4. Silvershield Estate

Dieter hearing the crash of the door and Aiwë’s "authority" decides to make more executive decisions. He runs into Stella causing both of them to crash through the window.

Stella screams as Dieter tackles her through the window. "Bite!" Stella yells commands in druidic, managing to maintain the spell.

Hide, but no sudden movements! Tell me what you see if it draws blood! she commands Noctalia telepathically, hoping to take advantage of the confusion.

"Give it up, you two!" Aiwë shouts. "This was never our fight!" She grunts as she takes the snake's bite on one of her mallets, preventing any injury. "You!" she calls to one of the soldiers. "Help me get this thing off."

Still on the ground, Stella's mind races with confusion. She snatches up her tattered tome and hooks it onto her belt, barely noticing the slices of glass on her face and hands.

Was it possible it was Aiwë? It seemed so unlikely. The different nicknames. Her refusal to cut her arm when she had previously sliced it without a second thought. Working with the Flaming Fists behind their backs? It made no sense.

But was there another way to prove whether Aiwë was herself? She didn't have Moonbeam prepared...

How far back could doppelganger memory-stealing go? If she knew that, she would have tried to ask Aiwë a question or make a false statement about some event that occurred...

How much time did she have before poison set in? She could shapechange to suspend the poison in her body...if there was poison.

How would they complete the mission? Stars, snapple gobs, frostbites, what was happening?!

She looks to Dieter, icy blue panic finally starting to rise in her eye-stars, starting to extinguish the decisive and collected green ones.

Having not been given another order, the snake continues to try to bite Aiwë.

Aiwë hisses with anger as the snake's teeth sink into her arm. The area around the wound turns a sickly gray colour.

"Auroth hit." Stella hisses to Dieter. "Noctalia sees gray skin around the bite. Almost certainly a doppelganger...But what do we do?!" She asks, breathing becoming labored, but making sure not to make any sudden moves.

"Shrink!" Dieter orders. He puts his plate armour between Stella and the crossbows.

Stella needed to get away whether he did or not.

Stella squints, confused, but trusts Dieter here. Her body dissolving into stars that condense into a constellation of a spider and solidifies.

Dieter grunts in pain as the crossbow bolts slam into him.

He runs for the wall and tries to scale it.

Wounded with various bolts sticking out of him he spits a glob of blood at the fists. Then vanishes

"What is he doing?" Stella wonders from down below as Dieter charges away. Perhaps giving her a distraction? Yes, that must be it. That gave her some clear options.

She could flee, summon Noctalia, and ride her around with a Locate Object to find the real Aiwë...But Aldous. And Duke Silvershield. She didn't want to risk lose track of them too. And if an opportunity for escape arose, she could help them take it.

And there were so many unknowns...so that meant she needed more information.

While the guards are distracted, Stella crawls her spidery way back up to the window to listen in. Tell me when they're not looking at the window, Stella tells Noctalia. When the moment is right, she tries to sneak her way in and over to Aldous.

Inside the Silvershield manor, the soldiers have Entar and Aldous bound. Aiwe, bearing some wounds from the snake (now disappeared), orders the soldiers to take the Silvershields away.

"Take the Duke and his son to Wyrm's Rock! The rest of you, find the other two. Stella will most likely have used druidic magic to disguise herself as something small, like a rat or a spider. Dieter's probably hiding in a tree or on a roof outside the estate. Go!"

Hiding in a nearby tree Dieter’s mind is racing. Every possibility is going through his mind. He has to assume that Aiwë’s memories have been compromised…which meant He was compromised.

He needed to become another person. He needed to become their worst nightmare.

He also needed to get out of this tree.

Wyrm's Rock...why there?
Stella freezes. The doppelganger was extremely skilled. Leveraging Aiwë's memories effectively. Would they search for her outside or inside? She finds herself following her spider's instincts and crawls inside, behind a curtain. Enclosed was safer.

As she climbs up the curtain, she forces her mind into motion—but not a panicked one. She could do this. She had to do this.

Would the Flaming Fists stop if they realized the doppelgangerwas an imposter? How many of them were also doppelgangers? Or was it just Aiwë? It was possible that the Flaming Fists weren't corrupt at all—Scar was one of the best, after all—perhaps 'Aiwë' just told them a story to get them here.

But...no, that would have been far to fast. It hadn't even been a half hour since Koveras fled.

Stella felt a hint of rage. She wanted to leap out, summon a polar bear, and start flinging fireballs.

But no...Information. She needed more information.

Duke Jannath...perhaps she would know what to do. Unless the Fists had arrested her too? It was a better bet than risking getting skewered by a dozen crossbow bolts...First she needed to find Dieter. Give him one of the invisibility potions. She needed somewhere to revert—and fast.

Stella waits for a several seconds to see if the room clears, seeing through Noctalia's eyes from her hiding place. If it didn't, was there a secret passage she could get into, like the one in the study? No, it didn't seem like it. If the doppelganger didn't leave with the rest of the fists, she'd have to climb to the second story and revert there.

"Oh, snapple gobs..."

"To me!" Stella telepathically calls to Noctalia. "We're going to the roof!" She scrambles to her tiny feet and leaps onto the owl's talon as the owl swoops down, then heads out the window.

So this doppelganger was their boss...That probably meant they were in on the ruse.