Glade was experiencing déjà vu as he trudged up the trail. Ice drakes were again swarming as the group steadily made their way toward the mana well. Fortunately, there were two very distinct differences this go around that made the assault far easier.

“How do you like Rocky 2?” Kedryn called to him as the Kid directed two balls of flame to attack the incoming drakes.

Glade snorted, glancing at the man-sized golem currently taking the brunt of the lesser ice drakes breath attacks. The golem stood at six feet in height and was a solid grey stone instead of the poor concentration of pebbles that was his first test. It was still slow, but methodical in all its movements. More importantly, the golem was the first difference that made their climb far easier than the previous one.

Drakes dove toward the golem again and again, bathing the rocky humanoid in blasts of cold and ice. Rocky didn’t seem to notice as it swung uselessly at the passing drakes. While its attack was nothing impressive, it was invaluable as a distraction.

The second difference wasn’t as directly helpful to the group, but the feel of the elvish bow in his hands as he targeted one of the larger drakes simply felt right, like all was right in the world.

Finally, he had a weapon.

Glade drew back the arrow like he had done it a thousand times, paused his breathing, took aim, and released in one smooth motion, sending the elivish made shaft of death toward his intended target with a quiet thrum.

His hand was already reaching for his quiver as the previous arrow crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, striking a diving ice drake center mass. He nocked the next arrow, aimed, and fired, all within a handful of seconds, bringing down yet another of the annoying lizards.

Sure, Kedryn had been a little sour faced when he had taken the bow and quiver of arrows for himself, but the Kid could hardly complain seeing as he couldn’t use both his fire magic and the bow at the same time. Besides, Glade had promised they could share the bow. A little.

“That’s three for me!” he called out.

“This ain’t a competition!” Gent snapped, cocking back his crossbow with a grunt before ramming a bolt in place.

“Of course not,” Kedryn laughed, using his magic fire balls to attack another pair of the drakes. “But if we were, that’s four for me!”

Gent shouldered his crossbow and fired at the same time Riya launched a stone from her sling. Two more drakes fell to the ground.

“Five,” Riya called out, but not with her usual enthusiasm.

Glade took notice of the elf’s subdued demeanor as he sent another arrow down range. Unfortunately, his intended target banked left at the last moment, causing the arrow to fly off into the trees below.

“Stop wastin arrows!” Bragden snapped from behind. “Or did ye forget that we need those to deal with the slime!?”

Mumbling a half-hearted apology, Glade paused long enough to connect his mind to two of the drakes and blasted them with his mental attack.

You have attacked two Lesser Ice Drakes with a weak psychic attack and inflicted 9 points of metaphysical damage each. The Lesser Ice Drakes are disoriented for the next 90 seconds (10 seconds for every point of metaphysical damage).

Both drakes fell to the ground, where the golem dispatched them with ease.

“I’m up to five!” he called out.

“Doesn’t count!” Bragden called back. “Rocky done finished ‘em off for ye. At best, that counts as one, not two!”

“Whoever decided to make Bragden the impartial judge of this little competition needs to have their head examined,” Glade grumbled, nocking another arrow.

“Like I done said, this ain’t a competition!” Gent cried as he went about the arduous process of rearming his crossbow.

“I’m up to six!” Kedryn practically sang, then added, “At least we’ll be eating good again tonight!”

There were several cheers throughout the small crowd of dwarves as they continued their slow march forward, picking up ice drake carcasses and throwing them into large sacks as they went.

“Seven,” Riya said in a lifeless, yet determined, voice.

Glade sighed internally. Riya had been quite shaken the night before after returning from her judgement. From her own account, she should be happy. Jubilant even. Credos had voluntarily judged every one of her skills that were on the cusp of a rank advancement. Even more impressive, she had passed them all! She was not only a journeyman in Natural Lore, but had taken the first step in becoming a specialized alchemist.

But instead of celebrating, she looked haunted. All because Credos had charged her with completing a quest.

Da’Riya Ab’Loshere has shared a Quest with you: Endings or Beginnings I. The Abli’Gare, better known as the Banished Elves, have come to a crossroads. Their next steps will either place them on a path of salvation or damn them to the inevitable spiral of extinction. As the heir of the Loshere house, Da’Riya Ab’Loshere’s presence will significantly influence which path of fate her people will embark upon.

Success Conditions: Da’Riya Ab’Loshere must be reunited with her house within the next 60 days or risk sealing her people’s fate.

Reward: A path to salvation; increased regard from Da’Riya Ab’Loshere and House Loshere; 10,000 XP; A solid foundation.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Going back to the bow, Glade let his subconscious mind go through the process of shooting down more drakes as he considered their current situation. Naturally, he and Kedryn had accepted the quest. They had planned on taking her back to her people anyway, the only change being they were now on a timeline. Which moved up every other timeline, resulting in their small council staying up half the night to brainstorm how best to restore the settlement's link with the mana well. It was essential they accomplish this task before they left for the grasslands.

Fortunately, the longstanding question of where they were had been partially solved. After all, the vault held more than just treasure and a bed. The maps on the walls, while undoubtedly outdated, indicated Storms’ Rest was nestled on the edge of a hidden vale inside the Barren Spines.

When he had shared that tidbit of information, Bragden, their eternal pessimist and fearmonger, again proclaimed that their deaths were all but written in stone. Why? Apparently, the Barren Spines was a vast mountain range considered a no-man’s land due to the dense populations of high-level monsters. A no-man’s land that just happened to border the far eastern edge of the grasslands.

According to the maps, there were two ways down from Storms’ Rest. A three-day trek through the vale that would take them through lands filled with moderately high leveled monsters until they ultimately made it to the coast. From there, it was a several week journey along the outskirts of the Spines, a place that was known for their ridiculously high leveled monsters, until they arrived at the grasslands.

For obvious reasons, they decided against this route. Though Glade wasn't happy with the alternative seeing as it led them back through the catacombs. To say he disliked the underground tunnels would have been a vast understatement.

Despite his personal feelings, the half day hike through the catacombs wasn't his biggest concern. Their maps were clearly outdated, indicating several towns dotting the rolling hills of the grasslands along their border that neither Riya, nor the dwarves, had ever heard of. What was worse, the maps barely extended past the border, meaning they didn’t have any landmarks to effectively plan their direction of travel.

There was some heated speculation how far away one of the more prominent human free cities, a place called Asylum, was located. All they knew definitively was the city was west and along the coast. The only good news was that Riya could guide them the rest of the way to the banished elves, if they made it that far.

“All right ye lay abouts!” Gent cried, then turned to the shadowy form of Riya to give her a head nod. “And lady. The drakes be pullin back just like they did the last time, which means it be the pyros and Bragden’s show! The rest o’ ye know what to do!”

Glade looked back to Bragden with a questioning look.

“Riya,” the bald dwarf grunted. “She got nine.”

There were several good natured cheers and congratulations, but most were subdued as they felt Riya’s distracted mood.

The twenty or so dwarves in their party cheered good naturedly as they passed by, their congratulatory tones more subdued than normal as Riya’s mood filled the air.

The group rushed to the front half with weapons and the others with freshly made shields. After learning they could use the mnemonosian core to rebuild items, he and the others on the council had spent precious mana to rebuild the tables in the hall several times over until every dwarf willing to stand in the front lines had a wooden shield. An unforeseen boon was their newly ranked engineer had gladly worked alongside Gird to enhance the integrity of the shields, which, much to Glade's surprise, significantly increased their durability.

Then again, he was quickly learning that higher ranks and skill levels made a huge difference.

Glade had briefly considered using the core to make additional elvish bows and arrows, but the cost to recreate magical weapons had been far too much. Factor in the bows were too big for the dwarves to use and everyone simply dismissed the idea. Then again, another bow and more arrows would be critical on their upcoming journey…

“Alright lads,” Bragden said, stomping up to both Glade and Kedryn with a newly made long spear with a crude, sparkling silver tip. “Do ye both remember yer roles?”

Glade nodded an affirmative but had to poke Kedryn who was staring out over the vale.

“What?” The Kid yelped, jumping at Glade’s not so gentle nudge. One look at Bragden’s darkening expression brought Kedryn back to the present. “Oh, right. Yes, I know what to do. We wait for you to paralyze slime then we…”

“We’ve rehearsed the slagging plan enough,” Bragden harrumphed. “Just keep yer mind in the here and now and we should be fine.”

As the dwarf stomped off, Glade gave the Kid a quizzical look.

“You ok?”

“Yeah,” Kedryn sighed before looking back over the vale, toward a mist covered lake Glade hadn’t noticed before. “It’s just… oh, never mind.”

“We’ve talked about this,” Glade said, giving the Corporal a look that said he had better share if he knew what was good for him. “What’s wrong?”

“Fine. I’ve been having these odd dreams of late. It’s always the same. I’m flying around the mountains and eventually find myself flying over a group of trees. Then I see a lake shrouded in mist before I wake up. I didn't think much of it until I saw that…” Kedryn gestured to the lake below. “I know it sounds crazy, but the lake in my dream looks an awful lot like that one."

Glade stared at Kedryn for a moment, then looked out across the vale, then back to Kedryn. There was nothing in any leadership manual he knew of that covered how someone was supposed to handle this kind of situation. How was he supposed to differentiate something mundane like a stress induced dream from what could very likely be a mystical monster that, for all they knew, had a penchant for royal blood.

He really hated this place.

“I’m… not an expert on dreams,” Glade began.

“But I’ve had some training,” Riya stepped in, her voice filled with intrigue. “How long have you been having these dreams?”

“Uh… the last three nights?” Kedryn stammered, not knowing exactly where to look as Riya was engulfed in her shadow armor.

“Are they the exact same every time or do they vary?” She asked again.

“Are you three coming!?” Bagden yelled. “Or do I have to do all o’ this meself?”

As a group, all three of them jumped, then hurried to the cave entrance.

“We’ll talk after,” Riya said loud enough to be heard over the waterfall. Kedryn simply nodded, turning his head around to get another look of the lake before it disappeared from view.

The cave looked exactly like Glade remembered. The walls flared out from the entrance into a wide cavern dotted with countless ice crystals blazing with the morning’s light. Lesser ice drakes were already swarming in agitation as Gent and the rest of the dwarves set up their shield wall, the golem positioned out front already drawing the ice drakes ire.

As Glade looked beyond their defenders, he laid eyes on the massive slime for a second time. The underground waterfall crashed onto it, spilling over the sides of the monstrous ooze before running into the lake below. It had three pseudopods waving sporadically in the air. As he watched, one of the tentacles snatched a flying lizard as it flew by, dragging the struggling creature inside its gelatinous body where it began to dissolve.

The slime was centered on rocks below the water fall, which also happened to be where the mana well was located. The well comprised of a cluster of glowing crystals, the largest point clearing 4 feet in height.

When they had found the slime the day before, the well had been converted to 94% pure, with only 6% of the water aspected mana remaining.

As the others prepared, Glade used his aura sense to verify just how much the slime had drained the well in the last 24 hours.

You have discovered a mixed mana well of Pure (97%) and Water (3%). Increase the skill Aura Sight to learn more.

Size: Unknown

Purity: Unknown

Charges: Unknown

Value: Unknown