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[5E] The Age of Worms - Solid Snake's Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Alexander Bryant1" data-source="post: 7539533" data-attributes="member: 6916184"><p><strong>Journal of Etona - 21</strong></p><p></p><p>The courier seems to be waiting for our arrival. He is enjoying a <em>sandwich</em>, a Greyhawk invention I am still wary of. Bred does not wholly agree with me but it is very important to the humans so I have tried to like it in the past.</p><p></p><p>“I am glad to see you again,” I say though he cannot hear me. In Mirror cant, I gesture to Rey: “I am glad to see anything again,” though I don’t think she heard me either, and her cant is stumbling, so there is no joke to catch.</p><p></p><p>We cannot hear one another: this is the problem. The wind is a swirling vortex of air and smoke, a tunnel of howling. Its sound is so unbearable, the stone above me so massive and thick, it makes me cry out in alarm. I want to go back, but that is not the way we must tread so we run through this column of angry air … and right into a summoning trap.</p><p></p><p>My Mistress of Obstruction grins. At least one of us is having a good time.</p><p></p><p>Jumped by magical weapons of smoke, we quickly realize that fighting them in this din without even being sure they could be damaged was futile. One of them lashed me on my way through, but though it stung it merely had the effect of making me feel light on my feet. Probably part of the trap, were I to remain in it. The creatures resembled <em>manta rays</em>, an animal Verdre sketched for me when she had returned from visiting the ocean for a few months, drawing everything she saw there.</p><p></p><p>We get out aided by Teegan who had already slipped by without trouble. I have the sense he has been here before. The room we land in looks like it had been outfitted by <em>faeriquenti</em>, high elves, studying under Dwarven trapsmiths. Machines of sleek rotating knives are parked in different corners of the room awaiting the hapless step of tender flesh. The nearest would probably have activated already but its pressure plate was broken, a fact the courier found by crawling slowly along the floor like a snake looking for its nose.</p><p></p><p>Behind us, something else steps through the din we fought past. I am expecting Egan or possibly another ally of Seraph, but no. Not at all.</p><p></p><p>Massive, dripping with burning blood: an eight-foot, masked, armored apparition of writhing chains and black spikes steps into our room. The Asmodi diplomatic corps have finally arrived.</p><p></p><p>Rey is en-guarde in an instant. I draw the Silver and begin raising protections for the three of us.</p><p></p><p>But the human could not have looked less concerned.</p><p></p><p>“’Lo, Jordan,” he says to the thing with a nod.</p><p></p><p>Jordan? That’s not a name for a demon nor even for a devil.</p><p></p><p>“What is this?” I say to Greet.</p><p></p><p>“Glad you made it,” he merely continues. “These are Etona and Rey.”</p><p></p><p>So the courier is part of the deception. They will kill us and proceed to Egan.</p><p></p><p>The hell knight bows at us, its head tilting to take in Angivre’s Silver and Rey’s sparking spear point both leveled at him. Little dribbles of electricity pour off Rey and spark along the ground. I feel the air charge up.</p><p></p><p>It removes its outlandish helmet revealing, to my surprise, a human face. With a gesture, the chains surrounding him retract into his armor … no. Again, that is not what happens. They pull back into his very <em>skin</em>. I will not quickly forget that sound.</p><p></p><p>He speaks.</p><p></p><p>“Good to see you, Trieg.”</p><p></p><p>Trieg! Was that his name? That wasn’t right, was it?</p><p></p><p>“Jordan is the man I have been traveling with. He helped me get here in one piece.”</p><p></p><p>“So you have a package,” I say to Trieg, “that comes with a devil. Let me guess, you two need to get this infernal present – likely something that tears spirits from bodies – to Egan preferably after slaying us.”</p><p></p><p>A sound, deep like the waking of an immense beast, echoes through the room. I dart my eyes quickly so as not to lose the two ‘men’, and am surprised that it comes from Rey. She is all but twitching to attack, but what holds my attention for far too long is a faint image of a dragon coiling to strike superimposed over her. They see it too, and fidget.</p><p></p><p>“I don’t think he’s a devil,” the courier says.</p><p></p><p>“No,” says the apparition, “I am not.”</p><p></p><p>“You are merely from a devil,” I press. I remember young Ptolmas Ohm’s dealings with – and ultimate demise at the hands of – Mr. G: a chatty, deal-making imp bent on setting up contractual obligations to damn people in Fardale. My tribe had run-ins with him before. “The Asmadi has sent you.”</p><p></p><p>“Again, no,” he politely replies.</p><p></p><p>“You are <em>not</em> from the Asmadi?” I ask, incredulous.</p><p></p><p>“Definitely not. They are neither friends nor allies of mine.”</p><p></p><p>“You are from a group like the Asmadi.”</p><p></p><p>“I assure you, no.”</p><p></p><p>“You may assure me of nothing, devil. What do you want with Egan?”</p><p></p><p>He looks displeased at my words: I think he might not like being called a devil. I am pretty certain he is not a demon, however, or an elemental or some outré being like that. Perhaps he is merely showy? Or cursed?</p><p></p><p>“I sought a mage in Greyhawk who was murdered. I was asking him about the events of the arena….” He stops when Trigger points to Rey. “Rey. Ambassador Rey. And the archer with the silver bow. You two. Hmm. The mage, Elgios, was connected to Allustan, the mage in Diamond Lake who, it further turned out, was also no longer living. His ghost, however, sent me on to the apprentice, this young man, Egan.”</p><p></p><p>“Why were you seeking all these mages?” Rey asks.</p><p></p><p>“The worms. It is all about the worms,” he replies. “What can you tell me about Egan?”</p><p></p><p>He must be kidding. “Nothing,” I say, but I do him the courtesy of stowing Angivre.</p><p></p><p>“Why are people after him?”</p><p></p><p>This causes me to pause. I look him up and down.</p><p></p><p>“Because Egan attracts trouble,” I reply. He smiles a little at that.</p><p></p><p>Rey, who had stepped between me and the knight, stands down, and we can all feel it: the charge in the room dissipates. What would she have done? I’d never felt anything like that from her before, and the outline of the dragon was new, too.</p><p></p><p>There is no help for it but to find Egan and deal with these men, and with the boy himself, when we see him.</p><p></p><p>The humans up front, Rey and I behind them, we move through the complex. We traverse a large room of spectacular purple and exit through another door. The hall on the other side leads eventually to a split: one direction reveals the river we’ve been hearing snarling behind the walls and the other that we actually take to a corridor where Rey is looking intently at the walls. This drops Trent to his favorite position – on the floor – and they say at the same time:</p><p></p><p>“Egan was here.”</p><p></p><p>“These marks, created by magic, see how fresh they are?” he says.</p><p></p><p>“He was carried off,” Rey adds.</p><p></p><p>I move forward, also low to the ground (I didn’t say his favorite position was unwise). The way ends in a round chamber cloaked in shadow. Or rather, shadows. Or, actually….</p><p></p><p>My Twilight does nothing to dispel them. Also, they crisscross but aren’t straight enough to come from the columns: there are little wiggles here and there that don’t belong. I must be transfixed for Rey comes up beside me and whispers:</p><p></p><p>“What do you see, Etona?”</p><p></p><p>Trent freezes behind us. He is wise to take my wariness seriously.</p><p></p><p>“They are like shadowy webs, but nothing–.” I draw back the Silver and illuminate a patch with her glowing flechette.</p><p></p><p>A dusty voice booms, “What are you doing? Why do you attack my home?”</p><p></p><p>“We are not attacking anything. Who are you?” I ask.</p><p></p><p>“You do attack. Like the other flesh-bag I have, one of you, a magic wielder like you. But he is mine now to do with as I please. His life relies on what you do next.”</p><p></p><p>I glance at the hell-knight but he doesn’t seem to be expecting this turn of events.</p><p></p><p>“Well, first of all some introductions: my name is Etona Aspianne. I am priestess of Sehanine. Who are you?”</p><p></p><p>“I catches the flies that would foul the tomb. I am guardian. I am protector, intruder.”</p><p></p><p>“We do not come to steal or corrupt, guardian,” I reply. “We are here merely to find our friend and leave with him. If you allow us this, you will not see any of us again: you may peacefully return to your duties.”</p><p></p><p>“Your friend came to steal and befoul!”</p><p></p><p>“If you have our friend, Egan, then that is not his aim. Have you spoken to him, calmly and without accusation, to find out why he is here? What he is looking for?”</p><p></p><p>“He is a thief, like the other one, like all the thieves! They come and try to steal. Why else would they be here?”</p><p></p><p>“Flycatcher, I sense you are one of My Mistress’s children. You defend your home from strangers, defend this tomb from robbers. Your cause is just, and we are not enemies. We do not seek to disturb you, but I must have my friend back, if it is he. May I know this much? May I speak with him?”</p><p></p><p>“Mmm. Mmm. I will permit you talk of the mind, but it does not work on the fae. You, human, I will permit talk of the mind. Hear him.”</p><p></p><p>The face of the courier – who I am increasingly believing is more than a mere package-deliverer, if nothing else, and there is plenty of <em>else</em> in the way he moves and watches – is suddenly slack. His eyes widen slightly. He is hearing something I cannot.</p><p></p><p>After a moment of this, I break the silence. “What are you sensing?” I ask him.</p><p></p><p>“Does he have a brogue?” says Trigger.</p><p></p><p>“I don’t know, does he?” I ask Rey.</p><p></p><p>“Yes.”</p><p></p><p>“Then it might be Egan,” he replies. “He sounds healthy, I suppose, but confused.”</p><p></p><p>“What did he say?”</p><p></p><p>“He wanted to know who I was, where I was, and where he was.”</p><p></p><p>“Tell him –.”</p><p></p><p>“No!” the flycatcher interrupts. “It does not in working that way! Your friend speaks out, but only I may speak in.”</p><p></p><p><em>Naturally. Resh! By my Lady’s radiant bottom!</em> I turn away in a huff and walk a few paces towards the darkest part of the circle just outside the columns surrounding us in this room. I know I can capture that shadow sight again if I focus.</p><p></p><p>Focus. Sink into darkness. Become that darkness.</p><p></p><p>Become.</p><p></p><p>A figure, as if through layers of fine black netting, stands in front of me. I feel his presence as much as almost see him.</p><p></p><p>“Egan?” I call, my hands outstretched. “Egan!” The figure turns toward me. It could be him.</p><p></p><p>“Cannot I speak with him?” I cry out.</p><p></p><p>“No with fae,” it says. “I told you, not in working with elf heads. Humans, yes. I make the bridge. Here. Hear.”</p><p></p><p>“How do we get him back?” I ask. “What must we do?”</p><p></p><p>“Powerful adventurers can aid me, can help me! Yes. We make trade. Your friend for my property. A ghoul has taken it, the cowardly sneak. My sacred texts! He has swiped them – swiper, no swiping! and run back to his lair.”</p><p></p><p>“Where is that?” I ask.</p><p></p><p>“At the mouth of the river.”</p><p></p><p>“Does this creature have a name?” Rey asks.</p><p></p><p>“Morato.”</p><p></p><p>We agree to think on it, but there is another door out of the room to check out first. It bristles a warning as we approach, however. Trellis backs away and I feel my hairs standing on end. More electricity – it has been a charged day – with a heavy dose gathered at the handle. Stay away, it warns.</p><p></p><p>But Rey seems drawn to it. She approaches, hand out, until a small arc of lightning jumps to her. She plays with it, caresses it, like a mouse running across her fingers. She is like Ellen, that lightning mage in Greyhawk and perhaps Egan as well. Is everyone in this area going to spark like a Dwarven generator? Is Seraph responsible? Is she raising an army of sparklers?</p><p></p><p>I do not think so, truly. But it is remarkable that in the space of one week I have encountered more beings wielding the liquid light than all my years before.</p><p></p><p>With her other hand, Rey simply opens the door. A tiny thunderstorm in a round kettle of a room lay beyond, another door past it. Rey takes a breath and walks in.</p><p></p><p>A bolt lashes out immediately fastening onto her. It clearly hurts, but she is going to bear it for us to allow us to get across. We scamper out the mercifully unlocked other portal. Rey wills herself, body rigid with the storm’s energy, to march where she can hurl her body out, cutting the connection. I rush to her side but she doesn’t let me touch her yet. </p><p></p><p>“Wait,” she whispers, and I watch as little whirling winds of electricity flow from her feet off into the dark. After a moment, she lies on her back and says, “OK.”</p><p></p><p>I check her up and down, especially the burned patches on her hide armor beneath this new dragon plating. They are a little tender, she indicates, but nothing like what they <em>should</em> be. She <em>should</em> be dead.</p><p></p><p>“You’re amazing,” I say to her in Elven.</p><p></p><p>“I don’t know how much of this is me anymore,” she replies with a gesture to her body. I lace my fingers through hers and hold them there a beat before helping her up. I look into her eyes, to her odd extra blink under the lids.</p><p></p><p>“That won’t ever matter to me,” I say.</p><p></p><p>Beyond is a stone platform just long enough for all of us to uncomfortably fit and peer down into a stone channel. A metal rung ladder leads down. We discover, through experimenting with a turning handle, that water flows into here. The handle raises a barrier letting in the nearby underground river we hear churning in the dark, the one we went past just before entering the flycatcher’s room.</p><p></p><p>It is dark and cold, and I feel buried here. Treeve, ranging back and forth along the channel like a puma in a cage, was muttering with the Hell-human, but I feel myself suddenly succumb to the deep. I cannot bring myself to care about whatever they were bandying about: they all seemed to end in plunging down a great freezing waterfall in the pitch black, scattered among whatever was down there in the eternal dark.</p><p></p><p>My people do not recoil from the twilight of the woods that sends humans scurrying into their homes after sundown for the simple fact that even on the cloudiest night of <em>dobrun</em>, the new moon, it is merely dusk for us. Not so here. Here is the realm of the Drow, my fallen cousins who were consumed by the blackness of the Underdeeps; here be the Dwarves who drink and sing and build, the constant hammering of construction to cover the unease their pounding hearts beat out in living in true blackness. Underground is death, and we are treating it like solving an interesting puzzle, as if we were not here to offer ourselves as sacrifices to the great smothering deep. A plan is being worked out, something to do with Obi and chains. There is an other shore of the roaring watery death to where we must travel. The ghoul is over there, the humans somehow divine.</p><p></p><p>Numbly, I realize I have categorized the hell-thing as <strong>human</strong>. Something has alerted my unwaked spirit which has informed my wakened one. He is a man under the armor. Whether he is here for good or ill remains to be seen. He may be the one jumping from the other board, the one carrying the crimson crack in reality.</p><p></p><p>Angivre’s glow, though not extinguished outright, is faint, a wan thing down here, and I must supplement with Twilight spells. She would not go out, would she? No. Not as long as My Mistress is in the world, as even down here she must be. Right? Or does Her face not matter here save for perceived betrayer of her cousin Llolth, a being once as <em>faeyre</em> as she?</p><p>A touch on my shoulder. Rey. She sees my wild eyes in the gloom.</p><p></p><p>“You do not like it down here.” I shake my head, no. Her hand moves to mine this time. “Do you trust me?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes,” I whisper, and I must whisper because there is something muffling about the deep that forces silence. I do not want to be heard; I do not want to be discovered.</p><p></p><p>So she begins to sing to me, a quiet little ditty. It is the sort of song you would sing to yourself to pass time. It is in Common, though as I listen I believe it hales from another tongue. It is about caverns and crystals and the paternal foundation of kind, reliable stone. It is about ages passing in chaos above and merely echoing calmly below. Life here trickles, the lyrics remind us, and once it is over, merely sleeps.</p><p></p><p>I have heard it before though with different words: a song that human mothers sing to their children in Fardale. The theme is similar: do not miss the wonder of lightless places.</p><p>She sings this softly, almost under her breath, only for me. She sings while she is leading Obi and me to the broken bridge, while she shows me where to grip Obi’s mane, and with gestures directs the owlbeast to the other side.</p><p></p><p>“You are just full of surprises today,” I say when she finishes and we are prepared to do something unbelievably rash.</p><p></p><p>“I have to try to keep up with you.”</p><p></p><p>Obi slams a claw into the rock wall and tests her weight. It holds. Another claw, another test. Again. Again. She is dogged, unhurried, and as cautious as I could wish for. With this noisy, slow progress we make it across the umbral river, my pale Twilight spell on Angivre’s tip serving as our illumination.</p><p></p><p>I scritch Obi behind an ear before I slide off, and she prr-oots a bit before she goes back to retrieve much-heavier Rey. That one is an exhausting journey by the sounds of her wheezing hoots emerging over the roar of the flow. With a final leap from a wall, she dumps off her master, shakes her great fur and feather hide, and plops down onto the ground, thoroughly spent.</p><p></p><p>The men are waiting for us on the other side.</p><p></p><p>Trieve raises his eyebrows. “That was probably the easy bit.”</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alexander Bryant1, post: 7539533, member: 6916184"] [b]Journal of Etona - 21[/b] The courier seems to be waiting for our arrival. He is enjoying a [I]sandwich[/I], a Greyhawk invention I am still wary of. Bred does not wholly agree with me but it is very important to the humans so I have tried to like it in the past. “I am glad to see you again,” I say though he cannot hear me. In Mirror cant, I gesture to Rey: “I am glad to see anything again,” though I don’t think she heard me either, and her cant is stumbling, so there is no joke to catch. We cannot hear one another: this is the problem. The wind is a swirling vortex of air and smoke, a tunnel of howling. Its sound is so unbearable, the stone above me so massive and thick, it makes me cry out in alarm. I want to go back, but that is not the way we must tread so we run through this column of angry air … and right into a summoning trap. My Mistress of Obstruction grins. At least one of us is having a good time. Jumped by magical weapons of smoke, we quickly realize that fighting them in this din without even being sure they could be damaged was futile. One of them lashed me on my way through, but though it stung it merely had the effect of making me feel light on my feet. Probably part of the trap, were I to remain in it. The creatures resembled [I]manta rays[/I], an animal Verdre sketched for me when she had returned from visiting the ocean for a few months, drawing everything she saw there. We get out aided by Teegan who had already slipped by without trouble. I have the sense he has been here before. The room we land in looks like it had been outfitted by [I]faeriquenti[/I], high elves, studying under Dwarven trapsmiths. Machines of sleek rotating knives are parked in different corners of the room awaiting the hapless step of tender flesh. The nearest would probably have activated already but its pressure plate was broken, a fact the courier found by crawling slowly along the floor like a snake looking for its nose. Behind us, something else steps through the din we fought past. I am expecting Egan or possibly another ally of Seraph, but no. Not at all. Massive, dripping with burning blood: an eight-foot, masked, armored apparition of writhing chains and black spikes steps into our room. The Asmodi diplomatic corps have finally arrived. Rey is en-guarde in an instant. I draw the Silver and begin raising protections for the three of us. But the human could not have looked less concerned. “’Lo, Jordan,” he says to the thing with a nod. Jordan? That’s not a name for a demon nor even for a devil. “What is this?” I say to Greet. “Glad you made it,” he merely continues. “These are Etona and Rey.” So the courier is part of the deception. They will kill us and proceed to Egan. The hell knight bows at us, its head tilting to take in Angivre’s Silver and Rey’s sparking spear point both leveled at him. Little dribbles of electricity pour off Rey and spark along the ground. I feel the air charge up. It removes its outlandish helmet revealing, to my surprise, a human face. With a gesture, the chains surrounding him retract into his armor … no. Again, that is not what happens. They pull back into his very [I]skin[/I]. I will not quickly forget that sound. He speaks. “Good to see you, Trieg.” Trieg! Was that his name? That wasn’t right, was it? “Jordan is the man I have been traveling with. He helped me get here in one piece.” “So you have a package,” I say to Trieg, “that comes with a devil. Let me guess, you two need to get this infernal present – likely something that tears spirits from bodies – to Egan preferably after slaying us.” A sound, deep like the waking of an immense beast, echoes through the room. I dart my eyes quickly so as not to lose the two ‘men’, and am surprised that it comes from Rey. She is all but twitching to attack, but what holds my attention for far too long is a faint image of a dragon coiling to strike superimposed over her. They see it too, and fidget. “I don’t think he’s a devil,” the courier says. “No,” says the apparition, “I am not.” “You are merely from a devil,” I press. I remember young Ptolmas Ohm’s dealings with – and ultimate demise at the hands of – Mr. G: a chatty, deal-making imp bent on setting up contractual obligations to damn people in Fardale. My tribe had run-ins with him before. “The Asmadi has sent you.” “Again, no,” he politely replies. “You are [I]not[/I] from the Asmadi?” I ask, incredulous. “Definitely not. They are neither friends nor allies of mine.” “You are from a group like the Asmadi.” “I assure you, no.” “You may assure me of nothing, devil. What do you want with Egan?” He looks displeased at my words: I think he might not like being called a devil. I am pretty certain he is not a demon, however, or an elemental or some outré being like that. Perhaps he is merely showy? Or cursed? “I sought a mage in Greyhawk who was murdered. I was asking him about the events of the arena….” He stops when Trigger points to Rey. “Rey. Ambassador Rey. And the archer with the silver bow. You two. Hmm. The mage, Elgios, was connected to Allustan, the mage in Diamond Lake who, it further turned out, was also no longer living. His ghost, however, sent me on to the apprentice, this young man, Egan.” “Why were you seeking all these mages?” Rey asks. “The worms. It is all about the worms,” he replies. “What can you tell me about Egan?” He must be kidding. “Nothing,” I say, but I do him the courtesy of stowing Angivre. “Why are people after him?” This causes me to pause. I look him up and down. “Because Egan attracts trouble,” I reply. He smiles a little at that. Rey, who had stepped between me and the knight, stands down, and we can all feel it: the charge in the room dissipates. What would she have done? I’d never felt anything like that from her before, and the outline of the dragon was new, too. There is no help for it but to find Egan and deal with these men, and with the boy himself, when we see him. The humans up front, Rey and I behind them, we move through the complex. We traverse a large room of spectacular purple and exit through another door. The hall on the other side leads eventually to a split: one direction reveals the river we’ve been hearing snarling behind the walls and the other that we actually take to a corridor where Rey is looking intently at the walls. This drops Trent to his favorite position – on the floor – and they say at the same time: “Egan was here.” “These marks, created by magic, see how fresh they are?” he says. “He was carried off,” Rey adds. I move forward, also low to the ground (I didn’t say his favorite position was unwise). The way ends in a round chamber cloaked in shadow. Or rather, shadows. Or, actually…. My Twilight does nothing to dispel them. Also, they crisscross but aren’t straight enough to come from the columns: there are little wiggles here and there that don’t belong. I must be transfixed for Rey comes up beside me and whispers: “What do you see, Etona?” Trent freezes behind us. He is wise to take my wariness seriously. “They are like shadowy webs, but nothing–.” I draw back the Silver and illuminate a patch with her glowing flechette. A dusty voice booms, “What are you doing? Why do you attack my home?” “We are not attacking anything. Who are you?” I ask. “You do attack. Like the other flesh-bag I have, one of you, a magic wielder like you. But he is mine now to do with as I please. His life relies on what you do next.” I glance at the hell-knight but he doesn’t seem to be expecting this turn of events. “Well, first of all some introductions: my name is Etona Aspianne. I am priestess of Sehanine. Who are you?” “I catches the flies that would foul the tomb. I am guardian. I am protector, intruder.” “We do not come to steal or corrupt, guardian,” I reply. “We are here merely to find our friend and leave with him. If you allow us this, you will not see any of us again: you may peacefully return to your duties.” “Your friend came to steal and befoul!” “If you have our friend, Egan, then that is not his aim. Have you spoken to him, calmly and without accusation, to find out why he is here? What he is looking for?” “He is a thief, like the other one, like all the thieves! They come and try to steal. Why else would they be here?” “Flycatcher, I sense you are one of My Mistress’s children. You defend your home from strangers, defend this tomb from robbers. Your cause is just, and we are not enemies. We do not seek to disturb you, but I must have my friend back, if it is he. May I know this much? May I speak with him?” “Mmm. Mmm. I will permit you talk of the mind, but it does not work on the fae. You, human, I will permit talk of the mind. Hear him.” The face of the courier – who I am increasingly believing is more than a mere package-deliverer, if nothing else, and there is plenty of [I]else[/I] in the way he moves and watches – is suddenly slack. His eyes widen slightly. He is hearing something I cannot. After a moment of this, I break the silence. “What are you sensing?” I ask him. “Does he have a brogue?” says Trigger. “I don’t know, does he?” I ask Rey. “Yes.” “Then it might be Egan,” he replies. “He sounds healthy, I suppose, but confused.” “What did he say?” “He wanted to know who I was, where I was, and where he was.” “Tell him –.” “No!” the flycatcher interrupts. “It does not in working that way! Your friend speaks out, but only I may speak in.” [I]Naturally. Resh! By my Lady’s radiant bottom![/I] I turn away in a huff and walk a few paces towards the darkest part of the circle just outside the columns surrounding us in this room. I know I can capture that shadow sight again if I focus. Focus. Sink into darkness. Become that darkness. Become. A figure, as if through layers of fine black netting, stands in front of me. I feel his presence as much as almost see him. “Egan?” I call, my hands outstretched. “Egan!” The figure turns toward me. It could be him. “Cannot I speak with him?” I cry out. “No with fae,” it says. “I told you, not in working with elf heads. Humans, yes. I make the bridge. Here. Hear.” “How do we get him back?” I ask. “What must we do?” “Powerful adventurers can aid me, can help me! Yes. We make trade. Your friend for my property. A ghoul has taken it, the cowardly sneak. My sacred texts! He has swiped them – swiper, no swiping! and run back to his lair.” “Where is that?” I ask. “At the mouth of the river.” “Does this creature have a name?” Rey asks. “Morato.” We agree to think on it, but there is another door out of the room to check out first. It bristles a warning as we approach, however. Trellis backs away and I feel my hairs standing on end. More electricity – it has been a charged day – with a heavy dose gathered at the handle. Stay away, it warns. But Rey seems drawn to it. She approaches, hand out, until a small arc of lightning jumps to her. She plays with it, caresses it, like a mouse running across her fingers. She is like Ellen, that lightning mage in Greyhawk and perhaps Egan as well. Is everyone in this area going to spark like a Dwarven generator? Is Seraph responsible? Is she raising an army of sparklers? I do not think so, truly. But it is remarkable that in the space of one week I have encountered more beings wielding the liquid light than all my years before. With her other hand, Rey simply opens the door. A tiny thunderstorm in a round kettle of a room lay beyond, another door past it. Rey takes a breath and walks in. A bolt lashes out immediately fastening onto her. It clearly hurts, but she is going to bear it for us to allow us to get across. We scamper out the mercifully unlocked other portal. Rey wills herself, body rigid with the storm’s energy, to march where she can hurl her body out, cutting the connection. I rush to her side but she doesn’t let me touch her yet. “Wait,” she whispers, and I watch as little whirling winds of electricity flow from her feet off into the dark. After a moment, she lies on her back and says, “OK.” I check her up and down, especially the burned patches on her hide armor beneath this new dragon plating. They are a little tender, she indicates, but nothing like what they [I]should[/I] be. She [I]should[/I] be dead. “You’re amazing,” I say to her in Elven. “I don’t know how much of this is me anymore,” she replies with a gesture to her body. I lace my fingers through hers and hold them there a beat before helping her up. I look into her eyes, to her odd extra blink under the lids. “That won’t ever matter to me,” I say. Beyond is a stone platform just long enough for all of us to uncomfortably fit and peer down into a stone channel. A metal rung ladder leads down. We discover, through experimenting with a turning handle, that water flows into here. The handle raises a barrier letting in the nearby underground river we hear churning in the dark, the one we went past just before entering the flycatcher’s room. It is dark and cold, and I feel buried here. Treeve, ranging back and forth along the channel like a puma in a cage, was muttering with the Hell-human, but I feel myself suddenly succumb to the deep. I cannot bring myself to care about whatever they were bandying about: they all seemed to end in plunging down a great freezing waterfall in the pitch black, scattered among whatever was down there in the eternal dark. My people do not recoil from the twilight of the woods that sends humans scurrying into their homes after sundown for the simple fact that even on the cloudiest night of [I]dobrun[/I], the new moon, it is merely dusk for us. Not so here. Here is the realm of the Drow, my fallen cousins who were consumed by the blackness of the Underdeeps; here be the Dwarves who drink and sing and build, the constant hammering of construction to cover the unease their pounding hearts beat out in living in true blackness. Underground is death, and we are treating it like solving an interesting puzzle, as if we were not here to offer ourselves as sacrifices to the great smothering deep. A plan is being worked out, something to do with Obi and chains. There is an other shore of the roaring watery death to where we must travel. The ghoul is over there, the humans somehow divine. Numbly, I realize I have categorized the hell-thing as [B]human[/B]. Something has alerted my unwaked spirit which has informed my wakened one. He is a man under the armor. Whether he is here for good or ill remains to be seen. He may be the one jumping from the other board, the one carrying the crimson crack in reality. Angivre’s glow, though not extinguished outright, is faint, a wan thing down here, and I must supplement with Twilight spells. She would not go out, would she? No. Not as long as My Mistress is in the world, as even down here she must be. Right? Or does Her face not matter here save for perceived betrayer of her cousin Llolth, a being once as [I]faeyre[/I] as she? A touch on my shoulder. Rey. She sees my wild eyes in the gloom. “You do not like it down here.” I shake my head, no. Her hand moves to mine this time. “Do you trust me?” “Yes,” I whisper, and I must whisper because there is something muffling about the deep that forces silence. I do not want to be heard; I do not want to be discovered. So she begins to sing to me, a quiet little ditty. It is the sort of song you would sing to yourself to pass time. It is in Common, though as I listen I believe it hales from another tongue. It is about caverns and crystals and the paternal foundation of kind, reliable stone. It is about ages passing in chaos above and merely echoing calmly below. Life here trickles, the lyrics remind us, and once it is over, merely sleeps. I have heard it before though with different words: a song that human mothers sing to their children in Fardale. The theme is similar: do not miss the wonder of lightless places. She sings this softly, almost under her breath, only for me. She sings while she is leading Obi and me to the broken bridge, while she shows me where to grip Obi’s mane, and with gestures directs the owlbeast to the other side. “You are just full of surprises today,” I say when she finishes and we are prepared to do something unbelievably rash. “I have to try to keep up with you.” Obi slams a claw into the rock wall and tests her weight. It holds. Another claw, another test. Again. Again. She is dogged, unhurried, and as cautious as I could wish for. With this noisy, slow progress we make it across the umbral river, my pale Twilight spell on Angivre’s tip serving as our illumination. I scritch Obi behind an ear before I slide off, and she prr-oots a bit before she goes back to retrieve much-heavier Rey. That one is an exhausting journey by the sounds of her wheezing hoots emerging over the roar of the flow. With a final leap from a wall, she dumps off her master, shakes her great fur and feather hide, and plops down onto the ground, thoroughly spent. The men are waiting for us on the other side. Trieve raises his eyebrows. “That was probably the easy bit.” [/QUOTE]
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