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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2643112" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 467A faint haze of dust hung in the air over the drow city of Asran Vok.  Situated in a twisting cavern shaped roughly like a huge letter “S”, the city had been organized around a long avenue that ran roughly through the center of the place.  The low valley in the center of the cavern was packed with fungi farms and ponds stocked regularly with fish, while the higher ridges that adjoined the cavern walls contained the fortified estates of the city’s great Houses.  The northern terminus of the cavern contained the precincts of the Temple of Lolth, while the southern end contained a trading bazaar, warehouses, and a barracks where fifty drow warriors donated from all of the city’s Houses provided collective security for the trade center and monitoring of the primary access points where the city interfaced with the surrounding Underdark. All of it, now, was in ruin. The broad central avenue was a swath of destruction, littered with rubble that in some cases had been hurled from a hilltop estate torn from the sloping ridges and strewn across the valley floor, sometimes hundreds of feet distant.  Drow bodies were littered here and then, interspersed liberally with the corpses of deep rothe, bugbear and orc slaves, duergar mercenaries, and other races that associated with the drow lords.  The gates of adamantine that had fronted the entry to the temple grounds where the Spider Queen’s servants held sway had been twisted and torn free of their moorings.  One bent segment of that barrier still held the impaled corpse of a priestess, her face frozen in a look of utter terror, her tentacle rod lying forgotten a few dozen yards away.  The temple itself looked to have been almost split in two, like an overripe melon dropped onto the hard pavement.  A sickly stench of rot rose from within, accompanied by the skittering of vermin who were already eagerly devouring the products of this gory conquest. But one thing was missing from this scene of carnage.  All of the bodies were of the victims, all of the destruction belonged to the drow and their minions.  There were not tracks, no trace of the engine of this devastation.  It might have been an earthquake, except for the thoroughness of the obliteration that had been wrought here.  Asran Vok had simply ceased to be.  Later, the few survivors that had fled the Terror would return, amazed at the complete end of everything that they had known. * * * * * Lok’s expression was inscrutable as he entered the cavern.  The place was dark and still, the faint sounds of water and wind reaching his ears, echoing softly to produce an impression of great solemnity and empty space.  It was a cathedral, of sorts, like the tomb of a dead god. The genasi shook himself of such dark thoughts.  He hadn’t slept much since his meeting with the urdunnir elders, troubled by what they’d told him, and troubled by the path his own dreams had taken. He became aware of light and sound.  Gaera and Mole, coming up behind him.  It was comforting to have friends here; although he’d first tried to insist on coming here alone, to face whatever it was that was threatening his people, inwardly he was glad that the two women had refused to remain behind.  The urdunnir warders had likewise been confused at his directions, at his statement that he would go out beyond the Shield Wall to face the threat alone, but the elders had only nodded, accepting his decision as an inevitability that was clearly evident. If only it was so clear to him, Lok thought.  He’d dreamt of the Keeper, in that halfway-real place between wakefulness and sleep.  Dumathoin had not spoken to him—not this time—but Lok had sensed that there was something there, that the dream-encounter was not just a product of his own imagination and memory.  He had come far since that last encounter, since Dumathoin had spoken to him. It is not yet time.  You have accomplished much, but you are not ready…Those words had come in the aftermath of their confrontation with the avatar of Tiamat, the dragon-god of Unther, brought back into the Prime by the plottings of the duergar and their deep-dragon ally.  When he’d heard those words his physical body had been dead, lying empty on the cold stone in the duergar citadel.  But Dumathoin had had other plans for him…I send ye back into the world, my Lok, as a defender of the urdunnir and those others that need thy aid.  I send you not as a missionary, for my star has already passed its zenith, and even now descends swiftly toward its nadir.  But you, who have walked the many diverse pathways of the world, will not make the same mistakes that I made…  That is my hope, my son.Was now to be his time? the genasi thought, unlimbering his axe and laying it on the stone before him.  The quiet cavern was a fitting place for the meeting, solemn, so far beneath the world in which he had lived his life.  “Mole, you should return to the settlement,” he said.  He didn’t even try to convince Gaera; the woman had made her feelings on the issue quite clear earlier.  The priestess did not agree with him coming here, but nor was she going to let him stand here alone.  None of them understood what they faced here; Lok did not have any additional insight into that, but from what he’d learned from the elders, and from his own dreams, he knew that it was something ancient that had the power to strike down what he had accomplished with the urdunnir. “In the words of another dwarf I once knew, go stuff yourself,” Mole said with a grin.  “Besides, I want to see what it is.”  What is it? Lok thought.  He stared into the darkness, but although his darkvision penetrated it, there was nothing there to be seen.  The elders had spoken of a vibration in the stone, a tremor that spoke of a thing that was coming toward them, moving quickly and with purpose directly toward the heart of their community.  Lok had not been able to feel it, but he knew his people well enough to sense the unease that suffused the inhabitants of the settlement.  The urdunnir were a people in close harmony with the stone, and even when the warnings were subtle, they could sense wrongness, even when it could not be fully identified.  The elders had been able to give him a direction and a time.  The former intersected with this cavern, and the latter… well, the latter, Lok realized had just about run out. He knelt, drawing off his gauntlet and pressing his fingertips against the cool stone of the floor.  “I don’t feel anything,” Mole said, imitating Lok’s motion.  She dropped to the ground and pressed her ear against the stone, trying to improve the efficacy of the detection stratagem. “Quiet,” Gaera said, her own voice a whisper.  The priestess was clad in a breastplate of shining mithral, and with her heavy mace and shield, both of fine dwarf-forged steel, she looked more martial than she felt.  She’d already laid several long-lasting wards upon them, including a potent invocation against evil that surrounded her, enveloping her two companions. Lok did not respond to them; he focus was on the stone, and his senses.  He had never possessed the urdunnir gifts that his mother and the other of his kin had as their birthright.  But he was of the earth, and on some deeper level, he felt a bond with the stone, with places such as this…Then he felt it.  Alien, malevolent, surging through the crust of the world beneath them like a shark through the ocean. And close.  Very, very close. Lok’s eyes popped open.  His hand tightened on his axe, and he pushed himself to his feet. The only other warning the others had was when a massive tremor shook the cavern, a pulse like an explosion that threw them all roughly from their feet.  The two dwarves fell hard, but Mole landed on the ball of one hand and popped back to her feet instantly, where she bounced lightly against the bucking stone. Since she was standing she saw it first. It was as if the stone floor of the cavern had become water, and a massive tsunami was forming in its surface.  The wave filled the cavern, the floor and walls coming together into a surge that rose almost to the ceiling of the place, forty, fifty, maybe even sixty feet above them.  It was… huge wasn’t even close to enough to describe it.  The time it took from when she saw it emerge from the rock to when it was looming above them could be measured in fractions of a single heartbeat.  As it came, it became more distinct, with massive arms erupting from the wave, and black points of utter malevolence becoming visible in its top, its ‘head’, Mole supposed, although to give something like this humanlike traits seemed somehow wrong. “We’re in trouble,” the part of her mind that could still think managed to say. Then the wave broke over them.</blockquote>

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