That's So Raven

Captain Dunkel Spireward walked the bodies of his fallen riders himself.

All seven. One at a time. His face did not change while he did it. When he reached the last one he stood still for a long moment, and then he turned and addressed you — the Band of the Hand, he called you, after AC said the name and no one argued — and he thanked you for what you had done.

You told him about the refugees. He said they could camp outside the walls. He would draw from the Spire's grain.

This was not a small thing. You had just watched him lose eight of his thirty knights in the first minute of a fight, and his answer to the arrival of seventy-seven hungry civilians was to open the storeroom. You noted it.

On the way back to the Spire, he told you what the valley looked like from above. Red Larch fallen. Ironford, Summit Hall, Bellyard — all in enemy hands, cutting off the road to the south. Goldenfields, the walled farm city, still holding — but the road in was blockaded by gnoll patrols, and the Spire had been running short for months. Westbridge was rubble, destroyed decades ago, but fertile land. And out at Yarder, alone at his post, the last of a dying order: a man named Sir Titus.

AC wrote him a letter. A giant eagle took it that evening.

The Spire's traditions made themselves known in the preparations.

The two knights from Waterdeep — nobles who had joined the order and died with their hippogriffs beneath them — were carried to the chapel. Armor removed. Bodies cleaned. Everything that rank and ceremony required, done with care. Sacred in the way that formal things are sacred: deliberately, with attention to every detail.

The six vulture riders went to the cliff face.

Their armor was left as it fell — dented, bloodstained, lanced through in places. A wide ledge in the stone, darkened from years of prior use. No explanation was given because none was needed. The vulture riders had known. They had chosen the stone over the chapel when they chose their mounts, and the Spire honored what they had chosen.

You watched both.

Later, while the others went to dinner, Ubys stayed outside.

He had the spells. He had them when Orin walked forward in the Temple of Filth, gear piled carefully in KeYs' arms, making eye contact with each of them in turn. The math wasn't complicated. The toll required a living sacrifice. Ubys had been trained for twenty years to stand between the living and the thing that wants to take them.

I could have saved him.

AC found him and sat with him. He did not argue.

Next session: The road to Waterdeep. Two noble families are waiting for their sons.