>>5180349>>5180350>>5180396>>5180403‘Zi will have to wait,’ you say, to yourself as much as Irinnile.
The succubus whines, but does not argue the point beyond this. No sooner have you set your mind to your next course of action than you feel your wings already tilting, changing course to guide you to the first of many crypts in and around Hawksong. What follows is a long, tiring night, searching one site of interment after another. Your quarry eludes you, again and again, and without any deliberate effort as far as you can tell—though perhaps it has notice the recent bevvy of activity, and is hiding from the Paladins, and thus accidentally from its rescue as well.
You are on the very verge of surrender, hopeless and spent, when the scroll-case on your belt rumbles queerly. You land upon the ill-lit rooftop across a burial-plot used by followers of a minor goddess of—you gather from the motifs in their stained glass—rain and possibly other inclement weather. There, you uncork the scroll-case, releasing the hound once more. Brezzog is… shrunken, diminished, almost cute in its faded and ragged state. Whatever energy the hellhound acquired in devouring a man and a gryphon, the other paladin’s word clearly cut away from him, along with the souls of the goblintown waifs he consumed prior.
“What is it?” you ask.
“Not nice,” he growls. “Sending to fight knights with god-swords. Bad.”
You smile patronizingly, and nod. “But we lived, and escaped, and we gave better than we got. Look on the bright side, demon.”
The hellhound huffs.
“Did you ask to be let out just to complain?” you ask.
‘Maybe doggy needs to take a piss,’ Irinnile snickers.
“No,” Brezzog grunts. “Looking for others from the prison? So we can go? Join greater demon?”
You nod.
“Smell it. Demon.”
That gets your attention, and earns Brezzog a bit more allowance.
“Show me,” you command.
“Then you take me to greater demon?”
“When we can,” you reassure. “We have one more to find first.”
Brezzog growls, and snaps his wee jaws. “Not fast enough.”
“Brezzog,” you speak the demon’s true name, “Show. Me.”
The hellhound shrinks back a little, not technically bound but still wary of you, and it obeys as Irinnile obeys. It guides you down into the grounds of the small temple, to a mausoleum. You weave between more humble burials and their simple headstones, each bearing a name of a presumed occupant, and each with the same symbol of a stylized rain or teardrop upon it. Eventually, you reach the tomb, which faded engravings purport to be that of a former priestess.
It is very slightly ajar, almost imperceptibly so.
‘Bingo,’ Irinnile enthuses.
