Hallowed Dreams
Eighteenth Day of the Fourth Month 293 AC
Over her short but eventful life Daenerys Targaryen had faced many a challenge, from the constant annoyance of of being discounted over her age alone, to battling against the horrors that would prey upon mortal kind, to the struggle over her very soul, but none of them had been quite so endlessly frustrating as trying to get six-and-ten fey urchins to bathe, comb out their hair, and dress nicely, and then stay that way for a few hours. They seemed to possess the previously undiscovered ability to manifest dirt onto themselves. Thankfully by the use of one of her least powerful but most useful enchanted objects in her possession she could will that very dirt away... again and again... and
again.
By the time the hour finally came to set off to the temple of Meraxes the princess was seriously considering if 'herding cats' were actually doing a disservice to cats when compared to getting a group of gremlins to do something against their nature for the sake of a plan. Then just as the crowds began to thicken something rather astonishing happened, her fey companions abruptly stopped tugging at collars, pulling each other's hair or daring each other to skid into mud.
They had their audience at last for the trick she had promised them.
The mob was hard to miss, for all they made some cursory attempt to hide their true purpose as they awaited some signal to begin their bloody festivities. Patched cloaks and wooden clogs made a poor showing in Old Volantis, making it very clear that someone had dressed them to be the very picture of 'dangerous escaped slaves'. To Daenerys' horror she even heard the odd raking cough and glimpsed open sores on some of their faces. No arcane illness, just mundane sickness she soon realized. It must have amused the demons to drive the ill and the dying out here to bleed and die for them.
That there were demons among the crowd she did not for a second doubt, their presence hung above their heads like a cloud of brimstone, cart beasts shied away from their path... just as the horse of the young red-cloaked guard was about to as he approached them to disperse or push them back, a tiger from the look of things.
The curtain was rising...
Daenerys could not see who threw the first stone, but the next dozen came so quickly as to give lie to any notions that this could have been remotely spontaneous, not to mention the fact that the fight in the square may have begun, and hopefully ended by now, but even if the conspirators' hopes were all fulfilled there would have been no time for disorder to spread this far, much less for gangs of escaped slaves to have decided to storm the Temple of Meraxes of all places as opposed to the far less well defended manses nearby.
To his credit the young guard realized which way the wind was blowing and turned about, the rest of his patrol following close behind. The young mage's hand clenched painfully tight around the silvery focus at hidden in the folds of her cloak. She was to protect the temple not a handful of guards, lest someone ask uncomfortable questions about the nature of the 'saviors' once the day had run its course.
Many lives are more important than a few, she reminded herself forcefully, though she still breathed a sigh of relief when no fiend rose up from the crowd to strike down the guards. They probably thought they were playing with the mortals...
By now the street in front of the temple was in the grip panic and other darker passions as passersbys fled down side allays, knocked desperately on doors to be let in, or else simply let themselves be swept up in the mob. Where before she had been hidden in the anonymity of the busy street Daenerys now stood alone roughly in the center of the street, not forty feet from the barred gate leading into the temple complex. From the shouts coming from more kindly locals she likely presented the image of a lost child without the wit to get out of the way.
The simple brown cloak, a surer disguise than sorcery in this one instance fell away to reveal a pair of golden wings that seemed to catch and hold the noonday sun in their brilliance. The daughter of dragons ascended above Volantis in fourteen wing-beats. Hers was a hollow sanctity she knew, a dream of what might be... but dreams had broken the world once and they would make it anew.
All around her from their hiding places on nearby roofs Glyra's troupe ascended as though upon some unseen wind their inhuman features filled with radiant joy. They were kindly in their own way and thus having striped the the scruffy exterior they were not unskilled in playing an angelic choir.
"You who would defile this hallowed place as the whips of your masters and the tongues of fiends compel you, halt!" Daenerys called.
At her command, and the silent urging of her gremlin helpers the entire front of the mob stumbled and tangled together like a wave crashing against the shore, the chaos revealing one man who stood alone waving a torch... or rather a creature masquerading as a man. To her eyes its shape was clear, a nine-foot-tall figure of lustrous black chitin, its face utterly devoid of any features, a galu demon. Hardly the mightiest of fiends, though the young princess reminded herself that it might have found some path to make itself mightier than most of its fellows. The Abyss was many things but not lacking in opportunity for change and transformation.
"What do you seek here?" she addressed the crowd again, ignoring the demon. "Gold, treasure, freedom promised by your treacherous masters, perhaps? You shall find none of these... only blood death and should you succeed, ruin beyond even then."
From whispered seeds uncertainty was born in their hearts... at least those not utterly turned to darkness or so mired in despair that they could admit no kindness save that of their 'masters.' How similar those were at the last.
"Liar! Witch!" the faceless demon hissed. "Nothing but a wizard's pawn set in our way!"
The girl did not deign to reply the desperate ploy, instead she simply tore away its mask of humanity aside with spell of her own. "Behold the face of your leaders!" she announced, and then the time for words was ended.
The newly revealed fiend spat a curse to break her will and send her mind watering as a pair of succubae rose on dark wings to strike her down... only to be themselves entangled in the gremlins' spell of ill fortune followed by peals of child-like laughter.
"Be gone!" Daenerys commanded in the tongue of Valyria of old, and it seemed to her just for an instant that another distant, but vastly more powerful voice added itself to hers.
Thus did the demons fade from the world that there was no other to content with an 'angel's' word.
OOC: Dany got 1600 XP from this. She was actually in some amount of danger since the galu sorcerer used feeblemind.
. Did the god boost the DC the demons needed to save against?
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