What news from the West?”

The tentacled abomination moved closer to the table, which was nearly taller than it was, but did not sit. Rather, “Abomination” cocked its cowl slightly to one side and instantaneously a feral sounding chuckle bubbled up from Striker and Fish-Eye put a chubby, webbed hand to his pale-lipped mouth, as if in shock.

“Perfect. It sounds as if plans are progressing along quite nicely…” Striker replied. Fish-Eye started to open his mouth, as if to say something, but a quick jerk of Striker’s hood immediately silenced him. Striker’s hood then moved back to Abomination, “Anything else to report?” Abomination shook its hood, indicating the negative. A smaller tentacle slipped out of the cowl and pointed towards Fish-Eyes.

“Yes, yes, yes…” Striker sighed, his hood once again looking again towards Fish-Eyes, “So what news from the Temple?”

“Th’ templ’ is rife wit’ rumors and whisperin’…’ey were foolish enough ta brin’ da dem’n wit’ dem, if ya kin believe it!” Fish-Eyes slurred, this thick lips flopping around the words like dying carp on a dock. “Many nows ‘ear an’ see da’ church’s weak underbelly fer themselfs. Should’na be’a hard task’ta gain symfathy an’ aid fer tha’ war.” The pale man grinned, revealing a double row of shark’s teeth set behind his blubbery lips. The word ‘war’ seemed to slip easily from his mouth, as if it were a cherished favorite, spoken often.

Striker nodded, he seemed pleased with himself and with this news; he drew intricate, invisible symbols on the smooth table with his gloved fingers as if lost in thought. “Excellent. Now, we have only to wait – the little present for our friends to the East has been sent and should be unwrapping itself soon. We shall have to keep a close eye on them…”

Nefarious chuckles were heard and voices were lowered into conspiratorial whispers as another of Abomination’s tentacles lashed out and snuffed out the candle, plunging the room into abject darkness. It mattered little, for the room’s inhabitants seemed to far prefer the gloom to the light…

---

Bacillus sat, brooding, atop his newly gained mage’s tower – the structure was far inferior to his home back on the mainland, but it was apparently the best that could be found here on the shores of this uncivilized, barbaric continent. He let his honed gaze glide around the room like a snake in an oil-slick – there were a few arcane baubles that might amuse him for a day or two, perhaps a week, but it would seem that there would be precious little distraction here from his primarily goal.

The High Inquisitor felt his blood heat and the back of his neck grow hot, as it did each and every time the opportunity to grind evil into paste beneath his boot presented itself. There was little he loved more than slowly flaying the skin from a screaming heretic and it seemed that this “new land” was literally brimming with them. He would be busy, oh yes, o so very busy…

A silent, magical alarm sounded in the High Inquisitor’s mind and he spun languidly in his overstuffed leather chair and peered out one of the tower’s small windows (making a mental note to [i]glassteel[/i] the tower walls at his first opportunity) and saw that the “famed” Misfits had entered into his courtyard, below.

’Misfits indeed’, Bacillus thought, a sneer crawling across his pasty features; a trio of beetles scurried up out of his blood red collar and began anxiously touching the corner of his mouth with their antenna and forelegs. The Inquisitor raised a sallow, smooth hand into which the beetles scuttled. They were instantly joined by several flies which buzzed from a darkened corner of the room and a small trickle of squirming maggots that wriggled their way out from under Bacillus’ cuff.

“Yes, yes, my dear Noctuula…” Bacillus crooned to his swarm familiar, as a mother would to a child, “I know, I know, my sweet.” A faint glimmer of a smile played around the edges of his usually down-turned mouth and flashed in his dark, maroon, bloodshot eyes. The Inquisitor spun back to face the doorway of his inner sanctum, knowing that soon, his manservant, Forthington, would usher in his first “visitors”. Suddenly, a long, flat, gleaming black centipede scurried onto the polished surface of the desk and into Bacillus’ sleeve while a fat bloodfly landed in his graying hair next to his ear; he looked up just as the door opened.

Bacillus wordlessly nodded as Forthington introduced the Misfits and backed from the room with a bow. The High Inquisitor leaned back casually in his chair and toyed aimlessly with the gleaming, ice-blue rod of frost that he had appropriated from the Tower’s previous owner. Bacillus took special note and perverse pleasure at the half-fiend’s raised eyebrows upon seeing his newest toy. He smiled a small, sharp smile revealing a set of perfect, bone white teeth and spoke, his voice deep and dangerous, like a night-black pit filled with deadly, voracious vipers.

“Well, well, well! It is so very good to finally meet my newest servants, the well known Misfits!”

Bacillus warily eyed the group of oddities arrayed before him; gauging their reactions, mentally noting and recording their subtle body movements and responses. The High Inquisitor knew, after the decades of interrogating prisoners and suspects, that the slightest mouth twitch or batting of an eye could tell volumes about an individual and their innermost motives.

The lizardman hissed quietly through clenched, pointed teeth as his nictitating membranes quickly flicked over his orange eyes; his tail snaked back and forth slowly – all three were signs of irritation and unease.

The half-demon’s red eyes were still trained intently on the glowing rod of frost in his hand; other than his greed, which he wore like a garishly colored festival mask, the demon-spawn did a fair job of masking his innermost thoughts. Bacillus thought, for a moment, that he glimpsed the slight furrow of a brow and a shifting of boots – signs of fear or at the very least, uncertainty.

The giant half-orc female was easy to read – she widened her stance immediately, grated her grossly protruding tusks and her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists – it was utterly obvious that she wanted to attack. Bacillus sighed inwardly, he had hoped that these Church-led buffoons would have provided a bit more challenge, really; so far, they had been nothing other than predictable.

The High Inquisitor glanced to Oricx and instantly discovered the challenge for which he was yearning. The accursed water genasi was utterly unreadable – its eyes like black pools of perfect oblivion and its cold, near featureless face betraying nothing of the thoughts that played in the mind behind it. Further, the blasted creature’s stance had not changed a single iota since it came to rest in the room – trying to read those horrid creatures was like trying to delve into the mind of a statue, Bacillus silently cursed.

Bacillus passed his bloodshot eyes over the wemic for a moment and the word “savage” flashed into his mind like an eldritch beacon. The Inquisitor knew, from hard-earned experience, that trying to extract reason from barbarism was a near-fruitless cause; he knew in his bones that this brainless creature was capable of little more than cognitive thought. The wemic would pose no problem to him, [b]ever[/b], the High Inquisitor thought haughtily.

Finally, the High Inquisitor let his eyes rest upon the “leader” of this rag-tag group of abominations and half-breeds – the nixie paladin known as Quela. Her steely gaze met his with a righteous indigence, instantly conferring to Bacillus her utter reliance (and subsequent weakness) on her faith. Her mouth was a thin, tight line and her posture exuded defiance: arms cross tightly across her fish-scale armored chest, brow furrowed deeply, feet exactly shoulder width apart.

Bacillus smirked – perhaps this one would prove to be entertaining, if nothing else. Philosophical sparring and verbal fencing played a close second in the High Inquisitor’s list of true loves.

Quela spat her words to him in a thick, fluid accent – like a mud-choked brook. “Ya mean servn’ts o’ tha One, right High Inquisit’r?”

Bacillus noticed that while she instantly defied him with her tone and her implication, she was careful to toe the line in regards to Church protocol, addressing him by his formal title. The pasty-faced man arched his left brow slightly as he replied, waving his hand slightly.

“Oh yes, yes, of course, my dear Quela!” he said with mock apology, his tone sickly sweet and wholly false. “Servants of the One, yet — completely beneath my care, concerns and instruction…”, Bacillus followed up his initial verbal feint with a hammering blow, his tone gliding back over itself like a deadly viper, switching in a single instant from open, pleasant and light to direct, cutting and venomous. “I am, after all, the new Mayor of Seafoam and I was appointed, of course, to investigate your recent actions and the inexplicable results thereof.” Bacillus bared his teeth in the vaguest resemblance of a smile and glared at the tiny paladin – visually daring her to challenge his authority.

The nixie backed down only slightly, but quickly retorted. “An’ as tha new Mayor, why’re ya not livin’ in tha Mayor’s house?”

Bacillus let his smile melt into a wide, satisfied smirk. “As the Mayor of this “town”, if it can even be called such, I have the authority to claim any unattended structure as my own, to do with as I see fit.”

The lizardman could bear no more, apparently, and his words burst from his scaled lips like a crocodile from the dark waters of a swamp. “But thissss tower wasss claimed! By Yilren!”

“Who?” the High Inquisitor asked in false concern – none in the room doubted that Bacillus knew exactly to whom Vaskesh referred.

“The apprentice of the Mage who once owned this tower.” Oricx stated flatly.

“Oh, yes…” Bacillus leaned forward, elbows on the polished hardwood desk, and laced his fingers together. Noctuula, in the form of several score maggots and beetles, writhed out of his cuffs and onto his hands. The High Inquisitor continued speaking without pause, “…the child. I offered to let him remain here, with me, but he declined. He also declined the ownership of this tower. I have a document in my possession, stating such, signed by his own hand…” Bacillus eyes narrowed like a predatory cat closing in for the kill.

“Then where’s tha boy?” Quela demanded, setting her jaw with determination.

Bacillus waved a hand dismissively, slinging maggots to the floor with tiny, wet plops; drawing a look of disgust from Karma. Beetles’ wings unfurled as they too were launched into space, and they quickly zipped back to their master, their thick wings droning in the still, emotion-charged air of the tower. “Oh, you know, children. Terribly unpredictable… I’m afraid the poor boy ran off into the night…” the Inquisitor paused for a moment, letting those in the room hang on his every word and then delivered a verbal jab to the throat, “…crying unpleasantly, I’m afraid…” Again the feral smile crept across his pale lips like a jungle cat through long grasses.

Jekka growled, “Wot’d’ya do to him?!?!” There was murder glowering in the half-orc’s eyes and her tusks grated audibly. Her muscled, calloused hands strayed towards the hilt of her massive magical greatsword, almost of their own accord.

Bacillus knew that she was no match for him, especially within his inner sanctum, but deep within himself, he could not deny that she was formidable. The thought sparked something within the Inquisitor’s foul, maniacal mind and the horrible, off-kilter, gore-splattered gears of Bacillus’ mind began churning with the foundations of a plan. He pursed his lips, sat back easily in his overstuffed chair and shrugged his shoulders.

“I did nothing but tell him the truth. I even offered the whelp more than he deserved — a chance at greatness at my side-“

“-He refused.” Karma stated flatly, her voice supported by the underpinnings of a deep-throated growl, interrupting the Inquisitor mid-sentence.

Despite the rage that boiled up within him at his interruption by an uncivilized animal, he nodded silently. ’Let them think what they will…’, he thought to himself. He held his tongue for several heartbeats and then spoke quietly, “Yes. He refused. I offered him that shack that Morningstar was living in, but he refused it as well.” A pair of bloodflies buzzed around the Inquisitor’s right ear and he nodded, “Yes, Noctuula, I know, my love, there’s just no pleasing some fools.” As he spoke the last word, he stared into Quela’s eyes, as if directly challenging her to act. When the nixie did not take the bait, Bacillus continued, “I’m not really sure what set the whelp off, but he started bawling like a baby and ran from the tower, ahem, excuse me, my tower. Furthermore, I know not, nor do I care, where he has gone!”

“I’ve heard enough!” Vaskesh spat, turning to head back down the winding, hand-crafted stairway. He placed his hand upon the ornately carved balustrade, fashioned into the likeness of a fearsome, spiraling dragon, “I’m going to find the boy before ssssomething happensss to him!”

“Hold, lizardman.”

Bacillus voice was as empty and as emotionless as any that had ever been spoken within the Tower of Arravis; his words were as cold and as deadly as the grave and the weight of magic was woven into and carried along with them. Despite his will to leave, Vaskesh froze in his steps.

The Inquisitor continued. “I am not finished with you just yet…”