The adventurers are heading east to Osclaimid (still). Having left the burning body of a big ol' formorian, Zook still warty and ugly from its curse, they trudge on.
They stop for the night as the terrain becomes woodsier; it'll be forested for a while and then get swampy, they think. Everyone beds down to sleep, other than Dara, of course, who meditates quietly. After a couple of hours, she spots someone walking in the woods, a tall, elegant, luminous, elf woman.
Dara turns into a squirrel and follows, and sees that the woman is walking slowly and aimlessly through the forest. She doesn't look hurt or scared, or really much of anything. Dara turns back into her natural form and gets in front of her, asking if she needs help. The woman walks around her without changing expression, and keeps walking. Dara follows, and the woman leads her deeper into the woods. She's out of sight of the camp when the luminosity around the elf peels off into three distinct glowy blobs of light. The float over to her, and release magical energy, stunning Dara and nearly knocking her down.
Not fancying her chances against three whatever-these-ares, Dara runs. The lights follow, and they're much fast than she is, but she manages to get within sight of the camp and yell for help. One of the lights gets close enough to zap her, but she remains standing.
But the yell worked! Zook and Keenan wake up, and rouse the others. Fearg slowly picks himself up, and not for the first time Aisling worries about him - he normally leaps up and grabs a weapon when there's danger. But she doesn't have time to worry about that right now. She charges into battle and flings magic missiles at the glowy lights, and Fearg runs up and hurls a javelin...but misses and hits Dara. Zook pops up behind Aisling and wiggles his wand of magic missiles, striking the lights, and they all three vanish.
Fearg walks up to Dara and apologizes ("this is why I should stick to hitting things with my pick"). They all head back to the camp and Dara explains what happened. Aisling identifies the lights as will-o-the-wisps, evil little spirits that prey on lone travelers. Maybe they made the elf woman as an illusion? But in the legends, that's not what they do, they just lure people into bogs or off cliffs and then eat their souls.
The adventurers decide they should follow the elf woman. Zook and Fearg, both suffering from some kind of curse, go back to the camp to sleep, while the others track down the elf maiden. They find that when they stop her physically, she patiently waits until someone lets her go and then keeps walking. She isn't going in a consistent direction, though, just walking in the woods. In the end they decide to walk her back to the camp.
When they get close, she sets off the alarm spell that Zook cast. Zook starts, and Fearg, again, just groans and rolls over. Everyone beds down, though Dara finds she has to stay up and keep an eye on the elf, otherwise she'll just stand up and wander away.
In the morning, they make a more concerted effort to communicate. Aisling also remembers a story that Dara told them when they were in a tavern in Fiadh a long time ago, about an elf maiden who drank a potion hoping to numb the pain of betrayal and wound up feeling nothing, wandering the forest forever ("where'd you hear that story?" "I thought I made it up, I don't know, I was drunk"). Aisling plays a song, and the elf very briefly acknowledges her and points off into the woods. The adventurers decide to head in that direction and see what they find.
After most of a day's travel, they find something. A group of trees has grown together in the rough shape of a hut, and there's even a door at the front. Aisling walks up and knocks; no answer. She tries the door, and then feels a drop of drool from above.
A bunch of tentacles ending in eyeballs appear, attach to a big fleshy body with a nasty, fanged maw! Clara wastes no time; she leaps up into the tree and punches the damn thing. It snaps at her, and then aims eyestalks at her and Aisling. Clara shakes off whatever it tries to do, but Aisling suddenly feels confused, unsure what to do. She looks around for a target, and fires her crossbow at Keenan. Fortunately, she misses ("what the hells, Aisling?" "I DON'T KNOW!"). Dara calls down a moonbeam on the creature and it sizzles, and Zook hastes Clara. It turns out not to matter much; Clara picks her shot and punches straight into the monster's immense eyeball ("ew, eye-juice"). It slumps dead, and Clara jumps down. Keenan hands Aisling's crossbow bolt back ("lose this?").
They check the door; it's locked. Aisling tries to pick it, but can't; she doesn't really have the right tools. Fearg offers to kick it down, and though they're still worried about traps, they all get behind him. He kicks the door right off the hinges, but breaks his ankle in the process ("could I trouble you for a healing word, love?").
The heroes investigate the hut, and they pretty much immediately make it as a hag's lair. For one thing there's a batch of stew on the fire that smells...foul. Zook stirs it and sees fingers ("yep, it's people stew, urgp"). There are a baker's dozen potion bottles around, all labeled with flowery titles - "Angelic Rancor." "Anarchy Water." "Impulse."
Zook searches the room carefully and finds a small, boring, wooden box on a low shelf. He opens it, and a milky-white flash of light zooms out and flows into the elf-maiden's nose. She gasps, and the light comes back to her eyes. "Oh...I'm still here?"
"Not 'still,' I think," says Aisling. "What's your name?"
The elf says her name is Brébhinn, and she doesn't have much memory of wandering in the woods. The characters want to hear her story, but don't want to hang out here. Aisling advocates burning this place down, potions and all, but Keenan doesn't want to leave them here - what if they're useful? "Nothing good comes from hags," Aisling reminds him.
Keenan grabs a random potion - "Azer's Tears" - and checks it for color, viscosity, and scent. "Potion of fire-breathing," he says. "Drink it and you breathe fire, like a dragon. BROOSH." The others asks if he's sure, and he says that there's really only three ways to know what a potion does: make it yourself, drink it, or cast a spell to identify it. In the end they decide to throw all thirteen potions in their bag of holding and blow the place up.
Zook and Keenan both throw a fireball into the hut and leave it burning. They travel on, and make camp at sunset, just as the ground is starting to get softer. On the way, Brébhinn tells them her story:
"I had a lover, Piaras. One day he went out hunting, and I followed to bring him wine and food. But I found him...with someone. People always said I felt too deeply, and I did, and I ran into the woods and eventually I found that hut. The hag, Missy Rot, answered, but of course she looked like a kindly old lady. I told her I wanted to stop feeling this pain. 'If I fade away, let me fade away,' I said...and she gave me a potion, and that's the last I remember."
Clara gives her a couple of historical references and they figure she's been wandering in the woods for sixty years or so. On the plus side, for an elf that's not too much? But on the minus side, that hag is most assuredly going to be a problem. The same hag the characters fought in Cian? It's hard to know. Aisling asks Zook to cast his tiny hut spell so that they rest without being disturbed, and they all bed down.
In the morning, Aisling wakes to find Fearg in the corner stretching. "You seem more yourself," she says. Fearg agrees - he's not slept well since they left Cian, and he's had disturbing dreams. The heroes are immediately reminded of Zook's experience with the night hag's curse, and note that they fought three hags back in Cian. They killed one, but two escaped, and if they've met up with Missy Rot, they may have formed a coven and becoming much more dangerous.
Zook drops the spell and they prepare to move, but the terrain is different now. The trees are bigger and more imposing, and the sky is a sickly bruise-purple. "This," says Fearg, drawing his pick, "is what I've been dreaming about."
They hear cackling from the woods. "I see you, Brébhinn. Now you're running with thieves and vandals?"
"Yes," says a voice from another side of the clearing. "And they killed my sister."
"Show yourselves," says Zook, and the night hag steps out of the woods.
"Oh, yes," she says. "One bright morning changes all things."
No comments:
Post a Comment