Forum

[Medriev]

The companions eventually stopped and rested in the chamber with the tilting floor, each one throwing themselves down on the floor and letting grief consume them. At first, once Telkya realised that Litiraan had not followed them, she wanted to go back, but Lavren held her back until she collapsed, broken, into his arms. All slept fitfully for a few hours with two keeping watch in turns and when they rose, they were all decided that they would turn north from the chamber away from the terrible plant creatures. Dulvarna led them through the north door in silence and when they emerged onto the rope bridges over the water-filled room that the harpies had guarded, she turned east without speaking. The companions climbed the stairs into the ettin’s chamber with the pit of corpses at its centre and there they stopped, for before them stood a man with bushy dark, shoulder length hair and a wild-looking beard. He knelt beside the fallen ettin, apparently examining the corpse. He wore a fur-trimmed tunic of deerskin and trousers of the same hide. At his belt hung a short stick, tied with bones and bird feathers while in one hand, he held up a long scythe.

“An arborean?” Telkya asked from behind Dulvarna.
“I think not,” answered the warrior woman.
“Fear not,” said the man as he turned to regard the newcomers. His nose was flat, his features bestial and his eyes were a bright green.
“I am no enemy but a lost traveller much as you are,” the man continued. “My name is Thorn Valerian and I am one of the few druids who still guard the Hullack Forest.”

“Well met, Thorn,” Dulvarna answered. “I am Dulvarna of Eveningstar and my companions are called the Defenders of Winterhaven.”
“How came you here?” Enlishia asked.
“I tracked a bandit named Gharash Vren,” Thorn answered. “My circle had been petitioned by the Lord of Sunset Hill to find Vren and his band. She offers a purse of gold for the man’s head.”
“And this place entrapped you as it did us?” Telkya asked though she already knew the answer.
“It did,” answered Thorn. “And now I know of no way to escape and no way to find Vren. Your work?”

As he asked the last, he gestured down to the blackened corpse of the slain ettin and the bloated bodies of the insect-like creatures in the pit.
“Yes,” Dulvarna answered. “And now we have returned here to seek another way. Terrible plant creatures lurk to the south and have slain one of our number. You are welcome to travel with us for we too seek a way out of this place.”

“I am grateful to you,” said the man sternly. “And if we find Vren within this place and live to claim the bounty of Lord Kelana Dhoram then we will share it between us.”