>>5946200>>5946210>>5946318>>5946435“Sorry, but we need to step outside for a second to confer,” you tell the Kuttralas cultists and their Keeper. “We’ll be right back. It shouldn’t take long.”
Izzy looks to you as if unsure how true your words are, but you simply raise your eyebrows in return. Without an explanation from here, you really don’t know what to expect, after all. She seems to recognize this, and as neither high priest nor acolytes voice any objection, you both do your best to navigate your way out of the organic, almost intestinal labyrinth of the sunken temple, back to the not-so-great outdoors which surround it.
“I could just teleport us,” Izzy notes after a while, her voice impatient.
“Not if you want this to be a private conversation,” you reply. “Remember what I told you about what happened when Rudolfo and I took your <Dimension Door> to the Sylvan Realms the first time? And now we’re in the HEART of mushroom fairy territory.”
She takes your point to heart, even if it plainly doesn’t appease her emotions. Luckily, you eventually navigate your way back to the still-smelly, but less humid, air outside.
“What’s going on?” you ask almost immediately. “I know that look. Either you know something that’s going to change our course entirely, or something is about to happen, or BOTH.”
Izzy opens her mouth, then shuts it. Her face scrunches in contemplative consideration, in that way you normally find rather endearing, but which right now just exacerbates your concern.
“Izzy,” you say bluntly, “we don’t have time for this. Come on.”
Izirina Henzler relents with a great sigh and a slump, and a girlish pout almost hilariously at odds with her all-black attire and serious air… But she does as you request, and gets to the point.
“You remember that I told you I had a new teacher, right?”
“Yeah,” you say, not certain that you like where this is going.
“Well,” she says, fidgeting, “I didn’t exactly mean a Mage Proctor of the Tower.”
“So, like… A hireling of the Archmage? Some person from another discipline?”
“Not… Exactly.” Izzzy pauses. “Not precisely a PERSON, that is to say…”
You stare for a moment, not quite registering what she is telling you, until finally it clicks. The Unknowable Prince, an his symbol, and his talk of a ‘teacher’ besides whatever terrifying entity ‘Centipede Elf’ must be, and…
“Oh,” you say, and then then you groan. “Oh, no. Izzy, NO.”
