Quoted By:
>rolling a fucking 19
>Deianira is blessed, per usual.
You, Myrethuia and your troupe exit the andron to nervous, anxious, fearful looks of the Damachidean spearmen. Myrethuia, showing no sign of her calculating nature, and presenting herself as only tipsy, smiles warmly at them, saying:
“Loyal servants of the οἶκος – set aside your grief and despair! Damachides will be well – he is stirring under the tender care of Charima. I expect that he will awaken soon!” Murmurs of relief spill through the halls – but not an outburst of cheering and frivolity, you notice. These people are more concerned for their own safety than for the life of their master – and for good reason, you suspect. The tense atmosphere has hardly abated and the nervous glances do not quite disappear. Myrethuia sets the spearmen by the door, and orders servants to produce your troupe’s cart from outside the gates, and another for her own use.
Myrethuia and yourself spend the few minutes waiting for your carts chatting amiably for effect – discussing the theatrical performance in hushed tones, saying a few quick prayers to the divines for Damachides’ rapid recovery, and otherwise doing your best impressions of carefree noblewomen. Gerasimos looks both bored and irritated that he has been kept out of the loop – you send him warning glances when he attempts to approach you no less than two times in three minutes.
When the carts arrive, your group sets off immediately to the area of the palace where the vault is enclosed – directly beneath the guard’s quarters, in a cellar dug into the earth itself. It seems that you walk the polished stones of the Damachidean halls for a very long time – it truly is an enormous structure. Every so often, a painted statue of some hero or another is placed alongside the wall, and every ten or so strides, a blazing brazier lights the hall.
To your surprise, the halls are almost totally empty – even Myrethuia glances nervously about herself on more than one occasion. Clearly, she was expecting difficulty along the way and is somewhat unsettled by its absence. You see a few scuttling servants, darting along the edges of the hallway like frightened mice, but see no spearmen or guardsmen of any kind.
The vault itself is accessible through a trap door before the guardshouse within the Palace – and again, the halls are silent and empty. Myrethuia and yourself don’t hesitate – together, you lift the trap door, and quickly descend the steep staircase into the depths below, carrying torches. The hallway ends abruptly – there’s only perhaps five strides between the descending staircase and a heavily-fortified door, barred with heavy iron.
>cont
