... Well that's very strange, but she's not exactly going to interrogate the strange adventurer on her backstory. Instead she'll go into the woods and see about cleaning up the mess other people have made. At least this time it's nice and physical instead of nebulous and social. There will not be any goblins able to find them on her watch.

When she returns to the gate she will see the mess very neatly on its way to being handled, with the bodies in a pile, the scattered arrows and broken-off pieces of armour neatly collected, and the blood and viscera buried well enough to pass at least a second inspection.

Oh good! That's so helpful. She'll get to assisting with handling the mess in companionable silence, then. She can help put back some of the foliage, or grow something to cover up more obvious bits of battle scarring.

"... is it bad that my first instinct is to feed them to the animals," she muses, of the corpses. "I could set them on fire, but the smell and smoke might be too obvious."

"...has it not happened before? Dead bodies to get rid of."

"Not of... things attacking us directly, that then need to be hidden? In the time that I've been here, anyway. Our typical methodology is to avoid being attacked in the first place, and kill only what needs to be killed, and use that well and respectfully. But... eh. It's probably fine to feed them to the animals. Not wasting nature's bounty, and all."

She sounds like she's quoting someone else, with a little bit of irony.

"What do you do when your own people must be buried?"

"In the soil of the grove, around the Idol of Silvanus, to continue to be part of the Circle even after their souls have left us. But that would be... inappropriate for goblins. Because, you know. Burying the bodies of our slaughtered enemies in the center of our Circle. Kind of icky."

She nods. "...you might want to cook their meat anyway. It could have diseases that would be bad for your animals."

"Mm. A good point. I think just bring them inside and let my elders sort it all out," she sniffs.

"They'd know better," she agrees, with only a tiny quirk of the corner of her lips.

"Indeed. And I am so young and reckless and foolish, and filled with such regret and shame for my outburst."

This decided, they can resume cleaning until everything except the corpses are sorted.

"Ivetrielle, lovely Ivetrielle, as beautiful as the morning sun and twice as fiery," he says when they meet up again, "I need some alone time with you and the rest of my party for some wild, sweaty activities that should not be witnessed by small tiefling children."

He is wearing different clothes than before. They look much better than the ones he'd been wearing, stolen from a fisherman, and their style suggests they came from the tieflings, and not the druids: slick and modern rather than made directly from the pelts of hunted beasts and the surrounding flora. They still nod to practicalities, though, being made of thick leather that can withstand some amount of punishment in combat while leaving his arms free for the kinds of movement a rogue favours.

“And to think my mood had almost begun to improve. Try again, but with a bit less innuendo and a bit more actual reasoning.”

"No. Please trust me, and I really mean it, no. Come with me."

She glares at him, finishes dragging the final goblin body through the gate, and then… maybe it’s actually important and he’s just being an ass about it.

“Fine,” she sighs, irritated.

He finds somewhere sufficiently secluded and out of the way that no one is likely to run into them and that elf hearing won't pick up on what they're saying and says, without preamble: "Your aunt is a shadow druid."

...a what?

“She…” begins Ivetrielle, then stops, stunned. Oh. Oh that does explain where the Rite of Thorns came from, doesn’t it. A ritual to cut off the grove from the outside world would be a perfect moment for an attempted re-education of her entire Circle as to why civilization is bad and needs to be destroyed, wouldn’t it. And them without their First Druid, and a threat outside to scare them into obedience, and maybe some tiefling deaths on their collective conscience to help sort out that pesky squeamishness.

“Shit, that explains so much. And they probably promised that she could be First Druid of the new Circle loyal to damned Cloakwood. She’s been irritated at her station for years, and. Do you have any tangible proof.”

"What do you take me for, darling?"

He reaches into a Bag of Holding he definitely didn't have last time Ivetrielle saw him and offers her a book and a letter.

The book's spine is limber from overuse. The corner of one page is folded inwards, and some of the text on that page is rather concerning.

Balance is a myth; where any clan treads, nature struggles. Unity is a fiction; men of mere flesh seek only to tame beast and raze flora.

We are thunder, and we are the rain. We shatter mankind, and grow new life in its place.

And the letter itself isn't that elucidative but it is curious.

Kagha.

Swamp-docks. Tree. Meet me. Alone.

Olodan.

"This is not, of course, proof, but I am itching to go to the swamp-docks and see what delights await me. And I believe Lae'zel is starting to become antsy from blade-thirst."

"... Well, as I'm sure you've reasoned, if you go, I'll be going with you. But why are you so interested? Because I'm not likely to go and actually join an adventuring band long term, putting my standing with my circle to the torch notwithstanding. And I don't see why you'd.... particularly care about our internal politics."

"Oh, I'm not that interested. It just looked interesting. No, no, my main worry is the fact that I have a mind flayer parasite in my brain. As do both of my friends. And according to our beautiful githyanki companion here, we should be shedding our flesh about now. According to your own Circle's Healer Nettie, this is also true."

"You spoke to a healer?"

"She said... that she's seen others with the same infection. Others who have had it for longer, and who have not transformed, and instead have gotten the same strange powers we did."