Scholars' Tomb
Seventeenth Day of the First Month 293 AC
Pondering on the betrayals willing and not that a wyrm may commit when faced with a cleric of Tiamat the Many-Hued, you eventually decide to leave the dead dragon behind, at the same time showing a measure of trust for the cursed ancient... after all, you are leaving him near your 'hoard' with nothing to guard it. Nothing obvious at least. You've little doubt that Yss will rouse himself from slumber to warn you if some madness overtakes Amrelath and then woe betide him.
To Essaria you travel first in three long leaps, then to stand among the ruins of another age, the place where you and your foes in equal measure had claimed new allies from amidst the crumbling stone. Then without pause or a backwards glance on you ride thought the night: yourself and Dany upon your own wings, Aradia riding the wind lightly as a feather while while the others ride steeds of shadow and smoke. Next come Malarys, Lya, Ser Richard, Waymar and Vee, all of you ready... no, eager to put an end to a foe you can find at last, a foe with a face and a name. Not distant powers of the depths or the ice, not lords of flame in fortresses before which the gods might balk, but mortal men who can die just as easily as any others in spite of all the dark pacts they have made.
The Dothraki Sea is dark under you, the distant lights of campfires like fireflies caught in the grass, and for a time is seems as though the the whole world had been stilled by the twined emptiness of sky and earth, broken up only by the many rivers cutting across it. You take heart when you notice that they are beginning to flow east not west, knowing your destination near.
***
Your company approaches the Silver Lake besides which Sallosh rests still under the stars, though false dawn cannot be far. The place once been named the City of Scholars, and the second among the jewels of Sarnor now lies still and silent as a gravestone in the pale moonlight. You see no fire from on high, no sign of life save birds and beasts for as far as the eye can reach. Only the River Clearsong burbles in its banks as ever, passing over the wreck of what must once have been a tall and stately bridge as it heads north into the Bay of Tusks.
Looking closer you realize a truth that the moonlight had hid, much of the stonework is blackened by a great blaze: the work of looting Dothraki or a last desperate blow struck by the defenders before they were cut down, the histories do not tell, for there were none there to recall but the horselords to witness it and they care little for such matters. A melancholy fate that so little would be known of the fall of a city built on scholarship... though perhaps a fitting one.
"So to work expunging the last of my order's shame," Malarys begins, speaking briskly as though to to clear away his own grim thoughts.
"We dare not come much closer like this," you muse. "Any flying scout untroubled by darkness will easily be able to spot us."
"Yet we cannot search the place house by house and street by street... it's the size of bloody Oldtown," Ser Richard is quick to point out. "If we have to spend a month looking for them there won't be much surprise by the end."
Here sorcery cannot guide you as well as it has done so far. The Wayfinder points the straight and surest path to the Cheesemonger of Pentos, unfortunately that path leads to some place
beneath the city as you had half-suspected from the vision, and you can hardly carve a tunnel through the ruins where it leads.
"They will have things with them... things that don't
belong in ruins," Dany says after a moment. "We could try to find the nearest store of grain, or the nearest sharpened knife. They can't have dug in like moles without leaving any guards on the surface, either so..."
"We could take prisoners," Waymar finishes the thought, excitedly. You recall a time when such tactics would have been the farthest thing from his mind.
"Maybe send some of my spirits like the manner, make them think its something else looking for 'em," Vee offers slowly. "They won't last long, but a few of them are quick."
"We could call one of the Xorn," Lya suggests, rising suddenly. "They can swim through the stone and find any tunnels that may lie hidden underneath the city."
What do you do?
[] Fly through the city trying to locate with the Wayfinder objects that do not belong
[] Send summoned creatures scouting
-[] Write in which
[] Call a Xorn
-[] With lesser planar binding (Dreamcast or Blood Wish)
-[] Travel to the Plane of Earth to obtain a guide
[] Write in plan
OOC: You used three teleports from you and three from Vee getting here, plus five phantom horses.
