Zalia peeked around the corner of the hallway towards where the two guards stood vigilantly in front of a door. The sparsely decorated hall would be an excellent fighting location for Zalia due to its straight and narrow path if it weren’t for the fact that there was an entrance to the kitchen on her left. The horde of Bronze and Iron rank undead in there was a risk she had been willing to take when she was fighting only two Bronze guards but in a fight with these two she wouldn’t be able to hold them all off. She wasn’t entirely certain that trying to take down these two guards was a good decision in the first place.
One solution she had was to bring the fight to the undead kitchen staff herself, running in there with the Silver guards following and using her big area of effect spells to lock them all down. It would certainly help if she was able to choose the location of the fight herself rather than be playing around trying to make as little sound as possible to not wake them.
First though, she had to get into the room those two guards were standing at the door of so she could see what rank they were inside. Her solution to that was quite simple. Using her stone manipulation, Zalia dug at the wall until it was thin enough that she was able to simply step through into the room beyond. The way the corridor turned left then right once more allowed for this as she stuck her head through the wall to look inside. The room was the one she had seen from above through the glass ceiling and it sat exactly as she remembered.
Along the sides nearest the entrance sat two tables that were equidistant from each other and their closest walls. Lining the walls on either side sat sixteen banners, eight on each side. Nearer to the end of the long room was another large table with seats facing the entrance and a huge thorny throne against the far wall. Zalia thought it looked something like a throne room set up for a meeting of nobles from across the lands. She could see the one banner she recognised from her place as half a head stuck through a wall. It was the Y shaped imagery with tree-like growths coming from the top of each prong. From this angle she could also see that it appeared to be slightly stylised in the manner of a crows foot.
Did the Bathar revere whichever god was the one who had spoken to Zalia through Ro?
Remembering her conversation with the starlight wolf back in Endaria, Zalia did recall the wolf had said the Bathar once revered the old gods. She scanned the other banners and saw one that looked like it might be a starry sky with a howling wolf on it. As she looked at each, they all appeared to represent a type of animal with an element of nature alongside it. She didn't recognise any of the other animals but did identify them as such.
She turned her attention away from the banners momentarily to check the rank of the undead in the room. From this viewpoint she could see another two guards that stood at attention towards the end of the hall on either side of the throne and paying closer attention she saw another figure. Masked amongst the thorny throne sat a figure with its head resting upon a leaning arm. The king.
A similarly themed crown sat upon the monarch's head and two green glowing eyes peeked out from a fleshless grinning skull. As Zalia looked at the monarch, her eyes tried to slide off the undead as if they were being compelled not to see him. She couldn't identify any rank from here but seeing as he was awake he must have been at least Silver rank, maybe higher.
She pulled her head out of the wall and slowly backed away from the throne room, throwing aside all plans of fighting the Silver guards. An extra room of undead containing at least another three Silver rank Bathar was something she was very much not ready for. Maybe if she came back when she was fully Bronze rank or even Silver she could manage but as it was this was an unwinnable fight for her.
She left the bottom floor entirely and went up to the keeps tower trying to decide on her next course of action. The list on the wall of her cavern had marked into it the objective of finding a way of harming, killing or hiding reliably from the shades in the sky but she wasn’t really in the mood to be swarmed by shadow wielding ghosts at the moment. Instead, she decided to go and search another island.
The closest one was, if facing towards her island from here, towards the right. It was unfortunately much further away than her home island and the Bathar ruin island were from each other but with her flight it wouldn’t be so tedious bridging over.
“I think we best search another island,” Zalia mentally told Delphi.
“What did you see in that room?” Delphi asked.
Zalia sent the images from her mind to the memory obsessed frog and cast her air wing ritual on each of them. Ro came flying in through the open door from the balcony and landed on the ground, looking at Boreal.
“I think there is a banner dedicated to your god downstairs Ro,” Zalia said.
Ro-ak looked at Zalia and tilted his head, letting out a quiet croak. As he did that she saw a shiny object held in his beak.
“What’s that?” Zalia asked.
Ro-ak hopped over and dropped the metallic object to the ground with a soft clatter. She looked at the twisted metal object for a moment before recognising it as what might have once been a spoon.
“Where did you find this?” She asked.
Ignoring the question, Ro-ak hopped over to Boreal and began cleaning her fur.
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“I believe we may have some information regarding these banners,” Delphi said
“Oh?” Zalia said questioningly.
“I do not have the information with me but I believe one of our members does. I shall ask when we go back,” Delphi explained.
“So.. you know that one of the collective knows something but you don’t know what they know you just know they do?” Zalia asked.
There was a pause before a reply came.
“Yes,” Delphi said.
“Wonderful,” Zalia said dryly.
“I would like to go and read some more of the texts in this keep before we leave for another island,” Delphi said.
“Oh right, forgot about that. Yeah that would be good, maybe we can translate that map of the city we found,” Zalia suggested.
Most of the city was completely worn down or rubble but it would be good to get an idea of where any bigger or central structures may have been. Searching each and every building would take forever but some of the more important places may be structurally sound or enchanted.
“That would indeed be a good memory to have,” Delphi replied.
“So, library then another island. Any problems with that you two?” Zalia asked, looking at Boreal and Ro-ak
Boreal and Ro-ak stopped cleaning each other and looked at her blankly.
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said.
They moved to the second floor and made their way to the library where Delphi asked Zalia to open and show various pieces of parchment, even getting Zalia to hold Delphi up so she could see them clearly. They also went and gathered the other scrolls and notes from what Zalia thought to be the king’s bedroom. It took quite a while to go through everything but Boreal and Ro-ak weren’t bothered, playing in the corners of the room and searching the ancient dust for secrets.
Delphi managed to translate the central map of the city, finding the locations of a town hall, central market, barracks, a magic research facility and many other locations. A few of them were mediocre boring things she didn't care about but some of the former were quite interesting to her. The magic research facility was one of those things and she hoped that it had held intact at least somewhat.
Delphi also translated quite a few of the scrolls in the library room but most of it was reports of various kinds about income, production and other managerial points.
There was one thing they did find that Zalia was instantly interested in for various reasons. It was a report they had found on the desk of the king that detailed locations of newly discovered rituals in their own kingdom. The descriptions of the rituals eerily matched to what Zalia had seen firsthand in Endaria and what she remembered from the in depth ritual sheet she had taken from Juniper. That disturbed her greatly.
It seemed like, for one reason or the other, that the same rituals that had been happening in Endaria had also taken place here and based on the fact that they had found the report on the kings desk as well as the larger list and map they had found in the library, it had been happening right as the kingdom fell.
She knew what that meant, logically thinking. It meant that the same rituals happening in Endaria had been the end of this one and the reason for the Bathar peoples' fall. She didn't know if it had transported the city here to Cormaine from the world Endaria sat upon or if it had somehow managed to transform Cormaine into the hellscape it now was but either idea was terrifying.
“Do you have any memory of my race?” Zalia asked Delphi.
“Hmm, some of our most ancient memories from when the collective lived on the surface have images of other races, yes. There was a race much like yours but much shorter and with significantly less weight to them,” Delphi explained.
“A shorter race? I don’t know about an- oh wait, what did they call themselves?” Zalia asked.
“There were a few different types of their kind that we had interactions with. The ones we most commonly interacted with were Those Born of the Watery Depths. There were a few other kinds such as Those Born of Wind and Sky an-” Delphi replied.
“And Those Born of Heat and Stone,” Zalia interrupted.
“You know of them? We have not seen their kind for many a cycle,” Delphi asked.
‘Yeah, a good friend of mine, Glemp, is one,” Zalia said.
The fact that Delphi knew of Glemp’s people and even knew of some types that she had never met gave life to the theory that this kingdom, named Hetheir they had discovered, had been sent here from the same world as Endaria. They had found no mention of Endaria within the reports of ritual discoveries, the only mention being that first piece they had translated. Though she supposed that much like the Bathar people, the Nature Born, as she decided to call them, could have fled this world to the other.
“I don’t suppose you remember where those people lived do you?” Zalia asked.
“No, they always came to us asking for hints of the future. To a degree they revered us as is expected,” Delphi explained.
“As is expected?” Zalia asked in disbelief.
“Of course, our powers have helped many different peoples in their times of need. Through our long memory and sight of the future we have gathered much wisdom over the cycles. We even knew you would come to us,” Delphi replied.
“Then how come you didn’t come talk to me the few times I came down to observe you before I reached out?” Zalia asked.
“We were observing you also,” Delphi said simply.
Wonderful.
“Well oh wise frog of the deeps, what shall I find upon the next island I visit then?” Zalia asked sarcastically.
“You shall find that which grows and remnants of a god,” Delphi said.
“Funny,” Zalia told him, looking over to Boreal giving her a look like, can you believe this frog?
“Not at all. My words hold no humour,” Delphi told her.
“Wait, you're serious?” Zalia asked.
“Quite,” Delphi said.