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Date Posted: 01:38:10 02/12/02 Tue
Author: Tristan
Subject: Looking for Corum
In reply to: Erlic, Corum & Valhorek 's message, "Venturing onward" on 20:45:35 02/11/02 Mon

The second they entered the ruins, Tristan knew they were not alone. As he climbed nimbly over the rocks of the rubble, sword already unsheathed and ready, he kept his nose to the air, trying to capture the source of a rather strange and unpleasant odor. It was too elusive to place, though, and at present, he had no room to break away from the group as they made their way through the narrow opening into the city.

You’re no help, either, he thought grimly, glancing up at the weak light the half-moon was straining to shine down upon them. It threw everything in sinister shadow, making monsters out of harmless brick and stone structures. If it were this hard for him to see, he wondered how his human companions were faring. The elves in the group likely had even better eyesight than he did, but everybody knew that humans had notoriously bad night vision.

He whipped his head sideways when his ears caught the sound of sluggish movement and a heavy, animal-like breathing. There was a general intake of breath as the pair of golden eyes was spotted, and if everybody hadn’t retrieved their weapons yet, they definitely had by now. Just as quickly as they were detected, however, the eyes winked out of sight. Tristan growled lowly, baring his teeth ever so slightly, for he suddenly realized that that was where the awful odor had been coming from.

Before he could tell the others that they might soon have a problem on their hands—the chances of something smelling that awful being perfectly harmless seemed pretty damned slim, at least to him—Tia’s sudden cry for help diverted all their attentions. Most everyone rushed toward the wall that had apparently come to life, several large and hairy arms springing from it in various places, two of which were currently trying to drag Tia into its depths.

Tristan hissed when he saw her start to disappear within, breathing a private sigh of relief when Rowan dove forward to aid her. Momentarily, he took his eyes off the tiny thief and focused on the wall. Almost absently, he flicked his sword out, knocking a flying arrow out of the way, its pointed tip barely missing him to impale itself harmlessly into the wall. He fell upon the wall with a vengeance, slicing the arms of the living wall off with relative ease. He didn’t find that fighting stationary disembodied hands was an exceptionally difficult task, although he did have a few close calls. It was frustrating, though; almost every time he’d slice an elbow off, the arm would retreat back into the pseudo-stone, only to be replaced by yet another.

He backed off for a while, giving the wall another hard, menacing growl as he glared at it. Now that he wasn’t busy fighting, though, he once again paid attention to what his nose was telling him, and he whirled around in alarm, staring up at the seven-foot tall creature exuding the incredibly offensive odor. Valhorek was doing his best to handle it, and not too shabby a job, either, as he already had one lying seemingly dead at his feet.

There was another scent drifting through the air, though, and it wasn’t monstrous at all. It was the smell of foreign humans, mixed in with the burning tinge of slight magic. Tristan’s eyes darted about the area, mentally counting heads of all those around him. Tia and Rowan were missing, he realized with shock, apparently having been swallowed up by the wall. But as he watched on, a seemingly foolhardy Saras approached the structure and spoke to it before leaning into its inhuman embrace, causing it to create a tunnel leading directly into its depths!

All right, he could admit privately to himself, he was definitely impressed. The genie was showing a little more gumption than he had of late, and that was always a good thing. Tristan was of the opinion that he was too pretty for his own good, but if he managed to make himself useful like this, then more power to him.

When Tristan finished his mental head count, however, he realized someone else was missing—Corum! Gripping his sword reflexively with both hands, he moved cautiously away from the wall, toward the scent of the foreign humans. He was less than surprised to see Erlic surrounded by three dead bodies, apparently himself unscathed. But among the smell of dead remained the smell of the living, and it was coming from that direction over…

“Yorik!” he breathed, rushing over toward the fallen staff. Corum never went anywhere without his damned staff! “Shit,” he muttered, crouching down to pick Yorik up, “This is not good.”

Quickly, he hurried toward Marz, grabbing his arm to get his attention and shoving Yorik into his free hand. “Corum’s missing,” he said evenly, his dark eyes starting to whirl red with a mixture of rage and worry. Marz glanced at the staff he was now holding, but before he could respond, Tristan grabbed his wrist this time, pulling him toward the spot he found Yorik lying in.

He sniffed the air a couple times, closing his eyes briefly as he did so. “This way,” he muttered, dragging Marz with him as he marched off with determination in the direction he thought Corum’s captors must have taken him. Once the ruins opened up a bit more, though, it became more difficult to follow the scent. Surely, they couldn’t have gotten far, though, since they had to be dragging him, or at least carrying him.

Almost on a whim, Tristan switched to his othersight, little flecks of silver flashing in his eyes as he scanned the area. Everything was thrown into shades of gray, which wasn’t all that remarkably different from the way things normally looked. As luck would have it, he spotted a glaring reddish blur off in the distance, a few buildings down, exuding both evidence of some life-force or other and even a bit of magical aura around it.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the exact spot. He started walking toward it, sword drawn and ready, not thinking for a moment that just because he’d discovered another living entity didn’t necessarily mean they’d found poor Corum after all.

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