Empirical Gnollage: Installment 87 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment087.png]
Steam billowed from the open doorway, and an angry hiss rose from the center of the room beyond. The adventurers braced themselves to meet the attack as the steam cleared to reveal the thing that threatened them.
It was a rock.
More precisely, it was hexagonal column of black volcanic stone, with a diameter a bit wider than Al's head. It rose up to about knee-high from the center of a wider hole in the floor. With another hiss, a puff of steam belched from the hole around the column. From somewhere below floor level came the sounds of running, bubbling water.
The room was perhaps ten paces long, and perhaps six paces wide. A granite bench ran all the way around the steamy room, interrupted only by three doors. One was the door they'd just opened, the other, to the left, was the one leading to the gallery. A third door was directly across the room from the party on the opposite wall. The ceiling was arched, and Al estimated he might almost be able to reach the highest point of it if he stood on Gruntle's shoulders.
They waited for several tense moments, then Wikwocket and Gruntle looked at each other. Gruntle gave a quiet, vaguely questioning bestial noise from his throat, and Wikwocket nodded. Gruntle lifted his flail and stepped into the room, tensing to swing as another hiss rose from the stone in the middle of the room. When there was no further threat, Wikwocket joined him, with Al and Bote following cautiously.
"This looks like a caldarium, like the one we met Cyrus in for that first meeting," Al observed. Still sensitized to magical influences, he looked more closely at the stone column.
"Ah," he said, "after spending all that time thinking about fire, it's easy for me to see where the heat's coming from. There's some kind of enchantment on that stone column that keeps it hot."
"That is a piece of columnar basalt," Bote added, "I do not believe it is native to this territory. Leave it to elves to waste so much time to separate a single column from whatever formation it came from, and then transport it all the way out here to make a magic water-heater."
Gruntle stalked to the edge of the hole the column was in and looked down. He leapt back to avoid another hissing puff of steam.
"Do you see anything that shouldn't be here?" Al asked Bote.
"Yes. That door," they answered, pointing to the door on the far wall. "There is a wrongness to it that I cannot quite place. It is not truly desecrated, but it feels similarly unnatural."
Al focused his own senses on the door. The swirling patterns of magical influence were of a degree of complexity he'd never personaly examined before. The details were unclear from across the room, but Al could definitely tell there were multiple layers of interacting concepts embedded in the skillfully-crafted magic. His fascination compelled him to move closer, until he was standing at the doorway. Having the torch brought near by his invisible spirit-servant revealed the neatly compacted spiral of arcane sigils that covered the door and extended beyond it and over the doorframe and part of the nearby wall. Some were familiar to Al, but many were not.
"This one is definitely over my head right now," Al admitted as he carefully looked over the symbols that had been shallowly carved and then painted on and around the doorway. "I think this part means this is some kind of warding magic. These look like symbols that are supposed to mean vitality, but their orientation isn't in line with the rest of the pattern. They're sort of upside-down and backwards."
"Wow, that's a lot of incomprehensible scribbling. So they mean, what, death? Because of being anti-vitality symbols?" Wikwocket's curiousity compelled her to ask. "Like a magical trap that kills people who try to open the door?"
"I don't think so, the concept of death or dying has its own symbols, at least in the tradition that I was taught from."
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Al inspected the spiraling pattern of sigils more closely. He was so caught up in the mystery that he didn't even notice that he was slowly leaning and tilting his head to the side to follow it until Wikwocket snickered at him. He straightened back up.
"I think opening the door will disrupt whatever it is this is doing. From these symbols down here and from what I can see of the way the magic is manifesting, I think it's aimed inside, not towards us, so I think it might be safe to open... um... well, this ward at least probably isn't dangerous. No guarantees whatever inside isn't dangerous of course," he explained, then took a deep breath and wiped the dripping sweat from his face with his sleeve. Wikwocket and Bote were sweating heavily as well in the hot, humid air of the caldarium, while Gruntle panted.
"Maybe if we open both of the other doors for a little while it'll cool off in here," Wikwocket suggested. "That'll also give us a couple of escape routes if whatever terrible otherworldly threat is sealed away behind the evil magic door is too dangerous."
"I don't think it's evil," Al objected.
"It's got to be!" Wikwocket countered, "It clearly doesn't belong here!"
"Since when did you become an expert on magical wards?"
"You don't need to now anything about magic, just look at it! It clearly doesn't fit the aesthetic of the rest of this place!"
"That doesn't...," Al said, but as he looked at it, he felt he'd have to concede that much. "Well, yes, I agree that it looks like someone came along and added it long after this place was originally built and that it doesn't look like it fits in with the way the rest of the place is decorated, but that doesn't make it evil."
"Evil might perhaps be an oversimple assumption," Bote suggested, "but I am forced to agree that it does have a certain wrongness to it that I do not find myself comfortable with."
Al looked around at a sudden slight breeze, and saw Gruntle opening the door to the gallery and stepping out to squat down and pant heavily in the cooler air outside. Having both doors open did seem to help make the air a little more comfortable.
"Do you feel anything else past the door?" Al asked. "I know I'm only going to be able to focus on magical influences for a little longer before everything just gets too blurry to keep it up, but I'm not feeling anything actively magical on the other side of this door, just the ward on it."
"At present, my divinely-gifted insight reveals nothing beyond the door, though the feel of the door itself is very distracting," Bote answered.
"I was all ready to fight the walking dead before we came in, shall we give it another try?" Wikwocket asked. "Let's not waste the anticipation! Hey, Gruntle, want to see if there's something behind this door that we can be violent to?"
"Remember, we don't want to destroy it if it's in here, just disable it!" Al hastily reminded them, as Gruntle strolled back to get into position in front of the door. "And just in case, maybe don't put your hand on the door when you open it."
Wikwocket lifted the door's latch with the tip of BiteySue, then gently thrusted forwards. The door resisted for a moment but then there was a crackling, tearing sound, and flickers of dim violet light danced between the edge of the opening door and the doorframe before snuffing out. As its momentum swung it further open, Al heard a heavy, dull thud inside, and the door finally swung far enough to reveal someone crouched on the floor.
Al was about to ask whoever it was if they were all right before Bote called out urgently, "I feel them now! On the ceiling inside!"
The figure on the floor lurched to its feet with a pained groan, then ran at them. Its eyes glowed with violet light and it bellowed in incoherent rage as it charged.
Before it could get near, Bote held up the sacred scroll-case that symbolized their order and called out a malediction upon all who make a mockery of life in death. Silvery divine light lit up the whole room beyond the door, and the formerly-living person shielded its withered eyes with one arm as it halted. A wordless, hollow cry of distress came from the thing's throat. Its face contorted in horrible fear. It turned and fled away towards the furthest corner of the room it could reach.
"That will not keep it away for long, be ready! There are still things on the ceiling!" Bote called out.
"Was that a dead guy walking around? My first zombie encounter!" Wikwocket cheered. She pointed her dagger and BiteySue upwards and stepped inside to look up, saying "From what Cyrus told us I was expecting something more MMMPHH!"
Whatever she was saying was muffled as she was knocked down and glued to the floor by a sticky sheet of silk.
A spider the size of a horse dropped from the ceiling, its mold-ringed eyes flickering with the same violet glow as the zombie as it flexed its long fangs in anticipation.