escape

The group spends some time discussing how to leave Uxphon and how to get the 5 freed slaves out as well. Fix calls upon Zybella to send Joyve to aid in teleporting those 5, as well as Jhorn and Gavyn. Juric encouraged teleportation to Ephremon and had already agreed to aid the others in supplies to travel their separate ways. During this time, Evangeline communes with Denier to learn about the magical ink. She learns the ink was foreign to the book and that it will fade with time.

Neberos comes in after a bit of time and informs the group that guards are traveling door-to-door to inspect homes for the attackers. After Joyve teleports the others, Forsythe transforms the group into clouds. Hovering high in the air, they watch the guards come to the Methuk estate, inspect, and leave. Seemingly not finding anything. 

The group decide to travel to the Cloudcrystal Skyfields in search of the ruins of Yagoril. Flying over the fields, they see large shards of crystals floating in the air, and smaller shards shimmering from the ground beneath. They spot a traveling group, land, and meet Thomas, a crystal merchant. They learn he takes a harvest of the crystals to Qi to sell at the market. He also warns them of the “City of Bones,” which he had never seen himself, but had heard rumors of people disappearing in the area. They all pick up some shards from the ground for various future purposes.

Evangeline sits and focuses on the drawing of the bones attempting to locate it. After one failed attempt which made her nauseous, she finally succeeds and leads the group to the city. As they come upon the city, Kadath trips on a larger shard and finds another card. The Moon card, altered to look more like a pearl, is believed to have the symbol of Cyric. Voices also begin to whisper to the group, getting louder as they get closer to the city, “We’ll take you where you’ll want to go, but getting out, you’ll be too slow.”

Kadath enters the city first, realizing that once he crossed the threshold, the voices stopped. He also turned to see about stepping back down and found the city had a barrier. Knowing what they may need is within, the group join Kadath in the city. As they wander through the city, toward the concentrated area of magic in the center, they see the streets are large cobblestone, but the buildings are made of bone and mortar.

When they reach the center building, they enter the main floor, an empty room with stairs going up and another set heading down. They decide to follow the stairs up and find themselves in a multidimensional trap. Finding 8 distinct doors, they begin to experiment. They discover that when they cross a threshold of a door, the area seems to reset, but whatever is done to the doors remains the same.

They recall some information that may help them find their path out of this trap:
Second major city to be built, quickly rose to be first in this' class in magic and science, third to fall by its own demise, last to actually die.

Episode 65