The small house in ruins isn’t just a small house. It’s the start of what remains of a small town. Not exactly what Felazo was expecting coming to the isle, but it is something nonetheless. Then, there was a circle of stones built up. Or, formerly built up. Now the tower only reaches up to Felazo’s hip. The circle tower is exactly what Felazo came here to find, but not what he thought he would. Not exactly, in any case. The journal he found in the sewer hideaway of the last town told story of a lone sorceress who lived in a tower here, but this circular building is in the center of a proper town, possibly even a small city if there are ruins yet not found. Curious, he muses as he enters the circle to explore the ruin he came here to explore.
The first issue he notices is the issue he expects to notice. The packed, decaying leaves and twigs from nearby foliage, falling on solid ground and rotting over the last half century, at the very least. Actually how long has it been, he wonders as he scrapes at the mortar that remains between the stones and tests it alchemically. The mortar configuration is odd, an old Elfish one. Much worse than modern mortar. Only people in the Vyrroltea who used this a half century ago were the Orks, but the architecture is all wrong. Which means it’s older than that. Probably between seven and nine centuries. Around the end of the Dwarfish arrival and beginning of their trade with the others. Prior to the Betrayal. Possibly even prior to the arrival of the Fist. Fascinating. Definitely predated the journal significantly, he thought. Perhaps, when the journal was written, the town had already fallen. That can explain the solitary nature of the sorceress and the existence of but ignorance towards the town. Who cares about some falling down houses when a very powerful mage chills in a falling apart tower, after all.
Felazo pokes a dagger down into the detritus. It pushes deeper than he feels comfortable digging through by hand before the point contacts a surface it can’t break through. So much for cleaning it the usual way, he thinks to himself as he steps back onto the small remains of the stone wall. No non-magical books up here would still be around, they will have already decomposed, mixed in with the rest of the detritus. Meaning, so long as he does not use magical fire, there is an easy solution. Taking out some of his firework powder, Felazo sprinkles it intermittently across the disgusting mush. Then, carefully, he strikes at his tinderbox. A spark flies out down onto the powder and it bursts alight. Everything on this small island knows where he is now, he thinks as the fires burn, bright and smoky, for a while. Most non-sentient beings of nature are afraid of the unnatural. On the way in, he saw a small graveyard for the town. He knows how to fix this.
Rushing over to the graves, he kneels over one of them. It matters little which one. Muttering the words and reaching out into the soil, through the soil and stone, pulls unlife into the corpse below. A mostly-skeleton wrenches itself out of its own tomb and looks around at the world. “Follow me,” Felazo tells his unnatural servant, and he walks back towards the burning remains of the tower. It obeys.
With his unnatural deterrent for the beasts of the island standing guard, Felazo watches as the decaying leaves burn away. A natural fire, which he uses frequently for this sort of job just in case some enchanted tome is there, takes much longer to burn through all its fuel than a magical one. But eventually, inside the stone walls and above the stone floor, there remains nothing more to burn through easily. Some small flames remain in areas where the underbrush broke through, but the stone is clear. No books or objects obviously magical remain. Which tells Felazo one clear thing: he is missing something. No sorcerer lair he has found yet has lacked at least one magical item. There was the looted one which only had his magic table bolted to the floor, but mages of enough power that their homes qualify as lairs all tend to keep lots of magic nicknacks. And, given that this isle is practically lost and can probably only be reached by those with extensive knowledge of the sea’s hungers, ebbings, and stillnesses, he doubts this place has been touched at all. Meaning there is something else here.
There are two options. Up and down. Up meaning the proper lair area was once above the ground floor. If that is the case, the remains either fell straight down, or toppled. No clear evidence of either, meaning it is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. The other option is the creepier option. Secret basement lairs. Felazo had hoped, after the last sewer lair, he could avoid the dank, creepy lairs. But alas, hope is oft hopeless. Taking his walking stick, he begins tapping at the ground, seeking out a sound that is different from the others.
Unfortunately, his senses aren’t exactly fine-tuned to such matters. And, in spite of his intention and certainty, he finds nothing curious. This can mean one of two things. Either, he is wrong, or the trap door to the basement is not meant to be found. Knowing the former is clearly impossible, Felazo decides the latter must be true. Instead of trying to find it the direct way, Felazo seats himself on the stone floor. He can simply think like an all powerful sorceress with slight paranoid tendencies who lives alone. Instead of looking everywhere, he simply needs to look where it is. It takes longer if something isn’t well hidden, but if it is well hidden, it’s likely the only way he will find it.
Wait, he realizes. The lonely sorceress didn’t put in the tower basement. The people who made the town did. The sorceress likely only hid it. Meaning he is in the wrong place to find it. Standing up, he heads over to the other houses.
After checking the three nearby houses, the basement doors all were the same. Outside the houses proper, opposite the entrance. The paranoid sorcerous wouldn’t have let that stand, but wouldn't have the resources to change it too much. She’d just change the tower’s walls, wouldn’t she, Felazo muses. Then add a simple enchantment to make it feel right. That is what he would do, if he were a slightly paranoid, solitary sorceress.
With that, he heads around the tower’s walls to where the circle isn’t opposite the gap in the wall where the door to the tower should have been. The spot is within the walls, but, until he trips over the wall, it seems like it isn’t. Exactly as he predicted. Fascinating that the enchantment remains despite the wall itself no longer being a, well, wall. Such a permanent enchantment makes Felazo even more interested in finding this lair’s secrets. Opening the stone hatch with a bit of effort, he hopped down into the darkness.
The underground nature of the tunnel combined with the shade from the forest above makes the basement very dark. Likely, Felazo considers, there is some magic method the sorceress had to produce light down here. Or, equally likely, she had some method of seeing in darkness better than he. It matters little, for he has his own methods of seeing in the dark. With a word and a twisting of his left hand, several spheres of pure light rush out from him, spreading along and around the basement. Revealing to him exactly what he wants. A lair. A proper lair. And a full one at that. He begins to look through and catalogue everything. Decide which of them he wants. Closing his eyes, he mutter some more words and reaches out and when he opens his eyes, the magic of specific items becomes evident.
The answer, of course, is everything. The table appears to be enchanted with some sort of enchanting spell. Several of the books are magical. There is a box that has some kind of divining enchantment upon it. And a series of massive bowls, each darkened by the other than natural magical schools of conjuring and necromancing. Finally, there is the drab clothing on the shelf. Which is, in and of itself, magical. Some kind of illusion, though what sort, Felazo can’t figure easily. Also, while not magical, the bed looks particularly comfy. And that is only the clear and evident magical items. The others may still have magic, but If he’s going to check those, he wants to be somewhere safe. Like aboard the Ekzokia. And if he’s to transport all this stuff back, he needs a cart.
Flipping the table and using it as a base, he needs to make four wheels and some walls and attach them to the table in some non-permanent but stable way. When he returns to the surface, his corpse is once again a corpse. It takes too much effort to use that sort for long periods of time. It likely did its job of keeping the wildlife away during the fire’s immediate aftermath. Instead, he brings back to him the sort of helper that he oft sails alongside. With the help of his less than visible helper, he manages to finish crafting the cart in the basement by nightfall. Then, lying down in his soon-to-be new bed and reading himself for the return trip tomorrow, Felazo sleeps.
The morning comes without issue. He places the bed inside the cart, then pulls the cart to just below the trap door. Wrapping rope around the makeshift cart and climbing up, he murmurs his chant and the rope pulls the cart to the basement entrance. Then, it is simply a matter of, one pack at a time, ferrying everything else from the basement lair, to the cart above. That takes most of the morning, and with the sun burning directly above him, Felazo calls to him his invisible helper and together they begin to journey around the island back to the cliff he was docked to.
With the massive surge of magical energy traveling in the cart, Felazo doubts the wildlife is going to try anything during the journey, but he tries to keep an eye out while pulling the cart anyways. Together the pair do manage to find a way to pull the cart around the cliff he climbed over on the way to the town, and down through the woods to the cliff. Not quite the right place along the cliff, but close enough for the moment. He just needs to check over the edge of the cliff every once in a while to see if he can spot the Ekzokia attached anywhere. The sun is growing low in the sky, but that doesn’t phase Felazo. He can see at night well enough, so long as there are stars above shining upon them. This is an important aspect of survival on the seas, for the seas’ hunger can change any moment, day or night.
As dusk is coming to its final moments, the cart finally reaches the cliff directly above the skiff. As he docked at high tide, and now it is no longer so, the boat sits above the waterline by a foot or so. He takes the rope, wrapped around the cart, and wraps it around a nearby tree as well. Then, with the help of his helper and the urging of the rope itself, Felazo lets the cart down, foot by foot, towards the deck.
Once the cart hits the deck, he has the rope slowly coil back up on deck, pulling him down, much faster than the cart, with it. Once on deck, he brings the cart down to the hold and, pulling the bed off of it and one of the books as well, he sits on the comfortable bed in the hold and begins to read. After all, this is the end of his current chain of lairs. He needs to figure out where to go next.
Comments