I club at it with my unlit torch, focusing on the element of fire as I do so.

2-3 Hours After Noon
'Right Road', Probably Eastward
Raymond swung his torch in self-defense against this plant-like monster that had been trying to sneak up on him. It was an improvement, though, he had been hoping all day to run into a living being. As far as that goes, however, he was really hoping for some one a little more humanoid and much less hostile. He had to aim down a significant amount just to even attack the creature, which was quick enough to fall back from the blow. Unfortunately, it came back just as quickly, and those long woody claws each drew shallow gashes in his hip and abdomen (-1,-1 Ray 5/7). As he looked for a chance to return attack, Ray noticed his body responding just a bit slower, as if it were becoming tired (-1 Str Ray 11(0)).

The obvious direction of continuation lay beyond the large stone doors opposite the door they entered. With a bit of effort, the heavy stone was dragged open, revealing a rather startling sight. As though the roof of the hall had fallen through, the entire corridor was covered in large stone blocks and dirt.

"A dead end?" Owen asked, alarmed. If this was the only exit, how would they get out? Ben had a quick solution to this problem, stepping up onto one of the fallen blocks. His head nearly touched the roof as he attempted to dig through the mound. "We only need to remove a corner at the top, so we can squeeze through."

"If we try to remove a substantial portion, a larger one will likely cave in on us," Galen mutters. Jeremy cast him a slight frown, annoyed with the pessimistic comment regarding their chances. Galen ignored him and examined the fall for a stable location to start digging. While he looked, Ben discovered truth in Galen's words, finally loosening a block which sent a steady stream of broken stones raining down onto him. The shift came accompanied with the unsettling sound of larger blocks moving elsewhere. Ben stopped for a moment, trying to warm up his hands. The earth he was digging in seemed to steal the warmth from his body. "What did I tell you?"

"What other way can we go? This is the first room we've been to where we haven't found any monsters," Owen asked. Then a collective double take took the friends as a question occured to them. Why were there no monsters in this room? How else could they have gotten into the deeper levels behind?

"We should go back, to see if we missed anything," Owen decides.
"Right we should check the other passage we missed earlier, or do you think that is too far?” Ben suggests.
"Wait a moment, consider the laboratory," Galen says quietly, "likely that sort of work is bound to cause gaseous dangers, so you'd think there'd be some sort of ventilation."

They glanced back into the armoury for a second, and agreed to check that idea should there be nothing behind. Down the other passage near the stairs they found that it led only to the corridor that Ben had rejected earlier.

"Now that I think of it..." Jeremy pauses to think, acting out the verb, "Unless these torches are continuously burning, someone must have come down here to set them again. And even if that was so, the hallways would be filled with smoke if there was no sort of ventilation."
Galen speaks up, voicing previous concerns, "Notice that the roof is close enough to touch, in the other room we couldn't see the ceiling where we destroyed the first skeletons," he says, "We should check there."

They followed the hall back to the large room, and with some scouring with their torches, they found that high above their heads there was an alcove that they didn't see the first time. It lay higher off the ground than any of their heads or arms could reach. Ben steps up, "Move out of the way, I'm going to try and jump up." He pulled back from the wall, then took a running jump. As the best sprinter among them, his speed brought him up to an easy jump, and he managed to get a hold of the ledge. He then tried to climb up the ledge but his hands slipped and he came back down to the stone floor. Unfazed, he moved back to try again, leaping with ease to the ledge, but this time managing to pull himself over the top with some flailing.

The alcove turned out to be a long tunnel through the dirt, with no clue as to its origin. It was very cool in the tunnel, and the walls brought about the same unnatural chill when touched. He tells every what he sees, then helps them up each.

(first XP point again! This may feel more like walking from battle to battle I realize. You have escaped the Labrynth- things will only get more difficult from here on out, but you already know that. That is uh... 200 XP each of you, to round off to a nice number.)

I take a breath i am sapped of my strength. It is obvious that I do not have battle prowess and this creature does. I still my mind, and then in hopes, I reach into the inner realms of my mind to draw upon my philosophies of time.
What is time? A Force in continual progression, marked by periods such as past, present and future.
Is it relative? To an extent, yes. Today is tomorrow's yesterday.
where does time go?
The questions keep popping in my head in the split second I have, and with that I use all the focus I can to pry this power from my head and into the material plane; and to be specific, onto the shambling mound of vegetation before me.

Raymond almost unconsciously unlocks within his mind the power of philosopy. Time is relative, so why can't the twig beast merely fall relatively slow when moving. Mental energy wells up in his mind, ready to be unleashed. Ray focuses this energy, realizing too late that he has left himself open for attack. He quickly decides to ignore the claw and bare the pain in favour of concentrating on unleashing this energy. Luck favoured Ray today, though, and the monster's claw swung fruitlessly short of its mark.

The air suddenly filled with a low sound, barely audible at first, escalating within a second into a sound akin to a jet engine powering down. The air around the monster suddenly blurred slightly with a shimmering energy. Without really understanding the process that occured, Raymond recognised that his power had manifested and should now hold back the monster. Without a second thought, he made haste back to the road, pursued by the monster. His quick get away was facilitated by the fact that the creature found great difficulty stuggling to cover any distance after him.

(Start off with a quick items check for those of us who can't remember what we're holding: Ben has in one hand a battleaxe, the other holding a torch- his pocket carries a potion. Jeremy wields a torch only, pocketed potion inclusive. Ian carries his bone club in one hand and (whoops, forgot) has a torch in the other, since the beginning of the game ^-^;. Owen is carrying both spellbooks and is the only one in the party that goes potionless. Galen is carrying everything else which is to say: Five weapons rusted to their sheaths, a bone club in his hand and the last potion.)

They walked single file through the tunnel in the cold earth. By unspoken consent, no one said anything as they made this journey through the cool passage. They also quickly found that it was best not to touch the walls due to the heat-stealling chill about the earth of this place.

At one point, they passed on their right an area where the wall appeared disturbed as though it had fallen outwards. Without anyway to tell what occured, the group continued without comment, though not without a slight pick up of pace. The tunnel narrowed out at another point and veered right, to where it met its end, arriving in what appeared to be another room of the same ruins. The exit of the tunnel occupies where the corner of the room would have been, next to a large door. With the illuminatory effort of a few torches, they find that the double doors are marked with many runes, and sport a series of crack that converge at the center. Whatever tried to force them open obviously did not get through them, though the tunnel seemed proof enough that they eventually succeeded.
"Be wary, there may be enemies relatively close by." Galen cautions.

At the opposite end of the room in the dimness of the torch's glow lay an alcove that begins a spiral staircase. Being an obvious escape, in contrast to the rubble filled hall that barred them previously, they ascended the steps cautiously. Curiously, they rose counter-clockwise rather than the preferred clockwise rising spirals favoured to defend castles. But then, between above and below in this instance, the potential attackers of the ruins when they were habited would be coming from above.

The room at the top of the stairs was small and square, seemingly for the sole purpose of the staircase. The door to the room stood ajar, revealing a corridor beyond it. This short hall led to a large room that was already lit by its own power. The floor of the grand room was filled with rubble and cracks, as though it had begun to break through to below. In addition to that, pieces of the ceiling had come crashing down into the area. As the group comes to the entrance of the room they realize four enemies standing at the opposite end, nearly missed in their perfect stillness.

Since people seem to have no end of problems with not knowing initiative order, I'll see how it happens this way.
25-Skeletons
21-Jeremy
19-Owen
17-Galen
15-Ian
10-Ben

The skeletons mobilize quickly, but have difficulty moving across the large chunks of debris covering the floor. They just make it to the leaders Ben and Jeremy when they are about ready to mount their counter attack. Though there was the problem of being suddenly trapped. The skeletons capped the bottleneck of the hallway, leaving Ben and Jeremy on the front lines alone. Behind them neither Ian nor Galen could make any attacks that didn't involve throwing something, and Owen fell back to the absolute rear.

Galen blankly stares at the oncoming skeletons. There is primarily no course of action he can take at this time, and so he stares blankly into the 'eyes' of one of the skeletons, his eyes misting over as he thinks.

He lets go, feeling his soul's feelings. Among them he finds anger and hatred; that would be Darkside. It exists, but it isn't right. Galen holds his hands up to around the vague location of his heart, opened and cupped, as though they were holding an orb of some kind. Regardless of whether it occurs in reality or not, Galen closes his eyes and visualizes the anger and hatred being drawn to that area between his hands, into an orb of dark emotion. He imagines it being contracted into a physical form, and closes his hands as it does so. A blood red crystal, that is what he imagines. Then, as he grasps it, he imagines one of the magic circles he had made being etched into the face of the crystal, glowing a contrasting royal blue upon its red surface. When that's done, he imagines it as a pendant he is wearing, and lets his hands down to his sides.

It is a seal, a mental one at that, and it is only as strong as his will, but it is better than nothing. Hatred and anger are such useless emotions. Galen thinks, In the end, they only serve to make things worse. They just shouldn't exist.

My body jerked when I realized there were more monsters in this room. I already knew, as I had during the last battle, that I wouldn't be able to do much to help. Standing in the back, I was at least safe for now from attack, but that couldn't have been further from what I wanted. Before I was very preoccupied with the pain in my stomach, but now that the wound was gone - without a trace no less - I wanted to visit destruction against the monsters.

My first true glimpse that reality had been left behind those stone double doors came to me with a malicious, yellow grin and a sudden pain in my stomach. I had fallen over quite immediately, it was a survival instinct to get out of the way of danger and was also a weakness of mine; I probably wouldn't stand well as a warrior the way Ben was. Though with magic on my side, I could overcome. I also had another asset at hand- I could shout hella loud.

"Push them back! We're trapped in this hall!" I waited and watched the battle. When my chance came, I would take it without hesitation.

(Note to players, I think I'll be using 1st person for my own posts and reserve third person for mastering the game and such.)

Though he wasn't expecting more enemies to come at them, he was certainly ready to fight them. This time he would make sure that no one else was hurt. Ben pushed towards the skeletons and with a quick swing of his arm he added power as he tried to break the skull of the skeleton standing in front of his friend Jeremy. (Power Attack) His goal was to draw its attention to him so that it wouldn't try to take a swing at his friend.

"Go back to where you came from you abominations!" he yelled out menacingly.

He was sure that undead such as these were immune to taunts and such, but he had to give it a try anyways.

"Damn whoever keeps making these!" Jeremy curses, very annoyed with the limitless supply of undead foes. As he moves towards the skeletons he tries to think of a strategy he could use against them. Unfortunately the skeletons advance upon him before he can take a step and he decides to just bash it over the head with his torch.

Fighting bone with fire, Jeremy lashed out with his torch. Ghostly pinpoints tracked the swing and held just out of the arc as it rushed before the body. The skeleton began to move in with its sharp finger bones, woe to those who watched but could do nothing from behind.

Then with a cry, Ben's axe appeared to split the time-worn skull. The blow was more powerful than the effect would suggest, yet the bone still shattered, the force leaving the remainder of the body flying back.

However, no sooner had Ben destroyed the skeleton than the one next to it moved into place. It's right arm swung toward Jeremy, whose reflexes helped him dodge out of the way. At the same time, the skeleton in front of Ben, previously ignored, took advantage of Ben's distraction. Ben, though, wasn't as entirely unprepared for the assault as it seemed, not as though the mindless functions of the skeleton could interperet that. Ben leapt away from the first slash, but couldn't dodge the nearly instant second claw. It dug into his ribcage, just under his right arm and tore visciously through flesh and muscle [-5 Ben 7/15].

Owen saw a chance, but weaponless he took a different tact and didn't leap into the path of the skeleton that now held the place. He cast about for items which could be used to invoke skeletal destruction. Though his search proved pretty much vain, as the nearest free weapon in the form of large, heavy stones lay in the rubble filled room beyond their attackers.

After felling his first opponent, Ben turns to the skeleton that had managed to get a hit on him. With fury, he swings his axe at its head to finish off the battle for good. He was glad he was able to protect his friends from harm this time and planned to keep it that way until they could protect themselves from harm.

Destruction of one side only unbalances the scale. Inevitably, it would have to sway back to the other, something that side would see as misfortune. The four-sided scale sways back and forth, never favouring a single quadrant, like a ship on the sea of time. It is impossible to destroy the scale. It is a fact, yet it is so easily forgotten. From forgetting this, stories come forth where one or more sides of the scale are 'destroyed forever', either to bring bliss or endless malevolence to the universe.

In the end, it wouldn't be either, for it would be stagnant. Unbalanced forever, the scale breaks and disappears, and without anything disturbing its surface, the ocean of time stills and becomes flat. Stagnancy. The Eternal War begins and ends countless lives, yet it is also part of what defines life... Well, I'll work on that novel later. Galen decides.

There is another novel too, that needed to be written down... yet where is the quills and books and ink to write when you want to? The Diamond Maker... Galen names, writing the title down in the depths of his complicated mind.

And even as skeletons strike and maul at his companions, who strike and smash them in turn, Galen is bored.

If I could have used that opening, I need an other opening, so I can help push them back by jumping in, I just have to wait for another. Ian waited and looked for another opportunity to jump into action, for he planed to plant himself in the next opening and spring for an attack.

I decide to continue in the direction i was going down the road. after covering enough distance thta I believe that I have lost the creature for good, I set myself up beside a tree along the road and prepare for slumber. I am fatigued from todays encounters. my mind is at a loss from fear and confussion, and I hope that the rest will clear my mind, and allow me to awaken to my true life at home...