A cooking knife flashed beside the fire, and Elora watched it until its owner used it for nothing worse than cutting another portion of stew. Horses stood hip-shot among the tents. A dog nosed hopefully at a lowered hand. Men and women ate and talked and settled into the afternoon as if it belonged to them, and that knife was the largest blade she could find anywhere in the camp.
Their ease bothered her more than a drawn sword would have.
Thorn was already asking the question she wanted answered. “Why does he prey on everyone else and leave you alone while you sleep?”
The Vistana looked around the circle. “You’re looking for a tale.”
He gave them one. His ancestors had traveled these lands long before Barovia became what it was now, when Strahd had been a mortal commander with a mortal army. There had been a battle. The cause and the enemy had worn away in the telling, but the ruin of that army remained, and Strahd had lain among it, badly wounded. The Vistani found him, tended him, and brought him back to health.
“For saving his life, he promised us safe passage through his lands. Always.” The man spread his hands. “Now his lands seem to be eternal. It has turned out to be quite a good bargain.”
“And he’s kept it?” Thorn asked. “Even since becoming a vampire?”
“He leaves us alone. Whether some ancient magic holds him to it, I couldn’t say.”
Elora glanced beyond the tents. No stones or wards marked the boundary of this protection; there was not even a line in the grass. Yet the people inside it ate without looking over their shoulders, while Ireena stood among her escorts in armor she did not quite know how to wear.
They were gathering themselves to move on when their host added, “Before you go, you should speak with Madam Eva.”
“A fortune-teller?” Elora asked, once he had explained.
“A seer. You may have noticed we were not surprised to see you.” He pointed toward the largest tent. “She told us you were coming.”
Elora wanted to hear more.
Inside, a reddish light glowed against the canvas, fire-colored, with no sensible place for a fire to burn. Black cloth covered a table. At its center sat a crystal ball, and behind it an old woman bent over the glass as though watching something small and troublesome move about inside it.
“Ah,” she said, without looking up. “You finally arrived.”
Her laugh had a dry, catching rhythm, like a latch that would not quite close. Elora paused just inside the entrance.
“Maledurk. Thorn. Elora. Which of you would like your fortune told first?”
No one had introduced them. Elora looked at Ireena. “You know her too?”
“I know of her. She lives here.” Madam Eva lifted her gaze. “You are interesting.”
Thorn made a small gesture toward the chair. “Elora’s interested. Let’s start with her.”
Elora sat. The old woman divided her cards into two unequal decks, shuffled each, and had her cut them; the cards whispered dry against her fingers. Madam Eva drew three from the larger deck and two from the smaller and laid them facedown in a cross upon the cloth.
For a moment Elora found the arrangement reassuring. Five cards in five positions, with an order in which to proceed.
“This first card tells of history,” Madam Eva said. “Knowledge of the ancient, to help you understand your enemy.”
“We could use some understanding.”
Madam Eva turned the card. “The Philanthropist.” She studied it, then the crystal. “A place where sickness and madness meet. Your enemy was ill once. There was a return to health, but something was taken from the mind.”
Her expression shifted, and she leaned toward the ball.
“No. The illness is clear. The madness is clear. The enemy…” She drew the word out, testing its weight. “I am not certain that is what they are.”
“Is this a place here?” Elora asked.
“No. The one you seek comes from a place of healing and madness.”
“Are you talking about Strahd?”
The old woman laughed outright. “You’ve already killed Strahd. Surely you aren’t worried about him.”
Elora had several objections to that, beginning with the continued existence of Strahd. But Madam Eva was watching something beyond the glass again.
“You seek understanding. You find yourselves here again, where you have been before. Something is happening to you. I would not call this force your ally, either, but its return to health has caused madness. Perhaps that is why you are affected so.”
Elora reached for a memory and found it slippery. There had been sick people, dying people; so many occasions when they had arrived somewhere in time to help, or almost in time. She remembered an illness, something given to drink, but could not make anything useful of it.
“Come on, Elora,” Thorn said. “We’re counting on the brains of the group.”
She gave him a look. He turned back to Madam Eva.
“Can we assume we were the ones who helped this person? This force?”
“An interesting question.”
The old woman bent over the crystal, and Elora waited with her fingertips resting on the edge of the table.
“You have an odd influence on your own histories,” Madam Eva said at last. “It may be that you have not yet gone back into the past to help them.”
Elora took her hand off the table. “So we might still have to find them,” she said, “and help them, and the help is what makes them mad?”
“Are we responsible for the recovery?” Thorn pressed.
“That is unclear. Your past and your future are muddied together.”
Elora thought of the graves they had found, their own names cut above bodies whose fate had been left behind with so much else.
“What about our graves?” she asked. “Do you know what that was?”
“Most who come to destroy Strahd end in a grave. Why not you?”
“But those lives ended elsewhere. We were in Strixhaven.”
“Your former selves were struck down, were they not? And where were their bodies afterward?”
“We never found out.”
“Now you have.”
Elora sat very still. She had been trying to fit the graves into the wrong part of the story. The answer did not tell her who had carried the bodies here, or how, or why. It only set the earth back over them.
“Perhaps we’re the mad ones,” Thorn said.
“That’s beside the point,” Maledurk observed.
“Who isn’t?” said Madam Eva, and cackled.
Elora let out the breath she had been holding and looked down as the next card turned.
“The Myrmidon. A den of wolves upon a mountain. Your quarry is likely there.”
“Wolves?”
“Often metaphorical. A cave in a mountain, if you prefer. The mad one you seek.”
“Are we the wolves?” Thorn asked.
“That remains to be determined.”
“So that isn’t a hard no.”
Elora barely heard him. The mountain cave and the mention of madness reminded her of the impossible forest growing beneath stone, the dwelling within it, Nemu waiting there. A raven had led them in. They had carried lich moss for a stew, and afterward there had been the crown, and Nemu putting it on, and the window…
“Could it be Nemu?” she asked.
She could see resemblances, but had no proof, and Madam Eva could put their journeys in order no more reliably than they could.
The third card was the Berserker.
“A madman’s crypt,” the seer said. “Ordinarily this would point to treasure here in Barovia. For you…” She looked into the ball. “An item of great power.”
“The crown?” Thorn asked at once.
“Perhaps. I cannot tell whether you have been there already or have yet to go.”
Elora remembered ice, the crack in the glacier, the stairs descending into Nogbruth’s crypt. That tomb had sat in a valley, separate from the mountain cave with the forest inside. They had found the crown before they carried the moss to Nemu. At least she could still lay those events in a row.
“If you have already found an object of great power,” Madam Eva said, “then perhaps this has come to pass.”
“But you can’t tell us which object?”
“I’m a fortune-teller. Telling you easy things is not my job.”
Thorn eyed the remaining cards. “Then let’s have the next one.”
“This may help you in your struggle against the darkness.”
The Raven appeared against the cloth, and Elora leaned forward.
“An interesting bird,” said Madam Eva. “Cleverer than it looks. It knows things. One will guide you.”
“One already has.”
“Then perhaps it will again.” The old woman peered into the crystal with something close to irritation. “This is much easier with ordinary travelers. They come here to kill Strahd. That is what I usually do.”
“We’ve complicated it for you,” Thorn said.
“You have already done that.” Her eyes went back to the card. “I think the raven is more than it seems.”
The last card lay at the center. When Madam Eva turned it, Elora found herself watching the old woman’s face instead of the picture.
“The Seer. The one you seek must be in a place of great wisdom and warmth. Only there can you resolve what you are seeking.”
“Warmth,” Elora repeated.
It was an inviting word in that damp country. She thought first of heat, of green abundance, then of Strixhaven and all the learning gathered there. But learning did not necessarily make a place wise, and she could not decide whether welcoming was a word she would ever use for it.
“Warmth needn’t mean the weather,” Thorn said. “It could be kindness. A welcome.”
Madam Eva left them with that. The middle card gave them somewhere to end their search, though little idea how to get there.
“Could we find the raven?” Thorn asked. “Follow it again?”
“A plausible course. But remember: I see things you have done and things you have yet to do. I cannot always tell them apart.”
Elora studied the cross one last time. There was the illness healed into madness, the mountain cave, a crypt and an object of power. A bird might know more than it showed, and somewhere they were to find wisdom and warmth. Madam Eva’s sight reached beyond Barovia, but distance and their tangled history made every direction uncertain. Outside the tent, at least, there was still a road and a task they understood.
“We should get Ireena to Vallaki first,” Thorn said. “Finish what we started before we go chasing glaciers.”
Elora nodded. Ireena had waited through all of this while they picked over the wreckage of their own lives. She still needed somewhere safe to sleep.
Madam Eva had more to say before they could go.
“You have slain the monster,” she told them, “yet Strahd lives. Barovia remains. It is an odd experience for the Vistani, returning here to find the same story repeating. Our ancestors told it for centuries.”
“Only here?” Thorn asked. “You don’t find that elsewhere?”
“Only Barovia. We never quite know what state it will be in when we arrive.”
Elora looked at Ireena again. Travelers could remark on the oddity and leave; Ireena had been born into it.
“And our journey?” Thorn asked. “Can we get her to Vallaki safely?”
“That is easier to see. Yes, I believe you can. Strahd is a coward at heart. You’ve killed him before. I do not expect him to come at you directly.” Madam Eva looked past him. “But you travel with his greatest prize. I would be concerned about her disappearing when you aren’t looking.”
Elora disliked the word prize. It made her want to put herself between the seer and Ireena, though the danger being described was nowhere in the tent.
“And the people here?” she asked. “Do we need to worry about them?”
Madam Eva laughed. “They could not kill Strahd. They are not stupid enough to trouble people who have.”
It was a practical answer. Elora found she trusted it more than any promise of goodwill.
“Have you heard about the wizard?” the seer went on.
“We’ve met a great many wizards.”
“This one came to overthrow Strahd. About a year ago.” Her mouth twitched. “A year ago to the people here, at least.”
He had roused the folk of Barovia and led them against the castle, she said. Most fled when they reached it. Those who stayed had died or been changed. The wizard and Strahd had fought a great battle over and around the castle, and afterward Strahd was still there. Everyone knew what that meant. Some in the camp even claimed to have seen the wizard fall to his death.
Madam Eva glanced toward the tent flap, then back into her crystal. “I do not believe that is true. I believe the wizard prevailed.”
“What was his name?”
“No one knows.”
“What did he look like?” Thorn asked.
“He wore a twisted crown.”
Elora’s attention sharpened. Twisted did not mean bent metal, Madam Eva explained when Thorn asked. She suspected a crown of great evil.
The one they had carried had belonged to Nogbruth, a lich who had also been a king. They had found histories of him, and those histories had shifted after their dealings with the crown, but the crown itself stayed in every version. Its origin had never come clear. Now it was in Veyr’s keeping.
“Veyr could have gone back a year,” Thorn said slowly. “Used it here.”
“Could Nogbruth himself have been the wizard?” Elora asked.
There was room for either. Yet the description the priest’s son had given them earlier, having gone with that doomed assault, had not matched Veyr. A changed appearance was possible, of course. So were a great many things, once the past stopped staying where they had left it. They had a crown in a story, a crown in their memories, and no certainty the two were the same.
At last Elora rose. Outside, the cooking fire still burned, the dogs still hoped for scraps, and only a few hours of daylight remained.
Thorn asked Ireena whether she wanted to push on. He had been measuring the light against the road, but her answer made the arithmetic simple.
“They say the Vistani are protected,” she said, looking around the camp. “If they’ll let us stay, or even stay nearby, I think that would be safer than going on alone.”
She sounded less certain than she had behind the boarded windows of her home. The armor was not wholly strange to her, but she moved in it with the care of someone who had not worn it often. A day on the road, and an afternoon hearing what might come down that road after her, had worn at her resolve.
“Then we get a good night’s sleep,” Maledurk said, “and start in the morning.”
Their hosts welcomed the arrangement, subject to one condition.
“You must first find a stick suitable for a marshmallow.”
Thorn considered this with the seriousness it deserved. “An urgent quest.”
He came back from the trees with a handful. Soon there was food and drink, and marshmallows blistering over the coals. Whatever else Barovia denied a traveler, that evening supplied melted sugar in generous quantities. Thorn maintained that s’mores were a warrior’s food. No one offered a compelling objection.
Elora’s watchfulness slowly lost its edge. Thorn could see her checking the camp in smaller, less frequent glances. There was nothing sinister in the food, nothing furtive in the talk. People finished eating and went to bed without posting a guard. That was the most remarkable thing he saw all evening.
He settled into his own rest, letting thought go quiet while the world stayed present at its edges. Far off, wolves called. Nearer, small things moved in the dark. The camp slept on.
Then a bat crossed overhead. Thorn watched it circle. It did not dart after insects in the broken, restless pattern he expected. It made one slow circuit above the tents, like a vulture considering something below, then turned toward the mountain and Castle Ravenloft. He followed it until it was gone.
Strahd was the obvious explanation, though Thorn could not be certain. By morning, when he described it, Elora drew the same conclusion, and Thorn heard himself suggest that perhaps it had been a raven disguised as a bat.
“A helpful one,” he added.
It was a pleasant possibility. He did not put much weight on it.
Nothing had come near Ireena in the night. Whatever the Vistani’s protection amounted to, they had rested safely inside it. The wolves had kept their distance. When Elora wondered aloud whether those cries pointed to the den in the cards, they reminded each other that Madam Eva’s reading had concerned places beyond Barovia. Not every wolf had to be a prophecy.
Breakfast continued the camp’s dedication to s’mores, in a form apparently meant to be eaten as cereal. Their hosts packed more for the road. Thorn accepted the provisions with gratitude and a growing suspicion that the next meal would be easier to chew if eaten promptly.
No one was striking tents as they left. The Vistani watched them go, comfortable in the place they had chosen to stop.
The road brought them to a bridge. Westward, a waterfall dropped a white length of water through the gray landscape, high enough to catch Thorn’s eye and hold it. For once, nothing about the sight required interpretation. Water struck stone, broke into spray, and went on downstream. He enjoyed it for the few moments the crossing allowed.
By late afternoon they reached a fork. One way climbed toward the castle. The other ran northwest through a great gate, twin to the one they had entered Barovia by, its flanks meeting the slopes of the valley so that the road had no choice but to pass through.
The gate stood open. They went beneath it and kept on until the light began to fail among the trees. Thorn saw little advantage in finding out what traveled the road after dark.
“We still have the tiny hut,” Elora said.
“Yes,” he answered. “A good time to use it.”
He chose a place off the road among the trunks and raised the shelter, coloring its outer surface to match the woods. From inside, they could watch the road. Anyone outside would see no one through the dome, and neither claw nor arrow could simply pass through it.
A dispelling could undo the work. He kept that in mind as he settled. Still, it beat sleeping under a tree and trusting the garlic he had brought.
Supper had become something like s’more jerky. Thorn worked at a rubbery piece, then examined the cracker beneath it.
“Warrior’s food,” he said, less firmly than before.
Night gathered. The howling began again, closer now, and more voices answered than had called around the Vistani camp. Thorn let his rest go shallow. Through the shelter he watched the strip of road between the trees.
Five shapes came along it, from the direction they had traveled. At first they looked like large dogs. Then one rose onto its hind legs, and Thorn went very still.
They advanced with noses low, casting side to side. Beside him Elora watched with instant recognition: animals following a trail. And the trail led straight to the place where the party had stopped.
The five passed the hidden shelter. Thorn counted them down the road, one pace after another, until they slowed a few dozen yards beyond it. One turned. Another lowered its muzzle to the ground. Then all of them began working back toward the trees.
They had lost the scent, which gave him only a little comfort while the search brought them nearer. They gathered and muttered, too far off for words. One gestured along the road. Another broke away and came toward the hut, its face turned in their direction.
Thorn knew the spell. The creature could not see through it, though that did little to ease the sensation of being stared at from a few strides away.
The wolf-man stopped. Its nostrils worked. Then it looked up, into the branches and the dark sky beyond them.
“It clearly ends here,” it said. “They must have taken flight.”
Another answered from the road. “The boss isn’t going to be happy about that.”
“What are we supposed to do? We don’t have wings.”
Thorn kept his mouth shut. Even relief seemed best enjoyed quietly.
The creature turned away. After one more brief exchange, the five hurried off westward, down the road the party would need in the morning. Thorn watched until the last shape was gone. Only then did he shift his weight.
“Hurrah for the tiny hut,” Elora murmured.
“Yes,” Thorn said. “That’s something.”
The howling stopped once the wolf-men had gone. No bat circled overhead that night. The silence held until morning, and the party came out rested onto a road that looked innocently empty.
Thorn looked west before they started. Their pursuers had gone on ahead. He would have preferred almost any other direction, but Vallaki had not moved simply because the road to it had become less inviting.
They went on through the valley, up gentle rises and down again, higher ground hemming the route on both sides. Late in the afternoon an enormous reach of water opened to the north. The lake meant Vallaki was close, though not close enough.
“Three or four more hours,” Ireena estimated, from what she knew of the route.
They could reach it that night. They would also spend the last part of the journey exposed after sunset, with the wolf-men somewhere ahead and whatever had sent them still interested in the trail.
“The hut worked,” Thorn said. “I’d rather travel in daylight.”
No one needed much persuading. He found another place to shelter and began the spell again.
Elora watched the trees while the others settled for another night inside the dome. She disliked stopping this near their destination, with another stretch of road left for morning, but she had seen the wolf-man look straight at them and see nothing. The shelter was worth the delay.
There were howls after dark, though farther off than before. No shapes came along the road. The trees stirred and fell still, stirred and fell still. Elora rested with that rhythm moving quietly through her.
A cloud drew her attention. She could not have said at first why she noticed it. Other clouds were scattered across the night, and this one looked ordinary enough at a distance. It was moving toward them, pale against the dark.
Then wind passed through the branches, and the leaves bent the other way.
Elora lifted her head. She watched the cloud keep coming against the wind and tried to judge its height. What she had taken for something large and distant was becoming smaller and nearer as her eyes made sense of it. It came on as though it meant to pass over the shelter, but stopped overhead.
It was low, perhaps ten or fifteen feet across. She waited for another gust, and when the trees moved, the cloud did not.
For a while she considered it through the dome. The night beyond stayed quiet. No wolf-men arrived to explain it, and nothing came down out of it. She could keep watching until dawn and learn no more than she knew now.
“I’m going up to look,” she said.
Curiosity had carried her into enough strange places that she recognized the moment of choice. She had stood before an impossible forest inside a mountain. She had listened to an old woman suggest that a kindness still ahead of them might already have broken their lives. A small cloud refusing to obey the wind was, at least, something she could investigate directly.
She took a bird’s shape, her weight shrinking, feathers closing over her. The ground fell away under her wings as she left the shelter and climbed into the night.
Air moved cleanly over her at first. She angled up toward the pale mass, expecting cold moisture, perhaps the touch of mist on her feathers. Then the cloud swallowed her, and her next breath burned.
She coughed, a thin, struggling convulsion in the small body, and beat her wings harder. This was no gathering of harmless water. It pressed foully into her lungs. The dark beneath her vanished; trees, road, hut, all gone behind a density she had not understood from outside. She could not see through it at all.
Elora fought to keep flying. The cloud was small; she had seen its edges. A few wingbeats ought to carry her clear, if she could hold her direction through the coughing, if she could find the night again.
A voice spoke inside her mind.
“Ah. I found you again.”
She knew that voice. Strahd.
“Your little tricks won’t protect you anymore.”
Lightning burst from the cloud and struck straight down upon the tiny hut.
The riverside camp — the Vistani’s promise While escorting Ireena toward Vallaki, Elora, Thorn, and Maledurk learned that the people at the riverside encampment were Vistani. Their conversation turned to the apparent safety of the camp: Thorn wanted to know why Strahd preyed upon other people but left these travelers alone, even while they slept. An unnamed camp member answered with a story passed down from their ancestors. According to the Vistani, their ancestors had found Strahd badly wounded after a military defeat in which most of his army was destroyed. He was still a mortal man, and they nursed him back to health. In gratitude, he promised that their people would always have safe passage through his lands. The speaker said Strahd continued to honor that promise, although they did not know whether ancient magic compelled him to do so. The story gave Thorn a reason to consider the camp as an overnight refuge. It offered no clear assurance that Strahd’s promise covered visitors, however. Staying with the Vistani might be safer than spending the night alone on the road, but the travelers had received no promise of protection for themselves or Ireena. Elora surveyed their surroundings. Men and women were eating around a communal fire in an established camp, with horses and a couple of dogs nearby. She saw no children and no weapons larger than cooking knives. The visible camp looked settled and domestic rather than prepared for a fight. As the travelers considered leaving, a camp member recommended that they visit Madam Eva, a seer and fortune-teller in the large tent. Eva had reportedly predicted their arrival. Thorn was also weighing their remaining journey: Vallaki was too far away to reach in one ordinary day’s travel from the camp. The companions accepted the invitation and approached Eva’s tent before settling their plans for the night. Madam Eva’s tent — five cards and tangled histories Reddish light, apparently from magical flame, illuminated the tent. A hunched old woman sat at a black-draped table with a crystal ball. Madam Eva greeted the visitors with, “Ah, you finally arrived.” She then named Maledurk, Thorn, and Elora without introductions. When asked about Ireena, she said she knew of her, but found the outsiders more interesting. At Thorn’s suggestion, Elora took the seat at the table. Eva separated her cards into a larger and a smaller deck, shuffled them, and had Elora cut both. She arranged three cards from the larger deck and two from the smaller into a cross. The reading unfolded from the left card to the top, right, bottom, and finally the center. The first card, the Philanthropist, concerned history or ancient knowledge that could help the companions understand their enemy. Eva described a place where sickness and madness met, and a being whose recovery of health had cost something of its mind. As she considered the vision, she became less certain that enemy was the right description: the person or force involved might instead be an ally. Elora asked whether Eva meant Strahd. Eva said the companions had already killed him and that this reading concerned something else. She suggested that the unidentified being’s madness might help explain the troubles following the party, but could not name it or establish its relationship to them. Elora recalled an earlier adventure involving a sick town, without finding a definite connection. Thorn asked whether the party had helped the being recover. Eva could not separate their involvement from the confusion surrounding their histories. “You have, it seems, an odd influence on your own histories.” She suggested that they might not yet have gone back into the past to help it. Any responsibility for its healing or madness therefore remained uncertain, and might depend upon actions still ahead of them. Elora also questioned Eva about the graves discovered previously. Their former selves had been at Strixhaven, which did not explain why their bodies should be in Barovia or associated with opposition to Strahd. Eva asked whether those selves had been struck down and where their bodies had gone afterward. She treated the graves as an answer to the missing bodies, but did not explain how they had reached Barovia, who had buried them, or how they connected to the ghostly procession. The second card, the Myrmidon, pointed toward a den of wolves on a mountain, where Eva thought the person they sought could probably be found. She cautioned that wolves might be metaphorical, and restated the lead as a mad person in a mountain cave. When asked whether the companions themselves were the wolves, she left that possibility open rather than identifying anyone. The mountain cave brought Nemu to mind. The companions recalled the cave where a forest somehow grew underground and wondered whether its strange inhabitant could be the being in Eva’s reading. Elora remembered Nemu’s unusual behavior, including her jumping out of a window while wearing the crown. These were possible connections drawn by the party; Eva did not identify Nemu as the subject of the prophecy. The third card, the Berserker, described a madman’s crypt. Eva explained that an ordinary Barovian reading would make this a treasure clue, but she believed this one concerned an item of great power. Thorn immediately considered the crown. Eva could not identify the object or determine whether the companions had already visited the crypt or would discover it in their future. She allowed that the clue might already have been fulfilled if they had found such an item. The companions had indeed recovered the crown from a lich’s crypt during an earlier adventure, but they were not carrying it on this journey. It remained with Veyr for study, and Tempest’s last established location was his tower, where she had stayed while the research continued. Nothing in Eva’s reading confirmed that their crown was the powerful item she described, and no change in its custody occurred. The fourth card, the Raven, offered help against the darkness. Eva said ravens were clever and knew things, and predicted that one would guide the companions. They recalled that a raven had previously led them to Nemu’s cave. Eva thought it might guide them again and believed the raven was more than it seemed, but neither its nature nor its identity was revealed. No raven appeared during the reading. The center card was the Seer. Eva described a place of great wisdom and warmth as the place where the companions could resolve their search. They considered whether this might mean Strixhaven or somewhere physically warm, and whether warmth instead meant welcome, kindness, or empathy. Wisdom was not necessarily the same thing as accumulated knowledge. No suggested destination answered the clue convincingly, and the center position did not establish that this card overruled the others. Seeking the raven seemed a plausible course to Eva, but she could not turn the five clues into a reliable sequence of future tasks. Some might describe adventures already completed; others might require events still to come, including a journey into the past. Her warning remained, “Your past and your future, are muddied together.” The reading supplied leads toward the party’s larger troubles without settling who was responsible or where they should go next. Madam Eva’s tent — repeating Barovia and the crowned wizard Asked for further wisdom, Eva returned to the contradiction surrounding Strahd. In her account, the companions had already slain him, yet he lived and Barovia still existed. She said Vistani ancestors had passed down accounts of the same story repeating for centuries. Travelers returning to Barovia never knew what state they would find it in. She described this recurrence as confined to Barovia, without explaining its cause or how it related to the companions’ own tangled chronology. The companions reviewed the earlier places that might fit the reading. Nogbruth’s crypt had been beneath a glacier in a valley, reached through a crack and descending stairs. Nemu’s forest-containing mountain cave was a separate destination, visited afterward. A raven had led them there, and they had brought Nemu lich moss for her stew. Remembering these details helped distinguish the possible crypt and cave clues, without proving that either place belonged to Eva’s prophecy. Thorn argued that they should finish the task already in hand before returning to the glacier, searching for the raven, or pursuing other old leads. Ireena still needed to reach Vallaki, and he hoped the town might provide information or reveal their next step. Elora agreed. The reading changed what they knew, but it did not displace the escort as their immediate priority. Eva looked into her crystal ball when asked about reaching Vallaki safely and predicted that they could get there. She called Strahd a coward at heart and did not expect him to attack people who had already killed him. Her reassurance came with a pointed exception: she described Ireena as his greatest prize and warned that Ireena might disappear when the companions were not looking. They still needed to watch their charge closely. Elora also asked whether the camp itself might pose a danger. Eva laughed at the idea that its inhabitants would deliberately provoke people capable of defeating Strahd. This was her assessment of the hosts, alongside her prediction about the journey; neither amounted to a guarantee that the party could ignore the dangers around them. Eva then discussed the unnamed wizard who had led Barovians against Strahd roughly a year earlier by local reckoning. According to her account, most of his recruits fled when they reached the castle. Those who remained died or were changed. The wizard himself fought Strahd in a great battle around the castle, leaving a disastrous expedition whose leader’s personal fate was still disputed. Some members of the camp reportedly claimed to have seen the wizard fall to his death. Because Strahd remained, people had assumed that Strahd won. Eva rejected that conclusion when she consulted her crystal ball: “I believe the wizard prevailed.” Her belief challenged the earlier account of defeat, but did not establish whether the wizard survived, how he might have won, or why Strahd was still present. Eva could not give the wizard’s name. She did report a distinguishing feature: he wore a twisted crown that she suspected held great evil. Twisted referred to its spiritual character rather than a visibly warped shape. This report gave the companions another possible connection to their own crown, although the two objects were not identified as the same. Thorn considered whether Veyr could have taken the crown into Barovia’s past and become the expedition’s leader. Against that theory, the description previously given by the priest’s son had not fitted Veyr, although a person’s appearance could change. Elora proposed Nogbruth as another candidate. Both remained possibilities discussed by the companions; neither man was established as the wizard. Elora also wondered whether the crown’s apparent desire to return to its owner meant they should return it to Nogbruth. The conflicting histories they had studied nevertheless agreed that Nogbruth wore the crown, and he had been a king as well as the lich associated with the glacial crypt. That supported historical possession, but the crown’s origin remained unknown. It did not settle who created it, who rightfully owned it, or where it wanted to go. The Vistani camp — hospitality and a circling bat With only a couple of daylight hours left, the companions asked Ireena whether she preferred to press on or stay. Visibly frightened, she favored remaining with or near the Vistani, whom she believed protected from Strahd. Their company seemed safer than an isolated camp. Thorn proposed resting and making an early start; Maledurk supported getting a good night’s sleep, and Elora agreed. The Vistani welcomed them with food and drink. Elora noticed nothing suspicious in their behavior as the evening passed, and the hosts eventually retired without setting a guard or watch. Their ease contrasted with Ireena’s continuing anxiety. She seemed less confident than she had inside her boarded-up home. Her armor did not look wholly unfamiliar to her, but she appeared to have only limited experience wearing it. Thorn and Elora remained alert during their elven trances. Both heard distant howling. Thorn also saw a solitary bat fly over the camp, circle in an unusual, almost vulture-like pattern, and then head toward Castle Ravenloft. Its behavior was suspicious, but its identity remained unknown. The possibility that it was Strahd, or even a disguised raven, remained speculation. Elora connected the howls with the wolves in the card reading, but Eva’s visions concerned things outside Barovia. The local wolves therefore offered no confirmed answer to the Myrmidon. The companions separately recalled earlier reports of wolf-men or possible werewolves attacking Ireena’s home. Those reports remained relevant to the escort’s danger without identifying the creatures heard that night. Nothing else disturbed the camp. The travelers woke refreshed after a night without an attack, received breakfast, and were given provisions for the road. The Vistani showed no signs of packing up when they saw their guests off. The quiet night made the camp a successful refuge on this occasion, while leaving the reach of its reported protection unanswered. The valley road — five trackers lose the trail The travelers resumed their journey toward Vallaki and crossed a river bridge. A waterfall roughly a hundred feet high was visible to the west, strikingly beautiful against Barovia’s damp gray surroundings. Nothing unusual was discovered there, and the companions continued along the road rather than stopping to investigate a new lead. Late in the afternoon, the route divided. The northeastern branch climbed toward Castle Ravenloft; the northwestern road continued through a great open gate resembling the eastern gate through which they had entered Barovia. It spanned the valley, leaving mountain travel as the alternative to passing through. The escort took the open gate and continued toward Vallaki, reaching a wooded stretch near nightfall. Thorn favored stopping safely rather than traveling on into darkness. Elora suggested Tiny Hut, and the party established one among the trees beside the road, changing its color to camouflage the shelter. Inside, they could see their surroundings while remaining concealed from outside observers. The hut barred unapproved entry and provided protection against physical and magical intrusion, although dispelling remained a possible way to remove it. They ate some of the Vistani provisions and settled in. During the night, closer and more numerous howls announced approaching creatures. Five large dog-like figures came along the road from the direction the party had traveled. At least one rose onto its hind legs, revealing a wolf-man-like form. Elora recognized that they were following a scent trail. Their behavior suggested organized pursuit rather than animals merely wandering through the woods. The five passed the concealed hut and continued a couple of dozen yards before turning back. The trail seemed to have vanished at the stopping place. They searched the area and conferred while the companions remained hidden inside. One tracker came almost up to the hut without discovering its occupants, then looked upward and concluded, “It clearly ends here. They must have taken flight.” Another tracker worried that their boss would be unhappy and complained that they had no wings with which to follow flying quarry. They did not name that boss, and it remained uncertain whether they were specifically seeking Ireena or the travelers together. The companions had seen wolf-like pursuers able to speak and track, but had not established the precise nature of every member of the group. The trackers hurried west along the road, putting them ahead of the party’s intended route. The hut had concealed all four travelers successfully, and the search ended without discovery or combat. No bat appeared that night. After the five departed, the howling stopped, and the rest of the night passed uneventfully. The party could continue its escort, now knowing that pursuers had gone ahead toward the same destination. Short of Vallaki — the cloud above the second hut The following morning, the companions resumed the valley road. Its gentle rises and falls did not require mountain climbing. Late in the afternoon they saw a large lake to the north. From her understanding of the maps, Ireena estimated that Vallaki remained another three or four hours away. Continuing that day would bring them to town after sundown. Thorn preferred another night in Tiny Hut and a daylight approach to Vallaki. The shelter had worked well against the trackers, and he felt safer traveling by day than exposing the group to nighttime creatures. Elora noted their apparent pursuit by wolf-men and bats. The party stopped and established a second roadside hut, leaving the escort unfinished for another night. Distant howling returned, although it was less close than on the previous night, and no wolf-men passed the shelter. Elora’s Perception result of 34 drew her attention to a cloud moving toward them against the wind. At first it seemed ordinary and far away. As it approached and stopped almost directly overhead, she realized it was low and only ten or fifteen feet across. The cloud remained perfectly still while gusts moved the nearby trees. Elora decided to investigate it herself. She transformed into a small bird, a sparrow, left the shelter, and flew into the cloud. Thorn, Maledurk, and Ireena remained at the hut as she entered the strange vapor above them. Inside, Elora began coughing. The cloud was unhealthy rather than ordinary water vapor, and its density completely blocked her view of anything outside it. Entering prompted a Constitution saving throw, but its outcome and any resulting damage or lasting condition were still unresolved. She was airborne outside the hut, unable to see her companions through the cloud, when a familiar voice spoke directly into her mind. The voice was Strahd’s. He announced that he had found her again, then threatened, “Your little tricks won’t protect you anymore.” His body was not visible, and the cloud’s relationship to his physical whereabouts remained unknown. A bolt of lightning shot from the cloud directly onto the Tiny Hut. The session ended on the strike, with Elora still inside the cloud and the effect on the shelter and its occupants unresolved.Session Notes