The small hidden room Ruth revealed provided the group with several new items. Dahlia gave a pair of Boots of Bouncing to Lorien. The boots let the ranger quickly leap to high ground and vantage points. Drynthor acquired a pair of Armlets of Defense, which would make the already beastly defenses of the satyr shield wielder even more solid. The best of it all, other than the wand Ruth acquired, was the Collar of Phantasmal Prowl.
Dahlia put the Collar on Mr. Disapoofer. The living green vines of the collar had resisted the corruption of the Discordant. Rumor held that only mighty Fey dedicated to nature could weave such a collar. Simple fairies could weave one that would last for days, but only a genuinely knowledgeable and powerful sorcerer could make one that lasted with still-potent enchantments for centuries.
One final item lay in a hidden compartment of a chest. Its front and rear covers were made of an incredibly dense, magic-saturated wood that Dahlia had never seen before. No writing marred the front or back cover, but the pages inside were filled with the fluid calligraphy of a quill master. Ruth identified it as her mother’s journal.
Boots of Bouncing
Extraordinary Item, uncommon.
You may jump thirty(maximum:90) feet for every ten feet moved.
Adamantine Armlets of Defense
Extraordinary Item, rare.
Wearing these armlets grants you a sizeable passive defense bonus and immunity to critical hits.
Collar of Phantasmal Prowl
Extraordinary Item, very rare.
Glamour Ward: The wearer gains significant bonuses to Fear and Charm effects while wearing this collar. Minor illusions swirl around the wearer, mimicking the grandeur of a fey glamour.
Phantasmal Prowl: Once per day the wearer can wreath itself in illusions, choosing to either become invisible or more difficult to hit.
Sylvan Shroud: Once per day the collar wearer can cast Sylvan Shroud on itself and any allied creatures within 30 feet. This grants an immense bonus to stealth, and those affected leave no tracks or scent.
The journal offered hints about the demise of Aelwyth Morghaine.
Date: 15th of Sunblossom, 402nd year A.H.
“What’s the A.H. stand for?” Dahlia asked Ruth. The fairy perched on Xeras’s shoulder as the Gloamknight handled the book for the ghostly Ruth and the tiny Dahlia.
“The Age of Harmony, which started when the Thornheart’s allowed humans into Aelwyth Morghaine,” Ruth answered.
Tensions continue to rise. In the mortal lands to the south, the clergy of the Gods asks mortalkind why they must share the forests and glades with us Fey. Resentment grows, and some unseen hand pushes the Hags to deal more aggressively than ever. How many babies will be eaten, stolen, or cursed before a boiling point is reached?
The northern glaciers melt, and the great droughts of yesteryear have diminished the granaries of the southern kingdoms. Lord Thornheart ignores my warnings that hungry raiders and refugees will be a problem this year and insists the bounty of the Heart will provide.
I worry that he has withdrawn his ambassadors from the mortal realms of Nantes.
Date: 21st of Starbreeze, 402nd year A.H.
Lord Thornheart’s new bride has arrived through a portal to the north of the forest, precisely where I have been unable to scry. The death of Maylinda still lays heavy on the city and her people. The Gossamer Heart continues to create illusions of Lady Thornheart. Is the Heart sapient?
Maeravel seems keen to take over Maylinda's duties as the Guardian of the Heart, and she constantly meets those who have interacted with it or have experienced a connection to it. Is this an overabundance of caution wrought through anxiety, or an unheeded warning?
The mortal races war over resources as predicted. Hunger makes for a great motivator.
Date: 2nd of Mistveil, 402nd year A.H.
Maeravel has taken on the role of Guardian of the Heart.
No one can tell me where Maeravel originates from. What Court did she belong to? Which Realm Fairie did she emerge from? Which family, what Noble Blood, courses in her veins? I ask these questions, and in return, I only get blank stares and dull looks. I am then asked to repeat myself because the listeners do not understand me. It does not matter who I ask, maid or Lord Thornheart himself.
The illusions of the Heart, ever the most complex aspect of its magic, have become erratic. No one else has noticed this, and if I point out lapses while they occur, it is the same dull look I receive if I ask about Maeravel.
I suspect she is from the dark Courts. I fear for Aelwyth Morghaine.
Date: 26th of Moonleaf, 403rd year A.H.
Horus has declared Feykind the source of mortal peril. For humans to survive, he declares Fey must die or be driven out.
Lord Thornheart believes this to be a tall tale. The other Fey cities have begun raising fighting forces or making portals to the Realms Faerie. We do nothing. We wait. Aelwyth Morghaine, the greatest Fey city in all of Nantes does nothing while doom approaches, and no one but me seems to be concerned.
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The plants in the city have begun to wilt.
How long has it been since I last saw a Dryad? I cannot recall. Everyone I turn to cannot even comprehend the words I speak. I have sent a messenger to the Queen of Summer, asking for her aid in maintaining the Gossamer Heart. Will it reach Titania?
Date: 8th of Leafwhisper, 403rd Year A.H.
No answer comes from Titania. Did my messenger reach her? The stars in the sky churn each night. Astrologers across Nantes claim the change comes from God's disappointment in the War of Iron and Thorns.
My dreams are filled with a dark void that consumes stars. Why? Why should I care about stars, when our realm teeters on the verge of collapse?
The Gossamer Heart is the key. None will let me near it. Lady Maeravel fears saboteurs in all shadows, and Lord Thornheart sees their silhouettes around every corner.
Lunara Sylvane has fallen. Once our sister city, now it is but rubble. All who failed to flee were put to the iron swords of the Feybane Legion. The stupidity that grips the minds of others has begun to acknowledge the threat of mortal kind, but I fear our fates are already cast. It is too late.
Date: 13th of Frostgleam, 403rd Year A.H.
The Feybane Legion marches on Aelwyth Morghaine. Lord Thornheart has mobilized our forces to meet them. The few who have retained their wits have fled through portals, vowing to remain in the Realms Faerie.
With the guards and forces leaving the city, I will force my way into the Gossamer Heart. Should luck be with me, I may at least save the Gossamer Heart itself. Aelwyth Morghaine is doomed to fall. Ruthialle travels with the forces to defeat the humans. I fear deeply that her fate will be the same as mine, but what else are we to do?
Lady Maeravel has invited me for tea. When did she add Chorister to her list of Titles? It does not matter. I will use this opportunity to reach the Heart.
“That’s it? Last entry.” Dahlia complained.
“I don’t remember any of it going on as Mom describes. Lord Thornheart only had one wife, who was always the Heart's keeper. We did everything we could to prepare for the humans….” Ruth trailed off.
“These ruins don’t look like a city that ever suffered a siege,” Drynthor said softly.
“The forces of Aelwyth Morghaine never came to the aid of another city,” Lorien said. For all his gentle phrasing, there was the underpinning of anger and rebuke underneath.
“Let’s worry about that all back at Riverwatch,” Dahlia said. The pulsing power of her ritual still cast a pink hue over each of them.
“This is worse than I thought. Let’s find the Heart before my ritual wears off,” Dahlia ordered before she hopped off the wooden shoulder of Xeras and landed on her usual seat on Mr. Disapoofer’s head.
“What’s worse?” Ruth asked.
“A Chorister is a powerful Discordant One. One who directly serves the Conductor. Aelwyth Morghaine didn’t fall to humans, gods, or anything else. It fell to the Discordant.” Xeras said flatly.
“What the heck are the Discordant, anyway?” Drynthor asked.
“Material Worlders…..” Xeras muttered under his breath.
“As Titania is Queen of the Summer Court, the Conductor is the Queen of Discord, The Court That Isn’t,” Dahlia explained it in the same way Nyxaria had explained it to her. Now that Dahlia thought about it, it was an answer that wasn’t satisfying. Why did it seem an acceptable answer when she’d been younger? What did it mean for a Fey to be the Queen of Discord? How could a Court be, but not?
“We’re going to go fight the lackey of someone on the level of Titania?” Drynthor blurted, overcome with anxiety and aghast at the very idea.
“Dahlia is the Disciple of Nyxaria and inheritor of Gloaming Queen,” Xeras casually revealed.
“Conductor, Nyxaria, Gloaming Queen…” Drynthor muttered. A bleakness had entered the satyr’s eyes with all these unfamiliar names, with titles he didn’t personally know or understand.
Unlike Dahlia, Drynthor couldn’t see the tendrils of discord that had managed to wriggle into the thoughts of the satyr spirit. A slight, poisoned touch that Dahlia lacked the means to cure—for now. If she correctly understood the effects of the corruption, killing the Chorister should free Drynthor from the corruption, but if not… A SoulShaper could remedy even the darkest afflictions of the spirit, but the product might be an entirely different entity in the end than it had started as.
Xeras looked at Dahlia, but the tiny fairy shook her head. Dahlia saw no reason to speak openly where they were likely being watched.
“Let’s go,” Dahlia ordered. Her words reached into each of the Ebon Chorus and reminded them of what and who they were. It was as if she’d stuck a hand into their souls and run a finger along the very essence of who each of them was, but more importantly, she reminded them of who she was to them. Whoever they had been in life and even death, they were hers. Right, wrong, brave, or afraid, none of those words were relevant when it came to orders from Dahlia.
The ritual against Discordant corruption repelled illusions and other trickery, or the Heart had turned its focus elsewhere. Not one of them saw so much as a stray prism of light that wasn’t natural on their way out of the Enchanter’s Guild.
“Where was the Gossamer Heart kept?” Dahlia asked Ruth.
“In a grotto beneath Thornheart Manor,” Ruth answered.
“And that’s..?” Dahlia looked around.
“This way,” Ruth pointed and took point with Drynthor. For a few brief moments, the ruins of Aelwyth Morghaine were peaceful. The sun climbed higher into the sky. The empty buildings they passed added to the growing dread Dahlia felt in her tummy.
Was Dahlia ready to fight a Discordant One? This wasn’t the Soulweald. She lacked the full powers of being a Disciple of Nyxaria in this stupid world of Nantes. She wished she knew more, but Dahlia felt confident of one thing: Maeravel Thornheart didn’t have control of the Gossamer Heart. No artifact imbued with the power of the Queen of Summer and Flame would tolerate a Banshee to use it.
“Trouble ahead,” Drynthor reported.
A delicate wall rose around the old inner city. Sure, the wall looked like a stiff breeze would knock it over, but Dahlia suspected that the curving, fragile, seeming forty-foot-tall wall would withstand blows from frost giants.
The wall had a demur little arch at the bottom. A portcullis separated the old and new parts of the city, but it had been half raised, and it was more than high enough for the tallest member of the party (Xeras) to go under safely. The portcullis wasn’t the problem that Drynthor had pointed to. Beyond the gate lay piles of old, sun-withered bones. Many were broken or in fragments. All of them inched towards the portcullis to meet them.
Underneath the portcullis stood two spectral warriors in elaborate scale mail with gleaming longswords that pulsed with a familiar blue glow. Dahlia quietly warned Ruth telepathically to beware the blades, for they would hit even her insubstantial body.
“House Vesperwyn badges,” Xeras noted.
“It would be. Let’s make them stay dead this time,” Dahlia said. She triggered Shadowy Whispers, and tendrils of darkness writhed and coiled around the left warrior, and a lesser darkness enshrouded the other warrior as the debuff from the cantrip took hold.
“Ruth, try out your mother’s wand,” Dahlia ordered.
“For Aelwyth Morghaine!” Still at the forefront of the group with Drynthor, Ruth raised her mother’s wand.
A shimmering celestial orb appeared. Tongues of flame in the shape of leaves and blossoms formed around the sphere before Ruth launched it past the two warriors into the courtyard beyond. It exploded in a large sphere that engulfed a twenty-foot radius of the impact spot in celestial flames.