[quote]"Come on! Lets go! Come on lets get away from the scary 'god' demon thingy."

"Last one downs ogre food?"

"Sorry, go on ahead without me, I think I'm too heavy for that climb."

"How do we fix it?  Keep them away?"

[i]Any questions?[/i][/quote]

Rain and Rose were, quite simply, far too slow. Or maybe the ogre was much faster than they had anticipated. In either case, the two had only made it part of the way down the vine-crossed wall when the beastly giant showed up, huffing from the effort of loping halfway around the Stone. A rainy mist started falling again, and the ogre's breath huffed in pale clouds in front of its mangled mouth.

The ogre's hand shot out toward Rain, but she managed to slip out of its grasp -- and fell ten feet to the muddy ground below. It took the ogre a second to register that it had not, in fact, captured the girl, and it stared at its open palm in confusion. While the gears were turning in the ogre's thick head, Rose had the chance to climb safely to the ground.

The ogre lifted its hands in the air and looked down, surprised to find that both women were still free. [b]"Hah!"[/b] it breathed in dumb frustration, and it reached out to grab Rose by the arm.

There were three ways to go from here, if they wished to run. To the left was the fresh path the ogre had just made through the sapling trees and scraggled brush that led back around the rear of the Stone; behind the Stone were high rocks and cliffs that were near impossible to climb with any sort of efficiency, but following the path would bring them to the back room of the Stone. To the right they could make it to the front entrance of the Stone, and the broken remains of the drawbridge that had once been the only safe means of reaching the mainland. Or, they could attempt the climb down over the cliffside, using the rocks and small trees as hand and footholds.

[hr]

[i]"HA haha! Wouldn't you rather live and see what I'll do, rather than die and waste a perfectly good opportunity for chaos?"[/i] Rshalogg was positively thrilled by Nali's restrictions, and he had no intention of remembering them. [i]"I'll use you as I please. In exchange, I'll lend you my power. Everything you want. Desire is a beautiful thing."[/i] He was thinking of blood and of making masses of people bow in fear at his feet when he spoke of [i]desire[/i].

It would be a bit of struggle over rubble and along the crumbling pieces of what was left of the floor, but eventually Nali would find her way to the double doors at the front of the Stone, forced open and broken on their hinges. The misty rain outside billowed in; tall grasses waved gently, and weeds had grown over the rotting pile of wood that had once been the bridge to the mainland, an imposing distance away. From here, the cliff was a sheer drop into a deep ravine. To the left were the sounds of struggle between Rain and Rose and the ogre; to the right were trees and shrubs and a hike around the side of the Stone, which was situated alone on a mountaintop.

[i]"Let's find the nearest city,"[/i] Rshalogg suggested eagerly. [i]"We'll rule it before the other gods realize the girl's stopped singing."[/i]

[hr]

At the end of the hallway, in the room full of pipes that had gone quiet and cold, the girl had stopped singing, her light dimmed.

She stared at Amuné, her eyes barely focusing as the child spoke and touched her hand, and she shook her head slowly.

[b]"Җȿɖɷɹʘ ʃ♦ ɘʥʯͼӿ₰◊ⱷ."[/b]

Through her power and the touch of the girl's hand, Amuné knew she had said [i]I can't die.[/i] She meant immortality: she was incapable of death, no matter how many centuries she'd seen, no matter how many pipes had been stuck into her skin and fastened to her bones. The girl squeezed her eyes shut, flexed her fingers, and began to pull with her arms against the tubes that held her fast against the wall.

[b]"∞ⱷↄℓ₹ ᾣᵷᵠ."[/b] < [i]Help me.[/i] >

There was no longer a reason for her to stay here: there were no more living people feeding her power, and the pipes and clockwork that had fueled her song had gone cold and dry. Now that the Stone was only filled with corpses and rubble, there was nothing left to prevent the Old Gods' return. Rshalogg was only the first. She was not shocked at this: she'd only prevented the inevitable for as long as was possible. Now, all she could do was free herself from this place.

With a firm tug, each of the lines would release from the girl's skin without blood, though with a wince of pain. It would take a great deal of strength and effort, however, to lift her out of the web of pipes -- strength that Amuné alone did not possess. She stared around the room, sad to see that her dear ogre friend had gone -- and she caught sight, dimly, of Grace in the doorway.