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Carwyn finished chanting and pointed his index finger at a wolf which was attacking Krass, reveling in the two rays of scorching flame that slammed into the beast's side, setting its fur on fire and causing it to snarl in anger and turn on him rather than the heavily bleeding barbarian.  He hurriedly cast another spell; now that the beast was facing him, he could clearly see the spider on its forehead, and his missiles quickly dispatched the little construct.  The wolf toppled to the side, allowing Carwyn to see past in time to spy the barbarian dispose of yet another wolf by taking off its head.  Raging, the barbarian screamed incoherently with his axe in the air above his head as he jumped up and down, smashing the escaping spider to bits.  Krass had taken many hits, some of them serious, and yet each one only seemed to make the berserking barbarian more angry.

With Krass out of danger for the moment, Carwyn began to scan the rest of the battlefield, looking for any of his other companions who seemed to be in danger.  What he saw instead was a strange bald man with no eyes, his black robes in tatters and a manic grin on his face, running at him with his arms outstretched.  As soon as he glimpsed him, a revolting stench reached Carwyn's nose, reminding him of rotting meat and the pungent mold that grows in dark, dank corners.

"Run, Carwyn!" he heard someone scream, and he did indeed stumble backwards a few steps, coughing and retching at the smell that was assaulting his senses.   The man was quickly on top of him, grabbing his wrists and then forcing him into a crushing hug.  The smell suddenly became, if possible, even stronger, and Carwyn choked back the urge to vomit.  The man's tattered clothing was wet and dripping with some type of liquid, and as Carwyn struggled ineffectively against the surprisingly strong grip his own clothes were soon saturated with the stuff as well.  Giggling, his high-pitched voice far from sane, the man pushed past Carwyn in order to charge towards Krass, sending the sorcerer stumbling to the ground.

Carwyn scrambled to his feet in time to see a surprised Krass similarly embraced.  The barbarian growled and attempted to break free, but Carwyn could see that the man's grip was just as strong as it had been on Carwyn's own wrists.  The barbarian could not break away.

Carwyn cast his spell of two fiery rays once again, this time targeting the cloaked figure which had Krass pinned.  Although his fingertip was aimed directly at the giggling man's unprotected back, the two lines of fire that arced forward at Carwyn's command veered in separate directions when they approached their intended target, leaving the man untouched.

Undeterred, Carwyn cast another spell, this time causing four small balls of energy to dart forward unerringly to strike the cloaked man just as he finally released Krass and shoved him away.  As the small missiles hit, a shudder passed through the gaunt frame, and the incessant laughter ceased for a brief period as the man snarled in pain.

Carwyn experienced a feeling of triumph as he watched his foe's discomfort, smiling grimly when those sightless eyes were turned towards him with hatred.  The man's thin lips twisted into a grimace of amusement, however, and Carwyn felt his triumph ebbing away into a pit of despair and exhaustion.

Carwyn had never pushed himself and his magic to the place where he was too drained to cast anything, but he had a feeling that he was quickly approaching that breaking point with this battle.  He had cast so many spells so many times within the last few minutes, he was now having trouble concentrating on saying the intricate words anymore.  They just tied themselves into knots whenever he so much as thought about them.  Accompanying his inability to verbalize properly, there was the feeling that the source of his power was being consumed, and every spell he cast left him feeling weaker than before.

His attention was brought back to the present when he heard a contemptuous laugh nearby.  The cloaked man had turned his back on Carwyn and had begun to advance to where Faringoth was still battling a lone wolf.  Carwyn croaked out a warning, which he was fairly certain the soldier did not hear, and carefully voiced the words for the fire ray spell once again.  He willed the rays towards different targets; one arced across to lick hungrily across the back of the wolf lunging at Faringoth, while the other tried ineffectively to wound the slowly advancing hooded figure, but was foiled in its attempt by an invisible barrier surrounding its target.  Carwyn groaned with the spell's completion, as he felt his reserves sink even lower.

Krass had managed to regain his feet from where he had fallen, but he now stood shaking and leaning heavily against his axe, his rage finally spent.  His shoulders heaved as he fought to regain his breath, and his legs and arms trembled from the strain that had been placed on them.  Blood oozed from his numerous wounds, running down the spasming muscles to drip quietly to the ground.

Carwyn watched, helpless, as Faringoth succeeded in dispatching the wolf he had been fighting by shaving off half of its face, only to be overwhelmed by the man in black, who had snuck up behind him.  Carwyn attempted to send another wave of the bright missiles at the man's back, but he stumbled over the words and nothing happened.  Faringoth was pushed away to stumble into the corpse of the wolf he had just killed, which was twitching back to life as the spider reattached itself to the wolf's intact forehead.

As the man continued on to accost Ingram, who happened to be the next closest, Carwyn stared at his hands, stunned at their betrayal.  His magic, which had always been his companion and his instrument, had failed him.  His way of life, his very existence, was based solely on his ability to cast spells.  Without magic he was useless; less than useless, he was a liability.  Against this foe, his magic was futile.  He had no way to protect anyone from such as this.

Something inside of him rebelled against this line of thought.  He refused to lie still when his companions were in danger.  A violent impulse to protect those he saw as friends rose up out of his despair, urging him towards action.  There was always a way.  If his magic was ineffective, then it was time to revert to more mundane means.

Slowly, Carwyn reached into one of his many pockets, drawing forth the knife he used to gather spell components.  The blade was little more than a common kitchen knife, more accustomed to slicing the leaves off plants and herbs than to combat, but it was a weapon, and its edge was sharp.  Holding it in both hands, unfamiliar with its weight but determined nonetheless, Carwyn determinedly advanced on his enemy.

*****

Alix was awoken from her exhausted sleep by the sounds of a battle already underway.  Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she found herself staring up into the eyes of a strange man standing over her, wielding a knife that was held but a few inches away from her neck.  She gave a shout and instinctively shoved the stranger away, but could not avoid being nicked by the cruel edge of the man's dagger on her forearm as she did so.  As she scrambled to find her sword from its place beside her bedroll, the man disappeared through the tent's entrance with a crazed giggle, leaving Alix to curse at herself for having fallen so deeply asleep.  She made a mental note to change the way night watches were chosen in the future as she pulled on her boots and grabbed up her sword, then charged through the tent into the chaos that had erupted in the camp outside.

She was immediately engaged by two of the ferocious wolves that had attacked them on their journey north to see the elves, and in the exchange she lost track of the man who had been inside her tent.  Her attention was slightly diverted as she tried to catch sight of him again,and one of the wolves scored a deep bite on her right shoulder before she focused on the fight at hand with a shriek of pain.  She rolled around the side of her tent to give herself more room to maneuver, and now was a little ways away from the main fight, which was situated in the open area between the tents.  She swept her sword down as the wolf immediately in front of her lunged, neatly severing the thing's head.  Her eyes darted to the ground and she quickly stomped the escaping spider.  The other wolf stalked around the corpse of its companion, growling viciously.  An answering growl came from behind her, and Alix jerked her head in its direction to see a third wolf, this one with smoking fur, materialize out of the darkness beyond the circle revealed by the camp's limited firelight.

Alix gritted her teeth and began backing away from both wolves, making her way around the back of her own tent in an attempt to avoid being flanked.  Realizing her intentions, both wolves snarled and prepared to jump in unison, before an arrow suddenly sprouted from the forehead of the newest wolf who had just come from beyond the camp's perimeter, dropping it where it stood.  Alix muttered a quick prayer of thanks to the invisible Piper as the last wolf leapt towards her.  She dodged out of the way of its lunge, raising her sword for a downward chop at the exposed neck, connecting solidly but at the wrong angle to do any real damage.  Even as her sword bit into the matted fur the wolf changed course, trading a minor hit for the perfect opening in which to rake her across her unarmored midsection with its claws.

Alix fell back, her breath stolen from her at the pain lancing across her belly.  She did not have to look to know that this had been a solid hit, and without her armor to lessen the blow it might prove to be a fatal one.

Setting her lips in a determined grimace, Alix plowed forward through the pain to hack at the wolf's head, aiming for the glimmering spider.  Her aim was off; her shoulder wound screamed in protest and caused her sword to veer down, slicing the area beneath the wolf's eye but missing the spider by several inches.

The wolf retaliated by sinking its fangs into her right forearm.  Alix reached across with her left hand and punched the wolf's forehead, smashing her fist into the spider and reducing it to a few broken bits of metal.  The wolf shuddered and collapsed with her arm still grasped within its mouth.  Alix pried the reeking mouth open to extract her throbbing limb, clutching it to her chest in an effort to stem the flow of blood.

Rustling from behind her drew her attention.  The wolf who had grown an arrow from its forehead was twitching back to life again.  Alix shuffled over to it and kicked at the head before the monster had fully reanimated, shattering the spider.  She then removed the heads of both that wolf and the one she had just killed, hacking away arduously, her right arm quivering with every blow.

Alix straightened and swept her hair out of her face.  The sounds of battle had died down somewhat.  Barely daring to hope that the fighting had come to an end, and afraid that someone else might have been hurt, Alix moved as quickly as she could around the back of her tent so that she could view the rest of the battlefield.

Scanning the broken bodies bodies of slain wolves, her eyes finally managed to pick out the figure of Krass, leaning against his axe, his huge frame fairly drooping with exhaustion.  Around his feet were scattered at least half a dozen wolf bodies.  Alix had just opened her mouth to call out to the big man when she spotted Ingram, standing with his sword at the ready, his face a jumble of uncertainty and dismay.  He stood facing a struggling Faringoth, whose arms were frantically windmilling in an effort to push something away, although as he was facing away from her she could not see what was accosting him.

She caught sight of the dark shape that she had awoken to find standing over her when it suddenly disengaged from where it had been grappling Faringoth and lunged out to engulf Ingram, who shrieked and ineffectively swung his sword.  Faringoth was spun off-balance when the shadow pushed him away, and Alix spotted Carwyn sneaking up with nothing but a small dagger, only to be swatted aside easily when he attempted to pounce on the dark figure.  Alix hastened towards the strange commotion, suddenly sure that the wolves had been nothing more than a distraction from something much more sinister.

By the time she reached Ingram, she finally was able to see that the man was bald and dressed in tattered black robes.  For lack of better words she would have to say that he was hugging Ingram.  While she raced over and Ingram struggled mightily, Faringoth tried a halfhearted swing at the man's back with his sword, but the man simply laughed when a magical barrier surrounding him deflected the blow.  Krass seemed to have recovered somewhat, and picked up his axe to rejoin the fight.  She pulled up as the man released Ingram from the forced embrace, spinning the soldier away so that he was off-balance and reeling.  Alix was now the nearest to the stranger, and with Ingram out of the way she was afforded the sight of something wet that had been smeared across the robes covering the strange man's chest, and small pieces of glass that had gotten caught in the fabric to glitter in the firelight.  A faint reek reached her nostrils, and Alix wrinkled her nose in response.  The man grinned.

Appearing unconcerned with the close proximity of those who wished him harm, the man calmly clapped his hands together, muttering a quick phrase as he did.  A glowing blue lantern, which until this point had stood unsupported in the center of the battlefield on a nondescript looped staff while shedding its eerie light over everything, now levitated of its own accord over to its master's waiting hand.  He grasped it with familiar ease, then drew a deep bow with his other hand extended, leering up at them all with a sickening smile.  Straightening from his bow, he beat the ground once with the staff for good measure, then turned his back on them.

"I hope you enjoy your gifts!" he called jovially over his shoulder as he began to saunter away.  He seemed to move with languid ease, but for every step the man took he advanced much further than his pace should have allowed, so that before her very eyes Alix saw him disappear into the distance in just a few seconds.  Soon all that was visible was the cold blue light from the lantern, bobbing back and forth on its staff in the darkness.  Then even that was gone, and nothing but silence was left in its wake.

Alix remained standing for several seconds, her sword still raised, waiting to make sure that the malicious harbinger was truly gone.  Only when Piper melted out of the darkness looking decidedly grim did Alix finally lower her blade.

"Alix, you need a healing potion," Piper stated, handing her a small flask.  Alix blinked and quaffed the liquid without saying anything.  She immediately felt her wounds slowly close and begin to heal, causing her skin to prickle.  Piper quickly moved around to hand out potions to everyone else, and Alix took the time to take in their situation.

The camp was in shambles.  Wolf carcasses were everywhere, some still with small fires burning in their dark and matted fur from the spells that Carwyn had been hurling around.  Two of the tents had collapsed, their wooden supports snapped in half by wolves during the battle.  Alix noted dispassionately that her own tent appeared to be untouched.

"Who in the hells was that?" Piper demanded.  She stood beside Carwyn, who had been last to receive a potion.  The young woman still had her bow strung and ready with an arrow on the string, although it rested easily in the woman's hands and was not drawn.  Her stance was at ease as well, but Piper's eyes were busy scanning the surrounding darkness for any signs of movement.  "Where the hells did he go?!"

Alix sighed and scraped a hand across her face in frustration.  "I haven't the faintest idea, although I have a rather bad feeling that I know why he was here."  Piper turned her gaze to the paladin, and the two shared a significant glance that had the rest of the party members frowning in confusion.

"Well, please feel free to take your time in explaining it to the rest of us," Carwyn said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.  He had tucked his small dagger back into the recesses of his robes, having retrieved it from where it had been dropped after his attempt to take the man by surprise.

Alix ignored the sorcerer's sarcasm and instead moved to investigate inside her tent, her feeling of apprehension growing with every step.  She lifted the flap to reveal the darkened interior, and groaned in dismay as her fears were confirmed.

She had been in too much of a hurry when she had woken up and charged outside to notice the condition of her belongings inside the tent.  Spare clothes, parchments, flasks full of various potions; they had all been pulled from her pack and tossed aside impatiently.  Alix tore threw her gear in a frenzy, heaving a huge sigh of relief when she uncovered the box covered in angels, which she had meant to put away from where she had been studying it before falling asleep.  Tucking the box deep into her pack, she began packing away everything else on top of it, searching as she went.

Alix placed the final shirt on top of her bulging pack, then took a deep breath and ran her fingertips through her hair.  She glanced helplessly around the tent, hoping to spot the hand or the horn that had been recovered from Kirath, but they were nowhere to be found.  Miserable, Alix turned her back in defeat and returned to her companions outside.

The camp had been returned to order while she was inside.  The tents had been repaired, the fire had been built up, and the dead wolves had been moved away from the camp's interior.  As she opened the flap to her tent, her companions looked up from where they continued to tidy the area, shooting her questioning looks.

"We still have the box," she announced, trying to find the positive side of the situation.

"But..." Piper began, already guessing the truth.

"But the hand and the horn are gone."

There was silence in the camp for several seconds as the import of her words settled in the minds of her companions.  Carwyn gulped and hastily went to his own tent, reappearing a few seconds later with a relieved expression.  He nodded at Alix, and the paladin nodded back in resigned acknowledgment.

"Should we go after him?" Ingram asked hesitantly.  He did not look enthusiastic about the prospect.

"It would be useless to try," Alix stated flatly.  "He used magic to make his escape.  He could be anywhere by now."  She raised her eyebrow at a sudden thought and turned to Carwyn.  "Unless you know how to track him?"

The sorcerer shook his head.

"Then we need to figure out what to do next," Piper said.  Alix nodded at the woman, thinking furiously.  She decided to follow what her gut was telling her was the most pressing concern.

"We need to get to a major settlement," she decided.  "Whoever he was, he went through a lot of trouble to make sure he touched each one of us with whatever that stuff on his cloak was..."

"There's no question as to what it was," Piper interrupted.  "I saw him smash one of those plague flasks on his own chest.  You've all been exposed to it."

"What about you?" Carwyn asked in a choked voice after a moment of horrified silence.  Piper sniffed.

"I wouldn't be much of a scout if I couldn't avoid being seen."

"Fine," Alix said, drawing a deep breath.  "So our situation is we have one person who is free of sickness and five who are going to start keeling over at moment.  I can pray to Sianna to cure one of us.  That's enough to allow us to split up, with Piper going ahead of us to warn the city and one of us to remain behind to act as a guard for the others."  Alix swallowed against the taste of bile in her throat, unsure if it was the beginnings of the disease she had been exposed to or if it was just the situation she was currently in.  The others looked similarly pale in the glow of the dying fire.

"Faringoth, go get the straws.  We're going to draw."

Description
Carwyn finished chanting and pointed his index finger at a wolf which was attacking Krass, reveling in the two rays of scorching flame that slammed into the beast's side, setting its fur on fire and causing it to snarl in anger and turn on him rather than the heavily bleeding barbarian.  He hurriedly cast another spell; now that the beast was facing him, he could clearly see the spider on its forehead, and his missiles quickly dispatched the little construct.  The wolf toppled to the side, allowing Carwyn to see past in time to spy the barbarian dispose of yet another wolf by taking off its head.  Raging, the barbarian screamed incoherently with his axe in the air above his head as he jumped up and down, smashing the escaping spider to bits.  Krass had taken many hits, some of them serious, and yet each one only seemed to make the berserking barbarian more angry.

With Krass out of danger for the moment, Carwyn began to scan the rest of the battlefield, looking for any of his other companions who seemed to be in danger.  What he saw instead was a strange bald man with no eyes, his black robes in tatters and a manic grin on his face, running at him with his arms outstretched.  As soon as he glimpsed him, a revolting stench reached Carwyn's nose, reminding him of rotting meat and the pungent mold that grows in dark, dank corners.

"Run, Carwyn!" he heard someone scream, and he did indeed stumble backwards a few steps, coughing and retching at the smell that was assaulting his senses.   The man was quickly on top of him, grabbing his wrists and then forcing him into a crushing hug.  The smell suddenly became, if possible, even stronger, and Carwyn choked back the urge to vomit.  The man's tattered clothing was wet and dripping with some type of liquid, and as Carwyn struggled ineffectively against the surprisingly strong grip his own clothes were soon saturated with the stuff as well.  Giggling, his high-pitched voice far from sane, the man pushed past Carwyn in order to charge towards Krass, sending the sorcerer stumbling to the ground.

Carwyn scrambled to his feet in time to see a surprised Krass similarly embraced.  The barbarian growled and attempted to break free, but Carwyn could see that the man's grip was just as strong as it had been on Carwyn's own wrists.  The barbarian could not break away.

Carwyn cast his spell of two fiery rays once again, this time targeting the cloaked figure which had Krass pinned.  Although his fingertip was aimed directly at the giggling man's unprotected back, the two lines of fire that arced forward at Carwyn's command veered in separate directions when they approached their intended target, leaving the man untouched.

Undeterred, Carwyn cast another spell, this time causing four small balls of energy to dart forward unerringly to strike the cloaked man just as he finally released Krass and shoved him away.  As the small missiles hit, a shudder passed through the gaunt frame, and the incessant laughter ceased for a brief period as the man snarled in pain.

Carwyn experienced a feeling of triumph as he watched his foe's discomfort, smiling grimly when those sightless eyes were turned towards him with hatred.  The man's thin lips twisted into a grimace of amusement, however, and Carwyn felt his triumph ebbing away into a pit of despair and exhaustion.

Carwyn had never pushed himself and his magic to the place where he was too drained to cast anything, but he had a feeling that he was quickly approaching that breaking point with this battle.  He had cast so many spells so many times within the last few minutes, he was now having trouble concentrating on saying the intricate words anymore.  They just tied themselves into knots whenever he so much as thought about them.  Accompanying his inability to verbalize properly, there was the feeling that the source of his power was being consumed, and every spell he cast left him feeling weaker than before.

His attention was brought back to the present when he heard a contemptuous laugh nearby.  The cloaked man had turned his back on Carwyn and had begun to advance to where Faringoth was still battling a lone wolf.  Carwyn croaked out a warning, which he was fairly certain the soldier did not hear, and carefully voiced the words for the fire ray spell once again.  He willed the rays towards different targets; one arced across to lick hungrily across the back of the wolf lunging at Faringoth, while the other tried ineffectively to wound the slowly advancing hooded figure, but was foiled in its attempt by an invisible barrier surrounding its target.  Carwyn groaned with the spell's completion, as he felt his reserves sink even lower.

Krass had managed to regain his feet from where he had fallen, but he now stood shaking and leaning heavily against his axe, his rage finally spent.  His shoulders heaved as he fought to regain his breath, and his legs and arms trembled from the strain that had been placed on them.  Blood oozed from his numerous wounds, running down the spasming muscles to drip quietly to the ground.

Carwyn watched, helpless, as Faringoth succeeded in dispatching the wolf he had been fighting by shaving off half of its face, only to be overwhelmed by the man in black, who had snuck up behind him.  Carwyn attempted to send another wave of the bright missiles at the man's back, but he stumbled over the words and nothing happened.  Faringoth was pushed away to stumble into the corpse of the wolf he had just killed, which was twitching back to life as the spider reattached itself to the wolf's intact forehead.

As the man continued on to accost Ingram, who happened to be the next closest, Carwyn stared at his hands, stunned at their betrayal.  His magic, which had always been his companion and his instrument, had failed him.  His way of life, his very existence, was based solely on his ability to cast spells.  Without magic he was useless; less than useless, he was a liability.  Against this foe, his magic was futile.  He had no way to protect anyone from such as this.

Something inside of him rebelled against this line of thought.  He refused to lie still when his companions were in danger.  A violent impulse to protect those he saw as friends rose up out of his despair, urging him towards action.  There was always a way.  If his magic was ineffective, then it was time to revert to more mundane means.

Slowly, Carwyn reached into one of his many pockets, drawing forth the knife he used to gather spell components.  The blade was little more than a common kitchen knife, more accustomed to slicing the leaves off plants and herbs than to combat, but it was a weapon, and its edge was sharp.  Holding it in both hands, unfamiliar with its weight but determined nonetheless, Carwyn determinedly advanced on his enemy.

*****

Alix was awoken from her exhausted sleep by the sounds of a battle already underway.  Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she found herself staring up into the eyes of a strange man standing over her, wielding a knife that was held but a few inches away from her neck.  She gave a shout and instinctively shoved the stranger away, but could not avoid being nicked by the cruel edge of the man's dagger on her forearm as she did so.  As she scrambled to find her sword from its place beside her bedroll, the man disappeared through the tent's entrance with a crazed giggle, leaving Alix to curse at herself for having fallen so deeply asleep.  She made a mental note to change the way night watches were chosen in the future as she pulled on her boots and grabbed up her sword, then charged through the tent into the chaos that had erupted in the camp outside.

She was immediately engaged by two of the ferocious wolves that had attacked them on their journey north to see the elves, and in the exchange she lost track of the man who had been inside her tent.  Her attention was slightly diverted as she tried to catch sight of him again,and one of the wolves scored a deep bite on her right shoulder before she focused on the fight at hand with a shriek of pain.  She rolled around the side of her tent to give herself more room to maneuver, and now was a little ways away from the main fight, which was situated in the open area between the tents.  She swept her sword down as the wolf immediately in front of her lunged, neatly severing the thing's head.  Her eyes darted to the ground and she quickly stomped the escaping spider.  The other wolf stalked around the corpse of its companion, growling viciously.  An answering growl came from behind her, and Alix jerked her head in its direction to see a third wolf, this one with smoking fur, materialize out of the darkness beyond the circle revealed by the camp's limited firelight.

Alix gritted her teeth and began backing away from both wolves, making her way around the back of her own tent in an attempt to avoid being flanked.  Realizing her intentions, both wolves snarled and prepared to jump in unison, before an arrow suddenly sprouted from the forehead of the newest wolf who had just come from beyond the camp's perimeter, dropping it where it stood.  Alix muttered a quick prayer of thanks to the invisible Piper as the last wolf leapt towards her.  She dodged out of the way of its lunge, raising her sword for a downward chop at the exposed neck, connecting solidly but at the wrong angle to do any real damage.  Even as her sword bit into the matted fur the wolf changed course, trading a minor hit for the perfect opening in which to rake her across her unarmored midsection with its claws.

Alix fell back, her breath stolen from her at the pain lancing across her belly.  She did not have to look to know that this had been a solid hit, and without her armor to lessen the blow it might prove to be a fatal one.

Setting her lips in a determined grimace, Alix plowed forward through the pain to hack at the wolf's head, aiming for the glimmering spider.  Her aim was off; her shoulder wound screamed in protest and caused her sword to veer down, slicing the area beneath the wolf's eye but missing the spider by several inches.

The wolf retaliated by sinking its fangs into her right forearm.  Alix reached across with her left hand and punched the wolf's forehead, smashing her fist into the spider and reducing it to a few broken bits of metal.  The wolf shuddered and collapsed with her arm still grasped within its mouth.  Alix pried the reeking mouth open to extract her throbbing limb, clutching it to her chest in an effort to stem the flow of blood.

Rustling from behind her drew her attention.  The wolf who had grown an arrow from its forehead was twitching back to life again.  Alix shuffled over to it and kicked at the head before the monster had fully reanimated, shattering the spider.  She then removed the heads of both that wolf and the one she had just killed, hacking away arduously, her right arm quivering with every blow.

Alix straightened and swept her hair out of her face.  The sounds of battle had died down somewhat.  Barely daring to hope that the fighting had come to an end, and afraid that someone else might have been hurt, Alix moved as quickly as she could around the back of her tent so that she could view the rest of the battlefield.

Scanning the broken bodies bodies of slain wolves, her eyes finally managed to pick out the figure of Krass, leaning against his axe, his huge frame fairly drooping with exhaustion.  Around his feet were scattered at least half a dozen wolf bodies.  Alix had just opened her mouth to call out to the big man when she spotted Ingram, standing with his sword at the ready, his face a jumble of uncertainty and dismay.  He stood facing a struggling Faringoth, whose arms were frantically windmilling in an effort to push something away, although as he was facing away from her she could not see what was accosting him.

She caught sight of the dark shape that she had awoken to find standing over her when it suddenly disengaged from where it had been grappling Faringoth and lunged out to engulf Ingram, who shrieked and ineffectively swung his sword.  Faringoth was spun off-balance when the shadow pushed him away, and Alix spotted Carwyn sneaking up with nothing but a small dagger, only to be swatted aside easily when he attempted to pounce on the dark figure.  Alix hastened towards the strange commotion, suddenly sure that the wolves had been nothing more than a distraction from something much more sinister.

By the time she reached Ingram, she finally was able to see that the man was bald and dressed in tattered black robes.  For lack of better words she would have to say that he was hugging Ingram.  While she raced over and Ingram struggled mightily, Faringoth tried a halfhearted swing at the man's back with his sword, but the man simply laughed when a magical barrier surrounding him deflected the blow.  Krass seemed to have recovered somewhat, and picked up his axe to rejoin the fight.  She pulled up as the man released Ingram from the forced embrace, spinning the soldier away so that he was off-balance and reeling.  Alix was now the nearest to the stranger, and with Ingram out of the way she was afforded the sight of something wet that had been smeared across the robes covering the strange man's chest, and small pieces of glass that had gotten caught in the fabric to glitter in the firelight.  A faint reek reached her nostrils, and Alix wrinkled her nose in response.  The man grinned.

Appearing unconcerned with the close proximity of those who wished him harm, the man calmly clapped his hands together, muttering a quick phrase as he did.  A glowing blue lantern, which until this point had stood unsupported in the center of the battlefield on a nondescript looped staff while shedding its eerie light over everything, now levitated of its own accord over to its master's waiting hand.  He grasped it with familiar ease, then drew a deep bow with his other hand extended, leering up at them all with a sickening smile.  Straightening from his bow, he beat the ground once with the staff for good measure, then turned his back on them.

"I hope you enjoy your gifts!" he called jovially over his shoulder as he began to saunter away.  He seemed to move with languid ease, but for every step the man took he advanced much further than his pace should have allowed, so that before her very eyes Alix saw him disappear into the distance in just a few seconds.  Soon all that was visible was the cold blue light from the lantern, bobbing back and forth on its staff in the darkness.  Then even that was gone, and nothing but silence was left in its wake.

Alix remained standing for several seconds, her sword still raised, waiting to make sure that the malicious harbinger was truly gone.  Only when Piper melted out of the darkness looking decidedly grim did Alix finally lower her blade.

"Alix, you need a healing potion," Piper stated, handing her a small flask.  Alix blinked and quaffed the liquid without saying anything.  She immediately felt her wounds slowly close and begin to heal, causing her skin to prickle.  Piper quickly moved around to hand out potions to everyone else, and Alix took the time to take in their situation.

The camp was in shambles.  Wolf carcasses were everywhere, some still with small fires burning in their dark and matted fur from the spells that Carwyn had been hurling around.  Two of the tents had collapsed, their wooden supports snapped in half by wolves during the battle.  Alix noted dispassionately that her own tent appeared to be untouched.

"Who in the hells was that?" Piper demanded.  She stood beside Carwyn, who had been last to receive a potion.  The young woman still had her bow strung and ready with an arrow on the string, although it rested easily in the woman's hands and was not drawn.  Her stance was at ease as well, but Piper's eyes were busy scanning the surrounding darkness for any signs of movement.  "Where the hells did he go?!"

Alix sighed and scraped a hand across her face in frustration.  "I haven't the faintest idea, although I have a rather bad feeling that I know why he was here."  Piper turned her gaze to the paladin, and the two shared a significant glance that had the rest of the party members frowning in confusion.

"Well, please feel free to take your time in explaining it to the rest of us," Carwyn said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.  He had tucked his small dagger back into the recesses of his robes, having retrieved it from where it had been dropped after his attempt to take the man by surprise.

Alix ignored the sorcerer's sarcasm and instead moved to investigate inside her tent, her feeling of apprehension growing with every step.  She lifted the flap to reveal the darkened interior, and groaned in dismay as her fears were confirmed.

She had been in too much of a hurry when she had woken up and charged outside to notice the condition of her belongings inside the tent.  Spare clothes, parchments, flasks full of various potions; they had all been pulled from her pack and tossed aside impatiently.  Alix tore threw her gear in a frenzy, heaving a huge sigh of relief when she uncovered the box covered in angels, which she had meant to put away from where she had been studying it before falling asleep.  Tucking the box deep into her pack, she began packing away everything else on top of it, searching as she went.

Alix placed the final shirt on top of her bulging pack, then took a deep breath and ran her fingertips through her hair.  She glanced helplessly around the tent, hoping to spot the hand or the horn that had been recovered from Kirath, but they were nowhere to be found.  Miserable, Alix turned her back in defeat and returned to her companions outside.

The camp had been returned to order while she was inside.  The tents had been repaired, the fire had been built up, and the dead wolves had been moved away from the camp's interior.  As she opened the flap to her tent, her companions looked up from where they continued to tidy the area, shooting her questioning looks.

"We still have the box," she announced, trying to find the positive side of the situation.

"But..." Piper began, already guessing the truth.

"But the hand and the horn are gone."

There was silence in the camp for several seconds as the import of her words settled in the minds of her companions.  Carwyn gulped and hastily went to his own tent, reappearing a few seconds later with a relieved expression.  He nodded at Alix, and the paladin nodded back in resigned acknowledgment.

"Should we go after him?" Ingram asked hesitantly.  He did not look enthusiastic about the prospect.

"It would be useless to try," Alix stated flatly.  "He used magic to make his escape.  He could be anywhere by now."  She raised her eyebrow at a sudden thought and turned to Carwyn.  "Unless you know how to track him?"

The sorcerer shook his head.

"Then we need to figure out what to do next," Piper said.  Alix nodded at the woman, thinking furiously.  She decided to follow what her gut was telling her was the most pressing concern.

"We need to get to a major settlement," she decided.  "Whoever he was, he went through a lot of trouble to make sure he touched each one of us with whatever that stuff on his cloak was..."

"There's no question as to what it was," Piper interrupted.  "I saw him smash one of those plague flasks on his own chest.  You've all been exposed to it."

"What about you?" Carwyn asked in a choked voice after a moment of horrified silence.  Piper sniffed.

"I wouldn't be much of a scout if I couldn't avoid being seen."

"Fine," Alix said, drawing a deep breath.  "So our situation is we have one person who is free of sickness and five who are going to start keeling over at moment.  I can pray to Sianna to cure one of us.  That's enough to allow us to split up, with Piper going ahead of us to warn the city and one of us to remain behind to act as a guard for the others."  Alix swallowed against the taste of bile in her throat, unsure if it was the beginnings of the disease she had been exposed to or if it was just the situation she was currently in.  The others looked similarly pale in the glow of the dying fire.

"Faringoth, go get the straws.  We're going to draw."