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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 2243548" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #310] The Air Walk, part 2[/PLAIN]"This is not survivable..." Morier said after a moment, giving simple voice to their shared fear. Feln said nothing but looked away into the wind as if challenging the storm. Ledare put a cold and trembling hand on the albino's forearm."Do not despair, Morier," she began and the eldritch warrior silenced her with a look."No. I mean WE cannot survive this," he explained. "It seems possible that maybe one of us might... but we don't have the resources to get all three of us through.""What?" the Janissary asked, her brows knitting in confusion."I have a plan of attack that might just get me through," he said, belatedly adding, "maybe. But you two need to go back through the portal." Ledare shook her head at that."There's no way I'm leaving you alone on this mountain," she told him. "I just can't do it.""Look Ledare, that dolmen marks passage back to the test of earth, and perhaps back to the safety of the Great Oak from there," Morier said, indicating the far portal. "The journey back is not without risk, but you certainly stand a greater chance of survival against those known challenges than you do these hopeless circumstances.""The Oak has told us that the key to our journey is freeing Dridana, and that the keepers of this place are alone in the knowledge of how to do that. Only one of us need complete the Purging to gain that information," he went on then shook his head in disbelief. "Let's be honest - all three of us are not going to survive these conditions, and even then none of us may survive the water test." Ledare's face remained hardened, but a low rumbling began to build in Feln's chest."I cannot believe we have gotten this far and this challange is so impossibly unbeatable!" he growled, his voice building in volume until he was bellowing at the top of his considerable lungs. "SPHYNX!!! COME AND GIVE ME A RIDDLE YOU FOUL BIRD! GIVE ME A CHALLENGE, NOT A DEATH SENTENCE!!!" Ledare looked sympathetically at the half-ogre."Feln has recently returned to this world," she said. "He deserves his second shot at life. I'll stay with you, Morier.""No, Ledare.... I am no more a quitter than you," Feln said. "I had not thought of this challange as a gateway to the salvation of our world, Morier, but you have shed light on the puzzle again, and I agree with you; this may be the way to a great answer. We cannot allow ourselves to fail in this challenge.""Someone needs to succeed," Morier said. "Not all of us.""You are right about someone needing to survive this. But what good does it do to leave you alone here on this mountainside?" the Janissary asked. "Do you honestly think you're more likely to survive if you were alone?""Yes," the eldritch warrior said simply. "I do.""Well, I think you'd be better off if we both, or at least one of us, stayed with you," Ledare scoffed. "That way if one of us dies, you can at least burn the body. Who knows, we may die trying to return through the first two portals anyway.""But staying here is certain death for you," Morier countered. "We don't have the resources to keep all of us alive out here for long enough to last until the fourth portal opens. I don't have-""I won't be a burden and I don't expect you to waste your spells on me," Ledare interrupted. "I'm also not trying to be a martyr here. It just goes against every grain in my body to leave you alone... Morier, you especially know how many friends I have already lost."Morier grimaced and thought of the first time he'd met Ledare, her just a girl surrounded by the corpses of her family and friends in the bowels of a chagmat lair. As an elf, the passage of ten years hadn't changed Morier much, but Ledare had grown into a great warrior... a leader of men in a great battle against a rising evil. He was grateful for a second chance to keep her alive."I can use spells to boost my constitution and my healing draughts to ward off frostbite, and maybe Garn-Zanuth will have a hand in my survival," he told her. "But I cannot keep two of us alive... or three. Staying on this mountaintop is a certain death for you, but I am expendable, a journeyman pawn seeking adventure. You... you are a key to fighting the evil that grips the Realms." Ledare shook her head."I'm no more important than anyone else, Morier," she said. "We each do our part." "Then let me do mine!" the elf chided. "Go with Feln. Go back through the dolmen and wait for me. Find Karak and wait for me to step through the dolmen." He turned to Feln and looked into the half-ogre's eyes."Take her and go!" he commanded. "Remember the trap on the other side of the dolmen - Go!" But Feln just looked at him for a moment as if he were in some reverie. At last he blinked and shook his head."As a youngster, the elder monks would tell stories of great warriors and adventurers, one of which has been ringing in my brain in all the time we've sat on this cold earth," the martial artist explained. "Two warriors and their horses set across a great mountainscape. They had commited certain acts which had left them little options but travel over inhospitable ground for every road had men-at-arms and hired cut throats looking for them. After four days of climbing the warriors were exuberant to find that they were scaling down the other side, they had reached the half way point.""That evening, as fate would have it a blizzard took them by surprise. They had no shelter and they had no time to prepare one," he went on, gesturing to their own circumstances as he continued. "In an act of desparation one warrior sliced open his horse and climbed inside, using his sizable robe to create a small air pocket and try to ride out the storm. The other warrior could not bring himself to do the same, and tried to build a shelter... As the story goes, the warrior in the horse climbed out in the morning and found his compatriot frozen solid. The man's horse was dead as well. I think you see the point of this story." "No, I'm afraid I don't," Ledare said."We don't have any horses, Feln," Morier added and the half-ogre rolled his pale blue eyes."I know we have no horses, but I think Vade may have had me revived as part of some master plan. Why else would I have come back in this ridiculous form, completly out of tune with all that I have spent my life... or my first life anyway... studying," he said and rose to his feet, shaking off a thick blanket of snow as he rose and thumped his enormous hands against the vast expanse of his chest. "I volunteer, I request... in fact, I demand... that you use this shell - this ogrish form - to warm you and get through this test. Find answers and save this world.""OH MY GOD!" Ledare gasped in horror and Morier's jaw clenched."I will tell Vade of your great defeat over this challenge," Feln said with a smile "He will love the story, if I can get a word in edgewise.""I'm not going to kill you," the elf said."We are not going to take a life merely hoping to pass this or any other test," the Janissary agreed. "The others have all been designed around an element...fire, earth, air. Who is to say that 'water' won't do us in at the very next turn. It's too risky and your life is worth far more than that. We should go back." Feln looked at Ledare's face and saw no guile there, only genuine concern."I will not leave a friend behind here. End of story," he said flatly. "I leave with everyone, or I stay.""Feln, you have to go and you have to go now. You must take Ledare and make sure that both of you make it back to the Great Oak," Morier explained, rising to his feet and reaching up to put a hand on the giant's broad shoulder. "I have a chance at survival, but staying here for you is a certain death. I'm not doing this out of some false sense of heroism - I am doing this and planning on surviving and learning how to free Dirdana. You do not stand that chance... now get out! Nobody will remember you as a hero for sitting in a snowbank waiting to die; they will think you a fool for not leaving when you had the chance. There is no point to either you or Ledare continuing this argument that you can't leave me behind.""Karak was right, Morier - we don't need to waste our lives in pursuit of this. We can be effective against Aphyx in other ways" Ledare suggested. "Let's return together.""Of the three of us, I alone stand the possibility - however slim - of surviving. You have no such luxury!!" the eldritch warrior argued. "Concentrate instead on the tasks that lie ahead of you in returning through the test of fire and the test of earth. Wait for me to return to you as soon as I finish these tasks... NOW GO !!!" Feln looked solemnly down at Morier and shook his great head."If I am meant to die on this mountain, so be it... If I die, then you won't be killing me when you climb inside my ogrish husk," he said as calmly as if he were talking about sharing a pair of gloves. "If I live then we will see this through to the end. We still have to deal with water, even if we make it through the test of air."Morier's jaw clenched visibly and a blue vein throbbed in his temple as color tried rising without much success to his cheeks. But his voice was carefully controlled when he began speaking."Will the two of you PLEASE get out of here!?! " he pleaded. "Heaven knows I could be wrong, but I don't think surviving this test is about decisions, I think it's about just that... survival... and maybe none of us will, but for sure neither of you can. I can cast Quick Boost 6 or 7 times as well as use a scroll of that spell once. I have six healing potions right now, and my strength does not yet feel halfway depleted. That might be enough to get one person through this godforsaken test, but it isn't enough to get all of us through." He paused as emotions moved across his face. The light of the two sunrods struck lightning in his eyes."Don't make me watch you die and know that I could have prolonged your life with a healing draught or a spell at the expense of finding the answers we need," he said and his voice cracked with emotion. "DO NOT MAKE ME WATCH YOU DIE WHILE I DO THIS !!! NEITHER OF YOU STAND ANY CHANCE OF SURVIVING.!!! I DO!!! IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, WILL YOU PLEASE GET OUT AND GO BACK!!!" His voice rebounded like thunder in the night and for a moment the other two were silent. Then Feln spoke."Fine, I will go with Ledare... on one condition," the half-ogre conceded. "Ledare, you agree to stay for two days, no longer. I will not sit at a gate and dwell on the thought that Morier may not have made it. Agreed?""Agreed," Ledare said after a moment's consideration. She got to her feet."Morier, if it is worth giving up, then it is simply worth giving up," Feln said gravely. "The Dolmen is right there and you should consider walking out right behind us. If you stay, which it seems you are intent on doing, know that you are remembered and loved. May the gods shine on you this day." He clasped wrists with the elf, his huge hand swallowing Morier's completely."We are all pawns in this fight, Morier," Ledare said. "But on this day you have proven yourself a King." She leaned close and embraced the elf, pressing a potion bottle into his hand. "White Lady, Goddess of mercy, grant your healing touch to this brave soul. Give him your warmth and favor so that he might persevere in this dark hour," she said as she held him tightly and Morier felt the barest trickle of divine energy flow into him from Ledare.The three looked at each other as if it were the last time they'd ever see one another. Then Ledare and Feln turned and the two shuffled reluctantly back to the third dolmen. Feln spoke the password and they stepped through and found themselves back where they started in the Great Oak's wood...... leaving Morier alone in a private frozen hell.</blockquote>

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