A Duel of Fireballs

by Luke Thomas

Dear Diary,

The cavern reeked of ozone and scorched fiend flesh. We stood on a small bridge over a pool of absolute darkness, the corpse of Viceroy Trom cooling at our feet. We looted the Abishai, finding fancy robes and a smattering of coin, but nothing to explain exactly *how* he planned to enslave a Primordial.

Then, the whispers started.
Hayley froze, her eyes losing focus. A voice—Mother Aura—was speaking directly into her mind, asking if the fiends were dead. When Hayley confirmed they were, the entity expressed relief; they had intended to enslave her as a weapon. Mother Aura tested the waters, asking where our allegiances lay. Hayley, diplomatic but firm, stated she was her own woman, though we were aligned with Immerglade.

The Primordial asked to be released. Hayley flatly refused. She told the entity she knew exactly what she was. Mother Aura tried a different angle, claiming she could control her "children"—Sister Willow and the others we had encountered—and pull them back to the Feywild, removing them from the Material Plane without the need for imprisonment. But Hayley held her ground, and the voice eventually faded. She relayed the entire conversation to us, and the air in the cavern felt significantly heavier afterward.

We had to keep moving. Daman, a dark elf loyal to Ulther, was still down here with his own plans for the Primordial.
We opened a door leading to a descending staircase, and this time, Ileas stopped dead. Mother Aura had moved on to him. She whispered that he was tainted by a usurper—his uncle—and offered him freedom in exchange for her release. Ileas hesitated for only a second before rejecting the deal, catching Gael’s concerned look. He explained the offer once the voice faded, and Liliana gave him a tight, silent hug.

Before descending, I cast *Speak with Dead* on the Viceroy’s corpse to extract whatever intelligence I could.
I asked where Daman was going. The corpse rasped, *“A crypt hidden within this maze.”*
Where is the seal? *“Deep below this chamber.”*
Does Daman have reinforcements? *“Yes, your lives are forfeit if you attack him.”* (Clearly a personal bias).
Is there an item involved in capturing her? *“A powerful artifact I have sent away, you will never get it.”* (A blatant lie; we knew the fiends didn't operate that way).
Did Ulther order this? *“We only serve the High King, unlike you traitors.”*

Trusting none of it, we headed down the stairs and found a door inscribed with the name *Sunchaser*. Liliana threw it open, and we were instantly engulfed in a *Fireball*.
I threw my hands up, siphoning the worst of the heat away with my own magic, but the blast had an immediate, disastrous effect: it shattered the polymorph spell on Davozan. The swarm of snakes violently reverted back into a towering Giant, completely filling the cramped hallway.

Beyond the smoke, Daman grinned at us. Gael rushed in but was immediately pinned by a lance strike from the dark elf's bodyguard. Davozan, infuriated, hurled a *Fireball* right back into the room. Daman retaliated with a second *Fireball* of his own, but Liliana’s paladin aura and my elemental resistances blanketed the party, nullifying the worst of it.

Liliana and Alistan went on the offensive, but Daman threw up a magical shield, and his bodyguard slammed the door shut, locking our two heavy hitters inside with them. I wasn't having it. I summoned an Air Elemental, forcing it to compress and whistle through the keyhole to harass them, while Ileas lowered his horns and literally headbutted the heavy door back open.

The fight devolved into absolute magical chaos. Hayley eventually managed to turn Davozan back into snakes so we had room to maneuver. Ileas was fighting strangely—almost as if luck itself was bending slightly in his favor to avoid lethal blows. Eventually, a well-placed *Silence* spell completely shut down Daman’s spellcasting. Stripped of his magic, he threw his hands up and surrendered.

We tied him up and forced the bodyguard to drop the lance. Daman confessed he was on a mission for Ulther to enslave Mother Aura. When Alistan pressed him on *how*, he just sneered, "Magic," before finally admitting he had designed a specific ritual.
We dragged them back toward the entrance. But as we crossed the room with the dark pool, Daman muttered a single, silent word of power—he must have broken the silence effect somehow—and vanished. Teleported away.

In the same room, Ileas tried to sprint across the bridge to avoid Mother Aura’s voice, but he stopped halfway. The Primordial was digging into his mind again, tormenting him with offers of freedom from his uncle's control. It got so bad that Hayley had to drop the polymorph on Davozan to let the giant intervene. Davozan firmly ordered Ileas to reject the entity. Ileas, frustrated and exhausted, confronted Davozan about his ancestors being the ones who locked her away in the first place, but ultimately chose to walk away.
As he left the bridge, Mother Aura screamed in his mind, the physical darkness of the pool bulging and thrashing against its confines.

My patience was gone. I cast *Teleport*, pulling us all the way back to the entrance of Davozan's realm. Davozan offered to take our surviving drow prisoner, but we decided to keep him. The giant set off to rally his newly liberated troops, promising to officially pledge his realm to Immerglade soon.

We returned to the Tower of Titania, gave Dynia a brief report, and I practically collapsed into bed.The next day, just a bit before dawn, I woke up to the sound of grinding stone and a distant avalanche.
But I wasn't in bed. I was floating two feet in the air. A localized tornado was tearing through my room, ripping books from shelves and shattering glass. Then, gently, it set me back down on the mattress.

I looked at my hands. The glowing, elemental tears in my skin—the cracks where the magic leaks out—had grown deeper. I realized the distant rumbling had stopped the exact moment I fully regained consciousness.
The earthquake wasn't natural. It was Malfias. The Primordial gestating inside me is getting stronger, and it’s starting to leak into the physical world. I looked out the window; the damage to the surrounding valley was minimal, but the epicenter was directly beneath my room in the tower. Dynia confirmed it was an external force. It was me.

We teleported straight to Tarn to find Myrrdin. The villagers waved at us, nervously asking about the quake. I felt sick to my stomach.
Myrrdin gave me a thorough arcane examination. He assured me that the actual "hatching" is still weeks away, but he admitted he has absolutely no idea how to safely extract a Primordial once it has taken root.

He did, however, have a lead. He told me that if I need to understand Primordials and how to siphon their power, we need to ask someone who has experience drawing power from them.
For example, a servant of Father Passion (the Primordial of Want).
Lumiria.
My kind-of fiancée. The woman who was banished by Hayley and is currently imprisoned in Ulther’s castle. And whose rescue I have been putting off for far too long.

I sighed, a long, tired sound. Breaking into Neverhold won't be easy, but it does align with another goal: Ulther is keeping the Mask of Vincent there, too.

We tried to research the mask's connection to the historical Vincent, but we lack the context of recent Feywild history. So, we tracked down Vivienne. She was outside Whitewail, overseeing elven mages constructing a magical bridge to connect her city directly to the Immerglade Isle.

When we asked about the mask, she stopped her work and looked at us grimly.
"The mask isn't just a trophy," she explained, her breath pluming in the cold air. "It is a catalyst. It is the key to Ulther's entire plan."
We couldn’t go in blind. So we decided to wait a week until we are fully prepared for an infiltration into Ulther’s sanctum.
Once we are ready with our preparations, we have to go to Neverhold. We have to face Ulther, we have to steal the mask, and I have to ask the woman whom I abandoned to stop myself from exploding.
Just a typical week in the Feywild.

— Luke

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