Three Words

The plan was a heist, and nobody expected it to work. Fiadh goes in invisible through the upstairs door of a tree that walks, past ravens who go silent instead of raising the alarm, past a cradle with a doll shaped like a little vampire, and pries a glowing gem out from under the floorboards with two swords used as chopsticks. Hands start coming up out of the wood. She grabs it and runs. Outside, a kobold sits down in the swamp and makes small talk with Baba Lysaga while she breaks a goat's leg to stop it crawling away.

It works. That's the frightening part. The party gets out with the gem and the bullywugs' stolen scroll, and in four rounds of trying, not one of them touches her. A command spell bounces off. Magic missiles get swallowed by something in the air of her lair. She drops Helliax into the mud with a word. Then she walks across the top of the swamp water, on top of it, and whispers to the paladin who tried to make her stop: she will find him. She lets them all go.

Then it's a long road home: a werewolf's clothes stashed by the trail, a silver locket that's been buried out there forever, and a dead adventurer who never stopped giving orders to his wolves. At the Vistani camp, an old Vistana named Stanimir spits at Ghast's feet over an old feud between their peoples, and the Vistani explain what the party actually saw in the swamp. Those weren't goats. They were adventurers.

Then Madam Eva comes out of her tent under the full moon, points at the sky, and screams at them. Those aren't clouds coming in from the northeast. They're bats.