Paths Twined and Parted
Season of Rushing Waters
Stones lie flat and smooth, almost polished to a shine scattered around the chamber like the shoulder-blades of long dead giants, whether by the work of some long forgotten folk or some work of nature beyond your ken. An odd place to rest for long-sleep, but one without worm-spoor or the sound of skittering Perched precariously on the edge of one of the stones, or at least it would be precarious if it weren't for the claws, was Gorok enjoying his most recent catch, the dark red of the meat only a little singed from when Mina had watched the fire while she and Pepper had been discussing... something arcane and on doubt of great import. It is strange to find yourself the second most picky eater out of all your companions but not unwelcome on those instances when the dinner points of cookery escape whoever is on watch.
"Good?" you ask, nodding towards the bone he was quickly divesting of flesh.
"Strange," comes the answer as the slips a hand into one of his belt pouches and takes out a small straight horn unlike anything you had ever seen. Does not look like it came off a stag beetle or other escaped duergar beast. This looked more like the horn of the fanciful
sword-faced-rat, though if it had been magical surely he'd had shown it to you already: "Mina called it a
goat, said her folk raised them sometimes for meat and hides, they even use the milk sometimes..."
"How would you..?" Before the sentence is done you think the better of asking Gorok to explain burnlander things to you, he's probably as confused as you are if not more so. "What was it doing down here? Where did it come from?"
"Same as the rest of us," he tilts his head from side to side, something like a shrug "Eating Ankheg eggs, it was raiding a nest when I caught up with it, as to how it got here, there has to be a passage up close by. New opened or else the Cauldronites would have found it and put it to use or set it to guard."
"Are you gonna look for it?" you ask taking a somewhat more stable seat next to him. "To bring the slates to your tribe?"
"Before the season is out. Sun season, can't see the sun down here." He pauses, maybe out of nostalgia for the great upper flame, maybe in thought. "You three don't have to come, can stay in the city, plenty of coin for food and board."
As much as the thought of being able to linger in a safe trade town, warm bed and good food assured would have appealed to you a season ago, as much as it still appeals truth be told the thought of parting from your scaled companion is bitter on the tongue. Things once broken are not easily mended and those once long down wild tunnels are not easily found. Perhaps it is different in a world filled to overflowing with light, but from what you had heard from Mina and Cob it is as easy to lose yourself between settlements there as down in Nar Voth. And of course there are predators in lonely places, with two legs, with four and with more as the saying went. "Best if we stick together through this."
Gorok's forked tongue lashes briefly at his lipless mouth. "My tribe, the Red Crests has little love of warm-bloods and I do not think it would be wise to gain the favor of the elders the same way we did for the Xulgath."
"No, of course..." you start to answer filled with sincere thought, before you realize, guess more like, that it had been said in jest. "I take it you do not like the elders you left behind."
"If I thought they did only wise things and none that were foolish I would have stayed, followed their word and hunted the mire."
What do you do about the remainder of Gorok's quest?
[] Accompany him to the surface to deliver the lore of smith-craft to his tribe
[] Stay in Cauldron until he returns, resting on your laurels... and maybe parlaying them into something more practical, training, new weapons or armor forged
[] Write in
OOC: Goldarion, the setting where finding goats that feed on the eggs of burrowing insects isn't even that strange, finding them underground is. 
