"So there's not an actual demon in here?" They were looking at a rusted roadside box.

"Probably not. And I'm pretty sure this equipment is long dead. I should be able to tell, if..." She carefully floated a little ball of dirty water up to a wire. Nothing happened. "Yes."

They peered more closely and rummaged with sticks. There were no gems or coins but no demons either. "Scrap metal, I suppose," she said. "Oh, and writing. Somebody hand me the translation notes."

"I found some corroded copper," Khulis said, pulling up broken wire fragments.

"Okay." Ruyo busied herself with several sources' notes. "This is... a series of numbers, and it has to do with lightning."

"That's all?" said Elly.

Ruyo looked sheepishly back at her. "We haven't got a proper guide to the old writing. Mostly just symbols like this one for 'Warning' and this for 'Money'."

"Money?"

"That tree-like mark next to a number, etched on the outside. Maybe a price for something."

"Well, I wouldn't buy a box like this."

Khulis said, "The wire leads south, the way we were going. Maybe that's a good sign."

Ruyo nodded. "We can come back for the rusty junk."

They pressed on, reached the stream, and turned east. From there they followed the monks' directions to bend away from the easy route, down an awkward rocky trail. Down here ought to be... "Aha!"

Down in a little valley, shadowed by overhanging rocks and trees, they found broken grey stone with rusty iron rods sticking out. Then a patch of a tile floor, and finally a cave whose array of rubble and dangling roots didn't hide its rectangular entrance.

#

Elly vibrated with excitement as she stepped closer. Lisette wordlessly grabbed Elly's belt to restrain her.

Ruyo conjured a Quill elemental, then sent a light spell ahead, revealing a room with a dirty tile floor. "Hastro, Khulis?"

The men advanced, spears ready. Then they darted backward, chased by a snake.

It was long and jagged, glittering with spikes. The spearmen jabbed at it but only managed to anger the thing. It reared up and spun its lower body, clattering its spines.

"Back off!" said Ruyo. She didn't need to tell anyone. Elly took a shot with her bow and managed to catch it right across the head. Perfectly into its jaws. The snake reacted by catching the arrow and biting it in half.

The snake caught Hastro while he was staring. It rushed him, trying to saw off his foot in passing. The man leaped to one side, and Khulis jabbed to keep it at bay. Ruyo whipped at it with a spray of water.

Lisette stabbed twice and got in a lucky hit, impaling it through soft flesh. The snake quivered and lashed at her but wasn't long enough to strike. Lisette struggled to hold onto her weapon as the beast snapped its jaws from less than an arm's length away, then dropped it in fear.

That was the opening Hastro needed. He drew his sword and slashed, clattering the blade off the spines. He used the impact to hold down part of its body, and then Khulis came in and cut its head off. Both pieces spasmed for alarmingly long, then died.

Khulis cut off a few of the hard, shell-like spines and passed them around as trophies. "Unusual to see one of those around here. Let's get through the first room before dying."

They walked in, and found a ruined and ransacked square room. Exposed somewhat to the elements for centuries, the floor tiles were only fragments caked with dirt and mold. Ferns grew in several places. At the far end, a door of sturdy metal blocked the path. A pile of stone rubble in the center might have been a table.

Ruyo said, "The Brotherhood explorers weren't able to get farther than this. Not even blasts of fire broke that door." It had been cleaned off relatively recently and scoured with flame. A tiny chip of discolored metal showed where a crowbar might've failed.

Elly said, "So is divine power going to do it?"

The monks had said they'd felt something similar to Ruyo's power at the door, without the sense of threat that their prisoner gave them. They'd agreed she might be able to override whatever held this door closed. She ushered the others back and touched the door.

It spoke wordlessly to her, expressing the idea, Sealed. She thought right back at it, Unseal!

After a moment it creaked and rumbled, sinking into the floor. Beyond was a dark hall.

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Everybody peered into the depths. Ruyo said, "Probably nobody's been here since the end." She sent a light ahead to see if anything would jump out at it.

Nothing moved beyond the doorway. Wordlessly they set foot inside the depths of the ruin.

#

An open doorway loomed on the right. They peeked into a room of crumbled shelves. The room and the hall were timeworn but not fouled by weather, giving it all a dry, dusty smell. The men poked suspiciously at junk piles. The only furniture was the hint of display racks and a counter.

Elly picked up a ball of yellow cloth with a mane of yarn and two glass eyes. She bobbed it in midair and said, "Hey there, I'm the sun or something!" Several others like it lay nearby, in various blobby shapes and faded colors.

"Toys?" asked Lisette. "This could be a shop."

Hastro found a box of folded clothes, identical flimsy red shirts with a logo like feathers. Ruyo couldn't translate the stylized writing on them, but paused, examining the box's markings.

Her eyes widened. "How many shirts?"

"Sixteen," Hastro said.

She laughed. "This toy shop could be a breakthrough all by itself. Look for more writing anywhere. I bet this line on the box says 'Shirts: 16'." She began taking notes.

Khulis kept watch. "This is a defensible campsite if we need one later. By the way, notice the box itself? Have you seen that type of woody paper before? Take a piece, maybe."

"Good thinking on both counts."

There wasn't much intact in here, but they did piece together the word for "Quantity" and the fact that the toy blobs cost 299 coins, or whatever the money was.

Hastro donned one of the red shirts, saying, "It's a little chilly here."

They set down some of their gear and moved on.

Lisette gasped. A pile of skeletons choked an intersection. Whoever had been here had been burned, leaving little but bones and ruined equipment. "Why? What happened here?"

"A fight?" said Hastro.

Ruyo said, "Burn marks on the floor and wall..."

"Mostly facing the same direction," Khulis observed. "This one had a tool but it's slag now."

Ruyo knelt in front of the bones. These people knew nothing of the Steadfast Church, and whatever gods they knew were gone... probably, with one nasty exception. It didn't seem appropriate to recite the usual Church words. Instead, she prayed silently in her own words. Whatever you suffered, may you be at peace now. Let us respectfully explore and learn about your people, so that you won't be forgotten.

When she stood, several of the others had bowed their heads too. She waited for them, then picked the rightward direction that the bones had been looking.

They picked their way through a few halls that'd been damaged, partly by chunks of the ceiling falling. A pair of unlocked doors led to pitch-black rooms. In here sat fixtures that were obviously a set of toilets, which amused them all. Khulis said, "They were human; the needs don't change."

Ruyo said, "Lots of pipes. They had a good aqueduct system."

"The pipes might be worth something," Khulis said.

"True, but that's a low priority."

Hastro asked, "Could we get all this working again?"

"Maybe if there were an aqueduct." She looked around, expecting either places where lighting spells might be installed or a place for those lightning-based lights Nusina had spoken of. "Could we get a torch going? That could be a supply closet there."

Elly gleefully took the chance to light one of their rag-on-a-stick torches, using a self-lighting candle that absolutely wouldn't work for Ruyo anymore. Its smoke started to pour across the ceiling. The improved light showed a grey pillar coming to life and swinging a pipe at Elly's face.

Lisette yelped and swung her wooden sword, barely parrying. Elly threw herself out of the path and banged into a toilet stall, saying, "What is that?"

The men hadn't switched to close-quarters weapons like Lisette, so their spears mainly got in each others' way. Ruyo swung her hammer against the rocky grey hide of the cylinder-like creature but did no real harm. "That didn't feel like stone," she said. "Not an elemental?"

Elly, from the floor, thrust her torch at the creature. It reacted by swinging its pipe down again, crashing into the floor with a painfully loud clang. It tried again and Lisette got in the way, only to get knocked aside. Hastro grabbed her before she could crash face-first into a ceramic sink.

But that put her in position to get struck in the left arm by its next swing. Something snapped and she screamed.

Ruyo shouted, "Everybody out!" and flung a torrent of water, freezing the moving pillar to the floor. The pipe whooshed through the air. It didn't have limbs; it was swinging the metal beam like an extension of itself. Everyone retreated.

Ruyo froze it more thoroughly, until it could only creak in place and swing ineffectively in their direction. "Somebody grab that pipe."

The men feinted toward it, and then Khulis yanked the weapon free. It was just an inches-wide beam of some lightweight metal, jagged at one end.

Ruyo focused on Lisette. "Roll up your sleeve."

The girl whimpered and exposed her arm. It wasn't bent out of shape, thank goodness, but the pipe had left a nasty bruise. Her sister probed carefully and said, "Broken."

Ruyo felt like garbage for letting the pair come in here and get hurt. "We'll need to turn back."

"We just got here," said Khulis.

"That could've been any of us. We ought to have a proper medic. Damn it, I ought to be a proper medic. What good is --"

Elly looked up at her and said, "Please stop it. You can't learn all the powers at once."

Hastro said, "We've got that willow tonic for the pain. I'll go back for it."

Ruyo nodded.

Lisette said, "I want to see more of this place before we go."

Elly told her, "You'll be okay. Miss Ruyo, is that pillar-thing dead?"

Ruyo and Khulis approached it warily. "What's it even made of?" the man said.

"It's not an earth elemental. That's not stone." She whacked it savagely with her hammer and dented its grey hide, but it still twitched. "And I've never seen that pipe's metal before."

"Try shooting it."

Ruyo fired her crossbow. The iron bolt stuck in it and crackled with sparks, lighting the room in harsh blue-white for a second. Then the monster fell still. "Well, that works. But don't stab it unless you're holding a wooden handle." She shared some basic safety info Nusina had known about lightning power.

She left the bathroom and shut the door, hopefully leaving the creature stuck there.

#

Hastro came back with the brown bottle of medicine. It still galled Ruyo to think that ground-up tree bark was their best option! She at least conjured up some sticks and cloth to secure Lisette's arm.

Elly fussed over her sister but said, "You want to hold on a little longer before we turn around, then?"

"I don't want to miss this! My first real adventure and I've already messed it up."

Ruyo said, "You might've saved Elly from an even worse hit."

"Yeah!" said Elly.

Ruyo considered the time. They'd have to camp on the way back and put Lisette through a miserable night without proper treatment, but that was inevitable now. She could spare a little more time. "Onward, then."