Session 87: The Past is Catching Up

We collect our treasures and continue to follow the divine light that is now guiding us through the caverns until we reach a descending staircase. Lucky and Dandelion are ahead of us and as we follow, they disappear without any warning. Any attempts to track them down with magic is a dead end. It keeps telling us that they’re still here and yet, we can’t find them. After combing the stairwell for any sort of clues, I spot blooms of dandelions in the wall that weren’t there originally. Industria speaks with them and learns that they’ve been here for centuries, which leads her and Elathera to believe that those two were pulled back in time.     That’s confirmed once we scry on them. Dandelion’s running through the surrounding forests, trying to keep Lucky in high spirits by playing hide-and-seek. Lucky realized that they were trapped by a time spell, so they patiently wait for hundreds of years with the hope that we’ll find them. This wasn’t a spell that reversed time for them personally though. Instead, they were teleported and dropped at a random point in time as they are. Industria reunites with them and Dandelion, but Lucky doesn’t recognize her immediately. She uses a miracle to carefully reorganize their memories and once they’re back to their bubbly self, she brings the pair back to us.     Elathera’s very interested in the time spell, so Lucky agrees to help her study it later. We have no choice but to go down the stairs and when we’re not immediately thrown back in time, we move on until we reach the ravine that I saw earlier. Elathera can sense a dark aura behind the waterfall, and both Lucky and Dandelion are reluctant to move as they’ve met the Baba Yaga there. After Elathera summons a sea dragon, we head beyond the waterfall and find a teenage girl arguing with no one in particular. She’s very aware of our presence once we step into the room and warns us to stay back. All she wants is to be left alone because she’s grown cynical due to the greed and corruption that plagues the world. This girl is an aspect of Yanca, one that holds the piece of her mortality that we’ve been after.     Everyone’s uncomfortable with the thought of having to kill a teenager, so we attempt to talk her down with the hope that we can save her from becoming a monster. We even go as far as showing her what her life is like as the Baba Yaga and while she’s saddened that she’s become the sort of person she hates, she can’t do anything about it. She apologizes for the way things will turn out and proceeds to banish Jordeira back to the material plane. With Dandelion’s help in pinning her down, I make her death quick. Elathera looks her over, noting that the magic within her had vanished upon her death. With her familiar nearby, there’s a possibility that it could revive her, so we scry on it to find it quickly.     It’s a colorful, little moth hanging around the entrance to the caverns and is captured by Jordeira. He managed to return to this plane with the help of his obsidian steed and wants to gift the moth to Lucky. We teleport outside and surround him, letting him know that the deed is done. After Industria tells him that the moth is Yanca’s familiar, Jordeira turns away from Lucky and crushes it in his hands. We’re all tapped out from this journey, so we go back to the Baba Yaga’s hut only to find that it’s gone. We can’t get a hold of Louhi, but Industria realizes that the voice she heard in the caverns was Louhi trying to warn us about this.     There’s no way we’ll be able to track the hut down in our current condition, so we go to Elathera’s plane in order to rest. After talking with Iolond, I learn that in our reality, we’ve been gone for months even though it’s only felt like a few days to us. There’s a lot we’ll have to catch up with when it comes to our mortal affairs…and immortal ones too, considering Pandemonius has been upset about our disappearance. Before Iolond departs, they say it’s a good idea to go see him as soon as possible, but we all agree that that’s a problem with “tomorrow” written all over it.