//------------------------------//
// 02: The Way Out is the Way Inn 
// Story: A Pony, A Druid, a Fighter, and a Kobold Walk into a Pub . . . 
// by AShadowOfCygnus 
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Ahh, there’s nothing quite like a toasted lavender sandwich on a cold autumn night, is there? Especially when you’ve as merry a band of companions as these to share it with. You’ve all been a fine audience so far -- Sir Rich back there hasn’t dozed off even once! -- so I’ve no compunctions about going on for a bit longer tonight. Not that I imagine you rascals here at the front would let me get away if I tried, of course. Heh!

So, where were we? Just after Daria did in poor Taranath, yes? Don’t cry too hard for him, m’dear -- as he himself was astonished to discover not long after, in those strange and perilous eastern lands, death is rarely the last we hear of somepony.

And he was dead. Quite dead. Dead as a doornail! Head clean off his shoulders, thanks to the whirling swords and uncanny skill of our dear Fighter. Make no mistake: he was dead as a brained hare, and under any other circumstance, at any point in his life, he would’ve stayed that way!

But, as for the rest of us? Well, we’d fared a bit better for not accidentally going up against our wild-eyed swordswoman -- we’d only been beaten into unconsciousness. 

Now, I know this’ll fly right over the tousled manes of some of you younger rascals, but I’m sure no small number of the older folk know what a night of hard drinking feels like the morning after. May be that one or two of you’ve even been had a scrap in this very pub, had to sleep it off. But let me tell you, none of it compares to what a sixty-stone and very angry she-wolf can do to your head if she feels like it. She may not have been aiming for the kill, but Star Swirl’s saggy left bollock if it didn’t hurt!

(And if your mums and dads catch you using that expression, my fine foals, I very much doubt you’ll be hearing any stories out of me again. Or much at all, for that matter.)

But yes, she gave us quite a beating. And when Krat, Daria and I finally awoke in a battered pile of limbs, heads, and arses, we all very much felt it. 

Krat was, I think, the first to properly wake up; his futile struggling to free himself from the bottom of the pile was what finally roused me, and Daria jolted awake almost immediately afterwards. It took some doing, and there was a certain amount of pained wincing as hands, hooves, and claws brushed against others’ raw bruises, but eventually we all found ourselves standing once again. Stumbling, true; staggering, most likely, but we weren’t in much of a position at that point to care.

The first thing we noticed was how dark it was; it had been just about dawn when Krat and I discovered the wolves, but the room -- dark, dank, subterranean; a basement, we surmised -- was lit by only the faintest orange glow of a dying sunset. I knew for a fact that Krat could see better than I could, and judging from the way Daria kept thudding off the walls, she seemed entirely blind.

Krat and I crept forward to try and explore our surroundings a bit better, and Daria moved to follow us -- only to trip over her own feet and faceplant into the hard-packed dirt floor. That she landed with more a fleshy smack than a metallic clatter alerted us to a second troubling detail of our situation -- we’d been divested of all our armour and equipment. Krat, fiddling with the door he’d discovered at the other end of the room, made the third unwelcome discovery: we were locked in.

So there we were: sealed in the basement of the inn at the head of the valley, bruised, battered, barely conscious and nude, and with nary a lockpick to our name. And then what should we hear but the shuffling of slippered feet on the stair beyond the door?

No-one said a word, but common consensus had it later that everyone bolted for the furthest corner of the room at once, and ended up huddled together in a single trembling mass. (Daria would later comment enviously on the softness of my fur; I’m not sure I ever found the words to respond.) 

The door was flung open with explosive force, slamming off the wall with a dull crack of thick wood meeting thicker stone. There, silhouetted in the light of a single wall sconce, stood a wizened, hunchbacked figure. We collectively huddled closer; never had anypony present been more threatened by somepony thrice their age. 

‘Ohh, good! Ye little cravens are awake,’ she said, through clenched teeth. This was no grackle squawk, either; this was the full-throated growling of something old, powerful, and brimming with ill-suppressed fury.

‘Twould be wiser ter kill ye all now,’ she continued. ‘But ye’ve not stewed quite enough yet, and I’ve still my bairns to bury. But come the mornin’ . . . ye’ll all wish yer mothers had never birthed ye.’

She made to close the door on us again, then paused. One crooked finger pointed to the corner of the room opposite our huddled mass of bodies. 

‘And if ye think for a second it’ll end like it did for him, ye’ve got another think coming!’

And then she was gone, and the heavy oaken door was rattling on its hinges. 

Slowly, in the darkness, our eyes turned to the corner. Krat’s eyes were better than mine, and mine better than Daria’s, but it took everyone a moment to adjust to the Tartarean darkness left behind by the closing of the door. And as we looked, and as we held our breath, a murky shape came into view. It was . . . swinging . . . gently, accompanied by the soft creaking of leather, and looked for all the world like one of the sides of venison Krat had found in the kitchen earlier.

It wasn’t moving, though. That had to be a good sign, right? Nothing left alive in the basement to eat our wee little selves? If we’d only known . . . Heh.

I’m not sure whether it was Krat or myself that suggested it, but we all agreed it would probably be more . . . prudent . . . to cast a light spell, rather than risk something lashing out if we got too close. Neither of us were at full strength yet, after the battle and the repeated knocks on the head, but we both gave it a shot.

Summoning the magical energy required for even such a simple spell made me painfully aware of the dull throbbing behind my eyes, but after a moment’s concentration, it was done. Bright, sourceless light permeated the room, banishing shadows from every corner -- including the one all eyes in the room were locked on.

It didn’t take us long to recognise the Druidic tattoos. 

‘Dear Celestia in Heaven! She’s eaten his head!’ I yelped, tripping over my own hooves in an effort to get away from Taranath’s (very headless) corpse. Krat squawked in horror, and Daria had gone white as a sheet.

It was a grisly sight. Stripped bare and swinging freely, the ex-Elf had been suspended by the ankles from a pair of wickedly-sharp meat-hooks embedded in a low rafter. The dried blood pooled on the ground ‘neath his neck-stump, and the deathly pallor his tawny skin had taken on since last we set eyes on him, attested to how long he’d been hanging there.

It took a moment for the shock to fade, but once it did, anger was quick to take its place.

‘Why that flea-bitten bitch! She’ll pay for killing Taranath!’

‘Umm,’ said Daria.

‘There’s a reason I slept outside, pony-man! I knew we couldn’t--’

‘Er, lads?’ said Daria.

‘Why, if I could get my hooves on her--’

‘It wasn't the bloody wolves, ya knobs! Daria bellowed.

And as dust fell from the rafters, she proceeded to tell us what had transpired near the rock wall that morning -- of how Taranath, in wolfen guise, had charged out of the wood and directly at Daria, of how he had made no effort to signal her, of how she -- believing him kin of the wolves she had already slain -- had severed head from neck in a single, brilliant swing.

Thereafter, the general consensus was that the Elf had no-one to blame but himself.

I will say this for Daria, though -- for all that the fact of it had evidently  been weighing on her mind, she didn’t seem to feel any particular remorse over Taranath’s death. Angry, certainly -- almost to the point of rage. But beyond that? The Elf was dead, and that was all there was to it; water off a duck’s back. 

Perhaps I should have been more concerned by that, but, at the time, there were other, more pressing matters to attend to: namely, how we were going to get out of that basement, and what we were going to do about the Wolfmother when we did. Collectively, we didn’t have a scrap of clothing or equipment to our names, and a quick check of the group confirmed that no-one was particularly well-versed in unarmed combat. Nor was anyone -- least of all Daria -- inclined to simply blunder out into the forest without retrieving our gear. 

Further complicating the matter was Taranath’s body, which we weren’t entirely sure what to do with. Even if we’d known where to find a healer capable of reviving him, it wouldn’t have done us much good without a head to pop back on his body. But, by the same token, no matter how recent an acquaintance, he was our friend, and it would be cruel to simply leave him to the wolves. (Though, admittedly, the hilarity of that sentiment escaped us in the moment.)

Ultimately, however, a plan was formulated: Daria, who was, shall we say, the most limber of us, would find a way to quietly open the lock. She grumbled that she was about as dextrous as a boar in a tea shop, but went about her work regardless. I would search the basement for tools, gardening implements, old bits of wood -- anything that could be used as a weapon, really. 

And Krat? Well, Krat had volunteered to ‘get the Elfy-man down’, seemingly forgetting that the meathooks dangling from the ceiling were embedded in a rafter more than four times his height off the floor. This didn’t seem to bother him much, however; he was much more interested the parts of Taranath he could get ahold of. 

I was nosing around the corner nearest the door when the strange, oddly familiar smacking sound assailed my ears. I turned to Daria, but her eyes were already focussed on the ex-Elf,  wearing a look of faint disgust. My eyes followed hers, and soon I was wearing as sour an expression. I’ll spare you fine Celestia-fearing folk the gory details, but suffice it to say Krat had made good progress on Taranath’s free-swinging hand. 

He noticed us staring, and gave us a meaningful look. ‘Yuck,’ he opined, and resumed.

And that was how it was for the next half-hour or so: Daria worked at jimmying the door off its hinges, I poked around the room looking for any useable detritus, and Krat . . . nibbled. Every once in awhile, Daria would lose patience with the noise and aim a kick at him, sending the Kobold fleeing for cover, but he’d be back at it inside of a minute.

After an aimless half-hour of searching, and as the dim grey of twilight swallowed the last rays of tangerine out the slit window, I nosed under the pile of hay we’d all awoken on, and discovered what appeared to be a couple of discarded iron bars. I called out to the others, and together we examined them more closely.

One really was just a length of iron -- part of a door bar, probably. I hoofed it over to Daria to help her pry open the door. The other seemed to be an old, bent fire poker; this Krat snapped up in an instant, and immediately ran over to poke Taranath with it.

Ignoring the giggling Kobold, Daria and I trotted over to the door. We were still trying, at this point, to be quiet; it wouldn’t do us much good to get through the door if our warden were waiting for us on the other side. So Daria used the iron bar to pop the hinges off the door, and I caught them, depositing them gently to one side. It worked fairly well; we got all three hinges off with minimal trouble and deposited them neatly in the hay.

What we had not factored into our ruminations, however, was that the door itself was heavy, oaken, and therefore susceptible to the inexorable pull of the earth. Daria realised only as it was falling, and made an abortive grab for it, fingertips only barely grazing it on its way down.

The thunderous boom with which it hit the stone floor shook the remaining dust from the rafters and rang our collective heads like churchbells. The whole basement rattled, and probably the house above it. Tartarus, I’d not have been surprised to hear it echoing off the cliffs of the Valley itself!

So loud did it seem, so dreadful a noise, that we all froze. Barely a breath was uttered. Surely, any second now we’d be hearing the thundering paws and recriminating howls that would spell our end. 

But seconds passed, and no ghastly monsters appeared. 

‘Run!’ Daria snapped, breaking the spell. We bolted, quietly as we could, and I nearly tripped on the stairs as Krat wove between my legs. 

We found ourselves in the kitchen, behind a row of hanging meats that I could only assume had been the source of Krat’s hocks earlier. We slid carefully under them, moving stealthily across the rough-hewn stone floor (Daria again cursed her soft human feet), and upon reaching the door to the great Hall, we set about a hushed conference. It was agreed that Krat and I would go first, clear a path to the door if necessary, and head for the relative safety of the Forest. Daria, meanwhile, would search the bottom floor of the house for any hint of our gear, or at least some clothes. 

We moved cautiously, as a unit, from the kitchen door through the Hall, past the great hearth we had seen before, and around the long benches separating us from our destination. At the door to the front hall, we nodded to each other, and, doing our best to avoid the squeakier floorboards, parted ways.

Krat and I padded to the front door without incident. It wasn’t barred in any way -- wasn’t even locked. Perhaps the old woman hadn’t thought we’d make it out of the basement; perhaps she’d simply forgotten to in her grief. This second possibility seemed all the more likely once we actually poked our noses out the door and saw what lay on the lawn beyond.

I had heard that certain Human tribes in that eastern land were more given to burning their dead in the manner of the Pegasi, rather than bury them as we do, but I had never in my travels had the opportunity to confirm it. Perhaps it was a ritual peculiar to that Valley, to that old woman, and extended no further than it does here, but . . .

How can I describe a pyre to one who has never seen it? To ponies who have never smelled cooked flesh, let alone the bitter copper tang of heat-cracked bone? Imagine, if you will, a campfire, as you might make in the forest while trapping or foraging -- imagine taking that fire, and adding more wood to it, and more, and more, ‘till it was the size of a house -- a massive pile, a towering flame. Then imagine that, within the pile, rested the bodies of your loved ones. And then? Let it burn. let everything be consumed by the roiling flame, until only the ashes and the bleached bones remain.

That is what we saw when we poked our noses ‘round the door -- a strange ritual, fearful as it was breathtaking. From the look of things, the fire had burned itself out long before we had awoken, but simmering embers remained here and there, and a pair of elongated white skulls were clearly visible amongst the ashes. Something about the tableau tugged at me -- strange and foreign as it was, there was something almost sadly beautiful about it, more so than even a grave.

But what arrested our attention the most was not the pyre itself, but something just off to one side: a narrow shaft of wood, torn carelessly from a tree and still more carelessly rammed into the ground. And atop the shaft--

Mothers, you may wish to cover your foals’ ears for this.

Atop the shaft rested the head of our late friend, Taranath the Elf, slack-jawed and staring. His resting place, it seemed, had been untouched by the fire -- the wood was not even the least bit singed. Neither, for that matter, was Taranath; excluding the obvious, the only change I could detect in him was a slight pallor.

I remember looking to Krat, wanting to ask whether he would mind if I said a few words to help guide the ex-Druid to Celestia’s light. I remember hearing a rather loud cough and a gasp from behind me, as of someone coming up from a lakebed for air. I remember Krat’s eyes going wide, and his scaly lips parting in horrified fascination.

I remember turning.

I remember seeing Taranath’s eyes boring into me.

And I remember seeing him blink.

Now, stop screaming, children! Please! This isn’t a horror story, and I did tell you he’d be coming back. Wherefore you howling? A head is a head, whether on shoulders or elswhere.

And don’t think I don’t hear you scoffing back there, Rich. You think I jest, or that this all some half-mad faerie-tale conjured up by an old coot a few bottles short of a wine cellar; believe you me, had it been me in your place all those long years ago, I would have done the same. But I promise you, as Luna may take me in the night if I lie to you, that it happened thus: that as little Krat and I looked on in horror, Taranath’s head moved. 

It turned. 

It lookedat us. 

And it shouted, 'Seven Hells, don't just stand there, get me off this thing!’

And we were so shocked that we could think of nothing else to do -- we pulled him off the spike. He howled in protest as the sharp wood bit through the soft tissue of his neck, but what else were we to do? Carry him around as a pike? A screaming standard? No.

No, we pulled him off the spike, and Krat held him before us to better converse. Taranath’s eyes were rolling in his head, and he demanded to know where the rest of his body was, and what had happened. We related the events the afternoon as best we could, as well as what Daria had told us of what had happened at the cliff.

‘Fucking Daria!’ Taranath snarled. ‘When I get my hands on-- When I-- OOOH.’

He was incoherent for several moments. Then: ‘I didn’t think she’d actually kill me!’

And he went back to growling menacingly. Krat and I shared an askance glance. It was something of a surreal experience to be consorting with a severed head -- it was something else entirely when it was threatening violence against one of the only other reliable allies we had in the Valley. Had we had a bag, we agreed, he’d have been stuffed in it without a second thought.

Then something occurred to me: we had Taranath’s head, and we knew the way back to his body was clear; surely, it couldn’t hurt to try and reunite the two? Healers would scoff at the idea, but in this Celestia-lit world, happily, medicine is not always the only thing at work. The very fact of Taranath’s survival in the face of . . . well, death, it didn’t seem too huge a stretch to believe further extraordinary things might be in the works.

I presented this idea to Taranath, and he expressed significant enthusiasm at the prospect of opposable thumbs (‘all the better to strangle Fighters with!’); it was therefore with quiet, padding steps that we made our way back through the twilit yard and back into the house. 


***


Elsewhere, Daria had made intriguing discoveries of her own. She had followed the main hall away from the front door, past the staircase where two of our number had fallen previously; there, she found another passageway, smaller and at right angles with the first, with several locked doors leading off it.

Two were empty, and immediately discarded, but the third -- the third was locked with a sturdy padlock. Daria snorted, and set about levering it off with the iron bar, as she had before. It was a trick she had pulled a thousand times before, with crowbars, with metal rods, even with swords, in a pinch. Never before had an iron bar broken in her hand as she tried to break a lock.

Daria’s eye twitched as she examined the snapped iron bar in her hand. Had it been rust? Her own strength? Didn’t matter, it was broken now. Shaking with suppressed rage, Daria dropped the bar, gripped the padlock firmly, and yanked.

It did not give.

Beads of sweat ran down her brow as she fought the instinct to head-butt the door. She pulled on the padlock again.

It did not give.

Daria was shuddering now, her whole body tense as a coiled spring. Every fibre of her being was a moment from flying into a throat-tearing, wall-rending rage. Here she was: nude, bereft of equipment, with a talking pony and a half-mad Kobold at her back, an eldritch abomination somewhere in the house, and a dead Elf somewhere on her conscience, and this fucking padlock dared to get in her way? She was irrationally furious, and being forced to acknowledge it only made her MORE irrationally furious.

Summoning her every ounce of strength, she planted her feet firmly, tightened her grip, and pulled.

The lock didn’t give -- but the wood around it did. With a great tearing sound like branches in high wind, the entire lock assembly came off in her hand, and the door swung wide. Still shaking, Daria tossed the thing to one side, tore the door almost off its hinges, and strode inside. There, scattered in a corner in much the same manner as we three in the basement had been early, was the group’s equipment. Daria loosed a shuddering sigh, hefted her armour, and began girding herself for war.


***


It was about this time that Krat, myself, and Taranath’s head came peeping round the corner we had seen Daria disappear down earlier. We found her in the room with the most obvious signs of forced entry. She did not look up as we entered.

‘Lawn clear?’ she snarled, albeit quietly. Even now, in full sight of our equipment, no-one was willing to risk alerting the Wolfmother to our doings.

‘Yeah. But, look, we’ve found Taranath’s head.’

Krat held up the dismembered head with the kind of glee usually reserved for foals showing off their most prized toys. Daria still did not look up.

‘She didn’t eat it.’ A statement, not a question.

‘Not apparently. But . . . there’s more.’

‘Need to work on your swording a bit more if you want to kill a Druid, lady.’

‘He’s alive? Fuck off. There’s no way.’

‘Sitting right here.’

Daria eyed him. ‘If I catch you staring at my chest, I’ll make sure I finish the job this time.’

‘ . . . please don’t let her kill me again.’

I chuckled. ‘Sure.’ To Daria: ‘Hoof me my sewing kit, would you?’

‘What are you-- Oh. Oh?’

‘Oh.’


***


Soon enough, we were all fully clothed, armed and armoured again, and we moved carefully back down past the hanging meats to the basement, where we immediately set to work getting Taranath down from the meathooks and propping him up in such a way that I could set to work putting his head back on his neck.

Now, stitching a wound is as commonplace to us pony-folk as tending the field; it’s just what we do, as any healer from here to Hoofwich will gladly tell you. But to see Krat and Taranath’s reactions as I plied needle and thread to Taranath’s neck, you’d have thought I was Star Swirl himself, whipping up some incredible spell.

For my part, though? I wasn’t even sure the thick twine would be enough to hold his head on straight. I really was working from instinct; between the strangeness of the patient and the sheer madness of the situation as a whole, I think that trying to do more would have only resulted in me actually harming the gammy bastard, or simply losing my nerve. Rote or die, as the weavers say.

So I stitched and I sewed and I drew the string tight, and as I worked, a remarkable change came over Taranath’s cold flesh. He was, as I have tried to make quite clear, dead in every sense of the word; I don’t believe there was enough blood left in his body to fill a wineglass, let alone the buckets on buckets we had seen pooled under his corpse. But as the stitches tightened, and the sinews of neck and stump made contact with one another, Taranath suddenly gasped, and suddenly it was not merely his HEAD that was moving.

I will admit, my intention in putting the Elf back together had been more for our own convenience than any vain hope that I could restore function to his pallid form. Much easier, I think you’ll agree, to carry a tent as a single, rolled-up unit, than a collection of poles and tarp. And yet, here he was, flexing stiff fingers and trying to work ‘feeling’ back into his legs!

Whatever manner of undeath had afflicted him, ‘twas a strange one indeed.

And I realise, here, what a loaded comment that must seem. Very rarely do we Ponyfolk have occasion to deal with those departed from the mortal realm. We have our ghost-stories and our tall tales, but for all that our lands are blest with magical wildlife, UNLIFE eludes us. And perhaps for the better: in my adventures before entering the Valley, I had encountered all manner of undead in those eastern lands, and none had been particularly friendly.

I wish I could say that I knew all there was to tell of them; that I could explain to you the difference between a Ghoul and a Ghast, or by what process a corpse is raised as an animate skeleton as opposed to a zombie. Alas, I am but a simply Pony, and dedicated what brains Celestia gave me to medicine, not necromancy.

But for all that I had heard, and fought, and studied in the field, nothing compared to this. It was as if something kept him a hair’s breadth from death, stopped that last gasp of life from ebbing away. Fortuitous for him, and, I suppose, for our group, but somehow . . . wrong. And moreso than even the bog-standard varieties of corpse-raising.

‘Say!’ Taranath exclaimed. ‘If you put me back together that quick, surely a healing spell should work even better, right?’ He looked around at our stony faces. ‘Right?’

I’m sure my glance to Krat and Daria told them as much as their expressions told me. Where Taranath, fresh-faced youth that he was (or had been) believed himself the recipient of a cosmic second chance, the rest of us were a bit more suspicious of his apparent good luck.

‘Let me try something,’ I said. Drawing on what reserves of magic the day had yet to drain out of me, I cast the weakest healing spell I could think of.

‘Ow,’ stated Taranath, staring down at the sudden oozing welt on his bare chest. Then: ‘Huh. That doesn’t actually hurt nearly as much as you’d expect.’

There was a susurration of air being sucked in through collective teeth. Suspicions, then, confirmed. Had he been alive, the healing magic would’ve done it’s job; that it had hurt him bespoke the alternative we’d all been desperately hoping to avoid.

‘Well, Tare, I’m afraid I have some bad--’

‘You’re a fucken zombie, mate.’

‘Really?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Cool.’

‘Sure. The only downside is being undead,’ I snorted.

‘Ahh, no biggie. This kinda thing happens all the time, right? What’s the worst that could happen? We’ll just try to find some kind of super-healer out there.’ He sniffed. ‘Say, do we have any raw meat?’

Daria tapped her foot, casting tense glances at the stairwell. ‘If we’re done here, we should probably go. I don’t want to be waiting around for the bitch to wake up or come home or whatever.’

‘Okay, just one more question: why are half my fingers missing?’

***

We made it out of the house without further incident. We had retrieved all our armour and equipment, and Krat had even kept his poker for use as a melee weapon. No-one was quite sure where the Wolfmother had gone, or when she would be back, but we felt it would be best if we didn’t stick around for a repeat of the morning’s performance.

The first thing that occurred to any of us was to try and high-tail it out of the Valley -- make our way to the nearest town, see if we couldn’t get out injuries assessed, maybe figure out what to do with our newly undead Elf (who, I should point out, was almost entirely in control of his faculties again, raising still more questions as to the nature of his condition). It was a good plan, a sound plan; a much-needed tactical withdrawal while we pondered our choices and got on with our lives. 

Alas, upon reaching the edge of the Forest nearest the cliff, we quickly discovered that even the soundest plans can sometimes be led astray.

I have described already the narrow switchbacks we traversed on our way down, and the difficulty we had navigating the areas where rockslides had torn away the track. But this . . . ? It was as if someone had taken the entire rock face and worn away at it, as if a great river had run across it in the night. Sandstone made as smooth as glass, impossible to climb.

Strange as this was, stranger still was the change in the Forest itself. If the road into it split the forest nearly evenly, and if, with one’s back to the cliff face, the inn stood a ways into the forest on the right, then to the left of the road, opposite the inn and stretching far away from the cliff, a wide, undulating swathe had been cut through the dense forest. Trees big around as silos torn up at the root, underbrush flattened -- it was as though a house had gotten up on four legs and smashed its way through the forest.

It was decidedly too large to have been the handiwork of the Wolfmother, at any rate.

And it didn’t seem entirely far-fetched to assume that whatever had cut so easily through the trees also had the power to weather the cliff.

I don’t recall whether we actually spoke, in that moment, or whether the implications of what we were seeing were enough to still our tongues. But whether or not we gave voice to the fears swirling through our minds as we stood at the foot of the cliff, our thoughts when we did later were certain: something LARGE was in the Valley, and whether or not it had followed us, whether or not it was even aware of us, it seemed the better part of valour to avoid it at all costs.

One more thing to add to the list, it seemed.

With the cliff destroyed, the inn more dangerous than the roads, and the Forest itself off-limits by quorum, we had no other recourse; we followed the road. We did not dare risk a light, for fear of attracting the Wolfmother’s attention, but the moon was bright enough and the path clear enough that we found our way without much incident. Eventually, after we had put several hours were between ourselves and the inn, we set aside stealth in favour of speed, and continued trying to put as much distance between ourselves and the head of the Valley as possible.

The terror in our hearts was the worst we had to face that night. We stumbled on and slew a pair of sleeping apes at one point, and near morning we came across a small pack of dead wolves -- all the more reason for us to find shelter soon, especially if they were more of the Wolfmother’s children -- but beyond that the Forest was as quiet and crisp as any other might be at night. The road twisted and turned here and there, and gradually turned east, towards the walls of the Valley. 

The light was just beginning to change when the path ended in a large, almost perfectly circular clearing. We were puzzled, and not a little concerned: we’d had no real plan after following the road, and the promise of safety and a warm, unthreatening hearth had been the only things spurring us on. 

We were exhausted from the night’s exertion, compounded by what we had been through the preceding day. Krat was fairly shaking with a combination of cold and strain, and even Daria seemed ready to collapse under the nearest tree. Of any of us, only Taranath wasn’t breathing hard; though, perhaps that had something to do with him not breathing.

But there wasn’t time to rest, yet. Not while the threat of violent, furry death hung over us like a thunderhead. Wordlessly, we strode around the clearing, looking for some further path, some other way forward.

The first shafts of sunlight were streaming into the Valley when we heard the howl. It came from somewhere behind us and to the right, to the south, back in the direction of the smoothed cliff-face . . . and the inn. There was no mistaking it -- the Wolfmother had returned to the inn and discovered our absence. The outrage was obvious, the tenor unmistakeable. 

That didn’t inspire as much terror in us as it might’ve, though; in fact, it was almost a relief. Knowing where she was, how far she was, was far more reassuring than having to wonder if she would spring from behind the nearest tree at any moment. We had time, and plenty of it; we could find a way to avoid her if need be.

No, the thing that set terror in our hearts was not the Wolfmother’s howl -- it was the fact that something else answered. Not a wolf, not any animal that I had ever remember hearing or hearing being spoken of. It was a deafening, unearthly sound -- trumpeting, ululating, piercing, and seemingly emanating from every direction at once. Birds and wildlife scattered in its wake, and even the howl of the Wolfmother was quickly stifled in its wake.

The shriek lasted for perhaps half a minute, and for half a minute we remained rooted to the spot, not daring to move for fear of attracting the attention of whatever the thing was making that sound. When it finally died down, the last echoes bouncing off the cavern walls, we turned to one another, bug-eyed.

Finding our way out of this clearing had suddenly become that much more desperate.

We raced around the clearing, looking this way and that for clues. Under this rock? Behind that tree? That bird’s nest I can’t reach? But in the end it was I that made the fateful discovery -- a hollowed-out knothole, near the base of one of the thicker trees directly opposite the path on the other side of the clearing. I stuck my hoof in, experimentally, and found . . . a kick pedal, as one might expect on a loom. Carefully I depressed it, and felt some kind of mechanism within the tree click.

I called to the others, and they joined me, waiting tensely for a path to open up into the tree, or below us, or something. But no, our salvation did not come from below, but above; after a few, terrible minutes of waiting, a sort of whirring noise became apparent to our ears, emanating from above. Looking up, we noted with surprise that what looked like a large flower suspended from a series of ropes, was gliding down towards us from the treetops.

We scrambled to get out of the way as it landed with a little fwump in the centre of the clearing, and just as quickly scrambled back towards the promise of sanctuary it offered. 

I should note that the platform did not merely look like a flower; it was a flower, an honest-to-Celestia lotus bud some fifteen feet across. I had seen smaller-scale versions of the same flower in herbalists’ shops around the eastern markets. This was much the same in shape and dull white colour, and, much like a flower bud, there was no obvious means of getting inside it, and it was very vocally announced by much of the group that no-one felt comfortable trying to ride the outside of it.

We tried a couple of different tactics -- Taranath even shouted at it in Druidic for awhile -- but nothing made much impact until Daria happened to lay a hand on one of the petals. At that, the entire petal structure folded outward, revealing a carved wooden cage within. We clambered up into the cage, a surprisingly spacious affair which could easily have fit twice as many of us as there were, and watched with interest as the petals folded closed around us. A sort of handle was dimly visible in the vegetable gloom, hanging from the top of the cage, and Taranath gave it a firm yank. With a jolt and a hissing of thick rope, we were speeding skyward, toward whatever destination the makers of this strange lift had intended for us.

What did we find at the top? Well, lads and lasses, that’s a story for tomorrow night. Alas, these tired old bones can only support me so long nowadays, and I can see the littlest heads starting to droop.

So, clear off, tykes, and should the tavern-master not have tired of my voice, we’ll return tomorrow.