Session XXVI — Under My Protection
The Hallowed Tower
Nageru led them west for a week on foot, toward a place only he could see. They crossed the Gray Road, a dead river fifty feet deep and seven miles wide, one fold at a time, and came through a forest of trees turned to stone to a ruined fortress of Desna where demons were hunting a woman in a tower. Thane climbed to the top of it and rang the silver bell that hung there. One note, and the tower was holy ground. The knights broke the hunt in the dark, and the hag who led it died with a dwarf's knives in her back. Inside the tower, sitting unharmed on ground that should have burned her, was Arueshalae — and she told them how a goddess had reached into a demon and woken the woman she used to be.
Fallen Guardian
Terendelev
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“She never asked Kenabres for leave to guard it. For a hundred years she stood in its streets unremarked, and nobody vouched for her, and nobody had to. When the sky fell she put herself between the city and the fire and did not stop to explain what she was or why she stayed. She was dead before most of them understood. The scales she left are warm still, the knights say, and this season one of them learned what she knew all along: what it costs to stand in front of something and say, this one is mine to keep.”
The One Who Stood Beside Her
Caleth
Paladin / Wizard
He took the company down into the Gray Road and up the far side one fold at a time, thirty-six of them, and refilled the wand that night. In the ruined temple he fought with a dwarf at his back, turned fire into winter, and sent a spider the size of a house back where it came from. In the tower he was first to see that the ground was holy and the demon was not burning, and he asked her plainly why they should not send her home. Then he said aloud that he means to kill the man behind it all, and stood beside her in front of Drezen’s commanders and named her under his protection.
The One Who Said “I’m Here”
Nageru
Monk / Paladin
He walked in front of the horses for a week, pointing at a place no map shows, and never once lost the line. At the top of the tower he read Desna’s runes on the bell; at its foot he held out his empty hands to the woman from his dream and said, “I’m here.” He went over a wall onto the hag while she cursed his god and sank her claws into his back, and tore himself free. When the others went home ahead to warn the citadel, he stayed behind with her alone.
The One Who Rang the Bell
Thane
Inquisitor / Rogue
He rose up the face of the tower on the dragon’s scale, climbed in at the window, and struck the silver bell, and the tower became holy ground. He was the first to meet her on the stair, and called her by name before she could draw again. Unseen, he got behind the hag who led the hunt and put his knives in her back until she fell. Then he asked the one question that mattered, and she answered it: she knows the way to the Ivory Sanctum.
The One Who Said Yes
Korroc
Paladin / Oracle
On the last morning he bound himself to take half of three friends’ wounds, before there was anything to fight. A spider demon tore the armor off his body, and he fought the rest of the battle in his mail, then turned to living gold and healed everyone near him. He felt the wizard bleeding through the thread he keeps on him and sent Caleth running. In the tower he looked at the demon and said she was not evil, and when the others said she could not come back, he said, “Yes we can,” and stuffed his own screaming axe into his pack.
Current Status
A Demon in Drezen
The bell was rung · The hag is dead · She knows the way
The knights came home by Caleth's folds the same night, without their horses, which bolted in the stone forest and were never found. The wizard who rode with them was found up a stone tree with a bitten leg, and is home again too. The bell could not come. It is bound to its place and weighs as much as a house, and it still hangs in its tower far to the west. What came home instead was the demon. In the command room, before Irabeth and the citadel's leaders, Caleth said she was under his protection and that anyone who touched her would answer to him. Irabeth looked at the other three and said she did not think he would be the only one. Now there is a demon in a citadel of three hundred paladins, and she knows the way to the Ivory Sanctum.
Book 3 of 6|Mythic Tier 4–5|Level 11
