The Prophet’s Rolodex
Fable raised the carved bear she had received in Azmar, and the streets of the Charmed Cove morphed into the Prophet’s demiplane.
Behzad stood beside the emerald Rolodex. Its great brass rings turned around them, bringing one death after another into view as the Prophet searched the deaths and tragedies before him. Then, the mechanism stopped. Suspended before them was the Prophet himself, impaled on a sapphire moonblade.
He tried to dismiss the image when he noticed Fable watching, but she had already seen it.
The Prophet had spent so long asking the party to commit to his cause. Every delay made the vision feel closer. Worse, he feared the party’s growing power would eventually carry them beyond him: they would leave on a grand adventure to save the world, and never come back. He knew that pattern. He had once run a guildhall full of adventurers. He understood how easily a powerful group could outgrow the person who once gave them purpose.
Fable would not let him decide what she felt. She had argued with him, yes, and she still did not know what shape Rosenhall’s future ought to take, however, that did not mean she would abandon him.
Looking at Behzad and Fable, the Prophet could no longer ignore what his war would demand of his friends. Dunedrift had stayed with him: no one had celebrated when he killed Alliance guards there. If he called for war, Nys would be asked to stand against people who had worn the same uniform she once did. Fern would have to beat down ordinary soldiers in the name of a cause he did not fully endorse. Fable would be asked to help compel the people she claimed to protect.
He still believed something in Rosenhall had to change. They had seen the graves in the desert. They knew what powerful people within the Alliance had authorized. But the Prophet could no longer assume that his revenge was the war the rest of them ought to wage.
The Rolodex turned again. A bearded man lay cut in half across a golden throne. His crown rested in a pool of blood below him.
The Prophet said he had foreseen the Emperor’s death, fated for sometime after the gala. A vacant throne would bring its own struggle, but it offered another way forward. The party had made connections in Azmar, Dunedrift, and the Cove. If they were willing to use those relationships, bargain with the nobles, and put their influence behind a candidate, they could help decide who became the next Emperor.
It would take work. Liliana Sev would have to be pressed for support. Trinity would have to be brought into the fold. Every lord with a vote would have ambitions of their own. Yet a royal selection gave the party a chance to change the government without forcing that change on a bloody battlefield.
The Prophet apologized to Behzad for how much of his renown he had been willing to spend on his own revenge. Behzad did not pretend he had been carried along without making choices of his own. They had made them together, now they had to decide what to do next.
Fable embraced the Prophet. The Taimavar would still answer for what they had done to him and to his friends, she promised. Taking war off the table did not mean giving up on justice. Nor would she accept his death as the end of his story.
Before she left, he lent her the crystal orb from his Rolodex. Fable wanted to study Rosenhall’s history before trying to reshape its government, and the orb could help her reach into the past. Behzad received his share of the bounty for the Mincer as well, recovered through contacts the Prophet still had at the Charmed Cove Bank.
At the edge of the demiplane, Fable told him they would find a way to prevent his death. The Prophet gave her a quiet nod.
“Good luck, my heroes.”
The Art of the Cove
Fable and Behzad returned to the bustle of the Charmed Cove with several hours to spend before needing to rejoin the others. Fable wanted scrolls for her studies and her spellbook. Before visiting the College of Ioun Alumni Center, she and Behzad stopped at the Havenflower Gallery.
Ledger Day decorations surrounded its polished marble exterior. Inside, curved walls divided the gallery into rooms crowded with paintings and statues of Ondor Sev. In one portrait he rode a purple worm beneath a dragon’s fire. In another, he sheltered a terrified man against his chest. Clothing was apparently a detail the artist saw little need to include.
One statue showed Ondor falling backward, wings rising around him, its base bearing the title Face Off. Fable and Behzad could make little of it before a voice from deeper in the gallery demanded that an order of Atbella creams be doubled. Running short during the gala, the voice insisted, would be a catastrophe.
Jehnam Havenflower emerged in extravagant dress, introduced himself to Behzad, and promptly offered to show him his newest painting.
He led them to his version of the fight with the Mincer. In the painting, Fable cradled a deathly pale Nys while Behzad, bare of armor and impossibly heroic, shielded them from the killer. Jehnam had painted himself fainting into the curl of Behzad’s tail. When asked how he had captured their likenesses, he explained that he had commandeered the observatory’s telescope to watch the heroes moving through the Cove.
The portrait would be a centerpiece at the gala. Jehnam hoped Behzad and Nys would come and tell the assembled lords how they had saved the Cove. Perhaps, he said, the Emperor himself would hear the story and see that Behzad deserved more than a temporary regency in Wolford.
The invitation arrived so naturally amid Jehnam’s praise that Fable and Behzad simply accepted it.
Jehnam also knew that Nys had been awarded the Cedar Vale Villa, which lay in his fief of Oar’s Rest. He hoped to be invited to a housewarming party. Such a gathering, he added, ought to include family; Behzad should invite his sister Nasrin, who was living in the Cove.
Then Jehnam mentioned a wagon of elven refugees. They had been turned away from the Congregation of Elves and taken shelter instead at the Temple of Tiamat. Behzad found that worth looking into, particularly with Nasrin in the city. Jehnam gave him a wink before returning to the apparently urgent matter of the gala’s desserts.
On their way out, Fable noticed one more painting. It showed Fern and Saedor in combat. Beneath it, the title read Not Yet Named.
Across the street at the College of Ioun Alumni Center, Fable bought six spell scrolls from Ned, including Battle Familiar, Lightning Bolt, Haste, and Slow. Ned was delighted to see them and considerably less delighted with Headmaster Wregi. He had survived Crackjaw, the library in Dunedrift, and the hunt for the Mincer, yet Wregi had taken the public credit each time. Even Ned’s dissertation remained unapproved.
Fable assured him that those who had been there knew what he had done. Their talk turned to Fel’gram, Ned’s roommate, and then to Nys’s coming housewarming party. Ned offered to bring his sweet potato casserole. He also showed Fable an experiment: he asked Fable for a little blood and shaped it into an apple. It looked convincing, though he admitted that anyone who took a bite would burst it like a blood-filled balloon. His experiment still needed work. Fable left with her scrolls and a more practical idea for Nys’s housewarming: two blood pies, one savory and one sweet.
A Family Reunion at the Honest Hem
Fable and Behzad found the others at the Honest Hem in the middle of an argument.
Nys was angry that Fern had ended her conversation with Novakri. Fern said he had revealed too much about the party’s political intentions and had been trying to get them out before she made matters worse. Nys demanded to know who had made him the leader of that conversation.
Fern struggled to explain, then left through the broken window.
Behzad’s arrival brought a different shock. Fel’gram was there. The cousins had spent years apart, each hearing fragments of what had happened to the other after the occupation of Moressley. Fel’gram had carried the title of governor without the power it commanded. Behzad had been kept away from home. Nasrin was somewhere in the Cove, but neither cousin had seen her yet. Behzad and Fel’gram’s reunion made clear how far the occupation had scattered their family.
The discussion turned back to the party’s plans. Behzad told Nys and Fel’gram what the Prophet had seen. If the Emperor died after the gala, there would be a royal selection. The party could use the influence it had already earned to support a candidate.
Nys had never opposed changing Rosenhall. She had opposed the prospect of a war in which common soldiers and civilians would pay for decisions made by the powerful. She had lived long enough to remember what such a conflict did, and she thought of Taurion, their children, and her parents when she considered the cost. A contest for votes would still be dangerous, but it was a course she could support.
Behzad began to work through what they would need. His regency in Wolford could become a meaningful voting bloc if his status was confirmed. The gala might help him secure that recognition. The leverage they had over the Duke of the Cove might prove useful later, though using it too early could make the party look involved in the Emperor’s death. They would need support beyond the territories where they were already known.
And they would need a candidate.
Behzad looked to Fel’gram.
If Behzad sought the throne, it could become politically messy with Vlorfa occupied and his Princely title dissolved. But, Fel’gram offered another possibility: he still held the governorship of their homeland. If the Empire chose him, it would have to reckon with Vlorfa. Fel’gram had not expected Behzad to put his name forward, but he agreed. Whatever time he had left, he could use it to plant trees whose shade he would never sit beneath.
Fel’gram’s talk of the future faltered when he noticed Nys had gone still. Surely, he joked, it was not as though the Raven Queen were knocking at her door.
Nys asked Taurion to check on the children’s room, and waited until he was out of earshot before telling the others why his joke had landed so badly.
Sindatari had visited her before the fight with the Mincer. He claimed he had been protecting her all along: he could have made Garrus far more dangerous, but had chosen to help her instead. He also claimed that he was the only thing keeping the Raven Queen from taking her completely. Nys could not reconcile that with everything she remembered. He spoke as though he had warned her away from the Raven Queen, yet she could recall no such warning.
The scythe made the question impossible to set aside. Nys held the weapon that had killed her, but feared what would happen if she used it. Fable, whose nature was bound to the same sin of gluttony, might be able to wield it without suffering as Garrus had. The Raven Queen, meanwhile, wanted the blade turned against Sindatari and the Crow.
Behzad listened, but could offer no judgment that would settle it. He knew the teachings of gods and angels; he did not know which of them was telling Nys the truth.
His maul interrupted them.
“Something bad is going to happen today.”
The warning sent everyone looking for an immediate threat. Nys reached through the eyes of her raven and searched the city from above. She found Fern in Lecher Square, taking a breath before entering the Temple of Tiamat.
Behzad thought of Nasrin. Fable thought of the refugees Jehnam had mentioned. They ran for the temple, Fable binding her blood to Behzad’s on the way to shield him from what awaited them.
The Five Talons
The Temple of Tiamat was almost hidden beside the Cove’s grand cathedrals: a squat, star-shaped building with five dragon heads worked into its bronze doors. Its modest size was deceptive. Beyond the entrance, a stairway dropped a hundred feet into the sanctuary below.
Fern stood at the head of it. Six elves in red cloaks blocked his way.
Nys fired first. Fel’gram sent one of the cloaked figures fleeing with a spell that whispered into their mind. Fable’s scars opened, blood ran along her blade, and she cut another down before kicking a second over the edge of the drop. Fern drove through the group with fists and feet while Behzad’s revolver cracked behind him.
Then one of the hoods fell back.
The woman beneath it was a wood elf Nys recognized from the refugees in Dunedrift. A symbol of Corellon had been cut into her abdomen. Her pupils were blown wide, and the other fallen elves bore the same marks. They had worn Taimavar cloaks and carried Taimavar weapons, but they had not come here as willing soldiers.
Nys stopped to lay the bodies together and give them what respect she could. There was little time to do more. The refugee who had fled deeper into the temple reached two platinum-haired officers and announced that the heroes had arrived.
The officers greeted that news by finding a new use for the captives beside them.
At a command, one wood elf plunged a blade into the mark carved in their body. A blast tore through the corridor. When Fern tried to disable another captive without killing them, an officer destroyed that person with fire rather than let the party spare them. The officers spoke of their prisoners as expendable things and fought without concern for who stood in the path of their spells.
The party forced its way toward them. An officer tried to stop the magic gathering around Behzad’s maul, but he drove the blow through the spell and sent lightning down the hall. Fel’gram struck with a psychic lance that kept the other officer incapacitated. Nys moved between cover and open ground to find her shots. Fable drew blood from the fight into herself and kept advancing.
The final officer fell before he could use the vial of holy water in his hand. It rolled free beside him. The vial suggested Saedor had warned his people about Fable being a Dhampir.
Below, the party heard screams. Dragonborn breath weapons flared and went silent.
The Captain Below
The lower sanctuary had housed dragonborn families who sought safety during the Mincer’s attacks. Their tents were still standing, their belongings half packed for the journey home. Red cloaks moved among them, cutting down nobles while they tried to escape.
Fel’gram and Behzad spread their wings to carry Nys and Fable down the stairwell. Fern took the faster route. He leapt, vanished in midair, and reappeared above the officer directing the slaughter, his fist lined up for the man’s head.
The officer caught Fern by the throat. He lowered him gently to the floor, released him, and offered a formal greeting.
He was Veythras Argenwen’del, captain of the Taimavar mercenaries and Saedor’s brother. At a motion from him, the killers around the tents stopped and turned toward the arriving party.
Veythras said he had come to “scale one dragon.” Behzad understood whom he meant.
“Nasrin. My sister.”
Veythras confirmed that Nasrin was his target. Other moves were already in motion, he said. The Taimavar did not want Behzad on the throne; they wanted a royal selection with fewer clear choices, one that could drag on. The other dragonborn dying around him were, by his account, incidental. He advised the party to turn around. His brother was fond of Fern, and Veythras would prefer to send him away unharmed.
Fern refused. He threw a punch. Veythras caught it as easily as he had caught the first.
A low song began in the captain’s throat. His blade answered, vibrating in his hand as the song took hold.
Behind him, the surviving dragonborn were still trapped among their tents. The party had reached them. To get them out, they would have to go through Veythras.