The Exiles Came Back Bleeding

The party made it back to Point Pringle with less certainty than they had carried into the temple. Nick and Oskar took Dhaz toward Pringle Manor, where rest and treatment mattered more than another argument in a safehouse. The others returned to the flat above Threads of Truth to report to PP5 and the Exiles. The safehouse was no longer warm in the same way. The old shop still sagged beneath them. The hidden room still smelled of herbs and thread and old resistance work. But now the air carried blood, vinegar, burnt hair, and exhaustion. Maple sat on her shelf, motionless and watchful, her eyes following the party as if they had tracked the temple in on their boots. Araspinn washed blood from her hands near the kitchenette, muttering in her own tongue. Rahab lay stretched across an ottoman under threadbare blankets, her tail limp, her breathing shallow, an arrow wound still claiming the room around her. PP5 met them with the look of someone whose plan had survived but not succeeded. The Exiles had been hit too. Their cave assault had not found Grease Tooth either. Both teams had cleared danger. Neither team had reached the center of it. Still, PP5 gave the party what he had promised: two ignition crystals for the Pringle auto wagon, enough to make the road toward Stormcall possible again. The original mission had not gone away. It had only been buried under Point Pringle's violence for a while. The raid was over. The cost had arrived before the answers.