Verse 7
Our journey began the next morning, the first snows just begining to fall onto the land. Another week and about 3 days awaited us on our journey towards Evest, and if the weather continued like this, then it looked to be rather freezing for us for the whole trip. Dulgos and Cahir talked once more about the 3 stones and Evest while Cerrannor questioned Cahir about why he wanted to be rid of the stone in the first place, when Dulgos brought mention of Soldan into all of this. When questioned it seemed as if he wasn't paying heed to the question at hand and the discussion dropped as quickly as it began. As night drew near after much travel durning the day Dulgos ran ahead and then returned but a moment later to tell us that another WayHouse was ahead. To our lack of surprise ( or at least mine ), it was exactly like the last one, down to the loaf of bread and number of perfectly clean bunks. This sparked up a lot of mistrust in Dulgos right away that did not get out until after Dulgos told us more about Soldan. He told us that Soldan was a follower of Myshtul, the goddess of the underworld, most venerated by dwarves and some halflings, but recently popular with some circles of humans, but thankfully not gnomes.
By this time it seemed that everybody was on the edge over this wayhouse, and our trusts in Dulgos has lessened. When we were inside, I worked my arts, quickly determining the house's magicial nature, undetected by the party or Dulgos. Although it seems harmless enough why he is working in such a susicious manner, is it some manner of luring us into a false sense of security or is he actually being nice.
As morning dawned the snow greeted us, a foot of the stuff, up to the top of my thigh, deep enough to seep into my boots, never the less I took comforts in riding by horse with the others. The day went on without much bother, Cahir bringing up one of Dulgos's slip ups in talking to Cahir by using his real name which nobody should really know. Regardless, the snow greeted us again the following morning, the days go by with no activity, Dulgos seems to be resistant to the cold as I will find, most of his people are as well, with my mistrusts in him growing I spent most of my times in the forests watching for signs of trouble and danger. As our last day arrived, we came across a field of deeper snow, much to the discomfort of my small legs, and to make it worse the party decided to run across the field, forcing me to run over twice as fast as normal. As the sun began to set we came across a great cliff face that dipped what seemed like miles down. Dulgos revealed the shortest and safest way down instead of going down by rope, which he told us, somehow always broke. So we took the quick route, a slick ice slide going almost straight down. Dulgos immediately jumped down, Cahir quickly followed with Cerrannor and Gregol following shortly behind, only me, Binkley and Aalaysia remained. Binkley and I got into a fight over who should go first, thankfully I finally got Binkley to go first, only because of my small weight and the fact that I was going to slow my descent with my knives he agreed that it wouldn't be a good idea for him to smash into me. So down Binkley went, with Aalaysia in close pursuit and finally I went. The trip was horrifying, my head snapping back from the speeds I was going at, unfortunately because of the way I was heading down, I ended up in a mid-air somersault landing in a large snowbank, completely engulfed, as I arose from the snow and began to brush myself off, a furry brown thing flew into the air, and hit me in the face knocking me down into the snow bank again. Somehow I thought that that Widget, Aalaysia's mouse thought it funny as he left, leaving claw marks on my face from the impact.
Elven children appeared in the woods then, they obviously knew Dulgos, and Aalaysia attempted to befriend them, trying to speak so that they understood her modern elven, which I don't even understand so Cahir translated most of it for me, when he wasn't preoccupied.
They took us to the home of Dulgos's aunt Karinesa, the house was nice, a 2-story home with with a ladder leading to the second story, the bottom floor is one long room with another door leading to an outhouse. An ruddy iron, wood stove cooked inviting fish and despite the fact that we had to sleep on the floor, the heat from the fire had more than made up for that discomfort. Eating, we turned in for the night.
My sleep was a light one at best, some insect making chirping sounds and the tree slapping againist the window were not the least of my problems, Binkley's snoring and Cahir's mumbling kept waking me up, in particular his mumblings were making fun of me, so out I snuck, grabbed a handful of snow and shoved it in Cahir's mouth and quickly ran back to my sleeping spot and pretended to sleep. What followed was funny, Cahir jumped into the air spitting icy sludge out of his mouth, his eyes wide with shock and confusion, the funny part was that he blamed Gregol for it and snowballed him. Cerrannor then spotted something in the window, he described it as a purple light forming some kind of figure like a face, with fangs and yellow eyes. As I stared out the window it attacked, speeding without notice right towards me, I ducked as the tree branch hit the window scaring everyone as it did, due to the fact that about 4 weapons were drawn because of it. Then it hit the window again. By this time we thought Cerrannor was just having a bad dream or something, so all but Cerrannor went back to sleep, me with my sword rested across my lap.
After resting for a little more we awoke suddenly to the sounds of the window breaking, children screaming, and Cerrannor with his warhammer drawn. I snapped up almost immediately, short sword already in hand. Cerrannor screamed "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU" attacking something by the window. He told us that it was the purple thing again and that it disappeared when it broke the window, we approached the window ready to give chase when it appeared, flaring with purple light, lighting the room with an unnatural glo. It's black hand emerged from it's center, reaching for Cahir as millions of purple stars moved in a spiral pattern around it, a vortex of sorts. The arm was black, with a four fingered hand at its apex, reaching with its long claws toward Cahir connecting with nothing but the wooden frame of the window. Cahir let forth his magic missiles at the creature, forcing it to withdraw its hand back into the vortex, vanishing.
Dulgos called it Shikara, a name I am familar with for it is of my tounge, They are said to be the many armed spirits that are suppose to serve mind flayers. I got the job of relating what mind flayers were to the party, something I did not take much pleasure in doing, as I spoke of them I could feel my hand constrict upon my sword so hard that my knuckles turned white. The vortex then appeared again inside the home flat againist the wall, with a dagger in hand near enought to Ne`Stahsia and Aalaysia to cause great harm. I began to charge forward, cursing the creature in undercommon, as another blast of someone's magic missile stuck it another vortex appeared behind Cahir this time, I spinned to the new vortex as several hands grabbed him. I quickly grabbed hold of Cahir's leg and started to pull him back sword in one hand, as Binkley joined in helping me. Gregol lunched into the vortex as another purple vortex came into being behind us, emerging from it a sharp sword clutched by another black hand, Cerrannor attempted to meet connect with the arm but fell short of success by a long shot. The creature then attacked, swinging towards Binkley, losing its sword in the process. Then I swung at the arm, hitting it hard, a long thin line of blood trailing up its arm as the arm withdrew without its blade.
It then turned worse for us, a greater tug lunged Cahir forward as me and Binkley attempted to pull him back in. Cerrannor charged forth into the closing vortex as Cahir's waist entered the portal. The last thing I heard and saw as I plunged through the portal still clung to Cahir, was the screams of Ne`Stahsia, and Binkley letting go of his hold on Cahir...