Dollano 12, SP~4,909

Rhonda Floam

Searching

For two days now we’ve been searching for Begkragk and his dwarves and we’ve come up empty-handed.

Yesterday morning, before we started, Donnessling called out in some loud bird-like sounds, and soon after a very large whooshenawa landed at the western end of the shelf where we were camped. He proceeded to have a conversation with this creature, who occasionally would look over at the rest of us, and, in particular, at me.

The conversation lasted less than ten minutes. Then the whooshenawa bounded off the ledge and darted down the side of the mountain to turn at the last moment and then skim the ocean waters below us. Not bad flying!

Donnessling told us that Begkragk and his companions had been spotted heading for a cave west of us. We’ve been trying to find it ever since. Donnessling found it. He knew exactly where it was hidden. Good directions from the bird. Finding it, though, does not get us in. We couldn’t open it. We tried quite a few things, but in the end we had to admit that it was not going to happen.

We stayed the night there, and then the next day, today, we headed to another place where Donnessling thought we could find another entrance higher up in the peaks. By mid-day we did find it, and we even got the door open. We were making good progress, when we reached a turn in the tunnel and Donnessling stopped us. He had a couple of his stone experts check out a section of the wall, and they confirmed to Donnessling that there was a hidden door, but they could tell (I don’t know how) that the tunnel on the other side had collapsed. Another dead end!

Donnessling looked a bit dispirited, which is saying a lot for this guy. After a short break for food, we made our way through a different set of tunnels and, now, here we are outside the mountain, again, just further east of where we were the day before.

We must be up a few thousand feet. I still see the ocean below us, but to the west is something very strange. It looks like a long, thin line of some kind of shimmering white substance just above the horizon. Mossessling noticed what I was looking at and came over. He pointed at it and said, “That is Therol’s Ice Bridge, a wide bridge made of ice that leads from Shawmancer Island to the mainland. No one knows when it was built, though we know it was long ago, perhaps not even during this Era of the world. And, we do not know who built it. However, that is our destination. You see, the Begkragk Dwarf Kingdom lies under the mountains on both sides of the sea below us, and under that sea as well.”

Then, I heard Donnessling come up. “Yes,” he said, “That is our path, Rhonda, but you will not cross the bridge. A ship awaits you on this side of the bridge. It will take you home.”

I tried arguing, but that lasted about two minutes. We were all tired and nobody was their best (I’ll say it that way). To be honest, I was pretty cranky.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings, and where the days after that take us.