“Places of power should be respected. Even if your intent is to conquer a place, to ransack it of its treasures or cleanse it of its current occupants, you should take every precaution not to damage the structure itself. Always be aware of the fact that, given enough time and concentrated magic, the walls may not only have ears - they can sometimes start thinking for themselves.”

- Thesserion Kelluneth, Archmagister of Stone within the Collegium Sylvis on Arthaeum, in a lecture given to Adventurer’s Guild initiates

The Goodfruit Grove

The trek towards the “hill” that Kudscru had said the gremlins were using as a lair took another half hour or so, as we carefully picked our way through the woods. Ko served us well there. Once he knew what to look for, a quick flight above the canopy found a small clearing with a large grass-covered mound in the middle. With him guiding us, we cut straight towards it and soon found ourselves peering out at the clearing from behind a dense patch of underbrush.

“Well, they’re definitely in there,” I said quietly, listening to the bickering and caterwauling coming from the archway leading into the hill. “Can any of you sense movement in the clearing, or did we actually get lucky for once?”

Faraday just shook his head, though I hadn’t expected him to twig to anything - his holy magic only allowed him to sense evil outsiders and undead, rather than fey, and even then it was more a feeling of unease than a scrying spell’s precision. Cherubix, likewise, signaled a negative, her eyes darting around the clearing in search of anything that we might be missing.

“I don’t think so…” Ladybird seemed a bit distracted, but she went on. “The trees are definitely upset, but it seems more like a sharp sense of discomfort or disgust than fear or anger.” She shook her head. “Regardless, I can’t feel any movement outside of the shrine.”

“Beg pardon,” Faraday said. “That’s a shrine, then?” He nodded towards the white stone archway built into the hill’s face.

“It looks to be. Old elven architecture has a tendency to either co-opt natural structures and materials for habitable structures or to just build into pre-existing features of the landscape, like this one. If you look at the arch, it’s all a single piece of stone - no mortar or keystone holding it together, which means it’s either-” Ladybird’s voice had raised in volume and enthusiasm as she got deeper into her impromptu lecture, and I’d made a cutting motion to remind her of where we were. “Right, sorry,” she whispered. “Anyway, I’d guess that this was fashioned by an elven stone-shaper, and the fact that this is the only such elven structure I’ve heard of outside the forest, combined with the location in the middle of a large grove of blue oaks and the fact that it’s built into the landscape rather than built up into a larger structure…”

She took a breath. “I mean, I might be wrong, this could be the equivalent of a forester’s hut or something, but it screams ‘shrine to Meloria’ to my eyes.”

“And Meloria’s one of the major elven nature-y deities, right? Leaves, trees, deer, all that?” I asked, still scanning the clearing for movement.

“Exactly,” she replied, “though they may have had another name for her here. In the few rubbings and fragments that past adventurers brought back, that my father and I could get our hands on, we’ve only seen references to the gods of stars, moon, and magic. While the portfolios mostly matched those in elven pantheons from off-world, some of the names were different.”

Yeah, we were definitely going to be sitting down for a chat once we got back to town. The young druid was already proving a much better and more amicable source of knowledge than anyone else we’d met, and hopefully her father would prove just as helpful. Though, I did worry that he’d react poorly to us taking his kid out into the gremlin-infested woods…

Still, I thought to myself as I watched Ko coming in for a landing on my arm, that was something to worry about tomorrow, not now. “What’ve you got for us, partner?” I asked him as he resettled his wings.

His neck feathers fluffed up in annoyance, and he shook his head to resettle them.

I relayed that to the rest of the party, and looked at them afterward questioningly. “Any theories as to what the flies are about?”

“Oh, ew!” Cherubix’s face screwed up in disgust. “They’re gremlins, Dezy. They poo everywhere. If they’ve been in there very long… Well, it’s a good thing I packed the extra rags.” She puffed up her chest, proud of her foresight. Nevermind that she always packed extras, but I knew better than to mention that.

Still, I winced at what that likely meant for what we’d find inside, and Ladybird had a horrified expression on her face, which slowly turned to quiet fury.

Faraday just grimaced briefly before turning to examine the structure again. “Doesn’t change much about what we have to do, though, if that’s the case. Just try not to breathe any of em in.”

He looked at Cherubix. “Think you can fireball them from the doorway?”

“Ah… Could I ask that we try not to blow up a historical site? Please.” Ladybird interjected.

“She’s right. Though I’d wager that anything a fireball could take out has already been done for by the gremlins.” I said. “However... Cheri, can you lob a frostbomb in there, maybe freeze them in place for us?”

Cherubix had been watching the discussion from where she stood near the forest floor, and her expression bloomed with an eager smile. “Oh! Hey, yeah, I haven’t done one of those in a while!” Then her expression sank slightly. “Though, it’s not gonna be able to take as many of ‘em out as fire. Still, yeah! If I do it right, they’re gonna be frozen in their own poo!” She punched a fist into the opposite palm, and then paused and gave me a questioning glance. “That’s irony, right?”

“Ehh… Karma, more like,” I said, smiling at her, and then looking up at the other two. “But whichever it is, I think we’ve got the start of a plan.”

“Three,” Cherubix whispered, barely audible over the screeching of a particularly loud gremlin altercation.

“Two.” I whispered one last prayer, smiling as I felt the spirits flow out of the world and into the arrow I had nocked.

“One.” She said, concentrating on the swirling orb of ice-blue light hovering above her palm that had grown to three times the size of her head.

“FROST IN THE HOLE!” She screamed, flinging her hand forward, hurling the frostbomb through the archway.

I watched through slitted eyes as the orb flew down the shallow stairway leading into the shrine, waiting for it to impact at the bottom, but she somehow managed to hook it back up and keep it flying into the chamber for another split second before it hit something and detonated.

A chorus of sharp crackle-ing echoed from the room as a lot of water flash-froze, then shortly afterward a fwump as the spell let loose with a soft blast of pressurized air and sent a wave of frost billowing back up the stairway, along with the new sound of gremlins screaming in pain and panic.

It also brought the powerful smell of carrion and feces, giving me a powerful flashback to the sewers. Gods but I was tired of that smell.

“Go!” I shouted. Faraday was already four steps down the stairwell by the time Cherubix’s spell had finished exploding, so my exhortation was mostly for Ladybird’s benefit. I suited deed to word and started barreling down the stairs myself, Ladybird behind me and a slightly-winded Cherubix bringing up the rear.

The room beyond was a madhouse. At least a dozen gremlins lay insensate near the stairs, either entirely dead or just shivering uncontrollably. One particularly large Nuglub near the back - likely the Boss Sulbrug we’d heard about - had avoided most of the blast, but it was still blinking frost-bitten eyes while screaming at its henchmen. Unfortunately for it, said henchmen for the most part either had their feet frozen into the layer of filth on the floor or were still in shock from the sudden ambush in a place they’d thought was safe.

Not all of ‘em, though, I thought to myself, pulling back the arrow and letting it loose at a Redcap who had it’s shit together enough to start moving towards Faraday with a glimmer of ruby light in its eyes.

The arrow struck, but not enough to outright kill it, and the little monster turned towards me with a shrill scream. Its eyes flared with red light, and the world around me faded away, replaced by the horror in front of me that was the most terrifying thing I’d-

I grit my teeth and clenched my eyes shut, fighting the magic off, and then opened them to glare right back in its startled eyes.

I’ve seen what lies beyond, waiting to gobble up wayward ghosts who overstay their welcome. You are nothing to that, little stick-man. I accompanied the internal monologue with another arrow straight to its shriveled little onion of a face, which finally did the job, and then looked around to find my next target.

Ladybird stood in the doorway, and had the gremlins who’d been mostly insensate well and truly handled, as barbed claws of stone erupted from the floor and slowly tore them to pieces. Cherubix had dashed past me while I was distracted and was repeatedly hitting a cluster of Nuglubs with chain lightnings, which would hopefully be enough to keep them from freezing her in place and coming for us. Faraday had squared off with the boss gremlin and a Redcap, and from the looks of it was being pushed hard.

Yeah, that definitely looked like a fight that could do with some better odds.

I drew an arrow and focused on a target. Inhale, pull, whisper a prayer on the exhale, loose.

As the Redcap went for Faraday’s exposed side my arrow caught it in what passed for its hip joint, and it fell to the ground with a squeal. A moment later Faraday’s boot came down on its head, squashing it like a fist-sized melon, and he promptly went on the offensive against the big gremlin.

I turned my attention to Cherubix’s half of the fight, only to find that she’d reduced the gang of six down to three very scorched and desperate individuals, all of which were struggling under the effects of Ladybird’s polymorph curses. I started to shout a warning when one got its shrunken claws on the brownie, but cut it short when I saw that it had been so weakened that it didn’t even leave a scratch. Cherubix cut it down in the next moment, the torso fully bisected as the top half fell away from the bottom, so I mentally shrugged and turned back to Faraday.

The big gremlin was definitely tougher than the rest, having taken multiple cuts from Faraday’s longsword along its arms and shoulders, with only shallow wounds to show for it. It was big enough to be a legitimate threat on its own, too, even without any other gremlins helping it out - those arms were longer than Faraday’s sword, and the claw-like nails looked to be a good three inches each.

I waited for a few heartbeats for the right shot, and then loosed when the fight brought the gremlin around to an angle where I couldn’t accidentally hit Faraday. My arrow hit true - but instead of punching through the thing’s skull it skidded off its greasy scalp and left behind another shallow wound. It let out a snarl and flinched, but it didn’t let its guard down enough for Faraday to finish it properly.

Damnit! I thought. They probably get resistant to normal steel as they get bigger. Crap, crap, we don’t have anything prepped for this!

Then I paused. Wait, we’ve got a druid now.

“Ladybird,” I called out to get her attention. “Can you weaken it?” I asked when she turned her head towards me, gesturing towards the duelling pair in the back of the room.

“Let’s find out,” she muttered, before shifting her weight and thrusting her hand forth. “Theros, lierahm’veihk!”

Once more, the magic snarled as it left her hand, spinning into a cloud around the creature, and I drew another arrow as fast as I could as the spell sank in and the transformation began. If the creature was powerful enough to shrug off steel, it was likely powerful enough to break a curse, so I wasn’t counting on having more than one shot at it.

Inhale, pull, watch the thing shrink in on itself like a deflated waterskin, whisper a prayer on the exhale, loose.

For a moment I thought that it hadn’t worked, as Faraday hit one of its upraised arm with another blow and carved off a chunk of flesh rather than severing the hand, but then the arrow sunk into its chest with a thunk that echoed in the chamber.

The gremlin shrieked, and the curse snapped with a sound I could almost hear as the creature expanded back to its normal size, but a broadhead through the lung was something even it couldn’t shrug off. It spat purple blood and fell back, trying to make some space, but Faraday’s next hit got through its guard and took it in the neck.

What followed was messy, as the thing’s magically tough hide prevented a neat killing blow, but in the end its head rolled away from the torso as Faraday pulled his sword from the divot it had gouged in the floor.

I looked around at the rest of the chamber, searching for any other threats, but Cherubix and Ladybird had mopped up all the small-fry on their own.

“Anybody hurt?” I asked, and was relieved when the answer came back mostly in the negative. Cherubix had a couple of scratches, and Faraday a shallow gouge in his left arm, but otherwise we’d managed to make it through the fight unharmed.

“Well then,” I said, “I guess it’s time to clean this mess up. Who wants to deal with these,” I gestured towards the bodies littering the chamber’s floor, “and who wants to keep watch?”

It took a good fifteen minutes to collect the ears and eyes from all the corpses, by which point Ladybird had made it clear that we wouldn’t be leaving without her having cleaned up the worst of the mess and doing some sketches of the statuary and carvings, broken as they were.

“Wait, no, but it’s getting really dark out though! This place is haunted! We should be getting back to town!” Cherubix was not a fan of roughing it when a proper bed - or, from her perspective, a pillow and a nice warm saucer of milk - was a possibility.

“Uh, actually…” I felt I had to chip in. “I noticed something when I came out to keep watch: the haunting ends at the doorway. If you go back in, the feeling fades pretty much as soon as you pass out of sight of the woods. If we can clean up the place, get rid of the worst of the smell, we should be safe to camp the night in there.”

“Aw…” I could tell that Cherubix was less than pleased to not be going back, but she’d perk up plenty soon - the only thing she loved more than cleaning a room was the possibility of cleaning a really foul room.

“Oh, really?” Ladybird looked back at the archway, and then around at the trees surrounding the clearing. I could tell when she focused in on the feeling of being watched by the way she hunched her shoulders slightly. “What with the fight and… well, everything I hadn’t actually noticed a difference.”

Then she perked up. “But, yes, if we can clean it up and spend the night, then I’ll get as much sketching done and notes made as I can. I’m not sure how much Dad has in grant money available for that, but just making it possible to get a look at a site like this would be well worth it, and we can pay you back.”

“Even with the gremlins having done such a job on it?” Faraday looked at her with a skeptical expression.

“Oh, well, obviously that’s less than ideal, but honestly just the architecture is a useful thing to have a first-hand account of, even if the murals and statues are…” she grimaced at the sad truth. “Shall we say, less than intact.”

“Well, any kind of reward is welcome, but we’ll be getting more than enough from Marahm for this. Don’t press him for anything he can’t afford, yeah?” I said, ignoring the raised eyebrow that Faraday shot me at turning down the coin.

Ladybird seemed pleased, though, which was the point. “I won’t. But still, anything we bring back, I’ll make sure you three are compensated for.”

“Ah, actually…” I said, looking at Faraday and Cherubix and inclining my head towards Ladybird. “Auxiliary status, or no?”

Faraday had clearly been wondering about where I was going with this, but his expression clarified instantly and he gave a firm nod. “Absolutely. No complaints.”

Cherubix just gave me a big smile, which she then turned on the bewildered druid, and said “Oh! Yeah, she’s done good! This could’ve been a lot worse without her!”

I smiled, and looked back at Ladybird. “So, anything we bring back, we four will be compensated for.”

At her continued confusion, I clarified. “Guild rules let us give non-members who make significant contributions a lesser share in the rewards. We don’t normally do it, because there’s some legal hassles involved and it can make things really complicated, but you’ve more than carried your weight.”

I stuck out a hand, as she stammered something about not needing the money. “And, if there are any other locations that you know of... well, we can talk about making similar arrangements to go explore them, eh?”