Dellias

Gij sat on her ass, staring at the behemoth demon in open shock.  She couldn't think, couldn't reason.  Her mind was a horrified blank.  Everything that she had worked for had led to this.  And it was a sham.  A trick.  She looked at the people she'd brought here.  They struggled against giant shadowy hands that held them tight.  Some cried out in pain or anger.  Some had their mouths covered by the inky fingers.  This was her fault.  These people were going to die.

"It Who Walks Between.  That was..."

"Me." The monster answered, grinning.  An impossible number of jagged teeth bristled from his mouth.  

"It was all a set-up.  The Script, these people... Why?"

Thirteen travelers stopped at a ledge on the side of a cliff.  The pass narrowed here, turning in towards the mountain at a sharp upwards angle.  It was full of rocks and debris.  Gij hopped off of her skeletal raptor.  The other twelve dismounted as well.

"The way from here will be treacherous.  The mounts won't make it in the dark."  Gij adjusted the ribbon holding her thick pink hair in a ponytail.  She slid her simple wooden staff from its bindings on the raptor's back and turned towards the thin mountain pass.

"Will the mounts be safe?" Lorimie asked.  

"As long as they don't jump off the edge, sure." Gij said without looking back.

"Deathknell is practically right below us.  If one of the Forsaken saw us and followed--" Lorimie started again.

Aubrey climbed the rocks on the outer rim of the ogre compound, between the southernmost tower and the cliffside.  He shimmied easily between the shear jagged boulders, and made his way silently to the tower.  He crawled in between the large stone legs, and clung to the side, directly above one of the two ogres guarding the southern pass into the complex.  Dressed in matte blacks and blues, he was just a dark shadow.  As silent as a falling feather, he released his grip on the tower and kicked off of the rock.  He unsheathed a dagger in mid-air, landed on the ogre like a child riding on his large father's shoulders, and deftly slashed the brute's throat.  The other ogre in the pass heard a mumbling gurgle and turned to check on his partner.  He was rewarded with a dagger thrown into his skull.  Aubrey was at the dying ogre's side in a flash, helping him slowly to the ground to avoid a noisy crash.  The elf retrieved his dagger and clicked

It was an unusually dark night in the Blade's Edge Mountains.  The clouds were thick and black overhead, but seemed not to move.  They were low, making it feel as if there was a roof over Daggermaw Canyon.  Good, Fay thought, We can use all the cover we can get.  She, Pelp, and Dekket were perched high on one of the hundreds of large rocky spikes jutting over the deep crag. 

Fay and Dekkett sat on thick, burly gryphons.  The mounts were crouched low, allowing their riders to peer over the spike to the canyon below.  Fay's gryphon Marcus, a dark-golden animal, clucked with irritation.  She scratched his neck, trying to calm him.

Dekkett grunted.  "Marcus's blood is up.  He's ready for a fight."  The dwarf scratched his own gryphon's neck, sensing the same thing from his mount.

It took a surprising amount of courage to knock on the door.  Teague thought he would receive a punch straight to the jaw as soon as the block of iron swung open.  Thankfully, the worst that he received was a sharp look. “What do you want?” Xavior snapped. Teague tried not to let his sly tongue get the best of him. He bit the inside of his cheek as his eyes swept over the other elf. Aye, it was probably a good thing that he had left his gorilla back at camp.

“I want ye to look into my ‘ead.”