“What the fuck?”
Ravenna stirs in her bed on the floor of the little blue house. She sits up and looks around, spying the grey-haired Justiciar Mariel Trueheart, the hard and scruffy-looking Postmaster Malown, Merajit the Alchemist – the jovial and eternally smoking Chakagari, the impish Savinia Loresong. And Magnus. And Mar’Khabazza.
Ravenna turns to the Justiciar. “You voted to sentence me to death!”
Mariel Trueheart refills her tea cup from the kettle over the fire. “Yes, I did. And I am sorry you had to go through what you did. Once it was apparent that the vote would go against you, it made no sense to publicly come out to your defense.”
Mollified but not satisfied, Ravenna lies back in her blankets and let’s Merajit feel her pulse and take her temperature. As the Chakagari mutters under his breath, Magnus realizes that he understands that language and is actually fluent. While he fusses, the Sept of the Serpent catches her up on the day’s events.
Mar’Khabazza speaks up. “So you’ve gone though all of this trouble to get Ravenna out of the public eye. Surely there is a payment in return.”
Savinia exhales and a puff of smoke appears and vanishes in front of her. “Nope,” she says. “No payment.”
Postmaster Malown speaks up. “We did what we did to protect the life of an Archmagus from Elder Sarophas, the Slenderman and the superstitious mob that follows them. Call that basic humanity if you will. It would be presumptive of us to place demands of you when we barely know you. Instead we have a request: In your travels you might come across interesting or unexplainable phenomenon and our ask is that you let us know of them so we can compile them in our records. Perhaps something you reveal will uncover a further clue.”
“That’s it?” Mar’Khabazza is skeptical.
“That’s it.”
Ravenna is practical and to the point. She brings up the relics and journals from the river valley mines and some of the works from her father’s library in the tower. Subsequent inspection reveals her father’s journals are written in a strange language and are undecipherable. But the journals from the mines are written in the phonetic alphabet of the Sudaar and contain the musings of the Sudaar shaman as well as details of the mining operations there. The recovered scrolls describe the Vammatar – Sudaar gods of death, annihilation, and chaos. Rituals of human sacrifice, blood offerings and cannibalism.
“If you are curious to know more about these Sudaar writings and Kelemis’ treatise, you would do well to visit Mondaleth the Sage in Akind’s Ridge. He and Kelemis were the true scholars among us,” Mariel Trueheart explains. “It’s a significant overland journey but it might be well worth the trip.”
At this, the conversation breaks up and the group leaves the house singly or in pairs, with Magnus, Ravenna and Mar’Khabazza alone on the streets of Opal at last.