Tomorrow's Rot
The morning was bright on the Toke Inn, for the first time in what had felt like a long while.
Jorry slept upstairs. Cured.
You worked through the daylight. KeYs and Ubys moved the grey flame through the inn from cellar to rookery, and the Blight fled from it where it had pooled in corners and beams. Repairs. Boards. Brooms. The inn was alive again.
You took stock.
Moist said the auction tomorrow might have a weapon like the ones the Empty-Tyrant had used. He needed to be there.
KeYs kept her plans close. Falkor sat on her shoulder and did the same.
Lessie had come for a cure. Half of one was in your hands now. The rest was still in the woods.
Dhuxtyn wanted to be cool.
AC wanted to assassinate demons.
Ubys had been dreaming again. The Nagpa would be at the auction. So would a soul that had not passed through Letherna. Both were Raven-Queen business.
Ubys turned to AC. "Watch out for greedy vultures."
AC mounted Moist as a warhorse and rode south.
He left the Hell-Fork at the inn with KeYs. Too obvious for a sneak.
The road took them into the evening.
There was a tree across the road.
Cut. Not fallen.
Moist sped up.
He cleared the trunk in a single jump.
On the way over, in the brush off the roadside —
A body. Crow-feather-notched arrows in it.
The ambush was real. The ambush was recent.
The road resolved into a sign-post: Phandalin south, Conyberry west, Leilon north.
You went north.
AC slapped Moist's flank. "You're good from here."
Moist dropped Wild Shape at the woods' edge.
AC went in alone.
The wood took its time.
Hours went somewhere they shouldn't have. AC walked, and walked, and the trees did not narrow in the right way.
He came out into a small clearing.
A large elk lay in it. Northern stock. Not native here.
It had been eaten on. Not cleaned.
A predator had taken what it wanted and left the rest.
AC picked up the tracks that ran past it.
The tracks were circular.
Patrol-route.
He aimed for the center of the loop.
The center of the loop was a ruined castle compound.
Quiet. For the moment.
AC skirted the edge.
In the back, in a wall of brush and moss, he found a sewer drain. Locked. The moss had grown over everything except the lock.
He picked it.
It opened easy.
It led to the inside of the courtyard.
He looked through the grate.
He saw an overhead walkway. Goblins carrying wood and copper braziers, prepping for tomorrow's activities. He counted faces.
In the main hall, beyond —
A huge Ogre-ish woman. Beyond obese. Festering pustules across her flesh.
She was sleeping.
Goblins ringed her with food.
AC watched her for a long moment.
He worked it out. This was the Heiress.
He sketched her. He sketched the walkway. He sketched the brazier-prep. He drew the patrol routes he'd walked in.
He folded the pages into his pack — alongside the Grey-Robed sketches from yesterday.
He locked the drain again behind him.
He walked out of the compound the same way he'd walked in.
The wood let him go faster on the way out than it had on the way in.
You met him on the road back.
He had two pieces of intel for you.
Adamantium weapons and armor were on the auction lot list.
And "The Lost King's scroll."
Tomorrow, the Heiress would wake.
Tomorrow, you would walk in the front door.
Next session: the auction.