Chapter 20 - Part 8

The three rakshasa flew gracefully through the air, ignoring the bows and tokens of respect from the fiends that they passed over. Those fiends that could fly have swerved well out of their way, or dipped well beneath the altitude of their masters.

The rakshasa serenely descended to the ground, stay a good foot or so above the hundreds of corpses that littered the area. The great blue had slaughtered many lesser fiends with its lightning breath, its spells, and its mighty claws and teeth.

Soon the hovering trio approached the great corpse. More dead fiends surrounded the dragon’s lifeless body, but three kytons stood atop the corpse, their dancing chains warning the lesser fiends back.

“Masters,” the kytons said, bowing deeply and prostating themselves.

“Get the fiends here back to their usual places,” said the rakshasa on the left.

“Except for those who need to clean up the corpses of those who fell,” added the one on the right.

“Salvage what you can from them, but leave the dragon’s corpse to us,” concluded the one in the middle.

The three rakshasa turned to regard a particularly loud set of gibbering, scaled monkey things. “Take those to the Labirynth,” the rakshasa on the left said. “And some of the lemures. The orcs there need a distraction, lest they come out and make out life difficult.”

“You are in charge of cleanup here,” the rakshasa on the right said, pointing to one kyton. “You are in charge of herding the lesser ones back to their places.”

“And you,” said the middle rakshasa, pointing to the kyton whose bow had been a fraction less than the other two. “You lead the distraction into the Labirynth. Do not come back until the lesser fiends have all been destroyed.” The middle rakshasa didn’t bother to add that the waiting orc holy warriors were not about to let anyone that entered their domain get away.

The kytons scrambled to do as they were bid. The rakshasa waited imperiously, and in less than five minutes they were alone with the dead dragon, without even the dead demonlings for company.

The middle rakshasa cast the spell, and addressed the dead dragon. “Speak, or your soul will be forcefully put into your body, and you will be tortured for centuries,” it said imperiously.

The dragon’s mouth did not move, but an echo of his voice came from behind the shattered lips. “You bluff,” it said. “If you could do that, you would. I tell you nothing.”

“Why did you come here?” demanded the rakshasa on the left.

There was no answer. Speaking with the dead had its limits, especially if the dead were creatures of powerful will.

“Be not troubled in mind,” said the rakshasa on the right. “We had to try the spell, though we knew it was likely it would not suceeed. What evidence on the body is there?”

The middle rakshasa took out a small rod tipped with a Khyber dragonshard, and mumured words of a divination spell. “Dirt from the Eldeen Reaches,” it said. “This wyrm may have been the one who destroyed our agent that infiltrated Aundair’s intelligence service.”

The rakshasa on the right cast his own spell, and concentrated. After a moment he shook his had. “He was a Chamber agent, yes, but I can tell no more. The dragon prepared several counter-divinations on itself over the past few months.”

“Let us try logic,” said the rakshasa on the right. “Why would it come here? It wasn’t trying to get anything, or at least it seemed not to try. So far as we know it stayed airborne its entire time violating Fer’lrrg, not even touching the ground.”

“And it did not try to flee once spotted,” added the middle rakshasa. “It was trying to lead our agents to the Labiryth. Why? Has it equipped the orcs there with some weapon?”

“We have not heard from our colleague, Gaijiros,” said the rakshasa on the left. “His odd activities have not been accounted for. The many smaller fiends that he appropriated, and the ones we sent to investigate, are not accounted for.”

“One of our scouts did come back,” the rakshasa on the right said. “They found nothing save some bloodstains and remains enough to account for barely a score of the least ones. Of Gaijiros and his other followers there was no sign.”

“You are implying that Gaijiros was working with this dragon?” the middle rakshasa asked. “Impossible. How would they even approach one another?”

“Then we have no answer, and we are left with harvesting this wyrm’s corpse for consolation,” said the rakshasa on the right. “I suggest that we look outwards from that cave series that Gaijiros was so interested in. If there is a connection to the dragon, we may find it there.”

“We should also increase our agents’ surveillance of the Chamber’s agents,” the rakshasa on the left said. “I suggest that we call in some favors from the warforged cabal in Eston. The Chamber does not know of them.”

“Agreed,” said the other two.