Journal Vignette 13.02 - An Evening of Rime and Rhymes

Although Aja goes to sleep wrapped in her bedroll as usual, her dreams are restless. She wakes shortly after midnight feeling as if she’s burning up with fever. Throwing her blankets aside, she can see that the ground nearby is covered in frost, a ring of fine mist hissing along the ground around her and having completely extinguished the campfire. She presses her hands to either side of her face, and – though her skin is cold – she can feel that the bones of her face are even colder. Aching and stiff, she rises as quietly as she can, observing their darkened campsite and the familiar lumps of her companions, many of whose own bedrolls also appear to be coated in frost. She finds Gigi already hanging from the bronze ring at the end of her quarterstaff, as if he had been anticipating her wakefulness.   Seizing her quarterstaff in one hand, she moves the other in a familiar orison, her feet lifting off the ground. Restless and not wanting to disturb her friends, she glides among the trees and down the side of the hill, into the caldera. As she approaches the bottom of the crater, the forest around her quickly transitions from blue, black, and silver to almost full daylight, so bright is the barrier that surrounds the Temple City. Likely oblivious to the difference between day and night, the horrors within are still active, their gaping mouths working in a mimicry of speech.   One of the creatures appears to take notice of Aja and, with a brightening of its eyes and brandishing of fangs, begins to shamble toward her. As it crashes into the barrier, its skin throws off sparks, sizzling and smoking. By the time it has crossed into the barrier wall – ten feet thick and uncomfortably warm even from a dozen feet away – its face and half of its body has burned away. It has entirely disintegrated before coming within four feet of the barrier’s outer wall.   Aja frowns at the many dozens of like forms beyond the barrier. These creatures appear to be mindless and hopelessly aggressive. If she and her friends were to cross the barrier without sufficient preparation, they could easily be overwhelmed by dozens or more. She could use weather magic to conceal their passage with a deep fog, but the two orcs would undoubtedly grouse at length about having to blindly follow her through. Staring thoughtfully at the legion of miscreations, Aja feels filled to the brim with restless energy, a maelstrom of cold and storm that feels like it could burst from every pore of her skin at any moment.   Curiously, she allows what she believes will be a trickle of this energy to come forth. Immediately, the light from the barrier is dimmed significantly, its outer edge hissing at contact with the cold air that expands around her, throwing up clouds of fine mist. The change in light level appears to attract the attention of a group of the creatures, and they immediately turn to begin walking toward her.   Aja finds that now that she has allowed herself to relieve some of the pressure from the power roiling inside of her, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold the rest in check. Casting a glance back up the hill toward their campsite – more than 300 feet away, she guesses – she opens herself and allows all of the energy within to be released. A nimbus of extreme cold surrounds her, slamming into the barrier. She is buffeted by warm steam which immediately condenses as it comes into contact with her skin, soaking through her clothes. As her eyesight clears, she can see that the zone of cold has managed to cross the barrier, carving a sort of tunnel of significantly dimmer light through the wall and forming a semicircle of frost and ice thirty feet across on the ground on the other side of the barrier.   As three of the creatures enter the zone of frost, ice immediately begins to form on their legs, slowing their approach and creeping steadily up their torsos and faces until their entire forms are frozen in place. The change in light level appears to attract additional creatures who – oblivious to the danger – begin to shamble toward their frozen compatriots. Aja realizes that, while this technique is effective, it’s not necessarily as efficient as it could be. She needs a way to attract as many of the creatures as she can as quickly as she can, while her reserves are still at their peak. Thinking back to her childhood, she recalls a nursery song her father would sing to her when she was small. As arctic chill and darkness surround her, she begins to sing, her voice echoing hauntingly through the mist:   O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   Alone and palely loitering?   The sedge has withered from the lake,   And no birds sing.  
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   So haggard and so woe-begone?   The squirrel’s granary is full,   And the harvest’s done.  
I see a lily on thy brow,   With anguish moist and fever-dew,   And on thy cheeks a fading rose   Fast withereth too.  
I met a lady in the meads,   Full beautiful—a faery’s child,   Her hair was long, her foot was light,   And her eyes were wild.  
I made a garland for her head,   And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;   She looked at me as she did love,   And made sweet moan  
I set her on my pacing steed,   And nothing else saw all day long,   For sidelong would she bend, and sing   A faery’s song.  
She found me roots of relish sweet,   And honey wild, and manna-dew,   And sure in language strange she said—   ‘I love thee true’.  
She took me to her Elfin grot,   And there she wept and sighed full sore,   And there I shut her wild wild eyes   With kisses four.  
And there she lullèd me asleep,   And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—   The latest dream I ever dreamt   On the cold hill side.  
I saw pale kings and princes too,   Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;   They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci   Hath thee in thrall!’  
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,   With horrid warning gapèd wide,   And I awoke and found me here,   On the cold hill’s side.  
And this is why I sojourn here,   Alone and palely loitering,   Though the sedge is withered from the lake,   And no birds sing.   By the time she has reached the end of her song, the mists have begun to clear, revealing scores of the monstrous, frozen statuary, their forms having created a sort of macabre winter garden. It appears that she has cleared out an entire section of the temple grounds as there are no more of the miscreations in view. Feeling as if her fever has broken and that she has reached a strange sort of equilibrium, she turns away from the barrier to return to their campsite, hoping to eke out a few more hours of restful sleep before they begin their brief sojourn back to Chrailis in the morning