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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jairami" data-source="post: 113062" data-attributes="member: 1148">Tylette begins telling of the gaunt, almost skeletal, face of the man she saw in her dreams.  The green pasture upon which they lay wilting and rotting away to brown slime and muck as clawed skeletal hands burst forth through the mud and grabbed each of them, slashing and pulling them into the earth's embrace.Tylette had dealt with her ordeal by locking it away.  It never happened, she was never there.  She wept no tears and allowed no kind words as she locked herself in denial.  Much of her joyfulness, curiosity, anger, and personality was locked away with it.  But as a result she was calm and dispassionate in her dreams and viewed her fortellings in clarity.What she didn't mention was what she saw within the corrupt earth.  As she herself was pulled down in the odd perspective of dreams wherein she could see herself descending, she reached a massive open air cavern heaped with the remains of all manner of creature.  Fire roared along the ground in places and great vents of steam burst through fissures in others giving an ever shifting ominous light to the horrific surroundings.  Firelight danced through ten thousand hollow lifeless eye sockets in a mountain of human skulls upon which stood Khuuld, strapped down hard to two gnarled boards that formed an X behind him of blood-soaked dark wood.Except from his expression, he didn't know he was a prisoner.  He gazed in rapt fascination at the captivating and compelling man in front of him.  So much so, that he didn't appear to mind that he was feeding upon him, corrupting his inards, leaving that which was inside cold, black, and diseased.From her height Tylette could see through the sham to the true features of the man.  Mottled skin the color of slate was stretched taut against his gaunt features, his hands were so bony and elongated as to almost be claws.  His black teeth smiled around the blood dripping from them at his plaything writhing before him in delusional ecstasy, but then he straightened.He snapped towards Tylette's floating consciousness and hollow black twin voids where his sunken eyes should have been suddenly blazed to light with green fire licked with sickly brown.  They burned into Tylette's soul as he cast a clawed finger towards her and she fled screaming back to her body to find herself trapped in her twisted and coiled sheats, sweating and trying to clamp her teeth shut around a scream of absolute terror.This part she left out.Herding their at least clothed now, if still weaponless, indentured servants into a single room they posted Khuuld outside it as a menacing guard while they retreated to the common room to plan their next move.Tylette insisted that Khuuld's condition was worsening some how and that they needed to seek out treatment for him.  Collin was also concerned but more wanted to seek out possible knowledge of Gaedri's ruins and what could possibly be affecting the earth and causing Tylette's visions.  He had heard about town of the frontier town of New Galdamond far to the west being built upon the wreckage of the great city that used to stand there of the same name.  Apparently the earth there was almost completely despoiled and, more alarmingly, was still spreading.  The rate and cause of this was readily accepted as being of utmost importance.It sounded like adventure to Andrew; it sounded like suicidal folly to Frederick, but then what else had they to do?  Consulting their new map--a fairly accurate enough looking thing, at least with landforms though very few named locations, found hidden in a compartment of the desk in Captain Crayder's cabin among charts and notes in a grid system no one understood--they asked about the two towns, besides Ardonia, that they could reach by ship.According to the map they were stuck in an immensely huge inland sea, that while it reached a nearly unimaginable amount of shoreline, to their adventurous young minds seemed limiting.  Helpful word around town though was that a determined (or maybe insane) dwarf was attempting to construct a canal in a thin isthmus of land about two days south of one of the cities, Yogdush.  Yogdush was apparently a good sized city of hard work and industry and the primary house of the following of Diggadin, the dwarven deity of labor, toil, and unending work.The other mark on the map was identified as Galearon, the beautiful Elven capital.  No one seemed to know much about those lands, except that for longer than the oldest grandmother's grandmother could remember before she passed, an endless war had been waged by the elves against some shadowy enemy.  There were signs that the war had died down, maybe even ended, but for as long as it had raged, it might simply be a lull.From what Frederick and Collin had read about elves, they were a long lived people and might have knowledge of the ruins north of Ardonia.  Then again, they were far outside of human lands, much less the elven lands so far south across the sea.  But they were also touted as being masters of powerful magicks, so they may know, or have a way to find out.  And, as Tylette and Frederick both agreed, they may know of what has befallen Khuuld and perhaps some way to reverse it.Agreed that Galearon was the best choice, they set out gathering supplies and preparing what was needed.Now if only they could figure out how to get there...</blockquote>

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