Smoke Signals

[Rattrap]

Devil's Ridge.

It was aptly named - it was the ideal staging point for any of the more intelligent malicious entities, but even served as a waypoint for many of the less directed creatures that mad their way north.

On this day, the sky was dark and thick with stormy cloud cover. The cause was standing on a high, flat ridge - a beautiful elven individual with flowing black hair and a staff that looked more like a traveler's walking stick than any sort of wizard's instrument. Stella Luna didn't look much like a sorceress at all, though; except, perhaps, the lightning bolts flying from her fingertips.

Her target was, on the other hand, much more sinister looking. The man was the epitome of unhealthyness; sunken eyes, pronounced, fleshless cheeks. The bald sorcerer's black staff was straight and pointed, looking much more a weapon of destruction. Wearing tight-fitting crimon robes, the wizard fit the stereotype much closer to home. Neimad was his name, though no one in Myrken Wood had encountered him any longer than it took for him to help Archimedes, so he had thus remained nameless.

The lightning bolt was thwarted, simply disappating on connecting with the black staff. The old man laughed - a diseased, dead noise. "Come now! Your petty tricks won't harm me. Now, please, I must be off. Something has returned to that tavern in Myrken Wood...I'm sure you felt it, no?"

The magicry used by Kerrak and Coran would have been lost on Neimad had he not left energy in the Broken Dagger from his last encounter, and that energy echoed back to him from the events of last night. Like the echo-locations of a bat, the echo left him with strange images - not of the men, but of It. Neimad was intrigued, but interrupted. "Goodbye, miss. Your beauty makes this all the more satisfying."

The ground beneath Stella Luna opened up and pressed upwards, reaching to consume the sorceress while the dirt formed human-like apendages in much greater sizes. Neimad wasted no time leaving the scene, heading toward Myrken Wood.

Behind him, in Myrken's southern sky, a furious thunderstorm raged.