NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1739783" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 214Zenna figured where the lantern was leading them even before the fibrous forest began to thin out, depositing them back out onto the plain.  There, directly ahead of them in the center of Occipitus, lay the great skull.  Streamers of flame, smoke, and the occasional bulbous plasm rose from the uppermost eye socket.  The skull lay in the center of a blasted landscape that was sparse even for this place, and it seemed to stare balefully at them, waiting. “Why am I not surprised?” Arun said, sounding tired.  The sheer weight of Occipitus upon the psyche had to be having an effect upon him, she thought.  There was nothing to be done but to set out walking.  A long day passed, with them slowly drawing closer to the skull, although by the time they finally broke to rest Zenna thought that the mound looked little nearer than it had when they had started.  They encountered nothing, not the slightest stirring of life as far as they could see.  It was as if the entire plane had fallen into a deep somnolence, with even the ever-dancing plasms in the sky above seeming to drift sleepily on their random courses. They were tired and hungry, but Zenna was finally able to ease the latter problem.  Their stores of buffalo meat had rotted to the point where even Zenna’s purify spell could not make it edible, and they discarded the remainder soon after leaving the fibrous forest.  Mole turned out her bag of holding, but only found a few loose grains and other scraps of food that did little to assuage their hunger.  Zenna knew that whatever tests waited at the skull would demand the most of them, and that they could not afford to be weak from incipient starvation.  So after that rest, while preparing her spells, she focused her meditations upon their need, finally nodding as a trickle of divine energy echoed in her mind. The food she conjured with the create food and water spell was gray and bland, and it bore the same faintly rancid taint that everything in this place possessed, but that didn’t stop any of them from eating their fill.  Even with Hodge and Mole each eating enough for two people there was still a lot left, which Mole carefully packed up and stored in her bag of holding.  “Well, I mighta preferred a side o’ beef and a keg o’ ale, but damned if that didn’t hit the spot,” Hodge finally said.  “But why didn’t yer magic us up a meal before, when we was chokin’ down that damned fiend-cow meat?”“My powers have only recently augmented to the point where I can draw upon the third valence of divine energy,” Zenna explained.  At Hodge’s blank look, she added, “I couldn’t cast that spell before.”She didn’t see the thoughtful look that Kaurophon wore as he considered this new development. “Let’s get moving,” Morgan prodded.  In his new armor, and with the holy bastard sword slung across his back, he looked again the vision of a veteran knight, although dark circles still hung under his eyes, and the muscles of his jaw were constantly tight, giving him the tense look of a hunted man.  The second day seemed to go much easier, with plenty of food to sustain them, and no obstacles to bar their way.  They encountered a number of shallow pools, thin cuts like ulcers in the spongy ground, filled with a noxious, thick red fluid that looked and smelled like fresh blood.  They gave those a wide berth, but they began to appear with more frequency as they drew nearer to the skull.  “Another day, maybe two,” Morgan estimated, as they began to flag, and started looking for another place to set up a camp.  It didn’t take long; everyplace they looked seemed pretty much the same as the others, except that they wanted a spot well away from any of the bubbling ulcer pools.“Well, elf, you going to lend a hand, or are you just going to stare at that skull?” Morgan said, as he laid out his ragged bedroll, and started undoing the straps on his breastplate.  But Zenna saw Dannel’s body suddenly tense.  “What is it?” she asked. “Something’s coming,” he reported.  “Flying this way.”The companions leapt up, reached for their weapons, and stared out at the distance.  It took them a moment to see the tiny speck that the elf had spotted, but after a minute or two there was no doubting that he was right, that whatever it was, it was coming right for them.  Kaurophon’s soft voice sounded behind them, casting spell after spell in anticipation.  Zenna followed his lead, summoning both her mage armor and a shield.  Whatever it was, it was flying fast, maybe eighty feet above the plain, high enough to give it a clear vantage over the surrounding area, but not high enough to draw the plasms.  Finally, while it was still little more than an amorphous black shape to most of them, Dannel’s sharp eyes identified the enemy.  “It’s a dragon,” he said.  “A big one.”</blockquote>

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