*Lines with-in the stars are thoughts.*



"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

Erin Sayomara's scream echoes off of the mountains, threatening an avalanche. She jumps up from her place near the fire, awakened suddenly by the intense cold that somehow had found it's way down the back of her shirt as she slept. Dancing around, she finally manages to shake the snow out of her tunic made of course wool.

Turning on the sun elf she's been traveling with for the last two days, she sees him doing his best to look stern and not laugh. He points to the east and the sun peeking over the low horizon in the distance.

"Yeah, yeah. It is dawn. I know." she grumbles. "I just pray to Tempus you know where you are going, because I am completely lost."

As sad as it may be, this was her only hope. He seemed to try to give her directions that first day, but she never could understand the elven languages and he didn't seem to have a grasp of common. True, she had started to learn the language of Kozakura, the language of the father she never new, from her guide, but he was killed by those snake-things before she could learn much more than "Konnichiwa". Her guide insisted that it meant hello, but it could mean "I am a moron", for all she knows.

Gathering her gear, she glances back at her impromptu guide, who's name she still does not know. She found that he had finally broken down into laughter. She couldn't help herself. Her soft laughter joined his. This morning ritual of waking her at dawn was starting to turn into a game. Now, all she had to do was figure out a way to play, herself.



As they had for the last two days, they started climbing again before the sun was an hour into the sky. If the day continued like the two prior, they would climb until just after noon, take a short break, too short, in Erin's opinion, before resuming their climb until the sun disappeared, deep behind the mountains they were climbing.

At the moment, they were at a particularly steep section. The elf had climbed up ahead of her, as he always does, and is reaching down now, waiting to help her up as she nears him.

Several tense moments go by as she works her way up the face. The elfs sudden grasp on her forearm startles her briefly, and she nearly drops off. With the elf holding her left arm firm, pulling as she rose, she finally makes it to the top, a plateau, as it turns out.

*Thank Tempus that I am in shape.* she thinks, remembering her reasoning to come to the utter east to begin with.



She had been raised in Baldur's Gate, a large town north of Waterdeep. Her mother was making her living there selling trinkets. She knew growing up that she was different from the other children. The shape of her eyes and colour of her skin spoke of exotic lands. Even her last name, Sayomara, was strange, even by the standards of the adventurers who oft were found in her home town.

Her father, she learned as she grew older, was a great warrior for a powerful lord in a far away land. Her mother rarely spoke of him, and never of how the two met. She was amazed she learned what she did from her.

As time went on, she learned that her father had died strangely, leaving only her as an heir. Out of fear for her life, her mother had fled Kozakara, shortly after, when the government started persecuting foreigners.

Still, her father was a master swordsman, with many students. It should not be hard, she figured, to find one to teach her the fighting style of her father. *After all,* she thought, *what good is a family fighting style if no one in the family knows it?*



After helping the woman to the plateau, Wusheng look around. In the distance, on the far side of the plateau, rests the Juupin monastery.

Even before they had walked half the distance between them and the monastery, Wusheng could feel something was wrong.

"There is a darkness here." he says to the woman, even knowing she couldn't understand him. "It corrupts the very soul of the mountains."

Looking back at the woman, he sees her nod. Despite not knowing each others languages, there was no doubt that, by the tone of her voice as she spoke in her native tongue, she felt it, too.

*If the Diya-dailai has already taken the temple, it may be too late for anyone...*