Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lets' go back few days before the siege began.

Particularly two days before Reith departed for the Tabard of World-Tortoise.

The other Apprentices are either training or questing; but lo and behold, here he is, sitting at one corners of the reference room, seemingly undisturbed by the passing knights.

Eye glistening in full concentration, he flipped each pages of the book he held with long pauses between each flip.

What book did he read? Oh, it's just another lorebook.

But what made him interested in the book is not the story, but rather, the HISTORY contained within it.

The book speaks about one knight, his armor glittering with precious stones of all colors embedded in it. He found that particular piece deep inside the Dwarven Mountains.

But by envy of another knight, he was killed and the armor was divided into three pieces, the breastplate and the two shoulder guards.

So why did this story interest Rei?

-because the shoulder guards. It bears a pair of ruby and sapphire gems in each piece, and they has certain powers: should the wearer asks a question, the response will trigger certain effect on the stones-if the answer is a lie, the ruby will lit. If the answer is honest, the sapphire will lit.

Just perfect for him.

Anyway, the book contained enough information to be used as rough guide. After all, the pieces was hid in the Dwarven Mountain.

...Rei now seriously wondering what else lies beyond those mountain range.

But first, a visit to the pantries!

Rei took the journey too leisurely. As he reached the top of the tree, he shivered.

The next step is to cross the natural bridge of gigantic tree roots and vines to the other side. Not counting gale-force winds, a simple misstep will cause him to fall down in loud SPLAT.

Thus he made a hard decision of leaving some food behind to lessen the load-and in turn, risk of slipping to death. He took out few cheese slices-

AND ATE THEM ON SPOT. Hey, it DID lessen the load anyways.

Step 2: The Winding Forest

Walking carefully, Rei entered the Forest at dusk.
Well, to be precise, the canopy area of the forest. Looming high before the lush, EERIE greenery was the natural bridge. Far on the horizon, massive mountain range limited his vision.

He wonders should he took this path the next time, as it was certainly easier---

---ooooor not.

Few more hours walking atop of the canopy, the roots and vines strangely covered in something like thread. SILK thread.

He wonders why did anyone would waste a perfectly good (and pricy!) thing like this, so as he walked he spun the thread on his hand-in hope of collecting them for his personal uses.

Long story short, he gets too greedy and walked into giant arachnids' lair. There goes another portion of his ration---he used them to distract the spiders.

Again, lets' omit the part when he got chased around, it's not funny enough---but the bottomline he managed to reach the Dwarven Mountains before nightfall.

Step 3: The Dwarven Mountains.

As he entered the mountain caverns, a rather strange thing happened:

There was no ruins at this part of mountains, just a rather crude tunnel system that's looked partly man-made, partly natural. The tunnels are not dwarf-sized; some of them accommodate humans, and sometimes there's large open space inside the mountain that looks plain omnious.

What creature can dig holes THIS big?

As he explored the cavern system, he stumbled into a snake pit. OWCH. Fortunately, most of the snakes living there is non-poisonous kind.