The fight continues around you, and you see a beautiful, deadly looking fey queen suddenly appear and cut down Maligorn and Aripha.
As you prepare to fight with your last breath, you again hear a shouted distant cry to wake. The queen turns to to you and laughs coldly. "Abandon your folly, or when next we meet, I’ll do much worse than haunt your dreams."
Abigail, Kregimie and Koremar, you suddenly awake to find yourself standing in the clearing where you went to sleep. Thunder Rolling appears to have rolled away from you, but is just getting up from his blankets, while a half-dozen half-elves and faerie creatures are surrounding you, weapons drawn, apparently trying to keep you from harming anyone.
Your weapons are in hand, but there's no sign of the bloodshed and ruin you just witnessed. Your injuries suffered at the hands of the spriggans are gone, though your heads are pounding and you remain weary with exhaustion.
Friends. Be putting down your weapons. There is no harm here.
Thunder Rolling holds his hands up in a calming gesture towards the others, hoping to break through whatever effect has held their minds. He watches as the others blink in confusion, finally realizing that they were living out some sort of dream.
The Fellnight Queen haunts our dreams as readily as our realilty. We have set ourselves against quite the adversary.
Koremar took a knee as exhaustion of the mind and body took over. He could reason now that it was all a dream but he also knew that those blades running through him felt all too real.
"Abigail! you are alive!" the little gnome says and gives her a hug. Then the realization hits that whatever just happened did do some harm to him.
"She knows! She knows that we intend to keep her from returning!!" Kreg says to his friends with a wide-eyed and dazed look.
The elven magus will share what of the dream he remembered with those gathered to help them understand the group's eratic behavior.
Now it is of utmost imperative that we replace the stones and lock her away forever. That Queen Rhoswin can reach out like she did is frightening.
Indeed. Fey Queen reaching into minds like this is not good. Rest well and make minds smooth again. I will keep watch over you and ensure your slumber is not disturbed here. Tomorrow we go to war against this Rhoswyn.
Rolling Thunder sat back down in a cross-legged position and prepared himself to keep watch. He could rest without sleeping, and afford the others the comfort of having someone watching over them.
Koremar looked up to the towering Thunder Rolling and smiled.
I truly appreciate the offer but I fear there will be no true rest for me this evening. My mind is in turmoil. I will stay up with you.
As morning comes, the council's leaders again gather with you. "It seems Rhoswen does indeed fear you, so I think your plan to confront her directly is sound," Palombier says. "Our scouts have found an area where the portal is weakest, and my brothers and I can take you there directly, or overland, if you wish. Our forces will travel there as well, though that will take a day, and engage Rhoswen's army to hopefully give you time to make your way to her and end this war, hopefully forever."
"I think it better if we rest more. We will need more than just strength of body to fight through...though strength helps." The big man smiled broadly.
Can we afford the time? I wont deny that I could use a healthy rest especially to replenish my arcana but I worry that Rhoswin will just interrupt my peacefull dreams once again.
The unicorns bid you to mount and, with a flash, the familiar surroundings of the camp disappear. Before you is a small hillock ringed with pale white mushrooms. The nearby trees seem to loom toward the hillock, shading it.
"You must enter the fairy ring," Palombier tells you, "and will yourself to move into the Fellnight Queen's realm. When you leave the ring, you will emerge in that place of shadows."
"I'm afraid I don't know what lies on the other side, my lady."
Best it is to be ready for whatever may wait for us on other side, then.
Thunder Rolling unsheathed his giganic axe and held it easily in one hand. He stepped into the ring and waited for the others to signal thei readiness before willing himself to the other side
Koremar couldnt thank Abigail enough for the rest gained by her spell.
He was wary of the fairy ring and took his companions' wrnings to heart. It helped that Mai'Tahl thrummed with apparent excitement at his hip. So he unsheathed the blade and stepped into the ring along side Thunder Rolling with a almost non-chalant
Let's not keep the Queen waiting...it would be rude to say the least...
Nothing seems to happen as you will yourself to the Fellnight Realm, but as you leave the ring of mushrooms, night suddenly replaces day, the sky full of bright stars alongside Golarion's usual two moons.
To the north, campfires -- seemingly almost as numerous as the stars in the sky -- twinkle menacingly, mute evidence of the armies gathered by Queen Rhoswen to throw against Bellis and the surrounding area.
All of you feel a vague sense of unease, as if the land itself is rejecting you.
A trail leads to the north...
"I can go down the path a ways ahead of the group if you'd like. I'm fairly sneaky when I want to be." Kreg says with a happy tone, almost daring the dimly lit place they he finds himself in to quench his joy for life.
Thunder Rolling looked at the dimly lit forest around them and wondered, not for the first time, why he had volunteered to come. The fact that opposing Rhoswyn seemed right was answer enough. Still...
"Scouting ahead would be good, but be careful and do not stay long from our sight. Also, stay well clear when I swing the axe. Little men have been hurt before by not given enough room. I am no wild man, but my blows are powerful and uneasy to stop once started. uneasy? Is that right word? Damn this infernal language!
"As for closing the line, I think Koremar would be good at this. But maybe you know better. you have worked together more."
"I'll scout ahead and keep moving about half speed unless I find something. The three of you should stay back about 25-30 feet behind me. You can stay clustered together, it doesn't matter which order. Maybe Abigaul should close the line, stay in the back in case there is trouble up ahead."
It appears to the group that their little blue friend may have done this a time or two before.
The unicorn informs you that you can leave the same way you entered, by simply willing it so in the circle.
After traveling for several hours in the gloom, you finally see through the gloom, just past the treeline, a low wall of piled rocks. A trail of well-trod grass leads though a narrow gap marring its surface.
Thunder Rolling dropped low when he spotted the gap in the wall. He waited for Kreg to scout out he gap, with his axe in hand, ready for trouble.
As you near the gap, Kregimie hears the sharp hum of angry bees, announcing the arrival of an all-too-familiar swarm rising over the nearby hill. The creatures descend upon the gap in the wall, completely covering it with their writhing bodies.
I fought wasps like this in arena once. They gave me torch and told me it was my only weapon. It work, but only just. I almost died that day.. He shrugged.
"Yes, some of us have had to fight a swarm such as these before also, and it wasn't easy. Perhaps if all of us fight them with torches, unless anyone has any sort of magical ability that would help."
The elemental's vortex at first seems to have no effect on the bees, but eventually it manages to force them back about 110 feet, back beyond the faengard wall.
Bees Reflex 1:
Swarm fly 1:
Bees Reflex 2:
Swarm fly 2:
With no torch, and no ready means of making one, Thunder Rolling made for he gap. "go brought and hope bees don't follow"
Koremar had no desire to close with the swarm after the events in Bellis. He drew Mai'Tahl and scanned the area as he kept pace with Thunder.
Perception -