Chapter 32: Through the Feywild

General Summary

The following are excerpts from the lives of four travelling adventurers in the year 499:

Jacquora Flamood:

Apparently it’s a new year now. The time difference in the Fae Realm caused us to miss it. The villagers thanked us on our way out of town, though it is a shame that the time difference caused us to miss the chance to save more of them.
Our horses were sold off in the time we were gone, so we’ve chosen to use the Fae Realm to travel instead. Lily was kind enough to wait on the other side of the portal for us, and guided us up to the fae wild. Unfortunately we must rely on Leon to create horses to lessen the travel time, creating flower crowns in the meantime. Aqiatuxl’s was absolutely incredible.
The colors in this realm are very different from our own, in a way that is both fascinating and terrifying. I cannot trust what my eyes see, as our surroundings change randomly and without warning.
When we suddenly found ourselves in a forest, our path blocked by what looked like giant dandelion fluff, only alive. And then a satyr showed up, disappearing and reappearing on each of our horses within the blink of an eye. Turns out all we had to do was ask the fluff to move. This is very convenient information.
The satyr (Venali) continues to follow us as we move forward. I’m not sure if the directions he tried to give us would have been helpful or not, but Lily’s instructions contradicted him and she has been helpful so far so we continue as we were.
Venali did some hunting once we stopped to rest. I now have 6 jackalope horns. We sleep in shifts.
Sari was fucking missing this morning. I don’t know the last time I felt that much goddamn terror. I ran without thought after him, and found him outside a treehouse (?), safe and healthy. He followed that Venali bastard and refused to leave. Even followed him into the treehouse after some struggling with me. Wasn’t much choice except to follow. Then Venali changed into a cloaked person with gold hair? Who offers me fucking tea? Oh and Sari could talk. If I hadn’t lived it, I would have thought this a fever dream. Sari tried to console me at one point, but honestly that just kind of freaked me out more. I cannot figure out what I’m seeing is real. Venali disappears and reappears. I’m offered time again with someone I’ve lost, Tasha appearing in my tea. Because of course. In return I would perform an unspecified favor. I do not do unspecified, we saw how favors like that could turn out with that other piece of trash. Tasha is dead, and the dead should stay that way. Nothing good comes from necromancy. I made my denial clear, and asked Sari if he would leave with me. We left without issue.
Sari no longer speaks, which is disappointing now that it’s only the two of us. We make it back to the others, who seem to have barely moved since I left. They think I’ve only been gone a short time. It felt like all damn day. I’m starting to really hate this place.
The drain on my energy was too much, and I slept on the horse. Apparently the instructions ran out, and I’m woken up to help decide on what to do. Summoning Lily to give us directions, going forward appears to be our only choice. We found a portal in the middle of a lake, and honestly I am so done with this place I was not dealing with whatever was in that lake. We fly to the island (thank you Len) and then the damn thing moves. The island. The island moves. I’m never leaving our realm again. Fortunately the portal is right there, though we do end up in the bottom of another lake. And there’s something circling us…

Lenihlra Assim:

In the morning we left town through a crowd made up of what seemed like the whole town. I guess they were happy to be rid of the “ghosts” and boogiemen plaguing their town. At the edge of the crowd, the boy’s parents presented me with the top that once belonged to their son, a token of their appreciation. I tucked this into Sari’s bag and we made our way out of town.
As soon as we were out of sight we veered off the path and into the grasses toward the portal into the fey realm. Linking hands we stepped through the portal as one and I summoned Lili and she escorted us to the edge of Hespirius’ land. There was a weird, almost bubble like, barrier around at the point between Hespirius’ land and what lie beyond - the fey wilds. She explained that she would not go beyond this point as the fey wilds are dangerous and not somewhere she ventures often. She gave us a detailed map, warned us not to stray from the path because that could lead to never finding your way back, and wished us luck before wandering off.
Taking a deep breath I walked through the barrier and found that on the other side things seemed to right themselves and mirror more of what the realm we come from looks like (although things still had a brighter hue to them and everything still felt a little larger and brighter than life). Once everyone was through we were very careful to stay to the path and follow our directions closely. As we rode along on Leon’s phantom steeds I noticed a rustling behind us, it sounds like we had someone, or something following us. After some time some of the others noticed the noises too and Aqia called out to the sound saying that they can come out and we mean it no harm. Hearing this a small Satyr scurried out of the grasses and engaged in some lively conversation with us. He seemed very curious about us, where we were going, who we were, where we were from, and so on. He was kind of annoying if I’m being honest. We all answered minimally and evaded his ploys to try and get us to show him our map, go in a different direction, or venture from the path in any way. We went along like this with him trying his very best to be annoying for the rest of the “day” before setting up camp in the middle of the path for the night. The Satyr, Venali as he called himself, decided to camp out with us for the night and even went hunting. While he was hunting someone copied down the map and hid it away just to be sure Venali would not tamper with it while we were sleeping.
We set watch and settled in for the night. I took first watch and it was fairly uneventful although I could tell something large had moved past us as I was sitting there. Venali slept outside the tent and much to my annoyance, snored VERY loudly.
As morning came there was a bit of a commotion when Jaq noticed that Sari had gone missing and suspiciously, Venali was gone too. I summoned my dog, Gimli, and sent him out to follow Sarri’s scent. He was instructed to bark upon finding Sari. After a few tense moments of waiting we heard his bark in the distance and before we could plan anything Jaq ran off after the barking noise. Several tense minutes went by and I was starting to get worried that we would never see Sarri or Jaq ever again, when they appeared back through the tall grasses to join us once again (at least hopefully it’s still them…). Venali did not appear back with them and we did not see him again (good riddance). We continued on and I tried summoning my dog once or twice more as we continued to follow Lili’s directions to the T and every time Gimli appeared - letting me know that we were clearly missing several weeks in our realm (hopefully only weeks and not months, or worse, years).
Finally we reached the end of Lili’s instructions, but the door was not here - and a very barren wasteland area with floating islands all around was in our path forward. (now that I think about it hadn’t Venali said something about an area completely ruined by some God about 10 years ago now?) I summoned Lili and got as clear directions as we could from her before the time was up and she returned to Hespirius’ land. We were to walk straight until we reach the base of the largest floating island and then the door should be to the right of the base of this island. Quickly and carefully we walked in a straight line, the base of this island in our line of sight at all times (was that a table full of food I just saw off to the right - NO keep going forward!). We made it to the base in quick time, veered to the right and saw our way out… right in the middle of a crystal clear and still lake. That felt awfully suspicious and I wasn’t the only one who thought so - Leon summoned some sort of door, stepped through, and was suddenly on the other side. Following his lead I thought it might be nice if I could fly myself and the remainder of us across so I concentrated on this thought and uttered the only words that I could think in that moment “move like the wind” and all three of us flew across the lake. As we touched down on the other side the island started to move. Quickly, just as we had when we entered, we all linked hands and I touched the portal and… We were underwater?!
Swimming up as quickly as we could, we reached the surface. As I made it to the surface and took my first breaths of fresh air, it was clear the seasons had changed, trees that were colorful were now bare and the air had a sting as it filled my lungs. The others seemed to be in some sort of a hurry to get out of the water, so I started swimming to catch up to them…

Aqiatuxl

Keeping dates seems silly at this point. I know not how long we traveled in the fey realm. The entire journey seems simultaneously like it all happened at once, and like it happened over a very great period of time. I can hardly sort the events in my mind.
All of us made our way back to the portal. On the other side, the dryad from before met us again and led us some distance to the edge of the demesne of her queen Hesperus. Passing out of her sickly orange bubble of influence, the world around us made some small bit more sense again. This was of little comfort, as the place we’d entered was strange in a very different way.
We followed the map provided to us religiously. Nothing could tempt us from our path. I’ve heard stories of this place, people left wandering forever, never to be seen again. Best not risk it, not for anything.
A pleasant, but frankly annoying little creature name Venali started following us. The others ate some strange food he prepared, some kind of rabbit. He seemed to want to follow us and we saw no harm in this. He did try many times to get us to leave our path, but made no attempt to actually make us do so. That is until, I think, he stole Jacquora’s cat? She yelled and ran off after something, then came back with Sari. It was only a few seconds, maybe a minute, but when she returned she acted as if it had been much longer. She didn’t elaborate on what happened out there, and we didn’t press her on it. She had Sari back, and so we resumed on our path until it ended at a broken, unnatural landscape.
Lenihlra summoned the dryad again and she gave us an idea of the way forward. Again we stayed on the path, avoiding a strange unattended feast laid out, just waiting for someone to be tempted by it. Before long (or maybe it was long?) we arrived at the door back into the material plane. Unfortunately, it was on a small island in the center of a far too still, far too deep pool. Sensing something was off about this, our spellcasters expended much of their resources getting us to the island without entering the water, and we made it through the portal, hand-in-hand, just as the whole island started moving…
…and emerged underwater in the material plane. And something is in the water with us.

Report Date

05 Feb 2023