Chapter 18

The four adventurers trekked down the long stone spiral stairway, keeping alert for anything that might wish to attack them. They walked in silence for several minutes, until Miri, uneasy with the stillness, decided to break it. She turned to look up at their bardic companion, a few questions on her mind that she'd long since wanted answered.

"So, Tethyrian," she began, managing to remove any icy tones from her voice at the moment, "We're further than you ever went before, right?"

Celdern lowered his emerald eyes to the short cleric, raising one red eyebrow and scrunching up the other in suspicion and bemusement. "Yes, why? Are you going to imply that I'm now useless since I can't guide you all anymore?"

Miri shook her head, stretching her arms outward. She clasped her fingers together as she stretched, releasing them and relaxing her arms at her sides a moment later. "No, not at all. You're at least halfway decent in a fight." She admitted.

The bard narrowed his eyes slightly. "Oh, thanks." He grumbled sarcastically. "What do you want, then?"

She shrugged. "Just trying to make conversation."

"Why don't you bother the elves, then?" He queried, glancing ahead at their shorter, pointy-eared companions, who seemed to be tuning them out.

"Well, there're just a few things that've been bothering me about you," Miri confessed, wrapping her arms around herself as the temperature dropped the lower they went. She hated the cold – she was a desert girl, after all.

"You mean aside from the fact I'm a Tethyrian?" He snorted.

Miri bit back a retort and sighed, "I'm serious."

"So was I."

Resisting another temptation to lash out at the bard, Miri inhaled, then exhaled slowly. "Who was in the last party you traveled with? You know, the ones that didn't make it back."

This caught Celdern by surprise. He blinked at her, taking a moment absorb her question and debating whether or not to answer it. Curious as to where this line of questioning was going, he decided to comply – for the moment. "They were… friends, though I didn't know them very long."

"Didn't know them long?" Miri repeated, raising her dark eyebrows in interest.

He rubbed his neck, a bit hesitant. "I met them when I first came to Blasingdell from my home, some… Four, maybe five months ago, I think. I never intended to stay in that town for so long, honestly. I meant to travel out more, to find new stories, to weave new legends. I mean, I didn't delve into the bardic arts just to play music."

"So the moment you came into that map, you wanted to look into it." Miri guessed, and correctly so, as she noted when the bard nodded.

"Yes. I'd already been contemplating exploring Stone Tooth for some time, since local legends about Khundrukar have been around the local area for ages. When a retired mage gave me that map in payment for a performance, I figured it couldn't hurt to try and see if it was legitimate."

"I suppose it was, considering where we are now." Miri grinned. Celdern returned the smile, though his held little genuine mirth, his mind now elsewhere.

"This is true." He nodded, stepping over a small rock on the stairs. "Darvin and Pavel were eager to get out of Blasingdell as well, so they came along."

"Ah, so you finally call them by name." Miri noted, still keeping any tone of judgment out of her voice for the moment. Celdern raised an eyebrow again, but only shrugged in reply. "Had any of you ever gone adventuring before?"

"A little, but not much." Celdern admitted, scratching his small beard as he thought back. "Darvin was some thief that was too afraid to venture far from Blasingdell on his own. Figured anything beyond the walls of the city could kill him quickly if he didn't have a partner or two. Pavel wanted to join the Radiant Heart in Athkatla and become a paladin. If you ask me, he already was one in every way but title. I'm impressed those two got along as well as they did. We were such an odd bunch." He shook his head, a small smile reaching the corners of his lips.

Before she realized the words escaped her lips, Miri commented, "You speak fondly of ones you don't seem to value very much."

Celdern stopped in his tracks and turned to the Calishite slowly, his nine-inch height difference towering over the cleric, despite being on a lower step than her. "Excuse me?" he growled.

The elves paused as well, looking over their shoulders at the humans.

"Uh-oh." Serosa'ruth muttered from beneath his mask.

Too late to retract her comment, Miri instead plowed on, matching Celdern's steely gaze with her own. "You claim to have known them for many months, and even speak of them as good friends, yet you seem to hold no remorse for their death. I mean, you really didn't seem bothered by the fact the orcs here killed them off, even when we returned to their place of death. Are all your companions so unimportant to you?"

At first, Ky'itae thought the bard was going to hit the other human. Instead, Celdern grabbed the cleric's desert robes and pulled her up to him, bringing them face-to-face.

"How dare you!" He snarled, "How DARE you claim I don't care about my friends and traveling companions!"

Seemingly unaffected by the fact she dangled over half a foot in the air, Miri spat back, "Well, as I said, you sure seem to get over the murder of comrades quite easily! You seemed to abandon them pretty quickly when the orcs struck them down!"

The bard resisted the urge to shake her, but not by much. "Why you pretentious wench! For your information, Darvin was detected by the orcs when he tried to spy on them. He warned us of the incoming numbers – numbers two humans could never hope to beat on their own – just before they struck him down. Pavel and I fled for the entrance, but the orcs chased us through. He held them off so I could escape, cutting the rope bridge just after I crossed it, so I couldn't return to die with him. What was I supposed to do?"

"If that rope bridge was cut, how was it there when WE crossed it?" Miri snapped.

"It's been tendays since I was last here! Don't you think the orcs would've rebuilt it?" The bard growled.

"Gee, you could have shared that tidbit of information when we got trapped in here after it was cut again!"

"Well, I'm sorry, priestess," Celdern pressed his face against hers so that their noses mashed together, "But I think the fact that we all nearly DIED falling into that pit made it a bit HARD for me to think straight just then."

"That's no excuse, and get your face out of mine!" Miri pushed his head away from her. "Even if you couldn't get to him, you sure don't care that they're both dead."

"Just because I don't cry or outwardly mourn over them doesn't mean I don't care!" This time, Celdern did shake her. "Unlike some people here, I know when it's time to move on, but that doesn't mean I don't keep them in my heart."

"Oh, wow, you have a heart? That's news to me." Miri snorted once he stopped shaking her.

"Bold words coming from someone who probably owned a slave or two in her life!"

SMACK!

Miri's hand snapped across the bard's cheek. Surprised, Celdern released the cleric, who managed to land back on her feet gracefully. The taller human touched his stinging cheek for only a second, then glowered at the tan woman. "You little bitch!" He pulled his hand back to punch her as Miri's hand darted towards her daggers.

The flat end of a longsword slapping against each of their heads stunned them out of their squabble.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Serosa'ruth roared, coming between them, both blades in hand. "You two don't have to like each other, but for now, we're in the depths of a fucking cavern filled with HUNDREDS of creatures I'm sure would love to kill us in thousands of nasty ways. Keep your prejudices to yourselves for now, because, like it or not, we're a team, dammit! Dos rivven morfeth uns'aa viggtu, Usstan swariy!" The druid snapped his swords back into place with his last sentence, his cape swooshing about as he turned swiftly.

Both humans blinked at their party leader, stunned by his outburst, and neither understanding, nor recognizing the language in his last statement. They looked at each other dumbly, but before they could say anymore, a low buzzing noise filled everyone's ears.

"What in Toril is tha—" Ky'itae's question died as a score of strange, almost birdlike creatures flew up the stairs, coming at them all.

"Dammit, I hate these things." Serosa'ruth growled, taking his swords out again. His three companions quickly armed themselves as well.

"What are they?" Celdern asked, cutting through one of the monsters as it went for his face.

"Striges." Serosa'ruth answered grimly, "Our noise must've woken them up." His longswords sliced through half a dozen monsters in two strokes, "They're not too bad individually, but in a group like this, they can be nasty. Be mindful – they latch onto other creatures and drain blood."

"Eww, that's disgusting." Miri scrunched up her face to emphasize the sediment, waving her daggers at the striges to keep them at bay.

Ky'itae swung her bastard sword at the flying beasts, but her heavier weapon made it easier for the striges to dodge her. The moon elf cried in surprise and mild pain when one of the creatures got tangled up in her ponytail. Putting away her sword, the elf cursed and attempted to untangle the strige from her hair.

Serosa'ruth dropped to his knees as a large group of striges flew by. He put his swords down and held his hands up, muttering in Druidic. A strong gust of wind sent the creatures spiraling down the stairway, the force of the magical wind bunching them together. While they were distracted, Serosa'ruth quickly jumped up with his swords, cutting through all off the monsters in a scissors-like movement.

The humans picked off the last of the striges while Ky'itae still struggled to get the final one out of her brown locks. Chuckling and shaking his head, Serosa'ruth reached into his boot, pulling out a small dagger. He flung the weapon out, impaling the strige, which gave a shriek and expired. Its death stopped the struggle, allowing Ky'itae to remove it from her hair. She looked at the mess the monster had made of her hair – knots of tangles everywhere – and she noted some of its blood had stained her dark locks.

"Thanks, I think." She muttered to her best friend, who laughed as he retrieved his dagger.

"I have a comb you can borrow, if you want…" Miri offered, stifling a laugh. Ky'itae screwed up her face, running her fingers through her tied up hair to remove the lesser tangles. She shrugged in response to the Calishite's offer.

"Maybe later. We should just keep going."

"Good idea, 'frizzy.'" Celdern sniggered, earning a glare from the elven fighter and a snort of laughter from his other two comrades. Miri quickly ended hers in a cough, remembering her grudge with the Tethyrian once more.

"Yes, well… Let's go, then." She muttered, avoiding Celdern's gaze as she walked ahead with the elves.

Celdern briefly mused continuing his argument with Miri, but let it go. Serosa'ruth was right. Now wasn't the time for such things. With a resigned sigh, the bard followed his three shorter companions down the stairs and further into the caves.

Sorry for the long wait… What was it, a little over a month? Gah. I've just been real busy and working on other projects (art, mostly) in my free time. When I finally did make myself sit down and write this chapter, however, it didn't take more than a few hours. So, I'll do my best to force myself to stop getting distracted and write the next installment sooner. I'm still "filling in the gap" now, and I have a feeling this Khundrukar quest will still take at least two, probably three (or even more) chapters to finish, but once that's done with, we're back to the parts SL and I wrote, with fewer "gaps" for me to fill for a while, so updates should be quicker for a time.

The next chapter will probably be a bit longer due to the stuff I wanna fit into it… I usually keep these to about 4 pages, but the next one might be twice as long. We'll see how it goes. Feedback is VERY appreciated, but please write more than "your story rocks/this sux/etc" if you do…