Inside the Crystal Castle

"Finally we arrived at the great crystal castle. It was very beautiful and could only have been made by dwarves. We went inside and soon we were attacked." My father paused here and seemed unable to continue so I prodded him, "Please father tell me what happened. What attacked you?" "It was me 'Mina, me as a banshee. And you and your mother were dead right there. It seemed so real but it must have been a defiler trick because you are still alive. I am the one that is dead. Uh wait I'm not a banshee am I?" It was so typical of my father that I nearly laughed but that would been cruel given the extreme distress apparent on my fathers's face. I responded, "No father you are no banshee. But you are a spirit from the Gray summoned by magic. Please continue your story." "As you say 'Mina sure. Well the banshee-Torvek was powerful and would surely have killed any one of us alone but together we were too much for it and we destroyed it." "We continued a little farther and then we were attacked by evil eleganta spirits of the desert. They were female sand spirits with the power to drown us in sand silt. There were two of them and they came close killing us but with the help of the remaining pirates we were able to surround them and hack them apart." "Next we came to a room with these glowing balls of energy. A strange creature appeared and attacked us with magic powers. The balls of energy moved around and when they were near us we felt weaker. I was very nearly killed but Rhogar managed to killed the beast before I died." "Finally we came into a huge room filled with more water than I had ever seen in one place. There were creatures swimming in the water and we were getting short of food so we decided to catch something to eat. Jorvek splashed in the water and dripped some blood in there also. A big reptile jumped out at Jorvek and he took a bad bite. He had to run to avoid getting eaten. The creature went back down below the water where we couldn't see it and we were afraid it would jump out at us again so we ran away also." "The next room we found was filled with plants. I had never seen so many plants in one place before. And there was food. Plenty of delicious fruit. And plenty of worms and bugs if you got bored of the fruit. It was so beautiful and so perfect. If you and your mother had been with me, I don't think I would ever have left. But nothing in Athas can be so good without some kind of cost. In a short time we were attacked by a pack of cannibal halflings. It was a tough fight but we defeated them. The last few alive called some sort of a green pet giant with a big nose.

"The giant healed fast but I was able to cut it down with the help of my comrades. The next level was very strange. I think maybe it was a window into another world. My friends seemed to think it was a window into the past of Athas but it did not look like that to me. It looked like another world to me."