Hello, Everyone!
There will be no Q&A today because our D&D group just had the fight of the Century and I'm still too overwhelmed to do anything that requires thinking.
The fight was epic! Our DM is a wizard!
It'll be a long time until you get to read about it (it's one-and-a-half Arcs after we finish with Myth Adofhaer) but I assure you're going to love it!
So, anyway. If there's no Q&A coming up today, let's at least see where Mary and her friends are currently.
Last time, after having a good night's sleep, Mary got a present from her Patron - a Pocket of Holding, sewn into the fabric of her messenger bag. They tested its capabilities, had some laughs and were summoned to the elven prison to meet Dorina Dwendel. However, before they were able to, her family came to see her and occupied all of her attention.
Balaine Endoras took them aside and led them to his office, to talk about some things.
Balaine Endoras led the trio to his office and they settled on four chairs around his desk. Mary glanced at Fen’thras, flexing on its pedestal as if to attract their attention, and smiled, thinking of how it reminded her of Gillean.
“The Agents of Pamagos are truly a force to be reckoned with!” Endoras said with a smile.
“Why is Dorina Dwendel in a cell?” Mary asked, maybe a bit more sharply than she intended.
“Oh, she’s there just until we’re sure she is all right,” the Elder said. “She’s been through a lot and we needed to see how it all affected her.”
"In prison?!" Mary said.
Bruno cleared his throat and she stopped herself from saying anything else.
Balaine Endoras reviewed all that the elves knew about the case. It seemed that, while Mary and her friends were resting, the authorities hadn’t wasted their time and had investigated quite a lot.
Six years ago, while on the job, Dorina was ambushed and captured by Kloth. He’d done some kind of a ritual on her. The elves didn’t know exactly what it was, but it had included a toenail sewn into her neck. That was how Kloth had controlled her.
"Ew!" Aurum said.
“As far as we know, Maquiel had the same thing in his own neck,” Endoras said, “but when it--for whatever reason--stopped working, it just disolved inside of his body. The scar was reopened and checked after you three found it earlier. Nothing was found."
"Is he all right?"
"Oh, yes. As soon as we knew for sure that he had been controlled, we let him go. He was released from his cell this morning and right now, as we're speaking, he is being escorted to Meraket to reunite with his family."
Yet another promise fulfilled, Mary thought to herself.
Balaine Endoras continued with their findings. After Dorina and Maquiel were both under Entivio’s control, he made them put up a show to mislead the authorities. Dorina pretended to capture Maquiel, he confessed to the crimes and was put in prison. Kloth made her go back to Pamagos in order not to draw suspicion when she later disappeared. Three days after she’d arrived there, she snuck out and went back to Myth Adofhaer where she was once again under his control.
“What about Olivia?” Bruno asked. “What happened to her?”
Balaine Endoras sighed.
“We… don’t even know what she is,” he said. “We’ve never seen anything like that. It is her soul inside of that body, and it is her body, too. We’ve confirmed that beyond any doubt. But she isn’t alive. She was killed and her soul was destroyed. How it was brought back, we don’t know.”
“How long has she been dead for?” Bruno asked.
“Her body was resurrected close to her original passing eighteen years ago. As far as we can gather, she didn’t have her soul back then, and all of Correlon’s rituals and crimes were aimed at getting it back. We don’t know how he succeeded but we know that all of the undead he created were used either to experiment with their souls, or… to sustain her.”
He let that sink in.
All these people. Men, women… children! Used as living energy to keep one undead body fresh and prepared for its soul.
“What’ll happen to her now?” Bruno asked.
This was yet another thing the elves didn’t know. They had no idea if her body would remain whole, or would fall apart, now that Entivio was not here to feed her souls. Tiriel Elaire had taken it upon herself to get to the bottom of this, but until then, Olivia was under constant surveillance.
Balaine quickly filled them in on the rest of the details of the case. The four elven girls found in the laboratory were alive and getting better. Their families were with them right now. The spellcasters from Tiriel School of Magic had taken Kloth’s bone staff and were examining it to see how it worked and whether there were more souls trapped in it.
As for Kloth’s body – there was a mystery there as well. The elves’ autopsy had shown that Correlon wasn’t entirely elf anymore. He’d done something to himself and now he was part undead, part aberration, part... who knows what.
“But whatever one might say, we wouldn’t have been able to find out all of this if you three weren’t so tenatious,” Balaine Endoras said and stretched back in his chair. “You’ve put me in a good mood.”
“Well, I can certainly do something to make it even better,” Aurum said with a wink.
To Mary's surprise Balaine chuckled.
“On a different note…” Mary said, jumping to the opportunity.
She thought about all the things she wanted to learn about Myth Adofhaer, as well as the coins her friends were hoping for as a reward. But there was something else. Something that a certain Archfey needed her to do at any cost. This was the moment to shoot for it.
So, everything ended well, for what we can gather. They lived happily ever after, and the like?
Then why do we have four more parts of this chapter? What other things are there to talk about?
Let's find out together next time!
Take care and be well!
Episodes of Mary Windfiddle's story come out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide and the Glossary for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: These are my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum and Bruno) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.
