Eliel didn't stand as close to the hole as the others. He didn't have time to do anything when Vander wasn't able to grab Sohn's hand. Eliel didn't do anything: he just listened to the screams coming from the old man Vander. His screams filled the silent room and it was the only thing Eliel could focus. He totally forgot about the scurrying voice in the background. Suddenly there were no screams anymore. ELiel didn't know whether he wanted to look in the hole. He was curious, but he also had a bad feeling about it. He knew something bad had happened to Vander and he needed to know what, but the half elven could bring himself to take a look.

[i]"Ha ha well.. i guess he DIDN'T have a great fall!"[/i] The elven kid usually enjoyed jokes, but this time he couldn't find any enjoyment in Marglor's joke. Eliel didn't say anything, just looked at Marglor with big eyes as if he was a crazy person. How could he joke about something like that? Eliel was lost in his thoughts: thinking about the hole and Vander. Eliel heard Marglor saying something, but he was too stuck in his own head. He needed to see what had happened to Vander. So when Sohn demanded something from him, the elven kid didn't listen at all and just walked past him.

When Eliel finally builded up his courage to look at the hole, he started to right away regret his decision. At the bottom of the hole there was some kind of acidic substance at the bottom; the man was completely dead and dissolved. What had been Vander earlier became nothing. Eliel took steps away from the hole and felt like he could puke. And to think he had thought the search party would be a big adventure, just fun and games. In the end it turned out to be a total opposite. This was not fun at all.

All memories spent with Vander started to pop up in Eliel's head. All the times Vander gave him piggy back rides when he was small, or all the times Eliel was given some freshly baked cookies by the old man. Those were good memories he could never experience again, at least not with Vander. Beside the old man Irvin, the local hunter and Eliel's caretaker, no one had ever cared so much about the elven kid as Vander. Eliel slumped to the floor and started to cry out loud like a baby.