…now she’s next door, in the other building
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Sister Bomia’s Adventure Diary #22
A Rapid Descent Into A Strange Land
Ottersday 1, Sun God Month, Year 25 of the Golden Emperor
Dear Diary,
We left the cavern of the Calanoy this morning, about an hour after sunrise. We were told that leaving then would mean that the overnight ice had melted, making it much safer to travel.
Two of their hunters lead us to the path down the mountain, a narrow zigzagging trail that looked very dangerous. The slightest misstep by a horse and that would be the end. Even worse, the first switchback we could see from above looked just too narrow and steep for a horse to manage. We were at a loss as to how to proceed.
Then Amella remembered the Potion of Diminution that we had picked up two years ago when we rescued Wizard Kanoralis from the Green Hags of Petavi. In gratitude, he had pretty much let us raid his laboratory, where we picked up a 1 gallon jug of the shrinking potion. Most of us had pretty much forgotten it, but Amella has a very good memory for loot.
So it was that after giving measured doses to our animals, then ourselves, we were all a great deal smaller. I would say that the horses were no larger than foxes, with five of us being about chipmunk sized. The formerly too narrow trail was now looking wider than the Imperial Road into Yenvoo.
Realizing that smaller means slower, Olivia cast an Enhanced Haste spell on the horses, while I prayed for Sure Footedness. That done, we mounted up and were off.
Diary, we were traveling like the wind! I feel safe in saying that on the straight portions of the trail, we could have beaten a full sized race horse. We were taking the switchbacks at speed thanks to my earlier prayer. It was quite a thrilling ride, and we reached the tree line in just under 20 minutes.
At that point, we were all tired and thirsty, so we paused to rest and drink from a small stream. By the time we were rested up, we were beginning to grow large again. By the time we had ridden a few yards into the forest, we were full sized.
Looking at our surroundings, we noticed that these various conifers, mostly pines and firs, were not as tall as we were used to seeing anywhere back home or on our journey so far. They also seemed larger around at the trunk and with long, thick limbs starting about 30 feet up. The limbs of all the trees grew into each other, forming a great canopy and blocking out much of the sunlight. Above us, we could hear, but not see birds singing and squirrels chittering.
We all agreed that traveling through this darkness would demand extra caution. Olivia activated the Light spell on her staff and we road two abreast, which was made easy because almost nothing but mushrooms and fungus grew down there. Our ride was easy, but also very creepy.
After about 4 hours of riding straight downhill, the forest began to change into more normal trees, although we did not recognize some of them. When we came to a large stream, we decided to stop for a rest and a meal. In a bit, we’ll resume traveling.
I’ll write more soon, Diary.
Sister Bomia Evarain
The Dociverse Blog 