>>5277894>>5277531>>5277452>>5277419>>5277423>>5277425>>5277563You scan the rooms once more, looking for further clues as to the nature of the work done here (or wealth to seize for yourself) but find little but arcane alchemical implements well past their useful lifespan. Your bored elder brother leaves for the more spacious room outside while you do so, amusing himself by frying and squashing the remaining glowworms and their sticky silken enterprise.
Eventually, you relent. There is naught here but ash, dust, and mystery… And among the former two categories, you can find no answer to the third. Maybe, had you brought the Novice or one of her ilk, it would be different; likewise, if you could cast a spell of Guidance once again, and if you could this time find a way to interpret the messages encoded in the onslaught of imagery…
But, then, perhaps there is another answer in the last such vision?
You kneel before the skeleton of the suicidal Serpent Priestess, and speak haltingly dark rites which you have heard only once before, but never forgotten; where memory fails, you improvise.
“Oh Lord of Endings, of doorways and crossroads, Dark God of Sleep Eternal… Who witnesses our deaths and ferries our souls… Please accept my deadly works and mortal deeds in honour of your role I all things, and my acceptance of my own inevitable embrace by your unfailing hands. Please, Death, Lord of All, hear me and answer me.”
You closed your eyes as you spoke, but when you open them… You still see nothing. No room, no desk, no scrawled words, no skeleton. You force yourself not to panic, instead taking a deep breath, and in time the blackness parts like curtains—like robes of ink or smoke—and reveals…
“Death.”
You recognize the Dark God immediately, for how could you not? He walks not in a form you have ever heard of, and yet in a form somehow intimately familiar: a dragons’ skeleton, towering over you and filling all space, with great claws and massive body wing-struts… And with a human skull, albeit proportional to his great size, like that of some giant great ape.
“You slay a worm,” he says, dryly and without obvious intonation, “and think to summon a god in exchange? Such arrogance…”
You bow your head low, whispering an apology. And yet…
“And yet, you came, My Lord?” you ask.
Oh Gods, is he here to claim your own soul for your impudence? Perhaps this was an unwise decision. The Dark Gods are not known for charity or mercy…
“I did,” Death acknowledges. “You are entitled some special consideration. The Feathered One, Serpent Ascendant, granted your mother a <Favour>… And despite ample reason to do so, she never used it, save to bequeath upon your brow a crown of consideration.”
