One hell of a trip

[Reddie]

Baterru watched his duergar comrades finish up with the pale-dwarf scum - a bunch of hardy fellers, and though he wouldn't have called those gray-skin brothers exactly his friends, they were trustworthy. All duergar were when it came to their kinsmens.

As Bharat, his father, stepped over the few corpses liggering mutilated on the hallway, Baterru gathered himself and greeted the old dwarf formally, noticing how he panted and limped because of that old clanwar wound on his thigh. A miserable sight, a man of that age should be making weapons and pick axes for the younger generations instead of swinging that dreaded great axe of his. In the very same, flawed and ageless item he leaned and grinned revealing a full row of broken, blackened teeth in the middle of a white beard. The grin relaxed his son, as duergar ever were relaxed.
"They whar joos' a huntin' squad, son, ye dinnae hafta take th' fight soo personallee." the older of the two said, grinning his wretched smile. Baterru felt disgust thinking of the beerbelly his father had stuffed inside his full plate.
"Ah dinnae, gra. They joos' make meh seeck."
"Aye, they're suppoos't tae. Filthee lil' elfbreed." said Bharat and spit on the half-missing face of one of the nearby dwarf corpses. Without their darkvision it would have been difficult to tell the difference between the paler dwarvers from their noble, superior underrace.

They sat down on the cavern floor for a quick dinner and drink, leaning to the blood-spalttered wall, using the savagely deformed and mutilated carcasses of their opponents as coffeetables. Quietly the duergar squad enjoyed their mundane dinner.
"What ken ye o' th' whaddya-call-it?" Bharat asked with his low, rasp voice, as if directing his words to the meat ration he was washing down with ale. The priest answered curtly:
"It be sum' kinna tear inna matrix o' the worl' 'tself. Like a hole 'n thin aer."
He hesitated to continue, wondering if the battle-worn warrior understood the following.
"A rift tae oth'r planes."
The old groupleader nodded bluntly, not revealing his emotions or understanding with his face. He dipped his meat ration on the missing half of a dwarf's head, and took a bite of the gore.
"We be not th' onleeuns lookin' fer 't."

They were travelling on the border lands, so called natural caverns, between the duergar, dwarf and drow lands, quietly and alert. Every memeber of the squad had their weapons at handy, the priest had cast true seeing to make sure of not being ambushed by their cowardly rivals. Everyone of the men knew they were far from safe - every faction in the underdark was dying to know what this strange phenomenon was. Lots of strange things had started to happen after its said appearance. Some of the Garrah clan had gone insane, it was told. Their 'superior connection to magic and flows of the world' got the best of the worthless bastards, that is what Baterru thought. Show-offs got themselves killed, such was the law of the Great Below.

Suddenly the priest, Glaran, halted the group with a gesture of hand. His eyes were wide open and his hand had tighty clutched around his staff.
"Whassit, Glaran?" Bharat asked in a low voice.
"We be close, very close. Ah kin kennit."
Bharat nodded and signed that the cleric should move on as should the rest of the group. With a bit more care and a bit more fear the duergar proceeded towards the Harray's Stumble, a great memorial hall for a once raged clanwar. As they drew closer in the darkness of the caverns even the mundane dwarf flesh and sense could feel the eerie vibrations the planar rift emanated. Stronger by every step, it soon rose their skin hair up and sent cold, electric shivers down their backs. When they were near the corriodor to the hall, the feeling was a gut wrenching experience - as if a electric hand was turning their very bowels with a tight grasp while their bodies were hammered with sizzling, cold spit. The duergar showed no fear, their eyes were open and wary, but the tension that could've alomost been cut with a knife just got their violent side up. That is how they were brought up.

They entered the room after a small break in tight formation, eyes flaring up with excitement, hands tightly gripping their weapons and their breathing steadily whilring to the now electrified air of the Down Under. As they burst through the small cavern opening in the shapy wall of Harray's Stumble, they expected a great, lightning-firing portal or something of the ilk. What they found was a... lake.

The lake was of still water, but every now and then, a small, buzzing lightining bolt sizzled across a few still waves, the surface of what seemed to be black mountain water was dark, elusive and quiet, like a beast willing to launch an attack on the unsuspecting prey. The air in the cavern was breath-taking, it was like swimming in pure energy. It was painful and yet enjoyable. They slowly approached the lake, and their eyes ran around the room and the lake swiftly, looking for movement or something in general, something to kill.
"Halt, brothers." the cleric whispered. He seemed faint and old at the sudden sparks of lightning on the surface of the lake, but his eyes were glittering with interest - he, no, nobody in the world had ever laid eyes on such a sight. He stepped anxiously closer to the water. He looked at it, felt the tension grow the closer he got. He poked the water with his staff. It was thick and glittery, as if molten metal, but cool to the touch.
"It be marvellous, brethren."
"Whatever. Wot th' hell 's it?" Bharat snapped through his teeth.
"It's the rift. Ah'll begin me incantations 'n' research, ye keep 'n eye oot, will ye?" Glaran murmured, unable to hide the overwhelming interest he had on the peculiar rift.

Baterru took the chance to look around and at his comrades. The cave was large as a what, maybe 500 hundred feet to every direction. Most of the floor was covered in this liquid, his father, that [censored] refusing to die, was standing by it with the rest. All the men seemed a bit hypnotized by the lake.

Suddenly his observations were brought to a grinding halt - the cleric let out a surprised shout, and backed away from the lake rapidly, holding his hand. The staff was gone. What was going on?

Before he could expand the thought, the lake exploded into life. With raging wooshes and splashes it began to tremble and bounce, as if an incredible storm was raging on top of it. Great waves of that strange, black mass beat the surroundings. But what he could see before he, like the rest of the duergar, started to flee from the room without any shouts or screams but with haste and even slight panic, was that the lake had started to expand as result of these waves. It was almost like it was reaching for them. As he turned his back to run towards the small cave entrance, the lake began to screech. This inhuman howl was loud enough to strike them stunned in the middle of their hasty escape, a high-pitched screech that struck like a dagger in both ears, whistling, scraming and wailing - it resembled the sound a witch drow had made when they had bruned her alive for laughs.

His vision began to blur as a result of this immense sound that in no time at all rendered him deaf - it faded away as his ears lost their capacity to accept audio. He felt the ground beneath him becoming less stable as the rushing, black matter reached for the fleeing duergar. And he ran as he had never ran, taking everything fom his feet, his armour's weigh was working against him. The cave entrance was right there, he's just make-

he fell down as the black substance caught his leg. It felt indeed like liquid metal with a huge electric charge had he sunk his foot in. He shouted in terror as the substance began to swallow him, crawling up his armoured body and feeling like electrocution mixed with unwoldly cold - he could say nothing, he just yelled as he watched himself and his comrades sink in the almost thinking lake. His father was the only one he saw making it.
"HELP MEH, GRA! HAND TH' AXE!" he screamed to his father only a few feet away from him. He reached out his hand with his last remaining power and time to grab the axe shaft his father would hand him.
What he got was a grim smile with that broken, black teeth row. Bharat formed the word without a sound coming through:
"I spit on your grave, kid."

And then the blackness took over his vision like a thunderblast, and all fell in silent, dreadful darkness.

((That is how my character got here. Hello, I'm Reddie and I'll be staying here for a while, I reckon. I wrote this at the same time I gained the first level to my character, Baterru Gra'bharat. Speaking of which, I'll be heading back IG.))

-Reddie