The ganglion of youngsters were already paring away from the myth-weaving druid, to the fruitful friction of the Halfling's viol, a melodious solo of Bhusundan intimacy. Her comforting music etched harmony into the humid void, soothing the tumor of adolescents. About-facing, the hereditary prospects of Linan and Cuth were the last to creep to Parum, also coveting ontological reassurance of a guaranteed future beyond this dark faction, leaving the elder, alone with his overbearing, disillusioned tree. Torus likewise suffered from this capriciousness of youth, many decades ago. His fickle admiration crumbled progressively as he became more and more accustomed to the frivolity of pirated wares, sluggishly reaching a nirvana of exhausted mercantilism. 

[i][color=00aeef]“Scurry to the edge of the song, little ones. Forget not that the earth delights to caress your bare feet and the breeze yearns to play with your hair.”[/color][/i] The wrinkled glee mirroring his Cheshire smirk, beaming from earring to earring.

Torus longed, too, for enlightened companionship, but was paradoxically vexed with Xaron’s perpetual presence. She was largely the schismatic source of his mental prowess as well as his impending hamartia, a silent vow between souls, simultaneously, spiritually, feeding and starving one another. It remained an incessant mental mutiny, a seed of discontent sprouting into a garroting vine. The murmuring tendrils ostracized him from any lasting camaraderie, lest his greatest fear be realized.  That one day, Xaron’s intermittent insurgences would invariably overwhelm the throne of his paranoid psyche, transforming his ego into a demesne of greed and lust, lapsing into a graveyard spiral of depravity.

However, prayer and magic always seemed to quell the malignancy of his divided mind. 

The rowdy emotions were disturbed by his programmed sleeve searching for a book encased in peppered Minotaur hide. His pursed lips hummed along, often missing the time and tune of the kender’s, as he flipped through the labyrinth of pages, inked almost entirely in sylvan script. Over the years, he was able to intuitively decipher only one spell. 

An acquainted ritual of mystical rapport.

Herbs, incense and a brass brazier quickly gathered underneath a flint, fire steel and tinder ebbed in light oil. A cacophony of sparks spurred; Torus muttered as he rose and waved the pillars of smoke into a pulsating helix with his baton, conducting a makeshift orchestra of Apollyon prophecy. His musings wondered despite the emanating words and painted motions, subconsciously converging on Oghma and the tragedy of his whispering children, while the bard’s composition irked into his supplication. 

Soon, the familiar became manifest.

An ashen raven ejected into the smolder. Mimicking an oracle, the druid breathed the Coronis fumes and subsequently wept tears of soot, to the living icon of Huginn and Muninn, fatefully mingling memory with thought. His glare became mesmerized by the Mórríganian crow, hovering backwards atop his silver staff.

Time stood still. It cackled at the golden-eyed warrior, [b][color=ed1c24]“They will find you.”[/color][/b]

The chill down the senior’s decrepit vertebral column was interrupted by an uproar amongst men and fowl alike.  Its fretful screeching vacillated to match the fearful message of the dragon’s strike, signified by the glow and crash on the battlements.

No longer equivocating, the druid leaning heavily on the alcove’s left-sided partition, preached to the champion of the Ferine. [i][color=00aeef]“To gaze back upon one’s days in satisfaction is to live twice.”[/color][/i] He tossed a plumed goodberry to the bird, a final Śrāddha before allowing the smut to encroach his sclera, gurgling into cobbled cataracts. Torus closed the puzzling tome of Elvish calligraphy in anticipation; his irises were shortly enveloped by the skulking slime, the cosmic eyelids shortly shutting the gaps to his tainted consciousness only to erect telepathically as earnest pupils above a grinding beak.

The white-fanged cane glimmered as wings fluttered against the current of fleeing families, to the nearest parapet, hooting at the hopeful paladin, [color=00aeef][i]“Quickly now. We must not tarry!”[/i][/color] 

[hider=Mechanics]

During intermission:
Find Familiar was cast. Spell Slots left 1/2.

After the break:
As a bonus action, Shillelagh was cast.
As an action, Torus chooses to see/hear through the raven and fly (50 feet) to the keep’s barricade, as reconnaissance.

His eyes appear not closed but darkened, as if by heavy mascara, as he rests on one of the walls, relying on the glowing staff for support, while pocketing the spell book with his other hand.

HP: 7/7
[/hider]