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

Twenty Fifth Day of the First Month 294 AC

The answer is easy enough once you get a moment to think, no matter if she speaks truth or falsehood, no matter how deep the plots of the Lord of the Ninth run, if she speaks truth someone will soon arrive from the garrison to take both her and the book into custody, perhaps the merchant also if he is unlucky.

While you had been considering the implications the crimson robed shugenja acted, clawed hands snapping with the sound of edged steel scraping against edged steel. The devil vomits blood and bile from very pore as the death magic takes root in her flesh. If you needed any further proof that this was not a shugenja such as one might find in the court of the Azure Emperor that need is now gone.

Before anyone else can continue killing the supposed envoy of Asmodeus your own spell binds her tight like a fly in amber... unfortunately leaving Echyr himself trapped in an amber cage of frozen tentacles he cannot break least he release the fiend.

"Do you perchance know anything about our rather dramatic guest?" You ask with an edge of smooth irony to your words. There isn't much point trying to be forgettable now. Not reacting to this turn of events would be more notable than reacting.

"More than I would wish," the mimic gurgles angrily, forgetting the polish to their words in his rage. "It was one such as she, perhaps even this one, who 'discovered' Heronious' demise. It was theft... theft gone wrong... I ask you good and learned folk, do you think the Lord of the Ninth would lower himself to common thievery?"

To tell the truth, yes, after all you have done it and you would hardly presume Asmodeus is less pragmatic than you are, but you keep your peace on the matter.

"That is no agent of the Lord of Nessus," a wholly new voice interjects, calm, crisp and somehow too smooth upon the air, as though the word had been polished to a mirror sheen.

You turn sharply to the left to see a hell-born oracle with a golden robe draped over his slug-like body and a silver monocle on one eye, just as he continues. "If it were I would already be dead rather than pretending I was," he continues confirming your suspicion as to his identity, if the looks of veiled shock your fellow auction goers give were not enough.

"Were I to guess I would call her an agent of Lord Ezhekidich, the so-called 'just lord' of this rotting shell around us," the still very much alive Heronious of Dis continues. Part of you wonders if he is going to ask for his familiar back, but the others have more urgent questions.

"So you used us to trap your enemy?" Elariel says sadly, the voice of trust betrayed.

"I could not know if any of you were involved, the enemy knew too much of my movements and habits," the xerfilstyx shrugs, though there might be something like a frown of apology flashing across his scaled features. He turns to the envoy of Mammon. "You I did not invite, though sadly I expected you, leave."

The gilded devil does not take the dismissal well, though he answers mentally beyond your power to overhear. Heronious does not seem impressed, he shifts his monocled gaze instead to you, runes running across the edge of the glass as he tries to figure something out about you, perhaps to divine you.

"You I do not know, but I am going to assume by your actions that you acted in good faith and so I now offer counsel to leave this place before the Blessed Guard arrives, lest you become embroiled in battles that are not yours. I shall settle with you for what you have acquired. You may keep my familiar as collateral against the promise if my word is not enough."

A charming fellow to be sure, and as far as you can see sincere as he is sane unlike most of his kindred, but you truly desire that book. Perhaps you can cultivate him in his hour of need. You did not intend for Hassan to become tangled in the politics of Heaven's Shore but you have improvised more difficult tunes than this before.

What do you reply?

[] Offer your aid to Heronious in exchange for access to the final tome

[] Leave as he suggests, meet him later for negotiations

[] Write in

OOC: If the mimic had actually gotten captured the xerfilstyx would now be chasing after it and you would have a chance to join the rescue.