hye :>

Ignatius awoke alone in the darkness after a cloud of noxious gas knocked him, and the rest of the party, out. He started to explore the empty cavern, praying out for any help. He was answered by the disembodied Auril, who told him she was far away but believed he would make it out. 

Alderiche, by contrast, continued to needle Ignatius to lean into the hunger as he walked through the cavern and begging for the son of the Frostmaiden. Ignatius pointedly resisted, stumbling into Tadgh and enraging Alderiche in the process. In response, Alderiche went to bite the two of them and caught Tadgh, somehow progressing the deep curse to stage 4 in the process. He took this bravely before observing with his near 6th sense that there were a handful of undead creatures scattered throughout the cavern. The party, now back on its feet, split up to attempt to deal with them.

This took some amount of running around, with Ignatius nearly getting knocked out again. He prayed to Auril one more time, who promised she had someone in the area coming. The avatars of Alderiche began to fall one by one, including to said cavalry—a stranger in an owl mask and a great feathered cloak. After a brief standoff with Lucretia, they took off together to help take out the other avatars of Alderiche. 

Meanwhile, Ignatius faced down against one last one but wound up getting knocked out. He woke up to an open ribcage with a great mass of slime and meat biting into him using his own ribs as teeth. Alderiche boasted out that he was at last granted a body, and sucked Ignatius down into the floor. 

Alderiche errupted again in the main room, slumping to life as a giant slug-monster with Ignatius’ torso growing out of the top. What was left of the party squared up to fight, losing hope as Alderiche knocked them aside until Zelda’s body stood up from the floor. In one final blaze of glory she turned to Ignatius, reminding him of something he’d said long ago—”You once said to me, let your friends be your purpose. i return that to you. let your friends be your redemption”—before successfully blasting awya the shambling corpse of Alderiche. She brought Adelaide back to her feet, and the party stood for a half second as the last sluggy bits of Alderiche gave way to the sacred guts. 

The cave then started rumbling and collapsing as Alderiche, who’d become part of the land itself, gave away. Zelda threw up a wall to stop the party from getting any closer to her and sent her on her way—though not before telling Adelaide that she was sorry, and that she shouldn’t blame herself. In that moment her body gave up to the pressure of too much magic being poured into a mortal form, and she dissolved into energy and golden smoke which drifted off towards the exit. 

 The party then scrambled to safety. Ignatius was still unconscious, so Meta helped Lucretia shove his pieces into the bag of holding. She then tripped as she made her way out and saw a glimpse of the Bleached Man. It greeted the party, speaking ominously about their continued utility to it before offering them all a half-blessing—bad luck to those who would oppose them. Despite this blessing Vertebra stumbled, and Adelaide and Lucretia went back to go help her. They panicked for a second as the flood of water from behind them started to rise up, but Code came through on a horse to pick up the rest of them. 

The man in the owl mask suggested he could hold off the flood of water threatening to drown them all for long enough for people to swim, while Tibia said he could teleport one person out of there. Adelaide made him grab Lucretia, which he did, while the rest of the party went floating upwards through the surface of the lake. They emerged on the shores of the lake around Loveborough, where Adelaide awoke to Code doing CPR on her. They had a moment to see a whirlpool form in the surface of the lake before a pool of cursed sludge emerged and bodies started to rise to the top. 

Meanwhile Tibia and Lucretia appeared into the chambers of the president in Tenth Bridge. After a tense bit of sniping back and forth during delivering the status report, Tibia dragged Lucretia back into the room to hear the news—Hornsbrook had declared war on High Brook, because they found Queen Farlander dead next to High Brook Operatives, Webshrine declared war on High Brook for similar reasons, and Redben was also on the path to war. They quickly arranged themselves to go off and find the rest of the party in Loveborough to figure out what would come next.

Meanwhile, the party in Loveborough watched as Queen Farlander got dragged up to the surface. She fell upon President Valery, begging for help, but Adelaide spotted that she was already consumed by the deep curse. Valery tried to insist they could get Ignatius to help, but Tadgh took the matter in his own hands and laid her to rest. With her last breath, she thanked him. The party then turned back towards Tenth Bridge. 

They reconvened when they met up in the middle of the road. As the information came out, Valery insisted they go to ground. The owl-masked man turned to leave, stopping when he realized Adelaide and Tadgh were staring at him. When he asked them why, they explained his resemblance to an old colleague. He reacted poorly, shattering his own mask in a fit of excitement and revealing a confused man beneath it—who proceeded to die of drowning in an empty forest. Valery ignored that, and turned back to the plan: the party would be split to stay in different safehouses until the mission to recover the sacred corpse parts could be resumed. Adelaide would go with Radius to the Purple Mice in Loveborough, where she could be close to Code and Tiara. Ignatius would go with Meta to his old home in Twentieth Bridge. Tadgh would go with Zullie to Enigma’s old compound. Tibia and Lucretia would go to Crownshore City, to keep an ear out amongst the elves. They set out that night.

As the roads diverged, members of the bonesnappers peeled away—to wait out the years of war, and see what would become of this strange new world.