Chapter Text
In the grim, dank underbelly of the Szarr Opera Palace, there lay a theater where no light penetrated save the glow of the flickering lanterns held by the auctioneer and surrounding bidders. The chamber was a veritable forest of tarps and shrouds, as though somebody had made some sloppy attempt to hide something grim and baneful.
Before the auctioneer laid two glistering artifacts upon a small, rickety table. The first was a dagger, its spines twisting around one another and meeting in a sharp point at the tip, like vines choking out a spindly tree in a swamp. The second was a staff with a gargoyle-esque figurine on top, its red wings fanning out beside itself as though attempting to tear itself off of the tip and take flight into the stretched shadows of the vaulted chamber.
The auctioneer's voice rang out across the dismal theater, ringing off the walls in a haunting echo. "Lot 665, ladies and gentlemen— a tri-bladed dagger. Attached, a ritual quarterstaff. These items, discovered in the vaults of the theater, are still in excellent condition, ladies and gentlemen."
"Showing here," a porter said, gingerly lifting the staff from the table and shouting, "perē!" Her voice echoed off the walls as a green mist converged in sphere over the head of the staff— a blight spell targeted at nobody, which fizzled in a spatter of verdant smoke.
"May I commence at 480 gold?" asked the auctioneer.
A bidder raised her hand.
"480, thank you. 500!"
A robed man with a beard and shaggy, chin-length hair made umber in the lantern glow raised his hand.
"Dekarios, 500, thank you, sir. 530!"
One final bidder raised his hand, and the auctioneer shouted, "530, thank you! And 550? No? Selling for 530, then. 530 once, 530 twice… and, sold to Duke Wyll Ravengard of Baldur's Gate."
The man called Wyll raised his head— he was an older fellow than he had been when the Szarr Opera Palace was in its prime glory, his long and gold-adorned locs streaked in gray and his stubbled face rift with faint wrinkles.
"Collector's pieces, indeed," Wyll murmured. "It's exactly as he said it would be— will you still sing, Ascendant, when the rest of us are dead?"
A silence washed over the dismal theater, and Dekarios rested a comforting hand on the Duke's shoulder.
"Lot 666, then," said the auctioneer, breaking the hush. "A chandelier in pieces. Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Ascendant of the Opera— a mystery never fully explained. We're told, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster. Our workshops have repaired it and restored its magic. Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination. Gentlemen?"
In unison, the porters whipped back the shroud obscuring the chandelier, and a blinding, enchanted glow began to emanate from its branches, the lanterns flickering back to their former life and washing the theater in a hot-white glow.
Let us return, dear friends, to the day that this mad tale began— the day that the Ascendant of the Opera began to close in on his quarry.