Hi, I’m Grim. Drakon has asked me to tell the tale of what happened between the time we left him for his stand at the bridge and when we made it back to Storm’s Cove.

After I gave the order to move out and picked Aura we went down the road as fast as we could. After a few miles Aura was starting to get uncomfortable on my shoulder. We stopped for a few minutes while I explained to her again, that he could re-spawn and we can’t. That if there was any way we stood a chance I would be right up there next to him, kicking rodent ass. That seemed to calm her down a bit so I put her in front of me on Ethel and we were off again. We were just past the second bridge when we heard the explosion and saw the fireball rise from the trap we had made.

Missy and Sissy being able to traverse the swamp a lot easier on Ivy, with her not needing to follow the road, scouting a bit behind us to make sure we weren’t being followed. Drakon must be doing a good job because we made it out of the swamp and back up the side of the valley on the other side just before night fell, and we couldn't see any pursuit. We camped out in a wooded copse about a mile off the side of the road just to be safe. Aura decided to hide and camouflage her cart there so we could move even faster, with her mounting Freki. We were still each carrying a wolf pup as well, we fashioned some straps so they were strapped above the packs on our back, that way if it did come to a battle our hands would be free.

Without the cart slowing us down and forcing us to follow the road, we made it to Maiden’s rest just before nightfall the next day.

The city itself was totally different from Storm’s cove. The harbor there was much smaller as Storm Cove had much better facilities. At the center of the town was the temple of the maiden, which doubled as a town hall and courthouse. The maiden the town was named after was the goddess Justinia, goddess of justice and freedom. As such the city attracted a lot of outcasts and people who didn’t conform to the norm for their race. But it didn’t have that air of lawlessness that frontier towns usually have. With people being pretty well behaved.

With freedom being thought of so highly here, there were small shrines throughout the city to most of the gods, even those that some would deem evil. With the mantra being, you can believe what you want, do what you want, as long as you don’t hurt anybody else or cause any other trouble. The outskirts had brothels and gambling halls, with the city watch making sure that the men and women who worked there were there of their own free will. The center of the harbor had a gigantic 50-foot statue of the goddess in the middle of it. It depicted her as a Lion-kin in full armor with a crown, one hand holding a pair of scales that at night had some fires burning on it to double as a lighthouse. The other hand was resting on a sword held at the hip. Rumor had it that in actuality it was a gigantic Golem, enchanted to protect the city in time of need.

When we go to the gate we informed the city guard o what happened, they escorted us directly to the guildhall. When we entered through the portal Dave informed us that Drakon was in fact in the process of re-spawning but that it would take a few days. So each day that we were here I left an updated message for him, for when he woke up.

As we didn’t want to move our rooms to this guildhall, Missy and Sissy invited us to join them at their parents' place. I was a bit hesitant at first but Missy and Sissy assured me that it would be fine. When we got introduced to Eurydice and Dwalin Stonehammer there they explained to their parents what had happened. Their mother gave me a hug thanking me for taking care of her daughters and telling me and Aura that we were welcome as long as we wanted. At dinner, they picked up on the looks between me and the twins.

Dwalin took me aside and told the girls and his wife to have some fun while he and I went out for a drink. The twins and Eurydice gave me a wink saying good luck, as he was being as subtle as a Dwarf.

We made our way to a pub up the road where he ordered us both a tankard of ale. “First things first, thank you again for taking care of my girls.” Then with a wink added, “I can see why they like you.”

I blushed and started to stammer a bit when he held up his hand. “I learned very quickly to not get too hung up about sex, being married to a gorgon. Me and their mom have been together for years. There have been other men she has slept with. But she always comes home to me. That's just how gorgon society works.”

Being very embarrassed at this pint all I could do was just drown my ale and order another one while he continued. “I’m not saying that the girls will be like their mom but I just want to prepare you for it. I see that I have embarrassed you enough so let's talk about some other things.”

After that we mostly talked about Drakon, me being proud of my brother for staying behind to cover our retreat. After hearing that he was a lord and interested in being an architect, Dwalin offered to talk to his wife about helping to escort us back. He also asked, knowing his daughters well, if we would officially add them to our adventuring party. We spent a few hours drinking and made our way back to the house pretty drunk. The girls made us both sleep in the living room.

The next day we both woke up hungover and had a talk with the women about the next steps over breakfast. Eurydice immediately approved of the plan to escort us back, knowing that the twins wanted to join the party and wanting to spend some time with them. She had already heard through the grapevine that the guild was getting a few high-level parties together to deal with the were-rats. Aura was fussed over a bit by Eurydice, the girls apparently had told her story. Eurydice was going all mother hen on her. Aura didn’t seem to mind it as much as I thought she would.

We spent the next few days gathering supplies and getting everything ready for the trip back. The rest of the Dwalin and Eurydice’s adventuring party joining us. With Dwalin a stone-shaper and Eurydice a gazer they were both the DPS of the party. The tank of the party was Bernard a huge, almost topping 10ft, bear-kin. He had the Dreadnought class. Unlike most bear-kin, I’ve met he had almost no fat on his body being pure muscle. He wore full plate armor with a stylized helmet that made him look very fierce. When removed though he had this goofy-looking smile on his face, anybody who looked at him couldn’t help but smile with him. He used two huge tower shields studded with spikes in battle. Then there was Vex a small fox-kin with the shadow class who was the scout. And last but certainly not least. There was Grog the strangest of the bunch. He was a two-headed ogre. Apparently, both heads had different classes. One was a cleric of Justinia the other was a warlock.

Eurydice and Dwalin warned me not to ask how that was possible unless I wanted to have days-long conversations with him, them, whatever, on the subject as he himself didn’t know why or how it happened.

We bought a new cart to be pulled by Ethel for the time being and loaded it up with some supplies so Aura could maybe finish work on Geri, and enough food to last us for a while.

We teamed up with the other parties and had a caravan of close to fifty adventurers making their way back to Storm cove. Along the way, we picked up Aura’s cart. When we got to the site of the battle we found big piles of bones that had small bite marks on them. Apparently, this group of were rats eat even their own dead. Seeing how big the piles were and how many Drakon must have killed, I was glad that we weren’t there. We had to spend a day there to repair the bridge as the fire damaged it enough that some of the heavier carts might not have made it across. Dwalin showing off his stone-shaping skills he added a few skulls commemorating the battle to the four corners of the bridge. He also named the bridge Wolves crossing and shaped a small plaque on each end showing the name.

The scouts quickly found the warrens in the woods that the wererats were using. It was a huge network of small tunnels that would take weeks to clear out. Not wanting to leave Drakon alone for so long we decided to not join in on hunting down the rats but to push on back to Storm Cove. With the high-level party taking the lead we made it back without much issue.