As the sun falls we head out to meet with the Bane of Oberon. He is going to escort us to the Palace of Oberon. He is there waiting for us and immediately rips open a portal to the Hedge. He takes us down paths that don't seem to exist and we move through mountains and ice and swamps that seem distant but yet close. I fully understand that distance is an illusion but this is still an odd feeling. Eventually we make it to the outer gates of the Palace. The guards block the entrance and give the Bane of Oberon a dirty look. He just smiles at them and tells us this is as far as he can go and wishes us luck and quickly disappears. The guards allow us in and another set of guards appears to escort us in deeper. Eventually we are brought to two large ornate doors and an elf appears to escort us into the Halls of Oberon. As we are guided in the elf begins to introduce us. Instead of just the usual hey this Cygin, he goes into listing every deed we have ever done. Time moves strangely here but I think a few hours later the elf is done and he brings us in front of Lord Oberon. At least the hours of introduction gave us a good time to check out the throne room. This place was packed with Fae wearing all kinds of expensive and sometimes gaudy looking finery. Lord Oberon himself was dressed not so flashy but obviously in very well tailored robes.
We tell him why we requested the audience. We wanted to see if there was some way to "purchase" these contracts on our heads. We appealed to the fact that the contracts were interfering with our task of trying to save the world and how the Fae had a vested interest in that. Lord Oberon agreed but said regardless one of the Fae was killed and the King of the Autumn Court had the right for vengeance. I then told him about how the Lady of Autumn Sorrows had broken our laws too and we also had the right to do what we did. He seemed particularly interested when I mentioned how she cheated when she tried to take the Padre back. The King of the Autumn Court also didn't seem to be happy with the way Lord Oberon was listening intently to me. Lord Oberon than said in light of this new information that he we would offer us a deal to satisfy the King's right to payment. With the death of the Lady of the Autumn Sorrows and other defections the Fae had an imbalance in their courts. There remained one in our world who needed to be destroyed so that balance would be restored. Lord Oberon tasked us with destroying skin and bones. He said he would put a moratorium on the current contracts while we completed our task. He also said while this task would satisfy payment, he was also doing this as a favor to us and he wanted a favor in return. He wanted us to bring Puck back to him, alive. I mentioned that he wasn't very keen on being captured and taking him alive may be difficult. Lord Oberon understood and had an ornate box brought forward. Inside were cold iron shackles. He said these would drain Puck's power so he could be brought back alive. We thanked the Lord of the Arcadia for seeing us and being a very reasonable guy. On a side note he wanted to express his condolences for the loss of the Lady Abigail, he had a lot of respect for her. He then offered a boon to each of us in her honor. We were all kinda taken aback by that and said we would need to think on that. When we finished our tasks we could talk about it. I then asked if I could attempt to use a magical device in his presence. I was curious as to whether the Phoenix Gate could teleport us across the Hedge and back home. There was a lot of whispering when I pulled the Gate out. Lord Oberon understood what I wanted to do and gave me his permission. Soon we found ourself in the comfort and sanity of Ahava.
The Gate can work through the Hedge, I kinda of suspected it could but now that I knew this was going to come in handy when dealing with Puck. We figured since we had lots of darkness left perhaps we should try to find skin and bones and get that out of the way. So we headed outside of Ahava with a mirror and called him three times.
The mirror surface soon turned into swirling darkness and Danno hopped through it and the rest followed. We found ourselves in a pocket realm filled with mirrors. It was very disorienting and seemed like being in a really bad funhouse. Skin and bones was somewhere in this mess as we could hear him asking why we were here. We told him that his time was over and we had to destroy him. He kinda laughed at us feeling secure in his little realm but I think her was underestimating our cleverness. We started wandering around and breaking mirrors and other things trying to see what works. Skin and bones was obviously watching us so I threw out my aura and commanded him to show himself. He wasn't very happy about that trick and soon showed up in all the mirrors. Taranis started messing with the environment and frosting the mirrors over. We could tell by the sound of skins and bone's voice that he was starting to get worried and soon he started trying to make deals. We told him no deals, we had to destroy him or Lord Oberon would know we tried to re-nig on our deal with him and we weren't about to make an enemy out of the Lord of the Fae. Eventually skin and bones had nowhere to hide and Hector and Danno charged after him. They didn't find anything to dig their claws into as he used a mirror to portal over near Red and I. He immediately went for Red and managed to capture him in some bag. I used the Phoenix Gate to destroy the looping space around us and make the room feel finite which made him very unhappy. Skin and bones wasn't much of a match physically for us and as we began to unravel his realm and his only advantages he started to get beat on. He did manage to nab Taranis in the bag too but he couldn't escape as I looped the space around him and he finally succumbed to his wounds. It was a fairly easy fight compared to some we have had recently. This creature was weakened by his dealings with Donovan and really we did it a favor by putting it out of it's misery. We leave the slowly crumbling pocket realm with his bag of holding and return to Ahava. First task completed. Now we have to find Puck.
Cygin