The Sad Song in the Warehouse

The warehouse district did not give the party a crowd to bait. Stormcall Harbor carried sharp wind, brine, and the distant machinery of the city. Back alleys led My Alchemical Romance to a small shack and, behind it, a much larger domed warehouse with wooden sliding doors. The place was quiet enough to make their honeypot plan feel foolish. No one passed by. No one came to stare at Dhaz's exposed construct parts or the obvious wounded bait they had imagined presenting. If the lead was inside, drawing it out would not matter. So they listened. At the door, the warehouse answered with a sad song. It was soft enough to feel like a memory and dangerous enough to force the body to resist before the mind understood why. The party recognized the shape of it: siren magic, charm magic, something meant to pull a person across the boundary between caution and obedience. Dhaz chose the roof. With Spider Climb, he ran up the stone wall toward the skylight and peered down through the high opening. Inside, the warehouse broke into levels, storage piles, stacked materials, and sightlines that refused to give the whole room away at once. His scouting revealed entrances and movement, but not enough to make the situation safe. Then his stealth failed. The song found him. A harpy-like figure clawed at him near the upper space, and Dhaz fell from scout to victim in the time it took the rest of the party to realize the honeypot had worked after all. Only not in the direction they planned.