When the party stepped through the long-fallen gates of Aelwyth Morghaine, the light of day dimmed to that of dusk. Ancient magic diffused the sun’s light and created a world of shadows. In the weakened light, the living vines that grew onto arbors and bushes that formed long hedgerows continued to grow and thrive. Dahlia surmised that since the plants were still receiving enough direct sunlight this meant the true state of the world around them wasn’t twilight or dusk, but broad daylight.

When the fairy recognized this truth, the illusion fell away. The harsh light of day hammered the ruins around them, and many of the vines and hedges suffered from lack of tending, although some few still looked as green and lush as they had before the glamour fell.

“The twilight is a glamour. Question all that you see here,” Dahlia told the others.

“The Gossamer Heart must be malfunctioning,” Ruth said. The spectral mage looked more studiously at the ruins before them. “It’s definitely not operating the way it used to.”

“The Gossamer Heart?” Dahlia asked. The fairy hopped into the air to circle Ruth’s head, impatient to hear about something that sounded wonderful.

“Aelindor Thornheart founded Aelwyth Morghaine, or so the legends go. Such a silver tongue did Aelindor have that he earned epithets such as the Grand Envoy, Peacebringer, Frostmelter, and Firetamer. For seven nights and seven days, Aelindor played courtier, and on the final night, the Queen of Summer and the Queen of Winter bestowed upon him the Gossamer Heart. There used to be multiple statues depicting Aelindor bowing before the twin Queens.” Ruth gushed about the city's hero.

Dahlia had relatively strong doubts about this Aelindor fellow from the start. The Twin Queens were not known to get along and would hold a bitter grudge against someone who manipulated them to achieve their goals.

“What happened to Aelindor?” Dahlia asked.

“He vanished five years after establishing the Gossamer Heart in Aelwyth Morghaine. His children vied to become the next leader of House Thornheart for a few decades, but Aelindor never returned. Some history books suggest that the Gossamer Heart’s emplacement took a heavy toll upon him, what with how it utilized the magics of both the Winter and Summer Court.” Ruth answered.

“Lady Dahlia, look there,” Xeras interrupted. One of the warrior's wooden fingers pointed to a side garden. The roses wept blood like tears. Branches formed twisted faces that seemed to scream. Once Dahlia noticed the faces, she couldn’t help but hear mouthless cries in the back of her mind. The sudden spike in anxiety amongst her minions told her they, too, felt it.

Disbelieving in the illusion did not get rid of it, which raised a few possibilities—they were genuine and no illusion at all, the illusion was powerful, or the city was rife with phantasms.

“I’m guessing that’s new?” Dahlia asked Ruth.

“Definitely,” Ruth agreed. The sweet mage answered Dahlia’s sarcastic assessment with earnestness.

“I want to look around more,” Dahlia declared. “Distrust everything you see and hear.”

The forests and vines had swallowed the fringe buildings of Aelwyth Morghaine in the years it lay empty. Few of the outer ruins struck Dahlia as even worth investigating. She had a feeling in her gut that anything of interest would lie closer to the heart of the city. Banshees were greedy creatures, and over long years, they would have picked through the ruins to consolidate anything of beauty and value in the heart of their power.

So, the Ebon Chorus accompanied the fairy through the outskirts. No signs of life other than plants seemed to remain in the ruined city. No cats, no mice, not even birds flew between the trees. Where weeds had cropped up between the cobbles of the roads, they grew large and thick without fear of being trodden upon—until Drynthor or Xeras crushed them underfoot.

Dahlia noticed that the city's state seemed to bother the Ebon Chorus. One and all, they seemed to step out of their way to crush weeds or break branches that looked like screaming faces. Dahlia approved. Such actions might be symbolic in meaning, at best, but they seemed to help them resist the melancholy of this doomed city and breathe positive energy in their wake.

The overgrowth got worse rather than better. The group made it a scant four blocks before Xeras had to swing Gloombough to allow them to pass through tall grasses and areas choked with vines. The first great wall of vines and grasses they passed opened into a large courtyard with more impressive buildings than those they had seen.

“This was the market square. That was the Adventurer’s Guild, there was the Alchemist’s Guild, and the Enchanter’s Guild owned that building. This whole courtyard was full of stalls, tents, and street carts. Someone was always playing music, and you could have delicious treats for a few coppers,” Ruth said. The vibrant memory of the mage did not match up with the ruined reality.

“Ruff!” Ambush! Mr. Disapoofer barked moments before the grass stalks wavered, and huge, armored bodies of arachnids launched at the group.

“Gloomgrass Weavers,” Xeras grunted and attacked the first arachnid to reach him.

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“Kill them swiftly,” Dahlia commanded the others, even as she telepathically ordered Mr. Disapoofer to stay out of the melee and keep the spiders away from her. Unlike the spiritual, undead, or wooden forms of the Ebon Chorus, Dahlia and Mr. Disapoofer were vulnerable to the highly potent venom of the spiders.

It was a slaughter. Although the arachnids were large, they were pretty weak creatures that relied upon their stealth and venom to do their work for them. The Ebon Chorus were primarily immune to poison, and the seven giant spiders were butchered in short order.

You have gained (7x50) 350 experience.

“The coloration and physiology are all wrong for Gloomgrass Weavers,” Lorien spoke into the lingering silence.

“Corrupted,” Xeras opined.

“Explains why we haven’t seen birds,” Lorien said with a shrug. “Gloamgrass Weavers love birds.”

“Let’s check the Enchanter’s Guild,” Dahlia said. She rubbed her tiny fairy hands together, not at all greedily. Visions of reagents, powders, and tools danced through her head. If she could get her hands on some genuine magical items or the tools to make them, the power of the Ebon Chorus would skyrocket.

“I’ll take the lead,” Drynthor volunteered. The spirit satyr resumed tromping through the grass, swinging both shields to knock down and flatten a big path for the rest of the group. No more spiders jumped at them, but Dahlia noticed that their corpses were gone when she looked behind them.

“Did anyone see those spiders vanish?” Dahlia asked.

““No,”” said the Ebon Chorus.

“Ruff!” I smell a Discordant One. Mr. Disapoofer said.

Dahlia and Xeras both felt the same dark corruption surrounding them. Dahlia looked as if she’d put her hands into something vile—and the oily, slimy filth of the discordant had stained her hands, making it impossible to get clean.

“Oh, the Enchanter’s Guild used to be so pretty. The trees lining the path to the entry were always full of ripe fruit and surrounded by illusions of humming butterflies,” Ruth spoke of her memories when the man-high grasses ended.

The trees that lined the path to the main entrance of the Enchanter’s Guild oozed a disgusting green sap, and not one had a single leaf. The once beautiful illusions of singing butterflies had warped to twittering stick insects. Chittering noises all too easily warped into whispers of the mad the moment Dahlia stopped paying active attention to them.

The fairy took a deep breath and focused on the unreality of the illusions. Instead of harmless insects, hideous worms with maws full of spiky teeth hung from every branch of the trees. Each attempted to extend or lean off the branches to try and get a mouthful of one of the Ebon Chorus.

“Burn the trees,” Dahlia demanded.

Reluctantly, Ruth flung orbs of flame at each tree until nothing but ashes lined the entryway of the Enchanter’s Guild. The worms screamed and attempted to attack, but they were ambush monsters mutated to remain with the trees themselves. They died without challenge.

You have gained 100 experience.

Two pillars stood on either side of the entrance. Each sparked and sputtered motes of wild magic in a non-sensical pattern. The runes that Dahlia could see were practical sorts, sigils that once drew the raw ambient magic of the fey and filtered it into something more ordered. No doubt, such runic workmanship had been used throughout the building to produce more orderly, non-chaotic results. Dahlia even spotted anti-tampering runework to prevent sabotage from other Fey. The citizens of Aelwyth Morghaine hadn’t been backwater prime-worlders but honest-to-goodness Fey who had opted for existence outside the Fey Realms—the morons.

“You had good enchanters here, didn’t you?” Dahlia asked. Her purple eyes never left the rune work, though.

“We did. Our magics were the pinnacle of all Nantes,” Ruth said proudly. Neither Lorien nor Drynthor disagreed.

Dahlia extended imaginary hands into the spellwork of the pillars and attempted to reshape and fix them. A shower of sparks filled the air, and she pulled her hand back, wincing as if she’d been burned. No physical wounds accompanied the sensation, but the pain was real.

“Stupid runes,” Dahlia complained. She then spent two Glimmer points, one each, fixing the pillars through subtle warping of reality. In the blink of an eye, the pillars were whole and no longer a sparking mess of wild magic.

“Great job, Mistress!” Ruth cheered.

“Ruth, Drynthor, you two in the lead. We’re looking for anything still operational. Arcane furnaces, crafting stations, reagents, intact spell matrixes, scrolls…” Dahlia stopped reciting her desires reluctantly, afraid some sick observer would thwart her on principle.

The main foyer of the Enchanter’s Guild lay in ruins. The building had once been a living thing, grown from some form of white birch. The heartwood, exposed to the inside of the building, had shifted to a brownish-black color over the years. Once a beautiful latticework of intricate and subtle formations, they had morphed into a thing of blackened spirals and knotted growths. Tapestries on the walls had, one and all, been claimed by a dark mold. Whatever words or images they had once conveyed, the creeping mold had claimed and obliterated them from the world.

The same mold had grown over books, scrolls, and any other form of imagery or writing.

“Mmm,” Dahlia murmured. She studied the way it had crept over everything, felt the flow of its magic, and grimaced in disgust.

“Cursed. They cursed the whole city, those fuckers,” Dahlia swore angrily.

“The humans?” Ruth asked.

“The Gods of Nantes,” Dahlia answered. “Unless your enemies counted a Demi-God amongst them?”

Ruth shook her head in the negative.

“They didn’t want the knowledge of the Fey to linger, I suppose,” Dahlia muttered. “Good thing us Fey aren’t mere flesh and sinew like mortals. There’s something here, waiting for me. I can feel it.”

Dahlia turned her gaze towards a grand staircase, from which noise echoed down. A constant undertone of jangled notes, half-echoed whispers, and mispronounced language echoed off the twisted walls of the Guild.

“The Guild Master’s office and work room, along with all the senior enchanters, was on the second floor, up there,” Ruth said.

“That makes sense. Perhaps something remains in the Guild Master’s office. Let’s go,” Dahlia commanded.

At the base of the stairs a statue came to life and attacked Drynthor. One volley of attacks from the Ebon Chorus reduced the statue to pieces. Motes of magic manifested as twisted Wisps, or animated shards of broken furniture. None of it harmed any of them, but the constant barrage of attacks annoyed Dahlia, who felt something calling her.

When they reached the second floor, Dahlia sucked her breath in.

“Pretty,” Dahlia said.

“It sure is,” Ruth answered. “The whole building used to look like this.”

The walls were beautiful white birch bark and shaped into artistic flows. Grand tapestries that explained the cycles of the sun, moon, and tides hung on the walls. Portraits of elves in grand robes stared at them. The floors were a sturdier bark and had been encouraged to grow in a manner that looked quite like stone.

“Too bad it’s fake,” Xeras chimed.

The illusion broke.