By Silent Ways
Tenth Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
After returning the room to how you had found it, you turn to the woman who you now fear had been chosen to be in this place for a reason quite apart from any intrigue of men and offer the best protection you can offer without blindly overturning the proverbial apple cart. You offer Mereth's services to protect her, and for another layer of protection you suggest that they wear each other's faces. "If anyone asks about these arrangements, say you made made a bargain with Master Liu to get his protection after a unpleasant encounter earlier today."
The lady nods and takes the ribbon with trembling fingers, yet when you return to the garden and reunite with your two guards she does not just meekly go along with your plan as you had assumed she would. Instead she asks a question of the Fury, soft but firm: "That's not what you really look like either, is it?"
"No," Mereth answers idly, though the lines of her face shift ever so slightly. Interest glimmers in her eye.
"What do you really look like?" Jeanna Forlys presses, struggling with herself. "I agreed to have someone wear my face knowing so little of them, before I didn't even want to know and look where it's gotten me. This time I'd like to know even if it's dangerous, at least I won't be stumbling blindly in the dark."
The Erinyes seems amused by this small act of bravery, but for you it is nothing short of impressive after all she has suffered today. Something to look for in an agent of the Inquisition, perhaps...
No, not yet at least. "I will not lie, nor deceive you, but there are some secrets I cannot share on such short notice."
"Fairly said, Excellence," she replies in odd mixture of relief and disappointment writ upon her features.
The matter settled, you bid them to seek out Jarlar at the behest of his "investor" hailing from "Myr" from a few months ago and wanting to check if he thinks the time is right to invest the other hundred-thousand honors he had been offered then. If things go well then they are to withdraw from the manse in all haste by the manner that seems least suspicious to Mereth. "If things go poorly call in your mind and I will hear," you add,
wishing upon them a silent bond by which you may converse without being overheard.
"In our heads like... praying?" Lady Forlys asks, confused.
The words have the rare gift of reducing you to stunned silence for a moment: "No, of course not. It's only a spell," you hasten to add.
"Now do you see why Hell is right to reap their souls, these fools who will latch on to any power and call it god?" Leto asks silently.
"That something is easy does not make it the proper path, else we would all sink into the tumultuous embrace of our passions never to rise above then," you counter swiftly, having long since marshaled an argument against that point of diabolic reasoning.
"It's just methods not purpose," she replies, though there is the slightest edge of hesitation to it. You idly wonder if that was the first rallying cry of Asmodeus. For certain it would have looked awkward upon a banner.
You do not directly counter her point, for such seeds are not sown in a day. Instead you ask that she look into what the others had found in Lys, particularly about the mysterious solicitor, while you look through the other chambers of the manse in search of passages and arcane signs.
Without substance you float through the manse hidden from the senses of flesh, yet you had hardly crossed the corridor that connects Lady Forlys chambers with those of the remainder of the east wing that you find something that could see you, something that dwells in this twilight realm: black as pitch and cold as only emptiness can be...
shades forever twisted and tormented by the manner of their deaths float through the halls, by garb and manner seemingly born of a dozen generations and more. You see rich and poor, lowborn and high, but one thing is ever unchanged between them—all were of the blood of the dragonlords in life. Yet they pay your intrusion no mind, gathering in sorrowful choruses that follow in the wake of the living, unheard, unfelt.
Though tempted to attempt conversing you stay silent and keep to your task, taking advantage of the specters' strange tolerance as much as you can. Thus in two other chambers you find two more marks: 'wit' for Jarlar, 'knowledge' in Yargo's, and in each you also find secret ways, but it is in the third room that you discover the first self-evident sign of foul play: scorch marks on the walls, the scent of burning flesh and blood far fresher than the marks dripping over the headboard of the bed. A mage's duel had been fought here... fought and lost. You guess the meaning of the mark before you even read it:
'power'.
"Something approaches on this realm, something whole of mind," Varys hisses urgently in your mind.
What do you do?
[] Try to set up an ambush
-[] Write in
[] Retreat
[] Write in
OOC: Varys is really proving her worth here. Without mindsight or similar there's no real way to detect approaching ethereal creatures with all the haze that the physical objects around cause.
