[PurpleXVI]

Bas and Tamora

(OOC: Armen told me how Tamora would likely undertake the task of exploring near the clearing, so I'm making the assumption that Bas will go along with it.)

Under Tamora's careful leadership, the druid and ranger made their way northwards. It was slow going because in some places there were almost literal walls of vegetation, barriers of vines, bushes and trees towered over them and forced them to make detours or take the equally time-consuming course of climbing over.

Eventually though, several hours and barely a couple of miles later, they managed to reach the edge of the clearing. The jungle suddenly started to thin out, making the going easier, and they could see a lighter patch up ahead. Beyond the edge of the jungle there was a roughly circular clearing with a few trees in it. The trees were bare trunks that rose about eight feet into the air each, before spreading into a near-horizontal tangle of tightly interwoven branches with plenty of leaves. If not for the slightly sinuous shapes of the trunks, they almost looked like organic parasols.

The ground, both inside the clearing and around it, was covered with serpentine tracks. A few scales, each roughly the side of a palm and hard as steel, found in the tracks, confirmed that they were likely made by the snake-like thing that Jonas and his friends met. Aside from that, however, Tamora also found other tracks, humanoid-looking ones, though not human-looking. The creatures leaving them were obviously two-legged, but didn't wear boots and their feet looked distinctly reptilian.

Upon following those tracks around the clearing for a bit, she found the clumsy swathe carved through the jungle by Jonas' party, and noticed that the reptilian humanoids had shadowed the humans. Seeing as how Jonas hadn't mentioned the creatures, it would make sense to reason that he hadn't known he was being followed.

As Tamora and Bas came around to the left side of the clearing, they saw the creatures continued to follow the men in the direction of the lake.

While Tamora did her tracking, Bas managed to come to several conclusions about the snakes in the area. Judging by scratches left on many tree-trunks and scales embedded in them, it was obvious that the creatures often hung around well above their prey. Additionally, where the ground was particularly soft, they seemed to burrow downwards, possibly meaning that they could ambush prey from below as well.

Despite the blue sky above, Bas felt like they were likely going to get rain soon.


Lorath, Gan and Anne

The trio made faster progress than their comrades since they had the trail left by Jonas and his friends to follow. There was still plenty of undergrowth, though, often forcing Gan and Lorath to get out their swords and hack a way through, or leaving Gan with the job of finding them a way around some obstacle or another. Anne had an advantage over the men in that she was a capable climber, allowing her to scale obstacles that the others had to go through or around.

Around them, things seemed to be quiet, they were likely making enough noise that anything docile was five miles away, and allowing any predators to stalk them from the same sort of distance without having any doubt where they were.

Still, they arrived at the southeastern shore of the lake without losing any body parts. Lorath and Gan had a few scratches from branches, and Anne had stung herself on a few thorns while trying to climb a wall of vines that had a plethora of hidden pointy things right under the surface.

While they had made their way, however, Anne had the odd feeling that they were often being watched. Possibly someone was following them, but it was hard to tell since they were making so much noise themselves. When they finally made it out of the woods, though, they were no longer quite as noisy and yes, just at the edge of her hearing she could pinpoint something following them. Several somethings in fact, somethings very skilled at not making noise when moving through heavy jungle, but still incapable of being completely silent. Whoever, or whatever, it was, didn't follow them beyond the treeline, though.

As Jonas had told them, the lake was gigantic and pristine. It was at least several miles from shore to shore, the water was so blue you could hardly believe it wasn't dyed and all around the edge there was perfect sand, unmarred by anything. With little wind around, the surface of the lake was almost as flat as a mirror, only making the scene more beautiful.

At the northeastern edge, there seemed to be the outlet of a river which fed water to the lake, and on the southwest side, it looked like there was the point where water left the lake again, though it disappeared amongst a jumble of rocks and cliffs.

On the northern shore, there was, as Jonas had claimed, a few huts. They seemed relatively primitive. No one looked like they were moving among the huts, though, but it was hard to disguise the smoke rising from a few cooking fires that it looked like no one had extinguished.

The only oddity was that, for such a clear lake, there seemed to be very few fish and almost no vegetation on the bottom. A few hundred yards out, and likely as many yards down, something's visible on the bottom. Either a collection of very white rocks, possibly ruins, or the picked-clean skeleton of something that was about the size of a house before it died. In among the remnants of whatever it was, Lorath and Gan spotted something irregular, half-covered by sand. It looked brown, slightly wooden and as though it had a rather square shape, about the size of a man's torso.