Day 03 (S2)

Rina and Alice shared a room at the inn in Vorovni, and Kin and Aurelius shared a room. Rina did not need to sleep since she is an Elf - so she was fully awake for 4 of the 8 hours while the others slept.
In the night, Alice was tossing and turning, talking a bit in her sleep. Rina listened intently, but did not wake her.
"...They're gonna... Find me..." Alice mumbled as she slept, "...searching... searching for Alice..." She continued. She mumbled a bit more before jumping out of her sleep.
"Are you ok?" Rina asked.
"Yeah, I was just dreaming..." Alice replied.
"Someone's looking for you?" said Rina.
"Huh? Oh... Yeah... Maybe..." Alice trailed off and went back to sleep.
In the morning Rina did not pry about Alice's dream, but both she and Alice had slightly concerned looks on their faces for a while that day.

The party went to Henry's Horses again to get their horses, who they had housed there overnight.
"Hey Henry?" started Kin.
"Oi!" Henry III yelled back as he came in from the other room, "Oi you're back! Come 't get yer 'orses 'ave ya?"
"Yes, and another thing" said Kin, "Can you hide this somewhere til we get back? I don't want it to slow us down on our trip?" Kin shows Henry the chest he purchased the day before.
"I can so many things" Henry said with a wink, "for the right price."
Kin handed him 5 gold from the chest, "How is this?"
"Oi, 5 gold all to me self? You got yourself a 'idden chest!"
He grabbed the chest and buried it under one of the muddy horse stalls, and put a board on top of it. "Nobody will even look 'ere mate! It'll be right safe with me!"
"Thanks" replied Kin.

The four of them headed toward Stoneslope to try to find Cricket - he was the one survivor of the Disappearing Village, after all, and the only one who may know something.
The town was muddy, though it was clear that attempts were made years ago upon it's initial erection to prevent this - there were slopes of stones built up along the edges to hold the city up. Along the top of the stones there was a small iron fence surrounding the town - supposedly to prevent attacks from any small creatures outside, but hardly enough to hold anything back. It was broken in many places, the town itself was not kept up very well.
The guards there were a little skeptical of the party, the four of them did not look like most people who visited their little town.
Rina hopped off her horse and approached one of the guards. "Good morning," she started, "We are looking for Cricket, we've heard he's here somewhere? We are hoping to figure out what happened at Riverbend."
The guards looked at each other puzzlingly, but then one spoke up, "Yeah he's out back in the public baths but uhh..." he paused, "good luck talking to the guy about anything."
"Why, what do you mean?" Rina asked.
"Well," the the guard started, "he's a little nuts. He doesn't really speak in coherent sentences most of the time."
Rina and Alice both rolled their eyes, "Take us to him anyway..." Rina said, "Please."
Aurelius opted to not go talk to Cricket, instead he went into a local tavern. He had a few drinks, along with the bartender, and decided to come up with something he called his "Brilliant, money making plan" where he would have people invest their money into his business, then they would eventually get paid back. What was this business, exactly? Even he didn't know in his drunken stupor. But the bartender believed in him, and gave him 3 gold to help him get started. "Whatever your plan is, mate" started the very drunk bartender, "I believe in you!"
"Thanks man!" said Aurelius, "If you can get other people in on it, you'll get a bigger cut!"
"Oh really?!" said the bartender, "I'll get all me friends to join!"
Aurelius then begins his multi-level marketing scheme with an unknown product.

The other three party members find Cricket drunk at the baths.
"Hello Cricket" said Rina, "Can you maybe help us by answering questions?"
"Ohh buddy I can answer em like the best of em, lemme tell ye about the time I saw a squirrel in the bath!" A reminder, he was born blind - this man never saw anything in the baths.
"Um, no Cricket, we need to talk about Riverbend" said Alice.
"Riverbend!" and just like that, Cricket started singing, "Just around the river bend, I look once more!"
"Cricket, please, we need to know about the people who disappeared from the village you lived in."
He then got a bit somber, "Oh the disappearances ye say? Yep they'd be screaming one moment and be gone the next. No sign of em!" he said.
"Did it sound like they were dragged off or anything? Did they all die at once?" Kin asked him.
"No struggle." Cricket said, "They were just there, then they were gone. Only a few people a day til they were all gone." The real Cricket, not the crazy coot, seemed to show up on his face in that moment, " I left because I was lonely...
"Do you know why it never got you?" asked Rina.
But immediately he was back to his crazy self, "Did I tell ye about the squirrel?!"
"Another time, Cricket." Rina sighed as she and the others walked away.

Near nightfall they approached the town of Riverbend. Despite being near the river, it was not as wet as Vorovni. It stood slightly higher than the River Nives - the same river that runs through Vorovni, through the Pixie Woods, and all the way to the north of the mainland. South of here, the river ran through Castle Frey in Pennislovica, then continued south through Cruld in Drusk, and emptied into the ocean on the southern end of Kay'Lend.

Before going into the town, the party came up with a plan.
Trees surround the town on the south and east sides of the village, so the party went around to hide within their cover as they observe.
Rina with her elf eyes could see movement - there appears to be people within the town.
"I thought all the people were dead here," Rina said, "but I see a few people moving in there."
"We should go talk to them" said Kin.
"What if they are like... undead or something?" Alice retorted.
"I have an idea" said Rina as she snapped her fingers and twisted her hand around slightly.
Suddenly a small, fey-like cat appeared on her arm. He mostly looked like a regular cat, except he had a 3rd eye in the middle of his forehead that almost always remained closed, and his tail looked more akin to an octopus tentacle.
"This is Khoshekh" She said, "He can't really die even if something happens to him. So, I'm going to send him in there to see if we can find anything out."
"How will you know? It's not like he can talk to you." Aurelius said.
"Oh, but he can - I have Beastspeach. It allows me to speak with animals at will."
She whispered to the cat in a language none of them understand, and he ran into the city.
A few moments later Khoshekh returned to Rina, who listened to what he had to say intently.
Khoshekh responded into to Rina's mind with images and sensations of what he just did. She sees normal people, 4 of them, they appear to be robbers who are looting the empty buildings. One of them reached out to pet Khoshekh before going back to loading up the cart.

"There's 4 people" Rina relayed to the group, "It looks like they're looting the place. I think we should wait til it get's dark to-"
She was cut off by Kin, who yelled "No you don't!" as he jumped past the brush into the city - in line of sight of the robbers.
"Of course," Rina sighed, "Leave it to a Cleric to start a fight with robbers."
The rest of the party joined the fight, Rina stepping in-between Kin and the men at first. Two of the robbers jump on the cart to escape, and the other two draw knives to fight the party. Rina rushed to the front of the cart and yelled at them to stop. They didn't.
"Get trampled, Elf Bitch!" yelled their leader, who was driving the cart.
"I may be a bitch, but at least I don't have fleas!" she said as she uses infestation on him. Along with the bugs already on him beginning to chew at him, Rina's own magic flowed toward him with a sickly green color - hundreds of spiked butterflies ingulf him and he died nearly instantly.
The sun finally went down, but did not deter anyone in the fight. Not until it began to get oddly cold. The remaining 3 robbers began running away from the party and into a house to barricade themselves in, hoping to avoid any more of them getting killed by the party.
Kin began to follow, but Rina stopped him.
"Kin!" she said, "They've given up, their leader is dead. Let's just leave it be and investigate what we're actually-"
Just then, the men began screaming. The door slammed open as they began to run out again.
Behind them loomed a tall, dark creature. Taller than the average man by at least a foot, with dark brown, saggy skin covered in little holes. The skin seemed to be covered with a dark, sludge-like coating. It's neck was longer than usual, and thin. Where the eyes would be were just two black pits, and a strange, beak-like protrusion made up the mouth. Its screams were high pitched and bird-like, yet mumbled beneath the coating over its body.
This creature seemed to bring the cold, and around its feet could be seen a dark, swirling magic.
In that moment, Rina ran as far away from the creature as possible while still remaining within eldritch blast range.
It took its first attack, which was a pulse of magic from its feet. The swirling magic hit the remaining robbers, as well as Alice, Aurelius, and Kin. The robbers stopped immediately in their tracks and died. The party members who were hit were knocked to the ground, the HP they lost could not be healed despite Kin's efforts.
"Get out of its range!" Rina yelled at the party members, but they didn't listen.
Rina used her eldritch blast - a sickly green bolt of magic - and hit the creature.
Immediately following the hit, Rina felt something strange happen within her. She felt her magic, bound to her soul, begin to rip away from her. The pain of a soul being torn to shreds, her life flashing before her. The inner core of her being shattered. Then, she felt only emptiness. The magic was gone, leaving a feeling of an open wound in her soul. She could not help but fall to her knees and cry in pain and fear.
The creature then pulsed its magic again, but this time the 4 dead men's bodies began to rise up. They then attempted to fight the 3 closest party members.
Alice used her best efforts, but fell to unconsciousness. Kin could not heal her until the monster was felled.
Aurelius was able to down the 4 undead men, but their souls remained like dark shadows - still able to attack them.
Kin attacked the monster, hurting it until it was nearly dead itself.
As it hovered over Alice, she could hear its screeches. Through the cries she hears a soft voice. "Help... me..." it was able to say quietly. Despite its words, it lifted a foot to hit Alice while she was down - whatever this creature was, it could seem to control its own actions.
But Alice could not tell her companions what she heard in time to actually help the creature.
Rina - crying in pain on the other end of the street - suddenly felt the wound of her soul begin to change. All of the pain, the feeling of the ripping and tearing, the emptiness - she felt it all again, but in reverse. The sickly green magic was gone, but was being... replaced. She now felt a cold, icy magic begin to bind to her soul, mending the wound, putting her shattered soul back together. Within her now was no longer a green fire of a sickly devil she once called her patron - now it was an icy fire, both calm and chaotic, and comforting to her.
She conjured one more eldritch blast, unsure if it would even work. Instead of a thin, green bolt of magic, from her hand she shot an immensely large icicle - longer than she was tall, and sharper than the point of her arrows.
She hit the monster, felling it instantly.

Kin ran to Alice, making sure she was ok.
"We need to get this thing's body back to Marcus" Aurelius said.
"How are we going to do that? It's bigger than most of us even!" replied Kin.
"We can use my horse" said Alice, now that she was up again, "I have a broomstick I can ride instead, it's almost as fast as a horse anyway."
They fastened the body of the creature to the little hinny, Rina still staring at the hole that her icicle left in its face - unsure what this change in her magic really means. They all got on their horses and began to ride toward Stoneslope again.
However, before they leave the vicinity, the black swirling magic conjured hundreds of Shadow People. The shadows began to lunge toward the party like a giant wave.
"Go, Run!" said Kin, "I'll hang a little behind and keep them at bay!"
And so, around Midnight, they left Riverbend with a gallop of their horses - the body of the monster in tow.

Next: Day 04 (S3-4)