Sorry for the short entry, but there's a lot of dialogue, and I hate deleting and re-typing every quotation mark.
Dull pain. It'd been sharp at first, but now it was better. Flashes of red ran across veined lids, and it was accompanied by a sluggish heartbeat, coinciding with the flashes. At last, the pain subsides enough for the lids to be conquered, and they opened with a crack so prominent it almost merited its own noise. Jeol squinted as light assaulted his sight, blinking rapidly and trying to adjust. After a few moments, his vision began to improve, and he noticed with a start that a figure was hovering inches from his face.
"Aaaah!" He exclaimed with surprise, scooting back on his fluffy tail. He ran into a rock wall, hard, and turning, saw the grey mass stretched out behind him. Looking back, he saw penguins. Lots of penguins. Short penguins, fat penguins, ugly penguins and the like. The one in particular, the one that had been staring so intently at him, waddled up closer to him and continued to stare with wide saucer-like eyes. "Can I... help you?" Jeol said, voice so low it was almost a whisper.
"Why of course you can help me!" The penguin exclaimed cheerily, raising its wings happily. "I was swimming around in my lake, it IS my lake mind you, when I happened to notice you floating in it. Unconscious. Like, not-"
"I know what unconscious means. Where are my friends?"
"Well, your girlfriend-"
"Sheâs not my girlfriend."
"Well sheâs in another den, still asleep. Your friend, the hawk, swooped in just five minutes ago to find you, and the one with the missing ear was asked to leave after attacking the green fluffy thing."
"The treos?"
"It says its name is Tibbers."
"Yup, thatâs them."
A half hour later, Jeol, Rukia, Cowmaster, and Tibbers were gathered in a large den overlooking the lake. As it turned out, the penguins, whose chieftain was the one Jeol met and who called himself Vinster, lived in the north side of the lake, feeding off of the fish who fled up from the Alt lurking south. 'Oh it never bothers us.' Vinster said with irrepressible cheer. On the north shore, a rocky cliff jutted over the lake, perhaps fifty feet up and few hundred wide, and dotted along the wall were small caves dug out of the rocks, connected and accessible via staircases rising up out of the water. Nurv, after attacking Tibbers for spitting a mouthful of water in his face, had indeed been escorted out, 'no exceptions'. Now, as the day grew nigh, the four sat and explained their quest to Vinster and his group of advisors. Nodding here and there and interjecting a bit too often, Vinster heard them out. As they concluded, the sun touched the horizon gently, and the world was bathed in a soft dusk.
"That is very interesting.â Vinster said with a nod. "Tomorrow, we will show you where to go, and you can be on your way. For tonight, sleep."