The Seven Keys of Areid **COMPLETE**

Chapter II: The First Guardian

Warm, gooey liquid seeped down Adalira's face. From her cracked, mangled nose to her lips, staining them rose red, the blood gave her a disgusting, grotesque feeling, along with the throbbing agony contained in her nose. Clutching the offended appendage, Adalira crept along the cellar, squinting in the pitch blackness. Using her free hand as a navigator, Adalira blindly fumbled along as she felt for a flint stone. She knew there was flint around here; she'd stashed it after her first stay in the cellar. But  where was it?

Her hand landed upon a strange projection, seemingly a rock on the floor of the cellar. Hoping it was the flint, Adalira attempted to wrench it from the ground. The rock did not budge. It seemed to be stuck to something. Using all of her one handed strength, Adalira tugged, pulled, yanked at the object, yet it didn't budge. Finally, breathing hard, the elfin girl paused to catch her breath. A thought occurred to her: what if that door in the floor was around here somewhere? She had nothing to do but sit and wait for a few days; the drunken dwarf wouldn't remember she existed until the new barrel of ale ran out, so why not investigate? But, she reasoned with herself, light was needed first. Resuming her task, Adalira used both hands and pulled with all her might on the seemingly never moving flint. Vaulting backwards as her efforts were rewarded, Adalira landed hard on her back. Wincing as she stood, she carefully, cautiously made her way towards the flint. As her eyes adjusted, she began to walk without her hands acting as a lifeline in front of her. Instead of the cherished rock, she found a wide open trap door. Feeling her way around the door, she squinted hopelessly into the even darker abyss that pooled in the doorway. The door in the floor.

"I wonder if the flint ended up in here?" Adalira asked herself as she reached down into the blackness. Overstretching and underestimating the depth of the innards of the door, Adalira experienced a strange lurching sensation and found herself tumbling forwards into the darkness.

The girl had never screamed so much in her life. The sheer adrenaline and fear pumping through her seemed to take over her body, and the shrill shriek tore up her throat and filled what felt like the small tunnel she fell through. After a little while, the shock gradually wore off, and Adalira began to wonder when she would reach the ground as she screamed. She wasn't stupid; she knew death would probably follow, but this tedious falling unnerved her. A voice other than her own joined the screaming, but this voice was melancholy, a wail of anguish as opposed to Adalira's shriek of terror. Her screams dying out, Adalira was left plummeting through the damp air accompanied by a despairing cry. 

A long while had passed, and Adalira was reaching the point of panic when with a thud, she crashed into the breaking waves of an underground river. Now normally a fall from such a distance would have killed her on impact, but her heritage gave her hardiness a human would never have posessed. Plunging into the inky water, Adalira quickly kicked to what she determined was the surface correctly, bursting into the air with a gasp. Sputtering, the elfin maid filled her lungs with the blessed air. The saddening wail had vanished, leading Adalira to wonder if it had merely been a fear induced hallucination. Another voice, a deep, smooth one filled with arrogance, broke through her pondering.

"Why have you come here, oh elf of the tavern?" it asked. Adalira's head swiveled towards the voice, and was rewarded with vision. Standing boldly on what looked like an obsidian beach was a man. He was tall and lean, with a shirt displaying his toned pectorals and baggy trousers the color of ruby. His hair was shaggy and tomato red, and his skin was the color of overripe strawberries. The man's eyes were sparking with mischief and cockiness, and glimmered a deep garnet color. Adalira noticed with some interest that his ears were round and human, despite the obvious fact that this creature was anything but human. In one hand rested a deadly looking katana. 

"I asked you a question," the man sighed. "Answer me or I'll be forced to move."

Adalira scowled as she quickly paddled her way to the shore. Clambering onto the slippery shore, the dripping wet elf woman responded,