The one with Goyra the Oracle
The wind blew up over the mountain, blowing away some of the loose papers, making the dockmaster curse, as well as making the workers shiver a bit in the cold as it hit their sweating bodies. Whom it did not disturb however was Yanika, sitting on the dock, her legs dangling over the side. Well, except for her long hair maybe. The young girl was happy, and anxious, smiling and biting her lip in annoyance, a range of conflicting emotions raging through her as she looked out at the massive skyship being readied for its journey. She turned to the beautiful dark haired woman sitting next to her and smiled, reaching over to take Emine’s hand in her own.
“Where was I? Oh right, we had just talked our way past the two Naga Guardians and were about to enter the temple of the Oracle. The temple itself had seen better days, not having been maintained in decades, and inside, sitting on a dais, we found Goyra, the Oracle, a medusa and former angel of Arrisia. We introduced ourselves as we handed over our gift, and cutting to the chase, told her we were there to stop the incursion by Dolos and that for that we needed a tuning fork attuned to the astral plane. Much to everyone’s surprise, she immediately gave us the item we needed, as we were going to use it to help the city.”
She brushed her fingers through her hair in a futile attempt to return some semblance of order to it. The immediate agreement to help from Goyra had come as a surprise for sure, and even though their quest was a pressing one, Yanika had felt bad to just go, so instead had decided to stay and chat a bit with the oracle. The city had endured the incursion for decades, it could endure it a few hours longer.
“Goyra told us quite a bit of interesting information, such as who Dolos exactly is. As you know we’ve been trying to figure that out for a while now without much success. She, however, knew and could tell us. Dolos is some former demon lord hellbent on weaking the bonds between our world and his, to create chaos and destruction, and that if the incursion is not dealt with, it would grow strong enough for him to come through. Which is the reason we need to stop it here also!”
Emine nodded in agreement. She had long wondered what the poisonous fog underneath the city meant and now she knew, thanks to her adventurous girlfriend. She could not help but look at her in admiration. Yanika, oblivious to this, continued talking as she recounted some of the other, more obscure information that Goyra had shared.
“She told us that she had helped move Baltia into the astral plane with the last of her angelic demi-god power, when her world was destroyed by a large dragon-like creature, after it had destroyed their Gods. Can you imagine that? A dragon with the power to devour gods? Well it helped of course that he used to be the god of destruction of course, but still”
Yanika shuddered at the thought, happy in the knowledge that that creature was there, on a destroyed world, and not here on Ourboros. Emine wrapped her arm around Yanika and pulled her close, cuddling with her on the edge of the dock.
“Anyway, Goyra moved Baltia and its shapeshifters to the astral plane, and was happy to learn that some of the other angels like her had done the same for other races, in many different ways. She did tell us she had felt a familiar presence with us coming to her temple though, so we told her about Teiar, the fallen angel underneath Himmin, who turns out to be her brother of some sort. So we promised her to get her to Himmin after we had dealt with the incursion.”
After that they had left the Oracle and had headed back into the city to prepare. Yanika had all the necessary ingredients to make the PIC, Portal Imploding Contraption, and set to work while the rest ran off partying and doing other silly things. Except for Spade, who had headed into the library to find some more information on the old gods.
“So while Kayne and Majid had their asses handed to them in the arena, in the vain hope to be able face the champion, and Aitlas went back to Himmin to fetch some more potions that we needed, I worked on the contraption, together with y assistant Lut, a specialist in skyhips. When I was almost done with building the device, Kayne came up with the brilliant idea to go and ask for another tuning fork, this time one for the Abyss, so we could use it as a compass. This of course meant I had to sneak back into the temple to talk to the Oracle. She told me she didn’t have one available, but could make one if we brought her a living demon. That or we had to find one ourselves. We opted for option B, and Aitlas and Kayne went back to Himmin to see if they could buy one. It took them a bit of doing, but they did find a place that sold one at a reasonable price. Sometimes even these giants can be persuasive.”
Yanika had not asked too many questions on how and where they had gotten it, but long story short, they had taken it off the hands of some cultists. Not their dead hands either, they had actually bought it.
“So after they returned I constructed the compass and we headed to the Tome Ward to deal with the portal. Or at least that was the plan. We discussed a bit on how to approach this, and while I would have prefered the stealthy approach and avoid any unnecessary encounters, in the end we had decided on just walking through the front door.”
Of course this had immediately led to a fight between the group and three incorporeal demonic creatures with the ability to possess corpses, called Dybbuks. And of course there were plenty laying around for them to use. The fight had been difficult, so spread out over the entire square with these frightful creatures, but once they ran out of corpses to inhabit, the fight had been over quickly.