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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Medriev" data-source="post: 4860621" data-attributes="member: 21864">Chapter 18 - The Hall of Blizzards (Part 1)“We take the eastern door as we had planned then,” Dulvarna said once the companions had tended to their wounds. “But we must remember this place as a safe place to rest.”The double doors halfway down the corridor had led to a large side room with a smaller one off it that held two beds where the foulspawn had apparently been quartered. Two more demonic faces on the walls of the larger chamber seemed to allow a way to quickly get out of the chamber to the corridor as the foulspawn had.“And what of the southern doors,” Erlmoor rumbled. “These foul creatures were surely placed to guard something that way else they would not have fought us so fiercely.”“Perhaps,” answered Dulvarna. “But if there is an easier way to defeat Draxius here then I for one wish to take it. We have little food left and the quicker we escape this prison the better. We go east for now but we will come back this way if we cannot find Draxius that way.”The north-south corridor beyond the eastern doors dead-ended a little way to the north and so Dulvarna led the companions to the south until a wide hallway opened up to the east. Ahead, the corridor continued southward into darkness but Dulvarna turned aside, determined to avoid confronting for now whatever the foulspawn guarded. An opening to the right halfway down the passage revealed a staircase that led upwards but the companions barely paused beside it, knowing that they had to defeat another form of Draxius before they could ascend further up the pyramid. The wide passage ended in a set of double doors limned with ice. Dulvarna pushed on them and they failed to move but when Erlmoor lent his strength to the effort, the doors reluctantly swung open, releasing a blast of freezing air that assailed the companions like a winter wind. The floor of the hall ahead was covered with a thick sheet of ice that looked dangerously slick while frost coated the walls and the five other sets of doors leading out of the hallway. Dulvarna stepped forward cautiously onto the icy floor, picking ice that looked to offer her the most grip as she set her feet down. Despite this, she had barely gone a few feet into the hall when she slipped and fell painfully onto her back. She tried to get up but fell back again, jarring her back for a second time. Telkya followed Dulvarna into the room, stepping even more softly than the warrior woman had and for a moment, it seemed as if she might make progress. She passed Dulvarna with sword and amulet in hand, picking her way forward by the dim light that seemed to emanate from spots in the walls of the hallway. No sooner had she passed Dulvarna, she slipped and fell as her friend had, crying out as she jarred her arm painfully beneath her body. She tried to rise but she, too, fell back to lie beside the warrior woman.Lavren half-smiled at the problems that his wife and friend were encountering and closed his eyes, vanishing into a cloud of light motes. He reappeared beside Telkya and after taking a moment to steady himself, he sheathed his sword and reached a hand down to help his wife up. Suddenly, he heard a noise from the north and looked up to see the double doors across from him open. In the doorway stood an elf lord with very pale skin and white hair. His eyes were icy blue and the chainmail he wore seemed frosted from the cold. On one arm he wore a small, teardrop shaped shield and in the other hand, he held a slender longsword. The elf looked down at Dulvarna, who lay helpless a few feet away, and strode toward her.“To arms, to arms!” the warrior called out in elven and then stabbed his blade down into Dulvarna’s left arm.Erlmoor tried to rush to Dulvarna’s aid but he slipped and fell before he reached the elf. Still, he stabbed out with his blade, driving its point into the elf’s calf and forcing it back from Dulvarna.“Why do winter knights attack us?” he called to Lavren and Telkya, recognising the elves from a history he had read at the temple of Lathander in Eveningstar.“I know not,” Lavren called back.Another knight emerged from the northern chamber a moment later and strode easily across the ice to where Telkya lay. It stabbed out with its blade as the elf maid tried to scrambled backwards across the slippery surface. The sword nicked the side of her leg and Telkya’s blood, flowing freely in the cold chamber, stained the ice beside her. Enlishia came forward as quickly as she could but she too slipped as she neared the battle, falling to the ice but managing to keep her bow from falling beneath her. She loosed an arrow wildly that flew past the nearest knight but her second shaft drove into the shoulder of the elf warrior. As the elf recovered its balance and reached up to snap the arrow from the wound, a set of doors in the southern wall of the hallway opened. Another elf lord emerged from these doors, wielding the same longsword but seeming more slender and frail than the knights. This warrior wore chain mail but carried no shield and moved lightly across the ice towards Lavren, like a cloud of breath in wintry air.Behind the companions, Thorn moved into the doorway but did not step onto the icy floor. Instead, he unshouldered his crossbow and loaded a bolt before raising it to his shoulder and waiting for a clear shot at one of the elves. As he watched, more of the slender elves that he recognised as blades of winter emerged from the southern room until five filled the hallway and another knight emerged from the northern room to advance on Enlishia. Only Lavren remained standing while the others struggled to rise and keep the elves at bay at the same time. Thorn knew that the situation was desperate, but he knew too that he could do little to aid his companions.</blockquote>

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