Log Intro --------- Yelira Dal Rin, widely known as Ballybran's most notorious claim jumper, is in the act of once more reaping the rewards of someone else's find. However, while there, she's challenged.... Crystal Vein You can barely make out the traces of ... It is clear from the debris that crystals have been mined here in the past. Yelira clambers into the entrance of a crystal vein site. Something has arrived. Something clambers into the entrance of a crystal vein site. Yelira, cackling softly to herself, raises her cutter to work the face some more. You turn on the cutter, bracing your body against the power that surges through the handle. The sound of crystal shards shifting beneath silent feet is almost imperceptible. That, though, and the feeling that something is watching you sends chills up your spine. Yelira, resonance soaring, detects the noise and whirls, cutter raised offensively, shrieking "It's MINE, dammit! MINE!!" The creature isn't -quite- stunned from the unexpectedness of the Singer's actions, though it recovers fast enough. A huge rocked is hurled at Yelira and strikes her cutter with enough force to cause it to shriek off-pitched. The surrounding crystal echoes the bad note again and again until it sounds as if the crystal itself is keening. Yelira is startled, but doesn't loose her grip on the cutter, adding her own agonized scream to the cacaphony of noise in the vein as the clashing notes drill into her already crystal-mazed mind. "MINE!!!" she shrieks again and charges the beast, slashing with surprising accuracy at the thing's gut area. Something bright flashes in the beast's right hand. It seems as long as Yelira's cutter and with it's longer reach, the creature slashes down and stops Yelira's slash before it gets close enough to do any real damage. The creature howls in outrage at the attack and begins to push the angry singer back, their two weapons locked uselessly between them. "Fardlin' piece'a smegrat crap!" Yelira bellows, followed by more obscenities as she does her best to hold her ground, cutter raised against the thing's weapon. As she's backed against the wall, she kicks out viciously with one, steel-toed boot at the creature's knee area, using the wall as a brace to do so. The creature roars, maybe in pain - maybe just in anger, you can't really tell because it shows little more than a shifting of weight from the leg you kicked to its other one. With a quickness that is surprising for its height it shifts further, pushing the tangled weapons to one side and manages to swing an elbow around and smash it into the side of your head. With a loud "Uhhh!", Yelira stumbles to the side and shakes her head dazedly for a second before her sense of self-preservation takes over again and she swings her cutter around, possibly catching the creature's arm. She doesn't wait to find out, though...she drops to the ground and rolls past it, onto her feet once more and makes a mad dash for the exit from the vein. An unhuman scream tears through the air as Yelira's cutter slices into the thing's arm. It doesn't pause though, even in pain and grabs a hefty handful of Yelira's hair as she dives towards the exit. There is the sound of hair and scalp ripping as the Singer's frantic escape is stopped suddenly. Something incredibly hard strikes Yelira's lower back. Yelira screams shrilly, one hand flying to the back of her head as the thing literally tears her hair out, and screams again as her lower back is whacked. She goes down on one knee, listing to the side, a nearly inhuman snarl escaping her own lips as she retaliates, grabbing a handful of the creature's hair on its leg and pulling with all her strength. She falls backwards with another bellow of pain as her back contacts the ground when she tears the thing's hair free. Small droplets of blood pelt the ground from the creature's leg. The sound of its pained voice echoes horribly off the exposed crystal. It doesn't pause to allow this little being a chance to hurt it again. One huge foot strikes out at Yelira's side, again and again, the sound of crunching, grating bones accompanying each kick. Yelira grunts with each kick, drawing her legs up and trying to shield herself the best she can from the onslaught. Panting, she rolls farther away from the beast's kicking feet, manages to pick up a rock and hurl it toward the creature, shrieking at the top of her lungs. The rock bounces off the creature with little or no affect to its single minded determination to put you out of commission. It follows you and you can hear its deep breathing as it follows your path. It reaches out and grabs your arm, wrenching it from the shoulder as it pulls you up off the ground. It pulls you close enough that you can smell the reek of its breath. The wild matted hair and horribly disfigured face reminds you of stories of the yeti or bigfoot. It catches the front of your shirt and slams your back onto the exposed crystal face. Yelira lets loose another high-pitched scream as her shoulder is, at the very least, dislocated, and yet an even louder one as her already wounded back takes more punishment against the crystal face. Her cutter, having been dropped by now, Yelira grabs onto the beast's arm...the one pinning her against the rock face....and grips it as hard as she can, trying to loosen herself. In the process, she's managed to gather quite a fair amount of fur/hair in her fist again. The beast slams Yelira against the shrieking wall of crystal again, seeminly trying to force her through it. The other arm reaches up and whips itself against her head with a meaty *thump*. No longer screaming, Yelira simply grunts either an obscenity or an unflattering name at the thing with each impact. Her grip hasn't loosened on its arm, but her struggles are becoming weaker, especially once she's whacked in the head again. "Bloody hells..." she croaks, summoning up enough strength to kick out at the thing again--with both feet. The thing grunts in pain and stops slamming the weakening singer against the rock. The arm that hit her takes hold of her injured arm again and applies a mighty pressure. A sickening crunch of bone is heard loudly in the near silence of the vein. I manages to pull its other arm free, but not without loosing a handful of hair first. In the next instant Yelira finds herself soaring through the air, minus her arm and landing hard on the shard littered ground. Another piercing scream from the rose Singer which ends as she hits the ground with a bone-jarring thud. She lies prone, moaning. The creature tosses Yelira's arm away and shuffles over to her prone form. Picking up a nearby rock it bashes her in the head with it. Yelira is totally silent now, her head bloody in several places from a combination of missing scalp and hair, being whacked by the thing, and now bashed by the rock. The pebble and crystal shard strewn ground around her slowly darkens as her blood soaks into it. The monster squats down and peers at its handywork. A grunt of satisfaction escapes its mangled mouth as it hefts the dead or dying singer and takes it to where it belongs. Something This 'creature' stands over six foot tall and it's looming shadow alone strikes a note of fear into you. Silhoutetted by whatever light is nearby you can make out its vaguely anthropomorphic shape but little beyond that. Fur bristles along its limbs as they move wildly about itself, every so often there is a sharp reflection from its movements, then it is gone again. Though the gutteral growls and howling is enough to set your nerves on edge something in the deep red eyes chills your blood and freezes you were you stand. Taken. Yelira's sled This glittering, new sled appears to have never been used. The impression is false, as the recruit who spent several hours on it would be glad to tell you in great detail. The metal and glasswork has been polished, the seats attacked with stain remover... even the floor has been actually waxed. Of course if this happens to make the Singer slip at some later date, it may be reasonably classified as the cleaning help's revenge. This is a 1 person capacity sled. There is room in this sled for 5 cartons, 2 have been checked out. The console is off. The speaker is off. The auto-scanner is on. A small metal plate is fastened to the upper left corner, you can just make out "Lucky 'Lira" scratched into the surface. The weather is fine. A good day for flying. ( Type 'sled help' to see available commands. ) Contents: Something Carton 2 - Yelira Carton 1 - Yelira Dropped. Your body seems to chime audibly with the crystal resonance. You need some offworld time, soon. Non-singers around you see: Yelira appears to be extremely irritable, almost irrational. Yelira Tall and elegant, this woman moves with the grace of a dancer. Her face, however, is not the serene visage one would expect from someone with such flowing movements. A thick shock of black hair, shot through with a few fine strands of silver, is pulled back tightly from a sharp-boned face. Suspicious, ice-blue eyes examine everything and obviously find it all wanting. Since Singers show their age only after many decades, the sight of grey hair and fine wrinkles around Yelira's cheeks makes you wonder exactly how old she is. The once-vibrant turqoise worksuit she wears appears to have had better days. Its color is now a dull blue-green. The elbows and knees are worn thin, almost to the point of frayed holes. Countless years of dirt and grime have left their stains upon the front of the worksuit's bodice, and many of the myriad of pockets are either in the process of falling off and hanging by threads, or are gone completely, leaving a darker patch of turqoise to indicate where they used to be. Straight black boots, coated with dust and encrusted with grime, cover her feet. At first look you wonder if this singer could even be alive, but somehow though the symbiont has managed to keep her in one piece, well mostly, she is missing her entire right arm, it looks at if it was pulled from it's socket, the stark white socket that her ball joint is supposed to be in stares out from her shoulder. A bloody stripe runs down the back of this singer's head, missing hair and skin, you can see her skull through the hole, and the large crack in it. Her body is covered with large black and purple bruises, and as she walks towards you she has a definite lean to one side, which probably is due to the fact that two of her vertebrae in her lower back or out of position, and she has a slipped disk as well, if it wasn't for the symbiont's healing power to reconnect her spinal cord, this singer would surely be paralyzed. Yelira's body is uncerimoniously dumped into the sled. The creature nudges it farther in with its feet then reaches over to flip one of the switches on the control panel. With the flick of a switch, Something activates the emergency beacon. A bright red light on the console blinks rapidly. The beast hunches over and leaves the dying singer in her sled as it fades away into the Ranges. Something has left. [ To be continued.... ] ___________________________________________________________________ Lori Hansen voice: 619-755-7772 zNET Administration email: mailto:sales@znet.com www: http://www.znet.com/ ___________________________________________________________________