In the morning, Adaly and Amara do their normal morning ritual, but Sam is still steady asleep. When they try to wake him, he is clearly having some troubles with that, so Amara picks him up and carries him to the shaman.
“Is he okay?” Ogram asks while they approach and Amara says “He will be fine, now lets do this.”
The shaman just nods and they walk to an open circle in the woods. In the circle are 3 stones, one for each of them to sit on, and a fire with purple smoke. The shaman gives them a bowl filled with dark liquid “Drink this when you feel like you can no longer breath”
They nod and the three of them go to sit on their respected locations. Soon the smoke from the fire surrounds Adaly fully, comforted by the heartbeat sensor still being able to know her friends are close. It becomes harder and harder to breath, but Adaly waits a bit until it becomes impossible and then drinks the liquid.
Adaly feels her consciousness fading and suddenly finds herself floating in darkness, watching an outline of her own body in thin lines of vibrant white mixed with more faded lines of other colors, zig zagging across and through each other, constantly in motion. Her eyes are drawn to her left hand, where the vibrant white lines turn a sickly green color.
As her focus is pulled towards the debtor’s mark, the image of her soul fades and when she opens her eyes again, she in a different empty void. Large black claws reach out from the nothingness to grab her. Just before the claws close around her, though, she is yanked away by skeletal hands that pull her downwards and into green flames. The flames are excruciatingly hot, burning her body as the skeletal hands continue to pull her deeper into the flames. As her flesh is consumed, though, a thin smile appears on Adaly’s face, finding comfort in the knowledge that she has finally escaped her father’s clutches.
She wakes up heavily breathing, but satisfied. Happy with the feeling of freedom, escaping her father, but also feels some accomplishment, a sense of success.
The happy feeling soon fades as she hears someone stumble over but also realizes she is missing a heartbeat. She quickly goes to help the person who stumbles and finds Sam. He looks in terrible shape and Adaly helps him up towards the edge of the circle “Something is wrong” Adaly says with a panicky voice “I can’t sense Amara and Sam is rough” she says while finding the edge and handing Sam over to Livia.
The shaman approaches her looking at her in surprise “What do you mean you can’t sense Amara?” “She is not there” Adaly says with desperation and Shai and Agrom start blowing the smoke away while Adaly goes back to the location her friend was at and nothing is there except a ring of glowing runes marked in the stone.
Adaly doesn’t recognize them but Agrom quickly says “It can’t be… Uladrem has been long gone” “Who is Uladrem?” Adaly asks almost desperate, her friend cannot be gone, she cannot have disappeared, Amara needs to be okay.
“Uladrem is an ancient orcish god who watches over the circle of life. But he has not been seen or heard from for millennia.” Ogram barely whispers, looking weirded out at the runes. Adaly suddenly remembering she has Amara’s blood, she sits down next to the stone, one hand on the runes, the other on the blood vial as she cast devils eyes on her friend.
Adaly’s vision looks distorted a bit like she is looking through a green haze. She can see Amara fighting 3 buff looking green guys. She doesn’t recognize the species. Amara is on an island, with a giant two-headed snake floats in circles around the island, one head covered in vibrant green scales while the other is a skeleton with flames for eyes.
It seems to notice Adaly’s presence and says “We have company, I don’t like company” and the spell ends kicking Adaly back to her body.
Adaly starts cursing “Fuck, Amara is in a fight, how can we follow? Agrom you must know something about this fucking god.” Agrom looks at her with a weird look “You idiot girl, you want to follow? Nonono if this is Uladrem’s work, only he can decide if you are worthy of an audience.”
“Useless” Adaly says while standing up and pacing around. There most be something she can do… She cannot let her friend just die…
Adaly starts trying to analyze the runes, seeing if she might be able to cast a teleportation circle with them as a base. A few seconds later Amara appears next to her. Adaly immediately jumps her friend who is looking rough “what happened?” Adaly asks.
“Urgh, some vision, then I was pulled to an island having to prove my worth to a snake. I am exhausted, can we get some food?” Amara asks and Adaly nods. She wants to help Amara but Amara is too proud, so Adaly and Livia help Sam instead.
“We shall leave after dinner, we should still go back to base camp and get Heskeni to identify the stuff you got off of Zalia.” Adaly says, and the rest of the party nods.
They set Sam down at the edge of the feasting location, against one of the trees. “You guys go get food and enjoy, I will stay with Sam” Adaly says while grabbing some of the bedrolls, giving him some more support “Thank you” he kindly says before he fades out of consciousness again.
Stories of my brain 