Grey dust boils over a jagged crater in the shadow of a fallen dragon’s bones. The air stings with sulfur and old rot, and something beneath the ash is moving.
Davin Phoenix stands at the crater’s lip, Aethelgard ready, the Tome of Zar'khal pressed close by instinct. Below him, the ground heaves like a buried storm trying to breathe.
The Elven Emissary
Hold... hold, by Elyria’s green light!
The elven emissary, wrapped in torn diplomatic silks, carves a shaking ward through the dust. Pale light flickers, thin and failing, as skeletal hands thrust up through the ash around the crater’s center.
Davin Phoenix
The bones are old, but the magic on them is fresh.
The Elven Emissary
No, no, stay down... Letharion, if that is truly you, answer me!
The shape rising from the grave is gaunt and wrong, its face wearing the familiar ruin of the emissary’s lost sibling, now hollowed by dark spellwork. The ward cracks. The thing turns its dead gaze toward Davin and the emissary both.
The Elven Emissary
Champion, please, before it breaks free!
✓ Quest Accepted
Rescue the elven emissary
“I step between the emissary and the creature, raising Aethelgard to strike.”
SUCCESS (Great Melee Weapons, rolled -1)
Davin steps hard between them, ash crunching under his boots. Aethelgard comes up in a clean, committed arc, and the dead thing is forced back by the blade’s flare.
The blow lands, not on flesh, but on the spell knotted through bone and dust. The ward-lines jump bright, and the creature’s grasping hands falter.
The Elven Emissary
Yes, that is it, keep it away from me!
The emissary stumbles clear of the crater’s center as the broken earth caves inward where they stood. Grey ash swallows the space between them and the rising dead.
The sibling’s ruined face jerks toward Davin, pinned by the pressure of the strike, its mouth opening on a soundless snarl.
The Elven Emissary
Davin, the ward is breaking at the root, finish this or it drags them both under!
The crater glows sickly beneath the ash, and the dead thing still claws at the last threads of magic.
“I finish the dead thing now using eldrich blast”
SUCCESS (Good Magic, rolled -2)
Davin lets the spell go from his hand in a sharp, silent burst. Violet force slams into the risen corpse and tears the hollow shape apart in a spray of ash and blackened bone.
The necromantic glow at the crater’s heart gutters once, then fractures. The ward-lines flicker back into a thin, trembling ring around the emissary.
The Elven Emissary
It is gone... you have saved them.
The blast rebounds off the dragon bones with a hard crack, and hot static stings Davin’s arm. Dust rains down from the rib arch above them.
The Elven Emissary
Wait, my sibling’s name... I can still feel where the spell was anchored.
The crater falls eerily still, but the surviving ward keeps pulsing weakly under the ash, as if something beneath it is waiting to be named.
Quest Complete
Rescue the elven emissary
Skill Upgrade: Melee Weapons Great→Superb