Session 6 Summary

The group reconvenes in the aftermath of the Hyenakin ambush, shaken and scattered along the riverbank. Myra sits apart from the others, quiet in a way that unsettles even her — the near-death had triggered something old and visceral, a feeling usually reserved for when her sister is in danger. She can't place why. She doesn't try to explain it.

Emathion and Grendel had stayed near the back during the fight and came out relatively unscathed, though Grendel is barely present — still nursing a sleepless night and the guilt of the sacred pool incident, too tangled up in his own head to be his usual self. Torbin tends to Lizzy.

The name Lilith hangs over all of them like smoke that won't clear. Aku concludes the name sounds too human. Too human for the Hyenakin to revere. Whatever it means, it was delivered as a message — and it felt personal in a way none of them can quite account for yet.

After an hour's rest along the river, Grendel playing soft, aimless music that gives everyone a little extra resilience. Myra, half-drifting against a tree, catches movement in the shadows behind her: the shimmer of a wolf, watching. Not threatening. Observing. When she turns, it's already gone. Aku confirms it simply: if it had bad intentions, you would have already been attacked. Myra appreciates the lack of comfort, or rather his honesty in that. Torbin meanwhile fletches two newly sharpened arrows, and Emathion continues quietly drilling that Shocking Grasp spell — one more successful attempt away from truly mastering it.

They encounter Frost, Fenrik, and Draven beginning their hunt. Aku asks if they've seen the wild wolves in the area. Frost tells them that they are probably near "The Cube."

The group moves out together toward The Cube. Aku explains that The Cube is a massive, perfectly rectangular formation of non-earthly stone that has rested in Southern Tribe territory long enough for nature to reclaim its edges. The stories of the tribe tell that the cube came from the sky, like a meteorite. The wolves use it as shelter and a meeting point. Its smooth, unnatural sides draw the eye. Nothing natural makes this shape.

The Cube broke through the treeline without warning — too sharp, too deliberate, wrong in the way that only something not of this world can be wrong. Emathion and Grendel think back about lore and stories about meteorites, but there's nothing that indicates a shape like this...

The wolves didn't wait for their arrival. The moment it came into view they scattered, each one disappearing into the forest in a different direction. The group looked to Aku. Aku watched the treeline for a moment longer than necessary before he spoke.

"I can't help you with this one."

He said it plainly, without apology. If they wanted to bond with one of them, that was a journey for themselves, not something to be guided through, not something the rest of them could stand around and watch. The wolves were not tame. They were not waiting to be claimed. Whatever happened next would happen between two, not among many. One by one, Grendel, Emathion, Myra and Torbin drifted off, into whatever the forest had decided it was willing to show them.

Grendel goes alone — and the moment the others disappear from sight, something in his chest tightens. The trees close in. Memories of Kikita and Lauren surface unbidden, sharp and unwelcome, and the forest suddenly feels like the moment they vanished all over again. His flute comes out not by choice but by reflex, low and wavering at first, then louder, higher, sharper — less music and more noise, something to push the forest back. It doesn't work. Something circles him in the dark.

He freezes. And then, from the bushes, a young direwolf pounces — not viciously, but playfully — and snatches the flute clean out of his hands! It bounds toward the Cube with its tail wagging. Grendel chases after it, finds it standing there with the flute clamped in its jaws making a truly terrible sound, and — slowly, still trembling — reaches out his hand. They play together. A soft melody, then a howl in answer, resonant and warm enough to send a shiver through the chest. Grendel names him Loudy. It fits perfectly, even if no one else agrees.

Myra moves through shadows like she belongs there, circling the Cube at a distance, aware that something is watching her before she can see it. She leans against a tree and simply stares back. Eventually she steps into a shaft of light — an invitation — and the wolf appears directly behind her, enormous, fully black, and still. They look at each other. Same eyes: bright honey-brown, almost identical. Myra learns the wolf is a female, that she has a younger sister, and that she protects her with everything she has. Myra tells her she understands. The younger sister appears briefly as a wisp of black smoke — like a shadow and also gifted — before vanishing back into the trees. Myra names her Noire, and follows her to the Cube.

Torbin found a small clearing not far from the Cube, a flat rock at its center and wildflowers scattered loosely around it. He sat, Lizzy settling beside him the way she always did, while he studied that impossible shape through the gaps in the trees — wrong-kind-of-smooth stone that had fallen from the sky and simply stayed.

He closed his eyes and let the forest in. The wind. The creak of branches. Something small in the undergrowth to his left. Then vines crept up around him — not from his own hands, but from the ground beneath him, threading up through the flower bed and pulling tight.

The wolf was sitting on top of the rock. Grey. Large. Blue-eyed. Tail moving in a slow, unbothered wag, watching him the way something watches when it has been there considerably longer than you realized.

"That's a nice little trick you have there."

He cast Entangle back. The vines rose and wrapped around the wolf, thorough and deliberate — and it simply walked out of them. Not through force, not with any urgency. They bent away as if it had decided they didn't apply.

Torbin held out his hand. The wolf considered it, then stepped forward and let itself be touched. He named it Gris.

That was when Lizzy decided she had been patient long enough. She wedged herself between them with the full conviction of something that does not acknowledge the concept of sharing, planting herself against Torbin's leg and staring up at Gris with enormous, unblinking eyes. Gris pushed its muzzle past her head and nudged Torbin's hand back toward itself. Lizzy shocked it. Just a little. Just enough.

The wolf licked him across the face. Lizzy followed suit. Torbin accepted what was happening to him, now with two companions, before turning his eyes back toward the Cube.

Emathion walked into the forest with purpose, a Mage Hand floating ahead of him carrying a small spread of rations like a very deliberate lure. He had a theory about wolves. They were intelligent creatures, and intelligent creatures responded to resourcefulness.

The hand drifted between the trees at a careful pace while Emathion followed behind it, watching the treeline, reasoning through the problem the way he reasoned through most problems — methodically, and with perhaps a little too much confidence in his own methodology.

Which is likely why the undead got him from the side.

It came out of the bushes without ceremony, and before Emathion had fully registered what was happening it had his arm and its teeth were in him. The Mage Hand winked out. The rations hit the forest floor. Emathion reacted on instinct — Lightning Breath first, cracking through the thing and sending it stumbling backward, then Fire Bolt when it didn't stay down, slowly incinerating it. It was still moving. He finished it with a Ray of Frost, clean and final, the cold slicing through what the fire had left behind.

Three elements in sequence, like a scale played to its end. He stood in the quiet that followed and looked down at the bite in his arm. Then around at the trees. Then at the rations scattered across the ground. When he turned back, the wolf was already there.

It was large, blonde-furred, and sitting at a respectful distance with the alert, focused expression of something that had watched the entire performance from beginning to end and found it genuinely interesting. As Emathion looked at it, it opened its mouth slightly — and a thin breath of cold air came out, no more than a wisp, a few snowflakes drifting down to the forest floor and melting before they landed. It looked at him after. Waiting.

It had been trying to imitate Emathion's Ray of Frost.

Emathion considered this for a moment. Then he raised his hand and cast Firebolt into the air, a clean flare of flame against the canopy above. The wolf's eyes tracked it. Then from its mouth — a small, concentrated breath of something warm. Not fire. Not quite. But closer than the ice had been. It seemed like it wanted to learn from Emathion!

He showed the wolf his Spellbook. It plonked itself down in front of him and stared at the pages with the expression of something that understood the gesture, but not the content. Emathion took out his special Divination Orb, showing it to the wolf.

Emathion tried to teach it to use Mage Hand by guiding it through the motions and lifting up some rations — and when the wolf's brown eyes lit up and one of the dropped rations lifted, hovering unsteadily in the air for just a moment before the wolf lost concentration and it fell, its tail began hammering the ground with great enthusiasm. Emathion approved.

He noted that the wolf seemed to understand that magic was something studied, practiced, and built upon. That it wanted to learn rather than simply to impress. Emathion still hadn't settled on a name by the time they walked back out of the forest together. He was still thinking about it, eventually settling on Ohm.

The group reunites at the Cube, each accompanied by their wolf. Aku hadn't returned yet. Some of the group seem enamored by the odd Cube structure, Myra and Grendel deciding to venture inside. Each of the wolves having granted permission in their own way. They discover it is hollow, echoing, and strange.

It feels like something was contained here once. Grendel steps inside and gets an immediate, wordless impression of a prison cell. The little holes let in shafts of light from every direction that should be beautiful, but aren't quite.

The group notice symbols carved into the inner walls — repeated and deliberate. Emathion is called inside. He recognizes the first immediately:

Sowilō, the Luminary symbol of The Sun. Associated with light, accomplishment, and moving forward. A second symbol responds to his Ray of Frost with a faint glow.

Isaz, the Luminary symbol of Ice, or at least its elemental representation.

A third, scratched out, draws attention. Emathion casts Mending on the damaged symbol and it restores itself cleanly, as though the stone had simply been waiting. The material responds to magic like nothing natural should.

Emathion doesn't know this symbol; it looks like a combination of the previous two. The group ponders its meaning. Is it the opposite of Sun? Are the lines shielding it? Blocking it? Protecting it? A fourth symbol glows purple for just a moment — and then fades — Emathion believes it stands for nothing, but he's not entirely sure. Grendel wonders if it means "The Void."

They think the meaning of the symbols through slowly:

Ice holds "Nothing" in place?

Light keeps it at bay?

The Void is contained within the two.

What could it all mean?

The group see Aku arrive from the forest with his own new wolf. While Grendel tries to climb onto the Cube, Myra and Torbin leave the Cube to meet Aku. Emathion decides to cast Detect Magic, but he needs a few minutes to concentrate.

Grendel climbs out through one of the upper holes to get a better look at the surrounding forest — and from up there, through the canopy, he sees Kiv. The manticore is mid-flight and then suddenly not, an enormous shape folding out of the sky with a spear-sized wound in its wing, dropping into the trees below. Grendel is back down before anyone can ask what he saw.

Kiv! We have to go! Now!

Grendel throws himself onto Loudy and tears into the forest before the others can even respond. Torbin and Lizzy decide to rush after him on Gris, leaving Aku, Myra and Emathion behind at the Cube.

Rushing through the forest, Grendel and Torbin arrive at a full gallop to find Kiv on the ground, one wing torn open, wrapped tight in entanglement vines conjured by Draven. Frost stands with his axe. Fenrik has his spear ready to finish off the manticore.

Grendel is off Loudy before the wolf has fully stopped, running toward Frost with his hands open, voice pitched somewhere between desperation and diplomacy. Frost feels insulted.

"You dare to interrupt our hunt?!"

He was interrupted mid-hunt by outsiders pleading for a dangerous creature's life — this is not something the way of the hunt has much patience for. Torbin understands that this is their way of hunting, just like with the hordelings up north. The wolves hunted and got their prey down. It's defeated. They've won. That's the way of the hunt, the way of life.

Kiv, for his part, is furious in the particular way of something that has been defeated and knows it and hasn't decided yet whether survival is worth the indignity.

Torbin tries to add weight to Grendel's argument, working the angle that Kiv is intelligent, that he has a history with the group, that there is value here beyond meat and its needles. Frost is not persuaded yet. Kiv snarling that he'll remove their heads from their shoulders is not helping matters. Grendel pleads once more, that it has a cub.

Draven tells Frost that they don't need the manticore for meat — it's inedible anyway — but Frost retorts that that doesn't matter. It's a dangerous creature that has no place in their sanctuary, and they can use its needles. When Torbin asks if it has hunted one of their tribe, Kiv violently yells no, prompting Grendel to rush to him. Kiv calls him "Small one..." Kiv demands Grendel get him loose so he can "rip their heads off!"

Torbin argues that Kiv could be a useful ally to the tribe, but Kiv immediately puts a needle in that idea by shouting that he'd never ally with those who shot him out of the sky! Grendel argues that "At least then you'll live!", which is even more insulting to Kiv. Torbin tries to tell Frost that Kiv wasn't a threat to them yet, but Frost argues such an argument is irrelevant.

He argues that if you see a threat in the forest, you don't wait for it to attack you. You strike first. Torbin argues that Kiv can be parleyed with, but Kiv's attitude isn't helping right now, only proving Frost's point. Grendel tries to persuade Kiv into calming down, and not to fight if they let him go, but Grendel doesn't feel convinced that Kiv is actually listening to him.

They go back and forth a bit more on what to do, with Frost arguing that the only reason he's listening to them is because Grendel's a Pouchfoot, and their way of life demands that they respect them. Grendel's plea works on Frost, and Frost considers letting Kiv go, asking how the wolf tribe can be sure that the manticore won't retaliate.

Torbin lies and says that manticores are "true to their word," and that "If they say that they won't hurt you, you can believe them." As Torbin says that in the common tongue, only Frost understands it, as Fenrik and Draven do not speak the common tongue. Frost falls for the lie.

Frost tells Draven to let the manticore go, and Draven ends the entanglement spell. Within the split second that follows, Torbin sees it before anyone else — Kiv's scorpion tail already rising, already angled toward Frost's back, Frost unaware of it.

Torbin shouts "Kiv, if you get struck down again, Nala will be alone."

Kiv's tail stops. Kiv stands there, breathing hard, looking at Torbin and Grendel with something unreadable in his eyes. Fenrik's spear is up. Draven's hands crackle with held lightning. Nobody moves. And then, slowly, Kiv's tail lowers. Frost realizes, after a moment, what did not just happen to him. He remains standing very still.

The tension bleeds out. Grendel goes to Kiv — who does not thank him — and takes a look at the wing. The hole is too large for a healing song, can't be healed with a potion. What he has is rope, and Peryton feathers, and a performance costume, the first one he ever wore for Kikita and Lauren — he tears it apart without ceremony and wraps it around the wound as best he can. It costs him more than the fabric. Kiv suffers the bandaging in pure silence.

"Get out of here, little one." Kiv says eventually. "Before I change my mind."

He backs into the trees without turning around, keeping his eyes on all of them until the forest takes him. He does not say goodbye. The group rides back toward The Cube in quiet.

Meanwhile, accompanied by Ohm, Emathion finishes his ritual spell, now seeing magic in colors. The entire Cube glows blue, yet the Sun and Ice symbols glow orange with Evocation magic. Yet underneath everything, threaded through the stone itself, deep abjuration blue. The mysterious rune that Emathion has no meaning for starts to glow... Protection. Containment. Shielding. Emathion can sense something was held in here once, and the Cube has not forgotten how.

So... perhaps it would respond to an Abjuration spell? Emathion has one, though it's unknown what it might do. He reaches out and casts Mage Armor on it — yet suddenly the holes of The Cube slowly begin to close with a layer of ice. If Emathion and Ohm don't move now, they'll be trapped in the Cube.

What follows is a desperate scramble through a structure that has suddenly become a trap! Barriers rise and reform across the inner passages, each one requiring strength, luck, or both to break through. Emathion and Ohm struggle their way toward an exit one agonizing step at a time, knocked prone, slipping backward or losing ground.

Ohm gets blocked off by a barrier that it cannot pass. Emathion, realizing that he could have doomed Ohm, casts Vortex Warp on Ohm, sending it blinking out of The Cube. One less thing to worry about.

Outside, Myra and Aku don't hesitate. Myra mounts Noire, moves to the edge of the Cube, and starts breaking barriers with Fenrik's spear while Aku hammers at the stone with everything he has. A rope goes in through one of the holes. Emathion's claws find it — and Myra, Noire, Ohm and Aku haul with all their strength. The Cube pushes back. Ice creeps across the inner passages. The barriers keep reforming, one step forward and then one step back, and the cold inside is getting worse. Myra, Noire and Ohm pull. Aku strikes. Emathion keeps moving.

When Emathion finally comes within reach, Noire shadow-steps them both in a single heartbeat. Twelve seconds later, the Cube is an ice structure, crystallized from the inside out, smooth and silent in the middle of the forest clearing.

Everyone looks at it.

"That was too close..."

Grendel and Torbin arrive back from the treeline at almost exactly that moment. They take in the pillar. They take in Emathion. They take in Myra, who is looking at Emathion with the particular expression of someone who has just hauled a person out of a freezing stone prison and would like an explanation.

Myra shouts to Emathion: "What did you do?"

Emathion is quiet for a moment. Then, almost to himself: "I put a shield on it."

Nobody speaks for a second.

"Well," says Myra. "Obviously that didn't work — now the wolves have lost their sanctuary!"

Nobody has a good answer for that. The pack mills at the treeline, unsettled, their clearing changed into something cold and unreachable. Aku looks at it for a long moment and then says, simply:

"What's done is done. It is better this happened now than with any of them inside."

Some of the younger wolves have the touch of the arcane. Had one of them accidentally sparked it on an ordinary night, with nobody nearby — the thought doesn't need finishing.

It doesn't make the wolves less upset. But it settles the group.

Emathion, in the quiet that follows, looks down at his hand. A ring sits on his finger — that protection-like Luminary symbol set into stone. He doesn't remember it slipping onto his claw. He holds it out for the others to see. The symbol on it is the same one that glowed on the Cube's inner wall.

Nobody is entirely sure what to do with that information. Torbin looks at it for a moment and then says, simply, that it seems Emathion is connected to the Cube now somehow. Perhaps it is best they do not find out exactly what that means today. Myra agrees — they came here for a different reason, and the swamp is still waiting, and they have already lost enough time.

The question of what to do next sits over the group quietly. They do not have the time to lose and all of them know it. Aku offers them the choice plainly — return to camp and leave at first light, or push through now and make camp at the swamp's edge.

It won't be without risk. There may be undead along the route. Aku will accompany them regardless. Noire moves to the treeline before anyone has to ask. Her younger sister appears briefly at the forest's edge — that familiar wisp of black smoke, there and then not — and Noire communicates something to her in the way wolves communicate things, quiet and certain. The rest of the pack gets the same message. They will travel to the Wolf Tribe camp. They know the way.

The group watches them go. Then they turn south, toward the swamp, the ice pillar at their backs catching the last of the light as the trees close in around them...

Somewhere else, in a place of cold stone and colder air — a young woman sits across from a Luminary man working through her language lessons. She gets the Sun symbol wrong. She gets the Ice symbol almost right. The third symbol — which the Luminary explains means protection, or rather containment — she gets wrong again. The girl finds this maddening.

Then she notices his hands. He's gripping them. There is an even colder breath in the air that wasn't there before. And on his finger, clearly visible before he moves to hide it, is a ring — set with the same symbol he just asked her to translate.

"Does it protect you?" she asks...

"What are you talking about?"

"Does it 'protect' you? Or 'contain' you?"

"Kaedlin will pick up your lessons — we'll see each other next tenday."

The Luminary leaves without answering.

"This makes no sense!"

She slams the book shut.

Key Information

• The name Lilith was delivered by the escaping Hyenakin mage as a deliberate message. It sounds human — not a deity the Hyenakin would revere. The name feels vaguely familiar to some but cannot be placed. It seemed personal in a way none of them can fully account for.

• The Cube is not of this earth. Its stone is unlike anything found naturally in the region, and it predates living memory in Southern Tribe territory. The wolves used it as a sanctuary — until now.

• Each member of the group has bonded with a direwolf mount: Grendel with Loudy, Myra with Noire, Torbin with Gris, and Emathion with a large blonde wolf drawn to the arcane.

• The inner symbols of the Cube are Luminary in origin. Sun responds to light. A second symbol responds to ice. The full structure glows with abjuration magic, containment and protection. Something was once held inside it.

• Casting Mage Armor on the Cube triggered its sealing mechanism, nearly trapping Emathion inside. He escaped narrowly — only twelve seconds from being frozen within permanently.

• Grendel and Torbin talk Frost, Draven and Fenrik out of killing Kiv, with Torbin able to talk Kiv out of striking Frost in revenge. Kiv leaves into the forest, clearly angered and humiliated.

• Emathion now wears a ring bearing that Luminary symbol — seemingly bonded to him at the moment of contact with the Cube. He feels a pulse from it.

• The group has decided to push toward the swamp rather than return to camp — time is short.