The party travels from here up into the hills, planning to take a small road from one river valley to the next one up, and thus avoid needing to retrace their steps back down to the main river. This will save a few days travel, and moreover, it'll be interesting. The villages they're travelling through now are separated by stretches of wind-swept moorland, or little forests tucked away in small valleys and hollows where the weather is less harsh, and the party has to stay in barns or spare bedrooms rather than proper inns. Still, they're keeping ahead of the pace they need to set in order to make it to the mountains before winter sets in.

Eventually, they arrive in a small village, no more than a dozen houses set along the road around a manor, whose solid stone construction looks impressive only by comparison to the mud-brick of the other houses, and one of the many dwarf peasants of the region will approach them. 

"Excuse me Ma'am, but you are adventurers, correct?" 

"Yes," says Sida with absolute confidence. Does it matter that they're almost completely inexperienced? Of course not.

"Ah, well, that's good then. We've had a bit of trouble, see. Some folks have set up out near our shrine to the Green God, they have some sort of ritual planned and threw fire at us the last couple of times we went over there. If you could go deal with that, we'd be very grateful, and we could scrape together a nice reward for you, I'm sure." 

"Throwing fire isn't even that hard... Tarka, you think we can handle this?"

"Quite possibly so. We ought to take a look."

"Let's do it then! After we park the wagon."

"Finally, something interesting! Let's go!" 

(Dyva will make sure the wagon is securely parked and so forth, properly locked up. She's not that worried, but Ossa will be coming with them, rather than staying with the wagon as he usually does)

They are directed to take a goat-track out of town, past some gardens, and some flocks of surly-looking goats, to a place where a sturdy wooden fence separates the moor from a dark and overgrown patch of forest. The path continues into the woods; people not as short as dwarves will find that they have to duck under a number of vines and branches along the way. 

Tarka leads the way, avoiding all the branches and making very little noise.

Sida follows a short way behind him, crouching low to the ground in a partially-successful effort to avoid hitting the branches and making noise.

Dyva will follow carefully, only ceasing to natter about the botany of the forest when prompted by her more-stealthy friends. 

Ossa will walk into several branches, and prove that he's entirely unsuited to quieting the clanking of his armour. 

"Does Ossa have a quiet setting? Or are we just doomed in that department?"

"... Unfortunately, no, the body wasn't any good at stealth and honestly stealth in heavy metal armour is a doomed endeavour even for experts." 

"I should have considered this."

"Ossa is probably sufficiently useful in combat that it is not worth leaving him behind. The next best thing to stealth is speed, so I suppose we should just jog to the shrine."

"That makes sense, if we're only expecting a single fight." 

"I do not know what we should expect, but as long as we avoid tiring ourselves out, I think it is desirable to come in fast and disorient any enemies. In this terrain, they will not see us coming from very far."

"Okay. Let's go, then!"

Moving at pace only increases the number of accidental collisions with tree-branches that occur, but people can figure things out and get moving. After half an hour of moving at a decent clip, the path they're on opens out into a clearing, a cathedral of trees where sunlight filters through the arches of tree-branches meeting high above to frame a place of natural beauty. At the centre of the clearing, is a large monolith, twice the size of a human, engraved with runes of classical dwarven script. This is the shrine that they were told to expect. 

This is not all that is in the clearing; around the monolith a circle, with accompanying runes, has been carved into the dirt and filled with ash, that glows a sickly green colour. Inside the circle is a giant snake, with jewel-green scales and a bright red jewel in it's forehead to match its eyes, maybe 30ft long and 2ft wide, writhing in pain of an unknown cause. A elf man and a raptoran woman are peering at the circle, discussing something, while a third person, a human, is keeping watch over the path the party approaches from. They give a shout:

"Hey! Who're you!" 

It's possible that the villager they spoke to was lying to them, and these people are here on perfectly innocuous business. But it sure looks like they're doing magic to the shrine and torturing this snake, which seems bad. She throws a fireball at them.

"You may surrender at any time!"

[NEGOTIATION MAY PROVE USEFUL—]

Oh, okay then. Tarka runs forward to attack the nearest target.

One of the druids will go down flailing with a face full of fire! Another will say a word of power, and the forest reaches out to grab the party, and also their unfortunate guard, just before Tarka reaches them. That guard does their best to ignore the mess of vines they're tangled up in, and instead does something to make their walking stick grow a mess of vicious-looking thorns. 

Ossa struggles and rattles, but is held fast. 

Dyva will curse and try to throw fire, and fail, her hands to well-bound to make the right motions.