Entropy 💎🐲

A story from Erick's personal life, told to a friend one night

"I ever tell you of the time I made one of my simulacra able to get drunk? Was a tricky thing, that - complicated, getting the physiological reactions right... but that's not what I want to tell you of. It's the aftermath that gets interesting."

We all felt it, in that moment. A dread in the pits of our very hearts, something we couldn't explain.

Our group was rather small, all sorcerers banded together for mutual assistance against the horrors between the stars. But what we felt wasn't just something we could fight - it was so far beyond us, beyond anything we could imagine, that we all simultaneously collapsed. It was like if an ant suddenly understood exactly what a human was, and that the human it was gazing up at wanted its little world erased; that it was saved only by faltering bonds that would fall apart in a blink of an eye on the human's scale.

We could feel a tugging in our souls, pulling us away from its source: we determined it to be Sylvain, the old elven homeworld, from where one of our number originated. Somehow he managed to look even sicker than the rest of us.

The most knowledgeable of our number, Ka'ara, a paradisian who recently joined us, said we had a couple Earth weeks before whatever that was broke free. Most of us wanted to just flee, but I could tell from the feeling left within me from that pulse that even if we did it would be futile. Running would only delay it.

I set us a course to Sylvain, and we arrived less than a day later by our ship's internal clock. Numerous other ships were showing up at the same time, the ley lines were practically clogged with every sorcerer in the galaxy either sending warnings or showing up personally. It was a mess out on the rim of the system, chaotic as we wove our way through the traffic to the head of the pack.

Evidently, Elven leadership had already heard the news; as we approached the little bluish-green dot, we started seeing massive craft lift off from its surface, whole chunks of city older than humans' figuring out of agriculture ripping themselves free of the bonds of gravity. There'd always been rumors that the ancient ecumenopolis had an "ark-ship" protocol built in, so I suppose that's been confirmed. One flew right past us, ancient buildings overgrown with flora contained in a warded bubble for transport. We could even see some people milling about inside, making sure the thoroughly-aged magitech was functioning properly. We continued on anyways, reaching the planet to see miles-deep holes where the city centers and their rings once stood, deep into the world's crust. The feywild was already starting to spread a bit into the ones next to it.

And of the feywild, in its heart a panchromatic light was growing, each pulse of it sending it further out. Cracks in the planet's surface, no doubt caused by whatever sort of cosmic horror was planning on unleashing itself soon. Despite the distance still between us and it, we all felt each pulse of it in our very souls, like it was trying to draw us in and we were naturally inclined to get the hell away from it.

Only one other ship ventured as close as ours, a legendary vessel we'd heard stories of for as long as our group had existed - the personal ship of Erick, the Voidsinger. It was like someone had taken a number of other large ships and ripped them apart, cramming the best pieces back together in a frankenstein of machinery, and then twisted the resulting mass into accepting aged brick and stone, blending it all into almost a sort of sideways wizard tower - no mundane engineering had gone into this thing, it was a pure work of intense magic alone that made it.

A signal crackled to life over our somewhat old commlink, coming from the craft.
"I don't know who you kids are, but you should get somewhere far away. This is my fight, and I don't want any unnecessary collateral damage."
It was the voice of Erick. We didn't know what his plan was, or even if he had one, but we got out of there as fast as our engines could take us.

"Hey, you been in the dungeons recently? Looks like someone's set up a shop selling cheap magic items down in a lot of them. You should check it out, maybe they've got something worth the trip."

That's what your friend told you that got you down here. Now, after making your way through a number of monsters and traps you'd rather not dwell on, you see it before you: a brick and mortar shopfront standing in stark contrast to the ancient stone surrounding it, clean and brightly lit despite the darkness and grime all around. A sign out front advertises "Half-Price Magic Items - Always On Sale!" with a mechanical construct waving a sign around pointing to the entrance.

Well, you've come this far. You step through the door, finding tidy and organized shelves with more mechanical, humanoid constructs - one sweeping the floor while another stands behind the counter, drumming its metal fingers on the clean, polished wood surface. A somewhat conspicuous door is set into the wall by the end of the counter. The constructs pay you no mind as you peruse the shelves, save for the one sweeping up avoiding bumping into you. You notice they're out of the one thing that has a name that has caught your eye, a wand of illumination.

Stepping up to the counter, the shopkeeper-construct's gaze moves from staring off into the middle distance to looking at you, suddenly at attention. "Ah, how can I be of assistance?" it asks, its voice tinny and sounding like a poor quality recording.

"I'm interested in a wand of illumination, but it looks like you're out of them," you reply. It's probably just an automated store, a few have popped up in larger cities as of late, but not in out of the way places like this. You've gotten somewhat used to the way they operate.

"Well, I can't leave my counter, you never know when a customer might come in!" it says, gesturing to the otherwise empty store. Definitely automated, you think to yourself. "But, if you'd like, you're free to check in the back." The automaton gestures to the conspicuous door, its somewhat dusty frame standing out against the otherwise immaculate surroundings.

With a shrug, you approach the door. You notice out of your peripheral that the counter automaton lacks legs, instead being attached to a metal box bolted to the floor, but that's pretty standard for such automated shops, so you continue through the door.

What you find in the 'back' of the store is mostly what you would have expected, boxes on boxes with labels scrawled in some unintelligible script. However, looking past the stored merchandise, you see a hallway. Its walls and floors are polished wood, the ceiling made of some sort of stone. It grows darker as it extends deeper into the space, fading into an inky black in the distance.

Looking away from the hall for now, you glance over the boxes and quickly find what you were looking for - a wand labeled with a little tag reading "illumination". flipping the tag over, you find that it not only casts a light before you, but apparently is meant to help you find your way when lost... somehow.

As you're about to head back out through the door and make your purchase, your curiosity gets the better of you. You turn, and stare down the dark hallway. Muttering the activation phrase to the wand, it shines a light before you, and you venture into the darkness...

...

Some weeks later, in the middle of the nearest city, a crazed-looking adventurer bursts out of the back storage room of an automated shop. Apparently, they'd found a store in a dungeon and went into its back storage area, and somehow gotten lost and ended up here. They were clutching a wand that was later found to have a misdirection curse on it, turning them around and getting them hopelessly lost.