The Jump

As our enemies appeared before us and began to close in, the huge wolf that appear approached me. Time began to slow around us. The wolf, a towering beast at least eight feet tall, spoke to me. It said Silvanus had sent him to protect us and give us an opportunity to escape. His name was Braenor. He offered to carry some of us away, but I said I had a plan to get all of us away in an instant. So he said he would keep the Lovelocks occupied while we retreated. Time shifted back to normal and the wolf turned on our enemies, while I called out to the others to gather around. While they grasped hands and formed a circle, I took out the gate cube that we had taken from the vampires. Having finally identified how to use it, I thought that it would provide us a safe method of escape. I quickly spun it around and selected the side with the symbol of the Feywild and pressed the button twice. As space swirled around us I called out to Lilith "Maethok says you're a bitch!" And the next instant we found ourselves standing in a field in the Feywild.
 
I barely had a chance to look at our surroundings as questions raced through my mind. My first instinct was that Po had betrayed us and led the Lovelocks to us. Pointing this out, Dru joined in my suspicions, but Po adamantly denied any involvement or knowledge of how the Lovelocks had come to find us. Then as we stood there arguing a thought struck me. Lilith was not in Limbo. Her domain was unprotected. I quickly asked Dru for his sister's full name, then turned the cube to the side with the symbol for Limbo and pressed the button, saying the name Dre Shepherd. A portal opened up and a female firbolg fell through. It was Dre. She urged us to rescue Mirielle’s mother, Thea Dawnmane, but we were faced with a predicament. There was only one more charge left in the gate cube, so we could either attempt to rescue Thea or return home to find Mirielle and Tharra. After some discussion, we decided to return home. I used the cube to cast the gate spell, opening a portal to Shadowtop Cathedral, and we stepped through. At first everything appeared to be normal. Greenwhistle was still in his usual perch in one of the trees playing music. The area was calm and still But as we went over and spoke to the startled fawn, it was apparent that something was different. He seemed to have aged, and spoke as if he hadn’t seen us in a long time. Getting the feeling that something was off, we asked when was the last time he had seen us. He told us it had been 16 years since the last time we had been in Shadowtop. Somehow we had jumped ahead 16 years into the future. The weight of this hit like a ton of bricks. We noticed a thick fog growing around us, and the air smelled of poison. Pressing Greenwhistle we asked what had been going on, and he told us that Slarkrathel had finally come to the High Forest. The entity was not a kraken at all, but a green dragon, and had finished off the last of the Emerald Enclave and taken up residence in Shadowtop.
 
I walked away from the group as they continued to speak to Greenwhistle, trying to comprehend what I had heard. Suddenly I fell, and felt a hand grasp the back of my head and wrench it back to look up. The demon that had appeared to me before in Stiljabyr was above me. It began shrieking at me, asking me where I had been and threatening to take me back to Maethok. I stumbled to my feet just in time to see Dru crash into the fiend. We fought the demon, and managed to damage it a great deal. In a last effort it attempted to grab me and teleport away to Maethok, but Shiara countered the spell and we killed the fiend.
 
The others were understandably confused by the sudden appearance of a demon, and I finally confessed that I had made a pact with Maethok and explained the situation. During my childhood my city had been under attack by duergar and my parents were killed. Desperate to get them back, I had found a book in my mother’s library that had a summoning ritual, and had summoned a demon that offered me a deal. The deal was supposed to be my eternal servitude in exchange for ending the siege and bringing back my parents, but while the enemies had been defeated the demon only brought me my parents lifeless bodies. They remained dead. And now my soul is forfeit to a fiend, and his minion had been keeping tabs on me.
 
Their reactions were somewhat confused, but the situation at hand with having suddenly lost 16 years seemed more pressing, and we were apparently in great danger within Shadowtop. So we quickly left, traveling along a stream away from the cathedral. We eventually came to a place where we saw the petrified body of Turlang standing in the forest, with two figures sitting in the shadows nearby.