Rashemen - RP Thread

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Atten found it hard to focus on what was going on. There was so much happening at once. They were so close to the Heart of the Earth.

 

Seeing the two mushrooms trying to follow Del, Nakia ran screaming at them, sling bullets & rocks. With their attention on her she dashed the opposite direction from where she was sure Del was.

The only problem was she was deeper in the cavern then she wanted to be. Into the shadows she went and moved around the wall.

 

With the two myconids no longer on her tail, Delphinae escapes from the cavern and bursts out into the open. Spying Atten nearby, she rushes over and hurriedly says, "AttenhereistheEarth'sHeart. Youmusttakeitandhideit;Ineedtoreturntothefight!"

Atten's look continued to be one of confusion (Del's hurried talking combined with the speed potion likely made her unintelligible), so Del impatiently thrust the Heart into Atten's arms and rushed back to the myconid cave.

 

Jex caught sight of Nakia sneeking into the shadows, a blunt club from a duergar snuck past his defense and hit him hard in the ribs. It's rattled the half drow. But it focused him a little more. His eyes flared and hands blurred back into position. He went into a spinning blur, slashing at anything that wasn't Nakia or Del, he was angry, and his chest hurt. He didn't notice the blood seeping out from his armour. Stopping his spin he threw both blades wide, takeing the throats from the two duergars.

 

The Heart of the Earth was thrust into Atten’s arms. He staggered, partly from the weight of the object, but more so from the wave of power he felt emanating from it. It was a foreign earthy sort of power, quite different from the power of the living force with which he was more familiar. It was immediately obvious to Atten why the Heart was so important and why the Earth force would never be properly in balance without it.

But what to do now? The chaos of the battle continued around him. Atten decided that he had best try and get back to the surface, away from the mushroom people.

 

The mushrooms seemed able to track her. She could out run them but the cavern was filled with duegars and mushrooms. Suddenly she remembered one of the drows' words.

"Swebdsa!" The two mushrooms moved back from her. she moved out into the cavern seeing Jex surrounded by duegars and mushrooms. Racing into a rock shadow she used her crossbow to take out a couple of the duegars near Jex. Jex moved so fast she had to be very careful.

 

Delinos was bleeding on his back, and was using more dangerous spells.

"Dreytui Fretgyu Opiew!" he said and a duergar exploded.

Kelvados was using all of his blades, spinning out of control, pulling blades out of what seemed like thin air.

 

Maron shivered in the cool of the cavern, her mace held loosely at her side. Her eyes darted from left to right, and to the cave's entrance more often than not.

As a duergar leapt at her, axe raised, she shrieked, and swung her mace wildly, only just managing to deflect the onslaught.

The duergar leered at the pale elven woman, and swung again. She leapt back, her wings stretched, and screamed again as her wings touched the cave walls.

As the duergar's swing missed, it's head lowered, and Maron took the oppurtunity to pounce, her mace arcing down to the dwarf's head.

She turned straight away, not bothering to inspect the damage done. She leapt towards the cavern openiong crying "The walls are closing in, have to get out!"

 

Delphinae fired arrows at the mushrooms and dwarves at an astounding rate, seemingly almost a machine of flying death. The duergar and myconids dropped by the dozens, but there always seemed to be more.

Suddenly she swayed, seeming disoriented. A purple-covered dwarf advanced on her and she almost failed to block the quick downswing of his axe. The speed potion must have worn off, she thought to herself. Attempting to recover, she maged to fight the dwarf to a standstill with her sturdy elven bow, then began to gain some ground and eventually disarmed him and caved in his head.

Del yelled to her compatriots, "Everyone, we must retreat! If we do not, we will be overwhelmed, and we can always come back for the Earth's Heart at a later time!" She could only hope that they understood that her speech was for the myconids' benefit.

 

Atten continued to back out of the cave. The Heart was an awkward size and weight which made it difficult to run. Atten could still feel its power.

It was now obvious to him what would happen if they did not restore the Heart to the Earth. If they got out of here safely and could take a breath, he would attempt to explain it more clearly to the others. It was vital they understood what he now understood so clearly.

 

One's connection with the Creator was suddenly broken. He felt it ripped from him in an incredible cry of pain. He was dying, surely the Creator's touch was the only thing that ever kept him alive.

...

...

He was still alive. He was not dead, neither were his progeny. Why? How could they survive without the Creator? Even now, he could feel the Creator, going away from him. He called out to it, **Creator! Do not leave us! We will all surely die!**

The calming presence of the Creator came back and enveloped him. **My dear One, you have never needed me. It was always I who needed you and your progeny, to keep me safe from others who would abuse me. You will continue on as before, and your progeny will multiply. A part of me is in all of you, and you will always be a part of me. I have found others to care for me, who can do what you can not do. Thank you. Let me go. Let them go.**

One stood still for a moment, then sent out a powerful message to all his progeny. **Stop fighting the intruders. Bring your pods and your servants back to the main living area. The Creator has left us, but we will continue living.**

All the myconids and violet covered deurgar and derro stopped fighting and turned towards the large cavern.

 

Sepp saw Atten running up the passageway with the Earth's Heart! Yes, he really had it, it was really there. He suddenly realized that he had been conceived, born, and lived his whole life in the power envelope of this entity, and how important that was to him. He was irresistably drawn towards it. He reached his hand out to touch it.

His finger was sucked into a small hole in the Heart. He felt his soul trying to leave his body and enter the Heart. The Heart was trying to complete itself from something that it thought he had. It pulled and pulled, then finally spit him out.

He was thrown to the ground, his finger plump and red. He got up and looked where his finger had been. A small crystal shaped hole was there.

"Look Atten, the Heart is missing apart. It thought that I could complete it, but then it realized that I wasn't the right one."

 

Nakia breathed a sigh of relief as the fighting stopped. She ran over to Jex. "Let's go. Back to main cave. Del got the Stone."

She waits to be sure Jex has heard her.

 

For the first time in many years Jex's weapons slipped. He felt himself feeling faint and weaker, weaker than he had ever been. He had heard Nakias shout and looked at her with pleading eyes and then it happened. He dropped his scimitar. Never in a battle had he dropped a weapon. His hand found it's way under his armour and found it to be soaked with blood. Three ribs were protuding for his chest, the dwarves club had cause alot more damage than he had thought.

He staggered backwards and fell against the wall. His back slid down the wall and he came to rest in a sitting position. "Get Maron" he shouted but it came out as a harsh whisper and coughed bright red frothy blood up. It splashed out of his mouth and down his armour adding to pool on the ground.

He was dieing, he searched for his amulet, it might delay the inevitable, allow his friends to help him, but it wasn't around his neck. Nakia had it. Closeing his eyes, the half drow shuddered and lay very still.

 

Nakia touches the amulet then pulls it off and throws it over Jex's head. She races out of the cavern yelling; "Maron, Sepp. Come. Jex's is hurt bad."

She keeps yelling as she runs.

 

The amulet was slowing the bleeding, but it wasn't healing the lung, there was to much damage, it couldn't do everything. Jex lay on his back trying with all his might to open his eyes. His memories flashing through his head. Memories of his father, training in the fields, other townsfolk cursing at him calling him a half blood, and worse. He remembered his fathers death. Fighting the bandits, seeing his father fall, running into the night with his mother. He remembers the day that his mother died. Returning from the general store to find her dead in her bed. A look of peace on her face. His many adventures and friends came flooding back to him. Seeing Menzo, fighting a Red Dragon. The horrible screams from a villiage that was overrun by Orcs. The helpless feeling he felt as he watched that villiage burn.

He had always been faithful towards Lathander. He could feel the warmth as he was accepted into the afterlife. There was no more pain, his breathing had settled. It was quiet. He wasn't covered in blood anymore, not his foes, not his own. His armour was clean and his scimitars were shiny. He found a comfortable resting place and settled down. It's a shame he thought this is the first time I've stopped to relax and really rest in three score years. It's to bad it had to happen like this. But I'd prefer to die in battle than any other way I suppose

 

"What's going on?"

Atten turned to see that nobody was following him. He tried to decide whether he should go back or carry on with the Heart.

 

Delinos and Kelvados walk away from a pile of dead duergar and derro, injured and bleeding.

Delinos had his arm cut wide open and was useless, and his back had been sliced.

Kelvados was cut down the back of his thigh, and his neck had been hit by a duergar club.

"Can anyone heal..?"

 

Black limped out of the shadows and up to Jex's body. He gently licked the half-drow's face. Black was missing an ear, and a dagger's hilt protruded from his right hind leg. He heard one of the Drow brothers ask for a healer.

"Yes," he thought at them. "Maron, Atten, and Sepp are likely back in our mushroom farm cave, where we set the rally point at. They can all heal. Are the two of you still strong enough to carry Jex here to the cave? It's not very far." They both nodded. They walked over and lugged Jex up, supporting him between the two of them. They both let out several loud curses in Drow, then followed as Black lead them back to the mushroom cave.

Everyone seemed to be back there, in greater or lesser wounded states. Sepp ran over to Jex, "No!" he yelled. "Jex, wake up! Wake up!" He pulled life out of the mushrooms and put it into Jex's body, but it had nowhere to go. Jex was dead. Seeing the two Drow brothers, Sepp moved the lifeforce from Jex over to both of them, and then turned more than half the mushrooms in the cave into dried out husks before the brothers seemed close to whole again.

Then Sepp pulled the dagger out of Black's leg and healed Black too.

Turning the dagger over and over in his hands, he mourned, "Jex was the first person besides my family that I ever talked to. I was afraid that he might try to kill me, but he turned out to be a great friend. He told me that he was going on a long journey. I never did find out where he was going. Now he'll never get there."

He looked for a moment at the dagger, then jumped up. "Hey, Del, Nakia, look at this! This dagger has the same snake symbols on it that the weapons of the Fellowship of the Serpent had! Black, who stabbed you with it?"

"Just one of the purple dwarves, but none of them had the cloaks on, and the first time I was in their temple, there were absolutely no dwarves. How do you think the one that stabbed me got it?" Black thought.

"I don't know," Sepp answered. "It doesn't make any sense."

 

"The Fellowship probably hired those dwarves to steal the Heart," Delphinae sneered. "No true derro assassin could resist the lure of a dagger that well-made. You had best leave it behind, young halfling, lest its evil corrupt you."