And.....this is the part that's going to hurt. 

Herald Vanyel came upon them, and he sensed a subtle wrong,
And there was some magic working; deeply hidden, yes, but strong.
And it moves and worked in secret, like poison in the vein
Like a poison meant to weaken, this was magic meant to drain.

Herald Vanyel saw the Shadows, and they turned their wiles on him
For one moment even he began to fell his spirit dim--
But he saw their secret evil, and he swore ere he was done
He would stalk and slay these Shadows, and destroy them one by one.

Rebecca experiences four seconds of BLIND PANIC because if this language pops out at her from the Void then even if by luck it is perfectly phonetic she will never be able to learn it in time for grad...

...uation was like half an hour ago.

Okay! He's a good singer. She has no idea why he is singing at them, is it a spell? She climbs down to hear better.

Maybe Orion should try the psychic mal spell and aim it at himself because usually life makes somewhat more sense than this thing that is happening right now.

....Stef is realizing that he's no longer sure what he was hoping for, here, and also everything hurts and probably the world should stop existing literally any minute, now - 

- but he's been throwing his Bardic Gift into the song really hard and he has all of his Bardic senses wide open and maybe it's going to tell him something useful, at least? 

- Shannon is suddenly in tears and she has no idea why! Someone is singing a song at her, apparently, but she doesn't have any idea what the words mean, she's just suddenly feeling a lot of incredibly confusing emotions! 

Raleigh is used to ignoring confusing emotions. He puts his arm around Shannon's shoulder. 

What in all hells is happening right now. 

.......Probably if Jisa were here then she would be able to make sense of this? 

Jisa isn't here, however, and so Treven is going to stay where he is and wait until there's something obvious he should do. 

Herald Vanyel saw the Shadows, and they turned their wiles on him
For one moment even he began to fell his spirit dim--
But he saw their secret evil, and he swore ere he was done
He would stalk and slay these Shadows, and destroy them one by one.

Herald Vanyel, Shadow Stalker, hunted Shadows to their doom
They turned all their powers upon him, turned away from other men
And although they strove to take him, he unwove their web of gloom.
So the Shadows fled his anger, their creator sought again.

Rebecca's increasingly sure this is a spell! She's... not sure she could cast it even once she's learned the language, though, there's something weird about it. Maybe just because it's so long and foreign, but she learned that sixty-verse Hindi monstrosity to sing to her tiara when she was making it.

What's happening. Why is is Shannon suddenly collapsing in tears next to him. Why....is he mysteriously feeling emotions about this song that he doesn't even understand...?

Ow ow ow ow ow ow–

.....All right, fine, apparently none of these people were responsible for killing Vanyel???

(Was that what he had been testing for from the start? Stef...is honestly not sure. And he can't bring himself to care, anymore.)

He stops singing. 

Dara catches up to them. And, for lack of anything else obvious to do, puts her arm around Stef. 

Rebecca... claps??? She considers going over to Shannon but it looks like Raleigh's got it...

What the fuck is going on today. Why is he here instead of trying to carve chunks off Fortitude killing that argonet's babies.

Dara cannot answer his question because, despite the fact that she's trying to read all of the mysterious kids' minds, she has no idea what Orion is thinking about. 

....She kind of wants to give Orion a hug, just because what's in his mind is kind of awful, despite being incomprehensible. 

Vanyel is DEAD.

.....Marius catches his breath from the incredibly horrible Bardic projection, and manages to catch up to them. 

:You should come back to one of the tents: he tells all four of them. :Follow me: 

Raleigh isn't going to argue with this? He's also not delighted about it, though, so he glances at Orion and tries to convey 'this seems like a bad situation and maybe we should figure something else out?' via eyebrows. 

Orion cannot read (Bradley? Riley? No, Riley was some other kid... maybe he is mixing up this kid with Riley and actually his name is something totally different like Jason or Darius or something. He should ask Rebecca discreetly. Do her allies have French. He could ask her in French.) those eyebrow communications. They were going to a tent before, then they got derailed from that, now they are going to the tent again, seems okay.

In hindsight, Raleigh is very aware that he picked the wrong person to try to communicate with via eyebrows! It's just that he's really used to having a leader, and Orion gives off that vibe very loudly. 

....He - will try again by attempting to catch Rebecca's eye and making a face at her. 

Raleigh is making faces at people? Shannon is so confused about everything right now?? And also she's very cold again. 

"Do you have a better idea," Rebecca mutters at Raleigh.

What kind of better idea is he supposed to have. Raleigh has zero ideas. Because he has zero idea what's happening right now. 

"....I just think something seems really wrong here? I -" glance over at the redheaded kid, "- that......something is really wrong here."