Malakos stepped out of the bread shop's doorway and glanced up at the sun. It was almost touching the horizon now–he had to hurry. He picked up a bottle of grape juice from the tavern and raced to the temple he had seen in the middle of town. 

Panting, Malakos knocked at the door. “Is–(gasp)--is it too late–for a humble petitioner to make an offering?” He managed. 

“No, no, you still have several hours before shrine cleaning,” the priest who answered the door said, somewhat taken aback. He gestured to admit the cleric. “Choose any of the empty tables and make your offering.”

“Thank you,” Malakos said, and placed himself at one in a corner. He delicately arranged the loaf of bread and bottle of juice on the table in front of him and began to make his call. It was a little different this time, as he needed to call upon a particular Ascended One–Ilmater, to whom Samuel had assured him Holy Mace had been oathbound. It would take longer for his plea to be answered this way, but the cleric was prepared to wait as long as necessary. Hours passed, and other clerics and petitioners passed through, offering reports and pleas before leaving. Still, Malakos sat and meditated. 

Around the stroke of midnight, the stillness of the sanctuary was softly interrupted by a gentle opening and closing of the great doors. Out of the corner of his eye, Malakos saw an old man in tattered robes approach the table next to him. He was gaunt, with a matted beard and calloused hands that trembled as he clasped them together to begin correspondence. The tiefling could see defined ribs through some of the larger holes in the man’s robe. 

Malakos quietly tore off half of his loaf of bread and placed it, with the bottle of juice, on the table before the man and returned to his seat. When the man opened his eyes and saw the food before him, he glanced over at the cleric. 

“You should not be so careless with your offerings to the Ascended,” he said. 

“I offer to Ilmater,” Malakos returned. “And he prefers his offerings be placed in the mouths of those who need it.” Then, he smiled. “So thank you for providing me an altar.” 

The man looked at him and chuckled, before taking a small bit of bread. “You are a follower of Ilmater?”

Malakos winced slightly. “Not–not quite, I’m…just a petitioner. For the School of Life,” he mumbled. 

“And…what is it you’re petitioning for?” 

Malakos glanced at his offering. He should probably be focusing, in case his correspondence was received, but… a part of him suspected that it was in the process of being received. Either way, it would be rude and not religious at all to ignore another person, especially in a sanctuary.

“I’m here on behalf of the people of Whispenshire. They are downtrodden under the rule of an oppressive king. I was hoping to come here and find Holy Mace–you’ve heard of him? To–to ask him to come help us relieve their suffering. And we–my team and I–we found him! Only, he’s… he’s dead, I’m sorry to say. But I was just thinking–he was oathbound to Ilmater, the same Ilmater who protects the oppressed, the same whom the people of Whispenshire have claimed as their choice Ascended, for his care of the poor. So…maybe…he’d be willing to–to maybe lend us Holy Mace? For a little bit? I brought his…um…his remains. In case that would make it easier.” 

The old man looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Well…I hope you receive what you need. As you can see,” he gestured at his ragged clothes, “I’m no stranger to the Guardian of the Oppressed. I’ll put in a good word for you, hm?” He winked. 

“I thank you,” Malakos returned. The man finished his correspondence, and then left in a quiet shuffling of robes. 

Malakos continued meditating for a few hours. Then he grew bored and spent some time arranging the bones on the floor next to him, in case that would encourage an answer. Once, he asked another priest to help him figure out the arrangement of the vertebrae, but received only a strange look in reply. Eventually, the cleric fell asleep at the shrine table, the large skeleton of Holy Mace laid out on the floor off to his side. 

Ruby had had no trouble finding lodging for herself, but as soon as the question of her tiger came up, suddenly there were no openings. She was down to the last inn she could find, and it was getting dark. 

“Hello, I’d like to rent a room for the night,” Ruby said at the front desk. 

“Very good, dear. And will you be needing a stable stall?” A shriveled old lady asked as she scratched the numbers into her ledger. 

“...Yes.” Ruby said. At this point, she figured she didn’t need to be overly specific about what she was planning to keep in the stall. She wouldn’t be dishonest, just…prudently ambiguous. 

“Alright then, dearie. One silver gets you a bed, breakfast, and complimentary brushing for your steed in the morning.” 

“Oh, brushing–ah, she’s a tempestuous sort, haven’t finished breaking her in just yet. Best not approach her,” Ruby exclaimed. “I’ll take care of her grooming myself.”

“As you like it, dearie,” the woman said pleasantly, although her brows knitted with mild confusion. 

Once she got her room key, Ruby set down her things, then went back outside to lead Kiki (and Lorenzo, whose passed-out form the tiger had been guarding during Ruby’s shopping trip) to the stables out back. 

She led the large cat down the row of stables until she got to the farthest, most obscured stall. 

“I’ll come get you in the morning,” she said, giving the tiger a juicy steak she had bought earlier. “So don’t cause trouble and don’t eat the horses.”

The horses in the stalls they had passed whinnied nervously in agreement. 

The tiger reluctantly agreed, then turned her attention to the steak. 

Ruby rose to leave, then noticed Deruque snoring in the next stall over. 

She decided to keep walking. 

Just as she reached the door, a stablehand entered. He was a young teenager with freckles and a bit of sunburn, despite the chill in the air. He bowed quickly to Ruby and started to move past her toward the rows of stalls. 

Ruby briefly considered trying to bluff him, or distract him, but she was tired and decided to just palm him a gold coin to keep quiet about the occupants of the farthest two stalls. Then, finally, she retired to her bedroom and went to sleep. 

“RUBY!” 

The blue dragonborn woke the next morning to a pounding on her door. She groaned. Had her tiger been discovered? 

She rolled out of bed to face the music. To her surprise, however, it was not the innkeeper who answered. Standing in the doorframe was her brother–disheveled, wild-eyed, and grinning from ear to ear. 

“Ruby, Ruby, you’ll never believe it! I can hardly believe it myself–it worked! It worked! Ha-HA! I mean, it turned out a little different than I had been thinking, but who can complain when given such a gift?!”

“Malakos, what in the nines are you talking about?” 

“What am I–What else could I be talking about? This, Ruby! THIS!” He thrust an object in her face. 

Ruby had to blink the sleep out of her eyes before she realized that the object the cleric was holding was a skull, grinning and tangled in thorny branches. She reared back in disgust. 

“Malakos, what the–!”

“Glorious, is it not?” 

“It’s not! Why are you carrying that thing around? You’re going to get sick or cursed or something!” 

Malakos looked hurt for a moment, then his ear pricked and he turned to his left. “Oh, yes, yes, right, of course. I forgot! Ha-ha, how silly of me,” he said to the air next to him. Then, he turned back to Ruby, an unnerving calm settling over him. “I’m so sorry, Ruby–I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just so excited, I got ahead of myself.” 

“Mal?”

“Here,” he said, holding the skull out to her, smiling again. “You have to touch it.” 

“Okay, no, you are very clearly cursed and I am not touching that thing,” Ruby said, gingerly reaching toward him. “Let’s get you to the sanctuary and…”

Before she could say anything more, Malakos seized her hand and pressed it against the skull. 

Ruby let out a gasp and tried to yank her hand back, but Malakos held it firm. 

“There, look! You see him too, right?” He said. 

“See who? I–” Ruby’s words fell flat. Off to Malakos’s left stood a monstrous man, seven or eight feet tall, hunched to fit under even the inn’s relatively high ceilings. 

“She sees me,” Holy Mace said to Malakos. 

“YESSS!” Malakos released Ruby’s hand to pump his own fist. Admittedly, he hadn’t been entirely convinced that he wasn’t suffering sleep-deprived stress hallucinations, but Ruby’s reaction had confirmed his sanity. 

“What is…? Why’s he…? How did you…?” Ruby stammered, placing her hand tentatively on and off the skull to check that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. 

“Well, you see, after we parted ways at the bakery, I went to the sanctuary to make an offering and see if we couldn’t get some divine intervention from Ilmater. I petitioned all night until I fell asleep, with his skeleton laid out on the ground. I thought maybe having his remains in place would…would maybe make it a little easier a request–resurrection, that is. So when I woke up a few hours later and found that the bones were still…bones, nothing more, I–I’m not going to say I was disappointed, it was a long shot in the first place–but I was out of ideas. So I started gathering up the bones and putting them away. Then I got to the skull. As you can see, a vine of thorns had sprouted up–creeping through a crack in the sanctuary floor–and wound itself around the skull. As soon as I touched it, he appeared, sitting at the table.” Malakos gestured in the direction of Holy Mace, invisible to Ruby once more. “He’d been there all morning, apparently, waiting for someone to be able to see him; which, as you now know, can be done only by someone touching the skull.” Malakos looked happily down at the human remains in his hands. 

“Wow. So… we got the hero,” Ruby said. 

“We got the hero,” Malakos confirmed. “Now, I’m going to go wake Bardy–as it so happens, he wound up renting a room just two doors down from you, if the innkeeper is to be believed. Then we can go get Deruque and Lorenzo.” The tiefling ran off, his tail flicking happily behind him. 

Ruby gathered her things and started out the door to join Malakos. However, when she entered the hall and saw him pounding on Bardy’s door, still looking manic and disheveled, with a skull in one hand, beginning to draw the alarmed attention of the inn’s other patrons, she decided she would visit the stables first. 

As soon as the innkeeper saw Ruby, she bristled. “YOU!” She shook an accusing finger at her. “What are you trying to play at, huh? You think me a fool? That you can just slip anything you want into the stalls and hope nobody would notice?!”

“I never said she was a horse,” Ruby muttered defensively. “And you never said I couldn't keep a tiger in the stall—”

The old woman wasn't listening. “You think you can just stow a man away in there so you don't have to pay old Gertrude for two beds! Well I have news for you, missy—I know all the tricks! Nothing slips by me in my inn!”

Behind her, Kiki slunk past the window.

After the innkeeper was placated by an additional silver coin, Ruby slipped out to the stables to check on Lorenzo and Deruque.

She found Lorenzo more or less where she had left him—but now he was awake and quivering against the back corner of the stall. Kiki had cornered him again, attempting to offer him a dead rat she had caught.

“Kiki, down girl!” Ruby called. The tiger cocked her head in confusion, but complied.

Ruby approached Lorenzo and hauled him to his feet. “Have you seen where Deruque got off to?”

“H-he stepped out,” the poet stammered, shaking so hard that he could barely stand. “Y-your cleric followed him a few seconds after.”

Ruby, Kiki, and Lorenzo found Deruque about fifteen minutes later on a cobblestone street that wound through town, Malakos walking quickly after him, brandishing the skull.

“No, I know you can't see him,” Malakos was saying. “He's invisible. You have to–”

“What is wrong with you? ” Deruque exclaimed, quickly backing away from the cleric.

“Yes, I know, I'm trying,” Malakos said over his shoulder to what Ruby assumed was the ghost of Holy Mace. “He's not listening to me! Deruque,” he turned back to the bronze dragonborn. “You'll understand if you'll only do as I ask. Just touch the skull, and your eyes will be opened too.”

“No! You get that thing away from me!”

“Where are you going, Deruque?” Malakos called, sprinting after him. “Come baaaaack! Don't be scared! You weren't scared of the skull when you were helping me carry it yesterdayyyyy!”

“I'm not scared of the skull, I'm scared of you, you little freak!” Deruque glanced back at the cleric. Dark rings under his eyes emphasized the wild, bloodshot look in them, and his grin was wide enough to display every pointed fang in the little devil's mouth. Worst of all, he was getting closer.

“Deruque! Don't run from me!” The tiefling cried out. Why did this blasted ranger have to make everything so difficult? “If you'll just—hey, stop running! I'm trying to help you understand! Just—I just need to—just give me your hand, and you'll see! That's all I'm asking! Just one moment is all I need!”

“Quit chasing me! You're causing a scene!”

Ruby turned to Lorenzo. “Should we step in?”

Lorenzo didn't appear to hear her. His eyes widened, gleaming with inspiration as he watched the desperate chase between the two adventurers. He scrambled to pull out some paper and started scratching words on it as fast as his pen would permit.

Finally, Malakos cornered Deruque and shoved the skull up against him. Deruque was about to shout at the cleric, when he caught sight of Holy Mace.

“What the–?” Deruque said, looking from skull to ghost.

“You see? Objective one, complete!” Malakos said, puffing out his chest self-satisfactorily.

Deruque scowled. “Malakos, you idiot! It's not complete at all–we're supposed to bring back Holy Mace, not that stupid skincrawler!”

(The event, from three different perspectives:) The casual observer:

And finally, Lorenzo: