Shelter from the Black Wind
Rainer strikes the tuning fork absently, the cord sounding distant and hollow in his ear. It cannot bring him home. A crooked inky scar creeps along the metal, an insidious gift from their horrid host at their last meeting.
The thick air of the Wretched Plane claws at his throat and he mutters the incantation for Planar Infusion practically without thinking. The pain dulls, as does his other senses, matching the gray emptiness of the Plane that surrounds him.
His watch has run deep into the night, within the hole in the ashy white stones. His companions had carved out this nitch amid jagged boulders in anticipation of the night's acid rains. Outside, foul greenish clouds occlude the faint starlight, spitting droplets that hiss and fizzle on contact with the ground. The Springtime showers of The Wretched Plane peel skin from bones, transforming the zombie hordes that had accumulated at the dead of winter into rattling armies of skeletons. Then Acid Spring will give way to Infernal Summer, blackening bones and baking the soil in a radiant holocaust of hell fire. Those scorched amid the furnace heat will rise as the Ghosts of Autumn, a paradoxically fertile season. What tortured and corrupted life that exists seems to flourish during the Days of the Dead, as the Plane brushes itself against neighboring Elysium delicately, like the edge of a knife tickling the throat. But Autumn fades, leaving the cold and empty Winter Void. It is in this darkest of hours that The Wretched Crawler emerges from its Palace Tomb and walks among its people. The Necromancy Cults reveal in this darkest of seasons, bringing forth great new hosts of the undead from the accumulated corpses of the fallen. If a new Lich Lord or Vampire Prince is to be anointed, it is in the Darkest Hour of the Winter Void.
It was on such an unholy midnight that Keyleth had plotted to strike The Wretched Crawler and collapse his most vile home. Take Wretch at his peak, when he was most free with his dark gifts and bound to fulfill the obligations a realm demands of its Master.
But the ambush had failed. Those Keyleth believed loyal had been our betrayers. Those Rainier had believed vulnerable to divine magicks were hardened against strategies that had proven effective in the past. We were forced to retreat, scattered and wounded and exhausted of resources. Yet we were not snuffed out.
The acid rains of Spring had obscured our trail. Our wounds had healed with time. And our knowledge of this place had grown. We would not be the heroes who would end this blasphemous realm. The Age of Fire would come to a close, this land resilient to our most valiant efforts. But we could be seeds.
Rainier’s eyes seem to bore into the rock at his feet, his whispered prayers barely audible amid the stones. The ashy soil parts. A tiny green finger reaches desperately to taste the foul air. It shudders, but does not succumb as so many before had. We could be the light in the dark for those to come. We could be the bough that bends against the black wind but does not break. We will offering shelter to those who stand behind us. We will clear the road ahead for those who travel farther.
Rainier resigns himself to this fate, as he stares out upon the roiling clouds and midnight winds that scour the ashy sands beyond.