In a Broken Maze
Twenty-Fifth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Although you very briefly consider daring the mist yourself, the voice of reason sounding, suspiciously like a certain Stormlander knight, dissuades you from the notion. There is no way to know where it may lead in all the spheres of being, and as powerful as you have grown there are still places you would not dare to tread. You could of course tear the very fabric of magic around yourself and then fly forth, but then you would be willingly stripping yourself of all arcane protections before setting off into the unknown. The mist might be magic, then again it might also be something as simple as poison and that can kill you no less dead than any spell without the protection of your crown.
"Be ready to draw back from the forward-most ship," you call instead across all your mental threads. After ten heartbeats everyone is braced and ready, even Balerion obedient to your mental summons. Thankfully, the ships of your Shaitan allies had not made this ship a target knowing that the most dangerous members of the expedition are on board.
Whether by chance or intent, the battle seems almost to still as you draw breath, the hiss of arcane weapons and the roars of dragons fading into the distance and then you breathe out,
flames that burn sorcery as easily as flesh. The mist draws back from the touch of the flames, but as it does so the magic in it seems to grow stronger not weaker, the mark of a powerful artifact or a spell of above the seventh circle...
No sooner had the thought come to you than you begin to see the shape of it writ in eddies of smoke in screams to whispers faded, a
trap to lock away the body and mind in hellish torment, empowered until it can snatch away not merely one victim but many. Dany was right, it was a demiplane, but far indeed from the mage's sanctum.
"Keep trying to unravel it," you call to the others,
pitting your own magic against the mist again and again, until it was finally banished, leaving behind a thin acrid smoke that Siduri confirms as poison, likely meant to weaken the mind against the horrors of the maze. If nothing else, one cannot say your foe does not bait a good trap. A pity they sent a trapsmith to do a general's job.
The fleet is on its last legs. Enemy attacks grow ragged and desperate as the boarders of the Peerless empire fight their way into the lower decks while the Wyverns scour the upper works. It will be a roll of the bones if you can secure these ships or if the graveyard of Valyria will claim them.
"Come on, I think the last of the poison's cleared," Dany says, though she does not dart ahead as she might once have, though whether in consideration to her safety or simply your and Ser Richard's nerves is more than you can say.
The room you had been attempting to enter is a dining chamber, lavishly decorated in rubies and ivory, lit by mage-lamps in the absence of windows... the previous absence of windows at least. You had improvised a rather large one. In the center of the table there is a puzzle box draped in blood and on top of the box a soot-blackened skull. "Enjoy thy petty victory, oh 'Scalathrax Ashbringer'," it proclaims in a mocking tone. "Know that thou hast made a foe of one who outshines you as a fire-mount outshines a candle. I would say farewell, but I know that you shall fare anything but..."
While the mage had been indulging in his love of theatrics, you had drawn a gem from the folds of your cloak, a Sothosi black diamond as it happened. Ironically enough, you suspect the long dead spider worshipers might even have approved of what you have in mind for it. Before the spirit can speak the final word, you
three words of binding heavy as steel chains upon the air, one clawed hand reaching towards your enemy, not for the vessel of bone he inhabited but for his very soul.
A scream of rage cuts short words of mockery, a flicker of tainted flame passes between the skull gem, and there it lies, an ember in the palm of your hand.
"Is that..?" Siduri trails off. "You know you could probably trade that for a lot in Dis."
"I have use for him myself," you reply, voice carefully neutral in spite of the implication that you would sell a slave. She had spent too little time in your lands to know the depth of your feelings on the matter. "He would make an excellent book."
For some reason the answer seems to disquiet her for a moment, though it is quickly followed by a genuine smile. "We should probably look for his empty body first, Your Grace, lest some fiend step into it like a discarded cloak and whisk it away."
What do you do next?
[] Aid in seeing a swift end to the battle
-[] Write in how
[] Seek out the mage's body
-[] Write in how
[] Write in
OOC: With his buffs the mage had to roll a 4 or lower on his will save to be caught by trap the soul, even cast as a miracle at 9th level and he had alter fortune to re-roll the save. First roll 3... second roll 1. At least he got some spells in unlike say Damphair. Not yet edited.
] Address the voices in your head
