IC Story Thread: Chapter I, The Pride of Lions

The thing looks up at Rolen and it opens it's tiny mouth to make creaking and groaning sounds, but it appears to be either unable or unwilling to speak in a comprehensible language.

The thing just continues to cower at first. As Marié continues to speak, it looks out at her and the things arrayed on the ground, it shrieks and jabs a twiggy finger out at the things, one after the other in sequence in a mimickery of Marie's instructions. It watches Marie intently, kind of in a perpetual posture of recoil like it expects to be struck, and whenever she asks a question it shrieks and jabs it's finger at all three objects in sequence. Soon it becomes frustrated and pounds on the invisible barrier of the circinate stones, and then just curls up in a ball again.

It doesn't appear to be very intelligent.

Rolen believes the creature should remain trapped within the circinated stones indefinitely, so long as something material doesn't breech it's perimeter.

With the summoned creature being of... less help... than Rolen might have expected or hoped, there is little else to do perhaps but just move forward.

The path takes a final steep incline, curving around the bottom of a rocky out-cropping before sweeping up the side, to the peak.

Before you even crest the rise, you can hear the clanging of metal on stone ringing out like a violent bell-tolling. Each CLANGGG followed by the skittering sounds of many smaller stones across the mountain top. And when the expanse of the peak comes into view, you can see the source of the clamorous sound.

There is a ... woman? ... standing perhaps 75 feet away. She holds a great maul in her hands, and is dressed in rugged leathers and furs, but the top has been peeled down to her waist as she labors in the intense mountain sun. Catching the motion of your approach out of the corner of her eye, she shrugs her heavily muscled arms into her sleeves and straightens, rolling her shoulders to try to force the tightness out of them. She stands over what can only really be described as a small boulder, which has the litter of many smaller stones about it. It appears as if she has been striking smaller stones, from the boulder, with the maul.

And just behind the woman and the boulder is what appears to be the foundation of a yurt, constructed out of these smaller stones, with a thatched roof of sticks and evergreen branches that must have been brought up from timberline.

She turns to face the four of you, the maul hanging at her waist in a relaxed grip in both hands, as she examines you all appraisingly.