Editing Journal - Through Dust and Fire (section)

==A Confusing Encounter==

Falcor climbed out onto the roof of the temple first. There was a light rain falling, and it was early morning. He listened and scanned the area, wary that he might have heard something above us some distance away, but unable to see because of the low cloud cover. I waited just inside to see what happened, and as he moved around he caught sight of the flying creature we had seen before a little way off, moving across his field of view but not towards us. He lost sight of it in the clouds, but after a couple of minutes it dived down from behind him to land on the corner of the building. Thankfully he had jumped down near to a tree, so it couldn't find him at first. It was sniffing loudly in his direction, though, so it was only a matter of time.

Then it leapt onto the tree above him and shook it, presumably to see if he was hiding in the branches. Falcor stepped out and grabbed its tail, pulling with his considerable strength and yanking it clear of tree. It fell some distance away as he flung it, at least twenty feet, and then rolled and recovered its feet. I climbed out onto roof, moving towards it as it screeched at Falcor. He warned me that it was of both chaos and evil, so I moved to flank it and jumped down slowly as I watched Falcor punch it in soundly the face, causing it to reel back. Red pants appeared at that point, at a run, screaming at me in a language I didn't recognise and placing his hand on the creature as my sword, which had already been in motion, cut into its side. I pulled my second blow, though, because everyone seemed to be trying to avoid a fight! I was confused by this, but didn't want to be the one that kicked it all off.

Falcor had grabbed the animal's bridle and pulled its head down towards the floor. I sheathed my swords, and instead tried to grapple red pants to the floor; I managed to get hold of him, but he was strong and kept his footing. Falcor punched his mount again, pulling it down again until it became submissive. Red pants pulled free of my grip, giving me more indecipherable yelling, but then at Falcor's challenge switched to a halting common. It seemed that he thought we were idiot dark elves that didn't know what we were doing, and we went along with this idea. Falcor asked him how we could get back to the &quot;others&quot; without our magic marble. He spoke of the &quot;old way&quot; in the mountains that led to his master's realm.

Falcor passed him the reins and he mounted and healed the creature, horns glowing as the power transferred to the beast. It leapt into the air, climbing quickly, but he agreed to lead us to to this &quot;old way&quot; (presumably a natural gate)... but it was four days of flying! We started off anyway, making best pace towards the southwest of the island, with red pants occasionally circling back below the clouds to complain about how slow we were. At the edge of where the lake used to be, Falcor used his dweomer to fly again, carrying me once more. Once we were over the water, of course, we saw Last Defender swimming below us and Falcor let her know what we had found and what we had done within the temple. There was a surge of hope in what she asked next; if we had closed the path and removed the key then... was she free? Falcor decided that yes, there was no reason for her to stay now, so she was free! She asked what Falcor would have her do next - were all the ancient Elvradrak so subservient? He asked her to return to defend the Forge of Life, but asked if she might do us a favour first and carry us on our journey, if she could do so invisibly. This was apparently a trivial task for her and she agreed at once - we would get to ride there at a much faster pace.

The journey was uneventful. We passed a tall peak on the north side of the mountain range, then circled around it and headed in towards the heart of the mountains where there was a distinctive bare area of ground with little or no growth. As we descended towards it we started to make out many pockets of a shimmering heat haze dotted around the hillside, all about ten to twenty feet high and wide. Those facing us could be seen through clearly, and the ground on the far side was clearly different to that surrounding us, so they did lead to another place somewhere. When Last Defender alighted on the ground we were still sat some distance above the ground, but a mental image from her helped us to find a way down without falling. Red pants landed a little afterwards, impressed that we had travelled so fast, which Falcor put down to powerful dweomer. Red Pants asked if we were to go through now? Falcor agreed, and we stepped through one of the portals after Red Pants, emerging into a flat, dry area of sandy ground with formations of rock visible in the distance, both elevated and falling away. Looking around we could see a cloud of dust about half a mile away but we were otherwise alone.

We asked the way to &quot;our camp&quot; as we hadn't used the old way before. He cursed our ignorance again, but seemed willing enough to show us, flying ahead again... straight towards the dust cloud. We followed on foot, claiming that we had used our dweomer. It was hot, but not unbearable, and very dry. As we got closer to the cloud we could see that there were large humanoids within or close to it. There were at least ten, perhaps twenty, and it was clear that the dust cloud was no natural phenomenon but was being held in place by some power. We veered around to avoid getting too close to the giants, despite annoying our guide by doing so, and noted that there were a couple of giants that seemed to be commanding the others. They were walking into the dust and disappearing to somewhere else, much to our relief.

We started to make out openings in the rock formation beyond the dust cloud, and I disguised myself (physically at least) as one of the dark elves to buy us a bit more time as we drew close. A bugle sounded, presumably at our approach, and dark elves emerged from the openings with bows. Falcor thanked our guide and said we could find our way now so he could leave. He also asked about the Prince, but it seemed that the Court was much farther away, but we could get travel stones here. A few elves moved forward with swords drawn and we were challenged by one. I responded, knowing that the disguise wouldn't last, but trying to get a bit closer. As the challenge came again, demanding to know who I really was, Falcor ended the discussion by causing an enormous fireball to explode amongst them! Half a dozen or so were killed outright, and many others were badly hurt, but they recovered fairly quickly and the arrow fire began. Only one hit Falcor from the initial volley, but we needed to close quickly.

I protected myself from evil and charged forward, drawing the bow fire as I intended, and even managing to get one of the nearer foes shot in the back by their own archers! I continued to sprint until I reached the cliff, skirting along it to close with one of the lower of the openings. Falcor was able to engage in melee, killing one quickly and moving forward to the next couple as I started fighting one of the archers.