Weary and weak from the day�s battles, the Company started to shuffle toward the chamber where they had stowed Sebastian�s lifeless form. As they passed through the cavern that was disintegrating into different dimensions, S�ilara caught sight of a human woman with shiny black skin and burning red eyes. She was accompanied by two wolf-men who looked like the creatures the Company had fought outside the walls of the Bhindum family just a cycle of the moon ago. One of the wolf-creatures carried a lifeless body over his shoulder. The Company recognized the dressing immediately � the creatures were stealing Sebastian�s body.
The Company followed woman and her wolfen bodyguards after she picked a locked door and proceeded north out of the cavern. The Company entered the room just as she was fleeing into another door at the far end of the corridor. Bolts of blue lightning shot across the width of the narrow hallway, sweeping back across the length of the room, at waist-height. Rather than risk injury, the Company doubled back through the cavern and the torture chamber.
As they did, the Company came upon the woman at the far end of another chamber, picking the lock on a closed vault door. A fine, grainy dust was falling from the ceiling into the hallway. Cirend approached the woman, and demanded that she hand over Sebastian�s body and The Key That Is The Hand. The woman regarded Cirend carefully, and partially acceded to his demand, replying that she would leave the body and not engage the party in battle. At that time, Jeremi and Logan started coughing in the falling dust and instantly froze in place, paralyzed. Cirend nodded at the woman, and she and her companions opened the door and disappeared.
Through the open door, Cirend spied an unholy sight � the desiccated body of winged humanoid, hanging upside down on a cross stained black with evil magicks and dried blood. On the chamber floor beneath the crucifix rested a metallic horn blackened and rusted by desecration. Cirend was about to pull Jeremi out of the hallway when he sensed a very faint wellspring of life coming from the dried-out husk hanging on the cross. Motivated by his sense of righteousness, Cirend enlisted Uso to help him pull the body from the crucifix. Once released, the desiccated body immediately transformed into that of an otherworldly humanoid with feathery golden wings.
�Thank you, Servants of Good,� he stated. �I am Callin.� Callin explained that he was imprisoned here by Danar thousands of years ago, after Prophet had been corrupted by the very corrupting Banes he was seeking to hide from the world. Callin said that Danar was in the process of opening the sealed vault doors and releasing evil back into the world when Callin was sent to stop him. Obviously, Callin failed. Callin now felt compelled to return to his heavenly realm, to report what had happened and to seek new instructions.
Before the celestial being left the Company, however, he engaged in a short conversation with Cirend, who, as a believer in �ton, was curious as to Callin�s association with the Universal Creator. Curiously, Callin seemed not to know of �ton.
As he began to take his leave, Callin agreed to heal the Company and to summon Sebastian�s soul back to her body to complete the work she still had before her. He also left the Company his horn, which was no longer tarnished with evil and glimmered in pure gold. When he finished, he exploded in a brilliant flash of light and was gone.
Still reeling from the miracle of resurrection that took place, and still able to remember the feeling of having her soul called back to her body, Sebastian took a few minutes to collect her thoughts before getting down the business of disabling the paralyzing dust trap. She succeeded after a few failed attempts, and the Company gave chase to the black-skinned woman. They crossed the chamber where Callin had been imprisoned and went down a flight of stairs into a tiny chamber where Sebastian found secret door. Through the door, the Company came upon a pool of glistening, crystal clear water. Standing in the midst of the pool was a stone likeness of a woman pouring water into the pool. Much to the Company�s surprise, upon their entry, the woman turned to look at them and asked, �What does it mean to be good?�
Both Jeremi and Cirend replied that Good aids others, and fights and persecutes Evil. Without saying anything further, the statue motioned with one of its arms and a secret passageway opened to the south. The statue then returned to its former pose, pouring water.
