Hester turns over in the dark.

Hester took the Wraith's arm and walked beside her.  "Is that even possible?" She asks with all the guile of a baby crocodile.

Bristle's leg twitched restlessly for a moment, then settled back down again.

Caleb muttered something unintelligible, rolling over onto his side.

The sky begins to brighten with the coming dawn...




After what feels like a surprisingly restful night's sleep, the group awakens on the hill, beside the statue and the graves and the remnant of the previous night's fire. It's morning, and while the forest is still eerily quiet without birds, it no longer has the bone-deep silence and disturbing shadows of before. It would seem that the curse on these woods is, if not broken, at least eased still.

When Caleb woke, he laid still for a moment before he truly processed what had occurred, at which point he pulled himself quickly from his bedroll while grabbing at his crossbow, scanning his surroundings for anything out of place.
When that was done and nothing was revealed, he relaxed just enough to lower the crossbow as he walked over to what remained of the fire, sitting down and warming his hands over the coals, noting that the others had woken up as well. "Morning all. I'm going to guess that your dreams had an unwelcome intruder, am I right?"

"It was She", said Hester.  "She says she wants to live but I don't think she's going about it the right way."

She frowned as she thought of the implications of that.  "Perhaps death holds a certain terror for her which brings with it a weakness?"

Bristle nodded when asked about her dreams. "She visited me too. Said to call her Whisper. She tried to get me to make an agreement with her to show me how she did..." Bristle gestured vaguely at their surroundings. "This. But I turned her down." She didn't feel the need to mention that she was the one to request the information in the first place.

"She said she had a very long time to figure it out though. Something to do with putting people in prisons they don't want to escape from? I'm pretty sure that was a metaphor though." Bristle shrugged, unsure of what to make of it.

She looked at their surroundings, noting the burning skeletons she had circling the camp as smoldering guards in the night. With a sigh, she said to nobody in particular, "I guess I have no reason to keep you guys around anymore. A promise is a promise. My two-legged minions, tear yourselves apart." Her mindless humanoid skeletons did exactly that, showing no emotion as they pulled themselves to pieces until their own flames were extinguished. Only her cow and bear remained.

Hester shrugged.  "So", she said.  "We dreamed about her but she wasn't really trying with us."

Caleb listened with interest as he rummaged around in his bag, pulling a ration from his pack and beginning to eat quickly as the other two talked, only speaking up after he had finished eating. "She didn't say much of anything to me, probably because I shot her when she didn't leave my head when I told her to. It didn't work by the way, she didn't even bleed. Gonna have to find a way to fix that."

"I have a feeling we haven't heard from her for the last time though. I got the sense that, at least for me, that she would be invading my dreams until the end of days, trying to coerce me into making a deal with her. Or something like that." Bristle's face took on a look of mild concern. "So I guess the next question is, "what is our next step?" Go back to a town with actual people in it and try to find a lead while we make preparations?" With Illix's "contributions" to their cause and an entire village full of "abandoned" supplies, Bristle figured they could probably upgrade their own supplies before seeking out more confrontation from Whisper.

"The way I see it, our job here isn't done yet. You said that huge mob of creatures we saw had living people in it, we ought to look for them in case they're lost out here. If nothing else, I have people to find out here, dead or alive." Caleb said matter of factly, leaning back as he spoke. "After that, I say we leave this place for now so we can research what exactly is happening with this witch or demon or whatever she is and how to actually kill her for good."

"I still need to see my Grandmother", said Hester.  "She's not among the dead or among the living as far as I can tell.  What else is there?"

Bristle merely shrugged at Hester's question. Maybe her grandmother was not here when events started happening, or maybe she was at the bottom of the bone-lake in the caves after being turned into a shadow creature. Either way, their next move was clear. "For now, let's starts with the obvious move. Let's head back to town and see if anyone has shown back up. See what they might know or remember." The changeling woman began the walk toward town, leading her undead creations through the forest.

Sounds fair to me, but I'm keeping an eye open for people on the way back." Caleb said, rising from where he sat as he began to break down the small camp they had set up, following Bristle and her skeletons once he had finished, crossbow readied and eyes peeled for movement.
ooc: Rolling perception to keep an eye out for people or signs of passage on the way back, result is 30.

Moving back to the village, Caleb sees occasional signs of passage back in that direction, but no people. The first people you see are when you get back to the village proper, where a bare handful of humanoids are visible. They look normal enough, many of them exhibiting signs of serious stress. Upon questioning, none of the two dozen or so people express any memories of their time under the spell whatsoever. They universally claim to have only disjointed recollections that feel dreamlike and don't match up to the real world in the slightest.

Then one of them says, quite calmly, "She was such a bother until I let her in, but it's much easier now." And she smiles. It's a look of relief, of calm.

Hester frowns.  "Who was such a bother?"

Bristle was glad to see that not everyone in the village was gone for good. Although she doubted the village would ever get back to normal. And the living people would probably remain traumatized from all they had lost. Or at least that is what Bristle was assuming before one of them sent shivers up her spine with a couple sentences.

"The hardest prison to escape is one you don't want to escape from," Bristle muttered, quoting something Whisper had said to her. Then, to Hester and Caleb she whispered, "I think she is talking about you-know-who. It almost sounds like she liked being enthralled."

"The woman in my dreams," the woman says blithely. "Pestered me endlessly, until I let her in. But it's much easier now. Not a bother at all."

On their return to the village, Caleb was visibly pleased to see the mercenaries he'd been looking for wandering about, and diverted from the other two to pull them from the crowd, explaining that they had been missing for weeks and delivering the orders for them to get back to Almas before returning to Bristle and Hester.

When he rejoined them and heard the oddly calm woman speak, Caleb gave her a hard stare for a few moments, before shaking his head. "That's... great for you, I guess," He said, leaning away, hands twitching as if he longed to be holding his weapon as he muttered back to Bristle. "I don't know what's up with this lady, but it's freaking me out."

Bristle shared a look of agreement and gave a slight nod. She was getting more and more eager to be on their way. And in that vein, she nudged Hester along in the conversation. To the people present, she asked, "Say, none of you happen to know where," she looked to Hester, "What was her name again?" Bristle honestly couldn't recall if she had even been told. But regardless, she would let Hester handle the details.

"Carien Silverhair", asked Hester.  "With hair like mine?  My old grandmother.  Anybody remember her?"

Hester is becoming anxious, wondering whether her granddam is still on the prime material plane, or even whether any reason remains for her to revisit the village that birthed her.  She has little fondness as she casts back her memory.  Only her grandmother stood out as a point of beauty in a drab history.

"Carien?" a middle-aged woman standing nearby says. "So you're her girl, eh? Afraid I can't help you. Carien went to the capital some time agone. Funny thing, she left just before everything went sideways here in Falcon's Hollow. Like she knew what was coming, eh?" The woman laughs cheerfully at the absurdity of her own statement. After all, no one could have known what was coming. It was a strange coincidence, though....

Hester nodded, "No you're right, I'm sure she couldn't have known."

But there were so many things Hester didn't say.  She didn't say that she was not a hundred percent sure that Carien's disappearance had nothing to do with the coming of the Whisper.

Neither did she say that she wasn't even sure that Carien had gone to the capital.  After all, Hester had something of an idea of what may lay ahead of her as her magic poisoned her system.  First there came the all black eyes and the silver hair, then her arms had grown so abnormally long.  She did not know how her body might change in the future but Carien was her grandmother and she might be years along the path that Hester was doomed to follow.

She did not even suggest that there was nothing left for her here and that perhaps the next cluse might be found in the capital.

"So... should we head to the capital next then?" Bristle suggested, almost as if mirroring Hester's thoughts. "I mean, you could look for your grandmother, Hester, and it would be a good place to look up information and collect supplies. Unless there is a good reason to stick around here a bit longer?" Additionally, the bigger the city they went to, the more likely she would be able to find a buyer for her burning cow skeleton.

Hester sighed.  "We might as well go to the capital, although whether we'll find my grandmother... well let's say I have my doubts although if we do, it will give me some clues about my own destiny."