05/09/5-10

In the morning the group set off to the designated gathering point west of the keep, which was due to start an hour after first light. Other teams were already there and some of them were quite notable. There were 8 teams and none of the Knyazshtit were taking part. Surprisingly no members of the other horse clans were present, in fact none of them had been seen in Novograd, at all. Many of the teams were minor nobles in Novosel colours and some which had come up from Dragomir, the more for the fun than the competition. Some people had hunting hawks with them.

1. Khert Novosel upon his winged lion and with his personal guard.
2. Laz, The prison guard from yesterday, who bore a resemblance to the Khert.

The prison guard saw them approach and looked eyes with Milivoj, his face turning pale at seeing him without a helmet. He looked unnerved and told Milivoj he wasn't sure how he was to refer to him, no that he was not a Novosel. Milivoj told him he could call him Ser Milivoj ad Novograd or just Milivoj. Valeyo asked how much he knew about the hunt and killing fields, but Laz said it had been his first time hunting them, he did know something of the Killing fields. There were large birds seen in recent days, there were lions too and a Giant was seen going there recently. Valeyo asked if all of his team worked for the Novosels. Laz nodded, but said one of them was a hunter they had hired externally, who had come from elsewhere. Deciding to ask a risky question, pointing at the Khert and asking if their teams would work together. Laz denied it, saying that there would be no honour in that. Besides, the Khert's team is by far the most experienced, taking part on most natural hunts caused by earthquakes. Valeyo wished him luck and he and Milivoj returned to the group.

Back together they went over their plans for if they encounter Shuult, which amounted to feigning ignorance. As for the dinosaurs, they would travel and stop every 6 miles for Cassini to Commune with Nature, with the first starting a few miles out. A few minutes later, a large horn was brought out, which Milivoj knew had come from a large dinosaur hunted before his birth. The herald sounded the horn and the teams were off.

Laz's team headed towards the lake, while the Khert headed south with his lion soon taking to the sky. The group chose to travel west towards the forest. While travelling, Shiek pulled out two gold coins, which he said he could use to ask an entity about things that are about to happen. To start with the Commune with Nature came in empty, only telling them that the most common type of creature were bipedal birds standing 6-8ft tall with long slender necks and bulbous bodies with nasty claws. Sapphira mentioned that she had noticed some claw prints that fit that description while riding. There were also some track following those, which had come later and were feline in nature, likely a lion. A few hour later, Cassini's familiar, which was flying above them, notified him of "Swarm, left.". He looked through its eyes and saw that there was a group of hundreds of these birds to the west. Milivoj shared that these were called Ostriches. From what he said, they were not very aggressive and stood away from people, but if you got close to them they could fight back in defense. Deciding that it was unlikely a dinosaur was there, they continued deeper west.

After a couple of hours, Sapphira spotted a carcass in the distance, a dead lion. She pointed it out and upon looking closer it seemed to have been killed a while ago, perhaps a couple of days. It was small, likely not fully grown and the wounds it had matched what she expected from a large reptile, perhaps even more than one. There was even some plumage left around, which Cassini could use to track it down. Looking into his mirror of solar steel, his censor saw not one, but tree of these creatures together. They were in a flat plan, typical for this area. Looking at the way they were moving, they were clearly in a pact, but not their usual one. They fight and hunt together out of necessity rather than familiarity. They possessed sharp teeth and somewhat short frontal limbs, and were in the middle of chasing down a large bird creature, different to the Ostrich and more familiar to the party - an axebeak. A closer look at the ground around them, showed that the grass was darker green, closer to the forest in the north. It would be over a day to reach that far into the fields and so the group focused on covering more ground.

Closer to the end of the day, Sapphira noticed some lion tracks, right as one of them jumped out at Dobrovnik's mount. Sapphira conjured a pack of spectral wolves to defend it, striking back at the lion. Dubrovnik felled one, but before he could find another, Valeyo created an illusion of a Red Dragon flying above them, scaring the remaining ones away. The party continued their travel and shortly after night fall, the area looked similar enough to the terrain that Cassini had seen in his scry.

While keeping watch, Shiek could feel a soft vibration come across the ground, barely noticeable but constant. After 10 minutes of this, Shiek awoke Cassini to ask him about this. Cassini wasn't sure what to make of it and begun casting a Commune with Nature. While doing so Shiek said he was worried about it being called by a Demonic incursion or something else nefarious. While he could sense no portals, there was a powerful extraplanar creature within 3 miles. The feeling came from around 2 miles west, in a similar direction to where he had seen the dinosaurs yesterday and slightly underground. He instantly started casting it again to check if it was moving, while letting Shiek know about it. Shiek started waking people up and telling them, Valeyo suggested they go to sleep and check on it tomorrow, whoever was on watch can wake them again if the rumbling was stronger. Cassini's second cast of the spell told him that the creature was rising in elevation, but very slowly. The rest of the group went to bed and Shiek's watch soon concluded uneventfully. Sapphira was up next and was mostly calm throughout, except near the end of it. The earth shook immensely loudly and with great violence, as a great cracking of earth came from the west, similar to the last Great Hunt, but bigger, much bigger. Everyone awoke and after a minute the rumbling stopped. From the forest in the west there was a glow of light, that could be seen from where they were. The group packed up and prepared to head after it, pushing through the exhaustion.

06/09/5-10

A mile into the forest, the group saw something through the trees, similar to the Allosaurus, but much larger, about 60ft tall with veins of metal coursing through it, glowing bright orange.