Thar Shaddin

Lo'en narrowed her eyes, partially out of need to shield them from the dirt and began her long, leggy stride down the wide path. She had hardly gone a few minutes when the abrupt shift in Justinaryn's flight path caused her to stop and look up. Clearly displaying signs that he had sighted something, the half-elf watched as he dove, moving marvellously through the air with all the grace of an avian hunter. Scowling, remembering his personality clashing with his noble appearance, Lo'en began to move again. He was set on killing whatever he just dove after! The path began to narrow as she sprinted further south, the bend in the ravine just ahead. His sharp cry of frustration, one she could recognize now, rang through the thick, cold morning air.

Ducking roots and brush which were starting to show through on her side of the canyon, she made her way into the elbow. Grey eyes widened at her luck as the goat, bleating in pain, had appeared on a precarious footpath on the other side of the ravine. It was breathing heavily, wide eyed from its narrow escape, bloody flanks heaving. As it caught sight of Lo'en, it threw up its head and started running again, deeper into the ravine. Given the overhang on the other side, Lo'en doubted Justinaryn' had been able to follow it and looked up to see if he would come down onto her side, where the path was much more tenable for the larger beast to find a foothold. She was smirking to herself at her mental picture of the griffin clinging to the red clay sides with his claws and beak. With or without him, she would follow their prize and started to push deeper into the ravine that seemed to be turning into some kind of brokenly covered tunnel.

After losing sight of his target, the griffin had two obvious choices. He could climb again and hope to find the goat again, or he could give up and return to Lo'en in shame. Unfortunately for him, catching an animal that had enough time to crawl into a hiding spot was not his domain. He knew how to take a target by surprise with rapidity and efficiency, but not how to ferret one out of a hole. When hunting for a meal, if one got away as this goat just had, he always moved on to find an easier target.

So return to Lo'en he did, perhaps lucky that he could hide his shame behind that beak of his. She was already on the move and as he thudded to the ground beside her, it became apparent that she knew where the goat had gotten off to.

"This ravine is a terrible place to catch prey," he said, unable to proceed without justifying himself to her.

Keeping pace with her, chin held high and refusing to look at the smirk she had on, he squinted into the darkened tunnel ahead. Unable to see clearly inside past the obstruction of the rocks and a corner in the tunnel, he stopped where he was, letting her go on ahead if she wanted.

"I dislike the look of this place..."

"Ah, don't be such a chicken head," Lo'en laughed good-naturedly as she continued further in, without looking back. The rasping voice was a bit of a surprise, figuring that the griffin must have had to swallow some of his enormous pride to land next to her and venture inward after the goat. "I'm actually quite impressed you aren't choking," she snorted, not caring to elaborate her statement by explaining her thoughts.

Instead, she walked along the narrowing path, choosing her footing carefully as it started to slope downward again and loose gravel had begun to make the trail a little more treacherous. Ahead, she could hear the sounds of the goat's hooves slowly growing more distant, a slight muffled sound against the clay walled tunnel. An occasional bleat made its way back, one which the half-elven goat herder recognized as pain.

As the two made their way eastward, the overhang alternately closed and opened above them, allowing just enough light to make Lo'en's eyes hurt from straining. She had no material for a torch, however, and resigned herself to hoping it wouldn't completely encase them in a tunnel ahead. After ten minutes of making steady progress down the ravine, their path came to an abrupt end. Fortunately, the other side had progressively been getting closer and was now inside of Lo'en's jumping range. The opposite side's path was barely wide enough for the half-elf's feet, with roots sticking through at precariously annoying places. Their side fell off to the bottom of the ravine, a 6 meter drop to a wide floor, perhaps once filled with water, but now only a dry, rocky bed. Pale light trickled through the wide opening overhead.

Lo'en was in the middle of turning to Justinaryn' when movement caught her eye. She turned quickly back in time to catch the flick of the goat's tail disappear on the other side of the path. It must curve downward, maybe even goes to the bottom of this ravine, she thought quickly, frowning slightly as she felt obliged to lose time chasing the goat in order to discuss the options with her feathered friend.

"There should be enough room for you to float to the floor, while I'll follow along that path," the grey-eyed half-elf spoke in a low, muted tone as she slung her bow across her body and checked the security of her quiver at her side. She shifted it towards her back- the far side ledge would require her to inch along pressed up against the side and she needed the slim quiver out of her way. "Don't look so dismayed... I'm sure breakfast is waiting for us right around the corner."

Justinaryn' hated to be called a chicken head. Chickens were stupid, pathetic animals bred for food and tossed around between humans as an insult representative of cowardice. It irked him that there was no equivalent comparison that he could make of her and, perhaps, somewhere in the back of his mind, he was self-conscious of looking like one of those birds.

She said something about choking that he didn't understand. Maybe chickens choked a lot; he didn't know. But Justinaryn' didn't explain, and he didn't ask. She was too busy making her way to the cave, and he was too busy trying to avoid exactly that.

"You two leggers may like your caves but I am not going to go crawling around in there for one goat." He stated arrogantly, more for himself than for her. She wasn't going to listen to him and he knew it.

He did inevitably follow, but not immediately behind her. Nor did he follow her suggestion and float to the floor. Instead, he remained to the high ground, climbing up onto an overhang while she made her way down, and then leaping and gliding to another one of the other side of the ravine, near the bottom.

"Don't look so dismayed... I'm sure breakfast is waiting for us right around the corner," she'd said.

Yes, but who's breakfast?

He kept the remark to himself and watched her inch along a narrow ledge.

As Lo'en inched along, she came to see that her current ledge eventually ran out onto the ledge Justin recently landed. Five long minutes of precariously clinging to the wall of the ravine brought her to stand just behind him. The white feathers sprouting at the base of his leonine tail had the same unusual radiance as his wings and softer head and torso feathers. The half-elf was gathering her strength and breath, and was just about to give the griffin a shove when movement and sound simultaneously arrested her.

"Meeeeh," the goat's bleat and a flick of the white tail came from just ahead as the creature leapt over something and stood on the other side, looking back at his pursuers. He stood there placidly chewing his cud and bleated again, obviously feeling secure in his tight corner, the ceiling low and close to his knobby little horns. Both Justin and Lo'en would have to jump over the dark crevasse to reach the goat, as there was no longer any room for the griffin to spread his wings.

From behind the goat came a muffled answer, another goat call, and before Lo'en's amazed grey eyes, several pairs of eyes, glinting from the weak light coming through the ravine, blinked back at griffin and half-elf. The earthy, metallic scent of dried blood, presumably from the injured goat, was mixed with the heavy smell of close-quartered goats, a deliciously familiar scent that made Lo'en's empty stomach grumble loudly.

The griffin's tail swayed back and forth slowly, blissfully unaware of Lo'en's malicious intent, when a sound from the cave drew her attention away. Justinaryn' was already staring into the cave, looking at the animal as it tucked itself away behind more cover. The only thing that seemed obvious about the situation was that the goat would have no way out, and was effectively cornering itself. Everything else, though, was still suspect, and did not encourage the griffin to relax.

A whole herd of the animals was tucked away back there, hiding in the shadows behind the rocks for protection. They stank, but to him they smelled like food, and Justinaryn' was hungry.

"I stand corrected, two-legger. You seem to have found the herd. Now I wonder how you plan on getting them back."

He took a few paces forward and leaned his avian head over the crevasse to peer down it and gauge its depth with his talons clutched over the rocky ledge.

In less than a blink of an eye, a large, gooey mass erupted from the crevasse. The exact colour was nearly impossible to determine in the poor light and it moved so swiftly it would have blurry at best even in direct sunlight. The inconsistent blob of nearly translucent matter opened up into a rough four-fingered hand shape the size of a goat and grabbed the feathered head. Small droplets seemed to drip and roll off the "hand" as if it were wet- Lo'en's mind could not move quickly enough to process the minor details as she watched the glob yank Justinaryn' into the pit.

The silence in the cavern following the red griffin's abrupt disappearance resounded like thunder. No stray bleats from the creatures on the far side offered any respite from the oppressive emptiness that pervaded for several heartbeats, filling the space that Justin had previously occupied. Utterly shocked, Lo'en could only watch in horror as the two feathers, shaken loose from the sudden, violent motion, drifted lazily down. The silence was so complete, she imagined she heard them hit the dirt. Finally, as if waking from a stupor, the half-elf blinked slowly.

As her grey eyes started to open, the low keen they had heard the night prior began. The noise was so deeply pitched she could feel it moving through the ground, vibrating the soil beneath her boots, jarring her bones, and making her clench her teeth in pain. She futilely cupped her hands over her ears as she catapulted herself forward toward the edge of the crevasse, loudly cursing and not being able to hear herself. Lo'en swore again as she caught a glimpse of a griffin-shaped object in the middle of the pit, completely engulfed by the ... goo.

It was huge, its total mass would have filled two of the goatherd's cottages. Instead it was filling the narrow crevasse, strangely bubbling in some places, wavy in others, grotesque all over. There was no discernible head, body, or limbs- random spikes would form in various spots, the tips of which would morph into strange, mostly non-functional shapes before being absorbed back into the main mass.

Lo'en bit back her disgust at the ... creature and twisted away to find her bow that she had dropped when she had tried to block the noise from her ears. She noticed the noise had ceased as she scrabbled for her weapon. In a swift, clean motion, the half-elf brought her weapon to bear, standing on the edge of the pit. Her sharp grey eyes scanned the creature for any kind of internal organs but the dim light made it impossible to pick out anything. Desperate as the seconds seemed to slowly tick away, Lo'en released an arrow into what she hoped was the center of the monstrosity, perilously close to the blurry shape of Justin.

There was barely enough time to see what reached forth to grab him in the head, let alone get out of the way. The hand alone - if it could be described as a hand - that reached up to grab Justinaryn' was nearly as large as he was and engulfed his entire field of view. The world around him all changed to the same disgusting colour.

Instinct kicked in and the griffin's hind legs tensed up, preparing to launch him away, but before he could do anything his upper torso was covered in thick, translucent gelatinous stuff.

He fought back to cling to the edge of the cliff in vain as the creature overpowered him in an instant and pulled him down into the crevice. He couldn't yell or make a sound with his face completely covered in the goo, and soon all that remained was a series of white streaks on the stone where his claws had struggled to get a grip.

Down in the pit, Justinaryn' tried his best to put up a fight. He squirmed and tried did what he could to lash out with his talons, as if cutting the creature would accomplish anything. Nothing worked.

His oxygen cut off, mouth and nose covered by the goo, his struggling wore him out after only a few seconds. His lungs ached for air and soon he knew he would pass out if he didn't get some. There wasn't enough time to think about dying.

Above him he could still see light and, through the blurry tinted colour of the goo, Lo'ens form looked back down at him, silhouetted against the sky. Unblinking eyes stared back at her in desperation. She was firing an arrow somewhere beside him. An arrow was never going to work. She should run.

His friend. His poor, pathetic, two legged friend.

The arrow flew from Lo'en's bow quicker than a breath, hitting its mark truer than a goat's white tail. The metal head sank into the gooey body with no effect, its trajectory slowed to a slug's pace as it neared the griffin. Another slimy appendage spontaneously sprang into existence and before the half-elf could spring, she felt the suffocating gelatinous creature encompass her body and pull her off the ledge...

The immediate sensation that occurred to Lo'en as she was pulled from the ledge was akin to being dunked in a warm bath, though instead of water, it was filled with thick custard. Startled, she gasped only to suck in some of the gelatinous material and find her airways clogged. The half-elf coughed reflexively but that did nothing to clear her mouth. She struggled, just as the griffin had, writhing to get free but finding no purchase, her movements meeting thick resistance. Her skin began to tingle but before Lo'en could process that feeling, the sensation of falling arrested her mind.

It wasn't marked by a sudden drop, it felt more like falling through deep water. The body of the monster seemed to have suddenly liquefied, losing its thick, gelled consistency. The best guess Lo'en's shocked, oxygen-starved mind could formulate was that the water was emptying out the sides of the ditch...

The two bodies, half-elf and griffin, weren't the only things to hit the cavern floor as the creature disintegrated. Over the liquid clogged in their ears, the sound of multiple bones and other pieces coming to rest on the ground echoed through the cavern. Immediately Lo'en began to cough, gag, her lungs trying to expel the liquid while trying to get air at the same time. Her grey eyes watered, and she was vaguely aware that she should be feeling disgusted as the liquefied monster left a faintly sticky residue and there were still large pieces of gelled substance scattered around. Instead, the first concern rang through her befuddled head was for the feathered creature, lying no more than an arm's reach away.

He was a sodden mess, feathers and fur thoroughly soaked through, making him look rather bony and skinny. Lo'en scrambled quite ungracefully over to his side. In her panic, she touched him, putting both hands against his ribs, something she'd only dared to do twice before this time. Still trying to regain her breath, she gasped out between coughs- "Jus- *gck* tin- *hck* Justin..."

The whole episode, from when the griffin was pulled in to this point hadn't taken more than two minutes but to the half-elf it felt like two hours since Justinaryn' had been under. She continued rocking his body, afraid of the worst.

Justin...

The griffin did not expect to wake up again. After struggling for what felt like eternity, experiencing nothing but futility and growing fatigue, his lungs had given in and he had inhaled an unhealthy portion of the gelatinous stuff in which he was submerged. The instant the fluid reached his lungs, he felt the world spin and turn black. As far as he was concerned, his life had ended. Seconds before he lost consciousness, he accepted this fact.

Fortunately, while his mind accepted it, his body did not. The push of Lo'en's hands against his chest was enough to trigger its reflexive response. She rocked him a few times, and suddenly he convulsed to start a torrent of liquid gushing out of his open beak. The stuff spilled out from him and his eyes shot open. His coughs were louder, deeper, and slower than a human's would have been. It only took a few to expel enough of the liquid so that he could start breathing again, at which point he dropped his head back down against the cold, wet ground.

At first he wondered why he was still looking at the rocky walls of the ravine he'd died in. Then he realized there were a pair of wet hands pressing against his side, accompanied by Lo'ens familiar voice. She sounded worried and on some level that surprised him.

Lo'en jumped as the griffin began coughing to clear his lungs, but she did not back away from the sodden beast. Though she was not as familiar Justin's anatomy, it sounded as though he had managed to purge most of the liquid from his system. His amber eyes appeared dull and almost grey in the dim light of the cavern as they finally crept open as if surprised they were still functioning.

Relief washed over the half-elf as readily as the liquified monster goo. Her mind wasn't about to pause long enough to acknowledge the reasons for her feelings, however and the first thing she could bring herself to say was, "Well, how about some goat to wash out that horrid taste?"

Despite her words, Lo'en remained on the ground next to Justin, unconsciously, to ensure he would be ready to get to his feet before she started to move.

As was the nature of being a griffin, the bird could not express itself with a smile. Whether Justin even heard Lo'ens joke was not immediately apparent in the way the bird's eyes stared up at the cavern wall, barely open, struggling to focus.

His chest heaved and he coughed again, sputtering and convulsing with the ejection of yet more remnants of liquid in his lungs.

He had heard her though, and was aware of the expressiveness his birdlike face lacked when dealing with humans. It was usually necessary to communicate his emotions verbally to humanoids when he wanted them known.

"Eating is the last thing on my mind."

With his feathered head still laying flat against the cold stone in a puddle of slime, he became self consciously aware of how miserable he must look in his condition. More important to him than the physical vulnerability of his current state were the social implications of Lo'en seeing the noble griffin as a smelly, slimy, immobile lump on the ground. He looked much smaller with his fur and feathers all matted and plastered against his skin.

"Please give me a moment alone, two-legger..."

He remained where he was until she obliged, neither moving nor explaining himself to her.

The half-elf gave a shrug, more to herself as the griffin kept staring at the wall of the cavern. She could hear the distraught, choking embarrassment in his words and couldn't help but be amused. In fact, she had to choke back a laugh, a near giggle. Something about almost dying always made Lo'en nearly hysterical. Trying her best to keep her composure, she heaved herself to her feet and looked around at the sordid mess lying scattered about the floor.

Carcasses mired in the remaining slick slime, in various states of decomposition, created a rather disturbing and sickly smelling carpet. From nearly dissolved bones to a partially digested carcass with only the skin dissolved, the half-elf picked through the mess to find her cap, as sodden as Justinaryn looked. Grimacing, she moved toward the large body, peering at the long legs, muscle, tendons, ligaments still intact-

"Uh," she stumbled back, almost slipping on the wet floor. "I think we found what happened to the old man's previous hired hand."

As disgusted as she was, Lo'en managed to hold her bile down. There were no remnants of the boy's clothes except for some thickened leather pieces near his skinned feet, most likely the remains of the tough leather he had used for shoes. The half-elf shook herself like a dog clearing its fur of water- fortunately whatever digestive juices the creature had possessed seemed to have lost their potency as it lost its gelatinous shape. The tingle that she had felt on instant contact with the monster had long since faded, but as she glanced around at the horror lying before her, she couldn't help but shiver and shake herself again.

Still, despite the situation, she felt her stomach rumble again and scowled. If she took a goat at this point, the others would flee and she'd never be able to round them up again. They could be bestially intelligent when they wanted. Why they were cowering on the above ledge, with no exit except for the way they had come-

"Call me crazy, but I think the ... goo monster... had some kind of mind control on the goats." Her low voice rang in the now largely empty cavern. A few bleats met her in response and she could hear an increase in the shuffling of the goats above. Shuddering as her mind tried to wrap itself around the concept of an intelligent, all-devouring gelatinous creature, Lo'en stoically pushed aside the why's and how's emerging from the situation.

Gazing above, the half-elf judged the ledge to be within a jump's grasp. She had thought the gully which had housed the monstrosity had been deeper, but attributed that to an optical illusion and did not want to dwell on remembering that sight for a while.

"Um... do you need a boost out?" She doubted the griffin could fly in his sodden state, and despite his stout refusal to admit his embarrassment, Lo'en did not want to leave without him. At this point in their travels together, she was aware that his pride was a part of his identity, and though not always sensitive to Justinaryn, decided to forgo her usual mockery. In an attempt to disguise her offer of help, the half-elf carried on. "If we can get you up on the side we came in on, I can herd these things your way back over this crevasse and we can show them out of this death trap."

One at a time, only once she had given him the privacy he requested, the griffin placed his paws on the stone floor and pushed himself to his feet. With a heavy sneeze, he threw his head down and a spray of translucent goo followed the movement, splattering in a line along the floor. Lo'en was lucky not to have inhaled the stuff. It tasted as bad as it smelled, and would have had the griffin retching if he hadn't already puked up everything he had in him.

He looked miserable and knew it. It was the reason he hated water and refused to swim. Goo matted his fur and feathers down, making him look nearly half the size he normally did and giving him physical proportions that were anything but the regal, elegant self he was accustomed to being. The dampness and filth of it all dirtied his plumage, with grit and slime stuck to his feathers in a most unsightly way.

The stuff had yet to completely ruin the protective, weatherproof shield his feathers offered. Much longer inside the monster and he he would have ended up in a helpless state for months. Without his feathers he was quite naked from the chest up.

Like a bird after a dip in water, he shook as much of it off in a series of rapid twisting vibrations of his neck. Goo and dirt shot through the cavern, achieving remarkable range. By the time he was done he looked like he'd had his hair styled spiky with gel.

He remained unaware of exactly how it looked, but assumed he was dry enough.

Without dignifying her offer of help with a refusal, the griffin lifted his chin and trotted over to the highest point he could find in the crevasse. On top of a jagged piece of stone, it was only a few feet more to get out. He leaped up it gracefully to stand silhouetted against the sky, as Lo'en had been earlier.

"I will help you herd them, but only because you saved my life."