[center][b][color=BFC1C2]Mancer[/color][/b][/center]

As if the wizard needed to like any more like a monster, the eerie blood-colored rain had stained his pristine white cloak red in places.  Though no more than a mere garment in terms of properties, the mantle spelled for Mancer a comfort very much like snow.  With its purity and expanse, it covered up the ugliness of the world, at least where he was concerned.  Now, however, he found himself in a place far too ugly for any mundane enchantment of frozen water to conceal.  The dark and the storms themselves were trivial, even if a morbid liquid nigh-indistinguishable from vital fluid dripped from the tempestuous heights.  It was the [i]feeling[/i] of Ebb, the dankness and pervading fear, seasoned with gloomy desperation and topped with alarming magical anomaly, to hear the citizens speak of it.  Mancer never needed to look for to see decay, for it festered within him, held at bay only by his self-control and self-administrated ablutions.  To see it everywhere around him, however, a damp degeneration whose very sight inspired a creeping unease in the mind, affected him deeply.

He could not put these apprehensions aside as his approached the home of Mayor Exeter, but approach he did nonetheless.  Money motivated him, certainly, as it did all, but something else convinced Mancer to follow through on the application he filled out on the spur of a moment yesterday.  Perhaps it was foolish bravado, seemingly so abundant in those of heroic ideals as he used to be, but the sorcerer knew that if his actions could accomplish, or at least assist in the achievement of, wiping the taint of Ebb off the face of the planet, then he was obliged to do so.  All residents of Chalcedony, Mancer perhaps most of all despite the brief fortnight he'd spent in Ebb, would sleep easier with this darkness erased.

Mancer chanced to enter the main parlour just as the mayor herself, closely followed by her strangely-clothed detective, entered the room.  For a moment trepidation surged through Mancer's veins, but he assured himself that the days of flinching when others looked upon him were gone.  It was time he faced the unknown like a man.  Nevertheless, Mancer made sure that his broken-off horn was aptly covered by his hood before joining the small assemblage of people within.

A quick search of the room determined the whereabouts of its occupants.  In a corner squirmed an anxious-looking goblin, trying to hide.  Mancer spared him a sympathetic glance.  Before his unspeakable ordeal in Sheol, he hadn't spared the gangly little humanoids much thought, but even if the atmosphere of the dead land afflicted him, deformed him, and crazed him, it opened his mind.  Many specters of goblins had been encountered in the place; they had spirits like anyone else.  More than anything else, however, Mancer could understand distrust and fear based on appearance.

Dripping on the carpet was a heavy-set man, freshly swum in a nearby basin or reservoir judging by the lack of waterborne filth permeating his garb.  Perhaps, Mancer reflected, he'd even been in the ocean, for in this upper level of Ebb, both literally and figuratively for its elevation and class, the open waters lapped not too far away behind the towering seawall.  It had been by sea that Mancer had arrived.  Most interesting was this fellow's mouth, which gleamed a metallic sheen in the parlour's lamplight.

The glinting alloys in Aron's mouth, however, paled in comparison to the splendor of the figure Mancer next spotted.  Though appearing to be a woman at first glance, Eresa proved anything but—she gave off every impression of a statue cast in bronze, but no statue spoke and strode and clothed itself in fine black fabric.  Totally unknown to him were the golems of Monolith.  An ordinary person, Mancer grudgingly mused, might have been unnerved by her inhumanity.

Mancer's observation of the antlered gentleman near Eresa was interrupted by his sudden notice of Marianne's fearsoem direwolf, and shortly thereafter Marianne herself.  Mancer took one look at the elf and diverted his eyes to the floor.  She was so exquisitely lovely that he felt impinging upon her beauty merely by affixing her with his accursed stare.

Fortunately, the voice of his host rescued Mancer from his embarrassment.  [b]“Thank you all for coming.  I am Margaret Exeter.  Please, sit, and have a sip of wine if you need to.  I wish to waste as few words as possible, for every passing second is potentially another calamity come to my city.”[/b]

Exeter seated herself, noticing Eresa.  [b]“Ms. Aedon, I particularly appreciate your presence.  With the state Ebb is in, I expected you to be concerned with your other business, so I am honored to have you here.”[/b]  Addressing everyone now, she motioned to the bald, armored figure standing to her right.  [b]“This is my detective, the impromptu leader of this investigation, Udo Koro Kai.  He'll be your guide to the city's bottom levels and beyond.  The nature of your assignment is this: you are to descend into the cisterns beneath Ebb and seek whatever is causing these phenomena.  A vague and dangerous journey, yes, but for the good of the city -not to mention a hefty reward- it is one you will be taking.  If any of you have qualms, now is the time to quit.  Right now the tide is falling, and in an hour it will be at its lowest.  By that time you will be entering.  Kai?”[/b]

Udo Koro Kai stepped forward.  In a low, silky voice, he intoned, [color=C9A0DC]“From time of entry we will have six hours to find out what we can and return before the tunnels flood.  We have a collection of aura-aqua conduits for each of you that needs one, which will keep you breathing for a half hour, but best if we accomplish what we need to with haste.  I assume some of you have questions.”[/color]