The Creator Sends Nick

The party left Cynthia's cave with a new mission and not enough certainty. Virgil was somewhere out in the cold. The Githyanki still held Smiteclaw Village. Walter was gone. Victor's arm had become a wooden stump. The path ahead was supposed to lead toward Cynthia's missing husband, but the mountain outside did not look any friendlier than it had before. Then reality opened in Gravenhurst. Far away from the cave, Nick Kremp had been on a morning coffee walk with I.J., the Akrakan dancer who had become something close to a maybe-girlfriend. They were talking about the city changing almost overnight: strange things appearing, more noise in the streets, the sense that Gravenhurst had kept moving while the others were trapped beyond the portal. Nick stepped through a portal mid-conversation. He came out beside the party on the side of a snowy mountain, next to Cynthia's cave, with no graceful explanation and no I.J. beside him. At the same time, Jonah heard the Creator in his ear. The message was simple: the Creator had made a portal for Jonah's friend. Jonah had been a good servant. Keep it up. Jonah accepted the moment as a gift. Nick accepted it with much less calm. The reunion was immediate and messy. Nick wanted to know where I.J. had gone. The party wanted to know where he had been. Victor was down an arm and a dragon. Everyone else was trying to explain, in too few words, that they had been captured by Githyanki, escaped an occupied Dragonborn village, met Cynthia of the Wilds, and now needed to rescue her husband from somewhere up the mountain. Nick had missed Walter's reveal, Walter's capture, and most of the Void Realm disaster. To him, dragons were still supposed to be extinct. To the others, Walter had gone from miracle to hostage in the space of a few brutal scenes. That changed the reunion from relief into orientation. Nick was back, but not for a gentle catch-up. The Creator had dropped him into the party at exactly the moment they were stepping back into danger. Cynthia needed Virgil found. The mountain wind was rising. The path above them still led toward the Githyanki-controlled heights and whatever had happened to the missing warlock. The group took the miracle for what it was. One more friend. One more chance. Then they started climbing.