Skeletal Spike was a difficult galdr to learn, double that when learnt in a cupboard and slowly dying of thirst, but Erika was sure she had the outline down, the way to… think/move the edges, Feral Fury was easier and she was pretty sure she could cast that now, Wicked Tail was in-between the others but it used some of the same saga and story that Skeletal Spike did which might help her develop it properly. Erika had studied a few of the third circle galdr as well but none of them made much sense to her, she vaguely understood their outlines but they seemed to require a layer of motion she could not provide, yet.
As a side note all this studying was helping her ignore the argument.
“… there is no glory in this! Dying in a cupboard! None of us will see Valhalla unless we take the risk, is it really that much worse than dying of thirst?”
“What if the draugr follow you back here? What if they find the rest of us who don’t want to die!”
“You’ll die anyway when the supplies run out!”
“The Vitki can fix that… I'm sure of it!”
Erika pointedly didn’t look up; they’d been having this argument around and around for ten minutes now. Solvor and Bjorn were staying out of it but that didn’t seem to matter, the one in favour of leaving was a woman called Ari, a middle-aged firebrand with an axe as big as her, the more cautious was Olaf Olafson, the fifth of his name as he liked to point out, a calm man of the jarl caste who was one of the Silvermane agents attached to the expedition.
Both of them made pretty good points, but Erika thought they were both equally far from the truth, as it was, they had heard nothing for half a day now, not a scrape of stone or footstep, there was no horde of draugr waiting to rip them apart, instead there was just the normal miles and miles of identical cold corridor without any food or water.
Which did not sound enticing.
“Coward filth!”
“Brutal monster!”
Ah they were squaring up for a fist fight, Erika had know this sort of thing was coming… was she supposed to eat one of them if they killed each other? She didn’t know the code of conduct for cannibalism. A moment later the first fists flew which forced Bjorn and Solvor to step in, Solvor simply boxed Olaf Olafson in with her body glared him down but Bjorn had doubled Ari over with a haymaker to the gut.
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As they started some sort of inspiring speech Erika turned back to her books, she was hoping to understand some of the 3rd circle galdr, even if only a little, but the saga within wasn't anything she could understand. First circle was… flat for want of a better word, second wasn't much harder but these galdr seemed like they expanded into the pages themselves, Erika had no idea what the tenth circle would look like, a small world in itself for every galdr?
Oh they appeared to have finished up, Bjorn and Ari were talking side by side and now Ari was heading to the door… oh dear was this a mutiny? Erika really didn’t want to become a cannibal; she didn’t even have any seasonings.
“We’re gonna risk it!”
Ok not a mutiny then, wonderful. Erika reached up to her back, on the inside of her cloak of office and stashed the galdraz in the largest hidden pocket she had, the shining silver was just barely visible through the worn out fabric but it was better than holding the damn thing so she let it slide for now.
A few minutes later found Erika skulking along at the end of an undulating mass of silent delvers, weapons held high and ready, creeping forwards step by step. “Only one light.” Bjorn had said so they moved in a single faint circle of light.
The usual banter or complaints was nowhere to be heard, only silence and shallow breathing as they crept along. Erika for her part was realising how odd it was that they found a cupboard at all, most of this vast structure was composed of identical passages, the exact same organically curved stone and dotted designs on the walls, but this area was different. They’d stumbled onto it randomly but the halls were noticeably smaller, but still larger than any but the grandest human halls, the stone was rougher and the dot artwork was entirely absent. In the end Erika could only conclude they had found the servants quarters and the domestic passages which implied one thing, if servants frequented these tunnels once, they would have a kitchen nearby.
She whispered this up the line of delvers and watched the drawn faces fill with hope as they passed the information up to Bjorn who nodded but stayed silent.
It turns out they did have a kitchen, down a dozen more corridors at least, one that was stone cold and empty, not even dust left to coat the pots and pans. Spreading out the group opened giant sized draws with ropes and hammers, pulled open the pantry and turned over the pots finding nothing, at least that was what it seemed like until Solvor raised a hand for silence, after a moment of quiet she turned to the group and beamed.
“Water… I can hear water running… over here.”
Erika had never seen people move as fast as the delvers did, without magic enhancement at least, the mass of people descended like a horde of locusts onto the wall Solvor had pointed at, tapping bricks and running knives down cracks.
“Here!” That was Olaf Olafson again, he hadn't joined the rush but had instead gone further down the pantry and found it curved, the false perspective gave an impression of an end where instead it continued in a loop around the back of the kitchen where…
“WATER!”