16 Mesic Husa
Our trip has begun, seemingly uneventfully. The overland trek was calm – it was really nice to get out on a horse for a while and smell the trees, the air, the spring smells. Getting away from town is something I don’t get enough of, and it’s something I miss. Problem is, I never miss it when I’m actually in town. Ironic, that.
Spring is just beginning to show – small faint green buds on all the trees, and although the days are still cool they aren’t the biting chill of late winter any longer. I see why they name this the month of geese, the flocks are flying overhead almost constantly, heading for their northern lakes and shores. Might have to shoot one of those on this trip, it’s been a long while since I ate goose. Maybe I’ll convince the halfling to nail one for me, though it’d be as big as he is once it falls. I’ll get the lizard to haul it for us.
That sounds terribly selfish of me, but once I’ve cooked it for them they’ll understand. No one works a better field kitchen than I do, I’m proud to say.
I loaded a reasonable pack – it was hard to leave my keg behind, but I’ve got several bottles of wine still that should tide me over for special occasions. Still have half a case left back in the keep, probably the last of its vintage on the planet now that I’m thinking about it. The stuff is only a few years old to me, but it’s a variety that hasn’t seen the inside of a bottle for over half a millennia now. Turned out to be a smart idea, after all. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We left the horses outside of the caves, a couple of hirelings taking care to lead them back home once we reached the entrance. The decision had been made a while back to get to Veyd through the Feywild – a gate to which was in the old throne room or near it, where the trolls had set up the beginnings of their renewed kingdom a few months back. Only a few minor creatures had come to occupy the caves since they were forcibly cleared a while back, so getting to the gate and the throne room turned out to be…routine.
It’s been several years – for me, that is…five or seven hundred years objective time – since I was in the Feywild last. It wasn’t a fun outing. I led a team through the Feywild as a shortcut to traversing a long stretch of land in the ‘real’ world back during the war. It was winter there at that time, and a more vicious cold I’ve never felt. That the fey didn’t take kindly to my intrusion would be an understatement. Although I recognized this trip was necessary, I was not relishing the thought.
The Feywild reflects, to some degree, the seasons of the real – as the seasons change, so does the Feywild. Though some regions of it apparently (much like the real) do not see change, the regions between the Summer and Winter kingdoms fall under the sway of the dominant court. I have never seen the ceremony of passage, when Titania or Mab formally relinquishes control of the Midlands of the Feywild to her counterpart, but I am told it is a fantastic celebration. Perhaps our own solstice festivals are shadowy echoes of theirs. Makes me wonder which world is the shadow of which…
As it ended up, it was early summer or late spring there. Whereas my previous trip was dominated by rhime and frost and white, this time the place was a positive riot of color. All around were shades of color I didn’t even understand, much less did I know such things existed before. Small flowers dancing with electrical sparks; mushrooms tall as a tree, with glowing spots. We heard singing birds, even saw some – and they put to shame some of the prettiest flowers in our ‘real’ world. I have to say, if Shadowfell and Feywild are supposedly ‘shadows’ of the real, then their sources of illumination must be fantastic indeed. It is perversely logical to me that perhaps the Feywild is somehow a “negative” shadow, and that the thing casting the “light” must be some form of darkness…whereas the thing throwing “light” for the Shadowfell must be something closer to what we would consider light.
Bingo the halfling kept scouting ahead, and I must admit a bit of guilty humor, I kept waiting to hear a “yelp” out of him as some plant or other munched him up for a snack…even in the real, we have plants that eat large animals, they can only be more fierce here. Fortunately, such things never took place, so he made it through safely.
Sered was still limping from his injuries and unfortunate brush with mortality while adventuring against the giants, but the rest of us were well. We had a new companion, a fellow named Dei, some kind of evocation specialist. He showed up at our door asking to be allowed to join our number a couple days ago. From what I can see, he’s not an arcanist – but he does seem to pay obeisance to a number of gods. I’d guess he’s some form of roving holy warrior…but his fight isn’t swordplay, it really seems like some kind of divine version of arcana. Quite fascinating, really.
Everything in this realm seems to glow…I can’t quite put a face on it, but something inside them all seems to shine. This doesn’t mean they aren’t out to eat me, but at least they’re pretty.
Along the path, we met a curious gentleman, some kind of wanderer. Asked to be called “Bow” (which he came up with rather than produce his actual name). Peaceful enough, he apparently has been here for a very long time – years, perhaps decades, perhaps centuries. The way time passes in this realm, it could very well be he was older than I am. He carried a bow, and had a peculiar collection of maps – they were tattooed into his flesh all over. I suppose that’s one way to avoid aging maps. He appeared to be a middle-aged human, and told us he’s been here long enough to have forgotten how long he’s been, or why he originally came to this place. He called Titania by the name “Tiandra”, and mentioned that he’d been originally going to petition her court, but could not remember his reasons. At this point, he was seeking a city called Azarath, a moving city, in the hopes that he could locate it and somehow change something he’d done in the past. What it was, he did not elaborate, and we did not pry further.
We had a good conversation – once I gave him one of my cigars (which he took a part of, and smoked it from an intricate silver pipe, stowing the rest away – strange humans!), he loosened up considerably. Told us about the many places he’s been here, and even drew us a basic map of the region. He also pointed out the hunting area of “a great grey dragon,” whom I can only assume is Rain of Tears. Fortunately that area fell well beyond where we intend to travel, so it is my hope that unless we go looking for him, we won’t see him on this venture.
It was this man, Bow, who told us of the Lady of Thorns and Leaves, a deadly sorceress of some sort who ruled a portion of the land between us and the hideout of the trolls.
He had a peculiar tattoo – not just the maps, this one was done professionally – of a dagger surrounded by three stars. I don’t quite recognize the significance of this, but I suspect it’ll hit me late in the night when I most need to sleep, and my brain has one of those connection-moments.
We chatted for quite some time before he began to wrap up his belongings and leave. Our intent was not changed, though our path did as a result of some of what he told us. Before he disappeared, I gave him one of my bottles – any man wandering the wilds here probably doesn’t get many chances to have a good wine without fearing what fey spell might be placed on it. He was most appreciative, and even gifted me back with a bracelet of silver, with little charms upon it…there seems some enchantment about it – I don’t know precisely what, but I will investigate a little more closely when we stop for the night. I didn’t know what to say, it seemed a vastly disproportionate value for a bottle of wine. I suppose in hindsight if one hasn’t had the wine of your native world for many years, the reminder is worth a great deal to you.
We haven’t seen him since we parted ways, but his information turned out to be invaluable – for we ran into the first warning less than a day later.
We broke from the frustrating thick brush into a relatively clear area to find ourselves near the bank of a clear river, with perhaps sixty feet between the tree-line and the water. Enormous swaying willows were scattered about, as were patches of some sort of briar. Three stone barrows stood in the cleared area, and all manner of fluff danced in the sunny air. I could actually smell the river, and I have to say, nothing would have tasted better than a canteen-full of that clear, cold water. But we had to cross. We took a few moments for myself and the other ritual casters to throw a water walking enchantment upon the group, and set forth for what we hoped would be a fast crossing and a move onward.
Of course, that was not to be. Almost immediately as we stepped out into the clearing, one of the flowering bramble-patches stretched out a long thorny vine and promptly snagged Rhogar in what had to be a fairly painful grasp. I was standing directly behind him, and watched the thing coil itself up his legs. If the situation had not been so potentially dangerous, I would have laughed at his reaction – he simply looked down and grunted “Ho there.”
I can’t tell if it was genuinely simultaneous, but it seemed so, that two pale eladrin (well, particularly pale for eledrin) stepped out from behind two of the barrows, and began rippling us with some form of spirit-draining arcanist’s bolts. Most of the harm done to me dissipated across my armor, but Rhogar took the brunt of it, again with nothing more telling than a few grunts.
I’ll give the Arkhosians this much: when they bred their slaves, they did a good job with the pain threshold.
A quick application of fire from one of the team behind me scorched the vine’s connection to the briar patch, and the rest of us spread out. It was then that I saw the Lady appear on a hilltop across the river, watching from her vantage. She seemed not to be doing anything to us at the time, merely observing the two attacking us here. We continued to move against the two eladrin, and even got set up into something approaching a proper phalanx, and began pounding on the male of the two.
I heard muttering a few moments later from behind me, and it appeared that Sered had asked Nix to give him a gateway across to the Lady in order to negotiate with her. Before I could stop him, he stepped through and appeared a few yards in front of her across the banks from us. I was pretty sure I heard him talking to her over the noise of the fight with the eladrin – and another one or two of those briar patches were kicking in.
Whatever he said, apparently didn’t impress her much, because moments later a vine snaked down from the trees above and snatched him off his feet, by his neck. I think the local villages used to call that “hung by the neck, until dead.” Fortunately he didn’t die…though he did come close. She didn’t even say a word, just began clawing at him. The vine, I then noticed, had entered the ground near the shore, tip-first – and it burrowed right up to where it then grabbed him.
After she retrieved him from his noose, the Lady tucked him under her arm and began to cart him away – extruding numerous heavy thorns which pierced him from every angle. From what I could see, they were coated with some form of venom. The first thing to cross my mind was “better him than I”, but he’s a teammate – I could not simply let him die. With a few quick shouts and a bit of a spell here and there, we dealt quickly with the creatures beside us (who actually collapsed into piles of rotting leaves and roots when their physical form was destroyed, and assumed a non-physical echo of themselves which had to be dealt with as well), and were able to get into range where I could manage to extend a bit of arcane healing in his direction. He regained consciousness quickly, though it took some effort for him to extricate himself from the Lady’s grasp.
We rushed to cross the river and reach her, and discovered – painfully – that the fish in the river were rather viciously carnivorous. As they chewed into Rhogar’s feet, I realized he was truly trapped on the water – he would not be able to climb the opposite bank in time to escape being completely flensed by the little predators. I took a calculated risk, and unfortunately it didn’t pay off – I shot him with one of my explosive arrows, hoping the explosion would kill the surrounding fish.
It didn’t. I actually almost killed him with it – first I dropped him like a stone, and then the fish had at him. Fortunately Cannon was able to rush forward and get him up and healed to some degree, so after a moment of self-recrimination I ran forward and slammed another of my healing spells across onto Sered.
Meanwhile, that great vine that had originally hung Sered went into full swing – if you’ll pardon the pun. As soon as we came ashore, it began pummeling us with the force of a falling avalanche, and I must admit to a level of surprise that it didn’t crush us all. Somehow we pulled together and put the thing away – though in the process it revealed that it spread itself quickly, spawning smaller vines as we struck at it. Given what we saw, I figured it had to be some form ofAudrificatus Duos, just monstrous and fey.
Eventually, though, we did hack it down and kill it – and in the meantime, we absorbed a terrible beating from the Lady as she rushed to support her garden.
This turned out to be a mistake on her part – with the vine gone, she could not escape being mobbed by the entire mass of Fellbane. And we fell upon her like snow on a mountainside. Nix even managed to get a simple sleep enchantment to stick to her, and she looked almost beautiful resting beneath one of her willows.
Which made it a little more difficult to pummel her further. Which we did.
I don’t remember who it was that drew that first truly solid hit, but her blood was green, sap-like. I was a bit away from the circle, and saw her regain consciousness at that first blow. She moved with a supernatural speed to a crouch, and I could see her readying some strange arcane motion. Realizing little time remained, I charged her while letting out my best bellow and baring my eyes and teeth the way I used to against the halfling slaves in the Cairn Jale, hoping it would at least distract her for a moment, break her focus. I shouted to her to surrender – perhaps she’d recognize that this didn’t have to end with her demise, and she could bargain for her life.
And somehow, I convinced her. Perhaps a bit too much. She saw me coming, and must have known the end was near – thank the Black Queen, perhaps my visage conveyed a bit of the rage and finality approaching her. She dropped what appeared to be a handfull of sparks to the ground, and reached with the same hand to the bole of the great willow beside her, and it pulled her in – as though water through a pipe, she flowed through her hand and into the tree. I heard her a moment later, as she extruded herself from another tree across the river from us.
I saw then that she’d come out amidst a small crowd of spriggan, who were following in along our trail. She looked about, and the spriggan, seemingly dumbfounded at this syrupy mess that had just popped out of the tree next to her, seemed caught unaware by her and did nothing but watch as she repeated her evaporating trick with the tree next to her. After she vanished into that one, I saw no more of her.
But the spriggan, at least five that I could see, saw us – and we hefted our weapons as we faced off against them.
