Fresh from the victory over the ogre, the party follow the sound of the lamentations of an elf to the north. Up ahead, Cat wakes up after a most disturbing encounter the night before. Hearing familiar voices she calls out to the party and they are reunited.
The night of the banquet, a wine-drunk Cat wanders the streets of Nurfirg alone as her companions Kazaban and Odion head to their respective town houses. Instead of heading to the Inn of the Last Home, she finds herself at the Cinderwing house. There she collapses and is taken to bed by Eshe’s servants.
It is a disturbed night as a feverish Cat vomits and sweats through until morning. Then feeling much better, she goes downstairs where she is tended to by Eshe’s servants. A hearty breakfast is had with eggs and sausages piled high between two slices of bread. The steward of the house tells her that a horse awaits her, courtesy of the Crowthorns. Her friends have already gone ahead to the east. He reads to the illiterate Cat a note from Eshe wishing her well and warning her that not all her companions may be trusted.
Cat names her new horse Rocinante and rides out to cross the river. She encounters acolytes from the Order fixing up the refugee camp and learns she is not far behind her party. By dusk, she is within sight of them but before she can reach them she finds her horse reluctant to proceed any further.
Using her considerable skill with animals to calm the spooked Rocinante and urge it onwards, she discovers that she is in fact trapped in a ring of fire as tall as herself. The flames give light and heat but are deathly silent with no sign of what may fuel them. Then out of fire steps a tall being made of out of fire and speaking with a voice that carries the authority of the Divine Will. He greets Cat and proceeds to speak…
When Cat wakes up the next day, she is in the forest and the memory is foggy, the words spoken by the angelic being forgotten.
The party follow a trail in the forest northwards until it opens up into a clearing by a river bank. Perched in the clearing is a large wooden altar. The group do not notice the singing stop as they approach and find a person tied up on a raised podium in the middle of the altar.
Kazaban recognises the handiwork of ancient elves on the altar and Odion is intrigued by the strange runes etched into its surface. Cat examines the silver-haired person whose arms and legs are bound, her mouth gagged and her eyes blindfolded. She clearly looks like an elf with her pointed ears and by the fine green and gold dress she wears, one with some status.
Before Cat can determine if the elf is alive and release her, the party notice that both Kazaban and Nox have wandered off into the woods as the lamentation songs strike up once again. They come from the tree line and Gryff notices a naked winged-woman fly across the clearing of the trail they had followed.
The winged-woman near Nox who drew him towards her, reveals a set of fish-like teeth. He realises the danger he is in. Somehow unable to move, he desperately lunges with his spear at the fiendish creature. Kazaban and Nox soon find themselves under attack by two of the harpies each.
Battle is joined and Gryff runs into the fight, throwing javelins at the creatures perched on the branches of a tree. Nox recovers himself and is soon punching, kicking and stabbing one of the harpies and moving past them to gain space. Kazaban calls on arcane abjurations to protect himself and then disappears.
Badly wounded, Kazaban only reappears once Gryff has command of the battle field. After freeing the captive elf, Cat is slower to the melee than her companions, but joins the fray as Odion launches multiple blasts of eldritch magic at the harpies.
Soon three of the harpies have been vanquished, leaving one contained by Gryff’s blade. It is at this point, the wood elf that was tied on the altar steps forward. She forces the surviving harpy to obey her command and yield. She introduces herself to the group as Simmerah, a mother of the wood elves of the Great Forest.
As the party catch their breath and patch up their wounds, Simmerah tells them that she is an enemy of the witch of the woods. That by some powerful magic she cannot confront the witch herself but can tell the party how to defeat her.
The key to defeating the witch is to stop her being able to transform into her many forms by forging an ancient blade. Its parts can be found by the Great Tree, in the Onyx Cave and the ruins of an ancient elven temple in the forest. Then to reforge the blade, they will need the spellbook of Shellogath for an ancient ritual.
Evaluating their chances as no better than even, the party discuss whether they should undertake such a perilous quest. Nox shows the greatest reluctance but is eventually persuaded that should they not and the witch complete her plans by the new moon, the peril will not stop in the Great Forest. Eventually Nurfirg and all civilised lands would be impacted.
So led by their new ally, the party head north to the Great Tree. Simmerah tells them the witch’s magic prevents her going closer and that the party will need to wait until nightfall to approach it themselves. So making camp a little distance away, they leave their horses with the wood elf and journey on.
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