Green Pass Campaign IV: Interlude

After magically sealing the underworld rift, the surface of the lake already no longer seems to boil and fume and the malign fog above the surface of the water seems to lessen.

Over the next few hours the clouds around you lift and dissipate, revealing skeletal trees that seem to sag as though wilted by age. Portions of the bark are falling away, leaving behind patches of swollen mushy pulp that looks more like raw meat than wood. Residual beads of red condensation drip from withered leaves. The forest is still deathly still, with no bird calls or insect noises. At least the quiet provides some comfort that camping here for the night will be uneventful. You recover your spells and sleep well, the curse of this place having grown less oppressive for the moment.

After about a few hours of waiting, the formerly indistinct boundary between day and night has become meaningful. The sky is grayed by dawn, but as the sun rises, the coloration is badly wrong. Looking diagonally across the lake you can see the loading docks on the east shore, about a quarter mile from Centerpost, where a few small river boats are moored. The shore itself is deserted, but above the mist-choked horizon, you can see a terrible sight.

Low to the ground, lower than the mountain peaks would be, there is a swirling vortex of cloud. The cloud is fed from below by two enormous geysers of churning colored fluid that seem to be forced upward under great pressure. One is orange fringed in black, like cooling magma. The other is green with pulsing veins of purple wrapping around it like climbing vines. Rather than falling back to earth, the geysers seem to be feeding their churning liquid into the cloud like the base of an upside-down waterfall.

This actually exists! (It's Saturn's polar cyclone.)

The cloud itself is a spiral that draws in both colors like a tornado about to form. At the cloud's center is a dark throbbing egg of something that glistens like wet rubber, spinning rapidly as it hovers in the air a quarter-mile above the ground. Tongues of colored lightning, orange and green, descend from the egg to strike the ground at the known location of Centerpost. A hot wind is blowing outward from the direction of the vortex that was not present the day before. Just in the last few minutes, it has notably risen in intensity. The leaves now tremble enough to shed their drops, and a thin rain of ferric-smelling blood is drizzling under the forest canopy.

There is a far-off wailing on the wind, nearly imperceptible at first but growing louder like a chorus being joined by many voices. The surface of the lake answers the wailing with the wisps of fresh fumes, and begins to sputter with bubbles again.