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Post by Henry Bloodwrath on Nov 3, 2008 21:04:12 GMT -5
At one wall of the main cavern, an arc of fire materialized and defined a semi-circular shape. The wall in between the fiery arch and the floor darkened until it was black, and after a couple of seconds, Henry Bloodwrath stepped through the gateway.
Gently tapping K'zin and C'tarl on their heads, Henry woke them up from the nap they dropped into. It seems as if the journey was almost instantaneous this time. I must be improving on this spell. As K'zin and C'tarl flapped and crawled to their respective quarters, Henry started casting multiple spells, setting his eyes blazing again.
Most of the spells were for illumination, but the first few were to disable his security system (except for the cave entrance and treasure cave golems). For illumination, he intensified the fire within a crystal pillar in the middle of the main cavern. The pillar stretched up to the top of the cavern, which was about 50 meters high. The pillar was cylindrical in shape, and had a radius of about 2 meters. The fire within the pillar was not altogether natural, and so the light from it filtered equally from the center of the pillar from bottom to top.
Having brightened the pillar's light to about a bonfire's radiance, Henry then lifted his staff and started casting fireballs. Each on formed near the top end of his staff, and then moved up to and stayed at the top of the cavern to provide more illumination (the glowing salamanders already outlined the main cavern's floor). During the casting of the final fireball, Henry heard the sound of another's footfall within the cavern.
Lowering his staff after sending the last fireball on its way, he turned with a smile to the newcomer, forgetting his eyes still blazed red. Henry said, "I'm glad you decided to come."
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Post by gentri on Nov 7, 2008 19:08:49 GMT -5
The look of the cave wasn't really what she had expected, although Henry had already mentioned that it was an active volcano. Logically, it would be located on a mountain, and a cave was rather enevitable. Still, she hadn't expected it to be this hot. Feeling sweat beginning to bead down the front of her forehead, she cooled the air and made it chilly, fighting off the natural temperature of lava. Now more at ease she placed her hands in her familar pockets and walked across the dirt floor, watching him put his...things away. She smiled a little at Henry, used to the red eyes that he had now. "I was bored" she replied, always a girl to be so blunt.
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Post by Henry Bloodwrath on Nov 7, 2008 21:13:51 GMT -5
"Well, I hope I can interest you enough in here." Henry smiled, then frowned a bit, seeing the small beads of sweat that had formed. "Sorry, I forgot that it would probably be too warm for you." Walking over to a nearby shelf of rock, Henry placed his staff in a nearby opening in the ground, and then placed his cloak on the shelf, after taking it off. Then, he formed a small air-wall in the tunnel leading to the lava river, blocking most of the heat from it. There was still quite a bit of heat left, but it was gradually getting cooler.
When it was off, Henry's appearance was about the same, but with the his armor more discernable. Since while making the armor, he wasn't able to see the back, he hadn't smoothed it out like he had the front. Therefore, the back of his armor looked a bit like "wavy" obsidian, as if it had ripples from the lava it was formed from still in it (which was true).
Straightening to his full height of 6' 5", Henry stretched a bit, and then looked across to Gentri. "There are several things to do here, but I don't know what you would want to do first."
Motioning towards an apparent dead-end tunnel, Henry said, "You could view the outside world through the entrance, or try practicing out there. There's also a minor library that I've...'collected', with a map of the surrounding region. There are the many caves for my creations, the lava cave, and other various storage rooms."
"However, first I think that we should visit my 'treasure' cave, which has various implements and jewels in it. There, I think I can find an efficient way to bind gemstones to you." Going over that last sentence in his mind, Henry held up a hand to show the minor garnet gemstones embedded in his glove.
Looking awayfr om Gentri briefly, Henry said, "Sorry for the boasting, but...this is basically my first time to show it off to someone." And I hope that this tour won't end badly like that...other...one. Looking back at Gentri, Henry indicated the still burning arc of fire in the wall. "If at any time you want to return to the marketplace, you can use that portal. On second thought, to stop intruders, I'll make the portal one-way." Walking over to the portal, Henry simply removed the inner boundaries of the fire with a subvocal command, so that it became a semi-circle of fire, rather than just the rim.
While listing some of the options available, Henry had not mentioned anything about a well-lit side tunnel off to one side of the larger tunnels. The other tunnels had marks etched above the entrances, so that the contents would be known (for example, a tree for the outside, and a large diamond was embedded outside the tunnel to the treasury). However, this tunnel had a small, irregular pentagon above it, with a barely discernable line within it to form a triangle on a square.
"So, um, what do you want to do? Or, do you have any questions?" Henry asked Gentri.
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Post by gentri on Nov 12, 2008 17:55:10 GMT -5
That was a lot of information to take in, but Gentri got it. She had a good memory and a nice ear, even if she wasn't lycan like the others, and her memory was like a portable camera. She listened to the things he said but didn't really look at him, instead her eyes roamed around the cave that she had never seen before. She didn't know how long Henry had been here, or the cave, but she assumed awhile. You always knew a person was being arrogant if they said they had been everywhere in Gaia, because it wasn't possible. Even after almost nineteen years Gentri was still learning about different hidden surprises in her own backyard. To her, all of Gaia was her back yard. That's the way it was with all Pack Manor residents. It was interesting, because it was something she had never seen befoer and despite being a home body, adventure was simply in her blood. She couldn't help it, her family was like that. She smelled the air the way a dog would, she could smell the acid and the familiar egg smell, like the smell of a hot springs. Hot springs smelt like volcanos because they had similar properties.
"Surrounding regions?" She had picked that up, and she looked at Henry. Gaia was a place she had never been too keen on leaving, unless she was visting her distant elvish relatives in Miriel. She didn't know much about what was out there besides what Natalia told her, and most of that was mortals. Gentri Gale knew there were other immortals relms like Gaia, but where and what they looked like she could only collect from the sketchy descriptions her dad used to get her. He was one of those guys who couldn't figure out how to describe anything. 'well it's a box, and it's brown' kinda guy. Now that he was gone, she had no information at all, River didn't bother to talk about it. "I'd like that" she said, wanting a chance to look at the maps. "It's ok. It's not like you're really boasting...you haven't seen boasting unless you listen to my cousins."
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Post by Henry Bloodwrath on Nov 13, 2008 0:13:09 GMT -5
"Ok. The library cave is over here," said Henry as he started walking towards a tunnel. The tunnel had, like the other tunnels, a small engraving at the top; this tunnel had the image of a book above it, super-imposed on a faded etching of a winged horse.
Passing through the short tunnel (about 5 meters with a slight curve to the left), Henry ended up in his library. The cave was a bit small, with only around 25 square meters of floor. However, it was quite obvious that this cave, unlike the main cavern, was tunneled out. It had an unnaturally rectangular prism shape, and the ceiling was a slightly curved dome.
The side of the cave that the tunnel opened into only had two small alcoves, with a glowing salamander in each. These were small and stationary by nature, basically living lights. Their radiance was about that of a candle, but not much else. Henry, upon recognizing that Gentri would neither have memorized the layout of the room beforehand, nor see the magical runes that marked sections of the cave, formed a few stationary fireballs and stationed them at the four upper corners of the cave.
On the side opposite from the tunnel, the wall seemed half-melted (as if someone was in the process of expanding the cave by melting the wall), and not else was distinguishable about that wall. However, the other two sides were more diverse in their appearances. The wall on the right side of the tunnel had a series of rock shelves crafted into it, and these shelves held a small number of books. Closer to the tunnel's wall, the books' wall had a desk crafted outward from it, and that had a pile of paper journals and one mysterious leather-bound book.
Unlikely as the previous three walls sound, the fourth wall (opposite from the books) was the most surprising to the casual observer. Boarded by lines of small diamonds, the wall contained a large rectangular map of the world around the volcano.
Naturally, since Henry still didn't know very much about the surrounding area in detail, there were only a few places where gemstones could be found outside of the immediate area of the volcano. The volcano was placed in the middle of the map, with a large ruby symbolizing it. Around the ruby, numerous small pieces of onyx, sapphire, and emerald were embedded into the wall, symbolizing the surrounding landscape (onyx for rocky areas, sapphires for bodies of water, emeralds for grassy/forested areas). However, near a far side of the map, a small curve of yellow topaz stones could be found, with the size of the circle proportionately large to the magical Barrier surrounding Gaia. Close to that curve, a small diamond was found embedded into the wall, along with several other gemstones.
After surveying the room, Henry turned back towards the tunnel, and said to Gentri, "I know it's not very detailed, but this is the best I can do for now. Ah! In case you're having difficulty seeing this, here's something to help out." With a couple of gestures, Henry extinguished the two corner fireballs that were on either side of the map, and also started a minor radiance spell on the gemstone map. With the spell activated, each gemstone started glowing with an inner light.
I think I'll give her some hints so she knows what each place is on the map. Pointing to the central ruby, Henry said, "The ruby is basically where my cave is located, and this diamond over here," pointing to the small diamond near the curve of topaz, "is the marketplace I met you at." The total distance of the central ruby to the small diamond was over 5 times the length of the small diamond to the yellow topaz line. "Also, that yellow line of gems indicate some kind of magical wall, though I'm not sure what it is exactly."
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Post by gentri on Nov 17, 2008 16:49:46 GMT -5
"Did you make all this?" She asked him, a little bit in awe. There were engravings above the doors and porportional hallways, a large an expansive library. She found it hard to imagine one person making all of this on their own. It intrigued her because she was a bit of an inventor, coming up with things that made every day life just a little bit easier. It was only a pass time, but people got entralled watching her create things. With her brown eyes looking this way and that, getting a quick look at book titles and shapes as she passed, she headed straight for the nicely lit map over by the wall. This was what she came here to see, to see what was out there. She had Gaia memorized like the back of her hand, but beyond Gaia and the mortal city that rested on its edge, she knew very little about what was out there. Her dark black locks fell into her face as she tilted her head to look at the different gemstones, knowing that Nienna most definitely would have approved of his choice of markers. Nina liked all things shiny.
"It's alright, I figure things out fast." Even with vague descriptions she could usually fill in the blanks and decode stuff. Her family knew she was practically a genius when it came to thinking outside of the box and riddles, but people who didn't know her well tended to judge her. Her apperance and choice of tatoos was very misleading. She watched fire balls disappear and re-appear in different places, that familar want of getting control over her own powers came back. But she placed it aside, the map was taking up all of her attention. She traced her finger of its lines and grooves, coming to the marketplace and carrying it off a little bit to reach the location of Pack Manor. It was easiest for her to start there; she always gave directions and found things from the perspective of her home. The further you got out the less detailed the map became, as if it too was having trouble unlocking the mysteries of the world. "Thanks" she said quietly, already so immersed in the map that she became very unaware of her own surroundings. Her eyes squinted as she followed outside of Gaia to the city, familiarizing herself with the mortal relm she hadn't visited in so long. And for good reason.
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Post by Henry Bloodwrath on Nov 17, 2008 17:02:15 GMT -5
Henry smiled at Gentri's enthrallment. "I'm glad you like it."
I'm glad I brought her here. Ah, I should probably put that book away. I wonder if she wants to read my journals...nah probably not. I'll ask just in case anyways. Going over to the opposite wall from the map, Henry went to the desk and laid his hands on a leather bound book there. Lifting it, he once again scrutinized the crimson glove pictured on the front, and half-heartedly attempted to open it. Failing once again, he placed it on the nearest shelf, then turned to the small pile of journals left on the desk. Picking them up, he turned around and asked Gentri (while looking away from her), "Would you like to read these journals? It's okay if you don't want to, but...you told me a bit about yourself, so it's only fair for me to offer information about me, I guess."
Brightening his visage, Henry added, "Also, what else would you want to do next?"
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Post by gentri on Nov 24, 2008 16:53:30 GMT -5
"I'm not much of a reader" she admitted. She learned a lot, but it was through her ears. If she was given the option of losing her eyesight or her hearing, eyesight would definitely be the thing to go. But she still reached out for them, tucking them under her arm beneath her jacket. "I could take them home and read them though.....it just takes me awhile." If she could pace herself she would get it done, but those people like Natalia who could read a book all in one day were something else. Gentri began fixing her rubber braclets around her wrist, moving them over one of the many tatoos that littered her skin. She had one underneath each wrist, one on her left back, shoulderblade, one on her ankle, and one on her forearm. "What is there to do?" He had probably told her already, but she'd been so busy getting a hold of her whereabouts that she had forgotten. Besides Gentri kind of went with the flow, whatever he wanted to do was probably game with her.
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