Standing on the opposite side of the room is an ethereal woman dressed in the garbs of a Cleric of Good, if a bit ostentatious. She's got her hands tied to the wooden post behind her.

"Oh, you poor souls, may Sarenrae forgive you." She proclaims to the two guards to the front of her. As she speaks, her eyes briefly flick towards the door before snapping back to the guards with an expression of innocence and pleading. "I would see no more evil done today, wouldn't you be so kind as to let me go free?"

"Listen lady, we don't want trouble with the Dawnflower's faithful," The first guard says gruffly, looking at her guardedly. "But you was snooping around where you shouldn't have been."

The other guard has his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. "She can't be allowed to just walk away. If she squeals about what she saw to the authorities, we'll swing for it." Being a part of the authorities yourself doesn't protect you from a Cleric reporting you with evidence sitting around. Or at the very minimum, it is a far greater uncertainty.

The first guard nods grimly. "Aye, can't have that. Only two choices then — silence her permanently..." He pulls out a dagger. "Or...?"

He trails off. 

The question hangs in the air. Can she convince them, somehow, that she can stay quiet without getting her pretty little throat cut?

Oh, she could. She was sure of that. They so desperately didn't want to be killers, even if they took money from demon summoners, that it practically shined to her. A teasing word, an implication of friendliness and hoping for their redemption, with a tinge of innocent fear and they'd let her go with nary a spank much less a blade.

But she didn't have to bother, and not having to bother could be so relaxing at times.

Of course her hands were tied. Nothing you could do about that. Unless you were.. a thief or a Half-Elf with far too much time on her hands or even a mildly competent individual in her perfectly honest opinion.

Hands unclasping from behind the pole she raised her fingers together. Blindness.

"Hey! Who turned out the lights —"

Untel sprang forward, a grin on his face that quickly diminished as he saw the two targets in the room. Still he swung his khopesh much like an axe into the calf of the closest man, the one not blindly swinging his blade around the room.

A crossbow bolt shoots out from the doorway into the chest of the blind guard.

Within the next round he'll be skulking through the backdoor to ensure there's no one else here, even though Zyth signaled it was empty. Always better to check.

As he passed, a knife was stabbed into the side of the blinded guard and Jalar looked at Zythren with a raised eyebrow.

"Jalar! How nice to meet you here! One moment." Leaning over to untie her put her about level with him. Once she was done, her ankles feeling much nicer with fresh air running over them, she looks up with a smile which spoke more of amusement than friendly relief. "I'm so glad you were here, helping those two to realize the extent of their mistakes would have taken a bit more effort without, uh," A glance over as Untel stopped the guard's swinging blade with a hand around his wrist. "your assistance."

"That you needed our help in the first place is a damn shame." Jalar scowls at her, internally glad that he could at least do it with her kneeling for him to look her in the eye which made him soften (which was exactly why she did it, which made him try to unsoften but it was hard to get that annoyance back). He runs his hand over his stubble. Stress. "If we'd been on the otherside of the city, your little orphan-sent message would have reached us just as soon as they got finished gutting you for whatever Balor they have on the other end!"

"Really now, I doubt they're quite so interesting as to have a personal Balor liaison." Verbal poking. "But yes," Had to give him something to hook onto. "it would have been better were I to have stayed a tad further away." Or, more realistically, had prepared Invisibility, but relying on hiding always felt so cheap when she could usually hide in plain sight. "Still," she felt the need to correct him, "I was in no real danger, those two were practically begging to be pushed around." 

"At least bring Reyven along to watch your back." He sighs, running a hand down his. Glancing about and then looking at her, he asks "Was there at least anything at all of interest?"

"Now. Where are those demon-summoning sons of whores?" The tall gray-haired man growls, the edge of his khopesh red with blood. He took little pleasure from killing patsies or bribed guards or whatever the hells these two were. "Tell me." The guard was still alive, and if the little man told him where some of those fucks were then if he were still alive by the time Untel got back then he'd heal him.

Healing was tough work when you weren't God-touched, so he felt that this was quite generous.

His tactics were blunt and unlikely to work. "They're not here darling." She rolls her eyes and stands fully, her (half-)Elven height matching his. "Left these two to guard unknowing of whatever is in the warehouse, using their authority to keep out any casual interest. Might be some demons laying in ways if you head in deeper. Do keep an eye out for Revyn, though." There was nothing back there, but if there were traces then the demon hunter would be the one to isolate the sources. Mostly it got him elsewhere that wasn't around her.

He snorts, but immediately heads to the back door that the guards had been, well, guarding. "I'll deal with them, witch."

She smiled placidly at his back. "Not a witch." She mutters, having lost that battle with him long ago.

"Now, Jalar, drag that one over here for me to ask a few questions before he bleeds out."

A full three percent of souls that land in Abaddon are instantly annihilated or absorbed by the terrain.

All the planes have peculiar landscape features. Abaddon has both the most mundane: destruction from grand wars of the past, vast naturally formed mountain ranges, and lakes where the River Styx pooled. Forests of mundane trees, even if of long evolved-away variations.
And the most esoteric, if we were to ignore a few locations within the depths of Hell or rather specific corners of the Abyss. Designed from the ground-up mile wide towers that had stood since before man was brought into the world. Features with no observable past even to the oldest that cared to look. Terrain that breathed. Locations where space-warped, hideaways of daemons both big and small. A burning sun of gamma rays and negative energy that rose in the center of a vast desert once every turn of the week, burning away all life within its range. A forest of fruiting trees that all but the most hungering of daemons avoided.

Abaddon was among the worst in terms of horticulture choices.

The River Styx swept through a shocking portion of the realm. A mockery of the River of Souls; the waters went far deeper, for they were in-essence darkness unending. There was no outer darkness of unutterable things to lie in wait in those depths, there was the void. It acted as the natural extension of Charon: Death.

Charon (and His servants) went through the grand river by boat or wings. Many new souls arrived upon the grand safe shores of Abaddon, where few Daemons strayed (the glittering thread lines of the River were ever so near, a grand temptation but not worth gaining the attention of the overeager Good guardians). Charon boated most souls across in time, into the waiting maws of throngs of those who claimed their status as His servants or many waiting unallied Daemon.

Not all decedents were torn to shreds and consumed. If one were to be buried with coin, Charon would simply nod and take this as his payment, your ride sheltering you at a safe location upon the far side. By ancient agreement for that still held some weight here, or perhaps it was merely an amusement of the Grim Reaper.

Most those with coin were eaten by a Daemon within the next few days, far outliving those who lacked.

If one were to appear in the River Styx, or foolishly try to swim across to an empty piece of land just right there, then gone you would be. For just as every creature in Abaddon it ate away at the edges, and so the River Styx would find itself a fraction of an inch wider, ever closer to the glowing threads.

Spontaneously appearing at the mainland, far away from the far shore, was the greatest chance of success. But petitioners were not given a choice of where they entered into this land.

'Success' as defined by a proper chance of becoming a Daemon. Those in life who knew power would find that their souls held a strength to them unlike but not entirely dissimilar to the power they had held past. That was the taste the Daemon's craved. These would find themselves ahead as Daemons, able to bully and consume the lesser forms.
Those away from the shores were oft assumed to be powerful enough to at least be wary of, for it was not unlike the more human powers to take fair guises or for petitioners to rise quickly given the slightest handhold.

There was no diffuse continuous transformative power as in the Abyss, nor the strictly regimented levels of Hell. There were very few weak souls (or quite many if one considered the lambs in Awaiting Consumption), after which the level of capability jumped sharply to the main population of horrific Daemons. Then beyond those teetering disparate towers of allied power were some under a Horseman and some not.

Jalar hated Abaddon already. it wasn't just the moans or prayers to Sarenrae that the handful of other people he saw threw to the skies as if those would help them. It wasn't just the dead colors, a gray lifeless grass and a darkened red horizon. It wasn't just the fact that he was going to die horribly, and forever this time. 

Okay. It was mostly the last one.

He was scared. He was weak like he hadn't been in so long. He held all his strength but his armor and weapon were like shadows, vague representations of what he had worn and used which might take a hit but just felt lacking.

His only consolation to the end of his tale was that he had a dozen gold and silver coins in his pockets. They might buy him passage, were the stories true. 

(They probably weren't, a small scared part of him that he had never quite expunged whispered pointing to preaching from the Church about the evil of the Evil afterlives and most of the Neutral. That Hell gave up all limited pretense to torture, the Abyss grabbing you and reforming you into a beaten servant, and Abaddon there to consume you until nothing remained.)

"Jalar? That you?" Came a voice from the fog, the rogue stepping out in just the same manner as he might from shadows.