Cu'scath smirked at Rothar's last comment. "How do you suggest we get them to trust us?" he asked. "Two half-wolf mutants and a demon? We're not exactly the types they'd choose for confidants."

Good grief! where is everyone else who's got characters in the camp?!?!?

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(sorry)
Once awake Maria hurried over to her horse Nightfire.

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"Is all that we see or seem in a dream, but a dream?" -Edgar Allen Poe

[: ? # = $ ^ ~ +]


Normal is for Muggles!

Name: Mrug Axethrower
Age: if he were human, he'd appear in 30s
Race: dwarf
Gender: male
Allegiance(good or evil): good
Appearance: http://www.strategyplanet.com/homm/homm ... -dwarf.jpg
Attire: spiked hauberk; two-horned helm
Weapons: enormous adamantine battle-axe ("Cleaver")
Personality: proud, gruff, aloof; does have a noble and compassionate core, if you know him well enough
History: Grew up in one of the dwarven clans on the edge of the The Grainayar. Spent his youth climbing the mountain range bordering the wasteland and occassionally visiting the great dwarven cities in the mountain passes. He became a lone wanderer at a young age.
One of the 10 chosen(yes or no): no

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The Chosen. The Chosen symbolized hope - not only for him, but for all the dwarven clans of The Grainayar. Life after death. An end to the plague and the curse that'd suddenly afflicted the once-impregnable stone walls of the Stone Hammer.

He had to find them.

Stumbling in the darkness, Mrug Axethrower subjugated his knawing obstinance at last. He collapsed to the ground, lungs burning, legs throbbing with the exertion of the past few days. Those past few days had become all but a blur. Many miles - so many he'd lost count - from the desolate reaches of The Grainayar. He'd climbed the snow-clogged mountain spurs, trudged along ancient roads, felt the oppression of the verdant forestland around him closing in. His heart was stone, he kept telling himself. He was born to stone halls and stone walls, not the trees that pressed in around him now.

But no. Hearts of stone do not feel exhaustion.

With a growl he forced himself back to his feet. Had his journey to Talatia, all the questioning, all the tracking, been for nothing? Slinging his adamantine battle axe - fondly dubbed "Cleaver" - over his stoic back, he trudged on.

Half an hour later, he came upon hoof prints on the ground before him. A burst of anticipation and adrenaline gave him resolve as he quickened his pace, subconsciously breaking into a jog when he sighted the campfire in the distance -

- and running full into the elf patrolling the camp's outskirts. He grunted and fell back, hands immediately reaching for his battle axe. The dim firelight flickered upon the elf's slight features - the gray eyes, the white-blond hair.

Elves. It was always elves.

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Despite the fact that he had been listening to it for a while, he didn't realize that the sound was a person in armor until the dwarf ran into him. How could someone be foolish enough to run through these woods, at night, making enough noise to wake the dead!?!? However--there was no knowing whether this dwarf was friend or foe, which meant that he should be treated as foe, though left alive, and not crippled.

He rapped the dwarf's knuckles with his spear shaft when it reached for its axe, and then rested the point under its nose, where there was no armor.

If this dwarf was friendly, he could answer a few questions and maybe they would let him go in the morning. If this dwarf was an enemy, he would answer a few questions and be left in a ditch in the morning, unless one of the soft-hearted fools in the camp had pity on him.

"Name yourself, stunted one," he said, still wondering what a dwarf was doing alone, this late, and this far from the road. More importantly, he was wondering how it even got there, when evil seemed to have taken shape and stalked the forest. This dwarf had to be more than he seemed, though whether that meant he was simply skilled, or an agent of the enemy, Damien had no clue.

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Stunted one. Mrug bristled at the less than complimentary term. He flexed his knuckles, still sore from where the elf had rapped them, and considered going for his battle axe anyway and seeing how well this wood faerie would fare against Cleaver's adamantine wrath.

The spear tip prodding under his reddish beard once more reminded him of his impasse... and his situational place.

"My name, you blond-headed stick," he declared in high dudgeon, "is Mrug Axethrower, warrior of the Stone Hammer." His unimpressed eyes looked the spear-wielding elf over. "And who by the forge are you?"

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Alythrya came up beside Damien to look at the newcomer. She glanced at Damien once before watching the drawf and seeing what he would say.

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Just became a college freshman; be on sparingly

(sorry for absense- bad week)

Having roused the others, Radearle hastily bundled up her bedroll and tied it behind her saddle - and something tapped at her mind. She spun, re-nocking an arrow to her bowstring.

Nothing there.

Another mental nudge, a surreptious searching for a chink in her newly-cast mental shell. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply, reaching along the searching link, trying to remain inconspicuous while she tried to ferret out the source. She touched it and instantly recoiled. It was so dark that it burned.

Radearle couldn't stop the reactionary spasm that shot through her body - something was hunting her. Them. They had to leave.

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

Damien's lips shifted into something that could have been called a very thin, tight smile.

"At this point, stunted one," he said, "my name is of no concern to you. Maybe, if you earn our trust, I will tell it to you, but I do not see how knowing it would benefit you right now."

Indeed, there was no reason for him to tell the dwarf--Mrug--what his name was. Names did not matter much in a dark forest, in the middle of the night, with who knew what stalking them through the trees.

There wasn't much point in staying quiet after the noise they had made when the dwarf collided with him, but Damien stayed quiet anyways--he could listen better if it was quiet, too. Listening meant surviving, which was something those at the camp seemed to have no conception of.

"Come with me, Mrug," he said, gesturing with his free hand in the general direction of the camp, still watching the dwarf. In actuality, it would have been more fitting for him to say "Go in front of me, Mrug," because he made sure the dwarf was in front of them. Still, he wasn't trying to be rude to the creature, though he didn't have any real intention of being kind to it, either. Especially considering how much noise it was making as it stomped through the woods.

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(Can someone tell me what's going on? I'm at a lost here. All I know is that my guy and his soldiers are looking for the Chosen Ones)

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I was cured all right.

Mrug was practically on breaking point by the time he reached the campfire, around which the elf's other companions were waking. Indeed names didn't matter, but what happened to the elves' so-called nobility and grace and trees and sticks and dirt...

His mood considerably brightened though when he took time to calm down and take a good look at the members of the party. There were eleven, he'd been told, and he counted exactly eleven among these companions. His anticipation heightening, he glanced at the elf. "Road from Talatia's dangerous these days, eh?" he began conversationally.

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Maria was grooming her horse when she heard footsteps coming towards the camp in a quick reaction she grabbed her dagger and stood ready to attack whatever came her way. When she saw Damien come from the woods following behind a dwarf she put her hand down but kept the dagger ready just in case there might be something following them and they didn't hear it. "who's that" she quietly said wondering who the dwarf was

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"Is all that we see or seem in a dream, but a dream?" -Edgar Allen Poe

[: ? # = $ ^ ~ +]


Normal is for Muggles!

((I believe Damien and all the Chosen except Erillyn and Seryl are confronting Mrug at the camp, and Seryl has stumbled upon your character and his minion-type-people. Not sure where Erillyn is.))

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"Who's the midget?" Xaviera asked. "What does he want?"
She was rather tired, and the dwarf seemed rather... dangerous. She didn't trust him.

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- married fingon fingolfinion 6/4/13 -
~art credit~

((Artemis (Erillyn) can't be on this weekend so she will catch Erillyn up ASAP))

_________________
"Is all that we see or seem in a dream, but a dream?" -Edgar Allen Poe

[: ? # = $ ^ ~ +]


Normal is for Muggles!

Radearle swung around sharply as Damien and Althyra came into camp, closely following something short and stumpy - it was hard to see in the dimness. A dwarf? She'd never seen a dwarf. However, that was irrelevant right now.

"We need to leave," she announced abruptly. "Now. Something's hunting us, and getting closer - I've felt it. Those of you with mental gifts need to make sure that nothing gets past your shields."

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>