Session 9: Absent-minded Children

The Serpentine River ran sluggish and dark beneath the floorboards of Mother Pela’s stilted home. Rain dripped through the eaves into clay basins, and the steady rhythm of it echoed through the rafters. Lanterns hung low, their light refracted by glass jars of herbs and cloudy liquids. The air smelled of mint, fish oil, and wet wood.

The party arrived soaked and silent, the rescued children bundled in cloaks, pale, trembling, and empty-eyed. They carried no wounds, yet something vital had been taken from them. Hoping Mother Pela could mend what the cult had hollowed out, the party brought them to her doorstep.

When Pela saw them, she hurried forward, eyes wide.
“By the river’s breath,” she whispered. “What have you brought me?”

She had the party lay the children on the floor, kneeling beside them as the rain drummed on the roof above. The room fell painfully still as she worked, her breath the only sound besides the storm. She pried open each small mouth, and beneath their tongues faint sigils shimmered in the lamplight, written in ash and blood.

“They’ve been hollowed out,” she murmured. “The cult’s ritual isn’t meant to kill. It’s meant to take away memory, hunger, self. See their pupils, how wide, how dark? The spell drinks what makes them them. Their names, their laughter, their shame… all offered to the Feast.”

The words hung in the air like incense smoke.

Pela straightened slowly. “I can try to bring them back,” she said, voice low. “But memory is a fragile thing, more fragile than bone. What’s been taken won’t return easily. Some of it will never come back. I can cleanse their bodies, soothe their minds, but…”
Her voice trailed off.

Then she moved, lighting small reeds of dried sage, mixing powders, whispering prayers as she worked. She took a small, silver knife, its edge dull from years of use, and drew a thin line across her own palm, letting a drop of blood fall into the steaming broth by the fire.

“Hiruwen’s touch mends only what’s shared,” she said softly. “His healing asks a price, as all things do.”

She began to chant, her voice rising and falling like the tide:

Breath where the silence dwells,
Hunger unmade by mercy’s spell,
Let what was taken be known again,
Let what was eaten be made whole.

The air grew heavy with heat and sound. Steam curled thick around them as the chant built into a strange vibration that made the floorboards hum. The children began to twitch, one gasped for air, another muttered a nursery rhyme in fragments, and the third shuddered violently before falling still.

When at last the chanting ended, the silence felt alive. Mother Pela leaned back, her face pale with exhaustion. The children breathed, weakly, unevenly, but they breathed.

After the ritual, the party told Pela what they had found: the broken dinner, the sigils, the interior of the wagon, and the stench of sanctified decay. She listened without interrupting, her expression tightening with every word.

When they finished, she spoke with certainty. “Valens & Vine,” she said. “The vintner. Go there. See what wine they pour and to whom. Return when you know more.”

She promised to keep the children under her care in the meantime, to do all she could to coax their spirits back, but there was unease in her eyes, and something perilously close to doubt.

Rain still fell as the party crossed the river and made their way to Valens & Vine. Its shutters were drawn, its door locked tight. A flicker of light showed faintly through the cracks.

They picked the lock and entered. The front room smelled faintly of cork and vinegar. No voices. No motion. Only a cellar trap-door in the corner offered a way forward.

They descended into a low, stone-walled chamber lined with barrels, some old, others freshly sealed. The air was thick with the scent of oak, candle smoke, and something sharp and metallic. It was there, behind a false cask, that Tolliver found the entrance to a hidden chamber carved roughly into the earth.

He crept forward.

Candlelight flickered over the figure of Sarin Valens, seated before a makeshift shrine built from a split wine barrel. Symbols unfamiliar and half-erased circled its rim. The merchant’s hands rested on his knees; his face was gaunt, eyes sunken but alert. He seemed to be waiting.

When Sarin noticed Tolliver in the doorway, he smiled faintly and whispered, voice thin and trembling: “You’ve come early. I haven’t set the table.”