A+Discovery+of+Secrets+in+Raven's+Nest

 Wren walked into her mother's personal alchemy room in Raven's Nest, a place where she used to spend a lot of time. Large tables of various burners, tubes, vials, and tools now stood quiet. Nothing was bubbling. A large open rack hung from the ceiling with several bunches of dried herbs, now covered in dust. Large silken webs spanned through a third of the room. The young witch paused, looking around the room with her heart a little heavier. Raven had been gone for too long...

 She sighed and picked up a spool from the shelf and started winding some of the silken strands onto the spool. She was quickly met by a large brown furry spider coming to investigate her tugging on the web. "Stitch!" Wren laughed, suddenly delighted, as the spider crawled onto her open hand, filling her palm.

 She pet the spider's back gently and set it up on her shoulder as she continued to carefully pull and wrap the webbing onto the spool, "What have you and Venom been up to in here? This place is a wreck... has no one been tending your webbing? You have it all tangled up... We can't have you webbing up the entire lab! You might break something important in here. What was Mother thinking? ...leaving you two all unattended." The silken webbing was strong and shiny as she wound it carefully like thread.

 She set down the full spooling and carefully cleaned off the table, setting up to finish up the potions she wanted made. She set up one with tubes and vials and another in her cauldron, keeping a close eye on both as she picked up another spool and started winding more only to be met with the second spider, this one a fiery red and black with bright yellow stripes along her legs. She leapt onto Wren's hand as she was pulling on the webbing and sank her fangs into the meat of the young witch's palm. Wren screamed out in pain, barely resisting the urge to shake the spider free as her hand went numb and a fiery torment flared up her arm.

 The elven woman growled out in pain, "Venom! I am NOT my mother!" as she quickly grabbed a small wax-sealed black bottle from the shelf.  Inali ran to her side, "Wren!" The little fox growled low with her ears laid back and her eyes narrowed. She leapt up and batted the spider off of the witch's hand and chased her across the room until Venom skittered through the webbing and slipped back into her hole in the wall.

 Wren was familiar with the poisonous spider that her mother had had as far back as she could remember. Raven was mostly immune to Venom's pain as she had built up a high tolerance to her poison, but she made special anti-venom potions made from the spider's own secretion for the rare event when her pet decided to bite anyone else.

 Wren stumbled, falling to her knees as the searing pain seemed to spread through her body. Her eyes were bloodshot in a red spider web pattern over the whites of her eyes and even into the edges of the gold. Her vision blurring, she quickly removed the wax seal of the black bottle, tipping it up to her lips. Across the room, down low, a blurred red rune in a spider web pattern could be seen on the wall. The young witch had never noticed this before... it must be something from Venom's poison. She tipped the vial back down from her lips, barely drinking a few drops. She clenched her jaw, closing her eyes against the fire burning within her, forcing herself to stand, but crumpling quickly back to the floor overtaken by the pain.

 Inali came quickly back over to her, "Wren! What are you doing?! Drink the potion! ...before you black out!" The elven woman pointed to the rune across the room. Inali could barely see it, and only because of their magical link. Inali sneezed into her girlish form and helped Wren cross the room. Looking over the rune, there was a small black spider in the center of the red pattern. She had a very vague memory of her mother using something like this on something else long ago when she was a child. She wove a detect secret doors spell over it to help her solve it through her fiery torment. She had her mother and Venom's fiery poison in her blood... she hoped she was right and put a small slit in her finger with a knife, squeezing a couple drops of blood on to the rune. A soft blue glow lit up over the pattern and she heard a click. She pushed the wall in, revealing a door and slipped inside, quickly drinking the potion. The pain subsided, fading back slowly.

 Wren looked around the dusty room of shelves beyond shelves beyond more shelves of old books. She walked to the back, looking at the bindings change slowly as though put up in an order of time. She pulled a thick heavy book off of one of the back shelves. It was bound in a strange scaly blue hide. The pages inside were all handwritten in ink in an older elven dialect. She didn't recognize the handwriting, but it seemed to be documented events like a diary of history from a coven. Wren flipped through the pages to find an entry with her mother's name in it...

 //~ My eldest daughter Raven has given birth to her first child today. We wanted to celebrate with her but alas... it was a boy. S// // he is young to have to kill her first son... and it always seems to be more difficult when it's also their first birth. I considered killing the child myself to spare her, but if she's to be a leader of a coven, then she needs to be able to do it herself. I sent her alone and she has not yet returned. //

// Peregrine Dreamspinner of Raven's Nest ~ //

// ~ The coven is ill at ease today. //// Raven finally returned mid-morning. She is unwell... moody and not herself. A vibrant woman who the others are attached to. Her anger and pain seems to be felt among several of the young witches. This will calm down. It was her first and she's strong. It will only take time. //

// Peregrine Dreamspinner of Raven's Nest ~ //

// ~ We burned and mourned Sister Robin Feathermoon today. She was killed in a battle in the woods. Starling was able to return, carrying her body. Robin leaves behind her only child, a very young daughter named Ibis. //// The child clings to Raven. May they bring each other peace. //

// Peregrine Dreamspinner of Raven's Nest ~ //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">// ~ Raven Dreamspinner //// is leaving the coven today. She is branching out to start her own coven in Rawlinswood Forest. I am proud of her. It is fitting that the child I named my coven after is going off to be it's first branch. //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> //She is still acting strangely and her decision to leave came up abruptly. It seems that Raven is still having difficulty coping with the elimination of her first born, though it has only been a couple of days.//

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">// I fear it's too soon after such an event for her to go off on her own, but she is a driven and ambitious woman, declaring that she will find a way so that no one of her coven has to go through what she did. I'm certain it will only take more time for her to learn to cope with what is necessary in our ways of life. //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">// I find no fault in letting her leave while she is so determined. Raven is well loved and a natural leader, people follow her charming ways easily. Ibis refuses to leave her side and is going with her. She is awfully young for such a travel... may the powers that be watch over them both. //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">// Peregrine Dreamspinner of Raven's Nest ~ //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> The book trembled in Wren's hands as she read entry after entry dated almost two centuries ago. She closed the book, sliding it back into it's place. She was shaking and pale, her mother had a son? and was forced to kill him? Did she really kill him? No wonder she was so adamant about following her ways... so she had indeed been successful and found the discovery she left determined to create... and Ibis... the witch who had adopted Loch... Wren knew the two had always been very close, but she didn't know the story of their leaving together to form a new Raven's Nest.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> Wren rested against one of the bookshelves, her head spinning a little with so many thoughts... and then it hit her... a history written in the hands of her grandmother. Perhaps... she could find out what happened 50 years ago in old Myth Coramanth... She looked at the rows and rows of books that seemed to run in a strange pattern from this point. She selected the next book which was written in her own mother's handwriting. Of course... two histories... for at least a time. The secrets that must lie in these books! She walked along the rows with Inali looking for the right time period.