Simurg had a pondering neck as he threw his head from side to side, thus far he had been truthful yet it might get too troublesome, if he would tell the rest of his tale. The order would not easily forget him and they had not, many of their higher ranking members still kept an eye out for his race not to mention him ecspecially.

"It is my home and I have lived here for many years, how many I cannot remember since I arrived here and began living in the shapes of animals my sense of time vanished. I might be a few years older since I came here or I might as well be 50 years older, but the return to civilization has crossed my mind though once in a while..."

He answer again truthfully as he still tried to get a comfortable feeling in his original form as he had not used it in a while.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Yrudit shot a quietly admonishing look at Miniya - did she have to make it so obvious? Often underestimation was an asset in adversaries, and though he couldn't yet dub this shapeshifter a solid adversary, they were at the most dangerous stage of their journey and hunted by all manner of shadows.

"I truly apologize, but I am afraid you will have to submit to a mind probe," he told the stranger. "If you are a friend then you will understand. We are not in amiable territory."

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(( Oooookkkk... What is happening?))

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You may (or may not) know me elsewhere as Elfpen

((Chill, you guys Catching up is part of life.))

Silvryn could not honestly say she was sorry at all. And really, a mind probe now was quite unnecessary. For the last ten minutes of this discussion she'd been coolly perusing the strange humanoid's mind and knew all she needed to. Or thought she did. But the Princess had learnt from long experience that very few people appreciated knowing that someone had quietly been helping themselves to their inner thoughts, so she replied breezily - "I'll do that, then."

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(Don't ask me..I'm still trying to get my bearings and figure out how to worm my way (back)in.)

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Eccaia watched the exchange curiously, remaining characteristically silent. She eyed the doppelgänger warily, wondering where this would lead. She increased her attention when mind probing was spoke of. The notion certainly made sense and was most likely very necessary, but would this stranger willingly submit to it?

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I'm back!

"Sure why not, I do not mind"

Simurg said with a careless shrug, he could always escape if they managed to find out what he did in the order of the gifted.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Yrudit stepped aside to allow Silvryn into her element. Deciding that he could be of no further use here, he ducked back into the alcove, where the last embers of campfire still burned, and proceeded to find a warm spot to rest his aching legs.

Rest did not come easily, and he hadn't settled down for three minutes when something else caught his eye. And that was the walls of the alcove itself, which belied the mound's smooth exterior appearance. The interior of the mound seemed a conglomerate of dirt and decay. Wondering, he rose back to his feet and experimentally scraped one talon along the uneven surface. The material seemed to crumble in his hand, and he felt something slimy crawl down his scaled arm.

A single writhing worm. Worms lived in rock?

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(Eh... anyone?)

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

((Aha, I KNEW I'd forgotten one))

Silvryn did one more cursory sweep of the gangly humanoid's mental faculties and folded her arms, regarding him with a distinctly unimpressed air. "There. Done."

Without further elaboration she turned her back and strode to the opposite side of camp, resuming her pose upon the outcropping boulder. She seemed almost watching for something, though of course those who knew her well would also know that upon asking what it might be they would receive a scathing glance and a dismissive shrug of her black-cloaked shoulders. This had been her increasing reply to almost everything.

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Tal nodded in acceptance. Why someone would live here for many years, he didn't know, but it wasn't his business. Glancing away from the newcomer, he noticed something--Yrudit was picking at the walls of the mound, frowning oddly. What was happening?

"You have found someting unusual, yes?" he asked when he got closer to the lizardman. It seemed that the Shaman had--he was holding a worm in his hand. A worm in a rock. Very interesting.

"I think, we should look into this, yes?" he said. It wasn't really a question, after all.

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(okay... really behind... I'll try and catch up this weakend when there's no school! *doesn't feel like reading a whole bunch* stairing at the screen is bad for my poor eyes...)

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

[I've read the whole thing.. now I just need to find a way to jump in... hrrmm...]

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"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Simurg walked closer and gazed at what the lizardmand was holding, he hmphed loudly and shrugged.

"What`s so special about that?"

He said with and turned away, he jumped onto a large stone in the rocky terrain and sat on it, he scratched his neck and gazed at them all.

"So what brings the gifted and even the exalted to this desolate backwater?"

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Yrudit snapped an equally sharp glance Simurg's way. His slitted eyes shifted to the desert elf, whose intuition he'd learned to trust over the course of their journey. His gaze shifted back to the worm writhing in his palm, and his frown turned further downward. A worm. An anomaly, nothing more. He really was growing paranoid. After all, phenomena like these occurred often in the Wasteland -

That was before the rock right next to his face exploded in a shower of reeking decay. Leaping back, he reached reflexively inside of him for his Exalted powers - no. Magic was too valuable to be wasted here and now, so close to their destination. Instead his hand shot for his jeweled rapier.

And not a moment too soon, for bursting forth from the aperture in the mound crawled a worm massive in girth. Writhing and spitting greenish acid, it pumped its repulsive segmented body forward, lashing out at the intruders with fangs and acid. Not that ordinary worms possessed fangs or acid.

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"Aw.. sh.."

Simurg cursed under his breath before leaping away from the rock and rolling around in the ground after his leap in order to get farther away from the hideous worm. Fighting did not appeal to him as much as running away from the situation as he could let these gifted and exalted deal with it, but then again if they were whom they claimed they should have no problems. Simurg stepped back quietly only waiting for the real fight to begin as all of these travellers would start killing the worm or if they would at all.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!