24. Purpose

Following their victory over the living statue, the G.O.A.T.s ventured up the newly revealed staircase. It wound around in an escalating circle until it delivered them into an extensive, domed chamber with light grey stone walls and uneven flagstone floors. Esoteric symbols large and small were carved into every surface.
It was evident to the adventurers that this was a temple of some sort, the heart of the complex in the Nameless Mountain and it was mostly barren, apart from in the centre, where what appeared to be a seated, unmoving person beside a water well. Beyond on the far side of them, perched on a jutting stone. was a familiar grey owl.
The owl's strange yet familiar voice spoke directly inside their minds, "Ah, there you are, you have finally arrived!"
Gilles continued to proceed walking further into the temple, seemingly not taking notice. Noticing this, the owl cocked its head and then danced in alarm, exclaiming "Oh, your friend Gilles is not in control of himself!"
Gilles' fingers suddenly gestured arcane symbols in the air, and a fog suddenly engulfed the space around him. From the fog, dark swirls appeared and strange shapes suddenly emerged before the adventurers could even realise what was happening.

A flock of dark creatures clumsily flew out of the dark portals, their small, squid like bodies having a thick membrane of skin stretched between each of their tentacles. They had multiple eye spots around their dorsal shell, whilst the mouth underneath sported a lamprey-like mouth, gnashing and dripping foul mucous.
A stranger thing still emerged from one dark portals, what looked like a giant brain with a bird beak, with barbed tentacles hanging from its underside. Its horrifying shriek echoed through the chamber. As the dark portals dissipated, the strange creatures closed in on their feast - the adventurers!
Bal'Aur charged ahead, yelling "We gotta knock out Gilles!"

As he sat on his throne, Gilles pondered his glorious empire, reminiscing on how it came to be. With access to the grand library of powerful spells and forbidden knowledge, he used his cunning and subterfuge to undermine the old, stagnant kingdoms until they bowed to him.

Bal'Aur, Eberond and Catsby tried to ignore the small flying octopus-like horrors, which later they would find were called darkmantle, and the floating bird brain and tried to reach the possessed Gilles. They rushed into the fog and swung wildly with the blunt ends of their weapons at shapes resembling their friend. However the darkmantle monsters took every opportunity to attach their lamprey mouths on to them, rending through armour and into the flesh.
Brutalithops thought this was the perfect time to find out what the random potion he concocted in the alchemists lab below would do. He hoped it wouldn't kill him.
Gilles, or whatever mind compelled him, made use of the cleric-wizard's magics to escape the fog and reach the far end of the temple chamber, fumbling away at a particular sigil engraved on the wall.
During all this, the alarmed owl flew off its perch and swooped down the stairs and out of the chamber.

Being the overlord of the empire was not accepted by all people of Merra, and Gilles was not surprised when a few rebellions rose against him. But with near unlimited magic and brutal assassins at his disposal, those rebellions were quelled without mercy.

The adventurers pushed on through the fog but the bites of the attached darkmantle were starting wear them down.
The floating bird brain screeched, "Grell!". The tentacles that dangled underneath its hideous body lashed at Brutaliothops. The goblin stood back for a brief second looking at the blue-ish residue left on the wound by the grell, and realised it was poisonous. Though the effects never came and he surmised that he had been lucky - the potion provided brief immunity to poison! Bal'Aur was the first to reach Gilles, who was doing something to a sigil. Gilles turned his head towards Bal'Aur and in a voice not of his own spoke, "You pathetic worms will not foil my escape!"

Still sitting on his throne, he looked down the dais and at his son, Dave De Rais, who stood guard. The man had been an accident following Gilles' drunken frolic with Florence, but had his uses, if anything to carry his line sometime in the long future. His thoughts turned to Florence, his friend since his days pretending to be a Helmite cleric. he had no love for her but like their son, had her uses.

Just as Eberond reached Gilles and Bal'Aur, the darkmantle on him crawled across his body and savaged his face. The half-elf's unconscious body slumped, yet this did not stop the monster trying to violently burrow into Eberond's mouth.
Catsby and Brutalithops slowed their advance but starting to successfully hack down the things or put them to sleep using Catsby's bardic powers, yet in return they were suffering considerable wounds from the darkmantle and the grell creature.
Gilles once more cast a fog spell around him, making Bal'Aur's attempts to subdue to the man that much more difficult.
Suddenly there was a sound coming from the stair case, akin to a galloping horse. From the stairwell leaped a table bound by magic, the same one the adventurers had encountered in one of the temple chambers. Atop the moving table was the owl, directing its strange mount to charge at the darkmantle.

Gilles hummed a happy tune, leisurely sat in his behemoth throne. The world was as it was - under his rule and order - and he was content. His eyes scanned across the grandiose throne room, gilded and thread with the most opulent materials from Merra. The finest warriors and servants at his beck and call.
He looked through the arched windows, which showed but a sliver of his empire. Above were dark clouds that had sweltered there as long he remembered, but there was a sliver of light now cutting through them. The incandescence hit the valley and burned away the clouds and the land beneath it. The light exploded and smashed into the throne room and Gilles in it.

Gilles' body lay slumped across the sigil, with Bal'Aur standing beside him. The half-orc had a feeling the presence controlling his compatriot had been very close to succeeding to whatever it was trying to do.
With some help from the animated table, Brutalithops and Catsby had been successful in dispatching the remaining monsters. Eberond was also on his legs, saved right on time by Catsby's healing song, though the scars on his cheeks where the darkmantle had pried open his jaw were still visible.
With the imminent threat gone for now, the owl told them how he could save Gilles, which essentially involved activating the temple using the Wild Weave collected by Gilles over the last few weeks in a vial, along with a spherical key Gilles already had on him. This in turn would power the owl to regain a further sliver of his godly powers. The compatriots were not overly sure of the owl's motives and purpose but decided to help anyway. In accordance to the owl's words, they placed the vial and key into the hands of the shriveled body sitting by the well, who the owl mentioned was a wizard of The Cabal Aeternus. As if by a shift of weight, the husk of a body and the components it clasped fell down into the well with a great echoing crash. The adventurers and the owl looked at one another and after a brief moment of awkwardness, a bright light exploded up from the well, bathing the temple chambers in iridescent light. All the sigils in the room glowed and shifted whilst a strange noise reverberated around them. When the noise stopped, the beam of light continued to shoot into the apex of the ceiling and the sigils continued to glow.
Where the owl was, now appeared an elderly human in lapis hued robes and mercury-like eyes. He walked across to Gilles and put his hand above the forehead. Gilles' face squirmed but when it came to a rest, his eyes opened. Gilles' dream of a ruler of an empire broke and the control of the evil presence was gone.

The Tribulation of Exposition

The owl turned man who called himself Azuth had already claimed before he was a god of magic, expelled from this world following the events a millennia ago which saw the Rift closed, thereby ending The Incursion but extinguishing magic as a consequence.

For better or worse, the bindings had recently begun to unravel and his essence had returned through the cracks, but Wild Weave also leaked into the world. Although this Wild Weave saw a gradual return of magic to Merra, its unfiltered energy also corrupted the land and its denizens alike, as the adventurers had already seen.
Azuth said he had plans for the Rift to ensure that such energy would arrive into the world in a safe way, but would require the aid of other gods of old who yet slumbered. Some of his brothers and sisters already stirred, their dreams touching certain individuals who would inspire enough faith to wake them.
He explained that gods had an ancient rule that they could not directly affect the world following its creation, and instead would provide guidance to their worshippers to enact their will.
They could however invest their considerable power and a sliver of their being into avatars, who could perform great feats, as they did during the mending of the Rift a thousand years ago.
When asked, Azuth said that there were both good and evil gods, at least from the perspective of a mortal, yet he saw all as part of a balance. the god mused his interest to see which of his siblings would wake first, for they would hold greater sway over Merra for a long time to come and influence the world accordingly.

Since the mending of the Rift saw the gods weakened into slumber, only Helm remained awake, appointed to protect Merra. However a thousand years on, the isolated god, bloated by the belief of the world, had become detached, granting his power carelessly whilst feeding on the Wild Weave that in turn corrupted him. Through his mercury eyes, Azuth saw a mark in Gilles, indicating Helm's interest in the mortal.
Azuth then asked Gilles if he would be open to the idea of becoming an Avatar of Azuth when the time came, but also said that Gilles was marked by Helm, but could not do both. As as an alternative option, Gilles could ignore both and become a wizard of his own merit.
Gilles was more interested in demolishing the institutions that forbade wizards and sorcerers and sought Azuth's assistance in doing so, but the god brushed this aside, saying that such a quest was inconsequential compared to what risks the Rift posed to the greater realm.
Gilles ultimately agreed that he would become the Avatar in time, and Azuth in turn dispelled the mark of Helm and those powers granted by that, and then reforged Gilles into a sorcerer, marked by Azuth's favour.
The god of magic then explained to the other adventurers that he saw certain marks of divine interest in some of them, though could not provide further details. He sensed that the gods laid their destiny north of Trg and past Mt Dar, where lands of Dezaria met Deathsea, the great desert.
Azuth could summon a portal and deliver them to the town of Trg now if they wished. His powers were still developing, and could not transport them any further at this stage.
Before they left, Azuth also provided some insight into The Lord of the Lake who had enslaved Gilles, an extremely ancient being who emerged from the Rift during the Incursion. It had hoped to destroy a sigil in the temple that bound the creature to the nearby lake, for it had been trapped here by Cailus Blacktooth, a member of The Cabal Aeternus as a way of protecting the temple and trapping the ancient.
Catsby enquired to his curse, which saw him transformed into a female. Azuth smugly replied that as he could not interfere with the material plane, he could not reverse this but suggested a higher ranked cleric of Helm could solve the issue.
The adventurers also received a reward from Azuth, whereby they could place an item into a bucket from the well and intone a word of meaning. Azuth then had them winch down the bucket into the well of light and then return it. The mundane items had transmuted into something more and Azuth wished them luck in their endeavors.
Azuth summoned a portal against one of the walls of the temple chambers and stepped back. The animated table skulked toward him and as the god bent down, the table transformed itself into a massive ornate blade that Azuth then somehow tucked inside his robe sleeve. The adventurers gave him a look and Azuth replied that it was something he was keeping safe for a friend.
The G.O.A.T.s then walked through the portal and found themselves in an alleyway, assailed by the familiar fish stink of Trg.

END OF BOOK I