"Kotashin?" Auger asks. "It is very good to see you." Auger cannot help but smile at the creature and its manner of speaking. "This is Snow. He has been a very able companion to Varielky and me. On our adventures." Auger makes a point to say Varielky's name in a deliberate way, to help Kotashin's pronunciation. "It has been some time since we have seen you. Have you been guarding this bridge for all this time?"

"Umm, sure? I mean, that's not why I'm here, I think, but maybe I can do that as well." Varielky ignores the wrong pronounciation. Who is she to correct anyone when it came to names? 

But Kotashin's appearance was as always unexpected. Mist befitting a dream, but she'll find it no less surprising if he appeared in reality too. 

"But we can't stay here for too long. We are looking for a way out of here. Maybe you can come with us, and I'll teach you what I can while we occasionally stop to rest." It reminds Varielky that they once almost dueled to test each other's abilities, but were interrupted. She still doesn't know much about Kotashin yet.

Snow gives a deep bow as he is introduced by Auger.

"As Auger says, my name is Snow. It is good to meet you, Kotashin", he says as he finishes the bow and throws the elephant-person a grand smile.

"How is it you know my new friends? And how is it you are here in the Fey Wild?", he inquires. It seemed like quite a coincidence that they would find an acquaintance in this manner. The whole of two planes of existence and they run into each other.

It is not the first time he has come across former allies of the pair though. Maybe this is just normal.

“Hullo um, Stone!” The creature bows deeply, its cap falls off, it loses its balance, arms windmill and it falls over, giggling. It stops giggling, and rolls onto its back with a leaf now stuck to its face, which it blows off. The leaf lands in the same place so it just talks with the leaf there. 

“Arger are you on another…” now whispered, “…quest?” It sits straight up, eyes wide, considering this possibility. The leaf drops off. Its eyes were wide before so now they are practically all-encompassing. “But… if I were on a quest I would not come here. It’s kinda kinda kinda. Boring.”

In answer to Auger’s question: “I came here after the dog tried to eat me. But I couldn’t get back because there was nowhere to go back to. Just lots of rocks.” It looks forlorn for a moment.

To Snow, it answers, “Me an Arger and Valkraky met before. But,” and now it crinkles the space between its eyes, “but but… are you really Valkraky? You look different.”

To Varielky’s statement regarding finding a way out of here: “Yayayayayaaaay! Then I will come with you. But… I do not know how to get to ‘back’ unless Anafora Lenna Volubelle calls me. But she already freed me so I don’t think she will. But maybe the sleeping lady knows.”

The “Sleeping Lady,” it tells you in its desultory and undetailed way, is an enormous tree which has fallen in the forest, some distance from here, to the southeast. It can’t tell you why it thinks the Sleeping Tree would know anything. To that question Kotashin — indeed you have come upon one and the same creature which Auger and Varielky met before — Kotashin stares blankly at you, blinks twice slowly, then loses interest and offers a non-sequitur. 

"I think I am." Varielky answers, puzzled. "Am I not?" Varielky turns to the others for confirmation. Who knows, since it is a dream, maybe she isn't even herself, or just doesn't look that way.

Varielky draws her sword in confusion to look at her reflection on the red-steel blade. It relieves her to see her own face staring at her in confusion, and it takes a few more moments until it dawns on her.

"Oh, might you mean this?" Varielky sheathes her sword with one hand, and runs her other hand through her long brown hairs. It's true, when he last saw her, Varielky had her hair braided all the time, but now she leaves it free, and the straight hairs go wherever they please. For a moment, Varielky is reminded of something Benita once told her, and it brings a faint smile on her face. "I guess I've been through a lot since we last met you. It is never truly boring for long on our quest."

"Can you show us the way to the sleeping lady then?" Varielky brings conversation back to topic. "Maybe she'll be able to send you with us, too." Suddenly, Varielky has an idea. It may be pointless as this is a dream, but she still voices it: "Unless you are happy guarding this bridge, I think there's someone else who needs your guardian's skills. A dear friend of mine, and her baby boy."

"Snow", Snow tries to correct Kotashin, not with much hope it would help.

This 'Sleeping Lady' sounded worthy of investigation, but he was slightly sceptical that the elephant-person knew what he was talking about. However, in the absence of a better plan it seemed like the best way to proceed.

He gives Varielky and Auger space to talk with their friend, still keeping an eye on their surroundings to ensure they were not surprised by something or someone more dangerous.

"To the Sleeping Lady then," Auger says agreeably. "That may help our quest, indeed. It truly is a wonder we should meet under these circumstances. Perhaps we can help you find a way to a -- a more interesting place if you want to accompany us."

If Auger perchance catches a moment when Kotashin is speaking with 'Valkraky' he quietly says to Snow. "Do not let this one's innocent nature fool you. Kotashin is heroic and capable in its fashion. Truly it saved us in a past adventure. And just prior to that it saved Granophyre when he was trapped in the Poppy Citadel. Still though the coincidence of meeting it here. A trick of the Fey Wild perhaps?"

Auger takes a moment to examine Kotashin carefully, momentarily wondering if it is here in an illusory way, or perhaps is another creature covered by an enchantment. (Arcana: 10 +4  14). How silly of me, Auger thinks. Of course it is Kotashin.

(OOC: Somehow in my head space Kotashin always wore armor. Can you remind me if the armor/outfit Kotashin wears now is the same as it always was?)

“Maybe I can help!,” Kotashin replies in its gruff little voice to Varielky’s offer of her friend in need as a solution to the elephant-person’s stated desire for excitement.

“Follow me!,” it pipes, and tooting a cheerful tune, it begins walking due east. 

Several hours later, the sun has definitely not moved even an inch higher in the sky. Yet a subtle change in the forest through which you pass has become more and more apparent. Shorter and shorter trees, less and less healthy.

Snow’s elvish side may sense a sickness in this part of the wilderness, where the brooks run silently, while the woodland creatures remain furtive and hidden.

The flatness of the ground, pierced at intervals by tall rocky spires, is recognizable here as counterpart to a place you are familiar with. The Blistering Sands, east of Kalahata. You now traverse their parallel in the Fey Wild.

The Fey... Desert... Auger thinks to himself as they proceed. The unmoving sun is disconcerting to say the least and the time spent traveling is uneventful and perhaps a bit dull. Yes. Boring. To pass the time Auger quizzes Kotashin a bit about the Sleeping Lady, who she is and how she may know anything helpful. Otherwise he walks along with the others, trying to remember where their route might overlap with the route they took to eventually find his cousin in the real world. Then he remembers how on that route there was a giant and some flying creatures to contend with. What parallels to them might exist here, Auger cannot know but he does remind himself to stay aware.

Finally remembering how his ability to move is disrupted here, Auger tests his connection with the Sea of Stars to see what else of his powers or that of the Yemma's Diadem might be disrupted.

“We have come across your allies unexpectedly before. It seems yourself and Varielky have some destiny that fate might be driving you towards. And meeting friends in unexpected places is not the most unusual proof of that, the fact we are still here at all..”, Snow replies to Auger, letting the thought trail off.

It shouldn’t surprise him that Kotashin is more than they seem. Nothing about his journey with Auger and Varielky has been mundane.

”This place feels… sick”, he says as they continue their journey.

Other than that, he listens to Kotashin’s replies to Auger and keeps an eye around them for trouble.

Perception: 11+7=18

You continue onwards, and have been on foot for a full day’s time, you reckon. Over the last hour, you have approached what seems at first to be a low mountain, but as you get closer, comes into focus as a fallen tree the size of a mountain. It is mostly trunk, shaped like a woman’s body, sleeping on her side, facing you, but angled obliquely, so to see the head would require you to continue your journey another mile or two. Quite suddenly, the sky goes dark, stars appear across the heavens, and the sun turns into a full moon which shines pale white light upon the fey world. Kotashin, who may have warned you at some point that night falls quickly, sighs, plops down on its bottom and says, “It’s time to, to, to rest, Arger.”

Snow, whose senses, he finds, are attuned to the fey realm to some degree, and who has continued to keep his eyes and ears open, has felt something on the edge of his consciousness, a darkening mood, which edges over time more fully into his thinking. The change from day to night has his hackles up, although he can’t put his finger on why. But soon enough, a new voice speaks up from not too far away which resonates with the same desolation the bard has been sensing.

“Who comes to disturb the Sleeping Lady?,” an old crone’s voice asks from behind a gnarled half-dead tree at the edge of your path. The voice possesses a sweet tone but with a harsh edge, like a bitter draught of honey mead kept too long in the pantry.

Snow's mood starts to darken during the time before nightfall. He speaks less and seems more on guard, more agitated, although he does not speak of it.

"We are but four travellers, looking for the right path. We do not wish to disturb the Sleeping Lady, only to ask for her wisdom", he says a little cautiously as his eyes scan for sight of the speaker.

Persuasion: 10+8=18
Perception: 14+7=21

The owner of the voice steps out from behind the twisted, dead tree, and she, an old hag, is more gnarled than the knotty bark which had concealed her. Her skin is shriveled and gray blue like a twilit sky crammed into an overnight satchel and left under the bed unused till enough dust accumulates to forever conceal it from view. Her hooded eyes beneath wiry silver brows burn like hot coals over a nose crooked and long as a scythe. Her jaw is an empty sack of drooping flesh surrounding a dry, beet-red gap within which are but two teeth. She walks using a cane made of the thigh bone of some primordial creature untold even in the oldest tales of elves or humans.

The bittersweet voice cuts through the night once again.

“You ask much, though you know it not. I shall ask little, answers dearly bought. Reply correctly? The Lady shall ye see. Answer falsely? Thy last night shall this be.”

“Three riddles have I. NUMBER ONE:”

“Beggars possess it. Emperors need it. If you eat it, your end will come.”

"Huh?" A bizarre dream indeed. She'd expect to fight something, maybe, but riddles? Whatever, if that's what she needs to do, Varielky will try to solve them. But the first one already had her confused. "What do you mean beggars possess it? Beggars possess nothing but clothes! Oh, wait." Varielky's own words reveal the answer to her. "Beggars possess nothing, and if you eat nothing you will perish. Then that means Emperors need nothing? Oh, because they have everything already, that makes sense." Though speaking aloud, Varielky mainly explains to herself, to be sure she is not mistaken. "Then that means the answer is Nothing!" Varielky declares. She then looks at Auger and Snow, realising they're more suited to solving riddles than she is, and she better not answer in case she'll be mistaken. "Right?"

“NO!!,” she shouts, then pointing her cane at you, screams, “GET THEM!!, and emits a hair raising cackle.

“Ummmmmmm…,” you hear in response, a breath blowing through the branches, “That was the right answer.” 

“Yes, ahem, yes. ‘Nothing,’” comes another deep groaning voice. 

“That’s what I would have said,” comes a third voice. “Me too,” and, “Aye!,” agree several more. 

The first voice speaks again as the hag’s mouth forms into a deep puckered frown and her red-lit eyes spark cinders.

“The Lady is sleeping but she still will know if you cheat.”

“HOW I HATE YOU!!,” the hag shrieks, twirling in a slow peg-legged circle, slamming down her cane with each step, while her outraged invective explodes up toward the overhanging bare tree limbs.

Eventually, she turns back to you, eyes roaring flames, but they diminish back to the burning coals they were at first and the passion drains from her countenance. 

“Yes of course,” she croons. “Of course the answer is ‘Nothing.’” She smiles, a wrinkled nightmare vision like an elephant’s armpit overgrown with nastiness.

“THAT ONE WAS EASY!,” she shouts into the air.

“Now,” crooning smoothly again, as smoothly as porridge laced with crushed glass, “where were we? NUMBER TWO!”

“In life, I stray not from my home. 

In death, I travel, and far may I roam.

What am I?”

Varielky has her hand on Dreygaard's hilt already. Even if nothing attacked them yet, it seems there are... things... ready to "get them" at any moment. So, naturally, Varielky should be ready if they do, when they do. Moreover, she had a feeling that this old hag will eventually attack them even if they answer everything correctly. She might not, of course, but she clearly craved violence, and that seemed a simpler path than answering riddles, to Varielky at least.

The second riddle is already beyond Varielky. She has a few ideas, but she's quite certain they're all wrong. She wasn't stupid, but she didn't trust herself with riddle-solving as much as she'd trust the others with that. It's like she once told Snow. Every person has a role in life, and solving riddles wasn't Varielky's role unless those riddles can be solved with a sword and board. Varielky turns to the others, clearly looking for help. "Any ideas? I have a few, but if any of them is correct, it would mean this dream is just an unsophisticated dream made by me, and that would be very disappointing." Surely, anything capable of forming a dream can think of better riddles than Varielky ever could.

His mood affected by this strange place and the darkness, Auger stands and stares, wondering at who these voices are and whether there would be any benefit to solving all of their riddles.

Varielky's first response he nods along with, yes, that makes sense. Briefly he finds himself thinking of an emperor needing nothing and realizes a true believer in the empire might not agree. Nonetheless it appears to satisfy their questioners and so it continues. Then he sees the reaction from the old woman and hearing from her friends he makes ready to fight, even touching the Sea of Stars briefly. But then they relent, fairness was in play it appeared. The second riddle does not come to him immediately nor easily. Things that live and then move after dying, like any of the wood he works, for example. So many possibilities...

Absently, Auger quietly replies to Varielky as he mulls over ideas, "A dream? In truth dreams may touch the Fey Wild but if our kind questioners do not like our answers then we may find out if we can wake from this. No my friend, this place is not like ours, but we are awake, and death here is as real as..." Auger trails off as a thought occurs to him. What could death mean in this? A turtle or a snail are often referred to as being 'at home' in their shells, but in death how would they travel? How would they roam? Something would have to come and take them... another creature perhaps or water might carry a dead turtle or -- ahh that must be it. Quickly Auger thinks through alternative possibilities and arrives at an answer.

"A leaf!" Auger says, too loud, too soon, without consulting the others. Auger looks apologetically at Varielky, death was not as real as... a leaf. But the thought came and he blurted it out. Then he holds his breath, hoping he did not speak out of turn. Slowly he continues explaining for the others as much as for the questioners. "It stays home, while alive and attached to its tree. But when it dies, the wind can carry it far. A dead leaf can roam quite far."

The hag cackles, the croaking sound dry and brittle like a rain of sharp stones.

“NO!!! The answer is ‘A soul’!! KILL THEM!!,” she screams, pointing her thigh bone cane once again. 

“Actually I thought it was ‘A Leaf,’” ventures one of the groaning voices after a short silence, answered by the others. 

“That’s what I would have said.”

“Me, too.”

“I was thinking maybe a stalk of wheat?”

“Oh… that’s good.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“It’s like, it could be transported, as part of a mercantile operation, among bushel upon bushel of wheat stalks, to a silo.”

“Or a mill. I think that’s what happens first.”

“You always think you know the best answer about everything. Who cares about a mill?”

“I’m just saying. Besides, you always have to be so… grandiose. Mercantile operation?? A single farmer in a lowly hovel carries the same meaning.”

“YOU,” interrupts the hag, “ARE USELESS!!!”

“Ow.”

“In truth, ow.”

“…”

“VERY WELL. The last riddle is unequivocal! There is one answer. ONE!!!! And if you do not answer correctly…” She cackles again. 

“NUMBER THREE!!”

“What do you call a human born in the Vale of Deshar, who lives his life in the Underdark, then dies in the Fey Wild?”

Snow stays quiet for the initial riddles, disconcerted by what he had read of Hags and not really wanting to engage with whatever was going on. But his friends had already done so which meant they were now invested in the process.

He tries to count the distinct voices as they argue with one another and inspects from a distance this Sleeping Lady trying to figure out what this was all about. The Hag certainly was in the mood for a confrontationand so he slips his violin and bow into his hands hoping that wuld not be treated as suspicious.

Turning to Varielky, Auger and Kotashin he whispers, "What does it matter what you call one who is dead, it's not like they can correct you?".

He shrugs and tilts his head.

Auger struggles to follow along with this last riddle. He knows nothing of the Underdark and his understanding of the Fey Wild itself is not particularly strong. The story in the riddle seems to be that of a specific individual, but none he can think to name. Auger looks at Snow and nods, "That might be it," he says.