Chapter III: Whispers of the Woods

The road back to Rassalantar should have smelled of wet earth and horse-sweat; instead, it smelled of absence. The gate stood open, the watchman’s lantern guttered out mid-swing, and every door in the village yawned as if the town had only just inhaled and forgotten how to breathe the-story.

Rigg crouched beside an overturned stew-pot. A skin of broth clung to the iron like last night’s arguments, and the flame beneath it had died without bothering to lick the rim clean.
“Whole place has the courtesy of a thief who wipes his feet,” he said. “No blood, no scorch marks. Just… gone.”

High Jinks dipped two fingers into the mud that passed for a main street and raised them to her nose.
“Tracks,” she murmured, tail flicking irritation from her words. “Men, women, children—all walking, none running. West, toward Westwood.”

Valen Pyre, rain dripping from the brim of his crimson hat, traced an invisible line through the air. “Two hundred souls under a compulsion strong enough to keep step and leave kettles boiling? Mind Flayers, or something that reads bedtime stories to Mind Flayers.”

The dwarf—Laydrick now, by stubborn declaration and legal writ of grumble—adjusted his freshly polished plate and crossed himself with a gesture equal parts prayer and expletive.
“Westwood,” he muttered. “Forest full o’ things that think dwarves taste like nostalgia.”

Dino the Githyanki stared at the horizon with the unhappy suspicion that it might stare back. “We follow,” he said, as though the point were not in doubt. Follow they did—and not without preparation.

A village without occupants is, to Rigg’s philosophy, merely a shop without staff. By the time the others finished a circuit of the empty cottages he emerged from the general store with two flour sacks of coin and minor trade goods.
“Emergency salvage tax,” he announced.
“Redistributed assets,” High Jinks countered.
“Loot,” corrected Laydrick, blessing each item in case morality could be retro-fitted session-03-whispers-of-….

Their haul—seven hundred gold once the temple’s offerings were liberated—made them briefly wealthy and eternally guilty. The miners they had escorted this far pressed twenty gold apiece into their palms.
“Westbridge can wait,” the foreman said, voice thin with fear. “You lot find the folk. Come back alive if you can.”

Night swallowed the Long Road long before the forest did. Wind knifed through their cloaks, and the rain returned, drumming on Valen’s hat like impatient fingers. They camped a mile inside Westwood, a single lantern throwing nervous silhouettes onto the trees.

The cat slept; the rest did not. Somewhere beyond the fire, a merchant’s voice bargained with emptiness until Rigg stepped into the dark and discovered a peddler from Red Larch too stubborn—or too foolish—to recognise terror.
Boots of Elvenkind, gloves for snaring missiles, half-plates and spellbooks changed hands faster than introductions the-story. By dawn the party was better equipped, very nearly broke, and Dino owed Rigg one hundred twenty-two gold—an obligation both men recorded and neither intended to forget.

Kryptgarden greeted them two days later, an ocean of mist and moss that made lesser forests feel like potted plants. Vines drooped like trap lines; blossoms the colour of bruises opened at their approach.
Laydrick trudged up a rise and stopped cold. “Bones,” he said. Cow bones, gnawed clean and scored by teeth that curved like sickles session-03-whispers-of-….

Dino crouched, gloved fingers tracing the marks. “Green dragon—adult, maybe worse.”
High Jinks brightened, because of course she did. “Imagine the conversation! ‘Oh mighty wyrm, could we borrow your lair and maybe a cup of villagers?’”
No-one laughed. Even the wind chose silence.

They pressed deeper and found a shrine half-devoured by ivy: Corellon’s smile weather-worn but patient. Each left an offering—inked calligraphy, a silver coin, a murmured spell. The forest sighed, and somewhere a hidden spring chimed.
A click echoed beneath the shrine. Rigg lifted a moon-touched longsword, its pale glow turning raindrops into falling stars the-story.
“Subtle,” Valen remarked. “Nothing says stealth like portable moonlight.”

Near evening, the trail of the vanished villagers reappeared—shuffled footprints, some large, some heartbreakingly small, all leading toward a stone rise tangled in roots.
High Jinks flexed her claws. “This smells like a lair.”
“Or a mouth,” Laydrick added.

They slipped through a cracked archway and the world tipped. The air chilled; the moss grew fur that writhed at the corner of sight. Three ettercaps skittered from above, silk spitting from their jaws.
Fire blossomed in Valen’s palm, incinerating one mid-leap. Laydrick raised his holy symbol; radiant light seared another. Rigg swung the new sword in a silver arc that carved the third creature from mandible to belly.

Silence reclaimed the corridor—until a shape untangled itself from shadow. A drow, cloak torn, blades low.
“We are not of the Spider Queen,” he said, voice brittle. “They took your villagers. Ours, too.” His name was DeSeth, and desperation clung to him like wet silk the-story.

The party followed deeper and soon the forest fell away, replaced by a pool still as glass under an impossible sky. Starlight shone where no stars could live—and at the water’s edge waited Her.

The Green Witch of Kryptgarden looked like every story ever whispered around a fire and none of them at once: woman, serpent, storm, tree the-story.
“Children of surface dust,” she said, voice wind-sharp. “Your villagers walk below. Follow, if you cherish futility.”

Laydrick stepped forward, plate softly glowing in her presence. “Why warn us?”
“Because the Underdark eats minds, and mine taste sweet,” High Jinks muttered.
The Witch’s smile flickered. “Because the forest tires of screams.”

With a gesture, the pool opened upon a stairway of roots. She left them gifts: a ring that made whispers travel like drums, two potions thick as garnet, and a vial of swirling green taken by Valen without a word the-story.

They descended. Earth clenched behind them. Light died. And the real hunt began.

Underdark stone pressed close, sweating secrets. Once, they found a villager’s body—skull neatly opened, brain gone.
Laydrick crossed himself. “Moradin keep us.”
“No, thank you,” came an echo neither dwarf nor god.

The ceiling shifted; spiders dropped in hungry silence. Chaos bloomed—fire, steel, eldritch light. Rigg’s wrench rang like a cracked bell; Jinks scampered across webs like a nightmare’s house-cat; Laydrick’s mace met chitin with a sound halfway between sermon and hammerfall Spelljammer-session-7-r….

When the last spider twitched its last, DeSeth re-appeared—bloodied, hopeful, terrified. “Portal,” he rasped. “One level down. Mind Flayers feed them through.”

No one cheered. Some battles promise victory; this promised only another staircase. But the road behind led nowhere except an empty town and guilt that weighed more than coin.

Rigg tightened his grip on the glowing blade. “All right. Let’s go do something profoundly stupid.”

High Jinks flexed her ring-hand; the air hummed, carrying her whisper down the endless tunnel.
“Knock knock,” she told the darkness. “Dinner’s here.”

And the darkness answered.