Needless to say,
Akira decides to wait till the first light of day to depart with the rest of her team.
...
The night passes restlessly for most of you-when you can sleep, your dreams are surreal and unsettling.
Sarco dreams of his home-the fortress city of Dous, suffering disaster. He sees the streets sinking into the swamp, the walls crumbling, the people fleeing...he tries to help, but his people are turning to dust before his eyes...
Tadhg dreams of his long lost family. He is given a vision of his brother Alat, looking older and harsher now, shivering in what looks like a bleak stone prison cell. His sister Atya has her waist and wrists bound in chains, being led by a faceless man down a gangplank, her face set in grim determination. He sees his youngest brother Tayo floating lifelessly below in the sea, the surface of the ocean above him.
Samara avoids bad dreams-being an Elf, she doesn't really have to sleep, as such-she can actually control her dreaming state. Most of her rest is spent in a Elf trance, where her body rests physically, and she continues to work out arcane theory and portents mentally-working out problems in the beautiful, yet fragile crystal labyrinth that is her mind.
[3][7]Akira dreams of a man with a cloak of dead stars, placing a blade to her throat. A voice rasps
'...And, how did I kill you today, Little Bird?'. She wakes suddenly, recalling her old mentor Bane. When he was teaching her how to stay alive, he would say such things when she messed up...it was always a prod to do better next time.
Kawtari actually sleeps well, for once-the strange voice of the Thing is muted and weak, unsure of itself, maybe even frightened...though, probably not of her. Or maybe she's just feeling more confident than usual. Or is a trick, to get her to lower her guard?
Aldeth's dreams are, like every night, too horrible to recount here. She senses a terrible triumph in the Old Things that plague her...mixed with a bitterness deep enough to drown worlds. She feels they may have won(?) the battle(?) they were fighting, but lost the war(?).
---Head back to inn. See if rations are being sold. Sleep.
Sarco finds they sell the more common rations in the Inn-
one gold for a satchel of standard rations (Biscuits super-hardened to break extra teeth!) that will last two days.
---The group makes their final purchases (Whatever those are, list em before the encounter) and departs at dawn, in a momentary lull in the storm. They are directed to a half-way point, at a quarry in the Mustered Hills, run by a family of friendly Kobold miners, and the group begins to make their way.
Traveling overland isn't easy, but the snow is not yet thick enough to seriously slow the party down-the group doesn't even have to don snowshoes, yet. Still, it's not pleasant. the wind bites, the cold tingles your toes and fingers painfully, the snow makes it hard to see anything in front of you-still, your directions are good, and you follow the old paths that were laid out in these lands decades ago, lined with low stone walls.
You occasionally hear sounds in the forest, the howls of Wolves and deeper roars that (?) Samara identifies as Leopards, Snow Apes, Yetis, and once even an Owlbear-but, nothing is quite hungry enough to attack such a well armed group, especially one that is aware as there's it...yet. The miles march on...
...
Bkt...bkt...bktThe party hears the banging noise even other the wind. It sounds like wooden against stone, and for some reason it puts them all on edge.
The group consults their maps as they crest the next hill, seeing what they expected-the Kobold mine. It's not much to look at from the front. If you hadn't been expecting it right there, you might have just walked past it-a deep rutted cart track that leads straight to the mines doors. You were told the Kobolds live inside, mining the metals (mostly raw iron and silver) that makes the Baron rich.
Bkt...bkt...bktThe group observes the large double doors leading into the mine are ajar, the left one banging steadily in the wind. There are no living people visible-only a few pieces of equipment and material buried under the snow-they can see an outline of a wheelbarrow, a cart, and a few piles of metal bars, what might be a toolchest. It's odd they were not moved into the shelter when the storms began. Still, the deep ruts of the cart track lead right into it.
Bkt...bkt...bkt