As no other shelter seems near, you finally camp just in front of the misty valley's entrance. Although you have assigned guards, you all fall into light and nervous slumber, until Lodissio, his animalish skin wet and hot from fever, wakes you.
"They're coming" he whispers, scuttling through the knee-high grass. And really, from a distance, angry shouts can be heard. Someone seems to have found the corpses you have so incautiously left on the open field.
You can hear the whining of horses, and feel the ground trembling from the force of running hoofs.
"Get up, quickly!" the satyr hisses.
"We have no choice but to enter the vale. We won't survive another attack!"
With these words, he hands you a rope. "Bind that on your belts and girdles, so we make a human chain. If you don't do what I say, you all will get lost in the mist."
The quevari a heartbeat away, you obey without discussion, and step into the darkness of the fog, Lodissio on the lead, followed by Shana, Alain and Stocker. Path in the middle, after him Nathan and Jarryd. [I haven't forgotten someone, have I?
]The way through the vale is rocky and you stumble often, mainly because Lodissio, although mot even really able to stand on his own feet, stumbles and pulls you down with him.
He hastes on into the mists, and soon you cannot even see your own hands before you eyes. Without orientation and sight, you get slower, and the mist enters you lungs and reaches your hearts. You feel like numb, not sensing where you put your next step to and suddenly the rope doesn't feel so tight any more...
You dream of your younger days, of your youth in your homes and feel the caring touch of your mothers again while you walk and sleep at the same time...
"We, we, we" sings your mother, "we, we, we keep what we take..."
And sleepy from that caressing lullaby, you ask yourselves where your mother got that fangs from... It doesn't even hurt when they cut your flesh... Blood, so cold, like winter wind...
Suddenly, you step out of the mists, and find yourselves on the exit of the vale.
Lodissio, a few feet before you, white like a lichen flower, struggles for to get his breath.
"Now, that was close" he coughs, and you are aghast to see him bleeding from his hands, like if he had been cut with a sharp knife.
"What the hell...!" He points at Shana's direction. As she turns to get free from the rope that is still bound around her waist, she cries in shock: Where Path stood, tied on the rope like everyone else, now stands a complete stranger!
]
)
(I'll just assume I was at the tail end...)