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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 224265" data-attributes="member: 143">Book V, Part 2By the time that the overcast sky above had brightened with the murky light of the morning the companions had already departed the cave to begin their day’s search.  It was already snowing when they left, and the cold wind and dark skies promised much more before the day was through.  Hoping to beat the storm, they hurried their steps along the faint trails that crisscrossed the shoulders of the mountain.  They moved over ground already familiar to them in the explorations of the previous few days, and after an hour turned onto a side track that took them into a deep, snow-choked ravine.  Lok was indefatigable as he drove on ahead, blazing a track for them through drifts of snow that sometimes reached higher than his head.  Soon they were feeling the cold even through their magical protections, but still they pressed on, following the genasi’s example.  The snowfall intensified as they came up out of the ravine onto a broad plateau.  For a moment Lok just stood there, the falling snow forming a crust on his face and beard, but then finally he spoke.  “This is the place, the battlefield where I was found.”“It doesn’t look like a battlefield,” Benzan said, staring out over the wide field of pure white.  “It’s been three decades,” Cal reminded him, moving forward to join Lok.  “Any idea of where we should start looking?” “It was a cleft deep within a cluster of boulders,” Lok said, already starting toward the sloping edge of the plateau to his right.  There, the relatively exposed face of the shelf gave way quickly to a series of gullies and stone-choked culverts, rapidly culminating in a nearly vertical stone face that rose up high above them.  Beyond that they could just see the vague outline of the mountain peak itself, its summit lost in the flurries of snow around them.  The companions fanned out behind the genasi as he strode across the ancient battlefield, lost in memories of a time long past.  Benzan dropped a hand to the hilt of his sword, crossing to a boulder and digging through the snow to reveal something half-buried beneath the edge of the rock.  With some effort, he freed the item—an old waraxe, its blade cracked in two.  “Looks like you were right,” he said to Lok.  “I can sense metal objects scattered throughout the area.”“Dana, maybe you can use your locate object spell to find this shaft Lok described,” Cal suggested.  “I’ll try,” she replied, closing her eyes as she called upon the power of her goddess.  For a moment a look of pure bliss crossed her face as she touched the source of her divine energies, and then her eyes popped open with an excited gleam.  “Yes, I think I sense it!” she exclaimed.  “Come on!”She led them quickly across the snowfield to one of the stony crevices that ran back into the rock face.  She plowed through the snow clogging the entry, leaving the others behind as she vanished into a knot of large boulders piled high with drifts of snow.  “Dana?” Benzan shouted, as he followed her in.“I’m all right!” she replied, her voice echoing slightly from somewhere within the crevice.  Then she reappeared, standing up in a narrow slot between two stones the size of horses.  “There’s an opening down here, under the edge of the rock,” she said.  “It’s not very big, but I think I can squeeze through.”“Be careful,” Cal warned, but she had already disappeared again into the gap.  He followed Benzan and Lok as they worked their way into the crevice, to where the two stones met.  Once he’d worked his way around the edge of the nearer stone, he could see the opening Dana had indicated, little more than a crack in the stone with darkness beyond.  He wondered how Dana could see anything down there, but then he saw a flickering glimmer of light from somewhere deep within.  “The crack leads back twenty or thirty feet into the mountainside,” her voice drifted up to them.  “It’s pretty tight…”“Lok and I are going to have a tough time fitting in there,” Benzan said.“We’ll find a way to squeeze through,” Cal said absently, his attention fixed on the dark gap and the flickering of Dana’s light.“I found it!” her triumphant announcement came back to them.  “There’s an opening here… it’s a shaft, leads straight down.  Seems to go a long way…”“Maybe we’d better be careful,” Benzan said.  “There might be someone or something down there, that could hear her.”Cal nodded.  “Come on back, Dana,” he called down into the opening.  As he listened to the noise of her making her way back through the tunnel, he glanced up at Lok.  “What do you think?”“It seems right,” Lok said.  “Although I don’t recall much of my initial journey up here, I doubt that there would be more than one shaft that led up to precisely this battlefield.”“So, this shaft leads right down to the urdunnir town?” Benzan asked.  “How far down is it?”“I don’t know, exactly,” Lok said.  “A long way, I think.”“Well, the power of my sword can carry me down,” Benzan said.  “And Dana’s got that spell of flight.  I imagine I could carry you, Cal; you’re not too heavy.  But what about Lok?”“We’ll think of something,” Cal said, still distracted as he watched Dana reappear at the thin crack below. “It’s a tight fit, but I think everyone can make it,” she reported.  “Lok and Benzan might have to take off their armor, though—there’s a few low spaces where it might make a difference.”  Cal looked at each of them in turn.  “Well?” he finally asked. Benzan took a deep breath.  “This is what we came here to do,” he said.  “Let’s do it.”They paused just long enough to remove their armor, packing each component carefully in the bag of holding.  They added their packs and other gear, keeping only their weapons and other key items close at hand.  Once they were ready they started into the narrow crevice, with Dana taking the lead and Cal, who had a much easier time moving through the tight space, bringing up the rear.  Dana held a small object, a short stick tipped by the glow of a continual flame that she had conjured during their down time in the cave.  Dana helped Benzan and Lok by identifying the easiest route through the cramped confines of the crawlspace, but even so it took them a goodly amount of time to cover the thirty or so feet back to the top of the shaft.  By the time they had gathered around the dark opening, Benzan was sweating, and a haunted look appeared on his face.  “What is it?” Cal asked him, seeing his distress.“I’m not particularly fond of such closed-in places,” the tiefling said.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”The shaft descended as far as they could see, and was perhaps ten feet across.  A faint breeze drifted up from below, indicating that the shaft opened onto other tunnels somewhere deep underground.“Shall I go scout it out?” Dana asked.“All right, but be careful,” Cal said.  “Fly back up if you see anything that looks like a tunnel or other exit below.”With a nod, she cast her spell of flying, and like a dart shot down into the open space of the shaft.  The ring of light cast by the continual flame allowed them to track her movements, but also made it clear that she would not surprise anything that might be lurking below.  “I hope she listens to your advice,” Benzan said, fingering the hilt of his sword as if he might need to call upon its power of levitation in an instant.  The light of the flame dwindled to a mere speck, as Dana dropped farther down into the depths of the shaft.  At least it seemed more or less vertical, as they could still clearly see the pinpoint of light even as the minutes crept on. “I think she’s coming back up,” Lok finally said.  And indeed the light was growing rapidly brighter, until they could clearly mark Dana’s form flying up toward them.  After another minute, she was hovering there right in front of them.  “It’s quite a fall, but there’s a ledge with a tunnel jutting off from the shaft.  I couldn’t tell how far from the bottom it was, if there even is a bottom.”“So have you thought about how you’re going to get us all down there?” Benzan asked, peering into the shaft.  “We’re not even close to having enough rope for the descent.”Cal looked thoughtful.  “I’ve got an idea, but it’ll be a lot harder to get back up than it will be down to get down.  Dana, how’s the duration on your spell?”“Plenty of time left,” she told him.  “I could make a few trips, easy.”“Just one trip,” he told her.  “Benzan, use your sword to levitate down.  Dana can help align you to where the ledge is, since you can’t go back and forth.”The tiefling looked at Cal penetratingly.  “I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking…”“It’s the only way,” he insisted.  “Lok can’t fit inside the bag of holding, and if I’m not with him, I might miss the timing.”“Um… what is it that we’re doing, exactly?” Lok asked, glancing down into the shaft and looking, for the first time that Cal could remember, decidedly uncomfortable.  “We’ll use my spell of feather fall,” Cal explained.  “It can affect both of us, if we’re close together; it will only work for a little less than half a minute, though, and that’s not long enough to take us all the way down the shaft.  I thought we could have Dana fly down to a few hundred feet above the ledge, and then when we reach her, I could activate the spell—it only takes a single word of command.  Then we drift right down—Dana could give us a push if necessary to make sure we don’t miss the ledge.”Lok looked down into the shaft again.  It was a long way down.  “The other alternative would be for the three of us to fly down, check things out,” Benzan said to Lok.  “You could stay up here until we scouted out whatever’s below.”Cal shot a sideways glance at the tiefling, a little surprised that he could be so clever.  He knew that Lok took pride in always being the first into danger, and that his casual implication would cut at the heart of Lok’s sense of responsibility. “No,” the genasi said.  “We’ll do it like Cal suggested.”“Dana, if you please,” Cal said.  The mystic wanderer looked at him dubiously, but then she nodded and dove back down into the shaft.  “Give me a few minutes to get down there,” Benzan suggested.  “If something goes wrong, my own feather fall might be enough to stop you.” Cal nodded, and the tiefling placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, and dropped into the shaft.  He plummeted like a rock, not activating the sword’s power until he was already out of sight.  Lok had closed his eyes and took a series of deep breaths.  It was unnerving for Cal, to finally see something that could shake the indefatigable genasi, and something as simple as a fall from a height.  Well, now that he thought about it, it was a pretty daring plan, and if for some reason the spell didn’t work properly…“We’d better get going,” Cal finally said, before he could think himself out of his own idea. “All right, what do I do?” Lok asked. “Grab onto me, and then jump!”And he did.</blockquote>

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