3-1 | 'Back to Square One'

Yow! [upbeat rock music] [waves crashing] Your longship chops along the water with every stroke of the oars that drive her along the icy waves.

The wind pulls at the tops of the crests, turning them to white mist that spatters the raised figurehead's draped form.

Its sinuous limbs inked with black and now capped in a crust of salt.

The sky is a burned gold color, hazy.

Your many shipmates are indistinct.

All you can focus on is the silver ash oar in your calloused hands, the purple rocks on the horizon, the distant hollow sound of the call.

[call ringing] The call.

You feel its pulse in your bone marrow, in your forearms, in the jelly of your eyes.

Its toll is deeper than any bell.

You know with animal certainty what it means.

Gather now.

The time is now.

Blinking spray from your eyes, you're dragging the ship up onto the sand with rope fiber splintering your hands, and everywhere the waves are crashing, dragging, pleading at the bare skin of your calves, beaching new ships up along the coast.

You're compelled, anxious.

It is time.

The path from the beach is the color of crushed up amethyst.

[birds chirping] Tall, blade-edged turquoise grass shivers.

You follow 100 indistinct footprints up, breath ragged, to where the burned gold sky meets the sheer cliffs, standing shoulder to shoulder with other ragged men.

And as the rain begins to fall on your faces, the call blows your mind to pieces.

[wind blowing] Red-handed Robin awakes from this dream, tangled in his bedroll.

The embers of the camp's fire have burned low.

Off to his left, a red dragonborn wrapped in a traveling cloak gently snores.

Across the fire, a halfling is propped semi-sitting against a fallen log, sleeping with her hand on her dagger.

As Red packs up his things without a word, the only other movement is the eyes of an elf perched in a nearby oak tree, silently watching him prepare to go.

Red avoids looking up at her and disappears into the night.