Starting Date and Time: Ceruleo 41st, 300DM

Starting Location: Chartric Forest outside Silent Rise

CS URLs: Cihr'Cten

The thick woodland was full of the sound of creaking trees, the immense boughs kept even the gray overcast light from filtering down to the loamy forest floor. The Ceruleo winds rocked the massive canopy back and forth, leaving the gloomy underbrush cold but spared from the blistering gusts that threatened even more snow.

Tracks of wildlife crisscrossed the open spaces between the trees and down into the rocky caves that occasionally yawned up out of the relatively flat land at random. It was from one of these rocky outcroppings that a sound came, starting small at first but growing slowly.

A massive tree, just as large as one of the great branching behemoths in Silent Rise that cradled homes and businesses in their notches and boughs, dangled at a steep angle quite disparate from the rest of its fellows. The aged and gnarled wood seemed grayish and friable when the others seemed dark and cold but still sturdy. The victim of termites and woodpeckers, the dying tree groaned and screeched woodenly under the onslaught of winter wind, its branches fracturing and breaking to drop down on the snowy leaf litter below.

Finally, as its slow descent towards the ground reached the point of no return, a fierce snap like a fracturing dragon bone echoed through the woods like a thunderclap, the sound followed by a slow, thunderous crashing. The main tap root had finally broken. Roots cracked and snapped, pulling up a nearly perfect circular crater of rich earth even as the trunk bounced and jolted off the upright shapes of its neighbors and slammed into the earth with an echoing boom.

The silence that followed was almost uncaring in its normalcy as snow filtered through the bright hole in the dappled ceiling, coming to rest mournfully on the great log. Within the gnarled roots, a small object tumbled free. A small carved sphere of moss-green jade that emanated a faint magic as it rested in front of a black hole leading down into the blackness, framed but the tender roots of the tree.

Even from far off, the cracks and groans of the falling tree echoed almost as loudly as it first did. In the resuming silence, a figure looked up from the brush they were travelling through. Their green, scaly skin made them seem unfit for the cold, yet they didn't seem to notice. Their eyes, blacks where the whites should be, and pupils standing out with an eerie red glow, traveled in the direction of the sound's origin.

They make a noise of contemplation as they consider going towards the source. Perhaps there might be something of interest there? Then, though, they disregarded it, returning their mind to the task at hand. Falling trees aren't all that special in the forest, anyway. They continued their path through the brush, when suddenly, they felt a strange sensation.

A tingling notion in the back of their skull. Faint, but still there. This wasn't the first time they had this sensation, but they still didn't quite understand what it meant. Although, with a second look towards the direction of the fallen tree, their mind came to a conclusion, and they changed direction.

As their form fully broke through the brush, their snakelike lower half slowly brought them forward, the motions of it lacking the crunching sounds followed by footsteps. They kept their head low as they continued to slither forward, attempting to not attract the attention of the more malicious wildlife. Of course, they didn't come into these woods unarmed. Only a fool would do such a thing. But still, the thought of confrontation worried them.

After what felt like an eternity of slow going, they came across the fallen tree. Their eyes flickered across the scene, from the tree, to the sphere, to the dark opening that was once hidden. As the tingling in the back of their head seemed to intensify, they finally broke their own silence.

"Well, what do we have here?" They asked the emptiness around them, reaching down and picking up the jade sphere, their eyes remaining fixed into the blackness within the doorway.

The quiet sounds of the sleeping winter forest resumed nonchalantly as the scaled creature approached the yawning hole. The scent of disturbed earth drifted up to their nostrils as the slightly warmer air escaped up into the light.

There was no challenge from the blackness when Cihr'Cten's palm closed around the stone, but for a brief moment the darkness melted away, a path revealed down into the depths. Something wrought by skilled and dedicated hands. Something that was secret. Revealed to his mind like a landscape illuminated by a single bolt of lightning and then cast once again into obscurity, startling to observe and difficult to recollect once it was gone. One thing they could be certain about was that this collapsed hole was all that was left of the true entrance, from back in a time before the great tree had sprouted.

The orb itself was slightly too large for the Israiph to close their hand around, like a grapefruit. The lingering traces of magic did not prevent the orb from being as icy cold as the snowy forest around them, and it would quickly become uncomfortable in their hand if they did not tuck it away. No action would recreate the brief vision, but the sense that the item was magical could be readily felt.

Upon closer inspection, it would turn out that while the ball of jade was smooth and shiny, though dirty from being caught in the roots of a tree all this time, there were fine stylized engravings all over the surface in a repeating pattern of triangles and circles.

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