Chapter 15: Isekai Life & Snake Dissection

From there it was easy to find the site of the temple dedicated to Yphion. It was the huge, burnt-out husk right next to the Islingquet, was a pair of morose-looking acolytes picking through the wreckage. Our quartet was just one of several lookie-loos peering over the husk of the temple, but a pair of city guards were on hand to prevent people from swarming the site.

“The two guards are men, I’ll handle this,” Katriana said, and drifted away from the party, “Why don’t you look for what evidence you can?”

Ashryn was still pestering Voss about something, so I was able to move around the whole structure and get a good look. While it seemed a lot of the outer shell was stonework, it had been placed around and supported by a wooden framework. Unlike that tomb at the edge of the city, a fire here had been a disaster and completely destroyed the building.

I had no idea what I was supposed to find, though, especially since the guard that Katriana wasn’t talking to kept giving cut-eye every time I got a little too close to the rubble.

There was a loud curse and the sound of cracking timber as one of the acolytes hurried stepped back from a freshly collapsing section of wall.

Once the dust had settled, I shouted over at the acolyte, “What are you looking for, anyway?”

Wiping his hands on his smudgy blue robes, the acolyte stepped over to me, close enough we wouldn’t have to raise our voices too much. “We’re trying to find remains.”

“Remains? Like human remains?”

“Well, mortal remains to be less specific. We were conducting a ritual to resurrect someone when the fire happened, and the new hierophant wants to find what’s left of him so it can be properly buried.”

I blinked, confused until I remembered that in AD&D clerics could combine their powers, to give one of their number a boost to cast higher-level spells. “Uh, you don’t know who that person was, who was going to be resurrected?”

The acolyte shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I thought it was an adventurer. Some man in plate mail showed up with a big donation a few days before, asking about whether it’d be possible. But, although the Eternal Order of the All-Father was able to resurrect Hannah, one of the assistant priests and myself, the old hierophant and the other assistant were not released by the gods. Only the hierophant possessed enough faith and power to resurrect with help, the new one can’t.”

So ... the old hierophant was just high enough in level that he could cast Resurrection with the maximum bonus he could possibly attain from four other priests. Because he and one of the other mid-level clerics couldn’t be resurrected because they failed their “resurrection chance” save, they can’t resurrect that guy ... which means the body was in a bad enough state that Raise Dead, which requires a mostly whole body, wouldn’t cut it.

“Thank you for satisfying my curiosity,” I said, fishing a handful of gold out of one of my belt pouches. “I’d like to make a small donation to the effort to build a new temple.”

The acolyte jumped down from the wreckage, and accepted the donation with a deep bow. A gourd was produced, and a bit of fresh water was used to anoint my forehead as he blessed me. Not like, the spell Bless, but just a regular blessing. I think.

“Thank you for your kind donation, go forth and do kindness in the name of Yphion.”

I was ready to go forth, alright, but because Voss was discreetly trying to wave me over to where he and Ashryn were standing, not because of anything to do with that watery tart.

“Hey, look at this,” he said, tapping some smudges on the ground.

I was going to say something sarcastic about finding burn marks near the site of a building fire, when I saw what he was indicating- a blackened divot in the ground a half-inch deep, like something had burned away the stone itself, making a sinuous, halting trail away (or toward) the ruin and heading off (or coming from) across the street and down an alley.

“What do you make of it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart guy, smart guy. I just work here.”

“Oooh, we’re following clues, just like real adventurers!” Ashryn annoucned to basically everyone in the immediate vicinity. “This is so exciting!”

Voss frowned at her. “Is she always going to be like this?”

I sighed. “Hey, Ashryn, are you always going to be like this?”

“Be like what?”

At that point, Katriana came over, scowling, and looked down at Voss. “Just a tip for your romantic endeavours, don’t ever call a girl ‘cupcake’ until you know her really, really well.”

“Uh ... I take it flirting with the guard went well?” I ventured.

“Yeah, apparently, one of the priests they resurrected said that a courier had dropped off a small crate for the Hierophant the day of the fire, but the Hierophant couldn’t get it open so he left it in the rectory while they conducted some ritual. They don’t know what was in the crate, but I suspect it would have been what started the fire.”

Voss and I looked at each other, then down at the trail. Ashryn clapped her hands together and squealed, “Yay! A breakthrough!”

The trail lead across the street, along one of the buildings, and down a narrow alley. Worryingly, the trail eventually met up with four others that had emerged from the wreckage at other points.

Eventually, a wooden hardwood door appeared in the lefthand wall of the alley. The trails congregated around it, and there was a fist-sized hole burned through the wood at ground level.

Voss tried the door, and shook his head. “Locked.”

I turned to look at Ashryn. “Could you give it a listen?”

She smiled at me, squeezed by, and carefully put her ear to the door. After a few heartbeats, she shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Do we bust it down, or... ?” Voss began, but I was already incanting the Formula of Zher-ah.

The spell caused the wood of the door to tremble, then buckle, as the door shrank by 10% in all dimensions. The wooden snapped and shattered as the hinges ripped free, and of course the catch pulled away from the doorjamb. Soon, it was only being held up by the security bar that had been holding it closed in place of a lock.

Voss grinned and slipped his hand inside to release the bar. “Show off.”

I shrugged, grinning back “Someone bashing down a door would be noticed, a little splintering wood probably wouldn’t make it out over the crowd.”

With Katriana’s help, he managed to wrestle the shrunken door out of the doorway, and we ducked inside what seemed, in the dim light, to be the smithy at the back of a blacksmith’s shop.

It looked perfectly in order, as if the shop had yet to open. The only things out of order were the notes drifting around the door, probably slipped underneath by worried apprentices and blown around by our entrance- and the two-day-old corpse lying on the ground by the actual forge in a pool of dried blood, a look of surprise permanently inscribed on it’s face by rigor mortis.