It's Not Easy Meeting Greens!
You woke at the forest's edge. The wyvern was Decomposed. The fire was out.
The forest crowded the light at its border — light-choked, like the trees were drinking it.
Things paced you from inside the tree-line. Eyes in shadow. They didn't approach.
Lessie offered a piece of jerky.
A moss-coated dog took it from her hand.
Ubys called like a raven and the rest of them eased forward. One had a name — Rufflerinsky. The pack ranged ahead on the path and within a few hundred yards you understood: they were leading you.
The path opened.
A meadow. A lake. A small island in the middle. A single huge tree on the island, branches hung with purplish flowers — flowers those of you with Fey blood recognized. (AC recognized them, too.)
At the entrance, a statue.
No tool-marks. Nothing carved. The figure unmistakable: Lynx the Gnome Druid.
Ubys and AC walked toward the tree.
A hundred feet out, Ubys hit a wall.
Invisible. Hard. The kind of hard that bruises a face.
AC felt it too — not stopped, but actively pushed against — and he masked the pain and walked through.
Ubys remembered, then. The slaying of Bahamut. The Shadar-Kai's role in it. The Harpers raising wards barring Shadar-Kai from certain consecrated places.
Ubys is a Shadar-Kai.
He waited at the perimeter while the rest of you went on.
The tree had a dagger in it.
Wicked-looking. Wrong-looking. KeYs knew it. So did Falkor. So did Teppo. So did anyone who'd grown up on stories of the Second War of the Lance.
Tahkisis' Kiss. The God-Killer.
Embedded in the heart-tree of Lynx's grove.
Dhuxtyn examined the statue up close. Extremely intricate. No tool-marks. No carving signs at all. The whole grove was grown, not made.
Teppo said, quietly: "This is the closest I have ever known anyone to get to the tree or the dagger."
Moist and AC walked to the shore.
Falkor sensed it just before it surfaced.
A green dragon — ancient green — rose out of the water.
A Greatwyrm.
"Stop right there…"
Her name was Old Gnaw-Bone. Claugiyliamatar. She wore a cold-iron necklace at her throat — not unlike the one AC cannot remove. A mental binding. A penance.
She looked at KeYs's story and said "Yes — and also no…" She looked at Falkor and said "Interesting color. I haven't seen that in ages." She told Moist she eats Sons and Daughters of Vlokgar when they come too close to the tree.
She is the guardian of this place.
She is also, the way she said it, near the end of her sentence.
AC tried to address her in something private — and they settled on Draconic — and he asked her about the bindings.
Hers.
His.
The session ended there, with her answering.
Next session: Old Gnaw-Bone, and what she knows about godsparks.