<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=53854.msg2765424#msg2765424">Quote from: Katina Tarask on 21-02-2010, 23:46:28</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote"> "And welcome back, Ithi.  This must be the most stylish victory you've ever brought us.  Are you alright?  Are you injured?  How did you even survive?"<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Before her voice answers in reply, there's the audible intake of Ithika's breath beside Sam's ear.  "I don't believe I did."<br/><br/>So suddenly apparent, the drow's presence comes to awareness like a cold breeze under a door.  Even without studying her, she seems utterly unlike her former self... her cape seems to stir in an unseen breeze like an inky creature that clings to her body.   Her eyes are invisible in the shadow of her hood, and a few stray wisps of hair peek like ivory cobwebs from within that caul of darkness.  The fine-featured face is set to a mournful stoicism, and she seems slightly smaller of stature than before.  Her skin, once the tone of unsanded slate, is mottled with the hypnotic whorls of gray and black like some strange butterfly's wing-- and she wears almost nothing beneath the cloak-- A fine length of chain like dulled brass wraps around her bare stomach, draping over exotically lean muscles and looping through a solid black ring in the drow's small navel, disappears into what little she wears below the waist-- a length of linen, faded black, and worn thin and filmy as spider-web, wrapped around the top of her hips and over-folded once between her legs, tucked in the waist and hanging loosely over what slim modestry the garb allows.  The same material, perhaps an inch wider, is wrapped around her torso into three layers and tied somewhere behind her back.  Talon-fingered gloves disappear under bracers like some massive insect's shell and rippling with intricate bone and malachite inlays, boots of soft leather stop at her knees.<br/><br/>She leaves Sam's other questions unanswered.  "Or perhaps I've helped end Eberron, if Pana speaks the truth."  She studies the ghoul lord, and moves among her allies like a cold wind.  "These chambers will be destroyed very soon, and the count's work ceased forever.  You've been very helpful," she adds this last bit as if reluctantly, and her hood lifts-- somewhere in the black depths, two black gems glitter out at him, "but unless you want to be our friend forever and follow us back to Rekkenmark, I'd suggest you go to the gate."<br/><br/>She knows he will find the tower, but what else is there..?  Could there have been more, entire libraries perhaps..?<br/><br/>With a twisting pang of regret, she knows that, if she lives long enough, she will have to return to that place.