68. Tiphorea and Orphne

* Having trekked deep into the heart of the Grandmother Tree's sprawling forest, with Pyt having gained the great, eldritch tree's notice along the way, the party and their companions were at last set to face Tiphorea in the Pines, the dryad turned tundra witch. But before they could take their fight directly to her lair, the witch called out for the spirits of the forest to rise up against the intruders. The party were set upon from all sides by treants and wood woads.
	+ The battle is fierce and frenetic, with much of the plant creatures' attention falling on Pyt, and with their attacks also falling on the bard more surely than they should have due to the branding mark on the back of his hand.
	+ The party's prevalence of fire-based abilities helped them greatly in the battle.
	+ Aerendyl took the form of a Hell Hound through the thick leather choker Nix had procured for him from the workshops of Mephistar. The elf found the form much more difficult to control than his usual *wildshapes.* He had to battle down the fiendish form's innate drives towards violence and destruction. But the abilities it afforded him, not least of which was a very effectual fire breath, proved very useful indeed.
	+ Clwyd made great use of her *eldritch blasting* and the fiery detonations she was capable of adding to them - though she was hamstrung by the need to hold some of her strength in reserve to use against Tiphorea.
	+ Just as limited if not more so was Wilfred, who was desperate to preserve powerful spell slots to counter Tiphorea's magics and to stop her swiftly. He was left with little more than his original *flame arrow* cantrip, the first offensive spell he learned. Even his arcane ward was depleted, having been spent to allow the party to move freely amidst the hindering grasses that grew near the Grandmother Tree.
	+ At the beginning of the fight, the forces of the forest all but ignored Alric, focusing much of their ire on Pyt and then on the fire users. But Alric just went to work with his axe, steadily hacking away at the back of a treant until it couldn't ignore him any more. When at last Alric had earned the chance to strike the final blow against such a mighty foe that had disrespected and underestimated him, Clwyd stole the kill at the last minute.
	+ Not one to hold a grudge, Alric quickly moved on, interposing himself between the remaining two treants and the group as best he could.
	+ Pyt was nearly killed several times, only to be saved by some miraculous twist of luck, fate, or sheer, brazen stubbornness. His *death ward* spell saved his life on two occasions, the first time he went unconscious he managed to pull himself through with sheer will, and then the second and third time he was resuscitated by the restorative magics of Aerendyl. And all the while, Pyt was chugging the healing potions his allies had crafted back on Anemone's island.
	+ The group were battered and exhausted, but they'd reduced enemy numbers down to just the last of the treants. Then, suddenly, Tiphorea herself entered the scene, sat atop a long staff of wizened wood, flying into tree trunks and emerging from distant ones as if they were connected doorways, cackling all the while.
	+ She flew up in front of the group, congratulated them for their arrogance, and commanded them to die - unleashing a mighty c*one of cold* from the end of her greystaff.
	+ But Wilfred *counterspelled* it.
	+ And then the party sprang their trap. Clwyd cast *sickening radiance* all around Tiphorea, even as she floated atop the staff in the air. Then Wilfred trapped the witch, her broom, and Clwyd's wretched spell effect inside a spherical *wall of force* spell.
	+ All of them fled the scene as fast as they could through a series of *dimension door* spells, and though the final treant tried to pursue them, they were able to slay it in a matter of seconds once they focused their undivided attention on the thing.
	+ Then they waited. And when five minutes had passed, a wind rushed through the forest from its heart - a sign of great change for the forest's keeper. The Grandmother Tree, Tiphorea's heart-tree, was mourning the loss of its other half, its other self. The first of the witches was dead.
	+ The party returned to the battleground. Tiphorea was still trapped in the invisible sphere where they'd left her, hanging in the air. But her body was limp and lifeless now, her skin sickly and wrong after baking in the radiation of Clwyd's spell.
	+ The darkness and the cold of the forest around them felt more oppressive than ever. Aerendyl could feel that they were prey now, here in the Grandmother Tree's place of power, so close to its trunk. They needed to leave.
* They bundled Tiphorea's corpse into their portable hole and Aerendyl cast tree stride, taking them to the tree he'd marked that was as close to Orphne's cave as they'd managed to get before they encountered one of her servants, back when they'd first started their trekking in the forest.
	+ Pyt gets up his drum-yurt and the group try to rest.
	+ As they do so, Pyt shifts his consciousness to his illusory double still back in the heart of the forest - him having cast his *mislead* spell during the course of the fighting. Through the double's eyes, Pyt sees an army amassing. Every great tree and shrub around the Grandmother Tree beginning to uproot itself, heedless of any pain or damage they caused themselves as they did so - some no doubt waking up from centuries' long slumbers. Beside them beasts most foul that inhabited the canopy branches and forest floor alike were giving up their constant warring, their struggles of predator and prey. They all gathered side by side and began to march. And Pyt knew they were coming for him. Not just the party but specifically him - following the branding mark the forest had put on the back of his hand.
* At this time, unbeknownst to the party, Orphne was reacting to the sudden death of Tiphorea. The fellow members of her coven had each been a presence in the back of Orphne's mind for so long now that she hardly took any notice of them at all, each a little bundle of emotion and a hint of where they lay relative to Orphne herself. The First of the Lampades had sensed Tiphorea's stress during the fighting, had felt her panic grow more frantic as she was trapped in the sickening spell with no hope of escape, and then felt the tiny *pop* as Tiphorea's life was snuffed out and the bundle of thought that represented her burst like a bubble. When she regained herself, Orphne nursed herself into a cold fury. And then she took to *communing with nature*, through which she could feel what the forest around her cave felt. And more than anything, right then, the forest too felt a rage most foul, and all targeted at one little creature that hadn't quite left the Grandmother Tree's reach just yet. One little creature with a branding mark on the back of their hand.
* The party set up their defences as best they could. Wilfred took the time to set *alarm spells* around the tiny hut and Clwyd did her best to remain extra vigilant while on watch. They all knew the extent of the force that was coming for them, but still they thought they stood no chance against Orphne in their current state - battered, resources spent, exhausted. They needed rest.
	+ And so they tried for it, falling into their tried and tested routine.
	+ However, this time, for the first time, Clwyd spotted something worrying in the forest while she watched, all the others asleep around her. A figure moved through the trees in the distance, humanoid in shape, and just barely at the edge of the goblin's magically augmented darkvision. It was Orphne, First of the Lampades, apparently intent to bring the fight to them right now.
	+ Clwyd frantically woke the others up just as the tiny hut was dispelled and the arctic cold of the forest's fringes rushed in and around them.
	+ Clwyd tried to follow the figure, rushing out headlong after the witch, heedless of any danger. Her allies screamed out for her to wait, to come back, but she didn't. And so they followed, not wanting to leave Clwyd to face the witch alone.
	+ But Clwyd had lost sight of Orphne when an undead mammoth broke through the trees and charged at her.
	+ Pyt's many hours spent polymorphed into mammoths lent him an acute understanding of the beast's combat nature, and he supported the group well through the brief fight as they dodged its fierce tusks and beat it down with focus fire.
	+ When the mammoth fell, the forest was eerily silent. The group couldn't see Orphne anywhere. Aerendyl cast *locate creature: Orphne*, and it told him she wasn't in the area.
	+ Pyt takes ten minutes to perform the ritual for the *tiny hut* again. Once inside, the group try again for the desperately needed rest.
	+ This time, after only ten minutes inside, the hut is dispelled and a *fireball* spell erupts around the group immediately afterwards.
	+ A game of cat-and-mouse ensues. Aerendyl reasons that the abilities they were facing were different to what they'd been told to expect, and his *locate creature* spell had failed while the enemy was still clearly in the area. Thus, the group were likely dealing with minions of Orphne wearing her likeness, and probably more than one of them. They must have been sent by Orphne to harass the group all night, prevent them from getting any rest at all.
	+ After a few times going back and forth - the hut getting dispelled, chasing the figures into the forest until losing track of them, summoning the hut and trying to rest again, and failing again - the group knew they needed to try something new to break the deadlock.
	+ Aerendyl tells the group that if they can manage for four hours without him, he can get his spells back, even in the arctic cold. He *wildshapes* into the form of a snowy owl and flies away, perching in an innocuous, distant branch and beginning his elvish trance while maintaining the tundra animal's form.
	+ The remaining members of the group begin lighting trees on fire, thinking that it would serve as a good beacon for Aerendyl to find his way back while also lighting up the forest, hopefully preventing their enemies from slipping away next time they tried.
	+ It was well after midnight by this point, they were all at varying levels of exhaustion, and the nighttime cold of the Roof of the World was relentless, refusing to retreat to the heat of their fires even as the darkness was beat back by the flames' light.
	+ With this new strategy, Clwyd, Pyt, Wilfred, and Alric were able to bait out and kill two of the three deathlocks that were harassing them - one a former fiend warlock and one some fey-connected warlock, both having been claimed by Orphne as her own through her mastery of undeath.
	+ At this juncture, with her own pact magic spells depleted, Clwyd sneaks off into the forest unseen, separating herself from the group, and has herself a short rest.
	+ While she's away, the final remaining deathlock, the strongest of the trio, an original warlock of Orphne's own design, again dispelled the tiny hut and retreated again.
	+ When Clwyd rejoins them and the deathlock dispels the next tiny hut they set up, Clwyd lands a *sickening radiance* on the thing, causing its form to glow with a dull light in the dark. Alric takes off at a gallop, charging through the falling snow and ash, his footing lit only by the distant glow of burning pine trees. The berserker was steadily gaining on the creature. 30 feet. 20 feet. 10 feet. He raised his axe. 5 feet now. The axe was falling...
	+ And then Clwyd killed the thing with her *eldritch blast* spell.
* It was nearly 2 in the morning when the deathlocks were finally dealt with. The party had been awake for over a full day, and it had been a day filled with some of the most relentless, unforgiving fights they'd ever had. Still, reluctantly, they concluded that they didn't have time for Pyt and Wilfred to sleep and regain their spells. Orphne would not stop, an army was coming for them, and fleeing wasn't an option - though Pyt did ask them again if it really wasn't an option at all.
	+ Pyt, Wilfred, Clwyd, and Alric each catch their breath with a short rest. A few quiet hours pass without further incident, and Aerendyl returns to them, following the trail of forest destruction until he sees Pyt's drum-yurt.
	+ And so it had come to this. Clwyd and Aerendyl had their spells. Wilfred and Pyt were at the very dregs of their abilities. Pyt bolsters the group's fortitude with his speech magic, Aerendyl uses one of his most powerful spells to provide them with a *heroes feast* - a bounty of foods in the style of his native Autumn City, but coursing with primal magics to further fortify them - spending the last of the thrice stones to do so.
	+ Wilfred, feeling that he will be next to useless in the fight against Orphne, takes Mackerel's iron flask, intending to use it at the first opportunity. Secretly, many of the party feel the flask working is their only real hope. Flask or fucked, they think.
* But they go anyway, trekking for a few hours as Alric does all he can to lead them to the mouth of the cave between life and death, the lair of Orphne, First of the Lampades, the nymph who bonded with the River Styx and then grew to become a witch and a master of Weird Magics.
	+ At the mouth of the cave, they hear whispers from beyond the grave.
	+ Pressing into the cave, each of them sees a flashing glimpse of the great mountain and river in the deadlands beyond life. As they do, they feel the mind-numbing chill of that lifeless realm, somehow colder even than the air of the Roof of the World.
	+ They descend, down and down, deep into the cave, as if it were truly an entrance to the underworld.
	+ Eventually, the bare cave walls give way to walls filled all over with alcoves. The spaces are empty at first, just a pock-mark pattern on the walls around them. But soon they encounter occupied alcoves, each one willed with a different humanoid head. All of them with eyes and mouths closed, features soft, fully preserved, looking for all the world as if they belonged to living people, save for them all lacking bodies of any kind.
	+ Orphne's soft voice wafted up to them soon after that. She greeted them sardonically, asked if they thought themselves some wicked hunters, and bid that they come forward and face her alone in her lair, so that she might avenge her fallen covenmate with her own hands.
* And so began a harrowing fight with the First of the Lampades.
	+ Orphne kept herself hidden amidst the many pools of water about her cave at first, emerging after the group had moved far into the middle of the system, and only when Aerendyl cast *locate creature: Orphne*.
	+ Alric quaffed the moon milk his vulva had prepared for him, shifting into his great bear form and charging at the witch, fully aware that he was no real match for such a creature.
	+ Still, Alric pressed her, leaping from rock to rock to cross her pools as she shifted the waters into the stupefying waters of the Sytx itself!
	+ Again and again, Orphne blasted the group with her waves of weariness, and each time might have been the end of the fight. But they persevered somehow, pushing her to a corner of the caverns. Aerendyl had again taken the form of a hell hound to assist with the witch herding.
	+ Then Wilfred came forth from the back of the group, suddenly feeling very exposed and very vulnerable, and unstopped the iron flask.
	+ And somehow, against the odds and their best guesses, it worked. Their gamble paid off. With a look of shock and horror passing over her face, Orphne was sucked into the iron flask and sealed away.
	+ It was such a shock the whole group took a moment for it to even sink in. And when at last it did, laughter filled the undead cavern, perhaps for the first time.
	+ Clwyd immediately sent Nix a message: 'You're not going to believe what I've just gotten away with!' The cambion's only response was, 'oh you do like keeping me in suspense, don't you.'
* They left Orphne's cave quickly, the rest of the party beating down Clwyd's unbelievable desire to poke around the place for anything valuable - it was far, far too dangerous, the rest concluded, and they were far to nearly dead and were not out of the woods yet, literally and metaphorically.
	+ Aerendyl marked a tree near the entrance of Orphne's cave.
	+ Then the group trekked on exhausted legs until they left the forest behind them.
	+ Pyt summoned the hut, and he, Wilfred, and Alric collapse into deep sleep.
	+ When next they wake, it's after 6pm.
	+ Next, now out of the reach of the forest, Wilfred takes Pyt's marked hand and delves into it with his abjuration magics, casting *remove curse*. He feels the deep powers of the Grandmother Tree even now, but it can't affect change here, so far away. Great though the creature is, apparently, it did have its limits, just as a tree's canopy can only stretch out so far. Wilfred wrapped the traces of Weird Magic he felt running through Pyt from the mark up, enveloping them in his wards, the *yanked* them, forcing it all out through the brand. It all felt like deep tendrils stretching down Pyt's arm, into his torso, around his heart, and Wilfred pulled it all. No, not tendrils. Roots. Deep, black, barbed roots of curse magic running through Pyt's body. The half-elf started screaming, Wilfred gave one final great metaphysical yank, and then a very real spurt of blood sprayed out from the back of Pyt's hand, reddening the snow in a pace-long streak. And the mark was gone.
	+ With that, the group were ready to head back towards the forest just enough to find a suitable tree for Aerendyl to take them back to Anemone's island, where they could meet up with their crew and get ready for the final phase of their plan.
	+ That was, until Aerendyl told them he couldn't. He'd made the decision to use his 6th-level spell slot on *heroes feast* before the fight. They needed to wait for him to be able to recover it before he could take them anywhere.
	+ They used their sending stones to tell the crew that the first of the witches was down and the other had been bottled. The responses they got were panicked. Taylor and Poppy told them to hurry, saying the other witches are apparently on their way to the island as they speak.
	+ And then the group had to wait ***ten*** hours until Aerendyl was again able to cast *transport via plants*.
* At 4:15 on the morning of Snowmelt 32, a full week after they'd left for the forest, and ten hours after they'd last heard from the crew, with Pyt having used his speech magic, Wilfred having put up the *telepathic bond*, and them having trekked to a tree large enough for the spell to work on, Aerendyl cast *transport via plants* and the five of them stepped through to Anemone's island.