**II**

Torlynn; six days later.

It looked like every building in Torlynn had emptied.

They pushed their way through the crowds to stand with Gustovan on the raised platform in the middle of the square. Buttercup, well recovered from her injuries by now, dropped three large, heavy-looking sacks onto the ground. They hit the floor with a satisfying thud; the crowd quickly silenced themselves.

"People of Torlynn!" the Mayor addressed the crowd. "These brave adventurers that I found have been dealing with our little Ogre problem!"

Some sections of the crowd cheered. Others appeared to, but in a sort of rehearsed, reluctant fashion. Other citizens of the town looked on sullenly.

"Miss Arden… I believe you had something that you wished to add?" She looked terrified. Elantar knew her better than that though.
"Mr Mayor?" she squeaked, shuddering.
"Go on! Nice and loud so that everyone can hear!" The Mayor was beginning to look very pleased with himself. Every pair of eyes in the crowd was fixed on her.

"People of Torlynn," she began nervously.
"Wos she sayin'?" a woman a few yards away asked. People nearer the back began to murmur, seeming to lose interest. Sigmund began to laugh. Taldir looked furious. Coralyn seemed confused. Arden frowned and looked sidelong at the Mayor; seeing his smug expression triggered a sudden change in her. She breathed deeply.

"People of Torlynn!" She was getting there now, as the act began to drop away. "Here lay the heads of five Ogres that will trouble you no more!" Buttercup emptied two of the sacks to raucous cheers and applause. The heads had begun to fester, and maggots spilled from one of their mouths. The stench was almost unbearable. Gustovan was beginning to look less happy.

"We know that this is not all of the Ogres that have been plaguing you," she continued as the crowd quieted, "but rest assured," she paused for effect: "We will kill them all!" More cheers, and some applause greeted this announcement. Arden waited for quiet again before she continued. "Ogres, we know, are a cruel breed. They have hurt you, Torlynn, and I weep for your losses." She dramatically took a knee and bowed her head for a few moments. "I need to tell you, though…" she began again, retaking her feet with reluctance evident in her voice "of a more dire threat."

There was a mixture of responses from the crowd: some gasps of shock, some frowns of confusion, but everybody, without exception, gave Arden their attention. And of course, just as she'd manipulated it to be, the Mayor had given her the ear of every citizen of Torlynn.

"The Great Tentacled Beast of Arglorr!" she announced with gusto. Arden was greeted with, once again, a veritable smorgasbord of emotions: several astonished gasps, fear, bewilderment… a few small children began to cry; a man carrying a sack turned to leave, but didn't quite know how. Elantar also counted seventeen silent screams, five holding their heads in their hands, three people sinking to their knees and a small boy turning to his father to tell him that he needed the privy.

"This beast of legend," Arden continued, "plagued the lands south of the Wyvernwatch Mountains for a decade. It was thought that a great warrior had slain it long before our lifetimes, avenging the great many wrongs it had wrought on a hundred villages."

The crowd were enraptured, but several of them were quaking with fear, convinced they were next in line for the beast.

"Alas!" she snapped, almost singing her announcement, "the beast escaped its doom, and I despair to be the one to inform you, but it has come close! Too close for Torlynn…" Arden warned, her voice conveying desperate pity. "We discovered it in the Ancient Fortress!"

Cries were raised from the gathered people. Several tried to push through the crowd to leave, but were hemmed in by those frozen with fear.

"Wait!" Arden demanded, and paused for attention once again. "It is true, that The Great Tentacled Beast of Arglorr had put this town in mortal peril, but see this Torlynn!" The crowd now mostly looked confused, but a few dared to show signs of hope. "Buttercup? If you would?"

The head that fell from the third and final sack sent the crowd into raptures. All that could really be seen of it was a mass of tentacles and a few jagged teeth. Elantar shuddered as she remembered her encounter with the Carrion Crawler. It was nowhere near as dangerous as the mythical creature Arden had invented; yet it almost claimed her life all the same. The teeth marks in her shins were still itching painfully. Arden grinned and took a deep bow.

Gustovan re-took the stage. "Now, now!" he called, waving his arms. He looked to the tentacle-covered head and involuntarily shrank away. The crowd began to fall quiet again.

"Yes! We clearly owe these adventurers a great debt," he said reluctantly, trying to ride on the tide of favour Arden was creating, like the shrewd political beast that he clearly was. "They shall be suitably rewarded!" he announced, beginning to turn crimson with fury, but hiding it very well, if only in his voice. "Please make our guests welcome for their remaining time, before they once again leave!" He was a bit heavy handed with that final word, Elantar thought.

Arden had done exactly what she intended though: the people of Torlynn loved her, and by extension, the rest of the party too.

They remained in Torlynn for three days longer before the Mayor made it very clear that they were expected to finish what they had begun. In that time, Arden had made nightly appearances in The Amorous Goat, and even an afternoon show at the much less savoury Pig's Britches. Her songs of heroism, which now included a hurriedly written new piece: 'The Saga Of The Great Tentacled Beast Of Arglorr', were catching on well and everyone in the town could be heard humming the tunes at one time or another.

They spent these days gathering what information they could about the mines, and found the townsfolk eager to provide them with all that they knew. There were thought to be roughly five Ogres in the mines: people disagreed over the exact number. Something that they were all sure of though was that these Ogres torched everything that they did not steal; several nearby villages were now a collection of burnt out husks and piles of ashes. There had also been talk of Kobolds working with them, which had awakened Boshley's rage for reasons that Elantar did not know.

Elantar spent the last night before they left on a task of her own…

"Useless…" Elantar breathed, discarding another scroll onto her rejection pile. At first, she had made an effort to make the room look undisturbed, but her growing frustration had drawn her into complacency.

Taran had, albeit quite ignorantly, given her hope that there would be answers in the collected knowledge that they had liberated from Demara's Fortress. She didn't doubt that there was plenty of Elven history here, but anything she found that she could understand was mundane in its details: equipment manifests; botanical and climate observations; vegetable growth techniques and the like. She was, quite simply, getting nowhere in her search for any details on controversies or executions in Khirin Alithenen; there wasn't even a single mention of her former home to be found.

In one hundred and eleven years living as an outcast, she had officially gleaned only two things: first, her parents were traitors; and secondly, they were executed before she was even a year old. The Elders would tell her no more than that. Nine years before her exile, Celal, her appointed watcher, let some more information slip. The night before she came of age, before being turned out of her homeland forever, she stole into the vault where the weapons of traitors to the King were kept, and left with her pair of Shortswords – the only inheritance she could hope for. She had those swords, and two names, but nothing else of her heritage. Celal had long since paid for sharing that information with his tongue, and was himself swiftly exiled from the land. She held little hope that he had survived.

"You know, Elantar…" the voice jolted her. "If you wanted to look for information, you could have just asked." Eldrann stood smirking in the doorway, his arms folded neatly over his chest. She whispered a curse and abruptly stood. She didn't mind being caught out so much; it was the being crept up on that bothered her. She hadn't quite realised how much time had passed either. Taran joined them in the chamber that they had hired to pour over the information, and was taken aback to see that the Wizards weren't alone.

"This is a private matter…" Elantar responded. "And I worked as hard as anyone to get hold of this stuff; why shouldn't I look through?" Taran glanced around the room, and angrily approached the papers that Elantar had been scattering around.

"Five days we spent sorting these!" he snapped. Eldrann clicked his tongue and shook his head in the corner. Elantar hadn't considered that she might have undone anything.
"Neither of you are coming to the mine tomorrow… I'm sure time isn't something you'll be short of," she shrugged. Taran seemed to resign himself to defeat. He picked up a handful of parchment at random and leafed through it.
"Fine…" he muttered. "In all honestly, it probably wouldn't take so long to sort again now that we have an idea of what's here." He handed the small stack to Eldrann as he approached.

"This is all Draconic," he said, looking through. "Geographic notes… yes… they're probably still all bunched fairly roughly."

"It's Draconic?" Elantar asked, glancing at some more writing. "This too?" she added, holding out the new sheet to Taran. He nodded his ascent, and took the parchment from her.
"This is the lineage of the Priests of Boccob in ancient Gregaria," he declared approvingly. "A list of names and notable achievements."
"So… of great value to… who?" Elantar replied.
"Me for one," Eldrann announced proudly. "My mentor was descended from this line," he explained.
"Being Draconic explains why I couldn't understand most of it…" Elantar added. "What else is here?"

"You could just tell us what you're looking for," Eldrann retorted. "And there was no need to wait for us to be asleep before coming to look. We did leave this room locked for a reason, after all," he bristled.
"Like I said," she rounded on him, "it's private."
"Ilmerne…" Taran stated simply.

Elantar grimaced. Eldrann paused for a few seconds, and then slowly smiled knowingly, and nodded. "That was what your scars meant!" he added. "I knew I'd heard something about that before..."

"I didn't think I'd be called that again…" she snarled.
"I recognised it in you straight away," Taran added, raising his hand as if in surrender, and with genuine pity in his voice. "It's an ancient, barbaric practice; marking the offspring of the treasonous… few tribes practice it in these times."

"I…" Elantar began. "I just want to know what happened to them," she stated simply, and was surprised to feel somehow lighter.
"I can understand that…" Taran sympathised, "and I'm happy to help." Elantar paused and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

"Do you have names? A place for us to look for?" Eldrann asked. She looked up tight lipped, and finally relented.
"Khirin Alithenen was my home," she breathed. Taran raised his eyebrows at this; he clearly recognised the name. Eldrann wrote it down.
"And your parents?' he asked, his inkpen hovering over the parchment. She looked at them both.

"Not a word to any of the others…" she warned.
Taran nodded in agreement. "If it was me," he added, "I wouldn't want everyone talking about it either."

Torlynn; on the morning of departure.

The crowds had gathered once again to see them depart.

Gustovan, resplendent in a peacock-feathered robe, had seen them off with a rousing speech, which Elantar had paid no attention to whatsoever. The people seemed to enjoy it though, and Arden claimed to have seen why he had become so popular in the first place. The Bard had though, for some reason, only seen fit to congratulate Sigmund on the speech, the Paige's face turning red as he smiled nervously.

They left the cheering townsfolk, weighed down with favours and with full water skins. Torlynn was still struggling for food supplies though, so they would have to find their own meals in the wilderness.

"Eldarion?" Arden beckoned to the Ranger as they left the town. "Score us something for breakfast, would you?" Confusingly, the usually cocksure Eldarion didn't take the opportunity to boast. He remained sullen and separated himself from the party. Boshley frowned, and repositioned himself closer to the Ranger: the two of them had become fast friends in the few days they'd spent together recovering at the inn. Arden shrugged her shoulders and checked her own bow instead. Without the help of the Ranger's skills, however, they struggled to find any worthy prey.

They had been making their way through fields and small woods for a couple of hours when Gravak suddenly stopped them.

"What is it?" Elantar asked. She was taking point alongside the Cleric, but had distanced herself a little because of the noise he was making.
"Something behind those bushes. Something large," he replied. They could all hear it now: a deep, rumbling snarl and the footfalls of a large beast pacing. Almost everybody drew weapons.

"Do we really need to kill it?" Eldarion asked firmly. There had been something different about the Ranger the past few days: he'd been disagreeing with almost every suggestion, and he'd been distracted; as if he had somewhere else he'd rather be.

"Let's take a look at least: we don't want something dangerous leaping out on us," Arden suggested.

The party slowly moved through the undergrowth together, still having no view of their target. They could hear it though, and it could hear them: its snarls and growls were becoming louder as a warning. They broke cover, a good twenty feet or so from the beast. Elantar recognised it at once.

"It's a Dire Boar," she said. "Dangerous… and very territorial. If we back away slowly, it'll probably leave us alone," she added, taking a step back. She was pleased to see Eldarion, Taldir and Arden follow suit.

"BAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!" Buttercup bellowed, raising her axe and charging headlong at the Boar. Everybody froze in surprise for a few seconds before Gravak hefted his mace and jogged forwards to help her out. Boshley followed soon after that. Any hopes that they had of avoiding a conflict here were shattered.

The Boar met Buttercup's first axe swing on its horns, turning the blow aside. Taldir, Arden and Coralyn all readied their bows and loosed arrows, finding their marks, but not slowing the beast. The Boar gored at Buttercup, opening a deep gash in her side.
"Fool…" Elantar muttered. Nobody could kill a Dire Boar in a head-on charge. She began to move forwards to support: she knew the Boar's vulnerable points and could get at them while the others distracted it.

Boshley and Gravak had caught up and engaged the Boar too, keeping it busy whilst Buttercup reeled from her injuries. She recovered her wits quickly enough to help the rest of the party overwhelm the Boar; Elantar didn't make it to the beast before it was bought low after several blows to its head and chest. It fell heavily to the ground, bloodied and with a number of arrows sticking out of its flank. Eldarion was the only one who hadn't taken part in the fight at all; he squatted where they'd first seen the Dire Boar, and chewed sullenly on some berries that he'd found somewhere.

"I'll get a fire lit!" squeaked Boshley, rummaging in his pack for flint & steel. Elantar helped Gravak to skin and prepare the corpse, much to Coralyn & Arden's distaste. They instead saw to Buttercup's wounds.

"I'm looking forward to a good Boar steak," Gravak exclaimed, tearing the fur from the carcass. Elantar had noticed that he'd been eying her strangely since the night she'd broken into his room. She knew that he knew… but was grateful that he seemed to share her wish to keep their business between them; no one else in the party need share in the information.
"I prefer it sliced fine on bread," Elantar answered. "But a steak will do nicely."

Eldarion was watching them from where they had left their mounts and luggage. He was seeing that everyone's horse was tethered and fed, and took particular care with his own steed, grooming her mane as he stroked her. The hound that had taken to following him around was paying more attention to the Boar, and it sniffed hungrily around Elantar's feet.

The Boar had made for an excellent meal.

"Are you sure you don't want any of this Eldarion?" Arden asked the Ranger, a mocking tone evident in her voice.
"No," he answered firmly, "I'm fine with these." He had almost stripped the bushes in the clearing of all their fruit.

"There's plenty of this left that we didn't need," Gravak observed. "We should take it with us; it'll probably serve us for a couple more meals at least."

"Can we be going now?" Eldarion asked impatiently.