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The second-floor halls and rooms were much more opulent and grander than those below, but still very much empty. Mira didn’t understand if this Grand Magister wanted a dungeon or a palace or neither. Either way, the emptiness was creeping her out. It seemed so banal that she was worried random inhabitants could walk out at any time. She forces herself to stay mindful of traps, inspecting each room carefully.
The rooms were a mishmash of guestrooms, sitting rooms, small studies, and bathrooms. Treading lightly down to marble-tiled halls, Mira quickly made her way. Tiamat scouting the front as per their normal adventuring methods. The paintings on the walls were animated, showing historical scenes of action and adventure. Glimmerlings scooted about, high above the central hall, paying the pair of adventurers no mind, providing a shifting illumination for the room. The walls and floors shifted about with spots of light.
Tacky. Disco is dead. At least there aren’t any more spiders up here, Mira thought to herself.
The hall came to a broad dining hall where some familiar scullery golems pulled plates of food from the wall service and set up the hot meals at tables. Further down, more were collecting the plates and disposing of the still-fresh food.
“Damn. This is just like in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but a special Enchanted Kitchen addition. How much food is being wasted because this Glaucus dude forgot to turn the kitchen staff off after his last party?” she whispered to Tiamat. The familiar snorted with a small puff of smoke.
They made their way past the dining hall and moved on into a large vestibule area with sitting couches. Three large doors were spaced out on the expansive far wall with a grand staircase going up. None of the doors appeared to have any magic placed upon them. Mira as always chose the leftmost doorway, using her telekinesis tattoo to open it quietly.
Scanning the room quickly and seeing no guards or people, she ushered Tiamat in and closed the door behind them. Mira had seen many examples of portal rooms or scrying rooms from her time in the Imperial Arcanum and working with other wizards. This room appeared to be serve as one or perhaps both of those types.
The large, cavernous room’s floor was made of rough dark stone, maybe basalt or even coal. The walls were not visible, the door they came through stood in space without any backing. That some spatial magic at work was evident. The room’s sole feature was a distant Stonehenge-like collection of archways circling the center of the room. The room was gloomy with some mist rising off the ground.
Magic glyphs of solidified golden Quick Mithril traced complex patterns on the floor between and around the arches. Each portal had a flickering spotlight shining down upon them, although no light source was visible from the dark void that was the high invisible ceiling. Mira and Tiamat stealthily advance toward the monoliths with nervous energy, faint noises were coming from each of them.
The spatial distortions in the room were apparent quickly, the apparent twenty yards to cross to the collection of archways took over five minutes. The distance stretched out in front of the pair as they advanced. As they got closer, the monoliths shifted as well, and the distances between the structures grew. At first, they seemed tightly arranged in a circle with only a few feet separating them, now the distances were longer than a well-thrown rock toss.
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Mira glanced back. The entry door was still there in the distance, with a spotlight of its own weakly shining down. The mist shifted and pooled in the intervening space. The spatial shifting of the room disturbed her, but it didn’t seem random. It was making the room and distances larger than was apparent, but only when they moved to a new location.
Tiamat shifted on her shoulder nervously, trying to watch their back and occasionally whipsawing her attention about the room nervously. The little dragon enjoyed very good night vision, but the darkness of the room was unnerving and absolute. Mira cautiously circled the first arch and the sounds coming from it were tinny but clear.
“I don’t care what that infuriating Duke said, I made a royal decree for a kingdom-wide celebration with a tourney in the capital! He must send the tithe and tell us who from his Duchy will compete!” Mira saw the speaker clearly through the glassy film covering the central void of the archway. A teenage boy was dressed in rich clothes and wore a weighty crown. He punctuated his angry words by slamming his fists down upon his throne’s armrests.
“But Sire, Duke Mebro is currently defending his Duchy’s eastern borders from Volshuri Raiders. Their cyclic Famine has caused them to expand their raids. If he doesn’t maintain his Frontier Rangers, his farmers may lose crops and animals and then come short of their annual tithes.”, his elderly regent advised with worry.
“Damn it all. You are as useless as an Ascendant’s fart in a Tribulation! My decrees are law, and we mustn’t let these upstart Dukes forget it. Now assemble a task force to deliver that message and take one of the KingsGuard to lead them!”, the teen ranted.
The tirade continued, but Mira was already quite impressed. Not impressed by the very junior Emperor, but rather by the Arch portal itself. It seemed to be spying on the figurehead ruler of the Eldamire Empire in his very throne room. Mira had heard about the proclamation and the unrest it was causing. It seemed that the emperor’s hold over the Duchies continued to slip from his grasp. Mira had little use for politics, but it sounded like the emperor was facing a losing battle.
Mira continued her circular path, slowly coming to another Archway as the room’s dimensions continued to shift when she moved. The king's whining voice faded as she approached a new portal with a very different view. Beyond the glassy pane, the landscape and the howling windstorm helped Mira identify the town. She had been there in one of her adventures.
Prospector’s End was a struggling town deep in the Ilbarse Wastelands. Its silver mine had long since been tapped out and most of the inhabitants have moved on. Some determined or perhaps crazy miners remained to this day, hoping to find a new vein of precious metal. The seedy town had become an outpost of dangerous raiders and criminals.
The arch’s view showed a pair of land’s famous Ilbarse Duelists facing off against each other in the main street of the town. A crowd had gathered to see the fight, some drunkards had come from the busy tavern and were heckling the pair.
Mira didn’t see the signal to fight but the conflict was over in a flash. Both had thrown their dueling knives with their famed speed and accuracy. One fighter flinched as the knife flashed past, tearing his ear apart. The other fighter was less lucky as his opponent’s thrown blade entered his jugular. With an exclamation and gesture, the knife returned to the winner’s hand in a spray of blood. The loser’s throat was opened wide when the summoned knife pulled free.
Ilbarse Duelists were deadly and quick to take offense. All their Qi focused on manipulating their favored weapons, the Dueling Knives. Like the gunfighters from the old Wild West stories, a duel usually ended with at least one death.
Shaking her head at the waste, Mira continued her perimeter walk to the next arch.
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