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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NoOneofConsequence" data-source="post: 606571" data-attributes="member: 5400">Test of the Demonweb IVThe earthquake didn’t last very long, but when it had passed my body was battered and broken and I was very nearly at death’s door. Moaning and peering through the dust, I realised that the darkness that had been blinding my progress had gone with the earthquake. With Pax’s help, Harmony pulled me from the rocks and set to healing my injuries. There’s something disconcerting about watching a twisted limb straighten itself and then relocate at the joint with a loud “pop”. Still, I didn’t complain.After I had been healed and following Mark’s report that nothing had come up behind us, that the passage was still clear back to the main complex, we were faced with the question of what we might do next. Clearing the rock would take great effort and time. We weren’t sure how long it would take but the longer we stayed underground in this complex the greater the chance that we would be found and set upon by more spiders, driders, drow or whatever else the spider goddess saw fit to throw at her impending “meals”.However, we were still loath to give up on the Golden Band, having given our undertaking to find them. Pax took her Horn of Blasting from her pack and, pointing it at the rockfall and speaking the command word, she blew a long blast. The air before the horn shimmered like it was boiling hot and then the rock in the passage began to vibrate and shake. The sound reverberated off the walls, pressing painfully into our ears. The fallen rocks began to crumble into dust and soon a channel, roughly one foot across, had formed at the top of the blockage. It was not quite large enough for a human to fit through however and it took the better part of an hour for us to clear sufficient rubble.Once we had a passage I scrabbled through, swiftly followed by Pax, who was reaching the end of her tether as far these delays and enemy magics were concerned. While Pax helped Harmony and Aria through the newly made opening, I thought I saw something in the shadows near a bend in the passage. Heedless of my safety (for the third time this day) I chased the movement around the bend and saw a spider, not much larger than the size of a gauntleted fist, fleeing down the passage. Considering its size, and my own personal frustration for the day’s pains and sufferings, I pelted after the little beast, bent on making a corpse of it.Many people know the feeling of someone “walking over your grave”. Imagine if you will, that feeling taken and then forged in the black reaches of the Void until it was a solid force, like a hammer head or a mace. Then imagine that mace of death striking you with the force that only a giant or ogre can muster. Such is what I felt, as though rocks from a mountain of death and emptiness had collapsed upon me. I staggered back, winded. No matter how I tried I could find no strength in my body, not even enough to make my heart beat. I had been touched by death itself, I thought, and I lay curled on the floor until my companions discovered me. Again I was in need of Harmony’s tending.Ahead, the passage ended in a flat stone wall and no sign of the spider could be found. Whatever power it had utilised against me was great enough to make us think that the wall at the end of the passage had been conjured to prevent our pursuit. Given the destructiveness of the attack, I doubted that our company possessed the power to assault whoever or whatever lay beyond the wall, even if we could devise a way through it, which we could not. The pursuit ended at the wall. Cursing and dejected, we left the passage we had struggled so hard to explore and returned to the rest of the underground complex, hopeful of finding some sign of the Golden Band elsewhere.</blockquote>

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