Justintime: Thanks for the advice about anonymous users. I didn't know where to change that, but now anonymous users are allowed to review me :D I hope you enjoy the Black Mountain now.

techwitch: I'm sorry I left you hanged there, but was the most logical moment of the story where to cut everything before starting with the Black Mountain, but the idea is, actually, leave you at the edge of your seat. About the check spell, I thank you for the advice, but is a little difficult to do that from where I am. I use the computer in a public place (the cheaper I can find near my house) and Word here is configurated for Spanish language (I live in Chile; South America). I'll try to check spell any way if I can. Thank you

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Chapter 2: The Black Mountain

The Black Mountain, Pelavin's Mountain, Pelavin's Dungeon... all three names for the same hell: the Dungeon of the Mages.

Kedri woke up and the first thing she knew was that her back ached. Badly. Probably Pelavin's guards just threw her there in the same way you throw a sack. She, then opened her eyes and found herself in a place barely illuminated; like twilight, but she could see perfectly even when it was dark. She wondered why.

She looked around her to see that the cell she was in had the perfect shape of a pyramid, being the highest point exactly her same size. The walls were perfect, like if they were covered with some kind of melted stone... a REALLY hard melted stone. No door was visible, and also no window, so she couldn't see if it was day or night.

She started thinking about No One Knows and if he was alive or not… she could feel his presence somewhere, but definitely he was dead... then why did she feel him so present?

The very thought of that made her angry… more angry than she ever was. She didn't even try to calm herself. She felt… Rage. More than anything. Rage above her desire of freedom. Rage above her blood thirst for Pelavin's blood. Rage and her body started to ache. She could feel like if every single little muscle and bone of her body was being stretched, her eyes also hurt and she shut them in a futile intent of stop all this pain. It was unbearable.

Besides, she grew so much that had to seat in the floor, because now she wasn't her usual 1,60 mt. high. Now she was 2,40 mt. high! She wanted to scream but when she opened her mouth all it came out from it was a lowd howling. She didn't realise what she was doing, though, and she howled with all her strength. She realised that she wasn't screaming and covered her mouth with her hands and then she saw herself... with horror.

Her hands were furry! as well as the rest of her body! and she had quite sharp claws in her hands and feet!. She saw none of her clothing on the floor and supposed they had, somehow, been absorbed by her body. She didn't cry for her wolf. She knew why she still felt his presence now. Pelavin, if she ever found him, was in BIIIIIG trouble.

-"Whoa!" she grinned "so the legends ARE true" after all she wasn't just an Arborum; she was also a Shoni (1) and understood that she had absorbed the essence of her wolf. "Shonis, then, aren't so easy to kill after all."

She understood that now that No One Knows was dead she turned into a werewolf... if she was the one that died No One Knows would be the werewolf, so her lupine friend was still somehow with her. She cried of joy for that, but she was still angry and scratched the walls with her new claws desperately. All she wanted was to get out of there, but it was useless. No matter how much she scratched or how strong she was, she didn't do a single little scratch to the wall.

She sat and cried. When she calmed down and looked at herself again she wasn't furry any more and looked like a regular Arborum once again.

The next day (she supposed was a day) the cell was totally different. It was almost twice as big than the first day, and it wasn't a triangle. It was a huge and perfect cubic space, but the walls were still the same way the day before. Every day the cell was different shape and size. Sometimes Kedri found herself in a cell so small that she could only stand up and not move. She was afraid that one day her cell could disappear, burying her under tons of dust and killing her.

And every day was also the same silence inside. She thought she was going to get crazy if she stayed there for much longer, so she started talking to herself.

6 months passed that way. Every day a hand passed through the wall and gave her food and water, and when she charged against the place where the hand had appeared only to find that there was only solid wall there too. The whole dungeon was, if that was what it was, a magical hell.

One "morning" Kedri woke up and found that she was in a reasonable sized cubic cell, like some other days, but now the walls didn't look the same. They were not perfect walls covered with melted stone; they were irregular, like roughly carved in the inside of the mountain, but she still couldn't see any door or cell bars.

She transformed to her werewolf form once again, closed her eyes and hesitated, but tried once again to scratch the walls and see if something happened.

To her surprise, when she re opened her eyes, it did. There was a scratch in the wall... there was hope! Kedri smiled and continued scratching as fast as she could. When she had made a hole that allowed to get out, she did and found herself in a long hallway. She looked at both sides of the hallway and saw a few other fingers coming out from the wall. She started helping them to get out.

One of them was a warrior Sholot woman, the second was a Piggot woman that looked as a healer of some class, the third was a human, but Kedri couldn't know for sure, for the way he looked like, the profession he had. The last person got out of his cell on his own and that was the bigger surprise for Kedri, because it was another Arborum, a male, and he did have a wolf with him. Every one started laughing and hugging each other. Kedri looked at the other Arborum with curiosity. She was 9 when she saw another of her race the last time. Now she was almost 40, but it was good to see someone of her race again... more than that, it was good to see someone again after being 6 months stucked in there.

They introduced to each other. The Sholot woman was Danitza, the Piggot was Tor Cal Dahra, the Arborum was Ig and his wolf was Gaarf, and the other human was called Planchet. He was the most reserved of the group and didn't talk much.

Suddenly the wolf heard something. Kedri heard it too.

- "heeeeelppp... pleeeaseee" it was a very faint voice. Gaarv started smelling and he barked when he reached a spot of the wall. None of them had any weapon, so Kedri didn't go back to her Arborum form and scratched the wall there. She made a medium sized hole and pulled out a really old man.

- "Thank you, daughter..." the old man said while patting her shoulder with an uncommon strength for such an old looking man "Now I have saved you"

Everybody looked at him in disbelief, mouths opened, while he did and said the same to all of them.

-"W... What?" Dahra said "It was us the ones who got you out of that cell!"

-"I know" said the old man "but I saved you. I'm Mahatma, the one chosen and sent to stop Pelavin's evil ruling... and you're my army"

Everybody's mouth dropped opened in disbelief, but they let that pass. All of them but Planchet.

- "Your army? W... wait... I'm no warrior. I can't be from an Army"

Kedri patted his shoulder

- "Looks like you're part of one now" Kedri thought Mahatma was crazy, but funny.

Danitza, who was standing behind Mahatma, put her finger against her head and made a sign like saying "this guy's a looney" and everyone started laughing.

-"What?" asked Mahatma and looked around in the very second that Danitza stopped doing it and looked to the ceiling with an angel face.

- "Nothing, your eminence" said Dahra, trying to hold her laughter "let's just get out of here and get you to a safer place"

So the group started walking. They didn't know where to go, so they decided to walk to their right, hoping that direction would take them out.

They walked for a few meters and heard noise coming from the corner. Laughter and steps. Heavy steps. It was too late to go back to the cells and they were all too angry to do so, so they decided to fight even with their bare hands if necessary. 7 guards were coming. Kedri, still in her werewolf shape, jumped in front of them, howling like a savage wolf, attacking 2 of them with her new claws. The guards were too surprised to react. They didn't expect the attack. They thought the prisoners were all in their cells!

Mahatma stayed behind with Planchet while the rest killed the guards. Ig, Danitza and Dahra took the weapons of the guards and killed with them and Gaarv attacked them just like Kedri: with claws and fangs. They were easy to kill.

- "PLANCHET!" Kedri shouted at him "YOU DID NOTHING TO HELP! DID YOU REALLY STAND THERE ALL THE TIME WHILE WE DID ALL THE FIGHTING?"

- "Take it easy, tree-girl. I was taking care of our guest here" he tried to justify himself and pointed at Mahatma, who nodded, but Kedri was so angry that if it wasn't for Dahra she would have killed the human.

- "Calm down, Kedri. There's no use in killing him. We might need whatever abilities he might have soon" Dahra said.

Kedri gave Planchet a dreadful glare and muttered "he'd better have any"

They took all the spears and clothes that the dead guards had, even if they didn't know how to use them very well, got dressed and continued walking. Finally they arrived to a small kitchen, with a lot of barrels, a table, chairs... they searched inside the barrels and found food, water, wine, salt. Two of the three barrels with food were eatable. It didn't taste good, but at least it wasn't rotten. The water wasn't fresh and the wine was vinegar now. They left everything they couldn't eat right there. It was useless to carry all that weight. Planchet found a knife stuck in a table and took it, looked at it and put it in his pants, ready to take it out if needed.

At the other side of the kitchen there was a door that leaded to a tunnel. As soon as they all entered the tunnel the door closed and disappeared. With her senses enhanced, Kedri looked around and read an inscription in the wall.

"... Don't you turn or look around, because the eyes that follow you are worse than death..."

None of them dared to look back, afraid of what they might find, but Kedri did look to her sides and to the ceiling. She saw no Ceiling. It was too dark, but all she saw in the walls and in whatever was above them were red eyes. Red eyes everywhere. They got to a place in the tunnel that seemed to be a little lighter, but what they saw was scary.

A group of demons... 3 of them were looking at the heroes, staring at them. They didn't attack; they only said that they should open the 7 doors. The first door was a math problem that Danitza solved easily and the demons let the group pass, saying nothing about the other 6 doors. Kedri asked about them and all the demons said was "You'll know them when the time comes". Kedri just shrugged and kept walking with the rest of her new found friends behind her.

Suddenly they saw a hole ahead. It was too big to just jump and they couldn't walk around it, when they saw inside the hole it was full of dead corpses in different states. There were skulls, bodies with some flesh still in them and all the states between those. None of them really wanted to fall inside, so they tried to jump with the help of the spares. Kedri jumped first and she succeeded, so did Gaarv, Ig, Dahra and Danitza. Mahatma and Planchet fell in the hole. Danitza and Dahra tried to help Planchet while Ig and Kedri helped Mahatma, but they slipped inside the hole and started to drawn in the dead corpses. Gaarv falled over Ig and started drawning too. They desperately tried to climb the walls of the holes, but it was useless. None of them succeeded, and they found themselves falling through a seemingly endless tomb.

Kedri reached the "bottom" first because she was heavier in that half wolven form. She heard a splash and felt wet. When she opened her eyes she saw herself in the middle of a subterranean lake. where she was the water was liquid, but a few feet ahead it looked less liquid and filthy. All of her friends fell too, and Mahatma. Kedri stood up and walked to where she saw dry land and from there she saw that the part where the water was filthy was moving towards her friends.

She opened her eyes widely and screamed at them "HURRY! THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE WATER AND IS MOVING TOWARDS YOU!" Ig, Danitza and Dahra looked around and saw the strange creature... it was just filthy water, but it was moving. Dahra, Ig and Gaarv dragged Planchet and Mahatma to where Kedri was, but Danitza wanted to stay and fight. Kedri went back to the water and put her over her shoulders, in spite of all the arguing Danitza was saying and how she wanted to get down. Kedri wouldn't let her go. They weren't ready to fight such a creature.

- "LET ME GO! I'LL KILL THAT DARN THING!" Danitza argued

- "No, Danitza, to kill that thing we would need fire and we don't even have dry wood around, so forget it" Kedri said "but if you want to go and kill yourself then go ahead, be my guest"

Danitza stopped arguing and they started walking through the border of the lake. It was big to be a subterranean lake, and in the other side they found a group of skeletons hanging cuffed from a wall. at one side of those skeletons there was a table and a group of skeletons were sitting around it, playing cards, they moved as if they were talking, and they had a bunch of keys over the table too. in the floor was lying a whip.

One of the skeletons hunged from the wall moved and one of the ones playing cards stood up from it's chair and grabbed the whip. Kedri and her friends thought the other skeletons were going to come and see them, so they got ready to fight, but their mouths dropped opened once again when they saw that the skeleton approached the prisoner skeleton and whipped him, then he moved his mouth and arms like if he was screaming bad words to him, but Kedri and her friends couldn't hear anything and laughed silently.

They passed the skeletons and the deads didn't even pay attention to the group. Strange, they thought. behind the skeletons was an inscription in the wall... it said nothing in words, but it was a picture carved in the wall of a chest that had legs and was running away from a group of skeletons. Kedri thought it was strange and kept the picture in her mind, but kept walking with the rest of her friends.

At the end of another hallway there were some stairs leading upwards and they climbed. Kedri went first. Probably she wasn't the bravest, but someone had to dare to do things. As she went upstairs she could see light... not like daylight... moonlight. It was dark outside, but at least they were close to the exit! Once upstairs they were in a room that had a door in front of them and a small hallway that lead to the exit to their left. They could see it... freedom...

Wait, not so easy. A Jellow-Cube was in that little hallway, and it was coming towards them. it was big, and they could see what was inside of it: there was a sword and also a shield, but there was a skeleton inside too. For the size of the sword and shield, the skeleton was probably the knight that wielded them. A Jellow-Cube is a non intelligent creature. It doesn't see or hear, but if you touch it you're screwed. it starts to suck you inside him and once you're inside there's no way out because it starts to digest you. A Jellow-Cube is made of stomach juices.

Kedri and Dahra made it fast to the other side of the hall, through the door. Once in there the Jellow cube passed in front of the door.

- "Fiuuu! Just in time"

Dahra nodded and looked around. it was an almost empty room, but there were some swords. They took them. Finally a weapon they could use.

The Jellow cube passed in front of the door again and Kedri and Dahra came out. Their friends and Mahatma were waiting for them. Slowly they followed the cube out, being very careful of not touching it. Planchet made the attempt to do so.

- "Go ahead, please" said Kedri "and you'll end like that one" she pointed to the digested knight.

- "GLUP Nah, thanks" Planchet said.

Kedri nodded.

Out of the hallway the Jellow-Cube melted in front of their eyes. Our heroes were finally free and so happy to be alive. They were in the upper part of a very high mountain... or so they thought, but what they saw was not very encouraging.

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A/N: UFFF! Finally I finished. I hope you enjoyed that. Sorry to leave you like this, but as I said to teckwitch, I always try to cut my chapters where I think is the most logical part in order to link with the next chapter, so you'll have to wait for a week to see what Kedri and Co. found out of the dungeon.

(1) Shoni is a tribe of Arborums that are hunters and expert wolf riders. The tribe where Kedri belonged was one of them. Is very difficult to kill definitively an Arborum that has a familiar animal because they're so close to the nature of their animals that when one of them dies the other turns into a werewolf or werebear, depending on the animal they handle, they can change at will from the Arborum or animal shape into wereanimal and they are always rational in this shape.