The stinger finds a soft spot in Tikrok's flank but he shakes off the poison thanks to his training. He clenches his jaw as he passes through the wall as the cold is stronger than he expected.
Asher wheels his mount around and gallops toward the group hard.
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"There's a tent on the side of the road a few miles up! It's where Tikrok found me. Let's meet up there!" Ivori says to Camlo and th others, pointing north up the road. " Tell Alwyn I'll grab his horse."
Still enjoying the benefit of haste and slipstream, Ivori runs a long, wide arc - hundreds of yards, past whatever trees or natural cover natural cover he can find, to loop around to the south out of sight of the emerging Hellknights. When the moment looks right, he'll move to the waterfall where the horses are concealed, then backtrack his wide arc to hopefully circumvent their pursuit.
I hope their devils return home soon. I think they'd lose their never to pursue us at night without them. And we can chip in for a good lawyer for the ones we left behind.
Alwyn looks sourly at the incoming hellknights and their diabolical allies. "I was wrong. We should have killed them all. But there's always next time." He mutters a complex incantation, and immediately dissolves into mist. "See you in hell, diabolists; I'll send each and every one of you there." And then he is gone.
Alwyn casts his spell and he, Tikrok and Sefayll transform into airy insubstantiality and fly swiftly away. Ivori, Camlo, Asher and Dravite hurry away on horseback. After several minutes of riding there is no sign of pursuit.
Having only barely escaped the fort, Tikrok stays high enough over the group on foot to keep a lookout for pursuers as they travel to Skull's crossing.
Camlo hot-hoofs it in a dam-wise direction.... being redirected frequently by his companions....
After a few hours of hard riding in the dark, the mounted adventurers reach Skull's Crossing. Those affected by Alwyn's spell have already been here for a while. A half-moon makes the skull-shaped floodgates look even more macabre in the shadowy gloom. Formerly the lodging of a giant troll - since defeated by the adventurers a few months ago - this close to a fortress full of hellknights bent on pacifying the area it is unlikely to harbour such creatures now. Still, it makes an eerie place to rendezvous.
The damage to the dam wrought by the ogres has not been repaired, and a steady flow of water runs from the breach down the face of the structure. But the gap has been spanned - presumably by those helpful hellknights again - with a wooden bridge. Here civilisation's writ ends. Magnimar makes no claim on the lands to the north, east or west of Skull's Crossing. The road from Turtleback Ferry, through Fort Rannick to here, is a small finger of settled territory poking into the wilderness of northern Varisia. Beyond, Shoanti tribesmen, giants and monsters dwell.
The route the adventurers need to take is across the dam. On the far side, to the east, are the Wyvern Mountains. Beyond those, the Cinderlands.
Once everyone is accounted for, Sefayll's immediate concerns are met and she allows herself to think about what just happened. Soon she is sitting facing the direction they came from, particularly thinking about the bard and the elf they left behind. She feels betrayed by her fellow hellknights, but she knows not long ago she would have been following their orders without question, also. Are they right or wrong in their blind devotion to the law? Was I wrong all those years? Or am I now straying from the truth?
Once he's fed, and sat for a bit, Camlo wanders over to Sef. "What do you think the hellknights will do with our friends? They wont hold them accountable for our actions will they? Are they in any danger?"
”They are innocent, but they are associated with me, a criminal in the eyes of my... of the hellknights. Our friends may be held as ransom for my return or they might be ‘questioned’ extensively regarding where we might be planning to go. Whether they will pursue us into the wilds I cannot say, but I hope the two of them are wise enough to hold out long enough to give us a head start and not long enough to suffer unduly. I must reach out to my superior. Maybe I can get them freed and that overreaching witch assigned to swabbing the devil arena.” There is a darkly satisfied look at that thought briefly, but the morose stare returns quickly.
"I also wish we could have gotten them out. I feel I abandoned them in that ice dome but there was nothing to be done for them without endangering the rest of us. We can return for them once or task is complete. All we can hope is their treatment isn't terrible."
After giving everyone a moment to rest, "We should find somewhere off the path to camp for the rest of the night. I have some magics that can hide our camp from our pursuers."
Camlo nods, not really satisfied. But he doesn't push Sef any further.
"Camp sounds goo. What can I do?"
Sefayll sees the doubt in the halfling’s eyes. She nods, ”I know. Perhaps it would have been better if I just went back to turn myself in. But then there would be no reason to keep them alive except to test my loyalty to them. Now, they have value - to capture,” pointing at herself, ”the one they believe to be a traitor. It is good we did not kill any of them. That will make future negotiations, should we have the opportunity, easier.”
"We can probably get higher-ups to treat our friends more leniently. Sadly, it is the best we can hope for right now. That insect-thing, whatever it was, was too powerful to defeat." Alwyn spits over the dam's edge.
"I'll contact the Hellknight leader tomorrow morning. After that we leave for the bloatmage city. I have never been to Kaer Maga, but if half the tales about the place are true..."
"We camp on the far side. I'll break the bridge; that way they won't be able to sneak up on us."
"I'm afraid I can't really offer any insights into the workings of the Hellknights, but if I can offer any help, it's yours. I'm just sorry we couldn't spring all of your friends.
MY relations with the Hellknights have always been a bit...tense," Ivori comments, fishing his battered Wayfinder out from under his breastplate, the Pathfinder's Rune of the Open Road prominently displayed.
"Turns out, the lines between archeology and grave-robbing are poorly defined, legally."
Camlo grins at Ivori. "I know what you mean my friend. I myself was accused of larceny on many occasions..."
Sefayll snorts at Camlo’s apparent innocence. ”Indeed you were.”
”Master Ivori, I shall share a secret with you because you have aided us and offered more in the future. Not all hellknights are hidebound and lacking in imagination. Just most of them. I am a member of the Order of the Nail, officially drummed from the order for crimes unspecified. In fact, the Order has a problem that my superior feels can best be resolved by someone acting independently. Someone inside is sharing plans with a certain criminal element. Of greater immediate concern, however, is the purpose of our odd fellowship, so I travel and aid these you see before you. One day we will return to Magnimar to solve the Order’s issue, track down a certain criminal mastermind, and clear both my name and Master Camlo’s.”
"I'm not sure we will clear it. But we may remove some of the more glaring stains." Camlo grins.
"We can rest here for a few hours," says Dravite as he brushes Crag's mane. "But we want to be well away from here before dawn. Yon hellknights are not forgiving types, and I dinnae want to be near here for long. Maybe we held 'em up for a bit, but I reckon they'll be on our trail soon enough. And those mountains over there are dangerous enough without being followed by hellpansies."
Sefayll nods at the dwarf's assertion. "He's right, of course. They may not try to follow us out of their territory - not leaving any bodies behind helps with that - but the devils might enjoy the sport and the hellknights might follow us for the fun of the hunt. The further we are from the fort before we rest, the better. Even if we can hide the campsite," nodding at Tikrok, "we're in trouble if we are needing to leave and they are crawling through the trees around us."
"Of more importance is whether we can obscure our trail as we travel." She raises an eyebrow as she looks at the shapechanging human. "Can you do that?"
"I could but not this night. Once I commune again I can gain the magics so we leave no path to follow besides magical means."
A cold wind blows across the Storval Deep during the night, sending small ripples across its otherwise placid surface. The hellknights do not make an appearance and as the eastern sky begins to turn silvery with the oncoming dawn, Dravite rises.
"Come on," he says as he saddles his horse, "We need to be going. We've probably stayed too long as it is. And those wee hills over there are called the Wyvern Mountains for a reason. Let's get moving!"
Camlo rubs bleary eyes as he follows Dravite’s instruction. ”Do, we, ahh, have time for, ahh, breakfast?”
"Dravite is correct. We need to put as much distance between us and the hellknights as possible. I'll see if I can find some food on the trail for us."
"One moment. This might just be petty vandalism, but I'll take whatever I can get." Alwyn walks over to the new wooden bridge spanning the breach in the dam. He kneels down at one end and gently taps the stones; they immediately begin to twist and buckle, sending the bridge timbers tumbling into the abyss. "Oh no!", he grins, shaking his head in mock sadness before mounting his horse. "Let's go find ourselves some bloatmages."
Asher pulls a ration out of his pack, and saddles up with everyone. He looks tired and crabby in his silence.
Before leaving camp Tikrok casts a spell on the horses and their riders and Seyfall so they leave no trace of their passage. "For most of our traveling day you will not leave tracks. Hopefully the hellknights will be discouraged from following us. Unless they employ magical means they will not be able to follow us. I will walk alongside you for a while but will take to the air to watch for threats before long. Lady Sefayll, if I see trouble I will come to you so you can use your helm to communicate."
The group sets off along the trail at the far side of the dam. It is little more than a game track, there being little traffic in the area so far from any centres of civilisation. It leads up steeply through the fir woods that cling to the slopes. The land here is spectacularly rugged, with high cliffs, jagged ridgelines and massive boulders the size of houses scattered in the way, as if in times gone by the mountains were suddenly ripped from the bowels of the earth in a single day. There seem to be few flat or rounded surfaces, the landscape tending to different degrees of vertical. The obstacles make it hard going, the horses needing to be led on certain narrow sections. The path follows a slender incline squeezed into a tight V-shaped defile. It climbs relentlessly between two cliffs that seem to get closer and closer to a shoulder between two peaks. Adding to the difficulty, the ground underfoot is slippery in places where rainwater lingers.
"I've nae ventured this way meself," says Dravite, "But I believe that mebbe it's aboot a day-and-a-half through the mountains before we hit the Cinderlands. Longer if we have tae forage."
It takes several hours but eventually the top is reached. To the west, the Storval Deep sparkles in the sun and Hook Mountain looms in the haze. Northwards, conifer-clad peaks like jagged knives stab at the sky, and eastwards they obscure any view of the plains beyond. To the south, the summits swiftly descend like craggy steps to the Varisian lowlands, and beyond them a broad smudge of dark green marks where the forests of the Sanos and the Ashwood lap at the base of the cliffs.
The way onwards is the top of a wafer-thin ridge, descending gradually to the south-east into the forested valley below. From there, a route needs to be found to cross the next line of mountains at the far side.