In this particular notebook, which Jhaelryna now held, the early entries are marked by neat lines and harmonic figures to mark the discovery of creative new theorems. Jhaelryna struggled now to comprehend these old visions and the intuition behind them. The most recent pages were filled with simple proofs and calculations in an increasingly erratic hand. They resembled nothing more than a student's workbook---full of repetition and exercises on postulates that another, more skilled mind had long ago devised. She found it difficult to stomach---as if the churning of the more recent handwriting was enough to make one seasick. The notebook was undeniable evidence of her descent since she was first targeted by the fallen theurge, Elias Houl. The curse---and the damned possession---were robbing her of more than time or reputation. Plainly, she was losing her mind and more quickly than she ever feared. Often she found that facts, memories, formulas---that she should know, should be expected to know---were simply absent. She could think or talk around them as if skirting a physical hole in her thoughts, but she was powerless to explain. She would find herself searching through reference materials and introductory texts that she'd long ago memorized. The names for basic lattices and algebraic rings. Axioms of group theory. Topics that, a few months ago, she could have taught without preparation. Her descent was becoming an obsession. She tried to mark her time, catalogue and account for her hours. She tried for a while to document her struggling memory, hoping the specifics might prove a pattern. But it was hopeless. She struggled to focus through the simplest trance routines. She hardly recognized herself in the mirror, and sometimes, in the hallways of Moonreach Keep... sometimes she heard it behind her. In those moments, when a draft silenced the candlelight and the stone became a familiar, colorless gray, the memory was so vivid that she thought she was below ground in the cavern of the Middledark where she'd fallen to her knees before a group of surfacers, what she'd later learn was a Phoenix expedition. In those moments, she could smell the foul creature's unmistakable musk---fermented mushrooms, the rotting teeth of a slave, the sputtering, oozing corpse of a bottom rung necromancy novice. One moment she'd be in Moonreach, but in the next she'd hear the chitinous legs crossing from wall to wall. It spoke not a word, neither in memory nor haunting. Her wild sprints and trembling must have tantalized her pursuer. She was being hunted, she knew, and she was powerless to fight back. In these moments of walking reverie, she remembered her rescue, but the danger felt so real, so pungent, that she feared she'd be captured, that she'd always always been captured, that she'd but dreamed of her escape. A day earlier, she'd been in the temple. Mid-service, she'd risen from the depths of an epiphany so powerful that she feared the entire congregation had felt it. But only the statue of the Spider Queen was watching her. Staring back at those unblinking red gems, Jhaelryna knew she had to flee. She'd tried to make the Matron proud. She'd risen to the top of her class, but she didn't find the cruelty of politics easy. She wasn't a natural liar. Her fate seemed sealed: sh would achieve nothing until the hour came when she was tasked by her superiors, by the all-powerful priestesses, to do what for her was impossible. She had to leave Draadaoloth before that hour. Past or present, Jhaelryna never feared that the silent hunter would kill her. She feared Lloth had sent it specifically, that the demon goddess would strip her of her gifts, drive her mad, and shape her into another drider outcast. She imagined the experience wasn't dissimilar from Houl's curse. She'd now seen her body act without her will. Seen the signs that her mind was no longer her own. She feared the moment when her friends who would look on her with revulsion---a stranger, an outcast, a monster. She'd experienced Houl's possession as watching a drow mage descend from the aether and wrest control of her body. She remembered how the goblins once reacted to her visage. Had they known this mage? But who was she to them in life? How was she connected to Moonreach, and what had happened to her? Was she ever real? Jhael turned back to her notes on the ritual to purify the moonstone. At some point, she'd attempted to improve it, to simplify its complicated demands, but that Jhael had misunderstood, had made foolish, embarrassing mistakes. They'd barely succeeded the first time, and Jhael was no longer confident that she could still rise to the challenge. She tossed the notebook to the ground. The dangers of Moonreach hadn't been anything like she'd expected, and it was still unfolding every day, every choice, every move they made. The L.O. misunderstood the risks, and in their most frustrated, stubborn moment, they'd caused a woman's likely death. Certainly the death of who'd she been. Jhael could hardly recall what she'd hoped to accomplish coming here, before the war came, and even if she could read her old theories, she wasn't sure she'd believe them any longer. Her body was being used for evil, and she was no longer confident that the evil wasn't her.

Limericks by Elizabeth Fisher Volume VI - For the Kids Here's a tale for the minds that are forming Twice a day, every night, every morning I've gone through the stats, Turns out you're all brats! So pipe down and take heed of this warning~ ‎ Young Peter loved climbing in trees He'd be up in the leaves and the breeze When along came a gust And you know it was just When he fell and he shattered both knees! ‎ Wee Bella loved talking to strangers All the bards, all the priests and the rangers, But this scamp was too tricky And her fingers too sticky So when talking to kids know the dangers! ‎ Short Stefan liked splashing in puddles To escape from a young life's struggles- He splashed the wrong bard, Got switched VERY hard Know your place or you'll share in his troubles! ‎ Little Jackie could chirp like a bird Quite a talent befitting a nerd! She'd call and she'd crow 'Till she got domed by a blow So remember; be seen and not heard! ‎ Small Milly loved glugging dad's cider But it made her so loud and so hyper Now she swears like a sailor And no one can save her Stick to wine for the best moral fibre! ‎ Tiny Tara loved reading for fun, In the corner, like a cloistered old nun She read until blind, Made mush of her mind- So be smart and go play in the sun! ‎ So listen up if you're young in the tooth Keep quiet, keep mum and keep couth~ You'll avoid so much pain If you stay in your lane There is no other cure for your youth!

The sun is setting, turning the mist that seems an everlasting companion of Moonreach Keep tinged amber, peach and fiery red. Out on the small garden ledge, a lonesome female figure sits, head bent over her writing - although on second scrutiny she isn't entirely alone, for carefully sidled into her shadow sits a small black cat, watchful yellow eyes gleaming faintly. As day fades into night, Laura writes: "Most beloved brother, I hope you know that you are just that, Barton. Beloved. I mean it in a genuine and deep-rooted way, I mean love in that it's you and me against the world, should all the world ever turn against us. But never will I be on the side that's against you - you have to know that. You have to rely in that, even if you yourself feel like I'd be justified in taking such a stance. I am not saying I'll condone everything you do, by sheer virtue of being my brother. I'm saying, plain and simple, Barton, that I'm a thinking, feeling, responsible adult now - and that you should trust that my judgement is sound when I say you're not alone. Is it vengeance you want? That's not a sentiment with which I'm intimately familiar, but please don't think I won't empathize nor that I will shrink from helping you, if help is what you need. I know that name by now. Wavesilver. Will that person coming here be what reunites us? Or wiill your hand waver from striking him down, if I am present? If it does, I'll punch that man in the gut myself and while he gasps for breath, I will bid you explain to me. Explain, if you can, why death is the punishment of choice, rather than stinging disgrace, financial ruin, public humiliation or any number of other choices available. It seems when it comes down to it, it's always a life for a life - even in hypotheticals, like the one Ereda and Lokelani debated. For my part, dear brother, I would like my enemy to be alive to suffer my retribution. For a good, long time, at that. Ideally they'd have the good grace to find actual remorse in realizing their crime. More ideally still, they'd work to rectify it for the rest of their lives, thus sparing others a similar fate. I'm not sure if that makes me an idealist or simply crassly pragmatic. Maybe it's a little bit of both. Aen called me vengeful when I suggested there was a way to make the collective pay for a collectively poor decision. Not with loss of life, you see. But loss of community. I found that fair, while Aen thought it cruel. But the premise of the argument was that this community had caused the death of one's sibling. Meaning you. And I cannot think of a retribution suitable for such a terrible loss, unless it too felt like a terrible loss. I'd just want everyone involved alive to feel it. Perhaps that is cruel, after all. All this is to say, my dear brother, that Houl's attempt to hurt me, to cut me in such a way as to create an opening for his attempts to make a puppet of me too, have got to me, but perhaps not in the way that he anticipated. He showed me a recording of you at your worst - not just professional worst, but with a bitter, acidic edge glimpsing through. A you you never showed me - remorseless and harsh. Killing a man. But throughout it all, all I could think was how lonely you must be, to carry all this anger yourself. It isn't yours alone. Even if I don't remember them, they were my parents too. Please, Barton. I understand why you kept me in the dark before, but I'm no longer a child. It's my right to be involved. It's my duty to share the burden with you. Find me. Include me. Let it be you and I against the world. As it should be. ~Laura~"

"You don't talk much about your past" Lokelani had suggested one night. This woman whose beauty felt like sin to look upon too long who had command over magic and blade, this Fey-touched who could rob a man of all his senses with a song if she wanted to. A fantastical creature. A knight. She wanted to hear about him? Aenhever brushed it off with something close to a smile and almost certainly said something noncommittal to deflect. What in the world could he tell her - tell 'anyone' in fact. The question troubled him for a long time. Long into that night, into the next too. He found he really didn't talk much about his past or his aspirations for the future for that matter. A philosophy of his great teacher had always been to live and act as if all that mattered was the present. An unshakeable discipline from an archaic Elf. Wasn't he Feytouched too..? He could tell her about his time with the Wolves after all. Those once peaceful or at least neutral Rangers who walked the near-beaten paths between the towns and the wilderness. He could tell her all about their silent heroes who always seemed to arrive just in time and then withdraw just as quick once wrongs had been righted. He'd once mentioned a tree that isn't there, a curious wonder of the hidden Den... but what purpose would any of that serve? He could tell her about his time with the Defenders. How he was almost locked up, exiled or worse after the civil war. He'd seen the Geese in action not long before that, the courthouse blown to ruin before the fighting broke out in the streets. Aenhever had been in the docks that day when the attack rang out. They moved with purpose, and fought their way to the warehouses by the water's side and had urged the Defenders to keep the peace while they took care of Whyte, and every one of them disappeared inside. The friends he'd lost in the street that day, not just the ones that stood with him but those who'd sold out, the ones that were playing dice a week past and trying to kill him today. There was no time for grief. It was a military tribunial after that, a formal debriefing that seemed more like an interrogation. The city was shaken to its roots after all, they wanted to expose any more seditionists or turncoats that might've been missed. They wanted to make clear their warnings that they would go to extreme lengths to ensure that there'd never be another civil war. The warning almost certainly would include deserters among those who wished to do harm upon the city, and thus face those extreme penalties. But what purpose could that possible serve? He supposed she might be interested to hear about the famine and the plague that had burned through the streets like hellfire. Then again did he really want to tell this woman that seemed to glow with innocent light about the depraved things people do when faced with famine and disease. He'd tried his best to push the signs of cannibalism from his mind during the peacekeeping and cleanup back in his early days of soldiering. The hollow look in the sunken eyes of what he guessed were the parents of whatever those gnawed bones in the dirt belonged to. He could tell her that Peltarch was no Silverymoon, but what good would that do? That ancient Elven ranger might've given him an apple to shut him up, or recited some meaningless poem that meant nothing in the situation but altogether held the world together like glue. The fact of it would be the same. Aenhever would live in the present. He'd smile, and he'd nod. He might sort his arrows he supposed. The past was the past, the future would be a gift never promised. Today he'd drink cool water and eat, and he'd be thankful to look upon soft - dangerous faces that felt like sin and joy all at once. He'd bear the heartache of having nothing much to say about it and supposed she'd forgive him his silence. No-one else ever asked at least.

It was one of the most serene and beautiful gardens Lokelani has ever seen. She was sure it rivaled the likes of which her and Hokanoe's dryad grandmother would create in her grove. Kneeling in her blue kimono amidst the garden's mystical pink glow, Lokelani drew out the bluish, ancient elven recording crystal from her sleeve. She cast her neon Spring green gaze around the small cavern that housed this botanical wonder. Flowers, the talking wolf had said, that grew nowhere else in the Mycorrhizae. They grew only here in the vicinity of the glowing blue wisp that hung in the air before her. A fragment of her twin sister, Hokanoe. Lokelani could help the tears that came quietly rolling down her cheeks, reaching out to touch... to hold her sister's non-existent hand. There she was, and at the same time there she wasn't. Closing her grasp around the recording crystal, she closed her eyes, concentrating to attune it into recording mode. Once she felt it grow chill, she set down and saw the dimmed inner glow pulsing. Recording mode on. She set the crystal down beside her and glanced again up at the memory fragment floating there. Lokelani smiled wistfully and tenderly at it. "Hokanoe... hello up there. You wouldn't believe where I'm talking to you today. and today... you actually here with me! In... in a manner of speaking... part of you is here. I'm not really sure how to describe it. It's beautiful. This little garden of yours.. and this memory fragment of yours just floating here among so many fallen petals. I-I can even talk to you... the real you and not just the you in my head that I talk to during these recordings... Yet.. this thing floating here... isn't really you either." "It's a part of you for sure... but only a part of you...a small part of you. It can only answer one or two questions at best before it starts over in its loop. I..I... after all this time.." "I feel so many things at once... For one... I'm elated! I finally found you! And you're not spore-addled as I had feared!! Yet also... the truth might be far worse than being spore-addled. Oh Hokane! What did you do to yourself?! And no.. no I don't hate you for this.. so... please, please, PLEASE don't go thinking that. I could never hate you." "I don't understand everything you do, but I think that alway went both ways. I'm pretty sure you don't understand everything I do either." "Anyway... I just want you to know I won't stop until I've made you WHOLE again! I'll seek out every last one of these hidden gardens your memory fragment showed me.. and then with the help of the gentle mushroom witch who has promised to help me figure all this out... and all my friends... we'll make you you again..." "Then we can go back home to our rebuilt cottage or wherever it we decide to go... together." "I-I-I love you, sis. I don't know how wanting to be one of the true fey lead you to this...but my friends and I figure this out. I swear it." "For now... I'm just going to sit here and share some of this crystals older recordings with your memory fragment. I don't know if... it will stir anything... but I'd like to think that wherever you are right now... that the sum total of all of you knows I'm here and is listening. And if you are listening, I want to help you remember." Lokelani double taps the crystal to end the recording and restore playback mode. The recording crystal dates back to before the Crown Wars as far as Lokelani knows, so she isn't sure how old the oldest recorded log is, but the logs do tend to fade and grow full of static with age until even the static is gone. The first log she plays for Hokanoe's memory fragment is one of the oldest logs still playable. It was old even before Lokelani and Hokanoe were even born. It's an ancient elven melody full chimes and flutes and still quite soothing despite the static. Lokelani and Hokanoe often used this old recording as a lullaby to go to sleep to as children. Next Lokelani plays a series of logs from when they were children, full of the twins laughter and childhood secrets, like sneaking over the village's baker's house to snitch his fresh baked cookies from the windowsill. Or the times Lokelani was forced to defend Hokanoe from the elven children of the village who would take advantage of Hokanoe's gentle and kind nature. Or how Hokanoe helped Lokelani make friends with those very same children once they were all older. Lokelani spends hours playing back logs of such things for Hokanoe's memory fragment... and even just chatting to it about nothing at all. AI Created Image of Lokelani and a Fragement of Hokanoe

The stone bastion of a keep that has seen better days. A winter chill in the air. An oddly large moon looms above among a multitude of stars, while a mist clings thick to the ground of the surrounding landscape, only letting up over the nearby lake. A quiet, somewhat secluded part of the ramparts. Not impossible to get to, but unlikely to be accidentally wandered into. Solitude. A wooden stool, about waist high, stands on the stone. Worn and forgotten like the keep he found it in, nobody would miss this particular piece of furniture. Nor the burlap sack fashioned into a pillow that lies on top of it. And the dried beans inside the pillow were fairly bought. A right hand comes straight down onto the pillow, an open handed slap. The Celestial palm. The wood creaks. The beans rattle softly. The stool holds, as does the burlap. The hand lifts off the pillow and twists. A second slap, open handed with the back of the hand. The Goddess' palm. The hand lifts and goes again, a cut with the outside of the palm. The crane. The hand goes again. And again. And again. Tiger, ox, monkey. Leopard, mantis, eagle. Palm, fingers, fingertips. Major knuckles, minor knuckles. Wrist, forearm, elbow. Straight forward, from the outside, from the inside. Nothing is spared. The wood survives the onslaught. When the routine is done, the makeshift pillow is fluffed and the left hand begins. Conditioning. Hardening. Zero Eight One had called them relaxing. Meditative. His fellow inmate had looked on with great amusement and a healthy helping of disdain when an officer ordered him to teach the fledgling brawler. Yet, he did as was demanded of him, as all in the Zhent warmachine must. A scant few weeks, and it already seemed a different world. The half elf repeated the exercise in the moonlight. His mind should have been focused on the task at hand, experiencing only the steady repetition, but he could not let it help but wander. So much had gone wrong after fleeing their captors. A bold move, some would say. A selfish one, according to others. There was no risk but for his own death. He had no family the Zhent could hold over his head. Nerrez never mentioned if he did. They'd barely survived getting to Moonreach. Deserters were not treated kindly, and hunted by their agents all across Faerûn. Making it out of Geroldine's direct holdings made no difference, as his sphere of influence extended well beyond that. They'd learned to avoid civilization after three brush ins. Learned to distrust wanderers after being informed against twice. Cutting a path through the wilds had been their only salvation. Still, that brought its own hardships. Traveling light, and being the hunted as often as the hunter, they had gone hungry more often than not. Oft times they had forced themselves to march simply to help them forget their hunger pangs. Those would have kept them from their sleep, anyway. To where? They had not known. They had not cared. Farther north than the Great Glacier, if they had to. Farther east than the Endless Wastes. Their path had seemed a random one. Maybe it had been. Zero Eight One had been a curious teacher, however. Stressing the lessons of the sun and the moon as taught by his people. Mocking the notions of Faerûnian humans even as he sat in a cage they'd fashioned for him. Two Oh Six had not cared much for the man's opinions, but sun and moon were ingrained into him, ever drawn to the moon in their nightly travels. Still, they might have missed this worn old keep entirely had the storm not driven them there for shelter. Maybe random. Maybe not. And now, all the world had changed. He had changed. Down to his very face. A complete stranger had not only sheltered them from the storm, she had hidden him from a Zhent agent that had sniffed out their trail. On top of which, she pulled some strings to have his body magically altered, to not look so like the half elf the Zhent were looking for. She would do the same for Nerrez. Others had been driven towards the keep in that storm, while still others were huddled around the fire that night. Maybe random. Maybe not. Given shelter, given a home, given more freedom than many places had given them before. A handful of them had stood up to help the Keep with a goblin problem, and now they had bonded together through their solitude in the keep, their need to belong to something greater and their desire to give back. Bonds so strong, little could deter them. From the goblins, normal or fiendish, to fishmen and their fey ruler, to legions of undead, to living crystal golems. From the glares their drow companion attracted, to the inability to communicate in a common tongue, to the known lycanthropy of one of their own. And possible lycanthropy of another. That had been a harrowing sight. The pain Aenhever had gone through. The transformation into that beast. He would not have wished that on any enemy. Now he had not just seen it happen to one friend. He had learned it might happen to the one soul who had seen what he had seen. The one man who had lived it and escaped alongside him. And there was the crux of the matter. The thought that truly occupied him and kept him from his meditation. The one part of his old life worth saving, and he might lose it as a new one begins. By the time his hand stopped moving, the dried beans had been ground to dust. He would not waste them, not in a place where everything was scarce. He gathered the dust in a bowl and added water. The paste would make a decent enough bread.

In the end, the man died with horror in his eyes. His head thrown back with his last words, a pleading cry for mercy. Cormac had decided early on, days in advance -- perhaps at the dawn of time when light first pierced darkness and shone upon the world, illuminating such things as pride and bold stupidity. He was determined by the time they reached the front lines, the breach into Col Geroldine's last stronghold, to leave a lasting impression. He would show those remaining men on the enemy's side that there were far more terrible things in the world than 'Bane'. He'd challenge a God, vie to wrest ownership of part of his portfolio -- his lordship over terror. Cormac Randolph would once again reave a broad and bloody wound straight through the very heart of the battlefield wearing only the agility of the wolf and Tempus' favor for armor. He was mad. Mad, and disappointed. He learned quickly that most of Col's forces were undead, that only a straggling few were living men. The last of his troops, maybe one in ten for every risen corpse. Most of the living enemies were archers, no less, whose arrows barely bit if they even came close to striking him in his battle-trance. At least some of them tried to turn and run. Tried. The report came in after they'd pushed deep into the territory that the Zhentarim had claimed. Forces split, one side will fall or the other - they were told they couldn't reinforce both. One side, the remaining Knights from Moonreach. On the other, Cormac's riders - the Tuigans who'd given to him their devoted and unwavering loyalty. Isolde spoke first, the first knife to pierce him all day would be her words, then the others came forward and shared her thought. Half a dozen blades in his back while they showed theirs to him, as they turned to aid the Moonreachers - who'd by now numbered so few that saving them was all but a waste of time, at least in his pragmatic eyes. Cormac refused. His words were no knife but a stone wall, he'd refused and he said he'd go his own way - save his own people. He wasn't surprised to be cut loose and left alone. The sounds of war filled the forest all about him before too long. He ran, he ran with his head ducking under boughs and snapping branches underfoot. His wolf-pelt cloak sweeping behind him and giving the visage of a shadowy monster among the trunks. Hoofbeats. The sounds of screaming horses were somehow more unsettling than the screams of their riders. Broken men and torn up horse corpses littered the forest floor, their entrails and parts scattered high into the trees. A red rain that made the forest floor stink as blood dripped down and painted the white-silver bark of the highland birch forest. Some great enemy would be present here, he was certain. The undead horrors undisturbed for the most part by the sharp arrows flung from the riders' shortbows as they charged and feinted on the backs of their ponies. Randolph burst forth from such a feint, a lone warrior on foot among a sea of light horse, his huge axe held above his head as he roared into the enemy line. A handful of riders followed him into the melee with their sabers drawn - made bold by the sight of their leader, sharing in his warlike frenzy. They met the chief necromancer, a captain among the enemy. Wrapped in magicked linen and wearing a headdress of brass, or gold, set with lapis and jewels. He saw spell-forged chains of ethereal light whip out from the mummy's magic crook and lash man and horse to pieces. He saw a target worth fighting, and engaged. His axe bore down and caught the khopesh in the mummy's other hand. It would fight, then. The mummy more than matched him in nimbleness and moved with eerie quickness. Dashing from left to right, slashing with its strange sword and thrusting its strange wand at him. He, kicking and wildly hacking, thrashing madly with his axe to try and claim a hit. The mummy was not prepared for Cormac's savagery, and the finality of it became reality - it was over quickly. He smashed the golden mask; clay, nothing more than painted clay - bone clad in thin brown, almost red skin. Dim lights in the sockets of what once may have been eyes stared blankly at him over a stitched thin line that could've been a mouth. The momentary off-guard stare that was too human, the moment he needed to strike once more and crush the skull of the evil thing with the ashwood shaft of his terrible axe. The linen bandages fell like weightless cotton, everything within spun away on the wind as if it had never been. The pale outline of a noble lady shimmered, he thought, perhaps he caught glimpse of her... and she was gone, too. Cormac caught his breath as the riders ran down the last of the undead from some long-ago war, a black-lipped grin beneath the wolf-pelt hood that covered most of his face. His body painted in blood from the gore-strewn trees, his boots filthy and scuffed from treading the bones and rusted armor of his foes. He was alone - surrounded by his men, elated at their victory. But alone, absent his companions. A lonesome win. The riders rode on. Cormac trailed behind until the sound of many hooves was no longer in his ears, though they weren't hard to track. It wasn't too long before he found the others again. There was a calm stillness in the air in the moments between places, like nothing existed there but wind. He wondered if he'd be missed if he veered left or right off the track and ran from here to nowhere, to a place where the legend of Cormac didn't exist... There was no final battle. The captain, the Lich, betrayed his general and stood his undead army down. Col had no more men, and the gates of his fortress were thrown open. When they caught him finally, he was not the man they'd met before with an army at his back. A wretched ruin of a man shoveling gold into sacks and rambling to himself. Cormac heard the man blame his folly on everything else, on circumstance and luck. Saw the fear in Bane's champion when he turned and saw the Geese. For Cormac, this signalled the end of his war. The end of everything. Col's life ended many weeks before Reyhenna gripped him by his mop of hair and pulled back his head to expose his fear-choked throat, months before she told him the dagger in her hand was enchanted with potent magic that granted True Death - soul and all - and cut his neck from ear to ear. The man died with horror in his eyes. Cormac's were filled with jealousy; True Death... peace.

Xiulan Ming - theme song -

Epilogue (placeholder)

End game (placeholder)

To Capture A Killer III - Unravelling He looked smug - all too smug, certain of his victory even as his lifeblood ebbed out onto the glossy ballroom floor. M's wheezing breaths died out, accompanied by a stab of concern to my already savaged gut. The portal was still open, M's death was not enough to silence the call, or surely something would 'change' around us with his passing. This wasn't over - and with that thought, 'she' reappeared. The Scarlet Lady, red as blood, eyeless, noseless, mouthless. She spoke not a word, but I could feel the cruel amusement on that featureless face, see the mocking come-hither of a slim red-threaded finger. 'Catch me if you can - if you 'dare', little mice.' The Red Lady retreated, gliding cooly off into the distance where a swirling vortex had opened up. We were ill equipped to follow, spell-spent, bloodied and exhausted, but I could see each and all grit their teeth as we looked to one another. In silent agreement, the first weary steps were taken, slow at first, then staggering doggedly faster, rushing towards the whirl of red, gradually closing once the Lady's figure had vanished within. Beyond was pure chaos. Pure malice, a constant, vicious tearing, mauling, rendering mass of nightmarish beings, a shrieking cacophany of unearthly voices. The full force of the Far Realm's utterly alien nature hit us, protections thin and threadbare now. The Red Lady in the midst of it all, choreographing chaos, long swirls of red snaring and entwining us. We were overwhelmed, outmatched, flies caught in a web of crimson. My songs were spent, my magic, even my anger. I knew with a cold despair that we would perish here, if nothing could turn the tide. Sharp claws ripped at my side and my vision swam with the hot blood gushing down. Nate, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry… Reality blurred. The shrieks and wails, the piercing cacophany faded blissfully out, replaced by white noise, a soothing wish-wash-woosh against my eardrums, like the crash of gentle waves against a sandy shore. If this was dying, would I wake then, on the shimmering white beaches of Brightwater? I could feel it now, the fresh saltwater in the air, the sun warming my battered skin, a welcoming caress. A seagull cried above, but as my vision slowly cleared, I could make out my party members nearby, and a slender figure before us. A glint of honey to that slicked back hair, a jaunty tilt of his head, still in the shades he'd worn last. This wasn't Brightwater - we'd been plucked from the maws of death onto Beeble Ravelzilch's dreamspun beach, the protective paradise he'd created after we had first delved into the Far Realm. I'd spent many a night on this beach, sipping coconut smoothies in the delightful company of my once enemy, speaking of this, that and the other. Most often of Aesso. Beeble gave a quick smile, but his face was visibly strained. 'You should hurry up and rest. I don't know for long long I can stop the tide,', noted the bard, staring out to sea with uncharacteristic grimness. The sun was setting, a blood-red stain on the horizon. No... Not a sunset, a 'wound'. Snaking, clawing, writhing strands of red tore at the crack, pushing, straining, tearing at the fragile bubble Beeble had created to shield us. 'Go on, rest', repeated Beeble, eyes focused in the far distance. We needed no further urging, long past exhaustion. The air was warm and balmy but the red glow on the horizon intensified as the 'sun' set. The air grew heavier, as though a storm was approaching. 'Tch... can you believe those chumps tried to replace me with 'that'?', scoffed Beeble, lifting his chin with the usual moxy. But his hand trembled, and he balled it up, still watching the horizon. 'You haven't left the ballroom, you know. You're still there, Marcel is still dying. That red 'hack' is messing with your heads, but please. I 'invented' that game! I've got time for one last intermission. But the final act is all up to you.' Beeble's ever chummy, ever cheery tone was tinged with melancholy, held that same heartbreaking note of goodbye I'd tried so very hard not to hear in my last dream. I couldn't bear to think what the price for this intervention would be for our friend, but I could see him struggling, the encroaching redness spreading a sinister glow onto the beach. 'I don't know how many times I can keep recreating this place...' His voice was faint now, writhing strands of crimson dancing across the surface of the shades. 'We've had a good run of it though, haven't we?' Beeble gave a faltering grin, while both Roslyn and I protested anything being over. It can't be, 'he' can't be. 'We'll see you again, I know it! We've 'got' to, how else can we gloat over the details of our victory?!' I think I heard him laugh, saw that oh so familiar, achingly dear thumbs up one more time - then the storm broke and our world turned red, heavy, grasping waves of crimson crashing down upon the beach, grasping, reclaiming its prey. I lost sight of Beeble in the mass of choking strands, but it can't, it 'won't' be the last we meet. Until then, my friend. The next time, the drinks are on me. All was red. The walls, the floor, the ceiling above our heads, completely lined with thin red strands, with wetly gleaming crimson hair. We came to in a narrow, winding tunnel, dank and dimly lit, as though were we inside the veins of some great lumbering beast. Where 'was' this? Were we inside the hair itself, within the embodiment of M's bloodsoaked 'creation'? I counted heads, but Beeble was nowhere to be seen. He must've hidden inside Roslyn's locket, I told myself, though her face reflected all my fears to the contrary, pale and numb. But here and now, we had no time for anything but our task, or the gift he'd given us would be wasted. I felt light-headed as we started to move, the air heavy and oppressive, as though we were deep underwater. Pressure all around, my heart's laboured thumps resounding in my ears. Breathing was difficult, my throat constricting and cramping. I couldn't breathe. I was choking and black dots swam before my eyes, black and red whirling in a maddened dance. Gasps and wheezes, all around me, as the pressure eased. The constricting came in slow rythmic swells, as though timed to a mammoth monster's slow heart beating. We tried to pace our progress, stumbling through the red maze in exploration. Maria lead the way, her keen arcanely attuned senses picking up on a hot spot, a glowing node within the tangled web we were in. Around the bend, we saw it - a huge knot of red hair, easily the size of Gnarl. Gleaming, throbbing like a living, beating heart. That's it! We really 'were' inside the anchor, created, twisted and knotted from the hair of M's victims - and we would have to unravel it from within. Gnarl swung his axe, but the knot lashed out, resisting the cut violently. With all our efforts combined, we saw it come undone, freeing a cursing dwarf from the hurtful tendrils. One down... but suddenly there was no air with which to celebrate. I fought to breathe, my hands instinctively reaching for my neck, as though M's hands were still clutching it. It was worse this time, my head swimming before a weak trickle of air finally made it down to my screaming lungs. We had a clear plan at last - find the knots, undo them one by one, but would we have the time, before all air ran out? Our rest at the beach had refreshed us, but every second spent in this maze saw our strength waning. Maria grit her teeth and started to run, mass haste quickening all of our steps behind her. The mad dash, the wheeze and struggle of each pained breath past my cracked lips in this world of red. The party pulled out, the front runners disappearing from view. I had to stop, bent over to laboriously suck down what little air there was, when spidery nightmare 'things' blocked the path. Z doubled back, cut a path through to me and lay a reassuring hand on my shoulder. We ran on. Another knot, another vicious fight, the hair lashing out like strips of steel wire, biting through leather and skin. Two down. And how many to go? Was it one for each side of the triangle, one for every victim? Impossible to tell, and all we could do was slog on, push through the pain and the dizzying lack of oxygen. A third knot untangled opened a locked path, the tightly knitted hair parting to reveal a larger chamber beyond. A strange rumbling echo, a fetid stench to the air here. The walls seemed to shift and undulate, the floor too - wet and unpleasantly squishy underfoot. As we moved further inside the room, it closed behind us, and a slowly sinking realization ran down my spine, curled and coiled in my gut. If the corridors beyond had been the artieries, the winding intestines of our red beast, 'this' was most definitely the mouth. The walls moved, the roof and ceiling both pressing together, squishing us between them. A soft crushing sensation, slimy and spongey all at once. And those great white marble slabs.. were those 'teeth'?! We were fighting the tongue itself, as it tried to smush us against the roof of the mouth - a grotesquely mobile mat of thick red flesh, its very papillae rising up to combat us. Nothing seemed to harm it, nothing, 'til Ysberyl's arrow hit home, a shudder rippling the flesh. 'Gross, gross, gross, GROSS', chimed my inner voice, while I tried, oh I fought another song past my lips, as rousing as I could muster. Arrows whizzed through the air, and with combined effort, the tongue fell limp and another knot came undone. I shuddered, wiping gooey mucus off myself as we neared the next room, fully expecting a churning, bubbling melting pot of stomach acids. But instead, the red parted smoothly like a curtain, and stage lights lit an area further in. Another light, this one falling straight on me, and I could all but hear a ghostlike echo of applause. Oh no. Ohhhh no no, I'm 'not' performing here, I've been jerked around enough, made to twitch and sing and dance for your amusement. I was suddenly furious, when I noticed the figure of a man near the stage, smiling towards me. Something about that smile... something about the orange-tinted gleam of his hair tugged at my heart strings, made my fury die down. He seemed to be working on a play, but as he wrote, the 'words' came to violent and savage life around us. Soon, I was caught up in tendrils of red, lashing at my limbs. But the 'man'... didn't he look just like... I reached my hand out, a cry choking in my savaged throat as Ysberyl's knife sank into the playwright. She stabbed him resolutely, and within moments Roslyn had joined in. Defending myself was all I could do, while my chest contracted painfully. ~Nate~. He 'looked' like Nate, but wasn't, he 'wasn't'. It was a ruse, a con, our feelings used against us to defend the knots, and were it all up to me, it might have worked. The playwright crumbled, and the monsters with him. Another knot undone, and we were closer now, close to the end of this labyrinthe but hurting, bleeding, struggling with every breath, every step onwards. The next room held a series of tents, makeshift and small. As we stepped inside, halfling-like figures rushed out of them, attacking us with panic in their eyes. 'No!', shouted Roslyn, 'wait, stop!' A woman was there, someone meant to be significant, but she too met the end of the playwright as our desperate party proceeded with our one, our only course of action - find the knots, undo them. My legs felt leaden, my throat a bleeding wound. How many knots done, how many yet remained? We entered a smashed up library, shelves toppled and broken. An all too familiar figure loomed in the distance, and hiding was no longer an option from the red beast. We had to fight. Maria hefted her greatsword, stepping to the front. Though spell after spell had been used, needed, 'necessary' to survive 'til this point, the arch mage had one more trick up her sleeve. With a sickening snap of bones, her frail body morphed, ballooned to a size equalling its crimson foe. A dragon, its red scales wraithed in shielding shadow, rose on its back legs and roared a challenge. The room shook, the crimson world trembled as the titans clashed. It was a fight in and of itself worthy of a bard's tale, of glorious song, but I remember it blurrily, through a haze of red, as gritted teeth and aching lungs, as sheer stubborn, desperate 'effort'. They wrestled, blood-red thread and shadowy scale, they bit and swiped and clawed, while the rest of us swarmed around like stinging insects - annoying perhaps, but small, insignificant. It seemed an eternal fight, but suddenly, I could see the threads start to fray. With a thunderous crash, the red hulk toppled, it 'fell'! Our world seemed to quake, and again it changed. When the dust settled, there was no beast, no ruined library around us - instead, there was only 'her'. The Red Lady, with her snaking, winding strands of crimson wrapped securely around each of us. I dangled in the air, the hair squeezing me tightly, trapping my arms and constricting my throat - she was choking us, she 'had' been all the while...! Her steps were graceful, predatory smooth across the floor as she approached me. A catlike tilt of her head, admiring, running a caressive finger through my hair while the strands tightened mercilessly, squeezing the life out of me. I couldn't fight, couldn't scream, couldn't 'breathe' but I kicked my legs, a feeble effort, a show of futile resistance that saw the last of my oxygen used up. The Red Lady had no eyes, no nose, no mouth - but I swear, I 'swear' she was laughing then. In my peripheral vision, I could see the others struggling, hear dim shouts of anger and defiance. The clang of armoured feet hitting the ground. The creak of a bow pulled back. One by one, my party members struggled free, and forced the Red Lady to split her attention. I thunked to the floor as the fight broke loose, Maria slapping yet another balm on, helped untangle the strands before she joined the fray. The fight is fierce and raw, a last ditch effort. My arrows fly wildly - did I hit a single one? I remember screaming, running, spells and swords flashing - and then at the last, a single arrow hitting true. Ysberyl's arrow, piercing the very heart of the Lady, the last and central 'knot' in our murders veiled red. A shrieking wail, near dropping me to my knees - the arrow burrows in, it slices through blood-soaked strands that suddenly 'snap'. The scream sends ripples through the fabric of this veil, this otherworldly 'reality', and all at once, every thread, every strand of hair's undone, unravelling like a flood of crimson. And then there's darkness. A ballroom floor, a slumped figure in a pool of wet blood. M lifts his head, his eyes wide and wild. 'No! This is 'impossible', you couldn't have...! They must have 'helped' you!' He is still dying, but Ysberyl aims her bow, intent on quickening the process. But finally, 'finally' that arrogant sneer's been wiped off his face and it's too delicious to end quite so soon. Am I cruel or merciful in stepping between them? I want to be the latter, but I know it's malice that drives me as I use my last healing spell to stem the flow of blood. I crouch, put my lips so close that he can feel my breath against his ear and I whisper, with grim and absolute satisfaction: 'You lose.' With that, Marcel grows silent, slumps in defeat. He speaks not a word as we haul him off to Gaol, and hasn't since. Oscar Halbrook, the 'hack' that M so loathed, framed and ridiculed, is not only a free man, but the man who holds the key to his cell. And that feels like justice to me.

She hid her Gnomish Positioning Scroll, went down the other route of the Pixie's Roost through the Romani Camp into the valley, but doubled back out of curiosity. When she finds him, he's wounded. He's furiously fighting a gloomy fog of shadow, 'This is entirely your fault'! She abandons him- Unable to sustain the fight- One she started, ducking low so her bat winged cloak could fill with air, and erupted her out of reach into the air. Shadows clawing and clinging to her legs as she looks back down at Mac hewing stalwartly at an uncountable force surrounding him and tearing him to pieces. She runs away with such force she's exhausted herself only far enough to be within earshot-and she hears his final pained path down the path. Noticing people converging in front of her looking for Cormac so she doubles back, and starts to weep over his corpse. She makes up excuses, and it is Sebrienne as usual is the only person who even notices Raazi acting suspicious, her doubling backs, invisible, coughing up reasons for this and that. Sebrienne only being confirmed over and over, the woman Raazi is a horrible mean person. Raazi and Cormac could barely make eye contact in public, knowing what she did. She wanted it all back and the crow already sounded over head. The empty well within her caused her to trudge, and she become high with the reality of her choices. Everything she valued so much, a realm just for her, a man stronger than the planes itself. She had to hide. She had to pray to him And he sits there furiously defeated, bitterly withering on his throne in Deaths Rest, breath by breath. His heart beat stopped echoing the chambers. A lightening crack staining the starry sky picture like the surface cracks on a plate refused to be thrown away for sentimental value despite its harbored bacteria. The atmosphere holding up whats left was contorted like the legs of a suffering spider and shattered into the deep black void like a violent storm and remained perpetually unraveling to his horror, to his grief. His brothers mocked him, their vehement laughter slapping around him like a chain noose. "HA. Ha ha. Ha haha! haha ha HA HA! HAAAA!!!! YOU KNEW IT! WE TOLD YOU! SHE BETRAYED US! JUST ANOTHER WHORE! AH HA! HAHahaha! Even after -everything-, she still turned her back on her family! YOU'RE FUCKED!! HAHaha! You know what this means!!!" He knew. And the Hungering Star that always loomed off in the distance of his domain started to accelerate, no longer hearing the war drum of Cormac's heart filling the nothingness with love, pride, purpose... "YOU KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!" An old friend sees his pain. Salin V, who was there when Raazi did her best to rally strong folk to come to deaths rest, with every intention to dethrone him. Salin V gives Cormac a hope just enough for his last few heartbeats to pump his blood and reminds him of his heavy ax's purpose and Who it is that wields it.. And he spends his few hours on the material plane trudging into shadowy fortresses with the noble few who can stomach it. Raazi, having lost her grip on her sword entirely unable to help. She knew it spelt death for her and she couldn't stop his fate, horrified he may be even more reckless now that she's successfully wounded the man. It is this very mistrust that ruminates within her. It compels her to bring a curvy dagger deadly enough to simply have to touch someone with slight intention to kill them. It is gripped in both hands, and she once again watches Cormac from the shadows. The moment has to be perfect. Even if it is tomorrow. He is a liability to her new future. One fit for the heartless, the whores, the betrayers, the guiltless, the powerful, the evil... So when all the kind folk leave the table at the Dancing Mermaid and it's just him bitterly looking over the fog of the commons. She is there behind him. "Whats that for Magpie", Cormac has no fear but respect when he' goes to touch her hands to relax her dagger. But she lays her threats down at him. To keep his mouth shut about what he knows. He will be silent about what he knows. If even a peep, she threatens to destroy him. And by the end of the conversation she's in tears barely able to hold the dagger. Cormac's skaldic poems trashing her into a human being again and reminding her she's not alone still. That even if he hates it, he'll do it for her. He'll keep the very secret that is the reason he's going to face the his end.. ..She chose to serve a demon queen.. Not sit by his side, under the million stars he placed when she wasn't looking. That now hang in ruins like a shattered love fern... They kept up the lie: it only takes a few friendly glances to feign a good time. Only few knew his true heart ache, if anyone. The Prince Kasimir having had a very close eye on them from the start perhaps the first to know. Slowly, they separated till it was too painful to be near again. They did their best to stay apart. But a pile of pixie corpse in a beautiful glen perhaps will remember the truth, hidden survivors turning away from seeing their The truth of loneliness, facing every challenge alone now, Raazi recluses to places of beauty where she finds Nenufar, curiously watching her from the shadows. Curious of this particular quarry, picking each other's minds like cherries that survived in the shade. Sharing an out look not bleak but tangibly understandable. Her mortal hand reaching out to a fiendfriend to doom herself once again into physical solidarity and mental isolation. The simple subconscious outreach turned devastating as she felt the full weight of the succubus's apathetic desire to be fulfilled even if it betrays them both. Nenufar identified promptly what happened and took flight. Had she been a lesser fiend, she would of taken Raazi's soul there perhaps- but saw her purpose, her loyalty[Needle In The Hay - Kermit]. Raazi could barely contain herself from the torture of being let alive. A thrall. Like a hangover, she did everything she could to curve it. Even admitting to a few people that a different demon named Miranda, who she knew rather well had been playing tricks on her and nothing more, perpetuating this other shadowy succubus as a baddie. She needed people to think she would -never- turn and did so quite effectively. She catches Cormac at the docks, and crys to him in her overly tightened clothing and helmet she fascend just to keep a layer between her and the Succubus Queen as she served her new purpose. Raazi could feel Cormac's spite, she knew he was going to be the first adventurer to murder Nenufar. An inevitable feeling like something falling like an ICBM towards her queen lingering in orbit. The hero Cormac Randolph had the means to tear Miranda out of the sky.. She finds the courage to finally ask: if she can come home in a moment of clarity or fear. "Its Xaari all over again," he refused, knowing fully well how bad it'd gotten. She'd of lost it, the good man spares her but spears his heart once again. "What is it that makes it so easy for people to leave me..." Cormac now walking away with a hollow cup in one hand, weapon in the other. Raazi filled with whats left within herself, only to flounder about crying it out laced in leather and twine. Cormac swings the ax ruthlessly when he picks it up, but his arm always slacks unsatisfied after every bloodshed he commits. Less so for The Jewel, and more because- he was in the current heading to the edge of the fall no matter what, due to what had happened. He knows his way through the bard college like a grocery store. The doors like isles he could care the fuck less about until he gets to the one to refill his cup. His eyes sob, his heart knocking on the door of the bard's college trying to take flight once more. It wouldn't of mattered if She was on the other side or not. The Norns moved his feet 3 steps closer to the door. 3 times did his heart beat. 3 final words did he utter like the roar of a wolf you'll never hear again. "My name..its.." He freezes at the door. Death's rest goes empty.

The Plan Varya writes in her journal Having discussed with Juniper who would allow me access to her portal, I communicate to the people on the farm as well as my mother and the other leaders that there will be a possible exodus through the south escorted by the Farm's strongest to her portal which would lead the Grain Goddess' people to Silverymoon. The weak, frail, children, and those who cannot fight will all be preserved in these times, though more still has to be done. I will either have to speak to the leaders there, or have Juniper speak on my behalf to see if a couple of thousand people will be able to be cared for during the period of war. I will also be providing 50,000 coin for any goods and services that can help them along their way, possibly more if needed pending on the circumstances. Grain Goddess, whether you feel me worthy of holy blessing or not, I shall continue to not falter in these trialsome times and will continue to ensure the safety of your faithful

Dearest Diary, -A time to kill- N'Jast has declared war against Peltarch. I'm currently reporting at the Legion Tower. I'm expecting that we'll be mobilised to defend either the pass or Norwick. If things go they way they did in the past, Norwick will negotiate some kind of truce in order to stay out of the war. At least they will attempt to. I'm not sure if that will be possible this time. The idea of going to war again knots my stomach. I saw enough death during the last war, and I'm not as young as I was back then. Facing the horrors of N'Jast's undead and their constructs, facing the heaps of corpses pointlessly slain, a part of me feels I am not up to it. But that part of me will have to die. If war is upon us I do not have the luxury of deciding whether or not I am "up to it". I will be ready or I will die. And when my body is cast upon the pile of corpses, many more shall be piled on top of me - folks who may have lived if I had stayed alive a little longer. I feel I do not have long to make myself ready. I have purchased a new blade from Kenton Seth. It caught my eye, and when I went to test the sharpness of it's point with my finger the tip of my finger began to bleed before it touched the blade. It was as if just thinking about the dagger was enough to cut my finger! Owning this blade may help in the upcoming conflict. At the very least it would be an honour to die with such a weapon in my hand.