Through their powers combined, Radegast and Bob used prestidigitation and ray of frost to make the hovel semi-habitable, putting out the fires that still smouldered after the battle with the banshee had ended. The party rested. Most of the party, that is. Emptying the contents of a still sturdy chest of drawers, Radegast dragged the wooden frame out in front of the banshee’s hovel, taking care not to trigger the alarm spells. Moving a fair distance from the rest, but still within the campfire's light, Radegast donned the jewelled eyepatch a bronze dragonborn stole from a nothic’s lair and drew the longsword from her back. Radegast swung for the Banshee’s closet and sank the longsword’s blade deep into the old, elven-crafted wood. She planted her foot against the side to claim back the blade, before driving it down again and again to destroy this once fine, elven craftsmanship. She began to sing. "Can you hear, my wrathful prayer Talos, Father, Lord of Storm Fury in my heart, Boils this young girl's blood The hurricane, the violent flood, Fire, lightning, sliding mud This one calls to know Your rage." The Song continued with each strike of the blade, quickly reducing the wardrobe into splinters and firewood as the blade grew duller and duller with each clumsy swing the half-elf made. "I am weak. I am kind. Your altar now I kneel beside. This anger that I hold No longer have I control. I strike the land. I wound a friend Destructions I must then amend. I beg Talos you to guide My hand.” Her blade arced wide, striking the side of the hovel. Another heave and the blunted longsword slammed into a dead tree, but the song continued. "Enemies, in these woods Claim a right to spill my blood It boils a seething rage. Please keep it from the earth. Let me rage. Let me smash. Loose your havoc from my fist. Let me and my kin strike Them down.” The sword snapped in two against a boulder. Gripping even tighter, Radegast slammed her fists against the stone with a mighty thunderwave spell, her song now screaming into the darkness in a near unintelligible medley of Orcish, Dwarven and Netherese. "Keep us safe. Keep us strong. Let no tree slow us down By fire and by storm Guide us safely home With this prayer, sung with force Destroyer, I call thy name Talos, I sing a song Of Storms." Staggering back from the rubble under her knees, Radegast pulled the eyepatch from her face and attempted to catch her breath. She reached to pick up the shard of her broken longsword, cast cure wounds on her bloody and blistered hands, and sheathed the wrecked blade. She’d have to have it repaired in Neverwinter. As she walked back to the camp, thunder rolled in the distance. Radegast re-entered the hovel and found a corner amid the bric-a-brac she had upended from the chest of drawers. She sat down heavily, pointedly ignoring Xylon’s worried looks in her direction. She felt something under her thigh. Fishing around in the junk, she pulled out a small oblong wooden box. Done in a silver finish, it had small brass hinges and a clasp holding down the lid. The surface of the box was inlaid with carvings of snowflakes – each one an impressive bit of woodworking. The box looked very old. Radegast shoved it in her pack and closed her eyes against the tears of rage that threatened to spill out. Bob felt very lightheaded and his eyes roll back into his head. He was suddenly transported into a high, narrow valley surrounded by three tall mountain peaks. Bob couldn’t place his surroundings – he had never seen them before, but at the very outer reaches of his memory they seemed achingly familiar. Streams from the melting snowpack sent fresh, crystal clear water cascading in rivers down the mountainsides, and the air was crisp and cool. Springtime , Bob thought, as a wave of homesickness tinged with vertigo rippled through him. The sky was clear. The sun was high. Bob flew over a settlement nestled in the valley, noting that it was populated by Wee Folk, but not folk like his friend Erwen. A different sort. As Bob arced out across the valley, he came across a strange sight. A band of vicious-looking grey dwarves were on the march, hammers in their hands and murder in their eyes. Bob circled around for another look. The dwarves were obviously intent on laying waste to the village of little people, and kept to the shadows of the mountain as they crept ever closer. Something in the sky shifted, like a prism. The sunlight was bent around a shape in mid-air that moved, sinuous, like a liquid. As if emerging from behind a curtain of clear sky, faint outlines tinged with gold began to sketch themselves in the air above the dwarves. The outlines began to take shape – the form of a wing here, the form of a horned crown there. And finally, teeth. Many teeth. And from that half-visible form, a dragon-shaped shadow blotted out the dwarven warband. Followed by a breath of golden fire. The dwarves began to scream. Bob awoke, shaking, his mouth full of the taste of soot. Erwen went for a walk in the woods outside the banshee’s hovel, taking care not to disturb the pile of shattered furniture. He walked a circuitous route around the perimeter of the clearing, unsure of what he was looking for. Sunlight strained to penetrate the leafy cover overhead, as though the forest itself was absorbing the rays before they could reach the forest floor, even in areas where the trees were widely spaced and warped by some unseen malevolence. Erwen stopped before a sturdy crabapple tree several yards from the hovel. Perhaps a change of perspective , he thought to himself. He climbed the tree. As he was pulling himself up through the thick branches, he reached out to steady himself and felt his hand pass through something hanging amid the tree limbs. He looked and found that his hand was looped through a noose of hempen rope. One of five such nooses hanging from the sturdiest of branches. None of these nooses had been in the tree the day before. “These weren’t here yesterday,” Erwen said to himself. He counted the nooses. “Ah, so there are nooses for everybody except me, I guess.” He hopped down from the tree and struck it with his walking stick. Crabapples rained down onto him. “Ouch!” Erwen rubbed his head. He turned to leave. He stopped, thinking for a moment. Turning back, he cast speak with plants on the tree. The tree’s branches shivered and there was a creaking, croaking sound. “That hurt, you mischievous little two-root!” The tree waved a menacing branch in Erwen’s direction. The druid stood his ground. “Who put those ropes up in your branches?” The tree’s leaves rustled uncertainly. “Oh, I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that .” Erwen held out a hand and conjured a woodpecker, which hopped around and fixed the tree with a look from its beady eyes. The tree’s branches recoiled defensively. “Put that away!” “What, this?” Erwen conjured a second woodpecker, which sat on his shoulder. “Or this one? Answer my question!” The tree shuddered and several leaves fell to the ground. “The…the forest runners!” “Who?” Erwen asked. “They, they run through the forest on their spindly little two-roots!” the tree stammered. “Now, where do these forest runners come from?” A third woodpecker alighted on Erwen’s bearskin hood. “Sometimes they come around to visit the ghost,” The tree said, straining at its roots as it leaned away from the woodpeckers. “Where do they live?” Erwen asked. “And when will they be back?” “They mostly come at night,” the tree said. “Mostly.” Erwen pondered the midmorning sun. “What do they look like?” “Thin…tall…” the tree moaned. It lowered one of its branches until it was about six feet from the ground. “This high. Taller than you.” Elves , thought Erwen. “Where do they live?” he repeated as a fourth Woodpecker landed on his other shoulder. The tree moved its branches to cover its trunk. “North! They live to the north!” The tree pointed a single branch northward. Erwen waved his hand and the woodpeckers disappeared in a puff of feathers. “That’ll be all for now, thanks!” He turned and walked back to the hovel, whistling joyfully. The tree shuddered. “That was a close call,” it said to itself. “Nasty woodpeckers…” Erwen walked back in to find Xylon elbows-deep in documentation, sorting through scrolls. There was a rustling sound as the wizard cocked an eyebrow at the druid. “Where were you?” Xylon asked. “I love the forest,” Erwen said and sat back, his head down. Xylon looked up as the sky darkened. A bleak, black and purple storm front was billowing overhead through the wrecked roof of Agatha’s hovel, a menacing shelf cloud that seemed ready to lean over and lay waste to the forest. Seconds later, it did. A torrential rain began to fall, turning the soot from the fires into a black sludge that flowed through the hovel to puddle at the entrance. Xylon frantically covered up his documents, stashing them away to keep the rain from damaging ink and parchment. He cast ray of frost overhead to freeze the droplets and buy him time. Erwen frowned as the storm buffeted the hovel. There were no clouds in the sky a second ago , he thought. He used his druidcraft to predict the local weather. A glowing globe, indicating clear skies for the next several hours, hovered above his palm. That’s weird , the druid thought. This is no ordinary storm. The ground shook and the darkness was momentarily banished by a series of lightning strikes, some of them very close. Erwen shook water from his bearskin hood and peeked outside. His heart sank as he saw the tree he had spoken with earlier laying on the ground, its mighty trunk split in two by a powerful bolt of lightning. Shards of wood were everywhere. Radegast got to her feet, heedless of the sheets of rain that were soaking her to her skin. The flashes of lightning revealed a serene smile. "Storms with us lads. Lets go." She walked out into the storm. “She’s gone mental,” Xylon whispered. Erwen sniffed. He could smell fire. Bundling his cloak around him, he stepped out into the clearing. Even through the storm, he could see a pinkish haze far off in the wooded distance. To the north. Already, embers were blowing in on the driving wind. “Fire,” Erwen told his companions. “Fire in the north.” Varien’s eyes widened. “What did you say?” Lightning was still striking amid the trees with almost gleeful abandon, rapid flashes of white-hot silver forging links between the dark clouds above and dark forest below. The rest of the party ventured out into the maelstrom. Xylon bowed his head and prayed to Sune for guidance. Instantly, a bolt of lightning arced out from the clouds above and struck Xylon squarely, knocking him off his feet. “What the hell?” he croaked, smoke roiling from his frazzled hair. “My friend!” Varien shouted, splashing over towards Xylon. “There’s a massive lightning storm happening to the north of us,” Erwen said. “This isn’t natural. It's supposed to be a sunny day all day today.” “You’re right,” Radegast said. “It’s supernatural. My prayer of vengeance has been answered.” “Answered by who?” Xylon gasped, trying to pat down the smoldering sections of his hairdo. “Talos!” Radegast shouted as thunder cracked overhead. “A deity that, when he calls you out, you do not wait for him to blow your house down. Because he will.” Radegast pointed to the eye of the storm in the northern distance. “We go north, and we’ll bring the storm with us!” She pulled out her lute and began playing a driving song about the hammers of the gods. She began to run north. “Today is a good day for someone else to die!” “Wait, no!” Bob said. “What about Thundertree!” “Or what about getting us out of this storm?” Alec shouted. Varien breathed a prayer to Sune, apologizing for the party showing respects to another god. Another bolt of lightning crackled and blasted Varien. “Agh!” the paladin shouted. Erwen stepped away from the two adventurers. “Guess I shouldn’t stand near you guys.” “How often do we go into battle with a god of destruction in the party?” Radegast turned and shouted from the edge of the clearing. “Now is not the time for fear or retreat. Now is the time to strike!” “Radegast might be onto something,” Erwen said. “This morning I found nooses hanging from that tree over there,” he pointed to the ruined crabapple tree. “I spoke with the tree and he said that ‘forest runners’ were responsible for hanging those nooses there. Then, this storm rolls in and one of the first lightning strikes takes out this tree.” He pointed to the north. “And now the lightning is focused on a location to the north of here.” Varien helped Xylon to his feet. “So the Eldreth Veluuthra paid us a visit last night?” the wizard asked. “Listen, I don’t want to make anyone nervous,” Erwen continued. “But I wanted you to make sure you were making decisions based on all the available information.” He bent down and set a snare for any creature that would follow them. “I’m not going anywhere unless we all go together,” Erwen said as he straightened up. “To the south is the edge of Neverwinter Wood and the ruins of Conyberry. To the north, possibly our enemies.” “We could get close enough to this lightning storm’s target to check it out,” Varien said. Bob sighed. “Agreed.” Erwen conjured a giant elk and then wildshaped into a similar form. The rest of the party climbed onto the animals and they began to head northward.