Unburied Secrets
Thirteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Aegon will not relinquish his secrets easily, you learn upon your return to Sorcerer's Deep. While you had been traveling to spheres beyond this one, he had been exploring the world of the mind, or dreams. But he did not dream as Dany did, spreading her wings through that strange realm, where it reflected echoes of a thousand souls. Aegon, it seems, had built a fortress of his own mind, a hall with a thousand doors and a thousand secrets to which only he held the keys. Had Tiamat aided in the raising of them, you wonder, or was this his arcane masterpiece, like Lya's soul forging or Dany's weaving of dreams in the world of flesh?
It is not an altogether comfortable comparison to make between the cursed unconscious boy shaped into a monster's weapon and your dearest kin and allies, but it is an obvious one. You will not be getting the answers locked in Aegon Blackfyre's mind save by his own will, by daring the perilous trek through the halls of his mind, or, as Malarys points out, by the intercession of another god.
Waymar is scowling and the tightness around Dany's mouth shows that she is not best pleased with the suggestion. "I'm not altogether happy with the notion of feeding him to Yss, it's what we do to elder fiends and immortals not..."
Not children who had drowned in darkness, the thought does not need to be voiced for all of you to hear it.
"It's what we did to Tor," Lya speaks up unexpectedly. "Tor whose friends we still share drinks with in the evening some times, and we did it for much the same reasons. He would have been too dangerous to leave his soul loose for his master to recover. Aegon... well we can't even get answers from him, how could we possibility trust him enough to leave him alive?" She is unnaturally still and you suspect that elsewhere the the city, another body, another face, shows emotions she does not wish to reveal here.
"What if..." Waymar begins slowly. "What if we just fed those parts of his mind, of his soul to Yss, cast them out and leave him as he was before he even heard the name Tiamat. The thing about his mind, his soul, is that it's
unnaturally ordered, but if we can find the cypher to get our answers we can just tear down the parts of him that are 'King Aegon' or whatever he wanted to call himself, and just leave a boy like any other, the one he was three years ago."
"No!" Dany practically shouts. "That's horrible, to who he is now, to who he would become. Just
not being would be better than that." She shudders and looks at Waymar, struggling for a moment to find her words. "It's just the idea of anyone doing that to me... fixing me by some personal notion of what my 'best self' would be is horrid. I would rather be gone. I would rather be
in Hell than that."
"Sorry," Waymar mutters with a sad shake of his head. "I should just keep to stabbing people shouldn't I?"
"No harm done," you say firmly, turning to Tyene. "What did you find from the other prisoners?"
"There is something, in the south, talk of dead kings. Our friend the necromancer only knew what he was able to overhear, and wring from tattered wraths. The priests we captured were not the highest in Aegon's counsels, so they knew even less, but we were able to get a few answers from Connington. The Band of Nine has risen again in Sothoryos, risen in death, them and all the exiled slavers, too, who fancied carving a new realm instead of being beggars at the gates of other free cities."
"The most foolish among the most wicked," Dany helpfully qualified the exiles, but you are not in the mood for jests.
"Is there any part of our family history whose rotten corpse will not be dug up and paraded through the streets?" you sigh, unable to even muster anger, though that will soon change.
Leto flickers into being in the center of the room, and you know before she even opens her mouth that it must be grave. The Sisters of Vengeance are no more likely to lightly interrupt an interrogation than they would a royal feast. "The Queen has been attacked, she is unharmed but shaken."
After rage comes relief, after relief gratitude that they choose to present the matter in this order.
"Who?" Dany asks, her voice almost a hiss.
"A shadow dragon. He took human form and infiltrated the Wyvern hangers, the Queen was there with but one other to guard her, the knight Bonifer Hasty..." She goes on to recount the whole harrowing tale from the Stormlander knight using your mother's token of translocation at her own request to try to seek help in the library, to the chase through the sky and the intervention of the Wyverns.
"The dragon escaped," your voice sounds hollow in your own ears. Strange how finding out that someone had resurrected Maelys the Monstrous could suddenly dim in importance besides the fact that a bloody servant of Tiamat had attacked your home, had nearly... you can barely thing about it.
"She's safe," Dany says squeezing your hand gently. "We'll get the bastard and... make armor out of his hide."
Alas that proves easier said than done. Your mother shares the experience over a cup of tea, held a little too tightly in her hand, though you are hardly one to judge. Unfortunately, even having seen the memory of the dragon you cannot scry him, the familiar empty grayness looking out from the surface of the mirror.
"But we could see all the shadow dragons at the fortress," Tyene says angrily. "They would have had no reason to divest themselves of that ward."
"Unless it''s not an item or a spell, but a place," you note. "A bolthole. Perhaps when we find some of the other missing mages or officers we can discover..."
A messnager raven lands on the table between you and your mother and caws its message clear. Baelon and his exploration fleet had found the Risen Nine and not just by word of mouth.
"How are things in Yi Ti?" you ask across thousands of leagues to Amrelath whom you had left in command of dealing with the last of the Golden Company. Not the most glorious task, but the prospect of being the first to their pay chests had enticed the dragon.
"There is no army left," he replies. "There might be a few apprentices scurrying in the ruins, but I doubt they interest anyone. All the lesser priests have been confirmed dead."
What do you do?
[] Pull back forces from Yi Ti and deal with the Risen Nine
[] Send some aid against the Risen Nine, but keep looking for boltholes and escaped mages, they can't all be as prepared as that damnable dragon
[] Write in
OOC: A lot of things happening this update, hopefully it's not too tangled. Not yet edited.
