A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Nineteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

You incline your head respectfully a moment after Garin: "And from me also my deepest thanks, my lady." With a rueful smile you add: "Now I shall have to consider how best to show my appreciation of your good work and this latest gift to one of my dearest and oldest friends." Your first inclination is to offer talismans and weapons, armor perhaps, though you have never seen Melisandre wear anything heavier than the red robes of her calling. Perhaps shadow magic is more like the more delicate workings of the arcane than the miracles R'hllor grants. You shake off the speculation, interesting as it might be. I can ask her later...

"No need to make haste in deciding," the sorceress offers as the blood melts away from her hand like a shadow in dawn's wake. "The deed was necessary, I think, to help mend that which some who claimed to work in the interests of the Lord of Light cast down."

Not for the first time it occurs to you that she can probably read you as well as you can her, not perfectly perhaps, but in flashes of insight and understanding more than enough to see beneath the masks with those who are not kith and kin. "Claimed?" you prompt. Obviously that could mean that Melisandre herself did not believe your various early conflicts with the Red Faith did not advance the will of R'hllor himself, but that perspective is obvious by her very presence. She is not one to fill silence with meaningless chatter.

"Do you not find it odd that the first of my order you encountered after your own awakening was the madman in Braavos, the one who sought to slay the Princess?" she asks, stepping besides Lya as the four of you depart the chamber by the door this time. The subtle nod of recognition that her presence at your side in public is a good beginning to that reward you promised and her company is pleasant on its own merits.

"Madness and magic are all too often tangled," you reply, not bothering to hide the grimace at the memories that invokes.

"Perhaps," the shadow-weaver allows. "However, we know a servant of the Great Other was abroad and loose among the faith in Volantis, twisting others there to her will. Slaying young Daenerys would have hardened your heart against the Lord of Light and all who serve him. Instead," the faintest shadow of a smile twitches at the corners of her mouth, "she became as she is now. Oft will the plots of darkness be turned to light in the end."

It takes you a moment to realize you had stopped walking. "We could recover his bones from the canal, question them." The Sealord would probably find it a strange request if you ask where precisely the priest had been made to vanish, but no stranger than mist compared to the rest that goes on these days.

"I would wager you will find nothing more than seawater and muck among those bones, Your Grace," the priestess replies, adding after the briefest hesitation: "My own visions could not shed certain light on the matter either. Likely she was veiled and not only by sorcery. Flame Keeper Benerro would not have been easily deceived."

"Likely you are right," you sigh. "Such tangles cannot always be cut by foresight, however finely honed. All we can do is keep our eyes sharp and minds wary..."

"And are there other minds and eyes you would enlist to your cause today, Your Grace?" she asks, her tone emphasizing just enough to mark that she knew why you have been spending these last few evenings in the temple of Yss and in whose company.

"Do you wish to join us?" Lya asks simply.

Silence reigns for a long moment, the longest hesitation you have heard of the priestess today and not over the presence of baatezu unbound from their prisons or called forth to offer them the chance to serve. It is the Great Serpent she does not wish to meet in the flesh.

"I will come," she says at last, her hand going to the crimson stone bright as an ember at her throat.


They stood before you one by one, the damned and accursed, the soldiers of the Blood War and merchants of souls, lead clad giants and unblinking assassins born of Erebus' vaults. Not all take your offer of course and to those who refused you deliver a warning to meddle not in the affairs on the world under the sun and a swift banishment. They will not heed it, you know, no matter that you had the power to bind them or to call them, no matter that you wear Mammon's hide for a cloak, but you did not trouble yourself with them past the last word of the devocation.

It is the fate of those who took your bargain that concerns you most, their strengths, their weaknesses and where they might fit into your realm, not least the frost-shrouded insectoid figure standing motionless before the eyes of Yss, whether with fear or pride you cannot say. "I will give leal service to the best of my powers, Great Lord," he whispers in your mind the same words as his fellows, from the lead-clad giants who could match him in strength if not in guile.

You had not known what to expect of the priestess' reaction, the Lord of Light has no love of fiends or those who call them, but she had worked with the erinyes on the Sea of Fire, accepted their place. Would that extend to summoning more fiends to recruit? you wonder. Now you are certain, in her eyes gleams a spark of interest, even as her hand remains firmly upon the blessed talisman, prepared for battle should the devil escape the circle before it is given leave.


Where do you assign all the devils after they have been ritually unbound from Hell?

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OOC: Shopping will be in the next update. I could not really introduce all the devils now explicitly since Viserys has been summoning them over several days in character.