Mirror Story 2
It began with a simple request.
A family of gnomes living in the Feywild were plagued by a beast. They asked for aid from Aelfhram, the Wandering Raven, the half-mortal hunter who was known to help those in need. They told him the beast was a great, hulking thing, like a bear with a long tail and the great jaws of a hyena. And so he lay in wait for it.
The gnomes spoke true, but something was amiss: the beast - an animal of no species Aelfhram had ever heard of - did not behave like a normal beast, nor even like one of the monsters of the Feywild. It stalked and hunted like a man, a man consumed with rage and pain; and it stank of magic. Following its trail, Aelfhram made his way to the Vale of Blue Spires, a minor fey realm ruled by a petty Archfey. There he found signs of another Archfey, the Lord of Ash, a dark and sinister creature of autumn and endings and the dying of the light.
Sensing something deeper was going on here and knowing his own limits, Aelfhram called upon two he could trust: Marzhin Bard, the Blackbird, a master of magical lore; and Svarthauk Shadowblade, warrior and wizard, whose blade was a match for the deadliest of foes. Together, the three of them confronted the beast, Aelfhram and Svarthauk between them managed to subdue it as Marzhiun unwove the spell ensorcelling it, and discovered the truth: it was an eladrin in cursed form, Branh the son of Domh, Lord of the Blue Spires. All signs pointed to a plot by the Lord of Ash, and indeed so Branh believed, but the suspicious Blackfeathers dug deeper.
They found layers within layers of plots. Tagruth Lord of Ash was blameless, but his wife, the Obsidian Lady Jessiva, was not; she it was that provided the Lord's magical implements, thus implicating him. The true culprit was the Lord of Blue Spires himself, who enchanted his own son to frame Tagruth as part of a plot with Tagruth's wife. Angry words were exchanged, words of power spoken by Archfey. Blades were drawn in anger, as Branh, Domh, Tagruth, Jessiva, and Olia the Lady of the Blue Spires accused each other of conspiracy and treachery. In the end, Olia and Branh were the only two to escape unscathed; the Lord and Lady of Ash, along with Lord Domh, laid terrible curses on each other, leaving one crippled in body, one broken in mind, and one trapped in the form of a common wren for a hundred years and a day. The Blue Spires were wounded by the conflict, and the domain of Ash left leaderless.
