In the pre-dawn light the group rechecks their belongings
and heads out of the village. The bearded, dreadlocked Neanderthal gives the
group a glare as they pass him. They meet the chieftain and several warriors on
a ridge outside the village. The old man seems to stare down at the mass of
people and has a quiet conversation to himself.
“Are we ready?” asks Siqua, not at all confident that the
old man can survive the trek.
“Let’s move.” Says the old man.
The group settles into its usual formation and begins
walking.
“The hell are you going? Get back here.” The old man
complains. With a gesture the man casts a spell. Smoke begins to rise from the
ground and takes the form of spectral elk. “Get on, we haven’t got all summer.”
For most of the group this is the first time they’ve ever
ridden anything. The sensation is strange.
With these mounts, the typically seven day trek is completed
in three.
As the group approaches the bison sculpture, Lion Sails the
Sea dismounts and makes an offering of sage and tobacco. The group walks across
the field of bones without so much as disturbing a stone. As the chief crosses,
however, the bones quickly animate and swarm to the old man.
Fearing the untimely demise of either one power or the other, the group stares, transfixed.
The skulls nuzzle the decrepit old man and as he strokes the
bones, flesh and fur fill in like water, leaving swathes of whole, white hide visible;
muscle clearly moving beneath.
The group enters the cave and dons their heavy furs. Nugi
and her two children – Siqua’s followers – make a makeshift camp under the
slightly glowing spirit tree. Her eyes are wide, too much of the white is
showing. Siqua and her eldest son calm her, but her anxiety returns as she
watches Siqua walk through the “Ice” portal with the rest of the group.
The group walks through the barrier. The old man hobbled through the portal, but
the bear creature emerges from the other side. Across the trackless snow ahead
of them the trunk of the great tree stands in the distance. Pkuma spots
something moving amongst the roots again. It’s roughly the size of a man,
though it’s difficult to tell what manner of creature it is. Once brought to
the attention of the group, the bear creature points its bony snout toward the
tree and says something unintelligible to the Neanderthal warriors. They turn
and immediately cross back through the portal to the tree room.
“I need them back in the village. There is something alien
here. I must destroy it.”
With that, the creature lunges forward flying down the hill
on four limbs. The group struggles to keep up through the high snow, each
adapting in their own way. Steam rises from the broken snow behind the beast
and the vapors for semi solid wolves, fast on the trail of the bear. Pkuma
grabs onto the fur of one the spirit creatures and clings for dear life as he
is carried forward with such force the wind stings his face.
The group watches as the rump of the bear creature vanishes,
swiftly followed by the three umbral wolves and the pygmy atop them.
The group comes to the point where the tracks vanish and
find a great hole in the ground made by the space between the roots of the
tree. From the claw marks gouged into the wood, it is clear the bear-thing
jumped down and was followed by the wolves.
The group makes their way down the crevasse and follows the
tracks while, Pkuma suffers the full effect of violence in the
spirit world. The wolves he has mounted run in all three dimensions along
vertical and upside-down surfaces. They stay close to the bear, which seems to
be running on its own vector. To Pkuma’s horror, a creature like the one slain
in the portal room rears up out of the woodwork and attacks the bear-thing.
With one swipe of its paw, the bear-thing separates the underbelly of the
creature from the rest of the carapace. Its intestines spill out and a deep,
purple ichor splashes the wood in the tunnel.
The bear-thing did not even break its gait.
Eventually the bear-thing, the wolves, and Pkuma reach an
entry way into a large chamber. Two stone pillars hold create a gap in the
twisting roots and some kind of magical field prevents further travel into the
depths of the tree.
The group arrives as the wolves’ spectral forms dissipate
and return to the Aether and find the bear-thing clawing at the magic wall. As
the group struggles to come up with an answer, they hear the sound of hundreds
of tiny claws scratching through the boughs surrounding them. A gap, not much
bigger than a dog, shoes another of the insect like creatures that attacked the
group not long ago.
Thinking quickly, Siqua ensnares the beast in the roots of
the great tree and Poma and Pkuma go to work cutting it to pieces. The struggle
is for naught, however, as the moment one Pkuma’s arrows pierces the creatures
scaly hide, the fight ends. A violent sucking sound buffets the group and the
creature collapses in on itself. After a quick red flash, nothing remains and
Pkuma’s arrow falls to the ground.
“Well, damn.” Says Broken Clay. “Where did you get those
arrows again?”
“They were just laying behind some of the roots in the tree
chamber.” Replies Pkuma.
Looking closer, Broken Clay uses his spellcraft to determine
the arrowheads have been enchanted to dismiss their target back to whichever
plane they originated from. "This is serious magic... I mean whomever wove this spell knows what they're doing."
Sensing an opportunity, Pkuma touches an arrow to the
magical barrier barring the path. With a whisper the field vanishes and the
group passes into the chamber.
They look into the circular room and see that it is nearly
perfectly spherical. The bottom of the chamber is hard stone, covered in loose
bones. Standing in 15 foot increments are large touchstones like the one the
Neanderthals were dragging. They are spread out in a grid, twenty by twenty.
There is little light in the area, and Melvi casts dancing
lights, much as he did the first time he visited this room. Again, the lights
float up and are absorbed into a ball of roots or antlers that act as a
chandelier. As the light disperses to other chandeliers, the dim light outlines
the movement of dozens of the black horrors on the curving walls, crawling into
and out of the intertwined wood.
While the room is still too dark to see fully across, the
outline of something massive shudders against the far wall, and a wet thump shakes
the ground the group stands on…
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