03/24/2026: The Library of the Amber Temple

The air in the library sits thick and cold, carrying the faint smell of ancient stone and something older beneath it — dust, old parchment, and incense. The light pulses, slow and amber-warm, across the shelves reflecting the lamps’ illumination from the resinous walls.

Shifty steps close to Ratrick and murmurs the words of a Remove Curse. The spell settles over the rogue like a warm hand lifting something unpleasant away. Ratrick blinks. Then he grins — that bright, slippery grin that opens doors and loosens purse strings — and something in the room feels slightly more dangerous for it.

Soulfire stands at the edge of the staircase, the gifted lamp hanging from her fingers. She turns it over in her hands, considering. Ilya looks exhausted, dark circles ring his eyes eyes. A Lesser Restoration would fix that. She has the lamp. She has Exethanter’s gift.

She puts the lamp away. Pinecone, her wolf, pads at her heels as she move to the circular stairwell..

She whispers a word and simply blinks out of view. The air where she stood gives a single, soft ripple, like a stone dropped in still water, and then she is gone, slipped sideways into the Ethereal Plane without so much as a scuff on the stairs.

Exethanter, apparently unbothered, extends one pale hand toward Nike. In it, a key — old, dark iron, smaller than you’d expect for something so important. “Keep your party close to you,” the lich says pleasantly, “and the flame skulls will not trouble you. They are… particular about who they consider guests.” He seems faintly amused by this, as if the flame skulls are an endearing quirk rather than a lethal hazard.

⚔

Biblo watches the empty space where Soulfire was.

“She’s gone,” he says.

Everyone looks. He’s right.

Crystal frowns and calls out into the stairwell. “Soulfire?” Nothing comes back. The word just falls into the cold air and disappears. Crystal thinks it through quickly — no shimmer, no blurred edge, no half-there outline. Not invisible. “She’s Blinked,” Crystal says. “She’s gone Ethereal.”

There’s a beat of silence.

On the stairs, Pinecone is scratching at the stone step where his person only recently stood. The wolf’s claws rasp against the floor in quick, anxious strokes. Biblo crouches beside him and puts a hand on the big animal’s flank. “She’ll be back,” he says, and sounds like he mostly believes it. Pinecone does not stop scratching.

⚔

On the Ethereal Plane, the stairwell looks like a charcoal drawing of itself — all grey and washed-out, the stone drained of warmth, the amber light gone entirely. Soulfire can see the library  in muted tones, the party moving around the shelves like figures in a dream. While she can see them, they cannot see her. She opens her mouth, but nothing crosses the veil: no sound, no spells, no help.

She looks up.

Above her, in the domed roof of the stairwell, four phase spiders are descending. They move fast — far faster than something that large should move — dropping on thick strands of ethereal webbing with the practiced ease of hunters who have done this many times before. Their eyes catch what little light exists on this plane. There are a lot of eyes.

Soulfire presses herself small against the wall of the stairwell and thinks, very seriously, about her new Fireball spell.

⚔

Back in the library, Nike and Crystal approach the lich with the particular careful courtesy one uses with very powerful entities who are in a good mood and might not remain so. They would like to borrow some books, they explain.

Exethanter brightens. It is, somehow, more unsettling than his neutral expression.

“Of course,” he says. “Knowledge is precisely what this library is for.” He moves among the shelves with the unhurried ease of someone who has organized these books himself and remembers where every single one of them lives. He selects a slim volume and presents it to Nike — elvish fairy tales, old ones, the kind with teeth in them. Nike accepts it with both hands.

Biblo lingers hopefully near a shelf of magical texts. Exethanter notices, the way he seems to notice everything, and produces a book on weapon techniques — specific, theoretical, exactly relevant to the problem of throwing a Flame Tongue Trident accurately and well. Biblo takes it with something close to reverence. The lich looks genuinely, quietly pleased. There is something almost sweet about it: a scholar who has had no students for a very long time, suddenly surrounded by people who want his books.

Crystal receives a long, flat box. Inside, nested in cloth that was probably once fine, are a pair of magical field glasses. She lifts them and sweeps the stairwell almost immediately — because Soulfire is up there somewhere, and the dome above the stairs has been bothering her since she looked at it.

The field glasses are excellent. Extremely excellent.

Four phase spiders, enormous, fill the lens. They are very close to  Soulfire crouches, clearly terrified.

“Firebolt,” Crystal says, and casts.

The bolt of flame streaks toward the web strands in the stairwell with a sharp crack of heat. It does not get far, and has no effect on the ethereal webs.

“NO FIRE IN THE LIBRARY.”

The lich’s voice drops about three registers. The temperature in the room does something unpleasant. The field glasses are removed from Crystal’s hands with a smooth, deliberate motion, returned to their box, and the box is set aside. Exethanter regards Crystal for a moment with an expression that suggests she has confirmed something he suspected about adventurers.

“The spider problem,” he says, with perfect composure, “belongs to whoever has chosen to visit the Ethereal Plane. Not to my library.”

Zilk, who has been quietly watching all of this, raises his hand.

“Could we… rest here?” he asks. “In the library?”

Exethanter considers this the way he seems to consider most things — completely, and briefly. “Yes,” he says. “You may rest here.” A pause. “You may not use fires.” He glances once toward Crystal. Crystal looks at the floor.

Neferon is dispatched for refreshments with a word, and slopes off down the corridor without complaint.

The lich turns his attention to Zilk with something that might be scholarly curiosity. He produces two items: a book on hags — their natures, their magic, their politics, the particular nastiness of their curses — and a picture book, large-format, old, illustrated in extraordinary detail. He sets them both on the table with an air of presentation.

Zilk, for his part, produces Bella.

The hag’s head sits in his hands with the same unlovely expression it always wears. Exethanter leans forward. He examines the head, whose eyes pop open, her lips forming words that cannot be heard. The lich peers at the head with the focused attention of someone encountering a genuinely interesting specimen. “Fascinating,” he says. “There is residual magic here. She may yet be capable of casting.” He does not seem troubled by this. He seems delighted.

Ratrick, meanwhile, has drifted toward a bag sitting on the table — magical, clearly, the kind that hums slightly if you listen for it. The kind that multiplies whatever you put inside.

“Help yourself,” Exethanter says, without looking up from Bella.

Ratrick reaches in and pulls out an Arcane Grappling Hook. He turns it over in his hands, testing the weight, and grins again. The grin has fully returned, charismatic and slightly alarming.

Neferon returns with the feast.

It looks extraordinary — roasted meats, glazed with something fragrant, bread that steams at the crust, a spread of fruits and small pastries arranged in careful patterns. The smell alone is enough to make the stomach clench with want.

The first bite is nothing.

Not bad, not unpleasant — just nothing. The same tasteless, textureless offering the Amber Temple has always provided, dressed up in the appearance of abundance. The party eats anyway, because they are tired, and because there is nothing else, and because Exethanter is watching with what appears to be genuine hospitality and it would be rude not to.

⚔

A sound from the stairs.

Soulfire steps back through the veil and onto the stone, slightly ruffled, trailing the particular cold that clings to the Ethereal Plane. She is intact. Behind her, on the other side of the veil, one of the four phase spiders is wrapped so thoroughly in its own web that it cannot move at all — trussed up in its fumbled attack, immobilized by its own silk, enormous and furious and entirely stuck.

Pinecone launches himself at Soulfire with the full force of a large wolf’s relief. She catches him, barely.

“There were spiders,” she says.

“We know,” says Crystal.