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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2008 All Rights Reserved
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529
 There is no benefit to remaining so exposed and as the creature moves in the gloom you sheathe your blade and find a place to hide within a ramshackle mound of fallen crystal and smashed rock. In the darkness you remain still, searching the shadows for any sign of the beast. It is only a matter of a few minutes before the creature emerges into view.
Like an apparition a monstrous beast detaches from the surrounding shadows, its enormous bulk wrapped in a spectral aura of rushing vapours and dark energy. From your vantage you watch, unable to discern immediately what it is, but sure that it is a magical construct of some type. Before your eyes it moves closer, raising itself upon huge legs before extending a pair of skeletal wings into the far corners of the cavern. In the darkness your blood runs cold.
You do not know what it is but a more knowledgeable soul could tell you that it is a Druhl, a construct of magic, bone and rock, created in the form of a spectral Dragon for only one purpose, to act as a Guardian for the very caverns you now journey through. For you however, it is simply a nightmare and in the confines of the cavern you cannot help but stare at it in disbelief.
Standing upon its rear legs it is the petrified skeleton of an ancient Dragon, wrapped in a black writhing aura that binds it together, its body a moving morass of rock and fractured stone gathered from the cavern floor. In the gloom it moves purposefully forward then comes to a halt before the entrance to the south-western passageway. For a moment it pauses, looking into the darkness before turning in your direction, sniffing the air as it searches you out. It knows you are here, however it cannot yet find you.
Before you can move the Dragon raises its head and screeches into the roof of the cavern. It is a deafening cry that echoes like a high-pitched thunderclap through the open spaces, collapsing stone from the walls at all sides and bringing down huge pieces of crystal from the roof overhead. The shear size of the spectral creature chills you to the bone, its ragged, grinding form moving ponderously as it searches the ground, looking for you. Within the pile of stone you remain unnoticed but this cannot remain so for long.
In a building rage the beast begins to throw large chunks of rock, skidding them across the floor, smashing and pulverising the mounds in a systematic attempt at flushing out the trespasser it senses within the cavern. As one of the pieces slams into the ground only a few metres from where you hide you know it is time to get away from this ghostly apparition. If you remain here it will find you, and there can be no doubt that if it does you will die.
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The Druhl has cut off any exit through the south-western passage. Only the larger western exit ahead and the smaller passage at its right remain open. If you are to escape this beast you will have to make for one of them and hope the Dragon will not be fast enough. If it is the western passage you wish to take turn to section 554. If you believe the smaller passage in the north-west will be more prudent turn to section 582.
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This book, and its associated books and other documents in the Chronicles of Arborell series are the intellectual property of the author, Wayne F Densley, and all rights are reserved by him. Windhammer is best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution. Any questions regarding the Chronicles of Arborell can be answered by emailing the author at densleyw@shoal.net.au
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Windhammer, Copyright Wayne Densley 2001 - 2007 All Rights Reserved
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