Nildeyr stopped a few steps shy of the attempts to unjam the door. The look he cast back toward Dorri was dark and frowning, but his eyes didn’t narrow with anger. He reminded Dorri of a reproachful hound which came wagging in friendship and received instead a scolding.
He wants me to tell him it’s all right. To stick up for him maybe, even.
Something like that, perhaps. He wanted something from her, certainly.
And maybe he should. It was my fault.
Hard on the heels of all that came another, more familiar thought.
I want to be anywhere but here with all these people.
Dorri put her head down to avoid Nildeyr’s eyes and took a second to check that her bowstring was in a good state. It was, of course, and she’d had no real need to look. Then she trailed across the room and stood back from Arra’s grunting exertion and flexing muscles as she worked at removing the bars from the door.
After the last of the restraining bars clanged to the stone floor, Booth put his fingers into the handhold indentation on the sliding door’s otherwise smooth surface.
“But of course, Booth is always right, and we’re going to open the door anyhow.”
Nildeyr muttered from closer than Dorri had expected. She pointed her gaze toward the opening door and carefully didn’t look toward him. If anyone else had heard Nildeyr, they didn’t say so.
Stone rumbled against stone, sticking briefly where rubble had fallen into the track but then moving again. Dorri expected darkness on the opening’s far side, dust and stale air and possibly additional rubble. Karon said the door had been stuck shut a very long time, after all.
Light spilled from the room and danced across the faces of those peering into it. Dorri shifted position and craned her neck to see into all the room’s corners.
The interior of the previously-blocked room was spartan, pleasant but in a simple way. Two cots with privacy screens took up the room’s far side, while nearer stood a table and chairs. Two larger chairs, overstuffed and homey, stood in front of a stone hearth with carved details around its mantel, geometrics which appeared at least similar to the ones they’d been seeing all through this place. The only truly decorative aspect was a bas-relief carved into the wall opposite the hearth, large enough to see that it also was geometric in nature, smaller triangles and lines which combined to form a single thick line which in turn formed a massive spiral.
A fire burned in the hearth, animating light and shadow in flickering patterns across the bas-relief’s surface and around the furniture onto the stone floor. Warm air eddied from the room, smelling of sunshine and fresh air and not at all the nose-itching mustiness Dorri would have expected. She swore she even caught the comforting scent of baking bread.
“Hello?” Booth remained in the doorway, but his voice filled the room. “Is someone here?”
Lora leaned to see around Booth and peered around the room. “There must be another way in and out, for someone to be living here.”
“If there is, it’s well hidden.”
“It’s also possible that magic is at work here.”
Booth glanced down at Lora and then back into the room. “Is someone there?”
Apparently, no one was. Aside from the fire and the shadows it created, nothing in the room moved. The hairs at the back of Dorri’s neck rose, just the same.
“The fire.” Lora spoke softly and didn’t elaborate.
In the hearth, the flames shifted in ways that hurt Dorri’s eyes. They seemed to curl and stretch in ways that weren’t quite right. Across the floor and walls, shadows turned in unexpected directions.
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“Uh.” Nildeyr no longer sounded sarcastic or sullen. Uncertainty lilted in his voice. “Maybe we should just—”
“If whatever is here is dangerous, we can’t just leave it.” Booth, however, continued to sound angry. His brow lowered, and his mouth turned down. “We need to deal with it, or it will bring harm to someone else later.”
“Well, if that thing it harms later is Scourge, then, you know…” Nildeyr’s words sharpened. His lip curled.
But Booth already strode across the room’s threshold, shield and weapon in hand. As he crossed from bare floor onto the thick rug at the room’s center, his footfalls grew muffled.
For a moment, Lora frowned at Booth’s back. Then she entered the room, too, lantern held loosely in one hand because no additional light was needed, and Karon and Arra followed. Dorri hesitated and then brushed past Nildeyr, still avoiding his gaze, leaving him to stand in the open doorway alone.
A crackling whisper rose all around them. Air rushed past Dorri’s cheek, stealing back any warmth the fire might have provided. In the hearth, flames thickened and then stretched, accompanied by other flickers of almost-movement too quick to look at directly.
Booth kept going, straight at the hearth with his shield held before him. The light which flooded his face darkened to the color of blood. Air continued to gust past Dorri’s face, icy now and thin, leaving her gasping for breath. Yet on Booth’s face, beads of sweat rose.
“I think,” Karon started to say.
The fire in the hearth expanded, spilling out onto the floor in a single, cohesive form. From it sprouted appendages, asymmetrical and painful to look at. One, long and pointed, lashed out toward Booth.
The way Booth shifted his shield seemed effortless. The claw of light, mottled brilliance with dull darkness, screeched down the shield’s surface.
“Voshell, Earthmother, Protector of Life, guide my hand.” Booth stepped as he spoke, using the momentum from his shield’s movement and lifting his flail in a single, graceful motion. A deep red-gold aura formed around his arm and flowed into his weapon.
At his words, the creature seemed to hesitate, but Dorri couldn’t be sure. Booth’s flail came around his shield, almost beneath it, and sliced into the thing’s form, brilliant gold light dispersing the darker crimson of the fire.
[Corrupted Flamis takes 30 damage.]
[Corrupted Flamis has died.]
And then everything was blinding brilliance and a shriek not unlike that of a dying rabbit. Dorri squinted shut her eyes and turned her head. Released heat blasted past, as hard to breathe as the icy air. But then the air stilled and cooled and there was some of the mustiness Dorri had anticipated. Bright spots swam a moment longer against her eyelids and then faded.
What remained when Dorri opened her eyes was soot and dying embers on the stone floor at Booth’s feet.
That was a massive amount of damage. Paladins, damn.
“Holy shit.” From the doorway, Nildeyr gaped at Booth. If any annoyance lingered, it didn’t show on Nildeyr’s boyish face. He took two steps into the room and stopped alongside Dorri.
“Holy something.” Arra sounded nowhere near as flabbergasted as Nildeyr, but she might have been impressed.
“Indeed.” Lora circled around to Booth’s far side and looked down at what remained of his handiwork. Arra and Karon moved up to look, as well.
Booth took a step back, lowering both shield and blade. He glanced back, and his gaze met Dorri’s. Obviously self-conscious, he stuttered a smile.
Dorri’s face heated. As usual, she couldn’t think of anything to say, so she looked away.
“An elemental of some kind?” Lora peered down at what remained of Booth’s attacker.
Flamis. Dorri checked her instinct to say it out loud, though. The combat message had labeled it, but that didn’t mean she’d know what it was. Her narrator didn’t provide any immediate information, so Dorri assumed the System was working on feeding it through one of the others.
Dorri stared at the unadorned wall opposite the hearth, just to have someplace to look while the others discussed what the creature had been and what they intended to do next.
It took her several seconds to realize that the wall should not have been bare.
“The wall carving,” Dorri started to say, far too quietly. Only Nildeyr, standing mere feet from her and still in the doorway, shifted his posture in response to her words. “Wasn’t there—”
At the wall’s base, stone flooring rippled. Shattered rock jutted from jagged seams, its surface ashy black and seeping dull green tar. Something long and tail-like and pointed arose, segmented and clacking. Another chunk snapped into what resembled a hooked beak.
Move. Now.
Dorri’s instincts kicked in. She tried to follow them.
Turn-based paralysis held her fast.
Surprise round. And I’m on the wrong damn side of it this time.
The spiked tail flicked toward Dorri. A too-sweet rotting scent like moldy, stagnant bog enveloped her.
[Corrupted Terberis uses Tail Strike on you. Hit!]
[You take 11 damage.]
Burning pain exploded in Dorri’s midsection. Her breath fled her lungs. Through the agony, only one thought got through clearly.
That’s over half my hit points.
She wouldn’t survive another hit like that one.