The Sorrows of the Map Makers

The Map Room was a broad room with curved, luminous walls. The room was elongated, more like an oval than a sphere. Kale looked carefully at the walls and reported that an enchantment made them glow. He also detected some magic from the floor.

On the floor was depicted a vast map of a world -- the Siege World. The map seemed to be old, perhaps created before the First or Second Apocalypse. The terrain of the world -- the mountains, the valleys, the plains -- was captured in what seemed to be an abstracted painting across the floor.

As we walked across the map, the names of cities appeared beneath our feet. We stopped to examine the names, and we noticed a bright light appear in a different part of the map. The light quickly vanished, and after a while, another bright light appeared in another part of the map.

"What is with these glowing lights?" Carlagnios muttered.

We spent about an hour examining the map before we found a part that could have been Lordahl. It was difficult to tell, since the map now described the world beneath the surface. Every few minutes, a glow would appear in another part of the map.

On the other side of the room was a doorway. In the room beyond this one, there was something moving. We carefully approached the doorway and looked inside.

The doorway led to a workroom with four tables and chairs. At each table was a hazy, ghostly figure, doing some paperwork. On the far side of this room was another doorway.

As we approached the figures, we noticed that they had ghostly wounds that they bled from. The blood was just as ethereal as the figures were.

"Hi," Bran greeted one of the figures. But the ghost continued to do his work.

Kale cast a spell to make the table glow, and the ghost looked up. The ghost looked around, as if trying to find the source of the glowing, before he looked at Kale and said, "All sturgeons, whales, porpoises, grampus, and large fishes shall be the due of the 100."

Kale made the other tables glow, and the other ghosts uttered the same, odd statements, as though speaking in some cryptic code of a law.

We went through the doorway at the far end, and we found ourselves in a room with no other exits. The room was a plain study with a single desk. A ghost sat at this desk as well. He was a wiry old man with split, braided hair and a beard. From a ghostly wound, he leaked ethereal blood.

"Please sit," he said, "I will be done shortly."

After a while, he lifted his hands to his face and rubbed them over his head.

"Now how may I help you? I am the Master Map Maker."

"We seek the location of the Centenarch," replied Kale.

"The Centenarch is nowhere," said the Map Maker. "Even a school child knows this."

"Nowhere?"

"You are asking me how to find nowhere. As you know, early in our struggle against the Lover of the Raven Queen, the Centenarch was magicked away to a pocket, where the Lover -- the Chimera -- could not enter. The door was open only to the 100."

"So how do we get to the Centenarch?" asked Kale.

"To get to the Centenarch, you must become one of the 100. Our world is ruled by the 100 from the Centenarch."

"So how do we become the 100?"

"To become the 100, you must ascend the slopes of the Bone Breaker -- a large, dormant volcano. At the top, you must challenge one of the 100 in an ancient ritual. They will answer your summons and battle you. Then, you must face the Harrowing Ordeal."

"How do we get to the Bone Breaker?"

"I can give you a map. You will also need the Ritual of Finding and the Challenge Ritual. Those you can find in any library. I can give you a map to that as well. Do you have any other questions?"

"Where are the focus houses?"

He frowned. "I used to know where the focus houses were, but I can't seem to remember now."

"What are the glowing lights in the map?"

"Those lights show us when someone is using our system for locating places. The lights tell us who is finding their way."

He scribbled down something on two strips of paper and handed them to Kale.

"Give these to the clerk outside, and they will draw up the maps for you."

We left the Master Map Maker and returned to the room with the four ghostly clerks. We handed the strips of paper to one of the clerks, who examined the papers and gave us a confused look. He gave the papers to the other ghosts, and they proceeded to draw up the maps.

When they were done, the clerk handed Bran the two scrolls, encased in nice, leather tubes.

"These are for you," the clerk said. "Now run."

Before Bran could respond, one of the ghosts cast his sorrows onto Carlagnios and possessed him. In his mind, Carlagnios saw what had happened to the ghosts when they were alive. "The demon for us," the ghost said, speaking through the voice of Carlagnios. "They slaughtered us all."

Another ghost possessed Bran and forced him to shoot at Firinne.

Kale quickly used his Orb of Imposition to transfer the possession from Carlagnios to another ghost. Firinne struck the ghost with a brilliant blade of light. It should have killed the ghost, but the ghost still remained.

"Their lives," Kale explained, "are shared. When we cause enough damage to kill them all, only then will they all fall."

One of the ghosts possessed Firinne. I would be only a matter of time before they possessed us all.

Kale cast a spell to put one of the ghosts to sleep -- the ghost that had possessed Firinne. She managed to break free of its hold on her.

"Now," Kale told us, "attack the sleeping one. If we can damage it enough, all of them will fall."

Carlagnios struck the sleeping ghost with this jagged axe. Firinne slammed the ghost with the fury of a martyr's retribution and glowed with a divine radiance that further damaged the ghost. I fired at the ghost with an excruciating shot and caught it in a hunter's bear trap, and the four ghosts vanished in a wail of agony.

As they disappeared, we could see them in their previous lives, savaged by the attacking demons. Was this part of the First or Second Apocalypse? This was truly a horrifying experience for these clerks.

We opened the leather cases and examined the maps inside. One map showed the path to the Bone Breaker (the mountain) from what appeared to be the buried city of Lordahl (beneath the present city of Lordahl). The other map showed the path to a library in the buried city of Lordahl.

We returned to Fasil and showed him the maps. He agreed to lead us through this buried city to the library, where we could find the rituals that we needed to find the Bone Breaker and challenge the 100.