Hardin looks at the bites that Keller delivered to Belisha and Slyfen. To him, they look like simple human bites—nasty but not of mortal concern. No signs of infection or disease are immediately apparent.
Belisha has some knowledge of the fey wendigos, and believes that Keller was not yet fully transformed into one. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really know whether they should be concerned about the bites.
The party decides to head back to Tasper, in hopes that the clerics there can cure Keller or offer them some advice about the bites. After Hardin and Eolan lash him to the mule, they head out.
That night the party sets up camp once again in the cold woods. A wind has whipped up, causing the clouds to race across the starry sky. Slyfen shivers as he takes his turn at the watch. He paces back and forth, guarding the perimeter of the camp. Suddenly, he hears a commotion near where they laid Keller for the night. Running over, he sees Keller—who has broken his bonds—bundling the folds of blanket about his legs with such speed that the elf catches little more than a passing glimpse of something dark and oddly massed where feet ought to be, and sees even that but with uncertain vision.
Then, before the elf has time to do more, or time to even think a question, much less ask it, Keller is standing upright in front of him, balancing with pain and difficulty, and upon his shapeless and twisted visage an expression so dark and so malicious that it is, in the true sense, monstrous.
"Now you seen it too," he wheezes, "you seen my fiery, burning feet! And now—that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent—it's 'bout time for—"
His piteous and beseeching voice is interrupted by a sound like the roar of wind coming across the deep forest. The trees overhead shake their tangled branches. The blazing fire of the camp bends its flames as before a blast. And something sweeps with a terrific, rushing noise about the little camp and seems to surround it entirely in a single moment of time. Keller shakes the clinging blankets from his body, turns towards the woods behind, and with a stumbling motion is gone: gone, before even Slyfen can move a muscle to prevent him, gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that leaves no time to act. The darkness positively swallows him; and less than a dozen seconds later, above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind, all four of you, now awakened and watching and listening with stricken hearts, hear a cry that seems to drop down upon you from a great height of sky and distance—
"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire ...!" then dies away, into untold space and silence.
You watch all the rest of the night, but see no more sign of the miserable thief or his cursed spirit. And when the morning light breaks your long vigil, you are glad.
Neither Belisha nor Slyfen now show any signs of disease, and the party is faced with the difficult decision of whether to move on to the priests of Obad-Hai in Tasper or return to their friend Elwin in Allthrop.
OOC Notes:
Keller failed his final saving throw (DC 15, Fort result 12 + 2 = 14) and completed his transformation into a wendigo.