Through the Raven's Eye
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Second Month 293 AC
This place had never been much to look at, your imagine, a clump of shops and houses seemingly grown like mushrooms from the damp earth, with crumbling stone, splintered wood, and beaten clay mingled together in a patchwork covered in the same grey mud that still covers most of the northern slums. After last night it is not even that. Doors and window coverings had been ripped from their hinges, grooves had been driven into the very earth by the frenzied attacks, more like a stampede of wild beasts than any battle. Though the bodies had thankfully been removed the blood still pooled in the shallows, filling the air with its slaughterhouse reek.
The crowds too were different, smaller, not a bright cloak to be seen, for any highborn bold enough to be here would likely have the wits to try and hide their heritage as opposed to flaunting it. Indeed there is a furtive air to the entire procession. Far fewer people would follow a sorcerer as he goes about his strange and bloody ritual than those who would observe a simple hanging, however many necks were fitted for the noose.
Here and now with the screams of the dying ringing out above the crowd none think to stomp, cheer, or clap. Unlike the people of the Deep who were seeing their hated tyrant and his favored servants perish, awaking from a months-long nightmare, here there are only men and women clearly diseased, and likely mad with more than the pain of their torment... and some things that from a distance seem almost like children and weep like them, until that is one comes close enough to see the grey patchwork skin, the cloven hooves and feral grin that marks them even in this torturous end.
For many the wretched lacridaemons are their first chance to actually see a fiend with their own eyes. From the gasps and screams that follow many likely decided leave at the mere sight of the things, unable to bear the personal,
inescapable understanding that such horrors exist not only as whispered rumors and twisted shadows glimpsed from the corner of the eye, but here under the light of day pouring out aplenty through the tattered clouds.
"Behold the bitter fruits of malice, of mad ambition!" you declare, motioning all around you. Then your tone no less harsh you add, "Behold the fruits of neglect. Mistake me not, for no mortal man or woman can be guilty of more heinous crimes than these, and not even they can hope to match the foulness of the fiends who share their end, but there were some who could have put an end to the madness, who could have at least given warning and they did not. For that too there will be a reckoning."
You imagine that after hearing those words relayed those who feel the most responsible might decide to heed the call of sea. Alas for them that the harbor is filled with your ships.
"This is not the place or the hour for that. Now is a time for that which is foul to be cleansed..." So saying you turn to face the pale weirwood sapling, its leaves red as new blood. Dark Sister is a comforting weight in your hand, though you feel the blade grumble at only being drawn so often for ritual and ceremony, not to the rush of battle.
Thankfully she is quick to forgive as you go about your bloody task. Again and again she rises and falls, parting mortal bone and daemonic sinew with equal ease, the rush of mingling blood a silent tribute to the roots of the weirwood sapling set in the midst of the circle. The sorcerer who would have been lord and then destroyer of the city you kill without ceremony, a final insult to his pride, but when you reach the twisted form of the thanadaemon, bound in chains of sorcery as much as iron, you tear the black veil obscuring its deathly face and announce: "In this cleansing shall the city be at last healed of the wounds of body and soul, from death a new and better life arising!"
Like its fellows the greater fiend dies in agony, its screams and curses fading into Abaddon's embrace. Pale roots drink deep of the black blood as the tree grows in heart-beats as it might have done in centuries, the light tinted crimson from its sprouting crown of leaves.
With practiced ease with skills born of arcane blessings you carve the face of the Gods upon the Tree, a young man of indistinct heritage with mended scars in his face, defiance and hope both in his gaze. As the final line is wrought and power swells into the heart tree you hear a familiar voice echoing in your mind, harsh as a raven's croak foretelling doom:
"The one you hunt does not flee but seeks to wound you as deeply as he may before his end..."
...a cadaverous figure swathed in black cloth and deceptive glamour that could scarce hide the dozens of festering illnesses that marred his flesh standing over the fallen form of a girl in the robes of a Scholarum student, knife of tainted bone in hand.
You remember her for her inquisitiveness and wit, who now writhes in torment beneath the dark mage's gaze.
"What treasure does he hold most dear! Tell me and I will let you die," he lies softly.
The vision releases its grip leaving you gasping against the truck of the Heart Tree.
What do you do?
[] Teleport to Sorcerer's Deep at once to save the young initiate
-[] Write in battle plan
[] Continue with the planned demonstration
[] Write in
OOC: Turns out Viserys is not the only sorcerer who thinks teleport is a great spell. On the plus side thanks to Bloodraven you found Rohar without any further scrying on your part. On the even better front he had trouble finding Rhaella (as in he does not know about her yet). That would have ended with either her death or being saved by the friendly neighborhood Dracolich, the latter of which would not have been that much less traumatic than the former. 
