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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 1171786" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Draelond #1] Purgatorium[/PLAIN]Draelond awoke slowly, his senses returning to him only reluctantly.He was laying face down on a rocky plain.And he was cold.Beyond that, he could tell little at first and it was only with great effort that he pushed himself up to his knees, shook himself free of snow and looked around.That didn't help.He stood up and blinked. The light was a dim, silvery radiance that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Draelond's shadow splayed outwards across the snow, surrounding his feet like spokes on a wheel. The sky above was a misty, violet glow in whose depths he could see faint motes of color - metallic greenish-blue and rusty orange-brown, mostly - but everywhere else all the color seemed leeched from the landscape. The soil on which he stood was a flat lusterless black, dusted with a thin crust of pale snow. Here and there he could see some wiry clumps of grass struggling up through the effluvium; the sickly blades were a strange gray non-color. A flurry of snow fell all around him like chill dust, already obscuring the imprint his body had left on the ground, but seeming to accumulate little.An expectant hush predominated, seeming almost to press against his ears.At his back swirled a bank of frigid mist that seemed to be the source of the cold. Ice crystals spun lazily through the air, borne on air currents that he couldn't feel. A thick layer of frost covered the ground before the fog bank.Abruptly, the fog spit out a figure that landed unceremoniously on the glaze of frost a half-dozen paces to Draelond's left. The figure was larger and bulkier than the warrior and dressed in skins and furs. It lay still for a moment and then it scrambled stiffly to its feet and Draelond saw that it was a bugbear. It turned to regard him and he saw its squashed nose sample the air as it hefted an enormous, pitted double-axe. Draelond took a step back, his hand going up to Ravager's handle as he did so. He was grimly surprised that he was going to have to do battle so soon after fighting the rat-headed... giant...He paused, blinking again.What had happened to the giant?And where were the others?The bugbear snorted at him non-committally and holding its axe easily in one hand it loped off into the snow where it was swallowed up by the gloom.Draelond forced his mind to remember what had happened before and he was surprised at how little memory there was. He clearly recalled charging at the giant's flank and stabbing half of his bastard sword into its back with all of the strength Ruze's spell had granted him. He also remembered feeling somewhat surprised when the thing turned on him, grabbed his arms in its barrel-sized fists and...He put a hand to his shoulder, half-expecting to find his arm hanging by thread of gristle, but he appeared to be uninjured. His divinely enhanced musculature had returned to its normal size, but there was no pain. His armor wasn't even dirty.The giant's huge claws came down, grabbed him savagely and... and then he was here. And he had a sinking suspicion that he knew where 'here' was.</blockquote>

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