The Finding of the Grey Flame
The chamber was quiet for the first time.
The dozens of rats were gone. The Rat Queen was gone.
In the far corner of the room, the portal still stood. Framed. Dormant. Waiting.
In front of it, on the cave floor —
Three robed bodies.
You had seen them in the loot-sweep last night. You hadn't looked.
Now you looked.
Two Half-Elves. One Dwarf. The robes were not from here. Not wool. Not cotton. Lighter. Better. Wrong.
Ubys knelt over them.
Within the month, he said. Maybe less.
The Blight was all over the chamber.
It would not touch the bodies.
Ubys read the portal next. Netherese. A thousand years old. Maybe more. No keys on this side. No power-supply. No torch-stand. Whatever opens this door, it opens it from somewhere else.
These three came through. They came through, and the Rat Queen killed them.
And then, afterward, something else came down here and bound the Rat Queen on the spike.
AC took a robe. He fed it into one of the robed beings' empty backpacks. The cloak slid in. The pack felt magical. He shouldered it.
"Grab a backpack," he told you.
Ubys picked one up. "Take as much as possible. It's not often I run across unknown orders."
KeYs took the third.
There was a candle in front of the dead one's hand. Set out. Ready to be lit.
AC lit it with his flint.
The flame was small. Less bright than a candle should be. It threw a single foot of bright, four feet of dim. You could read by it. Barely.
In the smoke, AC heard a word.
"Hayfield."
Anyone within five feet of the candle heard it too.
Ubys: "Did you say 'Hayfield'?"
AC: "No, did you?"
The candle was unlit.
It had never been lit.
Everyone in the radius had a what-just-happened moment.
AC re-lit it.
Different word: "Firefly."
He counted to five. He spoke the word.
Time reset.
But only for the people standing inside the candle's radius. Moist, outside the room, didn't notice anything had happened. "You going to light it?" — "Already done it!" — Dhuxtyn, outside the radius now: "Lame prank. Quit blowing out the candle."
AC lit it again. The third word came: "Cinnamon."
Moist healed KeYs. KeYs walked out into the room. AC said the word. KeYs walked back in unhealed.
The candle un-did the seconds inside its small bright square.
And then, before anyone said it: we should stop testing this.
Two candles per body. Three bodies. Six candles in your packs now. And somewhere — probably — a third pattern. A third candle the dead ones didn't have on them.
Then there was the torch.
It was lying near the first body. Strange dark metal. Liquid coming out of it like toffee.
AC tried to light it with flint. No.
"Fire-Boy, can you light it with magic?"
Moist's Druidcraft — no.
A normal torch held to it — no.
Ubys's Sacred Flame — no.
Falkor breathed on it — no.
Moist's familiar breathed on it.
It caught.
Sparks first. Then a shadowy grey flame that did not throw heat. It threw dim light. But for those of you with darkvision the dim was bright.
You walked the torch around the chamber.
The Blight fled from it.
You walked the torch over to the Rat Queen's body.
The Rat Queen burned in monochrome. No heat. No fumes. Almost no light. She was unmade.
Ubys stopped AC from putting the flame to the robed dead. He said his prayer over them instead. He Decomposed them with reverence — leaving a trace, leaving a remnant, leaving something an unknown order's living members could come back for.
AC sketched the bodies.
AC sketched the portal.
You took everything portable.
You walked back up.
At the Toke Inn, you took a Long Rest.
Ubys climbed the rookery stairs to where Jorry had been quarantined.
He told Rhovan about the torch on the way up.
"He is time trying anything," Rhovan said.
So Ubys tried.
He held the grey flame to Jorry's body and worked his healer's craft through the flame.
The Blight let go.
It nearly took Jorry with it.
He fell into a coma. His chest still rose. The Blight was gone.
It is the first cure of record.
You will ride for the auction in the morning.
Next session: the road south, the cut tree, and what's hiding in the woods near the Heiress's manor.