[Realms #375] On Toward Water
Ayremac stood, his face serene with no hint at the emotions stirring within him other then the tears glittering on his cheeks. His features were still and stoney despite the otherworldly glow that suffused him, making him look as if his depth of beauty and soul have moved beyond the physical realm into one of pure spirit. A calm and trustworthy aura radiated from him as perceptibly as the celestial light itself. After hesitating for a moment, he stretched his wings to their limit, feathered tips nearly brushing the opposite walls. Then he clenched his fists tightly at his sides, the muscles in his arms and chest rippling with holy power, and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Throwing his arms upward and with a single mighty snap of his wings he shouted to the heavens "Thank you, Umba!!"
Of course, this outburst woke the others
Morier rolled immediately to his feet with Stoneblade already in his hands. "What is it?" he shouted.
"What in the nine hells?" Karak grumbled as he scrambled to his feet, frost dripping off the blade of his waraxe. "Ayremac, lad, what've ye done to yerself?"
"I am not sure," the holy warrior admitted. "But I feel as if these wings were always a part of me. I've just finally unlocked the power of my celestial heritage."
"Wux pothoc," Huzair cursed in draconic, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He turned away from the spectacle that Ayremac had made of himself and made to return to sleep.
"Wux renthisj draconic?" Ixin asked from nearby, huddling within her borrowed cloak. She regarded the wizard hopefully, her eyes flashing gold at him.
"Yes," he answered in the tongue of magic. "I do. Is that a language you speak as well." She nodded and Huzair smiled reassuringly at her. "Well that's just great! We were wondering how we'd communicate with you, Ixin!"
She flinched slightly at the mention of her name and her eyes narrowed as she tried to remember things she'd tried desperately to forget. "I was once called Ixin, but that feels like an eternity ago," she told him. "Before the fire... Ixin... I... died.... sort of."
"That sounds horrible," Huzair said, his face full of concern. His voice fairly dripped with the stuff. "We never knew what happened to you after you entered the Grove of Renewal." She looked at him, recognizing the name.
"The Grove..." she muttered. "You know about that." He nodded.
"I was told about it," the wizard replied. "And I found Morier running around naked after he came out of it." She nodded and sighed expansively.
"I was engulfed in a lake of fire. I thought I was dead... wished I was dead after a time," she said, struggling with the memory. "But... but my draconis fundamentum would not let my heart stop beating. I... changed physically and became more of my dragon self. But it was torturous. I thought I must be in hell. It made sense to me as I had much to atone for." She looked at her clawed hands as if she might see them slick with the blood of innocents. Huzair laid his hand on her forearm and squeezed.
"I find it hard to believe that someone as beautiful and kind-hearted as you would have anything to atone for," he told her and she patted his hand with hers.
"That is sweet of you to say, but it is false. My past is not as spotless as you imagine," she sighed, eyes downcast. "But I believe my atonement must now be complete in the eyes of some god or another. And this group... You saved me from the hell in which I was trapped. I owe you my new life."
"Don't be silly," Huzair said, but their was a glint of something in his obsidian eyes. "Karak almost slew you, after all."
"Karak... I remember Karak... and Morier, but you others..." she looked around the chamber and faces turned to regard her. "How did you come to be traveling together and what are you doing here?"
"What are ye sayin' about me, wizard?" Karak asked in common, stamping toward them. Even unarmored and barefoot his footfalls echoed about the chamber. Huzair smiled at him.
"She was just telling me she finds me very attractive," the wizard said with the utmost sincerity. "Much more so that ugly old Karak and Morier." The dwarf growled and clenched his axe handle, but Huzair raised his own hands in helplessness, adding, "Those are her words, not mine."
"Sure they are, Huzair," Morier scoffed as he came over and squatted beside the two spellcasters. "You never lie about anything, right?"
"What are they saying?" Ixin asked in draconic. Huzair fixed her with an ernest eye and smiled.
"Oh, they say how lucky you are to have someone like me looking out for you," he explained.
"I am pretty sure I could fly with them," Ayremac said the next morning - or what passed for such in this sunless dungeon. He flexed his wings and the feathers rustled in the chamber. "I am not sure if that will help us get the next key, but it could be a nice distraction. I just hope I don't end up like the celestial beast you summoned, Shamalin!"
The cleric looked up at him briefly and then back down at the ring Huzair had found in the cache. She had slipped on her finger last night, but was unsure what it did. And, besides, she found it difficult to look at him. Her head was swimming. She had just started to feel comfortable with the Ayremac of the present, his new name and his new faith. Now suddenly here was this strange new development. He looked foreign to her, utterly unlike the youth she had known all those years ago.
It was the wings, mostly. She was acutely aware that this was a gift like no other. A sign of absolute acceptance by his god... a thing which left Shamalin feeling empty inside.
Ayremac sensed her conflict but not its cause and so he asked, "Have you not yet figured out the purpose of your new ring, Shamalin? Try to shout or intimidate me with it on." Shamalin arched an eyebrow at the Officer of Umbra.
"With pleasure," she said, rising to her feet, her expression suddenly hardened. She circled Ayremac slowly, allowing her voice to build in intensity with each breath. "I've been a member of this party longer than you have, and I'm entitled to the next elemental blade." She jabbed at his chest with her finger for emphasis. "I'll be the one taking the next sword, if we are lucky enough to earn another one, and if Karak does not desire it. So if you think you can flex your big... blond... wings and look down on me with that holier than thou gaze of justice, then YOU have another thing coming."
She stepped back and smiled, pleased with the stunned expression on Ayremac's face. Across the room, Morier clutched his mouth and belly as he stifled laughter. Ixin just looked on, utterly confused.
"Wow. That was pretty good. I almost believed you were really annoyed," Ayremac said, turning away. He contemplated her outburst for a moment then turned his head, eyeing her over his shoulder.
"Anyone have a strong feeling as to where we should go next?" Ayremac asked later after they had divided up the loot. "I believe air and water are what is left. Huzair, you have the most experience with the elemental planes, what do you think we will face in these challenges?" Huzair was leaning against the wall, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles.
"Oh, I would guess an angry Djinn, air elementals, water elementals, water wierds," he answered, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. "Those would be my guesses."
"Lovely," Karak grumbled.
"Which is more likely to be cold?" Ayremac asked. "Air or water?"
"Water," the mage answered immediately and Ayremac nodded.
"Do we have any skills here?" the hold warrior asked, looking around at the assemblage. "For instance, I have some natural resistance to cold. Shamalin, you can breathe under water, is that right?"
"It is a miracle I have prepared," she replied and the Officer of Umba frowned.
"Shamalin, I think that this will help with breathing under water. It should be yours... here." Ayremac announced, taking the bright red Necklace of Adaptation off his neck and moving to slip it onto Shamalin's. She held up a hand to prevent him.
"Ayremac, " She said, waiting until their gazes met before continuing. "In spite of what I said before about the elemental blade, we should be wise with our distribution of these magic items. I have a spell that will let me breathe underwater. Keep the amulet... It will give me peace of mind knowing you will be by my side no matter what the test environment may be like."
He smiled at her and lay a reassuring hand on her armored shoulder, nodding.
"Me bootsill protect me a bit from the cold," Karak offered, indicating his Boots of the Winterlands. And that was the extent of their preparedness.
"What about Ixin?" Ayremac asked. "What does she bring to our group?" Huzair translated the question and then her response.
"She's got nothing that'll help much with cold or water," he told the others. "She can glide a bit with her wings and she can breath fire once a day."
Ixin was striking to behold, and Shamalin couldn't help but stare at her as Huzair explained what she was capable of. It wasn't so much how she looked - although the height and fangs and muscles were an awe-inspiring combination. Shamalin's curiosity focused more on the idea that Ixin had been reborn from her previous life. This raised so many questions. Was it the place she had died which accounted for her reincarnation - this Grove of Renewal? Had it to do with some fiery element of Ixin's own nature or the means of her death? Had it been a choice? The fact that Shamalin could not communicate any of these questions was frustrating to no end. And so she resigned herself to watching their newest member with an isolated sense of awe.
In the end it was decided that they would press on toward the Elemental Water Key. They stepped through the plane of utter dark and stepped into a gray void. There was ground beneath their feet on which to walk, but it was indistinguishable from the air above their heads or pressing in all around them. Light came from everywhere and nowhere, casting no shadows and bathing everyone in a disconcertingly flat glow that made it impossible to gauge distance. Not that there was anything to see in the distance, mind you.
"What's this supposed to be?" Huzair quipped. "The Test of Boredom?" Before anyone had a chance to laugh, the man was in their midst, blade flashing.
He was wild-eyed and hairy, naked but for a loin clout and a golden amulet that swung crazily around his neck even as he swung his bastard sword about. The blade hewed into Huzair's right leg, its momentum slowed only by its impact with the wizard's femur. Huzair screamed and fell away from his assailant, blood streaming down his crippled leg.
Karak roared a battlecry and hefted his waraxe in the mage's defense, but Shamalin shouted for him to stop. "Remember the other tests!" she cried. "Defeating this man in battle can't be the ans-"
Ixin didn't speak common.
The half-dragon leapt onto the man from behind, her massive arms, pinning the berserker's own to his side. He struggled to free his weapon, trying to head butt Ixin as he did so. But as his head came back, the drakeling's jaws snapped forward, clamping down on his neck where it met his shoulder. The man seemed not to feel it and when she drew back her head, the wound closed bloodlessly.
"The amulet!" Huzair cried from the ground, where he was trying to staunch the flow of blood from his wounded leg. "Get the amulet!"
Morier's arm whipped out like a striking cobra and snatched the amulet, snapping the chain that linked it to the man. No sooner had the jewelry come free of his throat than he sank into a languid calm, seeming almost to melt in Ixin's thick arms.
"Mercy?" he pleaded. And then his eyes bulged and he made choking sounds as the half-dragon's arms tightened around his weakened body.
"Poc!" Huzair shouted to her, raising his blood-soaked hand. "Poc, Ixin! Sventhric-sthyr!"
"Shar, sthyrirlym wux," she responded and the mage shook his head. She let the man go reluctantly.
"It only seemed that way," he sighed in common and turned his attention to the defeated man. "I grant you mercy," he said and the man smiled.
"You may pass on through the far door," the hairy man told them, gesturing at a door that had appeared some distance away.
"But I don't understand, Huzair," Ixin said in draconic as they stepped through the door and into the next test. "He nearly killed you."
"I know. It doesn't make sense," the wizard admitted. "But I've learned to trust Shamalin on these morality tests."
"I don't see how this is a test of morality," Ixin replied, looking around.
They had appeared on one side of a chasm that was at least 50' across and so deep as to appear bottomless from where they stood. The door had let onto a narrow ledge barely ten feet across and twice that in length. A similar ledge was on the opposite side of the chasm and on it could be seen another door, marked as the previous two had with the rune of water. There was no visible means of crossing.
Huzair's lip curled in disgust as he felt all of the enchantments upon him suppressed within the chamber. "Anti-magic field," he announced, bitterly.
Karak approached the edge and dropped a rock over the side. He waited, hand cupped around his ear, but didn't hear it hit bottom. "I dinnae want to fall in tha'!" he said, stepping away from the edge. As he turned back to the others his face grew wide with concern and he pointed behind them. "Oy!"
Molten lava was slowly pouring out of two hidden vents one set on either side of the door through which they'd entered. It hissed and spattered as it oozed from the vents and began to pool on the ledge behind them.
"Not again," Ixin hissed in draconic.
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