The Keys of Telku / Into the Fire pt. 5 / Von the 20th, 3593 CE / 8-1-21

The Adventurers have been tricked into a trap by one they thought an ally, the bard Liscales. On the quest to find the missing knights of Amarath last seen on patrol on Mount Galadea, the party has encountered stone giants, trolls, and kobolds, but now they face an insidious and familiar threat; lycanthropes. Liscales it seems is a werewolf, and more seeming werewolves emerge from the forest surrounding an ancient circle of stones, called by the vicious black worg which sits atop the altar at the center, calling out invocations to Anubhak, the dark god thought to be the father of all lycanthropy. Even more disturbing is the fact that Adrienne recognizes this black worg as the same one which she fought the previous year in the Northern Wastes. Though she knows it is not the right time of the month for her own lycanthropy to threaten to take control of her mind and body, as the worg chants, the gill-woman feels the familiar painful urges course through her body, even as the silvery moon Dromidus is covered in an eclipse! But Adrienne is strong-willed and able to resist even as she and her fellow Adventurers spring into action against their dark adversaries. As several of the wolf-creatures are laid low, they make the disturbing discovery that the monsters' natural form in death is not that of men but of wolves. These are apparently wolf-weres, cursed by Anubhak to take the form of humanoid hybrid monsters and fight on the dark god's behalf. Despite the bolstering magic of Liscales, the wolf-weres fall one by one, and Liscales himself flees into the brush. And then suddenly the worg itself is silenced, its corpse sliding off the blade of a woman dressed all in black, a woman Adrienne recognizes as Night, shadow warrior of the Amita K'un ninja. Though Adrienne is relieved to see a familiar face, Night seems less than pleased in return as she demands to know why her old companion and her comrades are there.