Grettir had long had a hankering for a flying steed. After his experiences in the Sea Battle he felt that it would be mightily useful for combatting Imperial wizards on their carpets and would be a terror for shipping. It would also be very cool. Samuel, who had a flying beast of his own said that the person to talk to was the Cardinal of his order, Rebecca. So Grettir had himself teleported to Lydius once more. There he negotiated with Rebecca, who for a price (quite a heavy one) gave him a carved bone and a whistle. The whistle, she said, would summon a Sphinx and would probably protect him from it while they negotiated a pact. If the Sphinx agreed to a pact then it would swallow the bone and there would be a bond threafter between them. She warned Grettir that there were many types of Sphinx and not all of them were what he might describe as “Good”.
Grettir was keen to strike while the iron was hot. The last place that he had seen a Sphinx was in the Pyramid of Ptah. He thought that this might be a place to look. So he and Samuel entered the Astral Realm and flew together on Samuel’s steed to seek the place where they had found and woken Ptah. They could not find it. All that they could locate was a sprawling ruin, which they explored. There were no Sphinxes there but they were attacked by five Harpies and a Hag who cast magic at them. They slew the Harpies and Grettir crawled into a passageway where the Hag had her nest. He resisted her magics and there in the dark, with her talons around his throat, he slipped a dagger between her ribs and into her black heart.
They found a considerable quantity of gold there and other treasures. When they examined the body of the Hag they found that her skin was covered in tattoos and a script that Samuel translated as follows:
Behold the punishment of Pyah for Phrenga, Handmaiden of Sekhmet, Minion of the Betrayer
Let her wander the Endless Night knowing endless hunger for flesh; feeling endless lust
She may wear no clothes, she may bear no children, she is bound to the Stone of Ptah
So this was the person who had poured poison into the ear of Sekhment and caused her rift with Ptah. Looking around, they realised that they were indeed in the Pyramid of Ptah, but after thousands of years had rendered it into ruin. They departed the Astral Realms with their loot and returned to Lydius and thence to Telemark. Grettir had no Sphinx but did have reason to hope that he would find one in due course.
G-23b
OE Date: May 695
Characters: Grettir NPCs: Samuel
Real World: November 2011; Where: Maisemore