From my professional journal during the Keep on the Shadowfell missions, final entry:

I have never been as happy to see an overgrown lizard and a demon spawn as when Krova and Zar'za finally caught back up with us. There is just something comforting about having a Cleric nearby, even one like Zar'za.

With the party whole again once more we continued deeper into the ruins.

It wasn't long before we encountered an oddly shaped room full of undead, and the sound of their shuffling feet made me think that I had heard it before, back at the bottom of the stairs near the excavation room. There also came the sound of the weirdest wing beats I had ever heard, slightly reminiscent of a bats but different just the same.

I had a sudden flashback of going unconscious as giant mandibles closed in on me, and I panicked for a second. By the time I had regained composure the rest of the group had sprung into action, and I forced myself to concentrate on the battle at hand. My first arrow found its mark, the song of its flight resonating within me, and I became Retribution as I watched the Zombie fall. Krova became engaged with a Ghoul and several other Zombies, and Zar'za's scythe ran black with rotting flesh and blood. Lars began to send bolts of energy this way and that, and Lodi started to warm up his bow.

As the battle raged on I lost myself in it, no longer able to identify myself as the archer or the bow or the arrow, for I was all three. When the winged monstrosity made itself known as a major threat I switched targets without conscious thought, and my arrow ripped away chunks of its clay-like flesh.

All too soon the battle was over, though, and I again came face to face with the results of battle and of death. It was getting harder and harder to shake off the nagging doubts and confusion that I felt, and I was not finding the answers I suddenly sought.

We searched the room and found a nasty little tunnel going into the darkness, and we volunteered Lodi to find out where. It ended up being the sleeping quarters of the rotting corpses we just killed, and digging through the muck netted a very nice Viscous Short Bow +1 for him. Hey, you have to get some kind of reward for fighting your way through that kind of stench!

We decided to take a brief rest while we considered our next course of action, and Valthren took up his usual place against a column to write in his journal. I decide it was a good time to pull the group to the side to discuss our useless sage, when Lodi noticed Valthren was heading down the next set of stairs with a decidedly unfriendly look to him. The old bastard actually sneered at us, and his loathing was plain for all to see!

This would not do, and we could all tell it wasn't going to be a good thing if he made it to the bottom of the stairs. There was nothing left but to go on the offensive, and so we charged into battle.

I quickly ran into range and fired my bow as the rest of the group hurried to catch up, launching what missiles they had as they came. Krova rushed to block one side of the double doors just as Valthren got to them, and I did a bait and switch to block the other. Zar'za decided her crossbow wasn't doing any good and broke out her wicked scythe, while Lodi scrapped the idea of sending carved pieces of wood downrange and just started using whole trees. My god that little runt was bringing his A game to that fight! Lars put in his definitive resignation as only setting your ex mentor on fire can do, just in case throwing Valthren's cloths into the mud wasn't enough.

When the smoke cleared and the pieces of Sage neatly stacked we discovered that the turncoat had the rib with him the whole time, and that his journal was blank. He was obviously about to sell us out, and I hope he will entertain the Demon Lord Orcus for all eternity, I hear Orcus is fond of failures.

On the plus side Lars and Krova gained a few new trinkets, so it was a double win: We got the short term pleasure of killing the rat bastard, and we get the long term benefit of having a stronger group.

We quietly opened the double doors and were blasted by the stench of blood and death, and I watched in horror as a Priest at the altar across the room casually tossed aside the body of one of the townsmen. Apparently killing the Hobgoblin Chief did not prevent the attack on the village, we had been too late.

The room was large, and broad channels of blood were flowing in arcs from either side of the altar toward us, converging into a grate in the center of the floor and pouring down into the unknown. The evil was so thick in this room it made it difficult to breath, and the bodies discarded haphazardly at the base of the altar was sickening.

Again the fury of battle consumed me and I let fly two arrows, one of which took the Priest in the shoulder as the rest of the group engaged the enemy. Zar'za ran up the middle swinging her scythe after discarding her useless crossbow, and a welcome and familiar sight greeted us as Lars' Flaming Sphere sprang to life near our Cleric.

Krova charged through the broken down double doors to our right in an effort to flank our enemy without disrupting the choke point created by Zar'za and the flaming sphere, and Lodi and I quickly followed only to find that our Paladin had slipped while tyring to jump the river of blood and lay sprawled across the floor. A small shadowy form sprang to take advantage of Krova's helpless condition, but his dagger glanced harmlessly off of Krova's armor.

Lodi and I were more concerned with interrupting the ritual that Lars assured us was in progress, something he said he could feel through The Third Sinister Rib we took from Valthrens pack, and so we left the lizard to his own devices and sent fletched death toward the enemy Priest. At the time I had been impressed with Lars' observation, but in retrospect I recall the Priest yelling about the ritual, which kinda takes away from the effect a bit.

It was about this time that girlish screams emanated behind us, and we knew Lars had visitors. A lot of them, it seemed. Risking a quick glance in his direction I saw that he was holding his own, so I let him be for a moment while I took stock of our situation.

Since killing the priest did not stop the ritual I could only assume we needed to clear out the room and investigate it further, and we were running out of time. Glancing back toward Lars I saw he had the situation well under hand, so I concentrated my effort on the enemy Rogue.

The battle went quickly from there and everyone once again accounted well for themselves, although I was beginning to feel the effects of my personal demons, and my accuracy began to waver. Lodi was starting to show signs of fatigue, too, and his wicked bow fired fewer trees.

Zar'za, on the other hand, was just getting started. I found her standing in a pile of bodies, blood hanging off of her fearsome scythe in strings. From the burn marks all over the floors, walls, and corpses I could tell Lars had been quite busy as well. Even Krova had managed to get himself upright long enough to account for a few corpses.

We searched the room and found to our dismay that the ritual was actually going on below us, and the only way down was through the grate. Looking through it we saw the blood running down chains to drip off into a pool far below us, leaving us with the unappealing choices of jumping into the blood or climbing down the slick chains. We opted for plan C and tied off our ropes so we could climb down them instead. I followed Krova down on his because I didn't want to ruin my silk rope, as expensive as that stuff is!

As we dropped off the ropes into the pool of blood we knew our worst fears were realized: the Demon Lord Orcas was beginning his entrance into our realm, and wasn't all that pleased that we were crashing his party.

The guy at the altar on the dais across the room seemed to be much happier about it, and for some reason that wasn't much of a comfort either. He said he was quite pleased we brought the rib to him, since his lackey Valthren wasn't competent enough to do it himself. It turns out this guy, Kinslayers son it appears, had promised Valthren eternal life or some such, and the idiot believed him.

It does make me wonder why Valthren bothered to save me earlier, though, I am told I survived the spider only because he pulled me out of harms way. If he was supposed to bring the rib to this guy wouldn't he have had free passage? It certainly looked like he believed it when we headed for the doors of the altar room above. Perhaps even fools know caution sometimes.

A quick survey of the room showed the altar against the wall in front of us, a portal and a spell circle to the right, and various undead scattered about the room. Two of those undead guarded the steps up to the altar where K had been chanting from a book in his effort to summon Orcus.

Having little choice and less time, we charged into combat. Or at least, everyone else did. I found the sight of so much blood and death unnerving, and the image of spider mandibles crunching down on me chilled me to the bone. I tried to shake the feeling off but was only partially successful, and I was slow to join my companions.

K grabbed an amulet at his chest and teleported to the summoning circle just as Lars sent bolts of energy into the book he had been reading. Krova charged K while Zar'za engaged the skeleton guards approaching from the steps of the dais. Since K had screamed when the book was damaged we surmised that it had to go, and Lodi launched himself after it.

As I ran to assist Krova we noticed that the wounds we had inflicted on K healed themselves, obviously from some connection to the spell circle. It didn't even seem to matter when Lodi threw the book into a flaming brazier, so our hunch must have been wrong there too.

Zar'za and Lars now had their hands full dealing with the undead in the room, because the third undead creature kept reanimating the skeletons as quickly as they fell.

The battle quickly became one of attrition, we were beginning to tire. Lodi was no longer launching trees, and K seemed to heal what little damage the arrows dealt him. At one point Krova got too close to the portal and Orcas himself attacked him with tentacles that attempted to drag him through, but Krova's strength proved more than a match and he quickly broke free of them.

It was a problem I myself had to face not long after, and Lodi had to rescue me. That alone should describe quite clearly how bad off I was mentally, and having a second close call so soon threatened to push me over the edge of sanity. I was at my breaking point, a fact not at all helped by the knowledge that being drug through the portal would have been a fate far worse than mere death. To add to my deteriorating mental state, I barely resisted the necrotic affliction K infused me with before it killed me even as Lodi worked to save me from the demon lord.

In plain terms, I was worse than unhelpful in that combat, I was a liability. When Lodi came to save me he was attacked by the tentacles that had been dragging my unconscious form, and he barely dodged them in time to avoid the same predicament.

It wasn't that I was totally useless, I did manage to accomplish a few things, and I did draw some of K's blood. I even managed to move him out of his spell circle once, and my desperate barrage of shuriken seemed to turn the tide toward the end of the battle, but those were almost accidental benefits. Had I performed like I should have, had my mental state been stable, this would have been a very different battle. As it was we triumphed only because the others accounted so very well for themselves.

Zar'za harvested skeleton after skeleton, taking down first one and then the other in her effort to kill them and keep them killed. Lars flung bolts of fire and energy into all three undead, scorching bones and blasting them apart, but to no avail at first. It wasn't until I blinded the enemy that they finally put them down and kept them down.

Krova, meanwhile, had switched from trying to carve K up to trying to heal him. It seemed like a very odd thing to do to me, but I was having enough trouble just trying not to go insane. Lodi's attention was split between trying to keep me alive and trying to kill K, a job he did with admirable precision.

Once we were all able to concentrate on K as a group the fight went much faster, and we were able to produce more damage per unit time than he could heal. It was a hard fought battle, but he eventually fell lifeless at our feet. The moment the light faded from his eyes we heard an unholy roar as Orcas made a futile grab for K's body just before the portal closed up, leaving a blank wall in its place.

Tired, bruised, and bloodied we made our way back out of the ruins and back to a decimated Winterhaven. The Hobgobblin raid had been devastatingly effective, and the rabble that was left of the ruined town was lead by the Dwarvin blacksmith. The bodies of many familiar faces were piled high, Lord Pendrag among them.

Not having the energy to go on for the day we settled in to get what rest and respite that we could.

For myself, I have been thinking hard since closing the portal on Orcas, and I have come to a fundamental conclusion: I value my life, and I want to live it. I have come to see it as being far more precious to me than I ever thought, and I begin to wonder how my race can be so indifferent to it. I refuse to live the way they do, and the way they have taught me to be. The trick will be figuring out how to be true to myself at the same time, because I do love adventure. What worth life, if it is to cower behind locked doors, never coming out to savor it?

I have decided that I must rediscover myself in light of what I now know. I must again seek the experiences of my earlier years, but with wiser eyes. I know that sounds odd coming from a youth of less than 150 years, but not all wisdom comes from age, much comes from experience.

No more will I approach each day like it is one of an infinite span, and instead I will treat each like my last. No more will I be content to take the opportunities presented in battle, from now on I will make my own. No more will I be the prey.

Let this be a final warning to all, where once I was content to lay in ambush, The Wolf in the Shadows has learned to hunt!