Happily, the searchers were unable to discover our hiding place, thanks to Areon’s skill. Sadly, I buried Beowulf and his wolf at dawn. I hope they’ve found peace. Gral, too, seems to be long gone. While I sat down to meditate and pray (especially for some divine guidance), the others were surprised to see a party of humans, apparently headed for the fortress! They quickly agreed to join our party for the safety in numbers, and waited while I cast my divination spell. I asked where to find the silver tiger statue, and got this response:

”Beyond the path of water, resting with the dead, that seeks the living”

Hmm. Well, that seemed to point us to the other side of the bridge, anyway! Healed and refreshed, we headed down to the fortress, this time in daylight. Ebin is a human fighter, and I am ashamed to say that I did not catch the names of the others, only that they are caravan guards. They must be looking for some of the stolen cargo. We tried the locked front door, than walked all about the fortress on our side of the river. Theona found a possible stairwell, much blocked with stones, and we set to clearing them as quietly as possible (though not enough for Areon, who was nervous and cursing most of the day). Once there was a small gap, Tyan sent his rat familiar inside to take a look around. I’m glad he did - there were two hill giants waiting for us!

I thought we should have one person continue to move rocks as a decoy, while the others looked for a different way inside, but we eventually agreed to move to the other side of the river and try to get inside the fortress where the divination seemed to lead. Tyan was able to levitate everyone, and I was able to pull them over, using a rope and a fly spell. Ebin was especially nervous; I wonder if he can swim? An hour of searching on the new rooftop showed us another blocked-up stairwell. We set to clearing it while Tyan used a detect magic spell to look “through” the roof, eventually pointing out an especially “glowy” spot under the southwest corner. We’ll have to keep that in mind! Meanwhile, his poor familiar tried sneaking down the stairwell, but ended up teleported to a cell somewhere else in the building!

Now that we’d set off a trap for sure, Tyan decided to enter the building by an unexpected route. He walked to the middle of the roof, and set off nine shatter charges from a wand right into the stone! Of course, this got the attention of everything on both sides of the fortress; I saw several hobgoblins, two cats with six legs and tentacles, a green-skinned ogre, and two hill giants (surprise!) coming over the bridge and climbing onto the roof with us… or throwing rocks onto the roof at us! Tyan, too, took one look into the hole he’d made in the roof and moved away swearing, which I took to mean it wasn’t much of an escape route.

The battle was long and hard. We fought with spells and weapons and luck, and barely made it. Ebin was the only member of his party to survive! All the evil creatures were killed, except for one hill giant that fled north. I hope we get a little time to finish this search before it brings back more friends!