Astvanor Session 167 (7/11)

[cinaed]

Session 167: Day 27 of Saedan (7/11)

Mae claps Galowen on the side of the arm and says that it’s been a long time.

Galowen says it’s only been a couple months.

Mae says it’s been a couple months since he’s been gone from the forest but it’s been much longer since anyone from the temple has come back this way and since they’ve seen anyone of Galowen’s kind.

Galowen says he supposes that’s true. He asks when was the last time.

Mae muses and says that she can’t even remember. It was probably around when one of the last clerics was appointed, and clerics are only appointed very, very rarely. It feels like once an elf generation and those are long indeed.

Galowen asks for clarification and she explains she means a cleric of the grove, which is currently Adraetha. But there have been generations before her.

Tiffin has a coil of vines wriggling around her wrist and is clearly a human druid of some kind. It registers to Galowen immediately that as little as he knows about this place, in terms of who is here and who lives here, his cultural understanding is that humans don’t live here. Whoever Tiffin is as she slides up beside Mae, she wasn’t born here.

Tiffin puts a hand on Mae’s shoulder and says that it has been quite some time since a cleric of the Grove was appointed. Before Adraetha, the cleric’s name was Raelsavar, and before him was Saelvin. Every cleric of the grove historically is a harbinger of great misfortune to Kelfemma.

Galowen says that he’s surprised anyone does it.

Tiffin asks if he’s here for the celebration and Galowen says in a way. She asks if his friends are coming with him and he jokes that they’re leaving him there before he says of course.

She and Mae lead them through the forest, which is rocky and dense with undergrowth. There are fallen trees and trunks left to decay. Beetles and bugs skitter over the rotting wood as they pass through, survivors of the encroaching winter.

Everything is left the way that nature demands it be. There are no rocks moved out of the way, or brush that is cleared. When Tiffin leads them to a path with dense vines and bushes, she waves a hand and the vines and bushes fold back before returning to their original places after the group has passed. There is very much an intention to let nature do what it must.

Everyone except Yolov and Az quickly realizes that Tiffin knows where she is going because she is following a type of path. Every time she pauses to get her bearings, she is looking for cairns, carefully stacked flat stones. Occasionally she will spot one in the distance and then make the group’s way towards it.

Audacity notices as well that when Tiffin is crouching at one of the cairns, she’s investigating it carefully without touching it. He sees her walk and lead them all in one direction, past another cairn without acknowledging it. He starts to notice her skipping a few cairns the further they get into the forest. It’s hard to tell if she’s ignoring these cairns or missing them, though there are a few cairns that she second guesses herself about.

He can’t really gleam if she is missing them or making conscientious choices.

Tiffin talks as they all walk, Mae following behind the group to keep an eye out for people and to make it obvious they are being conducted through the woods. Tiffin explains that no one chooses to be the cleric of the grove, the position chooses the person. Only people who are chosen by Caletras can become the cleric, and only when they reach adulthood or when calamity is about to strike. It is a way of keeping Kelfemma safe.

When Saelvin ascended, his ascension foresaw many people dying in a great fire. When Raelsavar, his calamity took some time but he foresaw an invasion that happened long into his position as cleric. It was during this invasion that he died and Adraetha became the cleric.

Galowen asks who invaded.

Tiffin says that was before her time.

Yolov Messages Galowen and asks if they’re keeping quiet about meeting Viallo and helping him and if they’re waiting to speak with Adraetha first. Galowen hears the whispers in his head and then looks back and responds that they should speak with Adraetha.

As Yolov nods in acknowledgement, Galowen asks how long it’s been.

Tiffin says it’s been ten years. Mae agrees. There was a flood, but Mae was helping travelers over a fallen bridge and well it ended Tiffin’s travels there. Tiffin explains this with an affectionate look towards Mae.

Galowen says he was wondering because she knows so much about the clerics.

Tiffin says she takes in knowledge, but she doesn’t ask questions. It’s not her place.

Audacity asks Mae if she knows the year of the invasion. Mae says it was around thirty-ish years ago, give or take. Around the time the kids were born, so somewhere around there. She and Tiffin stop to take in the questions.

Galowen sees that Mae is starting to get a little agitated. Maybe it’s the smell of the familiar trees and the birds overhead. It’s all deeply familiar to him, but he remembers the days after he left, when he ran from the fire. He didn’t leave the forest alone. He was lost but another traveler was also leaving the forest, a tiefling named Virtue.

He remembers Virtue, who was about twenty years old when he met Galowen, who says that he was deposited outside the forest and abandoned as a baby. He was taken in by a general and her wife.

Galowen considers how the timeline doesn’t match up as Tiffin leads them through the darkening woods.

Yolov earnestly asks Tiffin if questions are discouraged here.

Tiffin says it’s more that she has yet to fully ingratiate herself into the community. They have more quarrels and history that people like her or him will ever know. How could she ask them questions? Occasionally she feels like a bumbling child, though she wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Yolov says he would rather ask questions and be told they didn’t want to answer than not ask anything at all. But he can see not wanting to ask the wrong question.

Tiffin says that sometimes the people here prefer to ask questions of the trees that are old here. There are some trees that are as old as when Caletras was born, though these trees are not that old.

Diana takes a step after Tiffin, and realizes where her foot has fallen there’s a broken arrowhead. Meanwhile Hava looks up through the trees and realizes they’re going further south rather than east, and Galowen realizes the same. He also hears the sudden silence of birds.

They’re not going in the direction of Kelfemma anymore. It registers in this maze of the woods that they haven’t been headed towards the community for quite some time.

When Galowen stops, Tiffin turns and says that they’re almost to the edge of it. Galowen says he doesn’t think they are, and Hava draws her father’s bow.

Mae says behind them that there’s no need for that.

Hava asks where they’re taking them and Mae says they’re taking them to the boss. Hava notches the arrow and aims it directly at Tiffin, whose playful smile drops as the vine around her wrist turns into wildfire.

She says she thinks they all know as Hava readies to shoot her.

Mae draws a longsword from her back and immediately goes for Az. She stabs him three times in quick succession. Everyone watches Hava’s eyes glaze over, and she feels her heart beating quickly, everything a terrifying blur around her. Enemies loom around her.

Audacity runs over to Mae, Hava’s hands tightening on her bow and shooting him in the back. He looks down, realizing what happened, and then strikes out at Mae with his new staff. He attempts to stun her but she resists it, and he follows it up with fists to her head.

Hava’s eyes dart around, still seeing blurry enemies. Az is the closest and she summons her pact weapon, stabbing Az with a trident. He turns invisible and teleports himself away to a nearby rock.

Tiffin watches all this play out and extends her hand above her. From her hand, wreathed in flames, lightning and clouds start to form around her hand and burst up into the sky, forming a cloud of lightning.

A lightning bolt strikes down at Diana, hitting her but mostly fizzling out on her.

Tiffin stares at her and makes an infuriated noise before she whistles and the burning tendril appears right next to her, turning into a small spirit made of flame. The wildfire spirit attacks Diana as Tiffin moves away from the Hooligans.

Galowen sends Glyn after Tiffin, who lowers his head and rams into her. The storm breaks as Tiffin is slammed onto the ground. She lashes out with flames, but Glyn manages to survive mostly damaged, badly injured but still alive. Tiffin growls out that they’re so lucky that they can’t kill him but they can burn his friends.

Galowen retorts that he can see why Virtue left and Mae asks who the fuck is Virtue. He ignores her as he studies the wildfire creature next to him. He doesn’t want to get hit by fire, so he draws ice and radiant energy to his sword and swings at the fiery vine. Both blows strike it hard, its fire beginning to gray.

Tiffin hisses from beneath Glyn not to kill her spirit. She’ll burn the forest to the ground and deliver the ashes to Elathias.

Atop of Adrin, Diana charges over to Mae. The wildfire spirit bites her as she moves away from it. Diana is breathing acid, furious, and breathes it out onto Mae, before she orders Adrin to bite her. Adrin misses with a snap of her teeth.

Az casts Witchbolt at Mae, which misses as she dodges. He sends Medrash over to sting her. Medrash stings her and poisons her. The sting hits her cheek and she swings out to strike him, dropping concentration on the spell she cast on Hava.

Yolov sends Es up above the battlefield and casts Psychic Lance at Tiffin, who is dizzied by the psychic damage. He backs away from the wildfire spirit.

Mae looks furious, and raises her hand to cast a spell, which earns her a sound strike from Audacity as Yolov Counterspells her attempted Fireball out of the air.

Audacity asks her if she would like to stop working for Elathias.

Mae looks up at Audacity and says, “You’re one of them. You’re one of the keys that we need. I’ve been working for Elathias longer than you’ve existed on this planet.” When Audacity says that doesn’t answer his question, she says fuck you. If she dies here, that’s fine.

Audacity raises his staff. The first blow sends her down to her knees, and the second blow snaps her neck. There’s something unsettling about the way she doesn’t even fight the fatal blow. From the other side of the rock they can hear Tiffin curse.

As Audacity darts over and punches the fire spirit, Hava refocuses, climbing up to the top of the rock where Glyn had charged. She knows that was her arrow in Audacity’s side. She aims her bow and fires between Glyn’s antlers.

The arrow hits Tiffin’s shoulder and she howls that this isn’t what she signed up for. She says she’d kill them all if she was allowed to as she clutches at her head and shoulder.

Galowen strikes at the wildfire spirit again and again, his sword flashing with radiant energy until it crumbles into dust.

Tiffin yowls in rage before Glyn stomps on her. There is a sickening crunch before he trots around the corner, completely covered in blood.

From his position on a rock, Az says forlornly he got stabbed many times. Hava apologizes for stabbing him as she heals him and he assures her that it wasn’t her fault.

Yolov and Galowen try to investigate Tiffin’s body but are overwhelmed by her smashed head. As they fumble with the corpse, Glyn noses them aside and dives into her pocket, chewing on a paper that they snatch from her before it gets interested in the jerky and berries in her pocket.

On Mae’s body, Audacity finds she has both the tattoos of the Sworn Edge and Elathias’s group. There are also a bunch of papers that have notes about the history of Kelfemma and about it being the twins’ birthday soon. It’s noted that the twins formally come of age this year, the changing season between youth and adulthood. In order to understand their roles in the community and what connection they have, they will be reopening the Split Home. The last bit is underlined by one of the annotators, with there being two different handwritings.

The note on Tiffin that Glyn found and Yolov gets away from him is: “The Keys must be brought alive. Feel free to kill the rest. -Heart, E.”

There is a loud rustling sound from the nearby woods.

This time when the arrow streaks through the air, it doesn’t aim to hit Audacity. It buries itself into the stone boulder.

They all see, emerging from the woods, a black-skinned elven woman and an older human woman with weapons drawn. Between them stands a very tall elven woman with a tremendous headpiece of elk horns curving back off of her head and decorated with scraps of fabric and flowers and gemstones.

She doesn’t speak, but when the elven woman aims her bow again at the group, the woman with the headpiece holds up a hand and says, “Mae, hold.”

The real Mae lowers her bow and says, “With all due respect, they’re strangers.”

The woman with the headpiece says, “No, they’re not. Is Galowen here?”

“We’re over here,” Yolov says, and Galowen waves a hand as they come around the rock.

The woman with the headpiece looks startled as Audacity steps between her and Galowen. When he refuses to stand aside, she waves a hand and wraps him in vines before she gently embraces Galowen. He gets a deep sense memory, and when she moves, he realizes it’s because the smell from her hair is the smell from every time he has visited the grove with Caletras.

Her eyes are the same color as the eyes of Caletras’ elk companion. She releases him and spreads out her skirt and kneels and bows low to the ground. She says he has been called as the protector and defender under Caletras’ command. It is her deepest honor to meet him. She wanted to do it personally. His mother has said such wonderful things about him.

She straightens and says, “My name is Adraetha. I’m the cleric of the grove. And together, we will ensure no harm befalls our people.”

Galowen says yes, he knows it will come to pass.

Adraetha says that he is the hero that Kelfemma has needed for so long. Please, let her and their commanders escort them to the central grove. She steps back and gestures at Audacity, melting the vines away. She apologizes, but he was disturbing a religious ritual.

Audacity says fair enough.

Adraetha sweeps away with an ethereal quality, clearly expecting them all to follow her.

Audacity asks what they should do about the dead bodies and the spies. The real Mae takes the notes as Yolov glances at them and confirms that Elathias annotated them but the two other handwritings are unknown.

Tiffin looks at the dead bodies and says they didn’t do a very good job. Galowen says it was pretty obvious and Yolov points out that if he knew he should have mentioned it. Galowen says it was for the bit, and Yolov says next time tell them if they’re being led into an ambush.

Adraetha looks at Galowen and asks if he’s ever led the road. Galowen says he hasn’t, and she tells him to focus. He focuses and realizes that the cairns are magically leading them through the forest.

Adraetha takes his hand and says that they should get back to the central grove as quickly as possible. After all, she promised Galowen’s mother they’d be home in time for supper.