Arc 8 Post 32: Veiled in Contempt
Veiled in Contempt
5th of Neth 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
"We can always fight when the words run out, things don't usually work out as well the other way." As jests go this one is particularly wan, but Mina smiles and Cob snickers at least. After the wards had been laid and sight sharpened against treachery the five of you come to the foot of the mound and it is up to Mina to play herald since Sirim's voice does not carry far even through the air, much less earth and stone.
Thus she calls calls in the Taldan tongue that has been spoken in Fusil for nigh-on three thousand years: "Hail to the lord and the Court! Hail to the Good Neighbors and to the Company Unseen! Make yourselves known that we may speak of matters on this side of the Hedge and that."
'Hedge' seemed to you a twist of the tongue, a poet's kenning for the wall between the worlds, at least until you see a wall of dark tangled green denser by far than the briar to either side move as though with the touch of an unseen current. Slowly as the eye follows, but quick indeed by the measure of green growing things, the hedge forms into a gate covered in a curtain of fine vines which seems to your eye too slender to carry the indigo flowers that sprout from them.
Parting the veil are small pale hands, dozens and scores singing a melody beautiful and sad, like a tune heard in a dream born of sorrowful drinking.
"Atomies," Mina half-whispers and you nod along as though you know what those are other than apparently diminutive spirit kin who take most of their shape from man and some from the swift-flying 'dragonfly', thankfully most unlike a dragon.
They call out some answer in their own tongue that Mina alone understands and from her frown does not to think much of, but before Sirim can pass it on another figure far larger passes through the curtain of vines. Elf-kin he seems to you, his skin tinted the pale blue and every part of him hairless, and what parts of him are not covered in a mage's robes are the canvas of fantastical gleamings that catch and twist the eye caught up in them. By the time you manage to tear your eyes away the figure, the fey lord, you are all but certain is glaring at Mina between heavy lids.
"Hag's spawn this time? Should I be flattered that the leavings of the Abyss have seen fit to send an envoy not quite as tainted with their pustulant presence? Or is one of the tanar'ri lingering in the flesh of some other here?" His gaze slides over Cob contemptuously. "How would one even be able to tell if one of Lamashtu's least breed is infested with one of the greater? It might almost be an improvement." His laughter falls in even almost musical cadence, as though he had heard of the concept, but only second hand.
"Demons? You were attacked by demons?" Mina latches on to the fact, but the fey lord isn't inclined to listen.
Mina Diplomacy: 1d20+1+1 (Guidance) = 6 (Failure)
"Do not interrupt me, the least you can do is pay some attention to the last thing you'll hear in your too-brief mortal existence. Mortals have some sense of solemnity in the presence of death, yes? Thine death has come now for thou hast walked to it willingly. Choose your weapon or... one supposes, your champion. I'll have your master's message from your dead lips and then deliver your head back to them in the goblin's hand. One hopes he's well trained enough for that at least."
Among the briars that now surround you the gleam of four large eyes too far apart to belong to the same creature that can be seen.
What do you do?
[] Fight the fey as a group
-[] Write in battle plan
[] Select a champion do duel him
-[] Mina
-[] Akorian
-[] Sirim
[] Write in
OOC: Well, on the plus side you got some confirmation that there are demons around, but on the other it is now fight time.
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