>>5517700“Sseztlee,” you address the Junior Novice.
“Do NOT call that thing by the diminutive of my—” the Novice begins, voice raspy with rage.
“Come,” you interrupt, ignoring her and beckoning her would-be test subject.
The Novice Fleshweaver seethes, and the Junior Novice follows. You aquat slightly, to better match the hunched ‘dogbold’ in height and eye-level.
“I know you dread the Novice Fleshweaver’s attentions,” you acknowledge. “They are awful things, which inflict terrible pain. But look at yourself, at what you have become. Look at ME. We are both of us strengthened through these trials, made better than we were by them.”
It is an argument that, in broad strokes, has proved persuasive to this creature before. He listens intently now, though you sense dread an uncertainty in him still.
“This power she offers to imbue you with… It will open doors to you yet unopened. You saw what the yowlers were capable of—spionic camouflage, teleportation! Imagien it!”
>18You can see the possibilities taking shape in the Junior Novice’s strange little mind even now. Slowly, he bows his head in supplication, and nods it in agreement. You turn him back over to his namesake, to do with what she will.
“You know,” she intimates, “you could have merely beaten him into submission.”
You regard her coolly, and she recoils.
“What?”
You sigh, and shake your head, but say nothing. It is her nature, after all, and it is this very ruthless and reckless alchemy that makes her so tactically valuable. And, well, you knew what you were in for when you fell in love with her.
Thoughts of one female turn to another—not romantic, but certainly tactical. If you could puzzle out the true nature of this THER female—the one in the vision, the one whom you seek!—you could discover what it is that you and the Necromancer are both striving towards, and direct the dig accordingly. Yoru <Guidance> can only get you so close. Now, you need intuition, and logic.
What the female was clutching must be small… Small enough to conceal in her claws. Could it be a tooth? A claw? An… An eyeball? No, these are all too large to be correct—you recall again the tales of the Red Dragon King of the Bloodrise Mountains as being a figure of almost GEOGRAPHIC proportions. Even if these legends overstate his size somewhat, judging by your ‘brother’ back home—the Great Green Dragonborn, created from remnants of another such Dragon King—the tooth of claw of such a being would still be much too large to thus conceal.
…But what of a scale?
