Rashemen Book 2

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"No problem, cousin, I know you've kept me alive longer than I have any right to, jumping into this questing business with such little experience. But I'm glad that I was useful." Sepp told Nakia.

The group set off north again, Maron scouting from the air, the others trading off taking point on the ground. They travelled through the night and on into the next without stopping and with little conversation. When they got out of the pine forest they had been in, Atten finally let them stop for two hours to rest and eat, but then he woke everyone who was sleeping up with his grumbling, and they set off again.

Another two days of trudging over rocky, frozen wastelands passed in the same way, and Sepp discovered that it was possible to sleep while you were walking, and it wasn't always necessary to have second breakfasts and afternoon snacks. They gradually made their way up a rise, and as they came over its ridge, they could see the ice wall to the north. The land simply stopped, and a huge wall of white-blue stretched over the horizon. It looked almost close enough to touch, yet it took them three more days of painful marching over foot piercing gravel and ice to get to the wall.

Finally they were there, at the ice wall. Sepp looked up, and up, and up, at it. It dissappeared into the sky. Up close, it was jagged, and rough, with sharp spires of ice twisted this way and that by the massive power of the frozen water it was made up of.

"Well, Nakia. You said earlier not to worry about how we were going to get up on top of the ice wall, so I'm not worried, yet." Sepp said to Nakia. "I am a little bit curious though. How are we going to do it?"

 

POSTING FOR ELWITHRAL IRENICUS WHILE HE'S GONE
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Delinos turned and made an exaggerated bow to Kelvados. "If you please, brother."

Without a word, Kelvados pulled a staggering number of blades out of his pouches and began flinging them rapid fire at the icewall. Many of the companions ducked involuntarily at seeing the barrage of flying steel, and Delphinae even nocked an arrow before she saw that the group was not the target.

As Kelvados gradually wound down, Delinos stepped leisurely over to the wall. He then grabbed one of the daggers embedded in the ice and pulled himself upward. As he repeated the behaviour, it could now clearly be seen that the daggers provided ladder-like foot and handholds. Looking over his shoulder at the group, Delinos asked with a self-satisfied smile, "Well, are you coming or not?"

[ October 06, 2005, 02:21: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Nakia smiled. "Excellent. Exactly what I had in mind." She leaped up to follow Delinos. The distance between the knives was a bit of a stretch for the halfling but her agility made up for that. She glanced back at the others.

"Well, don't be lally lagging. Guess Kelvados will come last so as he can retrieve his knives?"

 

Delphinae whispered to Jex, "I don't trust them. I'll follow Delinos, you wait for second to last so you can keep an eye on Kelvados." Not waiting for a response, she followed Nakia up the icewall.

 

Jex nodded as Del started climbing. He waited as Sepp, Atten and Alexi started climbing, and watched as Maron flew gracefully through the air. He looked at Kelvados and said "In all my years I never thought I'd be climbing a giant icewall."

 

Atten started to climb the precarious looking wall of ice. He could feel the Heart of the Earth as a weight as he climbed. It was as if the Heart was being dragged back down towards the Earth.

He noticed that nobody else seemed to be having any trouble climbing. He remembered that this was another sign of the weakening of the Earth force. He shuddered to think about the power of Water in this ice wall.

 

Sepp followed Nakia up the improvised ladder on the ice wall. He glanced down and made eye contact with Atten, and he knew that Atten was feeling the same sense of ill about the Water in the ice. It did not want them to get to the top and one step closer to getting the Earth's Heart back where it belonged.

He felt a shudder run through the ice, deep inside the wall, and peered into the deep blue of the frozen water. Something was moving in there, slowly coming towards them, with malicious intent, Sepp was sure.

He felt into the ice, trying to make contact with it and plead for it to let them pass, but it was so cold. And hostile. It knew what had happened in the river, and was angry.

Sepp could see a dark form moving about the depths of the ice, agitating it and getting it angry about the life forms who had pierced it with metal from the Earth and were now attempting to climb on top of it. He moved closer to to the form.

"Let us pass, it is required for the balance," Sepp thought to it.

The form lashed out at Sepp's consciousness. "What care I for the balance? Did the Earth care at all when I was imprisoned deep within it while stars were born and died? NO! Now that I am free from my bonds, I should go back to my adamantite cage and shun my new found freedom? NO! I should let a simple mortal, a halfling no-less, dictate to me what is required for the balance? NO! I should drown you now and let your lifeless body fall to the earth below, lowly dirt dweller!"

The form came closer and enveloped Sepp's consciousness. It was cold, and evil, and angry, and cold, so cold. It pulled at him, trying to break his contact that he kept with his body. Trying to extinguish the flame of his spirit.

"Not again," thought Sepp. He'd fought for his life so often recently, he wasn't really up for another battle. Ma wasn't there to help him any more, and he doubted that Drell was here in the ice, or would have any power over this angry water being. He felt more and more of his spirit loosing its grip on his body.

"NO!" Sepp yelled at the dark form. "You will not take me! We will return the Earth's Heart. Try and stop us if you will." He pushed back at the being, and with some unknown strength that was not his Ma's, or Drell's, or even Nakia's or Jex's but his own, he pushed the being back deep into the ice.

The ice around where they had been fighting was confused, should it suddenly melt and let the living creatures fall to their deaths? Or just go back to being cold and happy? Sepp saw that much of the ice had almost begun to melt. He pulled cold from the ice farther into the depths of the ice wall and firmed up the ice holding their metal ladder. He felt someone tapping his leg, and was quickly pulled back towards his body. As he left the ice wall, he saw the dark form moving quickly to the top of the ice, looking quite perturbed.

He snapped back into full consciousness in his body and looked down at Atten who was tapping his leg incessantly.

"Get moving Sepp, we don't have all day, you know." Atten said.

"Sorry, and yes, I know. We need to get to the top soon." Calling to the climbers above him he yelled, "Be ready to be attacked when you get to the top. It's some form of water creature. I don't know if normal weapons will harm it. Anyone have an idea?"

 

"What sort of water creature?" Delphinae yelled down to Sepp. "Is it a creature from the water, or a creature of water? I can take care of either, but I would need to know which arrow to choose."

 

"It's a creature of water, and it's evil, and wishes us great harm, so the Earth's Heart will not be returned to the Earth. It moved through the ice, so I'm not sure if it will be mostly water, or mostly ice, when we see it at the top. Good to hear you can do something about it." Sepp called up to Del.

 

Maron hovered just behind the group, wings lazily keeping her aloft.

"SHall I go and see whats up there? I can get up there much faster than you guys, and I can stay out of this things range too. What do you think?"


Drawing her mace, she pointed to the top of the wall. Sunlight reflecting from the icewall passed through the glass head of the mace, casting a spectrum across her pale face.

"Well?"

 

"That sounds like a good idea, Maron," Sepp called to her. "I can't imagine how the creature could move through the air, so you should be safe if you stay up high enough."

 

Atten closed his eyes and rested his tired eyes. He was feeling overwhelmed at being such a small pawn in what seemed to becoming a bigger and bigger battle between elemental forces. It felt as if he was choosing sides by carrying the Heart of the Earth, but he believed deep down that balance was important. But was it really worth fighting so hard for? He was not sure he had the energy to carry on climbing and then deal with yet another battle. If only he was more powerful, like Darwyn had been. Then everything would be so much easier.

 

Delinos looked upwards at the ice wall. There was a plateau up ahead, but they needed more blades.

"Kelvados, mzild velven!" he called down at his brother, " gaer zhah natha abok aglust felah, lu' lotha Sepp kluthak talinth nindel gaer zhah ogglinnar phor gaer. "

(translations for Drow can be found here. )

 

Jex worried about what Sepp had said. He started to climb faster. He didn't want to have to fight an unknown monster while scaleing a sheer wall of ice. He wanted to get to the top.

 

Delinos grabbed the blades the Kelvados had thrown up carefully, and stuck them in the ice along the way. When he got to the plateau part, he was surprised to see there was nothing there. He called to Sepp, "Are you sure there was--" He got hit in the back by something and started to fall off the plateau.

 

Sepp looked up just in time to see Delinos get hit by a large chunk of ice and start to fall. He reflexively reached an arm out to grab him, though he was several feet above him, well out of his reach. Somehow though, an arm shaped piece of ice moved out of the ice wall and grabbed Delinos' leg, giving him just enough time to grip the surface of the plateau before the ice arm broke.

Delinos ducked as another piece of ice was thrown at his head. He looked up and saw a dark mass of water, with jagged chunks of ice swirling in it, rushing at him from the plateau.

 

Nakia was only a short distance from Delinos. She saw the dark mass racing towards him and quickly slung an explosive bullet at the thing. The bullet exploded nicely. The creature staggered back, then whirled towards her. Muttering to herself she dropped into a crevice and hoped someone would have better luck with the thing. "This adventuring is going to be the death of me."

 

Jex came over the top. He broke into full on sprint and dove with his scimitars leading. They both plunged into the things mass, but it sent waves of cold through Jex's body. Pulling his scimitars out, he dropped to the ground. He staggered back a few steps and fell into the crevice that Nakia was hideing in. "I can't fight it" he groaned as he cradled his freezing hands.

 

Nakia pulls a wool scarf out of her bag and hands it to Jex. "Wrap 'em in this. It'll help. Hope one of the others has something useful for that thing. Maybe Atten can do something. He wants balance and that thing sure isn't in balance."

 

Delphinae crouched on the ice shelf, awaiting the perfect opportunity to slay the water creature. Sensing just such an opportunity fast approaching, she whispered a command word, raxolla, and pulled a dark (yet somehow colorfully shimmering) arrow out of her quiver. The moment came and Del loosed her arrow, but unfortunately it was deflected from its path by Jex's armor as he staggered backwards into the line of fire. "Svajlish!" Del swore.

Picking another command word at random (d'nilok), she pulled another dark arrow (this one of a black so deep that it seemed to absorb the light from around it) and fired again. With Jex out of the way, the arrow struck true and the creature screeched, a horrible sound that hurt everyone's ears. But the creature did not fall; instead it turned and advanced upon the puny being that had hurt it. Del swore again, "Double svajlish!" and turned to run, but found only a cliff behind her. "Oh, cdazt."