NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5112495" data-attributes="member: 60965">Session 29, Part 8 Kormak hurt everywhere.  As he came to, that was his first realization.  His second was that he was half-buried in rubble.  He coughed and opened his eyes and saw only smoke and dust.  As he pulled himself out of the rocky debris, he tried to remember where he was and what had happened. We flying over a ruined city that wasn't quite right... Endemore? he thought, blinking rapidly and spitting black phlegm to clear the grit from his eyes and lungs.  Oh wait, yeah, the pyramid... talkative beholder... the Skyland! Visibility was at ten, maybe fifteen feet, though he could see the distant glow of what was probably a massive fire through the smoke and dust.  Where is the Skyland?  We were on it when... when this happened. “Bail, you alive?” he shouted before breaking down into a fit of coughing.  He dug into his pack for a bit of cloth to make a mask, tied it on, and walked onwards.  “Bail?  Harold?” A faint breeze picked up, causing even more grit to blow and sending the smoke and dust swirling into his face.  “Harold? Bail?” It could have been minutes or hours of stumbling through the hazy, burning twilight world he'd woken into when the air  began to clear slightly and he heard a voice in the distance.  “Kormak, is that you?” “Bail?”  He squinted at a figure emerging from the haze a dozen yards away.  “Bail!  Never thought I'd be so happy to see an ugly half-dragon like you!” Bail smiled.  “Ugly?  Who are you to call anything ugly, dwarf?” “True I suppose,” Kormak said, assuming a humble pose.  “The gods felt bad about making one being so perfect, so they had to tweak something to keep everyone else from getting jealous.” “I think they overdid it,” Bail said.  “Seen Harold?” They covered their eyes as even stronger gusts began to blow.  “Let's find some shelter until this all blows over,” Kormak said, leading towards a large chunk of rock jutting up from the debris. When they got close, Kormak thought he saw a faint blue glow coming from the other side of the rock and slowed down as they neared it.  He pointed and Bail squinted at it for a moment.  “The henge?” “Wasn't the henge on a Skyland?” Kormak said as they walked closer. “I think that boulder there is the Skyland now,” Bail replied. When they finished circling around, they saw that the Skyland was, in fact, now a disc of rock perhaps fifteen feet across and about half that thick.  The pale blue crystals of the henge seemed to be entirely intact and stuck out at an odd angle from the half-buried sky-disk. Harold stood before it and glanced in their direction.  “It seems to be functional, though it might be best if we dug it out before we tried flying it anywhere.” “Nice to see you are alive, too,” Kormak said, shaking his head.  “I don't suppose you're going to tell us what the hell happened?” Harold shook his head as he continued to stare at the henge.  “Not now, time later.” Kormak sighed looked around the still-hazy rubble-field and was struck by a random thought.  “Where do you suppose the turtle is?” Bail and Harold stared at him.  “You know, I wasn't even thinking about it,” Bail said.  “Was it still attached after Meepo crashed the Skyland into the cliff?” Kormak shrugged.  “I didn't think to check.  I suppose we should find that cliff we crashed into then.” “We dig this out first,” Harold said, kneeling, digging with his hands and tossing small rocks over his shoulders. Bail snorted and glared at the human.  “I'm going to look for the turtle,” Bail said.  The half-dragon wheeled and walked off into the rapidly-clearing haze. He glanced back and forth between the half-dragon and human, then sighed.  “Good thing Dog is in Suniel's Coachhouse at least.” A quick scan of the area revealed a nearby massive, craggy heap of rock – probably a chunk of the Skyland that had been blown off.  He jogged towards it and began climbing. By the time he reached the top, the sun was setting and the wind had dispersed most of the dust.  The sight he saw was terrible and wondrous all at once.“Gods,” he said, plopping down on an outcropping and dangling his legs. Where the pyramid had been, there was only a crater, probably several miles across and hundreds of feet deep.  Around its edges were large heaps of rock and ruin, like the one he had just climbed, forming a jagged cliff around the rim of the crater.  The surrounding hills bore naught but flattened trees and fire and hundreds of smaller fires smoldered here and there in the crater itself, giving the impression of some simmering hell.  In the center, the rock was glassy and smooth and here and there still glowed red. And near that center was a tiny figure, staggering and stumbling as it made its way in Kormak's direction.  He watched it for several minutes, catching the faintest hints of black robes and the occasional strange glint of light from where it clutched something in its hand.  Something about the figure triggered a vague familiarity and as it continued to stumble in his direction the feeling grew stronger. Though it was still a mile or more away, the figure looked up, straight at Kormak's crag-top.  Somehow Kormak instantly knew who it was, despite the distance. “Not possible.”  Kormak blinked repeatedly, still staring.  “How in the hells...?”</blockquote>

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