Greystone raises his eyes and makes direct eye contact with Summer.hedgeknight wrote: Summer hesitates and then takes the letter, reading it quickly, looking up at Aurian and Greystone, and then reading it a second time.
"Tell me, Cerulean, do you trust Celadon and the Owls? And convince me this isn't some type of elaborate ruse."
"I do trust Celadon, Lady Summer. In truth, I have no idea what he wrote in the letter - it was my job to deliver it, not to read it. But I can tell you when we left here to go check out the stone portal, we were set upon by many owls who were charmed and controlled by these black robed figures. While we were fighting them, the portal opened up and... and creatures from another dimension began coming forth and attacking us. We fought them, as well as the charmed Owls and eventually shut down the portal for the time and broke the owls free of their charms. But the Driad and her tree were twisted and tortured by the energies of the portal. She died. Before her tree died, I used my connection with the Lady of the Forest to..." He looks down at his arm, suddenly, remembering the colouring it has now taken after so much use.
He continues, looking back at Summer, "to see what I could find out. The images it showed me were creatures out of our darkest nightmares coming through such portals as this, enslaving all humans and elves and dwarves, and destroying our realm."
"We went back to the Owl village to try and help free Celadon and the other Owls. There were many black robed men and women in their camp and, from what we could tell, all of the Owls were under the command of a man named Shumar. He had a horned daemon with him who carried a red lantern, which seemed to be the force controlling Celadon and some of the other elves. A new member of our group, a man in a fur cloak, used the magic of his kind to make me unseen. We attacked and were set upon by the black robes and Owls. I sneaked up to fight Shumar and the daemon and realized I needed help. That is when I communed with the great Cypress tree of the Owl camp, asking for help. That is when my arm turned green. The tree shook and the lantern dropped. I used an arrow, a gift from the Lady of the Forest, to send the daemon back to his home plane and we slew the rest."
Greystone pauses and takes a deep breath. "The Owls were told to retrieve Winter while under the control of the daemon." He shakes his head, "they would never have done something so heinous as steal away a member of our council of their own accord. If any of this is what Celadon says in that letter, then it is the truth."
He again bows his head.
