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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 183460" data-attributes="member: 143">Book IV, Part 9In a stone chamber deep within the network of dwarven tunnels under Citadel Adbar, Lok dreamed.His unconscious mind traveled over a mottled landscape of dark browns and grays.  It was the mountains he was seeing, mountains familiar from his youth, where he was raised by his foster father in the aftermath of the destruction of his people.  Most people saw the mountains as harsh and forbidding, but Lok, who could feel the thrum of energies within the stone, they had always been a place of comfort and solidity.  Now, however, as his dream carried him through over familiar terrain, a disembodied figure without form or substance, he saw that the picture in his memories had changed.  The outline of the peaks and valleys was the same, but something… dark hung over the land, a taint that filled the winter landscape with a chill not born of the icy wind or the thick drifts of white snow.  There were forms, too, in the mountains as Lok traveled through them in his dream, figures that were shadows like him, shapes that emerged and then faded before he could fully recognize them.  Numerous forms that he recognized even in that quick viewing: ogres, harsh, brutal, and powerful.  Of its own volition the dream took him across familiar byways to a place he remembered, Caer Dulthain, home of the dwarves that had found him on a battlefield and taken him warily in to raise into manhood.  Now, however, the dwarf town stood quiet and abandoned, yet as Lok drew nearer, he felt a tingle pass through him that raised a hackle of fear even through the dream…But Caer Dulthain was not his destination, and even as he felt the dark presence lift he was penetrating deeper into the mountains.  Abruptly he realized where the dream was taking him, but it seemed that he was powerless to affect its course as he was borne invisibly down a narrow shaft that appeared at a familiar place in the mountains, carried down into the deep ways that underlay Faerûn.  To a place that he had once called home.  To the Underdark.His progress slowed as he floated through the forgotten haunts of the Urdunnir, through the tunnels that had once been filled with the vibrant sounds of his people.  Once there had been the laughter of children and the unceasing sounds of the work of the stone dwarves.  Theirs had been a life of single-minded purpose, seeking to live simple and quiet lives in a place that was not hospitable to either.  Their enemies were many, from the Deep Dwarves, the evil duergar, to the mysterious and powerful dark elves known as the Drow.  Other things lived in these dark reaches as well, wondrous and mighty entities that possessed powers that would have staggered the minds of surface-world sages and arcanists.   Lok felt the burden of memories stir in him as he floated through the abandoned corridors of his dream.  Why had he returned to this place, and why now?  Was it simply a byproduct of being cast here upon the borders of his homeland?  Was it the trips of memory he had taken of late, using the memory-stone that was the final gift of his mother to him?He mused over such questions, but then he found himself moving again, traveling swiftly through a maze of darkened tunnels and underground chambers.  He quickly left the borders of the urdunnir community and penetrated into areas that he’d never even heard of, let alone seen.  He soon lost track of where he was or where he was going, but even as his mind swam with the barrage of stimuli he felt himself slowing, arriving at a new destination.  He was in a large natural cavern, hovering at the edge of one of numerous tunnels that led to other destinations in the vast Underdark.  He could hear the faint tinkle of water falling from a height, and could see the hulking shapes of mineral formations accumulated by centuries of falling water.  He did not know where he was, and he found that now, finally, he had some volition over his movements.  Cautiously he moved forward into the place, his darkvision allowing him to see as clearly as if he were standing on a sun-bathed field in the realms above.    His own feet made neither mark nor sound on the stone as he crossed the great chamber.  He paused as another sound came to his sensitive ears; a sound of metal striking metal.  It was a familiar sound to the genasi, whose skill at metalworking was quite advanced.  Curious, he followed the noises to one of the corridors that led off of the main chamber.  He followed the twisting curves of the tunnel for some time, his efforts rewarded as the noises he’d heard grew steadily louder.  He rounded a corner…And nearly stumbled in surprise as he regarded a guardian, a sallow-faced figure that he instantly recognized as a duergar, one of the Deep Ones.  He reached reflexively for his axe before he remembered that he was in a dream, and that neither he nor the other had substance or reality.  Even as he watched the enemy dwarf faded into insubstantiality, as if its form was just lightly etched onto the world of Lok’s dream.Drawn forward now by a desire for understanding, Lok moved past the shadowy guardian into another chamber that opened off of the passageway.  There was light, there, a red glow that caused his eyes to blink a few times in adjustment, and then he saw…The light came from a working forge, but that only occupied one small corner of the chamber that spread out before him.  Dozens of small tunnels branched off around the perimeter of the place, and Lok realized that they were mineshafts, penetrating deep into the uneven stone.  After a moment Lok belatedly realized that the room was occupied by numerous clusters of shadow-figures, forms that were hunched over and wrapped in a cloak of misery as they trudged across the uneven floor of the chamber and came into and out of the mine openings.  Lok was moving before he could think about it, clambering down the rough slope that led down to the chamber floor from his vantage.  He reached the nearest of the figures and tried to grasp it, but his fingers passed through the form as if it were made of smoke.  He had already identified it, however—the shadowy dream-shape was one of his people!He heard a voice, then, a voice that filled his consciousness and drove away any hint of doubt from his mind.  Long have you been away, my son, it said, the words deep and sonorous in his mind.  You have returned, and now you are ready to take upon your shoulders the duty for which you have been marked.  For it is you that I have chosen, Lok, to free my children…Even as the mental echoes of the voice began to fade, Lok sensed something coming up from behind him.  He spun around, frozen as he sensed a massive shadow rise up out of the darkness there, pressing close, tearing…With a deep gasp torn from his chest, Lok shot up in his simple bed, looking around in confusion for a moment until he realized where he was.  It was his room, deep under the dwarven citadel, still quiet in the fastness of the night.  His axe was beside the bed where he’d left it, and his armor was laid out on the table just a few feet away.  Every moment of the dream remained fixed in his mind.  He felt something in his hand, and opened his fingers to reveal the silver disk there, the memory-stone that had been given him by his mother and which remained the sole remaining legacy of his people to him.  He knew that he had put the stone in the pocket of his coat before going to bed, the coat that still hung on the back of a chair beside the table a goodly six feet away.</blockquote>

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