Hollowed & Drained

The road out of Ostfeld drops from the Dragon's Scar into the Lucid Fields, where shafts of blue and gold crystal throw an aurora low over the snow and every caster in the party feels their magic running hotter than it should. The rot has reached here too. Edwinn cuts into one of the black-rotted trees and bottles the tar that hisses out of it, and in the jar it keeps pressing slowly against the glass, trying to move south, away from the direction the siblings are riding.

As they continue their journey they find Marrow Hill, the next city on the way to the Iron Wall, is worse than Ostfeld. The loop here is coming apart at the edges: villagers walk through half of a conversation and find the other half five minutes later, and none of them acknowledge the party at all. While the siblings argue over whether anyone can be saved, Marik spots the one man still watching them and gets him alone. The last man who tried to leave was beaten to death by his neighbors. A girl who tried to shake her mother out of the loop was killed by her, and the mother walked out with blood on her hands and no memory of it. Weeks before any of it started, a southern priest in black and gold came through, healed people for a time, and then the tar came. Adric Wren had been here.

On the ride north, Marik congratulates Xanthe on her engagement and admits he wants his own ceremony as soon as they return from Maldaris, while there is still a chance Talon is alive to see it. Via draws Cailynn away from the group and says out loud that she is watching everyone else build families and does not know where that leaves her. She does not want a throne so much as she wants a home, and by the end of it she has decided to start taking her claim seriously.

They camp that night with a Harker caravan of about thirty, led by Mother Odile. She tells them what the stories say about the Ebonwood Thicket: the rituals that keep the lords and ladies of Maldaris young are worked there, blood has soaked into the soil, and the forest drives travelers mad. They will need a guide, and they will need to be careful which one they trust. She also gives them two things Ederia does not teach. There was a fourth dragon, white-scaled, who flew north to take Maldaris and was killed by the Countess's ancestor. And the Shepherd has been preying on Harker caravans for a century, sending back survivors who are hollow and empty.

Two more travelers arrive at the fire: Lord Gregor Abbadon and Lady Sirina, baron and baroness of the Maldarian capital, recalled home by the Countess over a sickness they claim to know nothing about. They are unbothered about admitting they are vampires, and that most of the powerful in Maldaris are. Gregor writes the party letters of introduction for Ebonshade - the Sable Door for enchanting, the Ninth Lamp for information, and the Verge, the ring of warding stones a traveler must pass before entering the Thicket - and promises the gate captains word of their arrival. Edwinn lays a glyph of warding across the tent door keyed to vampires, with Via's slow spell loaded into it.

On first watch, Marik has Thorn bridge a sending to his fiance Selara and asks her to marry him on his return. She accepts. He also tells Thorn that in Maldaris there will be no more hiding and no more illusions; Thorn asks to wait until the vampires have gone. Later that evening while on watch Marik is approached by Baron Abbadon. Gregor names his price for guiding them through the Thicket: a drink, from Marik, with a promise he would survive it. Marik turns him down, and the offer is left open should Ebonshade fail them. The lord and lady leave before dawn as two moths. On second watch, Cailynn hears Mother Odile weeping alone in her cart and is politely turned away. In the morning Odile tells her people the song is not in Maldaris after all and turns the caravan south, and nobody at that fire believes her.

As the King’s Hand continues their journey north, they arrive in Greywater Ford, the last village before the border, and there is nothing left in it. The people here are not slow. They are husks, still drawing from a dry well, still working a mill floor. A single candle burns in the mill window. The party walks the frozen river under pass without trace, knocks out the three hollowed on the grain floor without killing them, and finds a girl, Aelith, alive in the loft. Then gunfire, Captain Vaela Bartolo and the Ederian Watch, who have been doing this for two weeks already. Then, before they can talk anymore about what's been happening, the mill wheel splits open, and something with four legs and seven arms and faces pressed into its tar-black skin drags itself up out of the ice, moving with malice towards the party and the Ederian Watch.