05/06/2026: The Druids Fall

Wintersplinter is already gone, its colossal form crashing through the treeline in the direction of Vallaki. Violet Robin has been sent back to the Martikov vineyard for horses. On the muddy slope of Yester Hill, the old druid still fights.

Blinsky and his monkey, Piccolo, lie where they fell — victims of the old man’s lightning. They are still, likely dying. Torgen, Feesh, and Krelldutt have closed around the druid, who has proven far stronger than his age suggests. He does not yield.

Krelldutt brings the Sunsword down in two clean strokes. The blade’s radiant light scorches across the druid’s skin and he snarls back in Druidic, his words sharp with contempt. He drives the butt of his black staff into the mud. The violet stone set at the heart of its crown pulses with a cold, pale light.

A wall of thorns erupts from the hillside. Branches thick with barbs close around Krelldutt and Feesh, shredding cloth and skin alike. The two warriors are held fast — any movement cuts deeper. The druid steps back, Torgen before him. Somewhere beyond the thorn wall, invisible to them, are Krelldutt and Feesh.

Torgen does not stop. Raging, he swings his greataxe in wide arcs, driving into the old man with the force of something that does not negotiate. The druid takes the blows, staggers, and does not rise again. As his life goes out, the conjured thorns go with him. The wall collapses, releasing Krelldutt and Feesh onto open ground.

Krelldutt moves immediately to Blinsky and Piccolo, channeling healing magic until both stir. He heals himself last.

Feesh crouches over the fallen druid and lifts the black staff free of his grip. He passes the jeweled dagger —

long, curved, with a green man worked into its pommel — to Blinsky, who tucks it into his belt without ceremony.

The group moves uphill to where three enormous standing stones rise from the earth. Each menhir bears a carving at eye level: one suggests water, another an abbey, and the third the unmistakable silhouette of a castle with high towers.

Feesh says only: “Ravenloft.”

Krelldutt turns from the stones. “We will never beat the tree creature to Vallaki.” He considers the water stone — Lake Zarovich, Tser Pool, one of the rivers. Kresk and the castle should both be avoided. Even departing now, Wintersplinter reaches Vallaki an hour ahead of them, perhaps two. “If the stones an land us somewhere close to the city, we might get ahead of it — if we are willing to gamble on where the stone sends us.”

Torgen points out, “We might just as easily land at the bottom of a lake.”

Krelldutt spreads his hand against the surface of one of the stones, and a faint, silvery light runs across it, revealing a keyhole — large, iron, and old. He steps back. “The stones cannot be used without a key. Do we have one?”

No one does.

Feesh looks toward the great blighted oak that dominates the hill’s crest. The grotesquely large cocoons hanging from its branches sway in the cold, damp air. “The druids may have it.”

At the base of the tree, the trunk has split open at ground level, and a passage disappears into the earth between two massive roots. Krelldutt reads the ground carefully. Four druids — the ones who recently attacked them — came out. Also headed out, the tracks of the old man and three wolves. Before, six or seven children went in, as did several adults. Something with three feet also entered but did not come back out. The marks of the nightmare that was tied to one of the roots above.

Krelldutt asks if they should go in. Torgen is already moving, stealthily, down into the dark.

A pair of arrows greets them. Two druids, positioned on either side of the tunnel mouth, loose from the shadows. Torgen doesn’t slow. He barrels into the first before the man can nock a second shot.

Behind him, Feesh moves forward, following the sound of combat and the faint glow of firelight deeper in the tunnel. Something catches his legs — roots, or a snare — and he stumbles, pulling himself free with effort. He can hear Torgen grunting against the same obstruction ahead. They push through.

The sounds coming from deeper in the tunnel suggest there are more opponents than they anticipated.