Looking up at the sky, Mal sighs and states, "It's time like these I miss Badger's magical hut, woudl be nice to get out of the weather for the night." As she goes about setting up her gear as best she can.

"I can take first watch." Mal mutters out.

Perception: 8

Zendrak gives Mal a sardonic look, and then returns to staring at the sputtering fire. 

The evening passes slowly....damp and wet and with the constant staccato of dripping water splashing down around the forest. The next morning the fire is nothing but blackened wood and wet ash. Zendrak appears to have not moved the entire evening, sitting hunched over the cold dead fire.  As the group begins to stir and scrounge about for some sustenance, he speaks out loud. "I have been to the Fey wild before. If you so desire, I can direct you to a way across."

Asking Zendrak , "To anywhere in the fey wild or to a place near where this summer person might be? How large is this fey wild place, as big as this world and are there any large concentrations of people we can talk to to try and find a direction to travel?"

Then Mal will turn to the others, "Anyone else have anything they need to get done or anywhere they want to travel to." Stopping and thinking a bit, "We probably should stop at a larger city to restock on supplies as well before we start realm hopping around. Thoughts."

Zendrak shrugs to Mal, "It will be to a different locale in the Fey Wild. But...travel there is different than it is here. We will be able to seek this summer person once we get there. If you've had a vision of the place, we should be able to find it, eventually."

Kari was reserved during travel and through the night. This morning she seems mostly back to normal, and when Mal mentions supplies she puts on a thinking face. "What sort of supplies would be helpful for the feywild? Do fairies really like trinkets?"

"Oh I have no idea, but we have been traveling for a bit and not sure anyone had any desire to purchase anything. I am good to go, at least I think I am, don't really know to be honest, but I am sure we can find items if need be once we get there. So I guess if we are all ready, Zendrak lets get a move on." Mal responds.

Zendrak nods as everyone is finished packing up camp. "Very well."  Without much more than a single word of power, magic swirls around the lot of you and then the world collapses around you, only to expand a moment later.  Once the motion sickness of teleportation leaves you, you find yourselves standing in a dark cave. A tunnel reaches into the rock behind you, where a stream of water trickles from, passing by you, to a cliffside where it plummets off into darkness. Rocky pathways stretch both left and right along cave walls, but ahead the cave floor is missing, a huge dark sinkhole before you. From within the darkness, as your eyes begin to adjust, you notice glowing spheres of light from below. 

Zendrak looks about the silent cave. "Well.  Let's hope this still works."  

He leaps off the cliff, falling into the darkness along the stream of water.  He doesn't yell or scream, and simply plummets, along with the quickly misting water fall, into the darkness below, vanishing from view. You don't hear a thud, yell, or scream. Only silence.

Sighing, Mal says, "I am really getting to hate that man of little talk or explanation." Sighing again, "Guess there is only one way to go." As she steps off into the darkness, holding in a scream.

Kari had not even a moment of time to react as the strange person inside Badger's body decided to throw that body off into the hole. A couple of quick steps and a stretched-out hand did nothing to catch the falling gnome, and Kari listened for sounds that never came. Seeing Mal jump over the edge as well her face goes through a few unrecognizable emotions before she looks at Mordekai and Kurik. "This must be some fae thing, right? An illusion or something? Tell me it's not that deep at least, that my eyes are playing tricks on me." She glances over the edge but hesitates to jump in.

Kari and Mordekai stand there, next to Kurik, looking off the diminutive waterfall into the darkness. 

"Well, Zendrak seemed to know what to expect and jumped without much hesitation. And we can't exactly find our way home easily without him. We either jump or wait around stranded. Jump with me, I can always slow our fall if you're close." 

Mordekai steps out to follow Mal, but waits for the others, and will step off with them if/when they do.

 Feeling better about jumping with a group Kari gathers her courage and jumps in, feet first, squinting her eyes as close to shut as she can while still being able to see.

Kurik leaps as after Kari, followed by Mordekai....ready to slow their fall should things go awry.  

They hurdle down into the darkness, the spray of the waterfall leaving them behind.  Large glowing spheres seemed to decorate the cave floor below them, but as they fall, they get no larger and don't change direction.  Instead the cave wall behind them vanishes and they find themselves falling through darkness, but seeming like they're not moving, with no frame of reference but large glowing spheres in the distance.  Then it's as if they are laying flat, and then swing upwards, a rippling surface appearing in front of their faces as they splash through and......erupt out of the water.  

A thick hazy fog clings to the surface of a lake that the three of them find themselves splashing about....before finding their feet beneath themselves.  They each push themselves to their feet finding themselves standing in no more than 3 inches of water.  The shallow pond ends perhaps twenty feet away...where Zendrak and Mal can be see, soaking wet and taking off various bits of clothing to ring the water from. 

Everyone is soaked.  Small fireflies flit to and fro in the mist. The sky is not visible through the fog, but it seems to be day time.  The pond you see gives rise to some land, but then just as quickly plunges back into more ponds. Tall reeds and lily pads decorate the place that has a certain stink of rot. It's clear you stand somewhere within a vast swampland. 

A frog hops into the water and vanishes nearby. 

Zendrak looks to the others, "Welcome to the Fey Wild. This was the only permanent way I've ever known to this place. Now we just need to ask for some directions."  He dumps out a boot...which a good amount of water splashes from.  He sticks his sopping wet socked foot back into the footwear. 

Kurik brings up his hands and wipes the water from his eyes.  He looks down at his "passenger", and his parasitic armor wreathed and pulsed.  The heat of it causing the moisture to steam off leaving him mostly dry again.  "So this Fey Wild.  Not a plane I have been to before.  Thought it would be... less squishy."

Zendrak mutters, "Well, let us poke around a bit. This place hasn't changed from when I was last here, but....how hard could it be to find this summer court?" 

The half-orc, goliath, and tiefling follow the possessed gnome wizard into the fog. With them, the woman with the ring of winter on her hand....her eyes crystal blue...her hand coated in frost, step into the depths of the Fey wild. They'd already tried several leads on destroying the cursed ring. Who could say if this would work....but with determination, and the veil across alternate planes of reality offering them no barrier, they continued the trek forward. 

In the inside pocket of Mordekai's cloak, a two dimensional being clung, shivering slightly as it muttered mostly to itself, "This place is mostly illusion....".  Illusion, a word it had learned recently. Just another word for lies, in a black and white world of truth and falsehoods.  

Clinging to the finger of Mal...the insidious spirit of the ring clung...recognizing the Fey Wild.  It had been dormant recently, allowing these mortals to do as they will. It was eternal, it was forever, and the visions it shared of an ice covered world were the future, not some fanciful dream. It had already bent this woman to its will many times. When the time came, it would do so again....until then, it enjoyed their futile attempts to seek its end....its cold spirit feeding on that hope....knowing it would eventually leave them bereft. Then it would be time to move on to more fertile grounds. Until then....it drank up their hope, looking forward to their eventually disillusionment. 

The dimensional being inside Mordekai's cloak shivered once again. Feeling the truth of the rings presence...and yet....recognizing something else in that truth. It was the truth one told oneself when you became unsure. The truth that was actually a blanket of lies that one told oneself to ease hardship.  A tiny bit of grey slipped into the things mind, and it was most unsettling.

Here ends the story. 

For now.