Grimrin takes Togar's cue and pulls his hood up before tugging it over his eyes, looking resolutely at the ground. "I don't like the sound of this business with fae and curses. Trust me, it's all too easy to get trapped when you mess with this kind of stuff. I'm not going anyw-" Whe the clearing lights up again, Grimrin reflexively looks up, startled. Then his eyes glass over and he starts following the lights once more.

Wisdom Save with advantage: 13

     After a quiet walk of indeterminate length but not attacks from hostiles, the hut finally comes into view.  It is a mostly unremarkable hut with no smoke from the little chimney, no candle light burning in the window, herbs and vegetables in a small patch of garden out front but they are dead and withered.  The path that surrounds them leads up to the old wooden front door which stands ajar in the dark and the cold of this part of the forest.

     Anachain retreats into herself, after a fashion.  She closes her eyes and drops her head even while tightening her grip upon Deniz-mare.  (Gelding?  Not a horse person so not sure which is which and I am not checking anyway...  though they have shown an ability to be milked... But both Anachain and myself are trying not to think about that, thank you very much!)  While she seems "out of it" she does start a narration of sorts - she starts describing what she can see with her "mind's eye" as she calls it.

     She first describes the current scene as if from a bird's eye view, assuring anyone listening that there is no sign of life here at the cabin, and no sign any has been around for some time.  She confirms there is nothing hiding right out back or just around the corner, though she does remind that he eye can't see everything.  After a lap around the area she looks inside...  

     "Inside the house are signs this place having been lived in," she says in a bland, monotone voice.  "A while ago. It's not well lit in here but the smell is powerful, the sourness of rotten meats and vegetables hang in the air as well as the smell of decay. There is an old tome on a table by the window.  It sits next to what looks like burned pastries..."

Kulloda grunts as way of nothing he's heard what Anachain has said.

"Maybe long long time pass and no one hear," Kulloda says. 

He heads inside the hut, keeping an eye out for any of the old traditional traps the crazy like to lay out for intruders. He has more interest in the burned pastries than the old book, looking more closely at them to see if they might be edible, though not touching them yet.

As kulloda enters there is not trap, nothing other than the over powering stench of decay as Anachain had warned. It is dark, the majority of the two room hut bathed in darkness. No fire, no candles, a long abandoned place. Upon a rickety table that stretches out under the window on the same wall as the door he entered, kulloda does indeed find a book. The book is hand made, with a wooden cover, thick fibrous stitches hold the thick and yellowed paper together within. It seems to be filled with little drawings and annotations with a few paragraphs of text here and there, but it is not in a language kulloda understands, (I assume... It is written in druidic)

anyone entering the hut can give me a perception check and if there are particular things you would be looking for I can be more informative.

Togar begins to ritually cast detect magic as he enters the hut.  Immediately he’s interested in going to examine the tome on the table.  But he looks for any sign of active magical effects otherwise.  

Perception : 19

The dun stallion that is Deniz trots placidly through the forest after the lantern bearers, not changing back into an elf until his head is through the door of the hut. The weary and wounded elf slumps (gracefully) down into a corner of one room for a good ten minutes, sitting quietly with eyes closed and breathing deeply. Once composed, Deniz rises and helps look around the hut.

If Deniz can do anything to barricade or otherwise secure the hut from outside attack - blocking up the window with the table, or spiking the door - he will do so first. Second, he will consider lighting a fire (or at least a torch), as so far it seems the lantern-bearers light has been effective in repelling the dark pixies. Finally, he turns to the book to see what sense he can make of the scribbles, and whether it sheds any light on their current predicament...

When Deniz and Grimrin reach the hut, the Pathlighters each stop at a stone along the path to the door, each stone is marked with a rune which they touch and disappear into leaving nothing behind but a faint glow from the rune in the stone illuminating the path. The instant the Pathlighters are away in their stone homes, both Deniz and Grimrin snap out of their compelled stupor and are able to freely enter the hut with the group. 

Inside Deniz finds a nice stack of dried wood next to the fire place and is able to make a nice fire using his druidic skills, though it appears that whoever tried to light the fire last had failed pathetically. 

With the room illuminated and warming a voice pures out from the chair, in which a sickly looking cat sits, curled up upon a crumpled and smelly blanket cast over something in the chair. "Thank you" the cat preens as it squints it's crusted eyes indulging in the warmth. The wooden floorboards under the chair seem slick and rotten. Not helping the general overpowering smell of decay in this room.

As Togar casts detect magic he senses nothing from the book, merely a way to hold information though he does recognise some fine illustrations of the chernomoi, Pathlighters, quicklings, and something else that he assumes is the darklings that the chernomoi spoke of. Another illustration depicts a common looking goose though the writing through the book is druidic in nature and not easily read. 

     As Deniz-Horse pokes his head into the hut and becomes just Deniz again there is a thud followed by a quick shouted profanity - Anachain has been suddenly and unceremoniously dropped from horseback height to the ground outside the hut without warning or so much as a how-ya-do!  The fall hurts more than just the woman's pride, having no warning and having been lost in her "mind's eye" and so not even aware of her own senses until being dumped on the ground and having that connection broken, she lands badly and take 3 pts of damage.

     "A little warning next time?" she calls out, the annoyance obvious in her voice as she slowly rises to her feet, favoring one side and not wanting to put much pressure on her left ankle.

     Annoyed and bothered, Anachain stays by the front door leaning against the door jamb, eyes on the chair and the cat...  She raises an eyebrow when it speaks but otherwise is not shocked by it's presence...

     "I think we may have found the guardian," she mutters and waits.

Togar turns toward the cat, surprised when it speaks.  He reaches into his pack and puts on his helm.  With a snap of his claws, Togar starts casting prestidigitation multiple times to clean up the place, trying to handle the horrible smell in here, clean the floor, straighten up the place as they start to talk.  “Reeks in here.  Let me help with that, whew!”  He starts hocking and gagging, fluttering his feathers, then a ball of material comes up in his hands, he looks at the cat, clicking his eyes open and shut, then he cleans it away with his spell, working his way around the inside of the cabin, trying to be of use.  Recognizing the Druidic in the tome, he steps back and lets others lead the next portion of the conversation.  

Kulloda slaps his thigh and bursts into loud laughter when Anachain falls to the ground.

"Ha. Anachain ride Deniz then fall," Kulloda says, very pleased by the slapstick humour of the situation.

Then he looks carefully at the cat.

"Talking cat. Are you cat or like him?" Kulloda says, gesturing at Deniz. "Fake elf-cat or real cat."

"I'm not really a cat..." The cat coughs out, "why are you all here at my master's home?"

As Togar moves to the adjoining room his prestidigitation does clean some dust and debris away,, and the smell retreats momentarily, but the powerful stench comes back all too soon. The rot and decay coming from whatever lies under the blanket having seeped into the house itself.

Deniz picks up the book, and moves toward the fire where there is light enough to read. One raised eyebrow is his only change of expression at hearing the cat speak, and from across the room, without looking up from the book, the elf replies: We were invited here by the lantern-bearers, who claimed that the protector of the forest was in need of assistance. We also seek shelter from the enchanted quicklings.

     "Kulloda, move that blanket, will ya?" Anachain asks from the doorway.  She has suspicions about what will be underneath and she's happy enough to be some distance away when they are proved true or not.  Plus the cat may not take kindly to being shooed off of it.

     "And just where is your master?" she asks, turning to the cat.

((So there is no magic to be detected by Togar around the chair?  Under the blanket, under the chair?))

"I clean and clean, but the smell of death still reeks in here."  Togar looks over at Anachain, nodding in a knowing way, "A familiar.  Where is your master?  And, what are you sitting on, if I may ask?"

Kulloda moves over to the chair and the cat.

"Okay not-cat," Kulloda says. "See dead master."

He then pulls the blanket back.