Here is the next chapter! Hope you enjoy! Remember reviews feed the dragons! please review!
Chapter 7- Slayer Scrolls
Chapter 6-Chrissy - Dead Walking
Day 7 still?
Hall of Enlightenment
"Why can't my slayer sense just be little tingly sensations warning me of immediate danger like spider man. No, it makes me feel like I'm about ready to puke when those things are around. Great I'm talking to myself. It's better than this empty sound down here and the few moans in the distance but I better keep it quiet might wake those things up." Chrissy mutters to herself as she's taking aim add another walking corpse that was laying on one of the stone shelves. The aim is true but unfortunately not so quiet it wakes another creature.
"Is that a female? Do I even care? Nope." Chrissie quietly says as she takes aim at what appeared to be a female walking corpse that had ran over to the one, she had shot. This one turns in time to eat an arrow the hard way. Chrissy goes to check the corpse and get her arrow from it but has second thoughts. "Knowing some of my friends they would come up with something very inappropriate about how an arrow is embedded in this walking corpses mouth, being that it looks also to be female oh great my mind just went there that's not good. She can keep the arrow and whatever else she's got I'm not touching this one." Chrissy says as she just waves goodbye to the creature than checks the first one she shot. She grabs up a set of old lock picks that were sitting next to it. Finding nothing else she walks towards a darken hallway.
She starts to walk through it but then jumps back when she feels her foot snap a line triggering anvil size cleaver blade slicing from one side then over to the other pendulum style in front of her. After watching it for a moment she realizes that there are two more right after it. "You have got to be kidding me this looks like a bad trap from an old tomb raider video game from the early 90s. I can't believe I know what that is but of course when you have a brother who designs video games. What is worse yet I stupidly triggered the damn thing. Rookie Move. Since the rest of this place is designed like a video game might as well look for the lever that will stop that if it's on this side." Chrissy mutters as she starts looking around for any loose brick or poll chain. After what seemed like an eternity looking for a device that would shut it off, Chrissy starts to get a little bit irritated. "I don't have time for this crap if it's here I'm not going to find it. Hmm? I wonder?" Chrissy says as she lowers herself to her belly and starts to army crawl underneath the swinging pendulums of death. Chrissy just shakes her head at how easy it was to slide underneath them without being injured once. It only takes a few moments to army crawl underneath the swinging pendulums of death. As she crawls under the last one her senses warned her of multiple walking corpses not too far away. Not bothering to look back once she is completely past the pendulums of death. Chrissy grabs three more arrows notches one and pulls the bow back all the while she is rounding a corner ready to let it fly.
Completing the corner without any adversaries she finds a stone stairwell. Cautiously descending she keeps her arrow ready for anything that may poke into her line of vision. Letting the arrow fly about halfway down the stairs when something did poke its ugly body into her line of sight. Even before the arrow had made the killing blow Chrissy had another arrow notched and ready. Chrissy breathed a sigh of relief when her slayer senses lighten just a little when the soul of that corpse was released from its old decaying body.
At the bottom of the stairs Chrissy looks strangely at the creature who was now stuck to the wall in a way no man would want to be stuck and says. "Nope not touching that one either. But I will take these raw gems." Chrissy says while pocketing a red gem and two greens.
Continuing, she rounds another corner only to let her next arrow fly nailing this creature to all in almostly exact same way as the last. "Damn it I am not a man hater I swear." Chrissy mutters as she saw where her arrow hit but still a little on edge as she knows that there is at least one more close.
"Eeww!" Chrissy hisses as she steps into something sticking and smelling funny that was dripping for a type of oil jug lamp. Carefully looking at the oil she notices that is and the other are also leaking. An evil idea forms in her mind. She steps back into the area that doesn't have any oil on it. Using the dry old linen on the shelf Chrissy wraps it around the tip of her arrow with just a little hanging down to use as a wick. Chrissy notches the arrow. While keeping it notched Chrissy uses the travel lantern to start the tip on fire. Releasing the arrow quickly it flies true hitting the oil jug lamp causing it to drop while setting the falling oil on fire. The fire quickly spreads down the hall and around the corner with small explosions going off. Chrissy sees the Walking Corpse run through the fire. She is afraid that it might reach her but halfway through the fire the creature Sur comes to the flame.
While she is waiting for the fire to burn out Chrissy switches back to her sword and shield. Surprising Chrissy the fire only takes a few minutes to burn out with very little smoke. Chrissy notices this area is lit by warming stones and some torches. She figures that the walking corpses must have lit them but wonders why but shakes it off and checks the burnt one for anything of use. This one only had the mace it had been carrying. For a while Chrissy makes her way through the twists and turns of this smooth out hallway until it starts to head down and changes from smooth to piled brick stones. Chrissy's ears perk up as she hears a large waterfall not too far in the distance. A muffled wiggins feeling hit her. This one only has a few barely lit torches with what appeared to be the end being much brighter. Seeing this next hallway was long, Chrissy switches back to her bow and 3 arrows as she heads down it. As she is getting closer to a brighter light, she can hear a water fall even louder. The muffled wiggins feeling is also getting closer too.
Chrissy slowly rounds a corner that leads into another room. The bright light becomes evident as being a huge tri-dragon cauldron full of freshly lit, blazing, warming stones. Before entering Chrissy scans the room with her eyes. The room contains a gorgeous Waterfall that was almost as big as a one-story house and just as wide. At the base of the waterfalls, it narrows down into a single stream with a stone bridge crossing over it to reach the other side. It is on that side she sees two standing sarcophaguses one sealed one open next to a chest. Slowly Chrissy begins to enter the room with their bow notched and ready to shoot. She had just started to enter the room when the standing sarcophagus was kicked open from the inside out sending the door flying across the small area and smashing into the other sarcophagus. This startles Chrissy so much she accidently releases the arrow. By luck or by design, the arrow hits the creature that came out of the sarcophagus killing it instantly.
Not sensing any more of the creatures nearby Chrissy switches back to her sword and shield and enters the room. She takes just a few minutes to warm herself by the blazing warming rock. The heat from the warming stones eases a lot of tension Chrissy didn't know she had. Carefully crossing the stone bridge Chrissy reaches the other side without incident.
With a shrug Chrissy remarks to herself when she walks up to the corpse. "Well at least I didn't hit this one in the crotch."
Checking the corpse, she finds a steel ingot and was able to retrieve her arrow this time. Deciding to test a theory Chrissy takes the steel ingot and places it in her backpack. Her backpack gains no more weight and yet even though it was full was able to accept the new item without an issue. "This will definitely come in handy." Chrissy says as she proceeds to the chest to find 400 gold, some type of glistening stone, a metal chest plate, some leather scout armor, and a sword. Continuing to check the limits of her backpack Chrissy proceeds to place everything inside. Not even the sword punctures the backpack as she put it inside it seemed to just fit. Chrissy discovers that she can only put items in the main bag that are the same circumference or smaller. She tries another experiment and places all of her gold and small gems into the side pockets to find that they all fit no matter how many she put in them.
When she is finished putting her backpack back on, she glances more around the room and sees that there's only two other possible ways out. One was she would have to climb up the dangerous slippery vertical waterfall. Chrissy just shakes her head at that thought. The other is to flow a stream. She chooses the stream. To avoid getting her feet too wet Chrissy skips from rock-to-rock until she reaches a gate covering a poorly lit cave. Seeing another pull chain Chrissy pulls it and activates the gate. The gate reveals a long narrow, earthen passageway. When she reaches the end, she discovers there's a few lit candles, but she almost thinks it's a dead end because there are some very thick roots and only a small slit where the water was passing through. That was until the flickering of the candles revealed a turn in the earthen passageway. She follows it up and around to lead into a large open cavern.
Chrissy takes note that this area is lit by luminescent type wall mushrooms. Walking over to the closest luminated mushroom. Taking the chance Chrissy picks it and begins examining it. "This is interesting… maybe Genny can use some of these I'll just take a few." Chrissy remarks to herself as she takes a couple and puts them in her backpack.
Chrissy continues on all the while her eyes are darting around the cavern on the ceiling, she takes note of smaller roots coming through and she deduces that she must not be too far from some type of surface in the mountain. Following the stream, a little way down Chrissy is startled when she kicks the bones of a skeleton lying on the ground next to a pickaxe. In what was left of the skeletons bag she finds 150 old gold coins. Something glinting off the light from her travel Lantern catches Chrissy's attention. She feels the ground like Borazon had shown her and realizes that there is some type of vein of ore. At the thought of Borazon she wonders how he and Samuel are doing and hopes that they didn't meet the Dragon.
Chrissy takes a few minutes to chip away at the vein to get a couple of good chunks of iron ore which she slips into her backpack. Seeing as there's plenty of room in the area Chrissy uses her previous technique of her bow pulling three arrows notching one and holding two. Making her way further down the cavern she comes across a half-buried chest. Inside the chest she discovers a red gem, some old scrolls, a few lock picks, 100 gold, and a silver ingot all of which seems to easily fit into her backpack.
It is here, she has to choose whether to continue to the left and follow the water or turn to the right and go down into a cave area. Chrissy starts to follow the water but has to immediately stop as it turns into a waterfall that is well over two stories down. Before stepping back, she notices another walking corpse below her on a stone that it was using as a bridge. Unfortunately, before she pulls back the creature makes a sound like it knew that she was there.
Figuring that the only way the creature was going to come at her was from the right Chrissy takes aim and waits. It doesn't take long for the creature to come running around the bend up towards her. As it runs towards her Chrissy has enough time to put all three arrows into it.
"Crap!" Chrissy hisses seeing the creature is still coming. Chrissy barely has enough time to put back the bow and grab her shield to block a blow from the creature's large battle axe.
Seeing that she is weaponless the creature presses its advantage more seriously attacking preventing Chrissy from grabbing her sword. After getting pounded so much Chrissy has had enough counter attacks by smacking the axe back with her shield. This knocks the creature off balance long enough for Chrissy to assault the creature in the face with her shield followed by a right cross. The creatures jaw detaches and sails in the air then crashes into the wall shattering like glass. That doesn't stop the creature as it tries to bring down its battle axe once again. This time Chrissy is prepared as when she came back with her right hand, she had grabbed one of her arrows and started to savagely stab the creature in the face with the arrow.
What seems like an eternity while she does her best to keep the battle axe away from her while she bombarded the creature. Chrissy continually stabs the creature in the face with the arrow until finally it collapses to the ground.
For the next few minutes, a horrible gagging noise echoes through out the halls as Chrissy up chucks the food she had eaten. Her throwing up had been an immediate reaction to seeing the brutality she had unleashed on the creature when she realizes there was only a stub left where it's head should have been. Taking out her water flask Chrissy rinses out her mouth.
"Get a grip girl. It would have done the same thing to you if not worse. The only difference is it wouldn't be up chucking." Chrissy tells herself. She puts her almost empty water flask back than pulls out her sword. She heads down and around to where she first saw the creature.
"Crap! Crap! Really does no one believe in handrails!" Chrissy sneers as sees she is going to have cross a frozen slab of rock to get to the other side. Chrissy fought her fear and slowly makes her way across the stone. Icy chills run down her spine as she reaches the halfway while near frozen water splashes on her.
Chrissy is almost across when she missteps falls, then slides down and round on what could be really very painful corkscrew slide. All the way down she is sliding into one wall bouncing off then into another. By the time Chrissy splashes into the little pond at the bottom she was almost certain she might have broken something. Now a wet almost drown Chrissy painfully slowly starts to get up but screams and falls again as she realized she stuck her hand in something gooey. Glancing over to what she had put her hand in Chrissy just shakes her head in stupidity.
"Well at least I'm not the drowned rat like you." Chrissy remarks as she kicks the dead creature away from her and rinses off her hand in the pond. She stops for a moment as she realizes that right next to her hand is another skeleton as she's following the skeleton, she notices a small, drenched leather bag and checks it to her surprise she finds 100 gold coins. When she is finally able to stand, she glances around for her sword and shield, luckily, they were close by her. Retrieving them and notices on the wall across from the pond is another skeleton sitting next to a wood chest. She splashes through the water over to the chest.
She checks the skeleton first finds another small, drenched leather pouch this time it contains 2 lock picks and another 100 gold. she uses the lock picks to unlock the chest and find 500 gold coins, petty soul gem a silver ingot, 12 arrows, another sword similar to the last one, and wooden shield that is too big to fit inside of her backpack.
While she is putting the items into the backpack, she notices that nothing is out of place in the pack and that everything is dry. For this she is very thankful for. Before closing the pack, she takes out one of the healing potions and drinks the whole thing. While waiting for it to take effect Chrissy fills up her water flask and the now empty potion bottle with water. After a few minutes she would almost swear that she could feel the bruises dissipating. When she thinks that the potion had done its job, she starts to climb back up the same way she came down. Gripping the wall with her fingers Chrissy edges her way up the ramp she had slid down on inch-by-inch, millimeter by millimeter.
After several painstaking hours later, Chrissy finally makes it to the top and scoots inside the cave collapsing against the wall. She can sense one of the creatures, but it feels like it's a little way away. She takes this time to grab some dried meat, small portion of a loaf of bread, a slice of cheese to make a very dry sandwich. She eats it quickly and drinks all of the water that was in the potion bottle then gets up and pulls out her sword and shield.
Quietly making her way down earthen hallway illuminated by the mushrooms she comes to a slight incline and climbs up. At the top she comes to a small area that is obviously made by humans as there was unique designs in the walls the room itself is in turmoil broken shells and vases littered the floor that was also covered in dry old roots. Chrissy senses one of those creatures up into the right of her but it's still a little ways away. Cold and tired from what had just happened to her, she changes to her bow and three arrows again. Creeping up the incline she reaches a set of three open doors the middle one is covered in roots, but she can see through it. Glancing through she notices one of the creatures standing guard next large set of medieval looking wood doors. The room is lit with a good size stone full of blazing warming stones. Taking careful aim through the roots she lets the arrow fly the creature doesn't even know what hits it as it smacks up against the doors. This time it dies on impact.
"YES." Chrissy yells as she fists the air while running into the room and towards the warming stones. "AHHH!" says in pleasure as she reaches the stones and allows her hands to start warming up. "As much I would like to stay here this place is to open." Chrissy says while glancing around. When ran up to the warmth she had seen a chest. She quickly heads back to it. Four broken lock picks and a good swift kick later she finally manages to get it open. Inside she discovers another shield she cannot use, 100 gold, an iron ingot, two pretty soul gems some kind of potion, and another set of 12 arrows. She then returns to the warmth of the warming stones. Warms herself a little longer than checks the corpse and retrieves her arrow than finds iron ingot along with a pretty soul gem, and a battle axe 2 but it's too big to fit in her backpack. She changes from her bow to her sword and shield again then slowly opens the door to get to a sight that thrills her to no end.
In the next room is a huge tri-dragon cauldron with a blazing warming stone making the room feel like a sauna.
"I'm cold I'm wet I need a little time here to warm up and dry some stuff off. Plus, I don't sense any of those creatures too close." Chrissy says while shrugging off her backpack and cloak. The unique design of the cauldron allows Chrissy to hang her cloak on it without burning it. While her cloak is drying, she checks her bedroll discovers it too is slightly damp. Unrolling it she spreads it out so that it too can hang and dry. Deciding that it's best to error on the side of caution, she strips out of her armor and into the dry clothes she had worn several days back. She places her armor on the various strange hanging pieces of the cauldron so that they can dry without burning. Chrissy keeps her shield and sword ready just in case.
"Let's see, toothbrush, toothpaste, a good bar of scent soap and god I would kill for a hairbrush." Chrissy Mutters off a list of things she could really use and would consider a luxury at this point. The heat help to ease some of the stiffness she is still feeling from her earlier fall. Takes her time to eat and drink while she warms up. While she is waiting Chrissy finds a spot and to her utter embarrassment, she has to squat in the open to relieve herself she thankfully still had a couple of pieces of cloth she had in her backpack to use to clean herself. A little over an hour later all of her stuff is dry so she quickly dresses.
Once dressed and ready Chrissy takes up her sword and shield, she heads down the passageway that was on the opposite side of the door. This passageway is by lit torches and Chrissy is still hoping to find the woman but instead she finds another trap swinging pendulums again. Her senses are warning her of three of the dead. Looking past the pendulums Chrissy notices that the room is lit by both warming rocks and oil jug lanterns. Chrissy army crawls under the pendulums and into the room. Staying on the floor she puts her sword and shield back takes out her bow and 3 arrows. She slowly army crawls just a little bit further into the room when she notices one of the corpses high on a bridge again that has no rails. she takes aim and lets it fly killing it instantly.
"Damn!" Chrissy mutter as this action did not go unnoticed as a corpse that had been resting in a sarcophagus next to the wall across the room from her wakes. She barely has enough time to notch the next arrow and let fly without aiming. Thankfully this one was running towards her and got an arrow up through the bottom of the jaw into the skull killing it instantly. When it falls it almost lands on Chrissy and she has to roll out of the way and into a wall. This action sets her up for a perfect shot at one of the oil lanterns. There is a corpse running down some old wooden stairs towards her she takes aim and waits. As the creature hits the bottom stairs Chrissy lets the arrow fly. The aim is true, and the jar falls the impact starting a surrounding area where oil had dripped to on fire including the corpse. knowing she was not gonna get another shot off Chrissy drops her bow and grabs her sword and shield. Thankfully this corpse was weaker than the last one that she used that trick on and it collapsed as soon as the oil ceramic Lantern hit it.
Picking up her bow she puts it back then cautiously moves forward waiting for the fire to die out. Once the fire is she searches the corpses only to find their weapons, a ax, a sword and an ancient nord mace. The weapons look too old and of little value so she leaves them. Seeing that the room had no other entrance then the stairs and the way she came in Chris he heads for the stairs. At the top of the stairs, she looks to her right and only sees a dead end to her left she notices a large area and walks that way it comes around to the bridge where the first corpse she had shot had been. Fighting her fear Chrissy carefully makes her way across the rail list bridge all the while cussing up a storm at the merchant for letting his sister get kidnapped.
After the bridge she enters a small room that veers to the right and comes to a set of medieval wood double doors. Not sensing thing through it, Chrissie slowly opens them to reveal a long poorly lit hallway with intricate carvings on the walls. She follows it to the end but doesn't find a door. What she does find is something that looks vaguely similar to something that is niggling at the back of her mind. It was a large stone ring inside of each other.
Each ring had a picture of a different animal engraved in it. While examining them she accidentally discovers that if she pushes in just a little, she can turn it and reveal another engraved animal. She remembers reading in the book on how the answer was in the palm of her hands and she realizes it was talking about the claw. Taking out the claw she notices the same images except for in a certain order on the underneath side of it. She then proceeds to match each ring with the markings on the claw. Once they match, she places the claw in the center and turns it. It startles her when the claw pops out onto the floor and the rings starts moving on their own. The rings line up the same set of engraved animals. As the door was retreating into the floor Chrissy is bombarded with two very distinct different feelings. The first one she knew was that of a muffled or sealed corpse and not just any corpse, it was strong. The second feeling she had no idea what it was other than it was not evil just power.
When the door was fulling in the ground torch lights are triggered and a long stair well heading up was reveal. Chrissy picks up the claw and slips it back into her pack.
"Here we go." Chrissy mutters with a tighter grip on her sword and shield as she heads up the stairs.
The further she goes up the more she can hear different things, some were squeaking noises that she doesn't know what it is exactly, she figures it was a rat or mouse. Then there is the obvious sound of at least one waterfall not too far off. Strangely she thinks she hears the wind. Once she reaches the top of the stairwell, she comes to a long hallway then out into a large open cavern part of it is being held up by stalactites and stalagmites while the other is obviously carved by man. Cautiously she starts to enter this open area as the feelings grow stronger and a strange soft chanting noise reaches her ears.
The closer she gets to the soft chanting the more entranced she is by it, so much she screams like a little girl when some bats fly from the ceiling down into her face. After shaking off the fuzzy little creatures she continues forward towards the chanting.
"With all these damn bats I think Dracula is going to show up if he does, I'm beheading him quickly." Chrissy says as she is ducking down as more bats fly from the ceiling startling her so much she raises her shield above her head as a little bit of soft dirt the and pebbles fall from the ceiling.
The fear of having the ceiling collapsing on her causes Chrissy to dodge into the open area that she sees. This open area is lit up by a beam of sunlight coming from an opening caused by water cascading in. The sunlight lights up a huge, engraved stone wall with intricate markings along it. Chrissy is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. The chanting is so entrancing Chrissy doesn't notice the sealed sarcophagus she walks by. The closer she gets the more intense the chanting is and the more she begins to understand it. The chanting wasn't multiple words but just one word. At first, she cannot make out what it is, but as she gets closer it becomes stronger and more intense in her mind. She doesn't quite understand how to say the word, but she knows it means "force". When suddenly the chanting stops and that feeling of the dead nearby bombards her, she grabs up her sword ready. Turning just in time, she sees the lid of the sealed sarcophagus flying up high into the air as one of the corpses is getting out. she knew instantly this one was stronger than the rest.
The creature pulls out one of the biggest claymores she has ever seen and runs towards her. She is sent fly 10 feet back against the wall as the creature calls out the word she had just understood. On instinct Chrissy rolls and dodges out of the way just in time as the claymore crashes down into where she had just been. While on the floor Chrissy does a sweeping motion with her leg connecting with the backs of the knees of the creature knocking it on its ass. Chrissy flips up from the floor bringing her sword into play she thrusts it down at the thrashing creature countless times. The creature screams again that word but this time Chrissy was not in its direct line of fire so all it does is increase the headache she already had from the first time. Chrissy bashes down with her shield at the creatures throat to prevent it from speaking again while she continually stabbed down with her sword into its chest.
The creature finally collapses into its final death and Chrissy drops to the floor off to the side of it breathing heavily. After catching her breath, she gets up and checks the creature. When she touches the sword, he had been carrying chills are sent through her fingers. She figures it's enchanted and decides not to use it but to still take it. She marvels over the fact how easily her backpack accepted the sword. She finds a very strange looking stone with intricate etchings on it. To her it almost looks like a map. Figuring it was of some value she slips it into her backpack too. The last thing she finds is some kind of ingot she has no idea what it is but figures it's a value and places it with the rest of her items in the backpack. She then moves over to a huge metal chest that easily opens. Inside she finds over 500 gold, a pretty gym, a scroll of some kind a battle axe, a sword, some bracers, and a really cool circulate.
After stowing everything in her backpack she notices some stairwells and decides to head up them. At first, she's a little bit nervous because there's no handrails again. At the top she gets a little bit woozy when she slips and looks down. But in this case, it was for her benefit as she notices a chest down below just behind the word wall. She quickly backtracks and slips behind the wall. After she uses up two more lock picks Chrissy angrily slams her hand down on the lid and it pops open.
"Holy crap this is a lot of stuff. I hope the backpack can hold it all." Chrissy says as she hits paydirt. Inside the chest she finds a purple gemstone, 5700 gold coins, Another pretty gem, an iron ingot, and a silver garnet ring. Chrissy quickly loads up her haul and heads back up the stairs. She thinks it some kind of joke because when she reaches the top there is nothing but a cracked solid stone rock with a strange pedestal in front of it. At closer inspection she realizes that it's some type of lever. pulling from her brother's video games she pulls the lever up and twists. The crack in the wall slides up revealing a narrow path for a short distance that empties out onto a ledge.
"What is it with these people and heights?!" Chrissy bellows then slowly and carefully lowers herself to the next area. She finds another chest this time she finds 2200 gold in it. After stowing her loot Chrissy notices the smell of fresh air coming from her left. She turns that way to find a passageway and follows it out.
Outside of bleak falls Barrow
The sun was almost setting when Chrissy walks out and literally jumps back as she almost falls off a cliff. "You have to be freaking kidding me!" Chrissy bellows at the height she was at. She was about to turn around and head back into the cave when a stone slab slides down and closes it off to her.
"Somebody hates me up there." Chrissy yells up into the sky then tries to figure out how she's going to get down. "There looks that area is closer to the ground and has better hand holds."
Chrissy moves to the area and starts to climb down by literally hugging the wall all the way. Several painstaking hours later Chrissy was finally down. The sun was almost down so Chrissy hurried down to the lake in just below her. At first, she doesn't recognize anything until she happens to notice the path across the water as being the one from Helena. Turning to her left Chrissy sets off at a slow pace as it's uneven ground and getting dark. She had only been traveling a few moments when she hears the howls of wolves and two of those creatures come at her. Chrissy is in no mood to deal with their crap she uses her shield to bash it's head in of one and her sword she shoves down the throat of the other killing them both instantly. Chrissy doesn't even bother to gather the hides of the creature's innards, she just keeps on going. She closely follows the water until she can't continue any further that way. She does notice a fisherman across the way. Chrissy tries to call them over but they're too drunk to notice her. So, she turns to left and heads up a little bit once she's over the area that blocked her, she continues in that same direction along the water but higher up. A cold fog sets in and makes it even more difficult for her to see. She literally walks face first into an old building startling an elderly lady who was tending the garden next to it.
"Sorry, I didn't see that." Chrissy apologizes.
"No problem dearie don't mind me I'm just a poor old woman."
"Do you by chance know how much further it is to river run?"
"You are about a good half hour walk it is in that direction." The old woman points out.
"Thank you." Chrissy says as she heads in the direction the old lady had pointed.
River run once again
The sun had been down for well over 2 hours when Chrissy stumbles onto the stone bridge that led to River Run. When she reached the gates, they were closed. Not being in any good mood and tired Chrissy pounds on the gates.
"Who is there at this hour?" A voice from the darkness calls.
"Hey old man you better open these gates or you're gonna end up like the last gate warden!"
"I should have known it was you hold on I'll be right down."
The gate slightly opens and allows Chrissy to enter and is immediately locked behind her which causes her to raise an eyebrow and ask, "Is something going on I should be aware of?"
"Nah just with most of the men up at Helena, we felt it best to keep the gates locked early and until we get some backup here. I thought you were heading for white run."
"I was but I got roped into helping the merchant."
"He convinced you to go after the claw instead of getting help for us?"
"He convinced me his sister had been kidnapped by the same ones that stole his claw. I went to save his sister."
"His sister is here safe and sound."
"I'm going to kill him."
"That will have to wait until morning his shop is locked and he's in bed like most of the town. You look like crap I suggest you do the same. Don't forget you owe me a gold coin."
"Fine, whatever I'm heading for the Inn here's the coin. In the morning I'll head out to White Run after I have words with him."
"Have a goodnight, Las."
"Night." Chrissy mutters as she stomps off to the Inn.
At the rain barrel just outside the Inn Chrissy dunks her whole head in as she doesn't want to know what she had fallen into the times she had fallen out there in the dark while trying to get here. She comes back up for air and washes off her mud caked gauntlets. Afterwards she proceeds to walk into the inn just as the owner was about to close.
"Oh my I am sorry. I was just about to close."
"Can I still get a room?"
"Are your friends with you?" She asks with hope.
"Nope just me. I had a rough day. Can I please get a room?"
"10 gold for a single room."
"I'll make it 20 if you bring me some hot food and make it a lot."
"I think I still have some hot beef stew, a there are a couple of loaves of bread warming by the pit, plus I have a couple of sweet rolls."
"That sounds great. Which room can I use?"
"Why don't you take the one you had last time you were here. After I am done locking up I'll bring some food."
"Thanks." Chrissy says as she heads for the room.
Inside the room Chrissy drops onto the one of the wood chairs next to the small table in the room. Her body was demanding several things at once. Sleep, food and to be clean. Right now, all it was going to get was food than sleep. Chrissy had almost fallen asleep in the chair when Delfine came in with her food and placed it on the table.
"Here you go. Eat up. I also brought you a jug of warm apple cider."
"Thanks. Here you go." Chrissy says as she hands her the gold.
"Just a heads up. Those strangers from the other day are back. You might want to lock your door."
"Thanks. I will." Chrissy says through a mouth full of food.
Once Delfine is gone Chrissy gets up and latches the door then wedges a chair against it just to be sure. When she was satisfied that that was as much as she could do Chrissy sat back down in the other chair and continued to eat. After she has finished eating Chrissy draws her sword and crawls into bed leaving it handy just in case while allowing the sweet bliss of sleep to consume her.