8: "Oblivion take you!"

The rest of the ruin was dark and overflowing with the undead. It was mostly uneventful however, as the skeletons I encountered were barely able to hold themselves together, and the zombies were pieced together from pieces of who knows what. There were a few areas of note, mostly towards the end of my little visit.

The first was in a large room, not unlike all the others in this dismal ruin. The only interesting thing I noticed was two columns in the center that had protruding push blocks. I had encountered push blocks before, and so I new that all you had to do was grasp the center stone and push, but something was different. The two columns had six push blocks between them, all in a row on only one side. I thought this odd, but decided to push and see what happened.
As I laid my hand on the push block, I heard a creaking groan. I whirled around to face whatever skeleton had snuck up on me, but there was none there. I looked at the push blocks, and then at the walls. Sections of the wall were divided up into three parts. I had seen this before. The first secret door I had encountered here was exactly the same. I went over to the wall and put my ear to it, hoping to find the source of the creaking.

It was then, as I laid my head against the cold marble wall, that I remembered mysticism. The spell returned to my mind in a flash, and I readied my hands to perform the necessary movements. It was a spell to detect life, natural or no, over a distance of sixty feet. It worked through walls, and it would allow me to see what was behind this secret door.
I finished the movements, and my eyes tingled briefly. I peered at the stone wall, and slowly a glow began to appear behind it. By the poor posture and hanging limbs I could tell that it was another skeleton, and I walked back to the two push block pillars. I noticed that the rest of the room had the three paneled secret doors, and I looked behind them to find similar results. I opened the secret doors one by one, and had no trouble dispatching the skeletal guardians inside. Most of the rooms were empty, but the one in the far right corner had a chest containing the key to the door out of this room. I proceeded onwards.

The second area of interest was another room exactly like the others except for one thing. A Varla stone cage! I saw it and nearly wet myself. I had been searching for a Varla stone long ago, before the little accident that got me thrown in the Imperial Prison. I pushed the memory of that incident out of my mind, and started searching for the push block to open the cage. I had to go up a flight of stairs and dispatch a skeletal archer before I found it, but when I did, I pushed it down with all my strength, and ran back to the Varla stone. It was glorious! It hovered over a pedestal similar to that of a Welkynd stone, but it had a much more refined look to it. It was white, and the metal supports on it nearly glowed from magical saturation, I reached up and took it carefully, even though I knew it could withstand quite a beating. I sighed at its beauty and wrapped it in a pair of pants I had found, then I placed them into my pack.

Varla stones are of great use to both the adventurer and the scholar. They are an ancient Ayleid artifact that work similarly to Welkynd stones, but with a different effect. When the barrier that holds the Varla stone together is broken, the Varla Stone releases all of its charged energy into nearby enchanted items. ALL items in a person’s possession are immediately recharged to their full magical strength. Unfortunately, the stones are destroyed in the process, and they can be used for nothing other than recharging items. But enough scholarly input, I must continue my journey!

The third point of interest was an elaborate trap system. As I stepped up to the entrance of a corridor, Three huge hammers began swinging back and forth in front of me. I timed my dash through the hallway, but nearly got nicked of the heel. There were three other corridors like that, all branching off of a tiny little room with a pedestal. On that pedestal were two things of interest. The first was a pile of bones. The second was a statue of obvious Ayleid construction. I examined it, but couldn’t find anything particularly interesting about it. Nevertheless, it would fetch a good price with scholars or collectors, so I lifted it into my pack.

The final break from zombies and undead was not really much of a break at all. I encountered the source of all these poorly constructed skeletons, and he was not very happy to see me. I snuck up on the necromancer during one of his “procedures,” and before he could raise the skeleton from its eternal rest, I jumped out and shouted at him.

“OBLIVION TAKE YOU, NECROMANCER!” He had been in the middle of a very complicated incantation, and the concentration it took nearly fried his brain when I interrupted him. He yelled something incoherent and flung a spell at me, or rather, six feet to my right. Apparently I HAD fried his brain when I broke his concentration, and I simply walked up to him while he flung feeble spells in odd directions. A quick blast of chilling frost was all that it took to finish him off. He had some interesting things, but nothing more than some alchemical reagents, gold, a key to a fast exit, and a note to a guard captain somewhere. Apparently the captain and the necromancer ad been in cahoots, and it made me wonder where I could find this captain.

There was a door that led me back to the stairs where I had met the bandit ringleader, and so I returned to the place where I had stashed the heavy items from my pack rather quickly. Many of the tings were worthless, and the iron armor was just too heavy to carry, so I left it. It would only slow me down and right now I wanted to return to civilization quickly.

Too much death. I have killed too many people in these two days I’ve been free. I know that it was my life or theirs, and that they were bandits and a necromancer whom are not considered the pinnacles of society. But something in me is disgusted. Perhaps it is the fact that I was only looking for some money, and they got in my way. Or perhaps it is because I have not yet set out to find Jauffre. Whatever it is, I hope it passes when I reach civilization.