The Wandering Isles: Session 92

Weslyn woke beside the hole, only for Delphini Urging to emerge soon after and tell him that he had saved her. He was in no mood for ceremony and simply told her to keep up as they set off in search of the stone. When they reached the place where it should have been, they found only absence. The stone was gone, confirming Amaedrianna’s suspicion. She admitted she had seen it before in her father’s office and wondered whether it had once asserted power over the kin, but Weslyn dismissed that idea outright. To him, the kin were gone. What followed was a tense and revealing argument. Amaedrianna remained deeply sceptical of the forest and its supposed will, calling its magic “hocus pocus” and rejecting the idea that mere existence proved truth. Weslyn pushed back, insisting that the laws at work here were not divine in the way most people spoke of gods, but something older and separate, something bound to the forest and to the kin’s ancient accord with it. Eldrin stepped in before the disagreement could sharpen further, urging peace and reminding them that the truth might be stranger and broader than any one explanation. For his part, Weslyn admitted that whatever purpose had brought him here did not seem to lie in this place after all, while Amaedrianna confirmed she had only wanted to verify whether the stone remained.

Elsewhere, Hatsu sat beside Chicken the Fox and meditated in prayer, asking for aid for those in need and protection for Weslyn’s mind and memories. Then he rose and went looking for Weslyn’s old house, only to find it buried. He sent Boreal to fetch Weslyn while Amaedrianna investigated the space where the stone had once rested. Her examination revealed that it had not been removed with reverence, but hacked away, broken from the earth in what she took to be an act of magical engraving and theft. Boreal arrived so quietly that even she was startled. He delivered Hatsu’s message to Weslyn, but Amaedrianna could not resist a cutting remark, saying her father would have loved Boreal’s obedience. In that same moment, Weslyn realised Eos was missing. He sent Boreal and Chicken to find her while he himself went to Hatsu.

When Weslyn reached him, Hatsu tried to ground him by returning to the beginning. He asked whether Weslyn recognised the place and suggested that when a person is lost, it helps to go back to the start in order to find a path forward. Weslyn answered that what he sought was not tied to this place. Even so, Hatsu pressed the point more gently than forcefully. If Xerathis had only wanted translation, then anyone born with the tongue could have helped; Amaedrianna herself was proof of that. So whatever Weslyn had been sent to find had to be something more. Hatsu drew a comparison with his sword. Anyone could learn to wield a blade, he said, but not everyone could wield it with the same purpose, meaning, and connection. In that sense, some things were simply meant for the right person, and he told Weslyn, as he had told others like Eldrin, that he was a chosen one. Weslyn found the speech confusing and unsatisfying, but Hatsu stood by the idea that even if there was no purpose here, that did not mean there was no purpose at all. If this place was not the answer, then they should return and help the people who still needed them at the Bastion, and the supplies waiting on their ship. Weslyn, however, wanted something more immediate. He wanted to speak to the forest alone and understand what came next. Hatsu warned him that walking the old ways was not the only way, that change existed and people meant him no harm, but Weslyn insisted that he was bound by his word, not by ownership of the woods.

Amaedrianna then cut in with an observation that landed strangely but meaningfully. Weslyn’s name, or rather his clan name, seemed predetermined. “Theywise,” as she interpreted it, suggested that a group was stronger than a single entity. Delphini tried to make a similar point more softly, saying that kinship and clan could be chosen, not merely inherited, but Weslyn dismissed it as argument rather than insight. While he continued wrestling with duty and identity, Amaedrianna and Eldrin searched for anything left behind that might help him. She found no symbols, but Eldrin worked through the remains of the old house like an archaeologist, tracing its former layout and reading the ruin itself for meaning.

At the same time, Eos was elsewhere in the woods, chiselling stone and disrupting the land to craft something of her own. Boreal found her and asked her to come back, but she requested only a minute more. In that minute she carved a raven, wings spread, circled in twigs and twine, and spoke a raw, mournful message over it. She spoke of darkness and light, of a shadow that had held the night too tightly, of rage, of her mother, and of the thin road between them. It was grief given shape in the forest. The woods answered in storm. Weslyn, sensing the rain and thunder as anger rather than sorrow, ordered everyone to follow Chicken and leave him there alone. One by one they obeyed until he remained by himself, stripped bare in the rain, rubbing the dirt of his home into his skin.

There, frustrated, frightened, and utterly uncertain, Weslyn called out not in defiance but in formal recognition. Lightning ceased being scattered strikes and became a strobing sheet as Virethorn appeared. Weslyn bowed and welcomed the forest to the boundary of the kin. Virethorn dropped sticks, stone, and string at his feet, and a voice entered Weslyn’s mind: the effigies were a violation. It was a voice he recognised from long ago, but it did not speak as one being. It spoke as “we,” as the forest itself. It told him he had brought those into the woods who violated its laws. Weslyn pleaded to take the punishment in their place, and the forest accepted. Either the accused could bear the consequence, or Weslyn could take it upon himself. He chose the burden. The forest replied that if he claimed responsibility for another’s transgression, then he had to understand the source of that transgression. In Eos’s case, that meant her fear.

What followed was not explanation but experience. Weslyn was forced to live Eos’s burden firsthand: hanging, choking, burning magic, hatred from a crowd, and the destruction embedded in her memory. Through this, he came to understand her exile, her terror, her longing for trust and beauty, and the staggering restraint it took for her to hold back the power inside her. The forest explained that Eos had violated its law by making an effigy from sacred stone for something not worshipped there and not of that place anymore. Worse, in its eyes she mourned and called out to a force that had once brought terrible harm to the forest, and it believed she meant to bring that force back into the world through the portal. Because Weslyn had taken her burden, the forest declared that it had locked that power away inside him instead. He now had to keep it hidden and safe from her. It warned him that this made his blood newly desirable, and that those around him who swore to keep him safe would now be tested.

Even then, Weslyn pressed for knowledge. He asked about Xerathis, but the forest answered with questions of its own, repeatedly asking what he knew of the kin. In doing so, it began to reveal more of the truth. The kin had not originated in these woods. They had come seeking passage and safety, and in return they had respected the forest, protected its creatures, and kept magic away from it. The harm done to the land by magic, the forest said, was beyond repair. When Weslyn insisted he needed to return to Thimarrot, it told him that those trying to rebuild what the kin once had there would fail. It also revealed that the kin tongue belonged only to the original lineage, and no amount of magic could pierce that veil. Then came the heaviest truth of all: he and the others were all that remained of the kin, and it would now fall to him to decide whether the kin ended with him or began anew. When he asked for a name, the forest refused to give one freely. The rite had to be completed properly. If he wanted a name, he had to bring it and earn it. He was told to gather the rites, learn what he saw, and return. The forest said that collecting those rites would feed information back to it, whether that was trustworthy or not depending on him. It confirmed that Virethorn was a conduit tied to his soul. It reminded him that if the kin were to be renewed, the rules, rites, and written laws had to be honoured. And even then, when every rite was gathered, the final words would still belong to Weslyn alone, because he was the last surviving member of the kin as it had once been. He would decide what came next.

When Weslyn finally left the woods, he found the others waiting. He was naked, battered, and marked by what had happened. He warned them all to avoid the woods for a while, at least until control became something they could all be trusted with. He needed only to lie down. Eos asked whether he was alright, and he answered with dry severity that they were all still alive. Hatsu nudged Eldrin, who only shrugged before stepping in to help properly. Eldrin first cleaned Weslyn, then healed him with magic. Amaedrianna offered to retrieve his things from the woods, but Weslyn said he wanted to start again. He made himself clothing instead through illusion. Eos, apparently not about to let anyone forget her own injuries, then spoke over the group and demanded healing for the impact of being launched into a tree earlier, and Eldrin healed her as well.

With that, they left the woods behind. During the journey, Delphini asked to speak privately with Amaedrianna. She said that “he” had found something, referring to the entity that follows her, and from seemingly nowhere produced a box marked in the old tongue by Weslyn. Amaedrianna hesitated over whether to open it immediately or wait until she could do so with Weslyn present. In the end she promised Delphini she would look later, back in her room, and the group continued on toward their ship.

As they passed the tavern they frequented, Amaedrianna spotted the very crew who had abandoned their ship. She got Hatsu’s attention, and the two of them went inside while the others carried on. Amaedrianna sat with deliberate menace, pulling a chair around backwards and straddling it, while Hatsu stood beside her. She demanded to know why the crew had left. Frightened, they claimed they had been called home. When she asked by whom, they answered through their tapping code: “the bos.” They also admitted they were leaving by ship that very day. Amaedrianna checked whether they had been earning in the meantime, and when they said yes, she promptly took her cut: twenty percent, nineteen moons. Then she made the consequences painfully clear. If they failed again, Hatsu would take their fingers. They were not especially bright, but they understood. They understood even more when she added a final message for them to pass along: “tell her I said hello.”

Afterward, Amaedrianna and Hatsu spoke privately about what had happened with Weslyn, and then about something more personal: how Amaedrianna’s family had torn into Hatsu’s. She admitted that the Archon had hurt her too, not just through the damage to her wing, but through the way he treated her mother and the things he had done in pursuit of his power. She swore that no matter how it happened, she would burn him to the ground and do better than he ever had. Hatsu answered with grim calm that the powers he craved might burn him first. When he offered her a vow and a handshake, she surprised him by stepping instead into an uncharacteristic hug.

At last, Amaedrianna and Delphini opened the box. Inside they found an egg made of glass. And with that strange discovery hanging in the air, the session closed as the group reached level 8.