The Parting of the Ways

Military action

The Council of Dragons and The Fey Court go to war.

Indigo rides Shadow Braes onto the shore of The Summer Palace at top speed, sending the amassed shadar-kai, eladrin, werebears, hags, and other smaller fey running. He doesn’t give them any mind as he dashes inside the palace and runs face first into Mesikammen, The Bear King. The Bear King welcomes Indigo jovially, but Indigo demands to speak with the entire Fey Court. The Bear King leads him to the central-most part of the castle, where the Moonlit King converses with Ulorian, the River King, looking shabbier and more defeated than ever before. Between them, they have a case full of nine shadow seeds. Indigo warns them of the incoming dragon attack. The Moonlit King commands Indigo to tell the Fey Ladies what is coming and produces Gith’s staff from his robes.   “They must not know we have this.”   The party rides on Cerulean’s back over the ocean. Daryl gets a sense from her that she’s happy to be flying into battle with them again. She missed this. Ozan and Cyprium Aes fly close to the party. He tells them he’s been investigating Lawrence Aarden and Virescent. He thinks they have a different reason for attacking this place today. Jett’s bracelet activates and she’s able to speak with a member of the Horizon Walkers. The devils are attacking the edge of the Plane of Earth. They need all hands on deck. She regretfully says goodbye to the rest of the party and allows herself to be shifted to another plane.   They get closer to the island and Leonis comes over to speak to Mirian. Since he can sense all of the Moonlit King’s allies, literally everyone on the island, he should be the one to dictate how they attack. Mirian lets the weight of responsibility fall on his shoulders and accepts it. The dragons fly and lay waste to the beach, the castle, and one of the floating towers.   In the castle, Indigo must get to the Fey Ladies who have sequestered themselves in a magical tower. He runs for a door to take him there, but the ceiling collapses. He shapeshifts into a bird and flies through the dragon’s attack to get into the collapsing tower. Indigo breaks down the door to the Fey Ladies, Sarastra the Queen of Night and Magic, Nicnevin the Queen of Witches, and Morinn the Snow Queen, just in time and, as soon as they recognize what is happening, they teleport him with them back to the men. She puts a hand on the Moonlit King’s shoulder and moves it down to the staff so they both control it.   “End them all.”   Mirian feels whole swaths of Fey allies vanish, including Shadow Braes. Then, watches a portal open to the Shadowfell and drop Braes right onto Ivory and Snowhide. More and more portals drop stryx, shadar-kai, and eladrin onto their dragon allies. Two monolith footmen drop onto Cerulean to fight the party, but they throw some rope around her and hang on so she can barrel roll them right off.   Then the tentacles of The Kraken rise from the ocean and strike Cerulean.   The Fey Lords step out onto the front steps of the Summer Palace and Indigo sees Virescent and Aarden break off from formation to land near the western end of the castle. Sanguine and Koster Mayhew recognize the Queen of Night and Magic as the most powerful Fey Lord and careen down to kill her. However, she simply raises and hand and utters the spell dominate monster.   Mirian realizes as the party fights the kraken that he doesn’t sense it as an ally of the Moonlit King at all. What is it doing here? Seolfor and Ilmatar come round Cerulean and help fight the Kraken off. Cerulean blasts it with lightning and Daryl joins in for good measure. The kraken swims away, defeated-- and Sanguine attacks Seolfor.   Indigo can’t get Aarden out of his head so he goes to look for him, leaving the Fey Lords casting some strange magic onto Gith’s staff. The Queen of Witches starts to chain lightning from one dragon to the next while the Snow Queen starts up a blizzard. Finally the Queen of Night and Magic brings meteors crashing down onto the dragons from above.   Cerulean swings around to throw the party onto the beach and takes the full force of the meteor swarm. As they regroup they see all the dragons fighting Sanguine and Shadow Braes, meteors, the elements, and Sable leaving the battle altogether.   The Queen of Night and Magic asks the Moonlit King about Braes and he commands the dragon to them. As she regards him, her wedding ring, the 24-Carat Star, begins to glow brighter and brighter. The light starts to shed Braes’s shadows-- until she shields it. For a moment he was being freed of his affliction, and if the party can get to the ring they can finish it.   Indigo finds a hidden door propped open. Inside, a room dedicated to a strange red circle in its center. No matter how you look at it, it looks two-dimensional in a three-dimensional world, and Aarden is about to take hold of it. Indigo attacks Aarden.   The Queen of Night and Magic calls Sanguine back to her and makes him swallow a shadow seed. She then descends darkness onto the beach, spitting the party up. Koster Mayhew breaks through the darkness, overwhelmed by Saguine’s domination and the shadow seed, not to mention dealing with his own issues, he attacks Daryl. Daryl casts confusion and watches him walk away. Snowhide and Danger meet up, just in time for the Snow Queen to attack them. She demands vengeance for Snowhide killing her son when she was the berserker. She wants to kill Earlang. Danger rages and fights her with Snowhide. She calls Ivory in to bulldoze the Fey Lady out of their path. She and Danger realize she has to go, to protect Earlang, so she goes to leave with Ivory.   Mirian finds himself fighting shadar-kai and eladrin back-to-back with Cole Mirari. They both apologize for their relationship and makeup as friends. Then the River King cuts through to attack them both.   Aarden rants that he always knew Indigo would be the last thing to stand in his way. After he stole the River King’s land and titles, brought a kraken into the material plane, ordered it to kill Birinj to weaken the dragons, then forced them into this conflict too early when they would surely lose. Indigo was the only X factor standing in his way. Somewhere deep inside Indigo a spark of emotions flares to life and he unloads on Aarden, leaving him for dead. The castle shudders and he heads back toward the battle.   Mirian, blade to blade with Ulorian, tells the Fey Lord he’s his son. Ulorian looks upon Mirian and immediately switches sides. Paths of water float around the party and lead them out of the darkness to the Queen of Night and Magic. They follow it out, but Shadow Braes drops between them and her.   Indigo finds a shadar-kai pinned down by a piece of the roof in the center of the castle with Gith’s staff beside him. They beg Indigo for help. They were ordered to slam the staff down in the center of the room when ordered, but now they cannot do it. They ask Indigo to carry out the mission.   Shadow Braes prepares his breath weapon when-- Cerulean slams into him for a fight. The party moves through the dragons’ legs. Using his trusty driftglobe to blind her, Mirian swiftly moves around Sarastra and grasps the 24-Carat Star off her hand. He picks its cover off and points it directly at Braes. It shines so brightly that all his shadows peel off. He’s freed.   The Fey Lords call for the staff. Indigo slams it to the ground. Four pillars erupt, enveloping him. Four portals to the four elemental planes. Giant super monsters start slowly moving through them into the material plane.   Leonis and Gould come in hot to push the Fey Lords out of the party’s way. He orders the party to stop whatever is happening now. Daryl realizes he saw this before, albeit a smaller version when Gith made the new dragon eggs. He knows what it looks like inside and can dimension door there. Braes tells them that’s where Indigo is. He asks them to buy him time to fly up and over the portals. If they can draw blood from Indigo then he can force him through dragonbirth and free him. The party agrees and dimensions doors their way in to finally face Indigo.   Indigo fights Daryl, Danger, and Mirian full force but they overpower him and draw blood from him. Braes drops down onto him, puts his blood to Indigo’s, and commands him to submit before breathing fire onto him. Indigo reforms as the Brass Dragonborn, and is himself once more.   They break Gith’s staff, but the portals only shift instead of breaking. Entrances open for the party to four different gyrospheres in strange places. An island in an endless sky, a rock over the ocean, a deep dark cave, and a burning desert. Daryl takes the gem from Gith’s staff, but doesn’t know how to use it to stop all this. Indigo tells the others that the Fey Lords connected it to these receivers in the elemental planes so these portals would never stop. But all they have to do is break the receivers to stop it.   Daryl walks into the plane of water, Indigo enters the plane of air, Danger steps through to the plane of earth, and Mirian approaches the receiver in the plane of fire. They all destroy the receivers in front of them.   And then the portals behind them close.