42. The Night Mother

* The party fight a huge, wizened treant and three giggling spriggans.
	+ Early on in the fight, Wilfred casts a mighty fireball that burns the wood well and vaporises two of the spriggans before they can do anything.
	+ Lycan-Pyt is charmed by the remaining spriggan before it hops away, travelling through a tree. He attacks some of his party a little.
	+ The treant awakens some other trees in the area, turning them into facsimiles of itself.
	+ But the fight doesn't stretch long. Much of the party have command over fire, which was particularly effective against the treant. Soon it and the last remaining spriggan are killed.
	+ The piece of shadow hangs 30 feet in the air.
	+ Various members of the party scramble for it, trying to reach it before Clwyd does.
	+ Aerendyl is able to misty step into the air and snatch the thing.
	+ In his autumn state, he's able to stave off the intrusive influence of the piece of shadow, observing that it is attempting to push on him the maleficent intentions and lust for power that the Gloaming Court of Faerie is known for. Clwyd, holding two pieces and not being of Faerie, really stood very little chance of resisting such an influence; Aerendyl concludes that it's really no surprise she's been acting as she has been.
	+ The party rest at the top of the hill. At the end of this, they see the final moments of Malak's life, as once more an illusion appears near them. Malak screams for Clwyd to run, is hammered to the ground by an unseen force and then the life leaves him soon after, at which point the illusion disappears like smoke in the wind.
* The group travel back down, going through the tunnel of a path that's surrounded by the perfect dark that rings all around the hill. They begin walking around the base of the hill, looking for a way in.
	+ Clwyd can see through magical darkness, as can Jolene. They see that 6 feet of magical darkness rings the entire structure of the hill, and it doesn't allow passage for any of the party not in possession of a piece of shadow.
	+ Eventually the group come to the far side of the hill to the path up, where Jolene and Clwyd can see a large circular wooden door.
	+ The group try a few different things to get through, with Cormorant eventually coming up with the idea of ferrying the non-shadowed through in the portable hole.
	+ During their trip through, wolf-Pyt briefly loses control and tries to attack Wilfred when they're in the hole together. But Wilfred makes it out ok and tells Pyt it's ok.
* Through the door in the side of the hill, a long tunnel of darkness curls and winds, eventually leading to a lovely-if-macabre home under the mountain. Black flames burn in wall sconces, casting a dim light about the place. The group start looking around.
	+ They find a room full of cages and, next to it, a room full of ingredients, herbs, and dead insects, with a bubbling cauldron in the middle.
	+ Clwyd concludes that the bubbling concoction is all *potion of healing*.
	+ Wilfred takes a swig and is wracked with poison damage, shocked to find that the contents of a witch's pot in her lair didn't heal him. It was, in fact, all *potion of poison -* only discernible to be different from healing potion through use of the *identify* spell.
	+ Further in the house, the group finds a long hallway with a pitch black wall at the end. Walking down it is immensely disorientating, as each person is transported to a different scene from their past with each step. But they don't merely see each place; they live it again, with smells and sounds and tastes.
* They find a door at the side of the hall of memories that leads into a pitch black room.
	+ Aerendyl has been using his *locate creature* spell to hone in on the Night Mother's location, so he knows he is in this room.
	+ However, the darkness is magical, so only Jolene and Clwyd can see that it's a bedroom, complete with a huge four-poster bed with curtains drawn.
	+ Pyt, keen to send Jolene in to investigate, says her name as he always does. And she responds in kind, sounding the word 'hiya' in a croaky voice, waking the Night Mother up in the process.
	+ The witch spits out the words, 'you dare!' and the deadly fight begins suddenly.

* The party vs the Night Mother.
	+ Clwyd blows the bed, the Night Mother, and that whole side of the room up with the Kiss of Mephistopheles.
	+ A huge claw of shadow stretches through the darkness and seizes Cormorant.
	+ Wilfred dispels the darkness in the room.
	+ The Night Mother shadow teleports with Cormorant in hand, hurting everyone near her as she goes.
	+ Out in the hall of memories, it's hard to get good hits in on her.
	+ A quickling dressed in a tiny maid's outfit rushes around the corner, sees the commotion, and then disappears to put its armour on in no time at all. Then it makes to hurry around to the other side of the Night Mother's bedroom, but Pyt has had Jolene waiting for it. The imp's stinger flashes once, and knocks out the quickling without killing it.
	+ Cormorant breaks free of the Night Mother's grip and makes to get away.
	+ Shadows animate around a few of the party, picking them up and hurling them around the house.
	+ At other points, the Night Mother enables herself to freely pass through the walls of her home as if they weren't there, making her hard to pin down.
	+ She tries to *magic missile* Wilfred when the wizard has all his buff spells up, making him hard to hit, however, he's easily able to *shield* the assault.
	+ On two occasions, the Night Mother injures people near lycan-Pyt, knowing that he is struggling to control his animal instincts. Again, Pyt attacks Wilfred - though he misses. And when Cormorant was left bleeding out within Pyt's reach, with the Night Mother walking away smugly, wolf-Pyt was miraculously able to control himself and not feast on the dying old man.
	+ When the Night Mother was heavily wounded, she teleported to the far side of her home, forcing Aerendyl to use another *locate creature* spell to find her again.
	+ She was using a small corridor and doorway as a funnel so that the party couldn't get to her all at once, and had to enter her deadly reach each time they even tried to approach.
	+ The situation looked dire for everyone - the Night Mother was nearly dead, but so were most of the party, and Wilfred had been all but taken out of the fight when he was launched to the top of the house while the fight took place at the bottom.
	+ With Clwyd nearly dead, Aerendyl nearly dead, Cormorant nearly dead and temporarily banished to a featureless plane of black, and lycan-Pyt at the back of the corridor, Wilfred unleashed a *fireball* from the best angle he could get. It hit all his present allies, but also slayed the Night Mother.
	+ The fireball felled Aerendyl and Clwyd, but not lycan-Pyt, who immediately lost control of himself and made to eat Aerendyl. Only the elf's armour saved him from Pyt's claws and teeth, at which point Cormorant, returned from the darkness with the death of the Night Mother, kicked wolf-Pyt away and got to fixing up his allies.
	+ Wilfred arrived and cast sleep on lycan-Pyt. Before he awoke, they tied him up for good measure.
* The fight was done, the Night Mother slain, and though it came very close, none of them had died.
	+ Pyt, back to his senses for the time being, asked the group to tie his binds tighter, and then isolated himself in the room with the cages.
	+ The other party members looked around the house as quickly as they could, for many of them had given their word in Sylvan that the Night Mother's body would be delivered to the River King as soon as they were able to do so.
	+ Next to the Night Mother's bedroom, there was a large well in the centre of an ornate bathroom.
	+ The wall of darkness at the end of the hall of memories was actually a portal. Clwyd, foolhardy as ever, walked through it and ended up in the shadow of a large hill or cliff. She quickly turned around and walked back through.
	+ Aerendyl ties up the unconscious quickling and put it in the portable hole. The Night Mother's corpse was bundled in as well - now looking much like an elf woman, much like Mackerel if she were younger.
	+ In the Night Mother's study, Wilfred tore through books, not finding any secret lore within the time constraints the party were working under and with the stress of the geas from him almost, almost breaking the word of his Sylvan oath pressing on his mind.
	+ Wilfred did uncover the purpose of the pieces of shadow. They were a means through which the Night Mother was training and breeding more powerful minions. She had populated her islands with various factions, and they fought each other for possession of the pieces of shadow, for the power they possessed and because they granted access to the Night Mother's lair.
	+ They also learned that the portal that Clwyd had gone through leads to Mackerel's island.
	+ Some stipulate that maybe the well leads to June's lair.
* The party leave the Night Mother's house and hurry to the shore of the island, where a reflection of the silvery moon awaits them, rolling with the waves. Aerendyl deposits the unconscious quickling into the reflection, as well as the corpses of the Night Mother, the true lycanthrope werewolf, and the former shadow mastiff alpha.
* Then the party sail away.
	+ The moon fades as they sail, and the Moonlit Isles with it.
	+ When it's gone, Pyt is able to undergo another painful transformation to return to his normal form. He is still famished like he's never been in his life.
	+ *The Drunken Dragon* makes way for Glassy Four, to see if their cat survived the night like they did.