Story I: The Rift

Marveling at the size of the creature and the grandeur of the cavern, Baric almost misses the question posed. After a shake of his head and a refocusing of his eyes, he responds, The depths are vast and my short time here as a youth was not enough to see it all...

He pauses, distracted again, before continuing in a broken, half-focused mumble ...This place feels ancient, but familiar, like one of our temples, but unlike it in many ways...The structures don't speak the same language as do those of my youth...but we're potentially... He pauses to calculate, still staring at the bones and caverns, ...hundreds of miles from there...maybe closer... These were our cathedrals, our homage to the stone and the life it giv--gave us...

He pauses for a few longer moments, staring directly up at the creature. He whispers an explanation of his distraction,
The creature is imposing and distracts me from the rest. My mind is continually working to discover how it fit here while alive...

After a moment, he straightens and, with a jolt of energy realizes the potential of the hanging creature. The better question is how this beast was killed and if it means any of my kin lived to mount it here!

Breaking from his near trance, he stares directly at Neph and asks, urgently, Have you seen anyone who looks like me down here? Before allowing the language barrier to manifest, he continues, moving closer, Shorter than yourself? Bearded? Sturdy? Crafters and Miners? Recognizing the frantic nature of his inquiry and realizing the inability of either to understand the other, he searches for a moment with desperation in his eyes and finally lands on Ameera, before advancing on her letting out a horse, Ask her. Please.

Neph, who have you seen down here besides your kind and the Shadowkin? Have you seen any of the Dwarven kind, Elves, or humans? Ameera gestures to Baric, Erran, and herself respectively. If you have, when?

Neph turns as Baric approaches her. As his questioning continues, her eyes go wide and her confusion very clearly begins to turn to fright. She frowns, looking back and forth between the Dwarf and Ameera until a translation is made for her. Once she understands she points at Erran and shakes her head. She then points at Ameera, nods, and speaks.She then points to Baric and pauses, looking a little uncertain.

Ameera turns to Baric to translate Baric, I am sorry but she says that she hasn't seen any dwarves.... or elves either apparently, just humans. We'll have to ask her more when we can, she said that some were good and some were not, so I'm guessing that there was more than one meeting. Devanis? Oh sorry to interrupt. Did you hear what I said? Neph has met some humans, I am not sure when. When we get to where we're going we can ask for more details i think.

It takes Devanis a few moments to realize Ameera is speaking to him. "Huh? Oh, forgive me, I was distracted. I sense a monster not very far away. No cause for alarm just yet, I don't think. Less than a mile away to the south. Just stay alert."

Very well, we should continue, Baric looks down in shame. Glancing from Ameera to Neph, he says horsely, Please express my apologies.

We should continue. If this monstrosity is anything similar to those, I am anxious to move on.

"I'm good to prceed."

Pyrrah gives a low grunt of amusement, and an evil glint appears in her eyes for the slightest of moments. With a dark smile tinging the edge of her lips, she says "No elves, aye? Damn. Looks like Elnaril HASN'T been through here after all, Seraph. It's really quite a shame. I was really hoping that he'd be hiding out down here to take your useless, dull self off our hands. I guess he just left you here, instead."

"I realize that the sword almost got you killed Flare, but is it really worth your time to try and make it feel bad? Seems like something a silly girl my age would do." Ameera stares at Pyrrah with her best poker face from under her hood. "This seems like as good a place as any to be rid of it. Just toss it off this bridge and we'll never see it again."

"What?! No. We're not tossing anyone or anything." Devanis says levelly.

Seraph doesn't reply. The blue glow in his gem just dims slightly.

"Now, now. Let's not do anything rash."

Erran says, taking a protective step backwards from Pyrrah, "I know you have your grievances, but Seraph could be a very valuable ally."

Pyrrah says nothing, shrugs, and just walks forward after Neph, a shadow of a venomous smile at the corner of her lip. She'd said what she wanted to. After the stress of this journey so far, she needed a good punching bag.

Erran watches the dagger tongued rogue walk a few paces, left slightly uneased at her shrill response.

Diverting his focus to the more important task at hand, he nods to his other companions and follows Pyrrah to join the marching order behind Neph.