The Church of Sorrow
Ravi tapped four pebbles into the dirt at your feet.
One. Two. Three. Four.
"There are four very dangerous people following you," he said. "They will be here before nightfall."
He looked at Crowley.
"That one — closest. But not the same kind."
Then he flew south, and you were alone at the lip of the hole.
You went in anyway.
The shaft was deep — eighty feet, maybe more. AC went first. The rest of you followed. Whatever mechanism lives in the throat of that shaft caught you, cushioned you, set you down in darkness without a sound.
The air below smelled of old smoke and deep stone.
There was one hallway. You walked it. AC noticed the carved band running along the walls — geometric, patient, exact — the kind of carving that does not depict anything. The kind that says: here is a boundary. Here is the edge of one world and the beginning of another.
She was waiting at the end of it.
The Dark Mother. Her face was behind a veil. Her guards stood two steps back and one step out on either side, as they always do, as they apparently always have. She asked who you were. Ubys told her. She asked what you needed. He told her that too.
She considered you the way a house considers weather.
Come, she said. You may rest before you continue.
The room she gave you is called the Priory.
A midnight waterfall runs down one wall into a channel in the floor — thin, black-bright, always moving. The walls hold precious metals in the stone. Cushions on the benches. Oil lamps above.
Initiates came with food. Underdark things — fungus in careful preparations, things you did not name aloud, wine so strong they apparently call it drought poison. One of them was a young blonde elf. She moved like someone who has been told the right way to carry herself and is working very hard to remember it.
Ubys watched her.
"If you're allowed — you're welcome to join us."
She looked over her shoulder. Her discipline nearly held. Then:
"The darkness is a pure thing, but it's also pretty good for secrets."
She sat down.
She had been there for almost a year, she said. Hard to tell without the seasons. She had surrendered her name when she joined — that is the Sharran way, at this temple; the name is offered to the dark, and the dark keeps it. She did not seem to miss it.
"All of us here know what it's like to lose everything," she said.
No one had asked her to say it. She said it anyway.
"I have never felt the comfort of knowing that I have nothing to lose anymore."
She looked content with this. You were less sure.
The wine was strong. The lamp-light was warm. She talked about the temple — the way the barrier blurs here, so that some nights she is probably standing in the Shadowfell without knowing it. She talked about a shadow dragon that visited once, a long time ago, in the vast cavern beyond the circular room. She did not know its name.
Then she said: "The place is a buzz — we have two other visitor groups right now."
She caught herself. Stood up. Moved too fast.
"I have to—"
You offered to keep the secret. She was already through the door.
You slept.
The oil burned down over the course of the night, and when the last lamp went out the Priory was dark except for the glimmer of metal in the walls and the sound of water on stone. Those of you who dream, dreamed. Those of you who don't sat in the dark and waited.
In the morning, footsteps came. Many of them. The door opened.
The Dark Mother looked rested.
She apologized for the delay — she had been with her other guests. She mentioned, without particular inflection, that the initiate who had spoken out of turn had been disciplined accordingly.
"It is time," she said, "to facilitate your journey to the Shadowfell."
She walked you deeper.
Past sealed side-chambers. Down a flight of stairs. Down another. The stone grew closer and the air grew heavier and the temple kept going long past where it should have ended.
At the bottom: a round door, trimmed in gold and deep purple. The guards slid the halves apart with both hands.
Inside: black and purple. Braziers with purple-tinted flames. A statue of Shar on a low dais — not triumphant, not reaching. Just present. Just here.
And at the far wall: a mirror that was not a mirror. Dark. Still. Perfectly black. The surface did not move. It did not reflect.
"This portal connects to the Church of Sorrow," the Dark Mother said. "In the Shadowfell. A cathedral on a mountaintop. You may have heard of it."
Ubys had. Almost.
"A choir," she said. "Lost souls. People whose grief was too great to release. They couldn't depart. They sing there, still."
She looked at the portal.
"Shar tends them."
You said your farewells. Ubys turned at the threshold.
"Those other guests — they didn't go this way, did they?"
The Dark Mother smiled just slightly behind her veil.
"Shoo," she said. "Go on."
Ubys walked through.
The Church of Sorrow resolved around him like a slow exhale. Gothic arches overhead. Ribbed vaulting in pale stone. Murals on the walls — scenes from a world, from a time, from a place that is not this place and may not exist anymore. Above the nave, floating, a choir of incorporeal forms singing in registers that press against the inside of the skull.
For him — almost manageable. He has heard the sound of death before.
He looked up into the atrium space.
Four shapes. Robed. Floating. Very still.
The Shadovar mages who have been hunting you since the keep looked back at him.
They had arrived before you.
They had been put there before you.
Behind you, on the temple side, the Dark Mother looked at the rest of your party and said:
"It is time. They should enter."
Her guards stepped forward in a half-circle.
Lessie didn't wait to see what happened next.
She dived through the portal.
Next session: the Chorus of Sorrow, and four mages who have been waiting.