Blood Price
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Second Month 293 AC
You tear your eyes from the sight of Lya and Dany vanishing over the horizon Northward in the company of a pair of raven-servitors tasked with a message for the gathering currently in the plaza if things will have settled there. The temple guardsmen of Trios would have no real cause to leave their posts, and the Fountain of the Drunken God would hopefully remain a fountain and nothing more. You had made damn sure your attack would not coincide with any night of revelry....
Those legionaries tasked with taking the northern slums or at least keeping the fiends there too busy to begin their wanton slaughter had also begun their slightly delayed journey, the Shadow Tower's plinth held firm in Amrelath's claws.
"Alright, time to clean up here and move on," you call, taking on a shape more akin to the one you were born to, though still armored in crimson scale. "The audience room and the bed chambers first, then the record rooms and the treasury..."
"Your Grace?" the cohort commander who had come to sand beside you asks, startled.
"It is all to easy for people to die the chaos from deserters and such..."
or angry slaves, you forbear from adding. There will be no mob 'justice' staining this conquest, at last as far as you can help it. "Further fires are just as much of a threat and it's all too easy for decades of records to go up in smoke. Gold on the other hand is rather heavy to flee with in the middle of the night, and the docks are not precisely welcoming for any would-be thieves."
***
Even with the twin advantages of surprise and speed the palace claims its toll in lives, mostly from crossbowman firing from ambush, or desperate charges by Unsullied, fighting with impossible fervor though little of the skill they are famed for. Still, for every legionnaire fallen more than a dozen foes join them even in the narrow corridors where many of your men's skills are useless.
"They are coming!" the corporal ahead of you shouts as he had done so many times before that you had lost count.
Fire kindles in your throat, some utterly absurd part of your mind mourning the Myrish carpets set lavishly not upon the walls but the floor, likely to be charred beyond recognition. Then you notice precisely what is coming... not soldiers at all, but a wave of terrified servants driven forward by the spears of the Unsullied you can see behind them.
"Hold!" you shout, hoping the crossbowman and mages behind you can hear, before twisting time to your will. Between one instant and the next you fill the hall behind the last of the servants with fire hot enough to melt even steel, much less mere flesh and bone, more thankful than you can say that you had reached the ancient heart of the palace where the walls were fused dragonstone.
Alas this cannot stop the panicked flight of the servants, and they smash into the lines driven by sheer unthinking terror that sees a few of the soldiers knocked to the ground by the sheer weight of bodies.
When some semblance of order is restored the hall is filled with the groans and screams of the dying who had been trampled underfoot: men, women, children...
What do you do?
[] Move on
[] Ask the legionnaries to share their healing potions
[] Use Bloodwish to cast Mass Cure Moderate Wounds
[] Write in
OOC: Your rolls came out pretty well so far. The palace in not on fire, and resistance is scarce and disorganized.
