[PurpleXVI]

Lorath

The water level rose again as Lorath splashed down the corridor, and soon it was almost up to his neck. Whatever was following him kept pace, never getting too close, but never getting out of sight either, occasionally one of it's yellow eyes on stalks would slip above the surface of the water to watch him, but it was never for long.

His general surroundings were unremarkable, looking much like the rest of the tunnels he'd spent the day walking through, but the elf did note that he seemed to be headed for a more intact section. There were less collapses, the floor was more even and it was rare that any roots forced him to duck or crawl to continue.

Ten minutes after making the turn, he eached the end of the corridor, which opened up into a large, rectangular chamber. The floor was decorated with raised stone slabs, each reaching about to Lorath's waist and all submerged. All of the slabs were perfectly uniform, about five feet long and two feet wide. They had grooves and canals in the edges which lead to gutters around their bases, rather as if their designer had expected them to regularly get very wet.

Badly rusted metal cylinders, two at each end, were also attached to the slabs. They looked as though they could, back when they were freshly made, be opened and closed. They were roughly large enough that most people could fit their wrist or ankle in them.

Lorath's entrance was in the center of one of the short sides, to his left, a few yards along one of the long sides, was another door that lead to a very similar-looking corridor. Placed centrally along the long wall on his right was another exit, though this one was different. It was blocked by a large, wooden door which seemed to have been made of interwoven roots. Unlike all of the other wood Lorath had encountered in the place so far, this wasn't rotten, in fact it almost looked like it was still alive. The roots were covered in bark, and unless his eyes deceived him, they occasionally moved very slightly.

There was no obvious way to open the door, but right in the center it had a round hole that looked suspiciously like a mouth.


Ulik, Evon

Evon "kept watch" while Ulik examined his latest pieces of loot. Within the backpack he found a plethora of fascinating things:

Two small, ruby-coloured spheres, each about the size of a plum with a smaller sphere inside them, they looked extremely fragile, as though made from glass, and any movement at all caused the internal spheres to bounce about, resulting in a high-pitched noise.

Five wax-sealed scrolls, which looked to him like they were spell scrolls, he could understand the writing and use the scrolls, but the spells were unfamiliar to him and could do just about anything, the only things he could decipher were the names, though sitting down to spend a few hours studying them somewhere safe would probably teach him more.

A weird metal object made from something that looked like brass, it was hard to describe, but it was reminiscent of a birdcage that had been stomped flat, providing that the birdcage had originally been four-dimensional and covered in small, rounded protrusions. A few experimental pulls suggested that it could be unfolded, but that it might require several people working together to accomplish, seeing as how many of the parts were constantly trying to collapse back in on themselves again as soon as they were pulled out of their original positions. Folded, it was about the size of a buckler, there was no telling how big it would be unfolded.

The final object in the backpack was a small, leather-bound notebook, it looked water-damaged, but some of it was still readable.


Balth, Tamora

"No contact, of course," replied Balth, drawing his scimitar and flashing her a grin, "It would be like something out of a bad story if you were to survive your ordeal within the cliffs only to be accidentially slain by a friend immediately afterwards."

They started out mildly, both warming up and testing each other with simple blows and parries before launching into more complex attacks and feints. Tamora noted that Balth seemed a bit uncomfortable fighting with blade and shield, as though it was not usual for him, he also seemed to be restraining himself a lot. Several of the openings he left her with at the beginning were obviously intentional, almost as though he was testing her.

The period of amnesty did not continue for long, he soon began to unleash a more complex repetoire of moves, and she began to be hard pressed to hold him back. If he was testing her, though, examining the way she fought, he was not alone, she, too, was learning a good few things from the way he attacked. In the past, she had met several people, both as allies and opponents, who had wielded two weapons, and the way Balth fought was very reminiscent of that.

At the start of the fight, her opponent had been quite open and cheerful, joking and smiling even as she used holes in his defense to force him into a surrender. But as things heated up and it turned out she was quite an even match for him, he got more grim, almost angry, increasingly aggressive. Every time she managed to turn aside a serious attack or get through his defenses, he got worse.

Balth began to make attacks which, if she had not parried and dodged them, looked like they would most definitely have made contact. Not necessarily killing blows, but definitely ones that would have left her with bruises and gashes.

Before the fight could continue, however, a shrill cry rose up from the forest beyond the clearing, the sound of some animal meeting a grisly end. With some predator close by, both Balth and Tamora decided to stop their sparring session and resume standing guard. They had been fighting back and forth across the clearing for almost an hour, and their companions were both well asleep by that point.

In the end, nothing leapt out from the treeline to disembowel them, and as the morning came, their friends began to stir and awaken from their sleep.


Bas

It had been an exerting day for Bas, and the calmness brought on by his meditation left him in a half-dreaming, half-meditating state. The spirit of the area communed with him readily, lending him power to replenish his spells and half-speaking into his mind. The spirit, which was of the clearing and the area surrounding the cliffs, seemed more open to him than the spirits of any of the land they'd passed through so far. It seemed that it was not long since it had last been awakened, by another druid or some creature close to the forest. Though it was as ancient as the world itself there was little it could tell him, for most of what seemed important to mortals was over in the blink of an eye to it.

The only meaningful fact he managed to glean from the spirit was that there had once been a great exodus of druids from the jungles and forests, they had gathered and set off for the lands east of the mountains. With the spirit's immortal time-frame it was hard to judge how long ago it had been, but to Bas it felt like decades had passed since then. In the end, the spirit's whispers lulled him to sleep and he woke in the morning feeling as refreshed as his companions.


Anne

Even the sounds of Balth and Tamora's sparring could not prevent Anne easily drifting off to a deep, dreamless sleep only seconds after she laid down. The rogue woke once, in the middle of the night, because a worryingly large insect was trying to climb up her left nostril, but aside from that, she woke up to find her leg was still attached and looking slightly better. The only turn for the worse was that she had amassed an impressive collection of mosquito bites overnight.

(Anne regains 4 HP, 26 HP remaining.)

[ 03-02-2007, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]