Episode 71

The chaos of Celine’s outburst still lingers in the frozen air. Collective Action take a moment to collect themselves — a few tense glances, a few quiet apologies. Celine, awkwardly sincere, eventually mumbles one in Chance’s general direction, but doesn’t quite meet her eye. The group, shaken but not broken, decide that Aveline’s newly acquired — and obviously cursed — weapon can wait for another day.   They turn their attention instead to the third structure looming in the northern stretch of the buried city. Its entrance, half-collapsed and rimmed with ice, opens into a hall lined with cracked sigils and shattered runes. Inside, another elemental portal hums quietly — this one to the Plane of Air. Unlike the others, its Magic doesn’t shimmer or surge; instead, a steady stream of wind breathes through the chamber, gentle but constant. It tousles hair, tugs at cloaks, and seems almost to sigh, as though exhaling the city’s long-forgotten secrets.   Amongst the corpses here — brittle husks of mages who once sought the divine — the party uncover more shards of Quintessence. Crumbling notes nearby speak of mounting fear among the acolytes: concerns that their master’s work might truly grant immortality… and questions of whether he would ever share it. Other entries hint at dangers ignored, hubris justified, and the steady descent into ruin that followed.   With the last of the elemental halls explored, the group turns toward the broken heart of the city — the collapsed central tower. Its upper chambers hang suspended mid-air, held aloft by unstable Magic that flickers with ghostly light. Snow drifts through the open wounds in its structure. Climbing through the ruins, the adventurers discover a painted portrait beneath a slab of fallen stone — a man with piercing eyes and a proud expression. The inscription beneath reads Master Tharos Galudrin.   But the party recognise him. They’ve seen this face before. It belongs to Archmage Zephryus, the elemental savant they once rescued from the Isles of Flame.   So he did achieve immortality, it seems — though at the cost of this city and its people.   Beneath the tower’s wreckage, they uncover a trapdoor leading below. Descending, the air grows still and ancient. What waits below is a library — untouched, impossibly preserved beneath the centuries of ice. Shelves of frozen tomes line the walls, and in the silence, a faint tinkling sound echoes — glass-like wings in the dark. The sound resolves into a flurry of movement as elemental mephits burst from hiding, their shrieking laughter cutting through the cold.   The skirmish is brief. Frost melts and reforms as the creatures are dispatched, their broken forms dissolving into motes of light. With the pests gone, the party begins to search.   Using a magical astrolabe found among the scholars’ tools, they navigate the library’s endless catalogues, uncovering tomes on aboleths, a scattering of spell scrolls, and curiosities lost to time. A single potion, still faintly warm to the touch, sits beside a Dragonslayer Longsword — a relic gleaming faintly in the pale light.   When at last they return to the surface, the air feels different — thinner, alive with something unseen. A whisper rides the breeze, threading through the ruins. Lyra pauses, her eyes narrowing as she listens. The voice is not speaking — it is chanting. The words are ancient, cyclical… an incantation echoing endlessly through the planes.   The group exchange uneasy glances. Above them, something stirs in the shattered sky. The suspended chambers — the floating remnants of the tower — shift ever so slightly, casting long shadows across the frost.   Whatever dwells within them has awoken.