Last time, our heroes ended the horrific, undead existence of Madoc, and then went down a tunnel because it had a pleasant, cool breeze coming from it (and because Zook's augury magic said good things would come of it).
They wind up traveling through this tunnel for days. The first night, Dara casts a goodberry spell to give them all something to eat, and they build a fire. Aisling tells them a story:
"When the world was young and the rivers still cried for the sea, a man tracked down the Salmon of Knowledge, a mystical fish into which all the knowledge of the young world had been poured. He intended to take the fish's knowledge and become king. He found the fish and battled it for days, but in the end, as wise as it was, it was a fish, and the man won. He brought the fish home and gave it to his wife to cook (she questioned why he wanted to be king, but she agreed to clean and cook the fish). As she was cooking it, she burned her thumb on the fish's flesh and instinctively put her thumb in her mouth, and found herself flooded with all the knowledge of the world...and the salmon was just a salmon. Her husband saw that she had taken the knowledge, and was angry. He at some of the fish, but felt no smarter, so she ate the rest. He did not become a king, and she told her to get to work fixing their house. And this is why women have always been smarter than men."
The second day, the adventurers realize that they've left Zook's dog, Maeve, and Dara's donkey, Carrots, back in the village of Salann, but it's too late to go traipsing back through the tunnels. They continue on, and they check their gear. Aisling casts mending to fix the fraying and wear and tear, Clara oils her rope and sharpens her pitons, Zook casts prestidigitation to stay nice and clean, and Dara collects lichen and mushrooms to replenish her herbalism stores. That night, she tells them a story:
"Fallon the Lucky, or Fallon the Cursed, was an adventurer who always avoided misfortune by the skin of his teeth. If an ogre would swing a club, it would miss him. But the people he traveled with always grew to hate him, because the misfortune that missed him would hit them, and so he traveled with many different adventurers. He eventually struck up a close friendship with another adventurer, but that man took an arrow to the throat that was meant for Fallon. After that, Fallon went off into the woods to be alone. No one ever learned the origin of his curse..."
The third day, the adventurers continue on through the tunnels, sometimes sloping up, sometimes down, but always with the mysterious breeze. They pass through a large chamber riddled with stalactites, and move quickly and quietly to avoid vibrations shaking them loose. That night, Clara tells them a story:
"I told you before why if you hear a voice in the darkness calling for help, you shouldn't follow it. That's true of echos, too. If you yell to an echo, make sure it says back what you said. Sometimes it'll change, and it starts off funny or flattering or helpful, but the more you talk to it, the darker it gets. Sometimes it talks people into hurting other people by lying or making them paranoid. Sometimes it talks them into jumping off the cliff towards the echo. Sometimes it just makes you so happy that you stay there and starve or freeze. The only way to be safe is not to talk it, and eventually it'll got away. Maybe a month, maybe a week. I'd wait six months to be sure, myself."
On the fourth day, as they're getting close to camping again, Aisling spots firelight up ahead. She can't see the fire - it's behind the next bend - but she can see the flickers on the wall. Zook sends Edna, his spider-familiar, up to check it out...and an arrow that was jammed into the wall dislodges itself and pins the spider to the floor! She melts away, and Aisling calls out, "hellooo?"
A voice comes back. "Hello?"
"Who's there? We were just passing through."
A pause. "Odd question: Are you a bard?"
"Aye."
"And are you traveling with a halfling, a gnome, and an elf?"
"Who wants to know?"
Belle pokes her head around the corner. "Aisling?"
"BELLE!" Aisling runs up and gives her a kiss, which she stiffly accepts. "Where'd you come from?" She looks around the corner and sees Keenan and Fearg. Keenan lets go of the lead and Maeve goes charging around the corner and tackles Zook. Fearg does much the same to Aisling, picks her up and kisses her. Keenan runs up and hugs Zook, and Dara sees that Carrots is in their camp, too, thoughtfully munching something.
Everyone sits down; Belle points to some rodents she has roasting on a spit ("they're actually pretty tasty"). She then explains how they got here:
"When we left you after what happened in Watershed, I wanted to go home and see my family, so we headed east to Osclaimid, my home village. There was some action there-"
"She's being modest," says Keenan. "It was a huge snake-crocodile kind of thing! It bit Fearg up like crazy, but when we knocked off a head, two more grew in its place! Until we figured out that if I burned it, the heads didn't grow up."
"How many heads?" asks Zook.
"Started with two. I think it had six before we finished it," says Fearg.
"Anyway," says Belle. "It was swimming around near my village and stealing people. So we killed it, and I visited with my people, and then we headed north to Cian, figuring maybe we'd catch up with you, but we just missed you. We followed you out to Salann, but missed you there, too. We talked about following you into the Dead Valley, but-"
"Not as many magic-people," says Fearg. "Weren't sure if that was a good idea."
"Right. We waited there for weeks," says Keenan, "and then-"
"Wait, hang on," interrupts Clara. "Weeks? We were only in the Valley a few days!"
The others look at each other. "I don't know," says Belle. "We waited for almost a month, and finally everyone figured you for dead. We remembered that Clara and Aisling were from up north, around Cnoc, so we started heading up there to tell them, and we adopted your animals."
"I'd totally have kept Maeve," says Keenan to Zook, "but I'm glad you're alive!"
The heroes ponder this time-wibble. Clara asks Belle where they are, and she draws a map on the ground. They're a ways north of Salann, in the foothills of the mountains that Clara grew up in. But what's weird is that the other group came from the same direction as the characters, but never passed them.
Everyone beds down, and Zook (figuring that Aisling and Fearg might be, erm, distracted), tells a story:
"An adventurer named Seamus came up with a plan to slay a dragon that was preying on farmers. He knew a spell called catapult that flung heavy objects, so he cast it on a rock and flung it up, figuring gravity would make it hit even harder. It did, it landed on the dragon and killed it, but it hit so hard that it created a massive crater, and it filled with water and became an inland sea! The farmers had to learn to fish, and the area became a port town."
In the morning, they all pack up and carry on together. And finally, Dara sees light up ahead.
The tunnel opens to a sharp drop, and beneath them they see a plateau surrounded on all sides by mountains. It's big enough that not even Zook can see across it with his goggles, and the plateau is riddled with rock formations. They decide to explore it - not like they want to try going back.
Dara casts spider-climb on Carrots and very slowly convinces him to walk down the wall (Carrots is not into it). Clara just jumps and lands in a super-hero pose, and everyone else lowers themselves down on ropes. Aisling notes that there are already pitons sunk into the rock - someone climbed down here before, though it seems like it's been a long time.
Once everyone has landed (including Carrots), they start looking around. The rock formations are tall and a few feet thick, like walls. In looking about, they find a carving on one of these walls: "ÁDHÚIL WAIT FOR ME”. Aisling figures that it's a few days old, maybe a week, but there's no dust on the ground from a recent carving.
Belle finds a blood trail - tacky, only a couple of hours old at most. The heroes follow it, and it leads them around a couple of corners into a dead end. Zook, riding Maeve, and Belle round the last corner and see a woman in torn wizard robes, black hair and green eyes, scuffed and bleeding, tied to a tall, stone pillar. All around her, horrible half-human, half-jackal creatures snore. She makes eye contact with Zook, and then screams for help.
"Might not have been a great idea," mutters the gnome, but the creatures leap to their feet. Clara leaps on top of the wall and fires an arrow at one, but it bounces off its hide. Aisling casts a sleep spell into their midst, but only one falls over. The creatures stare at the adventurers and coo and snarl, and Aisling and Belle collapse into slumber. Dara follows Clara's lead and climbs the wall, and casts an entangle spell around the captive woman, rooting several of the creatures to the spot.
Zook takes a more direct approach - he throws a fireball, angling it so it doesn't hit the woman or Belle's prone body. Half of the creatures are incinerated!
Fearg rushes forward and shakes Aisling awake. "Nice job, Zook!" yells Keenan, and tries to scrabble up the wall, but falls. "Slippery!"
The monsters howl and snap! One pulls Dara off the wall, others surged forward and attack Zook, Dara, and anyone else they can reach with crude bladed weapons. Clara leaps into the fray, but quickly discovers that her fists do nothing against these things. Fearg, likewise, rages, but his war pick can't pierce their skin. Dara, on the other hand, figures that magic might work, and throws a poison spray into one of their snoots. It collapses and dies, changing into a jackal.
Dara moves through the battlefield, poisoning them. One of them puts Clara to sleep and they slice her up a bit, but Zook throws magic missiles at them and Aisling plays her lute and inspires the others. Keenan casts a spell and vaults over the wall, now ten feet tall! He flings firebolts at them, and between poison, fire, and magic, the heroes kill the rest of the creatures.
Clara cuts the woman down, and Aisling asks if she's Ádhúil. She says she is, and Aisling tells her about the carving. She asks if they've seen Eowain, her brother - presumably it was him that made the carving. She says that they are adventurers from Fiadh, but they came from the western badlands and took a tunnel in the foothills that had a weird breeze coming from it ("yeah, sounds about right"). They emerged here, but she's not sure how long they've been here.
Ádhúil says she needs some rest, but then asks if they can go look for Eowain. Belle and Zook do a quick sweep, but they're wary of getting too far away, since this place apparently plays fast and loose with both time and space. Fearg builds a fire, and they all settle down to rest.
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