3rd Day of Frost, 123rd Year of the Age of Steel
Masagh slid along the slipspace with what was now a familiar ease. When first his sister had carved onto his soul this Cardinal Rune that other space had been eerie and dangerous. Now it was just as dangerous, but it was a familiar danger, like the city of Gel’Grandal was. Masagh was leading the nervous ghost Indira through it though. The uninitiated could become lost forever if left alone in this space between. So Masagh was careful about following the correct aether lines back across the coast. The dark mysterious aether swirls did not distract the ghost from their thin tendril of guidance. She floated very close behind him, and Masagh could feel the cold chill that emanated from her.
He was a practiced traverser, though, and Gel’Grandal may be a day’s flight south in his Pterincus totem form but it was only a few minutes walk in the Slipspace. Soon they were stepping out into the dank sewer system just outside the warded property of the Creth compound. The flickering portal behind them shrank into nothingness as the two undead stepped out.
“This is… unexpected.” Indira said flatly, staring around at the rounded sewer tunnel with sad eyes.
“This is the sewer, not the compound.” Masagh explained. “Though our compound is connected to the sewers. Daylight is too risky for a ghoul.”
“Why, the villagers will come poke you with pitchforks?” Indira asked, eyeing him.
Masagh looked her way, then began to walk slowly towards the compound entrance. “No, well yes maybe. But it is dangerous because the daylight kills us.”
“Kills you?” She was incredulous. “As in you just keel over if you go out during the day?”
“More like we roast to ash.”
“That seems… Hard.”
Masagh’s mind flashed to Cynfael’s last stand. The wrongness of his pale undead face in the light of day, as though his entire existence was out of place. “It can be, but we are careful. Now speaking of being careful…”
Masagh turned to her. He had thought this over as he walked her home through the Slipspace. Dread turned his lower gut. “I think it best if you remain… unseen in the beginning here. My mother will be displeased with such a long unexplained absence. Worse for us, she will be curious and require answers.”
Indira frowned up at him. Only an hour of knowing each other and she was realizing his position was already more precarious than expected. “Should I be worried?” She asked, folding her arms protectively and glancing down the tunnels. She had never known the city that was Gel’Grandal. All the world was unfamiliar to her now.
“No, she won’t hurt me. Well she won’t-” Masagh found himself fumbling his reassurances. “I won’t be killed. And you won’t be seen to prompt more questions…” He growled under his breath. “She doesn’t much respect liches. I also didn’t tell her I was going to that ruin, or that I knew about it.”
“So you were inexplicably gone for a year, and now we’re going to walk in there and just hope they don’t require an explanation?” She asked.
Masagh grimaced, the expression stretching his gaunt features. “No, of course not. I will have to tell her the truth. But I’m hoping I can get away with just some of the truth.” He fingered the subtle black chains of the Fademantle.
