Episode 3: The Fake Child

The hideous troll woman or hag, as Nef later told me, stood there with another child in a sack over her shoulder. At that moment without speaking... much... we decided the child’s safety was paramount.
 
Nef began to negotiate with the hag in her own language, which only he knew, well, of us. I mean more people know the language. Duh. Anyway, at one point it went south and we sprang into action.
 
We sent Gray with Throut, Thea and the other child, whose name I had missed, south around the boulders and attacked. Theren disappeared and reappeared from shadows behind the hag, trying to get the child free. Skathor tried to help and I distracted her, by attacking her from the other side. Nef shot his crossbow at her, wounding her as well. With teamwork and time we got the child loose and it ran off with Throut back to town and the Green Door Tavern.
 
But the hag disappeared. Even though it was late we searched the place. I was tempted to go to sleep and come back in the morning, but Nef was insistent about possibly more children, but I think mostly about treasure. I think the children thing was to motivate Skathor, Theren and I.
 
Theren doesn’t say much, but sometimes I think he agrees more with Nef’s greed than I do. But looking at things, Nef and Theren both did the right thing without clear reward which makes me think that perhaps greed less important to them than I thought. It is nice to see no matter how mixed the motivations.
 
So, we found a child tied up and rescued him and returned to the Green Door. We also found some bottles and a fancy dagger I gave to Nef for now. I almost forgot that part. So we sent the new kid back to his parent with Throut.
 
We slept, it was so nice. It’d been so long. I awoke first to find Thea upset and staring off into space. She eventually told me she saw the tied up kid that we found die, torn apart horribly... so I was confused for a minute and then I realized, maybe the new kid was the hag that disappeared in magic disguise. I woke up the others for an uneasy confrontation.
 
So we explained to Throut on the way, but left him outside as we tried to confirm our suspicions with the family and the hag in disguise. Nef tried pretty hard, he did a pretty good job but they just couldn’t believe the hope of their boy back could be dashed. So Nef did some kind os spell that made them sleep.
 
Skathor pulled the poor parents away as we attacked the little boy. It was weird for a second but it revealed itself as the hag. The battle was very fierce and she clawed me once so fiercely I nearly fell. The pain was very bad. But in the end Theren cut off her head and Skathor burnt the body with his holy magics just in case.
 
And the sun had barely risen.