45. Old Mackerel

* The party are ascending a spire-like mountain in what they believe to be Old Mackerel's lair.
	+ Having just killed a pair of oni, Cormorant, Pyt, and Wilfred duck into the late giants' cave for a short respite.
	+ Aerendyl and Clwyd briefly consider flying down the mountain in pursuit of the oni corpses, but Aerendyl decides that they should keep their eyes on their goal and not risk unnecessary danger; Old Mackerel represents a far larger challenge and a far larger prize than anything else here. Thus, the pair join the others in the oni cave.
* The party rest in the oni cave partway up the mountain.
	+ The walls and ceiling of the tunnel-like cave are filled with scratched writing and crudely sketched pictures. Clwyd notes that a good amount of the writing is written in Halfling, the language of the Hin, and it largely tells a number of that people's folk tales. None of the group can read the other language adorning the walls.
	+ Aerendyl, anticipating a deadly fight in their near future, thinks the group should tell each other if they have any wishes for the others to carry out in the event of their death:
		- For his own part, Aerendyl says he has some friends on Tortuga who have been good to him in the past. He'd like the others to look out for them if they have the chance.
		- The elf goes on to say that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter so much if he dies; he'll live on again in some other form. But not everyone gets that chance, and such people can only really live on through their wishes and the lives they touched. As such, he also asks that the party remember the only request Quinn made of them, to honour her fallen crew by attracting a klabauter to the folding boat they'd died securing.
		- Wilfred would like Lyra to know what's happened to him, if the others can manage it.
		- Pyt asks that they tell his story better than it was, and if they can't manage that, then don't tell his story.
		- Clwyd just wants to be avenged in the event of her death, preferably dramatically.
		- Cormorant pulls out some folded parchment sealed with wax. He puts it inside the cover of Wilfred's book on the Old Faith in the Portable Hole and tells the others to read it if he dies, but not before then.
	+ At the end of their rest, they're 1.5 hours into the night's 6 hours of moonlight - their deadline for the covert mission.
* The party continue their ascent of the mountain.
	+ They move slowly to avoid the magically-spiked ground that had previously harmed and hindered Aerendyl, Clwyd, and Cormorant. 30 minutes pass and they've made little progress.
	+ Clwyd thinks they're taking too long and proposes they fly. Aerendyl *wild shapes* into a blood hawk; Pyt *polymorphs* into a flying snake; and Clwyd casts the *fly* spell on herself, Cormorant, and Wilfred.
	+ They rocket up the mountainside in the moonlight, and as the *fly* spell comes to an end, they've ascended enough to see that the peak of the spire disappears into thick, featureless cloud above. They have to choose to land on a jut of rock to their right or at the entrance to a perfectly carved tunnel to their left.
	+ They opt to land at the tunnel entrance.
	+ Before they press inward, they hear the sobbing of a woman coming from behind them, over on the boulder they had considered landing on a moment before. They look and see what appears to be a middle-aged woman huddled over and weeping. All of them universally agree to leave that shit well enough alone - though Cormorant does think that it might be one of the tributes given to Mackerel.
* The party walk through the tunnel near the peak of the mountain.
	+ The walls and floor of the tunnel are perfectly smooth, not appearing to be a natural formation at all, as the oni cave before had been.
	+ The path starts angling upwards until it eventually becomes a set of steep steps.
	+ These stairs carry on for 15 minutes before they emerge into a dome-shaped room filled only with five cairn-like piles of stones in a line - three larger, two smaller.
	+ Cormorant confirms the cairns are not illusions by poking one.
	+ Morbid curiosity too great, they start uncovering one of the smaller cairns, eventually revealing the dead face of one Wilfred Seabottom. The very much alive Wilfred pokes his own corpse's face, finding it to be cold and fleshy and seemingly real.
	+ Sufficiently creeped out, the party press onward, into the tunnel beyond the line of cairns. The path again starts angling upwards until it becomes steps. A further 10 minutes of climbing stairs and the party emerge from the tunnel.
* At 2.5 hours into the moonlight, the party emerge from the tunnel at the top of the mountain to find themselves stood on the large jutting point of a mountain peak rising from the centre of the sprawling, densely wooded bog. In the distance they see the same view of Sawtooth Basin and the Pirate Republic as they did from the base of the mountain - and they appear to still be at sea-level to boot, despite the great climb they undertook for the last two hours. However, now the view is somewhat obscured by a great spiderweb of massive tree roots that come cascading downwards from directly above them, high in the air. The roots describe a dome shape as they descend through the air, eventually touching down to the ground all around the perimeter of the swamp, where land meets ocean.
* The party propose flying again, aiming up for the mass of coalescing tree roots directly above them first, before potentially exploring elsewhere.
	+ Aerendyl had undone his wild shape, so he takes the form of a bird again; Pyt was still maintaining his *polymorph* as a flying snake; and Clwyd again used the *fly* spell on herself, Cormorant, and Wilfred.
	+ They scream into the air, but it quickly becomes apparent that they aren't making as much progress as they should be. Despite the distance it feels like they're travelling, their destination only creeps closer to them. Eventually, as Clwyd's spell is running out, it becomes quite a near thing as to whether or not they'll make it before they're left to plummet over 5000 feet back down to the ground.
	+ Thankfully, they do make it, grabbing on to the knotted mess of tree roots. They start making their way up, the roots growing denser and denser as they go. Eventually, the tight-packed roots start taking on a semblance of organisation, and soon they're growing in lines and rows. Before the party know it, they are walking up a spiralling hallway of perfectly packed roots.
	+ The technique of growing trees in useful ways like this causes Aerendyl to speak briefly of his home in Faerie, a place called the Autumn City, which is entirely comprised of a forest of living trees sung into the shapes of buildings, walkways, and all other manner of things.
	+ The group settle down for another rest in the corridor of roots, waiting mostly for Clwyd to recharge her hellfire magics.
	+ At the end of this rest, they're three hours into the night's moonlight.
	+ A further 5 minutes of walking and the party come to the end of the hallway, a small set of steps leading to a hatch in the ceiling.
	+ Cormorant tentatively opens the hatch, pokes his head through, and sees that it leads to the inside of Mackerel's hut - a place he thought he knew well.
* The party emerge in a small room in Mackerel's house and begin their exploration of the building.
	+ Cormorant leaves the small storage room first, emerging in a corridor that snakes off into the distance, revealing this place to be far larger than he remembers it.
	+ Walking through the hallway, they pass a door on the right with talking emanating from within. Wilfred recognises what sounds like the Draconic and Sylvan languages being spoken together in a hybrid form. It's hard to pick out any meaning in the alien tongue, but he thinks it sounds somewhat like a parent soothing children. The party decide to leave it well alone.
	+ The next door they pass, on their left, has no sounds coming from it. They go in, finding the room to be a small-ish, cramped, cluttered, incredibly well-stocked library.
* The walls of Mackerel's library are lined floor-to-ceiling with book shelves, and a free standing set of shelves cleave the floor space in half as well. The shelves are filled to bursting with tomes and books of all kinds - simple sewn sheets of parchment in places, great cracking leather-bound works in others. Scattered and stuffed in almost all the free space left by books are loose scrolls and slips of paper. Even the floor space is crowded with piles of books, sacks of scrolls, and paperweights aplenty.
	+ Wilfred's eyes shine and his hands start moving quicker than his brain, making to claim all the books that stand out among the sea of literature.
	+ The first books that caught the gnome's eye were on a shelf that was uniquely quite empty, save for a set of three black candles at each end, a skull next to each set of candles - one thick and relatively small, one narrow, angular, and longer - and the two nice books in the middle. The books themselves were adorned with the arcane glyphs of abjuration and transmutation respectively; they were wizard spellbooks!
	+ Wilfred grabbed the abjurer's book and instantly the two skulls on the shelf flared, their eyes glowing with pinpricks of light, green fire wreathing them as they took to the air. The two flameskulls spat a fireball each at the party - the shelves and books of the library were left unscathed despite the attacks, apparently warded against fire.
	+ As the party fought the flameskulls, Wilfred grabbed the other wizard spellbook, deposited it in his satchel, then left the room.
	+ Aerendyl turned into a bear for a bit, shielding his allies with his body.
	+ Cormorant avoided firing his guns, keeping the hopes of a stealth mission alive for now, but didn't find his flaming sword Deena to be as effective as she usually is, the skulls being impervious to fire damage.
	+ Pyt flung some paperweights around with his *catapult* spell.
	+ From the doorway, Wilfred threw a couple spells at the floating skulls, and coupled with Clwyd's *eldritch blasting*, the party made good headway.
	+ Cormorant hurled a vial of holy water at the longer, narrower flameskull, putting out its fire and largely neutering its offence.
	+ The fight ended pretty soon after that. One skull destroyed by a screaming paperweight slamming into it and the other swatted out the air by a meaty bear claw. The skull that had been dosed in holy water started smoking and bubbling on the ground, while the other lay as a pile of shattered bone and dust.
* After the flameskull attack, Wilfred moves back into the library and continues grabbing books. He takes everything of note:
	+ On the shelf above the one with the skulls and spellbooks, there's a small, leatherbound book wrapped in chains which are secured by a padlock. Next to it is an iron flask similarly sealed with a padlock. Both go in the portable hole.
	+ A Pliny Set: a collection of 101 books in beautiful forest green leather with silver threaded stitching - the complete works of the legendary playwrights known as the Great Twelve. Pyt recognises the set as something of a collectors speciality, his bardic college having had one he'd once tried to steal (unsuccessfully). To the right buyer, a Pliny Set can go for upwards of 2000 platinum pieces.
	+ A book twice the size as the next biggest in each of its dimension. Its pages appear to be black.
	+ A book covered in tanned humanoid skin, with the suggestion of a screaming face on its spine and cover.
	+ A pristine book with not a scrap of wear on it, featuring a Vitruvian-Man-esque design on the spine and cover.
	+ Three scrolls that stood out for having jade-tipped metal bars at either end, giving them some rigidity and weight, each sealed with ornate green ribbons.
	+ A disgusting scroll made from the skin of a flayed humanoid forearm and hand, complete with tufts of hair and the wrinkles where joints once were.
	+ A tiny, seemingly innocuous book that makes one's skin crawl while touching it (*this is the weird magic book that was technically picked up on the return to the library. I've moved it to being picked up now so that Clwyd's ambitions of learning about Weird Magic on the year off can be fulfilled. Queue that one Maui song.*)
	+ Lastly, Wilfred saw a set of 16 thick, dark red grimoires. Each one was adorned only with a number of pips (like dice) on its spine and cover, ascending from number 1 all the way to 16. The lower numbered books had more signs of ageing and wear, while the higher numbers appeared newer. He made to grab them.
	+ Wilfred attempted to grab book 1 from the set of numbered grimoires but the book stuck to his hand for a while and then tried to bite him. The single pip on its spine and the one on its cover opened, revealing them to be eyes and the thing attacked. The party quickly dealt with the living book, with Pyt and Cormorant stabbing the thing through with their swords.
* Wilfred put the No.1 grimoire in his satchel (*which is apparently infinitely sized. We really need to address how full this, the portable hole, and any other storage you guys have is at this point*), and then the other 15 grimoires attacked.
	+ The books flapped and flew through the air, swarming around the party, biting with unseen teeth and burning flesh with inexplicable gastric acid.
	+ The sudden fight quickly grew dangerous. The books latched onto bodies when they made contact, and they bit relentlessly at those they were attached to.
	+ Several members of the party made for the library's door, but the books attached to them simply went with them unless they teleported as Aerendyl did.
	+ Cormorant was forced to return to the heart of the book swarm when Clwyd was downed with three books on her and Pyt was downed with two on him simultaneously. The fastest field medicine any of them had ever seen from the old pirate was the only thing that stopped one or both of them from heading straight to House Telphousila there and then.
	+ But Clwyd wasn't out of the woods, and soon she had two more books on her, bringing the total attached to her to five, with a bunch still swarming in the air. Cormorant had also put himself in danger to save the two hell kids and books were attaching to him in a hurry as well.
	+ Pyt had fled to the hallway and Wilfred used *shield* to cover for the bard, stopping a couple more books from attacking.
	+ The situation was now looking really bad for Clwyd and Cormorant, but then Clwyd grabbed her ally's hand and *thunderstepped* the two of them to the hallway. An explosion of sound erupted in the room, snapping shelving, sending books, scrolls, and pages everywhere, animate and inert alike. The attacking grimoires in the room were all killed instantly, and the library was left in ruins. The thunderclap had also boomed down the hallway, surely spelling the end of their stealthy infiltration.
	+ In the hallway, the party finished off the final books that were still alive, attached to those who had fled the room prior to the booming.
* The party collect themselves after a harrowing fight with Mackerel's diaries.
	+ Wilfred said he was really sorry and got chastised for a bit.
	+ At the same time, Aerendyl sees a purple-haired quickling round the corner at the end of the hallway, gasp, and run back the way it had come.
	+ Next the party hear cries for help coming from the room they'd passed before, where the Draconic-Sylvan combo language was being spoken.
	+ The party are flustered and they know they need to rest. They consider returning to the hallway of roots on the layer below, but decide to check out the room where the pleas are coming from.
	+ Inside the room, they see an enclosure where seven little faerie dragons are being kept. There is one dragon for each of the colours of the rainbow, and each of them is missing their wings, with scars marring the spots on their scales where the limbs should be growing. The violet dragon, the oldest of the bunch, was the one calling for help. It's hard to tell on the reptilian face, but she's relieved to see the identities of those who answered her call. The rest of the dragons are visibly terrified.
	+ The party rest up and Wilfred blunders his way through a conversation with the violet dragon - who speaks passable standard Draconic - smashing his way through Faerie faux pas after faux pas, each of which would make Aerendyl cringe if only the elf could understand the language to hear them.
	+ The violet dragon explains that they want freedom. She doesn't know much about where Mackerel might be right now, or what the layout of her home is like, but she's willing to aid the party in their fight with her if only they'd allow the other six, younger dragons to flee into the nearby fey crossing at the first opportunity.
	+ The violet dragon doesn't give her name when asked, visibly hurt that someone would ask such a thing, in fact. Nor is she happy to be made to give her word in Sylvan when the deal is struck - not only because she isn't great with the language, but because to ask such a thing is to doubt her intentions to honour her word, a serious insult in Faerie.
	+ Wilfred then, rather insensitively considering the hostage situation taking place, asks her if she knows a dragon by the name of Pantalay. She says she has indeed heard the name.
	+ At the end of the discussion, the party have agreed to sequester the younger dragons in their packs and satchels. They have the little dragons move away and Clwyd breaks the thick glass of the enclosure with some siege-breaking blasts of hellfire.
	+ Faerie dragons are normally very good at turning invisible, and most of them show that they're able to do so. The two youngest however, the red and the orange, lack the magical energy or skill or both to pull it off. This sets off a little cacophony of reptilian whimpering.
	+ Wilfred takes the red and the orange, who are just tiny, shaking, scaly bundles of fear at this point and hides them in his satchel. (*Wilfred fitting two cat-sized dragons in the satchel now as well!*) The gnome swears to guard them with his life. Cormorant opens his own pack for the yellow, green, blue, and indigo dragons (*does this not seem like maybe too many cat-sized things for one bag to anyone else? Are these bags completely empty until people start putting loot or tiny dragons in them? We gotta sort this out.)* Aerendyl greets the violet dragon and helps her onto his shoulders. As they converse, he also thanks her for struggling to speak Sylvan for his sake.
* At the end of their panicked rest, the party and the dragons return to the hallway and push onward.
	+ After the library, the corridor snakes around to the right. They pass a door through which they hear the distant sounds of fighting. They decide to leave it unchecked. They pass three more doors and leave them be as well. The corridor then snakes to the left and curves in a long anti-clockwise loop before widening into a sitting room of sorts separated from an entrance hallway by a curtain of wooden beads.
	+ In the sitting room, a dishevelled human man is puzzling over a large chessboard. The pieces of the board are living fey creatures: brownies dressed in white and looking scared; sprites dressed in black and looking angry and frustrated.
	+ They talk to the man, and find him to be a Rumidian known as Taylor the Conductor, apparently something of a prodigy for military strategy. Taylor doesn't seem to take note of the strange happenings around him, in particular the cruel nature of the chessboard he is studying.
	+ Taylor answers some of the groups questions, telling Cormorant that he tills the fields, cleans up the house, sees to Mackerel's needs, and plays dragonchess with her quite often. He says that ultimately he doesn't like it here, but all things considered it's not as bad as it could be.
	+ That morning, Mackerel had told Taylor to man the chessboard, and so he'd been waiting there all day, puzzling over it. Now he had someone to play with, should they want to play. The brownie in the king position explains to Wilfred that whether she intended to or not, Mackerel has elected a champion for a challenge. Should the party win the challenge, they can claim a prize that's agreed upon prior to the contest. The brownie suggests the party might win the servitude of him and his fellows, freeing them from Mackerel's binds. For his part, Taylor says that he wants free of the place himself, saying he'd swap his role on Mackerel's island with one of the party should he win.
	+ The party decide it's too much to risk, and Wilfred says he certainly doesn't intend to risk himself for the task. They depart, with Taylor paying them little mind, the brownies sobbing and the sprites jeering their cowardice as they go.
* Through the curtain of wooden beads and out the front door of the entrance hallway, the party emerge outside. In the moonlight, they once again see the same sight of Sawtooth Basin and the Pirate Republic in the distance, but this time they are stood on Mackerel's island itself. A large hill rises behind the hut, well-kept farmland spreads out around it, and beyond that a number of thick copses and small forests of Sawtooth Basin's native sub-tropical trees are growing.
* The violet dragon tells the group that the fey crossing is in a glade amidst alpine trees. Aerendyl surmises that it should be higher up, so they opt to climb the large hill.
	+ The climb is uneventful and they do indeed find the crossing at the top, in the form of a beautiful pool of water amid a good number of alpine trees that shouldn't suit the climate.
	+ Aerendyl puts the violet dragon down on the ground and the others release the younger faerie dragons from their packs. The violet slips into their native Draconic-Sylvan hybrid language again, and tells the other dragons to seek out Hyrsam - whose forests should be close and who has been a friend to their kind in the past - or else to beseech the Queen of the Evergreen herself, to pledge themselves if they have to, but at all costs to protect and ensure the survival of those younger than them.
	+ The six dragons then walk awkwardly through the fey crossing, their bodies not well designed for extensive walking at the best of times, even without the muscle atrophy they'd suffered in captivity.
	+ The party decide on their next course of action. Everyone else hides amidst the alpine trees and Cormorant starts screaming Mackerel's name, waiting for her out in the open.
	+ During this time, Wilfred reads the final entry in the No.1 Grimoire he swiped earlier. In the entry, Mackerel had just been granted the position as one of the handmaidens to the Queen of Air and Darkness.
	+ Cormorant waits ten minutes then calls Mackerel's name again. A further ten minutes pass and there's still nothing.
	+ Aerendyl has his *locate creature* spell active, searching for 'witches.' He senses nothing.
	+ Some of the party think Mackerel is in Faerie, but since time dilation might screw them if they just go in willy nilly, they think it best to go back and ask Taylor.
* Back in Mackerel's hut, the party go to Taylor the Conductor at the chessboard, looking to ask him where Mackerel is.
	+ Aerendyl also now notes that his *locate creature* spell is detecting over the area inside the hut, when the area had just been a gap in his senses while he was outside. Still, there's no ping of a witch present.
	+ The group ask Taylor if he knows Mackerel's location and he says that yeah, they can play for it.
	+ Cormorant puts himself on the line and Wilfred sits down opposite Taylor, playing as the brownies dressed in white.
	+ And so begins the most brutal game of chess that Wilfred had ever played. The sprites stabbed and cut the brownies when they took their pieces, their expressions filled with disgust at the acts they were made to commit and their inability to do anything about it. The brownies throttled the sprites in turn, weeping and screaming in horror as they did so. It turns Wilfred's stomach, while Taylor doesn't even seem to notice it happening at all.
	+ Taylor is clearly an incredible dragonchess player, but despite this, and despite the distracting level of brutality on the board, Wilfred, through the *Gift of Hidenori*, eventually wins the half-hour long match (*with a final score of 57 to Taylor's 47. An average score for an unskilled player would be about 37*).
	+ Taylor briefly animates, his eyes shining in defeat. He screams 'capital play, man!' and such, remarking that he's never seen gambits and patterns like the ones Wilfred was pulling off. The gnome responds that he learned it in the land of the dead, but Taylor had already returned to his calm, unseeing self, whatever glamour Mackerel had on him reaffirming itself.
	+ As they're talking, the brownies and sprites are clearing their dead to the side of the board. Next they scrub the board down with tiny brushes. Finally, they open a wooden box off to the side that's as tall as they are and out climb replacement pieces. They all take their places on the board again.
	+ Since they'd opted for Mackerel's location to be their prize, they did not also free one of the factions from Mackerel.
	+ Taylor tells them that Mackerel has spent the day looking out over the ocean from the shore on the opposite side of the island to her hut. She will still be there now.
* The party leave Mackerel's hut for the second time, now informed of her location. Aerendyl casts *locate creature: witches* again and the party make their way to the far side of the island.
	+ (*It's come to my attention that some people regret not looking around the island more, which would have meant being able to free the brownies in the first place. I can tell you that had you not won the challenge, Aerendyl's spell under these conditions would not have worked. You might look up the spell Nystul's Magic Aura to see why it would have failed. As for why it worked now, well, that's because you won her location, and that sort of trade is just how powerful fey creatures, their magic, and everything surrounding them work.*)
	+ Roughly 1000 feet or so from the shore, Aerendyl begins sensing a witch nearby. He tells the group and they believe themselves ready for the fight.
	+ 300 feet or so away and they hear a sound reminiscent of a cow bell. They conclude that this must be the Weird Goat.
	+ Pyt reckons the quickling is busy running to the other witch islands currently, confirming that they're dead over there. He thinks they won't have to worry about it during this fight.
	+ They break the tree line and see the shore in the distance, and old woman waiting there, staring directly at them as they emerge, an enormous horse-sized goat next to her - its curling horns even larger still.
	+ Cormorant looks at Old Mackerel and says, 'you didn't come when I called,' before shooting her. But she's moved her head just enough out the way before he's even pulled the trigger. The bullet fizzes past. 'In a rude mood, aren't you, old friend?' comes the response. Cormorant sights along his gun again and says, 'I guess it's just in my nature.'
* Cormorant's gunshot sounds the start of the fight with Old Mackerel.
	+ She mounts her Weird Goat and it proves to be able to run in the air as if it were solid ground.
	+ She makes her way to the group and blasts them with a *cone of cold*. Mackerel cast the spell from a wand with a tiny humanoid skull at the end. The skull chattered 'oh, I love this one!' as the freezing gale was conjured forth, which instantly sent crow-Jolene back to the Nine Hells and slammed into all the party save Wilfred, who'd fled behind a tree.
	+ A couple of the party try hitting Mackerel with spells, and while they do find their mark, she appears to have some intense magical wards against damage from spellcasting.
	+ Clwyd shoots the goat a bunch with *eldritch blast*, detonating one of them with the *Kiss of Mephistopholes*, and then Cormorant sprints down the bluff, diving off a ridge to tackle the inexplicably flying beast, slamming himself, it, and Mackerel into the ground. Combined with the earlier damage from Clwyd, this is actually enough to kill the goat before it can do much.
	+ Cormorant uses his action surge and hacks away with Deena, blade aflame in the night, dealing far more damage to Mackerel than his companions' combined efforts in the opening exchange had managed.
	+ Aerendyl hopes he's making the right decision and casts a massive *plant growth* spell centred on Mackerel and Cormorant - the elf having cast *freedom of movement* on Cormorant prior to the fight starting.
	+ Aerendyl's plan was to completely lock down Mackerel's movement so they could just pick her off, but the ancient fey wasn't just going to roll over like that. She *misty stepped* to the edge of the *plant growth* and then started slinging *lava bolt* and *chill touch* cantrips around, the little skull on her wand offering exclamations at each casting.
	+ Wilfred was slinging *minute meteors* at the witch, but the damage from them was minimal. Pyt successfully blinded her with his spell but she simply snarled, 'I see with more than sight, boy!' The bard managed a 'well... good then!' in response.
	+ Clwyd had gained Mackerel's attention for her role in the slaying of the Weird Goat and subsequent powerful *eldritch blasts* - even if they were far less effective against Mackerel than Clwyd was used to by now. Mackerel focused a number of *chill touch* cantrips on the goblin, sapping her health and leaving her unable to be healed by her allies.
	+ Mackerel had teleported too far from Cormorant for him to get up close again quickly, so he put out his flaming sword and pulled out his big gun, getting off two nice shots on Mackerel. Again, the old pirate and his relatively mundane methods were far more effective against her than his spell-slinging friends. He snarled, 'your time has come, Mackerel!'
	+ Cormorant was proving himself to be a problem for Old Mackerel. And besides that, he was getting cocky a thousand years too early. 'My time has come‽ Speak for yourself, brat!' Mackerel raised her right hand, placing a gnarled, clawed index finger in her mouth. She crunched down savagely with sharp, dirty teeth, spraying blood across her lips and chin as she severed the digit. Cormorant felt his right hand rising in turn, the matching index finger extended. Then he punched the finger through his own throat with not even a whimper. He fell to the ground, and he laid still.
	+ Pyt finds his *healing word* spell not taking hold on Cormorant and fears the worst. He starts throwing around rocks and sticks with high level *catapult* spells.
	+ Clwyd, near death's door, trapped in the middle of Aerendyl's *plant growth*, had just got off an effectively hindering *synaptic static* before taking another *chill touch* from Mackerel, keeping the goblin from being healed. But then the violet faerie dragon, who'd been biding her time until now for just such a moment, *polymorphed* Clwyd into a massive tyrannosaurus rex - a creature which none of the party had ever seen before, but Pyt instantly liked lots.
	+ As the fight drags on, Mackerel pulls out a string of different coloured frogs, using them to Weird Cast a *prismatic spray*. Wilfred attempted to *counterspell* but Mackerel *counterspelled* it in turn. As luck would have it, many of the party were positioned out of the area of effect, and those that were in it managed to dodge the worst of the powerful spell's potentially deadly effects.
	+ In the final stages of the battle, Mackerel placed herself and Wilfred inside a domed *wall of force*. Pyt's *blindness* spell had ended. Clwyd's *synaptic static* spell's debilitation had ended (*eventually*...). Mackerel was chipping away at Wilfred, working through his *mirror image* duplicates with her claws, quickly burning through his health with her powerful *lava bolts*, and always keeping a *counterspell* in case Wilfred tried to teleport away. Dinosaur-Clwyd was slamming into the *wall of force* to absolutely no effect. Aerendyl was *calling lighting* and firing off his *rotting roots* cantrip at the wall to no effect. Pyt briefly *polymorphed* Wilfred into a giant scorpion inside the dome, but its attacks were largely ineffective against the witch and she soon dispelled the form, taking Wilfred's *mage armour* off with it.
	+ But for all the ferocity of her attack on Wilfred, Mackerel herself was hurting badly. She said that she could see her end in this conflict if the party continued, but they risked Wilfred's life if they did so, and they'd already lost one this day. She offered them the chance to leave her island now, and leave all those that remain standing alive in doing so. The party refused.
	+ Mackerel, true to her word, then kept attacking Wilfred. Pyt *dimension doored* into the *wall of force*, interposing himself between the old crone and the gnome. Things were looking dire indeed, but Aerendyl saw his chance and took it. He blasted Mackerel from underneath, where the wall offered no protection. His *erupting earth* spell smashed into the mighty form of dinosaur-Clwyd, but more importantly, it also slammed Mackerel up and into her own wall of force, again and again, until her concentration shattered and the spell with it, before a final spiked pillar of earth found its way right through her chest.
	+ As she hung there, bleeding and dying with the sharp pillar of stone jutting out her back, Mackerel's eyes rolled back and her head convulsed; she was receiving one final vision of things that might be. She started cackling, and her white eyes found Aerendyl. And the ancient crone laughed a bitter laugh as her life left her.