Lilyana paused, watching as the volcano nearby belched smoke and fire into the air. The very ground itself seemed to shake and sway to the tune of the violent tremors.

She pressed herself against a rock, brushing her long hair out of her face. The place scared her- though she would never admit it, even to herself. The cold valley was even more strange than the fiery mountain itself.

Shaking back her hesitations, she forced herself to venture away from the very relative safety of the sheer gray cliffs. She had to know.

She'd stopped at a small inn somewhere on her travels. A mysterious cloaked man had told her of a secret hidden among the rocks of Nandgirith. She hadn't really believed the traveler's tale, but she was always open to an adventure. So she had come here in search of whatever this 'secret' was. She supposed, half-amused, that it was probably non-existent. Nevertheless, any adventure was a good prospect to her mind. She had an insatiable curiousity for danger.

She poked through heaps of lightweight pumice, still blackish gray and smoky. There was little to be found but more of the same.

Searching the whole valley would take forever. Lilyana sat down on a rock, helped by the violent quaking of the ground.

If she were to hide a secret, where would she hide it? She frowned, surveying the valley of Nandgirith. Not near the cliffs, where a rockslide could bury it, not in the middle of the hard-to-get-to valley...

She suddenly caught sight of the unmistakeable glint of metal. She rose to her feet, swaying, and staggered towards it. As she neared the twinkling object, a particularily violent movement hurled her a few feet forwards.

She sat up, rubbing her head where she'd hit it on a rock. She spotted the object of interest a mere six centimetres away. She reached over and yanked it towards her.

It was a very ancient sword hilt. It was rusted and there were pieces of jagged metal where the blade had once been. It was hollow and very cracked- though what could have damaged a metal blade that badly was certainly...intriguing.

Lilyana fingered the hilt thoughtfully. It could not be the mysterious 'secret'. It had no magical aura, no special design- it was just a broken piece of weapon that was simply a pretty shiny rock, as far as she was concerned.

She dropped the hilt back down. It clanged against the ground, and clattered to a stop between two pieces of pumice.

The only thing the hilt did prove was that someone had been this way before. That was hardly surprising, but it was the only thing she had to go on.

She spotted another piece of shining rock a while away, and laboriously began stumbling towards it, the earth beneath her feet wrathfully shaking.