Part MMMDCLXXIV: False Fiends and True Terrors
False Fiends and True Terrors
Eleventh Day of the Third Month 294 AC
You can already hear raised voices coming from the corridor behind you and the sounds of iron-booted feet as you envelop the daemon's amber trap in your cloak. You need a distraction... Fortunately it proves easy enough to conjure. Zherys and Malarys begin to chant till false devils fill the night to cover your trail, terrors of pale bone commanding fearsome warriors before which even the spawn of the Pit quails, only nightmares of the hour born, but nightmares that can fight and bleed, that can kill at need, though you hope it will not be necessary today.
Even as these fiends fly to meet the guards Dany orders her own conjuring to dig through the rubble looking for the host. "Got him! The sarcophagus held so he should be fine to carry off."
"The spell does not leave him dreaming, I hope?" Zherys asks as you conjure a handful of ethereal scouts to enter the chambers you had not dared breach before the daemon was dealt with. Fortunately they are clever enough to know when to claim documents and arcane paraphernalia.
"No, he should be frozen," your sister replies. "Why?"
"The realization of what he has done might damage his mind if he is forced to dwell upon it in dreams." There is something in his voice you cannot quite place, not firsthand experience precisely, even the saturnine Archon of Volantis would not speak lightly of such things if he had been in such a place. Perhaps something he had witnessed in his youth.
***
Alas, securing the mansion does not go as well as the initial capture had. The guards prove to be wights just as you had suspected, though most of them do not seem to have the wit to do more than fight your supposed invading devils, who manage to herd most of the remaining mortal servants and lingering guests back into the great hall, likely saving their lives in the process. It is not the dead who prove the worst of your lingering foes.
In what must have once been a cellar for keeping food through the winter, not so different from what one might find in the North, there now lies a bone altar radiating a dreadfully familiar cold and with that cold came hunger such that even your conjured spirits who neither need nor desire sustenance were almost snared.
This hunger too you know the name of... wendingo. Though the wretches found lurking below were to the horror Amrelath faced Beyond the Wall like sparks to a raging inferno they were no mere beasts enthralled to Winter's power. They must have known their master had fallen from the moment it happened, perhaps through the sudden stillness of some arcane bond.
Rather than fight like cornered rats or flee as the daemon had done once before, the cursed Ibbenese had started tearing at the books and parchments in the room, some were even eating them. Though between the five of you it does not take long to deal with what remains of the foe in the midst of their frenzy you cannot help but curse at the sight of what they were able to destroy.
Delicate arcane apparatuses forged of ice that flowed like glass shattered and melting along with blue flames eating away at rings of silver and gold poured into the floor. At least you should be able to read through all the daemon's business dealings, the accursed had ignored that shelf entirely. All slip into the depths of your cloak.
- Trading Ledgers of House Horj
- Damaged Arcane Texts and other Documents
- Broken Necromantic Apparatuses
"It looks like someone heard the fighting," Dany calls just as you finish clearing out the room. "A patrol is coming from the front gate of the manse. It's fortified so my devils should be able to hold them off a good long while, but I'm not sure..."
You shake your head. "Let them be seen, take a few ineffective shots and then retreat. We have everything we can get out of this place short of occupying it for a day and doing a full investigative sweep, and I don't think the governor of New Ibbish will be that accommodating."
What next?
[] Investigate the Fallen Daemon's dealings further
-[] By binding it into the form of a book and trying to read it
-[] By interrogating the other prisoners
-[] By going through the documents
-[] Write in
[] Carry on with other business for the month
-[] Write in
OOC: Not quite a prefect casing, but pretty good rolls on this part.
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