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The Magic Hourglass
Topic Started: Feb 2 2012, 12:58 AM (683 Views)
Fellsing Aldataur
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"I suppose..." Hammerhead replied. Though the wagon was his, he had little say in the matter; he wouldn't dare continue through the desert alone. The desert ruins loomed overhead as they approached its dark maw. Sand covered the walls surrounding the entrance, and the wind had carried a fair amount inside. Fellsing slowed his riding goat as they neared its entrance.

"We'll have to leave the cart," the spine elf observed. "Should be big enough to ride our goats in, though." He guided the goat into the pitch black hall without waiting for his comrades. The goat trudged ahead without hesitation. After a brief sojourn in darkness, he emerged into a torch-lit inner chamber. Shallow stairs spiraled down toward an altar deep inside the sandstone building's interior. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, spilling a stream of light and some sand with it. As Fellsing descended toward the altar, one of the stairs crumbled beneath his goat's hooves. Fellsing's stomach lurched. With a bleat, it slid off the edge of the stairs and dropped several feet to the next level of steps below. The force of the fall caused that section of stairs to crumble as well, but his goat quickly bounded to safety just beyond it.

"Watch your step!" he called back up to the group. Hammerhead had only just reached the top of the spiral staircase with their spare goat. When he spotted the missing stairs, he whimpered to his mount.

"Y... You first..." he insisted, staring at Crius.

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crius
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crius ordered his goat down the stairs after givving the hammerhead a foul glare. just before he reached the broken part he ordered his goat to jump over the gap. it was a bit risky, but it seemed stupid to just try to walk over it. luckely he had a good goat, and landed on the other side of the gap without problems. he kept walkign before turnign back to the hammerhead.
"just order your goat to jump and then let it land on it's own, don't try to steer the landing and you'll be fine."
to crius' amazement the hammerhead actually gathered the courage to jump the gap, and he also landed without problems though he seemed to be sitting less stable on his goat. both of them joined fellsing at the bottom of the stair and crius started looking around trying to figure out what the temple ruin had served for in the past.
"does anyone see a symbol or picture that looks familiar? maybe we can figure out what this was."
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Fellsing Aldataur
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Fellsing dismounted from his goat and stepped onto the altar at the base of the pit. A thick layer of sand covered everything this far down. The toes of his boots bumped against a stone buried beneath the level of the sand. Purely for a lack of better things to try, he kicked sand out of the way and knelt to inspect the stone. Sand stuck in the grooves of an elaborate elven inscription.

"Make yourselves useful and help me dig this out." Fellsing waved the others over to the stone. As they uncovered it, pushing the mounds of sand outward in three directions around the front of the tablet, the inscription became clear. The same words were repeated further down in the common script, but the elven was similar enough to the modern tongue that all three could easily read it.

In times of need, let your troubles be known.
To set foot on this holy ground is to awaken
the sleeping souls of those before you.
The ancestral guardians lend their watchful eyes,
lest the collapse of all that is living accelerate.


"Lovely choice of words," mused Fellsing, drumming his fingers on the side of the stone tablet. "What's all this nonsense? If it's that simple, the ancestral guardians can take us to the tuning funnel and be done with it."

The sands began to shift. A formed in the middle of the altar as the floor beneath it slid apart, creating a fall of sand on either side. As the floor retreated further, the mounds piled against the far wall tumbled toward them. Fellsing grabbed the rope around his goat's neck and pulled the dumb animal back toward the stairs without any hesitation. Before he could make it there, however, the floor moved past the base of the stairs. Swearing, he changed direction and began a slow climb up the accumulated sands on the far end. More than half of the altar's base had effectively disappeared by this point, spilling sand into a chamber below them. Every so often, Fellsing heard a clunking noise beneath the sands, but everything was obscured; he could only guess - and poorly - what might lay underneath.

When Fellsing and his goat reached the apex of the sand mounds, he turned back to Crius. The others had made it to safety as well without much trouble. The falling sand increased in volume for a while... Then it stopped. Fellsing stared down into the faintly illuminated depths beneath the temple. Several smooth stairs of sand, loosely connected by the runoff, had formed as the falling crystals collected on platforms underneath. A purple light shone suddenly in the darkness far below. They had little choice except to proceed; the stairs were now well out of reach.

"Must've been something I said..." Fellsing muttered.
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crius
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"i think it might have been that you folowed the instructions and told our troubles. although i hadn't expected it would be this litural. so i asume we will proceed forward, unless someone has the book, 'how to fly in 4 easy lessons' on him?"
crius had no idea how they would leave once they were done here but for now he didn't want to leave anyway, he wanted to know what the purple light was. and although he had no plans of saying it out loud, he wanted to know what the rest of the text meant, except if it meant more trouble. without sayign a further word he started walkign towards the light.
Edited by crius, Feb 5 2012, 05:08 PM.
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Fellsing Aldataur
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"Whoever built this place had a sick sense of humor," Fellsing replied. He started down the sand-covered steps with patience. Every ledge brought them deeper into the darkness, further from reach of the narrow skylight overhead. Fellsing's goat stumbled clumsily down the stairs, kicking up clouds of gritty sand. The stairs continued beneath the walls of the temple. In the distance, the glowing purple light swelled toward them.

A few minutes passed before they reached the base of the new staircase. The purple light came from a small chamber set apart from the stairs. Inside, a semitransparent hourglass sat on a marble pedestal. It was as large as Fellsing's head and shone as brightly as the desert moon.

"The magic hourglass!" exclaimed Hammerhead. Fellsing grabbed him by the shoulder.

"I think we need to have a little talk," he said with a menacing smile.

"Wh... About what?" The elf reached for the hourglass, but Fellsing pulled him back.

"Don't touch it. I'm not letting this thing end up in a museum somewhere. We're taking it to the Spine."
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crius
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crius grinned as he saw the confusement on the true elf's face.
"it seems we all are after the same object, although there are a few differences in our mission, you see the ones who ordered us to retrieve it are more important then the elders or the council of Eyr. and unlike you we can't afford failure. so i sugjest you forget what you came here for, and forget you ever met us once we go sepperate ways."
crius stepped closser to the pedestal, carefully watching where he placed his feet to make sure there were no traps to stop looters.
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Fellsing Aldataur
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"But... You're thieves!" Hammerhead cried. He pulled free of Fellsing's grip, practically dragging the short elf forward. Fellsing fell face first into the thin cushion of sand covering the sandstone floor of the chamber. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough cushion to keep from bruising his face. Fellsing tried to grab the elf's ankle, but he fell short.

"Crius, shut this guy up!" Fellsing shouted, getting sand in his mouth. He spent the next few moments coughing and sputtering to get it out. Hammerhead rushed toward the pedestal and stretched out his arms. He cared nothing about booby traps; all that mattered was procuring the artifact sought by the Council of Eyr.
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crius
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crius reacted as swiftly as he could and turned around. as he saw the elf approuch he drew his sword and launched a fireball. the elf felt his hair beeing sinsed as the fireball just barely missed. meanwhile crius had lunged forward with his sword, but crius had thought the elf would try to avoid the fireball, instead the elf had just ignored the magic attack, because of that crius completly missed with his sword attack.
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Fellsing Aldataur
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Crius' interference quickly became meaningless as the elf they endearingly called Hammerhead slipped in the sand. He tumbled forward and bashed his skull against an exposed section of sandstone. Fellsing regained his composure and stepped over to the elf, prodding him with a boot. He pulled a couple of gold drops out of the man's pocket and handed one to Crius.

"The ancestor spirits must not have liked this guy," he joked. Fellsing wrapped his hand around the narrow neck of the hourglass and removed it from the pedestal. The purple light it gave off disappeared immediately, sending Fellsing's goat into bleating panic. Fellsing grabbed the animal's fur with his other hand and carefully trudged back through the sand to the stairs. Though they were submerged in darkness, the set of stairs created in response to their request was illuminated well enough to guide them. Fellsing grunted when he nearly tripped in the sand just like the late Hammerhead.

"How are we going to get out?" he asked, staring up at the skylight above the main altar. It all reminded him a little too much of his time in the pit in Graywalk. Unfortunately, Hammerhead's bones wouldn't help him out of this mess. The trio of goats followed after them obediently as always.
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crius
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"maybe if we say, we need to find a way out of here alive."
crius waited severall minutes but nothing changed except a bit of sand that in his hair.
"guess askign for it won't work, i might be able to destroy the the support of the stairs if my fireballs get far enough and do enough damage, but i think it would do more damage then good to our situation."
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