Not two minutes after running out through the gates, a light rain picks up. The rain then grows progressively heavier over the following minutes, until it is as excessive as buckets being dumped over my head with every passing second, a torrential downpour.
The wind picks up, and the temperature drops precipitously, until, despite the fact that I am running, I am shivering and shaking, freezing to the bone under the combined effects of the wind and the rain and the cold and the night.
Next, thunder begins to boom as lightning cracks across the sky to fell and torment the distant trees, a sound only rivaled by the ever-loudening howl of the wind passing through them and by my ears as well.
Even with my speed, I still must spend some minutes under these dismal circumstances as I hurry with the whole of my musterable haste to the gates of the city which may offer me refuge from this misery.
As I continue to run, I begin to doubt my heading; after all, surely I should be back by now, my journey to the town did not take half as long. At first I thought myself to be only imagining things, affected by the misery of the situation to overestimate the duration of my exposure to it; however, by this point, I should have certainly reached the city.
That I would miss it is quite possible. The rain is extremely heavy as it leaves gray streaks across the world with the aid of the wind, creating visibility nearly as bad as that which I had encountered at the edges of that nightmarish swamp of a forest. While I had seen just fine then, at those edges at least, my vision enhancement skill was of higher level then than it is now, and to a decent extent; all this is to say, my vision is so bad at the moment that I could have run right past the city without ever knowing if I were so little as even a few hundred yards off track. While unlikely and a bit unfortunate, such a thing is possible; and, beyond being possible, such a thing would seem to have occurred based on the lack of contact with the city.
As soon as I am certain that I have overshot my destination, I stop. I am in a field, and the rain faces no obstacle as it instigates my misery. I shiver and quiver, a weak fool feeling the awful effects of being trapped in a thunderstorm of immense might.
[Well, there is no point in backtracking either, the odds of bumping into the city are quite slim, it seems that I will have to wait until tomorrow to do any traveling. Heh. I could have just stayed in that town at this point, perhaps I should have accepted Gordier's offer, or, better yet, the offer of that first guard, to wait in town until morning… Well, nothing to be done about it now, my choices were the best I could have made, given what information was available to me. Sometimes, things don't work out even when one plans to the best of his abilities.]
Standing in the rain, my clothes so soaked through as to be a hindrance in the quest for warmth or dryness, I determine myself to have no other choice than to stay here for the night.
[And what a choice that is,] I think to myself miserably while using earth manipulation techniques to carve out a cave going deep into the bedrock for myself. Straight down, deep into the stone, to form a U-shape and climb back up a dozen feet into a small, pitch black area that will be safe from all but the most severe flooding, flooding the likes of which seems quite improbable in only a single night.
Once my shelter is complete, a task which leaves me covered in mud from all the dirt I pulled out and which takes close to an hour, I am happy to enter into it. While still a bit chilly, it is mostly dry, at least. Or 'damp,' I suppose, for it is only really dry by comparison to the outside world. Oh, and dusty too; these contradicting points could only exist in an area that has been recently excavated during a nasty storm, and are points that combine for an ever heightened sense of misery for the one forced to endure it. Still, better than an above ground structure of mud that would see me drowning before morning, or, perhaps even worse yet, spending hours wandering the dark in search of the city.
[Well, as long as Lector doesn't brave the storm to take my powers from me tonight, I should be fine in the long run. And besides, as of tomorrow, that shall no longer be a concern of mine!]
Also, even if I had reached the city tonight, I just don't see that old sorcerer meeting with me in the middle of the night to do something that could be done just as easily during the day, from his perspective at least. So, I guess, in the end, I have lost only comfort.
I lay on the stone, and, despite the terrible discomfort that comes with being soaking, freezing, and muddy while laying on a rough stone floor, I fall asleep instantly.
I awaken to… well, darkness. I am underground afterall, and the design of this shelter is hardly one that allows in much natural light.
Having no desire to stay in this miserable condition any longer than necessary, I drop down the hole in the room into a muddy pool. Though I cannot see, I know the way through my own creation; I swim further down, following the bend in its shape of a U, until I reach the rising portion. Even with my eyes closed, I can detect a bit of light, which gives me hope that the walls haven't turned to mud and collapsed in upon the external opening of the hole.
My arms above my head so as to prevent my head from being the first to contact any blockages, I use my water manipulation abilities to propel myself out of the water, before then quickly switching to air to get out the last part of the hole.
I open my eyes to see the sun high above, a sign of midday, in a cloudless sky of blue. [Feeling a bit conflicted today, are we?] I think, a bit cross as I question the heavens for the wisdom necessary to dump so many buckets of water on me.
I strip off all my clothes, and, with the power of water elemental manipulation, clean myself of the first that clings to me. I then remove my nicest change of attire from my dimensional storage ring. My tasks for today are to sell these potions and go get my name changed. I figure that dressing well couldn't hurt… though it is not like any clothes I possess could be fit to grace the halls of that sorcerer… but oh well. At least I can say I tried.
I run south a ways; and, sure enough, the city comes into view, well to the west of the direction I took. How I could have been so far off, I suppose I'll never know.