Strength in Strange Places
Eighteenth Day of the Third Month 294 AC
In the end, you decide to pull Dany and Lya off their respective tasks for now to scry and study any secrets that may be found respectively, while Garin is given full control of the investigation as High Inquisitor. The plane of earth can wait, he has more urgent business to attend to and so do you.
And if you are to hunt demons, you know just who might wish to join you.
***
Maelor is the last of your companions beside Dany and Lya to still have a room in the keep, mostly because he has not been in the Deep for months. It is scrupulously cleaned and aired out by the staff, but still has the faint air of disuse about it. What few marks of the boy's previous presence here are timeworn, like the carved letter in the bedpost or seemingly forgotten, like the Valyrian primer on pyromancy that is now a staple of certain Scholarum courses which your former apprentice has long ago outgrown. It is a place mostly frozen in time, awaiting the return of a changed guest.
It is clear that Maelor's time in the City of Brass has taught him to look beyond even the most uncommon of appearances. He takes to meeting Qyburn in stride. "You're the mind mage, right? I see what Dany meant when she said you were hard to describe. How much control do you have over that?"
"I am all that I am," the flesh-shaper replies, voice almost whisper-soft, but the pride in it as hard as adamant. "There is no aspect of my form, however minute, that does not respond to my will."
"Sounds useful," the boy replies sincerely. "I'm satisfied enough just growing wings out of my shadow, but I can see how your way's more thorough."
You can well see how he kept Efreeti officials happy and suspecting nothing, but sadly you are here just for the introductions. Drawing forth the scrying mirror from your cloak, you hand it to one of the black knights to hold upright. Though the glimpse you had of the two watchmoles certainly was not much, you are skilled enough in the art by now to compensate, or so you think, at least until you invoke the magic and see the surface of the mirror turn to midnight black. You cannot see the taken guards, nor anything else around them. You have no sense of how large the space is or if you can translocate into it. But you did feel the spell align properly.
"Magical darkness," you curse, realizing just where the shadow demons had taken their victims. It was easier to create veils against sight than all divination.
Still, by drawing the Wayfinder you are quickly able to triangulate the location on the watchmoles...
Tolos, about as far from Lorath as you could get and still be in the empire. Those rumors had likely been patsies then, or an attempt to seed the influence of Abraxas far.
"Relath's gonna want to know," Maelor points out. "It may be your Empire but it's his city, and he's as much a dragon as you."
"His court is likely infiltrated," you muse.
It would surely be easier to manage than the House of Mirrors. "Best to bring him here to get the news."
So it is that you add one more unlikely personage to the meeting in Maelor's room. The Governor of Tolos is so furious at the trespass discovered that he barely gives Qyburn a second look once you assure him that the flesh-smith is no friend to the Deep Ones and that he had achieved his current form in defiance of them.
Thankfully your maps are good enough that you are able to triangulate exactly where the watchmoles are being kept, beneath a small private
lyceum for young men of Tolosi noble houses who do not wish to associate with 'the commons'. According to Relath, he had let them have it on the grounds that it would help the foolish on their path to irrelevancy.
How do you approach the demons' location?
[] By stealth going though the city
[] Teleport in using sketches of the building the Tolosi Office of City Planning has
[] Write in
OOC: This is why I wanted to get this up today, because I knew we would not get into any combat or anything. I wanted to reintroduce Maelor after he has been absent from Viserys' immediate sphere for so long. Not yet edited.
