That's So Raven

The two griffins knew the way.

You followed them south through the Dessarin Valley, high enough that you were dots in the sky to anything below. Below there was a lot to avoid being noticed by. The whole corridor from Amphel down to Goldenfields was gnoll checkpoints and hobgoblin camps and giant war-party bivouacs strung along the Long Road like knots in a rope. By foot this would have been a siege. From altitude it was scenery. The griffins veered before anything could track you.

Over the Sword Mountains and down the other side. And there, at the junction of the Long Road and the High Road — a few miles outside Waterdeep — was the Long High Road Inn, surrounded by horse pastures and holding pens, rented out entirely by two noble families waiting for their sons.

A tiefling girl came running across the yard before anyone had dismounted.

She didn't look at any of you. She went straight to one of the dead knight's griffins, grabbed the bridle with both hands, and pressed her face against its beak. "Sir Gathrith. You came back. I missed you so much." She had clearly been sneaking down to feed this animal since she was small — whatever relationship she had with Sir Timothy's household, it had nothing to do with Timothy. She told you to look your best for the Midday Social. Then she ran off.

The Social was an outdoor affair. Riding boots and spring hats. Tables in the sun. Grief and money doing their best impression of an occasion. Most of the guests had heard enough about the Band of the Hand to be curious; none of them understood the first thing about where you had actually been. You were a novelty. Falkor was a bigger novelty — the whole crowd orbited him for a while, trying to decide if he was real, until KeYs could see him reaching the threshold and walked him gracefully back to the stables before something embarrassing happened.

Emmith worked the room. He found two families trying to make meaning out of something they didn't understand — Timothy's household, where the loss was genuinely felt and the tradition was genuinely respected; and Garrett's household, where none of that was true and the Social was just what you did when someone died far from home doing something stupid. When Garrett's family mentioned being relieved that the vultures hadn't "gotten to" the body, Emmith pointed out that they were just trading one set of teeth for another. You saw exactly one person think about that.

Sigrin nearly ate a horse. This was averted.

The procession took two hours. Five miles on foot into the city, the silken-barbed griffins walking the whole way, carrying their riders in state. The chaplain called it at the gates: "They ascended in valor. The stone shall remember." He had the ceremony exactly right. He just liked the other version better — the one on the cliff face with the blood-stained armor and the vultures, where something real was happening instead of something proper. AC saw it in him with a twenty.

After the ceremony, the families broke into social clusters and forgot you existed. Cut.

Then a halfling touched AC's arm.

He pressed a scroll into AC's hand — tarnished silver cord, message inside — held out his palm, pocketed the silver piece, and disappeared into the crowd. The message was brief: Welcome back from your travels in the realms to other realms. Please come and meet with us now that you're in Waterdeep. Sealed with the sigil of Mathenson House.

AC knew the name. Lower house, Waterdeep. Zentarium guild connections. Adjacent to things he would prefer not to discuss in the middle of a noble funeral reception.

You were in the city now, untethered. Emmith was going to find a genealogical library and look into the Silverhelm estate to the north — whether the family still held it, whether the land was viable, whether seventy-seven survivors could call it home. Moist had heard there was an aerial riding club. KeYs needed a smith who worked in rare ore. And AC had a meeting to figure out.

The stone remembers names.

Next session: Waterdeep. Four leads, one city, and a summons from a house that knows where you've been.