>>5190291>20 for trackingYou follow Brezzog for some distance through the murk of a misty night, trusting the infernal entity’s nose to guide you. It does not fail you, as the demon quickly catches the scent of its familiar fellow.
However, that isn’t all it sniffs out.
For a time the hellhound bounds faster and faster, forcing you to exert yourself to catch up and beginning to leave heavier, slower Roth in your dust… But suddenly, on the edge of a dense area of human housing out towards the dockyards but not quiet in sight of the sea, this chase comes to a screeching halt. The hellhound stops, stiff and alert, and emits a guttural growl that ill-suits its new, smaller size. You
“What isss it?” you whisper.
“Knight,” Brezzog rumbles; then, correcting itself: “Knights.”
Roth draws up behind you a moment later, winded; you shush him before he can speak, and guide him to the bottom of a rising gravel path between many tall tenements. There, you peer out, using your demonically-aided eyes to get a sense of the situation.
You half-expect to see Paladin knights cornering your quarry—it would be par for the course with your lousy luck, but no: it is entirely the opposite. You can just faintly make out a rail-thin shadow, moving in a spidery mode of locomotion which seems altogether unnatural at its much greater size. Creeping along a wall and swinging from laundry-lines, dangling from parapets like a monkey along jungle treetops… And following a pair of Paladins. Unlike previous pairs, both seem to be full-fledges, gryphon-mounted fighters of standing and seniority. You recognize Sir Innes as one of them, now armed and armoured with heavy steel plate and a great, menacing mace. The other, with sword and shield and riding a gryphon who moves jerkily as if unused to its rider, is he who fought you back on the night prior; his mount is clearly a replacement for that which Brezzog slew in that confrontation.
>20 times TWO for stealthYou spy upon them, listening to the silence between them but sensing something subtly… Off. Roth, less adept at the art of stealth, hovers back, with Brezzog remaining with him as well. For your part, though, your stealth is such that you creep close enough to hear them—almost close enough to kill them!—without being noticed. The two wizened warriors are mostly silent, until…
“You sense it, don’t you?” says Innes.
