An Arcane Tangle
Second Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
At Dany's answer you fall silent within as without, and for a long moment you weigh your one path against another. Thankfully it seems the herald is expecting shock and inner struggle, seeming to grow more confident and more hopeful with every passing moment that the hour of its deliverance is at last at hand.
"Varys," you send first to your familiar.
"Warn Zherys, Benerro, and Teana that I am about to try to lure this thing into a trap." Ser Richard knows you enough to guess that you have a plan, and you remember well that Rina had followed your command at once when you had dealt with the traitor Fey. Ordinarily you would say the same of Teana, but given how much pain this horror had caused her you would rather err on the side of caution.
They all react each in their own manner, breath catchings slightly, eyes widening by the barest fraction, but all of them are skilled for their own reasons in keep their inner selves from reflecting upon the face and body. N'gath might guess that you had conversed with them, but not what you had said. Hopefully your own attempt will go as well. It would be no easy feat to destroy the manse without harm to the rest of the city and the less said of the possibility of the fire spirit abroad and loose the better.
"How can we free you if you have become one with this structure?" you ask aloud through gritted teeth as though the words pain you.
"How easily you dip your banners in defeat..." Mad giggles spark off the walls, though something tells you there might be as much mummery to this mirth as to your own question. It wants to be underestimated.
"Will you not take my oath, then, that I will shine upon some other land far off from your ambitions?"
"I asked you a question and made no offer yet," you reply sharply, finding it disturbingly easy to play along. Unlike all the times you have played the arrogant stripling, the foolish conjurer or some other exaggerated mask, these are the answers you would have given if the Fey were not lying. Time is more precious than gold or gems, more precious than knowledge. To have it is squandered so would be a greater harm done to your plans than anything save a dagger in the heart. No, worse than that even, for you can turn death's hand but not the pitiless wheels of the clock.
"Have your ice witch compel the answers from Tagar," the spirit replies.
"Only from his tangled mind could one grasp the tangled web of his folly." N'Gath answers with disdain.
"Remember, the wheel turns blindly and none are at the helm..."
"Do not force me speak of that day," the tattered shade of the dead magister now divested of its shroud of memory proclaims hollowly. "He has sought to break me for years. Has it been years or centuries? The passage of time means so little now..."
"What do you mean break you?" Teana asks, obviously struggling to keep her tone level when faced with what remained of the man responsible for the Day of Fire, for the death of so many close to her.
"The betrayer has sought to bewilder my mind with old memories and false hope, to make me see the day of his treachery as something other than what it was." Ash swirls around the figure as he moves closer. "Yet no matter how many times he forces me to witness that which was I can never forget my death, never forget what I am. I will not be made a fool of a second time!" The voice rises to a screech, like metal carving through stone on the last words.
"It was trying to make you believe in a world where it did not betray you so that you would then speak of your precautions thinking it an ally?" Zherys interjects, unshaken by the spirit's rage rage.
"Yes... yes, and he will lie to you... of how sweetly he will lie, how much will he promise... ashes... ashes and blood... do not trust it, never trust it," the increasingly frantic specter proclaims.
Of course you have no intention of trusting N'Gath any further than you can throw the Red Keep and all within it, but that is not something you can say here where the dark spirit himself might hear you. So the question is now how to persuade the shade of magister Tagar that you would not make his mistakes or even if it is worth attempting to converse with it at all. You could simply ask Rina to attempt to compel the Wraith, but she had never commanded the unliving, much less for such a purpose. Worse still if the dead magister's will should prove stronger than it could destroy itself upon your weapons or flee through the manse.
What do you do?
[] Try to convince the wraith to explain what happened on the day of the summoning
-[] Write in
[] Ask Rina to try to compel the Wraith
[] Write in
OOC: The rolls were pretty close, but ultimately in your favor.
