Zeria in the Auchenai Crypts v 1.2

                          Zeria – Auchindoun – Auchenai Crypts

         Zeria had heard from some shady characters in Shattrath City that there were lots of gold and riches to be found in the Ruins of Auchindoun, but only the really brave, or really crazy dare to venture into there.  She wasn’t bothered by all the stories of people who went into there and never returned, but is was also afraid of very little, not because of bravery, but mainly because she was reckless, and just a bit crazy.  All the stories of danger and warnings just got her even more excited about traveling there.  She wanted to head out as soon as she could, but first Zerinan wanted to meet her for something that she honestly could care less about, and didn’t actually pay attention when he was talking to her.  So she was at least a bit curious about the meeting. 
         She arrived in a tavern in the Lower City of Shattrath, and didn’t see any sign of Zerinan.  “Of course he isn’t here yet, he’s always late.  He even slept through our battle with Onyxia a few weeks ago.  He probably forgot about the meeting entirely.”  She muttered to herself while waiting for the ale she ordered.  She usually doesn’t drink, but she figured now would be as good of a time as any to try some of the special Outlands drinks. 
         About an hour and several mugs of some strange green ale later, she noticed a slightly blurry Night Elf wander into the Tavern and sit next to her.  She of course wanted to know why he would have to sit right next to her when there were plenty of seats around, and attempted to ask, but it came out as a string of slurs instead. 
         “Zeria, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you drunk before.  It’s not like you.”  Said the strange Elf shaped blur.
         “How do you know my name” she replied, with a heavy slur, but she was managing to make it sound a bit more like common.
         “I told you to meet me here at 9, but it seems you weren’t paying attention when I told you that.  Anyway, I’ve got something for you.”
         “What, wait, do I know you?”
         “Bah, you can’t see straight can you?  It’s a good thing you don’t fight while drunk like Toru.  It’s me, Zerinan.  I wanted to meet you to give you a present.  I found it in one of my trips in Hellfire Citadel.”
         Zeria perked up a bit at the sound of getting something.  She started thinking of what things of value he might be giving her.  “Are you going to make me wait any longer, or what?” still in a slurred speech, but managing a bit better.
         Zerinan holds out a medium sized mace with a metal spiked ball on the end, it looked as if it had been in a few too many fights, and didn’t have much left in it.  Zeria was really disappointed after all the valuable treasures and things where in her head, and they had suddenly been knocked out with an old piece of junk.
         “It’s supposed to be infused with some powerful magic, but it only reveals that power at certain times, and I haven’t found out how it’s activated.  I figured you might want it, even without the magic, it seems like it could be useful to you.”  Zerinan said while offering the mace to Zeria. 
        She regretfully accepted it, just to make him happy, but would find a place to pawn it off later.  Then he walked out of the bar, probably to mess with people in bear form or something, but she didn’t really care.  She looked the mace once more with her blurred vision, and just decided it couldn’t hurt to try it, and attached it to the right side of her belt.  She stumbled out of the bar, and tried to get herself to the Aldor’s area so she could get some sleep, but in her drunken stupor, she accidentally wandered onto the Scryers’ rise.  She didn’t know what happened after that, but she found herself waking up on the road outside of Shattrath City many hours later.  She decided now would be a good time to head out to the Ruins of Auchindoun, and set off down the road.
        After what seemed like an hour had passed, she noticed a strange shadow circling her over and over.  She didn’t have to look up to know that it was Specalt on his flying mount again.  Ever since he got that damned thing he seems to have also gotten a bigger ego.  He would constantly do flybys and dive to about a foot above Zeria’s head, usually when she was trying to concentrate on a fight or trying to hide from something.  And then it usually ended up getting her wounded in someway, either by drawing her attention away from the fight, or revealing her position to enemies.  But she was going to show him soon, she had been doing some crypt robbing, and either stealing, or assassinating something for a price, and had almost gotten enough for her flying lessons and a gryphon of her own.  And then she would be able to get her revenge on Specalt, she didn’t know exactly how it would work, but she still wanted one to at least shut the guy up. 
        After more walking, she eventually came upon the Ruins of Auchindoun, but it seemed that it was a several story fall, and no other way to get down.  The shadow of Specalt and his flying mount where still around so she shouted “Do you think you could give me a hand to get down there, or are you just going waste both of our time by circling around me like an idiot?”          
        There was no response for at least a minute, and then suddenly she heard the sound of a diving bird behind her.  “Oh, so you are just going to act like an idiot then?  Be that way if you like but” Suddenly she was hit in the back by the diving creature, and lifted far into the air with her cloak in its claws.  She struggled to look up at who had her in its grasp, and managed to catch a glimpse of an Orc sitting atop of a giant bat, but at that moment the bat let go of her cloak, and sent her into a free fall hundreds of feet above the Ruins.  She reacted quickly and grabbed her Gnomish Parachute Cloak from her pack.  She quickly unclasped her cloak, and snapped the Parachute Cloak on.  At the exact second that the latch was snapped closed, she slowed down to a gentle glide down to the ground.  As she floated down, she noticed her other cloak drift far off into the distance.  “Damn, that was my favorite one too.”
        When she was about 10 feet above the ground the Parachute Cloak decided it was done fighting against gravity and just let her fall.  Luckily, she had been trained how to fall gracefully when she was a younger rogue, and falls like that were nothing that she couldn’t handle.  She however didn’t expect the cloak to stop her fall completely about 6feet above ground for a few seconds, and she ended up falling flat on her face.  She made a mental note to try and work out the bugs the cloak later, but for now she decided it would be best for her if it didn’t have any more spasms while she was exploring the ruins, and put it back into her backpack.
        While exploring the ruins, she came across many big, locked doors, with locks that she was not familiar with, and even one door with no way to open it, or at least no means of opening doors that she knew.  Eventually she came across one of the giant doors, but it had been blown off into the hallway that it had closed off to the world, probably from the giant explosion that was rumored to have destroyed Auchindoun in the first place.  She quietly enters the hallway, and after a minute of walking, she came across a giant hallway, at least 50ft across and going back who knows how far.  Sadly she noticed that the entire place had already been cleaned out, who knows how long ago, and most likely there would be nothing of value to find anywhere in there, but she decided to explore it as far as she could, just incase she might find something that was looked over.
        After several hours of exploring, she came across a giant bridge, with steps that went down to it, and weird pillars of what looked like blue flame set on the sides.  Something about the bridge gave her an uneasy feeling, but she pressed on anyway.  As she neared the end of the bridge, she saw a large staircase, much like the one she walked down to get onto the bridge.  On the area above the stairs floated a very bizarre creature.  It was a giant floating sphere with six smaller eyes placed what seemed to be randomly around a big central eye.  It had a large mouth filled with dagger like teeth, and strange tentacle appendages that seemed to just hang from random spots in its back.  Zeria was sure that the strange creature had already seen her, because it seemed as if all of its eyes were slowly looking her way.  She had to think quick and grabbed the mace in her left hand and her dagger in her right hand, while sprinting up the steps towards the creature.  As her last foot hit the top step, she pushed off and lunged toward the things center eye.  She heard a sickening popping sound and felt her mace crush the center eye in and embed itself deep into its socket.  She held onto her mace, while furiously hacking and slashing at the six remaining eyes with her dagger.  Her grip on the mace starts to falter, and she starts hacking randomly, desperately hoping to kill it before she loses her grip on the mace, and falls into the row after row of killer teeth.  Just as she is about to let go, the creature flails violently and throws Zeria clear across the bridge to the other set of stairs.  She managed to land gracefully, with her dagger still in her hand. 
        The creature advanced blindly toward her, even though it should be blind, it seemed to still be able to sense her by some other means.  She desperately tried to think of some way, any way of stopping the creature.  But before she had a chance to react it was already within a few feet of her.  It opened its horrible mouth wide enough to swallow her whole, when it gets to about a foot away from her, she starts throwing anything and everything she can at it to try and stop it somehow.  After that failed, she quickly ran up the steps, and jumped at the creature with her foot extended toward the handle of the mace in the creatures eye.  She heard a horrible squishing sound as the force drove the mace deep into the things brain, and it fell swiftly to the floor.  After she managed to pull the mace out of the things eye, and saying a silent thanks to Zerinan for giving it to her, she decided to go through her equipment to see what she had thrown at the creature.  As she looked through her stuff, she noticed she just lost a few gadgets, most of which didn’t even work, but she couldn’t find her gold pouch.  She started panicking and looking around desperately for her money, but she knew that it had been eaten by the creature.  She looked inside the things mouth, very disgusted that she was actually doing that, and saw a small piece of cloth quickly being dissolved in the creature’s saliva.  Even she wasn’t greedy enough to risk losing a hand for bit of dissolved gold.
She walked, sad and defeated towards the entrance to the middle of the ruins, and all she could think about was the fact that she lost hundreds of gold, just when she was a few away from getting her lessons for riding a gryphon.  And the thought of having to suffer though more of Specalt’s constant flybys and showboating just managed to make that day even worse. 
        It was about dawn when she finally managed to climb up the ruins and trudge back to Shattrath City.  She quietly sneaked onto the Aldor rise, and got some sleep, knowing that Zerinan would also want to brag about how great his gift to her was.