FDW4’s AoO (Melinda): 1d20+11 = 22 (Miss)

Melinda’s Attack (FDW4): 1d20+12 = 19 (Hit)

CL Check: 1d20+8 = 22 (Success)

Blast Damage: 4d6 = 17 (Magic)

Eldritch Chain (FDW5): 1d20+12 = 29 (Hit)

CL Check: 1d20+8 = 23 (Success)

Blast Damage: 8 (Magic) (Dead)

Once more, I danced out of a wolf’s jaws, leaving them to close on nothing more than empty air, before unleashing a blast of power at the wolf’s face. The bolt of purple magic left the wolf staggering, clearly barely standing. Then, it jumped to the one next to it, that Frostmane had thrown down, and put it out of its misery.

Melinda’s AoO (FDW4): 1d20+12 = 29 (Hit)

Damage: 1d10 = 1 (Dead)

FDW7’s attack (Frostmane): 1d20+11 = 15 (Miss)

FDW8’s Attack (Frostmane): 1d20+11 = 13 (Miss)

My wolf lost its nerve, and turned to flee. Unfortunately for the devilish beast, my foot snapped out and caught it in the side. I was well aware of my deficiencies as a martial combatant, but that was enough to bring down the wolf. The other wolves started to understand the situation they were in, their bestial cunning prompting them to make half-hearted attacks as they looked for a good opening to escape.

Frostmane’s attack (FDW7): 1d20+9 = 18 (Hit)

Power Attack (5) Bite: 1d8+15 = 19 (Piercing)

Freezing Bite: 1d6 = 4 (Cold) (5 Resisted) (Dead)

With the threat in front of him finished, Frostmane whirled upon the other wolves. Seeing one wolf badly wounded, while the other had yet to be hit, Frostmane struck hard, aiming to eliminate the weaker of the two first. In a flash of teeth and a spray of blood, the wolf joined its fellows in death.

Siora’s attack (FDW8): 1d20+4 = 14 (Hit)

Damage: 1d6+2 = 8 (Piercing)

Vestele’s Attack (FDW8): 1d20+4 = 22 (Hit)

Damage: 1d8+1 = 7 (Piercing)

Melinda’s Attack (FDW8): 1d20+12 = 26 (Hit)

CL Check: 1d20+8 = 12 (Success)

Damage: 1d10 = 3 (Bludgeoning)

Blast Damage: 4d6 = 10 (Magic)

Frostmane’s AoO (FDW8): 1d20+9 = 14

Power Attack (5) Bite: 1d8+15 = 20 (Dead)

What followed was simply academic. Siora and Vestel fired their weapons again, and once more they struck true. Eldritch energy cloaking my fist, I charged in and struck it between the eyes. That broke its will to fight, but as it turned to flee, Frostmane was there, ready for it, and his jaws ended the wolf’s life.

Your party has defeated 8 Fiendish Dire Wolves.

Melinda gains 900 XP.

Frostmane gains 750 XP.

Siora gains 750 XP.

Vestele gains 750 XP.

With the danger past, Siora let her spells lapse. As I returned to my normal, non-blurred state, I looked at everyone, and grinned. “Well, you know you’re doing something right if someone’s trying to kill you. We’ll have to be extra careful from now on, especially as we approach the Shrine. No doubt they’ll be waiting for us. But, for now, we should continue on towards the ruins.”

No one objected, especially since the uneasy feeling we all had was getting more pronounced as time went on. We all felt the oppressive weight of power pressing down on us as we neared the site of the ruins. Such power was clearly dangerous, too dangerous to leave alone when we were already needing to deal with other dangerous powers. At the very least, we needed to put it back to ‘sleep’, or whatever passed for it. Of course, part of me also realized that, if we could harness that power, use it for our own…

I shook my head to clear it of those thoughts. Power was good, and a necessary thing to accomplish your goals, or to keep others from taking advantage of you. There was nothing wrong with amassing power, especially when it helped to keep you safe. But the Elders in my tribe had been very clear when they were teaching lessons about the difference between power earned through your hard work and efforts, and power given to you by forces greater than yourself.

The most common form of ‘given’ power was, of course, clerics and other divine spellcasters, who did not use their own power, but rather channeled the power of their chosen deity (or, more rarely, a concept, such as ‘justice’). This offered people great power, potentially, but it also put restrictions on their actions. If you went against the ideals of your patron, then they might cut you off, and you would be forced to either find a new patron, or atone for your misdeeds. Granted, this wasn’t an issue for most clerics or the like, because they typically became servants of the divine because they were of a similar mindset, or were brought up being indoctrinated by the church.

But the gods were not the only forces out there that offered power, and those other forces were usually far from benign. Gods gain their powers, in part, from their worshippers, so it stood to reason that these other forces would want something from those they gave a sample of their power to. But such exchanges of power were rarely ‘fair’ and never ‘equal’. You could always count on the entity getting more out of the deal than you did.

That was true even when you didn’t take into account any hidden stings that the power might impose. Could be that you unknowingly sold your soul into an eternity of torment for the power to change the present. But the power itself could be a curse, and cause you to essentially ruin your own goals as you tried desperately to achieve them. The Greek tragedy writers had nothing on the malevolent entities out there, according to the stories I’d heard.

It was the middle of the afternoon when we finally made it to the ruins of Esyh Serin. The ruins were in a large, perfectly circular clearing. It was like someone had taken a knife and carved out a circle in the forest. The whole thing was clearly unnatural.

Looking out on the ruined outpost, I could tell that it used to be something fairly impressive. The main feature of the outpost was a four-story tower in the exact center of the clearing. There were five out-buildings, as well. Four of them looked to be in various states of decay ranging from ‘crumbling wreck’ to ‘ancient deathtrap’. One, a little two-story stone building, was actually in decent shape, much like the tower.

In fact, those two buildings that were still in good shape were in very suspiciously good shape. If this outpost had been abandoned since before living memory of even the elves, then it would have had to have been hundreds of years since the last people lived here. But that one house managed to not only have all four walls and an intact roof, and the tower looked almost as though it had been completed only yesterday, without any signs of aging?

As if the lack of aging weren’t bad enough, I could see smoke coming from the chimney of the house. All the information we had said that the outpost had been abandoned, and was now the den of monsters. While that could still be the case, the kinds of monsters that bothered using fireplaces could be some of the most dangerous, since they were actually intelligent.

Oh, there was one other big ‘issue’ that clued us in that something was terribly, desperately wrong with these ‘ruins’. Everywhere one looked throughout the clearing, there were statues. They weren’t the nice, normal kind of statues, either, the kind that nobles would have to decorate their estates. No, they were life-size statues and they were positioned all over the place, even in some of the ruined buildings where the walls had fallen down. And the poses they were in? Place a sword in their hand, and strap a shield to their arm, and more than one would be the spitting image of a warrior frozen in the midst of battle.

This, naturally, raised all kinds of alarm bells, with all of us. I knew that petrification spells were a thing in this world. I didn’t know the first thing about how they worked, or how they could be reversed, but I knew they were real. When it came down to it, there were only two options. Either someone had commissioned dozens of statues posed like this, and simply left them all over the place as some kind of sick joke, or there was something living in the clearing that was more than capable of turning people into stone statues, even in the midst of combat. No way was I betting on it just being some crackpot eccentric art lover.

Looking at the others, I could see that they had the same fears. I sighed, and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly set up for fighting against any creature that can turn people to stone. And if they’re not even bothering to hide that the site is occupied, there’s probably far worse than that inside.”

Vestele nodded sharply. “And my sister and I do not have the power to return any of you to life if you get petrified. We would have to abandon you, and come back with a scroll or a caster capable of casting the spell. The only person in the wood who might be capable of casting the spell would perhaps be Magdalin. But from the way they talked, she cannot leave her land without losing much of her power.”

Frostmane chuffed. “I’m not eager to see life as a statue. If we have no reason to venture here right now, then I’d say we leave it for later. If we come back at all. We still have that cache to find, right? Let’s do that instead.”

Since none of us particularly disagreed with that assessment, we circled around the clearing, making sure to stay outside of the circle. Part of me wanted to rush in, and discover all the secrets of the place, but the part of me that liked living shouted it down. There was no shame in recognizing that you weren’t prepared for something, and avoiding it until you were. And if anyone asked, we’d just tell them that we couldn’t risk the greater quest to stop the Malarites from whatever they were planning to satisfy our curiosity.

When we got to a point directly south of the tower, we turned, and headed to the south, following the instructions left to us by the Piper. We still had no idea what kinds of items we would find there. It was possible the Piper himself didn’t know the contents of the cache, just that it existed, for times like this. Still, anything we could find that would help us against the enemies we faced would be appreciated, even if it was just a store of potions and scrolls.

After roughly an hour’s walk through the woods, we heard the sounds of flowing water. Not long after, we found the stream, just as he had told us we would. We followed the stream up its course, until we found ourselves looking at a small cave.

Siora and I pulled out everburning torches. Their magical light flickered like flames in the cave’s darkness, but they gave off no heat, and were not true fire, so the restrictions of my class did not affect it. Magic, I had found, was strange like that. I could not light a torch with simple flame, but a magical light that appeared as flame was fine. I could not use a scroll which unleashed a Fireball, but if I found some alchemical agent that burned with cold, I could use it.

Thanks to the Piper’s instructions, we were on the lookout for the sign. If we hadn’t been, it was likely we would never have spotted it, as the sigil was carved in the shadow of an outcropping of rock, barely visible in the torchlight. In fact, I missed it altogether. It was Frostmane’s keen eyes that spotted the sigil in my torchlight.

I looked at the others, who nodded at me. Right, time to see what the cache held. I took a breath, and then said, “All within the Master’s eye.”

I was only slightly surprised when the wall next to the sigil shimmered, revealing a double door carved from the very stone, emblazoned with the Piper’s sigil. And, in the center of the twin doors was a small indentation, the perfect size for the ring the Piper bequeathed to us. Sure enough, I placed the ring’s face in the indentation, and the doors swung open before us.