"You went up against a Githyanki sword-stalker team and survived? That's quite impressive - they're some of the most potent warriors of their race. Or at least the most potent warriors that the Lich Queen doesn't consume for power."

"Yeah, fortunately for me they were sending much less competent bladeling and dwarven lackeys instead of showing up personally. It helps that they were spread very thin by just how many shards there were, and how spread out they were. I still had to track down the sword-stalker team and cut them off at the source, but I didn't just have a team of sword-stalkers show up outside my house and kill me then and there, I had time to learn magic and get help and learn swordplay and whatnot. That turned out to be very dumb of them. There turned out to be a reason why the team didn't go get help from other teams or the Lich Queen herself, though. My broken silver sword? Uh, yeah, it's Gith's. Or, well. Was Gith's. It's mine now."

"I'm beginning to see why someone wanted that shard out of you so badly. The kind of resonance you could set up with a piece of the actual Sword of Gith... wait, didn't you say they took your sword too? Did you mean that sword?"

"Yes. That sword. I am very upset about it. I reforged the damn thing and everything."

"... Did you reforge it smaller, considering you still had a piece of it lodged comfortably inside you?"

"No, uh - okay so when I say it's my sword now, I actually mean I don't think anyone but me could use it. I had the sword piercing for most of my life, the sword is very fond of me because I'm charming and likable, and the sword is... kind of alive, and its opinions matter. When I say I reforged the sword, I mean... magically, I got the shards to all go back to their original place in the sword. It was still a broken sword. And I was the only one that could keep it together, since it loved me very much. So the sword was a bunch of floating shards held together by will and magic, and had some holes in it. Still perfectly sharp, though."

Safiya nods. "The idea of anyone except you using the Sword for its original purpose at this point would be laughable. Which makes it all the more confusing that someone with the capabilities to kidnap you in the manner they did would steal it. It'd be like trying to steal my familiar - there's no value in the thing itself except perhaps as a ransom. But we've received no communication from the thief."

"Yeah. And dumping me where they dumped me. There's something deeper clearly going on here, and I do not like it."

"Agreed. I was told to protect you, and I can't do that without information. Or, well, I can protect you against immediate threats, but I'd like to be more helpful than a wand of Disintegrate."

"Hey, you also can cast persistent Haste, that's pretty helpful," says Ciaveth, trying to lighten the mood a little.

"I'm glad it is. Gann, are we nearing your cache?"

"Indeed, quite near!" He waves a hand towards a bit of a tree's roots, and the tree obligingly rearranges them a bit to reveal a bag. Gann grabs it and starts sorting through the contents, humming to himself.

"Excellent. Is there anything you need right now, or should we go hit up the nearest tavern to try and sweet talk ourselves a barbarian with a large weapon who can stand in front? Because that was my second plan."

"How dreadfully cliché. No, let's go see you try and fail to talk the natives into joining us, it should be quite entertaining."

Unfortunately, Gann is right; the natives are, to a man, vehemently opposed to fighting an army of spirits, no matter what compensation they're offered. (The more compensation they're offered, in fact, the more offended they become.)

Before long, the sun begins to set, the shadows lengthening and swallowing the light, and the atmosphere changes. The shadow-stone in Ciaveth's pocket feels colder and heavier in the dark.

"The best place to find a naturally occurring portal into the Plane of Shadows should be a liminal space of some kind," Safiya exposits. "If possible, one that's associated with death or concealment. Graveyards, back alleys, the space behind a building... we might be able to find one in the shadow of that gibbet by the prison, if all else fails."

“Oh, let’s not go back to that place just yet, hm? The day has been disappointingly boring enough already without revisiting stale pieces of scenery.”

Gann did not find the attempts to persuade the locals to fight spirits particularly entertaining.

“Wandering back alleys and seeing if we find a portal, or someone trying to mug us first, then. Maybe we can get a rogue.”

Fortunately, though not very conducive to their dreams of contracting a rogue, they don't have to go through many alleyways. The portal looks like a rippling curtain of pure darkness.

Safiya squints in its general direction, tracing her hands through the air. "I think... there's something here," she says. "It's faint, though. It should be..." She points at the obvious portal. "Somewhere around there."

“... huh. You can’t see it? I guess that makes sense, with me being the one with the shadow-stone. Well, you’ll be happy to know that you’re quite right. Give me your hand?”

She blinks as she touches Ciaveth's hand. "Oh! That's very well designed - I suppose we'll hand-chain through the portal?"

“Yep! Everybody hold hands and hope that this works in the other direction, too.”

“It would spare you the bear god,” points out Gann, taking her other hand.

“No it wouldn’t. Just delay him. I’d like to get this wrapped up sooner rather than later.”

And in they go!

Shadow Mulsantir is somehow darker than True Mulsantir on a moonless night. The shadows feel physical, oppressive, in a way that the clean night air on the Material Plane doesn't.

Safiya looks up the hill on which the city is built and lets out a startled laugh. "I'm guessing that's our destination," she says, pointing to a massive building carved from what look like the bones of giants, complete with a grotesquely massive skull at the top.

"Tasteful."