The crowd parted for the approaching figure without a word.
Barsali glided into the firelight with his serpentine body coiling smoothly over the frozen ground. Once he emerged from the mist, he looked smaller than he'd initially seemed to Micheline and she belatedly realized that it had been his shadow on the mist itself that made him look so large.
"No wonder the rumors of this place were so terrifying," Micheline whispered as she calmed her thundering heart. The serpentine man was still very large, and he could likely challenge a knight on horseback without the need of a mount of his own, but only if he rose up high on his tail.
Behind the serpentine warrior came an eclectic collection of human and eldritch figures, including two women who were bundled in furs and carried on litters.
