Let me say at the outset that I don't know what my companions were thinking; these poor villagers might have been planning our grisly deaths, but it's not like they were evil scum that deserved to be cut down! I mean, they were just deluded! Some of us (mostly me and Prihelm) tried to beat them off without killing anyone, but I'm afraid to report that Haley and Tolec, especially, seemed to be more intent on self-preservation than on doing the right thing. When the smoke cleared, seven of the villagers lay dead on the street and another one lay basically comatose, clutching his groin and moaning in pain (I'm afraid that was my fault; I think I kicked him a bit too hard). Now that his priestly hide wasn't in danger, Al became the voice of conscience, telling us that in defending ourselves so vigorously, we had maybe done a bad thing, but then, I didn't see him using just his fists!

At any rate, having spilled a bit too much blood for my tastes, we decided to beat feet before the mob could come back with a few dozen friends, and started a long trek across the desert. Several hours later, we arrived at the cave, made the most comfortable sleeping arrangements we could (principally, since the cave was pretty small, this involved making Haley sleep outside so that we didn't get frostbite), and frittered the day away resting up from the traumatic experiences. Haley seemed to be quite irritable, so the rest of us just avoided her as best we could, but I was pretty fed up with her by the time we were ready to leave the camp. Just because she's always cold and no one can touch her any more does not give her a right to try to make the rest of us miserable!

Since it was getting pretty late, we started towards what seemed to be our destination. Maybe an hour later, we passed through these twin pillars, entered a secret valley in the cliffside (I must admit, it was quite well hidden!), and were just wandering towards the obvious temple or tomb or whatever it was on the far end when we heard a bunch of dogs baying at us and decided to make a somewhat better pace, since there were quite a few of them. I can't believe I, a Raventhorn, was forced to run from a pack of mangy hounds! Of course, the fact that they had two heads a piece was somewhat unnerving....

Well, it was a close race, to be honest. Prihelm especially isn't so fast, with all that heavy armor of his, and we wound up having to try to keep the creatures at bay by slashing our swords behind us as we sprinted. Naturally, this wasn't very effective, but it did seem to keep them off of us somewhat. Then Sam, the noble idiot, decided it would be best to make a stand and give the rest of us time to escape. I hadn't even realized what he was planning until I glanced over my shoulder and saw him being feasted on by five or six of those blasted dogs! How could he do this to me?!?

I guess I must have been a little stunned at this shocking turn of events, because the next thing I know, I'm bouncing like a sack of potatoes on Tolec's back. He's really very strong, fortunately, so even carrying me, he was making pretty good time. Then again, despite what the others say in their jealousy, I'm really not all that heavy... Unfortunately, he wasn't quite making good enough time, because one of the dogs managed to pull me down from off his back and I was this close to joining Sam in death (which I wasn't all that eager to do) when Tolec's axe came out of nowhere, took off a bit of my hair, and killed the dog that was trying to tear into me. I suppose I owe him one.

To make a long story short, we managed to get to the temple without much further trauma, although both Haley and I were looking a good deal like chew toys, and we were more than a little worried about getting infected with something from the bites (the dogs looked exceedingly mangy, and they were dripping some kind of nasty goo from their fangs, too). Al did what he could to heal us up, made some nasty comment to me, picked himself up off the floor (I'm afraid I just wasn't in the mood to deal with him in a more diplomatic manner), and on we went into the tomb/temple.