Tess, Zatrian, and Zilo sit around a campfire made up outside of an owlbear's cave with a chunk of the fallen creature's meat cooking over the flame. Tess rubs her chin and remarks,
"So Jin and May are playing decoy so we won't need to deal with our assassin, I like it." Zilo nods confirming. The bard finishes laying out his tools to season and serve the meat, while Zatrian lifts the map and says,
"The path is already laid out, we just need to follow it before I' Sereg'wethrin can catch on." Zilo finishes serving up the first plate and lifts it toward Tess past the campfire. Tess stands up but her pants begin to slide down to her knees. She grabs at the falling trousers and glares at the bard. Zilo glances down to his waist sheepishly and stands to deliver her plate in front of her and begins to undo her belt he took earlier.
She snatches it back and begins to cinch it back into place as Zilo explains, "I thought that with your belt I could more easily carry you until you recovered. How was I to know you needed a mere 5 minutes to get back to your feet?"
"Be happy I like you bard! The last man to attempt such things ended up shocked 6 meters out the door he had his back to."
Zilo bows apologetically as he sits back down on by the meal and serves some to both him and Zatrian in turn. They all eat their meals and begin trading off keeping watch for the night. The morning after they all take to the road.
With the poison leaving lasting effects on their bodies they move at a rather slow pace as they move, but thanks to the trail mapped out by Zatrian, the time is about average for if they were poison free. About a day into their journey when they set up for camp again they take shelter beneath a wondrous marvel of nature.
A gigantic tree looms over their campsite, standing at minimum of a few hundred feet tall. Zilo and Zatrian both begin to write in their journals about the sheer size of it, one thinking of it's lore, and one composing a sonnet of it's majesty. Tess simply shakes her head and begins to set up camp.
As the sky began to darken after laying out the tents, she set about sparking up a campfire. Suddenly the flint she was using vanished from her hand and she grunts in shock. Zilo turned to her to see her jaw was taut and her expression was of surprise.
"Tess, you all okay there?" The dragon disciple opened her mouth and out came the flint she was just using before. She began spitting out and cursing in elven. Zilo chuckled and remarked, "I get you're hungry Tess, but we gotta get the fire going first."
Tess turns to the bard and takes out her two sided sword, flicking it about saying, "Something put that in my mouth, Zilo. Something I couldn't spot."
Zilo furrows his brow and says, "What could have don't tha-" In a flash Zilo's Hat suddenly is pulled down tight in front of his face as something cracks into the front of his shins and forces him to perform a full somersault forward onto the the collected firewood in front of Tess. Tess shouts for Zatrian to form up between Zilo and Tess.
The bard stands back up and takes out his bow as the Chronicler stands between the two warriors. Both look around the forest environment they are in. Zilo casts Detect Magic to sweep the area and pick up what might be hiding if it is using magic.
"Tess, this place, it's really got magic surrounding a lot of it."
"What sort?"
"No idea, but it seems like the only source I can hone in on is the plants, but there's something else moving too quick for me."
Tess closes her eyes and replaces them with her Bronze Dragon eyes, which begin to dart all around the area. She snaps out her sword and sweeps to send a blur of a tiny humanoid figure hurtling by into a bush. Zilo had barely managed to glance at it, and he turned back to see Tess' eyes already flicking back to her left with a spin and a thrust.
This time she missed whatever it was, but Zilo saw faint leaves rustle from the ground area she attack toward, signalling that something dodged away and veered off and away. The bard turns to his scaled companion and asks,
"How can you see them? My eyes are giving me zilch!?"
Zatrain waves a hand to cut off Zilo and says, "She has a dragon's Blindsense Zilo. The mere presence of something is all she requires to know where it is."
"But these little jerks are fast! This is still tough!" Shouts Tess, beginning to get taxed.
"OH I have just the thing for this! Hold tight!" Says the scholarly elf.
Zatrian reaches back into his backpack with a smile as Zilo continues to do his best and glance to whatever is out there when Zatrian speaks and throws him a piece of paper. The bard looks at it and sees a spell inscribed on it. The bard reads and suddenly he feels the entire area shine in a golden green tint from See Invisibility.
There it was, a tiny humanoid being zooming and blurring its way around the bush line, with a half dozen others just like it, waiting for a chance to flash in. Zilo could see everything. He raised Harmony and snapped loose a flurry of arrows.
Zilo was a crack shot with his silvery streaks in the night and though the poison had hurt his stamina, his aim was unaffected as one by one the little creatures fell. Just as quickly though more and more seemed to surface in the fight.
"Damnit Zilo, your arrows are just attracting more of them!" Growled the female elf.
"I'm waiting on a better plan if you got one. Can you try and scare them off!? You can be rather scary when pressed!"
"I'll take that as a complement. Okay bard, hit the deck!" Zilo drops to his belly holding Harmony horizontal shoot and give Tess some cover. As the bard heard magical and meaty noises from his six, he suddenly saw a long bronze covered tail flick over his head and wings beating behind him.
Tess now changed and reared up into a full 8 foot tall dragon let out a roar that shook the forest and blasted a bright streak of electric energy into the sky, obliterating and burning plenty of the branches and leaves above them, leaving only an ash burn hole through into the night sky.
The small creatures did just as expected and zoomed off at full speed into the forest past the giant tree rather than face a dragon. Zilo stood back up and ran his fingers along Tess' new emerald green fin along her spine and spoke,
"Nice, they're gone!"
The dragon woman growled, "Yeah! They... th-! They aren't the only ones Zilo!" The dragon craned its neck around in a panic, and when Zilo did the same he realized why she was on edge suddenly.
"Zatrian's been Elf-napped!" Yelled Zilo and Tess in unison.
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