View User's Journal

I walk slowly, cautiously down the narrow hallway, my eyes piercing the pitch blackness a good score of paces ahead. The air is stale, dusty and unnaturally quiet, making any attempt to keep my footfalls silent resound heavily in my ears, and the smell the smell of swamplands befouls the air, despite the lack of moisture. Down the way, I see a large, iron-shod door--old, battered, but closed. When I approach it and test it's solidity, I find it holds firm. I search the door itself, finding a latch that holds a keyhole beneath it. The cover was heavily rusted, and when I lift it, it squeals eerily. I grit my teeth at the noise and scan the corridor behind me, imagining beasts and horrors rushing towards me, cornered and vulnerable. I see nothing, even after warily eying the rough stone walls and cieling. Nothing. I sigh and turn back to the keyhole. I fish out a lockpick and fiddle with it in the keyhole. A jerk, shift and twist later I hear a distinct click within. I slowly push the door, wincing as its old hinges squeal in protest. I stop when it is just open enough for me to see within. Just a crack. At first I see nothing but black, but soon shapes begin to take form until I can clearly see the balefully green eyes swivel in my direction and the fangs the beast bares before it lunges for the door.
I bite back a scream and slam the old iron door shut with a grating creek ending in a thunderous boom. I brace my back against the cold and rusted portal in a futile attempt to keep the...whatever in the Nine Hells that was, barred in.
Yet, unfortunatly my weight isn't enough to keep the door shut, and when the thing bashed into the door like a battering ram, flinging the old thing out wide to crash loudly against the wall beside it, I am flung forward like a dried up leaf caught up in a sudden gale, tumbling head over heels.
Yet, somehow, I manage to get my feet under me, and I run like a mouse in...well, this kind of situation. It wasn't a very dignified run, either, mostly a fall that my pumping legs refused the let finish. And the only thing to see me in this condition is trying to kill me, which isn't as much as a relief as one might expect. Really.
I keep running and running, knowing the thing back there is chasing me from the rapid sound of clicking talons and the occasional shifting noise, like something hard and smooth sliding against stone.
I dare a glance over my shoulder, past the frayed end of my flailing cloak, to an ultimate feeling of regret. It doesn't do you any good to know that a dragon with scales of onyx is after your hide. And for that single moment I look, I am dreadfully sure those sunken, bile-green eyes have locked onto mine. This helped to quicken my feet.
Gasping for breath, arms and legs moving fast despite the burn of fatigue beginning to smolder within them, I curse the genius that decided to make this contemptably long and empty corridor--which was beginning to slope upward, much to my dismay. I remember thinking that it had felt like an eternity just to get to that door far behind me now, and I would have laughed sardonically or scream in anger--I'm not sure which--had I the breath to spare.
And then I heard the drake shriek, a chilling sound that froze the marrow in my bones. I don't know why it chose this moment to do so, and I might have pondered this had my life not been in such a peril as this, but then, it may have been doing so for a while now. I can barely tell, with my heart pounding in my ears.
Still I run and I run, making no progress other than the advancement of dread and fear clenching my eradic heart. And it is then that I see it--the portcullis I had struggled to get past before I could slink my way down here. Odd, how it is only now that I realize why the heavy steel bars had been treated to repel acid. In my head, I curse every god I know for doing this to me.
Well, except Tymora. I can only hope she's in good spirits...
Closer and closer, the foreboding grate of steel and iron begins to loom before me, a grey skeleton to my night-piercing eyes. It is a strangely welcomed sight. And as it becomes ever more defined, I recognize the two bars I had bent to get through the thing. Of course, I had squeezed through carefully and as quietly as possible, not leapt through while running pell-mell from an angry drake.
This would be so much more interesting if only I weren't so sure I wasn't going to make it.
The portcullis is getting closer. I hasten my steps, a feat I had thought impossible 'till this point. My limbs will surely feel like lead if I make it out of this. Of course, that is hardly something to worry about at this point. I'll gladly take the aches and bruises if I can keep my skin!
It's do or die, literally, now. I leap forward, arms extended and legs straight back, turning my body into a flying javelin. Now if only I could remove my shoulders, no? I try my best to twist in the air, turning my shoulders perpendicular to the ground and suck in my gut on instinct. I haven't been eating well for a while, so it was rather moot, but it hardly mattered then and there.
And, grace of the gods, I slip through the gap, coming to land ungracefully on my back inside the gate, rolling a good ten paces or so until I come to a stop, coming to a rest on my back, my whole body feeling bruised and hurt. Ah, but that just means I live! Now if only it didn't hurt so much...
And as if just remembering I was being pursued, I turn my trobbing head atop my aching neck to look back where I came to be greeted with the sight of a black dragon slamming skull-first into the cast-iron portcullis. The grate groans under the impact and I start to sweat and pray. O Merciful Gods above, please let that bedamned thing hold!
I could swear the thing bent forward into a broad bulge, like the surface of a lake about to be broken. But it holds, and I thank Tymora. The dragon, however, was far from thrilled, it seemed, as it snarled, growled, roared, and gnashed its great teeth on the steel bars. I appreciate the gate for taking my place in that. In a fit of frustration, the drake spits acid at the bars, doing little by speckling the ground near it with hissing little holes, adding to the already abundant collection of such marks. Another mystery solved, it seems.
And, as I lay there, pant, sweating and hurting, wanting nothing more than to rest and to strangle the little halfling that had told him of this "easy little catch", I find my vision growing narrow, as if my darkvision was beginning to give out. And that is when I realized that I was going to faint. Ah, well, at least no one is going to see it...
"Besides, I deserve the rest," I manage to mumble before blessed unconciousness takes me. Now if only that damned drake would stop making so much noise...

- Derek Crimsonclaw, Would-be-thief of Thay

Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

More Information