1 Chapter One: Nightstone, Part One

The cold wind settled on to the party as they traveled to their destination. A group of adventurers, seeking fame and glory. Ledias slept peacefully in the carriage. She's one of the youngest in the group; she became a doctor at 12, and a Paladin at 15. Now that she's 17 with new friends, she was ready for adventure. The horses stopped suddenly, jolting everyone in the carriage.

"We're here," Phil said, shaking her awake gently. She opened her eyes slowly to a familiar face of a Rogue. A handsome, blonde man with sparkling white teeth. His face was smooth, but his body has collected scars from multiple battles. He looked like a prince in "shining armor," even though he wore simple leather armor, but looks are deceiving, for Ledias and everyone else in the party knew who he was: a scummy thief, but also a good leader.

But even his reputation of stealing and killing couldn't keep her away from slightly smiling with the knowledge that she had friends she could trust.

"Welcome to Nightstone Everyone!" said the one giving them their ride.

"Finally! I'm a little low on booze, ya know?" Cyprus giggled, highly intoxicated from her alcohol. She reeked of booze. Her highly exposing leather armor was very inappropriate for battle; showing too much skin gives soldiers a disadvantage in the battle field. Ledias disliked her, for they seem to be complete opposites in personality and morals, for she was a Rogue, a Teifling, inhuman, and a practical slut at most.

"Riley, don't get killed on your first day as a Rogue!" Sorvex chuckled. Sorvex was a Veteran Rogue. He's had 20 years of experience and was only at the young age of 20. He's been a thief since he was a baby. Ledias disliked all of the rogues except for Phil, since he has some good values, and she respected that.

Riley was also a Rogue, but a new one. He's only 15, so his pubic state of being an undisciplined teenager and having a huge ego has made him into one of the worst criminals in multiple towns. Now he's in an actual mission with them, and many are worried that he'll get killed or start to cause a mutiny.

"Don't worry," he said with a crooked grin, "no one can touch me." He started to silently cackle like some kind of mad man until Justin Time started to poke him in the cheek.

"You seem very physical to me, young one. Why is it that you claim to be 'untouchable', when I can touch you? I ask in a posed look," he said, not in a posed look, his creepy white mask painted with red lines shifted whenever he spoke. The mask made his voice deeper than it supposedly was, making it impossible to know how he looked or sounded originally.

"You damn elves..." Riley mumbled under his breath while gritting his teeth in anger. Justin Time's an elvish frost Bard from the north. He's 800 years old with the appearance of a little boy. He can't understand human emotion, though he tries his best.

"Ledias, why is he angry?" Grog asked. Grog's a Goliath, standing seven feet tall with a huge muscular body. He could easily tear apart people's limbs for fun, but he has a broken mind of a child. At times, he's like a baby, and at other times, he goes insane, as if his personality was rolling a dice to decide whether he's lawful neutral, or chaotic neutral.

Ledias held his hand. It's soft, but rough with scars at the same time. "Don't worry about it, Grog. Say, why don't we head out side and get fresh air?" she said softly and smiled under her mask of white and gold.

"Fresh...air? Oh, yes, it very cramped here. I want go eat roasted beef," Grog said, smiling as if he was in a wonderful dream. He started to head out, shaking the whole carriage.

"Woah there boy, if you're going, I'm going too. I need a refill," Cyprus said as she followed him.

"Guess we should all head out too," Phil said with a smile.

As they all exited the carriage and the horses whined and headed down the road they came from, they looked up at the what was a beautiful town, but now it was covered in holes, dust, and ruble everywhere. The drawbridge was laid down before them with dead bodies and skeletons littered on it.

"Lets go get some drinks! It's on me!" Cyprus started to head first towards the castle, tripping over her feet.

"Wait Cyprus! Oh what the heck. She'll be fine. The rest of us split up in groups of two or more- wait, where's Midnight?" Phil looked at the group, and then in the distance he saw a humanoid figure.

"Wait!" it yelled. "Wait!" As it got closer, they could see the humanoid body wrapped in a robe, but as they saw its head, they saw that it was the head of a fox. Another one behind it was the same, except with the head of a bird. An Anthro Fox and a Aarakocra. Their names were Midnight and Ace. Midnight's a well known mage across the continent. He's been in many battles and had 30 years of experience.

Ace was a close friend to Ledias and Justin. He's always assisted them in battle and in hard times. He's the definition of a good guy.

"Hey Ledias, I dreamt that you were my 12th wife," he said as he arrived, pointing finger guns. The only bad part about him was his personality.

"I doubt you could ever court me properly," Ledias replied with a prideful smirk behind her mask. She posed like a model in front of him, teasing his lustful eyes. As fast as lightning, his hands were on her breast already.

"It's flat... Are you a guy?"

Silence swept the group. Ledias became highly flustered and slapped him across his beak. Her face was hot red and she covered her chest with her arms.

"Y-y-you PERVERTED COCK OF A BIRD!" she yelled and ran away with Grog.

"That was not okay, Ace," Midnight said.

"Agreed," said everyone in unison

"Agreed, I said in a posed look," said the frost elf, not in a posed look, his voice uneven with everyone else's tone.

"But it was her fault for teasing me! Also, she does know that a cock and a bird are technically the same, right? I mean, she posed in front of me and said, 'Oh DeAr SiR YoU CoUlD NeVeR CoUrT mE, AhaHaHa!' I just wanted to show her that she was very unguarded as a female and-"

"Ace, she's 17," said Wall Slayer, who was behind him. Ace turned pale, and then his face turned from sad, to depressed, to surprised as he turned around to see Wall Slayer.

"A little late to the party, aren't we?" stated Ace with his wings on his hips.

"A little late to prison, aren't you?" countered Wall Slayer. As they were budding heads, their group had already left them.

Ledias and Grog were way ahead of the group, making their way north of the castle. The stone path way used to be tidy and clean, but now it was littered with holes and rubble. Houses around them were broken down and some were burnt. Some had huge boulders crashed upon them, which was strange, and some were perfectly fine. As they were walking to an open field filled with tall stalks of grass and wheat, fireflies filled the yard with light as the sun finally slept and the moon awoke.

"It's...beautiful..." Ledias stated in awe. She then saw butterflies fluttering next to the broken stone walls. Colors of red, yellow, and blue filled the sky. "Look Grog! Butterflies!" She turned around, smiling, until she saw Grog hitting a rock. His eyes were crazy, his mouth talked nonsense words. He spoke every word in a different language. It was dangerous to interact with him when he was like that.

"I'll be back Grog, be careful," she said as she went towards the field. She saw some kind of shed, in the distance. She didn't know what pulled her towards it, curiosity, magic, or just her instinct, but she will forever regret doing this for the rest of her life.

As she passed through the small dilapidated town within Nightstone, she approached the shed. Once closer, it became more apparent that it was a tomb within a graveyard full of tombstones and other such markers of death. The echoing of an invitation coursed through her mind as she began to approach the chapel of stone.

Her body moved on its own towards the door. It reeked of death and decay. She slowly opened the door, expecting the worse, but within the confined space of stone laid a coffin of prestigious size.

A moment more passed before the deeper amalgamations of her mind began to speak to her. "Why must the coffin holding this one be so big?" she pondered to herself. Perhaps it was just curiosity or maybe demonic influence, but as these questions arise, so too does her hand towards the damned grave.

The voices in her head stopped as the stone lid fell onto the ground with a loud bang. She could hear her heartbeat echo from the enclosed space. Sweat beaded her face. She looked inside and found... a relatively normal but old corpse of a human, one size smaller then it's grave.

She took a deep breath of air, gagging from the foul odor of the air. "You scared me," she told the corpse. Her anxiety dispersed at the croaking of those words, but something still didn't feel right. She touched her chest where her divine necklace laid motionless, "Lord, give thee thy blessing of your own sense, and let thee see through thy eyes." A dim but noticeable light surrounded the young paladin as the power of the divines entered her, casting Divine Sense.

Her knees instantly buckled as her mind was fragmented by the untold horrors within the cold tomb. The Divine Sense was telling her that that place was a death sentence. She screamed in pain, a pain that she never felt before as the overwhelming sense of evil enveloped her. She needed to get out of there.

As the sensation ended she arose from the ground to look once more upon the corpse. "This thing cannot do me wrong, it is dead. Even a dead sinner cannot bring about such agony." Rubbing her temples, a light gleamed upon the dead human, or perhaps not, for the only thing that the young one could see is the relic held by the human corpse: a stopwatch of undeterminable age or condition. The divine sense warned her of the danger of that place, but perhaps it was not the tomb, but rather, it was the town? The stopwatch gleamed once more in the dark, inviting her to take it from the clutches of its dead master. Who was she to deny such a call?

Her hands moved on its own and slowly approached the watch. She heard a loud whistling noise in the distance and a thunk not so far away, and then a crash of a bell. Scared of what was happening outside, she quickly grabbed the watch out of the corpses hand, going strictly against her morals and values as a Paladin. Nothing happened. Everything was dead silent. The air, almost like ice surrounding her.

She breathed a sigh of relief, and saw that she breathed out a cloud of frozen air. She instantly knew what was going on and turned around in fear, eyes wide open, gazing upon the unspeakable horror that bearers the face of the corpse in the coffin, levitating above her.