1.9 KiB
Free of the train at last, the party found themselves crouched between the cattle cars and the station wall of Brefield, the shrunken dragon they had rescued blinking up at them. With little time and fewer options, they improvised a disguise, a leash looped about the dragon's neck and the confident air of travelers walking a peculiar pet, and set off through the streets toward an inn called the Splintered Snake.
At the Splintered Snake the party negotiated lodging for their unusual companion, paying twenty gold as a deposit and five gold a night to keep Tir'nael in their room. Odatina put her name to a document accepting responsibility for whatever damage the dragon might cause. It was only later that they thought the matter through: as Tir'nael grew and the reducing magic holding him small wore off, he might well tear the room apart around them. Thinking better of the arrangement, they moved the dragon out to the stables behind the inn.
With Tir'nael settled, the party made their way to Hyperion Hall to seek an audience with Kevana, leader of the Hyperions. There they learned a troubling truth: that the Spade, the House of Suits' silent enforcer, was an Oilblood, one of those who has merged with the essence and parts of a slain automaton. Kevana counseled caution, urging the party to keep their distance from Commander Taylor until they could learn more, and admitting that even she could not say whether the rumors of Taylor himself being an Oilblood held any truth.
As the conversation deepened, the party began to connect threads they had carried for some time, drawing a line between the flooded mine Taylor had once sent them to investigate and the Collapsed Reach. Sharing what they had pieced together seemed to settle something in Kevana. She judged that the time had come at last to tell them the truth about Commander Taylor, and it was there, on the edge of that revelation, that the evening came to a close.