Aftermath

In the aftermath of the 360th day (after the second wave of assaults on Greyton), we check in on some of the other defenders of the Valley.
== Zanaphia ==
Zanaphia looked like Mogriss. This was no accident, and while the two are not related Zanaphia found Mogriss' journal, and styled herself after the archmage's apprentice. Mogriss' journal was comprehensive, covering everything from elegant spellcasting to how she dressed and wore her hair. This was more than simple vanity on her part, her obsession with the "weave" and the patterns underlying magic had lead her to incorporate those patterns into her own being, from tattoos to how she braided her hair.
This was mostly wasted on Zanaphia, who failed by not being very clever, and by currently lying in a patch of mud coughing up blood. Her hair was nearly completely burned away and her fancy clothes shredded beyond the aid of anything but the most delicate of transmutive magic.
"How about" said Zanaphia, when she recovered from her coughing fit "how about next time I go down, you leave me and find an apprentice that doesn't explode so much"
Mogriss didn't reply, but hurled another fireball in a lazy arc toward a group of shambling zombies. She did allow herself a small smile when she saw that none of them had escaped the blast.
"This is Tsar!" continued Zanaphia, trying to get her legs underneath her. "The academy is lousy with mages who've got things like all the talent you could want. They probably don't die more than once a week, tops"
Mogriss gestured dismissively. "Find your cloak, pick up your staff, read your restoration scroll and then take care of those skeletons who're trying to sneak through the trench. Aim low, keep your eyes focussed on what's going on around you, not the target, and bloody well keep your ring finger next to your thumb while you cast."
The scorching rays managed to incinerate two of the skeletons, with the third ray being aimed just too far to the right to catch the last one in the line as it swiftly jumped out of the way. Zanaphia swore, and finished the job with a magic missile. She found the spell's unerring accuracy satisfying, especially against the unusually nimble skeletons. Her celebration was cut short by the sudden whip-crack of a nearby crossbow firing, and she had just enough time to feel a burning pain in her chest before everything went dark. 
Barely had the astral realm and Pharasma's line come into focus before she felt herself yanked backward, and she awoke coughing up even more blood while Mogriss put the small golden wand back in her satchel.
"Get up. Pick up your staff and don't let your mirror images fade like that. And what did I tell you about keeping an eye on your surroundings?"
Zanaphia wretched, but managed to use her staff to lever herself to her feet. "If not for you, I'd be dead exactly 50 times over, as of that one. Still not too late to get a better apprentice"
Mogriss' face softened for a moment. "So many will die today. You will not one of them. I have bound you to this plane so you may learn. Because you must learn. Fondon decided that for me, learning was more important than dying. So now, I have decided the same for you."
Zanaphia couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice "I can never be as great as Fondon, or even half as good as you"
Mogriss' resumed her serious expression. "No. You don't get to decide your own limits. When I found you, you were a vain, stupid, selfish girl, more interested in hairbrushes than in proper spellcasting. Fondon's gone, and there's a chance he'll never come back. I can't replace him, but I can at least try. A year ago you were a silly girl. Yesterday you were just a bad wizard. Today, you'd be a droput at any decent academy. Next month, you'd merely be bottom of the class. I will drag you upwards. You will die and be roborn as many times over as many decades as it takes to make you a wizard worth my time. If I can bring you to greatness, I can lift the whole Valley toward the light."
Zanaphia looked blankly for a moment, then spoke "Is that what Fondon did for you? Were you ever once like me?"
Mogriss looked Zanaphia dead in the eye. "No."
== Pharasma ==
"Hello Azarthraine Lucent. Please, take a seat. Have some tea."
"Are you sure? There's an awful lot of people in the line behind me."
"I am certain. Time passes here on my whim."
"Then why is there a line at all? Why is it sometimes long or short?"
"Have some tea. It's very good"
"Thank you. I think I will"
"Now, you incinerated yourself to protect your comrades. Noble, but you're not coming back. None of your friends have the money or talent to restore you."
"I know. I knew at the time, too. It wasn't noble, not really. I think I was just afraid."
"Afraid of seeing more friends die, or afraid of facing a monster?"
"This tea is very good."
"It is. I grow it in the fields of Rukongai, where those of a truly neutral outlook spend their days. It is nice there. All the fun of life, without pain, hunger, fear, or death"
"I don't think it's for me. I tried to be a good person, and I think I largely succeeded."
"You feel like you deserve a reward? Your faith in Darach Albeth, and the lives you saved and the monsters you slew?"
"Yeah. Something like that"
"Well if that's what you wish, finish your tea and take the door behind me. It leads to a rather peaceful part of Elysium"
"Aren't you supposed to judge me? Weigh my sins...or something?"
"No. My job, if you can call it that, is to simply send you to your correct destination. You're over 200 years old, and very clever. If you think you've lived a good life and should go enjoy your afterlife in Elysium, then by all means. You know yourself best."
"Do you disagree? I think that's where I should go"
"Yet you haven't gone. You harbour so many doubts. You lived your life as best you could, worried all the time that failing, even in a small way, would see you condemned to an eternity of torment. You concocted a façade of bravado and confidence, and embraced the pheonix; so that you may live forever and never face my judgement. Do you need me to tell you? To say 'Well done Mr Lucent. You rescued one-hundred-and-twenty-four-point-seven innocents and slew three-hundred-and-two evil creatures bent on harming the weak. You prayed to your god an average of one-point-two times a day and committed exactly two decently large sins. If we do the arithmetic and remember to allow for your rather poor treatment at the hands of your mother, then you are one-hundred-and-eighty-three-percent qualified to go to Elysium!"
"Yeah. That's what I expected? I thought it would make me feel better"
"You prayed to a god because all you remember of your father was him singing in church. You spent your whole life obsessing over the minutia of how to not obey the rules of society to the point where you drew up your own personal set of rules on how to not follow rules. You once killed a woman in a fit of rage and spent the rest of your life doing hundreds of good acts because you were so sure that you were in no way good at all"
"..."
"So i say, good on you. The door behind me leads to Elysium. You're free to take it. From the bottom of my heart, and from the tip of my just scales, you deserve it."
"Thank you. I...I just have one question"
"Certainly"
"I would like to finish my tea first"
"Of course"
"And then maybe see the tea fields of Rukongai. Perhaps spend a season helping out. Or two"
"You're free to do so. Go forth into the Boneyard, and grow some tea. No one will hold you accountable for your past, or guilt you into banking goodwill against some terrible future. Go on. You are free."
== Xelo'Tath of Claire ==
The plane of shadow is contiguous with the material plane, and indeed many of the outer planes. That is to say they overlap, and the shadow plane is just a strange reflection of the 'real' world. There is one place however (in the awkward gap between the planes of Hell and Negative Energy) where the plane of shadow exists, but no other plane does. Here the creatures of shadow exist in a world that's entirely their own, free to be what they want, rather than just reflecting the world around them.
The engine of shadow is a strange place of rolling hills and thin grey grass. The sky is filled with dim, whirling light as if someone has taken the plug out of the sky and you're watching the stars go down the drain. The grey scenery looks like an oil painting; quick motions of the brush rather than physical terrain. The creatures that live here build structures of glass an iron, the only materials that can survive there long. Colossal n-legged spiders hide out beyond sight of any living creature, occasionally venturing into the astral plane in order to steal souls for their consumption.
There structures here have neither roofs nor walls, as there's no weather to keep out, nor ways of stopping prying eyes. In a nearby depression, a dozen kytons are at work on different tasks, all centred around a great machine. The device is made of black glass, looking like part loom, part broken window and part nightmare. The whole thing is about 100 feet long and 30 feet high, and the component parts move around each other, giving the whole thing a roughly egg-shape.
Interlocutor Chattur’gah is a 9-foot tall creature of metal and flesh is watches a newly arrived kyton intently. Chattur’gah has three legs and four arms, all of which are covered in blades. In the center of the creature sits a human torso, fleshless and fatless with tubes and clamps binding it to the machine that attaches it to the rest of it's body. The thing is unnatural and somehow painful to behold, as if the creature radiated suffering.
The new arrival is a blue-skinned kyton clad in leather and chains. Unlike the other kytons that wrap their chains around them as a form of armor, this one spreads dozens of fine chains (each ending in a rusty spike) in a mockery of an angel's wings. It carries a beautifully decorated longsword, and is holding a small bundle of black cloth. This is Xelo-Tath of Claire, servant to the Patron.
Xelo'Tath hands the cloth to Chattur’gah, and motions to the machine. Chattur’gah looks expectant (Xelo'Tath has since learned to read the creature's bizarre attempts at facial expressions) and hands him a few feathers, snatched from the ground where Napharoth fell. Chattur’gah nods, and the kytons begin to busily work on the giant machine. The nightmarish loom begins to whirl to life as they kytons push switches and begin a chant which joins the sound of rattling chains. Chattur’gah approaches the giant machine, and places a silver shard upon the pedestal.
Flames spring up in the center of the machine, coalescing into the shape of a human woman. A moment later and unconscious Tabitha Wolfsbane drops onto the ground at Chattur’gah's feet. Xelo'Tath easily lifts her, and nods in thanks to Chattur’gah. A second later he and Tabitha disappear from view.
In Greyton, Xelo'tath quietly places Tabitha on a bed in the corner of the Greyton Field hospital, before vanishing again.