Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Isida Kep'Tukari" data-source="post: 3142740" data-attributes="member: 4441">Darvekis has the grace to look chagrinned when Haedyn says that, and abruptly becomes absorbed in studying the sundered woman, his lips firmly pressed together.  It's odd, the man was a spy for Deluin for years, he should know about keeping a secret...Solara: [sblock]It seemed he was going to say something that started with a "muh" sound.  Mud, mother, mulberry... something.  Though in context, "mother" seems likely.  Though why a tiefling would call a moon elf his mother is a mystery.[/sblock]       Haedyn and Jill clamber up the slope, Haedyn pulling himself up with the tenacity of a goat, Jill leaping lightly up from rock to rock like a squirrel.  A good fifty feet up, behind a large boulder, there is a large gaping hole where the tree once stood.  The hole is thick with ash and smells strongly of smoke and sulfur, scorched iron and blood.  Ssiran comes up behind them with a bit more effort, his nostrils filled with the stink.  Haedyn crouches down beside the hole, brushing away several weeks' accumulating of dirt from the edges.  Searching carefully about, he finds something on the boulder bordering the hole.  It must have braced the tree from countless landslides and avalanches, but there's something near the bottom that's clearly not natural.  It's a handprint, melted into the rock as if by great heat; a handprint with six fingers.  It's nothing that he recognizes, but Ssiran recognizes it at once.  Also you recognize that all around here the tough mountain vegetation is dead or dying, from where the tree was and upward and from side to side as long as you can see.  The sickness is only really apparent once you get into it, as you have.Ssiran: [sblock]They're the handprints of lava children, spawn of elemental fire and earth with hands like flame, with six fingers.  Born of flame, they are not harmed by it, nor can spells of earth harm them.  They pass through metal like it was air; they can strike through metal armor, and metal weapons pass through them without harm.  However, they adore the deep earth and consider the surface world boring at best.  Whatever enticed them above had to be powerful.[/sblock]Sir Aravir, Galan, Ebony, Hiitar, Darvekis, and Solara wait below, with Dalart, his donkey, and the shaking sundered woman.  She watches the three above with wide eyes, alternately clutching her throat and making slashing motions in the air.  The donkey is clearly terrified, and Shade takes most of Sir Aravir's attention to keep calm.  Her aura of madness and pain is terribly unsettling to the animals.  Finally the poor donkey can take no more and gives a loud bray and bolts away, Dalart's hand caught in his bridle, the dwarf being dragged behind him.  The sundered woman screams, her momentary quiescent madness bursting to the fore.  With shocking swiftness she throws herself at Ebony and Hiitar, them being the closest.  Ebony begins to gag, his throat slit in grotesque parody of the sundered woman's own cut flesh, while Hiitar is set reeling from a deep gash to his thigh.</blockquote>

Verification