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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 2316733" data-attributes="member: 2323">Meanwhile, back at the Grove of Renewal...A few solitary hours went by before Morier felt like he had to cast Quick Boost and drink the first of his healing potions. It was nearly frozen from the cold, but the curing slush tasted like ambrosia on his tongue.An hour later the two sunrods winked out plunging him into cold, wet darkness. He almost cried out in despair as the last dying glow faded away.An hour after that he again cast Quick Boost and cracked open the sixth of his remaining healing potions. Two hours after that he was on his fifth. Barely an hour later he was drinking his fourth. Another two went by and he was on the brink of death. Two of the remaining three draughts pulled him back from death's door, however temporarily.Leaving him five hours from the portal's activation with only one cure light wounds potion left in his potion belt.He clutched the last vial and looked at it intently. It represented his only real chance of surviving. He didn't feel like his spells were having any noticeable affect on his condition. The healing draughts were all that stood between him and oblivion and this was the last one. When it was gone it would be just him and the storm.He uncorked the potion with chattering teeth and slurped down the cure, savoring the warm sensation of healing as it hit his belly and spread outward to his extremities. He was afraid that it might be the last warm thing he felt before he found himself too soon beyond the veil."After I've returned to dust, the wind will still howl and the lightning will still sing," he muttered. He'd heard that somewhere or read it in one of his father's many books. Here, facing the wind as a very real enemy, the words seemed particularly apt. Prophetic even.He thought again of what he'd told Feln: "'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."Despite the grim circumstances, he had to laugh at himself.Time passed. Hours maybe. Or minutes. It was hard to say in this sunless hell. But Morier was quite certain that time was passing. For a while he had been able to keep time with the throbbing pain in his bootless foot, but that had long since moved to first a painful prickling and thence to a dead numbness.Numbness seemed to be settling in all over, and it was only with some effort that he reached out a hand to stiffly pat his cold, old friend, the dolmen. He huddled close to the stone megalith, snuggling the cold rock like a lover. Praying for the portal to open. Willing it to open and whisk him away from this lingering death. He was so tired. So very tired."Dalharuk-dobluth," they called him. Or "vlos-yibin". Their words like daggers dripping poison. He remembered being cut by them many times before his parents took him to be killed. If he once knew the words' meanings, he'd blissfully forgotten them. But the biting sting of those words he remembered all too well.Had he fallen asleep? Perhaps it was dumbness that was settling in, not numbness. Falling asleep in a blizzard was death. Pure and simple. He had to stay awake. Awake and focused on overcoming this challenge. But he was so tired.He closed his eyes to give them some relief from the biting wind.And let oblivion take him.</blockquote>

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