A corrupted lightning dragon thrashes atop a snowy mountain peak as Gemnar, enlarged into giant form, forces its shattered jaws open from the inside. Crackling blue lightning arcs around them. Boris fires crossbow bolts from a rocky ledge, Kyet scrambles back up the cliff after falling, and stormclouds curl above the ritual hut.
On a windy mountaintop, Sundr stands firm with radiant golden light flowing from him as he projects dancing, shifting orbs of luminescence to hypnotize a second lightning dragon. The massive beast hovers in midair, mesmerized. Snow and lightning swirl dramatically around them.
The magic carpet hovers near the ritual hut as Sundr and Gemnar look down at the valleys below, planning simultaneous strikes—three glowing ward-locations marked by beams of colored light. The rising moon casts silvery light across the mountains.
Boris, Kyet, Haru, and Turkasa materialize in the wrong forest clearing—no blue shimmering hut in sight. Everyone looks confused or annoyed. Haru’s mammoth snorts frost. Boris’s owl circles above searching for landmarks. The colors and trees look almost right… but not quite.
On a sheet of cracked ice, a colossal skeletal roc erupts upward, frost and bones exploding into the air. Boris hovers above with magical energy lifting him, holding a flask of oil and a glowing fireball bead. Kyet braces on the ice, readying a strike.
Boris drops a cascade of oil from the sky, then hurls a blazing fireball downward. The roc skeleton is engulfed in a brilliant inferno—orange and blue flame, the shockwave rippling through the frozen lake. Wide cinematic framing, dramatic lighting.
At a frost-rimmed doorway, blue kobold Haru stands in perfect defensive posture, mammoth behind him, AC impossibly high. Five serpentine heads burst from the icy water, snapping—but every strike misses as Haru’s blade flickers with expert parries.
At the Lind Valley hut, Kiet channels radiant and storm energy through the warding circle. Runes ignite, the power bends off its usual Pazuzu conduit and instead arcs toward the mushroom battle at Blackroot. Trees tremble, distant mushroom silhouettes glow with surging strength.
A towering shadowed figure—Mother—floats down over the mountain peak, spectral claws extended. Lightning splits the sky. Gemnar, still huge, stands defiantly; Sundr draws on Aegis energy, golden light pushing back against her suffocating darkness.
The sun streaks unnaturally fast across the sky, day collapsing into dusk. Long shadows stretch over the snowy valleys as the party races between ward locations—mammoth charging, carpet swooping, owl flying ahead. A sense of cosmic urgency.