Copper's Gleam
Nineteenth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
It takes the better part of three days, a span you can only measure by entering and exiting the land of the fey at even intervals of time, before you catch your first break. Among the branches or perhaps roots of an upside-down glade festooned with spiraling azure flowers, Vee encounters a pixie. In itself that is far from remarkable. Sprites and spirits of the air are curious by nature and more than pleased to stop and gossip about the goings on in their little corner of existence. Without the presence of a divine herald to ward them away, their chirping cries of welcome and excitement have come to be perhaps the only constant in an ever-changing realm.
That this particular
sprite is wearing golden silk fine enough to have once been a lady's handkerchief and wearing at her belt what looks to be a hair-pin reforged into a rapier is hardly of greater note. Wildfae who bargained with humans are not uncommon, yet there is something about her eyes that speaks of things beneath the sparking blue, like looking upon a pond in spring time only to realize it goes much deeper than than the sun-kissed surface. "I heard you were looking for the Man with the Copper Mask," she pipes up cheerfully. "You should be careful of him, he is dangerous."
"So are
we, if you somehow failed to notice," Amrelath says, sounding more amused than insulted.
"You're dangerous in your nature, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch, the eyes of flame," the little fey recites, flitting off Vee's palm. "He is dangerous in what he learned, what he knows, what he holds, that he sought and what he found."
"Don't suppose you could render that down to something with fewer words and more sense between them?" Maelor asked without much hope. Both of you have seen enough of the fey to know one enjoying a game too much to strike a a boring deal.
"Sense is like a string drawn tight, pull too many words away and it'll snap," the little fey said gravely, shaking her head. "He's walking in twisted footsteps and twisted is his purpose."
The flowers have started dispensing golden pollen like a soft rain upon you all, you notice suddenly, briefly distracted with insuring they are not poisonous or otherwise dangerous.
Her next words snap you back to attention instantly. "He smells of poison and soured blood, he smells of dragon's death. Even beside the ward of iron, we can smell it." The sprite looks around from Amrelath to the Myrkdreki coiled in the shadow of a root, or branch, to the mind dragon taking her smaller shape to better coil around Maelor's shoulder. "He seeks to make an end of such as you. How I know not for certain, but he is desperate and I have ridden with the Hunter enough times to know, a desperate beast is dangerous to even the most skilled hunter."
"Wait, this bastard still wants to
kill dragons?" Maelor asks incredulous and not without cause. "I thought he was running, not trying to brew poison no one's going to drink that you can cure in a blink."
"We have seen glamors that can still affect us though our wards. I would not rule out poison that could do the same," you caution.
The bone white arrows flash before your mind's eye, those had worked all too well the last time, but those were Winter's work, you doubt there are more outside their reach.
Surely not everyone is selling their souls to the Void.
"What do you think the man with the copper mask is looking for?" Vee asks your diminutive informer. "What's at the end of this path."
"Trees of copper, clouds of tears, little things that were once big, broken, broken all are
lost." At the last word you feel the unmistakable lurch of the earth beneath your feet, a twist of time and she is gone.
"I do not believe that was an ordinary being of its kind, for as much as classifications will aid us here," Zherys notes dryly.
Although you try to find the odd sprite again, trying everything from calling out blandishments to divining her, nothing works. She is as well warded as the Archmaester you seek, itself cause for suspicion, though in the end you have little recourse but to press on or turn back and let a foe work unhindered.
***
Once the inverted trees are left behind they are not replaced with any others, copper or otherwise. The ground grows barren and dry, a thin dusty soil over bare granite that reared up in sharp stones like the bared fangs of the earth. It looked almost like something one might find under the sun of some distant mortal desert, save for the gate that towered over it all large enough to make a dragon seem the size of a sparrow, spewing out bitter clouds fit to swallow cities.
"At least the clouds look to be literal enough," Maelor jests. "So, who's going in first?"
Mereth lands beside you without a sound. "Your Grace, allow me and my sisters to do so. If there is indeed some weapon against wyrms forged beyond this gate it would not trouble us."
What do you do?
[] Send in Mereth first as she requested
[] Go yourself you are the most skilled sorcerer
[] Send Vee, she knows the Feywild best of all of you
[] Write in
OOC: Your rolls just narrowly beat out not being able to find anything so you more cryptic hints than straightforward directions. Not yet edited. 
