The venture out from the dining hall has been, thankfully, uneventful. The door at the back of the room had let out into a hallway with several doors: One led to a kitchen, still clean and dust-free after all these years, including the rows of various cookware placed neatly in the requisite spaces, but otherwise devoid of anything meaningful; Another led to a pantry, connected to the kitchen, still with various dry goods and a few casks of ale, which despite its age Dahlia assured is still good and from which Demy restocked his flask(s); The last door led to a simple bedroom area with a few beds, which the three assumed to be some kind of servant’s quarters, and which was entirely bare of belongings.
Seems the servants simply grabbed everything of theirs and left after Tarn died. Demy respects that they left the art and other valuable things alone, while Wren has been doing internal math of their carrying capacity for such treasures since stepping into the foyer. The discussion of just which one of the two is the intrepid adventurer and which one of the two is the land-locked pirate has been a hot topic of conversation over the course of the past hour or so of searching.
“I thought people from the Crown were minimalists or something,” Demy muses, walking beside Wren as the two follow after Dahlia, who is taking lead and inspecting everything very diligently. There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else to check in this area, so the dour little Goblin is heading toward the end of the hallway, where a square set of wooden stairs curves up and around to the second floor.
“We’re not minimalists, we’re nomads. Most of the Crown is, anyway. We live off the game animals and plants that shift around with the seasons. Having lots of possessions isn’t really, you know, something that we did,” Wren says, shrugging.
“It’s good to be connected with nature on that level,” Dahlia says as she ascends the staircase, eyes scanning the landing above for signs of those things from the foyer.
“It was nice in some ways,” Wren mutters, glancing down at the steps as they begin up them. “But growing up, I had nothing that was mine. I like having trinkets and mementos of things, it’s tangible, you know?”
“But none of that stuff is really necessary, is it?” Demy asks. “Wasn’t it simpler just to have what you needed?”
“Simpler isn’t always better,” Wren says, a hint of bitterness creeping into their voice. “There’s more to life than just surviving.”
Dahla pokes her head over the side of the banister above, smiling down at the two. In a sing-song tone, she says, “Beware of what you want. It might want you more.”
“What does that even mean?” Wren argues, putting their hands on their hips and looking up at Dahlia. The Goblin cackles a little and slides back, disappearing from view.
Demy smiles a little but doesn’t say anything, not wanting to upset Wren any further. Instead, his eyes follow the two balls of light that dance around Wren and himself. Dahlia has a third, the glow from which is visible as she trots around the second floor landing curiously.
“I didn’t know people from the Crown practiced magic, either,” he says, feeling a sense of calm as watches the lights circle one another.
“They don’t,” Wren says, flatly.
“Then, uh, who taught you how to do that?” Demy asks, tearing his attention from the lights.
“Nobody,” Wren says.
Demy blinks slowly, clearly not understanding. He asks, “Then how–”
Wren cuts him off, tersely explaining, “Magic was seen as wicked and untrustworthy. Nobody taught it to me, it just manifested when I was younger.”
“That’s, well, really cool actually,” Demy says. “My grandparents knew some simple, like, hedge magic, but it never made sense to me. I bet your folks were thrilled, huh?”
Silence.
“Any idea where you got it from?” Demy asks, too enraptured by the simple display of arcane power to pick up on Wren’s discomfort.
“I just know it has something to do with Corvega and Tryden,” Wren answers shortly.
Demy stops at the top of the steps, going a bit pale at the realization. He mutters awkwardly, “Oh, th-the moons. That makes sense. Tracks, as uh, as Cash would, you know… say.”
Both Wren and Demy are snapped out of their personal grievances by Dahlia, who hisses out at them from around the corner.
“Hey! Talky Chattertons! Over here,” she says, motioning to follow.
Demy frowns and says under his breath, “M’not a ‘Talky Chatterton.’” He and Wren trot after Dahlia all the same, finally catching up to her outside the only door in the dead center of a long hallway.
She pushes the door open slowly and the soft light from their orbs, which Demy now understands to be moonlight, floods into the room. It is cavernous, stretching up into the third floor above with a staircase on the far side. Rows and rows of shelves line the walls and stretch across the interior, full of books of all sizes, shapes, and colors. From just the nearest couple of Shelves, Demy sees that most are written in the common tongue, Valeant, but even more are written in languages he doesn’t know, though at least a couple seem to be written in Phylerian, his native tongue.
“Whoa,” Wren says softly as they step into the room, the awkward conversation from before forgotten in the face of seeing this much literature collected in one place, rivaling the libraries of a few of the universities they and Kaz have visited upon their travels.
“Old guy was a reader,” Demy says quietly, careful not to speak too loud in case of anything lurking in the aisles of the expansive study.
“Secrets of manor? In here, somewhere,” Dahlia says triumphantly, grinning.
“Oh, oh no. You mean we have to read all this?” Demy whines. Dahlia immediately shoots him a dark look and he winces, relenting, “Okay, okay. I’ll, uh, skim through the ones written in Phylerian.”
Dahlia looks up at Wren curiously. “Can you read?” She asks.
Wren huffs, crossing their arms defensively and saying, “Just because I’m from the Crown means that I don’t know how to read and write?”
Dahlia stares, unblinking.
Wren drops their arms, sighing, “I know how to read Valeant, yes.”
“What about the Crown tongue?” Dahlia asks.
Wren purses their lips, answering, “Carnist is only spoken.”
“Then you handle the common tongue,” Dahlia says dismissively, shimmying up the nearest ladder to the third floor landing.
Wren grumbles and moves over to the nearest shelf, grabbing the first book they see that is legible. “You wanted this, Greedy Child,” they mutter darkly, speaking the last couple words in the guttural, throaty speech of their homeland.
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A phrase all too familiar.
~~~~~~~~~~
Any uncertainties about whether or not the monsters are still waiting outside are immediately dispelled when Cashew opens the door. Multiple of the things are standing just outside, staring off into space obliviously.
All that changes very quickly.
The nearest monster, pale and naked, eyes dead and lifeless, slowly turns to face the doorway, drawn by the light from Kaz’s shield. It stares, mouth full of serrated teeth agape, looking very odd but non-threatening in the moment. At least, it would, were it not for the oversized claws at the end of each hand, the talons at the end of each foot clicking against the wooden floor as it turns its whole body toward the room.
Kaz hits the hilt of her sword against the steel of her shield, letting out a resounding, metallic echo as she yells out at the gaping thing, “I’m waiting, monster!”
It is as if a switch is flipped. The slack jaw tightens into a snarl; its wandering, blank eyes focus; the claws hanging limply at its side curl. It opens its mouth wide, letting out its strange tandem screech, just before bolting forward with surprising speed.
It passes the threshold to the room, charging at full speed, talons digging into the wooden floor. Cashew acts, moving to slam the door shut–
A second monster slams into the door just before it fully closes, sending the door crashing back open and throwing Cashew back several feet to the floor. The monster stumbles awkwardly, obviously not expecting the sudden obstacle, and slumps to the floor off to the side of the door.
Cashew groans in pain, seeing stars from where the door hit him in the face on the backswing. Fighting against the dizziness, he scrambles to his feet, grabbing his sword from the ground as he rises.
The first monster hits Kaz’s shield, claws scraping at the metal. Her sabatons screech against the stone floor as she scoots back a few inches, holding fast against the impact of the thing. It is far stronger than it looks, its body showing none of the musculature that would normally indicate its ability to almost topple a seasoned warrior in full plate.
She swings her shield out, pushing the monster back, throwing it off balance. Her sword gleams in the blinding light radiating off her shield as it slices through the air, into the monster’s side. The heavy, sharp metal digs into flesh–but not nearly as deeply as it should.
The thing screeches and swipes a claw at Kaz’s face, catching her off guard, but she manages to step back from the blow, pulling the sword out from the creature’s side with some effort.
What is this thing made of, burlap and tar? Kaz thinks to herself, noticing the second monster nearby and Cashew stumbling to his feet. She yells, “Smalls, the door!”
“Working on it!” Cashew yells back, trying to steady himself enough to make a dash toward the open door. His thoughts are going faster than he is, but the dizziness is fading thanks to sheer willpower.
Gotta move, there were way too many of them out there–
A third monster steps through the open doorway, almost leisurely, head swiveling slowly from side to side, inspecting the room with a curiosity that is almost feral, animal-like.
“Fucking Kel!” Cashew seethes and slams into the door, knocking it against the monster with enough power to push it aside and slam the door shut, the latch catching audibly. The thing screeches, no longer amiable in its demeanor, crouching low as it focuses its attention on Cashew.
“Language!” Kaz yells back, the use of her deity’s name in such a crude fashion grating against her ears. The creature in front of her swipes at her again but she turns the blow aside. She grips her sword tighter, saying a silent prayer for assistance, knowing that she will need it against this foe.
Her faith is rewarded as the blade begins to glow, heat billowing from the metal as it erupts into white-hot flame. The monster takes a step back, possessing at least enough sentience to feel the primal fear of fire.
Cashew would be impressed if he weren’t focused on his own threat, which is preparing to pounce at him. He holds his curved shortsword at the ready, his other hand reaching into the back of his cloak and grabbing the hilt of one of the many similarly-made daggers hidden on his person.
It’ll leap, but I’ll go low. Cut into it, roll to avoid the claws. Should be able to get back to it before it recovers from the failed pounce, he thinks, going through the scenario in his mind in an instant. He tenses, seeing the monster do the same just as it leaps–
A thunderous sound echoes within the stone room as a bright flash of blue light illuminates the room, overpowering the glow of Kaz’s shield and sword.
Cashew watches, in amazement, as a blue bolt of raw energy slams into the creature mid-jump, hitting it in the shoulder, which obliterates into a gaping hole of exposed muscle and bone, blowing its arm entirely off in the process.
The thing cries out in pain and flounders, hitting the stone floor a few feet in front of Cashew. As surprised as he is by whatever just happened, Cashew is an opportunist at heart. He moves quickly, pouncing on the downed, injured creature like a predator, sensing weakness. The first slice of the sword is shallow, the first stab of the dagger barely puncturing the suspiciously tough hide of the humanoid thing. The second slice, however, is deeper.
The second stab goes farther.
He thinks of Addy postulating about the interior of the creature as he punches the dagger over and over into the creature’s heart, slicing through its neck as it flails weakly, trying to grab him with its remaining claw but he avoids its dying spasms easily.
Spurned on by bloodlust and adrenaline, Cashew gets to his feet, flicking the blood off his blades, which he notes is a thick, viscous, black bile.
He quickly glances back to where the blast of blue energy came from, seeing Addy standing toward the back of the room, holding her arm out to her side, glove still crackling with blue energy. Below her open palm, standing on four legs, is an oddly-shaped thing, all sharp angles and smooth surfaces, made of an unfamiliar material like her glove and visor.
At the front of the–device?–is an opening that glows with the blue energy, where the blast came from. Its four limbs move like a spider’s legs, the tips of which click and clack against the stone floor, as it fine-tunes its trajectory, aiming at the third monster that is picking itself off the floor from where it stumbled after hitting the door.
The glowing eye-like dot on the front of Addy’s visor shifts toward Cashew and she smiles widely, giving a thumbs. She speaks, presumably to her little artificial companion, excitedly exclaiming, “Nice shot, CAM! Second salvo locked on, fire!”
The cannon-thing, “CAM” apparently, jerks back slightly as it fires another bright blue blast at the remaining monster. It hits it square in the face, disintegrating its entire head in a spray of thick black gore.
Cashew feels slightly better about their overall odds of survival, seeing this.
Kaz continues her fight, methodically and carefully blocking each claw swipe until she finally sees it lurch back awkwardly for a heavy swing: An opening. She steps forward, stabbing her flaming, holy blade directly into the creature’s chest. Unlike before, when the edge of the blade barely cut into the monster’s flesh, the wrath of divine energy singes flesh, weakening it, allowing the sword to pierce through the skin, through muscle, through bone and organ, all the way out the back of the monster.
It spasms as the flames quickly spread across its body, consuming it entirely in a matter of moments, leaving only ashes littering the stone floor. The fire wreathing the sword quickly fades out, as if it were never there. Kaz takes a deep breath and returns the sword to its sheathe, giving a small utterance of thanks for the intervention.
“Fuckin’ A’. That went well,” Cashew says, chuckling as he also sheathes his blades.
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” Kaz utters, looking over at Addy, at the little contraption that tippy-taps around her feet.
“Care to explain that?” She asks, then quickly adds, “In brief.”
“This is CAM-01!” Addy says cheerfully. “Constructed Automaton Mortar. Number one. It took me years to get these gloves to work, they’re ancient Monteith technology that uses ambient raw matter and an internal supply of nanites, which are a lost–”
Kaz crosses her arms.
“–CAM goes boom and makes things explode!” Addy finishes, raising her arms high for emphasis.
Cashew leans against the wall by the door, taking a moment to focus and calm down. “Okay, apart from the obvious, solid job. We gonna keep this ball rolling?” He asks, motioning toward the door.
“Let’s shoot for one at a time from now on,” Kaz says. “Addy, you good?”
Addy grunts, dragging the monster’s body–the one that Cashew finished off–over to the corner. “Oh, sure! I’m just going to start dissecting this thinger. CAM, repositioning protocols for optimal target acquisition and minimum friendly fire percentages,” she says.
CAM lets out a couple of beeps and taps over to the wall, climbing up it with ease, making its way to the ceiling, where it waits patiently, aimed at the door.
“‘Minimum friendly fire percentages?’” Cashew repeats worriedly.
“Righty-ho, dissecting we go!” Addy quips, forming a small blade out of thin air in her hand before she plunges it into the monster.
Cashew and Kaz share a knowing glance.
“I for one feel comfortable with the mechanical blaster-crab providing overwatch for us,” Cashew says with a shrug.
Kel, hate to bother you twice in one day, Kaz thinks, beginning another silent prayer. She once again pulls out her sword, taking point as Cashew does the same, drawing his weapon.
He opens the door.