Back to the Deep

In the space between heartbeats, Hethir's view changed from the monster's toothy maw to gleaming armor. Struggling to haul himself upright, he saw Trace standing in front of him, shield held up as though he would fend off the massive monster with it. Strangely, it seemed to be working. Golden sparks fizzled and shot away from the shield, and Hethir realized that the knight was using the shield as a focus; blocking with magic and not mere steel. The teeth of the beast continued to grind and gnash on the barrier to no avail. Though as Hethir watched, he could see Trace shaking with exertion. The effort of holding the beast back was clearly taking its toll. "Trace, do you think you could kill that thing if I got you close enough?" Hethir regained his feet shakily, but his gaze was steady again.
"Maybe? It isn't of this world, Lumis will want it destroyed."
"Good enough, get ready."

Under Ancient Stone Part II

Slowly, so incrementally that they had had walked for almost another hundred feet before they noticed, the rough cave floor and walls gave way to ancient hewn stone and solidly placed blocks. After the initial shock had worn off, close examination of the walls began to reveal carvings. First it was just seemingly random chisel marks, but those soon gave way to runes, words, and sentences. Most of the runes were as indecipherable as those on the plinth from earlier; though Cairis was able to pick out a few here and there that bore enough similarity to hazard a guess at their meaning. The one bright spot was that neither Cairis, Alise, nor Tala's devices could detect any hints of magic in the Orrian writings. That however, changed when they found the second plinth.

A total cop-out

I was planning on releasing part 2 of Under Ancient Stone today but, well, the prep I had to do for my game tonight took far longer than I had planned. So yeah, total lame cop-out for today, but it really isn't ready yet. I promise it will be up tomorrow though.

-Matt

Under Ancient Stone

The walls of the cave glittered around them in the slight luminescence let off by Tala's armor. The diminutive Asura was several paces ahead of the rest of them, waving around a device that supposedly would detect any dangerous sections before she stepped on them, Cairis was somewhat less confident in Asuran magic after the last few mishaps with Tala's devices. She claimed to have made great progress since then, but the sections of his hair that still hadn't grown back from being singed off left him not wanting to simply take her word for it.
Behind him were the other two members of their group, Alise and Tor. The Sylvari and Norn moved with incredible silence through the rough cave, leaving Tala clinking and humming rather obviously. Alise's silence was hardly surprising. She barely weighed anything anyway--and Cairis was fairly certain that she was using some manner of air spell to silence her steps even more--Tor on the other hand was at least half again as tall as he was, and at least twice as heavy. Yet the Norn managed to move with all the grace of a dancer, avoiding every bit of loose ground or rubble that could have made any noise. Cairis himself was no slouch when it came to sneaking, but he was more than a bit awed now. He knew Tala much better than these two, having met her some years ago in Divinity's Reach. She supposedly had done work with them before, but what work that might have been was unknown to him.