"Of Tymora" The Hunted || Kellen

DISCOVERY
You approach the abandoned building with trepidation. It’s clearly been months since anyone set foot here - though the inside of the makeshift Temple is still more clean than the corpse-ridden streets outside. There are boils forming on your arms and torso already, but you still keep as far from the vacant stares of plauge bearing bodies as possible. The buildings around it are either heavily damaged or filled with a nauseating stench. However, even the atmosphere of the so-called place of worship feels clean.
Of course you make sure your entrance is not sabotauged to hurt you. But as soon as you open the door, you feel a surge of energy wash over your body. You throw yourself inside, letting the door swing behind you. However, a quick check convinces you that you are unscathed in body or mind. This is strange, but you have seen much stranger. You pick yourself up and cast your eyes about the room.
The interior looks less like a temple and more like someone’s home with a few extra chairs strewn around the fireplace. The walls’ only adornment is a banner with a gold coin painted on it - this slashed into several hanging pieces. There looks to be nothing of value in the house at all, at first. Your eyes scan the hearth above the fireplace and find nothing, until you approach within a few feet of it. Then blinks into your field of vision a worn, gold coin with the face of a smiling woman on it’s surface and a shining ivory-and-gold rapier with three smaller coins set into it’s hilt.
As you turn your focus to the coin, a wave of soothing warmth passes over you. It tilts toward you of it’s own accord, and rolls off the hearth to fall against your chest. Before you can react, the room around you vanishes. You can feel your feet planted on the floorboards, but to your sight, you are deep in the Northern Tundra.



HEIMEL
“We were supposed to bring him back!” The figure behind the tavern bar flings a bottle against the wall several feet from your head. The wall catches briefly on fire and fills the tavern with smoke. You and your friend kneel next to him, and a woman with purple skin and despair in her eyes.They will not tell you what happened, but the man acts as if the world has ended.
Someone swings the door open; billowing smoke obscures his form. You peer into the dark, hoping for the face of your friend, who comforted you, who encouraged you, who fell asleep with his head resting against your shoulder not a week before.
“...Thelise?” You call into the darkness. From the depths of the smoke, a pair of glowing eyes stares back at you. A mouth curls into a smile of triumph before he vanishes into the night.
~~~~~
You lurch out of the vision with dread in the pit of your stomach. The coin has settled in your hands, warm but unweighted - as you pass your nondominant hand over the smiling woman’s face, your fingers brush right through to your palm. You stare in confusion, but no harm has come to you thus far. You tilt the coin, turn the coin, roll the coin over your hand - nothing works to see the second side, but you do spot a small leather journal, beat to shit but mostly intact. Curiosity fills you, and you open it without a second thought. It falls on the same page as the vision you just saw, and continues on for a large chunk of the book. As you flip through, you catch bits and pieces of the author’s journey:
~ “Sahlrek tried to tell me you left me today, or that you weren’t what you seemed, or something terrible in that vein. This is not true - I will not believe it. You would never abandon me; I know this. Right now I am hollow, and weak, and really really scared. But I will find a way to reconnect with you, and I’ll follow you whatever you ask of me. If I have to cross the continent to hear from you I’ll do it. I am not Godless.”
~ ”Elghhn finally took us South, but only to Fort Thorne. Vex and I have a long journey ahead of us, but we have to try to rid him of his Patron - and me of whatever severed my bond with my Goddess. Asher -” There is a swift line trailing off the page here, as if the author suddenly stopped writing. When the hand returns, it is much shakier than before. There are spots on the paper that are wrinkled and smudged, like something splashed on them while the words were written: “I froze and he died.” There are a couple of scribbled out lines, and then, “Asher is gone. I can’t find him. We’re alone in a Crimson Army fort and the fucking Guard are here. Captain Sanguine...killed...one of the stable boys in front of us, for trying to sell Vex a horse. A child dead over a single horse! Goddess help us, we have to make it to the Festival of Fates or we’ll both die.” A small addendum on the side of the page is slightly illegible but contains several curses and the name “Aoife”, and then “Thank the gods for Arvid and his sense!”

At this time, as you’re still absently messing with the etheral coin, you flip it out of instinct. It lands tails-up in your palm, and you are sucked straight into another vision.

WESTERN CAPITAL
Again there is fire, but it spans the entire city this time. You catch glimpses of the raging walls of flame as you run back and forth to a 200-foot-long dragon; blue scales shining dully in the destructive light. It waits patiently as you help people with awful burns all over their bodies toward it as best you can, passing them off to a half-orc with a whimsical monocle who helps them climb the young dragon’s back. The same boy from the Tundra is doing his best to help as he always has, following the lead of a human who’s soul you just pulled from a hammer, and a man with a mowhawk and a bold “No Gods, No Masters” tattooed across his chest. You run by a half-orc who now wields the same massive hammer which once threatened your city in the Tundra. The fact that the ones who killed the past wielder held Thelise in their number is not lost on you, but you are glad nonetheless. These men seem to care about the people around them, and you hope you can be of help to them.
You try not to glance down at the many drowned bodies below you - the guilt threatens to pull you under with them, so you focus on the people who can still receive your help. As you pass the half-orc, you slap your hand against the green-glowing orb embedded in his armor. Your voice cries out to your Goddess for aid- and many people heal before your eyes. There is still much work to be done, but Her divine help spurs you forward until everyone alive is on the dragon - including a few very strange children, whom you’re staring at as the vision fades.
~~~~~~~

You regain sight in the makeshift Temple, the coin back in it’s place on the hearth. You glance at the rapier but, as you’re still recovering from the vividness of the last vision, you pick up the journal instead. This time you sit in a chair to read:

~ “Agnfall is beautiful. And we got to be a part of something beautiful, after all that awful fire. We not only got everyone on the dragon safely to the island, but we watched families reunited- I learned later that some of them had been separated for generations. It was wonderful watching people find long-lost family - I could live forever in a moment like that. I hope we get to make more of those sorts of things happen. And there are statues of my new friends! They call themselves The Hunted. But here they are heroes, doubly so now...I wonder if I could set up my shop here and live in peace?”
~ This entry is less words and more scribbles. It goes on for a couple pages, at first different phrases are decipherable: “Draxus’ children,” and “white flowers” and “Devourer priests”. It devolves into, “He has Her. He has Her. He has Her.” Over and over for the entirety of the second page.
~ The next entry marks a significantly longer time gap between entries. It is very short and a bit disjointed. “The young dragon is dead. My young dragon. I should have kept him safe. We both died. Dench saved me, but the life orb is shattered. They wanted me, specifically. I’m a definite target. So are my friends? I have to save my Goddess.”
As you flip through the journal, the words shorten and the scribbles lengthen. It looks like Fump - with the monocle - is making good progress doing something or other, but it’s not clear exactly what’s going on. The author is writing several times a day; apparently having space to actually think for the first time since Heimel. So far, it’s mostly fear-driven, frustrated, and exhausted. On one page, everything is blank except in very small lettering: “I can’t help anyone. I’ll try to save Tymora, and then I’m going to die. I can’t do this.”
But the journal continues on until the end of the book, so this statement looks to be untrue. You feel a strong pull toward the rapier on the hearth. Not so much a tug at your will, but a strong guiding sense. You hold the journal in one hand, open to the last page, and draw the rapier from the hearth. Your vision catapults into the Astral Plane.

SITE OF THE 13TH RITE
You and your friends stand at the base of a large staircase, with some kind of ceremonial setup at the top. However, these details are lost to you due to a radiant woman clothed in a flowing white dress, with hair almost made of light billowing to her waist. Bright joy bursts through you, and you run up the steps to her, gripping both of her outstretched hands. Golden wings unfurl from her back and yours, and together you soar above the Astral Plane. Her captivity was a lie, but the sight before you is just as jarring. A gargantuan monster - this is the truest word for this being that you can think of - is striding above the Astral Plane, devouring the souls of people who had ascended after judgement. Tymora is free, but so is this horrifying being. The vision half-fades into the bright light surrounding her before you and she descend again, but this time launches straight into the next scene.


LOREKAI
“If only they gave her the time...if only they believed...”
The beast is there, housed in the body of a dead king, alongside three Yesharians powerful enough to stoke fear within the Crimson Guard and it’s Captain. Twelve elite soldiers, half of them magically bound and broken, are all that stands between you and them. That, and a barrier shining with the same blue-tinted light surrounding Tymora. They saw your feat of magic, and have cornered you in your Shield.
“...if only they listened.”
Your whole body trembles, and so does your voice.
“Whether people listen or not doesn’t matter, what matters is what’s true.”
More and more horrifying creatures, and souls lost to Astral madness, swell before the barrier. A single one of them could crush you. The devourer god’s voice rolls through your mind, calmly pushing at your weakest points. You nearly cave - but then you don’t.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re infinite. What matters is if you stand for the good of people - and you don’t. I’m not going near you.”
The fear stays, but the shaking is gone. The shield will hold. The shield will hold. You turn down his offer, and he sends thousands of demons at the shining wall. They slam and claw and screech, but not one of them breaks through. As soon as this is clear, you are launched from the vision and fall back into the chair.

~~~~~~
The ethereal rapier is returned to its place above the hearth. When you’re sure the temple is void of demons and tentacled gods, you shakily glance down at the journal. As your hand releases it to the table, one last vision plays before you, too fast to even process in the moment: A mother of three, severely sick with plague, lays on the lap of a girl with black hair to her shoulders and brown eyes beneath her glasses. The girl places one hand on the woman’s forehead and the other on her chest. A flash of brilliant light later, the mother and her children are celebrating; the boils on her face and hand completely gone.
The only words on the very back page of the journal are these:
“If you could see these things, we need you. Go South if you can. She will guide you. Fate always has two sides - there’s always hope. -Kellen”