>>5717960It doesn’t take you long to recognize a description this distinctive. There is only ONE green dragon alive today, with nine orange-brown hatchlings to march in his wake.
“My brother,” you murmur. “The Great Green Dragonborn, and the Red Dragonborn? They attacked you?”
Your mind races. What is this madness? There are no forests in the underdark, barring moss and mushrooms and strange predatory groves. There are no birds, bears, deer or rabbits to speak of, save strange and mutant variants. Have the Serpent priests declared open war on the surface? If so… Why the forests and woodlands, rather than a direct assault upon Hawksong?
You meet the cunning, darkly-smiling eyes of the fairy trapped beneath your weight and your anti-magic blade. You understand in an instant that to ask anything more would be to spring its trap, to call upon its gift and potentially its curse. This is all it knows; anything else it must pull from some fey equivalent to the Akashic Record of your own Wise God, and that would carry a price which you have no desire to pay.
“Go.”
You stand up, taking your claw from the freakish fey-thing’s throat, and sheathing your blade. It seems almost startled, though not as startled as your Reptilian companions. The rabbit-fairy does not move to attack, nor to leave. It is trying to figure out your game, but you are done playing.
“Go, and never come back to trouble me or my friends again, if you have any sense. You are free, fairy. No ransom required. No price to pay… For either of us, yes?”
The fairy smiles at that, regarding you with some measure of respect and gratitude.
“Strange dragon,” it comments. “Yes. No price.”
It moves its spindly hand past its weathered face and, instantly, the wodoen mask of the rabbit is there again. You glance down, and the broken article has vanished from the forest floor. When you look back to the fairy, it is gone—only a greenish, foxfire mist hovering in its place, and then that too is vanished.
“Will it strike us in the night?” asks the Thief nervously. “What should we do?”
“Move,” you conclude. “Pack up and go. We’ll make camp elsewhere.”
And so you do—pressing on through the night until it is nearly dawn, and only camping when you come to the edge of the woodlands—outside the domain of the new master of this patch of forest.
You encounter no more weirdness-well, no supernatural or life-threatening weirdness, just the usual surface sort—for the rest of your journey. Snow and ice pelt you from the sky, necessitating many more stone yurts constructed to mark you path back to Queen Ekaterine’s original realm, where she still holds the title ‘Princess’. You spy it in the distance, its silver spires and ivory-white mage-tower jutting from the ground like icicles amongst the snow before you see the lower roofs and walls.
“By the gods!” that same Princess cries, bringing her hands to her mouth.
