“He can’t cast spells if he can’t speak or move his hands,” Coran offered as he drew a length of rope and a piece of cloth from his pack. Kneeling-down, he gaged him and bond his hands together behind his back in such a way that he could not even move his fingers, a trick taught to him by a sorcerer he’d met some time ago, while the badly injured wizard spat curses and threats, which were little more than incoherent growls through the gag, then he stood aside to allow Taenya to cast a healing spell, beseeching Eilistraee to save the blasphemous drow, taunting him; “Your glad to have a doxy of the Dark Maiden around now, aren’t you? A cleric of Lolth or Vhaeraun would let you die just for being such a fool!” Meanwhile, Willow turned Storm back to the edge of the road, pulling a horn from her saddlebags and sounding a warning call while facing Mistledale, hoping that a militia patrol might be within earshot, despite the nearest post in Treesedge being nearly a day’s travel. “What about the rest?” the paladin asked when she returned to the others, scanning the field of battle in search of any movement, then letting her eyes settle on the damaged monolith with a heavy sigh. “They are beyond help,” Taenya confessed regretfully, having already checked for any signs of life, “but it doesn’t seem right to leave them… or burn them… here. This place is sacred to both elves and men.” “I don’t suppose you have a clever solution to that dilemma,” Willow inquired skeptically, not expecting a reply. “Actually… I do, but you’re not going to like it,” Coran replied with a quirky grin, reaching out to stroke Storm’s neck, he added; “and neither is he.” Twilight had already faded to night when the weary travelers reach Treesedge; little more than a militia post and caravan stop just within the boundary of Mistledale, as the name implied, right on the edge of the forest. The guards at the gate of the towering wooden palisade recognized Willow as a captain of the Riders and, despite her company, allowed them entry with little challenge, as she lead Taenya, Coran, the captured drow wizard and Storm, who drug a roughly crafted litter of heavy branches piled with the bodies of the fallen drow, into the compound. “I know… it was a terribly indignant thing to ask of you,” she comforted the celestial mount as she freed him of his burden, then took down her saddlebags and shield, before dismissing him with an affectionate rub on his forehead; “Go on boy… I promise you will not have to do anything like this ever again!” With a snickering snort, that sounded a great deal like a humorless laugh, he vanished, much to the surprise of the militia men who had gathered around the bizarre scene. “What in the name of the Tyr, the Even-Handed is going on here!” came a roar from behind the line of militiamen that encircled the strange group, many of whom leaped aside to allow the hulking armored figure to pass, before he plowed them over. “Kaulen… I can explain,” Willow confronted the advancing juggernaut before he reached the others. Although, as a captain of the Riders, she technically outranked the militia post commander, she knew things would go much better if she placated the veteran warrior. “You’d damn well better!” he snarled, his eyes roaming from the beautiful paladin, to the pile of drow corpses on the makeshift litter, to the bond drow wizard who had sunk to his knees before Coran, who had a firm grip on his collar, and finally lighting on Taenya, who didn’t seem intimidated in the least by the fact that she was surrounded by armed militiamen, before snapping back to Willow with an angry sneer.