The party made their way out of the dank, stinking cave, hoping the leave the horrors of the torn bodies, the rotting flesh, and their companion's rage behind them.
Footprints of a person, seemingly unbothered by the creatures that lived within the cave? Such a thing seemed preposterous. Owlbears were vicious, hateful creatures, given to rage and murder. Most predators killed for survival or to protect their own, but owlbears were known to kill for the sake of killing alone. They clearly had killed and eaten other people; to allow a person to walk among them was beyond unheard of.
Both Isilmewen and Rosariel paid special attention to the footprints outside of the cave. Soon enough, the taur'ohtar managed to locate a set of prints that seemed to match those of the person from within the cave - the prints were not extremely fresh, but nor were they so old to possibly be confused with a time before the monsters had settled into this cave.
The prints were not especially deep or heavy, though they were rather sporadic; whoever had made them seemed to make it a point to step onto rocks or hard patches of ground whenever such were available. Were she to guess, Isilmewen might have supposed that the individual was a sylvari at home in the forest, accustomed to leaving as little trace as possible with their movements. Eventually, the tracks seemed to merge with a more well-blazed trail, which made following easier for the group as a whole, though in some ways, it made positive identification of the tracks more difficult.
So focused was the ranger on those specific tracks that at first, she did not notice the others. However, Rosariel did - and she brought them to the tracker's attention.
The prints that seemed to belong to a sylvari's boots had been joined by those of a massive bear. The large creature appeared to walk in parallel to the unidentified syl; in fact, at one point, a pair of such tracks seemed to flank those of the person for a good couple hundred yards. This caused Isilmewen to frown - these tracks were too similar to those she had originally spotted prior to the owlbear cave for her to dismiss them as belonging to a regular morko. No, these had to be owlbears.
This person had not only entered the owlbears' lair unmolested, they had apparently traveled with them.
What could such a thing mean?
Eventually, the sun began to drift low into the sky, so the party elected to set up camp for the evening. Tensions were palpable around the camp; it was more than a little disquieting to follow someone who seemed to treat such menacing creatures as walking companions.
Even so, the night passed without incident, and the companions found themselves once again following Isilmewen in her tracking efforts.
An hour or so into the day's journey, the quiet of the forest was interrupted by an explosion of black.
A massive raven - perhaps the largest one that Rosariel had ever seen in her life - dropped from the sky like a dark meteor crashing into the forest floor. It landed in a flurry of ebony feathers directly in the middle of the path, where it cocked its head and inspected the group. Indeed, if you didn't know better, it almost seemed as if the great black dulin were counting the party members, assessing them.
It stood there boldly, acting for all the world as if it owned the path. Just as it seemed that someone must interact with the creature, it let out a serious of astoundingly loud caws before taking wing and disappearing into the canopy to the north.
Shadows of the Empire Q&A
Shadows of the Empire
Shadows of the Empire - R
Reralae's A'niorna
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