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<blockquote data-quote="Alexander Bryant1" data-source="post: 7792851" data-attributes="member: 6916184"><p><strong>Journal of Etona 27</strong></p><p></p><p>Jodan looks conflicted as we all hop out of the boat. He steps out and stops, some internal struggle taking turns controlling his face. Rey takes off scouting the shoreline, so I dash after her, the two of us scramble across uncountable rocks that seem to be left over from a whole other island torn up, sharpened and cast here as weapons against visitors of any sort.</p><p></p><p>Our attention is called back: a commotion back at the boat. Jodan still isn’t moving, but heat is roiling around him making the air shimmer. The rail from boat behind him browns, its paint bubbling. His chains are <em>writhing</em>.</p><p></p><p>“What is that?” screams Cleo, one of the sisters.</p><p></p><p>Jodan is bellowing in Infernal now, I think, and, yes, there is his sword, the devil-in-steel, Beherit.</p><p></p><p>One last change in his features, his aura, his body language. The Hell Knight has wholly arrived, utterly present like I haven’t seen before. This is not Jodan: this is the devil prince, Beherit.</p><p></p><p>But the island is not having it: stone shoots out of the ground and envelopes his feet. I start running back to him.</p><p></p><p>“We can’t take him anywhere,” I call over my shoulder to Rey.</p><p></p><p>Beherit is slashing at the stone which crumbles and breaks. New stone emerges but it is too slow.</p><p></p><p>“Beherit!” says Treig, calmly. “This will not get you what you want. We will. We are doing what needs to be done, and so we cannot block your own interests here even if we wanted to. Return Jodan to us. You know this is the smart move.”</p><p></p><p>The words work a transformation and Jodan, in short order, is returned to us. It takes somewhat longer for me calm down the sisters, but Verdre will stay with them and that seems to help.</p><p></p><p>We move into the island.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>I lay my eyes for the first time on a creature – a whole knot of them, in fact – called a <em>roper</em>. I’ve heard stories of them, these underground menaces that contribute to making life so very difficult for Drow and dwarf. I am amazed to see several of them now, right here, live: dense, incredibly hostile foliage armed with spiked tentacles and frighteningly huge mouths. Fortunately, they are essentially immobile.</p><p></p><p>They were the first creatures we met in navigating what can only be described as an actual maze of manipulated stones that make up the region of the island we are on now. They are clustered on slabs of stalactites. On their tough hides are carved runes that I recognize. I cannot read them – they are druidic – but I know someone who can. She is just a short stroll back to the water.</p><p></p><p>Verdre is surprised to see me as I stumble out of the maze towards her. Each rock seemed to be identical to every other; it took me ages to find the ocean again. In fact, had it not been the pounding surf I was seeking I may not have found it. I have only been lost a handful of times before, and at least two of them had been magical fields designed to beguile. Here, I kept returning to the ropers from different directions, though I also crept by a nasty-looking tree that seemed to be the patriarch of all ill-tempered flora in the world.</p><p></p><p>I tell my aunt of the runes and she comes with me to take a quick peek. Together we find the grotto with the ropers readily enough.</p><p></p><p>She stares at the creatures, writing down what she sees into her Infinite Book. Eventually she has enough to translate. It is a sort of druidic treatise on nature, not words of power at all, more like, “We were here” from the First Watch. Interesting though not useful. She returns to the boat, looking thoughtfully at her surroundings. She will start a new map, I know, as soon as she has time.</p><p></p><p>The rest of us proceed to the base of a cliff a ways off. There, in front of a shallow cave is a courtyard in the maze that was probably a lovely spot once, a place for a … <em>pik’nik</em>, I think the humans call it. Now it is broken stone benches and white statuary and strewn crystals. Something recently – perhaps a couple days ago – blew them all to rubble. There is some blood, and we manage to piece together the scene: these were stone golems, and they were in a fight with at least two people, probably more. A quick scouting of the area reveals nothing nearby, but there is another party of adventurers on the island.</p><p></p><p>Blue crystals are scattered about, evidently from inside the statues. Treig scoops a few of them up and we continue into the shallow cave a couple hundred yards past.</p><p></p><p>An obsidian disk is in here. Seven eyes are carved into the stone circle, three of them are filled, and four more serve as depressions for fist-sized crystals.</p><p></p><p>…such as those we just got from the golems.</p><p>…such as those stuck to the base of the ropers.</p><p></p><p>“Return my eyes to me and I shall gaze through the storm,” it reads in Orrin, translated by Treig… courtesy of the circlet? I guess? I honestly have no idea how it performs these miracles of communication, particularly written language. Has he now an air elemental residing in that noggin? Or does the circlet actually whisper the translation? Or does it just look like Common to him? He won’t say, just shrugs.</p><p></p><p>He places a blue crystal in a depression. It fits perfectly, sparkles a little.</p><p></p><p>And so we have our assignment: we need the three other colors.</p><p></p><p>Treig believes he can excavate the ropers’ green jewels from their “feet”, a mass of arboreal foot-roots, if Rey will confer a <em>traceless passage</em> spell to him. I think Verdre or myself are the better choices, but he does have that magic cloak. Since he is reluctant to give it to one of us temporarily, this becomes his task to carry out.</p><p></p><p>He is successful, though: he returns with crystals plucked, the ropers none the wiser.</p><p></p><p>He repeats his thievery in the opaque tide pool of the monstrous tree I passed to retrieve red crystals.</p><p></p><p>That leaves the <strong>violet</strong> ones. It doesn’t take us long to find them.</p><p></p><p>We spot a place in the maze that has collapsed in an odd way: the walls’ rocks are piled twenty feet high in a ramp up against two other walls forming a corner. As we approach, a river of lightning pours out of the loose shale, striking Rey who shrugs it off. She wields her spear and charges. A moment later I can see her target: something called a <em>behir</em>, a large, multi-legged, snake-like creature that hates dragons, according to Treig. He isn’t going to like Rey.</p><p></p><p>It dies a violent death. It attacked Rey ferociously, never taking its eyes off her, and she is gravely hurt in battling it. But she is made of discarded deities, my Rey, and shrugs off horrific wounds that would kill many and cripple the rest. While I am tending to her, Treig harvests the violet crystals.</p><p></p><p>We return to the black disc and insert our collected chromatic bounty. The tempest seems to hush. There is a … drawing back, something anticipatory.</p><p></p><p>Treig and I step on the disc.</p><p></p><p>Immediately, the scent of grass in summer. Warmth, and peace.</p><p>A forest is to our south where there was none before. Snowy mountains to the north.</p><p></p><p>We are not in the Fade anymore. This is the Fey.</p><p></p><p>Rey and Jodan appear a few seconds later.</p><p></p><p>The Hell-Knight begins to age quickly and in short order looks almost skeletal! He starts chanting something and, with a fiercely determined look directly at me, he disappears. Gone, as if he had taken the Ethereal Plane drought.</p><p></p><p>While we’re putting together the words to express our surprise, he reappears, youthful again. But his arm is now encased in raw, uncut red crystals. Also, something about his aura has changed. Normally he exudes tyranny and power, and considerable heat. When he comes back, these are gone, replaced – for a handful of heartbeats – with Jodan-as-human. He wears, for that moment, the same expression as when he was with Natasha. And then Hell takes over again. But not completely. There is something else now in his eyes.</p><p></p><p>“Where did you go?” I ask.</p><p></p><p>He grunts. He doesn’t seem to want to look directly at me.</p><p></p><p>“Jodan?” I repeat and step towards him. “Where did you go?”</p><p></p><p>He is saved from answering me by the arrival of four hoary beings from some Fae duke’s court. Draped in mossy Fae armaments, banners of the elements flapping, butterflies and other insects hovering around them, and shouldering the weariness of millennia, they have stepped out of the ground, the wind, and the trees.</p><p></p><p>“I am <strong>Tilthranos</strong>,” announces one of them. “We are the Last Resort.”</p><p></p><p>The Common words are heavily inflected. ‘Last resort’ is obviously an inaccurate translation.</p><p></p><p>“We protect the secrets of this island,” he continues.</p><p></p><p>Treig steps forward.</p><p></p><p>“We seek something called the phylactery of Dragotha,” he says.</p><p></p><p>“Mm, you seek the Fountain of Dreams, but know that should you drink of it all secrets of what you seek shall be revealed to the world; the order of the Rite of the First Watch will be undone; and great creatures of legend will be set loose upon your world.”</p><p></p><p>“What creatures, exactly?” I ask.</p><p></p><p>“They roam this place. They will roam yours.”</p><p></p><p>“And which secrets?”</p><p></p><p>“Your books which were emptied of the words for what you seek will fill again. Stories lost will be known once more; journals and drawings rediscovered: all will go back into the Fade from which they were taken.”</p><p></p><p>“How do we start this off?” Treig asks.</p><p></p><p>“Should we start this off?” I ask. I pull us aside. “What if what we will unleash is worse than Dragotha?”</p><p></p><p>“I can’t really imagine that,” says Treig. “Dragotha is a plague spreading unlife everywhere, a head that bites two heads who bite four heads, and so on. It just keep growing like a disease loose in a city, except the city is our whole world.”</p><p></p><p>“We are not guaranteed to succeed in slaying Dragotha. But moving forward here will definitely add more destruction to the world. We could end up making things worse.”</p><p></p><p>Treig spreads his hands. “What do you recommend?”</p><p></p><p>“We should try,” says Rey. “We should always try, Etona. That is what you have said to me many times, and you were always right.”</p><p></p><p>I give her a mock-withering look that communicates what I think of her quoting me back to me, but I step back from the Watchers.</p><p></p><p>“So again,” says Treig to them, “how do we begin?”</p><p></p><p>“The Fountain will know you from your deeds. You must accomplish four tasks. The first trial: claim the golden belt of Krathenos, in his keep far to the south.”</p><p></p><p>Another watcher finally speaks.</p><p></p><p>“I am <strong>Baescoaen</strong>. Silence the Doom Shroud’s mournful song.”</p><p></p><p>A third one says, “I am <strong>Thoddamar</strong>. Seek the nightmare in the Thorn Vale to the furthest west.”</p><p></p><p>And the fourth: “I am <strong>Saeran Lai</strong>. Harvest the living feather of the Roc King in the mountains to the north.”</p><p></p><p>“These sound like feats of strength,” I interject, “and not trials of wisdom or virtue. Is the library for any who wield power?”</p><p></p><p>“The trials bespeak their own natures,” Tilthranos replies, “and will each, in turn, challenge your heroic aspect.”</p><p></p><p>“Have other attempted these tests?” says Rey.</p><p></p><p>“Yes, but none have succeeded.”</p><p></p><p>“What happened to them?”</p><p></p><p>“Some perished. Some merely left. A few are still here.”</p><p></p><p>“What are the creatures that will be freed to run amok in our world?” I ask Tilthranos.</p><p></p><p>“You see them here. Creatures of legend, beings from stories.”</p><p></p><p>“Are any of them world-shaking in their influence? Are any, for example, the actual island we are on, or the island is just barely big enough to contain a titan or something like that? Are there any who can affect thousands or the minds of thousands?”</p><p></p><p>“They are powerful; they are beings of legend. But no, none could shatter a nation.”</p><p></p><p>I look to Treig.</p><p></p><p>"Then we accept,” he says. “Should we do then in a particular order? Does that matter?”</p><p></p><p>“The trials may be completed as pleases you. It is for you to decide.”</p><p></p><p>“OK. Can you tell us anything about any of them?”</p><p></p><p>“We have said all we must.” And with that, they each withdraw, one into the trees, one into the ground, and the last two simply fading away leaving behind a puff of steam and a curl of smoke, each quickly lost to the wind.</p><p></p><p>“If we are to set out on these quests,” I say to the group, “then we must go back to the boat for Verdre.”</p><p></p><p>“Why do we need her again, necessarily?” To head off my incredulous reply, he quickly adds, “Just sayin’, it takes time and crystals, and we don’t have much of the latter. In fact,” he pulls out the collection, “we can go back and forth only one more time.”</p><p></p><p>“Then we have enough. Anyway, we must warn the sisters. What with the time difference between here and the Fade, we could be days or weeks before we return. Much could happen.”</p><p></p><p>He sighs. “OK. We go back to the boats.”</p><p></p><p>“Treig?” He turns back to me. “This wasn’t really a request.”</p><p></p><p>“Yeah, I know. I’m just, trying to keep everything together.”</p><p></p><p>“And you are doing a magnificent job.”</p><p></p><p>Poor man: it is so important that there be plans and control, as if the world could be mastered.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>Getting back is uneventful as Rey and I are beginning to understand the lay of the land. Verdre reports nothing amiss back at the boat. I look over her charts: she has captured the hazards of our journey in sketches within little side-boxes that point back to where they are on the map. How she memorized the details and the course we took <em>and</em> so truly reproduced it all whilst gripped in the storm’s jaws is beyond me.</p><p></p><p>We explain to the sisters what we are about to do and what the consequences may be in terms of not seeing them for some time. We beg them to leave, for their own good, assuring them we had another way off of the island, and they finally assent.</p><p></p><p>I press a gold into each of their palms. “To spend.” I press a silver into each of their other palms. “To remember us by.” They all know Verdre and I are sent by Her Night-Shaded Majesty, and the coin resembles a full moon. “Spend that one after we come back. I want to see all of you again.” I hug each one in turn making unhappy noises at the journey that circumstance has forced them to make, but Myra assures me it will be an easier thing to return than to come.</p><p></p><p>“This place hates visitors like a hermit watching an approaching troupe of joke-telling jugglers. It will be all too glad to watch us leave,” she says. She then presses a medallion inscribed with a single eye into my hand. “For good luck, to you, Etona, and to all of you.”</p><p></p><p>“I will see you again,” I promise.</p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>One more long look at the orcs. They are dressed and armed like pirates, that is, sailors as opposed to a war party waiting to get to a destination. I shouldn’t think a band of orcs would have any interest in plundering a dangerous island for some books.</p><p></p><p>Verdre remembers she saw a cloaked figure step out of the rocks near their ship, spy on the orcs for a moment, and then vanish back into the maze.</p><p></p><p>None of us can say what is going on here.</p><p></p><p>“I am surprised you do not want to saunter over and ask them to tea,” Verdre teases.</p><p></p><p>“I might, but keeping Rey from jumping at them is taking all my energy. With <em>Eye of the Storm</em> safely off, and they have given us no trouble at all, I am for simply returning to the disk and making the crossing back to the Fey side.”</p><p></p><p>“Sensible,” she returns with arched eyebrow.</p><p></p><p>“I can be sensible, too.”</p><p></p><p>“Of course.”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>Our first task after we complete the journey back, we decide, is to go and retrieve the golden belt. It is presumably on the mythical creature that lives in a fortress at the southernmost tip of the forest. Our choices to get there are around the woods or through.</p><p></p><p>It is the first forest I think I have ever seen Verdre blanch on the notion of entering. I do not blame her. Called the Doom Shroud, that name might be too lively for it. Black trees drip with ichor, smell of disease, as inviting as an exploration of Greyhawk’s sewers. Apparently there are also monsters within. How fun! We leave it to the last: perhaps we’ll be dead by then.</p><p></p><p>So, walking around grasslands where different packs of carnivorous animals are busy hunting. We see their signs: ripped up or flattened reeds; broken bones with impressive teeth marks; pieces of hide; all on a larger-than-us scale. Battles between big combatants. Rey and Verdre confer: there are packs of at least three different animals out here of any size besides the hyenas and – what did Verdre call them? – <em>gazelles</em>: fast, hopping, plains deer with unmatched grace that can turn almost in mid-air at great speed. Verdre spent some time following a herd of them, studying.</p><p></p><p>We sighted a <em>bulette,</em> a “land shark”, in the distance. It surfaced with a spray of dirt. Its prey, a couple of dogs separated from their pack, vanished.</p><p></p><p>Not long after that we moved into an area where for miles we saw no sign at all of the bulette. Verdre was commenting on how odd it was that they seemed to have a surprisingly small roam when several things happened at once.</p><p></p><p>A hissing sound but not from an animal, more like a river of insects.</p><p>Movement all around us, suddenly there as if we had stepped out of a quiet lake into a forest fire.</p><p>A sound like that of what humans call a <em>cougar</em>.</p><p>Purple flags flapping, no, black and purple, no, tentacles not flags, on hides, on big cats with tentacles and fuzzy outlines that hurt the backs of my eyes.</p><p></p><p>“<em>Yukuma,”</em> Verdre says. <em>“</em>Displacer beasts!”</p><p></p><p>They are on us from nowhere. Where did they come from?</p><p></p><p>I immediately tree-step away. Out comes Angivre. Verdre unsheathes Glitter with a frosty whisper that freezes the grass in front of her; Treig reaches for a handful of whatever surprising little weapon-devices he has stashed away. Rey’s beast, after locking eyes with her, simply kneels down, paws forward.</p><p></p><p>But it is Jodan who takes command of the situation. He barks at them in Infernal, his face contorted, his armor chains wave in mockery and contempt of their own tentacles, burning steel versus mere hide. He seems, as he often does when he puts on this show, like a thing summoned from Gehenna.</p><p></p><p>It does the trick: the cats are so cowed by him that Verdre and Treig’s mere snarls are enough to drive them off. Neither side so much as scratched the other.</p><p></p><p>“Will they return?” Rey asks. Verdre shakes her head, no. “How do you know?”</p><p></p><p>“They are intelligent but malign. They hunt for pleasure. There is no pleasure to be gained with us, they could see that plainly. And one among us,” she nods at Jodan, “may even seem like a master to them. You spoke Infernal?” Jodan nods. “They speak that as well. They understood you. What did you say?”</p><p></p><p>“Just some sweet nothings.”</p><p></p><p>Verdre, it turns out, knows a lot more about the yukuma. They are from the Unseelie Court, the dark fae. There is much to say about them but it would, and has at the hands of better chroniclers than I, filled scores of books. Suffice to say, they are bred for war and are now loose upon the world. This little island world, anyway.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>We again come upon a trail that had been running straight through the <em>zigzag</em> (what a delicious human word) of our own. Another herd of huge beasts, though these must be slow and ponderous, judging by their wake. I come upon their droppings and tentatively identify them as herbivore. Verdre confirms, and Rey agrees. I had not learned tracking as well as the rest of my people when I was young, but the years in the woods alone before Diamond Lake sharpened my senses, and now my guesses almost always accord with theirs.</p><p></p><p>We catch up to them. They are <em>olifants</em>.</p><p></p><p>Massive creatures with enormous tusks, long gray trunks, ears like sails and legs, gray columns: I can see why few would want to attack them.</p><p></p><p>Rey cautions us to wait. She approaches them carefully. They watch warily but allow her to put down her spear, open her arms, move near. When she is within some yards, a big male begins to look agitated. The herd behind moves off. She drops to her knees in supplication. It will be easy for the bull to trample her.</p><p></p><p>“Think she’s OK out there?” says Treig.</p><p></p><p>Verdre frowns. “They doubtless sense the dragon in her. It will make her task more difficult. But your friend is talented,” she says. “Give her time.”</p><p></p><p>Rey, perhaps sensing that a change in tactic was needed, rises to her feet and roars to the male. It rears, and she bows down her head but remains standing. It probes with its trunk and she swats it away at first then accepts with a nod. She comes to its face, stares into its eye, whispers something. And they accept her.</p><p></p><p>She is in their midst now, hidden and reappearing as the others come circle them. After some minutes, she emerges.</p><p></p><p>“Etona, I think you will want see this,” she says. “All of you, come. But Jodan, maybe you in a moment. They are still skittish.”</p><p></p><p>She has charmed the lot of them, and they do the same to me. Patient eyes and close bonds with one another – and their sheer size – has me breathless in their midst.</p><p></p><p>“We may ride them,” Rey says to my astonishment. This is a gift! It is practically worth everything simply to arrive at this moment.</p><p></p><p>They travel back and forth through the plains largely unmolested by the predators here, Rey is saying, so long as they are vigilant. We had been scurrying from stone outcropping to mole hill to tree to rock pile in an attempt to foil the senses of the bulettes, and it was working but taking its toll on some of us. I could do this for many moons, and Rey and Verdre for more, as could Treig, probably, but Jodan was becoming increasingly cranky and more willing to fight the bulettes head-on with each passing hour. He is not a plains-runner.</p><p></p><p>Now we can move with the olifants, though, who are not bothered by the land sharks so long as they travel in their herd, and in this way we are their companions, and extraordinarily their riders, all the way to the keep.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>It is as well we met them: I am constantly distracted by the floral bounty of the island. After perhaps the fourth time I dash off – never far, to gather the treasures I have been spotting ever since we arrived – Verdre approaches me on my return.</p><p></p><p>“You have found them: goldflower, lucia, maellen,” she says. “It is why you keep running off?”</p><p></p><p>“Only for a few minutes at a time,” I reply. “Anyway, yes! Aloa-dori, trapantas, waevran root. Verdre, there are herbs here I have only read about in stories.”</p><p></p><p>“Herbs that I have only associated with fables,” Verdre agrees. “But you must let me know when you go off and forage. This is a dangerous place.”</p><p></p><p>“I am not a child, Verdre.”</p><p></p><p>“And I do not want to dampen your adult enthusiasm, but you must speak up or I will worry. And Rey will worry.”</p><p></p><p>I realized that stamping my foot on the ground would not communicate the grave overtones of maturity that I sought to convey, so I simply nod.</p><p></p><p>“You are right, of course,” I say. In the background I see Rey – trying not to be noticed – listening carefully. She breathes a sigh of relief.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>The keep is worked stone, built from a mountain of stone, guarded by flying stone creatures retrieving flying stones. The olifants size this up and halt. We will need to proceed on foot.</p><p></p><p>“They will be here when we return,” Rey promises.</p><p></p><p>The flying statues are animated gargoyles flapping around the fortress. A few tend to a task of fetching boulders arcing from time to time out of the open mouth of the keep, some of them rolling to within a few hundred yards of us. Each one of these projectiles is preceded with a booming noise from inside the keep, a word something like <em>woethraan</em>.</p><p></p><p>“We walk in, we talk to the owner of this place, probably Krathenos,” says Treig.</p><p></p><p>I look dubiously at a two hundred pound rock in its own crater not far from us. “Maybe we should creep in carefully, unseen, and assess the situation first,” I reply.</p><p></p><p>He nods up to the swarms of gargoyles and wide-open gate. “I don’t think <em>unseen </em>is really an option. Besides, if we march in, nothing to hide, then we start from a position of honesty. “</p><p></p><p>“We don’t know Krathenos or what this belt even is, really.”</p><p></p><p>“Yeah. Well, that’s why I wanna introduce us, all open and proper.”</p><p></p><p>“It’s only polite,” pipes up Jodan, but I think he’s making a joke.</p><p></p><p>“The spider welcomes the polite fly,” says Verdre but tossing her hair in a gesture of unconcern.</p><p></p><p>We march in through the front gate, through huge, well-lit corridors, to the throne room. A twelve foot man of stone is pacing. He stops when he sees us, sizes us up, smiles broadly.</p><p></p><p>“Adventurers,” he says with a laugh. Amusement and disdain, but a little curiosity, all contained in the single word. “Have you come to test your mettle against me?”</p><p></p><p>Treig steps up.</p><p></p><p>“You are Krathenos?”</p><p></p><p>He kneels down to look at Treig.</p><p></p><p>“Yes.” He caresses the word.</p><p></p><p>“My name is Treig. This is Jodan, Speaker Rey, Etona, and Verdre, uh, over there with the drawing pad. We are here for a golden belt in your possession. We seek to barter for it.”</p><p></p><p>“Interesting. And what do you offer?”</p><p></p><p>“What do you need?”</p><p></p><p>He laughs at this and stands up again. “My freedom. Do you have that in your pack?”</p><p></p><p>“I may. When we get the belt, and three other items, the beings on this island will be released back into the world. You will be freed.”</p><p></p><p>We explain the quest, and the quest-givers, and the four items we will be traveling all over the island to retrieve. And we tell him why we are here pursuing all this. He is a remarkably reasonable stone giant. Or perhaps they are all like this and their reputation is marred: I have never met one before Krathenos.</p><p></p><p>He agrees, but on one condition:</p><p></p><p>“Finish the other three quests first and you shall have my belt.”</p><p></p><p>“Agreed.”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>It is a long trek back to our next destination, the aerie of the roc king. North back where we came from, past the pestilent forest, to the hills and mountains, to a particular peak.</p><p></p><p>Once again Treig has decreed we proceed in the open.</p><p></p><p>“But these are rocs, not flying statues,” I say. “We are food to them, and if they have a king then we are a threat as well.”</p><p></p><p>Indeed, they swoop past us as we come into their territory long before we have even started the vertical climb. But there is something….</p><p></p><p>“Do you see?” says Verdre.</p><p></p><p>“Yes. Necrotic,” I reply.</p><p></p><p>The great birds are wounded, singed by death magic.</p><p></p><p>“Rey, can you be our intermediary?” Treig asks.</p><p></p><p>“It will be difficult,” she says. “They do not come close, and none are here for more than second.”</p><p></p><p>But I have already started praying.</p><p></p><p>One roc swoops through a field of healing I have summoned. Then another. A third. They pause in their surprise, and Rey makes contact. She assures them we mean no harm and would only like to speak to their king. This goes on for some time until she eventually announces they will fly us up to the royal aerie.</p><p></p><p>There are few experiences in the world akin to flying. Some of the druids of our tribe aspire to flight above all else. Verdre is one of them. I look over to her after we are airborn: she is curiosity and inquiry and noting everything, but she is also joy personified. She will fly one day, and we will reel from her happiness.</p><p></p><p>We are gently dropped off into the cold, ruined nest where lies the dead shell of the king. The rocs bow their heads as we examine him, scorch-frozen to death by necrotic energy. No feathers are present: taken by the invaders, we assume.</p><p></p><p>We try to piece together what happened, try to assess this other group likely now our foe. The attackers killed this king right here, so either they flew through an army of these things or they materialized here. Then they got away, but there are no bodies to indicate casualties. It is possible, I suppose, that the rocs hurled one or more of their assailants into the valleys below but I don’t think so: anyone willing to take on a flock of giant predatory birds with the intention of killing their leader in his own home is well-prepared.</p><p></p><p>Since we cannot continue, Rey summons one of the four Watchers. He is aghast with what he sees.</p><p></p><p>“If you avenge the roc king,” he says, “I will give you my banner.” That is, it will serve as one of the four quests.</p><p></p><p>He further offers us some details. There are five of in this other party. They vanished from here using magic. They are a Hand of Vecna, probably heading to the shrouded Thorn Veil about two days ahead of us.</p><p></p><p>“Summon me when they are dead,” he says and then becomes fog in the wind and disappears.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>The great birds take us to the Thorn Veil, swooping over it until Verdre spies their passage: a twenty-foot-wide withered path through the iron-hard, blade-like thorns.</p><p></p><p>Evidently, it took them some time to make it here and get through as far as they have into the Veil, because we catch up to them.</p><p></p><p>They are not aware of us as we creep up from behind.</p><p></p><p>Will we make new enemies today?</p><p></p><p>Will we be alive this time tomorrow?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I wish I knew….</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alexander Bryant1, post: 7792851, member: 6916184"] [B]Journal of Etona 27[/B] Jodan looks conflicted as we all hop out of the boat. He steps out and stops, some internal struggle taking turns controlling his face. Rey takes off scouting the shoreline, so I dash after her, the two of us scramble across uncountable rocks that seem to be left over from a whole other island torn up, sharpened and cast here as weapons against visitors of any sort. Our attention is called back: a commotion back at the boat. Jodan still isn’t moving, but heat is roiling around him making the air shimmer. The rail from boat behind him browns, its paint bubbling. His chains are [I]writhing[/I]. “What is that?” screams Cleo, one of the sisters. Jodan is bellowing in Infernal now, I think, and, yes, there is his sword, the devil-in-steel, Beherit. One last change in his features, his aura, his body language. The Hell Knight has wholly arrived, utterly present like I haven’t seen before. This is not Jodan: this is the devil prince, Beherit. But the island is not having it: stone shoots out of the ground and envelopes his feet. I start running back to him. “We can’t take him anywhere,” I call over my shoulder to Rey. Beherit is slashing at the stone which crumbles and breaks. New stone emerges but it is too slow. “Beherit!” says Treig, calmly. “This will not get you what you want. We will. We are doing what needs to be done, and so we cannot block your own interests here even if we wanted to. Return Jodan to us. You know this is the smart move.” The words work a transformation and Jodan, in short order, is returned to us. It takes somewhat longer for me calm down the sisters, but Verdre will stay with them and that seems to help. We move into the island. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] I lay my eyes for the first time on a creature – a whole knot of them, in fact – called a [I]roper[/I]. I’ve heard stories of them, these underground menaces that contribute to making life so very difficult for Drow and dwarf. I am amazed to see several of them now, right here, live: dense, incredibly hostile foliage armed with spiked tentacles and frighteningly huge mouths. Fortunately, they are essentially immobile. They were the first creatures we met in navigating what can only be described as an actual maze of manipulated stones that make up the region of the island we are on now. They are clustered on slabs of stalactites. On their tough hides are carved runes that I recognize. I cannot read them – they are druidic – but I know someone who can. She is just a short stroll back to the water. Verdre is surprised to see me as I stumble out of the maze towards her. Each rock seemed to be identical to every other; it took me ages to find the ocean again. In fact, had it not been the pounding surf I was seeking I may not have found it. I have only been lost a handful of times before, and at least two of them had been magical fields designed to beguile. Here, I kept returning to the ropers from different directions, though I also crept by a nasty-looking tree that seemed to be the patriarch of all ill-tempered flora in the world. I tell my aunt of the runes and she comes with me to take a quick peek. Together we find the grotto with the ropers readily enough. She stares at the creatures, writing down what she sees into her Infinite Book. Eventually she has enough to translate. It is a sort of druidic treatise on nature, not words of power at all, more like, “We were here” from the First Watch. Interesting though not useful. She returns to the boat, looking thoughtfully at her surroundings. She will start a new map, I know, as soon as she has time. The rest of us proceed to the base of a cliff a ways off. There, in front of a shallow cave is a courtyard in the maze that was probably a lovely spot once, a place for a … [I]pik’nik[/I], I think the humans call it. Now it is broken stone benches and white statuary and strewn crystals. Something recently – perhaps a couple days ago – blew them all to rubble. There is some blood, and we manage to piece together the scene: these were stone golems, and they were in a fight with at least two people, probably more. A quick scouting of the area reveals nothing nearby, but there is another party of adventurers on the island. Blue crystals are scattered about, evidently from inside the statues. Treig scoops a few of them up and we continue into the shallow cave a couple hundred yards past. An obsidian disk is in here. Seven eyes are carved into the stone circle, three of them are filled, and four more serve as depressions for fist-sized crystals. …such as those we just got from the golems. …such as those stuck to the base of the ropers. “Return my eyes to me and I shall gaze through the storm,” it reads in Orrin, translated by Treig… courtesy of the circlet? I guess? I honestly have no idea how it performs these miracles of communication, particularly written language. Has he now an air elemental residing in that noggin? Or does the circlet actually whisper the translation? Or does it just look like Common to him? He won’t say, just shrugs. He places a blue crystal in a depression. It fits perfectly, sparkles a little. And so we have our assignment: we need the three other colors. Treig believes he can excavate the ropers’ green jewels from their “feet”, a mass of arboreal foot-roots, if Rey will confer a [I]traceless passage[/I] spell to him. I think Verdre or myself are the better choices, but he does have that magic cloak. Since he is reluctant to give it to one of us temporarily, this becomes his task to carry out. He is successful, though: he returns with crystals plucked, the ropers none the wiser. He repeats his thievery in the opaque tide pool of the monstrous tree I passed to retrieve red crystals. That leaves the [B]violet[/B] ones. It doesn’t take us long to find them. We spot a place in the maze that has collapsed in an odd way: the walls’ rocks are piled twenty feet high in a ramp up against two other walls forming a corner. As we approach, a river of lightning pours out of the loose shale, striking Rey who shrugs it off. She wields her spear and charges. A moment later I can see her target: something called a [I]behir[/I], a large, multi-legged, snake-like creature that hates dragons, according to Treig. He isn’t going to like Rey. It dies a violent death. It attacked Rey ferociously, never taking its eyes off her, and she is gravely hurt in battling it. But she is made of discarded deities, my Rey, and shrugs off horrific wounds that would kill many and cripple the rest. While I am tending to her, Treig harvests the violet crystals. We return to the black disc and insert our collected chromatic bounty. The tempest seems to hush. There is a … drawing back, something anticipatory. Treig and I step on the disc. Immediately, the scent of grass in summer. Warmth, and peace. A forest is to our south where there was none before. Snowy mountains to the north. We are not in the Fade anymore. This is the Fey. Rey and Jodan appear a few seconds later. The Hell-Knight begins to age quickly and in short order looks almost skeletal! He starts chanting something and, with a fiercely determined look directly at me, he disappears. Gone, as if he had taken the Ethereal Plane drought. While we’re putting together the words to express our surprise, he reappears, youthful again. But his arm is now encased in raw, uncut red crystals. Also, something about his aura has changed. Normally he exudes tyranny and power, and considerable heat. When he comes back, these are gone, replaced – for a handful of heartbeats – with Jodan-as-human. He wears, for that moment, the same expression as when he was with Natasha. And then Hell takes over again. But not completely. There is something else now in his eyes. “Where did you go?” I ask. He grunts. He doesn’t seem to want to look directly at me. “Jodan?” I repeat and step towards him. “Where did you go?” He is saved from answering me by the arrival of four hoary beings from some Fae duke’s court. Draped in mossy Fae armaments, banners of the elements flapping, butterflies and other insects hovering around them, and shouldering the weariness of millennia, they have stepped out of the ground, the wind, and the trees. “I am [B]Tilthranos[/B],” announces one of them. “We are the Last Resort.” The Common words are heavily inflected. ‘Last resort’ is obviously an inaccurate translation. “We protect the secrets of this island,” he continues. Treig steps forward. “We seek something called the phylactery of Dragotha,” he says. “Mm, you seek the Fountain of Dreams, but know that should you drink of it all secrets of what you seek shall be revealed to the world; the order of the Rite of the First Watch will be undone; and great creatures of legend will be set loose upon your world.” “What creatures, exactly?” I ask. “They roam this place. They will roam yours.” “And which secrets?” “Your books which were emptied of the words for what you seek will fill again. Stories lost will be known once more; journals and drawings rediscovered: all will go back into the Fade from which they were taken.” “How do we start this off?” Treig asks. “Should we start this off?” I ask. I pull us aside. “What if what we will unleash is worse than Dragotha?” “I can’t really imagine that,” says Treig. “Dragotha is a plague spreading unlife everywhere, a head that bites two heads who bite four heads, and so on. It just keep growing like a disease loose in a city, except the city is our whole world.” “We are not guaranteed to succeed in slaying Dragotha. But moving forward here will definitely add more destruction to the world. We could end up making things worse.” Treig spreads his hands. “What do you recommend?” “We should try,” says Rey. “We should always try, Etona. That is what you have said to me many times, and you were always right.” I give her a mock-withering look that communicates what I think of her quoting me back to me, but I step back from the Watchers. “So again,” says Treig to them, “how do we begin?” “The Fountain will know you from your deeds. You must accomplish four tasks. The first trial: claim the golden belt of Krathenos, in his keep far to the south.” Another watcher finally speaks. “I am [B]Baescoaen[/B]. Silence the Doom Shroud’s mournful song.” A third one says, “I am [B]Thoddamar[/B]. Seek the nightmare in the Thorn Vale to the furthest west.” And the fourth: “I am [B]Saeran Lai[/B]. Harvest the living feather of the Roc King in the mountains to the north.” “These sound like feats of strength,” I interject, “and not trials of wisdom or virtue. Is the library for any who wield power?” “The trials bespeak their own natures,” Tilthranos replies, “and will each, in turn, challenge your heroic aspect.” “Have other attempted these tests?” says Rey. “Yes, but none have succeeded.” “What happened to them?” “Some perished. Some merely left. A few are still here.” “What are the creatures that will be freed to run amok in our world?” I ask Tilthranos. “You see them here. Creatures of legend, beings from stories.” “Are any of them world-shaking in their influence? Are any, for example, the actual island we are on, or the island is just barely big enough to contain a titan or something like that? Are there any who can affect thousands or the minds of thousands?” “They are powerful; they are beings of legend. But no, none could shatter a nation.” I look to Treig. "Then we accept,” he says. “Should we do then in a particular order? Does that matter?” “The trials may be completed as pleases you. It is for you to decide.” “OK. Can you tell us anything about any of them?” “We have said all we must.” And with that, they each withdraw, one into the trees, one into the ground, and the last two simply fading away leaving behind a puff of steam and a curl of smoke, each quickly lost to the wind. “If we are to set out on these quests,” I say to the group, “then we must go back to the boat for Verdre.” “Why do we need her again, necessarily?” To head off my incredulous reply, he quickly adds, “Just sayin’, it takes time and crystals, and we don’t have much of the latter. In fact,” he pulls out the collection, “we can go back and forth only one more time.” “Then we have enough. Anyway, we must warn the sisters. What with the time difference between here and the Fade, we could be days or weeks before we return. Much could happen.” He sighs. “OK. We go back to the boats.” “Treig?” He turns back to me. “This wasn’t really a request.” “Yeah, I know. I’m just, trying to keep everything together.” “And you are doing a magnificent job.” Poor man: it is so important that there be plans and control, as if the world could be mastered. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] Getting back is uneventful as Rey and I are beginning to understand the lay of the land. Verdre reports nothing amiss back at the boat. I look over her charts: she has captured the hazards of our journey in sketches within little side-boxes that point back to where they are on the map. How she memorized the details and the course we took [I]and[/I] so truly reproduced it all whilst gripped in the storm’s jaws is beyond me. We explain to the sisters what we are about to do and what the consequences may be in terms of not seeing them for some time. We beg them to leave, for their own good, assuring them we had another way off of the island, and they finally assent. I press a gold into each of their palms. “To spend.” I press a silver into each of their other palms. “To remember us by.” They all know Verdre and I are sent by Her Night-Shaded Majesty, and the coin resembles a full moon. “Spend that one after we come back. I want to see all of you again.” I hug each one in turn making unhappy noises at the journey that circumstance has forced them to make, but Myra assures me it will be an easier thing to return than to come. “This place hates visitors like a hermit watching an approaching troupe of joke-telling jugglers. It will be all too glad to watch us leave,” she says. She then presses a medallion inscribed with a single eye into my hand. “For good luck, to you, Etona, and to all of you.” “I will see you again,” I promise. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] One more long look at the orcs. They are dressed and armed like pirates, that is, sailors as opposed to a war party waiting to get to a destination. I shouldn’t think a band of orcs would have any interest in plundering a dangerous island for some books. Verdre remembers she saw a cloaked figure step out of the rocks near their ship, spy on the orcs for a moment, and then vanish back into the maze. None of us can say what is going on here. “I am surprised you do not want to saunter over and ask them to tea,” Verdre teases. “I might, but keeping Rey from jumping at them is taking all my energy. With [I]Eye of the Storm[/I] safely off, and they have given us no trouble at all, I am for simply returning to the disk and making the crossing back to the Fey side.” “Sensible,” she returns with arched eyebrow. “I can be sensible, too.” “Of course.” [CENTER]***[/CENTER] Our first task after we complete the journey back, we decide, is to go and retrieve the golden belt. It is presumably on the mythical creature that lives in a fortress at the southernmost tip of the forest. Our choices to get there are around the woods or through. It is the first forest I think I have ever seen Verdre blanch on the notion of entering. I do not blame her. Called the Doom Shroud, that name might be too lively for it. Black trees drip with ichor, smell of disease, as inviting as an exploration of Greyhawk’s sewers. Apparently there are also monsters within. How fun! We leave it to the last: perhaps we’ll be dead by then. So, walking around grasslands where different packs of carnivorous animals are busy hunting. We see their signs: ripped up or flattened reeds; broken bones with impressive teeth marks; pieces of hide; all on a larger-than-us scale. Battles between big combatants. Rey and Verdre confer: there are packs of at least three different animals out here of any size besides the hyenas and – what did Verdre call them? – [I]gazelles[/I]: fast, hopping, plains deer with unmatched grace that can turn almost in mid-air at great speed. Verdre spent some time following a herd of them, studying. We sighted a [I]bulette,[/I] a “land shark”, in the distance. It surfaced with a spray of dirt. Its prey, a couple of dogs separated from their pack, vanished. Not long after that we moved into an area where for miles we saw no sign at all of the bulette. Verdre was commenting on how odd it was that they seemed to have a surprisingly small roam when several things happened at once. A hissing sound but not from an animal, more like a river of insects. Movement all around us, suddenly there as if we had stepped out of a quiet lake into a forest fire. A sound like that of what humans call a [I]cougar[/I]. Purple flags flapping, no, black and purple, no, tentacles not flags, on hides, on big cats with tentacles and fuzzy outlines that hurt the backs of my eyes. “[I]Yukuma,”[/I] Verdre says. [I]“[/I]Displacer beasts!” They are on us from nowhere. Where did they come from? I immediately tree-step away. Out comes Angivre. Verdre unsheathes Glitter with a frosty whisper that freezes the grass in front of her; Treig reaches for a handful of whatever surprising little weapon-devices he has stashed away. Rey’s beast, after locking eyes with her, simply kneels down, paws forward. But it is Jodan who takes command of the situation. He barks at them in Infernal, his face contorted, his armor chains wave in mockery and contempt of their own tentacles, burning steel versus mere hide. He seems, as he often does when he puts on this show, like a thing summoned from Gehenna. It does the trick: the cats are so cowed by him that Verdre and Treig’s mere snarls are enough to drive them off. Neither side so much as scratched the other. “Will they return?” Rey asks. Verdre shakes her head, no. “How do you know?” “They are intelligent but malign. They hunt for pleasure. There is no pleasure to be gained with us, they could see that plainly. And one among us,” she nods at Jodan, “may even seem like a master to them. You spoke Infernal?” Jodan nods. “They speak that as well. They understood you. What did you say?” “Just some sweet nothings.” Verdre, it turns out, knows a lot more about the yukuma. They are from the Unseelie Court, the dark fae. There is much to say about them but it would, and has at the hands of better chroniclers than I, filled scores of books. Suffice to say, they are bred for war and are now loose upon the world. This little island world, anyway. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] We again come upon a trail that had been running straight through the [I]zigzag[/I] (what a delicious human word) of our own. Another herd of huge beasts, though these must be slow and ponderous, judging by their wake. I come upon their droppings and tentatively identify them as herbivore. Verdre confirms, and Rey agrees. I had not learned tracking as well as the rest of my people when I was young, but the years in the woods alone before Diamond Lake sharpened my senses, and now my guesses almost always accord with theirs. We catch up to them. They are [I]olifants[/I]. Massive creatures with enormous tusks, long gray trunks, ears like sails and legs, gray columns: I can see why few would want to attack them. Rey cautions us to wait. She approaches them carefully. They watch warily but allow her to put down her spear, open her arms, move near. When she is within some yards, a big male begins to look agitated. The herd behind moves off. She drops to her knees in supplication. It will be easy for the bull to trample her. “Think she’s OK out there?” says Treig. Verdre frowns. “They doubtless sense the dragon in her. It will make her task more difficult. But your friend is talented,” she says. “Give her time.” Rey, perhaps sensing that a change in tactic was needed, rises to her feet and roars to the male. It rears, and she bows down her head but remains standing. It probes with its trunk and she swats it away at first then accepts with a nod. She comes to its face, stares into its eye, whispers something. And they accept her. She is in their midst now, hidden and reappearing as the others come circle them. After some minutes, she emerges. “Etona, I think you will want see this,” she says. “All of you, come. But Jodan, maybe you in a moment. They are still skittish.” She has charmed the lot of them, and they do the same to me. Patient eyes and close bonds with one another – and their sheer size – has me breathless in their midst. “We may ride them,” Rey says to my astonishment. This is a gift! It is practically worth everything simply to arrive at this moment. They travel back and forth through the plains largely unmolested by the predators here, Rey is saying, so long as they are vigilant. We had been scurrying from stone outcropping to mole hill to tree to rock pile in an attempt to foil the senses of the bulettes, and it was working but taking its toll on some of us. I could do this for many moons, and Rey and Verdre for more, as could Treig, probably, but Jodan was becoming increasingly cranky and more willing to fight the bulettes head-on with each passing hour. He is not a plains-runner. Now we can move with the olifants, though, who are not bothered by the land sharks so long as they travel in their herd, and in this way we are their companions, and extraordinarily their riders, all the way to the keep. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] It is as well we met them: I am constantly distracted by the floral bounty of the island. After perhaps the fourth time I dash off – never far, to gather the treasures I have been spotting ever since we arrived – Verdre approaches me on my return. “You have found them: goldflower, lucia, maellen,” she says. “It is why you keep running off?” “Only for a few minutes at a time,” I reply. “Anyway, yes! Aloa-dori, trapantas, waevran root. Verdre, there are herbs here I have only read about in stories.” “Herbs that I have only associated with fables,” Verdre agrees. “But you must let me know when you go off and forage. This is a dangerous place.” “I am not a child, Verdre.” “And I do not want to dampen your adult enthusiasm, but you must speak up or I will worry. And Rey will worry.” I realized that stamping my foot on the ground would not communicate the grave overtones of maturity that I sought to convey, so I simply nod. “You are right, of course,” I say. In the background I see Rey – trying not to be noticed – listening carefully. She breathes a sigh of relief. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] The keep is worked stone, built from a mountain of stone, guarded by flying stone creatures retrieving flying stones. The olifants size this up and halt. We will need to proceed on foot. “They will be here when we return,” Rey promises. The flying statues are animated gargoyles flapping around the fortress. A few tend to a task of fetching boulders arcing from time to time out of the open mouth of the keep, some of them rolling to within a few hundred yards of us. Each one of these projectiles is preceded with a booming noise from inside the keep, a word something like [I]woethraan[/I]. “We walk in, we talk to the owner of this place, probably Krathenos,” says Treig. I look dubiously at a two hundred pound rock in its own crater not far from us. “Maybe we should creep in carefully, unseen, and assess the situation first,” I reply. He nods up to the swarms of gargoyles and wide-open gate. “I don’t think [I]unseen [/I]is really an option. Besides, if we march in, nothing to hide, then we start from a position of honesty. “ “We don’t know Krathenos or what this belt even is, really.” “Yeah. Well, that’s why I wanna introduce us, all open and proper.” “It’s only polite,” pipes up Jodan, but I think he’s making a joke. “The spider welcomes the polite fly,” says Verdre but tossing her hair in a gesture of unconcern. We march in through the front gate, through huge, well-lit corridors, to the throne room. A twelve foot man of stone is pacing. He stops when he sees us, sizes us up, smiles broadly. “Adventurers,” he says with a laugh. Amusement and disdain, but a little curiosity, all contained in the single word. “Have you come to test your mettle against me?” Treig steps up. “You are Krathenos?” He kneels down to look at Treig. “Yes.” He caresses the word. “My name is Treig. This is Jodan, Speaker Rey, Etona, and Verdre, uh, over there with the drawing pad. We are here for a golden belt in your possession. We seek to barter for it.” “Interesting. And what do you offer?” “What do you need?” He laughs at this and stands up again. “My freedom. Do you have that in your pack?” “I may. When we get the belt, and three other items, the beings on this island will be released back into the world. You will be freed.” We explain the quest, and the quest-givers, and the four items we will be traveling all over the island to retrieve. And we tell him why we are here pursuing all this. He is a remarkably reasonable stone giant. Or perhaps they are all like this and their reputation is marred: I have never met one before Krathenos. He agrees, but on one condition: “Finish the other three quests first and you shall have my belt.” “Agreed.” [CENTER]***[/CENTER] It is a long trek back to our next destination, the aerie of the roc king. North back where we came from, past the pestilent forest, to the hills and mountains, to a particular peak. Once again Treig has decreed we proceed in the open. “But these are rocs, not flying statues,” I say. “We are food to them, and if they have a king then we are a threat as well.” Indeed, they swoop past us as we come into their territory long before we have even started the vertical climb. But there is something…. “Do you see?” says Verdre. “Yes. Necrotic,” I reply. The great birds are wounded, singed by death magic. “Rey, can you be our intermediary?” Treig asks. “It will be difficult,” she says. “They do not come close, and none are here for more than second.” But I have already started praying. One roc swoops through a field of healing I have summoned. Then another. A third. They pause in their surprise, and Rey makes contact. She assures them we mean no harm and would only like to speak to their king. This goes on for some time until she eventually announces they will fly us up to the royal aerie. There are few experiences in the world akin to flying. Some of the druids of our tribe aspire to flight above all else. Verdre is one of them. I look over to her after we are airborn: she is curiosity and inquiry and noting everything, but she is also joy personified. She will fly one day, and we will reel from her happiness. We are gently dropped off into the cold, ruined nest where lies the dead shell of the king. The rocs bow their heads as we examine him, scorch-frozen to death by necrotic energy. No feathers are present: taken by the invaders, we assume. We try to piece together what happened, try to assess this other group likely now our foe. The attackers killed this king right here, so either they flew through an army of these things or they materialized here. Then they got away, but there are no bodies to indicate casualties. It is possible, I suppose, that the rocs hurled one or more of their assailants into the valleys below but I don’t think so: anyone willing to take on a flock of giant predatory birds with the intention of killing their leader in his own home is well-prepared. Since we cannot continue, Rey summons one of the four Watchers. He is aghast with what he sees. “If you avenge the roc king,” he says, “I will give you my banner.” That is, it will serve as one of the four quests. He further offers us some details. There are five of in this other party. They vanished from here using magic. They are a Hand of Vecna, probably heading to the shrouded Thorn Veil about two days ahead of us. “Summon me when they are dead,” he says and then becomes fog in the wind and disappears. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] The great birds take us to the Thorn Veil, swooping over it until Verdre spies their passage: a twenty-foot-wide withered path through the iron-hard, blade-like thorns. Evidently, it took them some time to make it here and get through as far as they have into the Veil, because we catch up to them. They are not aware of us as we creep up from behind. Will we make new enemies today? Will we be alive this time tomorrow? I wish I knew…. [/QUOTE]
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