Last night was Blue Rose. Let's kick this pig!
Last time, the heroes were adjusting to their lives in Aldis, and Whirlpool was wracked with guilt over apparently leaving a friend at the bottom of the lake to die. This time, all four of them are patrolling the High Ward, when Pansy perks up and signals danger and Whirlpool smells smoke.
They follow the noses, and wind up at a jeweler's shop that's engulfed in flames. Whirlpool casts Cold Shaping to snuff the flames, while Dobbin organizes a bucket brigade and Arlen rips open a water pipe to douse the fire. Kisha senses magic, and feels that while the fire itself isn't arcane, something in the shop is. She goes running in and finds a young man of about 13 surrounded by a ring of fire, but the fire doesn't seem to be spreading or hurting him.
The fire outside doused, the others rush in. The bucketeers toss water at the ring of fire, but it dodges, which is odd. Whirlpool uses Water Shaping to direct the water streaming in from pipes and splashes the oddly frisky fire, and it coalesces into a humanoid figure and says "Well, that was rude."
Meanwhile, the young man has run towards the back of the house, looking for his mother. Kisha hears a faint call for help behind a pile of debris. She and the bucket brigade remove the wreckage and Kisha finds the woman mostly unharmed, and gets her to safety.
Whirlpool talks to the fire elemental, who claims he was summoned and it's very misleading to summon a fire elemental if you don't want everything burned. Whirlpool agrees and apologizes, and the elemental vanishes. The boy, Izhae, murmurs that he loses control of his magic sometimes, and everyone kind of glances at Arlen.
Outside, the woman (whose name is Ashera) talks to the heroes and thanks them for their help. She takes Whirlpool aside and asks if he knows he's got a malign presence in his mind; he says he does, but isn't sure how to get rid of it. She offers to cast a spell to do so, and Arlen, watching them talk, has a vision. He sees Whirlpool with a murky, slimy halo that leads off in a tendril, and stretches to the bottom of the lake, into a system of caves. There, someone is chained to a wall while monsters lurk in the dark. The woman casts a spell and dispels the murk, but upon so doing, the monsters fall on the prisoner and eat them.
Arlen quickly interjects and relates the vision (and shares it with the others using Psychic Contact). They confer with Ashera, who says that she was going to cast a Mind Shaping spell to sever the link between Whirlpool and the darkfiend (this was actually originally discussed way back here, but the characters kind of forgot in all the excitement of time traveling, and the darkfiend has been mum). They figure that this might be a kind of hostage situation - sever the bond and the monsters kill Aleta (whom Whirlpool identifies as the prisoner).
They decide to go and rescue her, but that means they need a way for the non-sea-folk to get there. Whirlpool is aware of magic items called breathing pearls; take a breath, put one in your mouth, and you can hold that breath for an hour or so. Turns out Ashera has some, but only seven. The heroes take them and head to the lake.
Solven, the Rose Knight that Dobbin met a week or so back, joins them on the way and learns of their plan, and offers to watch Pansy while they're gone. They leave behind the gear that won't fare well in the water (Dobbin's bow, Kisha's staff) and dive in.
They make it to the bottom and Arlen summons light, and finds a cave entrance. They swim in and find that it widens and dips up into a tunnel system with enough room to walk and air to breathe, though it all smells like rotted fish. They find a room with shackles on the wall, some holding skeletons. Whirlpool realizes that they're all sea-folk, and some have been down here for a long time. The bones have been gnawed, though he can't tell by what.
Several tunnels lead out of the room, but Dobbin hears faint splashing from one, and finds blood at the entrance. They head down the tunnel, and Whirlpool hears the voice of the darkfiend in his head, mocking him. "You'll come this far only to watch yourself fail, to watch your friends' flesh stripped and devoured, and I will feed on the guilt and shame you feel. You are a land-walker, a river runner. No sea-folk, you." Whirlpool relates this and the heroes move faster, and emerge into a cave filled knee-deep with water. Aleta is chained to a wall, bleeding from multiple bite wounds. As the heroes emerge, ogre-like creatures surface, some brandishing spears, all with awful webbed hands and snaggly sharp teeth.
The heroes draw their weapons.
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