Vincent had been sitting in his alley, looking at his seeing glass, when he felt a pressence hovering over him. He was hooded and cloaked, so a figure was hard to make out, even when Vincent strained his eyes.

"May I help you?" he asked the... man? He was sure it was male by the height and broad sholdiers. The only two things he could gather from the cloaked shadow. That, and the shiney silver of the blade of a dagger.

"Yes. You can come with me," he said. It was deffinantly male.

"Now, why would I want to do that?" Vincent inquired, glancing at his scrying mirror, and saw that his companions were being stolen away by more cloaked figures. So much for being the one to get them out of trouble. It looked like he was going to join them. "Very well."

Vincent oblingingly put his mirror away in his robes, and slowly stood, using his staff as support. He followed the figure and soon met up with the others at a warehouse. He went ahead and dropped his only weapon, his sword, on the ground. But when it was told that there would be no use of magic, the red druid had to step forward.

"If you would listen to me, I cannot comply to that. My life has been dedicated to magics and it would take an awefull long time to pull out all of my spell trinkets that are full of magic. Lock me up in a cell and throw away the key, if you will. That, or give me a blasted good reason why I should change my mind," he said. "Because if one of your kind are the ones who brought us here, I'd say you owe us at least an explination for so much incovienience you've caused us."

Vincent gave a hard stare to the others of the group, most smelling rather rank. Was he the only one that didn't want to blindly get into something that he didn't necissarily want to get into? Seemed so so far.

~~~~~~~~

Vondell, seeing no other option, had followed the others and their elf guids. Though he tried to keep a little distance between him and the others. They smelled like a sewer. But, that was just as well since they had gone through a sewer to get in here.

After a moment of chewing the she-elf's words, and getting a long look at her, he dropped his triple bladed dagger on the ground, as well as his quiver of arrows and simple bow. Trust and justice had long seized to exist in this world? That held more meaning than the actual words. So, there was somthing wrong in this world, and help was needed... that was painfully obvious, even with the part stating that secrecy was needed.

So, maybe it had something to do with the fact that the surrounding guards were all elves, and that this she-elf was held in high importance. What ever it was, Von was sure they'd find out soon enough. And to hopefully help the matter along, the bard kept quiet.

He tried to keep his attention on the matters at hand, but his eyes were drawn to a high window, where a man, on some sort of disk, flew through the window. And right behind him dashed in Nelnya in a flurry of gold. The little cat-sized dragon landed on Von's shoulder, rapping her tail around his neck tightly, and hiding her head in his hair. She gave a worried cheep and fell silent, feeling the bit of tension in the room...

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

Blue eyes flared. The she-elf whirled on Vincent, her hand halfway shooting up as though to strike him down. "You will heed my words, human filth, or you may remain here and go crawling to the armored pigs who call themselves guards, and they will show you no mercy." She pinned her glare on Jate. "And you. Don't you dare speak to me like the noble brat you are because we elves do not grovel before human princes any more than - "

"Enough!" Commander Telune seized her shoulder, but released it at another glare. He stepped back. A muscle bulged in his jaw. "Your sword."

"Their crossbows." Ryairon had retrieved her weapon. She didn't lower it. Neither did the elven soldiers slacken their crossbows. They had fanned out along the walls of the warehouse, their bolts leveled. She threw a glance at them, then locked her own gaze with Telune's. "You don't like us. It's mutual. But we have something that you need, else you would have spared yourself the trouble." She hesitated. Commander Telune was a warrior, a leader of men. Desperate and hardened, perhaps, but still she had to believe... "Your word. I want your word that we will not be harmed."

The gaze was returned. Unblinkingly. Unflinchingly. "Very well. You have my word. An accord, if you prefer." He smiled thinly at Raign, then pivoted and wove through the piles of crates toward the far corner of the warehouse. "However, the no-magic zone still stands. You've come too far to turn back. Leave, and we will be forced to kill you. Come, and all of your questions shall be answered." His hand rested on the peeling wall. Elven words flowed like water from his lips. Slowly, with a grating thud that shook the floor, a panel slid back. Darkness beckoned beyond the threshold.

He turned to face them one last time. Or, more specifically, face Kayne. "Sorry, but raining down hell is not an option. We elves already live there."

And he vanished into the shadows of the tunnel.

Ryairon sheathed her sword and rested it upon the lid of the nearest barrel. Her fingers lingered on the jeweled hilt. A single step away from her weapon, like the rolling over of a dog at its master's feet, and she had placed herself utterly at their mercy. What if the elves - She stopped herself. Unbidden, her father's voice raked her mind. Disappointment - he was disappointed in her. Her hesitation. Her apprehension. Fear makes fools of us all. Someday, the world will be watching. What will they see? A woman, or a queen?

Watching. The cloaked warriors. The she-elf. Her companions themselves. All watching. Observing her impotence. Judging her helplessness, her perfect nakedness without sword or command. Human filth, indeed. She clenched her teeth and strode into the tunnel.

The passageway didn't stretch far. It plunged down, down into murky gloom, and Ryairon had to feel her way along the smooth walls for fifty paces perhaps, before it opened into a cavern lit by torches. Pillars of stalactites and stalagmites cast long shadows on the damp ground. Somewhere to the side, she discerned the drip-drip of water.

"Commander." The word bounced around the chamber a dozen times - commandercommandercommander. The she-elf waited for the echoes to die away before finishing her sentence in elven. The command brooked no argument. She started toward another passageway shooting off from the main cavern.

Telune hung back. "Wait here. My men and I must tend to our wounded. In the adjacent chamber to your left you will find a stream fit for bathing. Use it. Please. Await my return."

They departed, every last one of them, leaving their captive guests alone in the torchlit cavern. Folly? Somehow, Ryairon doubted it. This domain belonged to the elves. There was nowhere to escape, no place to go except... Clean water. A bath. What a wonderful proposition. But first... she glanced at Jeniya and Vincent. "No magic?"

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Vincent stood tall still even with the elf's threat.
"I just do not with to go on without knowing what I'm getting in to," he said, but his words obviously were not heard.

He cursed under his breath, and mentally went through the trinkets on his body. None of them at the moment were spelled. He had even ended the scrying spell on his mirror earlier. And the spell on amulet he had lent Merrin for transelation had worn off now. So if this place didn't permit magic, then it wouldn't make any of his trinkets drain Vincent completely.

So, he followed the elf down the corridor into the cavern. They offered a bath, and Vincent knew that the majority of the group really needed it by their smell. Once left alone, he tried a small flame spell. Nothing happened.

When the girl, Ryairon, asked him, the druid just shook his head.
"No magic," he said. "At least so far they've kept their word."

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

The black water was still, glassily reflecting the torch flames, but Alanna had no qualms about walking directly in. There wasn't much to do in the way of preparation; her footwear had been lost on the island, and there wasn't much left of her shirt to take off. Her pants had escaped the abuse, fortunately, but they'd also been fermenting in sewer slime, and needed a wash just as much as the rest of her.

The water, spring-fed and ice-cold, stopped her dead after that first step; she gritted her teeth and plunged in whole. Probably limestone, the bottom of the subterranean pool deepened like a bowl. Alanna stood up at the center, water streaming from her hair, then realized that it felt warmer to be completely immersed.

So. She started to rub the grime off of her ankles. The little group was under guard. She was under guard. Again.

She could really make a career out of needing to be watched. It had been a few years ago; she'd been twenty-two, fresh out of grad school, waving a master's degree and hired by the government to work on the Freya program: the much-publicized maglev mass transit system that would finally make expensive travel a thing of the past. Freya, like its Norse goddess namesake, was a beautiful concept, but the bureaucracy that oversaw it was ponderous and unreceptive to innovation. It didn't take too kindly to the several hundred program engineers who, on their own time, developed their own version. Mischeivously, they called it Loki. It was cheaper, faster, and could be implemented more rapidly.

Her manager had been the first to introduce it to Alanna, but the decision to take it to heart had been all hers. She became one of 'the underground', as they were half-seriously termed, working on Freya during the day, on Loki through the night, and then coming in, red-eyed and clutching a coffee mug, to work to do it all over again.

No action could be taken against them. It was their project, on their time, with their tools. The government released study after study of Loki's impracticality, though, until the only thing left to do was to actually build a portion of the system. It would be extremely difficult to argue with an actual maglev track declaring steely victory.

They chose Siberia for its remoteness and harshness. If Loki could be built there, it could be built anywhere. Alanna took her accumulated vacation time and spent weeks laboring, in wool and furs, on 'Project Underground Railroad'. It was freezing and utterly inhospitable, but the cameraderie was unparalled, and spirits were kept high as kilometer after kilometer of guiderail was laid.

And then the raid happened. In the wee hours of the extended Arctic night, they were roused from their cots, already handcuffed, and flown back to civilization, charged with mishandling of public property.

And within a month, they had also offered Alanna a job.

The logic was easy to follow.They wanted to keep an eye on her, yet keep her overactive mind occupied. They wanted to make sure she wouldn't cause 'trouble' again. What better way to do it than to offer her a job that, technically, didn't exist, in a place that, officially, didn't exist?

Which was how Alanna Yeh ended up in the lunar CSEA (Chronometric Systems Engineering and Analysis) lab, the control chief of an honest-to-goodness wormhole generator.

And which, incidentally, was how she had ended up here. Being watched. Again.

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

Jeniya sighed and agreed, "No magic."

She then casually sniffed her robe sleeve and nearly retched. She really did stink. Her heart nearly danced in her chest at the mention of a bath. Just exactly what she needed. A nice warm bath to get all this filth of her. She looked around her, making sure no one noticed the small outburst of emotion that came from her. She quickly calmed herself down and breathed slowly.

_________________

I was cured all right.

"Hmh, the elf wasn`t kidding at all then, no wonder my spell wore off so suddenly... and I had thought my god had abandoned me..."

Xarw stated with a dry tone and grinned as he emerged from the shadows of the room, where he had barely managed to hide from the sharp elven eyes just in time. It was true he had managed to enter and follow them trough the power of his god, but after all his own skills in stealth were not to be overlooked. He had spent centuries sneaking from one shadow to the next, avoiding guards and stabbing them silently to death.

However once the elves would return they might not find it so amusing when the group would have gained an addition, especially an elf with dark skin. certainly it might be unheard of in this world thus his exotic appearance might invoke fear yet intrigue in the elves of this world, unbeknown of the truth. Xarw examined the space they were in and then gazed at the others as, if only now noticing their presence and cheerfully waved his hand at them.

"Tough luck, looks like I can`t help either tough I had planned on making a few silent kills to ensure our escape."

He said with a disappointed yet ponderous voice and disregarded the suspicious glances pointed towards him by smiling innocently behind his mask.

_________________

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!

Kira had given up on Physics a few years ago when she discovered her fire power, and she had just given up on sanity a few minutes ago with the whole world surrounding her.

However, from the offer of a bath, Kira was at no place to refuse. She was thinking and complaining, inwardly, at how disgusting she was for the past hour with a multitude of groans and grimances, and, right after Alanna, Kira dove right in to the frigid sparkling water.

Inhaling deeply was the initial reaction of Kira. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her teech clenched together as she took in the heart-stopping pain of the cold water. "&($&!" she cursed aloud once she realized her fire power didn't work, and it was immediately followed by a collasping hand over her mouth with a trinkle of red blush from embarrassment flushing through her cheeks and she wondered how many people here actually understood what she said.

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<center>

The whispering footfalls of the elves - their captors - had faded away, and Ryairon's first impulse was to race back up the tunnel and try the door - try anything that would get them out of here.

She lurched forward, then stopped herself. Inhaled. Exhaled. Quelled her panic.

Another inhalation drew an interesting scent to her nostrils. Her clothes, stiff with grime, cut into her skin. Splashes from the adjacent chamber bounced off the walls, and she followed the sound, nailing her gaze straight ahead. *beep* elves. If ever she met an elf who wasn't manipulative, who didn't think the earth and all the cretins upon it lived to serve them as footstools...

Her boots flopped to the ground, followed by the thump of her leather jerkin. She hoped she had time to dunk them and air them, or the mildew would be an ugly sight. Clad only in her tunic and leggings, she waded into the stream. The water sloshed around her waist, its icy needles penetrating the thin fabric of her shirt. She loosed her braid to let fall a curtain of dark hair, then dove under. Cold washed over her, freezing her sweat and stabbing through her pores. She emerged feeling worlds better.

One of her companions was splashing a few feet away. Slim. Black hair. Exotic but human. "Alanna, is it?" she said. Her voice echoed. She dropped it lower. "So are the elves in your world idiots too?"

_________________

Alanna started slightly, setting up a series of ripples in the glinting black pool as she realized that she was being spoken too. "Elves?" Elves in her world? "Ah, elves. No. We don't have them." She considered, teeth clenched against the cold, keeping her sentences short. "Other aliens, yes, but no elves, so I can't speak as to their IQ level." She worked her arms vigorously back and forth in the water, trying to get her blood flowing and warm up.

"I take it you're being sarcastic, anyway." The engineer's hand poked up out of the water. "I'm Alanna - oh, wait, you already know that. Sorry. Don't think I caught your name, though."

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>