I meant to post this up on today’s page but it slipped my mind.

This Thursday’s page is going to be delayed until Friday due to various circumstances. I’m leaving one job and starting another so I won’t have much time to get a page up and ready until I’m settled in on Thursday.

After this week, my comicking should be back on schedule. I might change my update days to Monday/Friday or Tuesday/Friday. I’m starting the semester up again next week and I may have some adjustments to make if Monday/Thursday doesn’t fit my schedule well. I will let you all know so you can plan accordingly. I know your lives revolve around my webcomic

Today’s post is a short story by Paul V on what Qul was up to when he snuck out of K’zink’s apartment!

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It was a chilly night in Sigil. The conditions were rather ordinary for most of its inhabitants, but to the cold-blooded Ssilirian amongst them, it was quite the difference from the torpid warmth that he was used to. Qul moved through the dark streets of the City of Doors as silently as he could. Even though his training had been focused primarily on camouflaging amidst the exuberant foliage of his homeland’s jungles, he could still be stealthy in the foreboding urban landscape around him. He knew how to step on puddles in a way that avoided the telling splashing sound, and how to stick to the prevalent shadows amongst the twisted streets that led to his destination.

The Hive. Qul didn’t really know what he’d come across. He half expected it to be an enormous, all-encompassing structure akin to a real beehive, but everything he had seen so far told him it would probably be simply more of those strange, intimidating buildings of rock and iron, full of blades and spikes jutting up; only with more soot and grime, more despair and disrepair to differentiate them from the rest of the city.

The Ssilirian had noticed the smoke almost from the very moment he had set foot into Sigil. It was… pervasive. And abrasive as well, with a strong smell of sulphur and a bitter taste of cinders. It was thick and clung to everything, his skin, his nostrils, his eyes, the sacred feathers on his shoulder. And the air was inexplicably thin. Most wouldn’t notice, but Qul had spent enough years exploring the width and breadth of Ssilir to realize that he was in a high place. He recalled K’zink’s explanation about the infinitely tall spire. It made no sense, yet the thinness of the air was a point in his favour. Shaking his head, Qul pressed forward. He wanted to get to this Hive place as soon as possible. He had a mission, and he wasn’t going to let some smoke get in his way, even if it made breathing a very itchy and almost painful affair.

Everything smelled awful in Sigil. And the more he followed Drake’s instructions, the worse it became. At first, it was a vague smell of brimstone and burnt coal, but as he approached what the tiefling had named “the Great Foundry,” he realized that the smoke itself had a disturbing number of different types of foul odours, from burnt wood to charred meat, ranging through the exhaust of smithies, typical cooking vapours, and even arcane fumes, of such an acidic and corrosive quality that they made Qul’s eyes water when the wind blew just so.

As the green lizardman raced silently through the mostly empty streets of Sigil, he made sure to avoid the little boys with the long, glowing sticks. They seemed to go around bringing light to dark places, and the Ssilirian greatly desired to remain in the shadows. He was still somewhat dazed from everything that had happened to him so far: being transported to a bizarre and impossible city, being almost murdered, losing his sacred blades and finding out that he was currently trapped in that inescapable maze of buildings that some called quite appropriately “The Cage,” but he still held on. Qul remained hopeful. He would find the storm god Rel and intercede on behalf of his people. K’zink had told him it was all a matter of finding the right portal and the right key, which meant that he wasn’t lost. He was only momentarily delayed.

Suddenly, the lizardman’s thoughts were interrupted by a woman screaming nearby. Qul halted abruptly, pressing his back against a nearby wall. As he felt the cold, wet grime against his scales, touching the damp and soot-covered wall was a decision he regretted almost immediately. It was neither the first nor the last time in the day he longed for a great expanse of fresh water in which to swim at his leisure.

“NO!” The woman screamed again, and some banging noises were heard, as though she was punching something hard and unrelenting with all her might. “LET ME PASS! I brought you everything the log said I needed! Everything!” She cried out from an alley close by, her tone wavering between unhinged hysteria and gut-wrenching sorrow. “Please! I have them right here! The sharpthorn rose, the razorvine leaves, the steel dagger and the iron needles! They cost me everything I had, please!” She whined, her voice lowering its pitch and cracking with the weight of her pain.

“The things… the things I had to do to get them… ” The female said, a few sobs escaping her throat. Qul silently approached the alley from which her voice emerged. “I need to go home… I need to go back to my father. He’s very ill and my brother’s been sent away to fight and my mother cannot hold on for much longer on her own. She’s too old. You have to open. I have to return to the Witch’s Tower and find the healing potion for my father. It’s the only way he’ll get better. Please…” She pleaded pitifully.

The Ssilirian looked into the alley and saw a very young woman, of a strange race similar to K’zink’s, save it looked less magical and more… like the dwarves back in his homeland, only taller and slimmer. She looked quite delicate, much unlike the females he was accustomed to seeing, whether they were dwarven or members of his own race. The girl had slightly elongated ears and long, dark chestnut hair, though it was badly tangled and looked almost black from the soot that covered it. Her lithe form was draped in filthy rags, and she looked beaten and malnourished. Her hands were wrapped in dirty bandages, which were soaked in dry blood. Dark bruises and fresh cuts, some of which were bleeding still, adorned her otherwise smooth, tanned face. She was kneeling before an archway between two buildings, with an assortment of objects strewn on her lap and several streams of tears washing away the grime on her face.

To Qul, she smelled rather disgusting, since the sickening stench of Sigil had suffused her clothes, hair and skin. Yet, if he strained to find another odour beneath the superficial layer of foulness, he could distinguish the scent that was unique to her, an aroma of woodlands and flowers in springtime, which reminded the lizardman of the time he visited The Garden of Perpetual Blooms. The Ssilirian elders said that smell was the sense that brought memories the quickest, and Qul had to recognise their wisdom. He was able to remember with astonishing clarity how the everblooming jasmines smelled like, and their scent bore a striking similarity to the girl’s.

“Please, I… I can’t stay in this city for another day! It’s too much! It’s too dark and suffocating and cold and I can’t breathe right! And everywhere I look there’s someone who wants to rob me or… or…” She cried at the eerily silent darkness in the vacant alley. “Oh, Ehlonna…” The girl whispered, reaching out towards the archway with a poorly bandaged, blood-encrusted hand. “Sÿavara nö erliah…” She muttered, and Qul frowned in confusion. He didn’t like it when the dwarves conversed in their own strange language, or when the shamans spoke to the gods in incomprehensible prayers; and finding himself in the City of Doors made it even more frequent to hear strange words whose meaning eluded the Ssilirian.

Qul tried to approach the girl, perhaps to give her a hand in getting the portal opened, perhaps to offer some comforting words; but somehow, she managed to hear him or spot him, for she immediately turned her head towards him the moment he stepped out of the shadows. Her dark eyes widened in utter terror at the very sight of him, and for a single moment, she remained completely paralysed, like a small bird before the vile snake’s gaze. Then, she tried to quickly gather the sharp objects on her lap, but her hands were too clumsy to properly hold them. After a few seconds of frantic struggle, in which the lizardman took a single step and raised his hands in a peaceful gesture, the girl finally gave up on being careful and simply pressed all the items against her body as she rose to her feet. The gasp of pain that escaped her lips and the grimace on her face proved that it had not been the wisest decision.

Yet the plucky lass did not let go of her harmful treasures, which were quite possibly her only way back home. She bit her lower lip to suffocate a yelp, turned around and scampered off into the deep darkness of the alley, crossing the archway one last time. Qul blinked in surprise, and then started running after her, figuring that his superior speed and physical condition would bridge the gap between them in a moment. But strangely enough, the girl’s footsteps soon faded away. The Ssilirian yelled at the blackness around him, but silence was his only answer. More confused than ever, the green lizardman strained his eyes to see, and managed to distinguish another archway not far from where he was, in the direction he had come from. Further ahead, toward the presumable end of the alley, there was nothing but almost palpable darkness.

Scratching his head, Qul made his way back to the streets that would lead him to the Hive, hoping with every fibre of his being that the girl had got the archway wrong the first time; and that in her mad escape, she had actually crossed the portal back to her home plane. The alternative, that something had silently snatched her in the dark, and had taken her away to visit even more pain and suffering on the poor lass, was too awful to contemplate. Thinking that she had made it back to her loved ones, hurt and in pain, yes, but alive, gave the scaly man hope. It made him feel that he too would find a way back to Ssilir after he had spoken to Rel. It made him feel that, perhaps, there was a way out of the Cage. That of the infinite portals in the City of Doors, there was one that would take him back home. To his loved ones. To his people. To the world he had ceaselessly explored, and of which he had become quite fond.

As he finally entered the dark, filthy slums that could be nothing other than the Hive, Qul found himself smiling, a revitalising energy surging through his body. He had spent the past few days in a confused haze, and now he finally felt that he had a plan, a way out. He’d get back his sacred daggers, and then he’d find the right portal and the right key. He’d see the storm god and convince him to stop the rain. And then, he’d return to Ssilir, where he’d be hailed a hero. Yes, that’s what would happen. He was going to make it, he was certain.

The lizardman climbed to the top of a low and particularly accessible spire, in order to survey the Night Market and decide his next move. He spent a few moments in utter stillness and silence, eyeing the myriad of strange beings below him, trying to find the Cloaks, the treacherous scum that had almost killed him. But his eyes caught the sight of the last two people he wanted to see, and yet the only two people in Sigil that could make Qul feel relief to have them by his side. As he watched from his vantage point how K’zink and Drake tried to sneak up on a menacing goat-headed creature, his muscles tensed in anticipation. It didn’t take a sage to realise it was a very, very bad idea. One which could get them both killed. But that wasn’t going to happen, not if the Ssilirian had his way. He was going to defend the only two people who had shown him kindness in that gods-forsaken city. He was not going to let them come to harm if he could help it, no matter the cost to his person.

K’zink made a noise, giving away his position. The goat-headed being turned around without hesitation, pulled his enormous lance back, and then thrust it forward, aiming for the tout’s chest.

Qul leaped.

And we come to full circle.  Unity of Rings and all.  One more page left in the prologue and then on to the main story!