Snippet #1597210

Pain was the first thing that Dessana was aware of, when she began to wake. Pain such as she had only felt once before, during the instants preceding her collapse. Her blood was not blood in her veins, but fire, burning with the intensity of Helkara’s rage. It was Dethe magic that pulsed through her veins, she knew; the bane of all Clerics. Poison to her.

What creatures had their attackers been, that they were in league with Dethe?

She had no concept of time as she lay there, burning as she had never burned, even when a fire spell had violently misfired during her training. Even fire did not hurt as this did… but gradually, she realized it must have begun to fade. It hurt too much for her to notice the difference, but she did begin to notice other things. The steady drip of water against the stone tile floor on which she lay. The constant breathing and shuffling of many people, gathered into a small space. There was an echo to the place which told her that they were underground, which did not please her in the slightest. She hated caves…

But this place did not have the feel of a cave. The floor was flat and smooth, carefully tiled, though the unpolished stone told her that this was not somewhere people stayed often. A cellar, perhaps, but not outfitted as such. Most cellars did not hold dozens of frightened people.

Slowly, painfully, she forced open her brilliant blue eyes. She was surrounded by bags and boxes and glass jars… yes, it was a cellar. A storage cellar, but looked around she could see that was not its only use. There were massive iron bars, networking throughout the room; rows of cells, and in each cell a handful of prisoners.

Her muscles protested violently as she forced herself to sit up. She had been stripped of her armor, she noted, which did not please her any more than being underground did. Beneath elven mail, one wore very little, as it was smooth and did not chafe against the flesh. She had been left in nothing more than the thin, nearly transparent white gown meant to protect her skin. Her weapons were gone as well.
She noted with pleasure that they had been unable to remove her amulet from her throat. She wondered sadistically how many had died before they gave up on that.

Shaking out her streaming golden hair, Dessana looked around. The others were lying around her, not yet stirring; that was suiting, she supposed. She had been the first to fall, she would be the first to wake. She wondered how long it would take them to wake… they needed to escape this place…

There were no doors on the cell.

Noticing this fact gave her reason to pause, and stare out through the space where the door should have been. What fool kept prisoners without a door…?
And with only a small black cat standing guard?

At least that what it looked like. The creature was curled up neatly by the bottom of the stairs which led out of the cellar. It seemed to be asleep, and indeed it seemed to be no more than a tiny black cat, but Dessana realized that none of the prisoners had run. There were no doors here, and yet the prisoners in the other cells were pressed as close to the back of their cages as they could get, cowering from the sweet, slumbering creature.
Perhaps he was not so much a cat as he seemed?

Nevertheless, they must escape.

With a low groan of pain, Dessana struggled to stand. She made it onto her feet, but collapsed almost instantly as pain overtook her again. The poison in her veins would wear off eventually. She had spent enough time studying Dethe magic to know that. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be debilitating while it still burned. And so she lay in a heap on the wet tile floor, shuddering and trying to figure out a way that she could get through this.

She had to save the prisoners, too. If it were only her it might not be such a problem, but she had her party to consider as well, and then all these men, women, and children who had been captured and brought here. She recognized some of them from Eagleview; the captives who had been taken in the middle of the night, stolen from their beds. She could not leave without them… that was her mission, after all, and as a cleric she must help all those in need whose paths she crossed.
Sometimes she hated that oath she had taken. But this time she had no choice. She was going to need help…
She was going to have to let her guard down, no matter how much it frightened her.

Since she could not stand, Dessana was forced to drag herself across the stone floor to her companions. She was glad that her garment was woven of elven silk; a human’s weave would have torn. As it was, she rather wished there was another woman in the party…

Reaching her party, Dessana reached out and shook Loto’s shoulder.

“Loto,” she rasped, at the last instant remembering what he had said as she blacked out. Her voice came thin and pained; she could hardly force the air through her throat to speak. “Loto, you must wake.”