Once she was done searching the room, Zalia was left feeling a tiny bit disappointed. There wasn't anything else in the room except for a lot of very basic equipment. While it was most certainly worth a lot, with no storage or manner of transporting it all the hoard was basically useless to her. There were some shields and various weapons but she didn't use a shield and had all the weapons she needed.

Her disappointment faded away as she tried pushing her hand into the wall for the hundredth time. The wall was too thick for her intangibility to allow her through, the feeling like pushing her hand into jelly. As she pushed her hand forwards it got harder and harder to move it through until it was stopped completely. She had discovered that with a thick enough wall she could basically hide in it entirely if she stood in it. She also discovered that the only thing stopping her from sinking into the floor was that she didn't want to. Willing herself to do so, she could sink up to the middle of her shin.

“This is so weird,” she thought.

She had tested moving her arm through a spear and it had passed straight through it without trouble. Having a thought about what counted as magically protected, she picked up a sword and tried to wave her arm through it. It didn't work and putting it down, she found it worked when not held. Her sword proficiency passive increased the durability of the sword she was wielding which was her guess at why she couldn't pass through it. A better description of magically protected would then be something with magic imbued into its structural integrity. She didn't know exactly how that worked but didn't question it too much, she wasn't some magic scientist after all. She just needed to know what worked and what didn’t.

Deciding it was too much of a risk to ever allow an attack to pass through her defences, she gave up the idea of dodging attacks by phasing through them. If all someone needed was a simple proficiency to counter the ability it would be useless against most enemies. That wasn't to say it wouldn't be useful in combat. Being able to pass through all kinds of barriers could be useful at just the right time if an enemy didn't expect it.

She didn't dally in the armoury for too much longer, leaving when she noticed Boreal getting restless. Boreal messing around out of boredom was the last thing she needed right now. They slipped past the front guards again, a task she only dared try in the first place due to the lack of Silver rank undead around so far. She could go either left or right from the armoury, the left path looking like it looped back around to the entrance. Deciding to take the right, she moved slowly trying to drag her hand through the wall while she walked.

She found that her hand wouldn't sink into the stone, which made her realise it was probably one of the outer walls. It seemed like they had some kind of structural magic which explained the relatively good state the keep was in. It may even have something to do with the sound blocking magic that the keep had. Well, whatever had caused the sound from the shades above to cease.

She followed the corridor, finding a large kitchen with not a small number of unconscious undead. Past the kitchen was a courtyard with a surrounding walkway, the walls looking into the courtyard nothing but low fences. Within the internal courtyard two possibly once well dressed people sat unconscious on a bench. The now undead Bathar were still seated in rest however many years after they had first sat down on that bench. She wondered if either of them had thought their lives would end on that bench. Probably not.

She walked around the edge of the courtyard, keeping a wary eye on the undead and the shades she could see above the ceiling less space. Despite there being no roof, she still couldn't hear the cries of torment let out by the shades. The soundproofing was an incredible display of magic if anything else.

Arriving around the other side of the courtyard from the entrance, she stopped mid step as she noticed the guards at the doors up ahead. These were not unconscious like the others, standing at attention two a side by the door. She couldn't tell their ranks from here but something about them sent a chill down her spine. She immediately turned around and went back the other way, making her way to the original set of stairs she had come down. Finding those awake guards signalled the end of where she could explore on the first floor.

Due to the location of those awake undead, she was pretty sure they had been guarding the entrance to the banquet hall she had seen from above when looking down through the glass. Knowing that there were also some undead in that room meant it was definitely a no go. That way lay death.

So she started exploring the second floor. She poked her head around a corner in the long corridor to see another door guarded by an awake undead. She quickly backed up and moved away. It seemed like this was the end of her exploration of the keep for now, not wanting to risk being caught by any of the undead in such a confined space where others all around her could wake up too. She went back up the long stairwell into the tower, closing and barring the door behind her.

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As she entered the room, she heard the flap of wings as their crow friend came to rest on the floor. She smiled at the crow but the expression was wiped from her face as it spoke two words,

“Death comes.”

“What?” she thought.

She quickly went to the balcony door and peeked out to see outside. As her head left the keep her ears were bombarded with sound as the cries and moans of the shades had turned to agitated screams. She winced at the sound but refrained from retreating back to the comfort of silence, watching to see what the crow had meant. Finally, she saw it.

Flying towards the keep on giant bat wings cloaked in a dull, dark red fire was a horrifying creature fit for the hellish environment around it. It had four legs that ended not with hands or feet but razor sharp spikes. Each of the limbs were shaped not unlike a spider’s yet muscled rather than covered in carapace. At the centre of the four legs was a thin and warped torso, thousands of eyes covering the twisted mess. Rather than a head atop the torso, it had a gaping maw.

It flew across the island with its four legs hanging point to the ground. Carefully, Zalia retreated back into the keep and closed the door with a soft click.

“Oh hell no,” Zalia thought.

The image of the hellspawn was burnt into her mind, the sight so horrific as to almost cause pain. She sat down on the floor, pulling Boreal to her arms as the corrupting aura all around grew steadily stronger with its approach. Her newly bronze Healing Presence was significantly greater in its healing ability than previously yet it had to work overtime keeping both her and Boreal safe from the corruption. Still, it grew stronger as the creature flew over the keep. The crow didn't seem bothered by the corrupting aura, simply preening itself in total relaxation.

The very air seemed to vibrate as the creature finally flew overhead, thankfully not landing as the aura began weakening once more. It slowly faded back to its previous strength and Zalia felt like she could finally breathe again. She let out a gentle sob as a shiver wracked her body. She had seen some terrifying things in her lifetime, many in the past few months in this world yet that monster was the first to truly bring her terror. Most of the things she had faced were scary in their own way and usually held some kind of danger to her but that thing… that thing seemed antithetical to life itself. The maw of that monster was where the soul went to die.

Zalia didn't know how long she sat there, holding Boreal as the feline shivered against her chest. It was probably the first time Boreal had ever even shivered with her natural protection against the cold. This was a different type of cold though, a chill in the bones that couldn't be shaken. A chill that no warmth would cure.

She had started growing somewhat comfortable in Cormaine, confident in her ability to stay out of the reach of shade or undead. The illusion of her own ability shattered, she was only alive now because she hadn’t been outside when that monster had flown over. She had a feeling that it was quite a high rank and only the newly acquired aura masking and magical protection of the keep had kept her hidden.

The crow sat there watching her as she held onto Boreal for any comfort she could get.

“W- what was that thing?” Zalia asked.

“Death comes,” the crow repeated.

Zalia shivered again.

“I wonder if my presence drew it towards these islands or if it was just flying over anyways,” Zalia thought.

Her mind was shifting into thinking with logic, trying to explain what she had seen to itself. She knew it was doing that but didn't try to stop it.

“It must be some kind of warden for Cormaine,” Zalia murmured.

“Mreow,” Boreal said, conveying a sense of terror as she did.

Zalia stood, still holding Boreal. She wanted to get back to her cave as soon as possible. She needed the safety and protection it provided her. The only problem was that she would have to traverse the large gap between islands with that thing flying around out there. She didn't know if it would come back or be able to sense her from this close. No, no she wouldn't go back just yet. For now the proven safety of the keep, despite the lesser threat of undead, would do just fine.

She took out a little bit of Frozen Heart and started chewing it, giving some to Boreal as well. The herb had some healing properties she hadn’t yet learnt how to use to their full potential but the feeling it provided when eaten was comforting nonetheless. Her entire situation here had just changed. She no longer felt comfortable taking her time to find a way out. She would live in fear of that thing while she remained here.

If that was the type of creature those rituals in Endaria were trying to summon, she was now really hoping they had failed. Thinking about that and Juniper, she wondered if she would be able to find Zayes down here. Juniper had said he was in Cormaine, whether held hostage or dead she did not know.

She also thought she might know what had happened to the Bathar now. Some of the destroyed buildings around the city held a more sinister meaning now, the collapsed sections very possibly created by the spiked legs of that monster. Anyone without her type of healing would fall to that corruption in seconds if not instantly. Others would have fought back but…

She put the thoughts out of her mind and tried to figure out her next move.