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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 2325114" data-attributes="member: 2323">Morier's Water Walk, part 2Without a second look at his piled possessions - items gifted to him by his father and others earned with blood shed on the field of battle - Morier stepped awkwardly out of his breeches and into the cool green water.The Keeper clasped him beneath one arm like a mother and he clung to her like a child. Then she plunged beneath the surface and hurtled through a tunnel that seemed very cramped with the giantess in it. If it was indeed 300 some feet to the fifth portal, then the giantess must have been capable of phenomenal speed in the water; the journey took less than 15 seconds. Then the portal was ahead of them and she pushed him through.He fell out into the hellish cavern where he'd begun the Purging. It was hot, of course, and seemed doubly so after the frigid day spent on the mountaintop during the test of air. But that wasn't the first thing he noticed. The first was that his foot no longer hurt - in fact nothing hurt any longer. He looked down and saw that his feet and toes had assumed their normal hue and the injuries he'd sustained in the fire and earth tests were healed as well. Even more startling were his chest and abdomen; they were free of scars. He ran his slim fingers across his pale flesh tracing designs cut into his flesh at childhood - designs that were no longer there."You are as you were meant to be," the giantess' voice spoke from above. He looked up to see that she stood nearby, her glistening green flesh steaming in the heat. "You are as nature intended.""Thank you..," he said and his voice sounded tiny and distant to him as he looked at himself as if for the first time."There is power within you, mortal," the Keeper told him. "You have harnessed it to walk the path of air, but we are as much at home on the ocean's floor as we are in the mountaintop storm." Morier looked up at her again."I don't understand," he began. "What do you-""If it is the will of the Green, you will learn these answers for yourself in the fullness of time," she explained, her loud voice easily drowning his own. "But for now, you came here for answers and I will give them now." She reached down and touched Morier's forehead and his world went black; all that was left was the Keeper's voice."Aphyx ripped Dridana's heart from her chest and imprisoned its essence inside a gemstone of immense size. Her body, the goddess of filth cast into the void where it drifts still. The gem she plunged into a mountaintop. Using her divine powers she tore that mountain asunder and set it adrift in the skies and warded the gemstone against all who would approach it.""But her powers are not absolute, and we Keepers, Dridana's most powerful servants, were able to craft four keys that would breach Lady Rot's defenses. These keys we hid away in a pocket not unlike the Grove itself, apart from the Green but linked to it. Each key grants its wielder great power over one of the four elements. And each key must be brought to bear to free Dridana's heart.""Once the heart is reunited with the body, the Fruitful One will be reborn. And great and terrible shall be her wrath."The Keeper withdrew her hand and Morier's world returned to him. He was dimly aware of a tugging within his head as if two invisible forces were pulling his senses in separate directions. He knew without being told that one was the direction leading to the keys and the other pull would lead him to the heart."This is the knowledge for which you came here," she said. "Use it as you will. You may step back through the portal to return from whence you came."Morier knelt there, so thoroughly humbled by his experiences that mere words failed in thier attempt to expess his feelings. He wanted to thank the last of the Guardians, but he seemed somehow so small that he couldn't possibly conjure the words. His thanks would be imperceptible in the grand scheme of things.He looked toward the Keeper and said, "I am only a single humble warrior, but please know that you have filled me with the desire to use what miniscule powers I have to do as much good as I am able.""Each of us has their role to play," the giantess said with a reassuring nod. "Whether for good or ill, each serves their purpose and plays their role. Your role in the coming times may be pivotal or miniscule, as you say; it is a page yet to be written. Go, and remember well the lessons you have learned here.""The gift of the Purging will remain with me forever," Morier said, and he was somewhat surprised by the truly heartfelt assertion. The world seemed so much larger now than it had when he entered the Grove... however long ago that was. He rose and turned toward the portal, placed his hand on the dolmen and stepped through......back into the Termlane Forest where he was struck at once by the lush beauty of the place. Verdant green was everywhere, pressing wetly against his senses; sunlight gilded each leaf, as if a troupe of faerie artists had painted them with gold; an overarching vault of brilliant azure sprawled above all. It was all more beautiful than he'd remembered.The second thing he noticed was that it was breezy.After the parching heat of the volcanic chamber, the cool, moist air felt downright chilly given his over-exposed condition. Gooseflesh crawled across his body as an involuntary shudder took hold of him. He clutched his shoulders and stepped out into a shaft of sunlight, letting Orin's Shield warm him.There was no sign of Ledare or Feln - or any of the others for that matter. He hoped that they'd made it out of the Grove alive after leaving him in the Test of Air. Nearby he spotted three modest cairns set apart from the forest in a small area cleared of underbrush. The memorials hadn't been erected very long ago, he surmised;  the woodland hadn't even begun to reclaim the tiny clearing of flattened plants.There were no names associated with the cairns, but he could guess at who they were commemorating. Which meant that Ledare and Feln had indeed returned safely from The Purging...... and they thought he was dead.</blockquote>

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