>>5350295>>5350307When this darkness parts again, you find yourself not in some great desert, but once more on hard, slightly-damp stone. Your chest and nose are filled with agonizing pain, and you feel a repeated pressure upon your lower-abdomen, repeated and rhythmic. You cough, hard, tasting that bitter spring-water and your own bile and remnants of your last meal.
“Superior One! Are you alright?”
It is the Degenerate Archer who asks, kneeling next to you and leaning over you. He, too, is soggy and shirtless, clearly having dove into the spring to pull you out when your lungs, muscles, and perception failed you. And at your stomach, trembling hands still resting just below your sternum, is… the female dwarf, Davora? She is gasping for breathing, having clearly exerted herself quiet a bit in the effort to pump water out of you through force of compressions.
You hear Karz, off to one side, scoff, and say something in dwarven-tongue. Davora reddens, shouting something back at him, but quickly stands and steps away from you, turning away and saying nothing. You look between them, and to your worried retinue.
“What did you find?” the Cartographer asks, excitedly, as he reigns in the dwarves’ chains.
“I don’t know,” you admit, frustrated at the truth of it. “Nothing, maybe.”
You look back towards the depths of that spring, and see no lingering glitter or glow at the bottom. Feeling sick even at the sight of the waters which nearly claimed your life, you turn away again.
You are in no shape to travel after your partial-drowning, so you and your allies, slaves, and pets make camp here. A small amount of wood from the surface is ignited with a spark from your Ring of Elemental Command, to make a fire with which to warm and dry your bodies and clothes. You can only hope that this path really IS a shortcut, for this misadventure has cost you many hours.
What do you do?
>Speak with Oluwadamilare about what he did, or didn’t, see in the spring>Attempt to commune with Death about what it was you saw>Examine your moon-sword, and attempt to better understand its magic through mindful meditation>Have Karz sing you a song, to raise the dampened morale of your nervous troops>Speak with Davora, and ask why she saved you>Write-in 