In Darkness' Wake
Twenty First Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
If the plants could sense your quarry, why not a beast or someone with a beast's senses? you wonder, a swift
spell rendering the world a melange of almost indescribable odors. You can tell a goose egg from that of a chicken, even when both have been cracked and rotting on the cobbles for three days. You can sense the sharp reek of a tanner' clothes left out to air a hundred yards away, and you can just barely follow the scent of your quarry, one who smells of frost, steel, and a hint of scented oil, like the wilted memory of summer.
Not for the first time, you regret losing the skill for squeezing yourself down into a hatchling's form. The Shadow City's thousand hidden nooks and cracks would be far easier to navigate if you were not limited to human form and remaining unseen besides. Your Dornish mage persona might have been able to stand up to muster on the street, but if you were to fly across Sunspear in those robes, you have no doubt you would be questioned sooner rather than later. Yet fly indeed you must, for the assassin, whoever or whatever they may be, proves nimble and swift, unafraid of walking along crumbling mud brick walls and over creaking planks laid out as bridges between one roof and the next.
You almost lose the trail twice, once when your quarry abandons the roofs by sliding down a wall overgrown with some nameless bluish slime that makes you want to retch from smelling it, only to somehow dive through a fountain without being seen to wash the smell off themselves, and the second time when they slip between a wall and an overgrown pile of rubble that really should not be able to fit a person. Whoever they are, they have far more experience losing a pursuer than you have in following. Fortunately, you cheat,
borrowing memories of dragons past who through spell or blood had as sharp a nose as you gave yourself today. Even so, on that last twist you had to lean on the luck or fate you unlocked in Lyceos.
The path grows straighter after that, out of the twisting paths of the shadow city, past a pair of bored looking watchmen already gossiping about the events of the day, and down the rutted road into the Old Lichyard. The place had once been the burial ground for the retainers of House Martel, long before the coming of Nymeria and her exiles. Now it was little better than a potter's field, the crumbling markets having borne witness to the burial of a thousand of the desperate and destitute for every favored vassal.
In the gathering gloom of evening, you spy a pale witchlight further among the graves and in the air you feel with senses beyond sight, hearing, or enchanted spell, the touch of cruel enchantment gathering. Pale sand swirls against your cheeks.
You reach out to Tyene in your mind with a question.
"Is there a sept in the lichyard still in use?"
"I think so, the septon there is barely more than a begging brother," she replies.
"No luck on finding Jeyne, she seemed entirely fine, nothing strange or magical about her, then just gone from her room. We did get some hair to 'curse' her into sight by."
"That might not be necessary," you reply, the suspicion in the back of your mind growing firmer by the moment. Just as you are about to step forward into the graveyard Dany's voice echoes into your thoughts with unexpected tidings.
"Lord Dayne is convinced of Lady Fowler's innocence and is practically demanding that prince Doran launch a rescue effort. Should we involve him?"
What do you do?
[] Go on alone
[] Call on some of your companions
-[] Write in
[] Have Dany bring Andrew Dayne
OOC: Viserys just barely managed to follow the trail with a mythic surge on his last check. Not yet edited.
