#dnd;elowen

“I need to check on the Mage’s College,” she told her friends, worry knitting her brow as she hugged her cloak close around her as if to fend off some sudden chill. “W-we should have seen them fighting, o-or something. They should have been protecting the city!” Elowen’s voice snapped with anger, hoping that the people she had lived and trained with for nearly a decade would not turn out to be as cowardly as the mages in the library above the Ivory Capitol. If she found that they had merely barred the doors upon the city then she would have some very nasty things to say to her teachers.

“You don’t think something could have happened to them, do you?” Diantha asked uncertainly, Ciaran’s tired look seemed to share some of Diantha’s worry.

“I don’t know,” Elowen admitted, “maybe they were forced to flee, or- I don’t know. We need to check on the college.” She couldn’t help the frantic whine in her voice, her mind reeling with uncertainty and anger at what could have kept the college from defending the city.

The group shared a worried look before leaving Monty’s shop and following Elowen towards the college. The first thing that Elowen noticed was the silence. What was normally a bustling school full of sound was eerily quiet, and there was no sight of anyone moving past the windows.

“Just… stay back a minute,” Elowen advised the group as she stepped forward towards the two large doors to the college, saying the incantation and raising her hands in the air to display the normal magical wards that lay upon the college. None of them seemed to have been modified or dropped… they were simply there. “Ciaran…” Elowen looked back at her friend with a small frown, “can you check the door for traps for me?”

Ciaran nodded quietly and stepped forward, running her hands along the doors and checking to make sure that they weren’t rigged in any way. Once she had finished her search she turned to Elowen and shrugged, “Nothing here, there’s no traps on this door.”

Elowen could feel the anxiety clawing at her stomach as she glanced back at the others before pushing open the old wooden double doors smooth with age, revealing the main lobby of the college. There was no sound as they entered, and no signs of anyone moving, though as the doors opened a bit of what appeared to be dust floated out with a rush of wind. As she was standing in the front of it Elowen received the full brunt of it and began to cough, the others joining her soon after.

“That’s… strange,” Elowen muttered before continuing into the college, the sounds of her companions quietly walking behind her the only thing she could hear.

The silence began to nag at her, like an itch she just couldn’t scratch. There was something unnatural about how quiet it was inside of the college, and as they walked into the main hall there was still no sight or sound to greet them. “Something’s wrong,” Elowen’s voice stuck in her throat, panic rising as worry that something horrible could have happened finally began to take hold. “The college is never this quiet. There’s- there’s always younger students running through the halls, and older students having noisy debates, and professors talking, and laughter-”

Diantha laid a comforting hand on Elowen’s shoulder, about to say something soothing until her mouth closed and she pointed over towards the floor. On the far side of the room was a cloak lying abandoned on the ground with a pile of dust beneath it.

Elowen rushed forward and grabbed the cloak, recognizing it as belonging to one of the younger student’s. “What is all of this?” she wondered aloud. “It looks like dust, but-”

“Elowen,” Diantha swallowed heavily, reaching out towards her friend as she said as gently as she could, “that’s not dust… it’s ash… from that person’s body.” The small wizard dropped the cloak, her hands shaking as Ciaran made a small whine of discomfort at Diantha’s discovery.

“I have to find the others,” Elowen stated, rushing forward through the college with the others not far behind.

“Elowen, be careful, we might not be alone in here-” Ciaran warned as Elowen led them through the next doors into the some of the classrooms to find more robes and piles of ash. Each room that they entered they found more of the same - dozens of robes littering the floor and the ashes of their owners lying beneath them.

“This can’t be happening,” Elowen was gasping for air, her body shaking as they continued, the sound of her friend’s worried calls muffled as she continued into each new room faster than the next. Finally they reached the dining room where the evening study hall was hosted and everywhere around the room there were cloaks and the ashes of the fallen lying beneath them.

Elowen felt as if she were drowning, it was impossible to breathe, and she couldn’t make out the words that Diantha and Ciaran were saying to her until everything went dark and she fell. In the darkness Elowen could see the faces of her friends, no, the faces of the family she had built here at the college. They were smiling, and laughing, the whole dream a collection of snippets of memory of the years she had spent with these other treasured souls. One by one their faces filled with fear and she could see the sickly green magic collecting in a pool at the end of the Necromancer’s finger - the same magic that had temporarily killed Ciaran - being unleashed upon the entire school. All of the people inside the college disappeared at once, blown away by the force of the spell that had claimed their lives, and left their cloaks to flutter uselessly to the ground in the wake of their destruction.

When Elowen woke she felt tears running down the collection of ashes on her face. They were all covered in the evidence of the tragedy that had happened here. All of them had been unwittingly breathing in the remains of her scholarly family.

The halfling looked up to see Jelani’s face creased with worry, her body cradled in one of his large arms as the hand of his free arm lightly fanned her face. He let her wake at her own pace, her body nestled safely against his chest as she closed her eyes against the horror of the stillness of the dining hall.

“How are we ever going to be able to take out someone so powerful?” Ciaran worried aloud. “The Necromancer killed me with just one blow and the college-”

“They’re all dead,” Elowen forced herself to say the words, Diantha and Ciaran looking upon her with profound sorrow as she forced herself to look at what was left of the college. “All of them. He had to target the college first to even get a chance to attack White Shadow, and he killed them all.” Elowen sobbed, wiping off her face with hands that shook, “He killed them from the young students all the way to the masters with decades worth of knowledge. I’m the only one left.”

“Oh Elowen,”  Diantha didn’t seem sure if she should hug her friend as Jelani gently let Elowen return to her own feet, “I am so sorry.”

The scholar sniffled and blinked until the tears stopped, “I have to- I have to tell their families, a-and the other colleges. I need- I need to get the enrollment records from the Headmaster’s office. You should- you all should tell the King-”

“We’re not leaving you alone here,” Diantha insisted.

“It’s not as if he’s waiting around a corner to kill me,” Elowen didn’t mean to snap, but she couldn’t help the anger that seeped into her voice, “if the Necromancer had meant to kill me he already had his chance.”

“But there’s still the bounty on your head, on all our heads,” Ciaran reminded Elowen gently, “none of us can be left alone right now. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Jelani rumbled, nodding his head down at Elowen.

“Alright then,” Diantha consented, “Jelani and Elowen will stay here and find the academic records while Ciaran and I inform the King of what happened. We’ll bring back Grayden so he can help.”

“Do you think there could be a pattern here?” Ciaran questioned. “What with the college gone, and Monty missing...”

“Are we sure he’s missing?” Diantha fretted, “Did- does anyone remember seeing Monty’s cloak, or any ash in his shop?”

“No,” Ciaran shook her head, “no his cloak was missing, and there was no ash. Wherever Monty is he fled.”

“He’s alive Diantha,” Elowen soothed, “I tried to scry for him in the shop. He may have blocked anyone from tracking him, but I could tell that he was alive. Those Evil Assholes targeted the magic users in the city because they knew they would be their biggest resistance. So the real question is: How did Grayden manage to survive?”

“He had locked himself in a room with Jadine, the Queen, and the princes,” Ciaran supplied.

“He had some sort of ward on the door Elowen,” Diantha added. “It must have kept them from being discovered.”

“It must have,” Elowen sighed heavily, running her hands over her face and through her hair. “Go. You need to tell the King what’s happened, a-and I need to find the admission records. I’m the only surviving member of the college, it’s my duty to inform their families of what happened.” A sudden thought came to Elowen and she looked up at the others with horror, “Does that mean I’m the head of the college now? Oh gods, I didn’t ask for any of this. I can’t-”

“Shh,” Diantha placed a gentle hand on Elowen’s head and tried to soothe her friend, “one thing at a time. We can worry about that later. Just focus on finding those admissions records, and Ciaran and I will be back with Grayden as soon as we can. Alright?”

Elowen took a deep breath and closed her eyes, nodding as she took what comfort she could from Diantha’s words, “You’re right. One thing at a time. We’ll see you soon.” With that the group split in two, and Elowen was grateful for Jelani’s blessed silence as they made their way up the stairs to the Headmaster’s office.

What had once been the room of a kind and wise man now felt barren, as if all of the light had been stolen from the room the instant that the old man’s body had disintegrated into the pile of ash that was left lying on his favorite chair. Jelani stood guard by the door as Elowen shakily made her way forward to the desk of her long time mentor and friend. Elowen closed her eyes against the ache in her chest, and her trembling hands reached forward and grabbed one of the weights holding open a scroll that had been left on his desk.

In one fluid motion the halfling turned and threw the weight as hard as she could at the wall away from Jelani, leaving a sizeable dent in the wooden wall where it hit. Elowen lost herself for a moment to her anger and the hate she felt towards the Necromancer who had taken so much from her. She cursed his name and his existence from the moment he was born in as many ways as she knew how in her native tongue. A few words of Dwarvish slipped through when her Halfling swears did not seem enough to portray how much she detested that vile sorcerer.

Jelani merely watched as Elowen had her fit, raising an eyebrow in surprise at the dent she had left behind in the wall. As she continued to swear and even threw a few more paperweights Jelani stood by the door, arms crossed and eyes following her around the room until Elowen finally wore herself out.

She ended her fit back at the Headmaster’s desk, her arms resting on the old oak desk and her head bowed forward with sorrow as she forced air into her lungs. It took a moment for Elowen to compose herself again, and when she finally stood and fixed her hair back in place she opened the small pocket dimension where the school’s most important records were stored. All of the senior graduate students had been made to memorize the incantations to the various pocket dimensions hidden around the campus to hide important records, and to hold confiscated goods from misbehaving students. The tomes that Elowen pulled from the Headmaster’s pocket dimension were thick and heavy enough that she had to give them to Jelani to carry for her.

“There, uhm, there should be a study next door we can use. No one should have been in there at this hour… it should be free of any remains.” Elowen led Jelani to the study connected to the office and advised him of where she needed the books placed on the table. She gathered a stack of papers, an inkwell, a pen, and the extra cushion for shorter students such as herself before settling down at the table and beginning the letters. Her hands were shaky, and after the first few crumpled attempts she simply couldn’t bring herself to actually start on writing the letters, so instead she merely wrote “To the family of” followed by each student’s name at the top of each piece of paper, slowly working her way down the list and setting aside each labelled paper once the student’s name was written.

Jelani watched Elowen as she worked, arms crossed over his broad chest and back leaned up against the wall directly across from her. His eyes were full of worry for his small friend, and he kept his ever-watchful gaze trained on her as the silence grew between them. He was the first to hear the entrance doors down below creak open once again, Diantha’s voice calling out to see where they had gone. Jelani left the room long enough to walk down the hallway and call back down to Diantha so she and the others could find their way up the stairs to the Headmaster’s office.

Elowen continued her work as the others arrived, only looking up as she finished the paper she had been labelling. With Diantha and Ciaran was Greydon, who was being urged to the side along with Jelani as Ciaran took a seat at the table and watched Elowen with a wicked expression as she looked at the others that had also entered the room. To one side stood Ace, confused by the frantic waving Diantha was doing, attempting to urge him to move away from Symund as Elowen stared at him.

Silence filled the room, no one quite knowing what to say as Elowen examined Symund. He had cast aside the jester’s outfit he had been forced to wear for so many years, and instead wore plain breeches and a tunic with a scarlet red cloak wrapped around his shoulders. The color had returned to his skin after all of those years below ground, and he seemed to have gained some weight - no longer the skin and bones that he had been when they had first met. He was staring back at her and on his face she could see a mix of sadness she couldn’t bear to look at, a bit of relief at seeing her unharmed, but most of all there was worry.

Finally Elowen put down the pen, resting it on the inkwell cap so it didn’t drip onto the table, as she said, “You’re late.”

“I got here as soon as I could,” Symund answered. “As soon as we realized there was something wrong we headed to White Shadow. I’m sorry we couldn’t have gotten here sooner.”

Elowen swallowed against the lump in her throat and sighed heavily, “I know. I know you did… it’s probably for the best that you got here late or else I could have found your body amongst all of the others.”

“Better to be late and alive rather than dead,” Symund offered, “after spending so much time around the dead I certainly learned what a blessing it is to be alive.”

Elowen sighed, feeling horrible for having made him remember that time, and for being cross with him after all that had happened, “I know. I know you’re right. Symund, I’m sorry-”

“No. No, it’s alright.” He sighed heavily, “Elowen I am so sorry this happened,” Symund started.

“Young lady,” Greydon put a gentle hand down on Elowen’s shoulder, “you have suffered a terrible loss, but you do not need to face it alone. Let us help you.”

“I can’t-” Elowen shook her head, swallowing against the urge to cry, “Greydon I can’t ask that of you. You weren’t a member of the college, I can’t expect you to write these letters for me.”

“You didn’t, I’m offering, and besides, you don’t have the time to write them,” Greydon pressed. Elowen’s head snapped up angrily at Greydon’s comment, eyeing the spell scroll that he put down on the table beside her hand. “I managed to finish this before they arrived, and after the last two weeks I’ve had some non-magical busy work would do me some good.”

“I can’t just go wandering off into the Fae Wilds right now!” Elowen snapped, “I’m the sole surviving member of this college. I- I owe it to the student’s families to write to them, to tell them what happened, and to- to return their remains to their families. Oh I don’t even know how we’re going to be able to identify the bodies...”

“You won’t be wandering around aimlessly,” Diantha reprimanded, “you’d be going there to ensure that the same evil that killed them will be stopped.”

Elowen hung her head in shame at Diantha’s reprimand, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t mean it like that- I just...” she sighed, not sure how to continue.

“I can seal the college for now so that only you and I can enter it,” Greydon offered Elowen, “I can write the letters while you go on and stop this evil.”

“But you’re not even a member of the faculty,” Elowen protested weakly.

Greydon laughed then began to count on his fingers and do a bit of calculation in the air, “My dear, I haven’t been in academia since longer than you’ve been alive, but I can certainly help you with this task.”

Elowen sighed and rubbed weakly at her temple, “...I suppose you could write them as one of the King’s councilors. It will sound more official that way, and at least if they receive a letter from you they can ask and find out who you are easily enough. If they ask about me all they’re going to hear about is my family, and my father is the last person these poor people will need to speak to… and it doesn’t help any that my reputation is currently being dragged through the mud.”

The old man gently squeezed Elowen’s shoulder, “That I can do. Now come along dear, and I’ll get this area secured.” The younger scholar nodded and got up from the desk, collecting the books and papers she had retrieved before handing them to Jelani to carry once again.

Elowen walked slowly as they made their way back through the college, grateful for the friends that walked alongside her as they made their way out of this tomb. Once outside the main doors Grayden lifted his hands and a magical purple aura formed the presence of a lock over the door before spreading around the whole college. “There, now it’s safe until you return.”

“I should still write to the other colleges before we leave for the Fae Wilds. They need to know what happened here so they can be prepared.” Grayden nodded in understanding before taking the books from Jelani and shuffling off towards the castle. The group came to a quick consensus that rest was in order and headed back towards the Keep on the other end of the city.

As they made their way through the streets they could see the destruction and ruin left in the wake by the League of Evil Assholes. Buildings had been burned and destroyed, and everywhere there were dead bodies being pulled from the rubble. Most of the people were in shock, moving through their duties with faces haunted by the horror of the attack they had just faced. Elowen watched her neighbors with a heavy heart, noting the faces of each of the grieving family members left in the wake of all this destruction.

Thankfully the Keep seemed mostly intact, just some minor structural damage to a few of the parapets that needed to be seen to. When they entered the keep it looked as if the kitchen had been occupied and used in their absence during the attack. Elowen rushed upstairs to make sure that her room was locked and all the things inside were safe, and to her relief there had been no looting of her personal items or magic artifacts.

“My room’s intact, what about yours?” Elowen called down to the others down the stairs where they were helping Diantha put the kitchen back in order. Ciaran was the first up the stairs to check her room, and soon after came Jelani and Diantha.

“Mine’s okay,” Ciaran reported.

“It doesn’t look as if ours have been touched,” Diantha reported, with a solemn nod in agreement from Jelani. “It must have just been some people taking shelter during the attack.”

“Must have been,” Elowen agreed. She looked towards Symund and Ace who had followed along up the stairs, “There are plenty of empty rooms. Take your pick and get settled. I’m going to go repair what I can of the damage to the Keep.”

Symund spared Elowen a worried look as she dumped her bag just inside the door of her room while Ace tipped his hat and said, “Much obliged to yeh.” The demon hunter urged Symund along to find a room as Elowen spared him a sad look before disappearing back down the stairs.

Outside of the Keep was filled with the sounds of carts moving through the streets and the city licking its wounds after the battle. Elowen was happy to see that most of the building was sound, and that the damage seemed to be artificial. She relaxed into the focus and concentration of her Mending spell, drowning out all thought as she worked on knitting the Keep back together stone by stone. It took her hours of concentration to get most of it back together, and after the third hour of casting she finally lowered her arms, rolling her stiff shoulders and neck with a sigh.

“That was impressive,” Symund said from his perch on a low piece of wall behind her. He seemed freshly showered and wearing a new pair of breeches and a new tunic.

Elowen rubbed her left shoulder as she turned to look at him where he was sitting on the wall, idly strumming at the strings of a new lute. “How long have you been there?” she asked.

Symund turned his head towards the sun and did a rough calculation, “At least an hour. You didn’t even seem to notice me, so I figured it would be best to wait until you’d finished.”

“Yeah, well...” Elowen sighed as she sat down next to him on the wall, “focusing on magic or other work has always helped me in the past when I’m-” she swallowed against the lump in her throat, “when things are bad.”

The bard sat up and put down his lute as he placed a gentle hand on Elowen’s shoulder, “I know that what’s happened is not quite the same as what happened to me… but I understand how it feels to lose people who you were close to for years. Elowen,” he waited until she looked up at him, “it’s okay to grieve for the people you’ve lost, but just remember that there are still people here that care about you.”

Elowen sniffled heavily at his words and wiped at her face again, groaning in disgust when she looked down at the ash that coated her skin. “I’m covered in them,” she whispered in horror, tears running down her cheeks as she looked up at Symund, “I breathed them into me.” Elowen put a shaking hand over her mouth and resisted the urge to be sick. “Please tell me there’s still bathing water left,” Elowen asked weakly.

“I made sure that there was,” Symund answered her gently, offering her a hand up.

She shook her head at the offer, still looking a little green, “N-no, don’t touch me. You’ll get them on you if you do.”

“Elowen,” Symund’s voice was gentle as he positioned himself to catch her as she stood swaying on her feet, “it’s going to be okay. We’ll go inside, you can take a bath, and get into new clothes.”

Something inside of her made his worried tone of voice amusing, and she laughed despite the way it made her head swim. “Do you know I’d only ever seen a handful of dead bodies before I came to White Shadow? I’ve seen at least two hundred times more death in just the last month since I left the college to travel with this group than I’d ever seen previously in my whole life! I’ve seen a plague leaving dead bodies in the street, an entire city of the dead, nearly an entire village slaughtered by a cult including the sweetest old man I think I’ve ever met in my life, a-and now- now we come back and the whole college is gone. All of them! And there wasn’t hardly a thing I could have done to save them, or- or any of those poor people we saw in the rubble on the way back to the Keep! What good am I as an Abjuration Wizard if I can’t even protect my own city? I was completely useless out there! They killed the King and Ciaran right in front of me and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. I just wish this were a nightmare! At least if it was a dream I could wake up and they’d still all be alive.”

“Oh Elowen,” Symund’s face fell, and it was the worry and pity in his eyes that finally allowed Elowen’s tears to fall.

The Halfling fell down to her knees and sobbed as hard as she could as all of the frustration, fear, and grief finally found its release. When Symund tried to move forward to hug her Elowen ordered him to stay back, unwilling to cover him in the ashes and decay that was still coating her body. He obeyed her wishes, but instead of leaving her to cry in the dirt of the courtyard Symund summoned a giant spectral hand and gently lifted Elowen from the ground so he could carry her back into the Keep. The others watched as they passed, Diantha hovering near Jelani with worry plain on her face as Ciaran watched from the top of the stairs as Symund took Elowen up the stairs towards the bath.

“Can one of you grab a change of clothes for her please?” Symund asked gently as he deposited Elowen into the bathroom and closed the door to give her some privacy. Elowen didn’t move from where she sat on the floor as the spectral hand Symund had summoned disappeared, and barely acknowledged when Ciaran knocked on the door a minute or two later.

“Elowen, I’m, uh, is it okay if I come in? I have some fresh clothes for you.” Ciaran called through the door. When Elowen didn’t answer there was the muffled sound of a whispered argument between Ciaran, and what sounded like Diantha, on the other side of the door. “Okay, uh, I’m coming in...” Ciaran slowly cracked open the door and put the clothes down on the counter nearby, “fresh clothes. Right there. So, uh, yeah.”

“I’ll have dinner ready by the time you’re cleaned up,” Diantha called out from the hallway before Ciaran closed the door.

Elowen listened quietly as her friends retreated down the hall, finally bringing herself to her feet once she was sure they were gone. She stripped out of her clothes and scrubbed herself from head to toe as best she could in the freezing cold of the stone room. Once she was certain that there was no more ash on her person Elowen allowed herself to slip into the bath, grateful for the simple fire spells she knew that allowed her to heat back up the cold bath water in a matter of minutes.

She soaked for far longer than she should have, staring up at the ceiling and allowing the sound of the water lapping against the side of the tub to soothe her. She cried a few more times while she was bathing, and when the water had run cold again Elowen finally felt clean enough to slip out of the tub and into her fresh clothes.

By the time she made it down the stairs everyone had finished eating, but there was a covered dish waiting for her on the table beside where Symund was idly playing a quiet melody on his lute. “How are you feeling?” he asked her gently.

“Tired,” Elowen answered, forcing herself to sit beside him at the table and look at what had been served for dinner. She nibbled at a few of the things on the plate under Symund’s watchful eyes and sipped at the water glass that had been left for her.

“I’m not surprised, from what Diantha tells me you’ve done a lot today,” Symund answered quietly. Elowen scoffed at his comment and shook her head, flinching a little when Symund gently placed his hand on top of hers. “Elowen, please look at me.” She swallowed heavily and looked up at Symund, barely able to stand the gentleness in his eyes as he said, “What happened was not your fault. There was nothing that you could have done to stop this, but you’re alive and that means you can work to put an end to this. You can stop those people who killed your friends.”

“I’m not strong enough to beat him,” Elowen sniffled. “He had all of us completely trapped. I couldn’t use any of my magic, Symund. I never,” she closed her eyes and swallowed against the memories she had tried so hard to leave in the past, “I learned magic because I never wanted anyone to be able to make me feel powerless again, but I’m still not strong enough.”

Elowen opened her eyes at the sound of Symund scooting his chair closer to her, and he kept a comforting grip on her hand as he said, “Then you’ll get strong enough to beat him.”

“I have to find some way to be able to cast without needing to move my hands,” she answered him, rubbing at her face tiredly. “If- if there's some way I can manage to learn how to do that we may have a chance… and we'll have to fight dirty. I know we will. They're too powerful for us to not cheat to take them down.”

“If anyone is clever enough to figure out how to do that I'm sure it will be you, Elowen… but not tonight. Tonight you need to rest.” Symond pushed the plate of barely nibbled at food closer to Elowen. “If you're going to win you need to take care of yourself first.”

Elowen sighed heavily and rested her elbow on the table, propping her cheek up on her hand as she turned to look at Symund. “This is not at all how I imagined out reunion to go. I had imagined you would chastise or tease me for spying on you, and then we could have some sort of talk about how you left and how much I’d been worried sick about you. Not- not this.”

“I am sorry about how we parted, but you knew I had to contact the family members of my adventuring party,” Symund sighed and looked away a little down towards the table, “and… and I had to be sure this was real. I had to make sure that I hadn't been enchanted with some wonderful dream and that one day it would end and I would wake back down below the ground.”

Elowen squeezed Symund’s hand, giving him a soft smile, “It’s not a dream, Symund. You escaped the Ivory Capital. You're free to do whatever you wish… Selat is gone, and he's not coming back.”

“I know,” Symund gently patted Elowen’s hand, turning the hand below hers so that he could hold her hand between his, gently running his thumb along the back of her hand, “and it's all thanks to you and your party.”

Elowen shook her head a little, “It’s hardly my party. Diantha is the one that keeps us all together. I'm just a tag along.”

“But it wasn't Diantha who stayed up and spoke with me and reminded me how it felt to have a friend.” Symund countered. “You do quite a bit more than you give yourself credit for, Elowen.”

She averted her eyes shyly at that, allowing silence to fall between them for a moment before she commented, “You look a lot better than you did before… I'm glad that you're recovering.”

“I am too.” Symund sighed and withdrew his hands from Elowen’s hand, “Now it’s your turn to heal.”

When he gave a pointed look at her plate Elowen sighed and turned back to her cold dinner. “Between you and Diantha I don't think I have any other option,” Elowen retorted.

“You certainly don't,” Symund returned with a small smile of his own.

Elowen shook her head with a quiet huff of air that could have been a laugh. She did as she was told and focused on eating her dinner as Symund rested back in his chair and played his new lute. She listened to the melody and allowed herself to relax, forgetting about her worries until she had finished her plate.

As she got up to clean off her plate and return it to the kitchen to dry she told Symund, “Ciaran recovered your lute from the Ivory Capital. I meant to write you so you'd know, but you never exactly gave me a forwarding address.”

Symund sat up in surprise at that news, “It’s here?”

Elowen nodded, “It’s up in my room on the shelf for safe keeping. Come on, I'll show you.” She started towards the stairs and looked back to make sure Symund was following.

When they got up to her room it was mostly dark, and Elowen lit a few candles as Symund looked at the spines of the books in her personal collection and at the few trinkets she had gathered and put up on her shelf. There was a flower from the Underdark that she had pressed and dried, some sand in a small vial and some water from the Wishing Pool from Shade, and the packet of spices that the old man had gifted to her.

Elowen took his lute down from the shelf where she had set it beside the dried flowers and handed it to Symund. He handled the lute with care, running his hands slowly over its strings and body to find that it had been well cared for in his absence.

“I never thought I'd see this again, but I should have known one of you would have found it.” Symund admitted.

“Finding it was the only reason we knew you were still alive,” Elowen explained. “I'm sorry for spying on you, but I was so worried-”

“I knew you were,” Symund sighed and placed a gentle hand on her cheek, kneeling down so they would be at eye level, “and I'm not mad. I knew the only person that could have been watching me like that was you, and that you were just trying to make sure that I was safe.”

Elowen sighed and pressed her cheek against his hand, holding it there for a moment before she wrapped her arms around Symund’s neck. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Elowen admitted.

“Me?“ Symund laughed darkly, “I’m glad you’re here. When Diantha said something had happened to the college-” Symund swallowed heavily, “I thought I’d lost you. If you hadn’t been travelling with Diantha you would have been gone, just like-”

“Shh, Symund, no,” Elowen gently soothed, “that spell wouldn’t have killed me. The cloak that I wear is enchanted to protect against force magic. I would have been the only one to have survived what happened.”

“But I didn’t know that,” Symund explained, pulling Elowen a little closer as he gently brushed his thumb against her cheek, “and for a moment I thought you were gone before we could meet again.”

“Symund,” Elowen breathed, her heart beating faster as he leaned in a little closer.

“I’m so glad you’re still here,” Symund whispered, glancing up at her hesitantly until Elowen relaxed in his grip, giving him the permission to gently press his lips to hers. The kiss was soft and hesitant, and Elowen could hear her heart hammering in her chest as Symund pulled her closer, burying his hand into her curls. As Elowen placed a gentle hand on his cheek she brushed aside a stray tear and kissed him back.

Kissing Symund was like kissing a man who had been drowning and was tasting air again for the first time. He was gentle with her, but she could feel just how much he needed to feel their lips together. When they finally parted for air Elowen was shivering and panting, her cheeks flushed with emotion as Symund slowly opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m real Symund,” Elowen whispered, her heart aching at the way he closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into the hand that she used to cup his jaw.

“I know,” he breathed, nuzzling his face into the palm of her hand and placing gentle kisses on her wrist, “but if you’re not real, then this is the cruelest dream I’ve ever had, and I don’t want to wake from it.”

“Don’t worry Elowen, we’re almost there,” Diantha assured her, and Elowen decided not to answer as she kept an eye on the horizon and the heat waves off in the distance.

Within the hour a large caravan full of merchants of different types, different families, and even different races could be seen heading away from Shade. Elowen kept her ears open as they passed, listening to the grumbling amongst the families and their intention to be anywhere but Shade. She could feel her stomach drop into the pit of her stomach at the grumbling. “That’s not a good sign,”  Elowen told her group quietly, turning to Ciaran and Jelani as the two also watched the caravan of merchants pass by them. “My father once told me that when the merchants move on you know a city has died. They won’t stay somewhere that won’t generate any profit.”

“How does he know that?” Ciaran asked skeptically.

“Because he’s a merchant, and it’s what he would do,” Elowen answered sadly, her eyes following after the caravans as they came into Shade. After an encounter with a wonderfully mothering innkeeper in which their group was able to supply her with several days worth of water they set out to inspect the marketplace for some answers on the cult that had moved into the town and was said to be abducting people.

It was there that Elowen made a friend. The old man who ran the only remaining stall offering only a few meager dried up vegetables was friendly despite having lost all of his family members to the cult. First they had abducted his son when they promised to provide food and water for an entire family in exchange for their work. Then his wife had been abducted within the last week, and all of his grandchildren had been taken by his daughter-in-law to escape the threat of the cult that was slowly killing this town. The party made sure to eat with him and give the old man as much water as they could despite his assurance that, “Oh no, don’t worry about this old man, it’s much easier to feed one person than it is a family.” He gave them a fierce smile before pulling Elowen to the side and handing her a sachet of some of the spices he had used to flavor their shared meal. “Dear I want you to have these-”

Elowen reached into her purse to try to pay him for the spices and he put a gentle but firm hand on hers, making her keep the money she had offered. “No dear, this is to say thank you for giving me something that I had almost forgotten - what it feels like to have a family. Besides, I think the big guy really liked them!”

There was a moment of pause as the little halfling stared up at the elven man, her eyes shining with unshed tears before she gave him a hug. “Please stay safe,” she whispered to him as he hugged her back and gently pet her hair.

“I’ll survive, especially if we have heroes like you here to help us and chase out this cult.” The old man promised as Elowen pulled away, even gently wiping away her tears and giving her a brave smile. “Now go on, you have things to do!”

“We’ll do what we can to help,” Elowen swore, “I promise we will.”

“I know,” he smiled at Elowen as the group called for her to hurry up so they could get to the pond that supplied water for the entire city. She made sure to wave to the old man on their way out, smiling and keeping an eye on him as they travelled to the pond...

What they found there was not something that Elowen would ever be able to forget. There was a horrible smell as they approached the water, one that Elowen did not recognize, but that caused Diantha and Jelani’s faces to harden and for Ciaran’s face to go blank, guarding her emotions once again. The little scholar didn’t quite understand the tenseness in the air, her mind working with magical formulas and scientific knowledge as she tried to think of any diseases or contamination that would cause water to produce a foul smell. Unfortunately the real cause of the smell was not something she could have predicted, and almost caused her to lose her lunch.

The pond that supplied the town with water was all but dry, producing only enough water to create a wet patch and about an inch of water trickle down the river that it had once filled. Surrounding the pond and staining the sand red were bodies. Dozens of bodies. Some had been there at least a week simply rotting in the sun, left there by the cultists either as a warning or just merely as a dumping ground. Others were merely days old, and some of them had even been tortured based off of the ways their bodies were bent, broken, and slashes to ribbons.

Elowen could hear Diantha start to pray for the souls of the dead and Jelani’s normally hard face had taken on a hard anger, his lips snarling in distaste as he observed the bodies of children that had been left behind with the dead. Even Ciaran was upset, the blank face that she had kept through most of the ride broken as she stood there with a hand held over her mouth, her capes rippling around her in the breeze.

There was nothing that Elowen could do for these poor people’s souls, and nothing that she could do to bring them back. Her eyes drifted over the bodies and she spotted a guardswoman who had been stabbed so many times that her entire torso was covered in dried blood, but the one thing that stood out was the purple piece of fabric that she had clutched in her hand.

“Look,” Elowen pointed out the guardswoman to the others and to the purple fabric in her hand.

“We should speak to her,” Ciaran offered, “she’s most likely to know what happened.”

Diantha nodded and started to set up ingredients for a spell while Jelani stood watch nearby. Elowen wasn’t quite sure what was happening but stayed nearby to watch this magic unfold. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck raising as the body inhaled the magic Diantha had cast, the woman’s soul returning to her body momentarily as she then opened her eyes and looked up at the sky.

“Does this mean we can speak to her now?” Elowen asked.

Diantha nodded, “Yes, but we only get five questions.”

“We should ask her who killed her,” Ciaran supplied.

So it went, Ciaran offering questions that would supply their party the answers it would need in regards to the murder that had taken place, what had happened to these poor people, and anything that the guardswoman might have known about what had happened to the well. On a few questions Ciaran and Diantha discussed the wording of the questions to make them as accurate as possible, with Elowen chiming up when she noticed something that might work better. In the end they found out that the guardswoman had come here with a dozen of her friends to investigate the pond and at sunset had been set upon by the cultists, each of them attacked and killed with their bodies left to rot in the sun. The guardswoman was still not sure why they had killed her, only that it had happened and that it had not been a pleasant death.

When the unearthly breath that had animated the woman’s corpse left her the group was left with an uncomfortable silence. Jelani’s normally stern face was livid with rage, Ciaran looked both disgusted and angry at the carnage that had happened here, and when Diantha knelt down to resume her prayer Elowen turned away from the sight of the bodies she could not help and focused on the one thing she could do something about. Ciaran accompanied her while Jelani stood watch over Diantha, and between the two of them they were able to get down to the pond without Elowen slipping and falling on her face.

Elowen did a few preliminary spells and was able to detect that the water had been drawn here magically at least a hundred years ago, and that something was siphoning the magic that animated it. There was nothing wrong with the water other than the lack of output from the water. “Well… at least they haven’t poisoned it, but I’m worried that leaving those bodies up there will end up leading to it getting contaminated.”

“It’s safe?” Ciaran asked, waiting to see Elowen nod before she carefully scooped up a handful of water to sip at once she had pushed the sand she also gathered out of her hand. After that the rogue looked towards the dimming sky and then over at Jelani with worry. “Didn’t the guardswoman say that they were attacked at sunset?” The group looked at one another and then began to find places to hide. Ciaran climbed her way up a palm tree around the oasis, Diantha hid behind one of the trees, and when Jelani tried to lay down and pretend to be a corpse Ciaran hissed, “Jelani! They’re going to remember that they didn’t kill a big orc.”

“I can’t hide behind the trees,” he protested, “they’re too small!”

“Just hold still!” Elowen hissed, using color spray to dose Jelani in red fake blood before she hid behind a tree herself.

It wasn’t long until the party began to hear the sounds of the approaching cultists. Elowen put her darkvision goggles down over her eyes and watched as the group approached, her stomach churning nervously as she noticed that the cultists were dragging something behind them.

“They didn’t even cry,” the shortest one complained, “it’s not worth it if they don’t cry!”

“Heh, yeah these ones were too easy,” the next tallest one answered, his voice sounding much older than the young punk.

“I just wanted to have some fun!” the smallest one started to stab one of the bodies they had dragged with them, laughing as he maimed the poor person further.

Elowen and Ciaran shared a murderous glance and turned back to see the largest of the three cultists take charge of the situation. “Enough!” he barked, “We’ve got to get back, we have work to do.” The younger one looked chastised for his actions and slumped his shoulders, making some statement of apology that Elowen couldn’t quite hear. When the halfling saw Ciaran’s knives go in towards the big leader she let forward a ring of a witch bolt to surround the smallest one. Then as she saw Jelani begin to rise from the ground after her witch bolt illuminated the darkening sky. As he began to rise Elowen used a minor illusion to make it sound like the corpses around him were shrieking with rage and pain from the murder that these cultists had brought down upon this city. The small cultist crumpled, succumbing to Elowen’s witch bolt and the final remaining cultist froze in place.

The group cautiously approached the sole remaining cultist, and only after Ciaran stabbed him in the calf without a single reaction did they sweep back his hood to find out that he was an old man, and that the fake screaming from the bodies and Jelani rising from amongst the corpses had been too much for his heart and he had died where he stood.

Next there came the next round of necromancy from Diantha, creating a zone of truth as they questioned the bodies of the leader and the smallest cultist for information on their cult, and this Leader of All the Hells they were following. Elowen knew very little about religion, devils, or the Hells so when she couldn’t think of who that could be she turned to the most logical person to ask out of their party, and the only tiefling amongst them, Ciaran. “Do you know who that might be? Maybe from some history teaching or something from your people? I haven’t the faintest clue who that could be-”

“No! No I don’t know who that is, and it’s not my history.” Ciaran snapped back, causing Elowen to raise an eyebrow in surprise at the venom she received in return to what she had thought was a very simple question. Clearly she had struck a nerve, but as Ciaran went off to help Diantha with more questions about religion, cults, and gods Elowen didn’t at all understand Elowen decided to put herself to better use by looking through the cultist’s things. She took their robes, their identical gold rings, and their daggers, hoping that might be able to get them access to the cult without having to lie too much about themselves or causing more bloodshed… though with what they had seen of the cultists so far Elowen highly doubted any of them were worth saving.

It didn’t take long for Diantha to finish interrogating the deceased cultists, and when she was done she returned to Jelani’s side, curling into his arms as Ciaran went through the bodies of dead villagers and Elowen went to examine the bodies that the cultists had been dragging through the sand behind them. One of them was a woman Elowen didn’t recognize, who seemed to have died of blood loss from the multiple stab wounds left on her body, and the other…

“They killed him,” Elowen’s voice was somewhere between a sob and a snarl as her eyes turned towards the body of the kind and lonely old man they had shared lunch with that very afternoon.

“Who are you-” Diantha asked and then the group turned to see who Elowen meant. Diantha covered a gasp behind her hand, Ciaran looked as if she had been kicked in the gut, and Jelani’s jaw twitched angrily, one fist clenching at his side.

“They’re not worth saving,” Diantha said almost to herself as she looked down at the cultists with disgust, “at least these ones aren’t.”

“I hope their leader’s soul enjoys the torment of being trapped inside Soul Carver,” Ciaran snarled, her hand returning to the enchanted dagger she had used to kill the largest of that small band. Jelani rumbled with agreement to Ciaran’s statement.

Elowen just stared down at the frail old man’s body, kneeling down beside him as she closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “but please know that they’re not going to get away with this.” When she stood up it felt entirely mechanical, as did the next bit she spent using a giant spectral hand to move the corpses into a pile for the villagers and another for the cultists. She didn’t have the strength or the time to bury them all at the moment, and she couldn’t chance that one of the bodies wouldn’t somehow end up in the pond and infect what little of the town’s water supply was left. So once the bodies were arranged she used a fireball to set the piles ablaze, leaving them to burn well into the night as the group prepared to return to the inn.

It was nearly midnight by the time they returned, and Ciaran made some sort of statement to the innkeeper about their tardiness before asking for rooms for the night. They were offered two keys, Elowen numbly took one, and Diantha took the other, but instead of last time where Elowen and Ciaran had shared a room the tiefling made sure Elowen saw that she turned her nose up at sharing a room with her, instead opting to sleep on the floor in Diantha and Jelani’s shared room. It wasn’t hard to see that Elowen had upset Ciaran earlier, but she was too tired, and too numb to get into what she was sure would be a rather loud fight. She decided to let Ciaran have the night to stew in her anger, and to confront her in the morning about whatever Elowen had done to offend her.

“Goodnight...” Elowen said quietly, Diantha giving her a look that mirrored the numbness she felt before Elowen returned to her room by herself. As usual she put an alarm spell on the window and then she changed out of the clothes that reeked of death. She threw them in the corner, making sure to scrub herself with soap and what water was left in her drinking canteen to get the smell off of her before she put on a nightgown and fell into the bed.

The little scholar laid in the bed on her side, looking out the window into the starry sky too tired and dehydrated shed more than a few tears for the kind old man she had only met today. After so long without any real family connections that weren’t strained Elowen had understood his loneliness… at least as much as she could. His smile had been more than payment enough for anything that they would have been able to do to help this town, but once again she was seeing just how much the use of necromancy and darker magics polluted and corrupted people the longer that they used it.

To be fair to him though it wasn’t as if they knew each other for more than a day. She certainly wished that they had gotten more time to spend together, but that apparently wasn’t something he felt equally interested in or else he would have stuck around. Maybe. Maybe not. He had been trapped underground for a very long time, and from what he had told her of his imprisonment it had been pure literal torture.

Maybe he hadn’t thought of anything other than getting as far away from the Ivory Capital as he could while he had the chance? If that was the case Elowen could hardly blame him. She herself didn’t want to experience life underground again any time soon. Elowen could almost feel Diantha’s watchful eye on her as they sat all sat around the campfire the night before they would make it into White Shadow.

Instead of acknowledging Diantha’s worry Elowen stood up and said, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m tired. Goodnight.” She did her best to give her new companions a smile before returning to her tent and curling up behind her pack on top of her sleeping roll. The map and the pendulum she had bought were waiting for her in the dark.

“I hope you know this is just someone worrying about you, and not some enemy from that horrible place...” Elowen sighed as she sat down and opened up the map, holding the pendulum above it as she concentrated on Symund. She could see him sitting at a campfire plucking at the mandolin he had been loaned and idly playing some gentle music that she had never heard before. After taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to this new darkness she tracked the mountains, temperature, and the location of the moon in the sky to determine where they were camped. It was only a rough estimate of course, but at least she could verify with the pendulum when she came back to her body.

When Symund’s fingers slowed as he sensed her presence Elowen watched his face flicker in the firelight before she sighed heavily. Hopefully he would stop at some city soon and she could sent him a letter. She felt like such a snoop having to check in on him this way, and she was almost certain she was setting him on edge.

“It’s just Elowen,” she whispered quietly and when Symund’s body didn’t relax she sighed again and returned to her body. The pendulum was pointing towards the path to the West headed away from the snow. She made a small mark with her pencil on the map where she had noted he was camped and then rolled up the map with her pendulum inside of it before she actually got ready for bed.