Chapter 001 - The Amulet and the Meep

# Chapter 1: The Amulet and the Meep The dawn was wide and pale, a sheet of cloud blunting the weak autumn sun as Sordia Vignti gathered among the shallow trenches and upturned earth behind their keep. Half the group was already mud-spattered and irritable; yesterday, the courtyard had been torn up during Karrut’s escape from what he’d called ‘bandit-farmers’, but this morning it was Erin’s cow, mystifying and recalcitrant as a minor deity, that gathered their attention at the fence. Steve knelt in the grass by Karrut—no longer ‘just’ a cow, but something singularly charmed and contemptuous. She ran her hands along the beast’s shaggy neck, then leaned in, murmuring a few ancient, burred syllables. The cow’s eyes flickered to her, dismissive as ever. “Could you at least say thank you?” Steve asked in the soft, lilting tongue of nature, her transmuted words reaching across the species divide. Karrut’s mouth worked around a strand of springy grass. “Thank you for what? That bandit couldn’t even read. You’re all less interesting than a fungal infection. Speak up if you intend to milk me, druid, or grow a spine and move on.” Grass sprouted in two tidy tufts atop her head as she spoke. Steve stared. She found herself transfixed not so much by the cow’s unhelpful sarcasm, but by the actual, living carpet of turf flourishing where hair should be. Then, stranger still—a pendant sprig of pale green drooped along Karrut’s left ear, and Steve realized that what should have been ordinary udders were blushing pink with bulbous, unripened strawberries. “Would you—what is this?” she demanded, voice skipping several notes higher as she spied a berry drop from the beast and nestle, quite unaccountably, beside a hoof. Karrut chewed loudly. “I produce only the finest. Erin says the milk makes fairy bushes. You wouldn’t understand.” Steve fell back on her heels, shaking her head in wonder. If miracles could be unlikable, she’d found one. Erin, for her part, hurried over when she realized what Steve was up to. She clapped, delighted. “You can talk to her? Properly talk? I always wondered what Karrut was thinking. Is she grateful we got her back?” Steve considered, then offered a faint, embarrassed smile. “Grateful isn’t quite the word. She’s… got opinions.” “She always acts like she’s better than us.” Erin sighed, but her voice was proud beneath it. Karrut’s huff scattered a small wind of seeds. In that brief, uneasy light, Sordia Vignti could almost have believed their days would go on like this forever—an unremarkable autumn, a surly talking cow, Erin’s childish laughter, Steve’s wild hope. But above them, Lyra’s form—a pumpkin-headed effigy strung together by magic and desperation—wavered where it sat atop the low garden wall. Her eyes were lantern-glow holes in a rotten gourd. A few flies circled her; she shivered visibly whenever anyone looked for too long. Nobody forgot the way she had come to require such a vessel: disintegrated by a power not entirely Ellette’s own, and now slowed in her suffering by the grip of her patron, the all-too-pragmatic Pumpking, who had imposed a deadline on Lyra's metaphysical survival. Two hundred days. Graxen knelt in the faint shade next to her. He lifted Lyra's temporarily surreally grim pumpkin head with a gentle touch and pressed his palm to its oily flesh. At once, the world shuttered inwards: from somewhere outside and inside himself, he saw (or sensed, the sensations layered and dissonant) a vision of an amulet—dark metal, ringed with arcane script, pulsing and subtle, like the hidden tooth in a monster's dusk-lit mouth. He shuddered. "There's something in here," he told Lyra, uncertain whether she heard as herself or only as a whisper submerged inside. "Take it out," she said, voice warped and pained, as if called from beyond a thick window. "I keep falling apart." Her tone was strained; not begging, but sharper, more desperate than she'd ever allowed in her original flesh. Steve, responding more by intuition than command, reached inside the pumpkin body's dank cavity and drew out the amulet. She expected, perhaps, a token or fragment; instead, the gourd that was Lyra’s vessel sagged and seemed to decompose in seconds, collapsing into a heap of fetid, mushy rind. Lyra's presence became suddenly, frighteningly weightless in the air—a cold, tattered shadow flickering about the medallion Steve now held. Ellette clicked her tongue, summoning Rasp, the mangy gremlin familiar—her own shadowy errand-runner—who scuttled into the garden, returning moments later with a half-devoured squirrel, its fur still blood-patched from misadventure. Ignoring protests from Steve, Ellette placed the amulet around the squirrel's trembling neck and whispered a brief incantation, urging Lyra’s spirit into the animal’s body. For a moment, the squirrel stilled, eyes wide. Then Rasp, moving with eerie, almost human delicacy, reached out and unfastened the medallion. Squirrel and soul parted; the squirrel body liquified, flowing into a noisome slurry in the dirt. "Charming," Graxen remarked, dryly. Steve was already thinking ahead. She snatched one of Erin's handmade dolls—a crude thing: a stick-figure knotted together from twigs and leaves and earth, dirt still fragrant and worms burrowing in the hollow of a leg—and slipped the amulet onto the reed-thin neck. Again, the magic pulsed. This time, Lyra's presence rushed in, the doll’s muddy features twitching, leafy fingers twitching outwards as if feeling for her own old skin. Such was Lyra's reality: ghost in a chain of borrowed bodies, always at the mercy of strange vessels, always at risk of being dissolved entirely if the amulet were ever disturbed. Erin, watching all this, only blinked, caught between awe and revulsion. If Sordia Vignti’s troubles ended with straw and pumpkin guts, perhaps they would have learned to laugh about them. But just then, a commotion in the garden’s farther end signalled new trouble—the meep, a creature as enigmatic as any they’d encountered, was doing what it did best: misbehaving with peculiar, threatening intent. Erin had reported its disappearance days ago; Nissa, forever half-in and half-out of any concern for normalcy, looked upon this news with irritating serenity. Ellette cornered her near the brambles, voice sharp. "Have you seen the meep lately?" Nissa only shrugged. "It digs. It comes back. It’s never normal, why worry now?" Ellette shook her head. "It buried itself—Erin saw it." When Ellette set out to find the meep, she discovered just the top of its shaggy head poking up from a fresh patch of disturbed soil. She advanced; the meep, sensing pursuit, ducked under, vanishing from sight in a flurry of claws and loam. Moments later, there was a muffled grunting from Fergal’s direction. The meep had somehow wedged itself, uninvited, in the space between Fergal’s ribs. When Ellette lunged, it snapped at her hand with surprising violence. She jerked back, surprise and pain mingling in her gasp; she nearly lost a finger. The meep bared teeth. Its eyes were bright and intelligent, but there was a feral calculation behind them—an alien hunger, perhaps the ghost of whatever force had lured it here in the first place. Now it had the attention of the whole party. As Graxen and Steve moved to help, the meep tore free from Fergal, dashed across the grass, and set off for the distant shape of the keep. Then, almost immediately, it circled back, now cradled in Nissa’s casual grip; she deposited it at Erin’s feet with an affectionate pat. From there, the meep did what the meep always did: it sowed chaos, fixating on Lyra’s stick-doll body with predatory fascination. Its stubby arms gestured, first toward the amulet around Lyra’s neck, then to Erin, whom it regarded with undisguised loathing. It heaved a handful of dung in Steve’s direction, nearly catching her in the chest. Unimpressed by scolding, it padded away, casting lingering glances at Lyra—the promise of future mischief. The party’s patience had frayed by now. The amulet, the keep’s odd menagerie, the meep’s elliptical malice—it was too much, too fast. Ellette gathered them up. “We’re going to Alexandria. We need a professional opinion. Quincy’s seen everything—maybe he’ll know how to help Lyra.” It was a subdued, uneasy caravan that left their home that morning. They rode with Kirra and Nissa steering, the others clustered around the rear, eyes peeled for trouble and minds wandering through their private worries. Partway down the road to Alexandria, as the sun slanted toward midday, they encountered a group of travelers—black-robed, hoods deep, each bearing the triangular skull motif pinned at their collarbones. These were Myrkulites, they claimed, and in their presence the air itself grew hush and clammy. Steve greeted them curtly. “What brings death’s own priests to Alexandria?” One answered, voice echoing from under the cowl: “We bring funereal rites. The city has seen much death, and still more is coming. There are ill omens at its heart.” Fergal’s gaze fixed on their vestments. He noted the symbol, recalling tales of blood priests—when he spoke the name Ba’al, the Myrkulites exchanged glances. “The blood-path is not ours,” one replied sharply. “If you met priests in white and red, know this: they are pretenders. Our own are black as regret.” Discussion turned, then, to matters less ritualistic and more dire. Ellette, ever suspicious, pressed about Luskan’s supposed resurrectionists—she described the red and white robes, the arrogant mendicant who had claimed responsibility for Lyra’s and Fergal’s return to life. “He was no true brother,” the Bone Talker answered at last, introducing himself with that unsettling title. “There is no mandate among Myrkul’s flock to chase souls back from their final path. It is not our way—nor is it wise. Some will toy at necromancy for self-glorification. True Myrkulite doctrine knows this: death is no mistake. Any who are drawn back, they have been… manipulated.” His black eyes flicked to Graxen. “And you—you carry something grim. Something’s reaching for you across the darkness.” The party pressed on: the black-robed company spoke of Mirabar, a mining town recently shattered overnight, its survivors numbering in handfuls. “A calamity led by a fiend with many arms and a black dragon, swaddled in a cloud that will not disperse. The whole land reeks of lost souls now—can you not feel it, even in the air?” Ellette, chilled, pondered aloud whether the same gaseous catastrophe that had once ravaged the drow stronghold of Menzoberranzan could have moved on from there to strike Mirabar. The Bone Talker nodded, adding, “There is an ancient root to such evils. You have spoken before of the Book of Vile Darkness—twice over, no less—yet never has that converged in one hand but now. The names tied to these books are forbidden even here. Yours is a path treading close to that of Vecna, the God Lich. Beware. No good ever came of one soul gathering so much darkness unto itself.” He pressed silver coins into their hands: each coin was heavy, cold beyond winter, stamped with the same motif—protection, he assured, but only if their travels remained true. As they reached the outskirts of Alexandria, the Myrkulites fell away, their final act a silent blessing upon the ramparts. Alexandria itself brought familiar comfort. At the Lucky Gryphon, Quincy was waiting, nursing a mug and a frown. Graxen slunk in quietly, having forgotten to return one of Quincy’s elaborate doublets—he and Steve were banished to the scullery, condemned to dish-washing in penance. Quincy listened gravely as Ellette outlined Lyra’s plight. “An amulet that destroys its host when removed… A soul cycling through dolls, vermin, dead leaves… That's heavy magic. Dark, and not of any church I know.” “What now?” Ellette asked. “We can’t keep swapping bodies forever.” “There are options.” Quincy’s eyes flicked to the rebuilt Warforged remains stacked along the rear wall. “You could commission a proper Warforged body. Pricey, five thousand in gold if you want it custom and new-built. Or—you take what's left of Crunk.” He nodded at the salvage piled beneath a moth-eaten tarpaulin. “He’s dead, but still might make a home for a lost soul.” The cost, he said—two thousand gold. Or, with a sly wink, “Do a job for me; I’ll eat the expense. There’s a town gone quiet on the road north. Missing folk. Solve it, and Lyra gets Crunk’s chassis.” They tested the amulet in Crunk’s skull, a hollowed-out housing ringed with faded brass and iron. Ellette slotted the medallion into a groove inside the jaw. The Warforged head shuddered, then came alive: Lyra’s voice, unsteady but real, echoed from deep in the iron throat. “Can you hear me?” Relief passed in a ripple through the group, even if the head was still disembodied, the rest of the form a heap of gears and secondhand plating scattered on a workbench. Quincy did not look away from her. “Careful now. You move the amulet, the body goes. Same as it’s ever been.” They discussed the trek—Greyhollow, Neverwinter, then Waterdeep, with the detour for missing citizens factored in. Quincy furnished them with rations at a discount, agreed to dress up Lyra’s new shell with a fringe of yellow hair and faux horns. “The shape’s got to be hers, even if it’s metal now,” he explained, as he patted the blank steel scalp. When they left him, Ellette steered them to the half-finished guildhall on the city’s outer edge. Big Guy—her oldest friend, the hulking Warforged—was helping a team of dwarves reset the massive beams. He grinned to see them, though the steel edge of his smile melted when he noticed the shattered remnants of Erin’s stick doll. “That kid worked on it all week. We owe her something to replace it.” Ellette, always eager to probe, quizzed him about his name, his purpose. “Dragon Heart,” he mused aloud after some prodding. “That’s what the old one called me. The dragon who gave me this gem—golden, loved to change form. Told me if I kept a true heart, I could keep magic alive in me.” He demonstrated by sparking a thunderbolt from his finger. “It’s all about what you do, you know. Bad deeds, the heart dims.” They exchanged a brief laugh, then Big Guy turned serious. “Nissa’s happy. I saw her with the children. It feels brighter, doesn’t it?” He did not mention the time he’d visited the lower planes, but the shadow of hell-gate memory lingered around his eyes. Elsewhere in town, Fergal peeled off to find the Myrkulites. He knelt beside the Bone Talker on a side street, seeking instruction on how to regain the favor of a capricious goddess. “With Umberlee, you must offer treasure,” the priest intoned. “Rare gold, gems, lost to the waves in her name. Some deities speak in gentle signs. Others, like Valkur”—the Bone Talker paused—“may not be so quick to anger as you think. Sometimes, all a god asks is that you change your own heart, not theirs.” Later, as Fergal stood by the tiny sea shrine, tossing a gold coin into the swirling surf and feeling the brief, humming fire beneath his brow, he was certain his devotion had been acknowledged. Their departure from Alexandria was almost an afterthought: the Myrkulites traced sacred shapes on the walls, blessing the city as though to armor it in symbols. An old woman offered Steve a hand-woven doll stitched from nettles and straw. Steve pressed it into Erin’s hands, a replacement for the stick doll, and received a shy nod and a muttered thanks. Erin, for her part, remained equal parts baffled and proud of her cow and its strawberry milk—“It’s not even eating the good grass anymore,” she confided, “but everywhere Karrut walks, there’s a new bush blooming behind her.” Back at the keep, Lyra requested more answers. Graxen might have extracted them by touching the amulet, but Zoltan—hard-eyed, rattling his toolkit—strongly advised against opening her skull, warning that the consequences would be unpredictable. Instead, Zoltan reassembled Lyra’s salvaged frame, bolting each plate and wire into place, while Lyra’s consciousness fluttered from the skull throughout the new body. She flexed iron fingers, warlock sparks flickering along her palms. “It works,” she whispered, the thrill of agency filling her artificial lungs. Graxen pressed Zoltan on the matter of enhancements—a blood gem for the gauntlet, perhaps, but Zoltan’s warnings were stark: “That hunger? The bracelet may make it deeper. You be sure you can feed it before you put it on.” He offered to begin work on Ellette’s shattered moonblade, promising to use the soul gem she’d salvaged and one of her dragon scales. “You’ll need more pieces. This gem is only a sliver. Find the rest, and the soul you trap could be much greater. And Mithril, of course—nothing but ancient elven metal will hold that much magic together. Try the Faewild, if you must.” His eyes narrowed as he recounted a different theft: “Wen was in your room earlier, Ellette. Took that scale—said she wanted to make a necklace. Careful with that one. Sword doesn’t sit well with angry hands.” Ellette found Wen out on the lawn, her posture stubborn, hair wild. “Were you in my room?” Wen looked away, cheeks coloring. “Just to borrow the scale. I wanted to make something for you. But when I tried learning the sword… I got so angry, I thought it’d break in my hand.” She didn’t say what had driven the anger—only that Darvin had mocked her, called her hands silly, and she’d hit him in response. There was a silence, heavy but not hostile; in it, Ellette considered the future of her blade, her sister, and everything that drifted in the uncertain shadow between. Sordia Vignti gathered that evening in the canted light falling through the keep’s main hall. They broke bread—bread that seemed too warm, too soft, for a house where death and resurrection had so recently stalked—and shared out rations from the Lucky Gryphon’s stores. They traced the next leg of their journey on the map, the routes to Neverwinter and Waterdeep traced in red, their path veering always away from Luskan and the places where too many ghosts lingered just out of sight. But not all problems could be fled from. The meep clung to its secrets; the amulet pulsed, as if remembering every body it had destroyed. Lyra watched the party from her new, metallic eyes, fingers flexing in time with memories of flesh and fire. In the growing dark, as laughter faded and plans turned into silence, Graxen pressed the silver Myrkulite coin into his palm. It chilled his skin, a reminder that for all their confidences, there was always something hungry reaching through, waiting to claim what was owed—the soul, the heart, a favor in the deep, inevitable dark.