James Davis - Circle of Skulls

She smiled at the thought, and it kept her going, though her interest in Dregg waned until evening turned lengthening shadows into pervading dark, a gloom that hid her well from the alert eyes of Dregg's fellow Watchmen. As the lamplighters made their rounds, the rorden's swaggering step seemed to find more purpose, a sudden shrewd sobriety infecting his mannerisms as he turned his boots south in confidence. She wondered at her initial impression of the man as he began to show a certain skill at directing his earlier pleasure toward the cold edge of something approximating duty. He saluted passing patrols, leaving them on their courses without stopping to dress them down and exercise his newfound authority.

His route was direct and sure, and Mara shook her head as he slowed at roughly halfway down Flint Street, stopping to glare at the high walls and lofty towers of the House of Wonder. Mara slid into the shadow of a shade tree north of the house, watching as Dregg paced, his eyes never leaving the wizards' school as if his vision alone might burn the walls to ash. Only the sharp tapping of a walking stick turned him away as a robed figure leaning on a gnarled staff approached from the south. Mara's keen eyes could make out the dark beard and bushy brow beneath the hood, the piercing, glittering eyes of a wizard descending on the waiting Dregg, who swiftly shouted orders to his men, sending them around the block as he awaited the mage.

"Archmage Tallus, I presume?" she whispered softly as the men met, their hushed conversation buzzing incoherently, though she did not expect to glean much. Dregg was a tool to be led along, used, and discarded as the wizard saw fit. Mara doubted Tallus would impart any details. As she waited for their meeting to end, a strange scent crossed her path, faint and enticing.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, she found herself transfixed on the alley at Dregg's back, the darkness calling to her fey blood with a smell as ancient as all of creation.

With a quiet glare, Dregg and Tallus parted, neither seeming pleased with the other. The archmage continued his path north as the rorden turned south, quickly meeting with yet another patrol of the Watch, a group of figures that caught Mara's eye despite her desire to reach the alley. The men did not salute as Dregg approached, their uniforms were ill fitting and unwashed, their weapons less than standard, and their wineskins unheard of among the city's officers.

"Thugs," she muttered quietly, sinking further into the garden's shadows and narrowing her eyes at Dregg's hired men. She suspected whatever was to occur would be coming soon, for even with Dregg in charge, such irregular Watchmen would be easily ousted if not jailed within a day or two. Tallus she eyed more carefully as he passed within several strides of her, his staff digging at the cobbles, his knuckles white on the gnarled wood as he made his hasty way toward Ivory Street. "No," she whispered. "The scheme is not yours either, dear Archmage. This smells of something far older than a limping, nervous wizard and his cruel, half-drunk blade-for-hire."

After both men had gone, she slipped from the shadows, prowling toward Pharra's Alley like a predator sensing prey hiding in the brush. She kept a wary, glancing eye on the House of Wonder as she neared, its wizards and their students toiling within without sense or care of the business going on at their gate. She smirked at their high-minded oblivion, quietly reciting a line from an ancient poem as she eyed the darkness within the alley.

Look down! Look down!

Your towers are much too high!

Ware the fall from your tower wall.

The sky will not protect you.

Turn your eye to the world below,

Else the ground will come up to claim you!

In the dark she studied the cold cobbles, sniffing the air and noting the unlit lantern, creaking on its hook in the winter wind. The ground seemed to hum with power, the area filled with an unmistakable scent though she could not pinpoint its exact source. She turned a wide circle before the house's gates, smiling curiously at the place wizards had dubbed a spellhaunt, a play of tenacious magic that had resisted all attempts to explain or dispel it.

"They dismissed you as an interesting trifle, didn't they?" she said to the ground, almost willing the skulls to appear. "What are you up to, I wonder? And how did you do it?"

The scent was intoxicating, overtaking her with a greed she hadn't felt in decades, an avarice that any night hag worth her own word in the Feywild would gladly betray powerful archfey to satisfy. She breathed deeply, tasting that which she could not yet lay her hands upon.

Souls.

They were a treasure she suspected that all the pitiful creatures shambling in the City of the Dead could only dryly wish for. She studied the haunted ground a moment longer then made swift progress in the path of Archmage Tallus. As she passed homes, towers, taverns, and celebrants, Mara wondered how many might survive the conflict to come, eager to see what end Sea Ward might earn for itself. And though she desired to foil whatever plot Asmodeus had in mind…

The scent of unclaimed souls whetted her appetite for the endgame.

"Naught for now but to listen for the screams," she said under her breath, grinning and wondering if the screams would stop at all.

Jinn blinked, his eyes still adjusting to the half light he found himself in. Damp stone pressed against his cheek, the air stinking of urine, vermin, mold, and things he didn't wish to consider. A soft glow nearby illuminated a wide, stone tunnel, manmade though time and neglect had held reign far longer than any man. Arched and caked with a thick layer of brown and green sludge, the walls glistened. Thin light from distant cracks in the ceiling danced as it reflected off the surface of a thick, rippling mat of steaming liquid too discolored to be called water.

A hand shook Jinn's shoulder as he stirred and sat up, finding Quessahn at his side, the shining ritual dagger in her hand. Her eyes had returned to the pale sky blue he was accustomed to, the ones in which he saw some long-forgotten sense of regret reflecting back at him.

"Are you all right?" she asked, and he nodded in response, the spinning in his head still slowing down from her spell.

"No need to ask where we are, I take it," he said.

"I took a chance in getting us down here," she replied. "But if the house is sealed as tight as I expect, we won't be followed any time soon."

"Better to take a chance on the sewers than be dead," he muttered, rubbing feeling back into his arms where the bodaks had struck him, their claw marks angry, red lines on his near-white skin. After a moment he noticed Quessahn staring, her eyes fixed on the swirling black symbols that decorated his arms from wrist to elbow. He quickly pulled his sleeves down, covering the markings and startling the eladrin.

"W-we'll rest here for a bit," she stammered and stood, raising her dagger and peering into the dark in both directions. "I just need to get our bearings."

Jinn was about to reply when he recalled the bundle of letters in his coat. Leaving Quessahn to her nervous pacing, he pulled the letters out and unfolded the first of them, narrowing his eyes at the precise yet flowing script of Rilyana Saerfynn.

My dearest Allek,

It has been some time since we last spoke, and I regret each day that passes that I do not call upon you, but it seems I am forced to break that silence and humbly ask for your help. Callak grows more protective of me and more violent every day, as though the bottle he drowns his life in replaces that life with something else, something sinister that frightens me. I fear angering him at home, yet in public it is the attentions of your swordcaptain, Lucian Dregg, that I must fend away lest Callak become enraged…