Chapter 9: Exploring the Tower and an Audience

June 6

Neeia and Kieron lead Ra toward a healer. Before that, however, Ra examines what the crossbow the others found looks like. The crossbow in question is quite shabby but nicely decorated. They reach the healer without problems, where a full healing spell is cast on Ra, and after that, they return to the inn to rest.

By five in the afternoon, everyone is in good condition again. Jaysek tries to cast a tracking spell on a second pigeon, but it fails after half an hour of trying. The group rests for about half an hour and then goes outside the city. They cast a few spells, and after that, Ra flies up to the heights in hawk form. Then they release the pigeon, and it starts flying toward the city. Jaysek sees that the bird flies over the wall and then estimates from there that, taking into account the direction of their previous birds, it has flown to the area of the promontory in the northeast corner of Magnimar.

Ra flies after the bird and sees where it goes. The others wait for Ra to return. Ra returns flying to the others and tries to explain something, so Neeia casts a mind-reading spell on Ra-hawk and finds out what Ra has seen. He has seen that the bird has flown into a tower about to collapse in the shadow under the bridge and through its window inside. The group starts walking toward the bridge.

They come to the tower and then wait for Ra to come out of bird form, and after that, the group starts flying up to the tower. They go inside to the bell tower section. In the tower, there are four large bells. Jaysek goes to the roof to look and sees an invisible spider-faced guy there. Jaysek returns down to tell about it, and after that, both Neeia and Ra go up to look, but they don’t see the invisible guy, but they do see a devil. When the group discusses below, they can’t reach an agreement on what’s there, so they decide to go look at the matter, so Kieron, Jaysek, and Neeia start flying upward, while Ra, in turn, starts very slowly sneaking up the stairs.

When the flyers reach the roof, they see the devil there, but nothing else. Neeia tries to talk to the devil, but it rushes to attack. Neeia flies to the roof on the other side of the devil, and at that moment a snake-woman-looking character appearing there casts stone magic on Neeia, turning her skin into stone flakes. This doesn’t improve Neeia’s appearance.

The snake woman hits Neeia with a stick several times, so Neeia decides to run to the other side of the roof. Kieron has sneaked from behind an angel statue and approaches the devil from there, and when the devil follows Neeia, Kieron sneaks onto its back. On the way there, she stumbles on a stone, kicks the stone noisily to the other side of the roof, and after that, the devil dodges both of Kieron’s strikes. Jaysek and Ra join the battle. When Ra comes close, he shouts, “Can I have a shield?” but notices that he still has it, after which he then asks for a big speed boost, to which Neeia replies that you already have that too.

Both enemies mainly hack at Neeia, and the others swing at whichever one they can reach. At some point, Kieron moves to the side of the devil and hits it with her silver-coated sword, whereupon she begins to feel that there’s nothing there, and at most, she did a little damage. Kieron thinks and concludes that it’s probably an illusion, and after focusing a bit, she confirms that this is the case. She tells the others, whereupon the others also notice that it’s an illusion.

At this point, everyone moves to attack the snake woman, and Ra shouts, “Kieron, give me the silver-coated sword; it hasn’t been tried yet; with my own weapon, I can’t do damage.” Kieron throws her weapon to Ra, who catches it in the air. Ra swings with the sword, but the snake woman responds by hacking Ra into poor condition.