Entitas Writes

004 - The Second Mystic

Stopping a small group of optimistic raiders is one thing, but there’s still the matter of the second mystic and settling the matter. Solana returns to Gautstafr to see if he’s willing to be a little more agreeable.

Gautstafr indeed knows the location of his opponent. He is to the south, which explains Timberhome’s fate: right in-between the mystics in the ritual. However, having divided his attention between his own mystic affairs and warding the town, he’s unsure if he can provide help much longer. There’s no time for supplies, and little left here at this point anyhow: Solana needs to go, now. Still exhausted from battle, she departs the inn room and wearily stares southward before making her first steps.

Despite the brevity of the journey, Solana stares down her empty bag and finds herself woefully unprepared. Trying to bypass some of the roughness of the deep Woods, she heads more in a southeasterly direction, through the Havens. It is here she reaches one of several dry grasslands. An area known to be sacred. There’s little time to be meditating: she must move on, quickly.

Solana moves quickly. Low on resources is nothing new to a traveler like her, and while hardly unpleasant, by now she feels much more in the groove of her old life (old? She was resting for perhaps a few weeks. Time feels longer when growing fat in an inn). Collecting food, kindling, odd bits here and there - the land is bountiful if you have some knowledge and imagination. Double the pace and with more goods than she started with - any army would be jealous.

Not far from the holy site is a small collection of graves. Any information about the dead has long faded away: the only indication that there are buried bodies here are the odd rock piles in an otherwise stoneless place. Yet no settlements are anywhere in the horizon: who would bury their dead so far? Perhaps it was a price to pay just for the comfort of the deceased being buried next to sacred ground.

According to Gautstafr, Solana is approaching the second mystic’s known location. A large hilltop nearby proves to be an excellent vantage point. Here seems like a fine place to try and rest and recuperate. Ultimately, however, her mind is clouded with uncertainty - what will this second person be like? Will he or she be as empathetic as Gautstafr? Doubt filled the evening as little more was accomplished than an uneasy rest in a vulnerable location.

In the morning, Solana notices from her elevated ground another encampment. It was so thoroughly intertwined with the thick foliage marking the Deep Wood’s borders that it would have surely been invisible from another angle. This must be the mystic’s hiding place.

She cautiously approaches, trying to appear nonthreatening, and hail the woman. Solana plays the role of a casual passerby for initial greetings, before springing the subject: there is a town nearby in danger from the mystics’ acts. Regardless of mystical affairs, this must be stopped, or innocents will be wiped out.

The woman is aghast. It seems both practitioners, so isolated from the world for so long, was entirely unaware the Deep Woods have slowly become inhabited over time. Solana explains further that the second mystic has already agreed to, for the time, keep the town safe, pending whatever affairs are here being settled. With her stopping, it would seem he should as well. Although, while such a caster is here, what were they doing in the first place, that would cause such chaos to the area?

It appears that the rituals performed here were, in fact, intended to be blessings. The art of magic is not a common one: it is derived from the ground itself. This connection to the earth must be re-strengthened regularly, or the fantastical would be lost forever. As it happens, both mystics were here at the same time for this same purpose, in effect empowering it too much, certainly not helped by antagonistic interpretations of the other. Given what has transpired here, neither will have much reason to bother Timberhome for much longer: the land is clearly over-enchanted. Gautstafr can stay as he wants, and she will be on her way back to seclusion.

The return back to Timberhome was uneventful by comparison. Already, the land seems more stable, helped of course by a local mystic becoming something of the town guardian. Much of the town, however, is hardly excited at this. Magic, after all, was the start of this problem, and seeing so much of it, so soon, and some mystic deciding they’re also a benefactor, is far too much. Solana, in their eyes, has caused nothing but trouble since they decided to get involved. Within a day, she’s yelled at, shooed, and the message generally made clear: She is no longer welcome here, and any hope of learning more of mysticism from Gautstafr is made much more improbable.