The Feywild is NOT a Friend
Keyleth and nature were friends. Heck, she regularly had conversations with a tree any they called each other “Boo.” So yes, she and nature got along perfectly fine, at least they did on the Prime Material plain. In the Feywild, however, the plants had rules that Keyleth didn’t know, and she kept on breaking them. Like for instance now, when she tripped over a mushroom that started spraying thick, purple fumes. She did her best to get out of the way, only to end up hitting someone behind her, knocking them both to the ground.
The purple fog burned her eyes and throat and nose. She couldn’t tell which was was up or down, let alone where the other members of her party were. She could hear at least two of them though, just beyond the haze of the fog, coughing alongside her. When the area finally cleared she could see two piles of cloaks that she immediately recognized as Vex and Vax’s. She scrambled to her feet and started to move towards them, that is, until her foot got stuck in her skirt and she fell face-first to the forest floor.
“What the-“ she started, looking down to her skirt. The flowing green fabric which usually reached to her knees dragged on the ground now. Immediately she looked at her hands. Sure enough, where once were long, lithe fingers, now were the short and chubby fingers of a child. Her voice was slide pitched higher than normal.
Before she could start to worry about it, though, groans came from the piles next to her. One small half-elven head popped up, followed quickly by another. The three small children stared at each other for a moment before simultaneously screaming.
“Keyleth! What did you do,” Vex yelled, her Syngorn accent replaced with a slight speech impediment. “Oh no,” she exclaimed,” clapping her hands over her mouth.
Vax looked at her and started laughing. “I forgot your little speech problem,” he teased, lacking his Syngorn accent as well.
“You shut up! It’s not a pwobwem,” Vex shouted, bouncing a little in her rage.
Keyleth just sat on the ground and started crying. The twins looked over at her.
They stopped fighting long enough to turn and look at her. “Keyleth, what’s wrong,” Vex asked, struggling to stand up in the massive pile of cloak around her.
“It’s all my fault,” the tiny red-head tried to explain between sobs. “I’ve been messing up at every turn since we got here.”
Vax stood up. “Well, you’re not wrong,” he began, balking only after his sister glared at him. “ I mean, yes, you’ve been messing up, Kiki. But the rest of us mess up all the time too,” he said, trying to recover, one of his tiny hands in his now light brown hair. He looked back to Vex for encouragement.
“Yeah!” she pipped up. “Do you remember when this one kept putting his life in danger? The Briarwoods, the whole time we were in Whitestone, having Scanlan dimension door them into the stomach of a dragon…” she listed.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t turn this into a rag on Vax time.”
Keyleth giggled at the two of them, before sniffling a little. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Vex beamed. “Of course I am, I’m a Baroness now.” An awkward silence hung over them as they sat just taking in the woods. “So, I wonder where Grog and Scanlan and Percy are.”
Three small heads scanned the around around them. As if sensing their growing fear, the trees seemed to lean in, the sky darkened and a flock of birds breaking the canopy caused them all to jump.
“Should we go look for them?” Vex asked, his voice barely above a whisper, as he inched closer to the girls. He took a dagger out of his belt, which had shrunk in size, as most of their enchanted armors did. The dagger however, had not shrunk, and was now nearly the size of a short sword in his miniaturized form. Vex shivered and pooled the two cloaks around them.
“I’m scared,” Keyleth whispered.
A loud groan of trees and snaps of twigs behind them cause the group to jump. They turned in unison as Vex pulled another dagger from her brother’s belt. Her bow and quiver lay next to them, useless since she was now as tall as the arrows. Keyleth cowered behind them as the sound grew louder.
A large man with blue-grey skin covered in intricate tattoos burst through the trees. A small gnomish man with dark brown hair sat on his shoulders, and a human behind them in a dark navy coat and a bird-shaped mask.
Vex immediately dropped the dagger and ran towards her friends, tears streaming down her face.