gl.
Windsday, Harmony Week, Fire Season 1627
We found ourselves in wooden cages somewhere deep inside the massive trunk of the great dead tree. The echoes of crying children reached our ears from somewhere nearby in the darkness, although our oubliette was lit by a large glowing mushroom. The mossy-backed toad things, seemingly some degenerate kind of newtlings, patrolled a connecting hallway. Our captives had disarmed us before binding our hands and tossing us in our wooden cages. And all around us, the air was heavy with a dark, omniscient presence.
The nearby whimpers erupted into screams as the toad-things dragged a child out of her cage and into the bowels of the tree. We could hear her screams going away from then going above us. We had to act. Working at our knots with fingers and strength, we were able to break free from our cages. The toad-thing guards came at us with their spears. We killed them and took their weapons.
We set about releasing the nearby children, almost twenty all-told, the missing children of Alone and other Far Point clans and villages. Making our escape, we herded the scared children with us out of the oubliette and upwards.
Climbing up through the magic-molded wood halls, we came to surprisingly well-furnished apartment, well-lit by many large mushrooms and lichens, with several surrounding rooms. The apartment was surprisingly cozy and civilized after the filthy cages in the oubliette and twisting crawlspaces of the toad-things. Well-made and brightly colored furniture adorned the entire apartment: a bedroom, a sitting room, a library, a workshop and storage room, all well-appointed and deceptively pleasant.
It would have taken us hours to explore the bric-a-brac and treasures therein; but we were herding the children away from danger and we continued upwards. Spiraling up, we emerged from the trunk into the massive crown of the tree, which seemed like a colossal cut tree trunk from which erupted another, younger but no less gigantic and dark, willowy mass of bare branches that formed a towering wooden dome that blocked out the sky.
We finally saw our foe: a dryad, dark and twisted, with dead-grey bark-skin and livid black eyes. She hissed at us, clutching the naked girl in one of her knobby claws, and Andrinor, Berevenenos’ magic spear, in her the other.
All is going as I have seen., she said to us, For a thousand years, I have danced this magic. Now, it comes to conclusion, for I finally have THIS!
She raised Andrinor above her head. Aeson leapt forward, shouting to Yelmalio. But Yelmalio was silent, and the dark dryad spoke black prayers against the Gods of Sky and Fire and Aeson fell to the ground, surrounded by choking darkness.
Berrik unleashed the power of Baroshi the Destroyer then, abolishing the darkness in a gust of sand and wind. Enraged, the dark dryad grew to immense size in an instant. Andrinor became like a toothpick in her hands and she snapped it in two.
I cannot be stopped now. All is now complete. I waited so many years for you to bring me what I needed. Now you have, I have what I need, and at last my spell is complete.
The dark dryad called forth a dehori to block our escape, sucking life and air out of us should we try to pass it, smothering all in the inky gloom of its formless body. Behind her, a great womb-like crack opened in the trunk of the tree and a blast of freezing wind and snow burst forth from the abyss. The dark dryad threw the remains of Andrinor to the ground and, wrapping herself around the still screaming child, began to withdraw herself into the abyss while the branches above began to creak and bend, blindly seeking to grab and crush us.
Aeson climbed to his feet and calling upon the Great Star Captain, Koroful the Keen, cast one of the toad-thing’s javelins at the tree. Koroful leapt into the missile, turning it into a pair of streaking comets, that smashed into the tree, exploding with great force and setting everything on fire.
All became madness then. Flaming branches flailed about us. Children ran wildly about in terror or stood petrified. The dryad vanished into the cthonic passageway and great gouts of snow rushed out to cover her retreat.
Suddenly, the massive tree itself lurched violent and tilted. Ancient wood and bark began to creak, crack, then break apart as the tree began to fall over. Soon we found ourselves hurtling towards the rushing ground amidst flailing, flaming branches.
Orlanth must have been watching over us. Perhaps he reached out with his hand and sent umbroli and thunder brothers to carry us down to safety. Or perhaps it was another god. Although Red Killi landed squarely on his head and was knocked out, the rest of us survived the great fall and crushing, flaming branches of the collapsing monstrous tree with only the merest of bruises and scrapes.
The ancient tree had fallen, burning and dead, and the dark dryad was gone, vanished into the abyss; behind, amidst the smoking and fractured remains of the tree, the cthonic gateway remained, impenetrably dark, belching freezing winds and snow. The surviving toad-things hopped out of the ruined tree and scattered into the forest, uninterested in us.
We searched the ruined tree and by a miracle found most, if not all, of the Far Point children: shivering with cold and terror, but alive and otherwise unharmed. We also found our gear and some interesting trinkets.
.l.
Fireday, Harmony Week, Fire Season 1627
It is the summer solstice and Yelm and Aldrya’s High Holy Day. The magical snowstorm engulfed the Woods of the Dead, but we made our way back to Alone with the children in tow. The gloom was lighter now, Aeson’s magic worked better, and the hours of the day seemed more or less what they should be.
In Alone, the Elders and parents were overjoyed to have most of their children returned. We feasted for two days and they honored their agreement, paying us all the Lunar silver they had promised. Aeson told and retold many times the story our rescue, of how Baroshi came and crushed the darkness, how Koroful came and pushed over the tree, and how Siwend, for it must have been Siwend, had embraced the children to save them from being crushed. And Aeson gently reminded the people of Alone that Argrath had sent us to help them so that the people of Alone, in their turn, would help Argrath.
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