The gang are going with Harshnag to the seat of the Allfather, to speak to the Oracle in the Frozen North, the spine of the north, in an ancient temple. The team meets at an inn the day before they are due to meet Harshnag.

Gunther’s travels

Gunther has been auditioning for a role in a theatre musical called the Phantom of the Hothouse and has made quite a bit of money.  He is a celebrity with a very specific part of the community.

Miss Moss’s dress ups

Miss Moss has realised that she’s expanded on her previous epiphany, whereby if she is dressed differently, people treat her differently. She’s had a bit of a clothes journey. She has dressed up and gone to have a cup of tea alone in a cafe. A gentleman walks past and greets her warmly, stopping for some small talk. She offers to share her biscuits with him and he accepts.

The pair sit in the cafe and the man leans over conspiratorily and asks in a low voice if Miss Moss would like to see something. She of course says yes. The man pulls out a tiny sleeping baby dragon and tells her that he is the foster carer of the little tiny dragon. He offers her to hold it which she cannot say no to.

As she cradles the baby dragon gently in her palms, the man suddenly stands up and looks startled, then clutches at his throat noislessly. The cafe dwellers rush to his side, then thrust him into their arms and off to the hospital. Miss Moss rushes after them but is left standing alone in the deserted street as the hustle and bustle of the emergency rushes in a bundle down the street.

She is left holding the baby dragon, looking down and then back up, thinking she would wait until he felt better and return the dragon to him. But without anything now to do, the streets empty, Miss Moss wanders towards the hospital to try to find the foster carer of the baby dragon. She greets the receptionist and explains who she is looking for and the woman looks sadly at her and says, “That man has died, I’m afraid.”

The old man died of anaphylaxis from the hazelnuts in the biscuits, to which he was allergic. Shame floods over Miss Moss and she has the same sense of responsibility for another’s death as when she was a child, teaching her kid brother to swim in the river.

As Miss Moss and her brother, Jarmey, were practising holding their breath (Jarmey was still very bad at it, spluttering and coughing each time) a swarm of bees came down the river valley. They heard them before they saw them, but Miss Moss knew the sound well and knew that the bees would skate across the top of the water, and they needed to be hidden as they did or they would be stung. Jarmey wasn’t able to hold his breath, but being deathly afraid of bees, he drowned. He was six years old. Miss Moss was just nine at the time.

Londer is Florida Jake, again

Londer woke up in an alleyway and can’t remember the last nine days. To his surprise, he has lost some teeth. He’s woken up and to find a gold medal marked Mirrabar Rumpus Champion and a piece of paper stuck to his head, a journal of Florida Jake’s.

Londer asks around the market and hears he’s helped a group of kids and has bought their freedom. He’s lost weight.

Leshanna reads

Leshanna has characteristically spent most of her time in the library, researching spells and speaking with wizards. There, she, Thoradin and Miss Moss met a halfling woman, Henny who has spent most of her life looking into giants. Henny is very happy to trade information, showing them a collection of all the runes they have discovered. They have no idea what most of them mean.

Ferd = some kind of journey
Kong = King

Leshanna tells them about the King gone missing, the stories Harshnag told them. Thoradin and Miss Moss have a quick conference and pull the rod of adamantine out of the bag of holding. Henny inspects it thoroughly. She waves her hands over it and it glows faintly.

‘Where did you find this?’

‘The rune was being dug out of the ground by a fire giant.’

Leshanna stands in the back, listening to Henny mutter and sees her touching various runes, as she begins to formulate an idea. She sees three runes and says, ‘This almost certainly means that this is representing fire…, this means war and this means dragon.’

The Fire at War with the Dragons.

Thoradin told them that he’s paid to go to try to find a ring in Berlador, a long rune ruined fortress high on the mountains above Mirrabar. He also noticed someone following them.

After some shopping, they get some sleep and then head out to the place where they said they would meet Harshnag.

As they head out, the wind is brutal and already giving them some pause about the journey ahead. The road is bare and not much going on and they can’t see any sign of him. They hear a voice from behind the trees. “Ahh, you’ve arrived” and the tree starts shaking.

Harshnag walks out to meet them. Horses cannot be brought because they are going to die. The ram may be ok.

They arrive at a town, Harshnag tries to look incognito. The town is deserted. He points up, “We’re heading up that way.”

A door opens, a crone looks at as they pass, her eyes wide. She smiles at them, amazed as if she’s never seen anything like this in her life.

They march for most of the day, conditions grow worse. They start to get an eerie feeling of quiet that makes them walk more slowly. Harshnag looks back, holds his hand back and gestures, pauses.

Just ahead, steam starts to erupt from the snow. The ground starts to fall away. Rising up, a creature soars out with flame inside it.

Harshnag says, “Oh no… here we go.”

Remorhaz bursts out of the ground in front of them. Londer fires off a javelin, missing.