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Lost Legends | Episode 5 - Beginning of The End - Part 1

Last time, the group had returned from the corrupted cookbook and found themselves back in the theater. A note drifted down from the ceiling. Help me. Books. Second floor.

The staircase led to a second floor none of Legends had known existed four great sections of books, each bearing one of their names, with purple mist threading between the shelves and pooling across the floor. The books they were drawn to wouldn't open. They gathered around the orb at the center of the room, and Carabossa stepped out from behind it. She had found Octave, she explained, and "persuaded" him to be cooperative.

Through the star-shaped portal that opened briefly behind her, Flutterwing was visible in the distance, bound by shadowy chains. Then the portal closed, and four shapes rose from the mist — Belial's Luitenant Ryzeth, Hrid's Husband, Rhyvan, Thordan's sister, Madelieve and Fionnlagh, Morub's mentor — each not entirely themselves. Each apparently out for revenge.

The fight that broke out was ugly and costly. Thordan's sister opened with a wave of necrotic energy, Rhyvan hit hard and often. Ryzeth worked through Belial with focused efficiency.

Hríd tried talking Rhyvan down anyway and almost managed it. It was Morub who noticed what they all had in common — a stone, a headpiece, a chain, a ring, all of them pulsing with the same purple light — and from there the shape of the solution became clear, even if reaching it wasn't easy.

Thordan's sister broke free first, laughed, recognized her brother, her spirit returning to the book in his hands. Rhyvan and Ryzeth's followed...

Fionnlagh, who had been watching from the sidelines with the relaxed air of someone whose plan had mostly worked, sat down and explained himself over chamomile tea. He had never genuinely joined Carabossa — he had simply played along, as was his nature — but the ring was real, the contract was real, and being defeated properly was the only way to hand it over.

Three trials, Fionnlagh proposed.

Reluctantly, the group went along and faced two of them: A fog-bound maze in the wilds solved through scattered cooperation, and a combat trial against four seasonal tree spirits, solved with fire and the timely memory of one of Fionnlagh's old lessons. Morub attempted to negotiate his way out of the third, but Fionnlagh refused. The trial of character was still waiting.