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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 222986" data-attributes="member: 143">Book V, Part 1“Cal!” Dana screamed in warning, as the massive white form of the tundra yeti lunged forward and swept the hapless gnome into the grip of its powerful arms.  Cal struggled to escape, but the creature pulled him into a tight hug, the gnome all but vanishing into its thick white fur.  Dana hefted her spear as she turned, only to see a second creature surging at her from the flank.  Apparently they had walked right into an ambush, as more of the creatures erupted from their cover within drifts of snow and leapt with ferocious intensity at the surprised companions.  Dana spun with the spear, bringing the gleaming head of the ponderous weapon to bear.  While still not completely familiar with the weapon, she’d practiced extensively under the tutelage of Lok and Benzan over the days since they’d left Caer Dulthain, and she could feel the magical power surging in the weapon as she brought the head in line with the charging yeti’s chest.  The creature, however, moved with a speed that belied its bulk, and it dodged under the point of the weapon before Dana could adjust.  She tried to shift out of the way of its rush, but it managed to catch her with a sweep of one massive arm, pinning her under its weight even as its claws dug into her back.  She screamed in pain as the creature dragged her against its body, its arms wrapping around her in a grim hug much as its comrade had done to Cal.  For all its fur, the touch of the creature was like ice, and Dana could feel the heat draining from her body, even through the magical protection afforded by her cloak.  It was crushing her, killing her…“Uhhh!” Dana cried, lurching up into a sitting position from where she’d been sleeping on the hard stone floor of the cave.  She looked around for a moment, the terror of her dream lingering for a long moment as she sat there, shivering.  The inside of the cave was cold, like a tomb, and she pulled her cloak around her.  The enchantment of the travel cloak kept out the chill of the mountains, but it could not banish the icy grip of the fear and grief that resided within her heart.This was not the first time she’d awoken to nightmares over the past few nights.  At least this one had spared her the gruesome image of Delem’s ravaged corpse hanging on the wall of the demon’s lair within the dwarven cistern.  That image, she knew, would never fade, and each time it popped unwelcome into her mind she felt as though her heart would burst with the pain of memory.  Her companions weren’t in the part of the cave they used for sleeping, but she did not worry on that account.  The loss of Delem had driven them even closer together, cementing the bond of trust that existed between them.  It was that bond that had kept them together in the aftermath of Delem’s death, and the uncertainty that had followed.  It was hard to believe that only a week had passed since those deadly events, culminating in their second and final confrontation with the demon that was behind the gathering of orcs and ogres of the northern mountains.  After defeating the demon, they’d retreated from the halls of Caer Dulthain to the nearby mountain of Tor Drothgal, where Gaera and her dwarves had taken shelter.  With them they brought Delem’s corpse, carefully wrapped in an extra cloak to cover the terrible damage wrought upon his body by the demon.  Gaera told them what they already knew, that no mere raise dead would work to bring him back to life with that gaping, empty hole in his torso.  So in the shelter of one of the dwarven tunnels they cremated him, bringing his ashes with them in the hope that somehow, a more powerful magic could be found to restore him to life.  But another, more troubling thought had haunted Dana.  She remembered the sight of the demon’s warped spirit rising from its sundered body, and the brief flicker she’d seen within that roiling cloud in the instant before it faded back into the cursed depths of the Abyss.  A nagging suspicion followed her, so terrible that she could not bring herself to discuss it with the others, although they must have seen it too.  So they allowed themselves the belief—the delusion, perhaps—that Delem’s soul had traveled safely to the radiating glow of Kossuth’s divine flame, restored to peace in the afterlife of mortal existence.  It was all they could do, given their powerlessness to affect the outcome in either case. Jerral had left them, returning south with Gaera and the other freed prisoners to Citadel Adbar.  It remained to be seen if the defeat of the ghour would result in the collapse of the alliance of tribes that had so threatened the north, but at least they had encountered no more patrols since leaving the vicinity of Caer Dulthain.  Gaera had insisted that she would petition the elders of Adbar to send a force of dwarves north to reclaim the dwarven town, and with the determination with which she’d said it, Dana did not doubt that the dwarven cleric would find a way to return.  Dana had wanted nothing more to return with them, any desire for new adventures or quests driven out of her by that grim image of her dead friend’s face, but she was bound to Lok by a promise and a commitment of friendship.  The genasi had grown, if possible, more intent upon his still-vague quest, and the urgency with which he pressed them still further north increasingly showed through his normally unreadable expression.  They could not know, and he did not share, the images that troubled his own sleep, images of his people suffering at the hands of a still-unidentified enemy.  The duergar that had overrun the urdunnir town were involved, that he knew, but he could not shake the persistent impression, a vague feeling at the edges of his visions, of a deeper, more powerful, more dangerous threat lurking in the shadows.  The strange voice that had called to him earlier did not revisit him, but he felt no less committed to its mandate for its absence.  Dana crept quietly into the outer chamber of the cave.  Cal and Benzan were there, talking quietly near the narrow gap that led outside.  They were well above the treeline, so there was no fire, only the slightest flicker of their tiny portable stove as it struggled to heat their small metal teapot.  They looked up as she entered, and nodded in greeting. “Couldn’t sleep?” Cal asked, his own eyes as haunted as hers. “No, not really,” she said, and their own expressions showed understanding.  She met Benzan’s eyes once, briefly, before he turned away.  It was still awkward between them.  Dana’s feelings were all a jumble within her, and she was torn between her grief over Delem and her need for the comfort that Benzan might offer.  Her attraction to the tiefling now triggered in her a deep and abiding guilt, highlighted by the ambiguity of her relationship with Delem.  When they’d been recovering… after… in one of the hidden dwarf safeholds under Tor Drothgal, he’d remained close to her, silently offering his presence, perhaps needing her consolation as well.  He hadn’t been aggressive or pushy, and a part of her had wanted to respond, but something in his touch had reminded her of Delem, had torn open the still-fresh wounds she bore inside her.  She had turned away from him, preferring solitude to the confusion Benzan’s presence awoke in her.  He’d been hurt by her rejection, and hasty words had been since spoken between them, but now they seemed to have settled into an uneasy truce.  Yesterday, when they’d walked into the yeti ambush, it had been Benzan who had come first to her aid, turning his back on the creature facing him to attack the one grappling her.  He’d taken several serious wounds in the process, but he had not turned to protect himself until the yeti had released her and fallen bloody to the snow.  Now it was just the four of them, and they were far indeed from any place of safety and security, heading still deeper into danger.  For the last three days they’d been staying in this cave, using it as a base as they explored the slopes of the massive mountain that Lok had named “the Maker’s Anvil,” located several days’ travel from Caer Dulthain.  It was here that the genasi had been found by the dwarves of Caer Dulthain as a child, on a battlefield littered with the remains of ogres and dwarves.  They were looking for something only dimly remembered from Lok’s childhood, an entrance to that dark realm that lay underneath the surface of Toril, the place whose name was spoken in hushed whispers by the folk who lived in the sunlit lands above.The Underdark.Thus far their search had not born much fruit.  They wouldn’t starve, not with Dana’s ability to create magical food, and they wouldn’t freeze, not with the magical protections they all carried.  The attack by the yeti was just the latest reminder of how dangerous these mountains were, however.  And although she knew only little about the fabled Underdark, what she had heard was enough for her to know that the dangers here were trifles in comparison to what they would find in the deep ways far under the sunlit surface of Toril.  And yet they pushed on, bound to their friend as he pursued his own enigmatic mission.  They were well equipped, at least, hopefully prepared for whatever lay ahead.  They’d found Delem’s magical items within a cache that the demon had stored within a crack in the cistern wall, and several other items as well.  Lok carried a new shield, a dwarf-forged item of blue-tinged steel that bore a potent enchantment, and Dana wore a pair of mithral bracers, which Cal identified as protective items that would help shield their wearer from attacks.  With luck the bracers would help compensate for the absence of Cal’s wand of mage armor, now just a useless stick with its power depleted.    They’d also found a considerable treasure in coins, precious gems, and assorted jewelry, but after what had happened even Benzan had not been able to muster much enthusiasm for that horde.  They took what they could fit in the bag of holding, gave some of the remainder to the dwarves, and left the rest.  The three sat silently, each lost in their own thoughts, until they heard the clink of metal on metal and Lok entered the cave.  The genasi’s plate armor was crusted with snow, indicating that yet another storm was settling over the shoulder of the mountain.  “Another storm coming, it’ll hit tomorrow afternoon at the latest,” the genasi reported, confirming the evidence covering his armor.  “Great,” Benzan said without looking up.  “And how are we supposed to find anything when we can’t see ten paces ahead of us?”“We’ll make do, Benzan,” Cal said softly.  “If need be, we’ll wait until the storm passes.”The tiefling looked up, and anger flashed in his eyes.  “For how long?  In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the dead of winter here, and I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the cold even through our resistances and magical protections.  We don’t have fire, all we have to eat is Dana’s magical… pseudo-food, and there’s only the four of us against…”  His gaze shifted up to Lok, and he continued, “Against who knows what?  Certainly your ‘visions’ haven’t been able to tell us that!  Why don’t you tell them about all the fun things one can find in the Underdark, eh Lok?  And the four of us are just going to waltz right down there, free your people from an entrenched bastion of deep dwarves, and just walk right out?  It’s crazy, that’s what it is.  This is all crazy.”For a long moment silence hung in the cave following Benzan’s rant, and none of them met each other’s gaze.  Finally, Lok stirred.  “I know that I haven’t been able to tell you very much…” he began.    “No, it’s all right, Lok,” Cal said, forestalling him with an outstretched hand.  “I know you’ve told us what you could, and I know these ‘visions’ of yours have been pretty vague.  We’ve acted on less substantial information in the past, however.  Ultimately, it comes down to trust,” he finished, looking squarely at Benzan.  “And friendship,” Dana said.  All of the complex feelings she’d kept bottled up inside came pouring out in anger as she turned on Benzan.  “Have you forgotten about that one?  Have you forgotten how they came to your aid against that cleric of Mask?  Yes, Cal told me about that story, about how you all met.  Or what about all the other times they stood beside you, fought with you, defended you…  Or all the times you insulted Delem, put him down, teased him, when all he ever wanted was to belong, to be a part of your group…”  She was shouting now, but it didn’t matter—felt good, actually, to let the stored feelings out.  “You… You’re nothing but a selfish, self-absorbed, mean-spirited, cruel, lying, dirty,…”“Don’t forget bastard demon-spawn,” Benzan cut in, his voice like ice and his face as hard as stone.“Oh, don’t give me that,” Dana yelled at him.  “I’m not going to fall for that, ‘oh, I’m cursed, oh, I’ve got the tainted blood of an evil fiend, so what can you expect…’  I’ve told you before, you are who you are, Benzan, not who or what your parents were.  You can’t blame anyone but yourself for the way you act, the things you say…”She trailed off, feeling curiously depleted as she searched for more words to hurl at him.  The anger was spent, however, and she suddenly realized how ridiculous her outburst had been.  They were all looking at her, and Benzan had a strange look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read.  She’d thrown down a gauntlet, but he didn’t respond, just sat there, looking up at her. She was belatedly aware that she was crying, the tears flowing in hot channels down the cold skin of her cheeks.  Suddenly unsure how to feel, she fled, turning and running back into the rear chamber of the cave.  Alone again, she found herself shaking, and fighting back the tears that threatened to undo her thin veneer of self-control.  Why did it have to be Delem? she asked of no one in particular.  “Why?” she repeated, out loud, fighting to keep that last image from crowding again into her thoughts, an unwelcome intruder that she knew she would never be free of. She felt his presence behind her a moment before he spoke.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “For all of it.  I didn’t really mean what I was saying—I apologized to Lok and Cal before coming here.  It’s just… all of what happened… I guess I just don’t know how to deal with it.”“Looks like you dealt with it the same way I did,” she said, wiping away her tears as she turned to face him.  “By making a scene and making fools of ourselves in front of dear friends with a lot of patience.”He stepped forward and took her in his arms, and she melted into his embrace.  “I’m sorry about before, too, back in the dwarven caves,” he said.  “I shouldn’t have…”“Shh,” she said.  “It’s not… it’s not your fault.”They just held each other for a long moment in silence.  “I miss him too,” he finally said.  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.  At the same moment they both stepped back, breaking the embrace, not quite meeting each other’s gaze.  Then, almost reluctantly, he returned to the front part of the cave, leaving her alone once more.  Sighing, she turned to gather up the rest of her gear.</blockquote>

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