Ylva Talks to the Fairies, part 5: Wolves of Winter

We have a job to do, and we barely know where to start.  I know, you'd help me if you could.  Mittens!  Spit that out!  That's not nice.

We decided to wait until just after the howl, to give us as much time as possible to investigate.  All our lives we've been told not to go to that part of the forest, and there we were walking right into it.  The wendigo wants war, and the hobgoblins want to supply it, and how do you stop that without making war?

How has learning the path I was born to walk made me feel so lost?

We just have to hope that we're going in the right direction.  Destroying the vile fetishes that the hobgoblins produce has to be the right thing, and destroying the hobgoblins at the same time probably doesn't hurt anything.  And we were able to rescue someone.  A Blood Druid, being dragged off to be turned into fetishes.  We saved his life when we killed the hobgoblins.

We talked.  War is the way of our people, and trying to persuade anyone, let alone the Blood Druids, that we need to set it aside to fight a greater foe, so that we might one day return to our ways, is extraordinarily difficult.  But we have sown the seeds, and arranged to meet at one of the meeting places.

The yetis are dead.  I don't know how or why.  I wondered why they left the mountain early and perhaps now I will never know.  But something has killed them, and left their broken bodies behind.  No, I didn't see them.  I hope I never do.

We need to talk to the Ulthani.  They are more amenable to talk than the Blood Druids.  If they can be swayed, we will be able to present a combined front to the Blood Druids, especially if the Gallian cloth wearers will also stand with us.

What?  Yes, we are a bit of a mess right now.  We met a winter wolf and some wargs on the way back.  It was terrible.  They were too strong for me or my fairy friends.  They were too strong for all of us.  I charmed one, but could not stop the others, and one by one I saw my friends fall under their claws and teeth and ice.  I called upon the spirit of the Great Bear and transformed.  I was strong and fast and powerful, but clumsy and awkward with the claws and teeth I had never used before.  I tried so hard, but could barely scratch them.  It was Turgut, standing beside me, who struck fatal blow after fatal blow.  We owe him our lives.

Thank you, Mittens.  You must know a lot about how to use teeth and claws.  That would be very helpful.  But now we need to rest.