Jeniya looked at the city with some curiosity as the moonlight lit up the city in front of them. She then examined the city opening, racking her brains to find a way through. Unfortunately, she wasn't a thief nor an assassin thus, she would have absolutely no idea how to enter a city undetected. Her first thought ran to disguises, but some of their party, including the stone golem like person, would be instantly revealed if a guard stopped them. She moved her shoulder experimentally, for lack of a better thing to do. It still stung but the pain had definitely dulled down and she could feel the bone slowly repairing itself.

She gathered her legs around her and wrapped them with her hands, just watching and listening to the rest of the ideas that the group were thinking of.

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I was cured all right.

Gramsil ignored the calculating looks others were giving him. He was hard at work, weighing options, trying to determine the best course of action himself. Stealth was definitely out, or at least any attempt at stealth with such a large group. However, perhaps he could serve as a diversion for the watchmen. Then the others could slip in undetected. Any mere soldiers would present no problem, and his ability to detect magic, apparently unusual, would help him avoid potential threats.

Of course, there was a second option. Gramsil's lack of lungs might be useful. If he could cut through the partially underwater gate, which may have rusted from its exposure to seawater...

He acted out both of his ideas for the others, mentally cursing his lack of voice for the thousandth time or so.

Damien had been very uncertain about getting into the boat with his back to the strange stone creature, but while everyone else seemed slightly suspicious of each other, no more suspicion was directed at the golem--Gramsil, he had learned that its name was--than at anyone else. So he sat stiffly in the boat in front of it, trying to keep his mind off of the fact that he was sitting in a boat in the middle of an ocean. He could swim, but he had never even seen a body of water larger than a small lake, and he had only gone out into that when absolutely necessary.

By the time they were in sight of land, his stomach was in turmoil, and he was grateful to the darkness for hiding the green tinge to his face that he was certain must be there. When Ryairon asked him about the city that he could see clearly in front of them, he flinched slightly, startled out of his...unnervance. He was opening his mouth to answer when the red-haired warrior in the adjacent canoe did something somewaht more useful for the others--he somehow managed to get the clouds to part so that moonlight hit the city. For Damien, though, it merely heightened the glare off of the armour of the various sentries, causing him to scowl. He was used to hunting in almost total darkness, and very much unused to metal armour reflecting the light back in his eyes.

Another boat closed in on theirs, and a girl's voice mentioned several ways that they could get into the city. Damien sighed, and shook his head.

"Just get me in a little bit closer to the wall," he said anxious to get out of the rickety little boat. "I'll get an entrance for you very quickly."

Getting their boat closer was done very quickly, as Gramsil was a very, very good paddler, and Damien slipped quietly overboard, holding his breath and ducking under the water. He swam some feet down before he started moving towards the wall, since he didn't want his hair to be visible to the sentries. White-blond hair was rarely a useful thing, but it was still better than being bald.

He saw another shape in the water below and to the right of him, which caused him to swim a little faster. The way it was shaped had the distinct look of a predator, and he wasn't interested in fighting something in the water. It didn't seem to notice him, either, so he just kept a careful eye on it.

He reached the wall, and smiled to himself. It was built in a way that there were almost no cracks between the stones. It didn't matter. He put his hands on the stone, and began to move it. He had been given this power some time before, and it had proved to be very useful. In this case, handholds were all that he needed, and he climbed quickly up the wall, letting his hands sink into the rock as he climbed. No one else would be able to use those handholds, but it didn't really matter.

He pulled his hood up right before he reached the top of the wall, and waited until he heard the sentires pass before he looked carefully between two of the merlons on the wall. The two sentries were walking along talking quietly together. Damien winced. It was useful for him, but he didn't think that anyone should be on guard duty if they were not actually going to be keeping an eye out. In his village, such an error would be fatal. As it was about to be here.

He slipped over the parapet and crept up behind them. One of them laughed at something the other said, and Damien waited until he was done laughing before striking. He stabbed his spear through the back of the neck of the guard on the right, made easier by the fact that they wore no coifs, and snapped his left leg out in a kick that caught the other guard on the underside of the jaw as he started to turn around. The sound of bone cracking as it was forced to far was suddenly very audible. The bodies made hardly any sound when they hit the ground, since stone that is almost liquid doesn't provide much resistance. Damien only waited long enough to pull his spear out of the first guard before he let their bodies sink into the wall. He was hurrying back to the part of the wall that he had climbed up as soon as he let the stone solidify again.

He clambered down the wall, then beckoned for the others to come closer. The more sharp-eyed ones of them might have seen the death of the guards, but as he watched, he saw them paddling away from the harbour, apparently going around. He looked around, and grimaced. There was a trading vessel going slowly in a line that would have taken it directly across the boats' paths should they have gone to the wall. He might as well have stayed with them.

He started shaping an entrance into the city, flowing the stone out of the way to make a tunnel through the wall. He would have to close it up again afterward, but unless there was some way to use magic to see what had been done, no one would know how he got through the wall--no one would know anything, actually, except that two guards were missing. He had removed his handholds on the way back down.

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"How uncouth of you my light skinned brethren, but one cannot expect wonders from your kind."

Xarw said with a disappointed tone as he had already utilized his natural talents in magic and floated himself up to the wall with ease whilst Damien had been silencing the guards. Xarw dropped onto the wall and gazed at the city opening before them, again he found himself tempted to depart from the group and start moving on his own. He gazed at the city and possible other guard posts wondering when the missing guards would be noticed, surely there had to be shifts and questions would arise, if the two weren`t seen at the change of shifts.

In any case Xarw thought that it wouldn`t matter really as they would have entered the city already and they could thus avoid some suspicion all tough he admitted, that again moving around with a golem seemed like a rather obvious threat. Then there was the fact, that he wore a mask and various other little details such as their clothing not to mention, if these citizen were as cautious as the villagers from before they would only cause trouble.

Xarw shook his head quietly at the desperate situation and the idiots he had been forced to deal with, but decided to follow their lead for now. He dropped down from the wall and landed inside the city before any of the others could even enter trough the newly created entrance. He had to admit he hadn`t expected such powers from the elf, but then again none of them knew what powers he held.

It seemed, that he would have to be more careful with these people as they had unexpected powers that might cause unexpected problems.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

When the elf vaulted over the side of the boat, Ryairon stifled a curse and lunged out to grab him. Too slow. Damien was already gone, his mane of hair, silver under Devarion's conjured moonlight, vanishing under the murky waters. "Imbecile!" she hissed, throwing a scowl at the first person she saw - which happened to be Gramsil, though he hadn't spoken a word the entire time. "What does he think he's doing?"

Whatever Damien was doing, following him was out of the question. Vessels ranging from sleek fishing schooners to massive trade galleons crowded the harbor, their hulls close enough to bump into one another at every swell. Maneuvering their knot of canoes undetected between them was tantamount to hoping for a miracle. Gods or no gods, Ryairon didn't believe in miracles.

She glanced at Raign. "This might be a free port. It might not. In any case, we shouldn't take any chances." Light flickered in the corner of her eye, and she swiveled back around to face the harbor. Through the misty haze, she could just discern a blossom of firelight bobbing above the water. Coming closer. A patrol boat? She didn't want to find out. "Gramsil, can you take us around the harbor? Toward that cove over there - see the rocks? We should make ourselves scarce before someone spots us."

As the canoe sliced silently away from the patrol, Ryairon squinted at the hulls lining the waterfront, the orange light from their portholes floating like disembodied eyes in the darkness. Some of these ships were immense, but they seemed to be lacking something. It didn't take long for the revelation to hit her. Back home, no ship left port weaponless. Each and every vessel from transport brigs to cargo barges were fitted for offense. However, studying these ships before her, she saw little indication of artillery. No cannons or ballistas. No prows thickened for ramming. In fact, some of these vessels looked too bulky or too long to be easily steered if caught in naval crossfire.

A peaceful city? she wondered, watching the sentries' torches drift up and down the battlements. The walls towered thirty feet or more above the water. She couldn't ascertain any measurements from this distance, but she estimated their thickness to be at least ten feet. Those walls had once known war. A complacent city? Arrogance will be its downfall.

The canoes thudded gently against the shore, and Ryairon clambered out. They'd landed on a rocky stretch a small distance down the coast. A bulwark extending into the water hid the harbor and half the city from view, but tiny specks of torchlight could still be spotted lining the fortifications.

A scan of her companions told her that someone else had also gone missing. The masked elf, the one who kept himself aloof from the rest. Damien hadn't returned yet, either. What was it with these elves? Perhaps they'd made it into the city by now. The rest of them, on the other hand... Ryairon turned to Raign. "You say you know a way in?"

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Heh, I edited my post so that ours match up a little bit more, LDM.

--------

Damien kept an eye on the boats for a moment, then walked through his tunnel and reshaped it behind him. Moments after he stepped into the street on the other side of the wall, there was no sign that anything had happened there--no sign that that stretch of wall was any different than the other bits.

"The others' route was cut off," he told the strange masked elf. "They seem to be heading to a cove near this city, and I think we should meet them. I have no idea where I am or how I got here, and I want to return to my home. My best chance lies with them, I think," he said, being unusually verbose.

He was starting to wish that he had not left his pack in the boat, though he would not have been able to swim with it. It had almost all of his supplies, though he still had his cloak rolled up on his back. Despite the fact that it was literally dripping, he unrolled it and put it on, pulling the hood up to cover his ears and hair. Should anyone see them, he didn't want to be easily recognisable.

"Let's go," he said, not waiting for an answer before striding down the street. He managed to resist a smile of relief at being on dry land again, though. Sitting in a little boat in the midst of all that water had been just about as unnerving an experience as he had ever had, and he was glad to done with it.

The city was larger than anything he had ever been in before, and of a very different style, too. It must be at least three times as large as Thöregal, which was the capitol city of his people. Here were stone walls instead of wooden; tall and narrow houses instead of low, wide, and long; and a strange mixture of curves and angles, instead of the very angular designs that he was used to. One thing was the same, though--at this time of night, few people were in the streets. After ten minutes of walking, Damien had seen one other person, standing in an alleyway and probably thinking that no one could see him waiting.

"Perhaps we should lay low for the night," Damien said to the masked elf, then realized something. "It would also be easier to address you if I had something to call you. I am Damien."

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Xarw remained silent as the elf babbled on after entering the city trough the hole in the wall, he guessed maintaining the entrance might have been exhausting for the elf and it could have been easily noticed for a longer period of time. A grin rose to his face, he would have to operate with the elf for the moment and he seemed like a newcomer, as he had not taken part in the battle on the beach so he might be more easily fooled. Xarw quietly followed the elf, but remained silent as his fingers gripped tightly around the handle of his dagger.

It would be childishly easy to kill the fool and be done with him, there wouldn`t be any proof, that it had indeed been him and he could easily pin the blame on the guards. The other might only suspect him, but that alone would not justify any actions against him as they seemed to be the type, that believed in justice. However the fingers let the handle go as he stared at the back of the man, who suddenly stopped to exhange words, only irritatuing Xarw for some reason. He had never been comfortable around `normal` elves, he knew how they prosecuted and hated his own people for what had happened at the crown wars back in Faerun.

It had been a large war between elves and in the end the side supported by the fallen elven gods was driven deep underground, to only woe vengeance against their surface dwelling cousins and one day hope to return to claim what was theirs. However the drow society was fracture, filled with deceit and unity was next to impossible within every city the drow inhabited. Xarw eyed the elf before him quietly and grinned behind his mask.

"Xarw"

He said shortly with a dry voice, that at least covered some of his discontent towards the situation he had been forced to deal with. After this he quietly gazed at the city and then back Damien as the elf had introduced himself.

"And of course your following them as well as I, it is logically our best chance to get out of this mess yet if they are to be captured and imprisoned I shall take my leave. I have no intention of letting the others be the cause of my imprisonment nor stake my life in for them, the same applies to you.

So... take care not to mess this up..."

He said with a somewhat calm yet poisonous tone, as he eyed Damien with his piercing red eyes.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Xarw," the masked elf replied, and this time, Damien caught the subtle difference in the elf's voice. The red eyes were all he could really see of the elf, so he had just assumed that he was a normal elf. But that different sound...

"You are a Dark Elf?" Damien asked, feeling the muscles in his back start to knot up. In Thöregal, the guards were just as watchful for Dark Elf raids as they were for forest creatures slipping in. If he was now working with a Dark Elf, it was great incentive to get back to the others. There was no record of when the animosity between the two races began, only memories of wars, raids, and atrocities all the way back into the mists of time. Atrocities on both sides--the Dark Elves were not the only ones who raided. However, in Damien's lifetime, he had only been through one raid, and that was from the outside of the town walls. He still bore the scars on his chest and back, too. So did many of the Dark Elves, though, who perhaps were still regretting their interference in the life of a Warden.

Still, while Damien could probably do fine on his own in this town, he was more likely to succeed if he worked together with Xarw. When there was someone to watch your back, it was easier to survive. Both Dark Elves and Light Elves had learned that in Riveria. In Riveria, there was no forgiveness, no mercy. There was only the primal law of nature--kill or be killed.

That was the reason for the Wardens--the Wardens killed first, so that their towns could be safe. The Dark Elf Guardians did much the same. Damien had heard of Wardens and Guardians working together before, on hunts and when fleeing, but he had never had the desire to experience it for himself.

So, even as he walked, he loosened his dagger in its sheath. Whatever happened, he did not plan to die.

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Vincent found himself in a small conoe along with a bard named Vondell. The druid had his staff propped up between his knees, and resting on his shoulder. All the while he was trying to help row the little boat. Not that he was much help at all except trying to keep the thing steady.

Vincent swore his face was as green as grass when the city came in sight. And he was having a fun time trying to keep what was left of his last meal down. He was never fond of boats, never having lived near any large bodies of water, and only seen the ocean thrice before. Once he had been on a good sized boat going down a river. And he had no fun at all on that ride.

Just in earshot, he heard someone say that if anyone could cast a spell that could disquise the gollem-like man, to speak up. That was one thing he could do alot better then rowing. Vincent leaned forward to tell Vondell to get closer to them when a shaft of moonlight peirced through the clouds with the help of magic, a few more murmerings were said, and an elf dissapeared into the water.

Too much was happening. They needed a solid plan before any action was taken. To keep away from what looked like patrols coming toward their knot of canoes, they headed into a cove nestled in the side of some rocks away from the city. As soon as they hit shore, Vincent was out of the boat and on the rocks. He was tempted to kiss the ground, but decided not to.

He sat down on one of the rocks, and watched the others.
"So... we need a solid plan to get into the city. And why exactly are we going into the city? To look for the man who brought us here. Well, it would help if we knew if this man or woman or what ever was. It could take years to search the city that size for just one man," he said to who ever would listen. "Though I guess magic casters could help."

~~~~~~~~

Vondell had somehow found himself in a boat with a queezy druid who wasn't much help with the paddle, though being a great phisical condition by the look of him. The bard's tanned skin was evidence that he grew up in a Southern country full of beaches and bodies of water. And in between studies and practice, Von and his friends would go down to the beaches to cause trouble.

The familiar and fluid movement kept Von calm as they neared the city. It wasn't that he needed to stay calm for himself, but fore the little golden creature curled around his neck. At a glance the little firelizard looked like a golden dragon necklace around the bard's neck. But further examination showed the small belly moving up and down in breathing, and a wing or tail twitching here and there.

He watched with amazement as one of the other men in another canoe made moonlight illuminate the city. The site sent a shiver of excitement down Von's spine. He had only heard of magic and songs and stories, but had never seen it happen close up until he ran into this group. That is unless you call a shapeshifter changing shape magic, then he had seen it before.

Then the group of canoes headed toward a cove. Von just followed the lead of the others for now, since they seemed to know what they were doing. The thing that you had to look for in rocky coves, though, were the rocks you couldn't see under the water that could scrape the bottom of the boat. But these were canoes, so maybe they needn't worry.

When they landed, Von lingered in the boat, then stepped half way out. One leg in the boat, the other on a rock, so that it wouldn't float away. They might need the canoes later on...

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

(Ahhh... sooooo behind. I will work on catching up tonight because I finished Heroes, so I should have nothing to distract me.)

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<center>

Um...I've been gone quite a while. Could someone fill me in from after the wyvern fight onward?

Actually, the essentials are all basically on the last page, Nauriel. ^_^

More or less, my character (Damien) arrived, we all left the island in canoes, we reached a city on the mainland at night, and Damien and Xarw snuck in while the rest went around to a cove outside of the city because the harbour was too crowded to sneak in with the boats.

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((Okay...This may be a bit of a rocky rentry. Correct me If I get anything wrong.))

Kith woke with a start. The sun was setting, and in the waning light Kith could see that he had been left alone. He cursed his luck that he had fallen asleep. He tried to remeber what had happened before sleep took him. He remembered the rest of th group found boats and were discussing reaching the mainland. What direction had they pointed? Kith desperatly shifted his eyes to that of an eagle and squinted into the horizon. Yes! There the were, the canoes and people inside them. Kith dove into the water, shifting to dolphin form. He ate up the miles that lay between him and the canoes.

Wearliy Kith dragged himself onto shore as silently as he could, hding himself in the shadow of the dock. Shifting to human form, and his eyes to that of an owl, he looked around. This was a perfectly ordinary city by all accounts, as far as Kith could tell. He strode up to the wall and glanced upwards, his breath catching in shock. The one called Damien expertly killed the two gaurds on look out. How he got up there in the first place, Kith didn't have a clue. Looking around again, he saw that the rest of the group was paddling to a secluded beach. After a moments hesitation, Kith decided not to follow them. Another man had followed Damien's beconing and now both were inside the city. Kith shifted to a bat and flew over the wall. He caught up to the two elves quickly, shifting back to human in the saftey of the shadows. Walking silently up behind them, he noticed Damien loosen his dagger. Best not surprise them, he thought. "Oi!" he whispered, quickening his pace to a trot. "Wait up."

Ruth Ann could not begin to explain how much she hated canoes. She was not the biggest fan of water, in general, so the entire ride over she sat with her hands glued to the side of the boat as if life itself relied on it.

----------------------------------------

Kira had reluctantly got in the boat earlier. In her mind, she thought it wouild be better just to burst into flame and fly towards the magestic and potentionally treacherous city. However, from certain doubt of not being able to blend in from the lack of wyvern's fire breath, Kira eventually gave in and went by canoe to wherever.

-----------------------------------

On the shore, Ruth Ann was one of the first to leap out of the boat. The idea of hard solid ground seemed rather extraordinary, even with her simple knowledge of swimming. Adjusting her weapons, Ruth Ann hoped onto the nearest rock and kept her ears keen for any suggestive comment she may be able to reply to.

Bing. One came. "It could take years to search the city for the size of one man."

"From my experience with cities," Ruth Ann added in when the man had stopped his speech, "The finding of an absolute ruler in that domain was not immensely difficult. I have found that, from a man's desire and greed, it has been quite obvious which of the buildings he would reside in.

--------------------------------

Kira muffled herself into her own little corner of the cove. She had been cursing herself for the whole ride over, and she was not about to stop now. It appeared to her that she had forgottening her outfit down in the sand on the beach and would never be able to retrieve it back from either the ocean or some other spectacle of some sick rulers imagination that would come to kill them as the wyverns did.

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<center>

Alanna, who had declined the use of a paddle, due to her still-healing back, had been silent most of the canoe journey. She was still processing it all - the irrational fantasy dream-state of this place, the sudden transport, and the possible reality of magic in this world.

The silver moonlight, capping the black waves, was slightly more conducive to concentration than the fire-breathing dragon attacks had been.

She stayed silent in the bow of one of the canoes, slightly oblivious to everything, until a comment about a person dragging them here caught her attention.

"Even if it was one person orchestrating our appearance here, and not just a massive fluke of physics, how do you know he'd be in this city? Couldn't he be on the other side of the planet, or even on another world? Or another universe?"

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

A river, plunging over several waterfalls and traversing several more brief spurts where rapids made it foam white, wound down the steeply rising hillsides above the city. Raign was watching it, following the path it took down through the city to dump into the wide, shallow bay. She had pinpointed its the place where it entered the walls when Ryairon spoke.

A brief glance over those following told Raign that so far, nobody else had a better plan, excluding the pair of elves that had disappeared earlier, and she was not wont to worry overmuch about those. Turning once more, she scanned the trail of glittering moonlit water that was the river. If it entered the city, it almost certainly entered through a culvert, and judging by the lack of armament and the less than vigilant guards, said culvert would not be powerfully reinforced.

"This way," she indicated with a brief nod and a subsequent jerk of her head in the direction they needed to be going, starting to walk and assuming that the rest would follow.

Raign did not consider her plan especially brilliant. To infiltrate a city fully outfitted for warfare was one thing, but bypassing the piddling security of a city whose risks encompassed no such thing was less of a feat. She wondered, briefly, about the strategy of the two elves, but dismissed the thought - they were an alien race whose abilities were likely beyond hers.

Nearing the walls, the land dropped off into a slight gorge carved from rock by the river, and Raign ducked behind an outcropping to turn and hiss instructions to the assembled group. "There is an iron grille where the river enters the city," she whispered, indicating the mentioned spot, her gaze darting from face to face. It was important that they understand. "There is every possibility that it has almost rusted away. Anyone with difficulty swimming may want to remain behind and wait for assistance elsewhere. Follow me. Don't make any loud noises. Understood?"

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