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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1638695" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 170A last bright surge of late afternoon sunlight flared over the lip of the Demonskar, illuminating the dark shadow of a figure standing at the edge of the ancient pipe, looking down over the canyon below.  Zenna stared at the shadowy figure, watching him even as the sun faded and night descended with startling rapidity over them.  She felt torn inside, twisted around by all that had happened.  It was not a feeling she enjoyed; her entire existence had been built around the need for control.  Even if it was just an illusion. Movement at her side drew her attention around.  Her mouth tightened as she looked down at Morgan, tightly bound, gagged and blindfolded with gobs of wax stuffed into his ears.  They’d removed his armor, and his clothes were dirty with mud and blood, much of it his own. Getting him up here had been an ordeal.  With one of her last remaining spells she’d been able to restore some of the strength Arun had lost to the hags’ foul touch, but even so the slope had been difficult enough when they’d been coming down with ropes and without the burden of an unconscious, armored man.  The cleric shifted a bit, and subsided.  Earlier, before they’d fully bound him with Mole’s ropes, he’d made an all-out effort to break free, forcing Arun to bloody his face with several punishing punches before he’d quieted enough for them to secure him.  Zenna rubbed her forehead, where a headache had taken up what felt like a permanent residence.  This was a complication that they didn’t need. The spell that the hag had used to subjugate Morgan’s will to her own was not one that she could herself cast—only truly powerful mages could—but she knew something of it.  She’d suspected that the hag would be able to control him from a distance, a suspicion that seemed to be borne out in the way he had shammed remaining unconscious, until he had tried to escape.  Any doubt that might have remained in their minds was eradicated a short while thereafter, when he had addressed them. “You’re not going to get out of here alive,” he had told them.  “You will share the fate of that fool manling who came before you, yes.  The Demon knows that you are here, and He will be coming for you, shortly...”He’d laughed until they’d gagged him, and after that they’d covered his eyes and ears, per Zenna’s suggestion.  She wasn’t exactly sure how much information that the hag would be able to draw from him, but by the way he’d looked at them, and by his laugh... she preferred to err on the side of caution.  “How long’s ‘e goin’ to be like that?” Hodge had asked, after the initial fracas shortly after they’d gotten him up to the pipe.  “I don’t know, for sure,” she’d responded.  “Days... maybe as much as a tenday.”“We don’t have a tenday,” Arun had said.  “Can ye break the spell?” Hodge had asked.Again, Zenna could only shake her head. Hodge had suggested tossing the cleric into the boiling pool at the base of the canyon below the pipe, and while Zenna had known that the dwarf was joking—or at least mostly joking—she’d felt keenly the difficulty of their situation.  Dannel and Mole had returned safely, the elf favoring his shoulder where a giant’s boulder had clipped him during their retreat, and the giants and the hags had not ventured an action against them in the two hours since they’d fled the complex at Vaprak’s Voice.  Knowing that their foes had the ability to cloak themselves in invisibility, Mole had laid simple snares and tell-tales on the path leading up to the pipe, but those rudimentary preparations left Zenna with little sense of security.  If their enemies wanted to counterattack, they would find a way.  At least they’d hear the giants coming—that is, if they didn’t wait until the Voice was blowing... “Rest easy, lass,” Arun said, coming over to her.  “There’s naught we can do about it now, but gather our strength.  Tomorrow, we’ll do what we can.”“And if they come tonight?”“Then we’re saved a trip back down,” the dwarf replied simply. Zenna laughed despite herself.  But then something else weighed in upon her, something triggered by Morgan’s words earlier.  “Do you think that he was... I mean, do you believe that Alek Tercival’s dead, that this has all been for nothing?”The dwarf’s stare was intense.  “He may be dead, but that doesn’t make this journey meaningless.  Evil festers in isolated places such as this one, but it is never content to remain apart.  It seeks always to spread, to take hold where it can, to undermine the bulwarks of good and dig itself into the cracks that exist even in the most upright societies.  Thus it falls upon those that can, to seek it out, and destroy it before it can grow to full fruition.”Zenna felt a sudden stab of feeling inside of her.  Her father had said something very similar to her, not so long ago.  She turned away, unable to speak. Arun clasped her shoulder.  “Get some sleep, if you can.  We’ll need you on the morrow, especially with the Helmite... indisposed.”  With a sound that might have almost been a chuckle, he returned to where he’d laid his bedroll out a short distance away.  When she looked over at him again, amazingly, he was asleep.  Hodge, who’d eaten a double ration of food and then collapsed in a heap about an hour ago, was already fast asleep, a coarse snore drifting up from his prone form.  Zenna laid out her own bedroll.  They would let her sleep uninterrupted, she knew, so that she would have the focus to regain her spells the next morning.  The others would watch, sacrificing their own rest for her.  She closed her eyes, doubting her ability to sleep through the confused thoughts dancing through her mind, but somehow sleep crept up and claimed her.</blockquote>

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