Wren the Dowser

You hear the yammering howl of the coyote. It is the call of Grandfather Coyote, the Trickster. He says, “Hear me! This is my descendant, my heir, a child of the water. In their blood courses my blood, the water of life.”

The Whitestone Cemetery is quiet on the eve of Strife’s Feast. From the Forest of the Condemned, the band of strangers return victorious. The cat’s-paws of Strife have undone Malice’s webs of deceit and entrapment to free one of their own from the confines of the Jack O’Lantern’s spirit-prison. To pay back one of their band, Dal-Cur, the agents of Strife promised him vengeance upon the two who had caused his death. Raven the Sorceress called up the spirits of Wren and Gildust and in that moment Dal-Cur and his allies descended upon them. Gildust’s spirit was impaled and sent it into the White Woods. Wren’s spirit was brutally rent in two by Dal-Cur’s axe and sent into Death and half of his spirit body is gated into the Fortune Glade while the other half is gated to the Sprites Realm.
The upper torso of Wren plunges into the Dark Waters of that aquatic realm, where it’s icy blackness shocks Wren back into his spirit-life. These murky regions of the Dark Waters have been tainted by demonic warping magics summoned years ago by a foolish adventurer and the Twinned Demons. The vile fluids begin to corrupt Wren’s spirit. Instead of one spirit hacked in twain, Wren becomes two halves of one spirit. The lower half of Wren in the Fortune Glade and his torso in the Sprites Realm take on the appearances of two whole and identical spirits. The Dark Waters draw like-to-like and, as such, the half of Wren that steeps in the void-rich waters becomes brimming with the tainted yellow aura of the bane-blighted. At the same time, the spirit-twin of Wren that lies in the Fortune Glade has its corrupt aura siphoned away into its Dark Water Twin. One spirit-twin is cleansed of the Bane’s touch, while the other’s corruption is only further amplified by the horrors of the Dark Water.
The Fortune Glade Twin is approached by the guardian of that glen and placed under her protection, while his other half, the Dark Water Dowser, swims from that abysmal region into the Nexus of Water that has also been infiltrated by Abyss-magics.
“This shall be my realm and I shall be… KING!!”
From the water weeds, the Dark Water Dowser espies a sprites water mirror and uses his divinatory skills to coax the mirror to life. As an image flashes across the mirror’s silvered surface, the dowser’s face contorts into a mask of utter hatred and then slides into a grimace of pure malice.
He mutters to himself, “There you are, the vile demagogue. I see you have reclaimed the bauble that I snatched from your brow long ago, but I’ll have it back over your dead body and then I will be safe at last.”
The scene in the mirror shifts again to a feast in the Jack O’Lantern Pub. “This is the moment of my vengeance and you…” He says pointing to one of the feast’s attendants. “You shall be my horse.”
Before you can see his intended victim, the Dark Water swallows the mirror, the dowser and your vision. All fades to black.