Date: Thursday, 10 Dec 1992 12:25:56 EST From: Message-ID: <92345.122556BANNON@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [R] Hazy and Dariel undersea References: <1992Dec9.070544.9266@iscsvax.uni.edu> After some elaborate gestures and unpronouncable phrases carried out by Dariel, a shimmer appeared around Hazy and Dariel where they stood on deck and then solidified into a flexible yet impermeable transparent bubble. Hazy was amazed by their chamber of air and immediately leaned over and reached to touch the wall of the bubble. She took a step and inadvertently rocked the bubble so that they both staggered inside. "Hazy, dear," Dariel said taking her by the arm, "Please allow me to be the one to set us in motion." With one hand he made a flickering motion and hissed and clicked a few words. The bubble rose off the deck and then over the rail. It decended toward the surface of the ocean and then passed steadily down beneath it and the stars in the night sky dissappeared and a darkness that few experienced enfolded them. Blackness was complete and neither had yet spoken. Dariel was secretly pleased that the experience had left Hazy at an apparent loss of words. Deciding that it was time to illuminate their surroundings he created two glow globes and suspended them about two feet appart at the top of the bubble, a foot and a half above their heads. The light they cast was bright enough to send shifting beams ten feet out into the water around the bubble. Their bodies cast bizarre shadows into the cloudy, particle filled deep water. He turned to get a look at Hazy's expression and found that she had shifted to a small, dense gray cloud that floated in mid- bubble, as it were. He frowned his concern, "Hazy, are you alright?" She streamed out and lengthened into human form again. "Oops, sorry. Yes, I'm alright. I tend to get cloudy when I am very distracted or absorbed, sometimes without realizing it." She looked at him intently, her eyes amazingly wide with wonder. "It's just....I'm not,... You see, I am used to myself changing all the time. I change from one moment to the next at whim, but, THIS....usually my environment is pretty stable. The world around me doesn't change much but THIS is so DIFFERENT!!!" Her face blossomed into a delighted grin and Dariel couldn't help but smile back. They drifted around, staying close to the bottom mainly, and explored ledges and gorges and sunken vessels and bubbling gashes in the ocean floor and gaped at the wildly shaped fish and, well, things that were to be found at that depth. They came upon two massive rock spires that jutted up from the bottom, and through the two spires when they moved closer they could spy a dark shadow that appeared to be the entrance to a cave in an underwater mountain. There seemed to be a pile of some sort of junk in front of the cave entrance. Suddenly Hazy gasped, "Wow, something on the ground in front of the cave is really shining! Do you see it? Move us closer! Let's go get it!!" Dariel peered into the murky water toward the cave. "Where?" he asked, "I don't see it yet." He put them on a course that would take them between the spires and over toward the cave entrance. As they floated gracefully through the rock spires there was an earsplitting roar and the two spires snapped toward each other like the blades of a scissors. Dariel shouted some words that might have been words of power or cuss words, they came out rather explosively, at any rate. Hazy found herself mezmerized by the glow she could see on the ocean floor ahead of them. She had to know what it was...she heard Dariel shouting again and the words made their way through to her brain slowly, he had said, "We're getting out of here now, before those spires turn us to powder!!" Hazy felt a rush of panic, it was urgent that she find that object out there. It was VITAL! "NO! Wait!" she cried, "I've GOT to go get that thing. Please, I mean, I can't not go get it!" She took Dariel's sleeve and wrung it with both her hands, "Please, let me out! Let me out! A tiny hole, a little permeable,--something I can get my molecules through, please, please, pleeeeezzzzzee!" Dariel took a split second to consider. Something was off with Hazy. This obsession with the object was not normal. The question was would it do more damage for her to be deprived of it or to obtain it? And could he keep the bubble intact long enough for her to fetch it? He decided. "O.K. A small hole, down there. I'll give you two minutes. Vaporize and be ready to move fast." She gasped, threw her arms around him in gratitude and dissappeared in a single instant. He knelt down and began to make a slow spiraling motion with the palm of his hand above the place where he planned to thin the substance of the bubble. Like he was washing a window without touching it, at the same time he was lending his strength to all the rest of the bubble's surface to prevent it from being crushed by the columns of rock that embraced it. He felt a quick rush of air and knew Hazy was out. There was a grinding sound and the bubble shuddered around him. He spat out another word that, had she been present, Hazy would have recognized more easily as something other than a spell. The stress of maintaining the integrity of the sphere and keeping the little hole open for Hazy's return was beginning to wear on Dariel. Magic needed energy and at present he was the source of energy availible. He hadn't planned on working this hard on their little excursion. He wished he'd stored up more at his last feast of energy. If Hazy returned soon enough, perhaps he could figure out a way to convert some of her electrical energy to a form that he could use,--that is assuming she could spare any. He wondered how her being would be affected by difussion into water. Suddenly he thought he heard a voice. "Dariel, Let me in....help me. Make the hole bigger. Help." It was very faint and off to his right and behind him. He turned and gasped when he saw just outside of the bubble a floating skull with it's black sightless eyesockets seeming to stare at him in his pocket of air, like a cat watches a caged bird. The voice spoke again, "It's me, Hazy! Please Dariel, Let me in!! I have to bring the skull with me!! Make the hole big enough, quick!!" With only a moment's hesitation he enlarged the hole and made it even more permeable. The skull pushed against that area and plopped through into the bubble with a jelly-like coating covering it from the dissolved side of the bubble. The gap that had been left gushed water for an instant before Dariel closed it up again. The bubble began to vibrate and the spires of rock began moving slowly, inexorably closer together once more. Dariel slumped from his knees to his side, breathing heavily. He gasped, "Hazy? Are you in? Hazy?" A dark heavy cloud coalesced by his side and took on a more or less human shape. "Yes." he heard her say, "I'm in." Dariel, in spite of his terribly weakened state, managed to gasp, "A SKULL?! We risked our lives for a SKULL? Are you nuts?!!" "Ah! You don't see the glow? Such a wonder!! Then it really IS the Radiant Crown of Memory! Amazing, just amazing. Have you heard the ballad? '..the invisible crown will be retrieved by a servant without hands..' In the water I had no hands, you see..." The bubble rocked suddenly and Dariel, Hazy and the skull landed together in a heap. The glow globes went out and the darkness closed around them like a fist. "Hazy!" Dariel cried into the inky blackness, "Quick, do you have any zap you can share with me?" Dariel felt his hair begin to stand on end and knew that Hazy was sending him what energy she could spare. Through clenched teeth he said, "Brace yourself!" Hazy could feel water pooling around them and the bubble rocked and bucked. She let the energy bleed out of herself into Dariel and heard him start up that insane-sounding muttering again. There was a blinding light that seemed to burn through her mind and perhaps a sound to match and then she knew no more. Hazy. The character Dariel appeared curtesy of B. Hsiung. Thank you, Dariel. Hope I didn't take too many liberties.