Cynthia's Cave

The cave was warm enough to feel impossible. After Smiteclaw Village, the prison cell, the mountain trail, and the bear above them, warmth felt suspicious. But the chamber was lived in: woven furniture, crocheted sheets, herbs, smoke, a small fire, and the kind of disorder that belonged to a home instead of a fortress. Mary Jane appeared first, hopping onto the table like she had been waiting for the party to catch up with the obvious. Then Cynthia of the Wilds came out. She looked exactly as much like a druid as the moment required: wild-haired, tattooed, followed by birds, smoking, and immediately more concerned with whether they had found Virgil than with introducing herself properly. They had not found Virgil. They had found Mary Jane. They had found Githyanki. They had found a stolen Dragonborn village and a mountain full of trouble. Most visibly, they had found a way to leave Victor without an arm. Cynthia noticed. She pulled Victor aside, gave him medicine to chew, and worked on the wound. The bleeding stopped, but the solution was not clean surgery or polished prosthetics. It was Cynthia's kind of medicine. Victor's severed arm ended in a literal wooden stump, strange and living enough to be both help and reminder. Once the immediate wound was handled, Cynthia explained what she and Virgil had been doing. The Githyanki had settled into the old camp of Tameis Smiteclaw, an old friend of hers and Virgil's. They had been watching the occupation for weeks, trying to understand why the Githyanki were there and what they wanted. The answer kept circling dragons. The Githyanki were connected to dragons and desperate to find them in Jericha. Cynthia believed they had started looking at Dragonborn as their best route back to dragon power. The captive Dragonborn child the party saw while leaving Smiteclaw Village was probably part of that effort. Then Cynthia changed the subject in a way that made the world larger again. Had they received their letters from VQU? The party had not. Cynthia had heard that Baron Von Queef was reopening the school. Not dead, not gone, but returned as a dhampir and somehow stepping into the ruins Albert and his followers had left behind. The news landed awkwardly beside the party's grief and anger over what had happened at VQU. It did not belong to the immediate escape, but it mattered. The school was not finished with them. Neither was the Void Realm. Cynthia named the place around them with several names: the Void World, the Lonely Islands, a kind of limbo between the Astral Plane and the material world. For her, at least for now, it was home. She fed them. Hot porridge, tea, water, enough care for the moment to count as rest. The cave became a pause where the party could breathe, tend wounds, and take stock of what Walter's loss meant. But the pause had a price. Virgil was missing. He had been scouting near the cliff, and Cynthia did not know whether the Githyanki, the bears, or the mountain had taken him. If the party found him, she could give them what they needed most: a teleportation circle back to Jericha. That made the next choice clear. They could not save Walter yet. They could not take Smiteclaw Village back with bruises and improvised courage. But they could find Virgil. And with Virgil, maybe they could find a way home.