“The Prison, the Prober, and the Proof”

Returning to consciousness this time took every bit of mental effort that Kah’terra could muster. Part of him wanted so badly to remain in the Cathedral that it was like dragging an anchor against the rest of his will. But he held true to the desire to see his comrades again, and eventually, he began to gain an awareness of his surroundings.

Hard… a hard surface, beneath him, holding him up, wholly unlike being borne on the gentle breeze of the cloudlike Cathedral realms.

Cold… a draining cold, one that seemed to pull the warmth out of his body, taking for itself the naturally warming heat a body would normally possess.

Jarring voices… a series of harsh, guttural sounds, yelling perhaps, or demanding, a jarring contrast from the peaceful choir of the Cathedral’s Voices.

Then a slap! Harsh and painful across his cheek. Then another slap!

He opened his eyes in time to catch the third attempt, grabbing the wrist of the being who’d hit him twice already.

“Alright!” he growled. “I’m up!”

He let go of Yumaia’s Tiefling hand. “Good,” she said. “You’re lucky they chose me to wake you. Rohkud wanted to have that pleasure himself.”

The seven-foot-tall half-giant rubbed his wrist with his meaty hand. “Rohkud only need one slap to wake up sleeping Gnome.”

“Chances are, you’d have put him in a coma,” Dowlin suggested, shuddering his wings.

Kah’terra leaned up on one hand, then sat upright. He blinked a few times until he could get his bearings. He sat on a hard flat surface, possibly a bed or a low tabletop, made of the same featureless white material that could have been stone, steel or something else, that made up the walls, floor and ceiling of this featureless room. The space was relatively small, with a flat panel on the wall to his left that emitted light, though no sky nor trees could be seen through it. On his right was a mostly open wall barred with a row of narrow beams of pure red light. The opposite wall held two more white bed/tables, and a fourth rested on the right, closer to the bars of—

“A prison cell.” Kah’terra harrumphed deeply. “We’re in prison.” He looked down at the plain gray robe he was dressed in, an identical if smaller version of the same robes that the other three wore. “I’m guessing all of our gear is gone, too?”

“It’s not all bad,” Dowlin said cheerfully. “Look!” He held out his right arm that, until recently, had been surmounted by a prosthetic hand, the previous occupant having been bitten off by an angry black dragon that the five had fought nearly to the death.

“There is some more bad news, though” Yumaia began, then halted. She glanced back at Rohkud and Dowlin.

“What” Kah’terra said. “What could possibly be worse than being imprisoned and all of our gear—”

He looked around the room again, this time in disbelief. “No. No!” He got to his feet and stood defiantly if a bit wobbly. “Where’s Apophis?!”

Dowlin inspected his wingtips, thinking of hiding his head beneath them and sleeping through the answer. “Apparently he—he didn’t make it.”

Kah’terra sat heavily back down on the solid white bed. He was known to grumble a lot, harrumph frequently, but rarely if ever did he swear. This time, he did.

“Dammit,” was all he said.

The big giant walked over and dropped a meaty hand on the old Gnome’s shoulder. “Rohkud gonna miss big-boom dragonman,” he said, with rare sincerity. “Good friend, good friend.”

Dowlin draped his wings in front of him. “As a sorcerer usually does, he’d made a pact with some sort of powerful presence,” he said. “He knew the price for his bargain: that when he died, his soul was forfeit.” He cocked his owl-like head to one side as if listening for an unheard voice. “I wish we could get him back, but I fear he’s beyond our help.”

The old Gnome sighed deeply. Then he resigned himself to moving on. At least, the four of them were alive, and together, even if they were stuck in a blasted cell. “And just where in the blazes are we?” he asked.

“We’re not quite sure,” Yumaia answered. “We still have access to some of our talents,” she said, as she manifested a small flame at the end of her fingertips. “I can create many of my Druidic spells, but I cannot connect with my Source.”

Despite having had his revelatory experience with the Voices, Kah’terra realized how difficult their future would be if he could no longer replenish his Cleric spells. He reached out to Ioun, but as Yumaia had explained, he found no answer, no connection, nothing.

“As best as we can figure,” Dowlin added, “we’ve awoken in the Astral Plane. This cell here is one of a few dozen in this…whatever this place is.” He made a gesture with one hand to the bars.

Kah’terra got back to his feet and crossed over to the barred doorway.

“Rohkud tried touching light-beam,” the Goliath offered. He rubbed his fingers as if they were still hurting from some recent injury. “Rohkud get shocked and thrown against other wall. Rohkud suggest you not try what Rohkud tried.”

The old Gnome inspected the glowing red bars without touching them. They seemed to be twinkling from within, like tunnels of the tiniest captured snowflakes. After Rohkud’s warning, he dared not touch them. Instead, he peered through them at the hallway beyond. There were other cells up and down the wide hall as far as he could see. The walls seemed to be made of solid stone, though the hallway was of a darker stone than the cells, with occasional pillars spaced every pair of cells, and oddly glowing disc-shaped light fixtures hanging down from the vaulted ceiling overhead.

“How long have we been in here, d’ya reckon?” he asked, staring at the empty cell across from them.

“Rohkud woke up first,” Yumaia answered, “then Dowlin, then me. Since we’ve been awake, there’s been a long period of light, then one of darkness, so maybe one day-night sequence. The weird thing is,” she said, rubbing her Tiefling stomach under her robe, “they haven’t fed us, and we haven’t been hungry. Nor have we needed to use any, uh…” She searched for the right word, then settled on, “Facilities.”

“Good thing, too,” Rohkud added. “You’d not want to share same room as Rohkud if Rohkud had to use facilities in one of the corners.”

“Hmmm,” Kah’terra mused, as he stroked his beard. “I wonder when our jailers are planning on telling us why we’re in here?”

As if on cue, a door far to the left down the corridor opened up, and a smallish metallic humanoid wadded down the hall. Kah’terra was familiar with the race called the Warforged, living metal-men designed to fight a war that ended too abruptly for them to find a new purpose for their lives. But those were tall and powerful constructs; whatever this was waddling down the corridor, he looked nothing like them.

The little fellow looked like he was made entirely of different types of metal: iron, steel, brass, even some bits of silver, all welded or molded together. He was accompanied by two massive bodyguards, if that was what they were, bearing neither sword nor spear, but long metal tubes, hollow at one end, with wooden shoulder-braces at the other, and some sort of finger-mechanism near the wooden part.

The metal-man plopped down in front of their cell, while the guards took up positions on either side of the barred wall. He blinked his metal eyes, which made a soft clinking sound as they did.

“Well, so you’re all awake now?” His voice was slightly grating, like the wheels of an overladen cart straining across a cobblestone street. “Are you ready to confess now?”

Kah’terra looked at his companions. “Confess? To what?”

“To piracy, of course.” The metal-man blinked again. “You were found where only pirates are found. Like these blackguards.” He indicated the other cells with a jerk of his brass thumb. “They’re pirates. You must be too. So, confess, and we can more on with your sentencing.”

“Look, we’re not pirates,” Yumaia said, a little testily. “We fight against pirates, and other thieves and criminals.”

“So you say.” The metal-man leaned forward. “Can you prove who you say you are?”

“That’ll be a little hard, without any of our gear,” Dowlin said. “Are you planning on giving any of it back?”

The metal-man scoffed. “You have everything we found with you, which is to say, nothing.”

Kah’terra saw an opening and pushed for details. “Where exactly were we found?”

“Somewhere out there,” the metal-man replied with a wave of one metal hand at the white square on the opposite wall, “out on the Astral Plane.”

The Astral Plane? Kah’terra wondered to himself. He’d heard about such a magical place, an endless expanse that served as a connection between thought and reality, a void of nothingness where, according to some old tomes, the Gods go to die, when they’ve lost all their followers. But how did we end up here?

“If you found us on the Astral Plane,” Kah’terra continued, “then how’d we get here?”

“Oh, we police the Plane for pirates that have fallen from their ships,” the metal-man replied. “That’s how we know you’re pirates.”

“But we aren’t pirates!” Yumaia said with some exasperation. “Look, my name is Yumaia. I’m a druid who protects the weak. That old Gnome is Kah’terra, a cleric of the highest honor. This avian is a monk named Dowlin, who fights for justice.” She extended a hand at the half-Giant. “And this big fellow is Rohkud.”

Rohkud waved a big hand. “Rohkud no pirate. Rohkud is mer-cen-ar-ee.” He pronounced the word carefully, as if it might bite him on the way out.

“Really?” the metal-man said. “And does Rohkud know the difference between a pirate and a mercenary?”

The three looked at Rohkud, knowing his reply might free them or keep them locked inside for a very long time. The half-giant thought for a moment, then said, “A pirate takes things from others, for himself. A mer-cen-ar-ee is paid to fight others—” He glanced around at his comrades. “And sometimes, the ones they fight are pirates. Like what we did.” He puffed out his massive chest, and added proudly, “Rohkud and friends fight pirates!”

The metal-man gave a harrumph that would have made Kah’terra proud, then got up from his sitting position and turned to leave. “We’ll talk later,” he said over his shoulder, “if you can prove to me that you’re not pirates.”

“But we’re not—” Yumaia said, exasperated, before she gave up.

But the old Gnome wasn’t willing to take their continued imprisonment so willingly. With a wave of his right hand and a low murmur of archaic words, he manifested a magical effect called an Arcane Eye. He sent this invisible entity through the cell’s humming bars, and following the metal-man as he headed for the exit at the end of the hall.

Through this spell, Kah’terra was able to watch as their jailor pressed a small section of the wall, and a sturdy metal door swung open. Up the stairs beyond, the entity could perceive a longer hallway, with a pair of very large, grey-skinned humanoids in crisp blue uniforms, carrying what looked like long tubes with a thick wooden piece on the lower end.

When the metal-man proceeded through, the door swung shut and locked with an audible clang. Kah’terra tried to push the invisible Eye through a small gap near the doorframe, but some sort of anti-magic spell prevented the entity from progressing any further.

Defeated in that direction, the old Gnome swung the Eye back towards the cells. He sent the entity to inspect each of the interiors, noting that most of them were occupied by large 6-foot-tall insectoid creatures with two legs and four arms, a type he’d never seen before. They seemed somewhat like the hand-sized bugs some called mantises, though never anywhere near this size.

While he did this, Yumaia came up to him and whispered, “What are you doing?”

“Arcane Eye,” he whispered back. “Scouting out the hallway and the other cells.”

“No,” she replied, then whispered closer, “how are you doing that without any reagents?”

The old Gnome paused. He hadn’t realized that the spell that would normally require a reagent, in this case a small tuft of bat fur, worked perfectly fine without that part of the casting. He shrugged his shoulders. “Must be a different set of rules in this world.”

After he’d checked out the twenty or so other cells, he dropped the spell and reported his findings to the rest of the group. “If there are insectoids nearby,” Yumaia said, “then maybe I can communicate with them.”

She approached the glowing red bars. She bent over almost double, as if she were sick to her stomach. But instead of throwing up, her whole form began to shrink to an incredibly small size. In her place appeared a small green-and-brown mantis, with long, delicate, fluttering wings that bore her aloft and through the gaps in the bars.

In her mantis form, Yumaia flew off to the left, past one empty cell, then on to a second one, occupied by one of the human-sized insectoids. She flew through the bar, being careful not to strike their glowing surface, and tried to communicate to the being, using the mantis’ innate chirps and clicks. Immediately, the insectoid stood on its large hind legs and began to emit a loud clacking sound with its mandibles. Yumaia sensed a telepathic message, not unlike the kind that Apophis used to send. The message was loud in her mind, insistent and repetitive:

One of us! the message cried out. One of us!

At almost the same moment, every other insectoid in the other occupied cells began to repeat the same bizarre activity, clacking their mandibles and repeating the same screeching telepathic message, One of us! One of us! One of us!

Though they didn’t use normal voices, the cacophony from their mandibles was more than enough to draw the attention of the guards outside the locked door. It swung open and slammed against the back wall, as a dozen blue uniformed beasts stormed down the stairs.

They teamed up in pairs in front of each of the cells with the clacking insectoids. One of the duo would touch a section of the wall up high, the bars would drop down, and the large troopers would jab their metal-tubed weapons at the insectoids, wooden butt-end first. It didn’t take much to get them to stop their clacking, as their message had been communicated successfully to the rest of the hive.

Yumaia was able to fly back to her own cell as the troopers began storming down the stairs, though she was spotted entering the original cell by one of the uniformed guards. He pointed this out to the last being down the stairs, which just happened to be the metal-man.

“And what were you doing out of your cell?” he asked when he’d waddled up to their bars.

“Who, me?” Yumaia replied, now back in her Tiefling form and using her most innocent voice. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Look, my friend,” Dowlin said, taking over, “we just want out of here. We’re not pirates, we’re not thieves, and we certainly don’t belong in here with—well, whatever those other creatures are.”

“They’re called Thri-Kreen,” the metal-man informed them. “They are connected by a hive mind, and are used by many pirates as the perfect crew. They don’t rebel, they aren’t greedy, and their hive mind allows them to stay in contact with each other better than any spell.”

The robotic figure looked up at the guards around him, then considered his options. “If I have the guards lower the bars, will you give me your word there’ll be no more shenanigans?”

Dowlin, Yumaia and Kah’terra gave their immediate assent. But as soon as one of the uniformed guards touched the wall section and the bars dropped, the massive half-giant raced towards the opening, intent on breaking through the wall of guards who were almost as big as himself.

They must have expected this kind of reaction, for three of them caught him under his arms and threw him back into the cell. Rohkud slid a good six feet on his posterior, then stood up and said rather sheepishly, “Rohkud didn’t know what she-nan-uh-gans means.” He straightened himself up and nodded with a wide grin. “Rohkud understands now.”

Just them, Kah’terra had an idea. “Look, you seem to be an advanced group of… well, sentients,” he said, speaking to the metal-man. “You must have clerics or religious priests that you’re familiar with?”

“Yes,” the metal-man replied slowly.

“Well,” the old Gnome continued, “I happen to be such a cleric. And I have access to a spell that can determine whether anyone within the reach of the spell is speaking honestly or not.” He spread his weathered hands apart. “With your permission, I’d like to cast that spell, and prove we’re telling the truth.”

The metal-man considered this for a moment. “All right, you have permission to cast just that spell.” He made a motion with his metallic right hand, and the guards, who now numbered eight, all lowered the hollow-tube end of their weapons at Kah’terra and his friends. “But no tricks.”

Kah’terra closed his eyes, said another arcane phrase, made a sweeping motion with his left hand, and a soft radiant glow appeared in the cell, centered on him. It even extended a little ways out into the hall, catching the metal-man and a few of the guards within its glow.

“My name is Kah’terra,” he began slowly, “and I am a cleric who follows the god Ioun. The last combat we were in before landing here was a fight to the death with a coven of Ilithid, Mind Flayers, a ferocious battle that seemed to have taken all our lives.” He left out the part where he communed with the Voices in the Cathedral of Living Banners, but so far, he spoke the truth. “Yumaia, tell them an honest lie.”

The Tiefling druid snorted delicately. “My name is Yumaia, I am a druid of a race called the Tiefling.” So far, the glow remained pure white, until she added, “And I so love your hospitality here that I wish I could spend the rest of my life in this cozy little cell.” Every word following “so love” made the glow tinge reddish-brown until she stopped talking, when it returned to its original whiteish color.

Dowlin and Rohkud added their own names and memories of what they recalled. Nothing they said altered the pure white glow in any way.

“So, you’re not pirates?” the metal-man asked, somewhat in disbelief.

“No, we are not,” Yumaia replied in as controlled a voice as she could manage.

“Hmmm…” said the metal-man. “Looks like you may be telling the truth after all.” He straightened up, and with another officious wave of his hand, the guards beside him stood at attention, their weapons held at their sides, hollow tube-end pointing up.

“Well, if you’re not pirates, and you’re used to fighting against overwhelming odds,” he said, with something of a twinkle in his eyes, “then I may have just the job for you.”

He turned on one heel and headed for the door at the end of the hall to the left. “Come along. Don’t dawdle.”

It took aa few moments before the group realized they were free to leave, as long as they followed the metal-man. For a split second, Rohkud considered heading down the right side, the opposite way that the metal-man was heading. But one look from the steely glare of the guards convinced him that was a bad idea.

“No she-nan-uh-gans,” he replied, with his customary wide smile, before joining the rest of the group heading in the opposite direction.