Well, there have been quite a few
comings and goings. First, Jven, Rhavin, and Canliss went. I mean, they disappeared. I´m used to
Canliss disappearing, usually when our back is turned, but one minute they were here and the next
they weren´t. Slurpy was standing there right where he had been, except Jven wasn´t sitting on him.
Nikita got really scared -- she wanted
to go and look for them. Which was a good idea, except that she was going to run off and do it --
and there could be a big Nikita-eating monster around the corner. I kept her from going anywhere,
and we tried to figure out what to do next. How could we look for them if we didn't know where they
went?
One of Five said something about the
field of corruption, but he didn´t tell us how to get there. I thought that maybe Rhavin and
Canliss and Jven went to wherever those gooey things keep coming from -- instead of them popping up
all of a sudden here, maybe they popped up all of a sudden there! Then I remembered that the gooey
things always died after they popped up here, and hoped that wasn´t where Jven and Rhavin and
Canliss went.
Nikita was still really worried, and
Kariya asked One of Five to try and calm her down. I calmed down. Kariya calmed down. Nikita was
still really worried -- she went off to talk with One of Five privately.
Kariya and I were playing with Ulfie.
It was really nice. I was scratching Slurpy behind his ears (at least, I think that´s what they
were), and Kariya was playing catch with Ulfie. I wasn´t worried about anything. We were just
happy. One of Five made us move because there was a Big Nasty in the next room, but that was OK.
Then things were even more than OK,
because Rhavin and Jven and Canliss popped back in again! Nikita was so happy to see Rhavin she
grabbed him and didn´t let go, yelling and shouting.
After a while, Kariya and I remembered
to be worried again, so we were ready to move on. Slurpy was hungry, so we needed to make good time
to whatever Slurpy could eat. Too bad Slurpy can´t wear my ring of not being hungry...
We had to figure out how to get past the
second Big Nasty without anything bad happening. We decided that I would jump through the broken
wall into the next room, Rhavin would climb over it, and Kariya and Canliss would attack from
behind. With all of us working together, we killed it pretty quick. In blew up, splattering acid
everywhere. All of a sudden, my head was on fire and I couldn´t see. The headlamp was gone!
Canliss put me out, I think, but I would have rather have lost more armor than the lamp. Now we
only had one light -- and since Nikita was gone with the light-rock, we had no light.
It was dark again, and I hate the dark.
Canliss made the little light that he studies by, and I stood close to him. One of Five could see
in the dark, so I suppose he could have told us if anything bad was creeping up on us, but I still
didn´t like being in the dark.
Then I had a good idea. Canliss had
told me that if I said "blade of nothing", Hilt´s blade would disappear. Well, that MUST be because
maybe you´d need to change blades, right? I said "blade of nothing", and the steel blade
disappeared. Then, I got Canliss to make some fire, and held it at Hilt, and said "Blade of flame"
and the fire blade came back. We could all see now!!!
I felt much better, waiting for Kariya
to come back with Nikita. We poked around a bit, and found a little room covered in that hard slime
the Big Nasties made. There was a table with those yellow leaves from the other room on it, and
eggs like in a nest. I decided to take care of the Big Nasty eggs -- I really didn´t like them.
Kariya and Nikita came back. It was a
new day, so Nikita and Jven could pray and heal us. I was really hurt again, and felt much better
afterwards. Then I found out that when I lost my lamp, Rhavin lost his holy symbol. No one wanted
to say anything, because he must have been feeling pretty bad. Nikita talked to him a bit, and
maybe it helped, since she´d lost hers too once, and maybe knew what to say to make him feel better.
Kariya started talking really slow, and
then stopped. Talking slow. Maybe that´s more of the field of corruption, wherever it is. We must
be near it. Jven created herring for Slurpy, hoping he´d eat fish since he was so hungry. He did!
I got to help feed Slurpy.
Nikita cast a spell to learn more about
Kariya´s father. While Slurpy was eating, she told us all that Madreus was dominating Kariya´s
father. That Kariya´s father was working for Madreus because Madreus was making him -- I hoped it
wasn´t like Quaren and the evil wall. I didn´t want Kariya to have to find her father stuck in some
sort of evil Thing that Madreus was using to stop us from saving the world.
By accident, I said something that made
Jven really mad. I mean, really mad, so that she hit me like Nikita does Rhavin now when she gets
mad. Rhavin and Nikita tried to get in the way, but Jven just hit Rhavin instead of me. I´ll have
to be careful, because it seems like the more we´re in here, the madder people get. I mean, even
when things were really bad in like the desert of despair and great evil was all around us -- even
then no one was getting mad at each other or trying to hit each other. There is something wrong
when Nikita tries to hit Rhavin -- I mean, she loves Rhavin to pieces. Or maybe it´s getting close
to the field of corruption. I just hope I don´t get mad and try to hit anyone.
A flock of flying moss flew by us. It
seemed a good time to move on.
The next room had a big pool of stinky
grey bubbling goo. Canliss said it bubbled more when he came by and tried to grab him. What bad
things could the goo do? Poison? Grabbing us? Maybe something lived in the goo? Kariya said she
could make an ice wall so we could just run past, which seemed like a good way to go.
I tried to run, but the closer I got the
more the goo stank. Soon, I couldn´t move and all I wanted to do was be sick. But there was no
time to be sick -- all of a sudden, there was a bunch of mouth-things! I managed to get one of them
before I got so sick that I couldn´t do anything. I saw Canliss turn into a rhinoceros before one
of the mouth-things dragged me down.
Rhavin pulled me out, and Canliss
dragged me away from the stinky goo. Bleaguh! Behind us, I could hear another mouth-thing pop in.
That was too much for Nikita -- she´s terribly frightened of the mouth-things for some reason so she
started running. Canliss told me to go get her, so I took off before she ran into some
Nikita-eating monster
I was too late. I had been running,
with only the light of Hilt and hoping I´d see the light from Nikita´s light soon. Somehow, Canliss
had beat me there and was holding a bloody Nikita in his arms. One of Five and Kariya were being
attacked by these eel-things flying in the air.
I didn´t know how they had got there
before me, but it was obvious that I had to help them. All of a sudden, the flying eels started to
shrink and get shorter like they were going to disappear. Rhavin grabbed one, and his arm started
going too -- Kariya and I grabbed him and pulled him back.
Rhavin said that he was trying to pull
it back so we could kill it, which didn´t make any sense until Nikita said that the flying eels were
just part of a big eel that we couldn´t see. Like the flying eels were just bits of it that poked
out where we were, and the rest of it was somewhere else. It had grabbed Nikita and pulled her into
that somewhere else and tried to eat her, and she cast a spell to put herself back here. It made me
kind of scared -- what if she hadn´t been able to -- then that big Eel would´ve eaten her and we
wouldn´t have been able to do anything.
We retreated a bit to the corner, but we
could still see the eel-bits down the hall. They didn´t look like they could see us, but who could
tell. Kariya made an ice wall to protect us, and we rested. It was hard to think about sleeping.
--love,
Ester