Astvanor Session 174 (11/7)

[cinaed]

Session 174: Day 28 of Saedan (11/7)

Yolov seeks out Galowen who is with his mom, getting his hair braided.

He says that he’s been thinking about Endurance and the prison and how Viallo and the others didn’t even know that they were warlocks. He suggests that Galowen use his divine magic to check the council in the morning for any trace of fiendish pacts, in case there are some unknowing spies among them.

Galowen says if they’re warlocks, then wouldn’t Elathias already know what he needs to know? When Yolov points out that the false Mae and Tiffin seemed to know only partial information, which they could have gotten from previous captives or Elathias’ previous time in the Grove, Galowen says they should ask Az if his patron was able to spy on his thoughts.

After they’ve had dinner, Az gathers everyone in an empty tent, leaving Medrash outside the tent to guard them and give them privacy. Then he closes the tent flap and turns to the group.

Az says he mentioned to Audacity that he thinks it might be better to find Elathias first and launch their attack.

Hava says she’s not opposed, but Galowen says he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, there’s too many variables and they don’t know where Elathias’ people are. Yolov says that they know where false Mae and Tiffin were leading them north, but Audacity points out that’s a lot of north.

Az says that he was hoping to ask Cal’travor and perhaps they could use Telepathic Bond while they’re searching for Elathias’ army.

Yolov tells them the limitations of Telepathic Bond is an hour, and then they all discuss the option of talking to Cal’travor to see which option would cause the least amount of deaths.

Yolov looks at Hava and asks if she thinks it would be helpful talking to Cal’travor. She says that Cal’travor might be able to give them information that’s confusing or cryptic but it’s worth a shot. Audacity asks if she can divine anything herself.

Hava hasn’t had her new status from her mother for long enough, but she knows she can cast Divination. She goes to the nearby creek, closing her eyes and focusing on her breathing. She’s meditated dozens of times in the past, if not hundreds as an elf going into a trance, but she’s very rarely meditated like this and never had this intention to reach out. This was never her job or her deal.

For the first couple minutes it feels a little unsteady, hard to focus and hard to wrap her mind around it. Then she feels herself slipping closer to this distant and almost ethereal feeling. It feels like her hands through the water are reaching for something she’s struggling to grasp, like an eel in the water.

It takes the full ten minutes before she can find her consciousness latching onto the thing wriggling away from her. She feels jolted and pulled underwater from a cold babbling brook to the impossible deep pressure of the deep, deep ocean.

When she opens her eyes there is an impossible stretch of ocean beneath her. Floating in front of her is one of the sea witches. Her hair threads out like ink in the water as she tilts her head and considers Hava.

She tells her to ask.

Hava greets her first. Then she thinks for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase her question. At last she asks if they should go after Elathias first and avoid a battle at the Grove.

The sea witch spreads out her fingers and her arms, tilting her head back as if she’s basking in the sun. She says, “The outcome which you seek is found in the north. Suffering and death cannot be avoided, but a way in the north lives hope.”

Hava says that’s good to hear and asks if there’s anything else.

The sea witch looks at her for a moment before she says that the chance comes, a fate Hava could not escape, redemption in the form of another. Hava clarifies whether it’s for her or a more general you and when the sea witch says for her, she asks what she did to deserve that. The sea witch says nothing.

After another moment Hava says thank you and that this was helpful, actually.

The sea witch says that in the north, protect the tree.

Hava emerges from the water with a gasp. Her hair is completely blue now.

When Hava tells them what the sea witch says, Audacity tells them that Esrani spoke to him in Radiscune. One thing was that the souls come from the trees and to look at the eyes.

Galowen knows things specific to this region and to his faith. According to the general method through which the wood elves were created is that Caletras was the first wood elf. She was created out of the last surviving tree from the very first forest after a fire claimed most of the original forest. One tree stood alone and Relatya drew forth Caletras.

Caletras was tasked with creating guardians of the forest. In the order to do so, she was given the ability to draw life from the earth. From trees and stones and soil, she made the wood elves and the firbolgs as the guardians of the forest.

In the center of the Grove, the most well guarded place, is a very well-protected, very ancient tree. His mother had told him once when she was telling him about the Grove where she was born that it was built on holy ground, built where Caletras first stepped foot in the world. The Grove is a place of rebirth and hope.

Some believe Caletras would return if she was ever needed in her entirety, if the souls of the forest and the woods needed her, she would return through the tree she was born from. He realizes if that’s true, then that tree needs to be standing.

The Grove works in structure and space as a cone where it seems to get narrower from the northernmost part. They had gotten a glimpse of the ancient tree roots where Adraetha lives.

Galowen realizes that’s where the Tree is and where the Tree is being protected and guarded. They are protecting the place of Caletras’ birth. When Esrani said protect the trees and the souls come from the trees, Galowen knows that despite fires burning some of the forest during Terran’s era, that many of the trees currently standing are likely the ones where the firbolgs and the wood elves were birthed from. This is what Elathias wants, to destroy the connection and the tree that is Caletras’ birthplace.

Audacity says he thinks that he thinks the sea witch’s warning meant they should stay to defend the Grove, while Yolov says he thinks that it meant they should go to the north and defend the Tree, but they all agree that they should speak to Cal’travor first before they make any decisions and speak to the council in the morning.

They go to Adraetha’s home, where she is still fussing over Cal’travor. She looks immediately worried and asks if there’s been movement. Yolov quickly assures her that no one is in immediate danger but they did gather new information they wanted to discuss with her and Cal’travor before the council.

Galowen uses his divine sense. Az lights up like a tree with fey energy, but the twins have an extremely celestial energy as well.

Cal’travor says he thinks they’re here for him, but they will tell him if he’s wrong. Yolov says he’s right, before he looks at Galowen.

Galowen says they’re trying to figure out the best thing to do. Cal’travor asks their options and Galowen and Yolov ask which is better for the Grove and its people: to stay here and defend the Grove when Elathias attacks during the ceremony or go seek him in the north and attack him before he can attack the Grove.

Cal’travor says they can intercept Elathias, but he’s too far away right now. They can only intercept him when he’s coming to the Grove. He moves when the ceremony’s preparations start so he can get there before the ceremony is over.

Hava asks him if he knows how Elathias is spying on them, and Cal’travor says he doesn’t, they have some nondetection and he can’t see them. It’s not any of the Hooligans though since Elathias arrives towards the end of the ceremony even when they don’t come here.

Galowen asks if they can know what happens in the ceremony. Viallo begins to prickle, but Adraetha puts her hand on his knee and explains that not even she knows the entirety of the ceremony, but they will open the deepest part of the tree where Caletras was brought into the world. Then it is the duty of their children to enter and take part in a gift that Caletras left for them long ago.

Audacity is wide-eyed at this.

Galowen asks if this happens with every child or every generation.

Adraetha says no. She leans forward and puts her hand on Galowen’s and says that the world has never been so in need that Caletras has both a cleric and a champion at the same time. The world itself has never been so at risk. This is something different. If this is what Elathias means to stop, it means that the ceremony must happen.

She squeezes Galowen’s hand and says that the hope of their people lives in her. Caletras is trying to make them a promise that cannot be broken. She brought Galowen here.

Galowen says if she brought him here, he doesn’t think he can leave.

Adreatha says if they feign the start of the ceremony, they can also ensure their guards and soldiers are able to corral all of their citizens into a central arena and ensure no harm will come to them.

They gradually compose a plan to fake the ceremony and allow the Hooligans and Adraetha to confront Elathias and his people at the Tree. Adraetha says that it is probably silly, but Elathias used to mean everything to her and she wants to see him again.

Yolov says that it’s not silly at all, he’s just sorry Elathias wasn’t worthy of her.

Adraetha calls him sweet.

Audacity says that she chose great for her actual partner, Viallo is great, which makes Viallo preen and Adraetha smile and agree that she chose a wonderful partner.

The next morning, they join with the council, where Galowen casts his divine sense and finds no fiendish pacts among them. Yolov gives them the rundown of what to expect from Elathias attacking, his fiend pact and propensity for fire, and the warning about the soul steel constructs. It’s decided to begin prepping for the ceremony. In order to ensure safety, it is no longer a ceremony but a state of emergency. Before anything officially begins they will collect all the civilians into the town center where everyone gathers together for meals, where Galowen sat and had dinner with his mom for the first time since the fire. It’s the place where everyone has had quiet moments.

Then the Hooligans join together and divy up the potions and Asa’s protective scrolls as the fake preparations begin.

It starts with Adraetha starting small fires like little campfires. They’re small fires around the entrance that had once been under tremendous guard. There are no fences here to separate the deeply intimate space, built on the understanding that what is sacred. Not everyone has shared in this belief, they know.

After the fires are lit, Adraetha leads them all into the deepest and furthest north point of the Grove. In the center stands a tree. It is old and large and filled with this aching sense of history. There is something old here that they can feel in the earth itself.

The center of the tree has a large seam-like scar, as though it once opened like a seam and then knitted itself closed again. They can feel the ancient magic and longing within it as they approach. There is an almost mournful feeling that accompanies it, a distant sadness that lives within this tree, like a homesickness that bleeds off of it.

Galowen feels the heaviness in his stomach. It feels the same way it did when he heard the birdsong in the morning and realized why it sounded different and wrong. He’d realized the birdsong sounded weird because they weren’t the same type of birds he knew. Morning sounds different when you’re far from home. It feels like a rich visceral homesickness for a place and a time that both he and the tree can never return to.

It clings to this tree in a way that makes it feel more alive than it should.

Adraetha, flanked by her children, approaches the tree. Adraetha kneels first, whispering under her breath offerings and prayers to Caletras at the place of her birth.

Galowen can feel the hope and longing and the deep mournful sadness that effuses the space. It is old and foreign and different from the energy that permeates the rest of these woods. It is Caletras’ life in a way that he’s sensing, but he recognizes this feeling as well. He felt it piecemeal and smaller in his youth when all it felt like a quiet sadness in a quiet room, the graves and tombs beneath the family temple.

His mother had once mentioned this was the place where Caletras was born and where she would one day be reborn. A place of rebirth. He gets a sneaking suspicion that this feeling of grief and sorrow means that this is both her birthplace and where she died.

The preparations have begun.

And so they wait, Audacity and Galowen applying the oil of slipperiness to each other and then Audacity climbing to the high branches sixty feet above the group to act as lookout.

Then they hear Cal’travor gasp a sharp breath and lean forward from where he was kneeling. His hand snakes out and points through the Tree, subtly and quietly, towards the other side of it.

Audacity looks at these treetops and the blanket of forest beneath him. He watches and eventually and inevitably he sees the faintest trickle of smoke. He knows what a campfire and a forest fire looks like. This smoke moves, the smoke of machines, the off-gasping steam that moves steadily towards them all. It grows in size as it gets closer and closer.

They have an option now to engage Elathias before he gets to the Tree. They can meet him with the Tree to their back or wait until he comes upon them.

Yolov casts Telepathic Bond and Audacity tells them all what he’s seeing.

Adraetha will leave the twins here to guard the Tree and go with the Hooligans to confront Elathias and his army. She has an unshakable faith in Caletras to protect her children here.

The group moves as stealthily as possible, Diana practically disappearing into the woods as they try to intercept Elathias two hundred feet from the Tree.

Elathias is not trying to be stealthy. They can hear the cracking of stone and wood, a callous crunch underfoot. There is nothing but noise of destruction and death coming for the Grove and the Hooligans.

Eventually they reach a point where the trees break into a small clearing. Ahead of them, they see an army of constructs, large, huge, metallic creatures that lumber forward and topple saplings and half-grown trees. The constructs lunge forward as small scrabbling almost spider-like creatures move at their feet, the latter familiar to the group as the spider constructs that exploded on them in the past.

Lastly there are six huge ballistas.

Flanked by these ballistas, arms crossed, is one wood elf, Elathias.

Audacity and Galowen have seen him before, but to everyone else this is the first time they have seen him as anything more than a sketch from Audacity’s hand.

Elathias spreads his hands and says they’re in his way.

Galowen says he’s in theirs.

Elathias says then they should go around each other.

When Galowen says that’s not happening, Elathias says that’s unfortunate. He doesn’t want to hurt Galowen. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

Galowen says he doesn’t want to explain how wrong he is.

Elathias says he was promised this place and to cut the roots from Caletras’ tree. He was promised, he continues, but Audacity interrupts to ask who was lying to him. Elathias says that he wasn't lied to. Once he gets all the pieces and tears the final piece from that bitch’s tree, he’ll get access and he’ll destroy her mortal body and then kill her in the heavens next for everything she took from him.

Galowen looks towards Adraetha as she steps around the Hooligans to confront Elathias.

Elathias’ face goes pale at the sight of her as she says, “Elathias. She didn’t take anything from you. Everything that’s happened has been your own hand and your own doing. I’m asking you to stop.”

Elathias whips his head immediately towards Galowen and asks if he thinks bringing her here would stop him. He can control himself enough to keep from hurting her.

Galowen says she wanted to come. What will stop him is this, he adds, drawing his sword.

Elathias gestures towards the closest ballista. It begins to aim as he begs Adraetha to step aside, but Adraetha says that she will not let him pass her.

Elathias looks between her and Galowen. Then he cracks his neck and says then after he kills them, he’ll drag her back to watch as he drags the last of Caletras’ soul from that tree.