Scars and Sacrifice
Twenty Sixth Day of the Second Month 294 AC
Fire roars in the chamber at your command, not of any common sort that one might find in a battle mage's spell or a forge's heart, not even in a dragon's gullet, but
fire meant to burn only those whose time in the world of men is borrowed, the dead and the damned. Light blinds as easily as fire, and for a moment Graces and and captor both vanish from sight and knowledge as though they had never been upon some cosmic pyre.
Benerro speaks and the fire bends to chains ethereal, to bind your foe from fleeing even if it is into a trap, but when the light clears and the scene is revealed again the masked thing is still here, pallid flesh smoking and blackened from the blaze, but of the children there is no sign, they are vanished.
Translocated, you realize with a sinking feeling, right in front of the pyramid, still in the thrall of the thing before you, to spread who knows what tales.
Then the writhing presence does the one thing you had not expected upon sending away its thralls, its draws from a pocket inside its own fetid flesh a dagger of a sort once used by the great generals of Ghis in the time of defeat that they may not be taken captive by their foes and shamed, and just as Garin's spells strike, one after another sevenfold it cuts its own throat, blood shockingly red... human... spilling into the waters of the pool.
"You have taught us the worth of sacrifice... dragonlord. For those who died without breath," the creature gasps wetly. As you watch the body begins to rot and sublimate into water, into smoke.
Rushing forward to guard against any peril Ser Richard reaches it first, but it is Benerro who seals it against the passage of time and Dany who carefully levitates the dagger until her somber gaze meets yours above its point. "It's cursed, the only way it could have killed that in one blow."
"What I want to know is what died without breath," Teana interjects. "If we are to fight choking ghosts next..."
The answer comes to you in a flash, though dark enough that you count it more shadow than light upon the mind. "When an Unsulled is finally broken to their master's will, they are asked to choose slay a newborn slave from the market, torn from their mother's arm. Most are strangled."
Dany looks ill, as she has not through all the battles of this month, at the reminder. "Why would a servant of the Lady of Spears feel it has to avenge them when it is Unsullied that kill them?"
"The infants are killed in her name, but not by the will of those who serve her," you answer slowly, still looking around the chamber for diabolic reinforcements that you are beginning to realize are not coming. "Who else would they belong to if not the goddess of warriors made slaves?"
"Wait," Garin interjects. "If the children were protecting this... being with their lives, what does it mean that she sacrificed herself to get them out of the pyramid?"
"At a guess..." Dany speaks slowly, as though not wanting the words to be true. "Those girls became vessels of its purpose, of its sacrifice." The last is spoken with revulsion.
"Sacrifice is not what I would call so cynical a working," Benerro says, his usually kindly face set into lines of cold purpose, almost of rage.
"The Unsullied and their Goddess are a thing of perverted purpose. We should not perhaps be shocked that they act it out. The girls will carry yet more of Asmodeous' will among the Masters, their minds and souls heavy with a darkness deeper than mere enchantment can breed." You shake your head. "We can only hope we have been distracting enough for those in the Undercity to do what needs be done."
OOC: No vote this time, partly because there should be an interlude up next and partly because I need to seriously consider some things about this quest in general. Not yet edited.
