Melody

From the start of the invasion all the way up until this point, Melody felt like she’d somehow been trapped in an illusion. She was unsure if it was the couple drinks, she’d had at the inn that night, a bad stew, or just the otherworldly feeling of the entire situation, but she’d had a hard time accepting the current events as reality. Even now after they’d captured six strangers who came breaking out of the dungeon entrance, she felt lost.

“Halt in the name of the law!” shouted one of the guards as he pressed his blade against the neck of a swarthy man on his knees. The intruders ogled the clearing and it was unclear what they were thinking. Their bug eyes and profuse sweating made Melody and others think that they’d just finished sprinting through hell and somehow came out the other end. Combined with their heaving chests that seemed starved for oxygen, the men had a crazed look. Obviously, they did the same math as the guards who were wary of them and decided not to resist.

“Greetings, my party and I seemed to have gotten lost and ended up stranded in this dungeon.” After a moment of silence, the swarthy man managed to gather his breath and demeanor. He continued looking around until he eventually located Melody. “You must be the Mayor. It’s nice to meet you Mel-,” he went to stand up but was pushed back onto his knees. He coughed, as to relieve the tension and awkwardness, before continuing like nothing happened. “My name is Kyrel Audun, I’m a mercenary that usually works for merchant ships.

“Ahh, this is awkward. Sorry, I’m just going to address the bear in the room. My crew and I were hired to attack your town, oh!” The guard who was holding Kyrel at sword point pressed his sword point against the mercenary's throat upon that admission, obviously angry. “Ay, ay, ay, wait a moment please! We never meant your town any harm and didn’t do any pillaging or attacking. We stayed back from the vanguard and quietly sabotaged the operation!

When the man saw that nobody there was buying his story, he delayed only for a moment before continuing on. Obviously his life depended on him selling himself.

“No, seriously. When we heard them openly hiring anyone who would sign on in Ostlind, we volunteered in order to try and stop the situation. The only people we murdered tonight were fellow members of the invasion! Upon entering this forest, the first thing I did was run a blade through the invasion commander’s heart. Most of the Ostlind natives refused to follow me, but I grouped all the other mercenaries together and led them astray, eventually ending up in the dungeon where my crew and I systematically eliminated them one at a time. I know this is hard to believe, I only ask that you don’t kill me right here and now. Find a truthsayer or inquisitor to confirm my story, please!”

Melody decided to have pity on the man for the time being, fighting down the urge to rip apart every single person who’d caused her harm that night. She told the guards to take them into custody and started checking up on everyone to see if they were ready to move out. There were a few things to handle before leaving the forest, but there was going to be a lot of work to get done before the town was anywhere near functional again.

“Gladil, over here please.” After tonight's events, Melody couldn’t help but admit that perhaps the wood elf’s cult was onto something. For an entire invading force to have disappeared, her group to have been escorted there safely, and the miracle fruit that healed Faeryl back to perfect health, there had to be some sort of higher power watching over the forest, even if it were not a god. The first person to recognize and act upon this, as well as the one with the most intimate knowledge of the forest, was the ex-ranger turned religious leader, Gladil. As such Melody decided it was probably about time she gave him a seat on Annahmia’s council, the unofficial ruling body of the frontier town.

Gladil, upon being summoned and seeing the other members in Melody’s group, couldn’t help but get excited. He naturally recognized the others, and realized he was finally receiving official approval from the town, his church could finally stop being referred to as a cult, and the mayor must now be a believer of some sort. He skipped over to the group as fast as he could.

“How may I be of help, Ms. Mayor?” the elf gave Melody a respectful nod, not in the least way smug or full of himself. A lot of people would, at the very least, have a look of ‘I told you so’ in a situation like this, but not Gladil. Melody respected is demeanor and felt a little worse about the way she’d been writing him off as a fanatic the entire time.

“Gladil, this is the council. From today forward, I want to offer you a seat and a vote on all things related to the enchanted forest. We can talk about tax reliefs for your church later, but for now we have a few questions, if you don't mind,” another nod, “Okay. Do you have any way of confirming these men’s story?” Melody jerked her head in the direction of the new prisoners.

“Ms. Mayor-”

“Melody, please.”

“Er. Right, Ms. Melody,” Melody did her best not to roll her eyes, “I cannot directly confirm what their story, but a lot of it makes sense. First, we need to look at the facts we can confirm. You, along with the rest of the villagers who could escape, all fled into the forest after sunset. For a while now, anyone who trespassed at night would be cast away into a dangerous part of the forest, but your group was offered free passage to the clearing.

“The arrival of these six men means, at the very least, a portion of the attackers chased after you as well. It is reasonable to assume that they intended to leave no survivors and thus needed to end your life. Now, if we acting under the assumption that my god had offered you his protection, and I am, then why did you have to walk all the way here? My theory is that the forest deity is still in its infancy and as such, is limited in the amount of power it has. Were it to direct you and yours directly to this clearing, it may have lost too much energy to be able to deal with the invaders giving chase.” So far Melody didn’t refute anything that Gladil had said. She knew that by letting him continue, she was acknowledging his god and his church, but at this point it only made sense.

“When we were praying to the god, before we saw the fires over the forest, I felt a large portion of energy moving through the air in the clearing. It was then that the god offered us a gift of the holy pear. I fear that it expended some of its energy to give us the miracle cure, and that is another reason why it had such difficulty ferrying you here.

“We do not know what happened to the Ostlind guard force, but I think it is safe to operate under the assumption that their commander was in fact killed by this Kyrel man, otherwise that would be part of the story too easy to refute as soon as we captured one of them. I theorize that they are most likely dead to a man, killed by the forest, whereas the mercenaries ended up in the same trial I fell into months ago. The forest god decided to test the mercenaries, most likely aiming its sights on Kyrel to thank him for helping to protect us and dumped them all into the dungeon it controls.

“The fact that they survived the trial, and they were the only ones to survive, might mean that they gained the approval of the god. For that much, I think that we at least hear them out and at the very least, do not kill them while in the forest. There is a lot we are still in the dark about here, we can only do our best to verify their story.”

Most of what Gladil said aligned with Melody’s initial thoughts, so she decided to accept it. There were a few more questions from the other council members, mostly them trying to learn about what type of man the new council member was. The elf received the approval of most of the council and was welcomed in.

Shortly thereafter, the town began to move as a group. Everybody collected their things, Faeryl was given support, and the group moved out. The drow insisted that she was feeling perfectly fine, but nobody was in a rush to let her walk by herself after having spent over an hour with a bolt through her heart and lung.

As they exited the forest, all were wary of the forest creatures still. In the past, while hunting or harvesting, it wasn’t uncommon for a javelin squirrel or two to leap out and attack, but that wasn’t the case this time. Very quickly, the group found themselves at the entrance to the forest, having skipped past every single clearing and a vast tract of forest somehow. Melody looked over to Gladil and saw a smile full of white teeth, clearly happy about something.

From where they stood, they could see that nearly the entire town had been burnt in some fashion, including the bridge that spanned across the river and connected the forest to the town. The palisade had been completely destroyed, along with most of the buildings. There were husks everywhere, but a few of the buildings like the inn looked like they’d been extinguished before they were burnt down completely. The only building that didn’t look worse for wear was the Greensong fortress.

Melody could see countless people streaming in and out of the courtyard of the stone building, and eventually one of them spotted Melody and company looking on. The person sprinted back indoors and before long, five men were running over to the river. The Annahmia guards clenched their weapons, but nobody drew them. The group did not seem aggressive, otherwise they’d be coming over with all their forces.

At the front was a tall man with long limbs and scales around his eyes. His nose was shallow, and his ears were close to his head, making him look like a snake. Melody quickly realized that the man was a fuxi, a reptilian race originally from a continent of the far east. There weren’t many fuxi in these parts of the world, which made her suspect the man's identity, which he quickly confirmed.

“Ho, citizens of Annahmia! Worry not, we are friends, not foe. My name is Salah, I am one of the four great-elders of the Adventurers Guild here in the Laevell kingdom. I cannot tell you how happy I am to see that you all survived. We arrived too late and saw only the carnage left behind and it has been wearing away at my soul. Hold fast, we will work on a bridge quickly.” The four men next to him began casting a group spell. There wasn’t much of a difference between spells and group spells, they just added a formation and combined mana pools to cast it on a larger scale. If the mages worked together enough, however, the effort would become multiplicative rather than just additive, leading to stronger works than usually possible.

Within 5 minutes, a portion of the river separated and then suspended itself above the rest, freezing into a thick bridge of ice that seemed sturdy enough to walk on. The townspeople followed Melody and company as they walked over to greet the fuxi. Melody had had contact with this man before, he was responsible for the guild activities along the southern border and was the direct commander of the Greensongs. Melody walked up to Salah alongside Jorn, the party-leader of the Greensongs, and introduced herself.

She gave the tall reptilian man a recap of the events from the night before, up to and including everything that happened after they safely arrived in the clearing and the men came spilling out of the dungeon. Throughout the entire story, the guild elder did not interrupt her once, only occasionally burrowing the scales that occupied the typical placement of eyebrows. As she finished, he slightly frowned before shaking his head.

“I want to apologize to you and the citizens of Annahmia. When I received Jorn’s letter I’d already intended to set up an official outpost down here, to monitor and assess the growth of the dungeon as well as protect the town. Dungeon towns being attacked out of greed isn’t common, but it isn’t an unprecedented event either. I’d hoped that the presence of Jorn and his company would be enough to delay any untowardly thoughts, not many would provoke the Adventurers Guild after all. I’d already filed all the paperwork and was just awaiting the Guild Master’s approval, but he was waylaid by the king and caught up in kingdom defense. He was distracted, and I was too patient.

“By the time I received your letter pleading for help and learned of the turbulent political situation down here, I knew that I’d messed up. I gathered as many men as I could on short notice and set off from the capital. Unfortunately, the capital is far, the letter was delaying getting to me, and there are no nearby portal arrays in the area. For that, I truly and sorry for my laggardness. After stabilizing what we could of the town, I sent off a large portion of the men I brought along to occupy Ostlind and stayed behind to confirm your fate. This won't happen again, and nobody should make this mistake again in the future.

“Jorn, you’ve done well to keep this situation stabilized this long. I am especially proud to hear that you came to the defense of the town, even when faced with overwhelming odds. I will not stay here for long, and I intend to put you in charge of the guild forces located in this area. I’ll be petitioning the Guild Master to bother the king about a minor nobility title for you. Don’t cringe, we both know it is only on paper, but it will allow you to help Melody contest any further claims on this land.”

“Thank you for all of your help, and there is no need to apologize for the evil of man, Guild Elder. Greed is greed, and we can only blame ourselves for not being prepared better. Thank you for all the assistance you have given us so far, and for the help rebuilding the town you’re giving us in the future.” Melody thanked the man before looking past him at the burnt wreckage of a town again. A tear silent made its way down her face, mourning the loss of the first true home she’d had. She didn’t wallow however, there was work to be done.