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What happened next was extremely humiliating. I burst into the cave entry, prepared to kick some scavenger tail, and saw the biggest, fattest, meanest of the birds I have ever seen and ever hope to see come charging out at me. Caught off-guard, I was promptly nailed with its beak. Feeling as though I had just been punched by a body-builder orc warrior, I went flying about seventeen yards back, looked up, and saw it charging in for wallop number two.

Ignoring the loud laughter of my 'friends' across the river (see if I ever share my dragon roots with you guys again), I began to flee, but not so fast that the bird would give up pursuit.

About five hours later with the scavenger still in hot pursuit, I came to the cliff above Tan-Gul's dwelling. With a quick glance down to mark where the rocks stuck out above the water, I jumped down, and so did the scavenger. Me, being a light bloodfly and with wings, landed in the water a few feet ahead of the rocks. The scavenger, being the bloated thing it was, fell like a block of metal, straight down onto the rocks. The water above my head took on a crimson tint.

How's that for a flashy entry, eh? Tan-Gul was certainly impressed. After retrieving the paper from the carcass on the rocks, it translated to this:

Green-night springs at the world's waterfall perch

 Young seeds overlooking the fallen dock

 Moon-potion, overlooking the fallen tower you search

Runestone blown by winds, upon arch atop block.

What??

Tan-Gul read it a few more times, then gave me some places to continue my jolly goose-chase. The first line said that one of the ingredients grew at the top of a waterfall. The second meant that some seeds needed for the renewal grew somewhere overlooking a ruined dock. The third referred to the fallen necromancer's tower in the orc lands; unfortunately, there are quite a few places overlooking that crater. The fourth one was the vaguest of the four. Tan-Gul suggested that a runestone had been blown to a block that sat atop an arch. And with those jolly tips, he sent me on my way, without even giving me the list. Blasted old man.

After being chased out of the human camp by a gang of templars, I saw no less that five waterfalls right by the stream pouring into the swamp. This errand was going to take a long time. After searching those ones to no avail, I saw another two that emptied into a pool near a camp of black goblins. Only these ones were quite a bit higher up. I had to roundabout the mountains near a cool, skull-shaped orc temple over to the waterfall, only to find nothing but rock up there.

I promptly decided that I would come back to this item later. Let's see... which was the closest? That was a stupid question. I didn't know where any of them were. But, at least I could search around the fallen tower for one item. One problem - my entry to the orc lands was blocked off by a red-garbed human sporting a wimpy sword and a not-too-wimpy looking crossbow. This called for a covert operation. I haven't been on good terms with orc dogs ever since an incident when I accidentally led a marauding group of fire lizards over to a pack of them and ran while the orc dogs got grilled. So, all I had to do was approach the pack of them. They came running after me who, in turn, led them straight to the human. Four bites and he was down for the count.

He managed to wound several of them, however, but didn't kill any. So I simply herded the dogs up the cliff above the molerat cave and hovered down. They followed me and, quite unluckily, forgot that they didn't know how to fly.

Ouch.

So, orc dogs and human aside, I flew on into the orc lands and soon came across the lake with the sunken tower. With a brief look around, I noticed a very, very tall waterfall, and remembered that it was described as world's waterfall. Well, this one sure did look as high as the world. With a sigh, I began to climb. Luckily, a nearby gang of orc dogs didn't take notice of me. After an eon of mountain climbing, I came to the top of the waterfall - what the...?

Alright, so the first item on the list was there, some green nightshade berries. But the interesting thing was that the waterfall literally came our of nowhere. Water just sprang up out of thin air and poured down the cliff face. Looking to the left, I saw that an orc dog - don't ask me how in the hell it had gotten up here - was dashing at me with a hostile expression on its face. So, once again employing my favored tactic, I took the dive. That was quite a fall. I hit the water with a big splash, and the orc dog hit the water with a big splash after also hitting several rocks on the trip down. Stupid orc dogs.

So, with one item down in not even a day, I set upon my exhilarant meter search of the places overlooking the tower. Nothing there. A great deal less exhilarated, I set out to look for the fallen dock. Gads. I searched day and night for almost a week at every body of water inside Aunna, and didn't see a single dock. When I neared Tan-Gul's dwelling, I thought I would at least drop off the nightshade. Unfortunately, Tan-Gul wasn't home. How strange. I headed off due east to look for him, and - oh, how interesting. A broken dock with a friggin' cave on top of it. No wonder I hadn't spotted it. So, what places overlooked that? Let's check that lighthouse up there. In fact, this cave at the dock seems to lead right up there...

Bad idea.

You can never get away from humans and their swords, not even when they die. The cave system was teeming with undead creatures, and I... uhh... 'accidentally' stung one of them in the skull, which provoked the entire cave. Great. Somehow they managed to get behind me and cut off my exit back to the outside of the cavern. After about an hour of playing let's-catch-the-bloodfly-and-tear-him-to-ribbons with my new undead friends, I found a room with a skeleton mage. Now, two dozen skeleton fighters following me about two feet away from my back is one thing, but a mage really put the icing on the cake. If I'm the cake, that is, because the mage started pelting ice balls at me like there was no tomorrow. My sense of direction told me that I was directly under the lighthouse now; I might as well try and make a run for it. But, what was this? A door? Now, that's just funny.

An eternity later, I was back outside to entrance to the cave and shook off the skeletons at the water's edge. I took the other route up the lighthouse after that, the one by the wrecked ship on the beach. A long search gave me nothing. I couldn't see any seeds anywhere.

I was about to go back to Tan-Gul's lair and tell him to stuff the nightshade in his ear when I saw a small, grassy platform sticking out the corner of the cliff. A short jump down and, of course, there were the seeds. Two down... now, only two to go.

Well, to spare you the disparaging details of my second search around the sunken tower, I'll just say that after a while I went berserk and flew off to that cool-looking orc temple with the skull gate. After brooding there for a long while, an orc biter came around the corner. I take it he was hungry. Since my usual drop strategy here would get me impaled on a tree branch, I fled into the mountains and headed east. Eventually, I found a diamond-shaped granite area up there, and - oh, guess what there's a great view of way down there?

I took the 'moon potion' and headed a little further east, only to find that the platform was about seven yards away from where I had found the nightshade. Life can sometimes really bite it.

And now... number four. I had been dreading this one a long time. There were so many blocks on top of arches in Aunna; not to mention the fact that Tan-Gul might have been wrong about the entire thing. With my luck so far, however, the rune stone was probably sitting smack in the middle of a human camp. As it turns out, I was partially right.

*

You must be hungry by now, my friend... would you like some of that tasty dragonroot? No? Alright then.

*

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